I thought The Point of No Return was G.M. Berrow’s greatest creation. I was wrong.

@Background Pony #ECF3  
@Mildgyth  
The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

@Background Pony #ECF3
 
Teal Deer.

A novel will never suffice, we require a pentalogy following Rarity’s total war against the giant crab! Roughly following the over-quoted “hero’s journey” and the equally overused five stages of grief, since those are absolutely the same thing.
 
First, the call to action, the Denial: a disruption of Rarity’s daily life through the giant crab, nay: through the existance, the possibility of a giant crab. The crab at first only appears in old mares’ tales and in dreams and in coffee grounds, causally unrelated to the plot, but of fell importance. The battle against the crab is only a symbolic struggle, maybe even metaphysical in nature. Rarity desires a change, tangentially, incidentally connected to a possible defense and protection against giant crabs: building a high wall maybe or undertaking a journey to a town where crabs are unknown(and ponies harvest their apples with cannons), ultimately failing because of her unwillingness to stand by her true motivation: the dread that is a giant crab’s possibility. Rarity fails, crushed under her single shortcoming and the fatalism that is her Umwelt. The giant crab, quite close and real, utters a Godzillian challenge: it takes away Rarity’s cat, sister or home, it speaks badly of her behind her back, or it flings a single speck of dirt on Rarity’s flawless coat from a great height. The actual violation is of secondary importance: the gesture suffers to launch the missile of giant-crab-hatred that Rarity has become under the crab’s insufferable shadow. Swords are raised to a blood moon, oaths become stuck in throats. A house, ship or bridge is burned or, possibly, built within a single day and night. Rarity leaves her hometown, alone or with two companions, and the last glimpse the first novel grants us is how the left-behind compatriots return to the work of their hands, one of them singing quietly, half ashamed, a song about the end of summer.
 
Second, the Anger, the threshold: Rarity travels, probably over forests and mountains, alternatively through the streets of an all-devouring city, possibly through the ranks of an insane court sustained from her own nightmares. She follows the crab’s six-pronged trail, and encounters three tests. Each test is designed, be it by a malevolent author, Rarity’s own warped perception, or the abysmality of a world permitting giant crabs, to have Rarity face two things: her loss, home or sister or pet or good name or honour; and how vastly the crab is superior to her in every measurable aspect. The crab, already gigantic, becomes titanic. Her legs are continents, her body a world, her mind that of a Lovecraftian god. She is not aware of Rarity, as you and I are not aware of the dust mites angrily gnawing away at our dead skin.  
What exactly the tests entail is of little interest; paths will be blocked, peasants will beg for assistance, kings will demand impossible tasks. Rarity will pass by ingenuity or perseverance or supernatural help. However, her victories will not strengthen her. The loss will stay a seeping wound, exarberated by the sacrifices the road takes; the crab will only grow in her mind, an all-eater lingering in the fringes of her world like a stepchild of Loki. In the end, after the Law of Three is served, a friend or a beaten mini-antagonist will take Rarity to the top of a mountain or high scycraper, maybe the gondola of a humongous zeppelin, far above clouds and the dusty blue of an autumn sky, and there, among the stars, dances in submarine glory the humongous crab. And Rarity will tilt her head and scream, not in agony but in anger and defiance, and the crab will actually, truly tilt an eyestalk to gaze upon her and tremble away. On the way down, Rarity’s physical wounds close. Her eyes become dry and wise and free of mercy. Down at the foot of the mountain she is hailed by the numberless allies her tests have earned her, finally congregating to swear allegiance. Our last pages follow the mentor-friend or mentor-foe that initiated Rarity, stealing away from the glory and the reforging of blades to cower in a hidden corner, clutching their head, the weight of what they did enough to shed thin blood from their sinuses.
 
Three, down in the abyss, Bargaining: Rarity has been clothed in silk or ermine or steel or magic. Her tools have been named and baptized in scarlet. Her allies are strong in numbers and conviction. The crab, gigantomachic, but finite, maybe mortal. But there is rot feasting at all the roots. Like so many tic-tac-toe-players, Rarity can not possibly win. The battle is one of gambits and pawn offers. The crab, just for example, will spit black grime at a tower-fortress or mountain-city, imbue an instable unicorn with eldritch magics or call butter locusts from the heavens. Rarity will device a plan to rocketeer a tower fortress or mountain city into the foe-crab’s heart, sponsor a magic academy in a faraway kingdom to dump the price of mercenary-mages, or have her dwarfish thrall-servants ignite a new sun where it will blind an ore-ogre protecting the crab’s liver mines. Needlessly to say, their movesets cancel each other, the weaponized tower will, hindered by the soot, hit and colonize the moon instead, the deranged unicorn will enroll in the new academy and become professor for defense against the dark arts, the locusts melt in the sun’s blaze but strenghten the ore-ogre with their buttery essence. Etcetera ad nauseam. The stronger Rarity grows, the more perfectly she is matched by the crab. When she lies awake at night in her luxurious quarters, she feels she created this crab herself, the same way the crab’s undeniable presence formed her own path. She heads down the slow, sure way of self-sacrifice. She sends away her heavy cavalry, and the crab’s pike formations starve in the field. She grants freedom to her double-pixies, and the dark promises their kingpriest hears in his doubledreams become increasingly half-hearted. Finally, rarity walks towards a mountain range overshadowed by eight long legs, and sends away her last allies, except maybe one that followed her from her wretched hometown. And while they approach the moutain range, leaving a trail of discarded treasures and honorably discharged recruits, the crab becomes smaller and smaller, finally ducking behind the mountains. Finally, a first victory is won: Rarity’s loss is restored. Her cat is placed by her side by a large pincer or her sister prances along a trail babbling about cutie marks or her house falls from the heavens burying an enemy magic-user, or her allies, having started mouthing badly about her during the war, praise her name and commission statues to her good name, or her coat and honor shines with an unknown clarity when the last piece of armour falls into the dust. Rarity has been offered a chance, a reason to turn her back and walk away satisfied. And yet, she pushes on. The enemy must be at the brink of defeat now. Rarity has bargained/exchanged well. And now she is down to her last pawn: herself.
 
Four. Depression. Transformation. Rarity is hunting the crab, hard on its trail, but the hunt is also a psychological exposition of what makes the giant crab what it is, with every discarded post card from its crab parents Rarity finds and every rudimentary pictogram the crab carves into a mountain while resting its scabbed feet. Desillusioned already, Rarity’s spirits crumble as she closes in on her hated enemy, realising with every step more how similiar they are, how similiar they were in the first place. She does not know anymore if she is going to murder her enemy when spotting it, challenge it to a knightly duel, chain it and lead it away to serve eternal punishment in the Tartaros, or if she is going to collapse before the crab at its mercy to be vivisected by pincers. Several times she allows her quarry to escape for another day, masking her indecisions with carefulness. Finally, already in hearing distance to the bells and jolly-ponies of her hometown, she stumbles upon the crab, abruptly: ravaged by creatures of low breeding, little relevance and no honor, dying.  
Rarity makes her lair by the crab. She feeds it with tea and muffins and stories of friendship and generosity. She tugs it in at night and welds shut its wounds and re-opens them to let the ichor out. There is no other course of action. One night the crab carves an apology into the bedrock and sneaks off. To die, it is implied, but Rarity does not think much about it. She follows the mad bells ringing and the large fires coloring the night sky in rust, follows them to what has been her home town.
 
Five: The Return and acceptance. Things have changed in Ponyville. Things have changed to bizarre degree. Every choice Rarity has made has come down on her hometown, a bodypart of her that has become swollen with rotten lymph and unrecongnisable with scars. The actual property damage, bodycount and loss of tourism has been neglectable, maybe, but everything Rarity may’ve valued in this town has been warped. Rarity does not understand that it his her that has been changed, in the crab war. Too spent and disconnected she can only watch how a small oversight from an earlier quest, an enemy lieutenant or an artifact unchecked grows to threatening proportions, soon towering over her like the Golem towered over Löw. The crab is being seen in the fogs around town, and when Rarity goes to see that spectre for herself, something slides into place, painfully like a broken bone. Rarity makes her peace with the town while the crab, never seen, heard or unambigiously stated to still exist, brutally takes care of the newly arisen threat. Rarity mops up afterwards, truly destroying the threat. She has a good laugh with her friends, at last. And then our story ends, while Rarity walks off into the fog, her battered weapon over her shoulders, whistling the same two verses of an old war song again and again, very ready for a battle with her past.

Bwa ha ha!

I read the last word wrong. crap

And at the end… (Spoiler) After defeating it in combat, and learning of the crab’s tragic backstory, Rarity befriends it, and they have a cute li’l tea party at the end. The other “Mane 6” & Spike are all “WTF?!“

I cannot type a sentence capable of describing how much I want this book to be real.

Now this is a book I would read.