A summary of the rest of the story:
This is late, but better late than never I suppose. I've been asked a couple of times over the years to post the rest of the story, but I never knew how to go about writing it up, so here we go
Chapter 3
This was the last one I had a proper script for. I guess partially 4? There was a snippet with Twilight and Spike figuring out how to find element bearers but I dunno if it made much sense. The script here is a bit rough and probably needed some refinement, but it gets the point across.
The following are the last pages I worked on, two of which were never posted.
[START SCRIPT]
He gives a short laugh. “Sorry about that! Nice to meet’cha. Name’s Nox. I hope those restraints aren’t too tight. You might be a prisoner, but there’s no need for you to be uncomfortable here.”
“…” Fluttershy glares at him.
Wow that’s actually a really great impression of my boss… You’re not related to Brass are you?
I guess you’re not the talkative type huh? That's alright, I can do it for you. How’s about we start with a name?
"Says here you’re Fluttershy. Only child of Cloud Cover and Posey who were prominent figures of the Velvet Carnation Movement until their untimely deaths ten years ago during the Ponyville fire, leading to you dropping out of Cloudsdale flight school. Currently you live in a cottage on the outskirts of New Ponyville and run an animal caretaking service.”
Fluttershy is shocked, and he’s grinning “Pretty spooky, huh? The crown’s got eyes and ears everywhere… But it looks like few places are escaping us… saaay… the hiding places of your Red Sun friends?”
Fluttershy raises an eyebrow.
“Look, I get it. You don’t trust me or anypony in the castle for that matter, but you’re here on charges of attempted regicide and that means you’re on a fast track to a short rope. But I know you’re just another pony that’s been twisted by the Red Sun. If you work with us-
“I’ll never work for Nightmare Moon!” She blurts out angrily.
“But you’ll follow the Red Sun? Do you even know what kind of things they do? Because they certainly aren’t the heroes some ponies make them out to be.
“All they want is an Equestria where ponies can live in peace-”
“Peace?”He places several photos on the table. ”Blood rituals, bombings of public gathering places, foalnapping and ransoming ponies to fund their activities.” Fluttershy's face is concerned. “Remember the wild weather that destroyed the harvest in Tall Tale last fall? Well the Red Sun’s goons stole the relief supplies our Queen sent. They were alright with leaving thousands to starve.
“Even if that were the case, I didn’t want to do what I did, but someone had to stand up to her. She’s nothing more than a big bully and I couldn’t sit around anymore and watch her hurt more innocent ponies. I had to try, and If that means this is my last day on Gaia, then so be it. New Fluttershy isn’t a coward!”
“That’s quite noble of you. Ponies that selfless are hard to come by… which is why I don’t want to see you go down for this. Tell me who helped plan the attack and the Crown won’t press charges. I’ll make it so you never stepped hoof in Canterlot. You could go on with your life… Go back to your cottage… back to your pet.” Slides forward picture of angel.
[PAGE BREAK]
Fluttershy is thinking of Angel and other animals from back home.
"I can’t do that. They helped put my life back together. I won’t let you hurt them.
“Would they do the same for you though? I mean… they didn’t come for you when you got captured. They don’t care about YOU, they cared about what you could do FOR them.”
“What and you care?”
“Fluttershy, I just want to give you your life back. The way I see it, a cult took advantage of a young troubled mare and made you do things you'd never think to do otherwise. If the Red Sun was willing to sacrifice someone as kind as you, who else would they be willing to throw away for their selfish goals?”
“They’re not like that…” She looks a bit more unsure this time.
[PAGE BREAK]
All I ask in return for your freedom is a name. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for the ones that care for you and would like to see you again. Take some time to think about it.
He gets up and leaves. Fluttershy looks down pensively.
[PAGE BREAK]
Nox exits. “That went well! Wanna grab a bite, Sabre? I’m thinking sandwiches-- Something with peanut butter. Crunchy, obviously.
Crystal Sabre is there, looking at Nox, exasperated. She points at him accusingly. “I told you that wasn’t going to go anywhere. You should have let me interrogate her.
“Look, until Brass gets back, I have to fill in for her, and that means I’m stuck with a mountain of paperwork. I even had to get up for that emergency meeting this morning! Let me have a little fun! Besides, I have a feeling it wasn’t all for nothing.
“The Red Sun’s never been this bold before…What do you think changed?”
Fluttershy says through the intercom window thingy “I want to talk to Rainbow Dash!”
“…Who?”
In the end, I got too scared of the idea of backlash from one of my OCs being mean to Fluttershy ^^;; I recognize that it may not have been the case, but after how much hate I got for killing off a random guard, younger me got too scared to stick to this script and I flip flopped between redoing it or leaving it. I came to love the characters I had originally made for the sole purpose of filling cabinet roles. I struggled bring myself to make one of them the antagonist in an interaction with someone as beloved as Fluttershy. I ended up putting off the decision long enough that I lost interest in continuing the story though. This script was not the main reason I lost interest in the story, but it was a factor. My original points stand, and I don't regret deciding to let this comic go so I could branch out.
A chunk I wrote with Twilight:
Sunset shimmer was a failed magician that was previously in Night's employ
Twilight actually would have talked about here in this chunk:
[START SCRIPT]
“We know the elements are all part of a system. If they’re inactive, the bond is still there, it’s just faint, like how on a map you might not see a road between a town and Canterlot, but there has to be one because duh, all roads lead to Canterlot.
We have pieces of the system and if we can isolate that link between the pieces, we could follow the link from one element back to the others. All we need to do is fine tune Rarity’s gem finding spell so instead of the beacon being any old gem, it’s whatever is on the other side of the link.
Spike: “Wouldn’t the mages before you already have tried something like that?
Twi: “Well the last one, Sunset or something, (Frowny scrunchy face), destroyed all of the notes from previous experiments so we’re pretty much starting from scratch, but even if they did, we have something they didn’t! A working element!”
[END SCRIPT]
Night burned through so many young and eager mages trying to get what she wanted. Once they weren't useful, they got dumped.
The big bad evil was going to be the guard Fenix who is actually a body hopping spirit of an alicorn from the ancient alicorn empire before it got decimated in the Alicorn-Draconequus wars. The alicorns had purged themselves of their "darkness" and went on a crusade to bring greatness and order to the rest of Gaia. The last of the Draconequus sacrificed themselves to break the alicorns into the three/four pony tribes--essentially exterminating both races. One of the newly minted unicorns had been in the Empress's inner council and refused to die quietly like the others. Since then, he's been taking over other unicorns' bodies as a way of living forever because he's scared of death (Unicorns because he wasn't sure if non-unicorns could do the necessary magic to prolong his life). That's why Fenix's personality changed when his buddy died in the flashback told by his cousin (The hopping usually kills original person. The original Fenix is gone, there's just the rogue soul now. The previous body was going to die, so he jumped ship before it did). The changeling comment by his cousin was meant to be a diversion.
The entity in Fenix's body had been around for thousands of years, just living a regular life. Ever since the rise of the two sisters, he attached himself to their leadership, usually hanging around as a soldier/guard of some kind, because he still believes in the Alicorns' right to rule and wants to help with bringing glory to Equestria and serve the greater good--the Alicorns and the ideals they choose to rule by.
Fenix had been fine living as just a guard, even under Nightmare Moon. Witnessing her uncertainty and paranoia--how the country was being divided by Night's poor leadership in recent years (especially after the whole assassin and Quake dying)--he became disillusioned by Night's rule and would go on to lead a rebellion against her by plotting to take the Elements of Harmony for himself, hopping into the body of the Red Sun Rebellion's Leader- Sunset Shimmer, then eventually hopping into Celestia to become Solar Flare/Daybreaker or Evil Celestia or whatever. The Elements of Harmony were actually ancient alicorn weapons of mass destruction. The enchantment that made them had mutated over the millennia, becoming something completely new, but contact with the soul of an alicorn of old would have ignited something. Not exactly a reset, but they would have recognized one of their original users and their original purpose.
Night is actually the darkness (a shade) that had been purged from the Alicorn Empress in the old days. It gained a will of it's own over years and forged a pact with Luna to help her take over the kingdom. She didn't remember who she was, only fragments because she was all the parts of the Empress that were deemed impure/bad. They were fine being partner rulers for a while, but then an offhanded comment led to Ponyville being burned to the ground by zealots in the Queen's name 15 or so years ago --this had been to destroy the Velvet Carnation Movement which had been a peaceful group advocating for democracy instead of monarchies--and they'd been feuding ever since and only recently made up in the comic.
Night would have freed Celestia from the Sun of her own volition to try to appease the population and show that she is a good ruler and stop all the talk of rebellion. She wanted to use her as a political puppet. Celestia would have been on a short leash.
Night would have died at the end of the comic, sacrificing herself to put an end to the old empire once and for all by holding down evil Celestia as they both get blasted by the Friendship Elements beam. The old ways were wrong, it was time to stop clinging onto the past--Celestia and Luna are left to make up and rebuild Equestria.
There was definitely a lot of middle stuff that I never figured out, but I did like the story. It just grew increasingly clear that it wasn't something I could ever finish.
Here are some of the alicorn designs I never got around to showing:
I feels quite nice to finally have it all out there.
