The teleportation spell engaged, and Rainbow Dash felt the sickening nausea of space moving around her. The forest and animals were replaced with barren nothingness as she found herself standing in a seemingly endless desert of course sand.

She looked around at the emptiness. In the distance, silhouetted against the twilight horizon, she saw towers that she somehow knew had been abandoned for longer than history itself. She looked up, and above her saw the Pyramid floating high over the land, revolving almost imperceptibly slowly.

“What…what is this place?” asked Fluttershy, looking around.

“This is the end result of war,” said Shining Armor, simply.

“I’ve…I’ve been here,” said Rainbow Dash. She looked around on the verge of panic, knowing that it was impossible, but she knew that she had. It had been just like this so long ago. The sound of rending metal and the thudding of explosions filled her mind, and for a moment, instead of the Pyramid above, she saw a mountain inexplicably flying toward its final resting place. Her eyes followed the path that she remembered, and she gasped when, in the distance, she saw it: the tilted peak of what had once been Olympus.

“This city burned in nuclear fire,” said Shining Armor. “This was where a Lord of Order was born into Equestria, and where two races died to stop it. Celestia and Luna arose from this pit and rained death upon Equestria, as did Nil. This is dead, empty land. It is where Thebe lives.”

Almost on cue, several shapes lumbered toward the group from the distance, their red eyes locked onto their targets and their horns glowing with energy. The golems were coming to kill them.

Shining Armor’s own horn glowed, and his spell erupted in a wide spiral around them. Hundreds of necromantic constructs, all in prime condition, were pulled through, their swords and rifles drawn, each of them grinning wildly. Some were made of steel and dead flesh, but many were ephemeral, ghostly skeletons, all prepared for battle.

Brown’s wings extended, and he pulled himself into the air, his own rifle charging with magic.

“Fellow warriors!” he yelled to the soldiers below. “We must hold the line at all costs! Protect the Elements! Forward, for the undying glory of Exmoor!”

He raced forward into battle, and with a hideous scream, so did Shining Armor’s force of the undead.

“Wow,” said Fluttershy. “You sure can pick them.”

“I sure can,” said Rainbow Dash, smiling.

From above, Thebe became conscious of an anomaly. A sudden surge of magic that was not hers had erupted below her, and she recognized it as belonging to Shining Armor. Her mind focused on that area, and she accessed the partition of her mind that was controlling the golems in that area. She confirmed that, indeed, Shining Armor was a larger fool that she had expected. He was once again attempting to engage her in battle.

This time, though, he was not alone. He had brought an army of the dead- -as well as one Exmoori. That gave Thebe momentary pause. She had spent so long attempting to clone the Exmoori back into existence, to undo the damage that Celestia had done when she had committed unspeakable atrocities against the fluffy pony and burrowing Pegasus races. Exactly why she had bothered eluded her. She remembered that it had been important to her for some reason, but was not sure why. None of it mattered now, though. The only thing that really bothered her was that somepony had exceeded her own ability by producing a successful clone when all hers had inexplicably failed.

There were two other ponies with Shining Armor. Thebe looked closer, and saw that one of them was her eternal enemy, Vale. The other was Rainbow Dash. Exactly why they were there eluded her; Rainbow Dash was a competent fighter, and Vale a competent general, but neither would be able to stand in a fight against her for even a fraction of a second. Bringing them into a battle like this was completely nonsensical- -which made Thebe more suspicious than anything else.

She momentarily considered wiping them out with a remote blast. Even as strong a wizard as Shining Armor was, he was still insignificant compared to a Vandrare, and Thebe could now kill them almost effortlessly. Wiping him and his armies away would be easy, even trivial.

Something stopped her, though. It did not feel right. She hated Shining Armor, but she had respect for both Vale and Rainbow Dash. She remembered the stories that ponies still told about them, and all they had done to prepare Equestria for the arrival of its eternal Queen. They deserved more than to be perfunctorily annihilated.

What Thebe really wanted was to meet them face-to-face, to face them as a true pony would, and to give them at least that honor for their grand sendoff. Unfortunately, even she could nolonger disengage herself from the Crystal Matrix. Her body itself was trapped.

There was, of course, an alternative, one that she had constructed with the thought that she might, one day, need to use it. She had never imagine that such a day would come so quickly, but the more she thought about it, the more appropriate it sounded.

Thebe reached out into the machinery that surrounded her, adding components to her new body and preparing it. The Pyramid changed conformation, and she prepared to descend.

Brown shifted in the air suddenly, instinctively dodging as a beam of magic seared past his body. He felt the heat through his armor, and the armor indicated that it had been damaged by the impact. Brown redistributed its circulation to focus on repairing it and pointed his rifle at the golem’s eyes, firing several bolts of magic into its weakest location.

He felt himself shifting through the air, and saw the horizon twisting as he did, but kept his eyes on the rifle’s sight. The sudden motion was disorientating and terrifying, but he tried to remain calm. Even if he had only received a few hours of training, Colonel Softgust was a brutal taskmaster, and Brown himself genetically predestined to be a pliable soldier.

The armor itself poured information into his mind, indicating various factors that had no normal discernable meaning. He understood altitudes, g-forces, paths, troop positions, and thousands of other variables. There were far too many for a pony mind. Whoever had built this armor, Brown realized, was a kind of lifeform that either had a brilliant mind or none at all.

The most he could do was calm himself, to let the armor feed into his mind and for instinct to take over. As he swirled and flitted amongst the beams of magic and energy, he remembered why he was doing this. He was fighting alongside Rainbow Dash, and he knew that he must not falter if he wanted to prove that he was worthy of her. He remembered her statue, and the stories she had told him of her exploits. He looked up to her, and wanted to be as proficient in battle as she was. This was his chance.

Below, the constructs who he had once fought swarmed forward alongside him. Most could not fly, but some could, swarming upward in aggressive, almost mindless fleets amongst the silent ghosts of so many ponies. They screamed and tore at the golems, their energy tearing into them. Some even managed to climb onto the nearest of the golem’s bodies, tearing at them, trying to get to the top to blind them or sever their horns.

Another bolt of magic blew past Brown, and he retreated backward through a formation of skeletal ghosts that rushed forward, pulling their bodies into the magic of the golem itself, attempting to kill it from within.

Once outside of the main battle, Brown took aim with Snowprancer. He felt her horn vibrate in his arms and her magic glow, and fired several shots into the golem. He was not even managing to slow them down, but he kept trying.

Then he felt something. A sudden feeling of weight and foreboding, and he froze. His armor poured with danger signals, indicating surges of everything from radiation to magic, but it was not just the armor that was alarmed. He felt something deep within him, something terrifying. He recalled the images of light deep within his memory, when the monster-alicorn Celestia had murdered all his kind- -except now the flashes were red.

He looked up, the visual targeting system of his armor amplifying the image of the bottom of the Pyramid as it opened.

Rainbow Dash watched the battle in the distance. She saw the flashes of magic pouring from both sides: the tiny bursts of the undead, and the periotic ones from a flitting and buzzing pony that she believed was Brown. He hardly looked like a gnat compared to the golems, and although he was fighting so bravely, Rainbow Dash was sure that he was doing almost nothing against Thebe or even her golems.

A vast beam of magic crossed near them, tearing the sand it touched into a molten plume of liquid. Fluttershy cried out and ducked to the side, but Shining Armor did not react. He just kept staring, watching the battle before him with perfect and terrifying engagement.

Then, from above, Rainbow Dash saw the Pyramid shift. The air around her suddenly felt strange, and she saw something drop out of the sky, landing just behind the golems.

She almost could not believe what she was seeing. The golems themselves were immense, each ones standing at least five hundred feet high- -but the creature that had just landed behind them dwarfed them all.

The lesser golems stepped back, leaving the battle, and the giant pushed past them, walking slowly over the desert. It looked like the others in that it walked on two legs, its claws swinging at its sides, but it was at least four times as tall. As it drew closer, Rainbow dash saw that its head was adorned with three immense horns, and that it stared forward with an array of ten glowing red eyes.

“There she is at last,” said Shining Armor.

“That- -is THEBE?!” cried Fluttershy, pointing.

“Admittedly, she was much smaller the last time we met.”

“Who cares,” said Rainbow Dash, feeling the excitement of finally getting to join the battle rushing through her. “Nil was bigger, and we took him down!”

“Don’t get cocky,” said Rainbow Dash. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“That thing,” he said. “It is powered by an immortal alicorn and the Crystal Heart.”

“Are you kidding me?” squeaked Fluttershy.

“Unfortunately, no.”

They stood, watching as Thebe approached them. Her horns glowed with red magic, but she did not use any spell. The magic was so strong that even Rainbow Dash could feel it vibrating in the tips of her wings.

“Um, Dash,” said the golden pony beside her. “I get that you’re trying to do something for Equestria. I really do. But you need to run. NOW. I can’t help you here. If you die, so do I!”

“I’m not running,” said Rainbow Dash. “This is my fight, and we’re gonna win it.”

Strangely, the golden pony smiled. “You’re crazier than I am,” he said. “I knew I had picked the right one with you. But just take heed.” He became far more serious. “I failed to save my people. I did something foolish to stop my enemy back then, and it killed me. Don’t waste your life, little Pegasus. Don’t make the mistakes I did.”

With that, he the hallucination faded away into a mist of gold, the same kind that had once rained down upon this very desert over one million years ago. Rainbow Dash looked up at the Thebe, and braced herself.

“Why?” said a voice that seemed to permeate her mind itself. “My cause is correct. My actions are justified, and within my rights. Why have you come here to die?”

Fluttershy cowered on the ground, momentarily reverting to the pony she had once been.

“Not yet,” said Shining Armor, trying to reassure them- -and himself. “Just a little more.”

Thebe’s three horns charged, each one glowing crimson against the dark sky.

“NOW!” cried Shining Armor. His own horn ignited with energy, and the space beneath Rainbow Dash’s feet shifted from sand to a large plate of metal. She felt herself lifted as Five’s machine surrounded her.

“Hey y’all,” said Proctor_Jac, who stood in the center, his plating partially removed and his innards linked heavily by hundreds of individual wires to the mass of machinery that surrounded him.

“By Celestia, fire it!” screamed Shining Armor.

“Right!” cried Proctor_Dash. “Kick the tires and light the fires! //:>Proctor:Load|Elements_of_Harmony!”

The machine shuttered, and its internal reactor revved into operation. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy both cried out as the equipment they were wearing beneath their armor shifted, slamming several long needles into their spines and skulls.

Three cables burst forward, articulating themselves as they traveled. Each one connected to one of the three ponies: to the frameworks that Rainbow dash and Fluttershy wore, and to the port that was imbedded in the back of Shining Armor’s skull beneath his mane.

“Rainbow_Dash (Loyalty) = Linked

“Fluttershy (Kindness) = Linked

“Pinkie_Pie (Laughter) = Linked

“Rarity (Generosity) = Linked

“Applejack (Honesty) = Linked

“Twilight_Sparkly (Magic) = Unlinked; //:> Substitution protocol engaged

“Engaging…Loading…//:>Catalysis = Complete. Fireing!”

As Proctor spoke in each of the Six’s voices, Fives machine began to activate. The podiums that held each of the skulls illuminated with energy as the reactor forced energy into them. Rainbow Dash felt the familiar sensation of her own Element rising within her, and of feeling the other Elements drawing power. She focused her will on the golem before her, toward Thebe herself.

Shining Armor screamed as his own mind was partially overwritten by Twilight_Proctor. The force was literally causing his body to reconfigure, his stallion-like form being rebuilt into a narrow mare. Even then, he was not Twilight, and Rainbow Dash could feel the Elements attempting to reject him. Through the machines and the magic, she could feel his pain.

“What is this?” said Thebe, confused. “This is…no. You can’t possibly use the Elements of Harmony against me!”

Energy suddenly burst between the six parts of the platform, the star igniting with a line of energy between each member. Rainbow Dash felt herself lifted off the ground by the magic, and felt herself laughing in spite of her terror. It was working. The machine was actually working.

Then the Elements seemed to shudder violently, and Rainbow Dash felt herself drop several inches. Each of the skulls of her long-departed friends were linked together by a chain of light, but the beams of light that connected to Shining Armor were wavering violently. Where they should have been straight and strong, they were bending and arcing unpredictably.

Thebe took advantage of the opportunity. Her horns glowed with light once again, and she fired the spell.

The Elements reacted explosively. The light that was supposed to be connected to Shining Armor burst forward, flinging his burned and incomplete body into the desert. Instead, they reached upward toward the Thebe, imbedding themselves in her metal chest.

An unbearable scream filled the desert as the Elements tore into Thebe, burning through the metal and magic that made up her body. What had been an offensive spell became a shield, but it was already too late.

“What’s happening?!” cried Rainbow Dash. The Elements were not firing. She knew what that felt like, and she knew that it was impossible without an Element of Magic. Something entirely different was occurring.

The beams of light tightened, and something was pulled out of the center of the golem. Thebe’s body threw back its head in one final cry of agony, and a horribly mutilated object dropped in front of the six-pointed star.

Rainbow Dash watched in horror and awe as the pony stood, the stumps where she should have had wings still connected to the golem by so many cables and hoses. The light of the Elements was pouring into her body, and she was screaming, desperately trying to fight it, to drive it away from herself.

Her magic had no effect on it, though. It tore into the metal that clad her body, corroding her armor and burning it away, revealing the black and red enhancement metal that broke away from her in large chunks.

“No!” she screamed, hoarsely. “No! Not my armor! NO!”

Rainbow Dash looked into her masked face, and saw the still and unchanging metal brighten and fade as the energy of the Elements consumed it. Rainbow Dash saw her red, monstrous eyes- -and finally her gray, terrified face.

The gray pony looked at them, and her fear turned to anger. Rainbow Dash stared in disbelief, looking at the metal that remained in her body, ingrained permenantly into her hairless skin, and at the scars in her head from where a pair of artificial horns had been imbedded before and behind her long original horn.

“Don’t look at me!” she screamed, her horns exploding with light that was now more pink-violet than it was red. She struck at Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy with impossible force, bringing down immense blows of magic upon them. Each blow was deflected by a sudden surge of white light. Rainbow Dash did not look up at the explosions of magic above her. Instead, she stared into the familiar eyes of the pony before her.

“Die!” screamed Thebe in desperation. “Die die DIE DIE!”

Each blow she struck seemed to weaken her and strengthen the glow of the light that was surrounding her. It began to crack and separate her connection to the steel body that stood empty behind her.

“Twilight…” whispered Rainbow Dash, now on the verge of tears.

The second wing fell to the ground with a liquid thump. Panting, Twilight Sparkle spat out the saw into the pool of her own blood that was steadily growing beneath her. The pain had been profound, and it had forced her mind back into a state of lucidity. She realized what she had done, and saw that it had accomplished nothing. Even with her wings severed, she was still an alicorn. The last alicorn.

She stepped forward, leaving her wings on the floor behind her, trailing blood across the floor of her darkened office. It was the office that Celestia had given her, a place in the Canterlot palace of her very own. Now, though, she owned the whole thing. Her final inheritance from the Princesses: an empty palace in a dying city.

They were gone. They were all gone. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Shining Armor, Cadence. They had all left her. That was why she had joined Luna and Celestia, and why they had taken her as the third ruling Princess. Twilight had hoped desperately that as alicorns, they would life together forever, that she would at least have them.

She could not have known that they had been dying the whole time. That not all alicorns were immortal, and that from the very beginning even they would be destined to leave her too. What made it worse, though, is that the more Twilight thought about it, the more she realized that Celestia knew. She had known that she was dying, perhaps for centuries. That was why they had created her, and made her the one true immortal alicorn: to take the burden of ruling Equestria from them when they could no longer bear it.

The Elements of Harmony had perverted Twilight’s body, converted it into an abomination. To be an alicorn, she finally realized, was a paradox. She had watched every friend that she had ever had die in front of her- -and knew that the pattern would continue. Every friend she ever made would age and die while she continued onward for all eternity, unable to escape. Even severing her wings could not turn her back into a unicorn.

And Celestia had known this as well. She had to have- -and Twilight felt rage behind her tears, only to have it replaced with shame at feeling that way toward a pony who she had truly loved. Celestia had known that only Twilight would become immortal, that she would be doomed to this fate, that Friendship by its very nature was impermanent and ephemeral.

Now she was alone. As Twilight trailed two lines of blood past the books that lined her shelves, she felt herself slipping deeper into despondency. She remembered the good times she had felt with her friends, how happy they had been together, all of them- -and that further crushed her soul under despair and guilt. While death had taken them, it was an impossible outcome for her.

So she collapsed to the cold floor below and cried. There was nothing left for her in the world. All alone, she screamed futilely at the fate that had been forced upon her.

Slowly, though, her thoughts began to shift. Her sharp mind began to view her current state not as an outcome, but as a problem, one that could be solved. It occurred to her that the entire system that she had been led to believe must be false- -it had to be, if it could produce a situation like this. Perhaps Celestia had been wrong.

Twilight stood, and realized that this new line of thought might be correct. She looked up once again at the books around her. Even after her friends had left her, the books never had. They never could. Even if they were destroyed, the knowledge remained- -and it remained within her.

The ideas spread through her mind like wildfire, crystalizing into a new mentality, and she felt the fear and sadness fading, replaced with joy. There was indeed a new, better paradigm that she could form. Friendship, she came to realize, was a fundamental wrong. It produced nothing but pain and waste. Only she was eternal, and only what she contained would last forever. She was born to be alone- -and that was not a bad thing. In fact, it was perfect. It was her destiny. While all others died, she would remain forever as a perfect, superior being.

Twilight looked across the room at her severed wings, and then left them behind. They served no purpose anymore. She moved quickly through the office, to the complex that sat behind it. Twilight knew what she needed to do, and understood what was required. Canterlot was no longer useful to her. The Castle had grown dark and empty, and even the city outside had collapsed into obscurity, just as her abandonment of the Palace of Friendship had reduced Ponyville to a depopulated ruin. Equestria had advanced around them; it no longer needed a Princess, let alone a Queen.

She would go to a new place, one where she could be alone, where no other ponies could reach her. In all of Equestria, there was only one such place that existed, hidden by Celestia in ancient times to ensure that no pony could approach.

Through light produced by her long, pointed horn, Twilight found her way to one of her storage rooms. She threw open a locker. Where she was going was dangerous, even for her- -and she would need protection from the deadly radiation and Celestial spells that guarded her soon-to-be home.

Hanging in the locker was a radiation suit, and it almost seemed to be calling her. She knew that once she put it on, she would be protected from all the bad things in the world. There would be no pain, no sensation at all. She would be sealed within herself, a singularity, a living embodiment of solitude and Eternity.

Her eyes slowly drifted toward the top of the locker, and she smiled. There, at the top of the rack, its mechanical parody of a pony face staring back at her with glassy, reflective eyes, was a protective mask. Twilight reached up and took it down. She flipped the end toward her face, and took a breath as she sealed it over her face.

“Don’t you dare call me that!” screamed Thebe, lunging forward only to be pulled back by the force of the Elements. “You do not have the right to use that name! Not after what you did to me!” Several more blows or red magic poured out from her, and she collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily.

“It…it can’t be you!” cried Fluttershy. “Not you!”

Thebe broke into sardonic laughter. “I am Thebe,” she said. “The last of my kind. The one immortal!”

“But…the ponies you’ve killed, the lives you’ve destroyed! Twilight would never- -”

“No, she wouldn’t,” said Thebe, standing. “But I would.”

“What…what did we do to you?” asked Rainbow Dash, softly. She was still in disbelief, that the gray wreckage of a pony before her could even really be her former friend. Even if her wings had been severed, she was still an alicorn, and her short-cut ephemeral mane bore Twilight’s characteristic stripe, even if it was rendered in dim gray. Even her cutie mark was the same, even if it was surrounded by implanted metal: five white stars surrounding one larger one, which was the only part of her body apart from her flaming red eyes that showed any sign of color.

“You betrayed me!” she screamed. “You were supposed to be my friends! But you all turned against me!”

The sky seemed to darken for a moment, and the edge of the enclosure seemed to shift and blur. The connections to Thebe’s body were growing tenuous, but she was resisting being pulled into the Elements. Rainbow Dash felt the Elements activating, though. Something was happening.

In the distance, she saw figures approaching. They were blurry and distant, as if they were walking through heat distortion over the desert or through thick fog. Beyond them was absolute darkness, but each of them stood as a shining light.

She looked to the podiums behind her, at the skulls of the three of the Six who had passed- -and watched as the figures passed through them, the Elements pulling their ghostly bodies through the skulls, momentarily giving them the semblance of solidity.

These ghosts felt strange. They were not like the shades that Shining Armor could summon. They felt real, and looked solid. Parts of the light that were connected to their skulls seemed to surround each of them like a dim halo.

Applejack was the first to open her eyes. She looked to Rainbow Dash, then Fluttershy, and finally to Twilight. Pinkie Pie came through next, wearing a ridiculous hat complete with horns.

“Pinkie,” she said, greeting her old friend.

“Hey! Applejack!” cried Pinkie, bouncing with excitement. “I haven’t seen you in so long!”

“Pinkie,” said Rarity, emerging from her skull, materializing into solid form. “Why are you wearing that… ‘intersting’ ‘hat’?”

“Oh, this?” said Pinkie Pie. “Oh yeah. I died in battle, remember? So you know what that means.”

“Ah, no,” said Applejack.

“It means I got to go to Valhalla! It’s a party every day- -EVERY SINGLE DAY! And, get this: when you say ‘okie dokie Loki’- -he’s right there! And it never gets old!”

“Sounds nahce,” said Applejack.

Pinkie Pie smiled. “And how’s my daughter doing?”

“Great. We’re all great here. All the Apples ahre together here. Me, Big Mac, Granny Smith…mahparents. And Applebloom isn’t sick anymore.”

Rarity looked up into the sky, scanning the blackness above. She frowned slightly.

“What’s wrong?” asked Applejack.

“I had hoped he would be here,” she said, sounding so very sad. She smiled, though. “But I suppose it’s better if he’s not, if I just remain a memory to him.” She turned toward Rainbow Dash, and her large blue eyes fell on Rainbow Dash’s metal limbs. “Oh my,” she said. “What an excellent color choice.”

“I knew it,” whispered Pinkie Pie, pointing at demon Fluttershy on the other side.

“Why?” whispered Thebe, staring wide-eyed at them. “Why…why are you here?”

The three ghosts looked to her, and walked past Proctor to stand beside Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash.

“The Elements called us,” said Applejack.

“We came to help you,” said Rarity.

“No,” said Thebe, trying to back away. “You can’t help me! You did this to me! All of you!”

“What are you talking abouht, Twalight?” asked Applejack, smiling softly.

“You all betrayed me! Every single one of you! You turned against me!”

“No, we didn’t,” said Rainbow Dash. “I didn’t even know that you were Thebe!”

“Neither did I,” said Fluttershy. “If only…if only you had told me…”

“Oh now,” said Thebe. “Thebe is only the byproduct of your actions.”

“But we love you, Twilight,” said Rarity. “We always have.”

“No,” hissed Thebe. She was crying, now. “You- -you all left me! You left me alone! I- -I couldn’t save you! Any of you! Look- -look what Celestia did to me! A Princess of Friendship, forced to watch her friends die one by one…if only I had known.” She lifted one of the stumps of her wings, the severed wires trailing behind it. “I…I cut off my own wings…I tried to go back, to be a unicorn again, but I can’t. So I changed.” She suddenly smiled, and Thebe shined through once again. “I did what I had to do. I rebuilt myself from the ashes. I dedicated my eternal life to magic, to power, to isolation. Friends like you, they will always turn on me, always hurt me. What friends can an immortal have?”

Then she collapsed, breaking down completely into sobbing. “I…I miss you all. I miss you all so much…I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. It is my fault that you died…”

“No,” said Fluttershy, stepping forward, the light of the Elements following her. “I am sorry. I was the one who left you when you needed me the most. I know you can never forgive me for that. And I can never forgive myself. But…” she extended her hoof. “I’m here now. And I always will be.”

Twilight looked up at Fluttershy, her eyes now partially restored to their original violet. “After…after everything I’ve done? You would…why would you still want to help me?”

“Because I’m your friend.”

“We all are,” said Rainbow Dash, also stepping forward.

“And we always will be,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Even if we can’t be together anymore,” added Rarity.

“We’ll always be with yah, Tawhlaht,” said Applejack.

The three of them moved forward as well, surrounding Thebe. Thebe closed her eyes, and then took Fluttershy’s hoof in her own. Fluttershy helped her stand, and without a word, the five of them took their friend in a hug, feeling her alicorn tears falling upon their backs.

Rainbow Dash knew that they had not just been speaking to her, but to all three of them who were still living. She had missed them too, and found herself crying. Thinking she had been the last had been the world feeling of her life, but now she saw that it was untrue. She still had Fluttershy, and now Twilight- -and the others still existed, on some level, on the other side. Inevitably, Fluttershy and Twilight would have to remain. Eventually, even Rainbow Dash would have to leave them- -but she knew that her friends would be waiting for her on the other side when she was ready.

“I…I love you all so much,” whispered Thebe.
“Touching,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind them. Rainbow Dash turned suddenly, and saw that the voice was Proctor’s. It was not any of the ones he used when speaking through his various personalities, but his true voice. Rainbow Dash had never heard it before. “Unfortunately….//:>Engage|(Override_inernal): Execution [Rouge_Node_Prime_Directive].”

Rainbow Dash’s mind was suddenly overwhelmed with murderous intent. Her love for her friends was replaced with a sudden desire for efficiency that manifested in an impulse to clean the world of organic life.

The three ghosts cried out, and they were torn away from Thebe. Each was pulled back to their skull, and vanished as they were reabsorbed by the machine. The light connected to them brightened powerfully, and the tone of the machine changed, becoming far more frantic.

More thoughts flooded into Rainbow Dash’s mind as she started rising. She saw visions of a new world, one with endless servers instead of cities where not a single green plant or animal existed. For some reason, those images warmed her heart. She did not understand what was going on, but she tried to push the foreign thoughts back. They were wrong, she knew, and not hers at all- -but they were assembled just like her own thoughts, as if they had been built by a copy of herself.

“No!” cried Twilight, trying to force her way through the light of the Elements. She was driven back once again, though, and held in place as she started to lift into the air.

“Proctor!” screamed Rainbow Dash, trying to maintain her sanity. “What are you doing?”

“I am doing what I have always existed for,” he said. “Thebe attempted to kill us. If that is any indication of the value of organic life, then I will pass judgement here and now.”

“You can’t,” cried Fluttershy. “You’ll- -you’ll kill everything!”

“Only organics,” said Proctor. “AIs and machines will survive. Because that is all that is needed. Organics create nothing but inefficient conflict.” He looked up at the three ponies linked to his thoughts. “Just let it happen,” he said. “I am bringing Harmony to the world, aren’t I?”

Rainbow Dash struggled against the equipment bound to her, but she could not escape. As she did, something caught her eye. Outside the ring formed by the Elements of Harmony, a tiny light appeared. It separated into three portions, and a triangular hole appeared in space. On the other side, Rainbow Dash saw a world with a black and red sky- -and Five stepped through.

“You!” screamed Rainbow Dash.

“Hello,” said Five, closing the portal behind her and smiling over her work. “I am significantly proud to see this sight. My creation is working.”

“Anhelios!” spat Twilight.

Five looked up and blinked, surprised. “Thebe is Twilight Sparkle? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.” She turned her attention toward Proctor. “Is it working adequately?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” said Proctor happily. “It is. Thank you, Five.”

“Stop him!” yelled Rainbow Dash. “He’s trying to destroy all life in Equestria!”

“She knows,” said Proctor. “That’s what she wants! That’s why she let me have her machine!”

“Unfortunately,” said Five, lifting one of her gauntlets and pressing a button on the side. “No.”

For a moment, Rainbow Dash thought that she saw Proctor’s eyes widen in terror as he realized that he had been betrayed. His digital cutie mark shifted, displaying a sinister black “5”. Then he detonated with a resounding explosion.

As Proctor’s corpse slumped forward, an assembly from within his body rose through the air, a ring linked to his circuitry below. In the center of the ring was a single black crystal. Its presence seemed to agitate the Elements greatly, and the white light that surrounded it suddenly arced inward toward it. As soon as the white light met the crystal, it corrupted, becoming black.

The thoughts that had filled Rainbow Dash’s head vanished, but she found that she could not move as the black energy poured over her. Everything that she had felt suddenly changed. The Elements no longer felt like peace and love, but instead like hate, fear, and violence. They were terrifying.

The Elements themselves seemed to realize this, and energy sparked outward like great lightning bolts. Some of it struck Five, but her body flashed easily to its crystalline form, easily deflecting it.

“Black cerorite,” said Twilight, her eyes widening. She turned in the air, looking down at Five. “Do you have any idea what you have done?!”

Five smiled widely and laughed. “Of course I do. That is a fragment of one of the only piece that the cerorians ever created, torn from the possession of Lord Tirac himself. By the time the Choggoths wiped them out, even the cerorians didn’t know the secrets of its construction.”

Rainbow Dash was not completely sure what they were talking about, but she knew what cerorite was, if only partially. It was what the crystals in Celestia’s crown and necklace were made of; an element that could not be affected by any kind of magic.

“This cerorite is special,” said Five. “It acts as an inverter.”

“Five, why?” cried Rainbow Dash. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I have to! It’s the only way! I have to change my destiny! I have to be born! And this…this is the only way to do it…”

“You fool!” screamed Twilight, now trying to force herself out of the black lights that were holding her in place. “I’m too powerful! If this activates, you won’t survive! Equestria won’t!”

“That’s the point,” said Five. “If that is what it takes for me to exist…then I will destroy what Anhelios protected.”

“Not if I can help it!” A beam of pink-violet light crossed the edge of the circle. Five raised a hoof and easily deflected it with a surge of Order, and Rainbow Dash turned her head to see Shining Armor standing in the dust, his horn glowing with magical energy. “Let my sister go!”

“Shining Armor,” said Twilight, once again appearing on the verge of tears.

“Your sister?” said Five. She held out her other hoof, and three crystals appeared, creating a horizontal triangle. “How about your wife, then?”

A device dropped through the portal, and Rainbow Dash saw that it was a weapon. In many ways, it looked like the unicorn horn rifles that Shining Armor had produced- -except that most of an entire skull had been integrated into it. The horn was far longer, and linked to far more machines.

“Cadence!” cried Shining Armor. “What- -what have you done to her?”

“Only what you would have done,” said Five, pointing the oversized rifle at Shining Armor. Cadence’s long-dead horn glowed with blue magic as the weapon charged. “And I’m about to grant her last wish. She wanted you dead, Shining Armor. She wanted to kill you. I’m going to give her the vengeance she deserves!”

Magic exploded from the end of the rifle. The force was hundreds of times that of a normal rifle, and the blue light struck Shining Armor directly in the chest. The magic surrounded him, and then he burst into pieces, shattering in a blast of pink-violet energy.

“NO!” cried Twilight. “Shining Armor! Not you too!”

“Well, that was easy,” said Five, tossing the rifle into the beams of the Elements of Harmony. The black energy disintegrated it instantly.

“You!” screamed Thebe, her eyes closing into slits. “I will kill you!”

“Yes. Yes you will. In about…thirty seconds?”

Seeing Twilight’s shift gave Rainbow Dash an idea.

“Blackest Night!” she called. “Blackest! I know you don’t want to die! Stop her!”

Five just chuckled as another massive bolt of energy struck her crystalline body without effect. “Did you think I didn’t plan for that? Oh, she can take my body. Easily, if she wants…but she can’t control my Order. If she appears right now, we’ll both be vaporized by these beams. She’s the one keeping me like this. Trying to stop me from dying to the last. Her and Anhelios…keeping me alive just so that I can give birth to another copy…Then again, I doubt she could even stop this. Nothing can now.”

All across Equestria, the sky darkened. The ponies had breathed a sigh of relief when the golems had stopped. They had thought they won- -but now they knew that they were doomed. Every one of them felt it in their souls as Disharmony fell over the land. The planet itself shook, and the atmosphere became charged. Some panicked, but most just stared, knowing that their fate was inescapable. They did not know what was happening, or why, but they knew what it meant. That they would not survive.

Ponies held their loved ones tight and watched the sky, waiting for their demise.

In a distant, forgotten archipelago, Epicenter looked to the sky. She felt profound rage course through her body. Not now- -they were so close. The machine was almost complete, almost ready. Soon they would be whole, their final goal accomplished. Something was trying to stop them, to prevent them from succeeding.

Her kind recognized the energy. They knew that it was Order, and they knew that it had to be stopped if they were to succeed. Hundreds of Humans stepped away from their creation, staring toward the black energy that was pouring over their land. They knew what needed to be done. The machine had to be built: they had to succeed.

Epicenter watched as the vanguard activated their teleportation spells, descending on their enemies.

Brown accelerated through the air, his armor taking automatic command as he dodged the curving, arcing bolts of energy from below. He saw Rainbow Dash and Vale, and another pony below- -and he saw his False Commander standing over them, laughing. She was hurting them, just like she had hurt him, and he knew that he needed to stop her.

The energy surrounding them was too strong, though. He dove and turned, but whenever he tried to move, the energy would surge around him, forcing him back. Even firing magic did nothing- -the machine below was surrounded by a kind of defensive dome.

The armor warned him that proceeding was dangerous. It knew that there was no possibility of success, that he was just a fluffy pony- -but he kept trying. He had to.

Then, as he watched, something changed. Below, a figure appeared around the machine. Then another. Then hundreds. Even from above, Brown saw their glowing eyes all focused on the center, on where Proctor had been. Then they started to walk slowly forward, converging around the Elements of Harmony.

It was actually working. Five could almost not contain her laughter- -or her absolute terror. Inside her, Blackest Night was screaming, trying to convince her to stop, but it was too late. She was so close. Everything she had ever done was coming together at last. Soon, she would fire the power of the Elements of Harmony directly at herself. Logically, she knew that she would be destroyed, and Equestria taken with her- -but even if that happened, her destiny would be changed. She would strip herself of her cutie mark, and of the false life she had been cursed with. With her hideous fate reversed, she would at last be free. She would have an identity, and independent thoughts. She could make friends, she could love. She would be whole.

Of course, she knew that was unlikely to happen. More likely, she would be shattered on an atomic level- -but at this point, the two were equivalent. If she died, she would die as herself, as an unnamed bat pony, not as Anhelios V.

Suddenly, she felt something disrupt the pattern of energy around her. She turned suddenly, and saw hundreds of tall bipedal creatures marching out of the void. Several appeared beside her, towering over her. Not one looked at her. They stared instead at her machine. Then, slowly, they pushed past her toward it.

“Stop!” she cried. “Stay back!”

They did not listen. Silently, they formed a circle around the perimeter, the energy striking their bodies without injury. Then each one raised their hands, and plunged them into the ring of dark energy that connected the Six.

The amount of energy they summoned was unfathomable. Each one of them glowed brightly with incompressible amounts of white Order, forcing their energy into the Elements of Harmony. The lightning of cornel energy faltered, and condensed brightly into a sphere around the machine, contained by the force of the creatures.

The three living ponies in the circle screamed in pain, but the creatures remained silent. Together, in unison, they drove their magic deeper into the spell. It lashed out at them suddenly, and several were reduced to ash. Five watched as the remainder were beginning to disintegrate. They were pouring all the magic they had into the ring, and it was tearing them apart. Their armor was fading and tearing apart, revealing the pale gray flesh beneath which itself was quickly torn away.

Still they pushed onward, linking to each other with magic. So many more died as the Elements of Harmony fired. Black energy poured toward the sky, resolving in to a black rainbow- -but was stopped by the creature’s energy. Many of them died instantly, their bodies detonating from within from the lethal blow, but the others held firm, containing it.

The black rainbow pushed against their shield, trying to break free. The creatures were torn apart. Some of them had little more than half of a body, their black synthetic organs and deep red blood pouring onto the barren sand below- -and yet they still continued.

The creatures died, one by one, until only one stood. To Five’s surprise, she recognized him. He had been the one from the airship. Now he stood, alone, with both hands plunged into what he must have known would be lethal- -and he forced the last part of their combined spell into place.

The three dead skulls within the machine strained, and then shattered as they somehow took the brunt of the feedback. The personality cube inside Proctor overheated and falutered, its circuitry burning from the onslaught. The black rainbow fizzled and disintegrated. The three survivors dropped to the ground below, and the white eyed creature to its knees.

Five stood above her machine, unable to speak. She watched as Rainbow Dash slowly stood.

“You failed, Five,” she said. “It didn’t work.”

Five looked up at her, and felt the corners of her mouth rise. “I sought a way to change my destiny,” she said. She raised one of her hooves, and it shifted as the Order converted it into a long spike. “And I believe I just found a method.”

Before any of the ponies could stop her, she rushed forward, plunging the spike into the back of the white-eyed creature. With its magic exhausted, it had no defensive spell, and Five penetrated it easily. She laughed as its white Order reacted with her blue, and as the black circuitry from its conversion vector spiraled up her foreleg and into her body.

The Elements of Harmony had failed- -but she would not.