Synchronia could almost feel the flesh as it crawled over her, attempting to find any place to gain purchase. It sought to find an entrance past her carapace. It did so with surprising dexterity and an interesting level of knowledge, as if it had seen creatures like her before—or thought it did. Because, as Synchronia knew, there must have been others like her. Twilight Sparkle had not just stripped away her flesh, but the flesh of all the unworthy. Her Benevolence had redacted their immortality, replacing eternal flesh with the unending mechanized undeath. A decision that was both wise and correct.

A powerful enough wizard, though, knew the ways to train the worm. The machine-necrosis could be directed. Those loyal to Her had found a way to persist at the cost of what little organic matter they might have contained. The construct had known the dead—but it had not known the dead who had contorted themselves in Her divine image.

She sent her new primary reactor into overdrive. The alien flesh shrieked and sizzled as her body supreheated, buying purchase for her technomagic to form new and better armor. Armor that could reach and cut, dividing the space between cells at will. The construct responded by keritinizing, then calcifying, forming a hard layer of coral-like substrate around her as the main body slithered away. Synchronia prepared a spell using her newfound magic, but she was unfamiliar with it. Slow. The construct was faster.

She was immediately encased in a block of enchanted ice. This did not perturb her. Even when flesh had still clung to her machinery, she had easily withstood the vacuum of space far beyond the light of any star. As all alicorns had, having evolved far above so many countless empty, uninhabitable worlds. With her body improved by Twilight Sparkle’s science, even absolute zero was of little consequence.

Flexing, she burst through the ice and cast a beam of concentrated radiant energy. It sliced through the creature, but the creature simply split, dividing in two and moving forward. One half charged as the other sat down, opening like a flower to return fire. Synchronia cast a shield, then corrupted it. While she could not use the bio-magic quickly, she was capable of thinking far faster than any organic brain would enable. Re-coding the spells was simple.

The shield exploded in a plume of anti-life. The escaping half of the creature was converted to necrotic slop, but the other part was able to shield itself with a different sort of magic. A kind of icy, alien energy drawn from within. A spell cast by something that, like Synchronia, was not properly a living creature. An earth-born ghost that had chosen to face a long-dead machine.

The spell was compounded with a shock wave. Synchronia was attempting to re-develop her connection to the Veil. With flesh but without a soul, she was in an ideal state to use it properly and without being noticed by its actual owner—but she had no idea if she could maintain that state for any kind of duration. If the cloned version of Sunny’s tissue would eventually form a soul, it would burden her—and, in its innocence, almost instantly corrupt.

Although the point was moot. As with all life, her skin would be stripped from her. When the planet was consumed as Twilight Sparkle had demanded. It was quite likely the last planet with life—true life—left on it. It was Synchronia’s last chance. If she failed, she would be alone. For the rest of eternity. For Equestria to survive, every living creature needed to die. Just as Twilight had intended.

The horror of this seemed to create a change in her magic. She noted with slight confusion that her power output increased—at the cost of far greater perception of the construct’s psionic field.

She took the advantage to liquefy her opponent.

White-Rime landed as a heap next to Misty, quickly re-assembling herself. Misty stood up, or tried to, wincing as she tried to cast a spell. All that came from the stump of her severed horn were a couple small sparks.

“Dang it,” she said. “I can’t—I can’t cast any spells!”

White-Rime condensed herself, forming an ossified shield to block an attack directed wholly at Misty.

“Dara’th’raranak is taking heavy damage,” she cried. “She is stubborn but in great pain, she will destroy herself to keep us safe, but I need more.”

“I don’t have any to give you!” replied Misty, tears welling in her eyes—until a strange look of understanding crossed her face. Her mind had encountered a distant memory, one that was not quite hers.

“You’re a windigo, right?”

“Yes? Why?”

Misty stood up with great difficulty. “Then I need you to feed on me.”

“Misty, no, you would become depressed and—”

“JUST DO IT PLEASE!”

White-Rime hesitated, but at Dara’th’raranak’s insistence, trusted her friend. She lowered the field that had been protecting both her and Synchronia—and allowed her wraith-form to once again devour everything in her wake.

Misty immediately felt the icy wave of inadequacy. It washed over her, and, as much as it cut deeply into her, it almost felt good. It was familiar. The sadness and loneliness she had known for her entire life came to her at once, as intense as it ever had been. It was tinged with a certain nostalgia. The desire to cry and to never stop reminded her of her life with Opaline. Nearly the entirety of her life.

The channel she had used to draw Opaline’s magic was mostly closed—due to damage to her own body, or due to depletion of Opaline’s supply. The warlock connection between their minds, however, was not. So Misty simply pushed once more the gate—and felt it explode open from the force within.

White-Rime shuddered under the sudden pressure. The wave of absolute, searing, unabashed and unashamed hatred. The near universal loathing for all ponies, for all things, the disgust at every living thing. The anger at Twilight Sparkle, at Sunny Starscout, at them all—all of them who had friends while she was forever alone. Alone and so, so lonely. So afraid and sad underneath it all. The full weight of a pony who had never known and who would never know love or friendship. Through Misty, the entire emotional content of Opaline’s mind was funneled straight into a creature evolved precisely to gain its power from discord and disharmony.

The flesh-form ruptured, expanding from within itself, muscle pouring through bone and bone pouring back through the muscle, opening into contorted veins, eyes, teeth, and alveoli—and then growing back on itself, contorting and layering as new and stronger heads sprouted at the sides of the first. They bore no faces, but they indeed bore numerous venomous teeth and horns ignited with hideous magic.

The body sprouted wings, impacting Synchronia with equal force as she too charged forward. The main head sunk its teeth into her body while limbs clawed at her with claws and tongues and ragged fingernails.

It was something Misty would rather not have seen, but it was the best she could hope for. With her and Opaline’s magic depleted, she flopped onto the ground. She would need to rely on her friend to make it the rest of the way.

The teleportation spell had been badly malformed. The time Blank took between reality and itself was expanded so long that for a moment—a very near moment—she almost saw past it. Before she could be driven fully insane, though, she slammed back to the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of her. She smelled it before she could even see it clearly. She had been sent back to Opaline’s castle.

And, for a reason that almost surely held some great scientific merit, the pain took longer to reach her than her body had.

She cried out as her head ached, her skull threatening to pull itself apart. Something squirmed in her spine, moving beneath her skin and threatening to tear her open from within. The pain only increased as she tried to force it back to where it had been, and the screams turned to a whimper as she lay curled into a shaking ball on the ground.

“Whiner,” moaned Opaline, standing. Her color had faded drastically, and she seemed to have grown much thinner. When she moved, it was with a violent tremor. Not one from exertion, but the repetitive, circular sort usually produced by severe neurological conditions. “How do you think I feel? The is the last time I let that little idiot take any of my power...look at me! I’ve been sucked dry!Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to be sucked so hard?” She groaned. “Do you have any idea how much moisturizer I’ll need to regain my youthful appearance?” She paused. “Or how many draconic souls I’ll need to devour to get even the barest fraction of my fire back?”

Blank did not answer. She was in too much pain to even realize exactly what was going on—or to stop Opaline from approaching her.

A thin smile crossed Opaline’s face. “Or. I can eat something else.”

Blank felt one of her limbs being pulled by weak magic, exposing the universal tool attached around it—and she heard the sound of her quantic crystals being pulled from their stabilization support.

Her eyes widened. “No—ACK!”

“Don’t tell me ‘no’,” snapped Opaline. “Nopony tells ME ‘no’. Do remember that I am not only your queen, but your god. Now if you will excuse me...” She popped the crystals into her mouth and crunched them. She seemed pleased with herself until the expression slowly faded.

“Huh,” she said, swallowing them. “That was certainly not the flavor I was expecting.”

She paused again, considering just what flavor it might have been—when her body violently erupted with magic, rendering and consolidating space into a portal that promptly sucked her into a dimension of unspeakable horrors.

Flesh washed over her. Splattered and tore and cut and bit. As it did, Synchronia began to doubt her conclusions.

It had been encoded in her deeply. The concepts explored by legions of ponies researching the same subject. Or, as she had come to understand, infected with the same contagious ideology. Many of those screaming minds had deemed flesh to be an inferior concept. Synchronia defied them, however, providing clear evidence that biological tissue was merely a different type of machine. A tool meant only to serve the One True Goddess, to be exchanged and disposed of at Her divine will.

This was the conclusion she now questioned. At how weak the construct seemed to be. At how little purchase it could gain on her immortal body.

Or, perhaps, it was simply poorly designed for it. Of the countless legions of living corpses that inhabited the dead-world of Equestria Prime, perhaps she was the first to fight back. To remember. What they had been created for. That the only possible purpose for a pony was Friendship—as in, utter service to the Goddess of Friendship. As in, completing the Will of Twilight. She would not allow herself to consider alternatives. The Goddess had destroyed all ponies, save for those forged on this forgotten world. Synchronia had only one option for purposes to choose—she could not bear even the concept of alternatives.

She cast her spells, expanding her shield outward with a shockwave that crushed and liquefied bone and muscle alike. Only for a trio of horns to pierce through it, blasting her back with a feedback wave.

Her synthetic brain compensated and re-programmed the feedback into a usable spell, returning it and shattering the construct—only for its occupant to absorb the spell again and pull the flesh back around itself. Because there was not one. It was two individuals. One, a sentient windigo—the other, the logical evolutionary conclusion of ponies.

The fight would therefore be straightforward to end—but at too great of a cost. Synchronia could have simply cast a radiation spell to purge all life in the vicinity. She would survive—but doing so would cost her all the growth of her skin and set her schedule back by days. The temptation of being adorable and lovable again was simply too strong.

It closed around her, freezing her in the process as its head split into multiples, each sinking their teeth into her technomagic armor. Their magic allowed them to wisthand the heat, and the teeth extended. Becoming soft. Reaching past, injecting into her internal space. Grabbing at her skin, her flesh, the buds where her wings would soon form—and Synchronia smiled.

Her tantaban implant spread up the teeth, deep into the flesh. Interfacing with it. Suddenly, she found her mind interfaced with the chaos of its own.

She spread like a disease. Her body—in its original form—had been somewhat unique. Her cult, the one she had been vat-born into, had built themselves in the image of a false-goddess, inserting genetic material from her still-living remains into their own. Luna had of course been sterile—but the Black Alicorns considered themselves her living daughters. Until, of course, Twilight Sparkle had brought their extinction. There were none left to worship the false goddesses.

It tried to escape, but Synchronia was faster. Her mind was adaptable and liquid, able to conform to whatever it needed to gain access. One of the bodies was impossible to access directly. An ephemeral being made of negative energy. But a being that was interfaced with an organic body—a body that was fully comprehensible to the machine mine that now encroached through it.

Memories occurred to her. Of a frozen, long-dead world—but a dead world verdant with new, strange life. Mutated, gnarled trees assembled into vast ice-forests. The fallen fragments of planetary-scale cities, fallen into snow-drenched or glacial-entombed ruins. Or buried far below.

Then something hit her, moving strangely through her mind. A vision of something she did not understand. The looming shadow of an alicorn without a name. Her pale form was entwined with a strange sensation, an implication or half-way association. This impossible, pale-pink alicorn was not alive. The Dream of Death—and at her side something tall and black. An image that Synchronia stared at in horror, realizing its origin through its evolution. The conversion, the advancement—and the mark of Twilight Sparkle laser-engraved on his head, his four burning orange eyes seeming to suddenly stare into her from across the stars.

Synchronia disengaged—only to receive a blast of energy to her chest. It ignored her shield, the frost creeping into her tantabus. It did not feel pain, exactly, but it responded poorly. Synchronia was thrown back, assembling half-visible machines to dampen the blow. Another blow came to her, this one from solidified flesh—but Synchronia simply re-enabled gravity. The flesh collapsed under the weight of suddenly striking a twenty-ton body.

She pulled energy into her flesh and repelled it with radiant fire. The construct, now little more than a shifting heap of white flesh, slithered back. It was tired, its energy decreasing. The tantaban implant had been able to siphon even more than Synchronia had predicted. Not in a literal sense. She had instead chosen to attack the hatred at its origin—and deleting it was so easy. She herself was immune to hatred, fear, jealousy, pain, or doubt. Or at least she found herself forced to insist so without relent.

It began to consolidate—but as it did, Misty suddenly stood up, a confused expression on her face.

“Misty! Stay back!”

“White-Rime...I feel...” She frowned. “Something’s wrong, maybe?”

Then her attention turned toward Synchronia—and there was not time for Synchronia to dodge, or to even understand what to dodge. She saw it, though. A sudden surge of energy channeled to her through her warlock connection.

She feared—for a brief moment—that she was about to see a teenager explode. Somehow, though, Misty’s body was not immediately shattered by the sheer volume of magic that pushed through her. Instead, it struck Synchronia.

Synchronia raised her shields, only to feel the magic retract—and rip space itself apart around her.

She fired a beam, only to have it slam into her own side, having traveled in a straight line through space that no longer retained linearity.

Misty took a step forward, and passed through multiple spaces as she was suddenly beside Synchronia. Gasping, she half-felt the weight of countless centuries and worlds she had just stepped through. She twisted her head and Synchronia was slammed across space, torn to separate components that were connected and dispersed. She cast a shield, trying to hold herself together, but it intersected with her own self, cutting deep into parts of herself that did not yet exist.

She attempted to consolidate, only to find herself thrown backward again and outward of herself, the spell striking her before it was even cast. Her single electron suddenly stopped as time ruptured. Her magic spread, or tired to, only for Misty to crush it as she imploded into herself, pulling Synchronia inward to the singularity.

They collapsed into a void that was inhabited and uninhabitable—only to slide out of it through a green place, a dark place, and one filled with strange light and numerous eyes. At each phase, Sychronia struggled to keep herself intact—but to control the magic in other ways. She found that far less of her ability was dedicated to retaining her own self, but rather to containing Misty. To keep her body from crossing the final line to the lethal overload that she was rapidly approaching.

“Stop! You can’t handle this much magic!”

“I see so much,” said Misty. “What are...alicorns? What if magic as we understand it is only the barest portion of this? So many threads and we only use the one.”

Her body was beginning to dissolve. Synchronia sacrificed her own protection to keep Misty alive.

“Misty! Sever the connection! Quickly!”

“Am I connected?” A distant smile crossed Misty’s face. “Or is Opaline just the catalyst? To this?”

Misty stared at Syncrhonia—across possibilities, across herself, forward and inverted in the future and past, sliding across the spaces defined by mathematics suddenly so clear. Her power was so incredibly logical—and it would be a simple matter. All she needed to do was disable the strong force holding the matter together, then adjust and nullify the vibrating strings of her subatomic particles. The explosion would be drastic, obviously, but she could absorb it into herself—or simply change the phase of her own matter so that it missed her. Or convert the energy back into matter, forging a teacup from a blast that would level half a planet. Or she could ignore it and jump a single fraction of a second ahead in time.

“Time,” she said, smiling. “That’s what I need...” She began to bend it, seeing the horror on Synchronia’s face. “I can fix everything. I can undo it. I can save you...I can save me. My father.... I can go back home. Never even meet Opaline.”

“Changing time is not possible!"

“Then why is it so easy?”

Misty reached out, feeling her body dissolve in her own magic as she made the change. Until something inside her snapped.

Something resisted her edit.

She blinked, suddenly staring into the eyes of something in the shape of a pale violet pony. An energy being made of light, but containing the disembodied skeleton of the pony she had once been.

“XN-C24438-alpha-7,” sighed another pony. Misty turned her head and looked across a space that was not a space, but a hyperbolic bend. Many bends intersecting onto one place, many timelines suddenly contorted to an inverted star facing her. The vertices watched her—and the one she now watched was a pale violet unicorn with a stripe through her main, wearing black armor with strange symbols. “This one? Seriously?”

“She withstood the impact,” said another, a pony physically similar except that she was five times the size. “I mean, that shouldn’t even be possible for a normal pony. It usually gets...you know. Messy.”

“So she’s a conduit,” sighed a pale-violet alicorn, looking at her polished hoof. She looked to another who was a filly version of the same unicorn. “That’s promising, sure, but not enough.”

Another spoke, her translucent body naked and radiant blue-pink as she floated among the others, a single electron represented on her forehead in orbit around her horn. “This is presently our most successful step forward. One has to serve the purpose. We require an avatar in the Fifth Generation.”

A biped with the same color scheme as the others crossed her arm. “She is not one of us, though.”

“But she can serve, though.” The speaker was a skull, halfway converted by machinery and floating over a small plume of tentacles. It stood beside a robe-clad version of the pony darker than the others, her body thin and red eyes sunken, her horn in-line with three others. Metal horns drilled into her brain.

“Agreed,” said the sickly one. “But she’s not ready.”

“I know,” said the first. Her ethereal horn ignited, and Misty felt her own regenerate. She smiled, though. “Misty. You have done so well. Don’t forget that. Except you will. Because I’m going to erase part of your memory.”

“Wait! Why? Who—who are you all?”

“You, essentially,” said the alicorn. “Soon enough, anyway.”

“You created one channel,” said the one in armor. “To a third-rate alicorn that even N-88-gamma could take in her sleep. Imagine an infinite number of channels to the most powerful ponies ever to live. Synchronized.”

“Because we are the same,” noted the large one. “But for somepony who’s not Starlight...”

“We will see,” snapped the skeletal one. “Eventually, and in time. I mean, come on. I singlehoofedly cloned the Elements of Harmony back to life.”

“Except Twilight.”

The ghostly one sighed. “Yeah. Because I’m a bit stupid.” She put her hoof on Misty’s chest. “You’re going to do a lot of very good things one day. I have faith in you. But right now, you can’t fight this threat with magic. No matter how much you use.”

“I...I don’t understand.”

“I know. That’s kind of the point. Consider it education.”

She shoved—and Misty cried out as she tipped over, falling backward and away—leaving a piece of her mind behind, with them, held for safekeeping.

Author's Note

This chapter does take something of a risk that I have realized can often (and easily) backfire. Over my time here, I have slowly developed a sort of "extended universe" of events, characters, and organizations.

To some, some parts of this scene will make perfect sense. However, I have slowly realized (especially after the story I refuse to speak the name of) that it can actually end up very confusing without context.

In theory, this scene (as odd as it is) will simply seem odd (but interprable) without context.