Half a dozen holographic screens shone at me in the darkness of Moondancer’s quarters. After leaving the Sky Palace’s peak, I didn’t have much choice but to head back to the Twelve’s workshop.

The meeting with the Stalliongrad delegates was practically over by the time I left it to go after Luna. The deer representative didn’t have any conditions, at least none she was ready to mention. The mystical and beautiful doe remained silent the whole time, yet watching every creature intently, even her allies. So, the rest of the conference was some formalities and the planning of meeting again to discuss the technicalities of the help Stalliongrad was going to provide. According to Sunset’s words, evacuating hospitals or the weak and helpless would most likely be Stalliongrad’s duty during the evacuation.

Spike was sedated and transferred into a special medical center, where he was being treated right now, but it would take some time before Sunset, Trixie or even Queen Chrysalis (who volunteered to take a look, but gave no promises) attempted to deal with the curse ravaging his mind. It was very late in the evening, so any visits to the infirmary were out of the question, and I didn’t want to bother Delight before she made up her mind. The same applied to looking for Tin Flower; she was likely to be asleep by then (she should be, at least).

Therefore, with no urgent tasks or meetings at hoof, I had very little to do. In fact, I was finally facing the only thing I had yet to approach, ironically the biggest task I ever had in my two lives: finding a way to become the Machine Goddess.

The first thing I did was make a plan (with a checklist). That was no easy task by itself, since I needed to define my goal, to understand what I was aiming for in concrete terms.

‘How does one become a god?’ was a good question to start with, but not the most correct one.

‘What is a god?’

By definition it means an entity of great knowledge and power, surpassing any mortal in that regard by a huge margin. Sadly, I had to admit that my understanding of that concept was more than a bit subjective. I always thought the Princesses to be equal to goddesses, but the death of one and the recent words of the other made me reevaluate my perspective on that matter. I barely knew anything about those who were called gods by the other nations, save for vague legends, and that obviously wasn’t something to build my plan on.

It seemed that I had to become an immortal being, more powerful than Princesses Celestia and Luna. That was a goal I had no idea whatsoever how to achieve, especially after the latter’s words, warning me that even if I wanted, Harmony would prevent me from getting that much magic. I knew that before, but Luna specifying that it was the main reason for everypony's limited magic output discouraged me greatly.

Worse, I didn’t even know where to start. Transcending mortality… Huh. I had actually already done that in some sense, maybe it was a starting point. But before starting to work on that idea, I also had to learn something I needed to know anyway. I wasn’t going to become just any goddess, but the one who was supposed to bring the Unity to equinoids. That meant upgrading their code to the Prime version of it, but to do that I had to study everything from the very beginning.

The only way to get any knowledge regarding the Prime Code was to look directly into the enchantments comprising the Twelve’s minds, their little Unity. Before doing something like that, I needed to know the basics, or preferably even more. That was why I was surrounded by translucent monitors, each of them showing some pieces of AI enchantments with the corresponding notes. Interestingly, most of them were documents stolen from the TCE labs and facilities by Swarm spies.

The information was segmentary due to the way it was obtained. There wasn’t a big tutorial, ‘Arcane AI Code for Dummies’. But I wasn’t new to the world of magic theory, and it was the other ‘me’ who created the code. After a whole night of diligent research I was sure I knew everything I needed to delve into the finer details, to the point that I had already come up with a few ideas on how to improve the existing enchantments.

There were a few bits of information I found quite surprising, and it was about that key difference between the Prime Code and the simplified AI. The equinoids with Prime Code relied on a nexus, in ideal conditions, a consciousness managing the streams of data within the network. Non-prime equinoids obviously didn’t, but their code wasn’t optimized to be independent. They needed something to stabilize their artificial minds, or they would fall apart without that ‘anchor’. Artificial memories served as that quasi-nexus.

I remembered Red Wire mentioning something like that, basic information about the world I was supposed to possess as an equinoid. But there was more than that – it was a fabricated fragment of life, as if an equinoid lived for a while before they were turned on for the first time. It also prevented any mental breakdowns after the scheduled wiping of the crystals, a procedure any equinoid had to undergo to avoid becoming too aware of their existence and also to prevent the accumulation of magic, something the TCE tried to avoid like the plague.

Though that knowledge wasn’t going to have much use for me (since I was planning to remove that dependence on false memories, which could become a problem when upgrading their code), I somehow couldn’t shake the feeling that it was important.

With all the notes being read at least once, I was left with only analyzing the received information and extrapolating. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be doing that, because I heard a hoof rapping at the door of the room. It took me a moment to realize what was strange about it. The Twelve would just call me, and the knock didn't sound like ceramic tapping against metal, the reason why my children used their voices instead.

“Come on in,” I called, turning to the door to meet an unexpected guest.

To my surprise a changeling peeked in, and not just any – it was Teleta. Her eyes widened in an avid interest as she saw the room’s contents, but she was quick to cull her curiosity and focus on the reason for her visit.

“Good morning,” Teleta greeted me with a small nod. “Clandestine Delight asked for you.”

I glanced at the glowing screens behind me. There wasn’t anything else I could learn from them anyway, nor did I want to make my friend wait.

“Could you lead me to her, please?”

Though Teleta was unharmed, save for a few bruises, she still stayed at the infirmary. Not for herself, but for Marmor, who was brought there in a hurry – it was a long way to the Hive’s hospital, and he was on death's door already. Delight, who wasn’t confined to her bed, eventually met Teleta and Marmor, thus learning about my return, and asked me to come. Nothing in Teleta’s story betrayed Del’s intentions. As much as it could be her worry for me after the risky foray into Canterlot’s most vile depths, it also could be to tell me her decision regarding Queen Chrysalis’ request.

When we reached the small hospital, Teleta bolted to the door next to Delight’s. The reason for her sprint was the nurse, who began to chide Teleta for violating the infirmary's visiting hours and denying the patient his much-needed rest. However, the overcaring changeling wasn’t kicked out, instead disappearing into Marmor’s room, leaving me before the entrance leading to the unknown.

I lightly tapped the door, glad of it being made from plastic.

“It is open,” Del’s voice came from the inside. I didn’t need to have her skills to hear the nervousness in her voice. I guessed she didn’t call me to ask about Spike, or leastwise, it wouldn’t be the only topic.

I let out a deep sigh and then entered her room.

Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t changed since the last time I visited. Delight was even in the same place, on her bed, leaning on the window with her healthy side and melancholically gazing into the hollow of the Sky Palace. It was filled with the reflected rays of dawn, full of changelings on the way to their jobs. I noted a few more things: a tray with untouched food and how the bedsheets were crumpled into a pegasus-sized improvised bird nest around Del.

Though I knew Delight was aware of my presence, she was showing no signs of that and no intention to speak first, leaving it to me.

“Del?” I carefully called after the silence stretched for too long.

Without turning from the window, still leaning on it, she asked me, so quietly I barely made out her words, “Would you hate me?”

“Huh?” I thought I misheard her.

“Would you hate me if I were to say ‘yes’?” Del asked again in a just as hollow, but slightly louder voice.

In all honesty, with all that was happening in my life recently I barely had any time to stop and think for more than one more step forward. Thus, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to think in the case of any choice Delight made.

“Why would I?” I asked, dumbfounded. Considering that I had given an equal chance for Delight either to accept or reject the offer, I shouldn’t be surprised that she apparently chose the former, but I was still taken aback a bit. Yet, I added, “I will support your decision no matter what you choose.” It wasn’t a lie.

“You hate the changelings and their queen,” Del whispered, then finally turned to me, her face full of sadness and voice bitter, “I know what she did. She told me.”

Grimacing in discontent was my instant reaction to the news. Delight talking with Queen Chrysalis wasn’t something I wanted to happen, since I was sure it skewed the objectivity of Del’s decision. Though, it was a question of how much the current queen revealed to Delight. So far, the conversation seemed to have a bit of a strange tone; either it was related to something other than the consequences of Del’s choice for the Swarm, or I didn't understand something.

“Children bear not the sins of their parents,” I cited Luna’s words, objecting to Delight’s point. “They are not the same changelings who invaded Canterlot.” On the inside I couldn’t help but cringe. I was lying through my teeth: my first visit to the infirmary was still fresh in my mind. I judged others by my worst assumptions, but myself by my best intentions.

“As for Queen Chrysalis…” I trailed off as I moved to the second part of Del’s claim. “I will never forgive her,” I admitted, ”but I don’t hate her either. It’s... complicated.”

I struggled to call her a villain, nor could I call her a hero, obviously. Who was she in my eyes? A murderer, though not by will; an invader and the savior of my nation; a ruler under a false face and a loving mother. She was changing every time I tried to define her. She was who she was – the queen of changelings, a master of transformation. However, Queen Chrysalis was about to die, and it would happen soon. Whatever I thought of her wouldn’t change anything.

Being a bit lost in my thoughts I barely noticed Delight looking at me intently, strangely, with an expression that I could only describe as dolesome gratitude.

“Then you won’t hate me if I say that they are very much like you.”

“What do you mean?” I tilted my head, trying to wrap my mind around her comparison. Whatever idea I had, I was somehow sure it had nothing to do with what Del meant.

“It is about what you told me the last time you visited. I’m a pony to you, not just a mare for a night,” Del smiled sadly.

I could only blink at that. It was… obvious? I did find her previous occupation a bit strange; that profession in general wasn’t something I was used to. But save for those uncanny psychology tricks Del used from time to time, it never mattered to me.

“Every single one of my clients, even the most gallant, polite and kind ones would just leave me without a word when they run out of time. I stopped existing for them that moment,” Delight muttered bitterly, almost venomously. “Even Flower and Wire look at me and see a Moth – ‘one of those ponies’. Not only that, of course, but it still stings.”

With that Del turned away from me for a moment, and I could see that she was fighting back a scowl and, perhaps, tears. When she turned back to me, her face was serene, less sad even, bearing the same grateful and respectful expression.

“Neither for you nor for changelings does my profession define me. You like me for who I am, not for what I am,” Delight stated clearly and resolutely, then smiled again, but without a single hint of sadness this time. “That was why I don’t want to lose you as my friend.”

I stared at her with a newfound respect. I thought that Del would accept the offer because of her ambition to be a pony greater than she ever was; or even to become a mother, a chance she lost when she became a Moth and now regretted. But in the end it was about love and friendship. The love she never got as a Moth, and the friendship she didn’t want to lose in the exchange for it.

Bowing my head slightly, but still noticeably, I said, “I am honored to hear that, Delight.” I didn’t deserve a friend like this.

My answer took Delight by surprise, but she quickly recovered and with a smirk commented, “I am not queen yet.”

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ I wanted to say, but I stumbled on my words and instead I snorted a laugh. Of course, Del wasn’t serious and she readily answered me with a giggle of her own. Our mild amusement grew into a hearty laugh, effectively relieving the tension in the room and dissolving the worries that had been festering in our minds for days.

I was glad for Delight, she was going to have a second chance to her life, stolen from her by Canterlot. She deserved that much. I was even happy for the changelings. Whether Queen Chrysalis was a good or a bad ruler for her children wasn’t for me to answer (though I suspected she was good, with the risks she had taken and the things she had achieved). Nevertheless, I was sure Delight was going to be a great queen. She had kindness in her, resting on a hard backbone which could turn into righteous fury. Hardship was familiar to her, letting her see things from the perspective of ordinary citizens... and those who were shunned. Smart and optimistic, she was nearly perfect for that job.

Speaking of which, “When are you going to be crowned?” I wondered if Del was aware that it was going to be a magic ritual, not a usual coronation ceremony.

“In a week,” she replied, still widely beaming, “Will you come?”

“Of course,” I promised, mirroring her bright smile.

I left the infirmary with a skip in my step this time, though not everything was perfect. Delight was happy, and I was happy for her. She was a bit worried, of course; becoming a changeling queen meant a huge responsibility and a lot to learn, but she was looking forward to it. She wasn’t going to be doing it alone either – the changelings wouldn’t leave her hanging and Sunset also knew a lot about running a Hive. And if everything went as I planned, I would be by her side as well.

The not so bright news was that I had no chance to talk with Flower. Her condition didn’t demand medical attention anymore (or at all, if I understood correctly), so she had no reason to stay at the infirmary. She was somewhere in the Sky Palace, guided by her sheer curiosity and ability to somehow get to the places where she wasn’t supposed to be. That meant if I wanted to talk with her, I had to dedicate some time to locating her first, and right this moment it wasn’t the top priority on my list. I had to think about what I had to say to her, which wouldn’t be just an apology – she needed an answer, which I wasn’t ready to give yet. I needed some time to think, but currently my mind was full of arcane writings.

Having made that trip twice, I managed to return to the Twelve’s workshop on my own (though I did have to backtrack a couple of times after taking a wrong turn). With my night’s research still fresh in my mind I wanted to ‘strike while the iron was hot’.

The problem was that mastering the code, Prime or not, wasn’t really that important unless I became immortal, omnipotent and so on. I had the option to follow Princess Celestia’s steps and assume my role by sheer charisma and skill (both of which I lacked), half-tricking the equinoids by bringing them into the Unity while remaining the same pony-equinoid I was. Even if they weren't indestructible, the crystals had shown in practice that they could last for centuries. But, although it was very unpleasant to admit, following those steps would bring everything to the same end.

Thus, I had to focus on doing the impossible rather than the doable. The only reason I wanted to return to studying the code was the possibility that it held the answer I was looking for. I had no concrete ideas at the moment, save for my recent revelation about transcending mortality.

Returning to the remains of the Royal Palace would be my first step. If there was a way to trick Harmony, it would be at the restricted section of the Royal Archives.

That was a sound plan.

It all went out of control, though I was to blame.

When I asked the Twelve for help with the AI enchantments, very soon it became crystal clear that one night worth of reading notes on one of the most complex arcane practices to date wasn’t even close to enough for me to truly understand that topic.

For five days and nights (with rare breaks taken when my mind became too jumbled) I studied the non-Prime AI, using as an example none other than Archivarius himself. He survived my ‘explosion’ at the Archives, but the EMP grenades used by the TCE police fried the connections between his memory crystals as well as a few of the crystals themselves. I learned the reason why they didn’t work on me back then: my memory crystals were solid-body, as opposed to the usual microcrystal clusters (made of the Crystal Ponies’ cell tissue), and those grenades were supposed to temporarily disrupt the connections between the tiny crystals. Often, that anti-equinoid weapon happened to be overcharged, causing more damage than it should, as ended up being the case with Archivarius.

He wasn’t dead, per se, but bringing him back to consciousness would require a lot of work and time that nopony and no equinoid had at the moment. Not to mention he wasn’t really needed with the Archives being half-destroyed.

Using a special device, an arcanium stand in essence, I was able to project the enchantments of his crystals into the air around me like holograms and study them. Unfortunately, even the considerable and quite unplanned amount of time I spent doing my research wasn't enough – coding was a science in itself, requiring more than just a week of hard studying to fully master it. However, the advances I made were enough for me to move on to the Prime Code, which I had been learning for the last twenty-eight hours straight, thanks to Seven’s help.

I was sitting, staring at the barely comprehensible lines of arcane runes intertwined with themselves, resembling a plate of spaghetti. Unlike Archivarius’ AI studied through and through by the Twelve, modified and left with countless notes after he was ‘appropriated’ from the TCE, the Prime Code put by Moondancer into our children had not a single annotation. I was pretty sure that I would have left notes when I was creating the enchantments, but Moonie wasn’t like that. The RCRC was a mess mostly thanks to her; she never put things back where she got them, among many other infuriating habits.

Another problem was with the ‘language’. The Prime Code was close to traditional magic, with intricate and ornate runes, the lines of them folded into spools like yarn; all that addlement crammed into nonuniform gemstones. The non-Prime AI resembled a mathematical table, the runes turned into numbers and formulas, divided into segments and distributed evenly among the microcrystals, each of them a copy of another.

It wasn’t hard to guess which would be easier to work with.

Seven, even with the plates on her head and body moved aside to reveal the crystals and connect them to the arcanium stand, was still able to fully function and comment, answering my questions when I was brought to my wit’s end, but not always – some things remained secret even to her.

Right now I was trying to understand what that huge chunk of data with only a few enchantments was doing in the code, especially as part of a shared network, rather than a feature of an individual. It wasn’t even active. Seven had no idea what it was, but saw no harm in trying to find out its function, so I ran the program.

For a few moments nothing happened, and I almost decided to move on to the next part of Seven’s consciousness, but then her eyes flared up, momentarily blinding me. When I regained my sight, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

In front of me was Moondancer.

“Good to see you again, Twi,” she spoke in a raspy voice, matching her appearance – she was far from young.

Clad in a dirty lab coat, with her muzzle and hooves covered in machine grease, which was also clearly present in her mess of a mane made into a practical (but silly even by my standards) bun. Thick glasses held together by at least three types of tape were perched on the tip of her nose, and she was peering at me above them with a crooked and cryptic smile. Her figure flickered, and only now did I notice the soft glow of magic.

“Moonie!” I cried and rushed out of the stand, almost tripping on the wires and cables strewn all over the floor. “I… Are you…”

I didn’t know what to say, what to think. Was she like me, memories put into a machine only to have another shot at life? Or was she just a recorded message? The latter seemed to be more possible, considering her nonplussed reaction.

Seeing my confusion (or not, if she was a recording), she spoke:

“If you see me, then it means you made it back and I, well…” Moonie shrugged and let out a sigh. “The first thing I want to tell you is that I truly regret how it all turned out.” She glanced away guiltily, thick sadness permeating her voice as she continued, “I know things weren’t so peachy between us as of late, but I still did everything I could for you to return to a world where you are remembered for your achievements, rather than mistakes.”

“Are you talking about the Transference Paradox?” I asked, not sure if I was going to receive an answer. I was also wondering what she meant by ‘not so peachy between us’. Our interactions didn’t sound so bad in the last recording we made together, though it could have been too short, or something happened after it.

“Yes, among other things,” Moondancer answered to both my relief and surprise. I was right about it being more than just the Transference Paradox.

Following her confirmation, I was quick to inquire, “What other things?”

However, her reply wasn’t what I expected. “I’m sorry, my responses are limited, you must ask the right questions.”

It was said in a deeply apologetic tone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was also a half-condescending, half-mischievous very subtle hint, as if it was a riddle rather than an answer.

So, it was a hologram with a rudimentary AI allowing Moonie to converse with me in a very limited manner. It made sense, in fact. I wasn’t sure if the program recognized my magic or if it was recorded only for me, but either way, the information it possessed wasn’t supposed to be acquired easily. Moondancer’s partial memory was a safeguard, a lock.

Armed with that conclusion, I began to think. Moonie wasn’t here for an idle chat, but she did want to tell me something. The question was: what?

She told me about being remembered for my achievements, but it had little to do with the Transference Paradox. Not my mistakes… I failed to move on, I was involved in creating the TCE, I gave away the equinoid enchantments… The first was too personal. The second was too early for her to know; the TCE hadn’t turned the Crystal Empire into a slaughterhouse yet, and barely anypony knew about it. So it had to be connected with equinoids. I wondered if we had a conflict about them – Moondancer had to know what I was doing, and unlike me, she would have cared.

Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle began to come together in my head. The things that had been nagging on my mind starting to make sense. If Pinkie and I were dead, Moonie taken into the Sky Palace and Trixie gone, then who told the equinoids about everything? There was a considerable gap in time between the four of us leaving the pre-Tunnels one way or another and the emergence of the runaway equinoids’ community. Somehow they learned about a lot of things, including such specifics as the Unity, but not about the fact that their Mother was basically the one who doomed them to be the way they were. Somepony very carefully fed them the information with a purpose.

The more I thought about it, the more crazy it sounded, but at the same time, the more it became clear. But it was only a guess so far, I needed to hear if it was true or not.

“Did you…” I began, but stammered, in the rush caused by my stroke of insight failing to find the right words on the first try. “Were you the one who created the legend about the Machine Goddess?”

“Yes,” Moonie’s image calmly answered to my shock. “Nothing less can operate the Nexus, you said it yourself.”

My vision swam, because there could be only one way the logic could take the next turn, “Was it my plan? To become a goddess?” With how much time passed, with how the facts managed to become twisted over time without any direct witnesses, I couldn’t write off the possibility. It could explain why I gave away the enchantments in the first place, to claim them later, but something went wrong...

“No,” the hologram objected, shaking her head.

That meant it was Moonie’s own idea, to give me a chance to redeem myself and fix, if not everything, the most grave of my mistakes, based solely on her faith in my return, though it should be impossible. I wasn’t sure if I should curse or thank her. It was classic Moondancer, doing what she thought was right for her friends.

If it was her plan, then she should know how to execute it, meaning that I suddenly had a way to answer my biggest conundrum: ascension to godhood.

“Okay then,” I nodded both to myself and the hologram, certain what I should ask next, “How do I become the Machine Goddess?”

“I’m sorry, my responses are limited, you must ask the right questions,” Moondancer deadpanned in the same very vaguely cryptic way.

That was strange. The recording admitted that it was Moondancer’s plan to set everything up for me to take the place as the equinoids’ mother and sovereign, but she refused to tell me how.

I sat, tapping my muzzle with my hoof, producing sharp clicks.

‘The right questions’. It was how the code worked: a machine could answer any inquiry whatsoever, but the problem was formulating those questions the correct way.

“Is there even a way to become a goddess?” I tried again.

The hologram beamed at me.

“That, my friend, is the right question,” she said, giving me an approving look and nod, Moondancer’s eyes under her gray bushy brows as young as I remembered, despite how wrinkled her face was. “But you are asking the wrong pony. Program terminated.”

That said, her image winked out of life.

With Seven by my side, I was all but galloping through the Sky Palace.

It took me about a minute to determine to whom Moondancer referred. There were four of us, but only one could possibly meet me by the time I returned. She could wait forever. Considering that Trixie knew how to work beyond Harmony’s limitations and she also wanted me to succeed, the answer was obvious.

I felt invigorated, eager to unravel that mystery, now that I had found a way. Though I also felt like I was forgetting something. But Del’s ‘coronation’ was going to be in a day, right? Right. I asked Seven and she confirmed that while I had spent a lot of time at the Twelve’s, I hadn’t completely lost track of it.

Trixie was staying in one of the elite suites, near the top of the palace, not far from where Luna stayed. To my surprise, she wasn’t there alone – Octavia hadn’t returned to Stalliongrad. Or, rather, she had returned to Canterlot at last. It was my chance to met another Former One.

Seven was guiding me through the corridors of the upper working, ‘office’, quarters, when suddenly, a seemingly random changeling called for me by name. Curious, I trotted back a few steps to meet that mare.

“Miss Sparkle,” she greeted me with a galant bow, “My name is Acus. I am working on treating Spike and I actually was looking for you. He is ready for a visit and asked for you.”

My visit to Trixie was instantly forgotten or at least moved one position lower on my list of priorities.

“How is he?” was my first question, leaving my speaker before I even thought. My mind was brimming with many more, but above all of them was my immense joy and relief. The curse was lifted, my fears dissolved.

“Well…” Acus faltered, looking suspiciously reluctant. “Spike’s condition is stable, but I am more of a manager than a changeling directly involved in the process of treatment.” Then she brightened. “You should talk with Forfex, she should be with him at the lab right now.” Addressing Seven, she explained, “We repurposed the old hydroponics lab, you know where it is.”

Seven nodded to Acus and then turned to me, “Is that there you want to go now, Mother?”

“Yes, please.”

We had to backtrack, or at least descend a few dozen floors, before we began to move in a horizontal direction. The lab was located on the level somewhere between the technical and ‘office’ zones, looking like it served as a science department. Most of the laboratories seemed to have been closed quite a long time ago, judging by the rust that had time to accumulate on the sealed doors. A few were still working, however, allowing me to take a look at the work going on in them. More often than not I was met with a green color: every second lab was dedicated to some kind of plant research, which made sense with the Sky Palace trying to be independent from the city and thus requiring a stable source of food.

Finally, we reached a massive door with a duo of guards armed with stunning charges standing on the sides of it. The entrance leading to the laboratory looked quite old, but as I came through it, I was pleasantly surprised – the interior didn’t match the outside. Sterile white and clean, it was full of new and high-quality equipment, to my confusion both medical and technical.

Spike was nowhere to be seen in that part of the lab, but there was a door leading further and at least half a dozen changelings milling around, one of them already moving in my direction.

“Twilight Sparkle, right?” the changeling in a lab coat asked me as she came closer (they were all in lab coats for that matter). Though she spared me a glance, all her attention was on a tablet held in her hoof. It was a holographic device, a frame with a projection inside, so I could see her staring intently at the moving rows of data.

“Yes,” I nodded, but then realized that it would go unseen. “And you are Forfex, right?”

“Yup, in the flesh.” Forfex finally tore her eyes from the hologram. “I bet my sister, Acus, sent you here, right? That lazy bugger,” she grumbled.

“She said Spike asked for me and that I can see him,” I replied, glancing at the only door in the room save for the one I used to enter.

In response, Forfex grimaced, making me feel a pang of worry. Was something wrong?

“Ah, our patient…” the changeling mare sighed. “Quite a case, that poor thing.”

My previously bright mood began to rapidly somber. In retrospect I shouldn’t have been so optimistic with so little told to me. ‘Stable’ didn’t mean good, he could be connected to life support for all I knew.

“How bad is his condition?” I asked and then added, learning from my mistake, “Besides being stable.”

“Sunset and…” Forfex trailed off, scratching the back of her head. “What was her name? Thorax?”

“Trixie,” I corrected her. If I wasn’t so concerned I would have found it humorous. The changelings’ names were interesting, mildly speaking.

Forfex nodded, “Yes, her,” and continued, “They removed the magic affecting Spike.” She winced and paused, giving me an unsure glance before speaking again, “According to their words it was the remnants of a spell used to revive the Crystal Ponies as golems during the Great War.”

The oil froze in my tubes. Somehow, knowing what exactly struck him down made it much worse. More than that, my mind readily began to create an explanation to how it could happen. An oblivious soldier bringing Spike a tasty treat from the battlefield, a chunk of flesh infused with necromantic magic, looking like a delicious gem. Or maybe somepony did that on purpose, perhaps thinking of it as a harmless prank, or not... If that was a possibility for me, I would have either vomited or fainted.

After giving me a few moments to come to my senses, or at least to a condition resembling that, Forfex quietly said, “It was impossible to determine if Spike lost any limbs or organs before the magic began to affect him or because of it, but that spell caused the prosthetics to become infused with his body in… not a good way,” she grimly finished.

“What… what does it mean for him?” I was afraid to hear the answer, but I needed to.

“As it was said, his condition is stable, the spell is gone now,” Forfex stated, scrolling through the data and looking like she wanted to show it to me, but deciding against it at the last moment. “But…” I gave her a wary glance, I wasn’t liking where that was going. “We had to remove all the prosthetics and the affected tissues. Spike is linked to a life support system right now,” -I cursed myself- “and we don’t know how to proceed further, because he needs artificial organs, but we aren’t sure about the Transference Effect in dragons.”

We were both silent for some time, Forfex looking at me sympathetically.

Then I weakly asked, “May I see him?” I didn’t want to listen anymore. Though I needed to hear that, it was more than I wanted.

The changeling mare hesitated for a few moments, giving me strange glances, looking somewhat fearful. She guided me to the door and pressed a button near it, revealing the bright room beyond, smelling sharply of disinfectant.

Unable to look anywhere but at the floor, I stepped in.

The dragons were always a mystery to everypony, to every other creature, maybe even to themselves. Their vehement reluctance to assist in any research aimed at revealing the secrets of their kind wasn’t helping. The scaled occupants of the seemingly uninhabitable lands that could be found beyond the Celestial Sea were unlike any other being. The magic fueling their hearts full of unquenchable fire came not from Harmony nor even from the arcanium core – an enigma. That mystical energy was what made the dragons one of the most unique and dangerous nations living on this planet.

There was no danger left in the dragon before me.

The moment I managed to finally tear my gaze from the tiled floor, it became glued to a miserable form on a huge hospital bed (actually at least five beds moved together). Forfex said that they had to remove the artificial parts of Spike’s body, but she didn’t say how much of it was not flesh anymore.

Almost everything.

The only limb he had remaining was his right arm and only the shoulder part of it, ending in an ugly, freshly stitched stub midway to where his elbow should be. His wings, legs, tail… all gone. The scars where his wings should be actually appeared very old. Only a few patches of his scaly skin barely covered his flayed body; muscle, withered and dark, was exposed to the air. Through the countless cuts in his flesh, tubes went into his body and out, carrying murky liquids. Spike had so little left of him that I could see the glow and beat of his heart through the gaps between his bared ribs.

Finally, my eyes stopped at Spike’s, the only part of him that wasn’t removed or mutilated in one way or another. He gazed back at me with an expression I couldn’t read – there was nothing left of his face but raw meat.

He took a shuddering breath, filling his only lung (which, to my further shock, I could see) and exhaled, “Mom…”

His voice, hoarse and weak, hissing awkwardly from the absence of lips, but the same as I remembered, broke the spell, and I rushed to him, barely avoiding tripping over the wires and tubes of the countless machines that kept feeding life into him.

“Spike!” I cried, extending my hooves to embrace his neck, but stopping myself awkwardly before I could touch his tender flesh. I put them near his muzzle and used the bed to propel myself close enough to nuzzle a remaining patch of skin around his eye, whispering in his ear, “I’m so happy to see you.”

Though Spike was skinned and butchered, he was still an adult dragon, his head almost the size of my own body.

“Me too…” Spike answered, rumbling under me. I felt his stub of an arm move and press on my back in an attempt to return my gesture. “I thought you were gone in that stupid experiment, I saw your grave.”

“I’m not…” I muttered and trailed off, not sure how to present him the situation. Then I realized that it didn’t matter. “Not anymore,” I said resolutely, “I’m here with you now.”

Our embrace lasted for a while before I finally leaned back only to regard Spike’s injuries with a pained look. This close his state looked even worse.

“I…” I stammered and had to wait until a wave of panic attack would pass over me. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes…” Spike groaned, making me wince. Seeing my reaction he chuckled and tried to joke, “Stings a little…” his feeble laugh turned into a cough, saliva and blood splattering the pristine white bed sheets.

Not knowing how to help I froze in front of him in desperation, my limbs outstretched but useless. I put a hoof on his stub in silent support. His cough didn’t last long, fortunately, but still left me concerned – it was obvious he was in agony.

Spike took a few laboured breaths before his body finally stopped shaking, the bared tendons ceasing their convulsions. “But, you know, as long as my dragon heart burns, I will live,” he commented and then grimly added, “I’ve had it worse.”

I almost recoiled in horror. What could be worse than that? And yet somehow I knew Spike wasn’t exaggerating.

“I’m so sorry…” I mumbled, my heart falling apart. If I could cry, I would be bawling right now. “I should have never let you go to the frontlines, I knew it wouldn’t end well,” I bitterly said, feeling anger growing inside of me. It was another of my mistakes. I hated myself so much in that moment. Then I finally realized what he was talking about when he spoke of the worse things. ”But at least that vile magic isn’t affecting your mind anymore.” It was a small joy, but I knew that torture of the spirit could be much more severe than any physical pain.

“My mind?” Spike echoed my words, sounding confused. “What are you talking about?”

I breathed a sigh of relief – he didn’t know. Then a pang of grief pierced my proverbial heart. He didn’t know.

Grimacing, I explained, “The magic that made the metal fuse to your body also drove you mad.” Maybe this moment wasn’t the best to reveal to Spike that he had been a feral beast massacring the underground populace for centuries, but there never would be a perfect moment to tell him the painful truth.

However, Spike didn’t react to that as something new. He sounded incredulous instead. “The only time I thought it drove me mad was when I saw you in the Tunnels a few weeks ago.”

What.

No, that was some kind of a mistake, a misunderstanding.

Shreds of skin and torn mane wet with blood were stuck in between the glistening razor sharp blades.

“But… but…” I had to calm myself once again, the only thing preventing me from hyperventilating was my lack of lungs. “You were hunting those who lived in the Tunnels! You killed ponies!”

“Yes, I did,” Spike answered terrifyingly calmly, making me take a step back from his bed. “No magic made me do that. It was my choice.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It must be some kind of a nightmare, another hallucination punishing me for my sins.

“Why?” I squeezed out of myself, my voice trembling.

“Wait, mother, you don’t remember?” Spike squinted his eyes at me.

That not only didn’t answer my question, it created more, but before asking them I had to explain, “I have memories only before the accident at the trial of the cybersuit.”

Spike half-closed his eyes for a few seconds, thinking, then rumbled, “Interesting...”

It wasn’t what I expected, but his silence gave me a moment to compose myself, which allowed me to focus on the only thing that mattered right now: Spike willingly committed murder. My mind teetered, threatening to send me into another of the spirals leading to a nervous breakdown, as I started to think about how many Spike killed.

“What. Happened?” I deadpanned in a cold tone, leaving Spike no other interpretation for my intentions.

“I left the frontline to be by your side,” he answered nonchalantly, but then his tone gained a growling, feral quality to it. “As a bodyguard. You needed that.”

My attempt to get a clear answer failed, as Spike apparently decided to tell me all that took place after the fateful trial. Obviously, I wanted to know it, but before that I had to understand why Spike chose to become a murderer. However, his words, the part about me needed security fueled my curiosity to the point where it won. “What? Why?”

Either Spike didn’t hear me, or simply ignored my words. He went on, telling me what happened next in a quiet, yet deep and imposing voice of a grown dragon:

“Rarity, or who I thought was Rarity,” Spike scoffed, “sent me away, as an ambassador to the Dragon Lands. In truth, there was an actual reason for it: the Dragon Lord wanted to go out with a bang and was planning a war.”

That aligned with Trixie’s story, and though I couldn’t remember the dragons being considered a threat during the Great War, I could easily imagine why such fear arose.

“And he got it – years later the griffins came, armed with the same weapons that broke the siege of the Crystal Empire, and killed him.” There was no regret nor even a hint of lamenting for the dead Dragon Lord in his words.

Save for that detail, Spike again confirmed what Trixie told me about the Griffin Empire advances, though I didn’t think the attack was so devastating.

“We had no chance, but that wasn’t going to stop us. As fierce as the war with griffins was, it couldn't compare to the strife tearing dragondom apart from inside: with the Dragon Lord dead, every damn dragon wanted to command everything. Ember, the Dragon Lord’s daughter, and I tried to rally them and turn to Equestria for help, but ended up being exiled. My curse, taken for a disease, didn’t help.”

Spike paused, recovering his breath, wheezing loudly. Though I didn’t forget how that conversation began, I listened with a breath held (figuratively).

“By that time, you were declared dead,” he muttered, and I understood the true reason why he had to catch a breath. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to recall, and Spike sounded as somber and sorrowful as if he was reliving that moment.

“I had no more reason to stay in the Dragon Lands, anyway. As I was leaving, we met a pony, or who I thought was a pony until I realized that she had the same magic Rarity had – it was a changeling. It didn’t take me too long to connect the dots. Queen Chrysalis snuck into Canterlot right under our noses and was keeping the Elements apart and you helpless.”

If only he had stayed… Queen Chrysalis was smart, she knew Spike would become my eyes and eventually see through her, especially considering how he felt about Rarity.

“Before rushing back to Canterlot, I had to visit the Crystal Empire, I knew that I had gotten the curse there and it had started killing me already,” Spike continued, but suddenly stopped, his eyes becoming glassy and body beginning to shiver.

For a moment I panicked, thinking that something went wrong with the life-supporting machinery, but then I realized something. Enough time had passed for the Crystal Empire to turn into the worst nightmare possible. Spike was shaking with rage.

“When I arrived there… The things I saw…” The muscles on his face were twitching, trying to form a grin full of sharp teeth, but he had no skin and his gums were bare. “The endless rows of capsules with the Crystal Ponies being grown… Then adults being taken out of them, gaping like fish, squinting at the sun, only to be cut into parts as they screamed… A literal river of blood reeking of death and atrocity…“

Spike closed his eye, and a single tear rolled from it, leaving a wet trail on exposed flesh, falling onto the white of his bed and blooming into a pink flower. All my anger at him, all my righteous demands were forgotten. I placed my hoof on the remains of his arm, squeezing it as gently as I could. No creature should have to suffer even the sight of that atrocity. Knowing of its existence, even imagining the possibility, was too much.

A few minutes passed before his voice, hollow and grim, filled the room again. “I tried to help them, there was a resistance fighting back. We reached the Crystal Heart, almost destroyed it, but had to fall back.”

Now Spike was recounting another side of the story Queen Chrysalis told me. He was the dragon who was involved in the liberation mission. But… that meant that Spike was amongst those who turned the Crystal Empire into a lure for the Windigos… Yet I couldn’t bring myself to blame Spike, even partially, for what happened. Not just because he was my son. He was doing the right thing when nopony else did. It wasn’t his failure, but the TCE’s.

“Ember sacrificed herself so I could flee,” Spike whispered almost inaudibly and fell silent, another tear painting the white beneath him with crimson. “I made it to Canterlot on a freight train, bleeding out and dying, my wings torn to shreds and legs broken. The changelings knew that I knew, the TCE knew that I knew, and for everypony else I was your son, so I had to hide. I got the metal limbs in the Tunnels and stayed there.”

Grimly, he finished, “I was too late to change anything. And I didn’t want to anymore.”

A heavy silence hung between us. Spike told me the story of his life until basically the moment he met me again. It was terrible. I couldn’t afford to fully embrace what he went through; it would leave me broken. However, he didn’t answer my question, at least not in the way I meant.

“I… I’m so sorry Spike,” I touched the skin under his eye with my forehead, then leaned back and steeled myself, “But I still don’t understand…”

The comprehension in Spike’s gaze told me what he knew that I wanted to hear, though for some reason he wasn’t telling me it. Not because he was reluctant or didn’t have the words, but as if I should know the answer already. Still, he said, “You are lucky to not remember, just knowing how you were treated was worse than seeing the Crystal Empire.”

“What do you keep talking about?” I snapped. It wasn’t the first time he vaguely hinted at some issue ‘I’ had with ponies, or whoever, after the accident.

“You always were that oblivious, mom.” To my surprise Spike shot me a glare. “After we all returned without Cadence from the Crystal Empire, the ponies began to whisper. As the war raged on, they started to talk aloud. After the trial they openly blamed you for Rainbow’s death, called you ‘the Hero Killer’...” I stared at him in shock and disbelief. Was it true? How didn’t I notice? “You don’t believe me? Go and take a look at your tombstone, though they built that ugly tower all over it...”

I was refused it, Moondancer had to make one for me. The marks on it, as if somepony had tried to write something, but was stopped by the powerful enchantment. How much must the ponies have hated me? ‘Among other things’, Moondancer’s hologram told me. She wasn’t talking only about the equinoids.

Yet that still didn’t answer the question of why Spike would turn into a feral beast, and I asked, “Was that why you started to kill ponies? Hunted them like prey? To avenge me?” I could understand that, but not accept. After everything what Spike went through, such a thing could be the straw that broke his back. His mind.

“I needed to survive, I had to eat,” Spike answered like it was a simple fact, his reply hitting me like a slap in the face.

My mouth opened and closed a few times before I was able to voice my wrath. However, I didn’t speak, I screamed, “But why kill!? You were raised among them, you were friends with ponies! You could have asked for help!”

“I didn’t want any help from the traitors,” Spike all but spat, his bared tendons again trying futilely to form an angry scowl.

“Queen Chrysalis tricked them all,” I seethed, pointing with my hoof in the vague direction of ‘them’, “The TCE are beyond evil, I can’t disagree, but not everypony is the TCE!”

Spike looked at me like I was trying his patience, asking the same question over and over, though the answer was obvious. When he spoke, it was in a slow, deliberate tone.

“When I was staying in the Dragon Lands I was writing to you every so often, but I also had a penpal, Fancy Pants, if you could remember him.”

I couldn’t fathom how that was relevant to my accusations, but still let him go on with that. I did remember Fancy Pants, a noble stallion, surprisingly smart and nice for his station and wealth.

“From him I learned how the ponies accepted the Crown, even though it was obvious that what the new government was doing was wrong. Nopony tried to stop the corrupt incompetent rulers from answering with violence to every complaint. There were thousands upon thousands of refugees who suffered horrible lives, but only so few joined Fluttershy and Pinkie. The others silently accepted their fates, many even openly supported the Crown. Chrysalis may be a murderous witch under a disguise, but the actual villains were the ones who didn’t stop her and instead followed her, who gambled on their neighbors being squashed so they themselves would prevail, only to be sent to the camps next week. The ponies had a choice and they chose a nightmare. The changelings had nothing to do with anything.”

It was like listening to Queen Chrysalis. Was it her ploy, a catch in her deal? Did she put a spell on him? But something was telling me that wasn’t the case, because I finally began to understand what Spike was trying to tell me all this time, with every sentence of his story.

“Spike, not everypony is bad, it’s… just wrong!” I yelled at him. “I thought I raised you better than that! You can’t simply kill the ponies becau–”

He cut me off in a hard voice, “I wasn’t killing for fun or retribution, I did what I had to do to survive. You were in the Tunnels, that mare who was with you reeked of sex and blood…” He paused, squinting at me in discontent. “How many good ponies are out there? Tell me.”

“She is a good pony!” I barked back, though I felt like it was a weak argument. How many ponies were raping her? Three? Four? The Tunnels were a sanctuary for all kinds of ponies. Spike’s question wasn’t without sense, but it was wrong from the beginning, not with the answer implied for it.

“Perhaps,” Spike agreed, “But if I kill a good pony, nothing bad happens. If I kill a rapist or a murderer, they won’t commit a crime again. They all would have died anyway, their lives never meant anything.”

“Spike, are you serious!?” I screamed at him in shock. What kind of logic was that?

A tired sigh escaped his muzzle, his lung deflating in his ribcage, “I tried your way, mother. Look where it brought you. Where it brought us.”

“Just. Stop.”

I turned away from him and squeezed my eyes shut, or, rather, simply closed my eyelids, that was all they could do. In a meaningless gesture I pinched the bridge of my nose, porcelain clicking against porcelain.

It wasn’t stupid or nightmarish… It was just wrong, every moment of it, every word Spike said. I could see the path his logic took, but there wasn’t even the smallest hint of morality on that path. It was a twisted way to see the world. He wasn’t a feral beast, he was… he was… judge, jury and executioner. My hoof fell to the floor with a loud click. How different was he from Rainbow Dash in that regard? They were both the same, broken by the things they witnessed, lost their faith in everything good. In fact, they weren’t the only ones. Delight turned away from her kind in the end, choosing the changelings. However, she wasn’t a Former One or a dragon from times when ponies remembered the virtues, yet she was a good pony. How many more living in Canterlot had their virtues stolen from them?

That wasn’t important right now.

The reunion I wanted to happen for so long didn’t go as I expected. It would be an understatement to say that I was mad at Spike. Though that didn’t mean that I would turn away from him – I still had to find a way to help his horrible condition. I just needed some time to cool down. He was wrong, and the price for his mistakes was dire, but I was sure I could persuade him to think different, to make him realize what he had done.

I was preparing to leave without a word, but then one of the endless questions nagging at the back of my mind suddenly came to focus. “On second thought, tell me one last thing: What did equinoids did to you? Why kill them?”

“Listen more to the crazies in the Tunnels,” Spike snorted. “I would never eat the flesh of a Crystal Pony ever again. I haven’t killed a single one, only took their gems out when they happened to be in my way, and hid them. It is still better than the lives they live.” The hoard. “I couldn’t bring myself to kill something that called you their mother,” he finished in a curious tone, looking at me intently. So he knew. I wondered how much, and what he thought about it.

“I… thank you for that,” I said with a grateful nod. Then my voice hardened, ”But you should know that I am still disappointed in you. You are not the Spike I remember.”

“And you are not Twilight,” Spike quickly responded to me.

“You mean ‘as you remember me’?” I asked, though I was sure it was a mistake. All that talking must have tired him.

“No,” came Spike’s reply, confusing me even further.

“What?”

Spike used his mangled arm to raise his body from the bedsheets and turn to face me, looking at me intently with his eyes, burning with some strange expression I couldn’t read. Then he said, the glowing heart in his chest beating in time with his somber words, “The magic is more or less the same, but you don’t act like the Twilight who died along with Celestia, like my mother. And not like the blinded hysterical mare I never could recognize, who blamed herself for being alive and who would have agreed with me.”

I left Spike’s room without a word, walking past Forfex even though she seemed to have something to tell me. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want anything but to forget Spike’s words. To wake up and find that it all was a fever fantasy, another of those morbid visions I now had instead of dreams.

The door to the ex-lab shut behind me and I took a few steps from it to stop and lean on the wall. It was then I realized that I was in the company of three ponies. Not ponies, in fact. Two changelings still stood guard, but the third wasn’t a pony either. I doubted Trixie counted as one anymore.

Seven must have found and brought her here, but I still wasn’t in the mood to speak about anything, even such an important matter as my mission. The approaching sound of her arcanium hooves clopping against the floor reached my hearing, meaning that my wishes would remain only wishes.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Trixie said, “I didn’t know.”

I gave her no response, I didn’t even bother to turn to her. Though things weren’t anywhere near smooth between us, I didn’t blame her for giving me false hope. It would have been so much better if her words were true and it was insanity which guided Spike.

In fact, there wasn’t much reason for me to be mad at Trixie for anything. Sure, she wasn’t telling me everything, hiding the details of her life. But in truth, she didn’t have anything to hide. Between Sunset, Rainbow, Queen Chrysalis… Spike… even myself, she was the least monstrous. If anything, she was a hero compared to us.

Remembering something Sunset told me, I asked, not as much as out of curiosity, but to not appear disrespectful with my silence, “What did Sombra do to you?”

Though I couldn’t see Trixie, it was easy to imagine her grimace. That question must be bringing very unpleasant memories.

“I passed the plan of the Crystal Empire defenses to the Equestrian Army so they could find a spot to break through,” Trixie quietly said. “I was by his side in the throne room when your brother stormed in. King Sombra instantly understood who had betrayed him and used a spell on me that made my body decay.” She gulped. “Slowly.”

“Shining Armor would have helped you,” I commented, finally turning to look at her. As expected, Trixie didn’t look like she was having a good time.

“For him I was just another Coven witch, I was lucky to get away alive. And he had just learned that Princess Cadence was dead, he wouldn't listen,” she replied with a shake of her head. “I tried to dispel the curse, but could do nothing. So, I grabbed an unfinished spell King Sombra was working on – it was supposed to make him a god or something like that. I hoped that it would save me, but it didn’t work at all.”

“How did you end up in Canterlot?” Since Trixie was an enemy to everypony and she apparently didn’t know about Sunset, heading to the heart of Equestria, the last city left, wasn’t a reasonable thing to do, especially in her dire state.

“I rushed after my friend, Starlight Glimmer, who was sent there,” Trixie explained, most likely speaking of her ‘colleague’. “When I met her on the outskirts of the city I found out what her mission was – to destroy it. I…” she faltered. “I couldn’t allow that to happen. Things got heated and I…” Trixie sobbed, the liquid metal on her face forming tears, muttered, “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to harm her.”

Even though we technically weren’t friends and I had shown nothing but outright hostility towards Trixie since our confrontation at Dodge City, it didn’t stop me from walking towards her and wrapping my hooves around her shuddering form (which was a bit awkward considering the difference in size and material between us). If anything, I was returning the debt – she did the same for me in the Deep Tunnels.

A couple of minutes later Trixie calmed down and continued, speaking in a small voice, “The spell needed a sacrifice. Magic that works outside Harmony always has a price. A shadow for a shadow.”

With an uneasy feeling (and fascination) I watched Trixie’s front leg move up, leaving one shadow outline midway, then another. The last one lingered only for a moment and merged with the first one. A pony with two shadows and absolutely nothing else.

“With the last component it was activated and I became who I am now,” Trixie said in a hollow voice, then morosely added, “It didn’t reverse King Sombra’s spell, by the way, I still rotted alive. Maybe I deserved that.”

I couldn’t help but shake my head at that, though it went unnoticed by Trixie, who was lost in her unpleasant memories. She wasn’t a bad pony, far from it. Ironically, she had become too humble to see that. Trixie did join the Coven, whatever her goals, that I couldn’t forget. Aren’t there things you regret? But I would always remember that she also helped to break the Crystal Empire’s defense (though not without the help of Sunset, if that was true) and that she was the reason why Canterlot didn’t share the fate of the rest of the cities in Equestria, becoming nothing but scattered villages.

“I wish I could undo what I did, but I can’t, the spell is too powerful,” Trixie sadly concluded, the ghostly limb returning back into its arcanium shell.

A thought, so outrageous I couldn’t believe it came from me and not somepony else, visited my mind. I tried to forget it, but it was like fire and my proverbial brain was made of cotton sodden with alcohol. Magic that works outside Harmony always has a price, the reasonable part of me screamed. Who was going to pay it? But Moondancer sent me to Trixie for a reason, and there was no other way.

“Trixie, do you still have that spell?”

There was some grim satisfaction in seeing Trixie’s metal face form an expression of utter shock, something that even the truth behind the Crown’s identities couldn’t achieve. Her first answer was vehemently negative, as I expected. After all, she had just revealed to me the consequences of using that spell. However, when I told her about Moondancer’s last message, her deprecation began to wither until it had turned into a mild reluctance, which began to melt as well as I continued to persuade her.

I assured Trixie that I wasn't going to use that spell as it was. I didn’t need to be turned into a shadow. We were going to work on it together and try to complete and possibly rewrite it.

It became the final argument that changed her heart. So now I was heading back to the Twelve’s and Trixie was going to visit her hideout in the Deep Tunnels, where she kept her notes.

Navigating the Sky Palace on my own wasn’t very easy, but with the changelings being friendly and always willing to show me the directions, I was managing. Between everything that had happened in the last week I had almost no time before Delight’s ‘coronation’, so the only thing I was going to do at the workshop was take a short nap, which I direly needed after learning so many things in such a short time. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I had to do something else, but I couldn’t remember what.

In my slumber I had a vision.

Spike was in it, his appearance constantly shifting between how he looked during the Great War, as he was when I met him in the Tunnels and his current miserable state. He was in the darkness of an ever-changing tunnel, raking at ponies, leaving their mangled corpses bleeding in piles around him. He was standing on them, a growing mountain of bodies and bones, seeping a dark river. However, only one set of obsidian claws was striking at the helpless, the other was holding something near his chest. Somepony. A mare with a purple faded coat and silver mane with a still bright streak of magenta. Her eyes were milky white, but somehow I knew she could see everything, even though her face never moved, a mask of bitter indifference.

I watched the display of violence, a senseless massacre, from another mountain, made of sparkling gemstones. I could feel a heartbeat in my chest, a feeling long forgotten. As I looked I saw nothing but blinding magic in my ribcage, pulsing. With every arcane throb, an equinoid was rising from the crystals around me to stand by my side.

A hoof shaking my shoulder brought me out of that virtual reality, as I was turning to see who disturbed my artificial sleep, an idle thought came to my mind: If there was no one to wake me, would I slumber forever?

It was Eight, an untalkative stallion. However, it wasn’t him simply deciding to break his habit. In the light through the gap of the open door I could see a silhouette with a curved horn, perforated limbs and gossamer wings. Time was up.

All Twelve of my firstborn were waiting for me in their work-room. With how much they were involved in the Swarm’s life, I suspected that they were all going to be present at the ritual. Not that I minded.

Together we filed out to the corridors, surprisingly empty and quiet. On second thought, it shouldn’t be strange – an event of such importance was a valid reason to put off work for a few hours, or even an entire day.

The changeling stallion guided us down, deep into the Sky Palace, deeper than I ever went before, save for the time I entered this place. Since I was at the head of our equinoid procession, I could see the changeling’s face. A solemn expression dominated his chitinous features, and for the first time I wondered if the Swarm was actually happy with the change of their leadership. Not in the sense of whether they wanted to lose their Mother – I was sure they didn’t – but if they liked the prospect of Delight becoming their queen.

The steel and plastic of the Sky Palace interior changed into stone without any warning, but that didn’t last for long. Very soon, dark glistening bone-like structures began to cover the walls. The cold artificial lamps were replaced by the green luminosity of the strange lanterns hanging from the arched ceiling. We were entering the Hive.

Those bizzare passages were empty as well and remained so until we came to an entrance covered with a membrane, which retracted on itself as we approached. Inside that room, Delight was chatting with Wire and her family.

“Twi!” Del exclaimed joyously as I entered. “You’ve come!”

“Of course,” I replied with my head tilted in surprise. “What made you think I wouldn’t? I promised, after all.”

“Ah, well…” Del looked uncomfortable. “You disappeared for a week, and I heard things with Spike didn’t go very well…” she trailed off.

I wondered from whom she learned that. Though, in the place packed with the best spies in Canterlot, it would be silly to expect any secrets to remain concealed. I only hoped Del wouldn’t be focusing on my problems at the moment like this.

“I was just busy,” I said in a slightly hard voice, hinting to her that it wasn’t important right now. “How are you holding up?”

Delight was pale, quite a feat for a mare with a white coat, and I was sure she was trembling, but she tried to keep a straight face. The bandages covering half of her body had been removed, revealing the cuts and bites that were not yet entirely healed. Beside all that, she looked splendid, with her mane and coat groomed and clean, almost shining on their own.

“I am fine,” Del lied, and I raised an eyebrow, prompting her to admit in a guilty tone, “Very nervous.” She let out a sigh, then sombered, her expression hardening. “But I’m not backing out on my decision.”

In that moment, Sunset Shimmer walked into the small room, addressing Del right from the doorway. “The preparations are finished, everything is ready.”

Delight nodded and gulped, glanced at me then followed after Sunset, who had already turned away, leaving.

To my surprise, the Twelve, who didn’t enter the chamber with me, had dispersed. However, it wasn’t only Sunset who awaited us outside – Queen Chrysalis was by her side. She greeted me with a silent nod and mouthed, “Thank you.”

I answered her with a nod of my own and a sympathetic glance. There was something about her appearance and expression that made her look like anything but the monarch she was. Perhaps it was the serene acceptance written all over her face, or that embroidered red comforter draped over her slumped shoulders.

In grave silence, we spilled into a vast long passage which opened into a large chamber at its far end. I could barely see the opening – we would have to walk a lot before reaching it.

Delight was looking at the floor, muttering something, chanting, likely bolstering herself. Queen Chrysalis was slowly walking, her half-lidded eyes not seeing things in the present, but memories long past. Sunset strode by her side, her expression somber.

As we were traversing the considerable length of the corridor, I could feel the looks pointed at me.

Hollow Druse, her hindlegs resounding with metal clops each step, was giving me curious glances. I could see that she was a mare hardered by the unforgiving life of the Edge; as much as she was wondering at me, she was measuring me.

I could sense Roche Dust’s attention quite literally. The unexpectedly young blind mare (or at least not as old as I imagined her), Wire’s mother, was using the Arcane Sight to compensate for her injury, her horn constantly aglow, though dimly. Barely felt, waves of her magic were washing over me.

Wire was… glaring at me. I realized that she had been doing so since I met her eyes. Speaking of which, her prosthetic, which almost killed her, had been replaced. It wasn’t the bulky artificial eye from before, but a delicate and beautiful replacement. A golden plate covered her eye socket with a radiant crystal inside it, softly glowing with the golden light. The changelings spared no expense. Still, what she was mad at me for this time? What did I do?

What didn’t I do?

I almost caught my hoof as I finally remembered that I was supposed to talk with Tin Flower, but it had completely slipped my mind between my fervent research, meeting with Spike and the ‘coronation’. Feeling horrible, I mentally put finding the troublesome filly at the top of my checklist.

Thankfully, my guilt didn’t have much time to tear me apart, as we finally reached the chamber at the end of the passage.

To call it a chamber was a huge understatement. It was an enormous cavern, spacious enough to fit thousands of changelings. It might be even bigger than that; my estimation came from the fact that the said thousands of changelings were already there, their eyes glowing in the darkness like stars in the night sky, just as numerous and cold.

The only place lit was an elevated spot in the very middle of it, where a twisted black throne towered, surrounded by sinister green glowing magic runes.

As crowded as the cavern was, it was quiet, until the moment we took a few steps in. Then a rustle of countless bodies, a whisper of wings and chitinous hooves moving filled the cave, as all the stares became glued to the newcomers. Delight stumbled, taking a step back, but quickly recovered and pressed on, shaking.

The walk to the throne somehow felt much longer than going through the pass leading to the cave, though the distances were the opposite, in fact. Del had obvious trouble walking as she bordered on fainting from the sheer pressure of attention given to her by the massive congregation. Yet she refused my help. In return, I refused to leave her side, walking by her and providing my silent support as she took her last steps as a pony.

When we reached the throne, only Queen Chrysalis and Sunset were by our sides. Wire and her family took their place at the front rows. I could also see the Twelve there, the white porcelain standing out in the sea of pitch.

I expected the changeling queen to climb onto the throne, but instead she was sitting in front of it, looking at it sadly and longingly.

“Thank you, Sunny,” Queen Chrysalis said ever so quietly, but it still sounded like thunder in the pregnant silence. “For everything.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Chryssi,” Sunset replied just as softly. “Farewell.”

Astonished, I watched as the Former One left her friend’s side, stopping near Delight and me. The reality of what was about to happen began to sink in: The ritual didn’t involve Queen Chrysalis seeing it through.

The silence and waiting were starting to become unbearable.

With a shaking voice, Del whispered, trying not to make it too loud, but failing, “Will it hurt?”

“No,” Queen Chrysalis said.

At the same time, Sunset stated grimly, “Yes.”

The queen turned from the throne to give Sunset an amused glance, then her gaze slid to Del. The elder changeling smiled encouragingly and motioned with her head for the shaking pegasus to come closer.

Del, fighting with her breath (she had begun to hyperventilate) and struggling to make her violently shaking limbs obey, climbed the stairs to the platform with the throne and wicked runes. Then, with as much difficulty, she made it onto the throne itself, its height being an obstacle on its own, despite her being a pegasus.

Queen Chrysalis’ and Del’s eyes were on the same level now, a creamy pink and milky white meeting emerald. They stared at each other for a full minute before Queen Chrysalis spoke, her tone kind and sorrowful. “Please, care for them like I couldn’t.”

Then, without warning, the twisted horn on top the queen’s head flared up, and the air around them exploded with magic.

A wild whirlwind of arcane energies surrounded the platform, the runes pulsing with an erratic heartbeat. A hurricane of jade fire was so fierce, it looked like it was going to consume and obliterate everything and everyone in the cavern, but it never went outside the invisible wall marked by the runes. The contained disaster’s influence ended with its light, bringing countless chitin faces out of the darkness, glistening with fresh tears.

The roar of magic wind wasn’t the only sound permeating the air. Deep chanting in the ancient language of the Unicorn Tribe, starkly reminding me of the peculiar changeling names, echoed through the cavern. Between the words of the spell violating Harmony, tearing through it, I could hear screams of agony, which were making my proverbial heart clench. Sunset was right about the pain. Magic that works outside Harmony always has a price.

All I could see through the curtain of viridian flames were two silhouettes. Queen Chrysalis was like a lighthouse, her dark slender towering form topped with the shining of her horn, feeding the maelstrom. And the throne with two points of radiance, two eyes glowing and moving, as if the head was thrashing.

The sight was as horrifying with its raw power as it was enchanting in its mystical beauty. It was a ritual from the times when the taste of primal magic, coming from the arcanium core, had yet to be fully forgotten and the scars left by those who wielded it freely were yet to be fully healed. Even putting that aside, I was looking at the birth of a being standing a step above mortals, though still below the deities, just one leap short. An ultimate transformation, an absolute change into a creature who could become anyone, take any form.

The chanting suddenly died out, as well as the screams, and the chrysalis of verdant blaze began to unravel, falling like a screen at a theatre play, a new act about to start. The runes winked out, leaving only charred marks on the gray stone.

Queen… Just Chrysalis’ body was black again, or rather, ashen. Before yielding to the silent blackness, the last spurt of fire let me witness how it fell into itself, in a rain of cinders. The comforter, only slightly singed, covered the remains of the previous queen, her crown rolling from it to the throne with a melodious clutter.

With so many changelings, glowing prosthetics, bodies of the Twelve and my own, the darkness wasn’t absolute, save for one place – the platform with the throne and the newborn queen.

The silence was different this time. It was like everyone present was holding their breath, even though none could be heard before anyway. The air tingled with anticipation, every pair of eyes, those love-hungry stars of the chitin-black night, were fixed on the nothingness in the heart of the Swarm, waiting for the emptiness in their chests to be filled.

A flash of emerald, a flaming aurora of green magic, flared for a blink of an eye. A moment later it returned, but stayed this time. The glowing outline of a curved, sharply deformed horn cut the darkness, followed by another outline on the floor, near the base of the throne. The telekinesis unsteadily levitated the crown from the ground, up and up, until it joined the outline of the horn and both let darkness take their place again.

On the throne, a pair of glowing deep green eyes opened.

Almost simultaneously the soft light of a myriad lanterns lit by the Swarm filled the cavern, making it as bright as dawn, revealing the slightly taken aback form of a changeling queen sitting on the throne. Her chitin was milky white, not yet hardened, matching her passed away predecessor. Periwinkle mane, almost of the same color as before, save for the subtle hint of poisonous green at the ends of the hair, cascaded down her shoulders in a waterfall of curls. Wings, magnificent and glimmering with all the colors of the rainbow were extending from her back on their own, just as soft as her chitinous skin, but only for so long.

A roar, a chorus of thousands of voices, laden with love, joy and respect, boomed, making the walls and floor shake:

“Hail Queen Heterocera! Hail Queen Heterocera! Hail Queen Heterocera!”

I was staring at the opened book, a pencil in my magic tapping the workbench which Trixie and I were using as a table. It wasn’t just any book, it was that book, the one bound in leather and resisting Trixie’s magic touch. It wasn’t a foliant full of spells, however, mostly a diary which Trixie very insistently asked me not to flip through.

It had been a week since Delight’s coronation. She herself insisted that I never address her as Queen. Heterocera, if needed. The celebration was… interesting. The Hive was divided into two halves, one mourning their lost Mother, the other cheering for the new one. There was no conflict between them whatsoever, and Del was allowed to visit both parts freely, to pay her respects or to bask in adoration. However, the next day every changeling had to return to work – Canterlot was still running out of time. Delight and Sunset were now almost inseparable, as the latter was teaching the former everything from how to care for the Swarm to how to run the Crown. Even though the Crown as the government would stop existing due to the deal with Stalliongrad, Canterlot needed the rule of changelings until the evacuation took place.

Trixie returned a day later and relocated herself to the Twelve’s, bringing Octavia along. The mysterious Former One wasn’t especially good with magic, which was a bit ironic considering her nature. However, she was an absolute genius with any mechanics, matching Moondancer with her skill, at least according to Trixie. On one hoof, that recommendation could be very biased, knowing their relationship. On the other hoof, Trixie’s gun was made by Octavia and it was impressive work.

The reason I was trying to beat a hole in the metal tabletop with a writing implement was because of my complete failure to talk with Flower, which was nagging at the back of my mind. Since the filly left the hospital, it became nearly impossible to track her down. Because she grew up in the maze of the Junkyard, it was very easy for her to adapt to the convoluted structure of the Sky Palace, including the service tunnels and, according to some changelings, even the ventilation. Waiting for Trixie, I spent an entire day hunting Flower down, but to no avail. She was avoiding me and the Twelve like the plague. The most maddening thing was that at the same time, she for some reason was keeping close, at the edge of my vision, but evaporating without a trace when I tried to approach her. Even now, I was sure the stubborn filly was skulking somewhere outside the workshop.

Suddenly, I had nothing to tap with. The pencil in my magic turned into a small pile of dust. I glared at Trixie, inky shadows still bubbling around her horn. She answered me with a glare of her own. While she had no filly to say her apologies to, we both were feeling down for another reason. Though it had been five days since she brought her notes, we had made almost no progress so far.

Despite my lack of experience with unconventional magic, it wasn’t as hard as learning the Prime Code (or non-Prime for that matter). Most of the runes were more or less familiar, just rare or used in some strange ways. The difficulty was in those that weren’t, one half of them being the crude cuneiform of the rams and goats. The other half were runes constructed by King Sombra himself, and I had to reluctantly admit that he was no fool with magic; they were a marvel on their own. I could understand most of them, but not quickly. The good news was that those parts new to me were the ones we had to modify or remove altogether, unless I wanted to become the Goddess of Shadows or something like that.

Trixie helped me to define my goal, the point we were trying to reach with that spell.

According to her words, which I listened to very warily because none other than King Sombra was her teacher, the entities of this world called the Old Gods were the ones whose power we aimed to replicate, since there was no other being that close to true godhood. They were the remaining individuals from very different lands and races who had unlimited access to the arcanium core and its energy. The details of how they managed to keep that access, with Harmony being created specifically to prevent any creature from having that amount of magic, were sketchy due to it being resolved between the creators of Harmony and the Old Gods. The former were long gone, sacrificing themselves to create the enchantment, while the latter were extremely elusive (to the point that it was hard to prove if they even existed or were just a legend).

Anyhow, our task was to create a spell that would allow me to access the arcanium core. Which brought me to the moment of choice and the reevaluation of magic I had postponed for so long.

Obviously, something like that was only going to be done with unconventional magic. As Trixie told me five hundred years ago, “One can’t bend Harmony’s rules using its own tools.” Luna confirmed that a couple of weeks ago, reminding me that the main reason for Harmony existing was to prevent anypony or any creature from having too much power.

So, I had no other choice but to start learning what I once called ‘dark magic’. Honestly, with the Twelve seeing no difference, Trixie using her power for good, and my best friend in this life being a changeling queen, I had no right to claim that it was ‘dark’ or ‘bad’ anymore. The TCE workers responsible for the Crystal Empire’s plight weren’t dark mages, but that didn’t stop them from being the most vile ponies I ever had the misfortune to be aware of.

Though unconventional magic had very different principles, it was still magic, and magic theory was something I was good at. Trixie, who by admission wasn’t the best mage back when she started (and still was far from my level in traditional practices), now used her centuries of experience to help me work with shadow magic.

But it wasn’t enough.

Actually, we had a lead, but it was a dead end. For it to work, to basically tear a hole in Harmony, the spell needed a steady torrent of power, an output not allowed by Harmony itself. Or we needed an artifact capable of doing so, but that would have to be something like the Crystal Heart.

Trixie stopped giving me the stink eye and reclined back on the chair, it creaking menacingly under the weight of her no longer enchanted body.

“Damn it, Tavi,” she groaned, “If only you didn’t give those crystals to the Stalliongrad assholes.”

“They are helping us, remember?” Octavia grumbled, tearing her gaze from one of Moondancer’s books. “I didn’t go through all those troubles only to hear you whining.”

“Whining? I’m not whining. I am complaining,” Trixie retorted, making me chuckle, though she was already too involved into the banter to notice.

They were the exact words of Rarity, from a long time ago. I, too, leaned back in my chair. It was a good time, we were happy and if something went wrong we could just use the Elements…

I almost fell from my sitting place, barely preventing my body from becoming a bunch of porcelain shards on the floor.

“Trixie, you’re a genius!” I exclaimed, rummaging through our notes, trying to find that ‘dead end’ spell.

“I am?” she looked at me in surprise, her argument with Octavia forgotten.

“Yes, if I’m right, we can use the Elements of Harmony to power up the spell!” I continued to look for the notes, the gears in my mind whirling like mad.

“Um, Twi,” Trixie called me, but I ignored her. Then she used her magic to touch mine, disrupting it and forcing me to pay her attention.

“Twilight, as good as that sounds, it won’t work,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

Everything in my head came to a screeching halt. It would be best for me to go take a nap – I needed it if I forgot such things.

I didn’t know what happened to the Elements. It had been more than five hundred years since I saw them for the last time. They were likely still kept at the remains of the Royal Palace, but even if they were, it mattered not. They didn’t work the last time, not for me. There was no chance we would be able to find six friends who possessed the corresponding virtues in Canterlot on such short notice.

I slumped in my seat, and Trixie reached out with her hoof, squeezing mine in silent support.

Another failure.

I was running out of time. Very soon the evacuation would start. The appearance of Stalliongrad only temporarily froze the city, the next day all the conflicts only flared up in intensity. The reports from the Western Edge were pointing at former workers gathering forces, preparing to strike very soon. The work, started by Queen Chrysalis and continued by Delight, was nearing its end.

The plan was very far from perfect, speaking mildly. I even refused to believe it was true at first, that it wasn’t a stupid joke. The spy network set a rumour afloat about the city evacuating, as declaring it openly would prompt the TCE to respond with violence. They would do that anyway, the moment the evacuation started. They needed ponies, to sell them their produce and send those who couldn’t buy to the Edge as slaves. It was a vicious circle profiting the TCE board of directors, and they would do everything to keep the money coming.

So far, a large part of the population eagerly grasped the hope of escaping the clutches of Canterlot, but there were so many who refused to believe. No one talked aloud about that, but saving even half of the ponies living in Canterlot was a goal nearly impossible to reach.

Anyhow, I took my hoof out of Trixie’s grasp and began to tidy the improvised table, stacking papers, digging the tablets out from beneath them.

All of a sudden, Octavia slammed her book shut and huffed, “You unicorns are always so quick to give up.”

“This isn’t the time for your jokes, Tavi,” Trixie barked at her, giving me an apologetic glance.

Octavia approached the table and put down the book: ‘A Farewell to Hooves: The Arcane Prosthetics’.

“You didn’t even try!” she snorted.

Trixie opened her mouth to retort, but I cut her off. “The Elements need six virtuous ponies to use them,” I snapped. “There aren’t even enough ponies in the Sky Palace, virtuousness aside.” I wasn’t angry at any of them, just tired.

“From what you told me,” Octavia addressed Trixie, “The Elements are the tool of Harmony, an arcane device.” She turned to me. “And every device can be hacked.”

I rolled my eyes and quipped, “If it was so easy, why has nopony done it already?”

“How many tried?” Octavia replied with an intent look.

Suddenly, sorting the papers and tablets didn’t seem so important.

My guess was correct, the Elements were still in the remains of the Royal Palace. Accompanied by Sunset, I made a trip there. To my surprise and relief, Princess Celestia’s magic was gone – Luna had undone the spell. Though, without it, that place felt especially dark and empty.

Now, the Elements, the most powerful artifacts in Equestria were lying on the workbench like some cheap trinkets amongst papers marred with scrawled notes. Half of them were disassembled, their frames being nothing but decorative parts.

Octavia was right, they were just enchanted gems in essence. However, the enchantments they had were beyond complex, they were the most intricate I had ever seen. ‘Hacking’ into them was out of the question, it appeared at first, as they were written in runes more ancient than Equestria, perhaps even older than the Tribes. However, not everything was hopeless. Those enchantments could be divided into two parts. The first was the biggest and the least comprehensible, responsible for mental analysis, to determine the Bearer and their worthiness. The second was the part evaluating if the target was a threat to Harmony. And then there was the rest, magic knitting it all together in a coherent system, along with such things as transforming into a proper shape and so on. We were working on unraveling and modifying those components, since they were the only weak place we could think of.

To say that we had a success would be an overstatement, but it wouldn’t be a lie. Limited in time and knowledge, we were able to achieve some semblance of our goal. The spell wasn’t going to turn me into a goddess, it would only give me temporary access to the arcane core. The rest was up to me. That was if we were able to succeed with the other part, which, despite being defined, suddenly became quite an unexpected problem, something none of us were able to foresee.

“I’m not letting you do that!” Octavia screamed at Trixie.

“Who else?” Trixie snapped back, turning away with a grim, but determined expression.

“Ask your friend Sunset, no one is going to miss that war criminal,” Octavia barked, circling Trixie to look her in the face.

“Queen Heterocera needs her. Canterlot needs her.”

We had found a way to fire the Elements without the Bearers. A recursive loop was supposed to lock a ‘Bearer-determining’ part of the spell in an undefined condition while still allowing the energy release as the next step. But there was a problem we had no workaround for.

The Elements didn’t release energy just like that, they still needed a target. Somepony or something else had to become one. Though all the energy was supposed to be absorbed by a spell, a single mistake would be enough for the Elements to work as they were intended. The problem was that we weren’t sure how wide their range was. Most importantly, combined with the previous issue, another was that the majority of the Sky Palace’s inhabitants could fall under the category of threats to Harmony.

“Twilight,” Octavia addressed me since Trixie proved to be immune to any persuasion attempts. “Let me do it.” Then she added, as she met my incredulous stare. “Not because I want you to become the Machine Goddess. It is none of my business. But I do care for that dum-dum.”

Octavia could serve as a target. Probably. She was a case of a Former One who didn’t choose their immortality. Her friend, another musician called Vinyl Scratch, was a huge fan of zebra alchemy and tribal semi-arcane practices, such as the one known as ‘Mlezi Wa Familia’, a ‘Family Guardian’. Some Mlima zebra houses practiced binding limited memories of their soon-to-be deceased family members to the material world as advisors. When Manehattan began to burn, Vinyl used that ritual on her friend, but as Octavia put it, “cranked everything to twelve.” Now she was nearly permanently bound to this world as a ghost with full recollection of her life. In a sense, she was something between me and the now-gone magic of Princess Celestia.

It wasn’t a choice I wanted to make, and I suspected I knew the true reason why Trixie wanted to volunteer: it was a win-win situation for her. If I succeeded, then all would be good. If the Elements worked on her, then Starlight Glimmer was going to be released, though considering that Trixie had no organic body to return to, I wasn’t sure what would happen to her. Would the Elements be so kind as to give her a new body?

“We still don’t know if it will work,” I lamely commented, trying to change the topic.

“Of course it will,” Octavia snapped at me, “We slaved for a week over those dumb rocks, it has to.” Some of the donkeys must have rubbed off on her during her stay at Stalliongrad; nopony could be that stubborn.

However, I didn’t really have to choose. Regardless of who I asked to become a target, I would be at risk anyway. I needed to be near the Elements the moment they activated. I wasn’t entirely sure if the Elements would see me as a problem needed to be fixed, but in the case I somehow was clear in the eyes of Harmony, nothing bad would happen. Nothing would happen at all, in fact. Then I would have to choose either Trixie or Octavia.

“I will do it,” I stated in a stalwart voice. Managing both the spell and the torrent of energy aimed at me with possible ill intentions wouldn't be easy. Ironically, if the Elements were to give me an organic body, it technically would be a failure for me.

Two surprised faces turned to me.

“Are you sure?” Trixie worriedly asked, her face becoming concerned.

I was not. But we had no time to lose, no other chance.

So I gave her a reserved nod.

The chamber was deserted, and I knew that it was also true for at least a dozen rooms in every direction save for the furthest wall – Canterlot was on the other side of it. The Elements lay on a stand in front of me made of deaf arcanium, waiting… menacingly.

I was afraid, but I wasn’t sure of what exactly. There were so many ways it could go wrong. We barely understood the Elements and we weren’t one hundred percent sure our additions would work – we couldn’t test them. At least the spell was copied from the crumpled paper it was written on to a tablet and checked at least a dozen times. But that didn’t mean it was correct and working; it wasn’t that different from the issue with the Elements.

I didn’t even know what would happen if something went wrong. What would happen to me? What would be the collateral damage?

There were only two things clear: it was a shot in the dark and there most likely wouldn’t be a second chance. It was fair in some sense – it would have been really strange and suspicious if the path leading to becoming a god was that easy. It was already easier than I expected it to be. Perhaps I was afraid of that.

Though it was a huge, no, enormous risk, I had barely talked with anypony. Delight knew about it, though didn’t really approve. However, she understood that under the current circumstances I didn’t (and wouldn’t) have an opportunity to polish the spell and make it less like a game of roulette. Sunset was aware and wished me luck, though with a strange expression in her eyes. Obviously Trixie and Octavia knew, and it took me a lot of effort to persuade them not to be in the same room with me. Neither Wire nor Flower were told, the latter still being impossible to meet face to face, though I was sure I caught a glimpse of her metal leg as I was trotting to this room. I didn’t talk with Spike, I still didn’t know how I could talk with him after all I learned. Rainbow was out of the Sky Palace, and Luna… she didn’t need to know. The Twelve readily encouraged me; of everyone with whom I talked, they were the only ones who didn’t have even the slightest hint of concern in their eyes. They had complete faith in their mother.

I deliberately avoided making it seem like I was saying my farewells ‘just in case’ to those who I knew and cared about, but it still appeared so. I, myself, couldn’t shake that feeling off.

Moving a step closer to the Elements filled the empty room with echoes of my hooves. The Elements, something I was proud to wear once, were an intimidating sight for me now. Without realizing it, I had ended up on the other side of their power.

Shaking my head, I took one more step forward, then another and another, until I was about two lengths from them. Waiting wasn’t going to fix anything; the spell wouldn’t cast itself. If anything, Trixie, Octavia and Delight would grow impatient or start worrying and come to see how things were going, which wasn’t something I needed in the middle of the ritual nor before it.

Two objects were levitated in the air by my magic: a small pouch full of fine attuned arcanium dust and a tablet. I began to pour the dust on the floor, copying the amplifying and dampening runes in specific places, to equalize my magic output. Soon, most of the floor was covered in thin glimmering lines, dimly reflecting my magic. Some grains rose in the air to follow my telekinesis, drawn to it.

Everything was ready, the only remaining step was to cast the spell and then… to survive, I guess. Suddenly, becoming a goddess seemed more like a bonus, rather than a goal.

We designed the spell in a modern, non-verbal manner, so the only sound permeating the ominous silence was the faint hum of my magic. Before long, the rustle of the magic metal, carried by the arcane winds around me, began its song as my output began to rise up. Rune after rune, layer after layer the spell was weaved, the pink glow around me and the Elements darkening, starting to bubble with inky black and green, wisps of red becoming a web connecting each part to another.

By that time, the entire room was filled with the steady roar of energy barely contained. My body, the Elements, the criss-crossed floor and the air itself laden with arcanium dust were shining brightly, blinding for organic eyes.

It was time to activate the Elements. Even if they wouldn’t work on me, the build-up of the spell was so strong that releasing it would cause considerable damage to the room and everything inside it, starting with me.

The Elements began to glow, and an iridescent beam of energy rushed in my direction. I felt the spell absorbing it, redirecting all the power into itself. Suddenly, a horrifying realization struck me. Trixie had been abiding to the other set of rules for centuries and I had cast so many different spells in my life that I almost never thought about the most basic things... like never directing a spell into itself. In a desperate panic, I began to change the direction of the torrent, breaking the loop, but changing the spell on the fly wasn’t easy. My mind almost went into a lockdown when I tried to calculate a possible outcome of funneling the Elements’ power into itself.

I began to feel and hear my porcelain plates cracking, the magic around me was becoming overwhelming, the spell overcharging. Currently, there were three outcomes for it, none guaranteeing my survival. The only thing I could come up with was to redirect the spell into the nearest ley line, hoping for the best, which I hurriedly did.

But nothing changed, if anything the destructive torrent around me was becoming stronger. I fell to one knee, still maintaining the spell, feeling an immense, an impossible amount of power washing over me. The ceramic plates began to explode, my body was shining from heat now, not magic, but I witnessed that only for a single moment, before my eyes melted away. Then I could hear nothing.

Releasing the spell now would wipe out more than just a dozen rooms, it would make a stone stump out of the Sky Palace.

It was another huge mistake…

I began to feel something: my crystals shattering, my soul gems.

Having only a few seconds to live I grasped at all that power trying to contain it, to disperse it into a ley line one more time, but it was too late.

I felt absolutely nothing. But at the same time, I realized it wasn't a dream. I couldn't tell if it was my total lack of senses of reality around me or just an absence of reality itself. "Is reality defined by our senses alone? Does the world go beyond our limited perception? What are we are supposed to rely on to know what is real and what is not?"

Was I dead? Actually dead this time, not stored in the recording crystals along with the day-to-day ramblings of a scientist with sharp frozen shards for her heart.

I could still cogitate, but with nothing to see, hear or sense at all, it was incredibly hard to focus on a single thought. Either all my sensors were gone and my body had been reduced to nothing but a pile of cracked crystals, still miraculously granting me my preternatural existence; or I had no physical form anymore. Did I become like Octavia or Trixie, a magic apparition?

With no senses at all, I had no way to say how much time passed or even when it started to pass. There was no beginning and no end, just nothingness. I was but a thought suspended in the void.

I was thinking, therefore I existed.

What if I stopped thinking, would I be gone? Would I be resurrected again, either from the same crystals or another batch? I remembered making lots of them. Those new Twilights would have to start from the beginning… I didn’t envy them, especially considering that, though it was hard to believe, they would end up in a worse world than that which I left behind. Would they follow the same path I did?

Suddenly, I could feel something, a presence. I wasn’t alone in the void.

In the darkness a mote of golden light, an incandescent grain of sand, soared like a comet towards me. Or it could be crawling, there was nothing but that speck of sunlight in the blackness, nothing to compare it with. It could be the sun itself. My eyes didn’t move, didn’t focus, I couldn’t take a better look or turn away. I could only witness.

Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t, I couldn’t tell. But the shining dot was a dot no longer, it was a glowing equine silhouette made of dots, golden dust.

I knew Princess Celestia wasn’t a goddess, but for some reason I thought of her. I wanted that figure to be her coming for me, taking me with herself. I had so much to do, but I wanted to rest… So tired of that nightmare, though I couldn’t deny that I was among its many writers.

As suddenly as the golden equine appeared, it stopped. Perhaps it never moved; it could have been there all along. I couldn’t tell if it was big or small – I was a thought, I had no dimensions. Everything was so surreal, I was starting to lose sense of myself.

It wasn’t a voice that I heard, but my thoughts being thought by someone else.

“We thought razing Neighponia would serve as a warning, but you ponies never learn...”

No words left my mouth, for I had none, but my question, “What?” was read from my mind and my thoughts were shaped into an answer as if it was always there.

“You sought to become one of us, but that path is forbidden.”

Pieces of the puzzle began to come together in my mind, albeit very slowly. I wasn’t dead, I was… somewhere. I was ‘talking’ with one of the Old Gods, they were real after all. Neighponia… it was destroyed, that I knew. Now I also had an idea why. Panic grasped my mind at the implications of that fact. If an entire country was turned into a ruin for what neighponians did, what would become of Canterlot for my insolence?

“Those fools wanted power for themselves, they challenged us, devised the tools: a hammer, a blade and a hoof shoe to break Harmony through a heart of the Dead One. We put out every forge, slayed every smith, buried every mine,” words without voice, messages without letters came to be in my mind. “You are no different, you wrote a spell. Every parchment will be burned, every horn will be broken, every school will be leveled to the ground.”

Everything in my mind became fear, a desire to run, but I had no place to run to, no hooves. Only the impending doom of the divine wrath that I wouldn’t witness – I was already dead. Harmony wasn’t the only warden, it could only prevent the emergence of gods within itself, not if the aspirants used non-conventional magic. But there were still no new gods, even with that path open.

“I’m not the same! I seek no power!” I became a mental scream etched into dread.

“Why reach for the core then?” the question was left in my consciousness.

“I want to become the Machine Goddess, to protect my children, the equinoids,” I thought of the answer, hoping that it meant something to the being for whom all mortals were just that – insignificant creatures perishing into oblivion before we could be noticed.

There was a pause, no question and no answer burned into my mind.

Then, a voice, a real sound I could hear, deep and powerful, yet gentle like sand rustling in a sunset breeze, came:

“You are wrong. We care.”

Now that I had a body, a glowing purple magic outline, I could compare myself with the entity standing in front of me. Though I could feel myself standing as well, I dared not move a muscle (or whatever I had), because there was still nothing but void around and I couldn’t sense what was underneath me, save for it being solid.

The golden figure was resembling a Saddle Arabian horse, tall and majestic, made of swirling sand, carrying exotic spicy scents and the distinct sensation of being under a blazing sun. Even with my limited knowledge, it wasn’t hard to guess that I was graced by the presence of a Dune Dervish.

Despite not really having any need (at least none obvious to me) to speak aloud or give me a body to listen, the Dune Dervish, neither a stallion nor a mare, was reading my thoughts as if they were an open book, spoke:

“Yes, we are.”

“Why I… you…” I muttered, confused.

The situation went from ‘incomprehensible, though I’m likely dead’ to ‘everything is very bad, I’m certainly dead’, and now was ‘I have no idea if it’s the first one or the second’.

“We are the ones of many whom you call the Old Gods”, the Dervish (Dervishes?) explained. “Each of us watches over our mortal kin, and we won’t tolerate any threat.” There was no expression in the Old God’s voice, but somehow I knew it was a warning. “The so-called equinoids can become one, but we have no right to wipe out a nation just out of fear.”

“What about Neighponia?” I noted, trying to sound neutral. The hypocrisy was blatant.

“Know your place.” The Dervishes glared at me, a pair of glowing eyes drilling into my very being. “The Neighponese trespassed the red lines. Now they are scattered, not gone.”

That was true. Though their very land was rendered uninhabitable for all I knew, the neighponese prevalence in Canterlot was obvious, especially in the Outer City, where their establishments dominated over other places.

“Those metal ponies are… peculiar,” the Dervishes continued after reprimanding me, musing, looking into the void above me. “Neither mortal, nor immortal. The others are wary about equinoids.” It took me a few moments to realize that ‘the others’ meant the Old Gods, not just mortals. “Those newcomers need an eye to watch over them. To watch them.” A golden gaze fell on me. “Perhaps you can be given a chance if your intentions are true.”

“T-thank you,” I stammered, bowing me head in gratitude, immense relief washing over me in waves. It was going much better than I had hoped.

“Your every move will be observed, make no mistake,” the Dervishes commented in a hard cold voice, reminding me that they could read my mind and that I was still a trespasser in their eyes, a potential threat.

That made me think of some of their previous words. With the imminent threat passed, my curiosity began to worm its way into my priorities, “How many others are there?”

“Enough,” came a curt answer. I couldn’t help but here a subtle hint of discontent in it. Maybe more than enough, or perhaps I was one too many.

“Why did only you come?” was my next question. Saddle Arabia was very far away, though I didn’t mind the Dune Dervishes meeting me... wherever I was now. I doubted I would have been glad to make acquaintance with the Elder Ones of rams and goats.

“A pony was our friend once,” the Dervishes replied, their shining eyes half-lidded, “the Sun Princess.”

As much as I was surprised, I was saddened by that reminder. Princess Celestia was a frequent guest of the distant desert nation, indeed. I wondered if the Dervishes knew or cared about me being her former pupil if they were reading my mind now. They had to know, to hear it from me anyway, “She is gone now.”

“We know.” The elegant golden horse bowed their head. “It is a shame her work was never finished,” they added quietly.

“Her work?” I echoed, tilting my head. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t about diplomatic relations or trade agreements.

“The Sun Princess was trying to better Harmony, extend its rules, create exceptions,” the Dervishes clarified. “She made an alicorn, though not true, and planned to make one more.”

I was taken a bit aback by that knowledge. It was as disturbing as it was curious, the fact that Cadence was ‘made’. I always thought she was Princess Celestia’s descendant (which wasn’t contradicting that news, only making it a bit more weird). Also, who was that other planned alicorn?

Instead I asked, “You mean Princess Cadence?” I still struggled to fathom why our conversation was ‘normal’, instead of the Dervishes directly prying both answers and questions from my consciousness. Perhaps it was respect, I was treated as an equal. Or maybe it was just to prevent me from becoming too confused. I felt better sanity-wise, but still uncomfortable.

“Names mean nothing to us,” the Dervishes said in an indifferent tone, letting me know that while they cared for the ponies for the sake of their past friend, mortal affairs were below their attention.

An uneasy silence took reign. I had so many questions to ask, as per usual, but the ironic coldness of the desert gods and their laconic answers promised me no satiation of my appetite for knowledge. Also, pestering the gods with inquiries felt wrong, dangerous even.

The Dervishes suddenly spoke, “Before we leave, there is something that you should know. Regardless of your success, the ponies will suffer. The Windigos lured by their follies brought great woe to many, and those who protect them will seek vengeance on ponykind and anyone who stands by them.”

Those who protect. That warning was very ominous, concerning me greatly. It was fair, however. Instead of trying to fathom who else but Canterlot and the Crystal Empire could be suffering from the deadly cold winters, I asked the question of greater importance.

“What should I do?” The only way to stop the Windigos from ravaging the land was to remove them somehow, which was a problem I had no idea how to possibly solve. If even the Old Gods were powerless...

“It is up to you, the Machine Goddess,” the Dervishes threw over their shoulder as they trotted away, leaving in their wake golden hoofprints full of sand, dissipating into the nothingness around us.

“Can’t you give me any advice?” I desperately called after the departing deities, though I knew I risked annoying them.

Only the void was around me, the last shining grain gone without a trace.

Then, inside my head I half-heard, half-read:

“You have to choose.”

Without the golden glow of the dreadful and beautiful divine being, the darkness of the nowhere I was at felt even more suffocating and absolute. My body was still an outline glowing with purple magic. I raised my hoof before my face to take a better look at it, and to my surprise I was met with lines of runes and numbers – code. I could even read it if I wanted.

That reminded my why I was there. Not in the sense of my goal, though that was true as well. I tried to reach for the power of the arcane core, and if the Dervishes were right (which I didn’t dare to doubt), I succeeded, hence they appeared and cut me off before I could wield it. Now that I was given liberty to try and live up to the title I had taken for myself, it was time to try to finish the job I started.

Not having a horn was confusing and making my attempts to sense and feel the magic around me very hard, but not impossible. The result was… interesting. Magic was all around me, and I was an inseparable part of that endless ocean of arcane energy. However, it wasn’t homogenous. There were different currents which I missed at first. There was a bottom.

It was the core, an enormous mass of arcanium, twisting time and space, flaring up with erratic, chaotic heartbeats sending protuberances of raw power crashing into an invisible wall. Harmony was separating that primal magic from the rest of the planet, containing the source of energy so potent that it could make an individual forever tear celestial bodies from their orbits. And I was going to tap into it.

The spell was still working, time and matter not important this close to the core, despite Harmony. The disrupted ley line was bleeding, the wound cut in it by the ritual allowing me to slip into it, to go down that blood vessel of the planet’s magic heart like a vicious parasite.

That pure magic, undiluted by Harmony, was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Nothing came close to that feeling of absolute power. But as amazing it was, I could feel how it was unrelenting. I had to cut off the torrent I was drinking from almost instantly. It was wild, it was destructive. Though those who could wield magic before Harmony knew no limits, they were so few, and not for lack of trying. It was deadly dangerous.

The core was now fueling me. I could feel that link established. It was stronger than Harmony, stronger than anything, save for the freezing hunger of space. Though it was reduced to a tiny trickle, I knew that I was more powerful than any mage I had ever met, their abilities only a weak shadow of what I was capable of.

I was a goddess now.

Yet the moment that thought came to my mind, a realization came to me: no, I wasn’t. There were no gods in this world. Only mages – some strong, some not. The Old Gods were mortals once, like I was, and we could only do so much, embrace only a fraction of the core’s power with our fragile mortal minds. Even if we were to fully control every pulse of that power, we would still be bound to it, depending on it to be omnipotent and immortal. Ironically, the Windigos were the closest to being actual gods, because they didn’t depend on the power of this world. But the universe wasn’t a speck of peculiar metal suspended in space. It was endless. Trying to let it inside the mind even for a fraction of a second would be irreparably devastating, leaving nothing behind but the imprint of endless hunger and the cold void.

My magic wasn’t without limit, it would never be, but on the scale of that world, compared to the lives and capabilities of others, it was far beyond reach. Anyhow, it wasn’t the amount of power that was important, but how it was applied.

Guided by that thought, I grasped the ley line, but instead of reaching for its origin, I allowed it to carry me back to where I came from.

The loud clatter of countless fallen things signified my arrival into Tin Flowers shack. Before returning to the Sky Palace, I had to think. That place seemed the best to be undisturbed for a while, and it also felt right to start from there again.

I was materialized as a formless mass of magic in the middle of her workshop. Wielding magic, especially that wild, without a horn or need for spells, just my will, was strange. I was quickly getting used to it, though. My body took the form I was most familiar with – a young unicorn mare. I realized that if I wanted, I could have an organic body again, but it would just be a caprice, rather than something really needed. I didn’t even bother to make my ghost form a precise replica of my first body.

My entrance was explosive, but it couldn’t have caused all that devastation. The TCE did come there, after all, rummaging through every container, turning everything upside down.

The violent wind was howling through the holes in the walls of Flower’s squalid shelter. It was night outside, just like it was when I first awoke here. If I paid enough attention to the dirty floor, I could see dust stuck to the oily spot.

The door creaked pitifully and fell off, my gentle nudge, preceded by the rude entrance of the TCE sniffers, becoming the tipping point. Rust scrunched under my ethereal hooves as I climbed higher and higher, following the steps of my previous two bodies.

The hill brought me to the view I saw so many times before, though it never ceased to amaze me. The city of the future... a future tomb. The whole evacuation was a joke. It was coming too late. The inhabitants of Canterlot who had at least some sense took too long to realize that their train was going off the rails and couldn’t be stopped. But the fare collectors weren’t going to let a single soul leave it until the price was paid: a life for a ticket.

No evacuation was going to take place. It would be a jailbreak.

I could change that, turn the TCE quarters into dust. But would my first act as a goddess be bringing the heavens upon those I thought to be wrong? How would it be different from what Spike did?

How many good ponies are out there? Tell me.

Who was I to judge? Might didn’t mean right.

But if I kill a good pony, nothing bad happens. If I kill a rapist or a murderer, they won’t commit a crime again. They all would have died anyway, their lives never meant anything.

It wasn’t the way. But the way I lived and acted before wasn’t the correct one either.

The scenery of Canterlot didn’t change, save for the dark silhouette of Stalliongrad. I could also see the gaping wound my ascension left on the surface of the Sky Palace – I contained the energy, but not immediately, and some of it spilled out, obliterating the stone, melting it like butter.

However, it was no longer an intimidating sight shocking me to the core. It was my home once, and it was my home again, because it was the place where my friends were. Tin Flower, Red Wire, Clandestine Delight and many others, the ponies who each showed me a part of this city, making it a place I knew as well as them. Even those who I couldn’t call friends influenced me no less. As much as they all were part of Canterlot, they were also part of the solution to the riddle I had been trying to solve time after time, since the moment I first stepped on this hill, but was never content with the answer.

How did it come to this?

Spike was the last one who I demanded to unravel that mystery for me. I asked my son the same question over and over, when in fact he answered it before I began to interrogate him.

It was my choice.

Equestria was a land of freedom now, ruled not by those who were privileged to have more power by the design of Harmony (though their rule being granted was never part of the great plan). It was ruled by equals, but that wasn’t important to the answer, not directly. Everypony, every creature had a choice now. That was what mattered.

That conclusion, however, called for the next logical question: why did the ponies choose that? The ponies had a choice and they chose nightmare. There were insane creatures inhabiting this place, that was true, I had seen enough of them in the dark paths beneath the earth. But not everyone was asinine, and only a lunatic would point their hoof at a nightmare when they had an alternative, a better choice.

That was where the catch was.

The easiest case was when there was no better choice. Rainbow had to choose between death and serving an enemy; either way she was going to lose. Life wasn’t what we wanted, it wasn’t even what happened to us, but how we reacted to it. Rainbow bit the bullet and began to work, doing the job that killed the remains of the pony in her, but saving Canterlot as a result, even if temporarily.

The easiest, however, didn’t mean it was easy at all. Making a world where not a single creature would ever have to choose between two losing scenarios was a task beyond any being, no matter how powerful. But even if that was to be, it wouldn’t fix anything, for having a better alternative didn’t mean it would always be chosen.

It was easy for me, a ‘goddess’, who lived two lives, saw two timelines, to make reasonable conclusions. I could see things clearly now. I had an experience not many can relate to. Yet even with all that, I wouldn’t dare to call my every step true and leading to only victory.

Sometimes, it was impossible to predict the consequences of an action. I could have never guessed that allowing Flim and Flam to make an industrial and trade conglomerate would lead to the Crystal Empire becoming a harvesting facility. I thought I was choosing the right thing; everything pointed to that. It was an alternative to trying to handle the crashing economy and satiate the war’s hunger by ourselves. It wasn’t a better one, as it was discovered, but it was too late by that time.

I was absolutely sure, if Queen Chrysalis knew that successfully invading Canterlot was equal to marching into a gilded cage surrounded by murderous beasts, she would have never considered that option. But she was desperate and afraid, which was the last part of the answer to my questions.

It was easy for me to sit down and choose for others, not feeling what they felt, not being in their horseshoes. Princess Luna was blinded by her burning desire to prove her worth by avenging her sister. Rainbow Dash and Spike abandoned any logic, any morality, moved by dread, guilt and bitterness. That list was much longer than the list of those who had made a choice with unforeseeable results. Sunset, Queen Chrysalis… even my name was on it. My grief.

Our hearts won against logic.

Unfortunately, it was something natural, a reverse of a coin. It was the price for having emotions, for being more than a machine. Even equinoids, artificial beings, were still victims of that bargain. As a goddess, as a creator of their code, their very souls, I could absolve them of that flaw. Rip out their hearts and make them into the arcane golems they were always considered. But that would be stealing the entire world from them, the ability to feel, love and hate. They would be clockwork apples, living on the outside, but nothing other than mechanisms on the inside, ultimately making no sense with their existence.

What would a choice be worth if there was no emotion to it, no gamble? A mathematical function aimed at finding the best solution, an optimal course of action leading to… what? We were specks of meat and the tiniest sparkles of magic on a mote of dirt soaring through the deadly void of the uncaring universe. Were we simply existing for the sake of existing? Even if that was true, we still had lives to live. There was no final goal, no ultimate reason, but the one we chose for ourselves with our feelings.

However, all that couldn’t justify the nightmare in front of me. It couldn’t be an excuse. It was still a problem of catastrophic proportions.

The mess Equestria had become couldn’t be fixed. The situation was too tangled, the corruption going too deep. Ponies, equinoids, kirins, neighponese, zebras… many nations were going to start anew. But if that nightmare happened once, it could happen again. Rainbow was right – everything, no matter how significant, would be forgotten, the river of time had no mercy. There had to be a way to prevent a second Canterlot.

It was all returning to the only thing that mattered: choice.

I could become a goddess ruling equinoids with a proverbial iron hoof, making them subdue the organic population of Canterlot. Many equinoids would gladly do that. I had the power to be loved and feared. In truth, the equinoids needed so little to overcome any others and make them kneel. But would I rob the power to take action from the masses I claimed to protect? Pushing my sense of justice and my own ideals onto someone was nothing but an exercise in self-righteousness.

That was why they needed me. By becoming the Machine Goddess, by embracing it, not just claiming the title, I would solve the issues of both equinoids and ponies. Titles meant nothing in the end; Luna proved it with her story. Only actions mattered. I didn’t have to leave anypony behind, I didn’t have to care only for artificial life.

Neither of them ever needed a ruler, malevolent or benevolent. The Old Gods were so subtle, so elusive that they were but legends. They were a choice, because directly influencing their subjects would be stealing any freedom. I wasn’t even going to guide equinoids, only protect them… from things who sought power for the sake of power. I was going to become their Harmony – the great enchantment was a ‘god’ in its own right. Perhaps it was the Old Gods of ponies, who decided to remove any emotions from their decisions, becoming a machine-like mind, able to calculate and evaluate, but not truly care, impartially distributing magic and cutie marks.

The solution was there all the time, right under my nose.

I was thinking a lot about those who made a choice leading to suffering, those who, guided by emotions, without realizing it, wandered into a nightmare of their own making. But there were those who had made another choice.

Red Wire, Clandestine Delight... But most importantly, the equinoids I met: Braze, Adamant Smash…

They saw reason, refused to succumb to loathing or bitterness. Finding a purpose in life wasn’t the opposite to making mistakes because of emotions. The virtue was a desire to make the world a better place coming from the very heart of an individual. The now-gone Equestrian diarchy was a mistake because it didn’t really allow anypony to choose virtue. The material things and beings left no alternative but to abide by the rules. It didn’t mean that without a stick and a carrot ponies couldn’t choose virtue. After all, it would always be a better choice than vice, which not always but often came with a price.

There was no way to force virtues and make them stick in a society, at least permanently. They had to be a choice like anything else. However, I now had the ability to offer an alternative to every equinoid and to make it obvious, unobscured by emotions without removing them. The ones who could truly change the world weren’t the rulers and their rules, but people.

My purpose as the Machine Goddess lay in bringing every equinoid who wished so into the Unity, a network powered by the Prime Code with me as its soul, the Nexus. Every member of the Unity would see the virtues and flaws of the others, would have a choice, a better alternative. Of course, it would be naive to believe that every equinoid would choose virtue over a flaw, but, as much as they (and Moondancer) had faith in me, I believed in them being better themselves. The Unity would not let them forget the consequences of any choice, good or bad.

It would be a society of empathy, where not a single equinoid would be able to hurt another without feeling that pain. They would understand each other, feel and know every feeling and thought. It would be a society with a choice, and it would be an example for organic life, for ponies.

Unlike the Princesses, it wouldn’t be an ideal unreachable by definition. The equinoids were children of mortals, their creations. The equinoids were made in the image and likeness of ponies, their very name meaning that. If anything, the Unity would be an object of envy, a challenge. A choice of empathy, freedom and purpose, something to strive towards.

It wasn’t a truth set in stone, an absolute solution for all woes of ponies and equinoids. It was another choice I had to make, guided by my faith, unable to foresee the consequences. The way we lived brought us only to ruin. We needed a change, even if that attempt would fail. I wasn’t a goddess, after all – the future would always remain a mystery to me.

But I knew what was going to happen next.

My footsteps echoed through the grave silence of the tunnel, disturbing the reddish dust and ashes which once could have become my last resting place. The incandescence from my shining body was lighting my path, the one I blindly charged before. I was no longer a metal frame puppeteered by the recording crystals or even an ethereal manifestation of the planet core’s chaotic fury. The equinoids had an image, an expectation of how their Holy Mother looked, and I wasn’t going to disappoint them.

My body was a living statue. With my magic coming from the arcanium core, I could also feel any slivers of the arcane metal if I concentrated. They were like transmitters, echoing with the power within me and deep below. It took me no effort to call them from the soil and make arcanium submit to my will, covering with shining plates the swirling blazing sun of my flesh. The rusty cables and wires of the Junkyard became my mane, clinging like snakes, trying to grasp, even though it wasn’t corporeal, the golden halo surrounding me. My back legs were shards held together by magic, resembling those of the arcanium abominations from Dodge City.

I could sense the magic inside the crystals of the equinoid inhabiting these passages, though I could find a way to her by orienting to the smears of oil on the floor, my dark, undrying blood. I was also able to hear her, the clutter of scrap metal falling, followed by angry curses.

Brass Litany didn’t notice me at first, her attention focused on picking up the fallen, slightly less rusty than average metal junk. It was her holy mission, which was about to be over.

A piece of metal in her mouth had a patch of corrosion cleaned away, leaving a reflective spot. It was that tiny part of the half-decayed skull that readily became a mirror for my radiance, catching Litany’s eyes.

Brass Litany sharply turned to me and a moment later the scrap fell out of her mouth. Before the sound of the equinoid skull rolling across the floor died out, she joined it, bowing as low as she could, almost lying on the dirt, her chain-mane ringing like hundreds of bells.

I approached her, my tall figure towering over the kneeling equinoid, almost scraping the low ceiling. With my hoof I raised her head, the corrosion of her body fading away at my touch, her copper mane and tail becoming fire, her steel skin reflecting my shine with an immaculate polish. My magic touched hers, the enchantments comprising the being known as Brass Litany contained inside the soul gems.

BLD-003.745.MK-44 – standard builder model with a hardened frame. Brass Litany had an artificial memory of working as a part of mechanized construction crew at the Inner City. Then came her own experience. Her owner was greedy and more than once missed the scheduled crystal clearing. She began to despise her risk-filled life, longing for freedom. The rest of the crew, sixteen other equinoids shared her dream of their lives being their own. One of those misty neon nights, they decided to break their chains, to run away into the Tunnels. Only Brass Litany made it underground, witnessing how her friends either were deactivated to have their memories erased or were killed the other way, their bodies turned into scrap metal and their crystals into dust. She, broken and hysterical, was met in the darkness by Alnico Sermon, his sweet promises placating her, turning her pain into righteous rage, into purpose. But those were lies. There was another way. She wasn’t given a choice, it was stolen from her.

Not anymore.

“Go, my child, and tell them to gather,” I said softly, smiling. “Your mother is returning home.”

Author's Notes:

As I warned, it took longer than usual for that chapter to be edited and you can see why. The next and final chapter is just as long, though I think its possible for it to be done a bit sooner, so the story will be finished before the next year comes.

While the editing goes on I not only struggle with hardships of my life – there is a new story in making! No ETA yet, and there is not much to tell it so far, except I'm trying to write it differently from my other stories style-wise.

Aftersound Project Discord server - it's a little community dedicated to discussion of the story and whatnot. Everyone is welcome to join.
Pony Tales, a quite welcoming place dedicated to disscussing and working on many great stories (now including Aftersound). I think you may also find it interesting.

If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.
I hope you enjoyed reading this story so far.
Stay awesome.