Ink
is a story in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic 'verse The Weedverse by Kudzuhaiku. The Book, retrieved from Skyreach by Tarnished Teapot and his friends, has been an opaque puzzle to Twilight Sparkle, impossible to even read, until recently, when messages in her own writing have begun to appear in the blank pages. Following the instructions, she summons Sumac, and they set to examining the mysteries of the Ink and the Nameless One.
Not to be confused with the second book in the Book of All Hours series or the indie fantasy film.
This story contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: During the Manehattan incident, Belladonna says she used to beat Sumac when he was a foal. Now he's grown, she uses more sophisticated methods.
- A Death in the Limelight: This is the first and last in-person appearance of The Nameless One before her death.
- Agony Beam: Belladonna uses one on Pebble to torment Sumac.
- Artifact of Doom: An Amplifier Artifact used by Radiant Hope to access the Nameless One's realm had a piece of Grogar's soul inside it, and that allowed Grogar to enter the realm and kill the Nameless One.
- Badass Mustache: Twilight may not have liked Flam, but his moustache was magnificent, and Sumac's inherited it, although it hasn't quite grown in yet.
- Bad Future: The castle shows Twilight and Sumac a future (or maybe a present) where they failed to stop Grogar because Twilight betrayed who she was as Princess of Friendship. The Royal Sisters have fled Terra Prime, and Tarnish, now a brutal warlord, rules the only remaining "safe" area, as only he can reduce Grogar's corruption by using poison joke.
- Barrier Warrior: Sumac's facility with shield matrices is very advanced for his age, even accounting for his general abilities.
- Big Brother Instinct: Pale refused to leave his sister to cry during the birth of her daughternote , even though it wasn't something stallions did back then.
- Birds of a Feather: Twilight's relationship with Seville is this, with both of them being penophiles and papyrophilesnote . Apparently, hours-long conversations about paper are not unknown.
- Blood Magic: Twilight has to bleednote to connect to the Book's power.
- Born Lucky: Sumac has the magic of "Grift", inherited off his father. It makes playing games of chance against him a futile effort.
- Brains and Brawn: Going by Twilight's description, Flurry and Skyla have this dynamic, with Skyla being the brains, and Flurry the brawn.
- Call-Back: Celestia's production of wainwrights is referenced again, perhaps with an explanation this time (wagon wheels can be seen as a kind of sun symbol), and linked to her contributions to the Apple family (Sumac's cutie mark can similarly be seen as a sun-symbol, with lightning radiating from an apple).
- Casting a Shadow: Shēdo apparently acquired this ability between the current events of Dogged Determination and the second Flashback, hurling chains of shadow to pull enemies towards her so that she can deal with them.
- Chess with Death: In the third Flashback, Sumac and Pebble must play cards with Pale to leave the graveyard they have come to.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Pale, of all people, upon losing a poker gamenote . Later, Twilight mixes it with I Am the Noun.
- Continuity Nod: Sumac still can't see his socks.
- Complete Immortality: By the end of the story, Twilight, maybe. She doesn't age unless she wants to, and once her body is done then it may result in Ascending To A Higher Plane Of Existence completely, but all we know is that they will "grow beyond it".
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Twilight instinctively does this to Sumac during Pale's Cluster F-Bomb. Rather pointlessly, as they're viewing an event from his past.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: In the Bad Future, Flam Apple comes to Warlord Tarnish for help. Tarnish, whipping up the mob of ponies against him, sentences him to quartering: being torn apart by the Pie sisters, one of them on each leg.
- Dark Messiah: Warlord Tarnish appears to be one to the other survivors of the Bad Future, claiming the title of "Last Light" and inspiring almost cult-like reverence from some of his followers.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Sumac has befriended Pale, initially over a card game.
- Die Laughing: The Nameless One.
- Endless Daytime: In the Bad Future, the sun is suspended above Tarnish's castle because if it leaves the field of poison joke surrounding it then it would be destroyed.
- Exact Words: It's standard procedure for ponies who meet Pale to have their memories wiped, but as they've just won Chess with Death, and the terms of the bet were that he would allow them to leave unharmed, Pebble points out he can't actually mess with their heads. Pale, rather unusually, begins Laughing Himself Sick and permits them to go without further complaint.
- Eyepatch After Timeskip: Warlord Tarnish has lost an eye at some point in the intervening years.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: A necessity of traversing the Library of Souls due to its sheer size. Fortunately, calling a name will take you to the book of the person you name.
- Flashback: Several, due to the castle showing Sumac and Twilight what they need to see, including events previously referenced: Sumac and Pebble's Romance-Inducing Smudge during his ninth birthday and his encounter with his mother in Manehattan note , and a meeting with Pale.
- Flying Face: In the Bad Future, Grogar appears as a gigantic dark cloud in the likeness of his own head.
- Great Big Library of Everything: The Library of Souls inside the castle contains the biography of everyone who ever has lived or ever will.
- Help Yourself In The Past: Twilight Sparkle That Will Be writes messages into the book, giving Twilight Sparkle That Is the information she needs to access it and become Twilight Sparkle That Will Be.
- Homeworld Evacuation: The Royal Pony Sisters fled a dying Terra Prime with a trusted few in the Bad Future, but many were left behind. Some of them have taken shelter with Tarnish, but most almost certainly died, or worse.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Sumac is right in the midst of it, and upon arriving in the Library Of Souls, decides to look up his fillyfriend's private activities.
- I Am the Noun: Twilight, while frustrated with an uncooperative (or possibly absent) Aethernote .Twilight Sparkle: I AM TWILIGHT FRONKING SPARKLE, THE ELEMENT OF FRONKING MAGIC! I DON’T FRONKING CAST MAGIC, I AM FRONKING MAGIC!
- It's All My Fault: Sumac feels this way about what happened to his friends in Manehattan, but it really wasn't, and if he hadn't fought back, it probably wouldn't have been any better. It was Twilight's fault, as she relied too much on her planning and became overconfident, and the point of the castle showing them was to force her to face that.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: It's meant to be done to anyone meeting Pale, but Pebble talked him out of it in the case of her and Sumac.
- Little "No": Sumac, upon realising he'll have to face what he did in Manehattan.
- The Magic Goes Away: Initial stages of this occur with the death of the Nameless One, but Twilight steps in to replace her and prevent the trope.
- Morality Chain: Discussed as one reason that Sumac will never turn evil. There are far too many Action Girls in his life that'd kick his a...plot if he departed the straight and narrow. That and he'd like to sleep with several of them. Twilight also considers Sumac at least somewhat this, the narration mentioning that her love of Sumac is far stronger than her love of power. Her mother's disapproval is noted by the narration as being another thing keeping Twilight from evil.
- More than Mind Control: Flam used his silver tongue to talk Belladonna into falling in love with him. Now, she knows she was manipulated and hates him for it.
- My Greatest Failure: Twilight views the kidnapping of Sumac, Pebble and Moon Rose in Manehattan as one of her worst mistakes.
- The Namesake: The Ink, the representation of destiny that flows through the entire story.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Sumac's enthusiasm for graveyards remains undiminished and he's made friends with Pale.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Sumac and Pebble end up playing Poker with Pale after they end up in a graveyard while she's practicing Jaunting.
- One True Love: Pebble is Sumac's soulmate, and while he may have life-mates, only she will be his soulmate.
- Overprotective Dad: Sumac would kind of like to do the mattress mambo with Silver Lining, but fears what will happen if it goes wrong, or he departs the path of good, given that Wormwood used to be a Warden.
- Pride: The Manehattan Flashback was to help Twilight deal with her own by forcing her to face the consequences of her own arrogance head on.
- Ret-Gone: The Nameless One mentions doing incomprehensible things to protect her daughters.
Word of God is that it involved writing several beings out of existence. To restore the balance, Harmony had to do the same to her, hence the events of the story. One of the lessons that Twilight had to learn while shadowing her was not to abuse the power of the Librarian. - Revenge by Proxy: Belladonna torments Pebble after Sumac attempts to shoot her during the Manehattan flashback.
- Rewriting Reality: The power of the Ink, which controls and records the destiny of every living thing.
- Romance-Inducing Smudge: A previously referenced event between Sumac and Pebble during his ninth birthday is seen via the weird-time effects of the castle, as it was an important moment in Sumac's life.
- Screw Destiny: The Nameless One's gift to Sumac is just enough awareness of the Ink to allow the ability to write his own future as he chooses.
- Secret-Keeper: His friendship with Pale means that Sumac knows a lot of secrets, including the identity of Celestia and Luna's mother, but he's sworn not to tell.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Many members of the Stiff Upper Lip Society died to keep Belladonna from reaching Sumac, Pebble and Moon Rose. They did not succeed.
- Shout-Out: To Monsters, Inc..Twilight Sparkle: Sumac, you put that book back or so help me!
- Bonus points for the book then turning into a door.
- The Slow Path: At the end of the first chapter, a far older Twilight Sparkle reappears just after her present-day self has vanished. She has apparently experienced thousands of years of subjective time. This is because she's had to live the Nameless One's life from the beginning to replace her.
- Stable Time Loop: See "Help Yourself In The Past", above.
- Super-Empowering: Sumac's power as a sorcerer is Exploited by Twilight to solve the problem of the book.
- Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: The Book, recovered from Skyreach by Tarnished Teapot, and the focus of the story.
- Touched by Vorlons: Sumac Apple Lulamoon doesn't come out of his meeting with the Nameless One unchanged.
- Wham Episode: This story reveals a lot about the past and future of The Weedverse, and includes the death of The Nameless One and Twilight Sparkle's ascension to replace her, as well as Sumac's ascension to alicornhood.
- White Void Room: The interior of the castle between Flashbacks gives this impression, being a largely empty room constructed entirely out of white paper.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: The power of the Ink grants this to the Librarian of Souls, but abusing it has horrific consequences (see Ret-Gone, above).
