Deep in the Gloame, D27’s body concentrated in his vault. Parts of him were already pulling the weapons and devices that he had collected through his eternal life, preparing all that he had once considered too dangerous for use for his final battle. Something had gone wrong, though. The one chamber that contained the weapon that he could never use was reacting.

D27 swelled against it, prepared for defense from an attack within. He poured Order into the gate mechanism to that final level of the vault, trying to force it to remain sealed, but it was of no use. The Draconian locking system slowed but did not stop as its material separated and withdrew.

The other side, which should have been filled with blackness, poured forth with green and violet light and a magic that was repellant to D27. The liquid of his body squirmed backward, unable to withstand contact with that horrible light.

The last of the door melted and a form stepped through, one so massive that he needed to duck to enter the halls. A figure whose body consisted of nothing more than enchanted fire wrapped around his immortal skeleton- -the one skeleton that D27 could never hope to wield.

“It is time,” said Rageclaw, stepping over the molten slag that had once been the prison of his long-deceased corpse. He looked down at D27, his flaming eyes narrowing. “Why do you recoil, beast?”

“Your magic,” whispered D27 from the halls around him. “I cannot approach you.”

“Because you are weak,” snarled Rageclaw. He looked up, his skull glinting within his flames. “The final battle is upon us. The spell I cast in my moment of death has awakened me once more, for a second and final time.”

“How can you even be here? How did you survive?”

“Is it not inconceivable that I could compress my entire lifetime into two points? To divert the path I may have had to two indivisible points? Even as my reincarnate form walks this world, I rise to join the fray once again.”

“You would stand beside me?” asked D27.

“Would I?” asked Rageclaw, spreading his wings. “Does a beast like yourself, a living blight, proclaim its worthiness for my assistance?”

“I do,” said D27, forming his own body to face Rageclaw as an equal.

“Then prove your worthiness.” Rageclaw extended a skeletal claw. “Allow me to join the others who have fallen.”

D27 stared at the claw, then at Rageclaw. The light was still jarring, and he could feel his flesh burning away. Rageclaw had designed his spell to ensure that no Choggoth could use his skeleton against his friends, and in doing so concentrated his immortality into it, providing himself with a form of cursed half-life. That same magic was what made him inherently toxic to D27.

D27 reached out and took Rageclaw’s hand. His entire form screamed out in pain as it burned in response to the magic. He wanted to do nothing more than to pull away, to run and hide- -but he refused.

“If this is what it takes,” he said as his arm was reduced to skeletal ash. “If this is what I must do to safeguard Equestria, then I will tolerate the pain. I must stand alone, so that they might live.”

“That is the correct answer,” said Rageclaw, smiling. His hand closed around D27’s. “If only partially so.”

Snow was falling from the thick gray clouds over head as Nil crossed the icy, glacial tundra that surrounded the Crystal Empire. In the distance, it was able to see the tower that surrounded the Heart of Order. It was the final component necessary, the only one that Nil had been unable to replicate.

It could feel the Order pouring across the land, transmitted by some kind of transmitter that had been built by ponies to house heart. A false body, designed by the heart itself. It was calling out, crying for the chest it had once inhabited.

That chest had long since been destroyed, but that did not matter. Nil had a new one for it, and the Heart seemed to know what it was now destined for: to be the core of a new sort of life form, one far superior to the incomplete shadow that it had once inhabited.

Nil was vaguely aware that there were ponies, some flying near it and others standing farther away. Those that got close died instantly. They all seemed so very small, so insignificant. Nil bore no malice or hatred toward them, or, really, toward anything. Such petty thing did not concern it. It only desired to be complete, to be what Choggoths always should have been, to evolve beyond the capacity that it had been born with.

If only they could have known. One hundred ninety three worlds ago, when the spore that would become Nil had first germinated, if the Lords of Order had only been able to see what it would become. Or, just maybe, they did. Perhaps they had intended this, forged all these events to ensure that a new paradigm could be formed, a hybrid of the children of the Soth, a creature of Order and consciousness that could spread singularity across all universes until the final entropy arrived at the end of eternity.

Then something condensed in the space between Nil and the city. Its eyes focused and watched as a massive portal opened, a hole in space to the useless nearby basin dimension. For just a moment, Nil stopped walking as something stepped through.

D27 exited the portal. In the distance, he saw Nil waiting for him, an impossible amalgamation of crystal and synthetic flesh. Even though his own body was several hundred feet high, his enemy dwarfed him.

It was impossible for D27 to ever be as powerful as Nil on his own. Even when Nil had been an ordinary Choggoth, it had been impossible. Through careful planning, however, D27 had made a tremendous effort to compensate. While Nil wielded the power of the Lords of Order, D27 held the power of the creations of ponies. Imbedded in his organic form was every component and weapon he had ever acquired: all the cerorian artillery, cannons, beams and projectors, the pony energy weapons, his entire stock of cerrorite, as well as countless tens of thousands of unicorn and trihorn skulls imbedded within him- -and, in addition, the living skeleton of the Eternal Magus Rageclaw.

The amount of energy surging through his body was incredible. Rageclaw alone was providing him with thousands of times the magic he could ever have hoped to achieve, and each of the pony skulls within him gave him a unique facet of magic related to whatever special talents they had possessed in life- -and he could feel every one of them, their memories flowing through him with their magic, as though they were standing beside him in one final battle.

D27 took a breath of the cold air as the snow fell peacefully around them. There was a moment of absolute silence as he charged the weapons and magic within himself. Then he and Nil started walking toward each other.

Though their battle may have seemed strange had there been any ponies to observe it, D27 was deeply aware of the similarities it bore to fights between Choggoths. Two opponents would simply approach one another, slowly, and then meet. Whichever was stronger would overpower the weaker, and the weaker would be consumed. This was how many Choggoths were born into the world, and was a style of fighting that D27 was all too familiar with.

“I am prepared to die,” said D27, trying to reassure himself. “No. I must die. Weapons like us were not meant for this world.”

“Then do your job and protect this world,” whispered Rageclaw from within.

D27 opened fire. Every weapon he had deployed simultaneously. Thousands of bolts of plasma and lasers merged with millions of bullets spraying from every appendage he had that could hold a weapon. Rageclaw’s magic surged, and a massive rune of fire appeared amongst the technological artillery, pouring out magic toward Nil’s form.

Several more steps forward, D27 ignited this countless horns. Dull magic of every color flew forth, mixing with his own wide blasts of Order. He fired missiles and artillery and enough nuclear ordinance to level ten thousand Canterlots.

All the impacts struck their target, but Nil did not even slow. It kept walking, its living crystal undamaged. It did not even bother to counterattack. D27 increased his power output, feeling his body beginning to combust as the weapons within him overheated, and feeling the pain as the horns within him began to crack, each time causing another set of memories to vanish eternally.

Drawing on Rageclaw’s skills and power, D27 cast a Draconian spell of unfathomable proportions, forming fire into poly-dimensional elements that flew forth in wide arcs toward Nil.

The impact actually caused Nil to stumble for a moment, and through the glow, D27 could see that the crystal in its chest had cracked slightly. Bits of it were falling away, disintegrating as they separated from the main body.

“ENOUGH,” boomed Nil.

The clouds parted as two beams poured in from above, striking Nil. The damaged crystal reformed as the magic of the sun and moon poured into its body, forming impossible quantities of new Order. D27 was terrified; in its current state, Nil should not have been able to harness the power of the Spheres without a Finality Core- -and yet it was.

The spell rapidly began charging. Without any effort, Nil summoned an Order emitter that was several times wider than its already massive body, a ring of sparking energy several thousands of times more powerful than the Weapon that D27 had created in ancient times.

“Coprolite,” swore D27 as spell reached critical mass and the universe itself started to separate slightly. Then a mile-wide beam of order came pouring down on his position.

All over Equestria, unicorns suddenly dropped to their knees. They were either racked by disorientation or physical pain as they felt a surge of magic pouring through the already saturated air. It only added to the growing fear and panic that filled their hearts. The sun and the moon had both risen and burned brighter than ever before, and the sky was yellow instead of blue, with thin beams of reddish-pink lightning crossing it at surprisingly even intervals. The riots had started to slow with ascension of Nightmare Moon to the throne, but as the new fear returned they came back with a vengeance.

“Sweetie Belle!” cried Applebloom as her friend collapsed suddenly.

“Oh,” said Sweetie Belle, “my head…what hit me?”

“Nothing,” said Scootaloo. She looked up at the sky, as though perhaps an object had cartoonishly fallen on her friend’s head. As soon as she looked directly at the sky, though, she regretted looking up. It was all the wrong colors, to the point where Scootaloo was glad that she could not fly, if only because she did not want to be any nearer to it than she already was.

Ponyville, unlike much of Equestria, had been thoroughly stabilized by the presence of Satin Veil’s soldiers. It had become so safe that, unlike the rest of the town, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had journeyed into the center to see demons constructing new, larger pentagrams in the center of town out of a curious red-brown paint. When asked, the demons had claimed that the purpose of the new pentagrams was to summon something called a “Red Bull” to counteract a contingent of unicorns on the coast, or, if things got really bad, to bring their females through to rapidly annihilate all pony resistance.

“Oh!” cried a nearby demon with a cactus cutie mark, rushing over. “Something wrong, eh?”

“She just collapsed,” said Applebloom.

“Hey Frantic!” cried the demon to one of his friends, a similarly colored demon with a bloody bone-saw for a cutie mark and a vest that marked him as a medic- -or a butcher.

The demons surrounded Sweetie Belle, the medic taking out a stethoscope. Ever since the Cutie Mark Crusaders had entered the center of town- -“stealthily” at first- -they demons had lavished attention on Sweetie Belle, giving her trinkets and compliments- -as well as several offers for her immortal soul, and literature on how to join the Legion of Satin Veil and become a demon.

“Is she going to be okay?” asked Scootaloo, looking up at the demons. With her orange coloration and flightless wings, she looked like a tiny hornless copy of them.

“It’s just magic shock,” said Frantic. Applebloom could not help but wonder what his second name was. “She’ll be fine. Just needs some…”

Both demons suddenly stood, their eyes glazing. Applebloom looked past them and saw that all the demons were doing the same. They all stood, stopping what they were doing, and turned to face the same direction.

The cactus cutie marked demon suddenly blinked, as did the others. They immediately started moving toward the large pentagram.

“What was that?” asked Applebloom, hoping that it was just their version of what had just happened to Sweetie Belle- -even though she was not entirely sure if they could use magic.

“Orders from Archdemon Corpse-Grinder,” said the lead demon. “This world is just about to end. We’ve been ordered back to Tartarus.”

“End?” said Scootaloo, her eyes widening. “What do you mean ‘end’?”

“Just that. I’m real sorry.” He started walking toward the portal, which the other demons had opened and were promptly jumping into. He and the remaining ones suddenly grimaced, however. He put his hoof to his head, as if in pain.

“What?” said Applebloom.

“Orders from…from the top,” he said, looking at Frantic in disbelief. He turned to the three small ponies. “Satin Veil has retrieval of a pony by the name of ‘Fluttershy’ for immediate evacuation to Tartarus. I hate to ask when, you know…but do you know her?”

“No,” they all said at the same time.

“Oh well,” said the demon pony, shrugging. “If you see her in the next…hour?” Frantic nodded. “In the next hour, let us know. After that, I hope to see you all down there.” He patted Sweetie Belle’s head, and then turned back to the portal. He, along with the last of the demons, jumped in and it sealed behind them in a puff of acrid smoke.

In the Canterlot palace, Blackest Night watched as Cadence’s unicorn handmaidens surrounded her, stripping away the spells that linked her to Sombra’s tower. She knew that there was not much time, and would have assisted, but she had still not fully recovered her magic. She had used what she could to teleport herself and Shining Armor back to Canterlot, and it had not regenerated. Some other force was drawing energy from the moon, rendering Luna’s magic nearly useless.

That did not mean she was inactive, however. All over Equestria, the population had suddenly started resisting her control. She stood in the center of her secretaries, Spike at her side, dedicating herself to the commanding the defense.

She was not a fool, however. Blackest Night was fully aware of the threat that Equestria now faced, and knew that there was no countermeasure. D27 had promised to defend the land, but there was no way he would be able to. Even with all the magic of Panbios- -that of every Draconian, every trihorn, and every monohorn- -he had only managed to destroy an incomplete, larval Lord of Order, and failed to destroy the Choggoth that had summoned it even with a direct hit.

For the first time in a long time, she was afraid. If the world died, so would she. She did not know what would happen; with no body to reincarnate into, she was unsure if she would simply dissipate or continue to exist as a sentient but perpetually silent, bodiless shadow, simply watching the empty wreckage of the world- -or even find a fragment of Nill to bind herself too.

A deeper part of her mind held a different concern. Blackest Night feared what would happen to Luna, and to the chiropteran foal several stories below her, still in her mother’s arms while her father fought on the streets of Equestria. If D27 failed- -and he would¬- -they would die without even the slightest hope of coming back.

A stab of Order suddenly tore across her mind. Her own tolerance for pain caused her to barely react, but the unicorns around her- -as well as Cadence- -cried out in surprise or pain. Blackest Night felt Luna’s heart seem to skip a beat- -a discharge of Order that could be felt at that range must have been of a nearly inconceivable magnitude.

As Blackest Night righted herself, however, several specks of light appeared near an open window. Her eyes widened as she watched them pour through, and the soldiers around her reacted as if they were under attack, charging their horns and brandishing their weapons. Even Spike- -to Blackest Night’s mild amusement- -used a Draconian spell to summon a pointed stick.

The glowing flecks became more numerous and resolved into the shape of a pony. Then, with a burst of light, they solidified.

Celestia blinked, and then started to fall. Her vision swirled, but she felt a pony grab her, keeping her standing. She took a deep breath with the one lung that she had managed to rebuild. Her whole body ached, and most of her organs were still lacking- -but she was alive.
“You are not nearly healed yet,” said a familiar voice beside her. “Why have you returned?”
Celestia looked up toward the pony supporting her, and found herself staring into the turquoise eyes of Nightmare Moon.

“You- -,” said Celestia. In her present state, she was too weak to stand, let alone withstand a fight with her mortal enemy.

As she watched, though, the blackness that made up Nightmare Moon’s face seemed to retract, leaving blue in its wake until Luna’s large round eyes were the ones staring into Celestia’s. Luna smiled, brushing her hair back from beneath the bizarre three-pointed helmet she wore.

“Sister,” she said, wrapping Celestia in a hug. Celstia felt tears running down her hairless skin. “I was so worried- -I thought I had lost you!”

“I’m here, Luna,” said Celestia, weakly returning her sister’s hug. “And I will never leave you…”

Luna pulled back and looked at her sister’s face. She was still smiling, even through her tears. “I am so happy,” she said, but then sighed. “But my time has yet to return. The world still needs her- -but I see it now. She, me…we are different, but parts of the same…please forgive her for my sins, sister…”

“Luna…”

Luna took a breath, as though she were diving into some pool of deep, frigid water- -or perhaps to hold back the pain as the black that covered the rest of her body crawled back up her neck, a shadow that consumed her beautiful face, contorting it into something that made every unicorn instinctively shiver.

“Shining Armor,” she said. “Help her.”

“Yes, your highness,” said Shining Armor, appearing from beside his wife and taking Celestia, straining under her alicorn weight.

“Did you…did you take my kingdom?” asked Celestia, weakly.

“Apparently not.” Blackest Night spread her wings and summoned what magic she had left. If D27’s second failure was going to kill her, she was not going to die like she had last time, alone in a cave.

With a running start, she jumped out of the window that Celestia’s dispersed energy had come through. She tightened her wings around her body and fell, relishing the air flowing and strange light passing by her. For perhaps the last time, she relished the freedom of flight- -one of the many gifts that she had been given by being allowed to inhabit so many Pegasi.

She fell to the fray below, a battle on the streets of Canterlot between the griffon forces at the sides of chiropterans and ponies of every race dressed in Crystal Empire armor standing against the terrified hordes. A space cleared for her, and her very presence seemed to slow the fighting.

“Cowards!” she screamed, summoning he personal magic from within her, striking fear into their minds. “If this is the end, do not waste it! Brothers and sisters, stand beside us! Do not waste your last minutes in combat, unless you desire only to die alone!”

The ponies paused, looking to each other as if they were unsure if they should keep fighting. The sound of gunfire and screaming slowed, and then stopped.

Then the two sides attacked each other, redoubling their efforts to destroy their mortal enemies.

The beam of Order ceased tunneling through Equestria, and the ice and rock it had passed through remained for only a moment as it condensed into a singular state and the collapsed entirely, its material form converted into pure Order, leaving behind a massive oblique-angled hole.

On the top of a nearby glacier, a bubble formed in space over a green-fired rune and D27 dropped to the ice. Teleporting something at his mass was nearly impossible, and even using Rageclaw’s energy he had nearly failed to engage the spell in time.

He looked down at the hole that Nil had formed, and wondered if Equestria was round- -because if it was, somepony on the other side just had their day thoroughly ruined.

Nill started moving again as its body sparked with Order feedback. If D27 felt a sudden surge of hopelessness. Even without the sun and moon as a power source, that spell would have been inconsequential to Nil. D27 imagined that such spells were probably within the capacity of Lords of Order- -or even larger spells- -but they had just never had a mental structure that would ever have decided to deploy one as such. Nil could easily have shattered the planet if it wanted to.

There was no time to allow personal limitations to slow his progress, however. D27 formed a mass driver from his body and planted several spikes of tissue into the glacier for support. He began loading his cerorite ammunition into it and modified his eyes for long-range targeting.

A resounding explosion filled the air as a three-pound crystal was fired as supersonic speed. It struck Nil and shattered through magically-generated crystal and Choggoth flesh alike. D27 fired another one, and continued firing as rapidly as he could- -but already saw that even cerorite was having no effect. The rounds were penetrating, but they were simply too small to do any real damage. Nil’s body was constructed with Choggoth geometry: it was decentralized and organless, able to operate even without its heart. There were no critical spots that could be hit to incapacitate it, or even slow it down.
Nil seemed to recognize this, and did not even bother to pay any attention to D27. It simply continued to walk, crossing miles with each step. The Crystal Empire only had minutes remaining before Nil reached it. Then D27 suddenly felt a spell engage inside himself- -and realized that something had been teleported into his body.

The unstable Order crystal exploded violently, tearing him apart, covering the glacier with shredded bits of metal and the broken bones of countless unicorns, all covered in the blue remnants of D27’s body, many of them sparking and convulsing from the surge of foreign Order that had been poured into them.

D27 felt himself slipping, but resisted the urge to die. He gathered what pieces of himself he could fine and pulled them together around the few bits of machinery that still worked and the skeleton of Rageclaw, barely having enough of himself to cover them all.

D27 was starting to panic. All the machinery he had accumulated had failed to produce any significant effect. He stood beside legions of the undead, but even their magic had failed. D27 simply was not strong enough.

“Only one option,” he said to himself. “Only one thing to do…I’m sorry…”

He reached out with his mind to his countless thousands of satellite bodies. Each one of them, previously dormant, reawakened, and he felt the stress of suddenly becoming so many weight his mind down. He knew, though, that the strain would only be brief.

Inside his head, he said one last farewell to Equestria. It had come down to the final option. If any life were to survive, then nearly all of it would need to die.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

As he did, a flaming claw suddenly burst from the side of his body, its magic suddenly horribly injerous to his organic matter. Rageclaw started to pull himself free of D27’s body, grasping the proportional equivalent of D27’s throat, causing it to burn as D27 struggled instinctively to escape the pain of the anti-Choggoth magic.

“Have you learned nothing?” he shouted, his flaming eyes staring into D27’s triangles.

D27 reached back with his own organic arm, his flesh burning away as he grasped Rageclaw’s throat. “You are dead!” he screamed. “You have no stake in this! This is the only way, and you will obey me!”

He began to swarm over Rageclaw, forcibly absorbing his skeleton and power, ignoring the magic surrounding him. Rageclaw was momentarily taken aback, and D27 momentarily seemed to be succeeding- -until his body was torn apart by a sudden surge of magical fire.

The bits splattered across the glacier, and, though many were still burning, once again coalesced into a being- -now a much smaller one, barely three times taller than a pony and horribly thin.

“If you destroy the world, what was the point?” said Rageclaw.

“Fine,” said D27, picking up one of the last remaining bits of weaponry and several scattered skulls. “I will fight alone.”

The situation was going to end exactly as D27 had expected it to- -and hoped that it would not. At some level, he had known from the start that Nil could not be defeated. He had known that Equestria would die. Even his own death along with it would be little consolation- -he had failed in his one mission. He was the one who had brought the Tree of Harmony into the world, and the one who served it. He was the only one who should have been forced to die to preserve Equestria.

Before he could proceeded to attempt to reconnect to his satellite bodies, he felt space distort behind him. For a moment, he through Nil had deigned to send him another explosive- -this time, perhaps one with enough force to kill him.

Instead, as he turned, he saw six ponies.

“Wow,” said Pinkie Pie, suddenly shivering and covering herself with her tail and hair. “I forgot how cold it is here- -I’m freezing my cupcakes off!”

“What are you doing here?” demanded D27. “You should not be here!”

“We’re here to save Equestria,” said Twilight, calmly.

“You can’t!” screamed D27. “This is not your fight! It is mine! I was the one brought here to finish this war, to finish where I failed last time!”

“Do you think we’re not strong enough?” said Rainbow Dash angrily.

“No,” said D27, “but you are mortal. You are not meant to be forced to make the sacrifices necessary to win this war!”

“Do you even know how the war was won the last time?”

D27 paused, unable to answer. “N- -no,” he admitted. “I died before it could be completed.”

“We sah it,” said Applejack, stepping forward.

“And it didn’t have to be that way,” muttered Fluttershy from behind her.

“You don’t have to do this on your own,” said Rarity, for the first time looking up at D27 without averting her eyes.

“No,” said Twilight, “you can’t do this on your own.”

“I was born alone,” said D27. “I lived my whole life alone. I will die alone. This is my path. It is the way it must be!”

In the distance, Nil had reached the Crystal Empire, the green region held beneath the dome of magic projected from the Heart of Order. The shield momentarally glimmered in the light of the two Celestial Spheres as the ponies inside tried their best to charge the Heart- -and as the Heart itself seemed to realized its inescapable fate and rebelled against it.

Nil raised one massive hand and brought it down on the top of the shield. The Crystal Palace was instantly destroyed, and a blast poured outward from all directions as the shield was instantly burst, producing a shock wave of ice and stone that moved outward with greater force than a nuclear blast.

Rageclaw raised his hand, and a shield of green fire surrounded them, hardening into an inpenetrabale barrier. The shockwave of the dying shield impacted it with enough force to knock the ponies to the ground and force D27 to prop himself up with the end of the artillery piece he was holding like a rifle- -but they were neither buried nor killed.

“It is time,” he said, turning to the ponies as they stood. Twilight looked up at him, knowingly, and nodded.

Their bodies glowed, and D27 detected a characteristic surge of exponentially rising Order- -one that he now recognized as sharing an ancestral source to his own. He saw them rise, their bodies glowing gas the power flowing through them changed their manes and coats.

“It won’t be enough!” warned D27. “You can’t defeated Order with Order!”

“How could you not know?” said Twilight in a voice that was not entirely her own, opening her eyes to reveal the light behind them. “When the world stood behind you, could you not see? Order has failed, not because it is weak, but because it is incomplete- -and you, created in their image, are like them. You are alone.” She smiled. “But you don’t have to be.”

The magic between them increased, and a powerful rainbow of Order arced across the sky toward Nil. Nil, who had been stunned momentarily by the shockwave of the shield, was seen through the dust and debris to turn slightly as it recognized that something was wrong.

The rainbow struck it, and it was driven backward, its massive form stumbling even against the relatively tiny rainbow. D27’s vision magnified to allow him to see- -and to his amazement, he saw Nil’s crystalline body crack and tear and his organic portions retreat, vaporizing as they moved away from the site of impact.

The blow was so catastrophic that it shattered enough of Nil to disconnect one of its several appendages, and the miles-long arm dropped to the ground below. It took a step back in pain- -and then regained its footing. It took a step forward into the rainbow, and its body flashed with pink sparks. It suddenly released as surge of order concentrated purely on the rainbow, and the feedback through it.

The six ponies cried out and burst apart as their rainbow was shattered, and they fell to the cold snow below.

“No,” cried D27, dropping his weapon and moving to their sides. He reached down and picked up Twilight’s tiny body- -and was profoundly relieved to see that she was still breathing.

“It…it failed,” she said. “But the Elements of Harmony…how could they fail?”

“No,” said D27, his mind suddenly racing. The knowledge suddenly connected in his mind- -and he understood why he had been resurrected. “No, it didn’t fail,” he said. “It was just too weak. It needs more power.”

“But tha’ was the best we got,” said Applejack, trying to pull herself up.

D27 was beginning to realize his role, and distantly becoming aware of what Twilight had meant. “You need to use the Elements of Harmony on me,” he said, setting Twilight down and stepping back.

“Um, did I miss something?” asked Pinkie Pie, pulling her head out of the snow.

“But…you’ll die,” said Fluttershy.

“I didn’t last time,” said D27. “And I don’t think I will this time.” He looked behind him, and saw that Nil was righting itself, stepping over its decaying severed arm and starting to focus on the Heart of Order. “You need to hurry!”

“But the Weapon won’t work,” said Twilight. “Even the Elements of Harmony can’t provide enough magic to power it!”

“Because the Weapon was nothing more than a convertor,” said D27 hurriedly. “It ran on Order. I understand now. Order alone is not adequate to win, it never was. We need Harmony to succeed.”

Twilight smiled, and she stood firmly, facing D27. The others did not seem to understand as well as she did, but they trusted her- -and trusted D27. They took their places, and the energy surrounded them again.

Their bodies changed, and they rose into the air. D27 braced himself for impact; it was impossible to know the amount of pain he was about to be in.

The energy swirled around them, accessing the Lord or Order that was the Tree of Harmony, pulling its power into their own and amplifying it- -and then they fired. Their rainbow crossed the glacier in an instant, striking D27 and swirling around him.

The force was incredible, and D27 steeled his mind against it- -but rather than resting it, he combined it with his own native Order and absorbed it, transmitting it through his neural network and ingraining it into himself.

All across Equestria, his satellite bodies suddenly activated. They stood, assuming the pony-like form he had once possessed. They stepped out into the streets around them, into the chaos and warfare throughout Equestria brought on by fear and by D27’s own misguided attempts to save them.

Each of his bodies suddenly surged with energy. From each one surged a rainbow of Harmony. Every pony it touched shuddered and blinked, and then turned to each other. Their weapons fell from their hands, and they looked at each other, confused and horrified at their own actions. In each city, their fear and hatred evaporated. Some wept- -and those that did were comforted by those who had just moments before been standing against them.

In Canterlot, the war in the streets suddenly ground to a halt. Both sides suddenly lost the will to fight. Even Blackest Night paused from her attempts to shatter the minds of her enemies- -because in their minds she felt the same thing. They were tired of fighting, and tired of being afraid. This was no time for war and discrimination- -but for them all to stand together against the true threat.

High in the tower above the fray, Celestia looked down from her window across the land, the darkness of all of it being driven away from so many points that had once strived to tear it apart.

“Wow,” said Spike, who had refused to leave her side. “Is that?”

“Twilight,” said Celestia. She could not have been more proud.

Farther down in the Castle in the makeshift, overcrowded infirmary, wounds began to spontaneously heal. The doctors were so enamored by the feat that they witnessed that they barely noticed the tall, brown-coated bipedal figure walking amongst them.

The door to a private, secured room opened as he stepped in. The white coated figure on the bed stirred, but did not turn.

“Tlilxochitl,” said the brown ahuizotl, weakly, holding the wound in his chest.

The female ahuizotl turned, and her distant, glazed eyes suddenly brightened.

“Chocolatl,” she said.

He stumbled across the room and fell into her arms. “I had lost you,” she said as she struggled against her chains to hold him.

“No,” he said. “I shall never leave your side.”

Even in a faraway mountain, Crimsonflame watched as the world was covered in a new energy, as she herself as contacted by a rainbow originating form a skull that sat beside her. She smiled. “Well,” she said. “I never expected you would use it for that.”

Even in the wreckage of the city that had once been Fillydelphia, the last of the Carcosans felt the sudden surge of Harmony. It stepped back, dropping the pony who it had been strangling the life out of. It could feel the madness that it had spread fading, and in that instant knew that the fate that had met its own homeland had been averted. It raised its hand and produced the Sign, and retracted itself back to its new home in Tartarus before the Harmony could reach it completely.

“It’s just like two weeks ago,” said Buttery Snake, standing in the center of Ponyville as the ponies around him felt the surge of calming energy pour over them.

“It feels…tingly,” said Applebloom.

“Hmm,” said Discord, poking himself. “I’m not stone. Well, that’s new.”

“Wait until the epilogue,” whispered Buttery Snake.

The last of the Harmony dissipated, and D27 collapsed. His body was smoking, but he had survived. It was so simple, he was astounded that he had never realized it. He was now what he had been when he was the Weapon- -nothing more than a lens. On his own, he was weak. His ability was not to be powerful on his own, but to utilize the powers of others- -to direct them and focus them toward his goal, the goal he should have seen the entire time. It was the unity of Panbios through him that had brought the Tree of Harmony into the world, and it was through the transcendent will of that Tree that he had been brought to his battle- -not to win it on his own, but to give support to those destined to replace him in the new paradighm.

Nil had been right all along. Order was obsolete- -but the path Nil had chosen was not the correct one. Giving Order greater virulence was not the solution: the solution was to convert Order into its new form, the form of Harmony.

“Nothing happened,” said Rainbow Dash as she and her friends dropped to the ground.

“Just wait,” said D27. “You are about to get hit with one hay of a feedback wave.”

They were still for a moment, and they did not seem to realize what D27 meant. D27 only smiled, at least internally. They would understand in a moment.

Then the first of them started to appear at the edge of the horizon. At first they were distant and weak, perhaps only visible to D27’s enhanced eyes- -but then they grew. The ponies looked, and then they seemed to comprehend what D27 had allowed them to do.

Pouring in from every corner of the horizon were millions of beams of light, each in a different color. Some were large and bright, and others small and dim- -but they all traveled together, swirling and arcing through the sky as they went, the independent pieces of a rainbow with every possible color.

“It’s beautiful,” said Rarity, as the colors approached.

“It most definitely is,” said Rageclaw, although only within earshot of D27.

D27 looked up at the trailing lights. He could recognize some of them. He saw the largest and strongest among them- -a beam of warm yellow light travelling alongside an equally sized one of midnight blue and pure black bound together in an eternal spiral. They came across the sky from one that was larger, colored deep crimson. Nearby that one came a zigzagging chaotic band of static-colored magic alongside an anemic, sickly green colored band, and nearby a pair of bands, one blue and one violet, swirled in a perfect helix.

The size was not all that made the lings stand out. D27’s eye was draw not a pair of three small ones traveling together- -pale blue, yellow, and orange- -lights that any other being probably would have dismissed as part of the background, but that held great significance to D27.

Nil seemed to notice the streaking lights as well and increased its pace. It stepped over the Crystal Empire, even as thousands of lights poured out, encouraged by their proximity to the origin of the first spell and driven by the Crystal Heart itself.

D27 took several large steps back as the ponies suddenly realized that all the bands of light- -that the Harmony of every living being in Equestria- -was headed for them. They seemed to panic for a moment, but then they just laughed.

The beams all converged on them, and the magic flowed into them on a level that D27 had no way of even measuring. He shielded his eyes, but had no need to- -the glow of Harmony was not harmful to him.

He turned his vison toward Rageclaw, and realized that the ghost was smiling. He nodded to D27, and then stepped forward. His green flames separated from his bones, and his skeleton fell lifeless to the ground. His body faded into a band of its own and merged with a much smaller band of green light, causing it to suddenly expand in both directions.

D27 suddenly felt something within himself, and he looked down to see a tiny stream of blue light coming from his own chest. It was barely the width of a thread, so much smaller than any of the others, but it was his. It was not the product of the Order crystals that were imbedded in him, but of his true self, the part that Nil could never have.

He watched his own thread leave him and join the others into the swirling vortex of magic that surrounded the six wielders of the Elements of Harmony. As the last of the beams came, the six of them rose into the air higher than before and the light surrounding them faded and crystalized around them. Within, D27 saw what he could never have achieved: not only did they have all the magic of Equestria, but also all of its generosity, loyalty, honesty, optimism, and kindness.

Then they unleashed it. A unified rainbow of every possible color shot out in a straight line from them, cutting through space at the speed of light. In the distance, Nil was just about to close its massive hand around the slowly revolving, hovering Crystal Heart. It closed its claws, ready to take what it believed to rightfully belong to it, to release a surge of energy that would ensure that Order remained supreme through the universe for all eternity.

Before it could, the energy of the Elements of Harmony struck it in its side. Nil did not even have a chance to cry out. The Elements of Harmony found nothing within it to purify; nothing good to leave behind. After all, there had never really been anything there to begin with. So instead of saving Nil, they tore through it. In one blast, its entire crystal body shattered and the Choggoth connected to it was pulled away and burned away into nothingness. It barely even had enough time to realize that its one hundred ninety fourth world would be its last- -the world that survived.

The inhabitants of the Crystal Empire gathered around the wreckage of their city. Many had begun to pull their friends and family from the wreckage, but Nil had been surprisingly delicate. Aside from the destruction of the Crystal Palace, the city remained largely intact, except where the crystalline remnants of Nil’s body had fallen.

The ponies were so enamored by the vast, steaming crystal bones that they barely remembered to bow as Princess Twilight walked amongst them, followed by her five friends and one Choggoth that vaguely reminded the ponies of a similar colored beast that had once invaded their kingdom and tried to steal the Crystal Heart.

“Is it…dead?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Yes,” said D27 as they approached the remnants of one particular bone that was as high as most of the pony’s crystalline houses. “And no. Nil was never alive, not really. It was a Choggoth, a machine. The best it could ever hope for was to be a kind of advanced, thinking parasite.”

“But you’re not that,” said Fluttershy.

“I am not sure,” said D27. “Perhaps I never will be.”

They stood at the edge of the crowd of ponies and watched silently for a moment at the dead fragments of Order.

Then D27 suddenly felt something vibrating within his body. He gasped and stepped back- -just s the remnants of the skeleton started to rise.

The ponies screamed and panicked, but did not run. They were unsure what to do- -and could only stare in horror as the pieces of the massive skeleton rose above their city, the asymmetrical remnants of its skull staring down at them eyelessly.

A seemingly distant sound filled the air, like a set of delicate bells, and the skeleton fell back into a heap. It seemed to be crawling forward toward, or trying to.

“It’s going after the Crystal Heart,” said Twilight, motioning for her friends to protect the Heart.

“No,” said D27, stepping forward. Unlike them, he could truly hear its cries, on a level that perhaps no pony ever would. He could hear it calling to him. “It’s not going toward the Heart…it is coming to me.”

“You?” said Twilight. Then, as she realized what was happening, she cried out. “No! D27, stop!”

Her call came too late. He was already too close, and he reached out and, for the first time in his life, truly touched a Lord of Order.

“The things I could do with you,” he said to it, feeling the fear of the ponies behind him. “With that much Order, I would be a god. I could prevent all death and disease, all war and hate. I could protect everypony ever born, for all eternity in both directions.”

“Don’t do it!” cried Fluttershy from behind him.

“It ain’t right!” yelled Applejack.

“Of course it isn’t,” said D27, drawing his hand across the crystal surface as the creature tried to rise again, repeating exactly what it had done a moment ago. He looked at his reflection- -a thin, headless bipedal creature. “You are in so much pain. You were forced to see what Nil saw, what it knew. I am so sorry.”

The sound of distant bells once again filled the air- -the sound that was perhaps, in times long passed, how the Lords of Order had spoken to each other before they had separated from the Soth to live the remainder of eternity in isolation from each other, united only by an ideal that now proved to be a lie.

“I will free you,” said D27, pushing his hand against the crystal and focusing his own Order into it.

There was a surge of power, and he felt the Lord of Order push back- -but it was already so far gone that it did not even bother to resist. It only needed a push, a tiny fragment of volition taken from a Choggoth to leave the world forever.

It shattered into dust, and the dust slowly floated away and dissipated into the sky, forming a kind of sparkling luminescent crystal snow. The ponies stared up in awe.

Something cracked inside D27, though. He felt a tiny grinding, like sand within him. The fourteen nanograms of Order within him had been consumed in the reaction. He had lost the ability to use magic.

“I’m free,” he said, looking up at the Order-snow falling from the sky. “After so long…I’m free…”