Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Ten years now I've had my current fanfiction account. And now, a chapter comes to a close. Here we go…

Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Six

Mitgaeard slithered through the air toward the southern edge of the Everfree Forest. Scanning the surrounding plain, she let in a massive calming breath and gently pressed the tip of her snout to the soil.

"You have done well, Mitgaeard," said a deep voice, a voice like continents splitting apart, rumbling from deep within the earth and piercing Mitgaeard's mind. "These years, not so much like years to the likes of you or I, have been fruitful… excellent progress has been made. But now… now is time for true progress to be made."

Mitgaeard nodded. "Yesssssss, my massster. I, too, am eager to begin."

"Fear not. You will seize your prize. The land will be yours, will be spared from my apocalypse."

"Aye," said Mitgaeard, baring her fangs in a grin.

"Equestria's greatest defense has long been crippled. Now all that can stop us are the so-called goddesses. I have been watching them, their past and present. Every moment of their lives, for the sake of exploiting any weakness I can."

"Yesssss… the goddesssesssss…" Mitgaeard said thoughtfully. "And what of the other threat againssst usssss—my ssson?"

"Who?" the voice wondered.

"My… Dissscord."

"Your Discord?"

"Dissscord. My ssssson. Why do you and he never ssssseem to be able to remember one another? Hrmm, thisss bearsssss further ssssssstudy…"

"I am… not familiar with what you speak of. Therefore, it is of no consequence. The apocalypse will come. Your country will be spared, but the rest of the world is mine. For I… am… the Beast."

Mitgaeard considered that statement. "I know," she said, puzzled.

"SILENCE."

"Yesss, massster."

"Gather your troops, Mitgaeard. My time draws near."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

"Rarity… aspect of Annihilara… wake."

"Pfft. You're such a ham, brother."

The three eyes of Rarity's temporary spiritual form opened slowly. Beside her, she saw a formless mass of shadows shape itself into the tiny aspect of Annihilara, and found she could barely focus on the sight.

"My goodness, I am beat," Rarity muttered. "How… how long have we been sleeping?"

The small Annihilara directed a burning stare at Hukwurm and Shifter, taking the form of a mass of giant purple pillbugs and a skinny glowing serpent.

"What have you done?" said Annihilara. "Old Gods, what have you done?!"

The two beings replied with a brief but chilling chuckle.

"Well?" said Rarity in a steely voice. "Answer the question."

"Which one?" Shifter said innocently.

"Mine, if you please," Rarity said through gritted teeth.

"Oh…" said Shifter, her form changing to a spiny tentacled frog. "A little over… four years."

"Four y—four years?!" Rarity said shrilly, her eyes bulging.

"Why four?" Annihilara said suspiciously.

"Why not four?" said Hukwurm, a shrug running through the swarm.

"What have you done?" Rarity gasped. "What in heaven and earth are you up to?"

"Hell," Hukwurm corrected. "And, well, whatever we're up to, we certainly couldn't have you just up and come back to life, now could you?"

"You… you foul… and evil…" Annihilara stammered. "You're nothing but a couple of shifty, awful villains!"

The Old Gods glanced at each other. "Have we ever indicated otherwise?" Hukwurm said flippantly.

Laughing raucously, Hukwurm changed into a swarm of tiny winged worms, and Shifter into a many-legged blue dragon-like creature that sparked with electricity. Together, the pair of them flew up toward the ceiling of the cavern, before vanishing in bursts of rainbow-colored smoke.

The tiny Annihilara watched them go, flinching away at the sight of The Core above them. "Four years…" she muttered. "Przewalski… all right. Come on, Rarity, we've got to get you back to the world of the living, and now."

The tiny shadow pony marched up the slope, taking a moment to notice that Rarity wasn't accompanying her. She turned around slowly, to find Rarity standing perfectly still, contemplative. "Rarity?"

"Four years," Rarity said quietly. "I've been dead… for four years. Surely that's enough time to get used to the idea that I'm… that I'm gone. Yes? To get over me. Come to terms with the… loss. Returning now would surely be crueler than not."

Annihilara stomped back to her. "None. Of. That. You are going back to the world of the living. Getting you there is my only purpose."

Rarity didn't move for several seconds, then let out a breath. "What's going on back there?" she wondered, looking up at The Core's rough ceiling. "What were Hukwurm and Shifter trying to prevent by holding me here?"

"I… I don't know," said Annihilara. "I'm only a piece. I can't see what Big Me can. And I can't reach out to her, only her to me. If I've been closed off to her for years, sleeping, she's probably stopped trying."

"Is there anything you can do to find out?" Rarity whispered.

"From here? Yes… I can reabsorb myself back into her. She'd learn everything that I know now. But that would leave you alone here, and I don't know that she could enter The Core to retrieve you."

Rarity considered that for a moment. "I… I'm not doing that," she said with a shiver. "I'm sticking with you. I need you to get me out of here alive, after all."

"No you don't, Rarity. You really don't. But I'll stay."

Rarity nodded. "So what is it we do?"

"Only thing we can do. Return to the real world and see what awaits us there."

"All right. I'm coming."

Annihilara put a hoof on Rarity's shoulder. "We're almost there."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

END OF PART THREE

July 8, 2019

I did warn you that I like timeskips, hehe.

So, if Vorpal Blade was the big bad of the story, and Mitgaeard was the bigger bad prior to her proper introduction, does that make the Beast the bigger-er bad? Of course, they don't call it the "bigger bad" anymore, they call it the "greater scope villain" now, because sometimes TV Tropes can be stuffy and encyclopedic. Which, for that matter, they no longer claim not to be, so there you go.

At this point, I'm committing to where each character is going to be at the end of the story, because I definitely don't want it to last forever. At this point, I'm pretty sure I've figured it out, but I haven't quite put all my thoughts in order. We'll see what happens.

The bottom line is, I'm no longer at the place in my life where fanfiction can be my top priority, as evidenced by the fact that it took me less than a year to write Part Two but over five years to finally finish Part Three. Missed the seventh anniversary of the whole story between these last two chapters—that's pretty mind-boggling.

So, I made the decision to put all fanfiction on the back burner. With every intention of finishing what I started, just not letting it consume my life. So, I'm going to devote the latter half of every year, July to December, to Princess Party, the Disney Princess epic I'm writing that's off to a pretty rocky, unfortunate start but I do hope to salvage. The front half of every year, January to June, will be devoted to Romance and the Fate of Equestria.

Until then, I'll be preparing all the disjointed notes I have on the future of the story, and returning to a few very scary tasks. One is finishing the illustrated version of Part One… maybe. I definitely long ago abandoned the notion of illustrating anything beyond Part One, but I started illustrating Part One, damn it, and I want to finish what I started. I might, if I truly get the time and inclination, do that and also continue to do concept art of characters, outfits, and sets from later in the story. Might.

Also, there's the matter of returning to RFE's TV Tropes page. Haven't checked it in a couple of years. I assume it's been sitting there, not being edited by anybody ever, but on the off-chance I'm wrong, I've been too nervous to check and see what edits have been made. Either way, I assume no one's made it current, so I gotta step in, make it current up to the end of Part Three. A scary prospect because at this point I am pretty embarrassed that I went and made a TV Tropes page of my own work.

Sometimes I wonder… am I Tommy Wiseau? I've been reading up on self-published authors who think they're all that… I'm certain I'm not that bad. I don't have any haters or people who outright mock my work, but the amount of apathy my work generates certainly suggests a certain amount of deficiency. That I'm capable of wondering if my work isn't as great as I think it is, that's certainly reassuring, because some people clearly lack that kind of self-awareness…

So, yeah, outside of the occasional possible piece of artwork, RFE returns in January of 2020. In the meantime, I invite you to check out Princess Party, my other, more recent big undertaking… it's not off to a great start, I'll admit, but I'm fixing it. Also Whirlwind, the adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running, though I don't really have time for that anymore either, and also my YouTube channel, link in my profile. Those are all the things that have become important to me as of late, but RFE will return in January, and will come to an end… at some point.