The ponies burst into motion at a speed that belied their size.

Rainbow Dash flapped her wings and lunged forward. Despite her wobbling buttocks and balls, she flew straight, though with the jutting length of her phallus her path was no longer like the arc of an arrow as much as a log thrown at a Trottish caber toss. With a twist of her hips, she swung the blue shaft around like a club and smashed it into the side of Celunastia’s body with a gelatinous crash.

They whinnied giddily sixfold, unfazed, before their hands reached for the pegasus, who was caught unawares, struggling to maintain her aerial balance.

“Rainbow!” Two unicorn horns lit up simultaneously. Blue light enveloped Rainbow Dash in a shield while a ray of magenta impacted the monster and pushed them back (and Twilight Sparkle winced inwardly), faltering enough for their prey to flit out of grasp.

“Hey, over here you overgrown varmint!” Applejack shouted while she ran in a circle around the side, four legs moving in careful pounding rhythm now despite how inconvenient her bulging guts were.

“Once more into the breach, friends!” Pinkie Pie cried from her perch on top of the farmpony’s back, with only the slightest hint of levity amidst her serious tone while she pelted Celunastia with a barrage of cupcakes pulled from somewhere nopony cared to identify.

“Twilight, how are we going to do this?” Spike asked urgently, moving out of the way along with Twilight Sparkle and Rarity when the fused giant reached for them with its grasping hands and a swathe of tentacles.

“We need to break through to them somehow!” the alicorn shouted. She remembered her past attempts to reawaken ponies’ memories; those hadn’t exactly proven to be successes, but she felt more confident now that her newfound understanding of the corruption would allow her to succeed. The only thing standing in the way of their success was the fact that their target was far more of a threat than anypony she had tried to cast the spell on before. “We’re going to have to subdue them!”

“Works for me!” The dragon grinned as he started forward. “Come on, Fluttershy!” Wings of scale and feather flapped as the two titans lumbered ahead and came to grapple with the monster’s thighs. Their breasts and phalluses got in the way, but that wasn’t going to stop them from holding onto the flabby pillars with all their might.

“Sorry, princesses!” Fluttershy called out, but her voice was resolute. Cords of muscle bulged and flexed in her limbs as she stood her ground and pulled, the white and blue body tilting as its balance shifted off center.

Rarity made a shrill battle cry and brought up diamond barriers around Spike and Fluttershy, shielding them from the grasping hands and tendrils. Rainbow Dash let out a whoop and a holler as she swooped in for another fly-by, all while the earth ponies continued to circle. Magic surged in Twilight Sparkle’s horn, preparing to fire another spell.

It wasn’t too different from any other time they had to square up against some dreadful enemy to save Equestria, aside from there being far more penises involved.

But, also like those occasions, she was aware that it was rarely ever so easy.

The droning chanting of Celunastia’s body had never ceased, but then they sharply uttered in a rumbling groan, “Consume the chains that seek to bind you.” And then, from beneath their gut, three shapes emerged, long and serpentine. Twilight Sparkle only had the opportunity to observe that much before they lashed out, reaching underneath Rarity’s forcefields, and Spike and Fluttershy cried out in surprise and pained pleasure upon being latched onto by each of their cocks. They were shafts tipped with equine heads and their own brimming indigo lips, not unlike the one Rainbow Dash had been saddled with, though these seemed far more flexible, like actual serpents erupting from a pony’s loins. They were quick to begin pumping along the lengths they had seized, bulging and straining, and their victims’ expressions betrayed their arousal, their grips weakening.

With a terrified shriek, Twilight Sparkle telekinetically pulled back on both of them, maybe a little too hard, rocketing back and tumbling on their rears.

“Hey, you can’t—whoa!” Rainbow Dash’s retort was cut off by those phallic heads snapping up at her, forcing her backward, while Applejack and Pinkie Pie came to a stop as well, maintaining a wide berth.

The trio of bending shafts raised in front of Celunastia, leering with many narrow dark eyes, cobras (cockbras) poised to strike. “They clamor for your reprise,” their belly murmured, and then the broad maw opened and something came spilling out. It was a figure made of shadow, and Twilight Sparkle immediately thought of the goo that she had seen in her vision of her own mind. This figure did not melt into a puddle, though, instead bulging and distending into an oily monstrosity. It was a mess of extremities and genitals, standing on a multitude of legs with arms jutting out at odd angles, breasts and phalluses and lips and vulvas and other body parts placed nearly at random. There were at least four distinct heads, vaguely equine shapes, some partially sunken into the swollen mass or melting into each other. The grotesque glob of merged ponies groaned, and no sooner had it stumbled forward than did more dark masses emerge from the fused giant’s gullet.

“Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash shouted indignantly, “Nopony said you could have reinforcements!”

“These are party crashers if I’ve ever seen one!” Pinkie Pie added with a huff.

Twilight Sparkle spent the briefest of moments pondering what these creatures were and where they came from, long enough to then promptly decide that she had no desire to know. “Don’t let them get near you!” she instructed, staring down the horde of some dozen or so of the dark pony-blobs. “Remember, we can’t get aroused!” She said this despite the burning need in her loins, the unconscious excitement fighting back against her dread.

“That’s real easy to say, princess, but we’ve gotta push through ‘em somehow!” Applejack dug a hoof at the ground and glared defiantly at the eyeless faces which puckered their lips at her.

The alicorn saw that those of their group who bore penises, Fluttershy and Spike especially, looked particularly anxious, their jutting lengths making them easy targets for the dark ooze to grab onto. “Alright, Rarity!” She looked over her shoulder at the spider-unicorn. “Let’s hold the line!”

“Right behind you, darling!”

The two of them stepped up to the front, and Rarity raised another barrier in front of them, a translucent cyan screen which kept them separate from the monstrous ponies on the other side. The dark masses blindly kept walking forward until they were mashing up against the wall, clawing and grinding at it. Twilight Sparkle charged magic in her horn and prepared to fire. Celunastia looked on impassively.

Bolts of magenta light fired rapidly, penetrating the shield and pelting the blobs. She wasn’t sure what she might have been expecting to happen, only hoping desperately that they might fall apart and dissipate in the way that the one in the dreamscape had.

Her hopes would prove to be in vain.

Amidst indistinct moans, one of the blobs fell backward with a splat. It crumbled, but it did not melt into nothing. Instead, as if dislodged, the constituent ponies that had comprised the misshapen body split apart, and one by one they stood, malformed and irregular in their own right, and they too threw themselves against the barrier, moving with far greater alacrity than before.

“Uh, Twilight?” Rarity said, the bluster having left her.

Twilight Sparkle ceased her barrage, but it was too late. Even those who had not been knocked over were still splitting along their seams, dividing rapidly, their number more than doubling. The barrier stayed strong, but Rarity’s pained expression showed her strain at having to keep it up under the increased rapidity and ferocity of the blows against it.

“Well shit, now what?!” Rainbow Dash asked aloud incredulously.

The answer came when Celunastia leaned and reached forward, stretching above the horde, their hands clapping against the barrier. Rarity cringed but still held firm. “It doesn’t hurt to love,” they murmured.

And then something strange happened.

Twilight Sparkle was distinctly conscious of the resonance of magic humming around them. If she didn’t know any better, she thought that it too was buzzing with the whispering chant of the corruption. It was electric, like the burning of ozone before a lightning strike. She felt it pulling on her, urging her to give in, a steady hammering on her senses, numbing her brain and stoking the fires within her. It distracted her enough to keep her from immediately recognizing the way the magic was attuning to theirs, but not merely matching, actively reversing the pattern. She understood it too late to do anything about it.

“Get ba—!”

The barrier vanished. There was no steady dissipation of the cerulean energy, it simply disappeared all at once, as easily as if a light switch had been turned off. And then there was nothing standing between them and the monsters. The alicorn couldn’t possibly have backed up quickly enough in time, couldn’t have flapped her wings to get airborne, and then they were upon her. The dark ooze-ponies groped at and affixed themselves to her, their touch sticky and cloying and tingling, probing at nipples, navel, folds, groin, buttocks, wrists, neck. One clambered up over her, blocking out much of what remained of her field of vision, and she had to imagine that she now looked like a writhing mass of dark herself.

There was a cry of “Twilight!” from beside her, quickly followed by another of “Rarity!” Through the clinging shadows, she witnessed just a glimpse of the warped ponies swarming Rarity like an army of ants drawn to a picnic. She shook her legs, but they grabbed them and held her still while reaching for her breasts. They kissed and groped and bucked at her, just as she felt them doing to herself, her brain bubbling with the turmoil of arousal, base desire fighting to take hold of her, her horn sparked and fizzled, attempting to cast a spell, but her concentration refused to stay steady, a fog settling over her mind, her thoughts drifting away because there was nothing she needed to worry about, it would be better for her to let them rut her senseless and fill every crevice and orifice with—

Light shone on her again as one of the oily weights was yanked from her. “Get off her, you creeps!” Fluttershy bellowed at the dark pony-shaped mass she held in her meaty hand before tossing it violently away, a distant splat resounding when it landed, and then she returned to prying more of them off Twilight Sparkle. They crowded around the pegasus’s legs, groping at her bulging muscles and her cock and balls, but that wasn’t enough to deter her. A single glance of her face behind her swollen lips revealed the determined fury in her eyes. The alicorn then saw that a similar commotion was happening next to her as Spike waded into the waves of shadows to clear away the ponies clinging to Rarity, unfazed by any of the unwanted affection he was receiving in the process.

“Here, you want this?!” Rainbow Dash swooped down with her grinning shaft pointed ahead of her like a lance and plowed into the horde. “You can have it!” Many shadows were knocked over, tumbling into each other and fumbling to collect themselves, scattered limbs returning to their improperly intended positions. Some grabbed her as she ascended, dangling from her like her giant testicles, but she shook them off.

There was a loud explosion accompanied by the buzzing tweet of a party noisemaker as another swathe of blobs fell over, sprayed with scattered confetti and streamers. Applejack rode by with Pinkie Pie on her back now holding a miniature cannon tucked under one arm—another silently unquestioned weapon. “Kinda wouldn’t mind having some cum cannons of my own, to be honest!” she said while she aimed with the barrel of the weapon again.

“Pinkie, we’re supposed to not be doing any cumming!” Applejack scolded her.

“Yeah, I know, but it’d get the job done, wouldn’t it?” the pink mare sighed lamentably while placing a hand on her bosom, her nipple-phalluses bobbing wildly with the galloping of her makeshift steed. “Just think how much damage I could do with all of—hey, look out!”

A dark mass loomed out of the crowd directly in their path, a conglomeration of melted ponies that hadn’t already been knocked apart yet, appendages reaching toward them. Pinkie Pie started leveling the cannon toward them, but Applejack promptly came to a stop and then turned about. The sight of her rear seemed to entice the glob further, goading them forward, right into the range of the farmpony rearing back and kicking it in what might have been the stomach with tremendous force. The dark ooze soared into the air, but this time the errant projectile came to a stop when it slammed against Celunastia. The amalgamated alicorn made little reaction to the immediate impact, but new moans rose from them when the mass of bodies turned its attention to them, clinging to and groping one of their breasts.

“That’s it!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed, realization breaking through the remnants of the fog like a lighthouse’s beacon, “Throw them at the princesses!”

Spike and Fluttershy didn’t need any further instruction, quick to redirect their efforts from tossing the ponies aside to chucking them at the fused monster, steadily covering it more and more. “How’s it feel to be on the receiving end, huh?!” the dragon jeered as he lobbed a dark glob directly at the monster’s face, splattering across their lips and then trying to embrace them. The swarm almost made it all too easy for them, continuing to blindly surge into the giants’ reach and making no attempt to resist. Twilight Sparkle herself, now feeling a second wind as determination filled her, was able to levitate the ones that were dragging their hooves and send them rocketing off like cannonballs. Celunastia were just about completely covered in the writhing oily gunk, yet they made no attempt to resist, only continuing to moan and murmur in their arousal.

“Okay, that’s a start,” Twilight Sparkle said while panting for breath, still internally squirming from the feeling of the gunk that remained clinging to her coat, and the others came to regroup around her. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to last long, though. We need to do something to really tie them down.”

“Kinky,” Rainbow Dash’s penis commented with a wet chuckle.

“Well we can’t really get to them that easily now that they’re…covered,” Spike muttered with a grimace, and the others shared his sentiment. Getting remotely close to the princesses would surely invite the swarm to spread over them as well.

“It’d take a whole lotta rope to hogtie somethin’ that big an’ I ain’t even got a lick o’ twine on me,” Applejack said gruffly.

“I got…some ribbons!” Pinkie Pie pulled a handful of colorful strands out from her puffy mane.

“Sorry, sugarcube, I’m talkin’ somethin’ more…heavy duty.”

“Um…” Everypony’s eyes turned to Rarity, and the way she shrank away, cheeks flushed, upon receiving their attention seemed more akin to how Fluttershy would normally react. “I may have…an idea,” she admitted in the way one would make a confession.

“What is it?” Twilight Sparkle asked hurriedly, feeling the urgency as the seconds ticked by like the sweat on her brow, yet simultaneously trying to offer as much courtesy as she could afford.

“It’s just, uh…” Rarity stammered, her mane falling over most of her eyes, “I’m not entirely sure how it works, and…it’s a little…humiliating, so—”

“Rarity, we don’t have time to sit around!” Rainbow Dash interjected before then gesturing to her lower body, “And in case you didn’t notice, we’re all naked and stupidly big and I have a talking dick, there’s nothing you can do that would be any weirder than anything we’ve seen already!”

“I—! Oh, very well, fine,” she huffed back, face all the redder. The unicorn backed away and turned around, bringing her bulbous abdomen to the center of attention. “Oh…how did I do this before…?” she muttered under her breath, grunting and groaning while she fought with the movements of her legs, eventually managing to get the rearmost pair to twist backward, the ends touching at the farthest points of the white mass. Twilight Sparkle’s eyes lit up upon noticing the thin tips that broke apart the white there: a spider’s spinnerets. After several seconds in which everypony else couldn’t keep from glancing back toward the princesses intermittently, continuing to be preoccupied, something emerged from the abdomen: a thick, gossamer white strand.

“Well…that’s something,” Rainbow Dash said next, scratching her head, “I don’t think we needed more sticky white stuff, though, Rares.”

“It’s silk, Rainbow!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed. Suddenly it felt like the chaotic knitting messes she had seen in Carousel Boutique made a lot more sense. She levitated the end of the strand over to herself to inspect it. It was about as thick as a rope.

“Now don’t that beat all!” Applejack chortled. “Hand some of it over here!”

The silk fed out meters at a time, Rarity’s legs pulling it from her spinnerets with Twilight Sparkle occasionally cutting it into smaller lengths, and Applejack was quick to get to work on tying the ends into knotted loops. Before long, she had several lassos, Pinkie Pie holding each of them in reserve. “It’s like silly string but, like, super,” she mused to herself, “and from somepony’s butt.”

“Pinkie, please!” Rarity gasped indignantly.

“Alright, girls, let’s bring this sucker down!” Applejack said before the topic could be discussed any further.

The embarrassed unicorn continued to spin more silk at Twilight Sparkle’s instruction while Applejack galloped ahead once more. She twirled the first lasso expertly, unhindered by her awkward bulk, and flung it at Celunastia when the appropriate opportunity presented itself. The silk loop fell around an outstretched arm, delicately falling into place and then cinching tight. “Here, Spike!” She tossed the rope to the dragon while Pinkie Pie handed her a new one. This process continued, securing each of the monster’s limbs and passing the ropes off to Spike and Fluttershy, holding them taut. The princesses and the blanket of shadow encompassing them mightn’t have even been aware there was anything wrong until a loud yell provided the signal for them to be pulled, yanked all at once backward, and with another tremendous quake they toppled and fell on their back.

“There, go!” The alicorn handed a big bundle of silk to Rainbow Dash, who then flew high up into the air before dropping it over the writhing morass. The bundle unfurled into a sprawling net, not unlike a spider web, which fell over and encompassed Celunastia, further entangling them. Spike and Fluttershy let go of their ropes, since the fused body could hardly budge anymore. Even the shadowy blobs covering it seemed to slow their movement, as if sensing the resignation of their presumed master.

“Did…did we do it?” Spike asked aloud, hesitant relief washing through him.

“It’s enough for now,” Twilight Sparkle said, trying not to let her hope get away from her while she waddled around the sprawling mass. “Now I just…need to hope I can get through to them.” She felt a new inward anxiety. She was about to intrude upon the minds of the princesses, one of whom was practically a second mother to her. They had both lived through dozens of her lifetimes. What would she see in there? What would their pain be? She wasn’t certain that it was something she would be able to handle. Ultimately, though, she knew that she had to try.

She came to stand next to where the combined pony’s head was, and with a flash of magenta magic she parted the indigo lips and dark ooze so she could see their face. Many eyes stared back at her, their heart-pupil gaze inscrutable. The silk creaked but remained intact. It occurred to her, though, that it didn’t seem like there was much effort being made to attempt an escape. It reminded her of when she had earlier subdued Fluttershy, how she had hardly tried to break out of the flimsy bed sheet ropes. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of a struggle. Why would they just give up like that?

(there’s no need to worry)

Her jaw loosened.

(the problem will sort itself out)

Resonance washed around her, a violent upsurge, the resultant undertow threatening to pull her under. The mad whispers turned into a droning whine in her ears for an instant, a sound that nopony was meant to hear. It was the will of the corruption, wildly lashing out at its surroundings, but Twilight Sparkle didn’t understand, there was no magic for it to react to, nothing to be canceled out. It was only then that she understood that it was far more than a mere counterspell. It was an outright denial of reality.

The air split with a crack and she felt herself forced to blink.

When her eyes opened again, the shape of Celunastia stood, completely unrestrained. The dark globs that had covered them were either sloughing off, dropping to the floor and fading into nothing, or seemingly being absorbed back into their body. The webbing that had tied them down was completely gone, not a trace of it to be seen. Their limbs creaked and stretched, and their many eyes twisted in the directions of the ponies around them.

“But…what happened?” Spike asked, dismayed, from somewhere behind the alicorn, practically miles away.

“We…we can’t.” Twilight Sparkle felt ready to collapse. All of a sudden, everything was so distant and numb.

But the fused monster was not so deterred—the very opposite of deterred, in fact. There was a rumbling groan that echoed through them, rolling out of nine mouths at once. “Little ponies,” they murmured amidst their chorus, “you have done so much. It is not becoming of you to exert yourselves so strenuously. It is becoming of you to become. Become. Become.” Their arms and tentacles raised as mana coursed around them, searing violet charged with flickering motes of golden sunshine and silver moonlight. That prickly atmosphere returned, more electrifying than ever, while their horn crackled and burned with an intense corona. Hooves were slamming against the crumbling floor, and Twilight Sparkle felt Spike tugging on her again, barely able to move herself while she watched.

“This is what you were meant to be.”

The corruption’s spell shot from Celunastia up into the air and burst like a firework, scattering purple rays everywhere. Where the reverberating pulses landed, the ground rumbled ominously before bursting in a flash of concentrated magical energy. Twilight Sparkle’s vision swam, eyes dazzled by the illumination, affording her only brief glimpses while Spike ferried her away, past flaring lights that lapped at her skin. Rainbow Dash wove through the air, avoiding the falling debris. Rarity and Fluttershy narrowly maneuvered out of the way of the detonations. Applejack and Pinkie Pie—

“Applejack!” she shrieked.

But the orange mare had already seen it. An amethyst light fell right in her path, practically at her hooves, its vibrations washing over her. There wasn’t enough time to correct her course and get out of the way. She could only spare a glance in the direction of the alicorn, expression inscrutable, before she put everything she had into a bucking motion that sent Pinkie Pie rocketing off of her back with a yelp. Then the violet light bloomed around her and in an instant it was over.

Twilight Sparkle felt her heart stop, no longer paying attention to the motions of Spike jostling her around. Her instincts and experience led her to expect a charred mess to be left behind. Somehow, the reality was worse.

The bright orange and blonde that comprised Applejack’s form remained. The texture was different, though, cast in a glossy sheen that didn’t resemble fur in the slightest, seams running along the rounded surfaces. Nor did her mane and tail resemble hair, turned into solid yellow lumps that hung over her rear and back. Twilight Sparkle was immediately reminded of the artificial appearance of Starlight Glimmer—another Starlight Glimmer, another friend she had failed.

But even though Applejack was intact, she wasn’t moving, not budging even an inch. Her limbs were held stiffly in place, swollen and distended, hooves rounded, hands and fingers fused into uniform nubs. It might not have helped that her barrel had become even more massively distended than it had been before, a great swell that bulged from her underside and lifted her legs from the floor, the belly and breasts of her upper body swollen as well. Her puffy lips were curled into an exaggerated smile, and her eyes stared straight ahead, pupils like red hearts.

“Ap…Apple…?” Pinkie Pie’s voice echoed quietly as she stumbled back toward her, still shaken from her fall. Her bubblegum mane was wilting and even her phalluses seemed to be going flaccid. She became despondent and listless, so much that she didn’t notice another bolt careening toward her. It was only by the intervention of a mountain of yellow coming past that she was pulled out of harm’s way, the light barely missing them while the force of the blast knocked Applejack away weightlessly.

“I’ve got you!” Fluttershy said, holding Pinkie Pie tucked against her side. She moved with as much urgency as she could manage given her bulk, jiggling and jostling while her hooves stomped out a thunderous rhythm that matched the din around them.

“That does it!” Rainbow Dash screamed while she veered about, shifting her trajectory toward Celunastia, the epicenter of the explosive bursts. “You really want a rutting, huh, you bitch?!”

“Rainbow, don’t!” the yellow mare desperately shouted after her.

But in their distraction, both pegasi had put themselves on a collision course. Rainbow Dash didn’t realize that, in her fixation upon her target, she had forgone any evasive maneuvers, and that meant that her collision was instead with another ethereal firecracker which detonated around her. Nor did Fluttershy watch where she was running, leading to her running headlong into another burst of light which enveloped both her and Pinkie Pie.

Rainbow Dash tumbled the rest of the way before bouncing off of the indigo mounds at the peak of Celunastia and then careening toward the ground in freefall. She might have landed in a heap if it weren’t for the sudden explosive growth of both pairs of lips. Her penis dangled downward as its lips filled like water balloons attached to a fire hose, cushioning the fall as they kissed the floor, while her body was pulled straight and her face forced skyward as those lips filled into miniature zeppelins unhindered by gravity. She struggled with muffled cries for only a scant few seconds before her writhing devolved into sensual groping of herself, undeterred by the mountainous mounds above and below.

Fluttershy let go of Pinkie Pie as her arms and wings shakily, involuntarily stretched upward, fingers creaking when they split and extended into branches, budding with leaves and round dangling fruit. Her mane and tail turned into flowering petals like cherry blossoms, spreading all across her form. Her attempts to walk were halted when her hooves rooted themselves into the floor, spreading through the cracks, flesh hardening into bark. Sparkling amber sap leaked from her cock and gasping nipples, and she managed a final cry before the lobes of her lips morphed, spreading and fusing into a single circular mass, a flower eagerly awaiting pollination.

While Pinkie Pie tumbled over the floor and weakly fumbled to stand before a spasm rocked through her. Her shafts had perked right back up again, the lot of them steadily enlarging, and now there was an extra one sprouting from her crotch. She twitched again, bucking her hips, and another emerged, this time on her right breast. Her whole body convulsed over and over again, phallus after phallus coming into being. A weak smile and chuckle escaped her, despite the tears in her eyes, before her mouth was wrenched open and her tongue pushed out, warping into a cock, shortly joined by four more, stretching her jaw to its limits. Pinkie Pie became a forest of penises in the shade of Fluttershy’s branches.

Twilight Sparkle could barely hear, the sounds in her ears dulled and deafened, when Spike shouted, “Look out, Rarity!” She didn’t want to look but she found her neck turning automatically.

Rarity had managed to stop just in time for an explosion to go off directly in front of her, but that left her a sitting duck for the next beam that was coming down right on top of her. Her horn flashed and a barrier manifested above her, several layers of fabricated cyan light. She might as well have been trying to stop a falling meteor with a piece of paper. The field shattered instantly, like a rock thrown through glass, and she had only an instant to cry out before the flash consumed her. White flesh spilled out from the remains of the conflagration, Rarity’s body becoming swallowed up as her many breasts expanded all at once, burying her in teat, and her abdomen bulged and distended even more so, a bloated, pulsating slug-like mass that eclipsed the rest of her. “Twi…don’t…!” she managed to gasp out before her voice gave way entirely to frenzied moaning and she was consumed entirely by bulk.

Five gone in a span of mere seconds.

Twilight Sparkle felt Spike might have been trying to lower her to the floor, but her hooves were limp, hardly having the capacity to stand. She could barely breathe, her chest tight and her throat constricting. Fingers squeezed under her chin and lifted her head upward, forcing her to look him in the eye as best as they could. This dragon which she barely recognized, long neck and floppy purple spines, muzzle hidden by swollen lips, and yet somehow she was supposed to understand was Spike. How could any of this have happened?

“Twilight, listen to me!” He was shouting at her. There was fear in his eyes and his voice. But there was far more than that as well. Unbridled determination. “I know it’s hard, but we can’t give up now! Everypony is depending on us to do this!”

“But we can’t do this, Spike!” she wailed back, tears streaming over her cheeks. “This is hopeless! We tried everything and we only made it worse!”

“Twilight, we only got this far because we cast aside our doubts! We can’t give up just because it hurts to keep going on!” He was nearly shaking her. “You need to promise me! Promise to me and the rest of us! Promise that you will keep fighting!”

“I…I can…I…”

A keening wail filled their ears as the resonance of corruptive magic washed over them. A bolt of light was about to fall upon them. Her attention snapped back to Spike, but his gaze was resolute. Her blood ran cold.

“I can’t be alone again,” she whispered.

“You’ll be fine, you always are,” he replied with a smile.

And then he pushed her with a shove that sent her tumbling back. She landed and watched just as the beam landed on the dragon, and a shrill howl of anguish erupted from her when he was enveloped in the purple glow. A twisting leviathan shape emerged from the bloom, tumbling on his side as his limbs shrank into themselves, leaving only the torso with his bulbous endowments. The scale of his body surged and expanded, tail stretching out behind him and filling the floor, and his skull warped, losing all definition, spines, then frills, then eyes, left with nothing but a gaping maw ringed by plump lips. The wyrm-turned-worm groaned like a beast in the throes of heat as he twisted about, gushing creamy excess from his breasts and cock.

Twilight Sparkle’s heart hammered in her chest. After everything that she had done, it was like she had regressed back to square one. She was alone in the map room again, the crushing weight of reality bearing upon her, now coupled with the crushing weight of her own body. Terror assaulted her senses, but far more than that she hated that she couldn’t truly dwell on those feelings, her brain unavoidably taken by the crashing waves of stimulation that refused to cease their emanations throughout her nervous system. She was so distraught and disheartened that she didn’t even notice that the hail of magical debris had come to a stop. She had been spared, and it had only taken all of her friends being twisted into grotesque mockeries of themselves, their remnants twisting and swaying around her.

But that would not remain the case for long. She didn’t have the energy to look up when the ground rumbled and quaked with Celunastia’s approach. The inequine white and blue form loomed over her, purple mane billowing. The whispers of incalculable voices washed over her. The question of how far the corruption of the singularity might have spread outside the castle came within her mind and went unanswered. She could have calculated the approximate dimensions of the giant mass at a glance, but in that moment the alicorn abomination appeared monolithic in their proportions, a colossus capable of snuffing out everything on Equus with a single breath, as insurmountable as the dilemma which Twilight Sparkle was faced with.

Her mouth opened and closed, trying to form words, but she couldn’t muster any sound to issue from her throat.

Long arms reached for her, hands seizing her by the shoulders, bony fingers with sharp points digging into her flabby flesh. The eyes embedded in the lips on Celunastia’s stomach affixed her with their ineffable gaze. The mounds parted, and within them that hellish maw there was a canvas of swirling purple and violet and lavender, a bottomless and all-consuming ocean. Yet more murmuring voices filled the air, these speaking in syllables that scratched at her ears. This was to be the end, then. Devoured, and then…who knew what fragmentary consciousness would await her.

Her eyes burned. Her loins ached. Her heart was in pieces. But her mind was strong. Twilight Sparkle wanted none of this, and nothing was going to make her think differently.

(don’t run away)

The giant faltered. The mouth closed, and those dark eyes regarded her with confusion.

The moment of uncertainty was short-lived, as Celunastia lifted the smaller alicorn, higher into the grasp of four more hands, holding her tightly against the array of breasts that made up their chest. Tongues lapped at her, but her attention was entirely taken up by the wall of indigo that was perched at the top of the monstrosity. They whispered to her, almost accusingly, and she chose not to pay it any mind.

“No more,” she said through gritted teeth.

“More,” the chorus asserted in turn.

They leaned forward for a kiss that utterly smothered the entirety of Twilight Sparkle’s upper body, face and chest and arms, matting her mane and fur in seconds. Simultaneously, there were three mouths that pressed at her vulva, gumming the sensitive folds, before all at once the phallic serpents shoved themselves inside. She wanted to cry out, to scream, but she was too busy moaning as the shafts writhed within her womb. Not that anything could be discerned when she was already being engulfed, vocalizations drowned out by wet smacks and pops. The noise and the damp were seeping into her.

A haze was settling over Twilight Sparkle’s mind as her form bubbled. Every spasm of her innards coincided with another addition, another part of her anatomy stretched out of definition as easily as taffy. She wasn’t sufficiently aware to be able to process any of it in detail. There were not arms or breasts or navels or hooves, there was only sensation, too much for her to be able to process what any of it correlated to. She would have thought that nopony would ever wonder what it would be like to drown in pleasure, but that was what was happening to her now. Her brain would melt into mush and run out her ears and there would be nothing but the carnal instinct of the flesh.

And still she thought firmly, “No more.”

The corruption howled at her, no longer words, only incessant desire, and right there within Celunastia’s grasp the power of its magic ignited, a point-blank explosion, and Twilight Sparkle saw and heard and tasted and smelt and felt white. Her consciousness constricted down to nothing more than a narrow point within the unfathomable abyss that her body had become. The voices of the corrupted carried her, borne on a river of distorted thoughts. She was at once one with Equestria and more alone than she had ever been. It was more than any pony could bear.

“No…no…more…!”

“…li…”

Within the metaphysical space that represented her mind, Twilight Sparkle turned, in as much capacity as she was able to, given the circumstances of her being an abstract construct, and focused upon the sound.

“…Twilight!”

“Spike?” she asked to the void.

There was something else there with her, something more than the smoky clouds of pitch. Another fragmented consciousness, an ember of violet and emerald.

“We’ve been waiting for you!”

“What?” She would have blinked if she had eyes or lids that covered them.

“Don’t forget the rest of us, darling!”

There was another, a glittering pale diamond flitting about her.

“You can’t go hogging the spotlight all by yourself!”

“We’re going to take down that big meanie together!”

“We gotta get a word in for the princesses too, you know!”

“We’re all behind you, Twilight!”

Rippling rainbow swirls, wispy curls of cotton candy, blazing oranges of autumn, and soft sunlight in a gentle breeze. None of them had hands, but she could still feel their embrace. She felt their hearts beating strong.

They were swallowed by the corruption, but they remained together.

And now they were right where they needed to be.

“Celestia!” Twilight Sparkle called to the void. “Luna!”

The myriad souls parted like curtains, and there they were revealed. The sun and the moon hung within the miasma, stained sickly purple. They were at the center of a churning vortex, feeding into an infinite blackness. The singularity.

“It’s time to wake up!”

Like a pair of eyes, the celestial objects focused upon them, and a cacophonous roar stirred the void into a frenzy. The seven were buffeted and tossed about in the winds of a hurricane, but there was nothing that could stand in their way now. The chaotic reverberations only prompted them to huddle together closer, and their light grew ever brighter. No amount of pleasurable stimulation could make them forget what was most important to them.

All at once they shouted, “Let’s go!”

The searing rainbow of color cast through the void. The current surged and slammed against them to no avail, unable to divert their course. The sun and moon battered them with pulsations of resonance, but it was a pitiful effort in comparison to their own force. Their light filled the void and shone in the eyes of every pony that was trapped within its grasp. The singularity pulled on them, tried to separate them, to no avail. The purple abyss was washed away.

Twilight Sparkle could sense them now. Celestia and Luna, their minds that had been buried deep within the expanse. Perhaps they were just as aware of her, for she could discern them recoiling. Their luster had faded. Their sun and moon were dull. They needed their light restored to them. They needed to be cleansed of their stains.

She extended toward them, and as she approached a space that resembled some semblance of reality, definition returned to her, slowly but surely, arms for reaching, hands for grasping. They shrank away, but the glare of the stars at her side tethered them in place. Heat and cold washed over her, burning and freezing her all at once. She was undeterred.

No more.

No more running away.

“Go, Twilight!”

Twilight Sparkle felt the princesses.

She breached the final barrier.

= = = = =

The ground beneath her was grey and ashen. Powder finer than sand. The cosmic dust of the universe.

Twilight Sparkle turned around. She was greeted with a rocky slope that reminded her of the view from the top of Mount Canter, but at the bottom there was only a colorless, lifeless wasteland. The horizon met not with a blue sky but pitch black dotted with stars. High above in the heavens was not the sun or the moon but the brilliant glowing sphere of Equus. At least, that was what she immediately recognized it as, judging by the continents and oceans, but instead of blue and green it was turned into shades of purple with clouds of smoky black raging across its surface. It was more than a little alarming, but she chose not to think about it, since that wasn’t the reason for her being here.

The alicorn faced forward again and resumed climbing the craggy slope. The mountain was impossibly tall; the peak seemed to blend into the void of space above her. She didn’t know how long she had been walking for, but the ache of her hooves made it feel like hours. Perhaps there would be no end to the climb, just a distraction to keep her occupied, to wear her down to submission. She would not give in, no matter what. It certainly helped that not being a blimp of flesh with a swollen vagina extruding between her legs gave her a whole lot more energy to work with.

Then the slope leveled out onto a plateau and the dust and stone gave way to smooth, albeit worn marble. She walked forward into a ruined hall, the roof mostly torn off, the walls standing with jagged gaps in them at random intervals. The moon dust was joined by chunks of rubble and shards of glass. The remains of an ancient throne room—the throne room of the Castle of the Twin Sisters, displaced in dreams.

At the far end of the chamber, the room remained mostly intact, with a ceiling to cast an unnaturally dark shadow over the singular throne, with its single occupant. There was not much that she could identify about the figure as she walked closer. There were not one but two manes, a billowing aurora of grey and black tones and a star-scattered curtain of pitch, radiant with an eldritch dark aura.

Twilight Sparkle stood her ground and firmly stated, “Princesses…Celestia and Luna.”

There was no response.

“I don’t know how much you’re aware of. Something is happening in the waking world.”

There might have been movement, a turning of the head, but she couldn’t discern it.

“It’s…it’s corrupting ponies. It’s transforming them and warping their minds. It’s affected you both.”

Silence.

“It’s using your magic to spread its influence further. If it isn’t stopped, the effects may be irreversible. I’ve come here to help both of you fight off its hold on you. I understand that…there must be something which has allowed it to latch on to you in the first place. It may be painful, but I will do everything that I can to help you—”

“No.” The figure spoke in two voices at once, layered over each other. It was both vehemently aggressive and trembling with terror.

“…No?” Twilight Sparkle repeated in disbelief, brows furrowed.

“No, we shall not.” There was a scraping sound of fingers with long nails dragging over stone. “We shall never return to that painful world.”

“You must,” she asserted plaintively. “It’s where we belong.”

“NO.” The chamber shook as a fist slammed on the throne. Twilight Sparkle saw eyes peering out from beneath the manes. Four eerie pinpricks. “The waking world is nothing more than pain and suffering. Day and night and day and night, it is all the same. This is the only way for us to escape. For everypony to escape. It is better this way.”

“How can you say that?!” Twilight Sparkle shouted. She stood at the edge of the shadows that covered the throne, unwilling to take another step forward. The dark was lapping at her hooves. “You would rather consign every being in the whole world to becoming a slavering beast, deprived of everything that’s precious to them, or worse, just because…because it makes things easier?!”

Those four eyes stared at her intently. No, rather, the centermost pair did. The outer two seemed more listless and unfocused. “We’re disappointed in you, Twilight Sparkle,” they rumbled with the blistering intensity under the surface of a volcano on the verge of erupting. “We thought that you, of all ponies, would have understood. You are cursed just as we are.”

“What?” she asked plainly, taken aback.

“Do not play coy with us.” The accusation was accompanied by a hand with gnarled fingers, pale white uncannily like bone, emerging into the light and pointing at her. “You have resented it since the beginning, no matter how much you endeavored to pretend otherwise.”

The sound shifted slightly, and a new voice spoke, separate from the chorus. “It was by my own hand that this terrible fate was invoked upon you,” Celestia said mournfully, “even though I knew exactly what kind of toll that it would exact.”

“I…I don’t under—”

The room shook again as the monarch in shadows roared, before they lurched from their throne and stumbled into the light, and Twilight Sparkle felt her blood run cold.

It was like seeing two ponies that had been mashed together side by side and knitted into a single form. Bones met with each other at odd angles underneath the white and blue coat. A collection of malformed appendages projected from the conjoined torsos, arms that hung listlessly, legs that stood at uneven lengths, wings that spread out behind and twitched languidly. Skulls fused together with horns that twisted and curled, Celestia on the right and Luna on the left, their expressions distant and glassy, mouths muttering unspoken syllables. Between them, however, there was a third face, a shadowy construct that shared an eye with each of the princesses, wisps of smoke burning with vivid embers, and it was this face that affixed her with judgment. This was not the same as the corruption, she understood immediately, though it was a by-product of it; this was the embodiment of the anger and despair which had lain dormant within the mares. Twilight Sparkle thought herself crazy for, however briefly, wishing that there could have been more lips.

“You are an alicorn, Twilight Sparkle!” Celestia and Luna said through the mouth of shadow. “You are a princess, soon to become the crown princess of Equestria! You have been doomed to bear the weight of the world upon your shoulders, all at the expense of your own person! And what did we do, knowing personally what that burden would be? We encouraged it! We personally threw you headlong over the precipice!” Hands reached up to claw at their chest and stomach, raking the skin and leaving gashes that wept with dark ichor for a few seconds before sealing themselves shut. The lavender pony cried out, begged them to stop, but they continued unrelentingly, tearing at shoulders and throat and face. The inky blood fizzled when it landed on the ground.

“How could we ever have been so foolish?!” they shrieked, “We saw you, and the potential which festered in you!”

“The quiet filly who read so many books and had so many questions,” Celestia said in a choked, rasping whisper.

“The brave mare who put her life on the line for those most important to her,” Luna added on the other side.

“We took that pony and cast her to oblivion! The day when Twilight Sparkle ascended was the day when Twilight Sparkle perished! That poor soul was tarnished, condemned to a life in which she would never know the satisfaction that had been owed to her!”

“You…you’re wrong!” Twilight Sparkle insisted in turn, standing firm, staring ahead no matter how much she might have wanted to turn away. “I know it…it’s a lot of responsibility to be a princess! I know that by undertaking this, I have…” Her hands balled into fists while her wings unfurled behind her. Her eyes stung with tears but she willed them back. “I have…given up anything I might have once wanted to do with my life! I won’t be a headmaster, I won’t be a librarian, I won’t…I won’t even be your student anymore! But…but that’s fine! I know that it’s going to be difficult! I know that I didn’t always rise to the challenge as it was presented to me! I was hesitant at first, but…I want this! I’m ready for this!” The alicorn stood resolutely, as steady as a statue, impassible as a wall.

And they spat back, “Ready?!”

“Ready for their pain,” Luna intoned quietly.

“Ready for their loss,” Celestia echoed.

Bony fingers reached for her. Survival instincts screamed at the mare—run, jump, fly, teleport, cast something, anything—but she remained still. The clammy grasp encircled her around the chest, clamping her arms to her sides, squeezing painfully, and yanked her off her hooves before reeling back and hurling her across the room. Dead wind rushed by her ears for a solid second before she landed painfully, bouncing once on her side, hip and shoulder flaring in agony, before skidding several feet on her face, grey dust grating at her skin. It was all in her mind, little more than a projection of a dream, but it felt frighteningly real. The consequences, at least, were going to be very real.

“You have yet to even grasp what it means to be ready for what awaits you!” The monstrous layered voice bellowed after her alongside pounding hoofsteps. “If you had known what it entailed from the beginning, you would have begged us to take back the blight which we had set upon you!” Twilight Sparkle was struggling to get up when a hand came down on her again, fingers pinching around the skull and neck, simultaneously keeping her pinned to the floor while also forcing her to look straight ahead, squinting through the pain. “Did you ever even fathom the extent of our reign, Twilight Sparkle?!” they hissed. “See it now! Witness the fruits of our rule, the glory which the twin sisters have wrought upon Equestria, the centuries of our hubris!”

Reluctantly, the mare opened her eyes, and again she looked down the craggy mountain slopes to the lunar plains below. And, indeed, she saw.

What she had seen before as an expanse of shallow dunes she now discerned as a graveyard. Countless grey tombstones, stretching from the foot of the mountain to the horizon. They were arranged in scrambled mismatched patches, some neatly lined up in rows, others a scattered mess of stones. There were ornate headstones down to meager burial markers, but every one of them was so weathered that whatever identifying text had been left on them was lost to time. Twilight Sparkle could see every single one of them, the images forcing themselves into her brain, no matter how much she squirmed for escape.

“Did you truly believe that our rule has always been just and benevolent?” the seething voice whispered in her ear. “We thought once that we could lead for the good of all creatures. And what were we met with for our efforts? Invaders, dissidents, insurrectionists, rioters, assassins! All of them crushed under our iron-shod hooves. And those were just the ones who invited their demise. What of the poor, the sick, the infirm, the broken? Those we allowed to sink into darkness, for we could never hope to extend our reach everywhere.” The grip on the alicorn tightened and she had to stifle a cry. “One thousand, seven hundred and sixty-two years, Twilight Sparkle. Can you comprehend how many lives have arrived and departed this world in that time, and how many of those lives we saw destroyed?”

“The lives that were taken,” Luna added, filled with bitter remorse.

“The lives that were squandered,” Celestia said, choked with sorrow.

They leaned in closer, until the mare could feel their acrid breath washing over her. “We destroyed each other, Twilight Sparkle. We envied and we coveted and we finally betrayed each other, gave ourselves over to a millennium of solitude.”

And it was only then that she could clearly discern the pitiful whimpering murmurs of Celestia and Luna, each repeating the same phrase over and over.

“Don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me.”

“Forgive me forgive me forgive me.”

Twilight Sparkle felt like the weight upon her was increasing with every passing second, the burden of rage and despair, and soon it would crush her entirely, but she would not surrender to it. “You…you did everything in your power,” she wheezed, “you may not have always succeeded, but your intentions were for the best, and in the process you learned valuable lessons.” She fought to twist her neck around as much as she could to glance at Celestia’s face. “That’s what you always taught me!”

For just a moment, it seemed there was a glimmer of recognition in that glassy violet eye.

“I know that you neglected your sister, Princess Celestia,” she continued, pressing back with every ounce of strength that she had, “so much that she turned into a monster and tried to take over Equestria. You banished her for a thousand years, a thousand years for you to regret your actions. I can’t claim to know what all of your feelings were, but…I know that you loved your sister and you wanted to be together with her!”

Half of the murmuring quieted and stopped.

“And Luna!” She stretched and twisted and fought to get the other sister’s face in view. “You were right to resent the disrespect and the hate! You deserve love just as much as any other pony! You may have fallen prey to your anger, but that’s in the past! You have shown the whole world that you’re more than just Nightmare Moon! All these years later and you still rule by your sister’s side!”

The listless expressions were becoming replaced with faces that expressed solemn placidity. The fused pony was becoming still, movements slowing. Even their manes slowed their ethereal rippling.

And then the darkness flared back to life and snarled at her. “And what of you, Twilight Sparkle?”

She froze up. “M-me?” she stammered.

But this was followed by a shriek before she was slammed down harshly onto the ground. “How will you rule, Twilight Sparkle?!” they demanded. “What will you do when the yaks come down from their mountains and storm our plains?! What will you do when a rogue cell of changelings tries to bring Chrysalis back to power?! What will you do when the remaining allies of the Storm King come back for revenge?! What will you do when Cadence and Flurry Heart prove to have far more popular support on their side?! What will you do when the nobles of Canterlot plot to have you overthrown because they believe you unworthy of the crown?! What will you do when plague and disaster ravage Equestria and leave its people starving and dying in the streets?!”

“P-Princess…I-I…” she said through gasping wheezes and coughs.

“What will you do when they are dead?” the darkness hissed.

A shard of ice stabbed into Twilight Sparkle’s heart.

“You have always known it, whether you were conscious or not.” The words curled into her ears and filled her skull. “You are an alicorn now. You are immortal. Your friends and family are not.” She squirmed but the grip on her remained as solid and steady as iron. “You will watch them die, one after another, while you remain young and beautiful. All that you have ever known will be eroded by the sands of time until there is nothing left, nothing but a kingdom that has long since ceased to resemble anything you once recognized.” The palm pressed down harder than ever, holding her flat against the stone and the dirt, crushing the life out of her. “What will you do then, Twilight Sparkle, when every pony that you have ever held dear has been buried, their eyes plucked by crows and their brains full of worms and their bones turned to dust?!”

And she didn’t have any way to reject this, because she knew that it was true. Some part of her had always been aware of it, no matter how much she didn’t want to admit to it. She had watched her friends grow and change in the years since they all came together as they each reached for their dreams. It had always made her happy. It had been so innocuous. But farmers and athletes and bakers and seamstresses and caretakers and even dragons were not princesses. The day would come when they were taken from her, and she would continue on and on without them. Every step that she took closer to the throne of Equestria was another step away from the life that she had once known.

She felt the weight upon her. The literal. The metaphysical. The flesh. Smothering and choking. It would be so much easier just to give in. It would be better that way.

But at no point did she cease her struggle. Her palms dug into the ground and pushed, and no matter how astronomical the force exerted upon her was she didn’t stop pressing back against it. She gritted her teeth, and her eyes burned, but she wouldn’t allow herself to shed tears.

“What are you doing?!” the darkness rumbled at her, burning with rage. “Why do you persist?! Do you not understand the pain you are inviting upon yourself?!”

“I don’t care!”

With all her might, Twilight Sparkle pushed back, and in that moment she felt as if there were six others pushing along with her, their light filling her senses and easing the ache of her body. She sprang upward and unfurled her wings, and the grip upon her was flung off, the monster thrown back, stumbling and falling, collapsing in a heap. The alicorn stood, and though she breathed wearily her posture was steady and firm. A corona of strobing rainbow light surrounded her, and her eyes emanated a pure white glow.

“I don’t care if it hurts!” she shouted, indeed pushing through the ache that gnawed at her heart. “I don’t care how hard it will be for me to be without them! I don’t care how hard it will be for me to be a princess! I don’t care if it would be easier for me to shut myself in a library and read books for the rest of my life or glut myself with ecstasy until my brain melts out of my ears!”

Her acerbity diminished as she watched the fused princesses stagger to their hooves again. The ground was shaking, the walls of the ruined throne room crumbling further, dust and debris cascading down the lunar mountain. She discerned a greater degree of life in the eyes of the mares. The shadow between them roiled and frothed, its shape dissipating, its form unstable. So Twilight Sparkle continued with her wings folding back, but her severe determination remained.

“Life is full of pain. We can’t avoid it every time. Sooner or later, something is going to hurt us. Whether it’s because we fail at a task, or we face illness or injury, or we mistakenly step out of line, or we lose somepony important to us. Someday, everypony I know today will be gone, and it’s going to hurt, but I don’t care! Because all that tells me is that they meant something to me, and in a thousand years from now, or two thousand, or ten thousand, I will always remember how important they were! I will always remember Rainbow Dash teaching me how to fly! I will always remember Rarity fussing over my mane before my coronation! I will always remember Pinkie Pie throwing me a surprise party when I was feeling down! I will always remember Fluttershy showing me how to take proper care of Owlowiscious! I will always remember Applejack drinking cider with me until we both passed out laughing! I will always remember every time Spike was at my side to help me! As long as I am alive, they will continue to live with me! I’m not going to run away from pain anymore!”

The darkness snarled and spat and gasped, burning eyes staring holes in her. They took one step forward, arms reaching out, fingers grasping. Then they fell, landing in an uneven kneeling posture, drooping limply. Their face hung listlessly. “How can you be so sure?” they all asked, their rage gone, leaving only the sorrow and doubt.

“I can’t,” Twilight Sparkle said, and she smiled wryly, “that’s just how life goes. I can’t stop just because something didn’t go the way I wanted it to.”

They were silent for several seconds before giving a single weak chuckle. Then the shadow faded entirely, leaving only two merged faces.

“Princesses…” She stepped forward uncertainly, into the shadow of the warped ponies. She extended one arm, holding her hand up toward Celestia’s face. Both of them had their eyes closed. They were still and lifeless. Worry bloomed in her chest.

Arms closed in around her, gently pulling her into an embrace, pressed against the gnarled flesh, but she didn’t care, returning with her hands reaching around the conjoined necks.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Luna murmured.

And Celestia finished, “Thank you.”

The moon crumbled around them, and they fell together into the dark.

Author's Note

Don't worry, I was saving the real body horror for last.

Boss music for your consideration.

I don't think I had too much of this sequence planned from the beginning, I was just winging it most of the way through, again having to try to give each of the characters a decent time in the spotlight. Twilight's epiphany was in the works for a long time though.

I'm aware that the silk ropes are somewhat nonsensical and the net needs to have some kind of weighting in order to be effective, shh.

I didn't originally have Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie's transformations at the same time as Rainbow Dash, but when I was trying to think of how to get to them I couldn't come up with any better ideas so I just put them earlier.

Fluttershy's final transformation was the one I fumbled for the most this time, and I was all too eager to go for tree TF when it was suggested by KaijuKing. Again I swear I wasn't conscious of the line she has in canon about wanting to be a tree.

Some very specific word choice with Rarity's transformation.

I'm still not entirely convinced that this chapter does a good job of blending the fetishistic content of the fight scene with the heavier themes of the dream, but I can't keep fussing over it forever so we're just going to have to throw caution to the wind and put it up.

So we're uh...a hundred thousand words into this transformation story and only now getting some extensive on-screen transformation. Oops.

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