Whatever the structure was, it had clearly not been intended for habitation. Inside, there was no pretense of aestheticism. Everything was built to be as functional as possible, but not for the support of people. Instead, it was a catacomb-like structure of equipment and laboratories, all dedicated seemingly to the same goal, whatever it was.

The facility was also deceptively large. As Pink led them through the networks of cables and reactors that built it, Starlight hardly saw any other people present. When she did, though, they were varied. She saw numerous races, all working together in harmony. There were all the races of the Milk Path galaxy save for synths and wendigoes, as well as numerous species of Equestria. Starlight saw a number of ponies, as well as diamond dogs, griffons, quants, and others.

“I wish the whole galaxy could be this peaceful,” said Sbaya as an asari scientist in black robes drifted past her at the side of a hulking diamond dog, both of them eyeing the group warily.

“It was, once,” said Eloth.

“Indeed,” said Four. “Every single time your race wiped out the rest.”

“And it shall be peaceful again, in time.”

“Notice anyone missing, though?” said Zedok, looking around.

“The children of Earth are not represented here,” said Pink, interpreting what Zedok meant easily. “One race has grown hardened to her voice, or any voices, and the other race has changed to ignore it entirely. It makes me proud to have once been human.”

Six looked around at the humming machinery around them. “But what is it all for?”

“For?” said Pink. “It is for Thebe.”

“No shit,” said Nine, feigning surprise.

“I sure hope not,” said Eight.

“This is Her temple, built by Her disciples,” muttered Pink. “And it shall be the first that her new eyes rest upon as she emerges and is born into this world.” His voice cracked for a moment. “And then…and then what? What will happen then?”

They continued, and Starlight allowed herself to fall back so that she was beside Jurneu and Chrysalis. “Something is wrong,” she said. “Can either of you feel it?”

“I can,” said Chrysalis.

“So can I,” said Jurneu. “I just don’t know…I don’t know what it is.”

“This place is humming,” said Chrysalis, staring down at the pair of ponies with her several demonic eyes. “It is alive. Or…almost so.” She pointed. “Look at the human. She feels it too.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Starlight. “Watch her. Carefully. Because if this goes south, I have a feeling it’s going to be because of her.”

“Perhaps,” said Chrysalis, “but remember: she’s the one holding the key to this reality. If she refuses to release us, well…then things won’t matter much, will they?”

Ahead of them, Six pressed closer to Scootaloo. “They’re talking,” she said, gesturing toward Starlight and her associates.”

“I know. I can hear them.”

“You can?”

“I can hear a lot of things. They don’t seem to trust your mother.”

Six sighed. “Well, she doesn’t exactly give them much reason to, does she?”

“She doesn’t. But that’s not why she’s so quiet. I’m more concerned with the fact that of all the things I can hear right now, they are the only ones talking.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am detecting hundreds of individual life forms here. And not one of them is speaking. All these people, and no one is talking.”

Six shivered and pulled herself close to Scootaloo. “Eerie.”

It was worse than that, though. Scootaloo was deeply apprehensive about this place. She had no sense of the trouble that the unicorns and changeling were whispering about, but from a simply logical standpoint nothing seemed to make sense. From what she had been told, Scootaloo had assumed that Thebe was a terrorist organization. In her mind, that meant a military force. This was not a military installation, though. The majority of those surrounding them were not soldiers, save for a few guards and several ominous insect-like creatures with luminescent violet eyes.

What made that disturbing was the lack of motive. In her time in the navy and as a Priestess, Scootaloo had come to understand political movements. They always had a purpose, and idea. With Thebe, that idea seemed to be, as near as Scootaloo could understand it, Thebe itself. Everything was organized and planned by some unseen method, a strange and foreign ideology that none of the workers seemed to understand. And that was what they were: workers. Workers who were building something and, after centuries of effort, nearing its completion.

“Pink,” she said at last. “I need you to at least try to explain what is going on here.”

“He can’t,” said Pinkamena from her perch. “Because he doesn’t know.”

“The Paradigm wills it,” he said, partially to himself. “We are those that interpret it and give it will. It is an idea. But Thebe is physical. Thebe is the Paradigm, and the Paradigm is Thebe. We are Her, and we are It.” He slowly tilted his head toward her. “And you are listed. You and the Core Starlight Glimmer, although you are listed higher. The sister of Rainbow Dash, the young captain, she who was sent to the Horizon only to find that its ruler had long been dead…”

“How do you know that?” snapped Scootaloo.

“Because it is listed. All is listed.” He put one shaking hand to his head. “If…if I look deep enough…”

“Don’t,” said Pinkamena. She glared at Scootaloo. “Stop asking him questions. The Paradigm is killing him. Every time you make him go deeper, I lose part of him.”

“Power the forge, power the forge,” sung Pink softly, “and forge us a goddess from ash…”

The group pressed forward a bit longer, and the scenery began to change. At first there were less and less people, and then for a time none. Instead, the machinery began to become tighter and denser. Motion became somewhat difficult through the mass of material, and after several minutes the lights became less sparse until they were gone completely. When they reached that point, Scootaloo and Seven both projected lighted drones. With the jungle-like desnity of the technology around them, though, the light did not press far. Pink stayed at the forward end of what light they had, almost entirely in the shadows, with Bob near him. Chrysalis and Sbaya, the only other two members of the group with good night vision, stayed in the back in preparation for an ambush.

This was the other people began to appear. It was not clear who first saw them, but somehow, no one screamed. These workers moved slowly on the edge of the shadows or beyond, blindly feeling the way through the hive of machinery. Their bodies were overgrown with imbedded technology that snaked around the rotting remnants of the various species that they once were. Their organic portions were invariably pale and thin, except in the cases where the flesh had rotted away entirely and the cybernetic skeletons of various long-dead individuals continued to toil beside their black-robed brethren.

“What are they?” asked Scootaloo.

“Husks,” said Eloth. “Or a version of them.” He looked into the void, his pupils widening until his red eyes were nearly black. “Which means they are using our technology…”

“The Paradigm is old,” said Pink, nearly in a whisper. “It has existed for so long that many of those who first attempted to interpret its will have long since passed any natural lifespan. Or tried to. But as Cerberus did not allow me to depart from my pain, so has Thebe kept them.”

“I know the feeling,” said Starlight, feeling more pity than disgust for the ghostly semi-machines that wandered the darkness, kept alive far beyond their years.

“They are the eldest,” said Pink. “The ones who know the most. No mind remains save for Hers, but it cannot be intact by definition. They are aware of fragments, but not the Whole.”

“I don’t understand,” said Six.

“You’re not supposed to,” said Inte, finally breaking her long silence. “Trust me. Be glad that you cannot. That burden was never meant for an organic mind.”

“I hate zombies,” muttered Bob, clasping her hand around her necklace. “I goddamn hate zombies…”

Then, suddenly, Pink stopped. The rest of them did as well. The group had arrived at what appeared to the nexus of the machinery, a column of indescribably complex machines rising around a surprisingly small and incomplete something suspended in their center.

Starlight stared at the center for a long moment before a wave of recognition chilled her blood. The small machine in the center was lit, but not by any independent light source on its housing. Instead, the glow came from a strange asymmetrical crystal installed in its center.

“What is it?” said Scootaloo, immediately realizing that Starlight knew something.

“That- -that’s the Key of Korviliath!” she said, taking a step back. “That’s impossible! It was destroyed! With Earth! It- -it can’t be here!”

“I agree,” said Chrysalis, also recognizing the crystal that had long ago adorned the crown of Princess Cadence. “We need to leave. Now.”

“But what is it?” demanded Scootaloo.

“Sunset Shimmer used it. To open a doorway to Equestria Prime.”

“The one that took out Earth in the process.”

Scootaloo suddenly realized the relevance of what Starlight was saying, perhaps even better than the others. She had been there as well on that day, but she understood the situation better than any of them. It was not truly Sunset Shimmer and the Crimson Horizon that had opened the gate, not really. Sunset had already been dead for some time without even realizing it. She was simply a tool acting on behalf of a pony far more terrible, a pony whose armor Scootaloo now wore.

“Agreed,” she said at last. She turned around, only to suddenly realize that the revenant drones that had been maintaining the central chamber had surrounded them.

“The crystal is the harbinger,” said one of the creatures in a low, mechnical voice. Her body was so ruined that it was impossible to tell what she had once been, but her luminous violet eyes were piercing and alive, as was the case with all of her compatriots. “The crystal is the last fragment of the door. The door through which the Paradigm came so long ago, and the door through which Thebe will follow.”

“To unite,” said another, “to give the Paradigm life. To end our need to interpret. To end the need for us.”

“The machine nears completion. Her body has been prepared. Only one piece remains.”

“One piece. One final piece.”

Starlight did not understand, but found herself backing away. Her friends braced their weapons, ready to fight, although she was not sure what they would be able to do against the lifeless shells that were surrounding them.

Only two among them appeared unconcerned. Pink stood, blankly staring, waiting for his goal to be complete. Likewise, Inte seemed unperturbed. In fact, after only a few second she stepped forward toward the hollowed out remains of what may once have been a krogan.

“I am here,” she said. She was smiling, but somehow her voice sounded sad.

Every pair of violet eyes turned toward her, and there was a mechnical murmur from the group.

“Inte!” called Scootaloo. “Get back here!”

Inte looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I’m sorry, Scootaloo. Sorry for a lot of things. That I could not tell you, and that I could never truly be your friend. Please do your best to believe that what I’m telling you is a true sentiment, not a programmed response. But I have to do this. I was constructed for this. To die here, so that She may rise.”

“Inte, no!” Scootaloo tried to take a step forward, only to be grasped by Pink. “Let me go!” she cried. “Or I’ll take your arm off!”

“So be it,” said Pink, “because that is the only way I will allow you to interfere.”

Scootaloo did not have time to make good on her threat. The animated remains of the krogan stretched out an arm, and Inte’s body dissolved, leaving only the clear blue tech shell surrounding her crystalline heart. It hovered in his hand, lighting the darkness with a powerful glow that even the Key of Korvilliath could not surpass. It was only then when Starlight noticed just how large and how utterly pure that crystal truly was. Both she and Six realized that it was not the sort of quant meant to operate a scout ship, or even a hub-dreadnaught. It was something far larger and more powerful, the likes of which Starlight doubted she would ever see be created again.

Even Scootaloo stopped resisting and watched as the Thebean priest walked through the crowd and up the stone stairs that led to their final creation. As he approached, the surface of the machinery ignited with tech energy. He extended the crystal in one hand, placing it in the center of the machine. As the tech swirled around it, linking to the machine that had been known as Inte, the entire facility suddenly became deathly quiet.

“It is done,” he said. “The final piece….the final piece…”

Suddenly everything hummed to life. The machine around them screamed and the room ignited with bright light. Every one of the dead priests screamed as the machinery surrounded them, rising up and penetrating their bodies, linking their remains and their individual fragments of the Paradigm into the womb that they had constructed for their rising deity.

The quant crystal began to revolve, and the machinery suddenly burst to life, writhing about itself like a swarm of millions of mechnical worms and arms, all reaching for the Key. The Key and quant together reacted violently, sending out plumes of pink-violet fire that curved and arced back toward the machine.

The krogan standing near it was instantly vaporized, his body torn apart by the blaze of energy. Starlight realized that it was already too late to run. They were standing too close.

Chrysalis realized this as well and raised her hands, projecting a deep green shield around them. The nearest of the energy arcs struck it, and she screamed in pain, dropping to one knee. Her formerly demonic form began to fail, becoming something darker and covered in porous chitin.

“Chrysalis!” cried Starlight.

The clones seemed to realize that they were on the verge of dying as well. Those of them capable of using magic stood firm and pointed their horns at Chrysalis’s dome. They projected their biotics into it, reinforcing it. Their actions only seemed to draw more energy, though, and they struggled to keep the shield whole. Zedok tapped Sbaya and Jurneu on the shoulders, and they threw down their weapons and tried did their best to support the others

Starlight desperately wished that she could help them, but without magic all she could do was watch. What she saw, though, was even more terrifying than the storm around them. Through the multicolored dome, Starlight could vaguely something arising from the central machine. From the mass of metal, a limb suddenly reached out, clawing its way forward. The Key of Korviliath was pulled forward on what now became a chest, and above it formed a skeletal, eyeless head, its forehead adorned by a single long metallic horn.

It stepped forward, screaming as it pulled itself free as it assembled itself, inching ever closer to the white-hot quant crystal that was struggling to maintain its link to the Key.

“We can’t let it reach the crystal!” cried Starlight, realizing what would happen if it did. “We have to stop it!”

It was too late, though. The pair of legs stretched out, pulling the two crystals together. The metal seemed to open, growing over the crystalline computer and integrating it into itself. The quant seemed to vibrate, as if it were struggling to resist, but Starlight watched as the machine surrounding it began to surround it, combining it to the body it was so rapidly developing.

The effect was immediate. The outward explosion crushed through the shield, and all of those supporting it collapsed with a cry. Starlight covered her eyes, expecting to be torn apart, but instead saw a flash of red and blue light. She looked up to see Bob and Eloth, both of whom were supporting the shield, Eloth with his combined biotic and tech ability and Bob by grasping the artifact she carried with both hands.

Even they could not support the shield for long, though. The room around them was being torn apart. Thebe’s machine had been incorrectly designed, and it was failing, incinerated by now uncontrollable force of their final creation. The priests had all been reduced to skeletal frames that were rapidly being converted to ash.

Eloth fell to one knee. Starlight could feel the heat emanating from him, and watched as his flesh began to heat and boil away, revealing the machine beneath. Bob, meanwhile, remained perfectly calm. Even too calm. For some reason, though, Starlight could not look at her. The light that now seemed to be coming from within her was too horrible.

Before they could outright fail, though, the Thebean machine gave one last surge of energy. It cracked through the shield, but with it, the arcing slowed and stopped. The melted remnants of what had been built there went silent, and some of them fell. Eloth and Bob ceased their defense, and Starlight saw that Eloth’s skin had been completely melted away and his clothing reduced to charred rags. Bob, who seemed otherwise alright, turned to look at him. That was when Starlight saw her eyes and how distant they looked, and realized that she may have suffered even graver of injury.

Bob raised a shaking finger at Eloth. “I can’t believe you made me have to do that,” she said. “If I regain consciousness, you are going to have the WORSTEST of anal reckonings.”

She then collapsed to her knees and fell onto Eight, who immediately tried struggling weakly against her mother’s unconscious weight.

“It is done,” said Pink. “Finally, She is risen.” He then collapsed to his knees. “But…but why can I still hear it?”

Starlight looked past him, and realized to her disbelief that he was right. Although the machine had been destroyed, the figure that it had created remained. It now walked down the charred stone stairs to its birthplace, its hooves clicking quietly as it walked. As it moved, its surface began to change. It was initially a strange amalgam of technologies, some of which was obviously reaper. With every step, though, something organic seemed to seep through and around its shell. Starlight watched as it skin began to form around it, and that skin in turn burst forth with fine hair that took on a purple hue. The machine then spread its skeletal mechnical wings, and they burst forward with muscle and feathers. Bone grew around her metal horn, and her empty, glaring eye sockets produced eyes.

When the machine finally reached the bottom of the stairs, it had assumed its completed form. Instead of a machine in the shape of a pony, Starlight found herself staring into the face of a violet alicorn.

“Twilight?” she said in disbelief.

The alicorn blinked her newly formed eyes and turned to Starlight, recognizing her name. A look of recognition crossed her face, and she smiled. “Starlight,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”

Author's Notes:

And everybody who read Child of Order remains completely unsurprised.