The Alicorn Drinks the Milk

And so, the sky above the Temple of Magic and the Alicorn Source tore open, a maelstrom of magic and fire as the rift across dimensions hemorrhaged and tainted ash fell to the land below, the storm pulling the blackened clouds of Equestria into its vortex and increasing the strength of the perpetual storms that raged across the surface of the dying world.

Those that were outside fled and hid in the shadows of what their world had once built—if they were ponies. Dragons watched from a distance, impassive to the sight of something that they had no need to comprehend. It was a contrivance of pony science and strange magic, and not something that concerned them. The poison it brought did not affect them, and they remained ambivalent.

The force of the consumed world fell down in a firestorm of magic. Inside the Sanctuary, the ancient magic-wrought technology fed the unpurified milk toward the central pentagram, focusing it into four of the five vertices of the Sacred Pentagram. The contents of the tanks screamed in pain as the entirety of the planet’s Milk was forced through their immortal bodies. Their mutated, hulking forms writhed in agony as the containment fluid in their tanks boiled, their cells shattering from the force of the Milk and reforming and differentiating, dying and being reborn as new cells of every type: masses of dissolving and reforming bone, teeth, eyes, horns, wood, venom and pain. They were the lenses, and this was their function.

The enormous pumps linked to them warmed up, forcing the copious quantities of black fluid through the feed architecture—and then, all at once, it all erupted outward into the system. The dark runes that linked the aspects of the pentagram lifted from the floor, assembling and increasing exponentially in complexity to form the magical equipment rendered in three-dimensions, then four, then five. The black fluid poured out of the tanks and, through the filtration tanks, emerged a brilliant, scalding white.

The ponies nearest to it shielded themselves, although they did not need to. Their faces had already been burned away, replaced with masks to protect themselves from the vast radiation emitted from the conduits as it flowed to its final destination. An entire planet’s worth of purified Milk was suddenly and simultaneously injected directly into the severed spine and brain of Twilight Sparkle.

In an instant, all of her severed parts disintegrated. The hooves, the wings, the canopic organs all blackened and collapsed to rot, then to gray dust, and finally to nothing at all. All that persisted was the spine and skull, and these were lowered into position.

Luster Dawn, the greatest of all mortal wizards, stepped forward, her organic body shielded by her own magic. She spread both of her hands into the field, casting the spells around them. Not spells that were required, but that would support the process. Accelerate it. Control it and ensure the efficiency of the process.

Her fingers caressed the forming pentagrams cast in her own floating silver blood, twisting as she summoned the truest of demonic icons, the language that Twilight had burned into her very soul. The second half of the spell, cast from the far side in pink-violet magic, met her spells and completed them. Spells forged in runes far beyond even Luster Dawn’s own knowledge, things of such depth that her own mortal mind ached just to view them.

The spine dropped and burst outward, rupturing as tendrils of violet flesh erupted from it. The spells responded, the differentiation controlled as the tendrils assembled themselves into complex organs, into bones and muscles and feathers. As a new Twilight Sparkle formed around her severed central nervous system.

She fell forward, falling limp, then stood, her body rejecting the ports fused into the bone of her back and separating her from the feed. It no longer needed to be connected, at least for the time being. She had absorbed all of it. The entirety of the Milk supply. She had fed to repletion and stood before her subjects, a beautiful unicorn—and as they beheld their one true god, her back ruptured, forming a pair of beautiful fluffy wings.

The spells collapsed. The process had burned away Luster Dawn’s hands, and all that remains were the smoldering, charred ends of her radius and ulna on both sides. She spread her arms to either side as the robotics descended, the blades slicing away her damaged arms at the shoulders and attaching a newly prepared set, aligning the vessels and nerves and automatically suturing the skin back in place.

Twilight, suddenly conscious, felt a different set of robotic arms descend around her. Without flinching, she felt as the brands pressed into her body, marking her with the demonic icons she needed to control the necrosis that was already beginning to spread throughout her body. The doctors, likewise, descended, carrying her royal armor, riveting it to her body and bolting it to her bones and flesh. One attached her crown, using an automatic driver to insert the long screws into her skull. Armor made from lustrous alien metal, itself inscribed with its own complimentary set of runes. The armor she needed to control the decay, to extend how long this new body would last.

There had been a point long ago when she had scarcely been able to withstand the pain. When it had first happened, she had even tried to fight them. They had held her down and completed their work. Now, though, she barely noticed. She sensed the pain, smelled the burned flesh, and could feel the insertion of every screw and rivet—but it hardly mattered. The rush of the Milk overcame it. The intrinsic, terrible joy of being pulled from the very precipice of the void back to fully formed, divine life. She had grown to enjoy the pain and to enjoy the Milk being inserted into her body. This fact was her greatest source of shame. That she enjoyed what she had become.

Spike arrived as the process was completing. He entered through the gate as Twilight stepped out from among the doctors, her body beautiful and regenerated—but already showing sings of decomposition, however mild. She was disconnected from the machines. The only time she could be disconnected, when they needed to cool and the lens-filters regenerated. The only time she was separate from the Alicorn.

She looked up at him and smiled. It was the most sincere smile Spike had ever known, but he could not look away from her eyes. They were the way they always looked shortly after regeneration: red, with no apparent pupil or sclera. Pure red, glossy spheres.

Spike had not previously known why, exactly, they changed. He had always assumed it was some part of the process, some side-effect of the Milk—but now he knew. Now he understood. He knew whose eyes those were. In the air, he could smell it. A smell he had detected countless thousands of times before, but only now comprehended where it came from. A distant, spicy-sweet smell of dying carnations.

“Spike,” she said, looking up at him with joy on her face. “You did it.”

Spike stared back at her. He smiled, but felt it fade quickly.

“You’re already dying.”

Twilight looked down at the necrosis that was staring to consume her body. A thin line of luminescent fluid dripped from the corner of her mouth.

“I know,” she said.

“The last one lasted almost a year.”

“Seven months. The last one lasted seven months. But this one...it must not have had as much Milk as the others.”

Spike shook his head. “You’re starting to resist it.”

A frown began to cross over Twilight’s face. A frown that hid her growing fear—but she forced herself to be cheerful again.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. I’m strong enough to open new doors again. New paths to new planets to get more Milk.”

“More Proto-Vandrare.”

Twilight averted her eyes. Despite the fact that they had no apparent pupil, Spike could always tell the way she was looking. There was some unnatural, alien mechanism within the eyes to direct their attention, something barely perceptible. They were not Twilight’s eyes—but they were the ones that had formed in her skull. The mare attached to them, regardless of what she had become, was still Twilight.

“Twilight?”

“I think...I think it might be time...”

“For what?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Parallel Earths are not the only source of Milk. There might be...other doors I can open.”

“We’ve tried aliens. They don’t yield--”

“Not aliens.”

Spike paused, considering what she meant, confused. Then, as he realized it, his eyes widened.

“You...you want to drain other Equestrias.”

“Not just any Equestrias! Not all of them are good, right? Some are evil. Bad places. Places where bad ponies are in charge. Evil ponies. Chrysalis, Tirac, Cozy Glow, Daybreaker--they must have won somewhere. Those are bad Equestrias. No one will miss them. We can...we can use their power for good, right? Make our world better? There’s an infinite number of parallel universes, an infinite source of Milk if I keep opening the doors--”

“They’re still ponies. And the Proto-Vandrare are still people. People that died. For...this.”

Twilight was breathing harder. Tears began to escape her eyes. Tears that glowed bright white. “Do you think I don’t know that, Spike? This, the things I’ve done it’s...it’s all wrong. I know that. I’ve always known that. But I don’t have a choice. This is the only way. The only way to keep them alive, the only way to save my friends. I—I can’t stop, I can’t leave them, I have to help them, Spike—”

She was hyperventilating, and Spike knelt down. He reached out with his hand, only to see her recoil at the sight of the burns on it.

“Spike! What did—what did you do? You’re hurt!”

“I did what I had to. To save a friend.”

Her eyes met his. “Spike I’m...I’m sorry. The things I’ve made you do...the terrible things I’ve made you see. You must hate me. I’ve been a terrible friend. I wish...I just wish I didn’t have to ask...”

“Hey,” said Spike, putting his uninjured claw on her shoulder. “It’s okay. And it’s going to be okay. I’m your number one assistant, remember?”

Twilight wiped her tears away and smiled. “Spike...”

“You’ll always be my friend. I love you. Don’t worry. Together, we’ll fix this. We’ll make everything right. Right? Everything's going to be okay.”

Twilight smiled and nodded. “That’s right, Spike. We can do this. If we’re together, we can do anything.”

He smiled and spread his arms for a hug. Twilight laughed and hugged him back. His arms closed around her. Spike held her, running his rune-inscribed hand on the back of her head, gently stroking her mane. It was so silky and beautiful, although parts were already starting to fall out. He could feel the runes carved into her scalp responding to his own.

“I love you too, Spike. Thank you. For always being there for me.”

Spike stopped moving his hand, and as his grip increased, there was a momentary resistance—and then a sensation of sudden motion as her skull gave way, fragmenting in his grasp. His claws moving through something soft and warm and a burst of liquid onto his hand.

Her eyes widened in confusion, and she tried to speak, but there was nothing she could do. She was disconected form the system. The only time she would be vulnerable. The only time she would let her guard down.

Her body shuddered as she took her last breaths—and then she expired.

The doctors turned to face him, confused, as their Alicorn cystals simultaneously fractured and fell dark. They all fell, their brains surviving for barely a few seconds without their artificial lungs feeding them oxygen. One by one, each fell, quietly crumpling to the floor.

It was not just them. In that moment, without Twilight to guide it, the Alicorn failed--and all of Equestria died.

Far away, across countless universes, Shining Armor took a sudden breath, then, unable to take another, drowned in his tank, having never seen his wife or daughter again. Far below on his ship, Lightning Dust, alone in the flying bank, ceased to function, dreaming of once again flying as her brain fired its last electrical spasms.

Elsewhere, Derpy, in a tank full of formadehyde and coated in glowing demonic runes, ceased her parody of life, her daughters falling forward and collapsing against her box as the runes flickered out of existence.

In the Temple of Generosity, an army of Sweetie Belles looked at each other, then ceased operation. They sat down and did not move, no longer having the volition to be anything other than machines--and each shut down sequentially, carefully deactivating themselves one after the other until there were none left. The last one to go stared at the controls, seeing the flat-line of the brainwaves of what they had once been tasked to maintain. She smiled as she turned herself off for the last time.

Under the Temple of Generosity, the parody of Applebloom that they had been attempting to create finally succeeded in dying--but under the Temple of Loyalty, as Scootaloo died, something overtook her, a machine still all-too-alive devouring what was left of her and immediately reforming itself into a more amenable format. That day, something that looked like an orange-and-purple dragon left the Temple, never to return.

This continued. Everywhere, and all at once. Every pony, now abstracted form the Alicorn, died.

The only one who survived a few moments longer was Luster Dawn. Her body was made of flesh, not machinery. She collapsed forward, the Alicorn that had held the diverse tissues of her body failing and causing them to separate. Muscle and bone and nerve came apart as she dissolved, her head still managing to take several labored breaths as her eyes filled with tears. She tried to speak, groaning and barely managing to form words, but she too expired, her own eyes going dark.

Spike was alone. Totally alone. And, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he began to cry.

Outside, Dragonlord Ember landed on the crumbling steps of the Temple of Magic. She crossed over the fractured and abraded stone toward where a heavy door had fallen in, save for the linkage of one rusted hinge. When she pushed on it, it fell in with a resounding sound in the silence.

She entered. On either side, she saw the guards that had once stood sentry of the Temple. They lay on the ground, their bulky armor rusted to the point where it barely showed the symbols that had once been inscribed on their surface. In some cases, their helmets had remained, preserving what were now mummified heads; in other cases, they had shattered on the concrete floor and the exposure to air had left nothing but bone. Skulls staring back at her with empty eye sockets.

The stone had faded, dust piling in the corners. Looking up, she saw the bright yellow light of the sun pouring through spaces where only the edges of shattered stained-glass windows stood.

She marveled at how fast the decay had progressed. How when the ponies had stopped the whole world had faded in a single instant, the last of their dying culture evaporating in a single blink. That this much damage could occur in a time as inconsequential as twelve centuries was barely conceivable. In the time of a warm afternoon nap, their civilization had vanished entirely into memory and half-preserved relics.

She felt her scales warmed by the sun above. No longer red and dying as it once had been. The world had moved on. The Age of Dragons had progressed. A dragon mage had been born with the godlike power to raise the sun, and his little sister from the same clutch born with the power to control the path of the moon.

Dragon civilization had expanded, crossing the globe. Not just tribes living in caves, or even towns, but whole vast, technological cities. Magic had been restored to them, and new culture formed, guided by her own claw. Which was funny. That with the ponies gone, her world had risen almost instantly.

She stopped at the massive statue of the ancient, deformed thing that bore five heads. It had partially collapsed in places, its form corroding from the acid atmosphere of the world. At her feet, small reptiles skittered in every direction. Many of them were rockodilians, but not all. Ancient life, buried in the hottest fissures and at the edges of the eldest volcanoes, had begun to spread across the world. While it would never be green again, life was abundant. Beings made of fire and trees that grew not out of wood but from rock, bearing crystalline fruits. Even now, in this abandoned place, Ember saw the light of thousands of lava larvae hanging from the surfaces of the ancient statue, and in the blazing sunlight she saw the equally brilliant wings of the flocks of tends of thousands of phoenixes passing in the distance.

To cylinders stood before it. Neither were operational, their surfaces pitted and stained, their contents long-since desiccated. Ember placed a claw on each of them, using her own magic to activate a door. Then she stepped through.

It was dark, but her eyes adjusted, and even for a dragon she was forced to behold the sight before her. The sight of lava larvae that had completed their pupation, of hundreds of magma-moths providing the light for a forest of life, or rocky trees and lichens that bloomed in brilliant shades of brown and gray.

She approached the center. She saw several corroded, rusted robotic bodies, their heads consisting of skulls with oxidized masks—and one skull that was preserved perfectly, linked to a rusted collar with an empty crystal and beside a plume of bones showing signs of having been perfectly cut into a pile that no longer had any semblance of organic anatomy.

Looking beyond, she saw several large tanks looming in the darkness. Tanks that contained indescribable masses of bone and wood, collapsed and dead, the empty eye-sockets of their rotted forms staring outward blankly and almost in relief. Things behind broken, grimy glass that had been dead for so very long.

She stopped. She stared at the dragon before her, kneeling on the ground amongst the fire-moss and tiny reptiles of the new world, his armor aged and corroded and his body covered in the same lichen that grew on the surfaces of this ancient place.

In his claws, he held a skeleton. The wings had fallen away, but the rest was still mostly intact, his claw buried in the shattered skull. He held this skeleton, and he wept quietly over her, his tears staining trails down the white of her bones.

Ember spoke. “Spike,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

He sniffled slightly, and looked over his shoulder at her. Then, gingerly and lovingly, he set the skeleton down into the brilliant glow of the moss that had grown around him. He gently stroked her head, and then stood, wiping his tears.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”