The stars shine brightest on the darkest nights.

Days and months and soon several years passed after The Night of Plague incident, when Equestria had been suddenly beset by horrific and unnatural viruses from other worlds and even other dimensions entirely across the vastness of the Cosmos.
Countless ponies and other creatures had been infected and/or had died, but then ALL magically been resurrected by the heroic (and tragic) sacrifice of The Mane Six, who had performed an extremely powerful and almost unimaginable Magic Spell which combined each of The Elements of Harmony and utilized the very souls of the six themselves as the final tool to accomplish their ultimate goal, which was to draw in the entirety of the many plagues from every corner of the entire continent before any could spread out any further or doom anymore innocents… and absorb each one into their own bodies.

In that time, the princesses all worked together tirelessly to truly help and rebuild the realm, strengthening it whenever and wherever they could.
Celestia herself was extremely busy now, burying herself in the work and doing every single thing that she could to improve the lives of her subjects. She seemed to be obsessed with improving Equestria after the plagues, and indeed, progress was moving along at a much faster rate than it had a long time.

But Princess Luna knew what was really going on with her older sister, and her heart broke a little more each day and night as she saw Celestia forcing herself into every bit of work and study she could do to learn and relearn everything she could about Magic and history and the economy and so on.
The Princess of the Sun was being eaten alive by her guilt and regret, and was doing whatever she could to try and honor the legacy and memory of Equestria’s greatest heroes by keeping their home safe and making it truly strong, something to be proud of.
Her obsessive behavior had ultimately resulted in Luna getting involved, and a brief, yet deep, conversation between them both had resulted in Celestia agreeing to come with her sister into the Dream World and face her fears and problems head on, rather than letting them endlessly terrorize her day in, day out.

And now they stood together in the midst of the Dream World, before a great and terrible cloud of gray fog which, despite this realm being technically unreal, gave off a chilling aura.
Luna’s voice was just a little tense and nervous.
“She… THEY, are there, sister. Just beyond our sight.”

Celestia didn’t like that tone, it unnerved her as well. But this was it: she needed this.
And so she stepped forward through the mist, and stopped dead in her tracks as her wide eyes took in the sight of the THING that awaited her.

She and Luna stood in a wide area of black ground, smooth and hard. And in the very center… was Twilight. And the others.

“T-T-Twi…Twilight…?”
She spoke, her voice one of unveiled horror and grief as her shocked and rapidly tearful eyes beheld the singular twisted, nightmarish, hellish eldritch horror that had once been her beloved student, along with all her friends.

It was larger than Celestia herself, much larger, although she was almost a bit comparable in size to an Ursa Minor!
Her body was mostly rotted and partially spiked in places with sharp black branch-like protrusions, and there was a mix of blood and sweat thet strange fluids leaking down and falling off her giant form. She also was much huskier in shape(more like a real horse), and yet her body was horribly twisted and mutated now.

Her colors were faded, something of a dull brownish pink and purple, and her legs were scarred and a bit pale and, upon a brief closer look, no longer had any real hooves and instead had long broken claws akin to griffin talons and black in reddish color.
There also were apparently MULTIPLE pairs of legs, all of them faded deathly colors and having vicious claws, and a few were also in contact with the ground while others were tucked into the monster’s sides like a macabre idea of wings.
Her wings themselves were also tucked away, but even like this, anypony could see how they had no feathers at all and looked almost like wings of a huge mutated bat creature, the countless little spores and sparks of electrical energy coming off from them was also being cause for attention.

She now had several horns, and each was appropriately long for her greater size and similar to that of Chrysalis, in that it was gnarly and akin to a long curving twisted sword, and finally there was her head and face.
She no longer had any real lips on her much longer elongated head, and she had rows of large sharp knifelike fangs along her jaws and nonexistent lips that were practically all visible.
She also had a pair of bright, brining violet eyes and other pair dig different colors ones that were constantly appearing and disappearing on her head and neck.

From how she was positioned as she stood before them, the two sisters could see the horrifying sight of dozens of blood red and violet eyes, opening and closing and constantly fixed on the two Alicorns. The creature’s body was always bleeding and there seemed to be something like some kind of spectral entrails that were hanging and falling from the torso and fading away constantly, almost like they weren’t even real.
Those rows of eyes and legs, those horrific wings and the eyes that were arrayed on them as well and burning like fire…

Fear and grief were what the two sisters felt… but this was especially true for Celestia. She had pretty much manipulated their lives as best she could for them to come together and become friends, made them heroes and more, all for this one, singular, hellish purpose.

Celestia opened and closed her mouth several times, her words failing her at the sight of just what her beloved student and her friends had become after being stuck with these viruses for so long.
But at last, she managed to force them out.

“Twilight… it doesn’t mean anything now, not after… THIS. But I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

The big muster head nodded gently, and a magically clear voice answered.
“I know that you are, princess, and I forgive you. All of us do.”

“How? How can you just forgive me after all I’ve done to you, leading all of you on your whole lives and condemning you to this fate!? Especially you, Twilight?”

The towering monstrosity seemed to make a sort of chuckling sound, even though now it was a bit more strained and was like a sort of predatory clicking and deep gurgling.
“Princess Celestia, each of us six have already been changed so much. If none of us forgive you NOW, then when can we?”

“No, I mean-umm… it’s just…”
The princess sighed heavily.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Princess Celestia. Ultimately, regardless of what you’ve done, our choices were our own. It was the six of us who chose to take the plagues within ourselves, and through conversations with Discord we realized that The Night of Plague
was something that was going happen no matter what, eventually. Even though you did manipulate events so that we became best friends and grew into the mares we were, and still are deep down inside, we were the only ones who could do this.”

“But it was still I who lead you all on this path, you-you just said so yourself… Yourselves… oh, whatever!”
Celestia said painfully, almost crying out.

“And? So what if you did? Who else would have been able to save Equestria, and then the wider world? Who else would have been strong enough and willing enough to make this sacrifice? The Elements of Harmony pretty much bonded to us in a way that they never have before, we all know this because we’ve looked into the past and into the history of this power. Ask Luna, she also knew this as well as you yourself, Princess. We were pretty much born for our roles.”

Twilight’s voice was now in its famous egghead form as she explained her reasoning.
“We all got our Cutie Marks at the same time from the same method on the same day, we perfectly matched our individual Elements, despite our personal flaws, to such a degree that we could utilize the pure power of Harmony itself without having access to the the physical gems after they were destroyed, and we somehow refined our sanities even after becoming the bearers of each of these horrid diseases and mutations.”

The huge mutated entity now leaned its frightful head forward, even as its own great horns were burning/glowing brightly and creating a mystical barrier of orange light that separated it/them from the princesses, lest they somehow be infected in some mysterious manner.

“This is simply our lot in life, Princess Celestia. And in our travels and experiences, we’ve realized that ultimately we have nothing to be upset about, even if we DO look rather ghastly and all that obvious stuff, hehe…”
The fact that the six horrifically MERGED ponies were somehow able to still chuckle at their nightmarish appearance and situation was both worrying, and yet simultaneously also relieving.

“Besides, we embody Harmony itself like this far better than in any other way. We are in perfect harmony with ourselves and each other. If we weren’t, we’d have all lost our collective individuality and become nothing more a raging monster of endless pain and suffering.”

The creature was speaking in a gentle tone.
“And we have you to thank as well, Princess Celestia, for doing why you did and becoming the pony you were meant to be.”

“What? How? I concealed so much valuable information from you. I pushed you more than once into stressful situations that caused you unneeded anguish, I even forced you into the role of leadership without even so much as a heads up!”
The elder Princess said sadly with emotion thick in her voice, her regret for all the unnecessarily complex choices she made on full display.

“Princess, I didn’t say you were perfect, ok?”
Twilight chuckled a bit as she said that, and somehow she seemed to be smiling, even if her monstrous face didn’t show it very well.

“The most important thing about this whole messed up event as how much you’ve changed for the better.”
The Twilight-hybrid creature shifted its immense body just a bit as its voice became softer somehow.

“You learned to truly refine your way of ruling Equestria, and have done so for the better. You have become so much more open with the knowledge you hold and the ability to share it effectively.”
The giant entity spoke with pride now, gazing down upon the Princess, and now more eyes seemed to open up or appear outright on the head as it spoke.
“You have grown so much more in Integrity and Compassion, Generosity and Devotion, and Knowledge. And finally you have become the transparent, deeply involved, and just wonderfully awesome ruler you have always been able to be, especially now that the worst is finally passed and you have no need to fear it coming anymore.”

Celestia could barely speak, and behind her, Luna smiled. It was true, every word, and she wasn’t so petty as to feel left out again or anything else like that. The Princess of the Moon had learned not to let those evil thoughts make any headway into her heart anymore.

“But yeah, you could DEFINITELY work on your Optimism, though.”

A pair of light blue eyes shined brightly, and it was clear whose voice this was.

“Come now, Pinkie. We agreed on who would do the talking here, ok?”

“Sorry! I just needed to say that!”
And with that, the eyes closed as did all the other pairs, and only Twilight’s purple ones were visible again.

“But truly Princess, do not be so sad, ok? We are fine, even if we don’t look it. We’ve also been able to see across the borders of worlds and beyond. We are so very happy to be seeing that you princesses have all been so very active in helping the lands, both in day and night, since we did this and had to leave.”

Luna stepped forward as well now and stood next to her big sister.
“Are… are any of you lonely, in a manner of speaking?”

The great infected amalgamation shook its head.
“No, we receive regular visits here Discord. And also… we are traveling a bit and looking for new places to go to without needing to worry about infecting others with our viruses.”

The two sisters sighed at that, but it wasn’t too bad, after all. Discord loved them, especially little Fluttershy, and would not let anything worse happen to them. He’d be doing everything he could to make them all feel more comfortable with their horrifying and ever-mutating conditions, for example.
Suddenly, those vast wings, complete with branch-like spikes and several massive fiery red eyes on each wing, stretched upwards.

“I’m sure-we all are-that we’ll be able to see you all again, Princesses. And not just in dreams like this, but in real life face to face, and not have to worry about infecting anypony.”

Luna nodded along with her sister, but now could feel a certain strain.
“Sister, we must leave now. The barrier between the worlds due to Twil-their presence is weakening the barrier between our realities. If we stay longer, it will collapse and they may be summoned to our world physically and spread their contagions.”

“What? Oh dear… but fine.

“It has been frightfully tragic to see how horribly the plagues have warped your bodies, my fiends. But the fact that your minds and very souls have survived this is… such a wonderfully welcome surprise after all this hardship.”

“Farewell Princesses, take care of Equestria and each other. Oh, and Princess Celestia?”

The Alicorn in question turned to look back.

“Just… please give our families a “Love You” from each of us, ok?”

The Princess smiled.
“I will. And goodbye, Champions of Harmony.”

“Until next time, Celestia and Luna!”

And with that, the portal to the Dream Realm closed, and the two princesses awoke in Celestia’s bedroom.

THE END