Humbly requesting an extension to the submission time so I can procrastinate writing since I'll be able to say to myself "I have all the time in the world", thereby adding a meta element to the story which will eventually be submitted with only "The" .

The legends foretold of this day, upon which the slumbering behemoth would awake once more. Wielding a pencil carved from the very branches of Yggdrasil, he once again hones his cursed and cursive craft upon vast plains acting as his parchment. Gentlemen, behold, words! Some roughly seven-hundred of them to be exact, carved into the bedrock twixt foothills. An omen of works to come, or but a moment's fancy before he returns to his sopor? Only time will tell...

Well, let's see if my attempt at being clever works out.

And done. Let's see if I can make up for all the lost years.

I've always had difficulties accepting out and out murder and the like in MLP stories (one of the reasons that, while I enjoyed how they didn't shy away from showing it, the fact that they killed the Storm King in the movie didn't sit well with me on a narrative level). There's a tonal dissonance that needs a lot of justification to make it go down well if you're operating in what would otherwise be an alternate timeline for the show (IE FoE). If things are clearly established as being an AU that can also help.

This story doesn't really do either. Sunset has clearly murdered the bearers, drops an F-bomb, and has acid spit. If she was callous enough to murder the bearers rather than lock them up with Celestia, why didn't she just kill her and Luna anyways? I can certainly headcanon reasons for it easily enough, and you sort of touch on it with the pet comment, but it still feels at odds with what she's done and her show counterpart. It's relentlessly Grimdark without really feeling like it's earned that distinction.

All that said, the conversation was written quite well, and you clearly have a strong grasp on descriptive text. I do wish you had played with the words a bit more; a quick re-read didn't reveal any use of simile or metaphor to me, but it was admittedly a skim. I'm not sold on the execution of the story itself, but I can appreciate the care that went into it.

I'm afraid I don't share the sentiment of the previous commenter. I'm not a particularly emotional person and, while I like the idea behind the story, it didn't have the punch to break through to me.

This was in part due to the numerous punctuation misteps and your strange insistence on spacing between dialogue and quotation marks (which you weren't entirely consistent with, either). Admittedly, the problem was exacerbated by the fact that I'm reading on mobile so it messed with the formatting much more than it would on a computer. Overall, solid idea, but it lacks the weight and polish to really stand out for me.

Interesting idea, and Windigoes are criminally underused, but the writing is clunky and lacks refinement. It reads almost like a script instead of a story, especially with those parenthesis.

After reading the comments, I'm going to say Changeling, which to be clear was my original assumption after finishing the story and hasn't been changed (yet). I'm also going to note something that I don't think anyone brought up, that being how he's getting lighter. My interpretation is that since his parents and siblings aren't really giving him love anymore, he's effectively starving and losing body mass. However, his excitement and framing of it as becoming a more adept flyer keeps him from feeling the negative effects of that, or it simply hasn't progressed to the point where his 'love fat' has depleated enough for him to have an averse reaction.

I believe the others are mistaken, the female wolf clearly says "I have changed you just enough", implying that he was given some level of mental capability. The voicebox acts as a way to let him vocalize his new intelligence without having been further altered physically, keeping in line with the 'consensual' aspect of him being ascended to sentience. That said, I feel he should have been in a cell fitting for a wolf, like a zoo exhibit, with an exit available to him. Being strapped to the table undermines the "Your choice" concept, unless that was the intent.

>>Miller Minus
Every time I write a story like this I wrestle with the thought of, "Am I being too obvious in the foreshadowing? This is a group of dedicated writers I'm catering to, after all." I suppose I simply haven't learned my lesson yet. I know I didn't fail to leave enough clues because others picked up on it. I even decided to describe his package as 'saucer'-like rather than pie-shaped because pie felt too on the nose (and saucer has 'sauce' in the word so it felt more clever in the endgame reveal). I guess he was delivering one with jalapeno peppers on it because you could say I'm spicy.

In the end though, the main body wasn't strong enough to stand on its own two feet to mitigate the possibility of the ending falling flat for some people. I'll have to refine my reveals, and maybe make them a little more apparent.

>>Icenrose
Reg surprises the Varghoul with his shot, ergo the exposition makes it a surprise too; by the time he pulls the trigger it's effectively already hit the creature. It's like when two swordfighters are locked together face to face in a movie, then one of them gets a surprised look and the camera slowly pans down to reveal a hand that, one presumes, is no longer holding the dagger embedded in their stomach.

The archanotech was undeveloped in its flavor, unfortunately. I should have cut out the runes bit so it could be more grounded in sci-fi, rather than trying to add a dash of fantasy when I lacked the wordcount to worldbuild such an amalgamation.

Thank you for the praise on the ending, though.

>>No_Raisin
30 minutes or it's free, Parker.

I went with 30mm because that's the ammunition type of a Thunderbolt II Jet's GAU cannon, which is a sexy T H I C C gun the size of a Volkswagon. I knew adding it was excessive, but I do ever so love the BRRRRRTTTT. It also gives the reader some indication of the size of hole it puts into things. The silver was part of the worldbuilding I tried to slot in. I was planning on having a mention of something along the lines of "Everything went to shit when those archeologists opened The Crypt" but I couldn't find a suitable place for it and was running out of both time and words.

Googling Varghoul brings up a wide variety of creatures, only a few of which I could hesitantly describe as being wolf-like. I was personally just appropriating Vargeist but didn't want to use the term since "Original minific" and all.

Yeah, there's pretty much two ways to read the story that I've been told of: Either it's the most extreme pizza delivery (my intention), or some pimply teenager trying to imagine their job being actually interesting (I only wish this had been my intention).

Hope you enjoyed the realization. In a world gone mad, one of the few solaces people can find is pizza, truly the greatest of all these parts of a complete breakfast.

Will bonus points be awarded if I submit mine within the last sixty seconds of the event?