FimFiction Link - Short ID: 172019/gods-of-war
Published: Mar '14 — Apr '14
Gods of War is the 10k word sequel to We fight as one, where, after a time skip, Eclipse has trained Cadance and Twilight to fight. Unbeknownst to them, threats worse than Discord are stirring beyond the horizon.
Gods of War is only two chapters long, but from that you can tell it's basically we fight as one 2.0. The fights are still pretty decent, and is still essentially the core of this fic, as chapter 1 starts with a duel between Cadance and Twilight as part of their training, and by chapter 2 the first of the oc villian group has come and straight into fighting it dives.
The same core issues plague the fic as did its predecessor - Eclipse essentially trades two well-rounded, complex characters who plays off each other for one not that well written one. At least in We Fight as One, Eclipse's will to protect Equestria as a combination of the princesses was believable in combat. Here, however, not only is she still sadly devoid of real personality traits and internal conflict, but despite having apparently been training and preparing for conflict for the last few years, she is still caught off guard for serious conflict with a deadly foe, her negligence causing dead innocents.
There's not much else to say - the oc villian group is fine, Twilight and Cadance are okay, and the writing is noticeably clunkier and more littered with errors than the last.
It's disappointing that for a fusion fic, the fusion concept doesn't really come in much, but I'm not sure how this could have been done anyway. A dream conversation between Luna & Celestia's consciousnesses? Surely are things that could be said about having access to two individuals' memories, or being a pseudo-newborn consciousness that has thousands of years of memory, but this is at its core an action-focused fic. I don't know. A combination of Celestia and Luna's magic surely can result in more interesting applications beyond combat magic too, like dream magic, but who knows?
3/10.