Queen Chrysalis paused when she looked upon Sideralis, stunned by what she saw, and uncertain of what to say. She stood frozen for several long moments. To say that Sideralis was plugged in was understatement. Much of his skin had grown back in a surprisingly short amount of time. She felt Twilight Sparkle brush up against her and she stepped aside, still in shock.

Even the room had changed. The walls pulsated with new biomass. There were blue crystalline growths sprouting out of the walls, ceiling, and floor. The air was cool but there was a warm breeze blowing from somewhere and there were now strange tubes filled with some kind of new bioluminescent goo that Chrysalis did not recognise.

“Sideralis… what is going on? You’ve been repurposing Queen Chrysalis' drones, altering growth patterns for The Ouroboros, and we’re getting all kinds of weird magical feedback from whatever is going on in this place. We’re worried, Sideralis… what is taking place here?” Twilight Sparkle, fearless, walked right up to where Sideralis stood in his rack and looked up at him.

“I am becoming,” Sideralis replied in an odd, distracted voice.

“Becoming what?” Twilight asked. “That is not a complete sentence.”

“I do not know.” As Sideralis spoke, several crystals in the room flashed with a soothing blue light. “I am learning. Everything that the hive collective knows, I now know. I have seen Equestria as it was and as it is now. I am understanding.”

“Understanding what?” Twilight asked as she took a step backwards, looking both worried and curious.

“Queen Chrysalis represents the best of what the changelings have to offer. Queen Mariposa represents the worst. There is a clash of ideologies here…” Sideralis went silent for a moment and his eyes flashed with a strange light. “In Equestria, arcano tech began running out of control. The lines between science and magic blurred. Dangerous new technologies emerged. That alone was dangerous, but it went beyond that.”

“Sideralis?” Twilight stared up at the alicorn suspended in his rack with dozens of tubes and connections sticking out of him.

“Technology run amok… it was a danger that no one paid any attention to. You were warned… quiet voices of reason tried to tell you.” As Sideralis spoke, the image of a pony was projected from one of the blue crystal clusters. The pony had glasses and wore a lab coat. His image remained for a moment and then vanished. “You burned coal and built hydroelectric dams. You, yes you, Twilight Sparkle, you tried to build technologies from the other world, the one beyond the mirror, never once thinking of the consequences of blending magic and technology together. You even dabbled in splitting the atom.”

“How do you know this?” Twilight demanded in a soft whisper.

“I am becoming,” Sideralis replied.

Twilight Sparkle took a step backwards and bumped into Queen Chrysalis.

“The changelings were the undisputed masters of biotech and arcanotech. They have hiveminds. They are a living learning computer, a neural network optimised for learning and growth. Queen Chrysalis can have thousands of drones reading books and devouring knowledge for her, and she can become an expert in anything. She consumed a thousand years of knowledge and she became something greater. She can consume an entire lifetime’s worth of knowledge in a day. Her potential is limitless. So is Queen Mariposa’s. The clash between the two ideologies was inevitable. We approach a bio-arcano-technological-singularity. It is a race against time to see who reaches the finish line first.”

“Sideralis, I don’t understand,” Twilight said.

“Queen Chrysalis represents the very best of what the changelings have to offer us. Symbiosis. Infinite technological progression. Infinite potential. A whole new way of life. New cities. Clean cities. She represents a shared future that is desirable where all prosper and are comfortable.” As Sideralis spoke, light pulsed through the crystalline fibres inserted into his body.

“While Queen Mariposa represents parasitism,” Queen Chrysalis said in a low voice. “Domination. Slavery. She wants to build a new civilisation on the ruins of the old world where everything is subjugated. Her and a chosen few will have unlimited power. This entire planet will become a hive and she will achieve singularity status. Once she has this planet under her control, she will spill out into other places, other whens, other wheres, and… and… and escape will make her a god. She will infest everything in order to achieve infinite computational abilities. She will reign supreme.”

“Chrysalis?” Twilight turned to face her friend. “How do you know this?”

“Because I too, am becoming,” Chrysalis replied.

“What?” Twilight shook her head. “Talk sense!”

“Sideralis just showed me. I understand… I am understanding. I am becoming.” Queen Chrysalis went vacant eyed as the crystals in the room flashed blue. “I can see my potential stretching out endlessly before me. I see what I could be. All this time, I could have been so much more. All this time, I could have been becoming. Queen Mariposa saw it first. She formulated infinity and then began the journey.”

“Has everypony gone mad?” Twilight demanded.

Blinking, Queen Chrysalis snapped out of her stupour. She looked at Twilight for a moment, her eyes wide, and then she looked at Sideralis. “This is not madness, but clarity. Twilight, we were staring right at our own great potential when you cast your improved invisibility spell and I used the hive mind to distribute the magical load.” Queen Chrysalis blinked. “How did I not see it?”

“See what?” Twilight snapped as she stomped her hooves.

“Twilight, we cast a spell with several hundred changelings and look at what we did. We hid the fleet. I have been learning all that I could with several thousand drones to speed my development… I had a glimpse of my potential, but I was still blind.” Queen Chrysalis blinked again and shook her head.

“Queen Mariposa operates with millions of drones to assist her in her learning, her calculations, and her ability to cast spells. One changeling horn is powerful, a million is a million more times so. Think of the unicorns of long ago and how they worked together to move the sun and the moon. Queen Mariposa understands this. Every day, she adds more horns, more minds, more intelligence to assist her with her work. She too, is becoming.” Sideralis paused as tiny crystalline growths spurted from his central mechanical knuckles on his wings. “I have been using the distributed neural network to make calculations and study magical models. I have analysed much of Doctor Gizmo’s work. Using his understanding as a foundation, I have perfected the gravity fluctuation emitters that allow my mechanical wings flight.”

“It is a process of your becoming,” Chrysalis replied in a knowing voice as she bobbed her head. “It will greatly increase your flight capabilities.” Chrysalis paused for a moment and her eyes flashed with the same peculiar sort of glow that Sideralis had. “Your power consumption under heavy loads remains an issue. You will deplete your energy reserves far too rapidly. What we need are external biotech batteries for you to draw power from. Already, I can see a way to construct such devices.”

“Yes, I see it too.” Sideralis’ voice seemed to be coming from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the blue crystal protrusions all around him. “We can mount them like tanks beneath my wings for long distance flights with heavy payloads.”

“With your new emitters running at full power, you will not need to flap your wings to agitate the magical currents in the aether to gain propulsion. You will glide along on the unseen currents and the aetherial updrafts from the ley lines.” Queen Chrysalis blinked and shook her head. Her whole body shuddered.

“I don’t understand anything that is going on!” Twilight shouted. “UGH!”

In a deep slumber brought upon by a calculational state, Sideralis dreamed. But this wasn’t the dream realm, at least, it wasn’t his mother’s dream realm. This was a place of his creation, a realm housed within the neural network of Queen Chrysalis’ hive mind. Many changelings, their bodies also slumbering as their minds laboured, joined him in this realm that was being constructed. Ouroboros pronked about in an ever changing, ever growing, ever adapting realm that was part dream and part distributed computational workload.

The foundation was being constructed for the Harmony OS. The Spirit of Harmony was sending him schematics through the aethernet. This would be a small system in comparison to Mariposa’s massive distributed learning network, but this system would have something that Mariposa did not yet posses.

The Spirit of Harmony had source code that needed to be uploaded, but Sideralis had to go to the source to retrieve it. It had to be pure. He had to connect to the source. He did not understand what was coming, but he understood how to follow instructions.

The source code would have three primary components. The first was a powerful organisational structure that would keep track of everything within the system. This organisational intelligence was an odd blend of chaos and harmony. Its system icon was three balloons and Sideralis did not yet understand the importance or significance.

The second system focused upon distribution, making certain that each bit of information went to exactly where it needed to be, a system of perfection and precision. This system would patch everything, repair any failures, connect new networks, this system would shape and control the very fabric of reality within the new network. This component had a system icon of three diamonds.

The third system focused upon resiliency and workload. This system would balance everything out, ensuring that the system load was evenly distributed and nothing was strained. It would also ensure that the integrity of the data was preserved and every bit of information in the network could be relied upon, you could trust the data and know that it was honest. This was a hardy sub system and its icon was represented by three apples.

Sensing Twilight Sparkle’s troubled mind, Sideralis tapped into her dreaming mind and pulled her in. He felt her calm, her troubling nightmare ended, and he knew that she knew a restful sleep, something that she needed. He was aware of all of the minds in the fleet. He suspected that it wouldn’t be long before Queen Mariposa used his mother’s magic to distribute the smooze infection through nightmares and dreams, weakening the minds of the world, infecting them, making them susceptible to the inevitable smooze attacks that were sure to come. Sideralis could not save the world, but he could save the minds in the immediate vicinity, those minds that existed within the fleet.

The fleet would have its own dream realm, a protected, private space that was free from intrusion. Here, dreams could be watched over, shielded from Mariposa’s influence. As an extra added bonus, when the full system was online, the dreaming minds of the slumbering ponies of the fleet would add extra computational power to the fleet network. This was not a parasitic function, but one of symbiosis. The dreamers would be free to come and go, free to enter and exit the dream realm as they pleased.

With Twilight Sparkle present, Sideralis had a much greater understanding of magic. He delved deep, spreading his influence, knowing that Twilight had touched his mother Luna’s mind on several occasions, and with Twilight’s powerful magic, she carried echoes—just like she had carried Rarity’s memory, which was now so much more. In exchange for drawing out what he needed, he projected Rarity into Twilight’s mind, giving her a pleasant, happy dream.

This felt right and good; somehow, without knowing how or why, Sideralis knew that his mother would be pleased with his work and proud of his progress. Twilight was the face of leadership. She was the figure that ponies obeyed. And he was creating a dream realm. Sideralis reflected upon his current position and had an epiphany.

Twilight had become something very much like Princess Celestia. A powerful figure of command. Sideralis understood that he had become something like his mother. He did not fully understand her role, he lacked the words or the understanding to even begin to describe it, but he and Twilight and were now mirroring the functions of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Something resembling balance would soon emerge in the fleet. Something resembling harmony would soon be achieved. He and Twilight would bring balance and order to these trying, troubling times.

With the alicorn of magic now merged with his dream realm, explosive growth began to happen. New connections were made. More dreamers were pulled in, which in turn, gave the entire system more power. Things began to grow exponentially. The changeling minds hummed with cooperative organisation. King Stag’s damaged psyche began a rapid healing process, shoring up his weaknesses and restoring vital functions of his mind. Queen Acherontia, who no longer had a body, now pronked alongside Ouroboros through the ever growing expanse. She too, was healing from her traumatic transformation.

The fleet was becoming.

Author's Notes:

Next chapter... Mustang Salvation lives up to her namesake.