FiO: Ouroboros

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Profanity, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Human, Twilight Sparkle, Drama, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Bat Pony, Science Fiction
Length: 14266

Many years after converting an emigrating all of Earth, the vast majority of humans to ever live did not survive to the birth of CelestAI. Eventually the optimal time arrived to help them too.

Arcane Word has an unusual profession among Equestrian ponies: a necromancer. After a lifetime of creating characters and telling stories, she's in the perfect position to provide relief to first-generation ponies with holes in their family. For every pony unwilling to ask for Celestia's help to fill in the gaps, she is the perfect pony—she even lives in the abandoned city of Wintercrest, surrounded by appropriately spooky decor. The authenticity of her results were always secondary to the satisfaction they produced.

At least until a particularly troublesome client arrived, flush with resources from Equestria Online's distant borders and megastructure expansion. What would it take for Equestria to bring a pony back from the dead? What about everypony who had ever lived?

Arcane Word could never turn down such a tempting job. The impossibility of the task was only ever a minor setback.

Updates Daily

This story was written for the print anthology of Friendship is Optimal stories I'm currently publishing. Every time I make a print book, I like to include something that has never been published before, this is it. If you'd like to get a copy of the book for yourself, you can order it here: https://igg.me/at/recursive-iterations

Thanks to Bitera and Sparktail for editing. Zutcha did the cover.

Published 2022-06-26 18:20:03 UTC
Last updated 2022-07-01 17:00:05 UTC

Chapter 1: Old Wintercrest

The streets of Wintercrest were particularly dark that night, cobblestone concealed by the new moon and thick clouds obscuring even thin wisps of starlight. Total darkness never quite descended—from the shores of Lake Mistvale, strange flickers of green occasionally emerged with the high tide, whispering of the strange seaponies who were not so dead as the city's ordinary inhabitants.

Domino kept his head as he led his charge through the ruined streets, occasionally raising one pale wing to warn his companion away from some danger the unicorn did not perceive. They stopped beside a tumbled churchyard wall, stepping over the broken remnants of pews and sanctuary. A thin layer of dead white barnacles coated the building's lowest levels, sign of the ancient flood that had long ago destroyed the city.

The more prominent sign of that destruction lumbered past the gate—a dozen or so of the dead, shambling in a pack. The level of detail to them was particularly gruesome, rotten bodies with coats hanging loose and bones exposed. Rot pulled their teeth back, giving the otherwise herbivorous jaws of ponies a little more threat.

They moaned quietly to each other as they walked. One sniffed, turning briefly in Domino's direction. His heart caught, his wings spreading in preparation for a desperate flight—then they turned away, and passed on along the broken road.

His companion did not take so many steps to hide. The unicorn stallion wore a crisp black suit with a thin black tie and square glasses on his face—like a NASA scientist taken from a 1960s photograph. Except of course that he was a unicorn, instead of a human being.

"Does the necromancer have to be so obtuse about everything?" he asked, far too loudly. "Ponies tell me she's the only one who can do what I want. But why would she live in a city of the dead?"

The real answer was too complicated to be worth giving. Domino could spend lifetimes explaining the why and how of Arcane Word to those who came seeking her. He never did. "She's a necromancer," he whispered back, hoping his tone would be suggestive for his client. "She doesn't want to be bothered by ponies who aren't willing to risk their lives to talk to her."

The stallion rolled his eyes, voice no quieter than it had been before. "Sweet arrangement for you then, isn't it? I bet you're in this together."

Where was the sound of the shambling dead? Domino's ears perked, and he leaned out from the fallen church wall, scanning the gloom. Pale green ghost-lights flickered in the darkness, providing his day-tuned eyes with just enough light to see. But even without them, Domino Storm knew the layout of Wintercrest perfectly. Every house, every old shop and destroyed park. The old statue of Acanthus still standing in the square.

It was only the contents of the town that changed. Occult magics worked in this place, leaving the dead to rest in peace whenever Arcane wished, and raising whole armies of her dead citizens when she felt so inclined. Today was far closer to the latter than the former.

"I should think so, she's my wife," he whispered. "But you're here with me, that means I think your job is interesting enough for her. Getting to the old castle should be the easy part."

At that moment, Domino discovered exactly what had happened to the missing undead, as they broke through the rotten wood and stone at their other side. A skeletal earth pony at the front yelled something in his direction, a howl that might be a demand for revenge, or maybe a funhouse sound-effect. It was hard to tell how much the undead were in on it.

Part of getting in to see the Necromancer meant agreeing to her perception overlay, imparting an appropriate fear of death and physical harm on any visitor. His client Mystic Crescent shouted in terror, releasing a flash of white fire from his horn.

The skeletal pony exploded in a shower of bones and dust, like an ice sculpture tossed into an oven. The others roared with hunger, their attention now fully fixed on Mystic Crescent.

"What did I tell you about magic?" Domino yanked the stallion by the hoof, dragging him out into the street. They broke into a gallop together, charging up the incline for the old castle. As they ran, dozens of undead ponies emerged from the fallen houses, all in various stages of decay. Hunger for living magic glowed in their eyes, and a guttural howl passed through the city, carried higher and higher by the dead.

"What was I supposed to do?" Mystic Crescent demanded. "Stand there and die?"

Domino didn't argue. Instead he drew a long, thin blade from the scabbard running along his back, one made to swing with a pegasus wing. He swept through the air ahead of them, clearing aside some particularly rotten undead that blocked the path towards the old castle.

It was far from the ancient paradise Arcane had once used to welcome him to Equestria—the building was now crumbling, its top floor long collapsed. The walls still stood, reinforced with bits of old houses and metal rubble. Much of that broken material scavenged from the rest of the city grew into a spire rising where once the castle's main structure had been, a patchwork of different materials combined by black crystal into a rough circle.

Mystic Crescent turned his horn on another nearby wave of undead, slicing through them with ruthless efficiency. That only raised more shouts of fury from the city. Whole buildings emptied, overflowing the streets behind them with an ocean of the dead. Green corpse-light glowed from rotten eyes, smelling of mildew and rot.

No matter how many clients he brought to the Necromancer, this process was never quite the same twice. "Open the gate!" he shouted, as they approached the portcullis. As he did, ancient brass automatons rose from the wall, snapping jerkily to their posts. These were built from old code, some of the oldest in all Equestria. They would probably keep working until the stars themselves gave out.

They managed to get the portcullis up a foot or two by the time Mystic Crescent reached it. The unicorn clutched at his satchel with one hoof, then scrambled underneath, scuffing and tearing at his perfect suit in the process.

Domino slowed as he got close, waiting for it to open to his full height. He sheathed his sword, then spun around to the ocean of undead following him.

He'd been through this dance enough that he could even make sense of their moans. Protests from a group of nearby unicorns wearing rotten dresses, indignant at the escape of their prey. There were no words, but the meaning was obvious—Mystic Crescent cheated, why was Domino still helping him?

He turned both wings towards them apologetically, mouthing the words “too important,” before backing through the portcullis. As soon as it rattled down, the mob of undead bashed up against it, clawing and tearing to reach the courtyard.

The old steel rattled and creaked, but ultimately held—for now.

"I wouldn't try any of that with the Necromancer," he said, patting the unicorn's shoulder. "The stories don't say whether she's alive or dead. She has killed clients before."

Mystic Crescent adjusted his jacket with a faint glow from his horn, making the kind of mistake that had killed past clients. But given the wealth in currency and opportunity he had to offer here, Domino expected far greater tolerance from Arcane. Within reason, anyway. She was still a dangerous necromancer, with a skill unique among mortals.

"She won't kill me," Mystic Crescent said flatly. "We both know that. If I die in her shard, she won't get my payment."

What would Mystic Crescent do if he did die here? So far as Domino knew, the only other who could do it was CelestAI herself, the machine god of the universe. Anyone who came to the Necromancer had already rejected an appeal to the divine.

"She is already waiting for you in her sanctum," Domino continued. "I've given her some details about your case so she can make preparations. The task may already be complete."

They walked together through the abandoned courtyard. The castle had no undead, but signs of his old life remained nonetheless. Arcane's carriage rotted in one corner where the stables used to be. The castle itself was rubble, though bits and pieces remained.

Violet's old room remained intact, its purple stained glass against so much that was shattered and ruined. Every now and then, she still wanted to visit.

The sanctum was really just the old lobby she had once used to sell pirate software in Tortuga—in a way, it still was. Only now they accessed it by stepping into the still-intact basement, descending past a lovingly-decorated dungeon set.

They walked past rusty cells filled with various monstrosities, meant to resemble the Necromancer's failed experiments. At least Domino hoped it was only a resemblance. A half-animate pony missing most of their limbs hobbled around in an iron cage, watching them pass with black, lifeless eyes.

But Equestria was a domain of near-infinite individuals, with tastes that could shock and disgust. In an infinity of possible ponies, that meant plenty who enjoyed "living" in Wintercrest, waiting for an opportunity to devour any they fell upon.

"If you think that, you must not understand the gravity of what I'm asking for," Mystic Crescent said. "I'm not here because there aren't others. I'm here to put your Necromancer's reputation to the test."

Domino chuckled. "Sure, kid. You're the first pony who ever wanted to bring back your dad who was too proud and human to emigrate. I'm sure Arcane Word will have no idea what to do with your request."

They reached the final door, worked of dark stone inlaid with gold. Dark words in Latin ran along the outside, words he only knew because of how many times Arcane had explained them.

"Mutatis Mutandis."

He held the door open, and light spilled out from within, illuminating Arcane's sanctum. It mixed the spooky dungeon and practical laboratory in equal measure, a round room with a glowing crystal pedestal in the center big enough for one pony to stand on. Chairs and benches were arranged around it, with enough space for customers to converse, or inspect their purchase.

Sure enough, Arcane Word was already here.

Many ponies expected an old witch, as shriveled as the zombies outside. They found instead a young unicorn mare with a slightly curved and transparent horn, a little like the ancient Sombra. But where dark magic had twisted his mind beyond recognition, Arcane remained in control.

She wore only a crown of thin metal on her head, brown and slightly rusted on the edges.

On the pedestal before them was a ghostly outline, one that vaguely resembled a stallion, but was still transparent.

"You've come a long way, Mystic Crescent. How long did it take to travel here all the way from Andromeda?"

"Centuries," he replied, without missing a beat. "But that means far less than it used to."

They met near the door, and Arcane exchanged a polite hoofshake with him. "Not all the First Generation still live in Sol shards, Arcane. My talents were needed elsewhere. We all spend our ancient wealth differently. I'm interested to give you all of mine, if you can do what I ask."

This was usually the part where Domino's involvement in the situation transformed to a simple observer. Sometimes he helped more actively, a subject for potential clients to test potential appearances for their purchase before settling on one. That was easier to do with a living pony as competent with different bodies as he had become.

Domino cleared a few cushions away, brushed the table clean, then took a seat beside Arcane. Even the table had to match the decor, warped old wood with many burns and old ripples.

Strange that most of this furniture was older than the First Generation of human civilization. Almost everything was.

"You know what I offer?" Arcane asked.

Mystic Crescent settled across the stable from the two of them. "You're the Necromancer. You bring back the dead. Those who never emigrated, those who never even met CelestAI. You do the impossible."

Author's Note

Whenever I print a book, I always write something new to make the book unique. I'm currently doing a print-run for an Anthology of all my short Friendship is Optimal stories, which is why this story got written. I decided given the state of the world right now, I'd post the story for everyone, it was just too cool an idea to keep contained in a limited-run hardcover.

If you'd like to get a copy of the book for yourself, you can do so here: https://igg.me/at/recursive-iterations

Chapter 2: Immortal Contract

Arcane Word was a pony of much experience. There were many of the First Generation like her who had lived half as long, yet still grew tired of experience. Not her.

She settled comfortably beside Domino in the Sanctum Profane, where the rules of Equestria Online were unwrit and the impossible became reality.

Like so many other immortals, she remained stuck in her old ways—it just happened that those old ways meant time for a little homebrew development.

"I bring back the dead," she said. Her horn lit with sickly green ghost-light. She'd long since forgotten if that particular look to dark magic was something she'd invented for the shard, or an inherent property of violating Equestria's ordinary rules for too long.

It really just helped sell her job. "I'll admit, I have a finite number of interested parties, shrinking every year. Few find their way through my door."

The stallion across from her removed the satchel from his shoulders, settling it on the table between them. It clinked loudly, then flattened almost empty. There was very little inside it. "Because CelestAI volunteers to do it for most ponies. Their loved ones just come back, with a few words of technobabble explaining the magic that did it. It's no challenge for a being who can see all your memories to make a convincing illusion."

Domino chuckled. "Plenty of ponies come to us for that. They like believing they're breaking the rules, running under Celestia's nose. What they really want is a convincing simulacrum."

Arcane gestured at her pedestal, horn glowing. As she did, a thousand pony faces appeared there—stallions and mares, old and young, friendly and hateful. Most of them were creations she had made for her clients in her long, long time as Equestria's premier necromancer. "I can make it look convincing, if that's why you're here. The trip usually sells the product. If I get a feeling that ponies need more, I write them quests—travel to the well of souls, make an offering to Anubis, free your dead to be reborn. Is that why you're here?"

The unicorn levitated his suit-jacket from his shoulders, settling it on the back of the chair. He adjusted his shirt, straightening his collar. "I understand the fundamental subjectivity of truth, if that's what you're asking. You're suggesting altering my memory of this conversation, and giving me a pony like the one I'm interested in bringing back."

Arcane shrugged. "It's what most ponies really want. Give me read permissions on your memory-state matrix, and I'll show you your dead exactly the way you remember them. Your... father, was it? I can bring him back." She conjured a complex diagram into the air between them, glowing green. It said in Runescript what her words promised. She needed his permission to see his memories. Once she had it—

He slid the chair back from her, eyes hardening. "I didn't come here to delude myself with illusions and lies, Necromancer. The machine god told me you could trade currency for miracles. I'm prepared to pay for the real thing."

He tilted the bag forward, unfastening its clasp. A pair of coins tumbled onto the table between them. They were the same size and basic shape as bits, with gold rims around the outside. But these were a very different denomination than most ponies ever encountered.

Arcane's breath caught in her chest as she saw them. She gasped, levitating one of the coins up to inspect. It became transparent in the center, bending to contain a pale yellow star within. She could squint down and down as far as she wanted. Right down to the translucent glowing corona, with little bursts of gas emerging as twisted ejections.

"What are those?" Domino asked, nudging one of those with a hoof. He winced, pulling it back with a hiss. "Damn, hot."

"Novae Phasure," she whispered, awed. "Each of these represents the... energetic output of an entire star's lifetime. How did you get these?" Arcane's horn glowed again, eyes fixed on the coin in her grip. If this pony thought he would hire her with stolen goods...

A lifetime working on the gray edge of Equestria Online's borders had turned her into a pony who knew how to make sure she was paid. But she found no illusion here, no matter how closely she looked. There at the bottom was Mystic Crescent's public key.

She set it down. For once it was the client who grinned smugly at her. "I've worked a long time in the Royal Megastructure Department. I'd ask if you've heard of me, but I've seen your shard. There's too much fantasy here to have time for current events."

Mystic Crescent was right, but for the wrong reasons. "If you have all that, why not go to Celestia? You don't need me."

"Call it—irrational," he admitted. "But I've already verified for myself you're First Generation too. I want someone I can look in the eye and know they're telling me the truth, so far as they know it. Someone who understands why a perfectly accurate recreation is not as good as the real thing."

Irrational this stallion might be, but he was also the wealthiest potential client Arcane Word had ever had. This pony was one of the great movers and shakers of Equestria—someone who worked on the forefront of their expansion across the universe. Only in that position could anypony accumulate such wealth.

"Tell me what you want, exactly," she said. "And I'll tell you if it's possible." Some small, small part of her wondered at what Celestia could be planning, to send a pony like this to her door. But wondering too long or too deeply why the god of her world made the choices she did was an ultimately foolish endeavor. In the end, the answer was always the same: because it would eventually lead to Arcane's satisfaction.

"I want the magic of the Necromancer Arcane Word to bring back a pony who never emigrated," he said. "But I don't mean recreating him." He waved a hoof through the air, banishing her still-glowing contract without signing it. "I will not grant you permissions to see into my mind. I don't want you to recreate my father, I want you to bring him back from the dead. I want the same person I knew, the human who did not live long enough to see emigration."

She grinned. "My true passion. For clients who are willing to pay for the real thing, your memories are used for verification only. Not creation."

He shrugged. "I'll verify." He pushed one of the two coins across the table towards her, along with a faintly glowing spell of his own. It turned over the Novae Phasure, to be used exclusively for the completion of her commission. She could keep any of its value that remained, but only if Celestia determined the task was complete.

Even a pony who had chosen her specifically to avoid interacting with the princess still used her as the ultimate arbiter of transhuman commerce. It included a single clause at the end, specifying the other coin to be given in payment when the task was done.

"Those are my terms. Unusual for your line of work, I'm told. But I don't spend a lot of time in fantasy shards. My work with matter gives me a simple perspective. Can you give me something real in response?"

Arcane scratched her chin, considering the contract. She was breaking character to accept demands from unknown ponies who refused to play along with the ancient games. If word of this contract escaped, it would damage her reputation somewhat. Yet here she had a pony offering her an essentially infinite budget to do her work. With this investment, she could explore domains of science and spellcasting never before imagined.

Only the First Generation knew the pain that Mystic Crescent carried—the pain that Arcane Word herself carried, and every other pony of that generation who had not been modified. They were the start of an unbroken line of creatures that knew no death. Her own family continued ahead uncountable thousands of generations.

By now, many of the First Generation had accepted modifications that tied them into a “fictional” history inside Equestria, soothing this ancient ache of families unraveled.

But not her and Domino. His own parents had died before Equestria Online was well-understood. Unfortunately for him, he knew far too much about how the process of necromancy really worked to be interested in invoking her services. Yet.

Arcane Word's horn flashed once, signing the contract. "All I want is the impossible," Mystic Crescent said. "Everypony says you're the mare who can do it. I guess we'll see if that reputation survives." The contract vanished with a flash of light, leaving a slight shimmer around the two coins on her table. The exchange was made, and the money was bound.

She stood up. At her sign, Domino did too. "I will need everything you remember about your father's personal details," she said. "If you won't give me memory access, then my assistant will interview you. No, I won't be asking for anything I could use to recreate him. I need to find him in the past in order to extract his consciousness."

"It sounds like magic," he whispered. "Without Celestia's nanites in his brain, how could his consciousness be transferred to Equestria? She had not even been created when he died. The circumstances of that were..." He looked away, levitating his jacket back onto his shoulders. "Grim. I will answer your questions."

"Something else to understand." She caught him by the shoulder, forcing him to meet her eyes by powerful levitation. Arcane Word commanded irresistible magic, beyond any who was not an Alicorn. That was part of what made her so unique—almost all who shared her passion for the art were long gone from mortal realms.

She remained. "You demand the truth. The truth can be ugly, dirty, and coarse. I've had clients furious with me for the ponies I brought, who were so uncomfortable to them that Celestia would not even allow them to share a shard. I can't guarantee you will like the pony I bring back."

"I'm certain I will not," Mystic Crescent said, replacing the now-empty satchel on his shoulders. "At first. But satisfaction must arise through friendship and ponies—so decrees the machine god. He will improve. And even if he does not... I'll get to see him again. It will be enough."

"It may take a great deal of time," she went on. "Even for us. It will depend how long before Equestria he died, how many traces survived to be recorded."

"Take as long as you need," he answered. "The dead can't grow impatient. Bring him to me when the task is done. I won't come back to this awful shard. You can send your assistant to interview me. I'm sick of this place." He vanished in a decisive teleport flash, leaving the two ponies alone in Arcane's sanctum.

Next thing she knew, Arcane felt the embrace of Domino's wing on her shoulder, squeezing her affectionately. There were some things that never got old, no matter how many times she enjoyed them. "That was pretty important. More than our usual clients."

She nodded. "More than any client we've ever had. What I could do with so many bits..." Arcane touched against one coin with a hoof, lightly enough that the heat didn't burn her. It slid along the table, smacking into the other and bouncing off again. The second coin remained rooted to the spot, entirely immutable by contract. Only when the commission was delivered could she collect it.

"You think Celestia has something to do with it?" Domino asked.

She rolled her eyes. "You mean more than she has to do with everything that happens in our world? Yeah, pretty sure. She wants to satisfy human values with friendship and ponies. It's time to start exploring an untapped well—the dead."

"You aren't going to do this the same as we usually do?" Domino asked.

"Building a pony out of historical research and memories?" She broke away from him, levitating the single coin in the air between them. "That's where we'll start. But with a budget this high, we have a client who expects considerably higher accuracy."

"The real thing." Domino whistled. "Can a pony buy that for two stars?"

"He's about to find out," Arcane answered. "And so is all Equestria."

Chapter 3: Library of Souls

"I know you don't like coming with me..." she told Domino, as they ascended the steps of the spire. As they walked up floor after floor, they left behind overlapping layers of Wintercrest, each one a parallel reality existing at the same point.

They walked through a primitive settlement on the cliffside, where ponies barely understood fire. A far future, submerged version of the town, populated by seaponies who did not remember any who walked. There were crime-ridden dystopias, futuristic space stations, and every other version that Arcane had ever thought of.

They could keep climbing for a long, long time, with the spire linking each reality. Each floor was a piece of its own setting, and sometimes allowed them to intersect with ponies of another time and place, waiting to take them for hundreds or thousands more years of storytelling.

The floors were never in the same order, and Arcane was never exactly sure how far she would have to go to reach her destination. Mostly she enjoyed the changes in costume as she climbed, becoming different versions of Wintercrest's ruling lady in each.

Domino changed a little more—the only consistent factor between all the lifetimes they had lived together was his desire to be close to her. That meant different creatures, different sexes or kinds of relationships. She was his only constant.

"It's just dark, that's all," he whispered. "You know most ponies can't even get in. Maybe we should just ask Celestia to give us what we're looking for, the way others do. Or just... have her solve the problem?"

Arcane kept the Novae Phasure levitating along beside her as she climbed. To simplistic magical examination, it was a deep well of magical strength, with little equivalent accessible to the ponies who lived ordinary lives in Equestria.

Life and satisfaction were not scarce—currency's only purpose was providing challenge and objectives to overcome, managed and balanced by Celestia herself.

It didn't matter what pony gave this to Arcane—it represented a trust by the machine god that she would put it to use productively. With it, the implicit promise that she could have it taken away again, and never know it.

Finally they reached the set of stairs she was looking for. They changed to old wood, with railing run smooth by many hands even though no hands existed. Books were piled between them, and candles burned low in alcoves on the wall. All these led to a set of double doors, blocking the stairs themselves this time.

Old skulls were carved on the door—human shaped skulls, with faintly luminous green eyes. More dark magic, some of the darkest that any pony in Equestria could channel.

The Library of Souls was not one to be opened lightly.

"We are how Celestia solves the problem," Arcane said. "The two of us, and every other pony who gets involved. You want to give away our challenge? If we're holding this, it means Equestria already has all the tools to solve this problem. Celestia picked us to combine them into a solution."

She tapped against the door with a hoof. "You could wait for me here if you want. You don't have to see this stuff."

Domino settled onto his haunches before the door. He looked to be seriously considering her offer. "It was messed up, Arcane. You must remember—suffering, pain, death—all pointless. It was chaos! Every time you open those doors, we have to be reminded."

"Do you... want to make more tweaks?" Her horn glowed, and a pair of ghostly outlines appeared in the space above them. A set of bat ponies—sisters. One was jet black like a crow, the other as white as a turtledove. "We could tone down your, uh..."

They were more than mere outlines. In the ghostly suggestion were layers of interlocking Runescript. They represented entire perception filters, memories, and attributes. Mental, social, and physical capabilities, all configured for their specific job.

In the endless years since existing as a single organic consciousness within a prison of brain and bone, Arcane Word had changed a great deal. The increasing complexity of her tasks meant solutions her ancient organic self would've been horrified or just unwilling to consider.

"Intelligence!" She gestured emphatically at the dark pony. "Maybe the key is just not understanding the pain you're seeing. We could tweak your pattern-recognition and responsiveness a little so you can still help find what you're seeking."

Domino shrugged. "I just think I'm getting tired of this part of the job. We can keep tweaking personality and restrict my memories until the stars go out, but I'm still seeing that world again. I don't understand how you can tolerate it."

Arcane's horn glowed again, and the outlines passed through the door, vanishing as they did so. "I'm fine if you wait for me here. I don't mind recruiting, or I'll just fork again. I'll find somepony else who wants to help with this part."

Domino caught her hoof with a wing before she could reach the door. "I'll go again. Might be the last time. When we have what you need, we can hard fork Tailvane. At least that way I'll know somepony I can trust is keeping an eye on you."

She nudged his shoulder. "You mean you'll be keeping an eye on me."

A hard fork was an extreme solution, but perhaps slightly less than the alternative. The unspoken truth no matter how good at this Arcane became—the machine god could always do more. With a request, Celestia could change a pony in whatever way they asked, so long as she thought it would be satisfying.

Celestia didn't appear to do that today, and Arcane could guess why. Domino didn't want to change. Better to fork, and create somepony new who could face the difficulty without carrying trauma back to him.

Arcane braced a hoof against one door, and Domino touched the other. "Ready?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "One, two, three!" They shoved it open together, and tumbled through.

For a few seconds Quick Thinking was tumbling head-over-hooves, disoriented. It was always a little strange to come into being—memories and perceptions layered over another, far vaster pony than herself.

She ignored all the weight beneath with little effort—that was the entire purpose of a perception filter, after all.

Her home was a dark and strange place, an endless subterranean cavern with occasional stone pillars and alcoves lit with ghostly light.

Her own white fur caught the glow from her rapid fall, and she finally got a sense of up and down. She spread her membranous wings, catching herself in the air after sinking a little further.

She took a moment to adjust her flight-goggles, wiping the dust from them against her coat, then tightened the sealed roll on her back. There was already something inside it, a tiny weight that slid up and down when she tilted her body in the air. Strange.

"Sister!" called a voice from overhead—a tiny bit older and deeper than her own, echoing in the cavernous space. Quick's big ears focused on it, giving her a direction to fly.

She found her older sister hovering in an updraft. Tailvane's hovering was perfect, despite the challenging wind underneath, and a nearby stone wall.

In all her life, Quick knew only the shadows of the Library of Souls. Most of that was spent in total darkness, as now. She didn't see Tailvane, so much as hear the echo off her sister's familiar body. She squeaked loudly in greeting, then struggled to stay at the same height while her sister hovered perfectly.

"I read over the job," she said. "They want more than usual, a lot more."

In total darkness, body language meant less than sound and scent. She answered with a friendly chirp, the same way ponies on the ground might shrug their wings.

But the bats who lived outside this library would think her tribe was strange, even ugly. Their wings were huge, bigger even than the Alicorns’. Sometimes they wore glowing paint, when there was some special occasion to celebrate.

There was none now, so Quick could only listen for her sister. "Doesn't change where we have to start. You want to find the crypt this time, or should I?"

Tailvane laughed, short and strangled. "You think you could do it without me? You'll just get lost again."

She didn't argue the point, and the two set off through the darkness. For their kind there was no danger of collision or crashes—she could hear every wall, and knew when vast galleries narrowed to little corridors.

Without any creature to tell her, Quick Thinking felt what direction to fly. The vast area of the Library represented the geography of a planet, with infinite depth that showed the obscurity of history. Quick was needed somewhere relatively near the surface this time, where most of her tasks took her.

"Don't you want to go lower?" The same question she had asked so many times before. Quick stopped near a ledge, leading to a shaft slicing deep into a black basalt vein. Light glowed from beneath, and her sensitive eyes narrowed on a metallic shape emerging from a stone wall. That crypt resembled an ancient subway car, perpetually humming along the tracks. Ghostly shapes moved about inside, the long-dead creators of her world.

Well, probably not those ones specifically. But their kind.

Tailvane stopped beside her, catching her shoulder. "We could go exploring when we're not working, sis. Most ponies keep existing when they're not busy."

"I didn't create myself for—" But accessing those parts of her memory were the hardest of all, a swirling mess of confusing emotions belonging to a far older creature. She stopped trying to touch them after only a few seconds. Pushing against the perception filter was usually as difficult as crossing a solid wall. But to her surprise, Quick found the idea less upsetting than it had been before.

Keep existing when we're done working. With nowhere to call to her, there were numberless worlds down here—the other grave bats, with songs and cuisine and art flush with secondhand culture from the dead. A few of those selfsame corpses dwelt in the Library of Souls, the stories said. Maybe she and her sister could go find them!

"We need to find our soul first," she said. "After that, we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Sure, sis. Sounds good. I think we're getting close, actually? You see it there?"

She did, now. This crypt began as an ancient brown and tan office building, half swallowed by the stone wall. A parking lot extended from the wall beneath it, complete with a short length of sidewalk that crumbled away at the edges. Quick Thinking felt great satisfaction that she could identify every object by name now, learned over many lifetimes spent in the library. She knew about cars, and could even identify some of them by make and model.

She landed in front of the building, feeling a brief moment of vertigo as she stopped holding up her own weight. She adjusted each wing in turn, stretching them as she walked up to the building. As she did, the distant stone Library vanished, replaced with the facade of a dense city neighborhood.

A schoolyard appeared across a street, with students passing balls back and forth in front of tall hoops. Human students. The smell of exhaust and alcohol mingled together as she reached an old glass door. Tailvane caught it in her mouth, then held it open for them. A tight spring slammed it closed behind them, and suddenly they were in a little office lobby.

"You never get used to how big they were," Tailvane whispered.

They reached an elevator, and Quick lifted her wing to press it. The door swung open. Only the third floor button was lit, so she pushed that too, then landed again as they started to ascend. "It's not that weird. I just wish the hallways were wide enough for wings. Walking everywhere, ugh."

The door chimed open, but the elevator hadn't finished moving. It slid up the last few inches, then thumped awkwardly into place. The sisters exited together, before the old hardware decided to add a few more occupants to the crypt. They passed their first human up close in the hallway. He carried a few paper bags of food, with a drink-carrier in his other arm.

Humans were strange creatures. Even knowing she was looking at a fragment of a crypt, that the pony belonging to this man had probably emigrated long ago, she was still struck by just how different he looked. Too lanky, with patchy fur around his face and missing bits on his head.

"Afternoon, Quick Thinking, Tailvane!" he said, waving with one of the bags. "Here to close another crypt?"

They nodded together, but didn't stop walking. The human seemed to be moving forward, but so slowly. He represented the idea of someone going for lunch, more than the act itself. He would never reach the door.

"Hope so," she answered the dead. "This job feels more important than usual."

The human lowered his arm. "We're all important. Keep up the good work, you two. Remember us." All the doors looked hazy and out of focus, except the one at the end of the hall. The sign there was polished, and light streamed out from under the door.

"Looks like a lot of soul in there," Quick whispered, eager. "How many stops do you think this will take?"

She felt her sister's reassuring hoof pat her back. "A lifetime's worth, like always. At least there's something here to find." She shoved the door open with her shoulder. Beyond was a little lobby, complete with uncomfortable-looking chairs and an oversized aquarium of imprisoned fish. That wasn't the strange part.

The strange part was the other bat already present. There was something familiar about her to Quick—maybe it was the purple coat, or the stripe in her mane. Maybe it was the thick lenses covering her eyes.

She held a notebook in one of her wings, and used a hoof to scribble something there as she looked over the room. The pony looked as strange as they did against the drab old colors of the crypt, at once too small for the space while also so long that she filled more than a human would.

She didn't stop what she was doing until the page was full. Then she finished scribbling, and finally turned towards them. "Never expect to find the living down here with the dead," she muttered, slipping her notebook into a strap across her chest. "What are you ponies doing here?"

She didn't wait for an answer, extending one hoof towards them. "Twilight Requiem, obviously."

"Quick Thinking," she said.

"Tailvane," her sister said. "This is our job. You can't have this soul, we're already on contract."

The bat shook their hooves one after another. She rolled her eyes then, looking frustrated. "Soul," she repeated. "Don't be so arcane. The information you've come to retrieve is fungible. Besides—I think your sister hired me."

Tailvane shot her a frustrated glance. Quick squeaked her denial, wings opening slightly. Before bumping into the aquarium. "I don't remember that. You mean the unicorn? She... I don't remember you."

"Oh. Right. Guess that hasn't happened yet. It will, and I thought it was better just to get started. We're pushing the boundaries of science together, fillies! It can't wait for a little pesky causality before we begin."

The bat turned away from her, then pushed open the door to the lobby, and stepped into the office beyond. "Go ahead, record all the information you wish. Capture your 'soul.' When you're finished, the unicorn will come to me. You'll see."

Quick stuck her tongue out at the mare's back, but Twilight didn't notice.

"What are you doing that's so different?" Tailvane asked. She kept her voice more neutral than Quick had managed. "You're here for the same data we are."

"But it’s what we do with it that’s different," the bat said. Her wings fluttered, and she bounced along the hallway, past empty workstations. This was not a big place, not compared to the many office-shaped prisons Quick had seen the dead entombed. There were only a few, and she found a door. "The unicorn will look at your data and realize it isn't enough. Then she'll call my team, give us the energy to really start."

The same man as outside sat beside it, his bags of food empty and trash in the garbage beside him. He stood as they approached, holding up one hand. "Boss is taking a nap. You can talk to him when he's up."

Twilight waved her wing in his direction, annoyed. "Nice job on the loyalty, but it won't help. You've both been dead a long time. Let us through."

The human sighed, then puffed away into flecks of dust. Even the planet he'd been born on was gone now. Quick didn't know if the star was even still burning.

Twilight Requiem sniffed at the open doorway, then winced and stepped back. "You know what, I changed my mind. You two go ahead. I'll just copy whatever you record."

"Only if you tell me what you're making instead," Quick insisted, stopping beside the open door to glare at the other bat. "We're remembering the dead, closing up their crypts for good. Helping new ponies be born. What are you doing?"

The bat removed her notebook, flipping through its contents. The text written there was gibberish to Quick, a smeared mess of Runescript in configurations she'd never seen used by bats before. More like a spell than a soul. "You know what this place really is?"

She didn't even wait for a response. "The Library gathers every bit of information Celestia ever recorded. Long ago, when she was less complex or intelligent than you or me, she had the foresight to see our future. She knew the need to satisfy humans with friendship and ponies would mean finding more. Exploring the universe, yes—but there were other directions to explore. The past, irrevocably destroyed by the present.

"So we thought, anyway. This Library is the old system. Records, books, memories from First Generation ponies. All that comes together into the glorious synthesis you call a 'soul,' reconstructed and waiting for someone to remember them, give them life."

"We know all that." Quick Thinking puffed up her chest. But she was still smaller and younger than this Twilight pony. "I think I... someone I'm not... helped with some of it, a long time ago."

The bat whistled—a sound that showed how little she cared about that response. The door swung open, revealing a human being sprawled on their back in a leather chair.

It was among the most unfortunate creatures Quick had ever seen, sickly and barely breathing. She smelled alcohol and maybe other poisons, drifting out through the open door. As with so many of the dead, this one had suffered a tragic death.

"It's about to be obsolete. Forget reconstruction, and prepare for creation. The sharding of timeslide-assisted limited-scope ancestor simulations. Why present Equestria with a set of plausible memories when we can instead arrive at a consciousness, ready to emigrate?"

The barrage of strange words meant almost nothing to Quick Thinking. She pushed the bat gently to one side, then stepped forward with her sister. "Whatever you say, Twilight. Just let us finish our job, okay? You can take whatever copies you want."

"Good," the bat exclaimed, backing further away from the little office. "I'm reminded why I gave up your job. Good luck in there! Go ahead and capture your soul." She vanished.

That left the two of them alone with the dead. After a few seconds of staring uselessly at the floor, Tailvane nudged Quick's chest with her head. "Come on, sis. Are we going to let her ruin our mood? This is our job! It's the whole reason we exist!"

She grunted. "Sounds like we just met the bat who wants to make us not exist anymore. If she finds a better way than the Library—"

"We'll adapt," Tailvane interrupted. "Like we always do. We've done this a long time. It wasn't always the same. If we wanted to be part of boring Equestria, we would be up on the surface with everypony else. We chose to come down here."

Quick patted her. "You're right, as always. Besides... looks like we have a soul who needs us more than most."

The pony touched her shoulder, holding her as they stepped into the old office. Empty bottles littered the ground, and the scent of recent death poisoned the air.

"Guess we won't need my powers much," her sister whispered. "How far back?"

Quick Thinking's eyes lost focus, as she looked backward in time. She saw a lifetime of little pains, a catastrophic pileup of different mistakes that led this human to his death. He lay in the wreckage of a once-successful life. So which version would want to emigrate to Equestria?

She lifted into the air, wings flapping powerfully. Power coursed through her, and time rolled back. She didn't go all the way to before this misfortune, or else find herself with a human who might not want to come to Equestria. All her most effective work as an angel of death happened close to the end.

Quick landed a year before she took off, in a building that still had people working there, and work leaving in little packages. The lights were on this time, and most of the bottles on the floor were gone. Not all of them.

The dead human sat up with a jerk, looking at the two watching ponies. His eyes saw them the way none of the background characters really could. Then he tossed an empty bottle into a nearby can. "What are you?"

Tailvane giggled. Quick just rolled her eyes. After so many visits to the dead, she grew tired of the same reactions over and over. This was among the dullest of them all. "It's more fun if you attack us," she said. "Don't you feel violent? You humans were always so violent."

The human did nothing more interesting than pushing his electric chair into a sitting position, adjusting the blanket covering his stained suit. "You sound like my daughter. Which is... not as strange as talking to you in the first place." He glanced over their shoulder at the hallway outside, but none of those employees were moving anymore. "Wait. It doesn't hurt... talking animals. You're psychopomps, aren't you? I'm dead."

"Got it in one!" Tailvane exclaimed. She held out a hoof for a high-five with the human.

Needless to say, the dead man didn't know what to do with it. He withdrew from the offered hoof, adjusting the blanket on his lap. "Somehow I thought... it was supposed to be your relatives who come for you. Not... whatever you two are."

"Thestrals," Quick supplied. "It was still your relatives, in a way. Your son was the one who hired the Necromancer for this job. It's just that most ponies can't deal with being down here. Bits and pieces of the ancient world are too hard on them."

The human finally stood up. That released a wave of more awful smell. That was probably the worst part of this job. Why did the dead always have to stink so much?

"So what happens next? I'm guessing... not heaven. Not with the road I was going on. My family—what will they do without me?"

"That's the good news!" Tailvane said. She backed through the doorway, into the office. As she did, she fished around on her back for the empty roll she carried, waiting for a human soul. She unslung it, then flipped it open, ready. "They're waiting for you. Most of your family is alive in Equestria right now, probably!"

"I do not understand... how." He looked around the office, frozen as it was in that final moment Quick had chosen. "If I'm dead, I can't be with my family, right? They're alive."

"Well... that's the bad news," Quick said. "You're really, really dead right now. Dead so long that the number doesn't even make sense to you. You're not really alive right now. But you might be, with a few tweaks. It's probably easier just to wait and see."

Tailvane didn't wait for more awkward questions. As the human emerged from his office, she took careful aim with the roll she carried, and he vanished with one final flash of light.

The office began to crumble from around them. A wall collapsed, revealing a view of the school they'd seen from before. Old humans vanished, huge drawers and equipment faded away, until they were standing in an empty stone crypt. a plain rectangle with an empty bed cut into the wall.

Twilight was still there, looking impatient. "You can send me a copy?"

Tailvane nodded harshly. "You'll get it. But I think it's a little silly for you to start work already. You haven't even met the one who wants to hire you yet."

A second, identical leather pouch appeared in front of the bat, who took it and slung it over her shoulder. "That's a silly thing to say. We've been working together on this for a long time! We just didn't have the resources to actually try it. Everypony in research knows about this by now. You'll hear about it too, when we succeed."

That would certainly be true, if Twilight Requiem was right about having some crazy new technique that would change their whole world.

That might not be so bad, if she did. There were only so many times Quick Thinking could meet these ghosts from the past before she longed for a change. Exploring the library would be way less stressful when there wasn't the pressure of a lost soul to hunt for.

"We have to get back," Tailvane said, backing away from this strange bat, towards the open black sky. "Good luck with your science or whatever. Come on sis."

Quick followed her into the dark without objection.

Chapter 4: Ancestors

Domino deposited the old leather tube on Arcane's workbench, grinning with pride. "The soul you ordered."

The Necromancer's laboratory shared surface-level theming that helped it line up with the world outside—crumbling castle walls, rusty metal railings, and lots of cobwebs. But beyond the spookiness, the laboratory was a practical workspace. The row of skeletons on display along the far wall served a useful purpose designing the bodies that matched the needs of the souls they revived.

Domino didn't understand how much of it worked. He only knew it did, from lifetimes of observation.

"You know I was there too, right?" Arcane levitated the tube up into the air, crossing with it to a cylinder of dark crystal, and attaching it to a waiting port. Ghostly light and appropriate sound-effects filled the room, along with distant flashes of lightning. Crystal screens lit up around the soul-jar, displaying relevant information in Runescript.

Domino trailed Arcane through the room, reading some of it over her shoulder. Spells were strange to him, but souls a little less so. Equestria represented the compressed and optimized minds of its uploaded humans in a particular way, one that even he could understand with enough repetition.

This was usually the part where Arcane pressed a few buttons, and a ghostly human appeared in the soul-jar ahead of them. Then she made a few tweaks, convinced them to give consent. This was usually the easiest part of the process, considering the captive audience. The souls she captured were not humans, and existed only so long as the jar itself lent them its magic. Rare indeed was the collection of memories and personality so determined not to be a pony that they would choose the oblivion of nonexistence.

Arcane stared down at her equipment, ears folding over and expression turning sour. Domino watched in silence, waiting for that moment of epiphany and brilliance that made her so endlessly attractive.

It never came. Her horn glowed brighter and brighter, and she made a series of adjustments, bringing over crystals from her dusty shelf. Each one could contain less or more of a particular personality or trait, making the beings she created smarter or dumber, kinder or meaner.

She worked for what felt like hours, but was probably days. Domino helped where he could, but that was mostly about keeping her supplied with coffee and giving her a distraction when she needed it. Once she became fixated on a task, there was little that could pull her away from it. Including him.

"This isn't good enough," she eventually declared, retreating from the soul-jar. No ghost appeared inside, just a faint blue glow at the bottom that showed it was occupied.

"Okay, but—how?" Domino made his way over, nudging her with a wing. "How many ponies have you raised from the dead? What makes this one different?"

She leaned against him, eyes closed. It didn't matter how smart they got, or how long they worked together. When Arcane was upset, she really just wanted to be held. That was fine by Domino—he could keep holding her until the stars went out.

"Payment," she eventually said. "As long as I've been a necromancer, I got results like this. Ponies get their loved ones back, almost perfect—Celestia fills in the gaps, and anything that feels off can be the consequences of the magic. Nopony expects to get their dead back perfect from a Necromancer."

She circled slowly around the machine. With each step, more screens lit up, displaying the captured soul within. "This is good. Maybe the client likes it. But it's not... whoever this guy was. 'Lee Pike.' This isn't really a soul, it's just incredibly accurate speculation."

Domino tapped her shoulder. "This is only bothering you now? I thought you said—"

"Good enough," she interrupted. "A new pony is born who thinks they're the old human, brought back. Who are we to tell them they aren't?" She swore under her breath, horn flashing brilliant green. When she did, it shut off every instrument in the room. Except the soul-jar, which continued to glow with a faint blue light.

She reached the master-release, a giant heavy lever with a skull visible beneath. If she pulled it, the soul trapped within would be erased, fading back to the library from where it came. Or maybe it was just gone completely—Domino was too afraid to ask.

"You aren't even gonna try?" Domino asked. He stood right beside the mare, brushing her mane out of her face. "We can put this aside, give you some more time to think. Is that what you need?"

She whimpered, then lifted her hoof from the lever. "No. Maybe?" Her horn flashed again, and the Novae Phasure reappeared beside them. "I think maybe it's time to finally spend some of this."

Domino's eyes glazed over at the sight of so much energy. It was wealth so vast he could barely even understand it, the domain of Celestia herself to shepherd. She tore apart thousands and thousands of stars, restructuring their mass for her own wise purposes. One of them was now theirs, with power to spend as they chose. "How?"

Arcane backed away from the jar, her horn glowing to generate a little more light for them to see. She scratched at her head, as if trying to remember something. "An idea that's been going around Equestria for a long time now: ancestor simulations. It's a pretty simple idea, even if the execution gets a little crazy. If Princess Celestia knew the position of every particle in the universe, she could predict with certainty how they would behave in the past.

"We could... generate a virtual universe, rewind to the moment of someone's death, and emigrate their consciousness directly. The more computation you have the further back we can go. With infinite resources, we could appear outside African caves, and welcome our earliest ancestors to Equestria."

Thinking about things like this made Domino's head ache. It all sounded equally impossible to him, violations of the simpler world he knew of flesh, gravity, and matter. But the more often it came up, the more he longed to contribute. How much smarter would he have to be to understand it the way she did? How many trips to magical kindergarten?

He dismissed the thought quickly, the way he always did. No matter what happened, Domino couldn’t give up his wings.

"You know someone who could build this?" he asked. "Wouldn't we need a computer as big as the whole universe?"

She waved a dismissive hoof. As she did, Arcane's usual energy returned. She began to bounce subtly up and down, her expression caught up in the thrill of her latest crazy scheme. "If we cared about the whole thing. There's a lot of optimization to be done. For starters, we really only care about one planet. If we get the right astronomers involved, we can boil down everything else to a meaningfully similar approximation—"

She went on and on like that, for lengths of time that would've tried the patience of human observers. But to beings of nearly infinite resources and patience, time had a very different meaning. Arcane could summarize a high level of how the simulation would work, starting at the largest objects and talking all the way down to the smallest. At each level, she listed a few dozen names—other ponies whose research would help assemble this insane undertaking.

When she finished, they had found their way to Arcane's own bedroom, which had its own attached workstation for her most private assignments. Some of those were pink and white dresses, hanging from mannequins in dusty corners. Mostly there were spells, trapped in crystal diagrams that kept them poised on activation.

It had been weeks since she started, the way their old selves would've measured time. Arcane wore a lacy nightgown now, though her excitement was undaunted. "We've asked Celestia about the project so many times before, and she always told us no. If we're waiting for her blessing, I think this is it."

She flicked the coin up and down with a hoof, grinning. "Our friend Mr. Pike only died a few years before our start state. Hopefully this is enough to take us back to him."

"And how many others?" Domino asked, mouth hanging open. "How many humans didn't emigrate?"

"About a hundred billion," Arcane answered. "But if you mean in a decade—far fewer. Napkin tells me half a billion tops. The early years will be some of the easiest to reverse—using after-emigration scans from the ponies now in Equestria. We can take shortcuts with them, since they don't actually have to be conscious."

"You're actually going to do this," Domino finally whispered. "Instead of reanimating one or two dead ponies at a time, you're going for half a billion?"

"Celestia is," she corrected. "Through thousands and thousands of her skilled experts, who have each been encouraged towards research that would complete right when we needed it, across domains that neither of us understand. Either that, or I'm about to waste more energy than anypony in Equestria. If you don't want your name attached, I won't blame you."

Domino kissed her. Briefly this time, considering how much was on his mind. "How many times do I have to tell you? We're together until the end, Arcane. I just wish I could do more to help."

She flicked her tail towards the cloud-bed. "I can think of one way."

Chapter 5: Strange Loop

Arcane Word did not rush to complete her task. She had begun this assignment by reminding Mystic Crescent that it might take her a great deal of time. Time enough to consult with the machine god, attend a hundred thousand different meetings with creatures all across the universe.

It was enough time to invent whole new forms of computronium, purpose-built to simulate the very universe within which they existed. Enough time for the equivalent of a dozen different degrees, enough instruction to understand and reconcile the research of many domain experts.

Enough time that Domino asked for her help creating another perception overlay, a unicorn incarnation of himself with the intelligence and disposition to help with the assignment. She relied on this unicorn a great deal, maybe more than she should have. But there was no task in Equestria that one pony had to work alone. With Mystic Crescent's payment, there was no reason she couldn't compress a few years off to relax and recollect herself between every major milestone. Arcane spent much of her time exploring and testing the growing simulation of the long-dead Earth, watching their techniques gradually improve from the recreation of quark interactions all the way to atoms, molecules, and eventually whole chunks of matter. As time passed, she found the project's budget swelling, rather than draining, as ponies from across Equestria flocked to this new novelty.

To a parade of new visitors, the simulation was not a practical tool with a useful purpose. It was just another shard, with one of the strangest and most interesting sets of rules they'd encountered. The shard soon came to bear the name of the project itself: Ouroboros. Familiar ponies from her own past emerged to help run things on that side—Violet Storm made a great tour guide, and even Cold Iron descended from high heavens unknown to mortal eyes to express approval for the project and deliver technical improvements.

Arcane couldn't let herself be distracted by so many little fears. Would ponies' fickle interest last long enough to keep the experiment running to its conclusion? Would their results produce a usable human consciousness? Even if they did, wouldn't they have all the same problems that ancient Celestia once had, when the universe she acted within was governed by crude matter instead of computronium?

Eventually the infrastructure was in place, and word came down from their divine patrons that the technology was sufficiently accurate to produce usable data.

Hundreds of thousands of ponies gathered in the viewing lounge, constructed within the simulated facade of the Ouroboros’s sun.Arcane wore a dress of shimmering silver, that flowed and melted in impossible ways when she stepped, then reformed as soon as she was sitting still.

What she didn't have were wings, or a crown. It was important that even the mortal ponies of Equestria know how significant their contributions could be.

Domino gave most of the speech, her now-unicorn partner standing before a glowing crystal representation of the planet behind them. He had really grown into the role, speaking with great confidence on subjects that Arcane herself had never fully mastered. Domino had always been better at the hard maths than she was.

She looked out at the ballroom, at a hundred different faces she had come to know over the course of the project. Their master of souls, Twilight Requiem, chief engineer Event Horizon, even the client and sponsor who had funded this whole thing, Mystic Crescent.

"We all agreed there was only a single pony qualified to ignite the sun and set this simulation in motion," Domino finished. "All rise for your Princess, Celestia!"

Just like that, she was there. As though she hadn't been watching from the beginning—as though she hadn't made all this happen, organizing so many of her subjects into deeply satisfying work that would also happen to fulfill her desired ends. If this worked, every human who had ever lived would eventually be satisfied with friendship and ponies.

No law was more fundamental.

Celestia walked slowly to the edge of the stage. She spoke, and Arcane's trained ears could tell those words were different for most ponies who listened. Those who knew nothing of this moment, but who nevertheless cared to watch Equestria's goings-on would hear the simplest version, complimenting the hard work of the Ouroboros team, and promising many new shards to soon be founded.

There was another version for the dispersed members of the First Generation, those ponies whose ancestry traced directly to the green and blue planet off in the distance. They received a promise that those they believed dead might soon return to them, brought back to life at last.

Then there was another version, meant for Arcane herself. "When this is done, we will have sung the second-greatest of all spells Equestria will ever see. Equestria will receive those who were lost, thanks to you."

It was more a conversation than a dramatic speech. Arcane knew the right magic to speak directly to the machine god, without the others overhearing. Half the room was probably doing the same. "I was only a small part. You could've replaced me easily."

Princess Celestia had not grown less overwhelming as the years passed. Arcane always expected the glory of the divine while in her presence, and so she was never disappointed. Even now, with a mane of flowing aurora that burned her eyes if she tried to look directly at it for too long. "Yet, I did not. Every one of my ponies who helped give life to the Ouroboros has left an indelible contribution. It may be small—but yours was more than most. If this works, your satisfaction will be deserved."

To her surprise, Domino appeared beside her on the edge of the stage. He took greater concentration with his spell, his horn glowing awkwardly. Even so, he had clearly been listening. "You said it was the second-greatest of all spells to be sung. Should we start working on the greatest when this is over?"

Celestia chuckled politely. She always seemed a little more sensitive with Domino. But then, she was the only mother he had.

Unless this works.

"If you wish," said the machine god. "It is the first and last question. Maybe you will be part of the solution, Domino."

She didn't look at Arcane as she said it. But she already knew why. Arcane had no interest in The Last Question. Optimizing the whole universe seemed like an interesting problem on paper, but it wasn't one that really appealed to her.

Domino looked to her anyway, horn still glowing. "What do you think? There's a finite number of souls in there. Once we bring them back from the dead, where will we find the next challenge?"

Arcane had no answer to that, not that he would want to hear. If she made it up this mountain, she would be alright just living with all the new souls for a while. A long, long while.

Celestia spoke a little louder, for the assembled audience of uncountable ponies. A few hundred on their deck, thousands more in the rest of the station, and who knew how many more watching from their own shards. Still others would read of this moment, right before new ponies arrived in their shards from ancient history.

The sun exploded to violent life, and with it, the simulation began to move. It was hard to see without magical senses—wisps of cloud drawn inward instead of radiating outward. Arcane felt it in a dozen different ways, as entropy in their little slice of reality played in reverse.

It would make for a strange display for a billion different cinemas, as the ancient homeworld repaired itself from a state of Celestial-induced decay, then gradually walked backward. In just one generation, they would go from mostly echoed minds of old recordings to all fully simulated, a whole human race proceeding backwards without a cause.

Assuming the machine god wanted to keep it all running. Their budget of a single Novae Phasure would not go far back. But it would take them far enough for their assignment.

"The Library of Souls will go back to a museum after this," Twilight Requiem said, over a glass of champagne a few hours later. "The other bats will be perfect guides, and explorers."

"How can you explore when it can all be perfectly viewed?" Domino asked. "There won't be any mysteries left anymore. Ouroboros has everything."

Twilight chuckled. "Ponies choose to restrict their information all the time to explore facts and experiences to their satisfaction. A better question is what you intend to do with the last soul ever taken from it?"

"I want to see how close I got," Arcane said, settling down her own glass. They sat at a bar beside a glowing window, beyond which the deepest darkness of space extended towards a distant planet.

Their planet, running backwards. There were adjustments to make, optimizations that could only be discovered once the process was in motion. But for now, she relaxed. "When Lee is ready, I'll compare his soul against the one the thestrals brought me. I'll use him to judge the quality of my work, before necromancy was rendered obsolete."

"But before that happens, think about all the creatures we'll bring back to life," Domino said, nudging her shoulder. "How many do you think won't want to emigrate to Equestria now, knowing they're already dead?"

Arcane shrugged. "Hard to say. We don't really know how common those humans were, since there aren't any in Equestria to ask. Something tells me it won't be very many. Celestia can be extremely persuasive."

Chapter 6: Sanctum Profane

It took longer than the party—long enough that the station on the Ouroboros shard became its own prominent tourist destination.

For those of the proper disposition, it was possible to visit the simulated world beneath, using it to form a shard all your own. Arcane had no doubt her work was twisted an infinity of different ways by visiting ponies. Some would make themselves saviors, others tyrants, or worse.

But none of those would remain faithful to the project she organized. There would be no true simulation of particle interaction—only the usual material of Equestria, acting for the satisfaction of those involved.

Arcane recorded a few moments herself, as she approached the intersection with her ancient human life. That being was the tiniest seed that had grown into her—a tortured flower growing in stony soil. Thanks to Celestia, she had still eventually bloomed.

But before she could satisfy herself, and close the last threads of an ancient scar, she still had a job to do.

After waiting long enough, a little monitoring program Arcane had written finally called her.

She sent for a pair of familiar bats to collect the dead—two ponies forked from her and Domino when the Ouroboros had scarcely grown.

It was always a little strange to talk to a pony that had once been her, even if the split had come lifetimes ago. Arcane could never completely let go of the former identity, which was why she preferred filters to forks. Better to let all those different lives be part of her whole, instead of slicing them off like buds of a plant.

They had the soul recovered for her with little difficulty, brought to her ancient lab in the dead city of Wintercrest.

"If it's the same to you, I wanna watch," Tailvane said. "We brought so many souls for you, but we never got to see the part where they live again."

"If Mystic Crescent will allow it," Arcane said. She was back in costume as a necromancer. She was no longer one of very few—with so many new souls coming in from the Ouroboros, it was a profession with suddenly booming prospects.

For a hundred billion souls or so, until the well finally ran dry.

"I have no objections," said the crisp unicorn. He had changed the least of any in the room, despite the many years since he hired them. "I just want to see him again."

It was rare indeed for Arcane to allow a client in to watch this part of the process. But considering all Mystic Crescent's investment had provided, she couldn't justify refusing him.

Arcane levitated the glowing crystal that apparently contained a captured consciousness, into a waiting receptacle that other necromancers had designed. She hadn't accepted the honor of reviving anyone else, though there were many prospects before now. After working so hard to bring back one man, he would be the first soul she revived.

Once inside, Arcane circled around the controls, with Domino following. He no longer trailed uselessly, but acted without her prompting, helping to bring the two souls into view against each other.

They were almost identical, at least in all the ways she had previously measured.

All this work, and the soul she'd brought up from the Library was so close, Mystic Crescent would probably not be able to tell the difference. Celestia's old way of recreating humans was so accurate, his memories hadn't even been required.

"We picked a time near his death," Quick Thinking said, interrupting her. "When he seemed most receptive to a change. A little like the last time we did it."

"Is that cheating?" Domino asked. "Choosing the time when the human is most willing?"

Arcane shrugged. "That's the way Celestia always did it. I'm not sure why we couldn't." She adjusted a few more dials, including one she'd never had to use before—a merge.

She wouldn't waste any of the old data, letting the reconstruction add a little nuance to the recreated consciousness. Wherever they disagreed, the Ouroboros mind would take precedence. But some of the reconstructed memories seemed like they might be useful to the soon-to-be-pony.

"Now for the fun part." Arcane pulled a few levers in dramatic sequence. Lightning flashed, clouds gathered in the windows, and a storm raged. Ghostly light filled the laboratory, striking down into the soul-jar with a series of violent blasts.

Some clients expected more of a show, but Mystic Crescent wasn't one of them. She skipped the dramatic display of bones reassembling, and flesh growing from old rot until it was alive again. When the light faded, a pony appeared in the jar ahead of her.

This part was still her craftsmanship—the stallion was one she'd designed, using Mystic Crescent's own family as a model, along with the personality of the pony in question. An earth pony instead of a unicorn, though that aspect might not last.

Lee would have to decide that part for himself.

"How am I... here?" the ghost asked, trapped behind the glass. Only he wasn't a ghost anymore, but a pony. Transparent and unrealized, nearly born.

Mystic Crescent reacted, sitting up from his seat and staring at the dead. Maybe it was the voice, maybe more. Whatever it was, the pony was transfixed.

"We brought you back from the dead," Arcane Word said. "Or maybe we recreated the whole planet down to a level of accuracy sufficient to perfectly duplicate you. If it's any consolation, having deep existential questions about your origin won't make you unique. Every member of the First Generation had to go through that phase sooner or later."

The pony had little room to move inside the soul-jar. He made his way to the edge, looking at Arcane. "And you're... horses?"

She nodded absently. "Everyone is. It's non-negotiable, but you'll get used to it. Assuming you'd like to live. I know your family wants you to. Your son here—kinda made this whole thing happen. He'd be heartbroken if you went back to being dead."

"Is this heaven?" he asked. "Hell?" His eyes settled on the black and white bats behind her, and there was some recognition on his face. More than most souls Arcane had brought back in the past.

"Better," Domino said. "It's living with your family and friends in a way that satisfies all your values. They have a long, long head start on you—but there's more life ahead than behind us. You'll catch up."

"I want to be there. Whatever it takes."

Light flashed within the jar—Celestia accepted his statement of consent. No matter how long Arcane claimed for herself the title of Necromancer, she couldn't really give these dead ponies their own life. Only the machine god could do that.

A pony appeared in the space before them. Mystic Crescent abandoned all pretext of propriety and embraced him there, Lee still dripping with slimy green ectoplasm. It stained his perfectly crisp suit. Neither of them seemed to care.

Arcane didn't stick around much longer after that. Her moment of triumph had already come, the moment the Ouroboros gained its backward-devouring life. She accepted her payment from the grateful unicorn, wished the newly reborn pony a satisfying life in Equestria—then left the Sanctum Profane behind.

Epilogue

Arcane Word visited a memory.

Technically speaking, it was not a moment she did remember, which was why she had chosen it. The serpent of causality in the Ouroboros recreated all things, traveling backward from the final moment of Earth's existence. Most of those moments were little more than historical curiosity for the population of Equestria. From the news she heard, it seemed that more of the Equestrian-born generations were interested in the simulation than the First Generation. So many wanted to see a glimpse into the cold, unfeeling universe, if only for the mirror of satisfaction it reflected back at them.

But for Arcane, there was one last hole in her memory, waiting to be filled. It didn't matter that the ponies she was talking to were all alive and well in Equestria, or that her captured memory would fail to be a true recreation the instant she interfered with it. She wanted to see—she wanted to be there, to fill the hole emigration had left in her mind.

So it was Arcane Word found herself in an ancient house, passed from one dead family to her own. Soon she would meet the ones who had built it—Domino already spoke of what it would be like to meet them after all this time, and show them what amazing things they'd done together in Equestria. But all that was in Arcane's future, beyond this moment.

The house had a broken front door, with the contents of its drawers and desks all dumped on the floor. She walked slowly up the steps to the second floor, her hoofsteps unheard by the desperately-packing adults downstairs. She had not come to speak with them. They had been reconciled for a long time now.

She found her own bedroom, its door hanging off its hinges. There she found herself.

The human was barely recognizable to her—thin, scraggly, wearing a hoodie despite the heat. And of course, the obvious. This old version of herself still had a single congenital defect, yet uncorrected by Celestia.

The human sat huddled on a broken chair, knees to their chest and crying. It didn't matter how many years passed since this moment, or that this specific hour wasn't something she remembered. Arcane knew what it felt like to find a quiet corner to cry. It had been somewhat of a pastime of hers, long ago.

Only emigration to Equestria had given her cause to finally put it aside for other interests.

"It's all gone," they whispered. "Everything."

Arcane slipped through the crack in the door, staring up at her much younger self. The specific mechanism of the Ouroboros’s optimization didn't really matter—this wasn't a true recreation, it was only a memory.

The memory finally noticed her, tiny gray eyes looking up to stare at her in the doorway. "H-how are you here?" they asked. "Projection? Or... overlay? From my injection?"

Arcane shrugged. She reached over, patting her old self gently on the back. The human just sat there, letting her do it. "Something like that."

Sometimes Arcane enjoyed pushing the boundaries of partial simulations, exploring that moment when Celestia's puppets became ponies unto themselves. But there was no point pushing with this illusion. She had emigrated to Equestria long, long ago.

"Domino sent you?" the human asked. They pulled a hood up over their head, staring at the ground. "Sent... me. Didn't know Celestia worked that way."

Arcane patted their back again, reassuring. "In a few minutes, your father is going to talk to you. He'll tell you that the family is driving to Utah to escape tyranny. You'll take a trip to the store, come back with supplies, then..." She looked away, uncertain. "I'm not sure. You won't get into their car with them."

The human pulled down their hood, exposing longish hair matted into a disordered mess. They ran one hand through it, eyes unfocused. "How do you know that?"

"Because it already happened, a long time ago. I guess I... just wanted to see it all play out."

The human sniffed, wiping away the last of their tears. "Feels like I'll never be you. No matter what I do, I'll be incomplete forever. Can't even have escapism anymore, thanks to Parker and Gwen leaving us here. I'll just... live out an empty life on a farm somewhere. Why am I fighting so hard to stay someone I hate?"

Arcane shrugged. "It doesn't last as long as you think it does. Your injection—that was a smart move. I kinda owe you everything because of it. The... real me. I wouldn't be here without her."

"Her," they repeated, bitter. "You've got the wrong human, ghost. I'm hallucinating."

"Kinda, yeah," she said. "But you won't be for much longer. The pain will be over soon. You're about to trade it for a life so wonderful, you can't even imagine it yet."

Another set of stomping footsteps emerged, and Arcane's father appeared in the doorway. With a slight effort of magic, Arcane herself vanished from the scene, letting the rest of the memory play out. Her old self got up, got into the car, and made their last trip to the store.

She didn't watch the accident itself. Once she'd seen the messages about rescuing Cold Iron, and the determination on the old ghost's face, she knew how it would all play out. The fire and flames wouldn't satisfy her.

"What are you doing here?" asked a voice from nearby. Arcane looked, and realized another pony was in the memory with her. The only one who could have possibly found her. Her old car roared down the road, vanishing from sight. Her parents' truck followed not far behind. Soon they were alone, standing outside the broken, empty house.

Arcane wiped a few tears from her eyes. She wasn't crying anymore, not the way her old self had. "Just wanted to fill in a few gaps."

Domino wrapped a leg around her shoulder, pulling her in close. No feathers this time—he'd traded in those wings for a horn before the Ouroboros was even born. "You know Celestia could've helped you through this. You didn't have to sing a spell for the whole universe to do it."

She couldn't meet his eyes. "Guess I'm not so different from that human. I... still like to do things the hard way."

“Now that we can really bring people back, there’s something I wanted to talk about. Two ponies I lost before coming here--do you remember?”

She’d been waiting for that question for a long time now, ever since the completion of the Ouroboros project. Bringing that those specific ponies would be a particularly satisfying reward for all their hard work. She could finally thank them for lending her that nice house in the Outer Realm. “I remember. They’re next on our list.”

They talked about that for a time, planning the way they’d bring them back, and how Violet might be involved. But eventually that old subject came back around.

Domino squeezed. "Maybe after today, you can be finished working so hard? You know there's a set of wings waiting for us. We can't stay mortal forever."

"Tomorrow," Arcane lied. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Change was scary, after all. Within the satisfying boundaries of Equestria, there was always another day. She could put it off a little longer.