When the preparations were made, the time had come. It was time for war.

Spike had lived a long, long time. By dragon standards, he was still a child, but in the lifetimes of ponies before the Alicorn had brought them universal immortality, he was ancient. In that short—and so verylong—lifetime, he had witnessed the birth and evolution of war in its entirety. From a peaceful, colorful civilization whose imagined conflict consisted of little more than charging and slapping one’s opponent to increasingly more detailed and more brutal technological systems, eventually culminating into a system of war driven by unspeakable methods with devastating efficiency. Then he had watched as war itself evolved beyond that point. Until it was no longer war anymore, exactly. To where the duty of a knight was little more than a repetitive industrial process.

The time had come to bring the Milk.

The facility did not exactly have a name. It was one of several monolithic industrial buildings that had not only survived but had grown from the ruins of Equestria around the Temple of the Alicorn. An enormous armored structure, a fort built with no intent of defense and only of attack, a leaning heap of metal plunged into the ground at an oblique angle like a broken fragment of rusted steel. It rose from the sand, defiant against the storms and the lightning that scarred its armored surface. On either end it was linked to the vast cables that distributed the Alicorn when saturation was no longer sufficient: wires hundreds of feet thick of thousands of metal strands and living myelin, fused and wrapped with chains of strange magic that pulsed with life. The life that sprung eternal, pulsing into every living pony, arising from the Alicorn and commanded by Twilight Sparkle herself as its avatar.

Spike knew the building, and knew it well. He had built it. Twilight had been so happy that he had done such a good job. Back then, she could still walk. The cables tethered her to the machines, and her frame was growing weaker, but she had been able to approach a balcony and look out at it with him. It was a surprisingly strong memory, and Spike treasured it, even knowing what this facility was meant to do.

None were present as he marched through its great halls. None except the Sleeping in their containment pods. Sarcophagi, in a sense, although they were not dead. Twilight thought of them as beds. Places where the heads of unicorns could rest, no longer in pain, their magic siphoned and directed by machines to power the Door that she had previously torn open at immense personal expense.

Liquid channels of floating runes linked the column-like machines, and through the thick, green glass, Spike saw their heads resting so peacefully, their sleep perhaps filled with dreams. Perhaps whatever remained of Luna was still sane enough to guide them to a happiness they would never know on their dying world. Or perhaps just being permitted the privilege of separating from that world was enough to bring them happiness even in their temporary oblivion.

Spike found their presence peaceful, but the sepulchral silence of the fortress disturbing. The way the light of their runes drifted off into machines without a sound, and how the only thing he could hear was the sound of his claws against the polished floor. It felt like a tomb, even though they were alive and always would be.

Passing the rows, he approached the final staircase and ascended. When he came to the door at the top, he stepped through. The frame was lined with a blue band of magic, and the moment he passed to the other side he felt a subtle change as he departed Equestria’s gravity and was instead held to the floor by magical rotors implanted far below the stone floor.

He looked back over his shoulder, back through the open door and to Equestria, and shivered. The doors were not uncomfortable to those who did not know how they worked. Spike, though, understood them well enough, and although he was only a few feet from his home he—and perhaps he alone, save for Twilight—knew just how far he had truly gone.

He forced the feeling away and proceeded farther into the ship, making his way to the bridge. The way was familiar to him. He had not built this ship, but had seen many like it in his lifetime. They were all essentially the same on the inside, all powered by the same systems and all precision-designed for the same specific purpose.

Upon entering the bridge, Spike was able to look out through the vast windows at the world far below. He felt a familiar pang of sadness upon seeing it. How so much of it was blue and green, and how pale wisps of pure-white clouds made their way over the surface. A world that looked like Equestria once had before its magnetic dynamo had had shifted its eternal cycle into the Age of Dragons.

Staring out through the window, Spike saw that the invasion had already begun. Thousands of objects were descending in a storm, arriving in straight lines and igniting with green light as they curved downward through the planet’s atmosphere.

“Hey, Spike,” said a friendly voice from behind him.

Spike, surprised, smiled and turned to face the pilot of this particular ship.

“Shining Armor,” he said. “I didn’t expect you’d be the one managing logistics on this one.”

Shining Armor smiled—to the extent that he still could. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, little brother. I heard this one was a tough nut to crack. I figured you could use some moral support at least.”

Spike laughed. “You always did like playing support, didn’t you?”

“I did marry a literal god, didn't I? What other role could I possibly play?”

“And why you always played cleric in Ogres and Obliettes.”

Shining Armor chuckled. “I can’t believe you still remember that. We haven’t played in...I don’t remember how long it’s been. We should start up a game when we get back. I still write to Big Mac sometimes...but without Discord, well...”

Spike nodded. “I know. I know. But hey, it’s good to have you here at least. Even if the support you’re going to have to do is a lot more than moral. Probably some air support. And fire support. Maybe even some technical support. You know I can never figure out how to operate these dang spaceships. It’ll be just like old times. When we first started doing this.”

“Yeah...”

Shining Armor, as the pilot, was positioned in the center of the bridge, facing forward. The captain’s chair, so to speak, although he now totally lacked the anatomy necessary to sit. He was held in a large, perfectly clear tube: a head and the fragments of an exposed spine, linked below to a pair of lungs rapidly inflating and deflating, air forced in from a system of tubes that linked to the bottom of his tank. Next to them, his pony heart still beat; embedded into it, surrounded by tendrils of pale flesh, was his Alicorn crystal. His skull had retained slightly less than half his face, the other being bare, eyeless skull, the bordering skin tattered with the ends floating lazily in his medium. Part of his brain, itself showing signs of necrosis, had been linked to the top part of his tube by a single cable while his spine had been wired in either direction. His one remaining eye, though, was clear and bright. He was not a corpse, but still very much alive.

“You know,” said Spike. “As the sister to the Icon of Magic and the Avatar of the Alicorn, you qualify for a flesh body. You don’t have to live in the tank.”

“No offense to Luster, but those things always skeeved me out. Besides. I’m wired into the Iron Protector. I control all it's functions. My functions. I’m literally a spaceship. I mean, how cool is that?”

“Pretty cool,” admitted Spike. “I’m kind of jealous.”

Shining Armor laughed. His mouth, of course, did not move; it had been fused long ago. Rather, the cable in his brain conducted his thoughts to what he now considered to be his true body. At least for now.

“So, the situation?" continued Spike, "How bad is it?”

“Not bad at all. Not yet. Our temporal positioning was basically perfect. Industrial, heavily populated, but not to the point where they invented nukes or spaceflight. I’ve reinserted us fifteen years forward of our last attempt.”

Spike nodded. It was an odd thought, he supposed, that three hundred years had passed on Equestria while only fifteen had passed for this world. But that was the way the Door worked. Time and space were immaterial things in the face of magic.

“Do we have the supplies?”

Shining chuckled. “You have no idea. The auto-factories? The ones we put on the fourth planet? They’ve been running this whole time.”

Spike frowned, confused. “They didn’t try to shut them down?”

“Like I said. No space travel. No sense to even try to build it. We have seven million tripods for every one pony in existence, although nowhere near enough trajector cannons to fire them all at once. But still. It’s a low-gravity world, the whole thing is made of resources close to the surface.”

“And the transmitter?”

“Fully intact and ready for Milk.” Shining paused. “Which...begs the question?”

“Which question?”

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

Spike stared at him—then slowly nodded.

Shining Stared back at him. “Then why didn’t she try to stop it? Our factories? She had to know they were there.”

“Because she’s just one pony. Look at the way she works. She knows she can’t fight us directly. That’s why she used the Germ. What do you think one pony would do against a planet of factories? You know how angry those things get. Worse than those freaky electric hornets.”

“Makes sense,” admitted Shining Armor. “Would have been nice if that one had Milk on it, though. That would make our job a lot more productive.”

“It’s been dead too long,” sighed Spike. “No point in trying.” He looked back at the planet. “And now we just have to deal with this one. And whatever Twilight came up with to deal with the Germ.”

Shining sighed. “You didn’t read the binder, did you?”

Spike blushed. “I...skimmed it?”

“Spike, you’re my sister’s personal student. And you know how she gets about reading.”

“Luster is her personal student.”

“Yeah. But you were first.” Shining’s corroded horn flickered, and a hologram appeared near Spike. A dragon-sized, perfectly rendered model of a tripod mech—but one very different from the one Fleur had piloted three centuries ago.

“This is the new model,” said Shining. “I transmitted the code through reverse-time so the factories would have time to make the updates. It’s better sealed and magically reinforced against any incursion. Bigger, stronger, and linked directly with the new technology. No need for an actual ground-force anymore. We’ll be dispatching them in threes. One pony to two sub-commanders.”

Spike did not know what he meant. “To what?”

Shining gestured to some of the auxiliary stations around him. Spike, being concerned with the stunning view of the invasion, had not initially noticed them or had dismissed them. His attention had been elsewhere. Seeing them, though, he recoiled in horror.

“What—are those?”

Shining smiled. “A gift from the Cult of Kindness. The last of Equestria’s living animal population, shredded alive and reconstituted by the Alicorn. Immune to the Germ and just barely intelligent enough to bolster our numbers. I mean, they're not smart enough for extraction, but good for mechanical support.”

Spike approached one of them. It was green and deformed, its surface a pulsating mass of peculiar flesh and its large eyes staring outward in an expression of perpetual surprise. Forcing himself to overcome his disgust, he placed a hand on it. The thing opened a beak somewhere on its body and let out a squeak of confusion, and Spike pulled his hand back quickly. Not because of the sound, but because of the pain. The pain that felt exactly when he touched Fleur’s box. These things were not alive—not completely. They were held together by necromancy.

“Twilight...what have you done?”

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Shining. “Fluttershy would be happy knowing that her animal friends can help us one last time. Because that’s the last of them. All except the ones that live in the fire and ash now. The Alicorn only works on ponies, not on anything else. Although I guess we can terraform the planet again at some point. Once we have enough Milk.”

Spike nodded and stepped back from the flesh golem, allowing it to return to its work. “And the population?”

“Rebounded. Partially.”

“I mean technologically.”

“See for yourself. It’s pretty cool, actually.”

Shining projected a new, smaller model. Using his magic, Spike lifted it and examined it closely—and was amazed by the simultaneous ingenuity and absolute absurdity of what he held in his hand.

“What am I looking at?”

“A tripod-mech.”

Spike counted the legs. “Well, yeah. I can see that. But what is it?”

“They call it their A.R.E.S. program. They build these in response to our own mechs.”

“But why? I mean, what is...is that steel? Did they seriously build it out of metal? And—sweet Celestia, is it hollow? Is this meant to have pilots? Inside it?”

“Looks like it.”

“Why would they—the Extractor virtually only works on Milk-containing targets. It barely damages non-living objects unless it pulls Milk. Why would you put Milk inside your machine, let alone to leave it completely unarmored? Why not automate this?”

“I know, right? It gets weirder. Take a look at the armament.”

Spike extracted the components of the model. There were rockets and bolt-throwers, and something else. He took it off and expanded it, separating the pieces of the hologram.

“What is...what even is this?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s their response to our Extractors.”

“The Extractors work on magic. This...doesn’t. There’s no magic in this whole thing. Hydraulics, cylinders, fuel—and this. Some sort of...heat ray?” He looked back at Shining. “Does it actually function?”

“I sent Daisy down to test them out.”

The hologram shifted and played out a highly realistic version of events. Of a massed force of boxy, metal-coated mechs charging into a group of three scout-class tripods—and then standing virtually still as they were each vaporized in a single shot, torn apart from within by the heat of their living targets being stripped of their Milk. Then, eventually, managing to fire their primitive weapons enough to damage and destroy the scouting party but only after losing ninety percent of their numbers.

“And Daisy?”

“Retracted and put in a new mech. That’s how we do it. Mechs are cheap, we can always build more. But you saw it, didn’t you?”

Spike nodded. “They have none of the armor ours do. Our carapaces are magically reinforced. They...aped us, but without any magic at all. This isn’t even reverse engineering.” He faced Shining. “Why would they do this?”

Shining’s eye stared at him. His smile grew. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Shining, if it was obvious, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“These weren’t made to fight us. No one seriously thought we’d be back. These things were made to kill each other.”

Spike was about to argue, but then did some simple math. He sighed, suddenly realizing what was happening. “It’s 1914, isn’t it?”

Shining’s eye moved, the closest he could approximate to nodding with his skull permanently bolted in place in the center of his slightly luminescent tube. “They just shot Frantz Ferdinand. It’s starting here, same as it did on all the others. And it’s going to get worse. A lot worse. I think we may have started them toward fascism a little early.” He paused, shifting the holograms as they swam around Spike, showing views of the world through the system linked to his brain. One resolved more clearly from the ghostly fog. This one was less clear, not taken from a tripod but from Shining’s own sensors. It was an image, rendered only partially in color, of a young man with dark hair and blue eyes wearing a gray military uniform—and, even at his young age, already sporting a distinct mustache.

“He’s here.”

“I can see that,” sighed Spike. “He’s remarkably persistent, isn’t he?”

“Can you imagine what he’ll do in twenty five years with those tripods? Or, really, more advanced ones? There’s always a Hitler. And things always go bad. And on this planet? Spike, this is mercy.”

Spike understood why Shining had forced himself to think that way, but made no response. He only nodded, watching the descent of yet more tripods to the world below. The battles were no doubt already beginning. They were of course unnecessary. But they would happen anyway. It was the nature of the industrial process he had helped build over so many centuries of constant development.

“It seems strange,” he mused, “that of all worlds, this one. These people who can’t even master the most rudimentary magic. Why we would bother with them at all.”

“Have you consulted the Xyuka Codex?”

Spike shivered. “Scootaloo was my friend. I can’t stand seeing...what they’ve done to her. And I don’t trust that thing that they put in her head. Whatever creature it came from, a thing that sheds whole bodies like I shed my skin, I don’t want to know what it was or where it came from.”

“I’ve seen her. I’ve talked to...it. It explained. But you’re a wizard. I think you already know.”

Shining Armor projected a hologram of one of them. The strange bipedial creatures. A diagram of them. They were thicker on this planet, more angular, and had larger eyes than some of the other versions, but Spike knew them all-too-well. And he knew what they were.

“The Proto-Vandrare.”

Shining nodded. “They are the most concentrated source of raw magic known.”

“Despite never using it. Just building machines and making more and more science.”

Shining paused for a moment. “Twilight explained it to me, once. that must have been...a thousand years ago? Two thousand? It’s their brains. The way they work. They’re too...procedural. At one point, they had almost limitless power. One Proto-Vandrare could rival an alicorn, or even ten alicorns. Or a thousand. But their brain is made in such a way that they seek out natural laws, they build machines. Incessantly. And when they do, it forces their magic toward enforcing those laws.” He paused again. “...or, reinforcing those laws. Making them immune to the effects of their own magic.”

“They neutralize themselves.”

“The only way to control limitless power is to direct that limitless power back on itself. Their magic contains itself. I think it has to. They could rip a galaxy in half with a thought if the full force of their magic wasn’t focused on making sure that doing so was impossible.”

“But our magic still works.”

“For now. Because their world is young. Who knows? In a hundred, a thousand years? We’ve never gone that far forward. They might eventually get smart enough to neutralize all magic in their own universe. Or other universes. Without ever knowing that it was even possible.”

“And we’ve never gone back far enough to see their ancient wizards.”

Shining paused. “Do you...even know what a Vandrare is?”

“No,” snapped Spike. “And I don’t want to. I really, really don’t want to.”

“The...the Codex...Scootaloo...told me. And you’re right. I’d really rather not have known...”

Spike suppressed the shuddering that threatened to overtake him. Even so far from Equestria, he still felt the memories. Still had a sense of what the word meant. Of something that had once been, or had been forced to be, perhaps the last time the world had ended—or perhaps so long before.

Instead, he focused on the task at hand. Twilight had sent him to get the Milk. He intended to do so.

“Other than these A.R.E.S. mechs, do they have anything that can hurt us?”

“Inherently? No. But the Heretic is down there, somewhere. For all we know the Germ was just the beginning of what she’s made in the time we’ve given her.”

“We can’t worry about something we don’t know. It isn’t productive. That’s our future selfs' problem. How many mechs do they have?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“Where are they concentrated?”

“You’re looking at it. North America. We’re in geosynchronous orbit over the continent.”

“Then we will direct our full force there. Target their secondary cities first.”

“The old one-two, then?”

Spike smiled, but without humor. Only out of the barest nostalgia, a thing he found somewhat disgusted him. “It always works, doesn’t it?”

“It might be the only way. Even she doesn’t know, does she?”

“No,” said Spike. “But when it comes to the Heretic, it’s not smart to bet on anything. But we’ll try it the basic way first. Then get fancy if we need to.”

He stepped down from the elevated bridge.

“Where are you going?” asked Shining.

“It’s just boring procedural stuff for now.”

“Really? So you’re going to leave that to me?”

“You’re good at that sort of thing. You can handle it.”

“Of course I’m good at it. But what are you here for if I'm doing all the work?”

“I deal with what happens when it isn’t boring and procedural anymore. And it never stays that way for long.”

Shining sighed. “So true. It’s not like I can go anyway. Can’t move. They cut off my body. Boy did that hurt.”

“Spaceship, remember?”

Shining paused. “Yeah...spaceship.”

“I’ll be in the interface bay. Checking on the pilots.”

“I’ll see you there. Because it’s plugged into my occidental lobe. I can’t stop seeing. Ever.” He sighed. “At least I don’t sleep anymore. Those implants give you the weirdest dreams...”

Spike nodded, even though he had no idea what that meant. He supposed he never would know—and he never could.

Author's Note

Hope derives from belief; like faith, it is a weaker shadow of unshakable knowledge in the truth of inevitable and permanent victory.