Twilight caught Fluttershy's eyes, and they nodded. Equinox fused into a single blade before her, and she raised it high to grab the attention of the remaining troops. “One final time!” she cried, bringing it down to point at the approaching army. She raised her head to give Titan's monsters an imperious stare. “For the end of war!”

Then the creatures of the Everfree, crazed and fighting for their lives, were upon them. Twilight didn't need to do any math. She knew they could win.

Fluttershy made a sound, a single, eerie wail that stopped almost as soon as it had started. A wave seemed to ripple outward from her as her song reached the ears of the army. They seemed to shed some of their exhaustion, standing straighter and focusing on the enemy.

Twilight heard it too. This one was laced with watching Rainbow Dash do a backflip or break through a cloud bank. Were these Fluttershy's memories, or just the feelings associated with them?

Her first foe was a giant scorpion, and she met it with Rainbow Dash at her side. It lashed out with its stinger, and the venomous point crashed against the ground as Twilight rolled past. She slashed at the creature's legs with Equinox, and four of them fell twitching to the earth.

The scorpion recoiled, but Dash had already sprung into the air, wings open, spinning like a dancer as she soared past the creature. With a whistle of air, her blade sheared its tail free.

Dash landed, and they stood side by side, moving forward into the enemy swarm. A crunching sound reached their ears as Applejack shattered chitin and crushed the scorpion's brain.

The next several seconds were a blur to Twilight. She remembered monsters coming at her and Dash from all sides, and she remembered that all of them met magic or steel. They moved together, impossibly fast, ducking under one another's blades even as they sheared their enemies into ribbons. Twilight's blades scattered and reformed, Dash called up thunder and lightning, and they cut a swath through the enemy ranks.

With a flash of purple light, Twilight teleported away from Rainbow Dash and to Rarity's side. She appeared in the midst of a teeming pack of spiders and manticores, hoof outstretched, and a striking stinger shattered against the end of her foreleg instead of impaling Rarity through the chest.

Another keening note from Fluttershy. Twilight felt Rarity telling her to speak up, and the confidence that came from knowing Rarity would listen. Yes, these were definitely Fluttershy's experiences.

The manticore roared in pain as it withdrew its severed tail, and Twilight wasted no time. She threw herself up and back, and Vorpal sped through the air beneath her, fourteen gleaming fragments meant to sink into undefended flesh.

As she turned over in the air above Rarity, Twilight looked up to face the spiders on her opposite side. She split Equinox in midair, then sent the blademotes away. Her hooves touched the gravel-crusted ground just as the sound of a dozen thrashing, shrieking spiders met her ears.

She ducked, and Vorpal sped over her. Rarity rolled, and Equinox blazed past her. Their blades reformed, glittering diamond and burning magic, and they brought the enemy in close. Their bladecasting was identical; Twilight preferred Rarity's style to Astor's or Terra's.

Eventually Twilight realized that she was using too much unicorn magic. She'd been fighting almost constantly since the moment they met the enemy in the Everfree, and unless she wanted to hit a magic drag, she'd need to take a break. She'd tried to be conservative—almost all bladecasting and teleportation, two extremely lightweight means—but she was stretching herself too far. It was time to take a break.

Rainbow Dash blitzed to the ground beside Rarity just as Twilight sprang away, ready and able to cover the fragile unicorn while she worked. Twilight dismissed Equinox as she rolled under a spider, then crushed its underbelly in with her hind legs.

Another note from Fluttershy. It hardly sounded like her voice anymore. Twilight felt the thrill of watching Applejack tie a hog while cheering her on. The assurance that Applejack would always be patient with her.

Applejack kicked the dying spider off of Twilight and pulled her to her hooves, her face a mask of grim determination. Twilight nodded to her.

They turned back to Titan's army, deliberately facing the thickest portion of the chittering, savage monstrosities. Then they charged.

Applejack went first, thundering forward on hooves of steel. Her momentum tossed monsters three times her size aside, and she crushed them beneath her legs. Twilight followed, noting with dismay that she was really too light to hurt anything without slowing down.

But the journey wasn't the point. Applejack skidded to halt in the middle of Titan's army, her hooves grinding against dirt and gravel. The point was to put themselves right into the belly of the beasts, to bring themselves to where the enemy was thickest, far away from their own troops, and...

“Rarity?” Twilight said as she slowed to a stop beside Applejack.

Applejack gave a sort of cough as she looked at the ground.

Twilight glanced at the monsters closing in around them. “Whatever.” She'd have to find out why Applejack was avoiding Rarity some other time. For now, business beckoned.

A pack of timberwolves were their first victims. Their alpha launched himself at Twilight, jaws gaping, and Twilight caught its bite with a foreleg. It clamped them down, harder and harder, until Twilight felt teeth splintering against her skin. She tossed it to the dirt between them, and Applejack turned it into kindling with a well-placed stomp.

There was nothing particularly artsy or sophisticated about the way they went about breaking in the enemy lines. They crushed, they bruised, they smashed in heads. While Twilight certainly incorporated the lessons she could draw from Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, they were more to accentuate Applejack's style of brute force combat. They were savage animals fighting savage monsters.

Twilight felt a tick at the back of her consciousness.

A hundred meters away, Pinkie Pie tightened the bandage around her injured foreleg as she stared down the biggest scorpion any of them had seen. It was a massive specimen, with pincers as big as an adult pony and a stinger that could have easily impaled one of its smaller brethren. Beady, insectile eyes caught sight of Pinkie Pie, and the snap of a pincer could be heard even over the cacophony of war.

Pinkie Pie loaded a blade into the launcher on her good foreleg and charged at it, her hooves dancing over the packed earth. She came at the scorpion, running full tilt into toward its pincers with her woefully tiny blade. Pinkie jumped.

Another incantation of Fluttershy's siren song. Twilight felt the thrill of being with Pinkie Pie in the bakery. Uncertain of just what crazy idea Pinkie Pie would come up with next, but certain that whatever it was it would be tons of fun.

It was as though they had rehearsed it. Twilight popped out of the air beneath her, grabbed her, and tossed her into the air in a graceful arc. As she flew, the launcher attached to Pinkie Pie's wounded foreleg was pulled away by Twilight's magic.

Pinkie Pie turned in the air above the massive scorpion, soaring over it to land in a roll. She rounded on the arachnid as she came to her hooves, leveling her launcher at its back and letting loose with one of her blades. It barely penetrated the creature's chitinous carapace. The scorpion didn't acknowledge the wound at all.

With a tug of magnets and pull of straps, the second launcher wrapped itself around Twilight's foreleg. She dipped into her unicorn magic, lightly touching the enchantments wrapped around the device. They were her spells, and it was easy to feed them more magic. She tugged on the blade lodged in the scorpion's armor.

It made no sound as it passed through the giant insect, cutting a hole through its insides and whirring through the air to attach itself to Twilight's foreleg, trailing ichor. The creature collapsed, but Twilight had already teleported behind it and to Pinkie Pie's side. Pinkie loaded another blade onto her arm and grinned at the horde of monsters that surrounded them.

“Our kung fu...” she said, “is stronger.” Twilight rolled her eyes. Even though Pinkie Pie was telling the truth.

Fighting with Pinkie Pie was a different experience. They moved together, so close and synchronized that they might as well have been one being—though, with their harmonic connection, they were the closest they could get. Pinkie Pie's style of fighting was unorthodox. Rarely did they use the same set of limbs to keep themselves on the ground for more than a second at a time—and that was if they were even on the ground at all.

Twilight flailed Pinkie Pie around like a club. They traded blades at least a dozen times. They danced on the back of spiders, scooched under manticores, and bounced over timberwolves as they maneuvered around the battlefield. For a moment, Twilight almost forgot the nature of what they were doing and started to have fun.

She was drawn back to the present by an absence of enemies, a lack of things to kill. Twilight threw out her magical senses, searching for the next wave now that Pinkie was safe.

She found none. They'd won.

A final note. Twilight was... watching Twilight.

Watching Twilight Sparkle lose control because her letter to Celestia was going to be late. Seeing her mane disheveled, her eyes wild, hearing the crack in her voice.

Then she saw Twilight giving orders. Presenting awards. Assuaging an entire town's fears in the face of a dragon, organizing the first ever punctual Winter Wrap Up. She saw Twilight's confidence, her strength, her determination, and she felt it too.

“You think you're not worthy enough for them,” Fluttershy said, landing beside Twilight with hardly a sound. She was facing back, away from Twilight.

Twilight turned back to look at the army. Her army.

They'd made it through, but they were at their limit. Ponies crawled out from under the corpses of creatures five times their size, blood and ichor matting their coats. Ponies were spread across the ground in bits and pieces, ruined heaps of flesh that couldn't possibly have once fit together to make a living thing. Twilight had brought them the worst of nightmares.

The living looked around at the carnage with empty stares or faces twisted into expressions of horror. They gathered around the dying, those wounded beyond the point of recovery, and said whatever words they could. Twilight tried to get an idea of how many they'd lost.

There was no way to count how many ponies were missing by this point, but it was at least thirty percent, Twilight reasoned. Thirty percent. Armies were supposed to break by twenty. Was it desperation that had kept them fighting, or her?

“They love you,” Fluttershy said. “I love you. All of us love you. You have to understand, Twilight—“

There was a sound like the crack of a whip, magnified ten thousand fold. A shrieking whistle followed it, growing closer and closer every second.

Twilight frowned, glancing at Exakktus. The dragon stood before The Citadel, not a creature near him, impassive. He wasn't making whatever that noise was.

She looked up, searching outward with her magical senses. “What—“

She felt it almost instantly, mere seconds after the noise had started. It was just so fast. Her eyes barely had time to widen.

The projectile struck the ground a long way behind them, near the edge of the army, and the ground erupted into an explosion of dirt, gravel, and stone. The earth beneath Twilight seized in proximity to the blast, and hundreds of ponies lost their balance and fell as a tremendous shock wave barreled through the broken plain. How many dozens of her ponies had just died in the space of a heartbeat?

A crack like a whip. A keening whistle, growing deeper as it came closer to them.

“No,” Twilight whispered.

Actions came before thought. Twilight pushed outward with her magical senses—farther than she ever had before—and found the approaching war spell. It was simple in its design, but not easy. A lattice of spells constructed to penetrate any defense and deliver an inordinate amount of force. She tried to work the magic, unwind it and ruin the spell. Titan designed his defenses in a line, if she just started at the only breakable point and constructed a spell to shatter each defense simultaneously...

An explosion rocked the earth beneath her once again as Titan's second spell struck the midst of the army. Twilight heard screams as the rubble from the blast rained down on any survivors close enough.

“No!” she sobbed.

A crack like a whip. A whistling shriek.

There was a very easy way to stop Titan's war spell, Twilight realized. It was just an explosive projectile, after all. Any spell that had to go somewhere could be disrupted by putting something in the way: that was the entire premise of moment fields and force fields. For Titan's spell, she'd just need something strong, sturdy, and mobile.

Herself, of course.

Twilight threw herself through space to come out in the air above the battlefield. For a moment, she hovered there, staring up at the starry sky and the looming edge of the megastorm as it was pulled toward Canterlot. And above her, a faint white speck moving incredibly fast, was Titan's spell.

She hardened her skin with earthpony magic, threw up the toughest moment field she could manage, then curled up into a ball and intercepted a spell meant to kill dozens.

Her barrier helped, creating enough resistance to cause Titan's spell to explode.

Twilight thought she'd remember what happened after that, but she didn't. There was no sudden wave of force, no loud noise. She didn't even remember falling through the air. One moment she was looking up at Titan's spell, the next she was reknitting bones in the dirt.

Titan's magic wasn't just sophisticated, it was powerful. It had a kind of brute force that Twilight both longed for and despised, the power of an alicorn over three thousand years old. Defense was untenable. Had she forgotten that, revelling in her own strength? Or did she just not care? For the first time that night, Twilight had almost died.

A crack like a whip. A whistling shriek.

“Twilight!” Applejack shouted from somewhere far off.

Twilight couldn't help but feel a little relieved at the chance to show them that she was trying. For too long she'd pretended to be their new god, issuing orders and spending lives without giving them anything in return. Here at least she could prove that she was willing to die for them. That to her they weren't worth anything less. She could never earn the devotion that they gave her, and she could never repay the lives of the fallen, but this was as close as she'd get. If she was unworthy, at least she wasn't a pretender.

And once more she was in the air, experiencing that blissful moment of calm before total annihilation. The Citadel was in her field of vision this time, hanging at the edge of her peripheral and glowing with Titan's power. It was beautiful, Twilight decided, even if it was going to be the doom of their race. Beautiful and terrible, just like the gods that built it.

Titan's war spell did not hit her directly, but broke open and detonated against her shield. It had been designed to burrow through defenses before breaking, and Twilight's moment field might as well have been three meters of rock and soil on the ground below. It was interesting to note that the spell wasn't made to kill large groups; it was to do battle with an individual.

Which was probably why he had packaged it in so many defenses. It was a spell gift-wrapped and tagged just for Twilight Sparkle. Twilight was fine with that. She had a spell just for him, too.

Again she felt nothing as the incandescent white missile burst right above her body. Did her heart stop? Did she lose consciousness? How far was Twilight able to slip into death before her earthpony magic couldn't bring her back out again? She was straddling the line, and she had no idea if she had enough power to survive another blast.

Twilight assumed that she fell limply out of the sky, a glowing purple streak of light. What would the army think, seeing her fall like that? Would they think that she was being a fool, or a hero? Could they understand that there was no way she could not do this?

Rainbow Dash must have caught her at some point, because when Twilight came to she was putting herself together in Dash's hooves as they glided to the ground.

“Twilight!” Dash shouted. “If you do that again you're going to kill yourself!” They landed amidst their friends.

Twilight struggled to her hooves and popped a shoulder back into place. “And if I don't, dozens of ours will die. Again.”

“Then don't,” Fluttershy said. Everypony turned to her, and she added in a voice that was no less firm: “Please.”

Twilight cast out her magical senses, searching for the next magic missile—and distracting herself from the idea that Fluttershy would advocate the death of dozens if it meant saving Twilight's life.

“Twilight,” Applejack said. “You don't understand. The effect you can have. We—“

Twilight's voice became flat and dull. “The argument is academic.” She closed her eyes, then faced The Citadel and Exakktus. “He's here.”

Had she forgotten that Luna and Celestia were fighting the King? Even if they succeeded at The Citadel, ponykind's fate would still be decided by their victory. And here was Titan, with Luna and Celestia nowhere to be seen.

For the barest instant, Twilight gritted her teeth with rage. Was this it, then? Had Luna assured Twilight that they still had hope and then flown off to die?

Was she angry at Luna, or her own helplessness? Twilight had always somehow worked under the assumption that if they lost it would be her fault. That if they won, it would be her victory. She frowned. For somepony who despised the idea of being a god, she was certainly developing a godlike sense of arrogance.

“Titan!” she shouted, looking up. She'd meant it to come out as a warning to the army. Instead it sounded almost like a challenge.

Titan struck the ground between Twilight and Exakktus, his hooves splitting a stone as large as a wagon. He was wearing his armor, and in the night his mane and eyes shone like beacons. He raised his head, and everything for miles fell silent.

“Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight felt the eyes of hundreds of ponies on her back. What did they expect? That she'd fight the King to the death and save them all. She could barely do anything here. Barely.

Keep him talking.

“Luna?” Twilight asked him, trying desperately to keep her voice steady. “Celestia?” It cracked. Desperation, fear, hope—all of them leaked into that one word. It was like Twilight was back in Ponyville sending friendship reports, and Celestia was still, well Celestia. She couldn't die. And if she did, what then? Twilight Sparkle would have no teacher anymore. She'd be lost.

Titan gazed at her from across what seemed such a small distance, and Twilight once again felt that crawling feeling of insignificance. He tilted his head an imperceptible distance to one side, and she realized her mistake.

“A mortal does not ask a god questions, Twilight Sparkle.”

Singularity darkened the air around him as he swept it in an arc. He did it with the speed of a three thousand year alicorn, and there was nothing Twilight could do to stop him.

His spell came in a wave of oily darkness. Twilight saw it approaching, faster than any wave of water could, and frantically tried to analyze it with her magical senses. She might as well have tried to read a book in the seconds it took to reach them, a wall of choking black that threatened to suffocate her and the dozens of ponies around her.

She took every shield spell she knew, desperate for a way to stop whatever it was that Titan had thrown at them. If she shielded for everything, then whatever the spell actually did would fail.

Her magic took the same form it always did—a thin barrier of purple light, arcing outward to span the width of the wave. Her horn burned with the power she was funneling into the spell.

The wave overtook her shield as though it wasn't there at all. Washing up and over the wall she'd created to continue its inexorable advance.

Twilight hardly thought at all. She grabbed each of her friends with her mind and teleported them to the other side of the wave, leaving dozens of ponies behind them to fend for themselves.

She felt numb as her hooves touched the ground. So much for earning their devotion, when she'd gladly let them die to save her own.

Her friends. They stood around her, and Twilight sent her intention to them as she began to tap the Elements of Harmony, drawing on their incredible source of power as a last ditch effort. She focused on Titan, still far away from them, as each of the links to her friends began to thrum in her mind.

“No,” Titan said as his horn flashed.

It was like being backhoofed across the face. Her spell just... stopped. Like someone had pulled a book away from her mid-sentence and tossed it in the fire.

“Damn you,” Twilight whispered.

Titan split his blade and threw the fragments at them like he was just scratching another item off a to-do list. Dark orbs sped toward them, impossible to see against the night.

Twilight called up Equinox and split it into enough parts to intercept Titan's blademotes. She threw them out, charging each with as much power as she possibly could. Her head ached, and her thoughts blurred into one another, but she pressed on. She couldn't afford to run out of power, not now.

Their blades met, and Twilight's went out like like a candle flame in a hurricane. Half a dozen orbs of darkness came at her.

They were intercepted by fourteen glimmering diamonds, which fell from the air as Titan's blademotes overwhelmed them. There were only three of Singularity's shards left now. And every one of them changed its course to fall toward Rarity.

Twilight reached out to teleport her out of the way, and nothing happened. Her magic failed, expended until she could gather enough strength again. Rarity was alone.

Rarity began to call Vorpal back to herself, but it was far too slow compared to the King's weapon. Applejack jumped to catch her, throwing herself so that she'd be in the way of Titan's blade...

With a contemptuous twist of his mouth, Titan's horn glowed. And three points of darkness accelerated to sink into Rarity's chest before Applejack pinned her to the ground.

The harmonic connection that Twilight felt with Rarity didn't go out. That meant that Rarity was still alive, even though she had stopped moving. The spells on her robe must have stopped most of the harm. That had to be true. Rarity couldn't die. Twilight would be lost.

She barely noticed Titan drawing his blade out of the air beside him and throwing it forward in another shatter. What she did notice was Exakktus's wing, coming down to envelop the King and obscuring him from sight.

Exakktus breathed out with the roar of an erupting volcano, and the inky black flames poured forth to fill the space between his wing and his maw. They doubled, then redoubled, heating the enclosed space past the point that would boil iron. Exakktus kept going, heating stones a dozen meters away from the flames to incandescence. Twilight would have burned, were it not for her protective enchantments.

A tremendous crack rang out over the Everfree as a skull as thick as a tree trunk shattered into thousands of fragments. Gore and shards of bone exploded from a hole in Exakktus's head, and the flames coming from his mouth ceased. He collapsed, the light in his eyes dying like fading embers.

A slit was cut in the dead dragon's wing as it folded inward, and Titan stepped out into the night air once again. Or at least, what was left of him did.

Backlit by the light along the Citadel, Titan was bone wrapped in glistening sinew. Slender for a pony so tall, his wings spanned out behind him, a set of thin white fingers clawing at the air around him. Twilight could see his tongue grow into his mouth, his tendons and muscles expanding. All of his flesh was bloodless. She wasn't surprised. He had no eyes, but they still burned, two pinpoints of light in the dead sockets of the skeleton king.

“No,” Applejack was whimpering, her hooves holding either side of Rarity's limp head. “No, no no...”

Twilight looked down at Rarity and felt magic come to her in a surge of vengeful hatred. “Kill him,” she said, letting her voice reverberate over the battlefield.

An army obeyed her. Metal shards and magic missiles were fired at the king by the dozens. Thin streaks of lightning danced toward him through the air above. Soon, Titan was in the midst of a hailstorm of tiny blows.

The skeletal pony weathered them with disinterest, looking on as steel bounced harmlessly off his pale flesh. His mouth opened, and a grey tongue formed words without using lips. “Die now.”

Twilight whispered, “No.”

The stream of iron crossed the distance between them near-instantaneously, a searing beam of white-hot molten metal. It took Titan in the chest, carving a hole through his ribcage and sinking into the wall of the citadel behind him. Twilight's war-spell held so much kinetic energy that Titan's body never even got to absorb most of the blow; he still stood as it cut through him, a wraithlike monster impaled on a spear of light. Titan tilted his head to the side.

She cleaved him in two with a simple readjustment of her spell's angle, and his legs fell away along with a sizable portion of his lower abdomen. His upper body stood on its own in the air, held aloft by what Twilight presumed was Titan's magic.

He burst into flames as his legs picked themselves up off the ground. Twilight's mouth fell open. Any mortal pony would die outright to that heat, let alone the massive amount of kinetic energy. And still Titan stood, staring on at her as though she was a passing interest.

She ran out of iron. Titan's body pulled itself together almost immediately, still only a skeleton covered in glistening white musculature. She looked past him, at the glowering slash she had sheared into the Citadel. In a ripple of growing tissue, Titan covered himself in skin and hair, and eyes formed over the glow in his empty sockets. He seemed to do it almost as an afterthought—had he even realized he hadn't been wearing any skin?

“No freedom,” Titan said, his mind-shattering voice drifting out over the broken plain. “No will. No love. No morality.” He cast Singularity once more, leveling it at Twilight. “No hope.”

Luna hit the ground first, shrouded in darkness and diving through the sky, Nadir a silver streak of light at her side. She didn't slow down and strike a pose like her father had, or stop to talk—she rolled right into a combat stance and started into her father.

Titan acted appropriately, taking a step forward and maneuvering Singularity with his direct style. It struck Nadir once, and Luna's blade flickered under the superior power of her father’s weapon. He began to advance, and Singularity took a large gash out of Luna's chest.

Twilight started preparing another round of iron. “Luna!” she shouted. The princess barely acknowledged her with a slight glance over her shoulder, then returned her focus to the King. “Remember what you told me!”

Luna ducked and wove around Titan's blade, then somehow managed to sneak in a stab. She dodged another flurry of blows, moving so quickly that it almost seemed she was prescient of them. Titan brought his hind legs up in a kick, and Luna rolled under him and brought Nadir down on his head. He had to back away.

It was far easier to see Celestia's approach than it had been Luna's. She was like a newborn star, a pure white alicorn covered in gleaming gold armor and trailing a blade of fire. She hit the ground like a meteor, and Titan split Singularity into two parts.

The King stopped as he held Celestia and Luna's blades at bay with his own, then looked over to Twilight. Twilight could almost see the thought process flash through his eyes, almost feel his magical senses reach out and touch her god-slaying spell as it neared completion. Fighting all three of them would be dangerous.

He took off, throwing out a ripple of compressed air as he moved straight upwards into the sky. Luna followed immediately. Celestia turned to Twilight, swallowed, nodded once, then followed. In a matter of seconds, they'd come and gone.

Her situation came back to her with freezing clarity. Titan's imminent spell. The Citadel. Rarity.

Applejack was lying beside Rarity in the dirt, tears streaming down her face. “She won't wake up,” Applejack said as Twilight lay down at her side. “S-she just...”

Twilight fell to the ground beside her and reached out with her magical senses. “Titan's magic,” she said softly. “It's inside her.” She tore off the front part of Rarity's robe to examine her wounds. Applejack let out a piteous groan.

Three blackened and puckered holes marred Rarity's normally pristine coat. The hair around them had melted away, and the flesh had become mottled and depressed, but it didn't look like it had been punctured.

Applejack's voice trembled. “Can you help her?”

Twilight slowly ran a hoof across the marks on Rarity's flesh as she watched it rise and fall erratically with her breathing. “No,” she whispered. “I don't know anything about medicine, magical or mundane. I can kill a pony in the space of a heartbeat a hundred different ways, and I don't know how to heal.”

Fluttershy stared down at Rarity, her lip trembling. “B-b-but we need her. For the Elements.”

“She's still alive,” Twilight said. She turned to Applejack. “Carry her. We're going into The Citadel. Everyone stand back while I open it.”

Twilight took several steps forward and faced the massive edifice of the closest arm. It had healed the damage she'd dealt to it while they were examining Rarity, the strange metal shedding iron and sealing itself into an unmarked whole.

“You can open it?” Rainbow Dash asked from behind Twilight. “Like, with a spell?”

Twilight released her war-spell, and there was a screaming roar of superheated air as a thin lance of boiling iron cut a circular opening from The Citadel. It fell away, revealing only darkness within.

“Yeah,” Twilight said. “Like, with a spell. Now come on before it repairs itself.”

Twilight led the way. Over stone and dirt that had been turned to cooling slag and glass, she led her shell-shocked companions. That Rarity was unconscious and dying meant nothing in the face of Ponykind's annihilation, or so she told herself. Maybe they'd fix everything, and inside The Citadel would be some magic that could heal her. And then it would bring back everyone else, too. Every faceless pony she'd ask to die screaming so that Ponykind would have a chance.

And while it was at it, it could make her love Celestia again.

“Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight realized she'd stopped moving and had fallen onto the flat of her forelegs. “I'm okay,” she said quickly. “We have to keep going.”

“Twilight...”

“We can do this,” Twilight said firmly. “There is still hope. I just have to remember what Luna told me.”

Fluttershy helped Twilight to her hooves. “What Luna told you?”

Twilight nodded. “Last night, she—“

“Luna wasn't with you last night. She was with me.”

Twilight frowned. “She came by the library after the sun had gone down, Fluttershy. She—“

“She slept in my living room, Twilight. We talked about Exakktus all night.”

Twilight shook her head. “No, she—“

Suddenly, Twilight was back in the library. “Your mind is not unlike Celestia's, and she has been having similar troubles.”

Twilight swallowed. “Are you here because of her?”

“No, Twilight Sparkle. I am here for you,” Luna had said.

Twilight remembered seeing Luna step into the candlelight, thinking that the princess looked almost unreal and indistinct. She thought back to when she'd looked into Luna's eyes—something she'd never really done before—and felt a vague tinge of familiarity.

Twilight was back in Sugarcube Corner, arguing with Celestia about the speech she would give to the army.

“That's dishonest,” she'd said.

“It is. But we won't tell them anything that isn't true by itself, we'll just make sure they hear it from somepony that they'll listen to.”

“Celestia,” Twilight whispered. “It was Celestia.” Her head snapped up to Fluttershy, then toward the Citadel and the sky beyond. “We have to go.”

Twilight led them along the last stretch of ground before The Citadel and stopped just before the gaping hole left by her war spell. The metal had cooled, and was already beginning to restructure itself, crystalline lattices growing and joining along its edges. Twilight stepped over the threshold and into The Citadel.

It was like entering another world.

The Citadel was made of an alloy Twilight didn't understand, but whatever it was, it was silver white and incredibly dense. Grooves were carved along the inside walls, just like the outside, and were filled with the light of Titan's magic. The center was dominated by a column of white light, which was orbited by tens of thousands of glowing shards.

As she entered, she felt the oppressive wall of anti-teleportation magic engulf her, along with something else entirely. It was a field of unicorn magic, certainly, but it wasn't aimed at other unicorn magic. It was the reason Twilight had never seen anypony other than Titan fly in The Citadel. An anti-flight field. Even developing that kind of spell was against the rules of unicorn magic. Twilight's friends filed in behind her.

“Right,” Twilight said. “The only way I can stop Titan's spell is if I seize control of The Citadel.”

“You can do that?” Dash asked.

“Hopefully,” Twilight said. “It will be a lot easier without him here. We can't fly, so we're going to have to ascend.” She looked up, past dozens of rings of shards to the distant upper level of The Citadel. “Might as well start now.” Twilight closed her eyes and reached out to The Citadel.

What she touched was not at all what she'd been expecting. Titan's magic had always been direct but powerful, efficient and to the point. Titan thought in straight lines.

Evidently, Harmony did not.

The defenses surrounding the Citadel were the most convoluted series of spells Twilight had ever seen. It was chaos, barely conceivable madness. With Titan the answer was obvious but not reachable—simple, but not easy. Harmony's defenses were less about power and more about understanding—they were anything but flawless, but even looking at them gave Twilight a headache. It was a maze.

Twilight could have smiled in lighter circumstances. She was actually quite good at mazes. She'd been trained by Celestia herself, the princess who ruled the world.

Celestia who had manipulated her yet again by disguising herself as Princess Luna. What goal had she been trying to accomplish when she'd come to the library and spoken to Twilight of magic and hope? Twilight felt her ears burn with rage at the thought of being caught in another one of her old teacher's lies and half-truths. Why couldn't Celestia just leave her be?

“Purple shards are ours,” Twilight said as she wrested control of her first several dozen shards and had them assemble before them into a set of steps. “White shards are Titan's. Follow me.” She began to run up the illuminated stairway.

She didn't look back, because she couldn't bear to see the looks on their faces. Rarity would still be slung over Applejack's back, dying. How could Twilight ever justify spending the lives of her friends?

We can’t ever hope to deserve the trust they give us, Celestia had said. But we can try.

Try how? Nothing she could do could ever repay Rarity's generosity.

Twilight was brought out of her reverie by a hundred shards of metal slamming into her from the side. She was pushed off her glowing purple steps and into the yawning abyss beyond.

Immediately she threw a dozen platforms underneath her to catch her fall, rolled to her hooves, then jumped back to a lower section of the stairs. Twilight landed, then spun to see a thousand metal fragments converge on the place where she had just stood.

None of them were bigger than one of her hooves, and all of them were made out of the same strange metal of The Citadel. They glowed with the light of Titan's magic, and as Twilight watched, they bunched together to form one cohesive swarm of spinning blades.

“What is that thing?” Dash shouted from ahead on the steps.

Twilight regarded it, and her shoulders sagged. No more fighting, they were so close...

“Terra has puppets,” she said. “I'm guessing Titan has that.”

“How do we fight it?” Fluttershy asked in an even tone.

Twilight closed her eyes. That thing wasn't killable. It was Titan's guardian. A machine creature for a machine pony, with a machine heart and a machine mind. “We keep moving. We survive. And when I control The Citadel, I'll control it too.”

Twilight split her mind two ways. She'd need one mind to fight with her friends and keep them safe. Her first mind could do that. It was already charging up the steps.

But she would have to seize control of The Citadel, unraveling the complex tangle of magic that was Harmony's deterrent. Every time she pulled part of the tangle apart, more of the floating shards became hers.

And she used them. They provided steps to stand on as they ascended The Citadel. They could form together to create a shield wall to protect from Titan's lunging bladestorm. They were springboards for Pinkie to jump off of.

They needed all of these things. Twilight's first mind fought a pitched battle against the bladestorm with the help of her friends. Attacking the thing was useless—any shards of metal she could knock out of the air would quickly reincorporate themselves into the swarm. Instead she fought a battle of barriers and avoidance, draining her magical reserves dry in an effort to keep them safe. And slowly, they advanced.

It wasn't fast enough, though. As she worked within The Citadel, Twilight began to get a sense of Titan's spell. It was almost done. The entire race of ponies would cease to be in mere minutes. The light of the beam at The Citadel's heart began to intensify, casting them into a world made entirely of stark shadows.

“You make others want to be... better. More than what they once were.”

What had Celestia meant by that? Twilight Sparkle had become a symbol to ponykind. A god. By definition, she wasn't just a pony, she was more. But the real Twilight was just a pony. Celestia had to know that, because Celestia had seen her despairing not moments before.

Had she taken advantage of Twilight's emotional state? No. Nothing Celestia had said had anything to do with their relationship. In fact, when asked about Celestia, “Luna” had deflected the question and brought up Twilight instead.

Slowly, in the heat of pitched combat, Twilight realized that Celestia hadn't had any ulterior motives. She'd just come to make sure Twilight was okay.

Minutes plural became minute singular, and Twilight had perhaps a third of The Citadel in her grasp. She needed to pick up the pace.

They could beat the bladestorm, Twilight's first mind observed. If they were careful, then it was only a nuisance until they took The Citadel. A flood of relief shot through her even as their first mind tossed them in front of a salvo of blades meant for Rainbow Dash. At least something was going right.

Twilight couldn't take her mind off Celestia as she worked frantically to seize control. It nagged at her, as though it was the key to something important. What was she missing?

Celestia had spent their last night alive making sure the mare who despised her still had hope. Celestia, who no doubt had been thinking the same thoughts that Twilight had. No one had been there to set the princess's mind at ease, that night. She loved Twilight, and to speak to her again she'd had to use a spell to disguise herself.

Celestia had fallen from the sky to save Twilight from Terra, gladly offering up her own life in exchange. But Celestia had also thrown Twilight into a war. Twilight understood exactly why Celestia had done it, she just couldn't forgive her for it. Why not?

The answer was simple: she wanted Celestia to be a god. Infallible. Perfect. Accountable. Celestia wasn't Twilight's god, couldn't be Twilight's god anymore, but the things she'd done should have made her a friend.

And Twilight might never see her again.

Twilight's first mind placed a hoof down, expecting it to land on another step. It didn't.

They'd reached the upper ring of The Citadel, faster than Twilight would have thought possible—the platforms must have also been lifting them more than she'd realized. Her first mind dove under a swarm of hundreds of razor sharp blades, and they bit into her hardened skin as Twilight came up into a roll.

The shaft of light at the center of The Citadel was almost blinding by now, such was its intensity. It cast them into a world without color, and Twilight's black blood fell to the silver platforms below. Her friends fought as silhouettes and beings of light, doing everything they could to deter Titan's inexorable minion.

A minute became seconds. Twilight wasn't half finished. They weren't going to make it in time. Titan's spell was about to travel up and out of The Citadel where it would expand to engulf all of Ponykind. Twilight needed to focus. She needed to put everything she had into untangling Harmony's giant knot, but the bladestorm demanded her attention.

Fourteen diamonds, brilliant in the light of Titan's spell, sped past Twilight to knock as many shards of metal out of the air. The bladestorm fragments fell away, sheared in two, and Vorpal turned back to its work, its diamonds flinging themselves on their own courses to intercept every razor sharp shard that went for their friends.

Twilight turned to see Rarity, standing atop a floating purple platform, a look of intense concentration on her face.

She was dying. There could be no doubt about that. Flesh along her face and sides had turned black and dead, and Twilight's magical senses revealed the extent of Titan's strike. The magic was eating her heart.

“Do it,” Rarity said as Twilight watched her. “Do it!” She gritted her teeth as Vorpal held a storm of steel at bay in a midst of blue sparks. “I can give. You. This.”

Twilight nodded. It was all she could do.

Then two minds set themselves against Harmony's defenses, claiming The Citadel as her own far faster than she had before. She pulled apart the threads of its defenses, slowly revealing Titan's spell, which was heartbeats away from release...

She had just over half The Citadel under her control. Her heart thundered in her ears.

She wasn't going to make it.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that they could have come this far and fail when all Titan had done was callously play his hand. It wasn't fair that with a careless sweep of his mind, he could kill one of Twilight's best friends. It wasn't fair that despite her supposed godhood, she couldn't protect any of them.

Twilight looked at her friends one last time. Every inch of them was illuminated by Titan's spell, now, cast into a harsh white light that made each detail easy to make out. The angry focus on Rarity's face even as tendrils of darkness moved to claim that, too. Twilight wondered if Rarity had realized that her heart had stopped beating seconds ago.

Applejack had her body covering Pinkie Pie, and tears were streaming down her face—for Rarity, no doubt. The reality of their situation would have dawned on Applejack first, of all of them. Her pragmatism was her curse.

Dash was in the air despite not being able to fold air under her wings—she'd just jumped instead. Her teeth were gritted, her eyes set and determined. Twilight had little doubt that even fighting a storm of blades, Dash would either fight until she won, or simply fight forever.

Fluttershy had a gash in one cheek, and the blood running from the wound joined the dried trails leading down from her crown of thorns. She still looked unreal, like a wrathful deity. A newborn god.

Pinkie Pie saw Twilight Sparkle and smiled.

“The effect that you can have...” Celestia had said.

Maybe Twilight didn't think she was the pony they made her out to be—Celestia, her friends, ponykind. But if they could put their trust in her, then she could put her trust in them. If they believed that she was their saviour, then she could, she would, be that saviour. She'd wear the mantle of command for them, for as long as she had to.

Because now she had a chance to earn it. A spell was about to be released, up and away, to eradicate everything inside every pony, everywhere, that made them special. Unless something made it miss.

It would have to be something incredibly strong and powerful, and there was only one thing that could possibly do that. A pony so mighty she was practically a god. A pony who didn't need to do this to prove that she was worth ponykind's devotion, because they already believed that to be true, and that made it true.

Pinkie Pie's smile faded. Her eyes widened.

It had taken her to the very end, but Twilight was happy again. With who she was, with what she was, and with the ponies around her. The thought left her mind and found Pinkie's. “I love you. All of you. And I love Celestia, too. Make sure to tell her.”

With that, Twilight closed her eyes, turned to face the doom of her species, and jumped.

“I've never asked you. I've always been afraid of the answer. Did you foresee my betrayal? Did you know I would become Nightmare Moon?”

Singularity passed so close to Celestia's face that it took a thin layer of hair away with it as the blade continued along its course. The tiny fibers were immediately swept away by the storm, microscopic iota caught in the midst of a war between gods.

Luna's question registered in Celestia's mind as she absorbed a lightning bolt with Zenith, then struck out at their father. He blocked, of course, but that was to be expected. Celestia's designs rarely ever were one step, even in spur of the moment combat.

“You need to know now? We're supposed to be coordinating.”

She threw herself backwards and into the storm, and the King did not pursue her. Instead, her turned on Luna, then rained a hail of blow down upon her. Celestia poised herself against a cloud with her wings spread wide, searching for the perfect opening...

“Whether we win or lose, I don't want to have any loose ends. There is only one thing that still troubles me in all the world, Celestia. Did you know I was going to betray you?”

Left flank up. Right hind leg down. Celestia saw her opening.

She froze. What was she going to tell Luna?

A lie would optimize Luna's effectiveness in combat and increase their chances of victory against the king. It would be good for her in the long run, too. They'd need to be able to work together to rebuild Equestria. A lie, however, was totally out of the question.

“I saw your resentment and I knew that it was only a matter of time. I just didn't expect for you to take up the Sliver.”

Celestia threw herself back into the fray, diverting Titan's attentions with a series of sweeps from her blade while Luna struck him with a brilliant green crack of thunder. He staggered back, and Zenith punched a hole through his back.

“Then why didn't you stop me? You could have. I know you, Celestia. You don't need magic to make a pony do what you want.”

Luna's words stung, but they were true. Celestia had a thousand years of unopposed rule to attest to that. Titan knocked them both away with a blast of pure force, then charged at Celestia through the turbulent air. She felt rather than heard the sound barrier break as he collided with her.

“I wanted you to be your own mare. I didn't want to be like him. It broke my heart, Luna, when you became so broken. But that was the path you chose.”

Titan never got to press his advantage. A million trails of shadows converged behind him, and Luna swung Nadir downward as a sheet of darkness slithered up his legs.

“As paths go, it cannot have been the worst one. It led us here, after all.”

Celestia cast a beam of liquid sunfire, and it burned away Titan's wings in seconds. He began to fall, and they dove after him, two trails of light streaking down through the megastorm.

“What do you mean?”

Now they fought in free-fall, using their pegasus magic to guide their descent. They twisted and writhed in the air, over and around Titan's blades as their own weapons slithered between his defenses.

“That I forgive you. And that I see you now as a being so fraught with flaws that you cannot help but be beautiful. You grieve over the lost. You worry for Twilight Sparkle. You lie, and you're proud, and you wonder whether or not what you're doing is right. You're a pony, Celestia, just like me. And it's taken me this long to see it.”

In the spinning, rushing chaos of falling through the storm while engaged in pitched combat, past Zenith, over Singularity and her father, and just above Nadir, Celestia found Luna's eyes. They were still cool, and focused, but not nearly as distant as Celestia remembered them. Luna continued:

“I used to fight only for you. I couldn't even cast Nadir until I knew that you were alive. I'd carry around this tiny figurine of you, and wonder what you'd do in my hooves. Now Nadir comes easier than it ever has.”

“What happened?”

“I met Twilight's friends. And then I met Twilight. She disagreed with almost everything I had to say. She wasn't afraid to stop believing in gods.”

The gods fell, their blades making flashes of light and thunderclaps of sound as they met one another, Celestia and Luna's wings beating frantically to keep them level with Titan. The ground was coming up fast, but Celestia saw that it wasn't the green grass and packed earth that she'd expected. They'd been fighting over the stretch outside the Everfree for some time now, the storm too high to touch the ground.

Below them was the western gate of Canterlot—or what had been the western gate. It was still a ruin from when it had been dropped on Terra, so many nights ago. Still, they'd reached Canterlot already, which meant they'd been fighting for a very long time. How much fight did Luna and Celestia have left in them? Moreover, how weak was Titan? It was impossible to tell. They could all look perfect until they reached the very dregs of their power.

Celestia flared her wings to slow her fall, and Luna followed suit. Titan didn't bother—his flesh could easily absorb the shock of hitting the ground at terminal velocity. Hooves shattered the stones beneath as he landed in a crouch on the road leading into Canterlot. In the still air beneath the storm, the sound he made reached their ears with perfect clarity.

Celestia hit the ground to one side of him, Luna the other. They moved in.

“Right eyebrow quirked. Left haunch tensed. Duck and stab at mid-rib.”

Luna ducked before Titan's strike ever came, stabbing out to catch him in the chest with Nadir. He brought the second half of Singularity up to divert her blade.

Left shoulder loosening, back legs tightening. He's about to throw her away and turn on me.

Titan thrust forward with both his blades, and Luna was sent reeling back. He spun to face Celestia, but Zenith buried itself in his chest as she stepped neatly out of the way of his blade. His horn began to glow.

Accessing repertoire of spells. Something to knock me back, but would Titan settle for only that? No, he'd want to leave her compromised so he could tear into Luna. Beating them one at a time was his method. Time was not on his side, however.

“His spell is about to stagger him. Use your advantage.”

It was a missile, an exploding projectile wrapped in a cushion of force. Celestia twisted out of the way and let it graze her, and a wall of concussive power threw her back and away from the King, tearing skin from her body in places.

It also sent Titan reeling for the barest of seconds, allowing Luna to slice off his wings again. He spun to face her, and she vanished into a cloud of darkness that streamed through the air to Celestia's side.

Celestia didn't wait for her wounds to heal. Titan had no wings for the next several seconds, which meant no focus for his pegasus magic, and they were going to capitalize on that weakness.

At their command lightning tore at the blackened clouds above and split the sky to meet them. Twin bolts struck Zenith and Nadir, then blazed forward to break against the King. They speared him through the chest, cooking flesh and stopping organs even as Celestia and Luna rushed forward to meet him.

He would be weak, now. At his worst. Burned and mutilated, Titan wouldn't be able to focus on the conflict and healing at the same time and do both effectively. They'd put him at a disadvantage, and if they pressed it, it wasn't one he'd be able to recover from.

The first rule of immortality was that you would die, eventually. Finally Titan would face a rule that applied to even him.

But something was wrong. As they closed the distance to the King, his face flashed with the barest trace of emotion. It wasn't fear. It was annoyance. Celestia didn't know what that meant.

“Shoulders set. Legs spread. He's preparing to meet both our blades in parallel. Feint and roll past him.”

They led with their blades in tandem, points first, then ducked at the last moment, rolling under Titan's blocks to flank him once again.

Singularity met Celestia as soon as she'd tucked her wings and relinquished any possibility for escape. It dug into her chest, shearing away a large chunk of flesh and both her forelegs with a shock of intense pain. Her roll failed, and she tumbled forward into the dirt.

Before she'd realized what was happening, Singularity had pinned her to the ground through her heart.

It was simple, Celestia realized. She'd been analyzing Titan's every move and incorporating his reactions into their combat strategy, just like she had with Terra. Slowly, they'd taken initiative and started to win.

But Titan's style of fighting hadn't changed at all. She knew he had to be capable of splitting his mind—why hadn't he shifted his methods?

The answer was obvious. He'd waited, collecting all the data he'd need. But not to improve his effectiveness in battle, no—Titan was just going to kill them. He wasn't making a gamble when he knew he'd win. He was just collecting his chips. This was how King Titan won the immortal game.

The world collapsed around her heart as Singularity pulsed, and an immense gravity drew her inwards. She felt her bones and muscles strain under the might of his blade. It took her power, too, draining her reserves just like it had atop the Dark Heart of the Everfree Forest. Celestia began to focus her unicorn magic even as it fell through her hooves. She wouldn't let it end like this.

She turned her head to see Luna screaming, but strangely she didn't hear the sound escape her lips. Nor did she hear Nadir clash against Singularity again and again as Luna tried to reach her sister.

She failed. Just as Titan had with Celestia, he moved through Luna's guard with perfect anticipation and shattered her face with a blow to the cheek. Luna beat her wings to throw herself away.

Titan caught her with his forelegs as the other half of Singularity buried itself in the ground behind him. Then he swung her through the air as Celestia watched on in horror. Luna hit the impaled on Singularity much the same way Celestia had been.

She didn't get back up. Neither did Celestia. It had taken Titan seconds to turn their entire strategy against them and render them powerless.

“Is there fight left within you?” Titan said as Celestia's heart seized around his unnatural blade. “Do you have more light inside that must be quelled?”

Celestia gritted her teeth. They weren't going to let him win. She'd find a way.

“Look,” Titan said simply, turning his face skyward. The storm above them began to part before his will, until a small window of the sky above could be seen, widening. “Look,” he said again. “Not at the stars, but at the cold, empty dark between them. Around them. Above them. We try so hard to fill it, but the truth has always been that it... cannot be conquered...”

He turned his eyes forward, back to the Everfree and The Citadel at its center. “It is done,” he said. “The world will be perfect again.”

The shaft of light that broke through the sky intensified, then flashed, casting the world into a vivid contrast that was brighter than any lightning strike for the briefest of moments.

Twilight! Celestia thought as all of ponykind was damned.

A ring expanded outward in a horizon from The Citadel, casting a dull light over the landscape as it traveled towards. It grew, and moved outward, and grew more, until it became dim enough to appear the faintest shade of purple...

“No,” Titan whispered.

She was falling, flying, almost, in a sea of light and at the edge of life. The magic flowed over her, around her, through her, an electrifying spear of light that carried agony and power in equal measure. She wondered which one would drown her first, the blinding shock of pain or the violent surge of magic.

This was not the magic of Harmony, magic that she rode upon like a wave and directed with her will. This was the magic of Titan, harsh and harmful and totally beyond taming, and stopping it was like trying to stand in a thunderbolt without an end.

Her fragile form cracked and broke within the torrent of energy. Her hair melted away as her hooves disintegrated into dust, to be carried past her and fired into the sky. The night that she wrapped around her skin broke and faded, and the flesh beneath began to burn and chafe away. It was an effort just to stay in one place, so great was the force that sought to scatter her to the heavens.

The last few beats of her heart bought her mind the precious seconds it needed to think. It was never her intention to stop Titan's spell—nothing could stop power like this. She just needed to divert it, disrupt it. All that power had to go to all the right places, and like a child smashing a priceless work of art, she would break his spell by pushing that power away from its course.

She pushed with every kind of magic she had. Barriers made of thought cracked and shattered in their instant of conception, so great was the flow of magical might. It stripped the enchantments from her armor, from her skin, then bore the thoughts out of her mind. Her horn shattered, a hundred fragments disintegrating into a hundred fragments each before disappearing into the sky above.

Thunder and lightning were called by her mind of steel, an effort that created not a shield, but a sword with which to attack Titan's channel of magic. Energy arced off her body and burned away in a sea of white as she tried to derail the spell. It churned around her, offset, but not otherwise hindered. Her eyes and ears bled away, and the world of roaring austere white became only empty blackness.

Her flesh was as strong as stone, as steel, as the unbreakable will of the Master General. Before Titan's spell, it broke. Skin gave way to blood and muscle, blood boiled and muscle burned and cracked. Fat melted and trailed up and away from her physical self, and her mortal heart beat for the last time as Titan's spell went on.

And without eyes, she saw them—five points of colored light in a world of only darkness. Rarity, white, faded and dull as her life left her. Applejack, orange, burning steady even as she watched her friends die. Rainbow Dash, blue, shining brightest of all. Fluttershy, yellow, soft and warm, almost inviting. Pinkie Pie, pink, twinkling mirthfully at the end of the world. And without ears, she heard a voice call Twilight Sparkle. She never could tell which one of them had said it.

She found the strength.

Magic, real magic, flowed over her, around her, through her, and Titan's spell was paltry by comparison. Without muscles, she stretched out a hoof and split the beam, and the light ran around her the way the water of a stream runs around a stone.

It seemed to her that the entire universe collapsed into her mind, and she knew that every inch of The Citadel blazed purple with the light of her magic. She called, and it answered, a thousand thousand shards taking their proper positions as five orbs of light drifted ever closer in her mind.

And then the spells melted into her mind, Harmony's knowledge taking its place alongside that of Terra’s, of Nihilus's, of Astor Coruscare's. Spells to create life. Spells to build cities. Spells to heal. And not a single spell for war.

Finally, she understood why she'd never been able to understand the Elements of Harmony. They were a puzzle, and she'd been missing all the pieces.

Five orbs of light converged in the darkness as Harmony's magic was made whole once again. The spell beneath her changed, becoming something that was no longer Titan's spell of dominance, but a new design made just for her.

Without muscles, she thrust a hoof forward again, and this time the stream of light did not split, but rather embraced her. It warmed her bare bones even as it broke them, making room for something greater.

She floated, alive, in a stream of energy and matter. Light wrapped itself around new bones, then became muscles and arteries, flesh remade. Her form stretched, and a pinpoint of purple luminescence grew in her chest and then took form and beat as a newborn heart. She threw her head back and opened new eyes to look skyward as her skeletal structure shifted to accommodate wings.

A hundred hundred fragments of bone converged a hundred times, then converged again into a horn that was long and graceful. Hooves tessellated onto the end of her legs as the space between her wing bones became taut with muscled flesh. A ripple of skin traveled over her form and was followed by a coat of vivid purple.

An immortal heart beat within her chest, and she felt every drop of blood flowing through her veins, warm and crackling with magical might. Her ears pricked as she heard the crack of thunder from the storm over Canterlot. She turned, and her eyes regarded her friends, still standing on the highest ring of her Citadel.

Titan's bladestorm disappeared as she folded it into null space with barely a thought. Rarity, long since fallen, was encased in a field of crystal, preserved.

The rest of them looked at her, stared at her, with awe. She smiled at them, and that awe vanished, replaced with relief and hope and love.

Pinkie Pie stood. “Good luck,” she said.

With that, she turned her divine eyes skyward, noting with satisfaction that the six arms of her citadel made an opening just large enough for her to fit against the sky.

And that it was shaped like a six-pointed star.

Titan whispered, “No,” and she heard him from a city away.

The storm had brought itself to a halt against Mount Avalon, and with nowhere to go it was descending on Canterlot. She watched her home city as it was engulfed by gale force winds and black clouds that boiled with unspent power. Then she turned her eyes downward, to where the rest of the gods were gathered outside the broken western gate.

She chose her spot well, landing in exactly the same place that Titan must have only moments before. As an amethyst, she blazed a comet’s trail through the sky and struck the ground. The shattered stones and scattered dirt beneath her hooves healed as she landed, remaking a small section of road to be as new and perfect as the day it had been laid.

Hundreds of pieces of starsteel landed around her, digging into the ground as they did. The metal was a strange combination of platinum, uranium and tungsten. Without Harmony's magic, it wouldn't have been an effective alloy at all. With it, they glowed, etched with purple light, an incredibly dense material.

Her mane and tail undulated in the air around her, coils of an infinite number of colors wrapping around one another and scattered with a million stars. They were nebulae, deep and vast as the empty dark itself, and their ethereal shape ran down her neck and along the edges of her wings. Her irises burned from within with the same ever changing light of the cosmos. To look into them was to see an entire galaxy hidden beneath a single tiny ring of purple.

She was exactly as tall as Titan, because she was exactly his age. And just below the crest of her shifting mane, a ring of light parting the infinite nebula, was the Empyrean Crown of Harmony, Queen of Gods.

She willed the thunder to split the sky, and it did so, casting the entire world in a brilliant purple contrast. She spoke, and her voice was a symphony orchestra.

“Titan.”

Two pinpoints of light shot forth and struck the blades that pinned Celestia and Luna to the ground. Titan drew them back to himself, then took a step back. “H-Harmony?”

She shook her head. “No, Titan. I am not your wife. You killed her, remember?”

Nearby, fragments of starsteel lifted themselves from the ground and were drawn to her body like iron to a magnet. Plates melded together over her chest, her belly, her legs, forming a seamless suit of silver armor etched with purple light. The Empyrean Plate. The first suit of armor. All other armor was but a pale reflection of Harmony's war regalia.

She took a step forward, and Titan tensed. “I am the voice of every pony that has suffered in darkness, and I cry out for vengeance. I am a drop of equinity in a sea of immortality. I am cold, cruel logic tempered in the light of friendship, and I am unafraid. I am hope, I am freedom, I am love.” She cast Equinox from nothing at all.

Then she cast Vorpal, fourteen diamonds folding themselves out of space and glimmering with an inner purple light.

“I am Twilight Sparkle,” she said, “and I am the end of war.”

She sent a spell out to Celestia and Luna, and Celestia’s voice sounded inside her head, warm and weak. “Twilight?”

“Celestia. Are you okay?”

“I'll be fine,” Celestia said. “I can... help. Help you fight.”

Twilight looked down at Celestia's emaciated form. Was the princess even in the right mind?. “Don't worry,” she thought. “Everything is going to be okay. Just go to sleep, Celestia. I'll wake you up in the morning.”

“It was me, Twilight. I—“

“I know, Celestia. Thank you.”

“Remember, Twilight. This world is not one to be won by war. Remember.” Celestia lost consciousness.

Her conversation with Luna was far more direct.

“Luna.”

“Titan is extremely capable with his blade, Twilight Sparkle; you may not be his match in bladecasting. He beat us by being predictable while taking stock of both our styles and then defeating us in a matter of seconds. He telegraphs motion with the muscles in his legs and he is very reserved when it comes to the use of any magic.

“He thinks he is superior to everything, Twilight. He thinks it is his right to rule all. He blames ponykind for the death of Harmony, Terra, and both Empyreans. He is proud, and full of hubris, but do not think him weak or unclever. He will kill you if you give him the chance.”

“Right.”

“I can't fight with you, Twilight. I'm sorry. Just remember that we fight with what we fight for.”

It took her the space of a second to have both conversations. Thought was a very efficient form of communication, and the princesses could do it well. Her declaration of self had barely left her lips.

Titan regarded her, his face an emotionless mask. Did he hide them well, or did he just not feel anything?

“You intend to fight me for control,” he said.

The words drew Twilight back into the present. Titan was observing the final protocol in the immortal game.

“I do.” Twilight noticed that the storm was almost upon them, now—the turbulent winds were just beginning to descend upon the highest towers of Canterlot Castle. “As Celestia and Luna are assets to both of us, I would like to put forth Canterlot proper as a suitable location.”

“Acceptable,” Titan said without a single break in his composure. “We will begin... with Avalon.”

A soft wave rippled over Twilight, and a crack sounded as Titan broke the sound barrier from a standstill. She never lost track of his movements as he sped away, her eyes catching every bit of his inequine speed with no trouble at all.

She followed, parting the drag forces in front of her and exceeding the speed of sound just as easily as he had. Canterlot blurred by beneath her as she went, a thousand towering buildings of stone and glass, all connected by crisscrossing streets and bridge-ways. Over the outer city and into the inner city, where the buildings were taller and even more densely packed, then finally past the green of the palace grounds.

She stopped atop the Tower of the Sun, gazing across a stretch of empty air to the Tower of the Moon, upon which Titan stood, mane flowing.

“You think yourself a god, Twilight Sparkle.”

Tufts of wind blew at her mane, and a maelstrom raged just above her.

“I am a god, Titan. By any definition, I am more of a god than you.”

“What you are is a perversion. An abomination.”

Mount Avalon was barely visible behind Titan through the obscuring cover of clouds. The wind was building, and the shingles beneath Twilight's hooves rattled on the rooftop.

“It's you who is a perversion, Titan. Every second you've been in my world has changed it for the worse. But now those seconds are running out. I'm going to erase everything you've ever accomplished, Titan, and your defeat will invalidate your very existence.”

“How pathetic,” Titan said. “I validate existence itself. My very purpose is to be the one true king. You are but a speck—“

The storm hit, and Twilight decided that he talked too much.

She teleported, landing directly in front of him, then hit him with a simple burst of telekinetic force, just to start things off simple. Apparently she surprised him, because her spell struck him in the chest.

Titan was thrown backwards with enough force to topple a building, back and back until he landed with all four legs against the steep face of Mount Avalon. Cracks appeared around his hooves.

Twilight raised a hoof and examined it in front of her face. To break solid stone with the barest of thoughts. To command the storm with the wave of a hoof. To ruin cities with her passage. She was an alicorn.

She chased Titan, drawing the air around to her body before sliding through it toward the king.

Titan thrust two halves of Singularity into the face of Mount Avalon, and his horn blazed. A tremendous series of cracks threatened to break Twilight's eardrums as he pulled his blade free and took off up the side of the mountain and further into the storm.

Twilight reached the edge of Mount Avalon to find that it had been shattered. Great shards of rock, bigger than the largest houses in Canterlot, began to ponderously fall away from the mountain, their jagged edges grinding against one another with a titanic noise.

She looked up just as another stretch of lightning illuminated the sky, and there, just a small silhouette in the storm, was Titan. The lightning arced out and down, and Twilight caught it on Equinox, causing it to bounce away and score a nearby mountain shard with a line of molten rock.

Twilight split Vorpal and charged each bladeshard with kinetic energy, then wrapped them in a blanket of friction-reducing magic. Fourteen diamonds blazed with refracting violet light, then sped through the air toward the King.

A missile came toward her, and Twilight zipped into the crack between two falling stones. It decimated the rock beneath her. She looked up at the inside of a dozen falling shards of stone.

Titan appeared at the apex of the falling rocks and hurled a set of dark shackles at Twilight—a binding. Twilight didn't want to think of what he could do to her if he ever got her to stop moving.

Her horn flashed, and Twilight reversed gravity for only herself, turning the entire world upside down. Now she looked down at the King. Twilight planted her hooves on the nearest rock—which was now falling upward toward the ground—and began to run. Vorpal returned to her, having missed its target, but the diamonds cut Titan's binding to ribbons as they rose to meet her. She loosed another spell at Titan—this one a bola of light that would sap his pegasus magic.

They fell toward one another through the massive stones as they slaked off the mountain, hurling and dodging spells as they went. Twilight never had Equinox or Vorpal on herself at the same time—rarely did she even have either. Spells whistled and cracked between them, and the fragments of Mount Avalon broke and shattered on their way to crash against the ground below.

As the distance closed between them, the time they had to react to the other's attacks lessened, and the barrage of spells became frantic. Light danced and flashed between them as they planted their hooves on neighboring shards. Closer and closer they came as the stones were forced together, the space between them dwindling...

Equinox and Vorpal met twin halves of Singularity, and a torrent of energy coursed through Twilight and sizzled in the air around her. Brilliant white sparks cascaded from the blades to ricochet off the rock around them. Twilight pulled her blades back to a combat position...

They had less than a second of time next to one another in the avalanche, and their positioning was less than ideal, as they were both looking down at one another. But the series of blows they exchanged in that small frame of time was unlike anything Twilight had ever experienced.

He almost killed her as she drew Vorpal back, preparing to jab. Singularity darted forward, just beyond the reach of Equinox, and slashed at Twilight's neck, intending to decapitate her. She drew back as fast as she could, and his blade merely severed her collarbone, several arteries, and her throat on its way out. Blood spilled into the air in a hundred tiny droplets. Twilight's alicorn senses picked up every one of them.

They twisted over one another, and simultaneously blasted each other with telekinetic force as the opening presented itself. Twilight was sent backwards, down and toward the sky as Titan was thrown to the ground.

Twilight landed with her feet against a falling rock, reversed gravity for herself again, then started throwing spells. Equinox went first, charged with explosive might. Vorpal followed it, each shard wrapped in a spell designed to unravel protective enchantments. She threw a modified version of Titan's missile spell at him, then an azure bolt of lightning.

Each of them disappeared into the same cloud of shattered rock dust at the base of the mountain. Twilight felt Titan’s magic at work as he deflected the attacks with blades and barriers.

“No heart,” she said. She let loose with a half second burst from her godslaying spell, now armed with the tungsten-uranium-iron mixture from Titan's own bladestorm. A beam of blue light speared downward, the thin stream of superdense metal blowing a hole through the king's chest and cauterizing the wound. Against Twilight's spell there could be no defense.

Twilight dove downward, teleporting just as she went supersonic to smash against the ground before the King. Equinox and Vorpal tessellated into form at her sides as Titan rounded on her, heedless of the hole running from his back through to his belly. Twilight looked at the king, her face an expressionless mask.

“No soul.”

Twilight tapped Rarity, and her mind was filled with a cool dedication to form and skill; the blades before her practically moved of their own accord, responding to the small ticks that Twilight herself picked up from the muscles in Titan's legs.

Their hooves danced over uneven ground as their weapons clashed in the air before them. Twilight came at Titan like Rarity came at a particularly difficult confluence of fabrics, working her blades in from every angle, threading them through Singularity as Titan struggled to adapt his painfully simple style.

Had he met his match before? Titan had probably never had any reason to learn to fight, being so much stronger than everything else alive. And now he faced Twilight, who wielded the power to destroy. Anything. Everything. Nothing would ever hurt her or her friends ever again.

The storm was in full swing, buffeting them with winds that would topple any mortal pony. Shards of broken windows, scattered fragments of rock, wooden splinters and roof shingles bounced harmlessly off their bodies or disintegrated upon coming in contact with their blades. Twilight kept the initiative, breaking Titan's assaults and pressing into his guard.

Canterlot Castle stretched out behind Titan, and Twilight saw her chance. She spoke two words as she broke Titan's defenses.

“No hope.”

Twilight surged forward as her blades pushed his to the dirt, drawing a hoof off the ground as their weapons were momentarily taken out of play. It was with grim satisfaction that she saw Titan wouldn't be able to block her strike in time. After all, he could only move as fast as she could.

Twilight tapped Applejack and Rainbow Dash as she coated her hoof in telekinetic energy, then slammed it into Titan's face. Straight forward and out from her chest to maximize power. Her punch landed.

Her hoof cracked, and every bone in her foreleg shattered, becoming like so many pebbles stuffed into a sack of skin. The plates of metal ensconcing her leg broke away and were thrown in every direction, bouncing off her skin and face.

It was nothing compared to what happened to Titan.

His skull became dust where her hoof struck, and broke into fragments everywhere else. His eyes were squeezed halfway out of their sockets, and his muzzle compressed like an accordion as teeth were pushed out the back of his throat. His neck snapped as his head went sailing backward, and his body followed too slowly.

It still followed, and Titan was thrown into the walls of Canterlot Castle like a missile. Twilight watched as he broke through the walls to the library and decimated a dozen bookshelves to come out the other side with cool indifference.

“No blood.” Not in Titan. What kind of monster was he?

She teleported into the courtyard as he skidded to a halt on the ground, raising her blades for the kill. There was rain now, water falling through the sky as the storm fell apart. It made no difference to Twilight's senses; it just made the light from their spells dapple against the wet ground. Her blades descended as Titan came to halt at her hooves, perfectly timed to shear off his head...

Titan wasn't going to give her victory so easily. He blitzed, using Esteem's spell to bring himself off the ground and behind Twilight, and she sensed him raising both halves of Singularity while her back was turned.

Nearby, the library began to collapse.

Twilight teleported behind Titan and struck him with a blast of telekinesis, sending him flying away through the mess hall nearby. She teleported to his side, hooves skidding on the stone floor.

Singularity came at her, and Twilight instinctively blocked it with Equinox. It was only as her blade died out that she realized her error—Titan had come at her with a whole Singularity, and half her power funneled into Equinox wasn't nearly enough to stop it. The tip of Titan's blade buried itself in her chest, and his horn flashed as he released another bout of war magic.

Her chest exploded, bursting outward like a shallow pool struck by a stone. She flew back, half propelled by her own wings and half by the force of Titan's blow.

He blitzed straight into the air to meet her in combat once again, and Twilight teleported behind him and sent him flying into the orrery with another modified missile. She halted herself in the air as her chest flowed back into itself, then fired another burst of her godslaying spell, this one longer than the previous had been.

Titan dodged it, but it still sheared through the bottom of the Tower of the Moon and the armory.

They fought on, blitzing and teleporting as they threw spells at one another from a distance. Their clashes were short and brutal, and their war spells rarely struck home. They ignored the rain. They ignored the wind. They ignored Canterlot Castle.

Twilight understood why Titan had never claimed the Castle as the seat of his power. Why would he or she care about any pony-made structure? They broke through walls of stone like they were mist, toppled towers with what, to them, was a light puff of air. Seconds were hardly an effective way to measure time at the speed they fought. Canterlot Castle was destroyed, to a building, in less than twenty of Twilight's heartbeats.

All but the Tower of the Sun. Twilight teleported back to the ground, and Titan stood away from her.

“What is it, Twilight Sparkle, that your heart truly desires? How would you build a perfect world? Am I supposed to pretend? To act as though I have these defects that you have ponykind worship in my place? My nature is perfect. I cannot feel your flaws.”

“No,” Twilight said. “I don't want to you to find redemption, Titan. I want—“

Several things happened at once.

First, Twilight stopped detecting Titan with her magic. A three thousand year alicorn, sheathed in conjured armor and blade cast, simply vanished from her senses. She couldn't rely on sight and sound to track Titan; the storm obscured her vision and sound traveled too slowly.

Titan fired another magic missile at her, but it was fast. Too fast for Twilight to dodge. Almost as fast as her godslaying spell. As he did so, he blitzed once more.

Twilight teleported just as the spell struck her, throwing herself through space to land somewhere, anywhere away from the king.

She landed in Celestia's study in the Tower of the Sun just as Titan's spell tore away her shoulder and one of her forelegs, scattering pieces of armor and forcing some of them into her abdomen. Most of it missed her, however, and as Twilight was pushed back into the Canterlot air, much of the study went with her.

The tower began to fall, ponderously slow, as Titan met her in the air, caught both her blades, and punched her in the chest.

She went up and back, tearing away another section of the Tower with her passage. Titan met her again, and again, and again, until all that fell to the ground below was dust and rubble. Canterlot Castle was no more.

Titan met her again, and this time Twilight was ready. She reached out and sensed everything, every bit of air and water and dust and debris around them, then constructed a second spell to find the part of that whole that was empty. A simple inversion spell added to the whole gave her an accurate means of detection. Titan came at her, and must have been surprised when she spun to meet his blades in midair. If he was, it didn't show on his face.

They went up and up, carried by alicorn wings into the heart of the storm, the winds growing ever stronger. The pace they set was slow, their flight steady. It made it easier to fight each other with their blades on the way up.

Twilight tapped Rarity, but it wasn't enough. Her bladework began to fail her.

Titan's style had completely transformed. It was still direct, still focused and overt, but he was better now. He met jabs and slashes with ease, his blade took away chunks of her flesh almost with impunity. Every motion of his blades put her on the defensive, and forced her to compromise more and more of her guard.

His expression never changed. It held nothing save the barest hint of contempt, and he wore it when he was winning just as he did when he was losing. Twilight didn't understand how he was suddenly beating her. Nopony could learn that fast. She couldn't learn that fast.

Could Titan?

He broke into her guard, dipped Singularity into her chest, and blew it apart once more. Twilight pulled the clouds beneath her with her pegasus magic as she flew, sliding to a halt on the soft surface and readying herself for Titan's next attack. It never came.

“I am the only absolute in all of creation,” Titan said as he descended lightly to the cloud that churned not twenty meters away. “You are but a fragment of my greatest dream, and it is a dream that has become a nightmare.” His eyes burned, two rings of light boring into her through the darkness. “I cannot lose, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight blurred to her hooves, gritting her teeth. One of them shattered, then healed. “We'll see,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She prepared to lunge...

Her legs stayed rigid as she looked into Titan's eyes, ignoring her commands to move. His eyes were like tunnels of white, drawing her in, absorbing her...

Titan was using the stare.

Immediately, Twilight tapped Fluttershy and forced herself to keep Titan's gaze. He wanted a battle of wills? She'd give him one.

She conjured up bits and scrapes of experiences she'd had with her friends. Applejack sighing as she started to haul her apple cart. Fluttershy laying out feed for the animals. Rarity pressing fabric to her board with a hiss of steam from the iron.

All of those things were swallowed up in an instant by the empty dark, devoured by a vast blackness that Twilight couldn't even begin to imagine. It encompassed her, drowning her in the unrelenting will of a mind that had killed stars and created worlds, and now turned its sights upon the irrevocable erasing of everything that made her species special.

Twilight tried to conjure up another image—Spike sucking on a claw—but it faltered. She was being crushed by the weight of her own insignificance in Titan's harsh, burning eyes, and there was nothing she could do about it. His will wasn't something that could be fought.

Titan broke the stare and charged.

She raised Vorpal to prevent Singularity from tearing her head from its shoulders, but nothing stopped the other half from stabbing her through the heart. She couldn't think, could hardly feel after being beaten down by Titan's indomitable will. What if he had kept her there longer?

There was a sound like a colossal growl, and Twilight was thrown back hundreds of meters and brought to her senses. She skidded to a halt, searching for Titan. He appeared behind her.

“I see what you fight for, Twilight Sparkle. You fight for the world you once held, the world you would now rule.”

“N-no,” Twilight said, backing away from him. Was she supposed to want to rule the world? That was what gods did, wasn't it?

Titan raised his blade high, and the clouds parted around them in the space of second. “Look, Twilight Sparkle. This is your world!”

Lightning danced across the sky, illuminating the landscape before them in a series of cracks and booms. The Everfree Forest, swaths of it burning. Her Citadel, tall and imposing. Ponyville, half of it a broken ruin. And Canterlot beneath them, the palace that had stood for a millenia, destroyed in a heartbeat with hardly a second thought.

“Your fragile minds are weak and broken with the horrors that resistance has brought. Your homes are gone and the ones you love have died by the hundreds. Do you think that you can ever regain the world you fight for, Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight looked at Titan, standing against the stars in his armor. Could she ever go back to the way things were? The answer was no, and it was so plain and simple to see that it hurt her all the more.

She thought of the palace, the pile of rubble and glass beneath them. She'd helped to break it, tearing the entire thing apart in the space of heartbeats. When had she become so careless and violent?

When she took up the power of Harmony. How could Twilight see anything as valuable, now that ponykind's castles might as well have been made of drying sand on the beach? Mountains were as breakable as unfired clay and physical laws were mutable things. Their cities were made of paper, their monuments were only a sweep of a hoof away from utter destruction.

A realization struck Twilight: this was how Titan felt all the time. He moved through a world that he created, and no matter where he stood, he could destroy anything and everything he saw. And everything he could destroy, he could replace.

And there were ponies, too. A race that he'd created. But each of them was barely more than a collection of proteins and fats, a weak reflection of his own magical might. They died in so short a time, all of them, that as individuals they hardly mattered. But as a race they were resilient and whole. Killing a pony was like putting a scratch on his own creation. It would heal.

But it wouldn't learn. Every hundred years the entire race would die and replace itself, and so ponykind was perpetually young, always destined to repeat the mistakes of its predecessors. And always so fragile, such small things compared to mountains and cities, and so meaningless when taken as individuals...

They'd convinced Harmony otherwise, though. And in doing so they'd sealed the fate of his son and killed his wife. Real beings. Immortal beings. True companions in a world made entirely of ever-changing mist. A world that he'd lived in for thousands of years. How could he not act the way he did by now? Twilight swallowed as she looked at the King in his immaculate armor.

No, not immaculate. Just by his flank a piece was missing, a fragment that he'd failed to replace with whatever spell summoned the suit. And laid bare before Twilight was his cutie mark, a simple white circle.

We fight with what we fight for, Luna had said.

This world is not one to be won by war, Celestia had said.

“Yes,” Twilight whispered.

Titan gave the slightest tilt of his head. “What did you just say?”

Twilight nodded to herself, then looked back to the King. “I said yes. I can fix this world. My kind can make it good again.”

Titan regarded her for a moment. “You're wrong. You cannot ever get back what is lost, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Why are you King?” Twilight asked.

“Are you trying to delay me, Twilight Sparkle? Are you waiting for my daughters to regain some measure of power and come to your aid? They won't. Singularity does not cause wounds that heal easily.”

“Why are you King?” she asked again.

“You are fast becoming uninteresting, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Why are you King, Titan?”

“So be it.”

Titan lunged, air drawing around his form in a blanket of pressure as he spread his dark wings. Singularity cut the air at his sides, and his face once again took on its usual contemptuous mask.

Twilight blocked his blades and caught his momentum with her forelegs, but didn't fight back. She didn't fight back as he brought Singularity in for another hail of blows, or as a lightning bolt as thick as a tree trunk smote her from the sky.

She steadied herself in the air and threw up a shield when he cast another war-spell at her, but didn't throw anything back at him. Her shield stayed the force of the blow, but she was still thrown down to the ground below.

She landed in the middle of the street in the industrial district, and Titan came at her not two heartbeats later. She teleported out to meet him.

Blades met blades, and sparks lit the air around them as Twilight held Titan at bay.

“What are you doing?” he said as the light of Equinox played across his face. “Fight me.”

Twilight pushed against Singularity's halves. “Why. Are you. King?”

Titan forced so much magic through his weapon that both of their blades went out, the stepped forward and thrust a hoof at Twilight's face.

She caught it, and the one that followed it, with her forelegs, straining to keep them away.

“Fight me!”

“Tell me why you're King, Titan. What gives you the right to rule?”

He slammed his head forward, and Twilight's muzzle broke like a glass of water under a hammer, bones shattering and flesh liquefying.

She staggered back as Titan brought his hind legs around, but managed to block the strike before it could land. She didn't retaliate.

Titan came at her, a whirlwind of focused hooves. The force with which he struck was incredible, but Twilight could match his every blow. Bones shattered as their legs met, then healed again in an instant. The road beneath them cracked with the force by which they planted their legs. And all the while, Twilight didn't fight back.

The end came when Titan managed to trip her, sending her sprawling to the ground. A hoof met her chest before she could recover, and Twilight was thrown through a solid stone wall and into a room that looked to be a workshop of some kind.

Titan blitzed to her side, wrapped a foreleg under her horn, then drove the other into the back of her head. There was an audible snap as her horn shattered, and his hooves moved down to wrap themselves around Twilight's neck as he placed his muzzle beside her ear.

“Fight me, Twilight Sparkle. Do not lose hope. Do not give in to despair.”

The grip on her neck tightened, and Twilight struggled to break free. Her forelegs beat against the ground, tearing holes out of the stone floor, but they didn't move. It made no sense—both of them together weighed almost nothing compared to Twilight's strength. She should have easily been able to send them into the sky from here.

The muscles in her neck screamed in protest, pressed in on all sides. She felt her spine fracture and snap.

“Fight me, Twilight Sparkle, with every ounce of strength you have in you. Spill every drop of blood you have trying to defeat me.”

Blood thundered in her ears and pooled in her neck and he twisted it back. Titan was trying to tear her head off.

“I will have you die knowing that everything you had was not enough. That with all your allies and gambits and the stolen power of Harmony herself, you could not defeat me. Because I am almighty, Twilight Sparkle. I am the soul of existence itself, and I rule all.”

Twilight choked out a single word. “Why?”

One by one, her vertebrae began to snap, and her vocal chords went with them. She wondered if that would be the last word she ever spoke. Why.

“It is my purpose,” Titan whispered. “My birthright.”

Twilight buried her forelegs in the stone beneath her and heaved, throwing Titan forward, his hooves still gripping her neck. She rolled him onto his back, her belly in the air, then slammed her forelegs back into his shoulders, causing his grip to loosen.

With a flash and a surge of earthpony magic, her horn and neck healed, and she teleported to a less compromising position, bringing herself to stand over the King. “You think you rule by divine right,” Twilight said. “You think that you of all ponies should have the power to choose what is right and wrong. But no one ever gave you that power, Titan.”

Titan stood. “I gave myself that power,” he said. His horn blazed.

Another missile, moving impossibly fast. This time, Twilight didn't have the space to avoid it. It took her full in the chest.

It wasn't painful at all—that surprised Twilight. It was more like the missiles she had deflected as a mortal. She had only the vaguest recollection of losing her abdominal cavity, of the flesh sloughing off her legs and face, of her body being compacted into something totally inequine. Of barreling through building after building before rolling limply to stop in the courtyard to Canterlot Castle, her bones snapping and seizing back into place and her skin growing back with a ripple of healing magic.

No sooner had she landed than Singularity impaled her through her newly healed heart as Titan descended lightly to stand beside her.

The world collapsed in around his blade, pulling Twilight toward it from all directions, and she felt her magic ebb. It was now or never...

“You gave yourself that power,” she said.

Titan's eyes narrowed. “Be silent and die, mortal.”

“No.” Twilight gasped, and a thin trickle of blood ran out of her mouth. “You see what I see, Titan. You gave yourself the power to do as you wish, but you never had the power to grant such a privilege.”

“I am the one true King,” Titan said. “I have the power to—“

Twilight coughed. “You're a god because you're a god because you're a god,” she said. “You let your mind fall into the same grooves you've carved for yourself over millennia of thought. It's a circular argument, and one you've used to justify the slaughter of numberless innocents, all of them no less endowed with a mind and soul than you.”

“Lies!” Titan shouted. His eyes were wild.

Twilight's immortal heart seized around his blade, each beat weaker than the last, blood flowing freely from the wound.

“Terra betrayed you when she took up the sliver. Harmony left me this power to kill you with. Ponykind has never accepted your rule. Even Exakktus, the greatest of your monsters, saw what we see. What you don't. Every single creature in this world stands against you, Titan. So much that you have to take our souls to validate your rule.”

“No,” Titan said. “You turned them against me. You poisoned them.”

Twilight shook her head. “You're alone, Titan, and you're trying to rule a world that prospered without you for a thousand years. It's not us. It's you. You're the flaw in the system, you're what's wrong. An ugly splotch of erratic perfection on a beautiful canvas of organized chaos. And you spend every waking moment measuring your own significance against ours, convincing yourself that it isn't true. Don't you?”

Titan froze, his mane and tail drifting, his eyes two uncertain circles of light. His mouth opened, as if he were going to say something, but no words came. His brow furrowed, and he looked at Twilight as if to ask her why.

Singularity went out.

Twilight was liquid, flowing to her hooves even as Equinox and Vorpal folded themselves out of space and fused into an incandescent shaft of violet light. She held it aloft, drawing on every ounce of pegasus magic she could muster, and a shaft of cerulean lightning arced down from the center of the storm to strike the Empyrean Blade and fill it with the power to kill a god.

Then she tapped Pinkie Pie, drawing on the power of an arcpony to intercept Titan even as he tried to escape. She beat his forelegs away with her own, seeing exactly how he was going to move before the thoughts even crossed his mind.

The Empyrean Blade forced its way into the center of his chest, right where his heart would be, if he had one. Titan didn't scream.

Twilight caught his eyes, tapped Fluttershy, and used the stare. This time she met a broken ego, still struggling to put itself back together again. Titan's mind was still vast and powerful, however, and his will pushed against hers, an inexorable wave of strength.

Twilight gave him everything she knew of Luna and Celestia. The way Luna was headstrong and anti-social, the way Celestia was subtle in her influence, and they way both of them cared for Equestria. They way they were each inspiring, in their own way, and they way they'd won the love of ponykind in a way Titan never could.

His fractured willpower never stood a chance. He stood, locked in Twilight's grasp and crushed under her will as her blade burned away his magical defenses. Until at long last, they broke, and Twilight grabbed the King of Gods with her mind and held him in her absolute power.

She took his magic. All of it, stripping it away and adding it to her own, pulling her blade free and letting him heal the wound so that he wouldn't die. It didn't take her long at all.

While she did so, she reached out and broke up the remaining bits of the storm. It had almost completely burnt itself out on Canterlot, and so it was a simple matter for Twilight to disperse the clouds that remained, sending them away to rain over the rest of Equestria. When she released Titan, the world was still again.

He fell to his knees, a stallion as big and broad as any Twilight had ever seen, but still pitifully small compared to a god. His mane hung limply around his head, and he trembled, surrounded by the feathers that had fallen out of his wings as they disappeared and the fragments of what had once been a horn. He looked at Twilight with white eyes that were dull, save for the reflected light of her blade.

“Gods can die,” said Twilight, “but you can live. You can live as a mortal, if you so choose. You took the first step in seeing the error of your ways today. It might take the course of an entire lifetime, but we’ll make you see that you were wrong. You’ll change, Titan. And then you'll have to live with the guilt of what you’ve done forever. Terra was brave enough to make that choice, even if she doesn't realize it yet.”

Titan's legs continued to shake. Twilight wasn't surprised—he'd gone his whole life feeling almost weightless, and now he had to stand as a mortal. And from the looks of things it was proving difficult. Perhaps harder for him than anything he'd ever done before. Still, he managed it, bringing himself up to his full height and regarding her, his face still devoid of any expression.

Twilight never knew if he decided that he would die fighting, or if he simply didn't understand that a mortal couldn't hope to harm her. Regardless, Titan jumped at her, so slow and frail, his face contorting with rage.

She was a god, and it was her duty to mete out judgment and wield the power over life and death. Her blade traveled through his neck as easily as if it were air, and Titan, King of the World and the final foe of ponykind, died. Twilight sighed as she found herself alone in the ruins of Canterlot Castle. It was her duty. Her responsibility.

Not her privilege.

The journey back to Ponyville was short one. Twilight had made sure Celestia and Luna were fine before leaving Canterlot. They were unconscious, but alright, just as she'd thought they'd be. Ponykind still had its princesses, and Twilight still had her mentor.

It was dark out when she reached the town, but it was still thriving with activity. The army had returned there after they'd entered The Citadel, and must have seen the duel in Canterlot from afar. It had only been a matter of minutes since the fighting had stopped. What had those minutes felt like, to the ponies waiting to see if tonight was their doom or their salvation?

She chose her place of landing to be the empty pedestal in the town square, and shot towards it in a streak of violet light, deliberately drawing as much attention as she could. When she landed all eyes turned to her and the entire town was plunged into silence.

Twilight looked around at the terrified faces of ponykind, watching as terror turned to recognition. Yes, she was still Twilight Sparkle, their Master General. And if she was standing there before them, that could only mean...

“Victory!” Twilight shouted, her alicorn voice rolling over all the town. “The King is dead!”

From the depths of her nullspace, she produced his severed head to hold aloft before the crowd. The idea disgusted her, or at least part of her, but ponykind deserved this.

They cheered. The war was over and they'd won. None of them were in any danger any more. The idea was numbing and at the same time exhilarating. Life would go on.

And they bowed. No salutes, anymore. All of them supplicated themselves before Twilight Sparkle, the End of War.

She stepped down from her pedestal, and the crowd parted before her as she made her way to Sugar Cube Corner. It wasn't over. Not yet.

Terra was just where Twilight left her. She shook as Twilight strode into the room and tossed Titan's head to the floor just outside her bars. Her eyes shot between Twilight and the head, wide with awe and terror. For a time, Twilight was quiet.

“Is...” Terra said at last, her voice quavering. “Is he... dead?”

Twilight looked down at Titan's head, stupefied, then back up at Terra. “Yes, Terra. He's gone. Forever.”

Terra swallowed. “My father is invincible,” she said, her voice strained. “He can't... this can't...”

Twilight leaned down to look Terra in the eyes. “Titan is dead, Terra. Which means that from here on, there's nopony but you who you can lay blame on for your actions. Do you understand?”

“I...”

“You’re coming with me,” Twilight said. “I need a blueprint.”

At this, Terra seemed to regain some focus. “A blueprint for what?” she asked.

They stepped out of Twilight's teleport and into her Citadel.

Twilight's back was straight and her eyes forward as she stood atop the metal shards that received her, then looked out at the tools she would need to save Rarity. Purple light still filled the etchings, and a thousand thousand shards floated beneath her in lazy orbits.

Before her stood her five friends, and behind her stood Terra. Twilight wished she could have seen the look on Terra's face after coming home at last. But she was too busy looking at her friends.

“Sorry I left you waiting,” she said as she strolled across the bridge that assembled before her and onto the inner ring. “Titan is dead.”

They each gave the same sigh that the army had, and that Twilight had also, as though a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

“Celestia is alive,” Twilight said, striding up to the crystal formation that held her dying friend. “Luna is alive.”

“Rarity?” Applejack choked out.

“Her heart has stopped,” Twilight said. “The blood doesn't flow anymore. Titan's magic has broken it entirely. It's eaten her skin, her muscles, her fat, her bone. That's all we are, really. That, and magic. There is still magic in her, Applejack, and so there's still life. It's faint, and frail, but all she needs is a little flesh. A little bone.” Twilight shot a look at Terra and gave a faint smile. “And a beautiful heart.”

She closed her eyes, slowly drawing air through her nostrils. “There's only one heart that will be guaranteed to fit, because there's only one heart that is perfect. It's already been shrunken down to size, and I have the original design. Both of them together should give me enough to make a perfect replica.”

“Harmony,” Terra whispered. “She left it to you. The power of life.”

Twilight held a hoof to her side in answer, and every shard in The Citadel zipped into place to form a complex array of spiraling rings. The knowledge was with her, and it would take a surprisingly little amount of power.

The crystal encasing Rarity broke, thin cracks spreading along its length until shards broke away and disintegrated in the air. Twilight levitated her out into the center of The Citadel.

The first step was a series of enchantments to keep her stable. To pump her blood, press her lungs, hold her together, keep her alive. They were beautiful things, incredibly complex spells that performed the function of living tissue itself. Harmony must have spent decades, or even centuries, trying to understand what made a living being tick. Everything inside them was just so tiny and complex.

A ripple of Twilight's power thrummed through The Citadel, and Twilight stripped away Titan's magic. Just like with her enchantments, she only had to do a tenth of the thought process behind the spells. The Citadel was an array of a million possible spells, and it knew what to do, focusing her magic on the minutiae as she directed it.

Then she began to knit the flesh anew, pulling raw materials from her own body and reforging them into the tissue that Rarity was missing. It was a slow process, but Twilight's earthpony magic healed her instantaneously.

And Rarity's flesh regrew as if she were an earthpony herself. Twilight let out a breath she hadn't even known she was holding. It was possible. It was beautiful. It was a miracle.

It was magic. To breathe life into a pony on the edge of death. What could possibly be a more noble use of her gifts? She had saved lives by killing. But now the deed was pure and untainted.

She worked until there was only one thing left to do, the shards of The Citadel spinning and configuring around her to suit her needs. A ghost image appeared above Rarity, the same image that Harmony had shown Terra in a memory from another lifetime. A beautiful heart.

Six shards floated to form a ring in front of Terra, and the fallen queen drew her vision away from her phantom heart.

“Terra,” Twilight said. “Put your hoof in the ring and I will have all I need. Rarity will live again. Her life is in your hooves.”

Terra scoffed. “Hardly. You could force me.”

“I could,” Twilight said.

“And if I don't you'll kill me.”

“I might.”

“Terra,” Fluttershy said. “Don't be afraid to try and be the pony you were before. You want to survive, but you can live instead. That's what ponies do.”

“This doesn't mean anything,” Terra said. “I don't have a choice. I'm not giving up anything to save your friend.”

Twilight gave a little tilt of her head. “Maybe you see it that way. Baby steps, Terra.”

Terra shrugged, then put her hoof through the ring before her.

Twilight immediately set to work on Rarity's new heart. She had to teleport each piece back into place, removing the remnants of the old one as she did so. All the while, she reveled in the deed she was performing. A heart transplant. This was what magic was for. Not killing and war.

On a whim, she told the Citadel to open and raised the sun. Morning came to a cloudless sky, and the brilliant light of the dawn filtered in through the silvery arms in widening beams. Twilight smiled as she finished her work, and a pulse of light finished her spells.

Rarity's heart began to beat, and she opened her eyes, her flesh in perfect form. Twilight teleported her to stand beside them.

“I'm alive?” Rarity asked. “Twilight is an alicorn?” She looked around, her gaze traveling from pony to pony, searching for answers. “However did Terra get here? Wait! Did we win?”

Applejack moved to stand next to Rarity and watch the rising sun. “Hush now, sugar cube. Watch the sunrise with us.”

“Come on, Terra,” Fluttershy said, taking a seat.

“It's just a sunrise,” Terra said, coming to join them nonetheless.

“You're right,” Twilight said. “It's just a sunrise. But I think that I, for one, could use a little more sun.”