Inside Where Eternals Die

by AppleTank

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Science Fiction, Twilight Sparkle, Gore, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 6128

In the ashes of a long dead sky, a machine feeds on the screams of a singularity.

In the furthest reaches of reality
Hides a realm in the last warmth of entropy
inside the ashes of a long dead sky
A place where eternals have come to die
Hear its last singularity scream
Find the devouring machine who can no longer dream.

The last story of the Interloper series. If you can't find it, don't worry, I haven't written it yet, because I'm an idiot.

Title inspired by "Outside the Reaching Sky"
Written in a style vaguely reminiscent of “Lost Cities”
Slight references to "Song of the Spheres"
Slight references to "The Immortal Loops"
Slight references to "Sufficiently Advanced"
Slight references to an unpublished series "Between the Multiverses"

Published 2021-11-14 07:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-11-14 07:20:01 UTC

1) Eternity

The discovery was a complete accident. Nobody ever went in that direction; it was out of the way, a difficult jump, and led to, as far as anyone could tell, nowhere. Mappers noted it was there, and that was that.

It was only after a fugitive tried running through unexplored dimensions, trying to shake off their pursuers, did anyone realize something was amiss. Out in this far flung corner of nowhere, there was a single chain of isolated, empty universes, twenty jumps deep.

With each jump, there were less and less stars in the sky. A once beautiful tapestry, becoming colder, emptier, lonelier. Until they reached the twentieth jump, where there was nothing. Not a single star they could detect on even the most sensitive of instruments. They raised the gain on them so much the faint light from the control panels started interfering with its scans.

The only volunteers were unilaterally sarosians who went ahead and sat for hours in darkness so pure, they echolocated constantly just so they could be sure they weren’t floating off into space. And even then, they still felt as if the ship was crumpling in around them. The results came in: there was a complete lack of even a single photon for billions of years in any direction.

From then on, everyone tried to leave this dimension as fast as possible.

The twenty-first jump reversed this trend, if only slightly. There was a single star as far as the sensors could see. A low-ranged one, though even that could not explain its age.

A single planet orbited it, though that was almost an insult to every planet. It was large enough to have standard gravity, and that was about it. It had a thin, breathable atmosphere, but the air was so devoid of moisture nobody ever took off their hazardous environment suits for long. Being on the ground was an exercise in boredom. Flat, dry compacted dirt in every direction. Not a single dune, and we had numerous pegasi go check. The poles were colder, but that was it.The wind was slow, meandering, unchanging, barely ruffling a single sheet of paper.

When night came, it became pitch black. No stars, no natural night lights. The first night we realized this, everyone went scrambling back to their ships. All remembered the darkness of the twentieth jump. Days later, hundreds of portable lights were shipped in.

At least when the exploratory vessels went into system orbit to set up telescopes, they had the light of the local star to see by. However, this proved to be useless as well.

As a last resort, the vessels made random jumps across deep space. The only thing they found were cold lumps of iron floating aimlessly.

It took weeks until someone found the one unique, and disturbing feature on this dead rock: an old, outdated, but clearly functional refueling station. It used the same standard fuel most ships in the coalition used, though it was near empty. Even had several old, if standard connectors, along with an easily removable detachment point to install different ones.

In fact, the entire building was made of simple, pre-fab parts, with not a single decorative embellishment. From the outside, it was just a large, concrete grey box with an airlock and dirty solar panels. From the inside, it was an empty concrete box with battery lamps, a few cots, and some plastic tables. The large fuel tank was bolted to the concrete foundation outside.

However, there was an additional room that broke this connection. The small side room housed a single, massive slab of iron, inscribed with hundreds of languages across the Worlds. They all translated into the same thing, a set of instructions to guide a dimensional jump, distance, speed, time.

On its back, a piece of spray-paint art. A vague outline in black, short, likely quadruped, with purple streaks spreading out like wings. It looked as perfect as if it was made yesterday in this dry, perfectly regulated environment. The iron black too, no moisture for rust.

Everything we found in this place, it only left us with more and more questions.

How old was this place?

Who made this?

2) Singularity

The probe sent to the coordinates eventually returned a positive signal, so a crewed vessel was soon sent after.

When we first re-entered realspace, we thought we were under attack. High energy particles raked out shields, filling our viewscreen with static. A moment later, the bridge officers reported that it was “merely” a diffuse beam of gamma rays. Setting the engines to full power let us exit it shortly enough.

When the viewscreen cleared up, my first reaction was despair. No stars, no cities, no life. The only light I could see were the dim glow of our controls. Except ... something was emitting that beam of gamma rays.

I informed the captain, she directed the ship to turn and point towards. At first, what we saw made no sense. A vertical line of blue-hot plasma, stretching lightyears away from us. A pinprick of light flickered in the distance, at the base of the plasma. Seeing as there was nothing but dust around us, we powered towards it.

The bridge crew was rendered speechless as we got close. At first, we were confused by the glowing ring. A portal? An installation?

But as we got close, we realized it was too big to possibly have been artificially built. The slight gravitational pull as we slowed to orbit explained the rest. In the ashes of this dead universe, a lone super-massive black hole remained. Its monstrous ring glowed to near fusion, magnetic currents funneling charged particles towards deep space like a galactic lighthouse.

As we stared a flickering light caught our notice, and further deepened our bafflement. A large space-platform was also in orbit. We watched it silently as it zipped by underneath us. The discussion was brief. We were sent here to investigate, and this was literally the only thing worth investigating within lightyears, if not the entire dimension.

We sent a message back to the operations team in a second shuttle behind us, warning them that we were going into a gravitational well. The engines were then re-lit once more, and we dove after that installation.

The installation, like the refueling station, was minimally decorated. Simple white paint covered in tiny scratches, burn marks, impact craters covered the entire outer shell. Yellow-black caution tape marked areas to steer clear, red text and arrows marked points of interest. As we drifted close, a red light flashed green. Large hangar doors opened up, a glowing shield keeping the air inside before us.

No hails, identity confirmations. It felt like we were walking into an automaton. But it seemed to be inviting us instead of threatening us, so there really wasn’t anything else to do but go in.

The hangar lights flickered on as we passed through the barrier, giving us our first sight of sapient activity, if only barely. Rents in the floor ending in a small shuttlecraft with its nose partially embedded in the wall, all its windows blown.

It was impossible to tell how long ago it had crashed here, the space was perfectly clean, perfectly sterile. So sterile, in fact, that anyone who wanted to check out the hangar needed to keep our helmets on, since despite being pressurized, there was no oxygen. Otherwise, one had to wait inside.

Three of us were chosen specifically for exploration, due to us being equipped with cybernetic bodies, along with a hip-high robotic spider carrying various instruments. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and I, the spider was Fluttershy’s drone, being remotely controlled through the radio signal maintained to the second shuttle orbiting outside.

I was checking if the flow rate of my oxygen tank was stable when Fluttershy’s drone sent a ping through the radio. “Twilight? I think you should take a look at this.”

I blinked, then quickly trotted over. I froze at the sight of the dark stain covering the side of the shuttle, a smeared trail leading deeper into the installation.

The spider drone had a needle dipped into the substance, her voice a curious hum. “It almost looks like blood, but there’s so much more mixed within, and missing others. No platelets, for one. There’s also oil, and metal fragments in this. Somehow, its not drying, nor evaporating. Whatever it is, this feels extremely artificial.”

By now, Rainbow and Applejack had walked over, their systems green.

“You think they died?” Rainbow asked, leaning over the spider drone.

The spider’s cameras whirled along the edge, all the way across the floor. “The hoofsteps look to be roughly evenly spaced. Even if injured, they seem to be stable enough to walk steadily, though to be truly sure I need to find them. Oh, I do hope they didn’t die.”

Applejack was standing by the shuttle’s side, which was barely even stained. “How long ago do ya think this happened? At the very least, its long enough for all this ‘blood’ to have dripped off these panels and fallen to th’ floor.”

All of us stared at the pool in front of us. “Only one way to find out,” I said, following the blood trail.

Like the hangar airlock, the doors opened for us the moment we walked close. The trail went onwards in a straight line, lights clunking on ahead of us as we walked. A few minutes of silences passed until suddenly, the shuttle crew sent us an alert. “Hey, Away Team? It seems like the hangar doors are--”

Yellow warning lights lit up and began spinning. A video feed was sent over the wireless, showing the point of view of the support craft. The hanger doors closed amidst flashing yellow lights as the back of the installation opened up like a metal flower. We could see a brief glimpse of golden panels on the inside.

The feed suddenly jerked up; the installation was headed straight for the black hole’s particle jet. The panels opened wide, ionized air arcing over the metal shell as high energy radiation started to slam into the installation. Moments later, the feed was filled with static, the interference was too much.

The floor shook underneath us. We clung to the railing as the air seemed to be charged with energy. The hazard lights seemed to be getting brighter, too. It took a moment before I realized. “Its ... using the gamma rays for power.” I whispered.

Rainbow blinked as the static cleared, and we could see the panels folding away. “Wait, those are solar panels? Well, not solar but, you know what I mean.”

“Seems like it,” I said. “I would ask why anyone thought that would be a good idea, but well, there really isn’t anything else around here.”

We waited in silence until the installation’s hazard lights turned off, then kept following the trail.

There were a few doors and hallways along the way. Most stayed dark, though a few seemed to be left open.

The first open door did not give us a very good impression.

"Shit!" Rainbow Dash shouted. Lines of magic lit up around her hooves, projecting a blue shield over the door. Her wings flared as she leapt backwards, pushing us all back.

It took us several moments to disentangle our hooves. “What the heck was that?” Applejack asked, patting down her mane. I looked over my shoulder as I helped Fluttershy’s droid flip over.

Rainbow Dash slowly inched forwards to the door, peeking an eye around the entrance. “I thought I saw ... “ Her voice trailed off.

Seeing her trail off, Applejack and I gave each other a look, then moved to glance around Rainbow. We both gasped at the sight.

The bent cannon barrel of a massive mech lay pointing at us, its torso torn in two. I could see scratch marks on the floor leading to a larger sliding door, currently shut. Behind it was a mass of destroyed weaponry, stacked carelessly. Enchanted blades, Heavy autocannons, sliced armor, charred combat vehicles, and more, many I couldn't recognize.

I gently pulled Rainbow back, and closed the door. "Maybe we'll come back to this. Later."

There were two more rooms like it. Massive charred vehicles, laser cut spacecraft.

Another few minutes of walking, I was distracted by a dimly lit stairwell down, strange blocky text labeled something I couldn't identify. There was ... a feeling in the air that made my heart race.

"Twi?" Applejack asked.

"Just a moment. It's ... calling to me." Rainbow and the drone watched the stairwell as Applejack and I went down.

The glowing barrier before us still let me see beyond it, and I gasped. Massive shelves stretching deep into the distance, packed with books, scrolls, tablets, shells. I jerked my head back at the sound of a crackling speaker. Except ...

"I know that language," I realized.

"Really?" Applejack raised an eyebrow.

"Well, no, but I know who does," I said, quickly assembling a folder full of pictures and sending it across the coms. "Get Pinkie on the line."

I glanced at the downloaded text document. "'Nitrogen environment, acquire full eva suit before proceeding' in Galactic Standard. An older dialect, but still translatable." I said.

Rainbow snorted. "I guess that would explain this builder's penchant for stupidly large space balls."

Applejack blocked my way back down the stairwell. "Sugar, we got plenty of time to explore after we figure out who's using this."

I sighed, flopping on her foreleg. "Add it to the list of mysteries, then."

We moved on after the trail.

The second to last open door was unlike any other. It was still styled like a massive garage, except there was only one occupant.

A tracked micro bus, a body of sharp angles and covered in scarred armor plate, sat waiting, watching. I shivered at the cold weight as I paused at the entrance, yet there was no movement I could discern.

As I began to look away, I saw a flash of a white, flowing dress. I snapped my head back, but it was gone.

The last door was the most disturbing of all. At first, we thought they were survivors in cyrostasis.

Then, we wiped off the frost, and realized something was terribly wrong. I stared at the grey Terrasire. "This is ... Octavia?"

Applejack walked over from down the aisle with a frown. "They're all Octavia."

Rainbow glided over to us, Fluttershy's drone carried beneath her. "Did a random check, these are all clones," she said with a grimace. "Didn't recognize half of the species there, no idea what the hay any of this means."

"Clones?" I pondered

Fluttershy tapped the edge of the chambers. "Some, but not all. Some groups looked mixed, with shared traits. I .. I'm not sure I want to think about what it was done for."

I slowly walked along the aisle, brushing the frost off a cyro chamber. This one was not a pony, but instead a dragon-pony hybrid, with a grey underbelly and scales of dirty gold. Small black horns curved around her ears and over a short cut black mane.

The resemblance was clear as day.

"Bodies, of every sapient species," I whispered. "Any face needed to blend in and acquire knowledge. Knowledge for the acquisition or construction of weapons. More bodies to fight with them."

"An' a foe that made this necessary," Applejack finished.

A crackling noise over unseen speakers made us pause and look around, ears swiveling. After a moment, it cleared up. "Ah, Equestrians!" the female voice said. "I honestly didn't expect visitors in the Eternal Forge after the first ... well, not that matters. I see you've brought oxygen masks; I apologize for the sterile air, but getting rid of oxygen was the easiest way for me to stop things from rusting around here.”

“Who are you?” I call out, looking up at the ceiling.

“Who am I? Well, I’ve had many names over my time active. Seer, Thief, Traitor ... but I prefer the Interloper.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Oh! I apologize, this form of communication is probably a bit strange for you.” The Thunk Thunk Thunk of circuit breakers slamming into place lit up the rest of the walkway. “Just follow the lights for a face to face meeting! Give me a moment to freshen up a bit.”

The lights followed the blood exactly.

Fluttershy gasped. The only reason she didn’t rush forwards was both Applejack and Rainbow Dash holding her back.

“Hm?” the Interloper said. “Oh, I do apologize for the mess. I never bothered cleaning up the body since, you know, didn’t expect visitors. Its taking a bit longer than I expected to wake up her internal systems. Tea?”

“How could you call your subordinate just .... just something to clean up!?” Fluttershy demanded.

There was a confused pause from the Interloper. “We appear to have a few misunderstandings,” she said slowly. “First, I never make anyone do what I wouldn’t do myself. Nobody wants to do what I do, so I do everything myself. Which means every single body you’ve passed by in the past hour ...” The body, the griffoness in front of us twitched, jerked, straightened up. It turned around, giving us a bloody grin, “-- they’re all mine.”

The rest of her torso was not much better. Her left talon was completely gone, a bluish goo covering the stump. The off-white fur of her chest was marred by a tear through her ribcage, the wound permanently stained black even as blue goo started filling in the gaps. “Second, I’ve had many, many years to design bodies that will fight down to the last cell cluster. This is annoying, but if its just to sit here and talk through the speakers, I can keep this up for a few hours before I need to get some food into her.”

“The heck kind of fight did you get into that needed to be able to walk away from a dragon attack?” Rainbow blurted, though despite her casual voice, even she was pointing her ears forwards slightly.

The Interloper sighed. “That is indeed one old story, in a place far, far from here. Let’s just say, there were some omnipotent beings so bored that they started playing with the lesser beings’ lives for entertainment.” Her face darkened. “I didn’t like that. So I spent countless years training, researching, and outright stealing technology to figure out what could kill a god. Then I figured it out. Then I ambushed them. Told them to choke on a cactus if they were that bored. Escaped their realm and pulled back all of my assets to hide here.”

Her face turned tired. “Then, I just watched the rest of the empires for a while. I had sacrificed everything for this self-assigned mission. Once I could find no further purpose for existing, I shut everything down for cold storage. Then, your little crew ran into me, and here we are.”

“How ... long was a while?” I ventured curiously. My mind was racing at the morsels dangled in front of me. Thousands of years of history, preserved!

The Interloper shrugged. “I stopped watching after the third dimensional alliance collapsed. Guess they were done after a few millennia of being trapped in a broken timeline. It was the oldest, too. I ... couldn’t find it in me to stay conscious. I simply stopped recording any new data, its not like anything happens here.” She glanced at Fluttershy, who had changed from shaking in outrage to brimming with curiosity. “So, what’s on your mind?”

The drone jerked. “Oh! I’m sorry, I got enraptured by the blue ... blood? That’s coming out of you. I’ve never seen any life with something like it.”

At this, the Interloper smiled with a bit of pride. “I’m not surprised you haven’t. It was a rare group of sapients, slime molds of a type. Friendly enough from the three generations I infiltrated. Collected enough of their genome to conduct my own experiments, and designed something like a biological nanoswarm.”

She was gesturing with her arm to continue, but Applejack held up a hoof. “Those ... bored gods. I feel like I’ve heard reports with something like it from some of our exploration teams--!”

The Interloper left an oily blue streak as she dragged herself in front of Applejack in a single movement, not blinking as Applejack’s reflexive training tore through the griffoness’s cheek. “Tell me,” the Interloper slowly said, a rumbling hiss coming over the speakers, completely ignoring Rainbow sliding in front of Applejack. “Have you heard of any mention of a group called the Restless?”

“Uh, no?” Applejack guessed.

“Unfortunate.” The Interloper leaned back onto her haunches, eyes going blank. I shivered as I felt an icy pressure press down on my spine, and looked around in worry. “It seems that I have been forgotten more completely than I thought.”

“W-what?” I stammered, backing away slightly at the Interloper’s sudden change in attitude until I bumped into someone’s leg and squeaked.

The Interloper nodded at the person behind me, and I whirled. A pale woman in a grey dress, covered in sewn-on steel plate and long black hair stared down at me. “Deloria,” the Interloper called out. “Please escort our guests back to the hangar. I must prepare to take the field again.”

Deloria gave a shallow bow. “Of course, my Master.”

“W-wait!” I stammered as we were forcibly guided away.

Rainbow’s hoof pushed against my muzzle. “Come on Twi, when the giant angry supercomputer says its time to get out, its time to get out.”

I pushed her hoof out of my face even as her wing shoved me back. “That’s it? Is this going to be the last we see of you? I want to learn more from you!”

The body didn’t move, instead slowly falling over like a puppet with its strings cut before it was hidden by the lights turning off one by one behind us. The floor rumbled like a beast coming alive, the visible lights flickering as voltages surged.

Then: “I must inspect what state the multiverse has become in my absence,” the Interloper said. “I will send a liason. What you do with the history is up to you, as long as you keep my name out of it.”

“How will I recognize you?” I asked.

Chilling mist streamed out of the room of frozen clones, and a grey Terrasire mare with a sleek black bob cut stepped out, her acid yellow irises piercing the shadows.

“You will.”

....

...

..

.

3) The Machine

An Eternity ago

She wheezed as her vision slammed back into focus. She was lying on her back, surrounded by the sapphire glass that used to be the cockpit window and bathing in her own blood. The shuttle craft she rode in on was partially embedded in the wall, the nose crumpled in like a pinecone.

Looked like she had blacked out during parking.

She carefully levered herself up on her good arm and looked down. Bubbles escaped from the ragged tear in her ribs. The wetness in each breath told the same story. She definitely didn’t have enough oxygen to focus for more than a few minutes at a time, and the constant jostling did no favors to the half-assed seal in her bronchial tubes. Hell, the active slime nodes had enough trouble sealing off the hundreds of micro tears littering her body.

She rolled to her front and slowly stood up. She pulled her left forearm to her side; keeping that stump down would only force herself to have to fight gravity itself to keep her fluids inside.

With a few cautious steps, she left the slow drip of her blood smearing down the shuttle’s windows.

Right, now, activate the ---

She wheezed as her vision slammed into focus, finding herself leaning heavily over the door control panels. Fortunately, it seemed she managed to automatically hit the trigger, and it was already open. She picked herself up and shuffled through, keeping her thoughts as blank as possible as darkness swam around her peripheral vision.

As she walked, she could feel the rumbling underfoot as the Eternal Forge awoke from its slumber.

Relays slammed closed, generators spooled up, wires heated, pumps roared.

She hissed air through her teeth, gasping as her pulse echoed distantly in her head.

A flash of white and steel gray.

Headlights beamed down.

Armored hands clutched her shoulders as she wobbled in place. “What are you doing!? You know you can always ask me for help.”

She gave a wet laugh. “Honestly, I was a bit too excited by the--”

She wheezed as light pulsed in her eyes. “Sorry,” she managed from Delori’s hip as her vision tunneled to almost nothing. “Barely enough oxygen to think and talk at the same time.” She paused for a few seconds until she could feel her toes again. “But we won.”

Delori sank to her heels beside me, her long hair haloing her face. "That's wonderful news, my Master."

"... yeah, it is. It took me so long because I was hiding in a deadzone to hopefully shake off any pursuers."

"I can certainly see that; your body is falling apart," Delori said. "Let me help you."

The Interloper held up a stump. "No, I want to take these steps under my own power. Just ...” Her eyes drifted shut, the pupils glassy and unfocused, "... guide me there."

Ichor dripped behind the pair as they trekked, the fervor of the Forge slowly calming down. When they reached the core, the Interloper slowly sank to her haunches. "Hey Boss, we did it. That ol' R.O.B. of ours ain't gonna be bothering anyone anymore." She wiped her lips. "Took every one of us, I was the only one to survive the backblast." She gave a wet laugh. "Don't think they were expecting an attack after eons of divine excellence."

The screen above her blinked, flashed, beeped "Perfect. You've done wonderfully. We all have." A cable dangled down from the ceiling, Delori guiding it to the back of the clone's neck. "Rest, now. Your mission is complete."

The clone smiled weakly. "Pretty sure I was going to do that automatically anyways. You sending anyone else out?"

"I will need to clean up some of our messes. Send some spies to see how the ripples of our actions flow. But that's for me to worry about. Goodbye."

The clone had slumped, breathing slowing, slowing, stopped.

When the data was backed up, the Interloper looked down at the cold body. It was the last of her wartime units. Packed to the gills with combat hardware, capable of operating when more than half their bodies were destroyed, perfect control of every cell cluster within. A pinnacle of biological, and magical engineering. While her next batches would no longer need such resilience, maybe ... she could keep this one around for a time.

Eons pass

An alliance rises. Its reach spreads. Infighting simmers. Disagreements burn. A devastating civil war. Dimensional lanes shatter. Communication lines broken. A full retreat, isolation. Worlds age, die, repeat.

"A shame. Maybe next time will be better."

Eons pass

Kingdoms arise. Alliances are formed. Trade routes develop. Alliances break down. Dimensional lanes collapse. The kingdoms isolate, then slowly fracture back into their component universes.

A sigh. "What a disappointment." Her scouts scatter, and wait.

Eons pass

This new conglomeration was an interesting one. A cluster, damaged, its timeline unstable, the advancement of time held short to contain the damage.

The timelines flowing, intersecting, the bonds forming, strengthening.

With the seemingly endless repeats, the difficulties of empire holding were insurmountable, and the disparate groups could meet without any other expectation than friendship.

Thousands of years passed, and her hope grew. Maybe this was it. The one who could recreate the once great Union Hearts of old, once this artificial restriction was finally over. Everyone, together, on equal ground from centuries to millennia of shared struggles.

Then it ended.

One last life, one last hurrah of celebration.

That was it.

The Interloper scout stareed in dismay. None of them had exploratory tendencies? All of their experiences, now all gone, like dust in a desert.

A sense of weariness crawled over the Interloper. She sent out the signal to recall all assets. All this waiting, only for emptiness and isolation to reign again.

A clone walked through the Babylon Library, a section of warped space and vacuum isolated storing countless histories. The clone slides in the last book into one of its largest sections. Her suit crinkled as she made a fist, clutching the shelf. This book would also be the last entry to the Babylon Library.

Shuttlecraft, fighters, and transports file back into the Eternal Forge, their pilots slipping into cyro-pods to offload their memories and store their bodies for another time. Hangars lock shut, lights turn off, and the gamma inverters shift into low power mode. Only stripes of reflective tape illuminate the remaining open hangar, the last warrior’s craft still resting in the same hole it crashed in so long ago.

The Interloper looks on into the long dark for a few more hours, before ending the memory recording systems.

No one ever spreads out far enough to find her. She sleeps onwards.

What is this? Visitors!? Amazing! They don't give off the impression of veteran explorers, but no reason not to humor them. They've made it this far, might as well practice being the eager host.

...

...

As the visitors leave, the geas she branded herself with burns aluminum hot. The lights around her Core popped in the surge of fury, the transfer cables buzzing in the maelstrom of energy roiling within her.

Had she been gone for that long? Were they all willingly ignorant of the invasion of the divine realms? The one thing she could be proud of?

She needed to find out more.

“Is this going to be the last we see of you?”

Her thoughts pause, derail.

It has been ... so long since she’s had outside contact. Maybe something interesting will come about a temporary exchange.

Delori withdrew a jar containing a yellow slime at my request, and gave it to the purple unicorn. “Keep this with you. We will know where it goes.”

She watched as the shuttle craft left to rejoin its sister in space, then vanished through eternity. This was a situation she had not prepared for, had never encountered, had never dreamt of happening.

She knew the kind of person she was. No good person would attempt an assassinnation against omnipotence. No sane person would come out still functional after subjecting themself to billions of years of subterfuge and infiltration. Of willingly splitting a mind never designed for hive-minded operation.

But still, she dutifully collected, hoarded, recorded. The multiverse’s largest, oldest, repository of culture, characters, and creations squirreled away beneath her feet, but for what end? Habit?

She already used it to cause so much destruction. Despite only being forced to bloody her hands once every few centuries, she was far too old to make that number look anything but horrifying.

Maybe someone else would be able to make something beautiful from her dark work. But it would not be by her hand.

When the shuttle blinked out of this dimension, she sent a short signal into the black hole. A few hours later, the event horizon vanished, leaving only a massive purple and red robot behind. “Oh-One-Nine, we’re leaving.”

Moments later, both the robot and the Eternal Forge vanished.

4) R#stL#ss

Most dimensions reset after a certain period of time. If there weren’t, there’d be a whole lot more lost empires sitting around.

There were, however, dimensions where they didn't reset.

For most, it seemed to just be an empty dimension. The complete lack of light in any direction certainly didn’t help to dispel that myth. However, for the very few who spent more time than reasonable sitting around recording everything, they may stumble upon the cold, frost-covered iron lumps that remained in the void.

For the Interloper, the voids became the perfect place to hide. In fact, the Eternal Forge was parked in one of these voids, pushed far enough out of the way that it would require insane amounts of luck to even stumble upon.

Which, over enough time, it had.

Within another void, the Forge warped in. The Interloper had spread a few safe houses within these voids. These were even harder to find, since they were kept unlit, powered by nothing more than a set of gravity pulleys for emergency lighting. Nothing else could last long enough for such use cases.

For the first time in eternity, there was light. A pyre, nitromethane white, burned in the darkness. An Interloper body stood in front of it, a flare in her hand. In her other, she clutched a memory chip.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the void. “I used you all to fool myself into believing I was leaving behind a legacy, when all I did was cast off sparks that died in the roiling seas. You tried so hard to uphold the ideals I never believed in, and died waiting for a rescue that never came.”

She glanced at the card in her grasp. "Anasi, you who loved me so, I have failed you the most.

"Next time," she growled. "I will build something that--!"

Her words choked, gasped, strangled itself in her throat. The nitromethane burned out by the time her fury had died out too, leaving only a tired emptiness behind.

“... No. If anything is to be built, it won’t be by my hands. May you be the last I failed. Goodbye, Anasi.”

A field, a sunny day, birds chirping.

Then, the space warps. A dull green deer with straw yellow hair stands up, peering at her surroundings underneath multiple layers of light cloth. There was a lazy arrogance in her posture as she stood up from her crouch. A relaxed air not from the confidence of her superiority, but indifference to life itself. She took a deep breath, and exhaled, smiling softly. Somehow, despite everything, this was the most relaxed she’d felt she could remember.

After taking a few minutes to take in the wind, the sun, the flora and fauna, she set down the dirt path. She consulted her mental map, comparing it with the small buildings coming up ahead. A few blocks down, she ran into an old, large townhouse. It was quite distinctive, especially since it had multiple branches growing out of its seams.

The Interloper chuckled. “Seems like someone has a bit of nostalgia for the classics.” Stepping forwards, she knocked on the door.

The door blasted backwards, a harried purple unicorn standing before her. “You ... you came?” she breathed.

“Of course. I promised, after all.”

They stood there for another moment, staring into each others’ eyes. The Interloper’s grin slowly grew larger and larger until Twilight squeaked.

“Sorry! Sorry,” She quickly stepped back and waved a hoof. “Please, come in.”

The Interloper squinted as her eyes adjusted to the light. The yellow jar of slime was on a counter near the door, a metal rod growing out and pulsing slowly. The rest of the area was covered in bookcases and couches.

The Interloper took one step into the house, then paused, her eyes squinting as she scanned the room. She turned her head to stare at the ceiling and groan. “I suppose I didn’t request you to enforce a complete information black-out.”

Twilight gave her an awkward chuckle, as a few hundred pairs of eyes poke themselves out from around corners, shelves, tables, couches, potted plants, stairwells, the vast amount of them being purple equines. “Sorry! Sorry. I guess I must have mentioned it a bit while at the Census, and well, you know how fast gossip goes.”

The Interloper gave them all the stink eye for one, long, sweat inducing minute. Eventually, the tension left her shoulders, and she let out a tired sigh. “Alright, let’s do this.” She looked at all of them in the eyes. “Let me be clear. This is a trial run. I’m not sure how sane of an idea this will be, but I’ve spent more lifetimes than I can count failing. Its time to try something new. So for now, I’ll introduce myself, and let y’all ask some questions. Good? Let us begin.”