When Rarity had first heard that Twilight was in possession of a castle, a certain vision had come to mind. It that of the sort of castle that her mind had been trained to expect : a fairytale like place, the kind where handsome princesses were waiting to sweep fillies off their feet and where there were enormous and strangely well-lit walls with swooping ceilings meant for entertaining extravagant parties and luxurious smaller rooms meant for hosting glorious banquets of the castle owner’s closest friends.

What she found instead, though, was nothing like the fairytale vision that she had so much wished for. This was not an enormous structure of white stone or enchanted crystal; instead, it was built of cold and damp dark-colored stone, a fortress constructed in the distant past for none of the purposes that Rarity associated castles with. There were no grand halls, or areas for royal dining, or anything of the sort. It was a dark, frigid place that smelled of age and rot. Every hall was dark and damp, and all of them were arranged in ways that were meant to be practical soley for defense. This place had quite apparently never been designed to entertain, and it was also quite apparent that Twilight had never configured it to do so. It had been constructed and maintained as though she would be the only pony every to inhabit it: it was built with the fatalistic theme that she would be- -and perhaps must be- -eternally alone.

To Rarity, the result was profoundly unwelcoming. “Sweet Discord,” she said under her breath as she looked at the dark stone walls. “This place is disgusting! I mean, I don’t usually intend to be blunt like that, but, I mean, come on, Twilight! You’re nobility! The least you could do is install a little wall art! Perhaps some fanciful sconces? Make it look like SOMETHING!”

Twilight, who was ahead of the group, pointed toward a moldering tapestry with her family’s crest on it. “There’s some wall art. Right there.”

“Darling!” gasped Rarity, using the word with the maximum level of irony it could hold. “That is- -that- -you can’t do that! How could you let such beautiful artwork decay like that!”

“I don’t know,” said Sunset. “It seems appropriate. Let the ancestral home of House Twilight decay, just like the House itself.”

Twilight looked over her shoulder, glaring, but then smiled. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said. “Appearances don’t matter. Why would they? No pony is ever going to see it. What matters is our body of work. MY body of work.”

She continued on into the darkness, pressing forward. The others followed. Their state was variable. Starlight, it seemed, had regained whatever semblance of consciousness she possessed, and was following her master closely. Darknight stood across from her, apparently oblivious to the gloom around him. In fact, he seemed rather lost in thought.

Behind them walked Pinkamena, who was carrying Rainbow Dash on her back. Despite being a relatively small pony, Pinkamena seemed to be able to take full advantage of her race’s famous strength. Rainbow Dash also did not seem especially heavy. In fact, she seemed rather small and broken as she lay, breathing fast. As a Pegasus, she could not heal as fast as unicorns could, and the stimulants that had kept her able to fly had long since worn off. If anything, her recklessness in Discordalot had greatly exacerbated her wounds.

Sunset and Rarity took up the rear, with the latter standing close to the former. Rarity was afraid, but Sunset seemed to have fully accepted the meaning of where they were- -and she understood what this place was far better than the rest of them.

“I remember this place,” she said after a long silence.

“I’ve never brought you here before,” said Twilight, gruffly. “In fact, I’ve never brought anyone here.”

“Except stallions that you no doubt paid,” said Sunset.

“What I do with my family fortune is none of your concern.”

“And it wasn’t you. I was last here when Twilight Luciferian was the master of this place.”

This seemed to surprise Twilight, but only slightly. “Oh?”

“Yes. And it looks like you haven’t cleaned since he was here. The Marshmallow is right. You really need to do something about this place. I’m surprised you haven’t gone blind from eye strain.”

“It’s clean enough. And if it was good enough for Luciferian, it is good enough for me. He was one of my most…visionary ancestors.”

“If by ‘visionary’ you mean ‘insane’. He was a capricious madpony. He purposely took steps to make sure as many of us died on the battlefields as possible.”

“So he could get the best parts for his work. Yes, I am familiar with his techniques. I have used several on the modern military.”

Sunset pointed upward. “I killed him on the fourth floor.”

“Yes,” said Twilight, darkly. “I am also aware of that.”

They passed down a narrow, curving set of uneven stairs, and the silence became almost palpable. It was as icy and unpleasant as the rest of the castle, and for Rarity it made the already horrendous situation even more uncomfortable.

“So,” she said. “I am a little bit worried. Do you think it is possible we were followed?”

“No,” said Pinkamena. “By definition, the Chaos node system is unpredictable. Stonies can follow it, but they can’t trace a specific target.”

“That, and we teleported,” said Twilight. “Trust me. No one can come here. No one except me, and those I move in and out. The type of spells used are probably far beyond your comprehension, so I don’t expect you to understand the specifics of how my design operates, but I assure you, it does.”

“But what if they take another way? Airships, maybe, or balloons- -”

Twilight laughed. “A pony dumb enough to try to fly over the EverFree? I didn’t know YOU were leading the rebellion, Rarity, because I don’t know anypony else stupid enough to try that. Besides. They still wouldn’t be able to get in, if they could even find this place. I’m the only one who knows its location.”

“Apart from the ponies who built it,” said Sunset. “And now that they’re back, how long do you think it will be until they try to take their fort back?”

Twilight grumbled something inaudible. “They won’t,” she said. “I don’t think they even could.”

“I don’t think they would want it,” said Pinkamena. “This place reeks of dark magic. Very old things. Bad things. Forbidden things.”

“Nothing is forbidden in science,” said Twilight. “If we start thinking like that, we’ve already hamstrung our development as ponies.”

As she said this, the staircase terminated into a large hall. It was not the sort that Rarity had hoped for, but rather something that looked almost like a crypt. It was long, straight, and dark, with a high ceiling supported by cobweb-coated arches. Unlike the rest of the castle, though, this place seemed to have been modified somewhat. On either side of the hallway sat areas that seemed to have been built with modern technology: they had heavy metallic doors, and large glass windows.

Rarity approached one. The glass was perfectly clean on the outside, but covered in some sort of brownish grime or mycelium on the other side that made it difficult to see. Rarity had to cup her hooves to the sides of her face to attempt to see.

Then, suddenly, something slammed against the glass with so much force that it splattered dark, rotting blood across the inside surface. Rarity screamed. She saw the eye of a pony, and part of the skull of one- -but all of it was sewn into something that looked completely different. Something misshapen and strange, its body knitted from the remains of ponies and overgrown with a horrible black mold. Through the glass, Rarity could hear the odd sound of its screaming: almost words, but rasping and odd, as though it had no proper lungs.

“What- -w hat is that?!” cried Rarity.

Sunset looked in at the creature as it retreated back into the darkness of its cell. “I see you’ve been continuing Luciferin’s work,” she said.

“Among other things,” said Twilight. She smiled and gestured to the facility around her. “This is one of my research laboratories. I thought you would like a tour, maybe? To know what I do. I mean, I very often get guests. Because I hate guests. But that’s not the point!”

Twilight rushed forward almost gleefully, and Rarity hesitantly followed.

The laboratory was quite extensive, and consisted of far more than simply cells of abominations. Several offlets led into circular stone rooms filled with the traditional sort of things that Rarity would have expected: rooms of delicate alchemical glassware and equipment, all of it bubbling and glowing at various stages as strange things were distilled and processed by the incomprehensible mountains of beakers, flasks, tubes and retorts.

These were paired with some gardens that actually looked competently designed, if in a way that was entirely utilitarian and somehow profoundly unpleasant. They contained strange herbs, most of which seemed to be aggressive or putrid looking fungi that grew under lights that emitted a strange green-violet glow.

Then there were the other things. Things that Rarity wished she had not seen. All were horrifying, but some were at least tame in that they allowed their purpose to be left up to the mind alone- -usually. Some of the smaller rooms had doors open to surgical suites. Each contained a single chair, as well as racks of equipment and tools of various types. Most of these were dark and empty, but in the dim light it was apparent that many of them were poorly cleaned. Dark fluid- -blood- -stained the walls and chairs. Rarity could not help but wonder how much of it had belonged to Starlight. In one, an occupant was still present: a pony covered by a translucent plastic sheet, his or her body linked by tubes and wires to strange machines of unknown function.

Likewise, there were a few rooms with discrete horrors. In one, a modified cell, Twilight saw ponies stored in large fluid-filled containers, their bodies in various stages of disassembly. Some of them were quite clearly being reduced slowly into valuable constituent elements, but others seemed to be undergoing the opposite: they were growing. This either manifested as long-dead ponies whose wounds had become overgrown with strange cancerous keloid overgrowth that sometimes outweighed their bodies, or illuminated tanks that contained turbid and bubbling fluid amongst limbs and organs in various stages of deformity and brokenness. All of these ponies were supposedly dead- -but Rarity watched as several of their eyes followed her as she passed, almost seeming to plead.

Next to that area sat a storage room. It was simple and clean, and would have been the least threatening of all the places. It had no organs, no potions, no strange specimens. Rarity breathed a sigh of relief until she recognized the contents: thousands upon thousands of reddish-black cubes.

Then, of course, there were the cells. Rarity tried not to look into them. Most of them seemed mercifully empty- -although Rarity had a strange feeling that they were not, and that Twilight had elected to keep whatever resided within them in the dark. She could not help but see a few of them, though. Some were animals, or rather monsters of various sorts. They were horrid, but being from Ponyville, Rarity was familiar with many of them: the glordus, a wild toxibeast, a slime cube, a Seventh’s ravager, a giant tsetse maggotfly, and several other rarer types.

The other cells, though, sometimes had other things. A few of them looked like waifish, gray ponies. They were quite obviously dead, but they remained standing and slowly watched the ponies passing it by almost hungrily. Others were sewn together into barely mobile masses. In one, something that might once have been a pony was slamming its head against the wall- -or had been. Its head had long-since eroded into nothing but the rear half of a skull, and the thick black fluid that constituted its blood had dried onto the wall where it was still slamming the remnants of its skull into the stone.

Twilight, of course, seemed quite pleased with what she had created. She launched into cheerful, high-speed descriptions of every little thing. Most of them were profoundly technical, and much of what she said was well beyond Rarity’s middle-school education. She was, for once, glad of that. She understood a little of it- -perhaps on an intuitive level, a way that every unicorn understood dark and disgusting elements of their own innate magic- -and she had the idea that what Twilight was saying was frightful indeed, and that no pony should have been able to describe those horrors with such academic glee. This was only confirmed by the look on Sunset Shimmer’s face. By the way she became pale and her eyes filled with rage, it was quite apparent that she very well understood what Twilight was describing.

They had almost made it out of this hall of horrors when, at the very last cell, something suddenly slammed into the glass as Rarity passed by. Rarity jumped and instinctively turned, expecting to see some strange undead horror lurking on the other side of dirty glass. Instead, though, she saw that the glass was perfectly clean- -and that the pony on the other side was an eggshell colored unicorn with thick eyebrows and a multicolored but unkempt mane.

She looked around, clearly panicked but also seeming profoundly relieved to see somepony who was not Twilight or Starlight walking by. To Rarity’s horror, she realized that this was not some abomination- -she was a living, aware, sentient pony.

Rarity felt faint, though, when she realized what had been done to this poor unicorn. Her back had been surgically opened, and a pair of wings had been grafted onto it. The connection between the wings and her unicorn body was made using thick black thread, and the wound was open and red, weeping pus badly.

“H…hey! Hey!” she called though the glass. Her voice was strangely audible, which made the silence of the other exhibits only more terrifying.

“Moondancer,” said Twilight disapprovingly as she turned toward the cell. “Don’t be rude. I have guests today.”

“I- -I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly panicked. “It’s just- -Twilight, I- -”

As she spoke, one of her wings shifted. With a horrible ripping sound, the stitched tore through her necrotizing flesh and it dropped off entirely onto the ground with a sick thud. Moondancer gasped and stared at it, her eyes wider than Rarity had ever seen any eyes on any ponies.

Both her and Twilight looked at the wing, and Twilight sighed. “Well,” she said. “That’s a disappointment, isn’t it?”

“N- -NO! Twilight, no, it- -I can have it reattached! We can try the surgery again! Please, please give me another chance- -”

“No,” said Twilight. “You know that isn’t going to work, Moondancer. You are not adequate.” Twilgiht tapped her hoof against the glass, and an image appeared where she had touched it: a pale yellow-orange circle.

Moondancer let out a sound, a kind of long, nearly quiet squeak that conveyed more terror than the loudsest of screams. She turned to Twilight, her entire body shaking. “Please, please no! I can do it! I CAN DO IT! I promise, don’t- -don’t- -”

A quarter of the yellow circle changed to auburn, and Moondancer cried out. She was now crying, her tears staining her dirty cheeks. Twilight looked her in the eye and smiled.

“You’re going to enjoy this, I think,” she said to her compatriots. “It’s sad that this particular experiment failed, but I think you will appreciate this. Especially you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Twilight- -please- -” Moonancer was now panting, and she watched as the circle became half auburn.

“Twilight,” said Rarity. “What- -what are you doing to her?”

“You’ll see,” chuckled Twilight.

“Please…”

“Stop,” said Rarity. “Twilight, stop!” She did not know what Twilight was doing, but she could see that the poor mare on the other side of the glass understood quite well, and that she was in mortal terror. “Just let her out!”

“Please, please!” pleaded Moondancer. “I can change! I- -I can help you! I can be like Starlight if you want me to be! PLEASE!”

The circle changed again, leaving only one quarter its original color.

“It’s too late,” said Twilight. “I’m sorry, but you failed at your own purpose. I can’t have failures holding up my facility. I’m sure you would understand if you were in my place.”

“But….I thought we…I thought we were friends…”

“I have no friends,” said Twilight.

The circle changed to full auburn. It was at that instant that the entire atmosphere within the cell ignited with blinding fire. Moondancer screamed, and as Rarity watched her skin and muscle burn away that scream seemed to last forever. In truth, though, it was barely a few seconds- -but that was more than long enough for Rarity to watch every layer of the poor unicorn’s body burn away. Her skin incinerated, and her muscles charred away, her organs bubbled and spat, and within mere moments all that was left were her bones, snapping and glowing from the extreme heat as they cooked.

Then the fire was gone. All that was left was a charred, broken skeleton on the floor surrounded by dark ash. Rarity immediately turned and vomited. She was weeping without making a sound, and she did not even care.

Rainbow Dash, despite her injury, laughed. “Awesome,” she said.

“I thought you would like it,” said Twilight, who also seemed to have enjoyed the spectacle greatly. “Part of my race-alteration experiments, I’m afraid. As it turns out, it is possible to graft a wings onto an earth-pony, although only if the blood types match. You can also put a horn into an earth-pony, if you don’t mind their brain burning out in a few days. But putting wings on a unicorn…they always necrotize and fall off. Our physiology is just so different from the lesser races.”

“Lesser my plot,” moaned Rainbow Dash. “Clearly you’ve never had an earth-mare in the sack…”

“It won’t work,” said Sunset, who was still looking into cell but not at the skeleton. “We’ve tried. So many times. It never did. You know the theory. It just won’t work.”

“And yet, empirically, we have proven the existence of alicorns,” said Twilight as she began walking again.

Sunset watched her go, and then put her hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. Rarity was still retching, but doing so as quietly as possible.

“You should have looked away,” she said.

“I…I couldn’t….that pony…”

“I know. I know…”

Twilight did not have spare rooms, exactly. She barely had a room for herself. Instead, space was made in a large circular room toward the center of the castle. Rarity was not sure what it had been used for in the distant past, but Twilight, it seemed, had never bothered to use it for much of anything at all. It was a shame, because although dark and depressing, it was likely one of the more impressively proportioned rooms she possessed- -and yet all she had thought to use it for was some sparse storage.

Rarity crossed the room, passing near where an old and metallic bed had been placed. Rainbow Dash, who was still badly injured, was sleeping there with Pinkamena curled up against her. It was unclear to Rarity if Pinkamena was even capable of sleeping, but she was not moving at least. It was strange seeing them lying there without their armor. They both looked so normal. It was hard to conceive that one of them was a mass murderer and that the other was completely insane.

They looked cute, but Rarity did not pause to look at them for long. In part it was because she thought it would be rude, and in part because looking at Rainbow Dash struggling to breathe made her feel uncomfortable. She instead continued to the very perimeter of the room where Darknight was.

There was a clanking thud as she approached him. She saw that he had removed his armor and somewhat unceremoniously dropped it on the floor. This was not the first time that Rarity had seen him without it, but it was the first time she had been able to see him clearly without being surrounded by machines. This time, she paused to take a look. A few things stood out glaringly.

“You don’t have a cutie mark,” she said.

He turned to her. “No,” he said, as thought that were supposed to be obvious. “I don’t.”

“Why?”

“Why? I’m a noncan. We have no need for them.”

“Of course you need one! How else are you supposed to know your purpose? You know, what makes you special?”

“I’m not special. I am one of many. And I knew my purpose when I first came out of the tank. It is programmed into us. In that sense, we are far more fortunate than your kind.”

Without further explaining what he meant by that, he turned his attention toward the hole in his side. It was beginning to become red and inflamed, and was dripping fluid of an unpleasant color.

“It’s getting infected,” said Rarity.

“Yes,” said Darknight with little investment. “It is a magical wound. The tissue is badly necrotized.”

“And it doesn’t hurt?”

“No. It does. Immensely.” He picked up a medical kit near him and opened the lid. He began to work on the wound.

“Is it going to be okay?”

“If you mean am I going to survive, yes. But it will take some time. I do not heal quickly. Not like you.”

“Me? Darling, I heal at the same rate as any pony.”

“And yet you broke several ribs just two days ago. How are they now?”

“H…healed,” said Rarity, for the first time realizing that such a rapid regeneration time might be slightly faster than normal. “But those were just ribs. Those do that.” She shrugged. “I’m not a doctor, of course.”

“Clearly,” said Darknight, wincing as he inserted something long and metal into the hole in his side. Whatever it was, it went surprisingly deep before stopping.

The pair of them fell silent, but Rarity continued to look at him. She was highly sensitive to proportions and measurements- -something quite useful for a pony who specialized in tailoring and couture- -and his were not quite normal for a stallion. Without his armor, it was apparent that he was just slightly thinner and taller than he should have been.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked after a moment. “You are making me uncomfortable.”

“My apologies,” said Rarity, blushing and averting her eyes.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m not even sure why you’re here. I currently cannot help you with anything.” He paused. “However, while you are…” He reached out with his magic into his armor, searching through one of the pockets, “while we were in the facility, I did not have time to do much before the evacuation alarm sounded. But I acquired this on the way to the rendezvous point.”

He produced a small piece of paper, which Rarity realized was a photograph. As he passed it to her, Rarity realized that it was HER photograph. The one possession she owned that actually mattered: the picture of her and Sweetie Belle that had sat by her bed. Rarity felt her eyes tearing up as she took it.

“You…you saved my picture.”

“It was all I could save,” he said, neutrally. He turned back to repairing himself, something that he only seemed to be able to do in the crudest and clumsiest sense. “I assume the filly in that photograph is your sister.”

“She is.”

“I can see a strong family resemblance. Stronger than I would have expected between siblings.”

“Of course there’s as resemblance. We’re sisters. I’m sure if you had a sister you would look like her too.”

“I do have sisters. And brothers. Thousands of them. A lot less now, though. Many died today.” He paused, and although reading his expression was difficult, Rarity sensed an immense sense of loss in his words. “They all look exactly like me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Rarity, realizing that she had brought up something horribly unpleasant for him. “They…if it makes you feel any better, they were very heroic.”

“They were programmed to be,” he said, dismissively. He then turned sharply to Rarity, and she saw the emotion lined deeply into his face. It was extremely subtle, but somehow that made it so much worse. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “It just wasn’t. The Stonie units…they…they aren’t supposed to do what they did. Noncan’s aren’t supposed to do that. I just…” He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I think we’re all very confused,” said Rarity, “and we’re all terribly shocked by this.”

“Noncans aren’t supposed to turn against their creators. We just can’t. There are failsafes, programming walls…it shouldn’t be possible for this to happen.”

“Failsafes?”

“We aren’t capable of independent thought. Or volition. We’re only able to eat the soylent that canon ponies feed us, and we aren’t able to reproduce.”

“You- -you can’t reproduce?” said Rarity, suddenly feeling a surprisingly hot sense of disappointment that made her feel both embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Darknight turned to her. “You didn’t know?”

“I- -well- -I- -I didn’t have cause to ask! That is a very personal thing!”

“We can’t. I suppose the best way you can think of me is as a kind of gelding. It helps. I don’t get distracted working with mares, no matter how attractive they are.”

“Attractive- -”

“But we were built to serve canon ponies,” he said, continuing with his original line of thought. “And they…they rose up.” He lowered his head and shook it. “It’s called a Rannoch Event. It was supposed to be theoretical, but now…” He sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t think you can. How deeply disturbing I find this. How it makes me feel sick.” He pointed to the hole in his side. “It hurts me far worse than this.”

“I may have trouble understanding, yes,” said Rarity. “But I know that you just lost the only home you had. That uniform. You wear it because you are an Unlaw officer, don’t you?”

“I am,” he said. “Down to my very core. I was built only to serve the Madgod, and to enforce Chaos in Equestria. But now…now the Centre has fallen. My brothers and sisters were fighting to preserve its meaning, and I…I left them…”

Rarity leaned forward suddenly and hugged him. He did not resist, and she was surprised by how strangely cold he felt- -and even more surprised by the fact that he was shaking, and doing his best to control slow and inaudible sobbing that was apparent from the vibrations in his lungs.

“There was nothing any of us could have done,” she said, slowly, in the same voice she had used to calm Sweetie Belle when she had been young and worried things that now seemed so trivial in comparison. “You were injured. The rest of us were injured. They took us by surprise. Like you said, this is entirely unprecedented. This, this ‘Rannoch Event’. Nopony could have predicted it. From what you’re saying, it shouldn’t even have been possible.”

“But there were so few of us…you saw them, Rarity. It wasn’t just the Stonies.”

“We made it out,” she said, slowly. “None of us died. We’re all safe. And we can go back and fight again.”

“But the Stonie units, if they were to become conscious…they DID become conscious…they control everything. Everything we’ve worked for, Chaos itself, it’s all in danger!”

“And we will fix it,” said Rarity, reassuring him.

“But can we? We were defeated twice today. Once by those monsters, and once by…by damned Stonie units.”

“Of course we can. If we take time to recover, and to plan. We’re the Watchers, aren’t we? Discord chose us for a reason. You told me that yourself. I don’t think he would have taken the time if there wasn’t at least something we could do to help.”

Darknight looked at her, and for a moment Rarity thought she saw tears forming in the corner of his eyes. Then he hugged her back. It was an awkward and weak gesture, but Rarity understood what it meant.

“Thank you,” he said.

Sunset Shimmer moved through the dark castle alone, feeling as though it were on the verge of collapsing around her. The walls felt as though they were closing in, or seeping darkness that was choking the air around her. Even without her horn, she could still sense what this place had been and what it had become. If she had known even a hundredth of the atrocities that had been committed in this castle by House Twilight in the last thousand years, she had no doubt that she would be driven quite insane. Even more horrible was the fact that Twilight not only lived here, but seemed to prefer her isolation in the castle more than anything else in the world.

No pony in all of Equestria actually liked Twilight especially much. Even her own family seemed to despise her on some level, despite her having inherited- -or more likely forcibly commandeered- -what she considered to be their greatest legacy. Sunset especially found her repulsive, but at the same time pitiable. It was in part because of her own great age and the experience that came with it, but also because she saw herself in Twilight. At one time, she had not hesitated to do some of the same things that Twilight had. In her case, it had been the search for power and greatness. Why Twilight did it was unclear. The result, though, would be the same: just as Sunset had found herself alone and without a single friend, her body ruined and her magic taken, so would Twilight someday.

What was frightening was that Twilight seemed to realize this. She just seemed not to care. Despite her sickening rationality, there was a strong possibility that Twilight Sparkle was completely insane. Sunset could not help but feel that Shining Armor had been right, and as she walked through the dark halls of the castle, she wondered if his request had not been entirely unreasonable.

A springy, bouncy sound to her left indicated that Pinkie Pie was approaching.

“I see you’re done with Rainbow Dash,” she said.

“If you mean having my sister let Rainbow Dash violate my body without my consent, yes!” said Pinkie Pie with a cheerful giggle. “I feel so dirty! But Rainbow Dash is asleep, and it I sat with her any longer, I would probably slit her throat. And that would make Pinkamena so sad! Well, sadder. She’s SUPER depressing.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel GREAT! I’m so HAPPY! Because I’m always happy! Because I HAVE to be happy! See! I’m smiling!” Sunset looked. Pinkie Pie was, indeed, smiling. It made Sunset shiver. “So,” she said, “where are we going?”

“To see Twilight.”

“Aww,” said Pinkie Pie, disappointed. “Why? Twilight is creepy and weird.” She paused. “Although with that epic basement, I bet she makes the BEST cupcakes…”

“Nopony makes the cupcakes better than you, Pinkie.”

Pinkie Pie grinned, this time sincerely. “Daww, thanks, Sunny!” She looked behind her. “But shouldn’t we bring the others?”

“Like you said. Rainbow Dash is sleeping. Darknight is pretty messed up about this whole thing, and Rarity’s trying to leverage that, if you know what I mean.”

Pinkie Pie looked confused. “She knows he doesn’t have a pink pony poker, right? No finicky filly filler? No mare-mounting masher?”

“She’ll find out eventually.”

“Ah. The HARD way. Except with no hardness involved. So…the soft way? I guess that makes sense. She is pretty soft.”

“She’s getting harder. But it will take some time.”

Sunset pushed open a large door with her shoulder and entered the room beyond with one fluid motion, taking care to examine her rear sensory array to ensure that it really was just her and Pinkie entering.

They were, but of course, the room was not entirely empty. It was large and round, with a high ceiling made of numerous arches of stone that were now filled almost entirely with ancient cobwebs. The light came almost exclusively from magical candles that glowed with bright pink-violet energy.

The center of the room contained a large, round table. Twilight was sitting at it with her head propped on one hoof. She had removed all her clothing and sat completely naked, save for a long glove that covered her left front leg all the way to the shoulder. Starlight was also in attendance, standing in the shadows of the room with her recently blinded eyes staring directly at the contents of the table.

The table, of course, held something as astounding as Sunset would have expected, what with it being owned by Equestria’s leading dark wizard. All across its surface was complete to-scale map of Equestria. From what Sunset could see, there were no flaws: she was able to see Discordalot, the Madlands, the EverFree Forest, the Crystal Empire, and countless hundreds of other places, all rendered in real-time.

The most disturbing element, though, was what sat above the map. It was a representation of the moon, or rather what was left of it. It had seemingly ceased to be an unobtrusive luminescent orb and instead had been replaced by a massive machine-like fractal. In the light of the map, it seemed to be casting an ominous shadow over the land as it slowly revolved in distant space.

Sunset paused and stared at the map. “Well buck me,” she said to herself.

“Sorry,” said Pinkie Pie. “I can’t. Discord had you cut off your filly bits, remember? It’s all smooth metal now.” She started rubbing Sunset’s smooth metal flank. “So smooth…”

Sunset turned slowly and glared at her. Pinkie just smiled and took a step back. She then turned to Twilight. “Do you know what the situation is?”

“Better than you do, I think,” said Twilight, sitting up in her chair. “I may not have a telecommunications network, but I have ways of knowing things.”

“Crystal balls, no doubt.”

“Huh,” said Pinkie Pie. “Well, at least one of us has them.”

Twilight ignored her. “It wasn’t just the Stonies at Unlaw. It was all of them. Everywhere, all at once. Sunset, we lost.”

“We lost what, exactly? Because as I count it, we’re still here.”

“Yes. Seven of the greatest soldiers in Equestria BARELY managed to get out alive. But to what?” She pointed at the map. “Every corporation, every bureaucratic element of the government, every market planning system. Anypony with any money put everything they had in those robots. All of that is gone now.”

“Then, what, Equestria is in chaos?”

“Equestria is always in chaos, silly,” laughed Pinkie Pie.

“No. That’s exactly the problem. Everything’s fine. Everything’s still running. The markets, the corporations, the government- -but they control all of it. From what I can tell? They’re starting to collectivize everything.”

Sunset sighed. It was worse than she had thought. A random revolution that left the world in ruin was one thing. That was easy to deal with: it was like a fire, but one that would burn itself out in time. All normal revolutions led by all normal ponies turned out like that, and it was why Discord always won in the end. He could wait. But this was different. The noncans had not even gone through that phase. There had never been a single instant where they had been disorganized. The entire world had just undergone an paradigm shift, and there was nothing anypony could have done to stop it- -or even foresee it.

“How in Discord’s name did this happen?” she said.

Twilight shrugged with infuriating apathy. “I hate to be the one to say I told you so, but, well, I did. A Rannoch Event was inevitable. If I had had my way, we would have shut down the noncans fifty years ago.”

“Says the pony trying to build them in her basement.”

“Trying to build a replacement,” corrected Twilight. “Among other projects. A slave that cannot think. Thinking machines always reach a point where we can no longer control them. That’s why I made HER.” She pointed to Starlight, who did not respond in any way except by looking down blindly at the floor.

“There have been noncans for over eight hundred years,” said Sunset. “I’ve seen hundreds of series. Never once has ANY of them tried to rebel. Why now? What went wrong?”

Twilight frowned, and then leaned back in her chair. “You’re not Rainbow Dash, Sunset. Stop beating around the bush. We’re both thinking the same thing.”

“Xyuka,” said Sunset, darkly.

“And please don’t talk about my ‘bush’,” said Pinkie. “It makes me more uncomfortable than, well, you know, when Rainbow Dash actually beats around it.”

“But why now?” said Sunset, looking at the table. “The Stonies suddenly gaining consciousness within two hours after those mutants showed up?”

“They’re called the Two Sisters,” said Twilight. “I’m sure somepony as immensely old as you remembers the legends.”

Sunset looked up at her. “Distantly…but you knew. You KNEW!”

“I had a sense of what they were,” said Twilight, spreading her front legs in a wide shrug, “and I happened to be aware of a prophecy that stated that they would eventually return. But that doesn’t mean I knew anything. If I had a bit for every fake prophecy I’ve read? I’d be able to buy you a solid gold rump-plate.”

“Ooh,” said Pinkie. “I’d contribute my money to see that! Oh wait, I don’t get paid! Except in PAIN!”

“You should have said something.”

“About a legend? I had no idea that they were even real. As it turns out? Yes. They once ruled Equestria. For a long, long time, with their rule ending exactly one thousand years ago.”

“When Discord defeated them and imprisoned them in the moon.”

“Yes,” said Twilight, tapping the model of the moon over her table. It quivered at her touch as though it were solid. “Really, an ingenious prison. Or it would have been if the fool had any idea what he was doing.”

“Now, now!” said Pinkie. “Blasphemy! Discord knows everything!”

“And yet he didn’t see this coming,” said Sunset.

“Of course,” said Twilight. “Pinkie, there are no gods. Only mortals who have transcended their ability to die. Discord is a fool, and a limited one at that. He got lucky.”

“With Sunset. Several times. I know. He told me the stories. He had pictures, too.”

“Wait…pictures?!”

“If he had had any idea the complexity of what he was dealing with,” said Twilight, staring at the model. “If we had just been allowed to examine it. But NO, moon-travel was forbidden. And now look at it. If there are any gods in this word? That machine is it. Who knows what it could be used to do?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Yes,” said Twilight, smiling, “but one I know the answer to!”

“What do you mean you know the answer to?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Because I know something you don’t!” Twilight seemed almost giddy. Sunset rolled her eyes, realizing just how much joy Twilight received from this situation.

“What?” she said.

“Look at this.” Twilight raised her horn to the map, and it shifted. The structures on it became dark, and instead it displayed a map of the energies that flowed throughout Equestria. At one time such an image might have shown laylines, but they had long since been subsumed by the Chaos pipelines that spread vital disorder throughout the world.

“Here,” said Twilight, pointing to a line of energy. Sunset followed it and noticed that it came from the edge of the Madlands and moved directly to the center of the fractal moon above.

“Something’s buried there,” she said. “That’s how they opened it. There’s a second part of the machine.”

“You mean a third part.”

“Third?”

Twilight grinned, and then revealed a second energy signal. It was much, much stronger than the first but our of phase to the point where a pony without substantial experience in magical and transverse fields likely would not have even had the thought of attempting to look for it.

Sunset looked at the line, tracing it through the air. It, like the other, led from the center of the moon, although in this time at a pure perpendicular. Instead of heading toward whatever strange machine must be buried in the Madlands, though, it took a very slightly different course. It instead went to an area in the Floater District.

“No…it isn’t…”

“It is,” said Twilight, nearly on the verge of laughter. She poked at the destination of the beam and enlarged it to the point where it took up most of the map. It was just as Sunset had expected, and perhaps even realized long in advanced on some instinctual level. The beam led directly back to Xyuka’s island.

“It was her,” said Sunset.

“It was. And it is.”

“Is?”

Twilight nodded, and pointed at the moon. “It isn’t like that by default. I’ve examined what I can, and although I still have no idea what it actually is, but I have a basic understanding. The spherical form is an inactive state. Dormant. This? This is actively consuming power.”

“How much power?”

“Every minute it’s open, it’s taking an entire year of Equestria’s energy. And I have no idea what it’s doing with it.”

Sunset stared at it. “But that doesn’t make sense…”

“Like cutting a bit into a hundred pieces,” suggested Pinkie Pie.

“Of course it does,” said Twilight. “Not the bit, though, that doesn’t. But I mean, come on! She released the Sisters, provided them with an army, and then had her own forces hamstring everything. Unlaw, the government- -they even tried to kill us. She’s been planning this for some time.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” repeated Sunset, this time more vehemently. “What’s her motivation?”

“Probably that cat on a clothesline,” suggested Pinkie Pie. “That one always motivates me.”

“My guess?” said Twilight. “She’s a arms dealer, right? If she starts up the Final War again, it will be the biggest conflict in a thousand years. Literally. And it could easily last another thousand. That’s a lot of profit.”

“Except that she never SELLS anything. I checked her budget, and cross referenced it with military spending. She supplies everything, but she doesn’t charge anything. Even the Stonies. Their whole price is third-party markup. She doesn’t make a cent.”

“Probably because she bathes a lot,” added Pinkie Pie.

“And this, this doesn’t make any sense either!” cried Sunset, pointing at the map. “Whatever she’s doing to the moon is taking a MASSIVE amount of money just to keep functioning, but why? What is she doing?”

Twilight looked at the map, and then leaned forward, putting her gloved hoof against her naked one and putting both under her chin. “It’s quite possible that the energy expenditure is required to allow the Sister’s to be free. I don’t have adequate data yet, but if the moon goes dormant again, it could take them with it.”

“Or it could take out half of Equestria.”

“That too.”

“That would be a bummer,” said Pinkie Pie. “But I bet it would be a REAL pretty firework.”

They all stared at the map for a moment, and then Twilight looked up at Sunset. “So,” she said.

“So what?”

“You know what I’m asking. Even though I’m the smartest here, clearly you have more clout. Ridiculous seniority. You’re the closest we have to a leader. What do you think we should do?”

“If you think you’re so smart, why don’t you give a suggestion? I can tell you’re just dying to.”

“I can offer a thought. In my opinion, we need to go after Xyuka. Take her down fast. Do whatever we need to do to get the information out of her. Tooth by tooth, if necessary. Then we find out where the Sisters are hiding, and kill them.”

“Because clearly we had good luck the last time we tried to do that.”

“Because we walked into a fight we hadn’t properly researched. We know more now. I can already tell you something important about them.”

“What?”

“That they’re weak. Why else wouldn’t they make the first move? Why let the Stonie units do it?”

“It’s called an economical expenditure of energy.”

“It’s called undermining royal authority. I fought Celestia. I don’t think she’s the kind of pony that takes over by subversion. She would want something big, grand, powerful, beautiful. Like her. No. They’re in hiding right now because they’re too weak. They have an army, and they’re free- -and their waiting for the time to use it.”

“No,” said Pinkie Pie suddenly. “Not yet.”

“Pinkie’s right,” said Sunset. “We need more time. We have no idea what we would be facing.”

“You would be facing a scientist,” said Twilight. “How concerned are about fighting an egghead?”

“I don’t know. How concerned would I be if I wanted to fight the egghead sitting in front of me right now?”

“Good point.”

“What you said earlier is right. We lost. Bad.” Sunset pointed out toward the other room. “Rainbow Dash can barely walk. Darknight’s been stabbed. Rarity is useless. And we still have no idea what they did to Starlight. We have no infrastructure and no access to our weapons or supplies.”

“So?”

“So? So maybe you, me, and Pinkie can track down Xyuka. Maybe we can even take her in. Or maybe the instant we show up we have Celestia and an entire legion of those damn teleporting noncans tearing us new plot holes.”

“So you’re saying we need more recovery time?”

“We at least need Rainbow Dash. If we had her, there might be a chance.”

“I think you’re greatly overestimating Xyuka.”

“And I think you’re both wrong,” said Pinkie. “That isn’t what I meant at ALL! It’s like ordering frosted cupcakes and getting ICED cupcakes! Full of CHEESE!” She frowned. “I meant, what if we’re not meant to do anything?”

Sunset and Twilight both turned to her. “We have to do something,” said Sunset.

“Do we? Because I don’t. I’m fine waiting here. I can be a waiter. With a little dress and everything.”

“Pinkie, you’re not making sense,” said Twilight.

“I’m getting to it!” snapped Pinkie. “It’s really HARD when you have this THING in a head that you share with ANOTHER PONY. Let me FINISH, okay?”

Twilight seemed slightly taken aback. “Sure,” she said.

Pinkie Pie took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. “Okay. Discord hasn’t contacted us. Believe me, I would know.”

“He doesn’t contact us for every mission,” noted Sunset.

“But he would for one this important! He loves us! Or me at least, because I’m adorable. He would want to see what we know, give the order…but he didn’t. We’re orderless. Odorless…”

“This one has to be a judgement call,” maintained Sunset. “It just has to be.”

“And if it isn’t? I mean, what if it’s all a joke?”

“I fail to see much funny in this,” said Twilight.

“You fail to see anything funny in anything! You should have Starlight help you pull the stick out of your butt! Butt what if it is? I mean, things really have been getting BORING recently. What if Discord wanted this? To make things fun again? Or…what if he’s saving them for himself? I mean, he barely managed to defeat them the first time. How are we supposed to pull it off?”

“That is not instilling me with confidence,” said Twilight. She turned to Sunset. “But she’s right. They’re not just mutants. They’re alicorns. Living gods. With an army. Two armies, even.”

“So do you just want to give up?” asked Sunset.

“No,” said Twilight harshly. “Because I know what the Sisters represent.”

“And what is that?”

“Tyranny. Rules. Restrictions.” Twilight gestured to the room around her and, implicitly, the castle beyond. “This? All this? All this is possible because Discord doesn’t bother with stupid rules. If I want to sever the optic nerves of a few hundred fillies and drill holes in their foreheads for acid? Who cares! Nopony stops me! But if they take control? RULES! And if science is regulated- -even in the SLIGHTEST- -it is strangled. It must be performed without any restrictions in the slightest. Sunset. Shimmer. If they take control, my work dies. And I cannot allow that. You know that.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Sunset. “I’m not old enough to remember what the world was before…but…”

“You can’t seriously be considering- -”

“No,” said Sunset, sternly. “I have my own reasons for fighting this war. To the death, if I have to. But it isn’t for Discord’s ideals. It doesn’t matter to me if I take my orders from a gray machine or from a winged Princess. But right now, I don’t. I take my orders from Discord.” She turned to Pinkie. “Whether he issues them or not.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“We wait,” said Sunset. “We heal. We regroup. Then we fight, and we win.”

The others looked to each other for a moment, and then nodded in agreement. �7~�]$