D27’s week had been going surprisingly well. He had managed to restore his ability to restore and utilize his mass, and had taken several hours to consume several tons of apples in addition to a significant amount of swamp muck, and had increased his mass to the requisite three tons. The trees in the Gloame that he had planted were now tall saplings, even though most of them proved poorly adapted to an environment without sunlight. Soon, he would have enough trees to generate his own apples, although the quality of them would be in question. His experiments with an Order-accelerated tree had already proved horrendous, making deep blue apples that tasted like Order and leading him to believe that Gloame apples- -assuming they did not get stolen by shadows- -would taste like Gloame.

The ponies had become increasingly friendly, though. Aside from an incident where a strange green pony in the background had accusingly screamed out the name “Mary Sue”, conditions had generally been genial. D27 had spent time wandering through the town, watching the ponies interact and enjoy their lives. He had visited Rarity and presented her with the promised fragment of cerorite. She had immediately began building him a suit. D27 found that clothing was uncomfortable and itchy, Rarity seemed to be having fun. He allowed her to proceed, at least until she unexpectedly attached a silver watch to him and liquefied one of his arms. Rarity had apologized profusely, even as D27 explained that it would probably regenerate. Her greater concern actually seemed to be the fact that she could not use silver accessories in the outfit, though. She had sent D27 away while she redesigned the second set of suits to avoid the use of silver.

D27 also spent some time with the red stallion Big Macintosh, who was selling apples from a cart. Big Mac’s treatment had been icy at first, but after lurking near the stall for several hours D27 finally got him talking. As it turned out, Big Mac was actually a rather sensitive soul and an adequate amateur philosopher. His views on the beauty of nature were poetic, but diametrically opposed to those of D27, who was genetically programmed to view all living things as food sources.

Other than Rarity, though, D27 generally avoided the six ponies that reeked of Order. They did not seem especially interested in him anyway. Rainbow Dash had waved in passing at one point, and D27 had waved back, but that was the extent of their interaction. Pinkie Pie had followed him for a few hours one day, but D27 had never figured out her motivation and actually started to become somewhat frightened of her in spite of her spastic friendliness.

Originally D27 had actually been intending to avoid them. They were nice ponies, but they were also busy, and associated with an alicorn. He was content to interact only distantly with the various random ponies throughout Ponyville, or to simply sit with the cows or sheep and speak of milk and wool. His opinion had changed when he met the pastel mare Fluttershy, however.

He had been sitting in a field beneath a beech tree, admiring the details in blades of grass below and wondering why ponies bothered to farm food if grass was edible to them when he felt something soft land on him. He turned rotated his head at an angle that real ponies probably could not, and saw a small, drab winged insect sitting on his rump.

D27 was about to yell at the insect for disturbing his examination of grass when he heard a small voice from somewhere around him.

“Ex…excuse me,” it said, meekly.

D27 shifted, focusing his eye on the perceived source of the sound. He saw a yellow mare with a pink mane cower away from him.

“Yes?” he said.

“I…I…” she mumbled something that D27 could not hear.

“Speak, soft-appearing winged pony,” said D27, perhaps too harshly.

“Oh. I just…I need to count that one…”

D27 noticed that she was holding a clip boards under one of her wings.

“You are counting these?” he asked. “Why?”

“Well,” she said, “if we know how many of each type of butterfly we have, then we can plant flowers for them. Different types of butterflies sometimes need different types of flowers, you know.”

“Yes. I am aware of this fact. Lesser lichen moth.”

“Excuse me?”

“That is the species,” said D27, “of this particular moth.”

“Oh dear,” said the mare. “The moth census was last month. I’m so sorry to bother the both of you.”

“Wait,” said D27, standing. The moth crawled along his back and onto his head.

“What is it?” squeaked the mare.

“I encountered you several days prior. I believe I may have frighten you. I believe I still frighten you. I would like to render an apology.”

“Oh,” said the mare, giving a cautious smile. “I’m afraid of everything. It’s not just you. And I’m usually the one giving apologies.” She giggled as the moth crawled onto the tip of D27’s ear, and then grimaced as it walked downward and centered itself on one of his eyes.

“I have no eyelids,” he explained. “This is normal.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not. It has very soft feet.”

“They generally do.”

They got to talking, and D27 learned that her name was Fluttershy. She was apparently in charge of the peaceful animals of Ponyville and the surrounding area, or at least involved in their care. She was, as her name implied, quite shy. Unlike most of his kind, however, D27 was highly manipulative, and eventually managed to set her at ease. All the time he was watching, examining her closely. He had initially detected the presence of Chaos on her, but on closer examination found that it was actually far more than a simple residue. There were active spells ingrained into her person, spells that she probably was not even aware of. D27 was very careful not to touch her, or ever get to close; the spells were reactive traps, and though probably not dangerous, a surge of Order around them would almost definitely trigger something to happen.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Fluttershy was almost as manipulative as D27 was, in part because she was so soft and innocent in appearance and attitude. She was adorable, and it metaphorically broke D27’s heart- -he actually contained no such organ- -that as a being containing both Chaos and Order, she was inevitably destined for a dark fate.

She eventually convinced D27 to meet her friends- -including the alicorn Twilight Sparkle. She even went so far as to organize a picnic in the near future. D27 flatly refused at first, but seeing the disappointment in Fluttershy’s eyes forced him to reconsider. At first he was noncommittal, and then, finally, he accepted. Fluttershy promised to bring apples.

A day passed, and D27 almost changed his mind. He was terrified. The thought of meeting an alicorn in person was horrible; just the thought of seeing one sickened him. From what the various ponies had said, though, Twilight Sparkle was a kind and intelligent pony. Careful probing showed that they did not know anything about her benefactor, which remained undetectable.

D27 found himself panting- -despite not having lungs- -and nearly panicking as he made his way through the streets of Ponyville toward the designated meeting location. He fought the urge to become a puddle of liquid and retreat, and did his best to remain calm.

Then he saw the six of them, waiting in the street. They were smiling and laughing with each other. Rainbow Dash was fluttering above them, and Pinkie Pie bouncing in circles excitedly. Fluttershy was carrying a picnic basket, and Applejack and Rarity seemingly engaged in a discussion about Rarity’s hat.

In the center of them, D27 saw the purple alicorn Twilight. She still disgusted him greatly, but her smile was genuine. Her and the others all seemed so happy, so at ease with each other. All of them were equally adorable.

Fluttershy noticed D27 first, and she motioned to the others. They all waved, and D27 smiled. He wondered if perhaps it was possible for a creature of destruction like him to have friends.

Then a beam of pure white light descended from an oblique angle and without warning vaporized the entire upper half of D27’s body.

“Oh, look!” said Fluttershy, tapping Twilight’s shoulder. “There he is!”

Twilight looked up. It was the first time she had seen D27 in person, and he did indeed look strange. Her time as the Princess of Friendship had taught her better than to decide on a pony’s personality because of his appearance. Twilight smiled and waved to him.

A narrow smile crossed D27’s lips, and he started to raise his front hoof to wave back, when suddenly a searing beam of light passed over Twilight’s head. Before her eyes, she watched as it tore through D27’s body, vaporizing his head and torso, leaving nothing but a set of barely-connected legs.

Fluttershy screamed, and Rarity fainted. The others cried out and reacted with panic, but Twilight was instead focused on the surges of magic from behind her. She turned to see bursts of white light all around her, the characteristic eruptions of long-range teleportation spells, all cast with a familiar magical trace.

Heavily armored Pegasi seemed to pour out of nowhere, all armed with weapons that Twilight did not recognize. Unicorns appeared as well, lowering themselves to the ground on pads of solidified magical energy, all dressed in characteristic royal armor.

In the center of them all was Celestia, her body encased in shining white armor, her normally colorful main condensed into a single stream of solar energy. Her horn was still glowing from the lethal blast to D27.

“Princess Celestia,” said Twilight, feeling tears in her eyes. She had just witnessed her beloved teacher- -virtually her second mother- -obliterate a pony on the street without warning. “Why?”

“Twilight, get back!” ordered Celestia, descending on a pair of fiery wings. She dropped in front of them, interposing herself between D27’s remains and Twilight’s friends.

“I think you got him,” said Rainbow Dash, smiling in her own terror. She appeared as though she was about to vomit despite her awe.

Twilight turned and looked at the gruesome scene in front of her, but to her astonishment, saw that it was changing. The wreckage above he legs was bubbling and extending, rapidly reforming what had been destroyed.

“That was completely- -uncalled for, Celestia!” gurgled D27 through his incomplete neck. Part of his face separated, forming a large eye with a triangular pupil.

Without warning, Celestia leveled another blast directly at D27. This time, D27 saw it coming. His body morphed into liquid and distorted, curving into a spiral that surrounded the blast, avoiding contact with it. The beam itself struck a house behind him, burning through it completely and causing it to collapse.

D27 only partially reformed, his body resembling a semi-solid parody of a pony, and Twilight suddenly felt nauseous. “Celestia,” he said, his voice no longer sounding as though it came from a pony. “Not here. The risk of collateral damage is too high.”

“Not if you just die!” hissed Celestia.

D27 watched as the ponies approached him from all sides. It was finally happening. Pegasi were descending from above, armed with energy weapons mounted to their sides. Equally armed earth ponies and powerful unicorns were encircling him as well, and he was staring into the face of Celestia to herself.

They seemed to have paused, as if he were expected to surrender. Instead, D27 turned toward Fluttershy, who was cowering near Twilight. She was responsible for this. It had been a trap from the start. They had all been planning it, carefully manipulating the system, biding time until a proper army could be amassed, until they knew what and where he was.

“Fluttershy!” he screamed. “You tricked me! I shall never forgive you for this betrayal! Never!” He then directed his attention at Celestia. “Fine, then. If you want a fight between gods, so be it.”

D27 shifted all his mass into his form, twisting and expanding exponentially, releasing a paralyzing storm of Order. Several of the nearest Pegasi were hit, but the unicorns universally generated shields, the princess included.

The princess fired another blast of energy, and it tore through D27’s body as though his armor were made of paper. The princess herself was by far the largest threat; the coronal energy loss from her alone was more than an entire army of unicorns. Her magic was also an incredible force. It was not Order, but raw and unprocessed energy pulled directly from the Red Sphere.

That was not all, though. Directing power was a simple task; any being with an adequate body could direct equivalent spells. What was clear, however, was that Celestia was not simply any being. Her spells were not simple blasts of energy; they were carefully modulated and constructed to tear through D27’s magical and physical defensive elements and to cause maximal damage. She was not simply throwing out energy; she was carefully constructing spells with skill and ability that surpassed any trihorn D27 had ever known.

D27 had no choice. He shattered his own body, liquefying it and expanding it into pillars of material that plunged into the nearest buildings. He poured himself into them, absorbing all the organic matter that he contacted, vastly expanding his mass. Instead of condensing it into a definite body, he instead coated everything around him in a writhing amorphous mass.

This was the true nature of the Choggoth. As an amorphous, decentralized liquid, it was impossible for a Choggoth to be destroyed with single beams of energy. A mass the size of a continent was virtually unstoppable; even at a mass of not six tons, D27 shared that durability.

There were problems with that approach, though. As he grew, D27 felt his mind fading. More mass meant less control; his mind was decentralized to prevent it from being destroyed, and he could feel his instincts beginning to take hold. He suddenly felt a profound desire to consume, to destroy, to mutilate and destroy everything and convert all organic matter into himself.

He did his best to resist, and instead raised part of himself, creating an arm-like organ and returning fire toward Celestia. A beam of condensed Order sparks flew out at her, impacting the solar aura around her. She deflected it, only to leave elements of it flying off into nearby buildings and toward terrified ponies who ran screaming in all directions.

“No!” roared D27, although he doubted that he could be understood at that point. She was using her own subjects as pony shields to prevent him from using magical attacks.

D27 adapted. He expanded farther, taking up more mass, and engulfing the ponies that surrounded him. He separated the ponies from their energy weapons, spitting out the ponies and incorporating the particle weapons and disruptor beams into his own structure.

The Pegasi around him opened fire, tearing at his tissue with beams of energy. The effect was painful, but minimal; any tissue that was destroyed could be rapidly replaced. D27 ingnored them, and instead focused the weapons he had acquired on the princess.

She dodged, and to D27’s horror, he realized that Twilight and her friends were in the path of the various beams he had generated.

Twilight reacted quickly, projecting a shield bubble around her friends. The impact against it was incredible, though, and shattered it, throwing her and her friends apart onto the ground. Disoriented, Twilight stood up. Everything sounded distant and deep, as though she were underwater. All around her was chaos; there were Pegasi flying in from all directions, beams of energy somehow streaking from them through the air even though they could not use magic. Unicorns were mobilizing, attempting to contain the rapidly expanding pool of amorphous blue liquid. Twilight watched as the princess battled the mass, the shifting material that sprouted screaming mouths and distorted, clawed arms at seemingly random to attack ponies in all directions. That mass, she realized, was D27- -what he truly was. What he always had been.

“Twilight!” She heard a voice in the distance, calling her back to reality. She listened, and tried to focus.

“Twilight!” repeated the princess, who was now holding back a wall of aggressive blue fluid covered in rapidly-firing weapons using her magic. “The Elements of Harmon! Use the Elements!”

“Right,” said Twilight. She looked to her friends, and they understood what they needed to do.

D27’s attention was suddenly draw to a rapid surge of Order magic. He sprouted numerous eyes and looked toward its origin. There, surrounded by an exponentially growing field of energy, was Twilight and her friends. The nature of their Order was heavily contaminated, but they were surely preparing an offensive spell.

“No,” hissed D27. His form shifted, surging forward past the shields of unicorns who were attempting to protect Twilight. He condensed a clawed arm and pushed it through the surge of order. The other ponies moved quickly, dodging, and D27 was forced to grab the nearest one.

He retracted his form, pulling a screaming Fluttershy away from the others, stopping their spell from firing. As he did, he felt the Chaos traps within her body trigger.

There was a sudden roar from above. D27 looked up, and his eyes focused on two objects in the distance. His body formed an internal radar organ and confirmed the impossible- -two jet aircraft were approaching rapidly.

A radio signal pierced the air.

“Teal team leader, going in,” said one voice.

“Green team leader standing by,” said the other.

One of the jets accelerated, D27 saw the tracers indicating that he was being strafed. The bullets hit him, but had little effect. He was surprised that anypony would even bother shooting him. The projectiles were not even silver.

Then he screamed in agony as the impact sights exploded with massive bursts of magic. He realized that he was not being shot at with bullets, but with condensed Chaos.

Whoever was flying the plane was a terrible shot, though, and D27 shifted his mass to form a shield to protect Fluttershy. Even doing that, the shield had little effect; even the densest of his tissues exploded violently and painfully into large puffs of something that was either confetti or glitter.

The main fighter turned and flew back toward D27, continuing to strafe randomly. The other aircraft, which was much larger and seemed to be made of wood, approached slowly.

“Buttery Snake, dropping the F bomb,” said a voice on the radio.

The bottom of the large craft opened, and D27 froze in horror. An incredibly decrepit but still fully recognizable cerorian warhead dropped from the bay. Its nuclear insignia had been painted over with a green “F”, and there was an equally green unicorn with an oddly branching horn riding it like a horse, waving a cowboy hat as it went down.

D27 reacted quickly. He surged forward, pushing past Celestia and sacrificing half his mass as it vaporized on her superheated form. Desperately, he hardened his mass and arranged himself into the form of a massive flower, closing around the warhead before it could activate.

He braced for the blast, which he knew at his present mass would likely be lethal. It never came, though. The warhead was far too old; it was a dud.

It had been some kind of distraction. The ponies around him started closing in, tearing at him with magic and energy weapons. Another beam of solar energy pierced his body, and this time, it not only burned him but began to spread.

His body overheating and surrounded, D27 realized that he had been defeated. He used the crystals still lodged in his form to open a tiny portal, pulling a tiny fragment of his mass back to the Gloame.

The remainder of his body quivered and lost color. It dissociated and splashed down onto the ground, leaving a terrified and screaming Fluttershy as well as several other engulfed ponies to splash into it. The resulting muck rapidly bubbled and began to disintegrated, breaking into gas and rapidly dissipating.

Celestia removed her helmet and surveyed the damage. Most of Ponyville had been leveled. Any house that the Choggoth had touched had been reduced to a pile of broken glass and stone, with anything made of wood, straw, or cloth destroyed. Several others had been destroyed in the course of the battle.

There were casualties. Several of her own soldiers had been paralyzed, and others had been injured by the rapid motion and engulfment by the wall of living liquid. The worse, though, had occurred to the civilian population. Several ponies had been trapped in collapsed buildings, and others had been burned by the coronal magic of Celestia’s own attacks.

“Get a rescue team on the buildings!” she ordered to her unicorns. “Set up an interim hospital! Air Guard, search the perimeter!”

Her ponies moved out, and she was momentarily reminded of her mortal role as a soldier. It was a familiar role and an easy one to fall into, but a dangerous one to stay in for too long.

Fluttershy’s friends were attempting to extricate her from the rapidly dissolving pale-blue muck. Twilight was not among them. She was frozen nearby, staring into space at the destruction surrounding her. Celestia nearly broke into tears at that sight. Twilight was as close as she had ever come to having a daughter, and she had wished ever so desperately to save her from the horrors of the war that herself and Luna had been born into so long ago.

Before she could move to comfort her student, Discord dropped from the sky attached to a parachute.

“A rousing success,” he said, smiling. “Drinks are on me! Who wants punch?”

Before he could create some manner of visual pun, Celestia struck him in the side of his head with her armored hoof as hard as she cold.

“Ow,” he said, obviously suffering no real injury. “Celestia. I am not a tree. You do not need to punch me.”

“You imbicile!” she screamed. “Do you have any idea what you nearly did?”

“I nearly failed to save Fluttershy. But I didn’t. She’s fine. A bit traumatized, maybe, but she’ll get over it.”

“You dropped a nuclear warhead on Ponyville!”

“What? Why would you accuse me of doing such a thing? It wasn’t me. Buttery Snake did it.”

“I’m a proxy!” cried Buttery Snake, lying on top of the steaming but unexploded bomb nearby.

“Besides,” said Discord. “It didn’t go off.”

“And if it had?”

“You’re an alicorn, dear. Nukes don’t kill alicorns. Twilight would probably have made it too, and I would have teleported Fluttershy out.”

“And the rest of the ponies?”

Discord frowned, and crossed his arms. “You wanted the Choggoth dead, didn’t you?”

Before Celestia could respond, Discord vanished, and Buttery Snake had faded into the background somewhere.

Celestia sighed, and looked at the destruction around her. She had felt the surge of magic just before the Choggoth destroyed itself. It has created a dimensional rift to the Gloame, and likely sealed all entry points around itself. The war had only begun.

D27 stumbled through his abandoned castle. He was not suffering from mass loss, and he had regained at least some of his mass from stored reserves of biological material he kept in storage. Despite this, he was still in pain.

“Why?” he called out to the emptiness and mute shadows. They only stared back, eternally watching. “Why would they betray me?”

He had entered the deep storage hallways. On his left, he found a stack of uncategorized goods. Hanging on a stone protrusion was the first of several promised suits that Rarity had promised him. Around it were several apples that he had left for himself- -apples from Applejack’s farm. Around them were other trinkets he had purchased from ponies- -a stool, some quills, money, and, to his dismay, a button given to him by the Cutie Mark Crusaders. As an adult, he was too old to be a Crusader, but they had made a thin metal button with a poorly drawn version of their club symbol.

D27 could hardly look at any of those things. He realized that the vestigial remnants of his eyes were dripping black fluid. He was crying.

“Why?” he whispered, turning away and continuing to stumble forward into his self-imposed darkness. “I could understand if you outright attacked me. If you tried to kill me like you were supposed to. But to trick me like that…” He approached a large glass device, one of endless rows, that was attached to it. He looked into it, and saw the reflection of a blue pony on its dark, smooth surface. “I could have been happy,” he said to himself. “I could have had friends, a life. They could have let me pretend I was a pony. It could be decades, centuries, millennia before the Finality Core fully awakens. I could have smiled and laughed as they do, and not been alone! I could even have learned to love. I could have had a special somepony, perhaps children. All I wanted was life!”

He slammed his fist into the glass, cracking it and distorting his reflection as cold steam hissed from within. Instead of a blue pony, he now saw the two components of the reflection: his own distorted, asymmetrical biped form and the preserved skull of a unicorn beneath.

D27 looked down at the spikes that terminated his arms. They twisted and separated, forming pairs of long, clawed fingers on the ends of each. He bent them, forming narrow fists.

“But I’m not a pony,” he said. “I never was. I’m not even alive, not really. I was never meant to have a life. I was not born into a life where I could choose the outcome. I was created with a distinct purpose.

In a final fit of rage, he pierced one of his hands through the thick glass and pulled out the unicorn skull. He threw it against the ground, shattering it. He had thousands more, and soon he would have millions.

“Why did I even bother to pretend? I was built for destruction. It is all I can do, my only purpose. I cannot love. I cannot have friends. It is not within my capacity. This mind I have created is defective.” He stared at his reflection through the cracked glass, staring at the symbol of the two triangles.

It was ironic that he had espoused the pointlessness of cutie marks when he himself bore a mark of his own. Six lines for six words. He thanked whatever gods the Soth had not yet annihilated that he could not remember what he had done, even if he could still hear the screams of countless billions from time to time. Panbios- -Equestria- -could be the seventh. A circle would be added to the motif, either between or in the center of the triangles.

“I cannot ever have friends,” said D27 to the shadows. “I can trust no one, because I am an abomination, and nothing living can trust me. I have a single purpose, and I neglected it in favor of an illusion. There is no time left for compassion. If I have to absorb every pony, every stallion, mare, and foal, I will not fail. Equestria must fall, and it must fall by my will alone. That is the only way.”