"At least that is what Theodora's inhabitants believe, far from imagining that a forgotten fauna was stirring from its lethargy. Relegated for long eras to remote hiding places, ever since it had been deposed by the system of nonextinct species, the other fauna was coming back into the light from the library's basements where the incunabula were kept; it was leaping from the capitals and the drainpipes, perching at the sleepers' bedside. Sphinxes, griffons, chimeras, dragons, hircocervi, harpies, unicorns, basilisks were resuming possession of their city."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
The Everfree Forest is close to Ponyville. So close that, even after stepping hoof into its verdant shadows, a pony can still hear the creak of windmills, the bang of doors, the shouts of foals. It is wild, untamed, and dangerous. It is filled with monsters.
Few ponies venture into its depths. Fewer return.
Even at its margins, where moss-laden oaks brood over the grass and flowers of the meadow, the forest exudes a sense of otherness. The line of trees demarks not just the boundary of the forest, but an end to the order ponies have struggled for centuries to impose upon the land. The plants within grow wild and free. The animals and monsters – two categories that blur the deeper one intrudes into the Everfree – obey only nature’s laws. The clouds above are shapeless and huge, a hundred or a thousand times the size of normal clouds.
All this, just past the first line of trees at the edge of the meadow outside Ponyville.
There are paths throughout the Everfree, though who created them is something of a mystery. They are far too large to be game trails, and they seem to require no maintenance. No grasses intrude upon them. No fallen trees lie across them. Ponies who stay upon the paths are generally safe from whatever lurks in the mists around them.
Sometimes the paths change. Nopony has ever seen it happen, but every few years a path will simply vanish. Gone; a memory. Centuries-old trees stand in their place.
Once, decades after the Banishment, a unicorn scholar spent a full year studying the paths. She placed scrying spells, wards, and charm circles on every path she could find, and she lived in a small hut in a large grove and did her best to hide from the slouching beasts that knocked on her walls at night. Against all expectation, she lived long enough to record several twists in the paths, and the conclusions she shared after escaping from the forest convinced her fellow scholars to find other subjects for their study.
The paths had not shifted. They never existed at all.
* * *
Poison joke is the best known example of the Everfree’s diverse, enchanting, exotic, and often downright lethal assortment of plants. It is not, despite the name, related to poison ivy or poison oak; it is more closely related to the tropical hibiscus, though strongly (and, apparently, magically) modified to survive in the dim gloom that fills the forest. On clear autumn nights, when the moon is full, the blossoms take on a faint silver glow that persists even when the flowers are moved into shadows or indoors.
Nopony has ever died from poison joke intoxication. Several ponies have died from the indirect effects of intoxication: pegasi whose wings fail mid-flight, or ponies unable to escape from the Everfree’s many predators because the bones in their legs have suddenly turned soft as moss.
A full catalogue of the Everfree’s flora has never been completed. Some of the more unusual known plants include spiderbrambles, whose thousands of blossoms are living, fully functioning spiders, capable of spinning webs and capturing insects. They are generally shy and do not bite ponies except in self defense. They are not edible and make poor gifts, according to florists.
In the swampy areas of the forest, what appear to be blueberries grow in thick clusters near fallen logs. Animal corpses, or simply bones, are often found around them, sometimes with the remains of berries still in their mouths. Roots have grown all through them, piercing them, drinking them.
They are not blueberries.
None of these plants are considered particularly dangerous by scholars of the Everfree. Those lie further in.
* * *
A variety of predators call the Everfree home.
Deep gouges scour the trunks of most of the larger trees in the forest. The wounds lie in rows, usually of three or four, and cut deep enough into the bark to draw out weeping flows of sap. They form shining amber runnels that buzz with flies and ants, drawn by their sweet scent and taste.
The slashes are one way manticores mark their territory. The acrid stench of their urine is another, used by males to warn each other away from potential conflicts. Female manticores are more sociable and their territories often overlap, except when game becomes scarce.
Once a year, a few weeks before the Spring equinox, manticores will swarm. The territorial animosity they display the rest of the year fades, and for a single night they gather by the thousands, crowding the air with their flight and bending the trees with their weight. They appear like a million monstrous bats, wheeling among the stars in some ancient dance that defies meaning or reason. They gather not to mate, or to fight, or for any purpose, it seems. By the time the sun rises, they are gone.
Not far from one of the paths, a pair of trees have fallen together into a spindly copse, their branches grasping at the canopy above as though to climb back up, or perhaps pull their still-standing neighbors down. The space between their trunks is crowded with twigs and leaves and vines, far more than could ever have belonged to these two trees alone. The mound of vegetation swells out, a cancerous mass, pregnant with secrets.
When building their dens, timberwolves often seek such fallen trees. It is not clear why they do so – certainly not protection, as timberwolves have no natural predators aside from fire. They pile their dens high with any green thing they can find, and spend the night time hours inside.
It is hard for the few ponies who venture this deep into the Everfree, who see timberwolf dens and manticore swarms, to remember that this was once the heart of a kingdom. That the very steps they now walk were trod by the Sisters at the height of their power, when all the world bowed to the Celestial Thrones. It was the golden age of ponies, and Everfree City was their jewel.
But gold is also the color of autumn and sunsets. It is the color of ending.
* * *
At its widest point, the Everfree forest is nearly fifty kilometers across. It is the largest free-standing forest in Equestria, and every year it grows.
The new growth is generally harmless, more like a normal woods than the unnatural darkness that inhabits the Everfree’s heart. Where it grows near towns such as Ponyville it is chopped back with little difficulty. The forest and the ponies around it have, after nearly a thousand years, reached homeostasis. They live as wary neighbors, and sleep with daggers beneath their pillows. They have made peace with the forest, like villagers living beneath a volcano, confident it will erupt some other day.
There is a river that runs the length of the forest. Ruins dot its banks; isolated at first, then growing in size the nearer one travels to its source. Marble and granite columns lie half-sunk in the boggy woods, overrun with vines until they appear like trees themselves. They are picturesque and unthreatening, and aside from the occasional serpent, the river is a relatively safe path into the forest depths. Were it not for a series of waterfalls and rapids, one could venture almost to the old palace itself on a boat.
The city’s bones rest closer to surface here in the heart of the forest. Wide stone walkways, now crumbling, lead straight up to the river’s edge. Broken walls, their empty windows like the eyes of a skull, stand alone and forlorn amidst the ruins.
It was a beautiful city, once; a dream of marble and towers and gods. Vast squares filled with fountains and sculptures that existed for no reason but the joy they brought to ponies who passed them by. The largest fountain was more than fifty feet high, layered like a wedding cake, and decorated with free-standing statues of pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies all dancing in unison. High above, atop the fountain’s highest level, a pair of winged unicorns gyred around a common center, each touching a wingtip to the other.
Little remains of the fountain today. The noble statues are heaps of rubble. Only a few pieces – a leg, a head, a wing – are even vaguely recognizable. The flat flagstones all around are buckled and torn. More trees stand here than statues, now.
Up ahead, barely visible through the perpetual mists, a few high towers still live. They are broken, toothless and hollow, but they have not fallen yet. Some other fate awaits them.
* * *
The ruins open into a broad plaza, seemingly untouched by time or the forest all around. Dark stones, cut into pristine squares, create a vast plane upon which not even grass or mold has dared to grow. By day the obsidian shines like black glass in the sun; at night, the moonlight penetrates deep into the rock, far deeper than the stones are thick, and transforms the dim emptiness beneath ponies’ hooves into a gaping space filled with stars and nebulae and galaxies.
A simple metal sculpture stands in the center of the square: a silver crescent rises from a stone pedestal carved with a thousand pinpoint stars. It has not dulled or tarnished with time, and glimmers as bright as the day it was forged. On humid days, which are common here in the forest, a layer of frost sometimes grows along the metal, regardless of how warm the sun shines.
The Plaza of the Moon was one of the wonders of the ancient world, though few ponies at the time would have said so. They saw it only during the day, when it was plain, and simple, and featurelessly black. They rarely visited at night, when its full majesty was on display.
* * *
Less than a mile away from the Plaza of the Moon, another vast square still stands within the jungle’s growth. Blocks of brilliant marble, enough marble to build a mountain, are laid out side by side like soldiers standing in a row. The level stones once shone bright as the noon sky.
Once, a great sundial held court in the Plaza of the Sun. Crafted from gold and platinum, its style stood higher than ten ponies, and the sweep of its dial was nearly as large as Luna’s entire court. The gold inlay was polished smooth by countless ponies who brushed their hooves against it, reverently whispering prayers to the god it honored. On any given day, a half-a-million souls crossed the plaza and admired, if only in passing, the unveiled beauty reflected on its face.
The great sundial is shattered, now. The fluted golden beam whose shadow marked the hours lies in fragments all around. Some great heat has rendered them to slag, and they slump on the broken marble like runnels of wax from a candle. The graceful dial has been uprooted and twisted into a mockery of the order it once spoke.
The level stones are ruined, now. Wrecks of marble, pieces weighing hundreds of tons each, are scattered like toys in every direction. The square is sunken and warped. Countless bones lie in its cracks and crevices, a once-living mortar that binds the fragments together in death.
The teeming millions are fled, now. They have left the city to its shadows.
The sisters are gone, now.
Only the forest remains.
* * *
Far in the distance, just barely visible from the heart of the Everfree, proud Canterlot juts from the edge of a mountain. It is filled with flowing water, families, and life. It is a dream made real.
The ponies who live there believe it will last forever.
I think it might just be me, but even though this chapter is the longest out of the four, I think it told me the least. Maybe I'm missing something...
Also, note to self: do not etch symbolism in anything when I build a city. That way lies madness, and death, and exorbitant artisan costs.
Who knew that a story about old cities could be so fascinating. It makes you wonder what other places there are in our world that we don't even know about.
Ooh. Cryptic last line. Edgy.
Perfect. I love it.
Cryptic is not the word I would use myself, but I think I understand what you mean.
As for my own thoughts, I am interested in the different fates of the squares, and the mystery of the paths; but a greater question is the genesis of the Forest itself -- we had an idea of what happened at each of the other ruins, but this time we are left mostly in the dark.
Can I just say that this whole story was literally breathtaking?
The descriptions are so vivid that I can actually see the landscapes in my mind's eye, watch the camera turn about the ancient ruins we explore, hear the voice that gently guides me through history.
This is the kind of story that deserves to be animated and voice acted and given to all the world to see, but it can never be because we can never do it justice. Although that shouldn't stop us from trying.
And that last line is absolutely perfect to end on, bringing together the themes of the whole story and showing us how truly fleeting our lives are when compared with our works, and how even our greatest works--our legacies, our immortality--fade in time.
In fact, it only just barely has to settle for being my second favorite line of the story. My favorite, of course, being the first of many which truly gave me chills:
"History records precisely one visit by Luna and Celestia to the Heartspire."
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a few well chosen words can be worth an entire gallery.
And now I've gushed far too much, and ignored my own attempt at pithy wisdom. So without cluttering up your wonderful gallery any further, I have just this to say:
Thank you.
I enjoyed these, though I am not about to gush over them. They are fun little stories in their own ways.
I did enjoy the final bit.
Though it was interesting how all four places had been visited by the sisters - and they were responsible for the bones of at least three of them.
3058687
You're forgetting what we do know about. Things like the Coliseum, the Roman Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum) and the remains of Roman aqueducts. That's just the Roman Empire. England is full of cathedrals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cathedrals_in_England_and_Wales), although I think the more impressive ones date between 1100/1200 - 1800. Especially ones like Durham Cathedral, which goes way back to 1093. That means it would have close to the same relation to a modern church/city as Everfree to Canterlot. There's interesting stuff all over the place, except maybe in the US. Not much of the old world here, really. I really want to go see all that stuff someday.
Unfortunately there are so many of us that ruins hardly stand a chance against reuse of materials and accidental destruction, and we're not even bringing intentional demolishing into it, I'm reasonably sure there is very little man-made stuff on Earth of any significant magnitude that is as undisturbed as the Everfree is in Equestria.
Words like these are the sort that I would expect to find beneath profile pictures across the internet, pithy sayings that are at once obvious and profound. A sentence that makes you stop and think for a second, ground to death beneath the feet of a thousand humans, each striving to be different.
I hope you will not take offense at my surprise that I did not find a similar quote in a quick search. It's just that your reversal of traditional color symbolism seems so easy and obvious once it has been pointed out. Do these words simply come to you? Is this an echo of an idea you once heard and adopted? You throw out a meaningful line so freely. Is this what it means to be a great writer?
Or maybe I'm just a sucker for lightly coated pretension. I don't know.
3059200
If I had to guess, I would say that the fate of the squares, and of the Everfree city in general, simply into something we already know: the story of Nightmare Moon. The squares seem to parallel that; Luna, like her square, was largely overlooked. The way the Plaza of the Sun was described suggests some violent force acted on it, killing many in the process (as opposed to the Plaza of the Moon, which is described as pristine). I would guess that Nightmare Moon destroyed the Plaza of the Sun in a symbolic, and probably emotional, gesture, before she was banished.
As for why the city as a whole was abandoned, it probably has something to do with the chaotic, unpredictable wildness of the Everfree Forest itself, which must have been something that arose after the city was at its prime. Perhaps the banishment of Luna and the abandonment of the elements (remember they were left in the ruins) had some effect on the environment itself, and the capital was moved as a result. I could be wrong on that, but it seems to make some sense.
As for the moving paths, I haven't a clue.
Canterlot, too, shall pass.
You captured Everfree's aura of menace and mystery very well, and the description of the Plazas of the Moon and the Sun tells, subtly, the whole story of Nightmare Moon.
Also, I only now noticed you have rearranged the chapters so that their titles grow ever shorter and less fantastic as the chapters progress!
3059707 Yes, the wrecked Sun plaza and unmolested Moon plaza points to Nightmare Moon's involvement there, but doesn't necessarily explain the rise of the Everfree. And is NMM actually responsible for the massive death toll alluded to? Or did some later disaster put paid to the city? Or is she indirectly responsible, and her banishment or attempted coup resulted in a catastrophe she didn't directly create? As I said, mostly left in the dark -- but not totally.
3059439
3058687
And don't forget things like the Angkor Wat, the Great Pyramids, the Terracotta Army, Aztec cities such as Tenochtitlan....
The list goes on and on and on. Nothing lasts forever, but that doesn't mean we can't admire and enjoy it
Aha, I'd been hoping for a chapter four!
In the end, you actually turned it into a story after all. Much love for this. I suddenly want to meet the anthropologist (equuipologist?) who compiled this data. As of this final chapter, he/she seems to have acquired a character beyond the simple Deep Omniscient Voice we saw at the outset.
The idea of this dangerous forest directly next to Ponyville has always been a bit of a divisive one in my mind. If it was really so dangerous, would Ponyville really be sitting next to it? Maybe the monsters are normally too frightened of the Princesses to do anything, maybe there's more guardspony work than we ever see in the show (a local garrison, perhaps?), maybe it's just not as dangerous as we typically make it out to be. It's interesting to me how many different ways I've seen authors tackle this.
Two reactions to that: Cool! and Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Same for the "blueberries".
Not exactly what you were going for here, but I'm reminded of the fights between the Brandybucks and the Old Forest.
And now I'm reminded of Osgiliath with it being a ruined city around a river. I rather like that idea, matches the current capital of Canterlot being based off of Minas Tirith. Same with the flight from the old homeland, except for frozen in ice as opposed to sunk beneath the ocean. Considering that we know the Minas Tirith analogue was intentional, I wonder how much of my ramblings here might have been as well. Probably less than I'm thinking since I'm pulling in a fair bit of fanon.
Man, that ending with the two Plazas and then the bit about Canterlot.
3059697
Very few of them are just tossed out there :) Chances are, the more lyrical lines are thought-over meticulously and changed several times before I'm happy with them.
That particular line is actually an homage to Arthur C. Clarke, who used similar phrasing in his novel "Childhood's End." I forget the exact quote, but it was about a golden age also being a harbinger of ending.
I do this from time to time. In "Everfree," the paragraph near the end about the destroyed sundial is a bit of an homage to Shelly's Ozymandias. It's a loose tie, but it's there.
3060143
Sure. Nothing lasts forever, but most of it will last longer than any individual will.
I'm deeply, crushingly sad about four cities written in a universe based on a children's TV show. I don't even...
I must say, the first chapter was my favorite, though this last one comes as a close second. The line about bones-as-mortar added a layer of jarring brutality to the envisioned scene: A great gathering to honor the sun turned into a nightmare as an angry goddess strikes down her subjects. The melted sundial is somewhat incongruous. Luna's artifacts are still cold where she left them. That implies that Celestia did the sundial in. Maybe Luna used it as a shield?
I loved this last line.
3064433
I assume it is supposed to emphasize that Nightmare Moon was the aggressor and Celestia didn't bear a grudge.
Or Celestia went through a bit of a thing after banishing her sister and that's why everyone else split town.
And it turns out that this time, they're right!
And this is why I love your stories, lines like this.
I really feel like Celestia herself did this...
Fantastic story of a world. Who needs characters anyways? Not CiG, apparently.
3060212
Hippologist?
3077588
That's the word. I was probably mixing my Greek and Latin again.
And here is proof, as I've often said, you do not necessarily need people or characters to tell a superlative story. Places and events (even just implied events) can do the job, when carefully constructed.
Very nicely done. Something that a lot of world building misses, is there should always be some mystery, some half-explained things to spur the imagination, and you've done that very well.
I think my only complaint would be really the first chapter and the scale of the Heartspire. Being one of the terribly numbers-grounded people of the engineering type mindset, I always baulk at things like "miles high", on the basis that the world is often so very much bigger than people give it credit for. Conversely, the implication of the size of it, especially that first level, seems to suggest that "hundreds of yards" seems not big enough (especially for a spire suposed to be miles high.) However, that is a complain I level frequently at many fantasy and sci-fi writers (and even more frequently at fantasy and sci-fi history and timelines, which are even worse at usign big numbers for the sake of it without really getting how long, say, five hundred years really is), so you are in good company with that...
3105215
Stories like this, with no dialogue, are probably the easiest to attempt a dramatic reading of. Go for it!
I shall keep that in mind, and not attempt to give them to loved ones. I'll only give them to enemies.
And now I presume it is even less well-known. Sad. I should like to visit it by night, just once, were I ever to find myself in Equestria. Getting there is no small task, of course, but I expect that inside the ruins is relatively safe (considering it's in the Everfree), and I'm sure that there's still plenty to see there to make the journey worth it.
Symbolism!
And 'Tia was, in the end, not blind to this symbolism. And once she opened her eyes, she did not like what she saw.
I loved all of these stories, but The Garden Out of Time is my favorite; that image of the pregnant mare standing at the fountain made me smile. Beautiful writing.
I'm imagining the scenes described here being part of one of those old nature documentaries, and the last shot is that view of Canterlot as the narrator calmly reads that last line. The premiere of such a prestigious film being having attracted Canterlot's finest (snobs.)
So, you actually could put a simple narrative behind all this: Some crazy pegasus filmmaker spent an entire year flying around and filming everything. Because history is awesome.
I wasn't convinced this would work until I read the final sentence. Nice way to package the whole thing up.
That was brilliant! I can see a lot of Elder Scrolls inspiration. Especially the history of the Dwemer Elves.
--TheRussianBrony
Read all four chapters, and I've got to say that your descriptiveness is just FANTASTIC!!!
I can almost see what the cities would be like, and they are all impressive
Chapters are all bummers though... Not your fault, but ruined cities are depressing...
I love any stories that provide both worldbuilding and history not just for Equestria but for the world that it exists in, and this is just a suburb example of a story told through imagery and excellent wordcrafting. i could see myself in the locations that you described, and i could hear it being narrated by some storyteller around a fire (it would be Morgan Freeman. Always Morgan Freeman)
Incidentally, was the Heartspire tower inspired by the dungeon that you have to go through in Final Fantasy XII? It was the first thing that came to mind when you described it, as in game it is a ridiculously high tower that once had a great purpose. I also couldn't help but think of the Hallelujah Mountains- the great floating mountains from the movie Avatar when you described them. Beautiful.
Heh.
Well that was certainly a thing. Nice and interesting, good storytelling through little details and whatnot. Don't know what else there is to say but yes, yes, this was a fine thing.
I suppose we just need to figure out what could total Canterlot which, bearing in mind how it's built, isn't so hard. An unusually stiff breeze could probably do it.
Words do not do your story justice. The mark it has left is testament enough. Thank you.
Noez! Dream Valley MUST be located where da griffon and minotaur societies are now, on the other as-yet-unseen continent across da sea!
Dat way it explains my whole hypothesis that the Changelings were Flutterponies and invited the ponies to travel to their continent after da Smooze left Dream Valley in ruins before it was destroyed and why the Flutterponies would feel so betrayed when the windigoes showed up after the tribes started fighting and why, with their valley freezing and her people starving to death, their Queen Lacewing would be desperate enough to make a deal with the newly-arrived Discord and become changelings and feed on pony love for revenge and there would be this whole long spell poem that Discord would give for the condition to undo the transforation of their people with some kind thing about filling themselves with love to replace the greatest hole in their hearts, which is all deep and symbolic and stuff about forgiveness and compassion and stuff!
MY FANON IS DESTROYED NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
*jumps off 10,000,000 foot cliff in despair*
(Interesting story, BTW.)
>>>The paths had not shifted. They never existed at all.>>>
Relative spatial discontinuity enchantments? Or 'overlay' enchantments, copy-pasting a 'road' atop the actual physical reality? It would work in a manner akin to a wormhole, I would suspect, except it maintains the relative distances traversed.
That begs the question if those paths can be left. If so, we're dealing with a 'leaky' tunneling effect... I would be most interested in examinng the thaumatic field matrix at the edges...
>>>Poison joke is the best known example of the Everfree’s diverse, enchanting, exotic, and often downright lethal assortment of plants. It is not, despite the name, related to poison ivy or poison oak; it is more closely related to the tropical hibiscus,>>>
Huh. I had always assumed it was a member of the Liliaceae family: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliaceae
>>>The ponies who live there believe it will last forever. >>>
It will last forever.
I have given it my blessing.
3071801 Because we, the god-like Hyoomans who love the ponies shall never allow it to fall.
We shall smite even those other of the Fallen Men who dare to assault it with their grimdark fics! Their darkness is no match for us, for darkness is naught but the absence of light, and even the smallest match flame chases away a vast realm of night, to say nothing of an LED which is much more energy-efficient!
We are an INFERNO of crazed fanbois! We are the wielders of the secret flame! The dark fire hall not avail them, those flames of Udun! NONE SHALL PASS!!
3219181 I was referring to its fate, not what was going on there. One was abandoned, one was blasted to smithereens... This one's occupants were petrified.
I don't think I have been so struck by the sense of scale of a work since reading the fucking Silmarillion. It is one of those things that precious few stories can instill on me, and that is quite distinct than what I get from epics or other things in a grand scale. I remember liking Fortress City... a while back, but reading all of them in context really completed the effect.
I will have to in a I wonder why it is, but this stuck a chord deep in me. I will certainly have to re-read it eventually, but suffice to say, this is one of those fics to show when asked for examples of what ponyfic can do.
3239015
An interesting idea in theory, but that song is goofy enough that the hypothetical author trying to make it creepy would have a fairly hard row to hoe, in my estimation.
Hey, interesting fact time: did you know that folklorists are now questioning the more macabre interpretation of that song? Check out the Wikipedia article on Ring a Ring o' Roses for the scoop!
well, that was amazing.
sorry for the lack of words here, cant brain them right now :(
This story is amazing, it definitely gives me the feeling of mystery and age. I like abandoned places because they tell a story, and loss is a powerful emotion. This story makes me feel... small, for lack of a better word. I enjoyed chapter 1 the most, because the tower left the impression of lost power, that no matter how long you resist, or how hard you fight, time will be able to outlast your efforts.
3219206
I think you're looking too much into it.
They simply had never existed at all. No more or less than that.
Anyhow, this is lovely. Sublime. I try to get at some of the enormity of the past with my stories but as always Cold in Gardez does it better. Someday...!
3271371 No no no no!! She WALKED on something! Which means a path of some kind had been created BUT not by removing the physical material in the vector!
This had to be accomplished by some form of spatial manipulation magic akin to a tunneling or wormhole effect!
SCIENCE CAN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!!
The bones scattered across the Plaza of the Sun could have been the result of a stampede of panicked ponies blindly fleeing from the battle between the princesses. Any who lost their footing and fell would have been trampled by the unstoppable mob.
Very elegant in concept: it reminded me of Dunsany--not so much his style as his penchant for telling stories in retrospect about beautiful, doomed cities ("In Zaccarath", "Bethmoora", and "The Fall of Babbelkund").
Thumbs up and starred. Nicely done sir or madame!
That was really quite a special experience. As far as experimental writing goes, I'd call this a success. No characters, but the themes and vague narrative it weaved were all superbly done. It had lots of those great individual lines, like the last one about Canterlot, and especially the one about the sisters visiting the Heartspire. I think the Heartspire chapter was my personal favourite too.
Mostly, this story leaves me with a feeling of melancholy. That implication that Canterlot will one day go the same way as all these other great civilizations isn't a happy one, but that's not what does it for me. I think it's more the idea that the other three cities seem to be forgotten.
I live in England, and we have ancient ruined castles all over the place. But those never depress me the same way this does, because those old castles are maintained and protected by English Heritage and open to the public. Our history isn't ever fully lost. Those old ruins are still there, and every day people will go out to look at them and learn about our country's long and storied past.
Here though, that hasn't happened. Knowledge of these places exists. The princesses are still around, and our narrator certainly seems to know his stuff, if he's even an actual character in this world at all. But the tower, the mountain, the city and the forest are all just abandoned to nature now, seemingly just left to decay. There are mentions of ponies visiting them, but it doesn't look like there's any presence there. No attempt to save this history. And already details are being forgotten, like exactly why some of these great civilizations even fell in the first place.
I think that's the most depressing part of it all. Not that these old settlements are gone, but that no-one really seems to care anymore.
This made me think of a quote from Civilization V, when you build the Stonehenge:
"Time crumbles things. Everything grows old and is forgotten under the power of time."
-Aristotle
The images of these places, the history of the ponies and the tidbits about Celestia and Luna all come together perfectly. I suspect I will read this a lot more times later. And one more thing, music I listened to while reading and it fit pretty well: