“So, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works.”

Rainbow Dash had just spent the last half of an hour trying to explain the Elements of Harmony to Brown. The two of them had been tasked to patrol a perimeter while Five, Gell and Proctor excavated for whichever Element that they were looking for. Five had even given Rainbow Dash a gun, which was not nearly as satisfying as she had hoped.

She had been flying as Brown had been walking below when Brown had asked about what they were actually guarding. Being one of the Elements, Rainbow Dash had jumped to answer the question, explaining that it was another Element- -only to quickly realize that she actually knew very little about how the Elements of Harmony worked, or even what they really were. Most of her response had been stories about the epic fights she had been in where she and her friends had used the Elements of Harmony: the defeat of Nightmare Moon, Discord, Tirac, and Nil, all listed with her patented Rainbow Dash storytelling style.

The whole time, Brown had listened attentively, occasionally asking for clarification on certain things, but not showing even an ounce of disbelief. Between the parts of her story, Rainbow Dash tried to explain how she thought the Elements worked- -even though the egghead gibberish involved with the actual magic eluded her. Even then, Brown seemed to accept what she was saying.

Finally, when she was finished, Brown seemed to consider what she had said for a long minute as he trudged through the snow and wintergreen plants on the forest floor.

“I don’t like it,” he said at last.

“Don’t like what?” said Rainbow Dash. From what she had guessed, he rather liked her stories about the battles of old- -at some points, he had even looked like a starry-eyed colt up at her, as though she were some kind of heroic warrior.

“The Elements of Harmony. I don’t like them.”

“Wait a minute…how do you ‘not like’ the Elements of Harmony? They’re the Elements of Harmony!”

Brown shook his head. “By default, I don’t like magic. The idea of arrogant unicorns pretending to be smarter than me simply because of their hideous bony growths…it does not agree with me. But this goes deeper than that. Some things were not meant for mortals to wield.”

“But the Elements never did anything bad. They only ever helped!”

“It doesn’t matter. Nopony seems to know what they are, where they even came from, aside from this ‘Tree of Harmony’. It is dangerous to use such power without knowing its purpose, its origin. This power runs deep, into places we are not meant to understand, in reserves beyond our comprehension. Given the choice, I would not have used them.”

“And, what, let Nightmare Moon bring on Eternal Night?”

Brown paused, and then pointed upward toward the perpetually black sky.

“Oh,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Also,” said Brown, “as I understand it, this ‘Nightmare Moon’ is now part of the Commander. I have met her. She’s not that bad.”

“Well, there’s still all the others.”

“Indeed there are. But the Elements of Harmony are still dangerous. All powerful magic is. I think…nevermind.”

“What?”

Brown sighed. “Sometimes I have memories. Things I don’t remember doing…and sometimes I see a light, a powerful, destructive light. I think…I think my people were killed by magic. By something like the Elements of Harmony.”

The mood had gotten dark quickly. Rainbow Dash did not like when Brown was sad.

“Hey,” she said, dropping to the ground and walking beside him. “You know I’m the Element of Loyalty, right?”

“Yes,” he said, slowly.

“Well, I do you think I would ever hurt you?”

“I hope not.”

“I wouldn’t. Not ever. And my friends, they were Elements, and they wouldn’t do anything bad either. They just don’t have it in them. So it’s all good, right?”

Brown sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Good,” said Rainbow Dash, flying into the air. “Now let’s go for another loop. I’ll race you this time. If you win, I’ll let you use me as a pillow instead of, you know, the normal way.”

Rainbow Dash accelerated, only to stop when she realized that Brown was not moving. Instead, he was looking into the forest, as if staring at something far away. His eyes were oddly cold, and Rainbow Dash was suddenly frightened.

“Brown?” she said. “Brown, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I feel something. Something bad. Something bad is coming.”

Gell kicked one of the mossy rocks that made up the burial cairn.

“Honestly,” she said, “this doesn’t look like I expected.”

Five agreed, somewhat. Her mental picture of the gravesite of Fluttershy was far more elegant. She had envisioned some secluded area surrounded by trees, perfectly manicured by generations of loving animals, perhaps with a headstone carved by their tiny animal hands- -in total, a place of beauty and peace. Instead, they had found a hastily constructed rock pile in a barren, icy region of a boreal forest.

“This is the only burial site I’ve found,” said Twilight_Proctor.

“Arg,” said Pinkie_Proctor, jumping slightly. “My tail…so twitchy!”

“You don’t have a tail,” noted Five. She ran her scanning device over the top of the gravesite. She was detecting Order, the kind that would normally be associated with an Element of Harmony, but it was possible that she was just detecting background radiation or, conceivable, the body of a crystal pony.

“This plahce was also loaded with all kahnds of ah critters,” said Proctor_Jack. “And bah all kahnds, I mean, lahk, ah million sqirrels.”

“Gah,” said Five, nearly throwing her equipment down. “I hate that accent. So. Much.”

“Well saahhh- -rheeee,” said Proctor_Jack, extending his words as if he were trying to be deliberately annoying.

“If I ever travel through time, somepony remind me to strike Applejack in the face. Actually, nevermind. I have her face already. I shall do it later.”

“Stop it, you two,” said Gell. Even though she was wearing a padded, insulating suit of armor- -she had a surprising number of them, actually- -she shivered. “I hate dampness. Cold I can take, but moisture…no.” She stepped over the grave. “So. How are we going to do this?”

“A shovel,” suggested Twilight_Proctor, producing a hard-light spade.

“Not yet,” said Five. “I have to check for latent magic first.”

“You really think that somepony booby-trapped Fluttershy’s- -of all ponies’- -grave?”

Proctor_Dash snorted. “You said booby!”

“And I have eight of them if you want to give one a squeeze!” growled Gell, angrily. “Honestly. I am not happy right now.”

“I am never happy,” said Five, adjusting her equipment and setting up one of the scanning tripods.

“We know, An,” sighed Gell. “We all get that by now.”

Five ignored her and plugged one of the cables into Proctor, who was not mumbling “twitchy tail” over and over again in a nearly inaudible voice, his digital cutie mark frozen as three balloons. Five also ignored that.

“So,” said Gell, sitting on a nearby rock.

“If you say one word about Shining Armor, I shall propel a rock at your head.”

“Okay…but I wasn’t,” said Gell, smiling. Five knew that she had been about to. Gell became slightly more serious. “Have you noticed anything off about Rainbow Dash?”

“Aside from the golden eye?”

“And that she’s not a lespony,” said Proctor_Dash, annoyed.

“I mean, smell wise.”

“She smells like rainbows, I guess,” said Five. “Rainbows and horse.”

“Not what I mean,” said Gell. “She’s kind of starting to smell like you do.”

Five cringed suddenly, and nearly dropped her scanner. She took a deep breath, calming herself, and placed the scanner into the slot in her equipment, transferring the reading to her gauntlet hologram.

“Well,” she said. “Then I’ll leave it to you to inform her of the news. And to get her to stop drinking so much.” Five paused. “Actually, I should probably drink more.”

“Don’t,” sighed Gell. “Alcohol makes you hurl. I should know. I’m the one who has to clean it up.”

“Well, you won’t have to much longer.”

“Why?” asked Proctor_Shy. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Because,” said Five. “I’m dying.”

“Dying?” cried Proctor_Shy. “What- -how- -when did this happen? What can I do to help?”

“Nothing,” she said. “My condition is terminal. The chemotherapy helps, but I have no more than a month. Perhaps two.”

“That’s…that’s terrible…”

“Not all of us seem to agree.”

Gell stepped down from the large rock she was sitting on. “Was that comment directed at me?”

“Yes,” said Five, calmly. “Yes it was.”

Gell stood over Five, casting a shadow on both her and the Grave. “You have no idea, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” said Five. “It is your purpose. To oversee my destiny. To ensure that I die promptly and correctly.”

“No,” said Gell, flatly. Her tone made Five stop working. “You should know better than that. How much it hurts me. An, I die a little inside every time.”

“And I die literally.”

“An. If you don’t know it now, I don’t think you will. But I’ll say it anyway. You are my daughter, and my friend. I’ve watched you grow up. We’ve lived together for sixty two years. I love you, An, and I’ll never stop. Not even when you’re gone.”

“Duly…duly noted,” said Five, clearing her throat.

“Aww,” said Pinkie_Proctor, wiping his eye. “It brings a tiny mechanical tear to my tiny mechanical eye.”

“You lack tear ducts,” noted Five.

“And if you repeat that to anypony, I will build you a pair or nards and tear them off you!”

“Noted,” said Twilight_Proctor, nervously.

“Now give me that shovel!”

Proctor projected the shovel once again and passed it to Gell.

“But the possibility of latent magic!”

“I’m a demon, An. Do you have any idea how much magic it would take to even put a scratch on me?”

“Probably a lot,” suggested Proctor_Dash. With the switch from Twilight_Proctor to Proctor_Dash, the hard-light shovel vanished, just as Gell was about to plunge it into the ground. Gell glared angrily at Proctor, who shrugged.

“I hate equidroids,” muttered Gell, kicking a large stone off the pile.

Five ignored most of the goings on, preferring to focus on things that were actually useful. She continued to calibrate her machine, but just before she was ready she saw a blue object rising from the forest. Five looked, and saw that the object was Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash flew to the top of the trees, and then stopped, staring toward the southwest for a long moment.

“Hey, guys!” she yelled from above, “I think we have a problem!”

From the tone in her voice, Five knew that something really was wrong. Five set her scanning equipment to standby and spread her own wings, rising into the air to join Rainbow Dash. When she reached the top of the tree canopy, Rainbow Dash pointed.

Five looked out into the distance toward the edge of the horizon, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light- -and then her heart nearly stopped. Even at a distance of close to ten miles, she could still recognize one of the only things in Equestria that she truly feared. There, at the edge of the horizon and lumbering toward them, was a Theban golem, lit with the red light of its six burning eyes.

As Five was paralyzed with fear, she could not help but look into those eyes, into the face of a creature that dwarfed the hundred-foot high trees below it. She knew that those were the eyes of Thebe- -and she felt them staring back at her, as if they could see into her very soul.

There was a blinding flash of red light from the golem, and the forest around it collapsed, imploding as the golem was surrounded in a sphere of red light. The sound from the teleportation spell never reached them; instead, a second, far louder explosion erupted a few hundred feet away from them as the golem teleported into striking distance.

“EVERYPONY MOVE!” screamed Rainbow Dash as the golem’s horn glowed with a powerful red light that turned the entire forest blood-red.

“Twitchy tail!” screamed Pinkie_Proctor.

There was a tremendous surge of magic, one so powerful that Five felt her horns resonate from the force. Rainbow Dash ducked down below the forest canopy, but Five found she could not move. She watched as the magic resolved into a narrow beam, one more powerful than any laser, and saw the beam strike into the ground. The golem had not been targeting any of them in particular, but rather the burial cairn below. Gell and Proctor managed to jump aside, but the grave was instantly vaporized.

The power was incredible, far beyond anything Five would have ever imagined. For the first time, Five truly believed the memories that she had inherited from her mother, of the Incurse war. Until that point, she had never believed that Thebe and the Blue Fleet truly could have slain the Incurse Armada.

The blast of heat from impact was intense, and Five’s wings were instantly incinerated. She plummeted to the ground below, spiraling uncontrollably and flailing her limbs instinctively as if it would help. As she expected, no help came. She hit the icy ground and felt two of her legs shatter.

Much of the forest around her had been charred, but the nature of the spell extinguished any flames, leaving only smoking trees. Five rolled onto her back as her legs and wings began to heal, and she looked up into the face of a god. The golem stood above her, its eyes staring directly at her. Each was nearly twenty feet wide, and so red. Never before had Five seen one move, and she was not sure why this one had chosen her- -but it felt like it was more than random. With the way it looked at her with those blank, soulless eyes, she felt like it had a purpose: like it hated her.

The horn charged again. Five tried to stand, her body struggling at Blackest Night’s command to rise and flee, even if Five herself wanted to be consumed by the magic of the glorious machine. Her legs were too badly broken, though, and she only managed to get several steps before the machine’s horn fired.

“An, move!” cried Gell, and Five felt something heavy impact her from the side.

Rainbow Dash soared upward from the trees as Brown mobilized behind her. Even through the trunks, she could see the beast and its glowing eyes. It looked just like the larger one she had seen in Megatropolis 616, the one that had looked so much like an inanimate statue. It was even complete with the strange, almost living red lights that seemed to move inside its body, swirling and locking into each other as its joints repositioned themselves.

Just as she reached the top of the trees, she saw the internal light within the golem change, shifting into a single aligned structure and linking to its horn. The horn promptly glowed with a powerful red light that Rainbow Dash could feel burning through her body.

She looked down at the smoking ruins below, at the hole where the last beam had hit- -and saw Five staring up at the golem. Rainbow Dash did not know why, but somehow, she knew where the golem was aiming.

“Five!” she cried.

The golem fired. Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow Dash saw Gell cross the gap between where she had been blown to by the initial blast to where Five was. With a tremendous shove of her horns, she pushed Five out of the radius- -and was struck by the beam herself.

The beam finalized, and Rainbow Dash had to descend into the top of a tree to shield herself using her golden wings. She felt her organic feathers searing from the heat of the blow, and through the cracks in her incorruptible golden ones she saw Gell consumed in the spell as it poured over her.

The spell lasted for several seconds, and then let up. The source code within the golem withdrew from its horn, moving into a different position, as if the golem were now trying to analyze what it had done.

Rainbow Dash dropped through the tree and sped to the ground.

“Gell!” she cried. “Gell!”

To her amazement, she actually managed to find Gell. She was still standing, even, although the spell had pushed her back several feet. Her condition was not good, though. Gell’s skin was charred and cracked, and her armor had been reduced to molten slag. The flesh beneath her broken skin still seemed to be glowing with heat, as though she had been cooked from within.

Gell opened her eyes and looked around. Then she lifted one hoof and watched as it started to disintegrate. From within her, a red light started to glow, piercing through the broken parts of her body.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Then her body collapsed into a pile of ash, with a single ring of superordered metal dropping to the heated ground below where she had been standing.

The golem started moving, and the forest was consumed by the sound of the trees toppling and splintering beneath its action. Beneath that sound, though, Rainbow Dash heard something else: a long, agony drenched scream.

The air suddenly felt far colder than it should have, and blue energy sparked through the trees. On the other side of the golem, Rainbow Dash saw the energy condense into a large blue crystal. Two more formed, forming a triangle around the golem.

Rainbow Dash looked back, tracing the source of both the sparks and the scream- -and saw Five, her body nearly consumed in Order, pouring blue sparks into the three crystals. The trees around her burst apart from the exertion of energy, their trunks converting to crystal and cracking and collapsing under the pressure of the magic, but Five hardly seemed to notice.

The golem looked down at the perimeter around it, as if perplexed- -or perhaps amused. Then the triangle erupted with energy. The air distorted so badly from the force that Rainbow Dash thought she was going to be driven into the ground, or worse, into the spiny dead branches that clung to the trees below.

She spread her wings and compensated for the sudden wind, though, and avoided being sucked into whatever insane spell Five was using. As she did, she looked down in time to see the forest surrounding the golem collapsing, as though it were falling into a deep pit.

Then she smelled it. It was a smell that she had not encountered in years, but it was one she could never forget. In her mind, she saw the black skies, the fungoid trees, the shadows, the legions of the dead, their bodies animated by blue, incomplete flesh, and the sky that even she was terrified to fly in. It was the scent of the Gloame.

She looked down, and saw that the triangle that Five had torn in the earth was more than a simple hole- -it was a portal. On the other side, she saw a thick, black tempest lit by slow-moving red lightning. The golem started to fall, pulled in by the suction of the portal. It did not fall far, though. As it descended, its horn glowed, charging a powerful spell around its entire body, levitating itself out of the pit.

Rainbow Dash stared dumbstruck for a moment at the scene before her, almost reveling in it- -until she realized that the portal worked both ways. Pouring out of it were a number of shadows, each one staring into the darkness of Equestria with a pair of reflective eyes in search of fresh meat.

Below, there was a surge of magic as Brown fired at the shadows. They dodged easily and advanced on him, surrounding him.

“Hold on!” cried Rainbow Dash, descending quickly and leaving a rainbow contrail in her wake. Just as the shadows leapt at Brown, Rainbow Dash pulled him off the ground. They continued to follow, cutting into the bark of the trees as they traveled, racing across the darkness, but Rainbow Dash was more than fast enough to avoid them.

“Thank you,” said Brown.

“No problem,” replied Rainbow Dash.

When she was once again above the trees, she looked down at the golem. It was rising slowly from the portal, propelled by its spell.

“By the Fluffle…” whispered Brown.

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “You said it.”

Then the situation turned rapidly. The shadows immediately seemed to stop, and looked at each other. All at once, they started racing silently back through the night back toward the portal. The shadows themselves made no sound, but Rainbow Dash could have sworn that she could hear breathing.

Then an immense black mass burst through from the portal. Rainbow Dash watched in horror as what she had always thought were clouds swarmed over the surface of the golem, clinging to its surface, their black substance overlaid with veins of red electrical discharge. There was a powerful groan, and pieces of the golem began to be torn from its body as it was dragged down into the pit.

The golem struggled, trying to rise, but the “clouds” were far too powerful. The spell that held the golem up began to falter, and it grabbed onto the land around it, its steel claw tearing through the land and destroying trees as it was brought down into a dimension where no life could survive.

Just before it went under, it managed to pull itself up slightly, and it seemed to look at Rainbow Dash. She saw its source code failing, and although she could not understand that part of how it worked, she knew that it was looking at her.

Then the portal snapped shut. Half the golem’s head and most of its arm were instantly severed as the rest of it was dragged unseen into the skies of the Gloame. For a moment, the remaining two eyes glowed even brighter, and its horn charged once more- -only for all light to slowly fade as it quietly died.

Rainbow Dash watched it for signs of life from above, but when she saw none, she quickly landed. As she dropped Brown and touched down, she saw Five racing toward the ashes that had formerly been Gell.

Five dropped to her knees, running her hooves through the ash.

“No no no no,” she whispered. “No, Gell!”

“Five,” said Rainbow Dash, approaching where she had just seen Gell standing moments ago. “You can fix this, right? You’re power. You can make her regenerate, right? Come on Five, tell me you can bring her back!”

“I can’t resurrect ash,” said Five, letting the remnants of Gell fall from her hooves. “She’s gone. She’s…gone…”

Five collapsed into the pile of ashes, sobbing quietly, drawing them toward her into a pile.

“Oh my,” said Proctor_Rarity, approaching with Brown.

“Subcommander,” added Brown in disbelief.

“She’s gone,” sobbed Five.

Rainbow Dash did not know what to do. She was still in shock from the events, and for the first time she understood how her own friends must have felt seeing her “die” so long in the past. Slowly, Rainbow Dash walked around the ashes and cooling metal of molten armor.

“It’s going to be alright,” she said, putting her foreleg around Five’s shoulder.

Five continued to sob- -but then the tone changed, and Rainbow Dash felt herself backing away Five looked up, and Rainbow Dash saw that her face was contorted with the most honest and horrible smile that she had ever witnessed.

“She’s gone!” laughed Five. “She’s finally gone!” Five threw the ashes into the air like confetti and allowed them to rain down onto her as she laughed manically. “After all these years! I’ve FINALLY KILLED HER!”