Opaline’s descent slowed, nearly stopping, her body well-beyond the threshold of the portal but surrounded with translucent orange clamps.

Blank groaned, held between a pair of technostruct components holding onto a rapidly decaying edge. The voice in her machinery had ceased, but she had no idea how long she had until it came back—so she had to hurry. To perform a task she had no idea how to do.

“You there, whoever you are!” ordered Opaline, looking down into the space below her and immediately sounding more nervous. “Pull me out!”

“To say it is substantially easier than accomplishing it,” groaned Blank, also looking down—and feeling her resolve fade.

Opaline’s body was the center of the spell that was recalling her to elsehwere. With her as its focal point, she acted as a lens, allowing Blank to see exactly where she was going. What she saw was utterly disheartening in a way that was both immediately comprehensible and far beyond her understanding.

The half-seen world below was dark, lit by a strange gray light. A shattered world floated below them in the fog, the crystaline form of a tree rising from it. A tree that was made of brilliant crystal, but crystal that showed distinct signs of hideous cuts deep into its intrinsic form. It was fragmenting, the pieces breaking away from its ancient corpse as new crystals of a very different color carved metastable forms from its remains. These new identities sparked with energy as they formed like parasites, and as Blank watched them, they watched back. They giggled in a way that she heard very deep in her mind.

Her machinery began to decay. She quickly reconstructed it, assembling it into a stronger form. It held but at a sheer force far above what the original version would have ever been rated for. Slowly, she began to apply torque to the internal gears. It drained an immense amount of energy, even moving slowly—and slowly was the only way she could move. Any faster and she risked a spontaneous degeneration of the construct. It would splinter like tempered glass.

“This is your fault!” cried Opaline, her descent slowing as her hoofs dangled and her flightless wings attempted to flap. “You should have said something, you idiot!”

“Stop struggling lest you slip!”

“If you let me go I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do, but you’ll be sorry!” She did not, in fact, stop struggling. She looked up, glaring, and then her eyes widened.

Blank felt a wave of pain in her head, but managed to look—to see the hands grasping Opaline’s lower hooves.

They were crawling from the void. Thin, bipedal things, their bodies encased in machinery of dark metal. Metal that had corroded and broken at various points, revealing pale and diseased flesh beneath. Integrated into them. Skulls with blank mechanical eyes or empty sockets stared hungrily. Faces devoid of emotion save for fear.

Their bodies were infected. Lesions of pure crystal had pushed through their metal skin, crystallizing and integrating into their nervous systems. Each exposed crystal glinted with strange internal light, and on top of each sat a tiny projection of a pony. On top of each infectious crystal, these tiny holographic ponies were dancing in unison as they tried to force their hosts to haul Opaline back to them.

“It’s touching me! Eeeww eeeeeww EEEEW! Unhand me, weirdos!” Opaline kicked, but their grip was strong. More and more began to fade from their infected world, grabbing on.

Opaline looked up. “DO SOMETHING! They’re going to ruin my tail and—GAH one touched my wings eeew EEWW EEWWW!”

The device Blank had constructed had started to crack. Opaline suddenly dropped slightly.

“IDIOT, PULL!”

“YOU PULL!”

Opaline charged her horn—and began to drop far more rapidly. Using the magic she had stolen from the quant-fruits was only bringing her deeper. Suddenly, Blank sensed that something terrible had taken notice. A strange floral smell floated to her from the emptiness, and the tiny projected ponies stopped dancing.

One of the necks on the creatures twisted unnaturally as it looked up. “Hurry,” it wheezed. “She has seen us.”

Blank struggled to pull—only to feel the machines she had made fragment under her grasp. She started to fall, sucked in with Opaline, and was left to consider an option she would rather not have faced. She had enough energy to pull herself back. Opaline would be lost, and possibly the planet’s entire magic with her—but possibly not. But she could survive even without it.

So she resigned herself to the unpleasant fate that awaited her down the hole. She would not abandon a pony.

Then something grabbed her wrist. A pair of dark-colored hooves. With only half the energy required to sustain herself, she redoubled her effort to support Opaline. Her descent stopped.

“Misty!”

Misty groaned. She seemed confused and sickly, unsure as to how she had suddenly arrived in Opaline’s castle. She was holding them both from falling, her back hooves treading hard on the smooth floor, trying to gain purchase in the grout.

“Use magic!”

“She can’t use magic!” cried Opaline. “She’s too supid! MISTY! I order you to PULL ME UP!”

“I can’t,” groaned Misty. Her horn sparkled slightly, but the amount of magic she could actually produce on her own was barely above trivial. “I’m trying to pull, but I—I’m falling in too!”

Opaline paused. A dark hand suddenly grabbed her horn, pulling her head back. Forcing her to face Misty.

“Misty,” she sighed. “You are such a disappointment. If you can’t do a job, why did you bother even trying? There’s no point in trying. You might as well just let go.”

Blank shivered. “NO! Do not let go!”

“There’s no sense in us all being dragged in,” sighed Opaline. “I’ll simply conquer this reality. I can already sense the magic in it. In fact, it would be better that way. I’d rather not share with either of you. Let go.”

“Really, Opaline?” groaned Misty, pulling harder. “Self-sacrifice does NOT suit you!”

“Stop talking, I am attempting to focus my constructs!”

Blank struggled to rectify their positions. She tried to ignore the pain in her back and in her head.

“You’re slipping! Stupid hooves, come on!”

Blank could not hold on to both. She needed to choose. Her strength was fading.

Then she felt her hoof fall from Misty’s hoof, and her construct shatter—and with it, a sudden burst of pain. In her head and in her back. Then, an odd sense of cold relief.

She cast a spell, reaching outward, grasping Opaline in her magic. Blank's dripping wings spread, trying to gain purchase on the thick atmosphere of alien air below. They were not hers, though—and yet they were. This was not the body of a Progenitor, but not a failure either. It was the conclusion of what Synchronia had originally begun. The body she had halfway programmed for herself.

The weight was great, but new things had become visible. Through her horn and her magic, she could see the channels of what she had formerly conceived of as “something watching her”. She grasped those chains, not caring where they went—and pushed magic into them. Using herself as a beacon to call whatever it was these strange, diseased failures were so afraid of.

The world darkened and faded. The smell of carnations became overwhelming. Beautiful funeral flowers, but with something deeper. A sour note as if they had been allowed to rot deep under fetid water. It was a beautiful smell—and made Blank more afraid than she ever had been in her short life.

Something slithered out of the blackness. Blank did not want to look at it as it hauled them away. As it, instead, grasped onto Opaline—and as the pair of great eyes opened below her. Eyes wider than the width of stars, leaking cursed red light as their gaze focused on the hole above. On the way out.

The resistance dropped. Blank flapped her wings as hard as she could, pulling Opaline upward—and just as she was about to falter, Misty grabbed her and hauled them both back into the world.

The spell collapsed. All three ponies fell to floor, gasping and coughing—while the fourth stood strong, not at all drained.

Blank stood up, shaking, and suddenly felt a hoof lightly tap her nose.

“Boop,” said the other pony. A yellow mare, her eyes and red both deep red. She smiled, revealing a variety of long, needle-like teeth. "Thank you, little pony," she said, still smiling. Then she ran away, chuckling to herself. In seconds, she was gone into the night, and Blank was left to contemplate what, exactly, she had just wrought onto this distant world.

She did not consider it for long. Slowly, she stood up, finding herself slightly taller than before. Misty stared at her, wide-eyed.

“What did you do?”

Blank looked back at her wings, still wet from emergence and darkening into a pattern she halfway remembered. The wings she had once had—or rather, Synchronia’s black wings. A recreation of her former alicorn body.

“I understand,” she said. She turned to Opaline. “What we refer to as Synchronia was an artifact. We did not understand its origin, its purpose, and thus took a course of utilization to retrieve our homeworld. To unify the last sects of divergent ponies.” She paused. “They...are gone now. Everything is gone.”

“Then why do you look like that?” sneered Opaline. “Did you come here to laugh at me? To mock me? The alicorn with her magic stolen?”

Blank shook her head. “I do not think this body was ever meant to house magic in any fashion. Only weakly. Synchronia remembered her genetics, but the derivation it produced was destined for the same failures as her previous self. She merged it with my own, but I am analogous.” She paused. “Was. Analogous evolution. Not mammals, as you. Chitin, tentacles, fuzz, in the shapes of the Progenitors. This was her body. To house her.” She looked to Misty. “But I am not her. I am me.”

Opaline groaned. “I have no idea what’s going on and it displeases me. I do not have the energy to even remember what the plot of this is. I need a nap. Whatever you’re handling, handle it.”

“Misty,” said Blank. “Synchronia and White-Rime. You arrived here to protect myself and her, but what of them?”

Misty shook her head. “I don’t know.”

White-Rime slithered back as Synchronia stepped forward. The machine, still smoking from her rematerialization, moved with a distinct tremor. Her body, though made of nearly indestructible elements, had suffered some form of deep internal damage.

“You are injured.”

Synchronia smiled. “I can repair myself. Don’t worry about me.”

“The offer still stands. Come home.”

“I saw it. In your minds. I wonder why he forsook Her. To build some sort of odd necropolis? Why?”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

Synchronia stiffened. “But why?”

“There is no...Twilight Sparkle.”

“Of course there is. She’s immortal.”

White-Rime consolidated a head to shake. “No. Twilight-Set has occurred.”

Synchronia stared at her, then sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Then I will need to create a new one.”

“Speak with the Gloom Father, he can explain—”

“My time is short.” Synchronia stood up. As she did, the mountain above them exploded, sending rocks outward as Synchronia fired her newfound ship’s forward cannons.

Rocks tumbled down the slope, some crushing White-Rime harmlessly as they passed. Her vision was instead focused on the now largely rebuilt starship that floated out of the hole it had blasted.

“But...how?”

“I’ve been busy baking,” sighed Synchronia. “My primary focus has been on using my cubes to repair my ship.” She paused. “Or, rather, this ship. Teehee.” Her body bristled as it spontaneously repaired. “Now. Let’s see if this works, maybe?”

Synchronia’s horn flickered, and her body disappeared in a flash of light. Then, moments later, the ship whined to full speed and vanished, leaving only a thunderous implosion in its wake. White-Rime stared up, confused, but realizing that somehow she had failed.

Author's Note

Wrapping up the plot, at this point, became increasingly difficult.