Preparations were underway and accelerating. The process was going according to all plans and projections. The war was all but won, because every war was all but won. Resources were limited save for the one that mattered; Equestria did not have the fuel necessary to engage foes under circumstances were victory was not fully guaranteed.

The machines were being built. The Soichet Ring was almost assembled. War raged on the planet below, but to Spike, it was a distant and abstract thing. Not a thing of consequence. The extractors equipped to every tripod were hard at work extracting Milk the way they once had so long ago, driving it directly to the Iron Defender where primitive processing centrifuges could convert it into the power they needed to run the rudiments of the operation. The process was of course inefficient; Milk could not be processed and purified properly by mechanical systems. But it was enough. It was part of the reason they had targeted the cities. The world below was not yet urban, but still agrarian. Most of the residents dwelt outside those places, and would continue to do so until their farmland depleted and the resulting depression would force a massive demographic change. At least, that was how it had gone on most of the others.

Spike oversaw this with exacting, mechanical precision, the way he had so many thousands of times before. He had a list. The first list had been written by Twilight, obviously, but the list he used now was of his own creation. A habit he had developed from her a long time ago.

One this particular hour of this particular day, he was examining the flight crew, taking notes on a clipboard as he inspected the machines.

The flight banks were not assembled the same way as the mech control cylinders. Flyers required less space, so instead of being mounted in a tower they were instead mounted perpendicular on the walls of a long, high-ceiling hallway. As Spike walked through, he could hear the sounds of their voices from inside their containers.

“Bogeys on the left! I can’t hold the formation!”

“Then roll out. Beta, sideline with her.”

“I can’t get there, I have to go around, dang it they’re all in the way--”

“Yeah, you’re going to have that on these big jobs, switch to moonrise-four configuration and come up from below--”

“They’re coming from above! I can’t shake them!”

“Hold on, Kicker, I’m on my way from your five--”

Spike stopped at one that was especially quiet. He accessed the control system and checked the metrics, disliking what he found. Then a sudden scream came from inside the container. A scream partially of pain, but also of rage.

“Curse you, Red Baron!” she cried. “I’m re-syncing, squad, ETA one minute forty!”

Spike pressed the eject, opening the drawer. It unsealed and folded outward, revealing the head held within. She, like all the pilots, did not use a body when in flight; the interface time was too low to sustain the reaction speed necessary. Instead, she had been grafted directly into the system, her connector collar and pseudo-spine plugged directly into the wires and life-support tubes that ran through the transparent assembly of her system.

She looked up at Spike, although of course could not see him. Her eyes had been removed, replaced with connector implants that were also wired directly to the machine, feeding her optic nerves what her flyer saw.

“What the heck?! Put me back in! I can do this!”

“Lightning Dust. You’ve gone through nineteen flyer units in the past two hours and thirty one over the last sixteen.”

“That’s what they’re for, isn’t it?”

“The flyers aren’t a problem. We can always make more. But breaking the soul-bond that many times can cause—does cause—permanent nerve damage. You’re taking a break. Now.”

“I can still do this, we almost have them, let me just shoot down that dang red menace--”

“That is an order, Lightning Dust. Get out. Or I tear you out.”

Her frown turned to a brief expression of fear, then she grumbled to herself. Spike turned to the pony beside her.

“You’ve got this, Spitfire?”

“Squad’s getting hit hard,” she said, more engaged on her flying than on Spike and Lightning Dust. “Pretty impressive for wooden planes. We’re faster, but they turn tighter.”

“I’ll submit and engineering report,” said Spike, marking it down. “But the next batch of flyers will have to come all the way from the next planet.”

“We’ll do our best until then.”

The extraction arm arrived, driven on the support rail for the bank. It hummed to life, reaching into Lightning Dust’s chamber and unscrewing her release connectors. With a squeak of pain, it pulled her and her nerves free, her Alicorn crystal momentarily taking up all life-support functions. As she was pulled out, a temporary body arrived on a second rail, and Lightning Dust was inserted into it. The scream of reconnecting was louder than her squeak, although she tried to suppress it. She barely even made a sound when the five-inch long needles of her visor were clicked into her eye-sockets by a secondary arm.

She stepped off the rail, immediately shaking. Her body was of course mechanical, but Spike knew what that meant. The nerve damage was already setting in.

“You’re not okay.”

“It’s just adrenaline,” she snapped, trying to get control of her shaking arms and her shivering robot body.

“You don’t have adrenal glands.”

“Then the body must be crap. Get me another.”

Spike sighed. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee into you. When was the last time you slept?”

“I had an amphetamine inserter mounted to my frontal lobe. Winners don’t need sleep.”

Spike raised a metaphorical eyebrow. “An injector...that’s against regulations for pilots?”

Lightning Dust backpedaled. “Hey, it’s a war. I need it to do my job. The dose isn’t even turned up, I don’t use it half the time--”

“I wonder if that’s why you keep losing soul-bond with your flyers.”

She snarled silently, but followed him toward the pilot break room. “You can’t bench me,” she said. “I’m your best pilot. I’m the best flyer in Equestria.”

“Save for Rainbow Dash.”

“Who is a flayed skin stored in a block of enchanted ice. Who hasn’t flown in...” She paused, confused. “I don’t...I don’t know how old I am...”

“She’s sleeping. A long nap. I think she’d like that.” He took her elbow and led her forward past the bank of other pilots engaged in the war below. “But you’re not wrong. You’re a good flyer. But if you keep this up, you’ll burn out.”

“I’m not a washout, not a washout...”

“Then for all our sake, please be more careful.”

Lightning Dust stopped again. She looked up at Spike. Without her eyes, there was no clear expression, but Spike understood what she was feeling. The nerve damage did not just affect her motor cortex, and pieces had been removed to make way for her stimulant injections. Her addition to flight had left her confused, missing parts of her mind. She was having trouble remember who, and where, she was. Insanity or structural catatonia were, of course, an expected inevitable consequence of flyer operation.

“It’s just that...I remember,” she said, softly. “When I’m in there. When I have my eyes. My real eyes. I’m...I’m flying. Again. Just like before...before they took my wings...”

Spike froze. He knew why the anthrofication had been necessary. Why they had been given new bodies. Why their magic and flight had been lost. He knew it, but only in an academic sense. That bodies cost magic according to numerous variables, and the Alicorn could not sustain the sheer mass of flesh required to have them stay ponies. That these bodies had been deemed the most efficient for the mechanical processes necessary for Milk extraction, that they had in fact been based on the superficial appearance of the Proto-Vandrare, the race so successful and powerful that in at least one incidence had given rise to something so terrible that the Xyuka Codex had actually noticed their existence.

And yet he could not find the words to explain this to her. Not in a way that would justify what he had allowed to be done to them. Especially when he stood before her with his own strong, healthy wings folded neatly on his back.

“Just...be more careful. If you burn up, you won’t be able to fly again. Not until Twilight fixes you all.”

“I know,” she said, quietly. “I just...it would be easier if...if I were there...”

“What, in the flyer? You burnt out thirty one of them. You’d have only had the one that you were in.”

She looked up at him, her black visor staring into his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.”

Spike led her to the break room and left. He had wanted to stay with her, but now he found he lacked the courage. Instead, he went ahead with his checks.

He was not twenty feet down the corridor when he heard Shining Armor’s voice.

“Spike. There’s a problem. It’s Fleur.”

The clip board shattered in Spike’s claw as he tensed.

“Careful! We can’t grow any more trees on Equestria, we can’t make more of those--”

“Fleur. What’s wrong? NOW.”

“I don’t actually know. I’ve lost contact with her tripod.”

Spike felt his heart drop. He took a deep breath. “Was it...was it destroyed?”

“No. I would know that. The telemetry would tell me. I’ve just...lost connection to it.”

“That is literally impossible.”

“I know. Tripods can’t be disengaged from the gate system without ejecting the pilot back here. But I didn’t receive an eject notification. She’s not here. But I’m not in contact. This has never happened before. I think something’s wrong.”

“I’m on my way. Where was she operating?”

“Outside Albuquerque.”

“Can you pinpoint it exactly? Using the ship’s occulus?”

“I can approximate the last known position of her tripod, but I’m not receiving active telemetry.”

Spike frowned. “Which still triggers even if the Tripod is destroyed.”

“In case we need to recover a body. Yeah. I know. You can’t just turn it off. There’s a group near that site. I’m diverting Roseluck to inspect.”

“Good. I’ll use her door to insert.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“I’ll be fine. I didn’t get to be Grand Seneschal for my pretty face. But if she’s removed from that box, if they separate her from those runes--”

“I know. Go ahead. I’ll handle the operation up here until you get back. And I’ll try to adjust the occulus to trace her magic signature, but it will take time.” He paused. “And don’t tell me you told me so.”

Spike did not, even though he had. There was no time to be petty. It had all been going so well--but now, he could feel the beginning of the situation fraying. Of it all about to fall apart around him. Just as he knew it always would.

Roseluck was located on the twenty seventh level of cylinder eleven. Spike did not bother using the latter meant for ponies; rather, he spread his wings and took flight, rising in seconds to the appropriate location and landing gracefully on the circular catwalk—but not before having taken a glance at Fleur’s door. It had been sealed, the same way it did when a mech pilot ejected. Except there was no sign that the eject had been fired. The seat and control assembly were nowhere to be found, meaning they were on the other side—but the door was inactive. The gate was closed. Shining Armor had been unaware, and was unable to restart it.

Spike entered the door that led to Roseluck’s machine, feeling gravity once again change as he passed. The red-haired pony looked up from a window that showed an enormous blue sky and the cliffs of a rocky dessert outside.

“Spike,” she said. “Shining said you’d be here.”

“Emergency exit?”

Roseluck had one hand free that she had been using for manual controls. She gestured toward a thin ladder. “Bottom level, on the mechanical floor. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Spike grabbed the top of the latter. “What’s the situation out there?”

“Quiet for now, but I’ve lost connection to my greenie-buddies. I think there might be dudes out there, but I can’t see them now.” She seemed concerned. “Are you going to be okay? What if the Germ gets you?”

“It doesn’t affect dragons. I’ll be fine. But keep watch, okay?”

“Will-do, Spike.”

Spike nodded and slid down the latter to the lower levels of the mech to where the airlock was located. He did not pause as he stepped into the claustrophobic chamber, and did not hesitate when he pulled the release handle.

Immediately, the light of the hostile alien world struck his body. It was warm and, to an extent, felt nice. The hot, dry air of the planet blew onto him, and he was reminded of Equestria—except for the smell. This planet smelled fresh and alive. It was not his home.

The atmosphere reeked of oxygen, though, at a sickeningly high concentration. Spike, being accustomed to pony atmospheres, was able to tolerate it better than a normal dragon might be able to, but it was still a hindrance. His magic would not fail him, at least not immediately, but it would be much weaker.

One of the segmented effector tendrils from Roseluck’s mech stretched out to him and Spike leapt onto it, allowing it to lower him to the bright rocky floor of what he realized was a desert valley. This was the last place Fleur had been, and he saw no signs of wreckage or even a battle of any kind—although he could smell a slight hint of smoke from something in the distance.

To his west, though, he realized that he was near a building. A large structure, like a factory or powerplant, although it appeared to be uninhabited and perhaps abandoned entirely. Since there were no clues outside, he assumed that the facility was the place to start.

He was aware that a Proto-Vandrare airship was in the area, but determined that it was of no consequence. The A.R.E.S. mechs had been designed to fight tripods; they would not know what to do with dragon, and probably would not even recognize him as a threat. To be safe, though, he put one claw to his mouth and breathed a thin stream of green fire onto it. At his command, it assembled itself into burning letters written in a language that he had only recently started to understand. These twisted and turned as he used them to create a spell that Twilight herself had taught him and, after casting the groundwork for it, he snapped his fingers, rendering himself completely invisible. He had no intention of fighting. Not when it could put Fleur in danger.

As he was crossing the bridge, he heard some sounds in the distance. Then Roseluck’s voice came to him on a magical channel.

“Um, Spike? There’s a dude here. I think he’s throwing pieces of metal at me?”

“Just one?”

“That I can see. Um...what should I do?”

“Extract him.”

Roseluck paused. “Is that...moral?”

“I’m not exactly an expert in that,” sighed Spike. “Just think of it like picking a flower.”

“Right, right, that makes sense.” From the distance, Spike heard the whine of an extraction beam cutting through the air. “Wow,” said Roseluck. “He really popped, didn’t he? It’s kind of neat how you can see the bones when the Milk comes out.”

Spike paused, considering, but continued. In all honesty, he had never met a Proto-Vandrare in person, never had a conversation with one. Nor did he intend to. But it was suspicious that one would attempt to engage a tripod mech all alone with a simple bolt-thrower. Suspicious and concerning.

He crossed the bridge and entered the facility, pausing at the entrance to get his bearings. The architecture was certainly that of the Proto-Vandrare, but it was not a military installation or even a research center. It had not been refitted for any critical purpose. Spike could not fathom why Fleur had broken off from the others and come to this place.

Then he heard footsteps behind him. His suspicious were immediately confirmed as he was approached by a group of Proto-Vandrare in dirty military uniforms. Some were holding bolt-throwers, save for one about the same height as Spike who was carrying a much larger weapon.

Being invisible, he stepped to the side, allowing them to pass and stop next to him on the catwalk. Then they became nervous and promptly leapt over the railing and onto the level below.

Spike heard it as well. Much larger footsteps, arranged with a much more familiar gait. He looked up to see a tripod walking past him. It was not a battle tripod, though, but instead a technical one, the kind operated by flesh-thralls for limited applications such as ground-based tripod repairs or staging flyer unpacking and takeoff. Seeing one here, though, was unusual—and what it carried on its back far more so. There, in a geodesic cage, it held a Proto-Vandrare—and one most certainly not in a military uniform.

“Well, that’s strange,” said Spike to himself as he, still invisible, followed after it. Something was off, and he was liking the situation less by the second.

The half-living machine proceeded deeper into the facility, and the deeper it moved, the more Spike began to understand what this place was meant to be. It was indeed a power plant, and although the technology was primitive by Equestrian standards he still comprehended at least what most of it was meant to be. To his dismay, there appeared to be a strong possibility that this facility ran on some manner of nuclear power, perhaps on fission technology stolen from the archaic tripod mechs before they had superceeded the need for power at all. Which meant that this race of Proto-Vandrare was already standing at the precipice of causing its doom by self-induced nuclear annihilation. It was only a matter of time before they realized that there were far more profitable uses of the atom than for the peaceful generation of electrical potential.

By far his greater concern, though, was where the technical tripod was going. This question, unfortunately, was answered quite thoroughly when it passed into an enormous room. From the ceiling, Spike could see more cages of Proto-Vandrare. On the floor, he had found piles of desiccated corpses.

The tripod put its Proto-Vandrare away with no particular eye toward organization style, and Spike knelt down by one of the shriveled bodies. He whispered a spell and placed his hand over the wretched creature’s head, extending his magic into the remains and carefully pulling it back with new information. Curiously, there quantity of trauma was minimal. Not enough to cause death—and at the same time, the event of death had occurred far to recently to leave a corpse in this state of mummification. The spell was quite reliable, and yet Spike could not understand why it had died. It was as if its life had simply ceased.

And then, as he stood up, his question was answered. He watched as one of the tripods opened a cage and extracted a Proto-Vandrare. As it did, it extended an articulated proboscis, ramming down its victim’s throat. This, Spike found, was consistent with the injuries on the one he had inspected.

Then he saw the absolute last thing he wanted to see. A vibrant, glowing fluid was extracted upward and out of the Proto-Vandrare through the proboscis and loaded into the storage tanks of the drone. The body of the Proto-Vandrare faded and desiccated, and then, after it was fully depleted, was tossed away with the rest.

Spike understood what this meant, and what the creature had just done. And, worse, what they had apparently done to hundreds of Proto-Vandrare. The implications were terrifying, and Spike realized that in this instance it was imperative that he never know the answer to why they were doing this—and he also understood that it was his duty to discover that very reason.

So he followed, sidestepping the military Proto-Vandrare as they entered the room, doubtless to free the others of their species. It did not especially concern Spike at this point. In fact, their actions had never mattered except to themselves. For the Proto-Vandrare, the war had already been lost—but Spike now knew that something else was at play. Something far more threatening than anything he could have possibly predicted.

He spread his wings, taking flight after his quarry. Its gait was longer than his, but limited by the use of three legs; in flight, he could catch up with it easily and was able to follow it as it descended down a long shaft. Why it descended and where it was going remained unclear until he reached the bottom.

There, he found a chamber. Why the chamber had been built, he was not sure, nor did he care. What mattered was what had been assembled within it. Amongst the Proto-Vandrare containers of oil and compressed propane, he saw hundreds upon hundreds of the flesh constructs in technical tripods working on the construction of a vast and unauthorized project.

It was a ship. A small one, normally intended for automated use, about one thousandth the volume of the Iron Defender but quite capable of atmospheric or deep-space travel. It sat incomplete, assembled from Proto-Vandrare resources and powered by the very reactor that they had aped from the fallen tripods. As if the power plant they had built were a purpose-built factory for the assembly of Equestrian technology.

Its presence was unwelcome, and yet Spike found himself distinctly intrigued—and he elected to approach. Although, as he did, he suddenly stopped, sniffing the air. Something was off. Something peculiar. Something he remembered, a memory drawn back from the edge of time, of eons past. The smell of a Proto-Vandrare.

He diverted his path, moving between the equipment and piles of detritus left on the floor of the factory and discarded by the flesh-golems. Spike found it quickly. A primitive device strapped to a large propane vessel. Even with his limited knowledge of their technology, he comprehended that it was a bomb, and he extended a claw to sever the control mechanism—but he stopped himself.

Spike did not know what he was walking into. He did not know the risks, or what would happen inside that ship—and he did not want to carelessly destroy something he might need in the future.

He left the bomb alone. At least now he knew exactly how long he had to figure out what was going on—and should he fail, the problem would be taken care of regardless of his ultimate fate.

Entering through a hole in its lower surface, Spike landed and folded his wings neatly on his back. As he did, he deactivated his invisibility spell; there was no need for it here. The flesh constructs embedded on their utility tripods saw him, but he was the Grand Seneschal of the Equestrian military. They recognized him and did not bother to attack. Even if they had, it would have been only a minor inconvenience. Spike was far stronger than they were, even in oxygen.

He proceeded into the darkness of the unlit and incomplete ship. The halls built into it were vast; this type of vessel was not meant to hold an atmosphere, but instead for use by mechanized soldiers. This had long ago meant ponies with bodies configured for battle holding extractor rifles before progressing to tripod mechs and, eventually, to the modern system that Spike expected would rapidly suppressed the need for ground conflict at all. The ascetic affect of this prudent architectural form was a sense of vacuousness, of scale without weight. Spike had always found it to be a profoundly lonely thing.

The atmosphere had less oxygen. He cold smell sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. It smelled like the air on Equestria. That only partially made sense. There was no reason to have that atmosphere on this planet. The only beings that strictly required it were, he supposed, the constructs; they had been built to survive the harsh environment of Equestria and he supposed they had been built to breath the native gas. Except that they were permanently sealed inside their mechs.

That question was answered when he approached an open gap wafting breathable gas from it. Pausing to check, Spike approached the precipice, holding onto the wall and staring into a vast pit. It was a type of hanger, at least on paper, meant for a type of ultra-large-scale tripod that had become obsolete nearly five hundred years prior. Except there were no tripods in this hole.

Down in the bottom, slithering through the fog and precipitation of their acid atmosphere, were the glossy-eyed creatures. Seemingly hundreds of them. And they were not alone. Interspersed amongst them were bodies. The desiccated husks of depleted Proto-Vandrare. As Spike watched, utility tripods arrived with cages full of corpses and dumped them into the pit on the far side. The constructs squeaked with pain and began to shamble toward the pile.

Spike was not sure what this was for or why it had been created until he looked closer and understood. He saw that they were changed. They did not eat, per se, but as the green creatures moved he saw arms, legs, and heads sticking from their bodies, occasionally twitching or clenching their fists as life was slowly restored to them. Spike saw the creatures growing fat as components of the dead merged to them until they violently split open, dividing into two of themselves.

“Well...that explains were all these guys came from,” he said to himself. It was a thought he had never considered and, as gross as it was, something of distinct utility. These creatures had been created from the flesh of the last of Equestria’s animals, but they themselves were neither alive nor dead. They were animated by necromancy powered by the Alicorn but utilized no continuous connection. Fed dead flesh, that dead flesh became them. On a diet of dead Proto-Vandrare, even ones devoid of Milk, they could reproduce.

As intriguing as it was, these creatures were capable only of intelligence, not volition. They had no souls. They were just machines made out of tissue. Which meant someone was controlling them.

One passed Spike in a tripod. Even from a distance, he could sense the reek of Milk. It was headed where he needed to go, and he followed it toward whatever he might find. He knew that time was short.

The door opened into a large room, and Spike paused. He was familiar with this type of ship. He had designed them. He knew the plans like he knew the back of his own spines—and this room was not on any of the schematics he had built. This place was new.

There was little light, but the tripod continued off toward wherever it needed to go. Spike did not follow but entered the room slowly, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Then they did, and he saw what he needed to see. What he supposed he might have expected, but something he had not allowed himself to consider.

The pentagram had already been assembled, the floor carved by magic into delicately forged runes that were now illuminated by soft pink glow. At each of four vertices, heavy extraction cannons had been disassembled, their internal gates torn out and reconfigured to a system of old and decrepit-looking rubber cables and conduits, things that had been salvaged from the Proto-Vandrare power plant. Equipment that they had built aping Equestrian technology taken and now merged back into that very same technology in a way that was never supposed to be attempted.

One vertex was different. One vertex where the cables and conduits converged. Spike knew what sat on that vertex. How long he had stared at that box. How well he knew every inch of its surface—that surface now drilled and cut to allow for the insertion of so many cables and tubes.

The tripod approached one of the extractors and extended its proboscis, regurgitating the Milk it had pulled directly from a Proto-Vandrare and inserting it into the machine. The modified extractor hummed to life, its pumps roaring as it processed and forced the Milk through the machine and across the pentagram. The construct cried out as its body suddenly began to shrivel, and it struggled against the unexpected agony—but it could not escape the tripod meant to imprison it. It died in pain, collapsing to dust, and its empty tripod fell with the others.

“Spike,” said Fleur, softly. She sounded sick, or extremely tired.

“Fleur, I--”

Spike approached, only to be knocked back by a sudden shock of energy. Of a familiar magic he had felt so many times before blocking his path.

“I had hoped you would not need to see this,” she said. “But I should have known, no? You would come. To save me. It was only a matter of time. So...pherhaps...zis is better? Zis way?Yes...zis way, you will understand. Understand what must be done...”

Spike pushed hard against the magical barrier, the machines casting it straining against his force but still managing to resist him.

"Fleur! You don't understand what you're doing, if the runes break--you have to stop this! PLEASE!"

Spike did not have a chance to stop her. The machines activated at once, the runes igniting with Fleur’s light. Brilliant red fluid flushed through the tubes, racing through them to her box and pouring into it, the machines igniting and melting, unable to withstand the force of the material they were attempting to purify, the fragments of extractor beams and makeshift purification centrifuges spinning to full power and roaring as they performed they were forced to perform the ritual.

“FLEUR, NO!”

It was too late. The Milk flowed into the container, the sudden surge of magical force immediately shattering the connection to the runes. Spike heard Fleur scream in agony, and then suddenly stop as the runes flashed brightly and then vanished entirely. As the necromancy keeping her soul tied to her body was lost.

And yet it continued to flow. The red fluid, drawn from the machines and forced inside—and Spike could not manage to turn away. He wished he could have, but he could not make himself do so. He could not give up on her, even though she could hardly comprehend the severity of what she had just done.

He forced his hands forward, deep into the field. The machines casting it sparked and resisted against the strain, but he pushed harder, driving his arms through it entirely and charring away the flesh that covered them. The sheer force of it was too much for the machines to bear, and they erupted in plumes of energy and molten metal, allowing Spike to stumble through, falling to the floor. He caught himself, his skin and flesh already reassembling to its normal state. Within seconds, his arms had fully regenerated and he rushed to the box--but it was too late.

Then it stopped. The red light dimmed, and all was still. Then box sat, empty, silent, and smoking. The glow of the runes had ceased, the spells having been broken--and only the light of the Alicorn crystal illuminating the metal as it began to rust and corrode in the toxic atmosphere.

Then it opened with a hiss.

A skeletal, half-formed hoof, its surface covered with only the barest fraction of dead flesh—but it pulled on the edge of her cage, drawing the body connected to it out.

Her horn emerged first, followed by her head. Her teeth, still exposed, gnashed at the air, and she gurgled and spat before suddenly bursting out coughing. The tubes were connected to holes drilled in the rear of her skull and what remained of her cervical spine—hoses that still held the barest splatters of red fluid on their interior surface.

The mummified gray-brown skin of her face began to rejuvenate, spreading in patches as it once again became light and once again filled with life. Shaking, the corpse pulled itself fully out of the tank and splatted to the floor. A head and part of a spine, rapidly extending behind it, a single front leg fully formed and another one already jutting out of a cartilaginous shoulder.

The skin extended, covering bone as new flesh and new organs formed. A heart formed in her chest and started to beat, perfusing her flesh with blood for the first time. She coughed hard and spat formaldehyde, metal, and fixed lung tissue onto the floor before taking a single long breath.

Then she stood. Her back legs had already formed. She was wobbling and barely able to stand, but she still turned toward Spike, the black eyeless holes of her face boring into him, the rear of the shadows already beginning to be painted by spreading, exposed retinas. Then she started to walk.

It came quickly. With ever step, new skin covered her, white and perfect. Her mane and tail emerged in clumps, then all at once, assuming their natural pink color and growing quickly to their full length. Luminescent red fluid dripped from her eye sockets and then, with a blink, lenses formed over the exposed retinas, then irises, and final complete new eyes that had been assembled in seconds. The implanted connectors in the rear of her head came out with a pop, ejected by the repairs to her skull.

Taking another breath, she regained her composure and stood tall. She stopped walking and smiled. There, before Spike, was Fleur De’Lis, a tall and beautiful unicorn.

Spike felt his heart breaking. “Fleur...what have you done?”

“I wish I could have told you,” she said, sadly. “To have explained my plans. But you would have tried to stop me. Your loyalty, it is simply to great. And your fear that I would fail. And I could not allow zat.”

“You’re...”

“Alive? Yes. I have had...much time to realize how to do it. How little Milk it would require. Only that of a few of these creatures. Barely a measurable fraction of their population. Twilight will not miss a few drops.”

“But...but why?”

“Why?” she looked up at him, as if confused by the question. “Why? You ask me why? Why I took steps to restore myself to life?”

“We saved you--”

“You saved a corpse. Tell me, Spike, do you know what it feels like to be dead? It is not cold. It is not hot, either. No. You feel nothing. No physical sensation. You see nothing. Hear nothing. Like floating, in nothing...but the spells, zey keep you zere. Not alive. Not dead. Trapped in...in zat awful hell. Were I cannot be...and yet Were I must be.” She stepped closer to him. “Were I can sense you, but not see you. Not touch you. Not hold you, as I once did. Even when I had a false body...but now I feel. I breathe. And you are here with me once again.”

Spike knelt down and ran his fingers through her mane and down her back. She was warm. Alive. In a state that no pony had ever been in in so long. Not linked to an artificial body, or held as an enchanted corpse in a tank—but truly alive. Truly a pony.

He held her close. “Fleur...”

“I did zis for us.” She laughed, pulling her head back and prancing around the room. “Zis new body! Zis ship! I have made it, for us!”

Spike smiled, mind racing. “What are we supposed to do with a drone ship?”

Fleur stopped and laughed. “What to do? What to do? Did you ever stop to think how big these universes that we harvest truly are? That there are hundreds, millions of worlds where we might dwell? Among others, or on a world of our own, alone and together for the remainder of our time? Where we do not need to fight a war to survive, where we do not need to live that life? Where we can leave it behind us?” She laughed, only pausing at an apparent twinge in her jaw. Something not quite right about her teeth.

Spike nodded and stroked her mane. “That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

Fleur smiled her large, beautiful smile at him. Her eyes were alight with life and so brilliant, like a pair of jewels. Then something rose to the surface of that smile. A strange expression of confusion. A tremor ran through her body, and she coughed slightly. Red fluid ran from the corners of her mouth.

“Fleur?”

“Is nothing. Is zis planet. I have not breathed in...longer than I can remember.” She winced and shook her head violently. As she turned, Spike could already see the lesions forming on her body. The tumors that were already spreading.

"We will be together," she insisted. "I am...I am alive again. I am back. I can see you, I am not alone, I am not ashamed that you can...can see...see me..." She coughed again, this time more violently. A look of fear began to cross her face. Fear at the feeling and realization that something had gone horribly wrong with that cough. That something inside her had changed suddenly and relentlessly.

“What is...what is happening?”

Spike already knew. Knew what Fleur could not have known. She had learned enough to extract it, to halfway purify it, but she did not know the nightmare she had so willingly injected into herself. He, though knew, and he could almost not bear to tell her that her fate had already been sealed.

Fleur shook her head again, backing toward her machinery and bumping into the tank that had been her home for three centuries. She cried out in pain.

“Why—why does zis hurt? I don’t—I don’t understand! The Milk, my body, I have my body back! I WILL NOT LET IT GO!” She looked to Spike, her expression filled with abject fear, tears flowing from her eyes, her mouth dripping silver and filled with so many extra teeth. “Please, not now, not while I am so close! Spike what—what is happening to me?!”

Spike looked at the ground, but forced himself to meet her terrified eyes.

“The Milk,” he said, solemnly. “It’s pure, refined life force. But not just life, potential. And no mortal being can withstand the effects of direct exposure to it.”

“What does—what does that mean? Spike, what does that mean!”

Spike looked away. He could not meet her eyes, their irises already beginning to shift and change. He tried to retain his composure, but he knew what he was about to see, and his mind was racing. Trying to find a way to reverse it. The exposure would not be fatal. The effects were much, much worse.

“Spike! SPIKE! Talk to me, please, I’m scared, I don’t know what’s—what’s--”

She suddenly screamed out in pain as the lesions ruptured, tearing themselves open to expose the teeth inside them that gnashed as the new mouths opened up, their throats boring into her and linking to her newly differentiating organs. Other holes split and separated, violet eyes opening on her neck and along her spine, most sighted bust some blind, their irises dividing into multiple compound segments.

Her eyes widened as she could suddenly see. “No! NO NO NO!”

She took a sudden step to the side and screamed. Instead of moving, the flesh of one of her rear legs separated, peeling her hoof in half and reconfiguring it into a complex claw, planting it on the floor to stabilize her as the skin regenerated and new muscle and bone formed on both the original leg and the new one. Fleur looked down at it, horrified, and screamed.

“SPIKE!”

Spike reached out to grab her. She held him back, turning her head so sharply that it fragmented, broadening and splitting, reforming itself but leaving a trail of teeth and bone spreading and differentiating, slicing through her blistering skin. Her vocal cords were split in the process, and all she could produced was terrified gurgling as she stared up at him, her eyes swelling as new eyes formed within them.

Her body reconfigured, spiracles opening linked to new vocal organs.

“What—I can’t—It hurts—it hurts so much!”

She pushed herself off Spike, her legs collapsing and the flesh merging into a pair of more sturdy, longer legs. Her hooves fractured, bending into hands.

“No, no! Not again, not this!”

She tried to run, her newfound arms linking themselves harder to the ground--and she dismembered herself. Her body split, her spine and organs drawing free of her body, with every inch a new segment growing and splitting forth into bone and muscle that forced itself into a set of skittering, insect-like legs that carried her forward as she tried to flee herself, only for new skin and new organs to cover her as the rest pulled its way forward back to her escaping front-half. Unable to flee, she wept at the sight of herself as she compiled back into cohesive, immortal flesh, her own thousands of toothed eyes and partial heads staring back at her as she moved. She swelled, her flesh suddenly tearing and bursting as she exploded onto the floor, her organs each forming their own claws through the mass of sinew and ever-living, screaming tissues, all attempting to draw herself forward. Forward, to Spike.

“The extractors!” screamed her numerous mouths as she formed tentacles, slithering outward. “Get it out of me, get it out!”

Spike knelt down and held her. “We can’t. The thermal effect, you’ll burn to death!”

He looked around, desperately trying to come up with a solution. She was not wrong; the extractors could, in theory, save her—but they were not designed for that and there was no time to modify them. What his eyes stopped on, though, was the Alicorn crystal. The one she had abandoned. The one she no longer needed.

He let go of her and grabbed it, tearing it free form her sarcophagus. He lit his fire and prepared a spell.

“But the extractors aren’t the only way!” he said, standing over her and casting a magic circle in the air. “It’s life force, pure life force, there’s an easier way to get it out, and I’m sorry. But if I kill you, the Alicorn will preserve you until I can get you back in a tank--the necromancy, I can keep you intact--”

A horrid piping gurgle escaped the infinity differentiating lump of bones and organs that had once been Fleur, and her tentacles curled up, suddenly erupting in plumes of clear cellulose spines and nematocysts—then, as they ossified, she screamed as barbed bone-spikes shot through her flesh.

Her neck extended, forming new bones and new joints as her jaw dislocated and opened far wider than it should. Her eyes were wide but no sound came out, even as she opened her mouth to scream and her teeth extended as violent points before rupturing into crawling flesh of exposed nerve and leaf-like apertures. Her overly long neck snapped, flopping to the side, and she vomited her organs, her intestines fountain upward in a plume and forming bones and skin and a new mane as they differentiated into a single long, four-elbowed arm and several new heads. The hand’s three fingers grasped Spike’s wrist.

“No!” she wept from one of the heads. It looked up at her. It looked almost like the face of a Proto-Vandrare--And she saw this in him, tears and Milk dripping from her split eyes, the teeth of her pupils gnashing holes in her corneas as her dreams were crushed. “No! please...”

“It’s the only way to save you!”

“I won’t go back, I can’t! Please!”

“Fleur, I have to stop it before it can’t be reversed--”

She shook her head and closed her eyes, forcing part of one of her heads to be almost like the beautiful face she had once had. She smiled to him, tears of flesh pouring out from her eyes. Eyes that were no longer afraid, but so very sad.

“Please! If you ever loved me, grant me this one wish. I...tried but I...” She shuddered, her face sinking back into herself as she continued to change, more legs springing out from her and new manes developing at various points on her body, erupting from between the teeth of her drooling, gibbering mouths. “It was wrong, it was always wrong. Please. Let me...just let me go. I’m sorry. Don’t...don’t force me. Please don’t force me. I don’t want it. Just...just let me die, Spike. I’m sorry.”

She burst into tears, and Spike held out the spell and the crystal—but he could not bring himself to do it. He instead relaxed his hand and, instead of casting the death spell, took the hand that had emerged from her, holding it tight and lowering himself to her. She stared at him in awe, her will and love forcing the mass of flesh, tentacles, bone and limb around him.

“The Proto-Vandrare planted a bomb,” he said.

“Then you need to escape. But I...won’t. I can’t. But I can’t lose you...”

“No. I’m not leaving you. I’ll be right here. I know it’s scary, but you’re going to be alright. It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

Fleur looked up at him, and forced herself to smile.

“How strange,” she said. “Zat you do not cry. Because...I Zink you understand zat zis is..it is right. Thank you, Spike. Goodbye, my love.”

Somewhere in the facility, a bomb attached to an abandoned propane tank exploded. The tank burst, and the effect occurred within less than a second. The reaction was dramatic and sudden, consuming both the Proto-Vandrare reactor and the incomplete reactor of the drone ship. In a single, sudden flash brighter than the sun, the two nuclear reactors erupted with the force of nine hundred thousand tons of TNT, vaporizing everything instantaneously.

There was a pause. A long moment as the force dissipated, as the cloud of fire became a cloud of smoke and debris. A moment not of silent, but of a firestorm dissipating, the energy within it dying and fading outward.

Then Spike stood up. In his right hand, he still held Fleur’s hand, and it crumbled to ash in his grasp. Nothing remained of her but dust with no chance of regeneration. Her wish had been granted.

Spike looked to his other hand. He still held the Alicorn crystal, its indestructible violet surface as polished and undamaged as it had been since Twilight had birthed it. Spike himself, likewise, was unharmed, the force of nuclear fire trivial against the scales of a draconic wizard. Fate had decreed that Fleur alone would die. Spike took a breath of radioactive air and realized that it was him who was now alone. Now and forever. She had escaped, but left him behind.

A voice came to him, devoid of interference.

“Spike? Spike, what happened? Roseluck just got ejected, I need confirmation--”

Spike did not bother answering. He raised his hand, drawing his fire around it and casting a familiar spell. Space around him bend with a pop as he stepped forward and onto the bridge of the Iron Defender.

“--that you didn’t get blown to...to...” Shining looked up. “There you are. What happened to your clothes?”

Spike said nothing but effortlessly changed his spell, placing his claw over his armor and casting a spell that caused them to regenerate within a matter of seconds.

Shining Armor immediately understood that something was very wrong. “Spike?”

Spike held out his hand—and Shining’s eyes widened at the sight of a severed Alicorn crystal.

“Spike, please tell me that she—she isn’t—“ He looked up at him. “Is that...Fleur?”

Spike nodded.

“But she...” His eye stared at the crystal. “But there’s...there’s never been a true-death. Not ever. The number of ponies, they’re exactly the same as when Twilight first became princess.”

“Except for Applebloom. For now.”

Shining Armor seemed confused. “What happened?”

Spike took a long breath and stared down at the crystal. It felt strange in his hand. Warm, but not from the nuclear blast. Warm and cooling. As if the life were escaping it—but not as though it were dead. As if it were still liable to start squirming in his hand at any moment. Dead, but incapable of death. A conduit of immortality waiting for its next victim. It was a fragment of the Alicorn. The Alicorn that was fed a continuous, unending diet of Milk. Life, or what they called life, was simply a controlled version of what Spike had just witnessed happening to Fleur. Controlled by Twilight.

“There was nothing to eject,” he said at last.

“Excuse me?”

“They took her down. A direct hit. Something went wrong. The feedback...it must have fried her runes. She...separated.”

“She died.”

Spike nodded. “They had her in a facility. What was left of her. It’s gone now. This is all that’s left. I’m sorry about Roseluck’s mech.”

“It’s fine, she’s fine, but...Fleur...”

Spike nodded. “I know.”

Shining Armor paused, a horrified expression spreading over what remained of his face. “And I...I was...oh Celestia, it’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“NO, no, I could have, I was the one who signed the exemption, I was the one who...who...” His jaw clenched around the tubes shoved down his throat. “I...I’m responsible! I did this! I...Spike, I’m...I don’t know if...I can’t...”

Spike shook his head and put the crystal in a small pouch on his belt. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Shining. She was already dead. And we still have a job to do.”

Author's Note

Perhaps volition can only be perceived through sheer blindness to the intersection of the self-evident cycles.