The Surgeon of the Sacred Heart
Twilight’s Solution
The princess had failed.
Princess Celestia had not been able to stop the changelings.
She’d been defeated. And their subsequent victory had been inadvertent, the result of Twilight merely seeking to comfort Cadence.
This was all Twilight could think about as she worked on her experiment. She tried distracting and diverting her thoughts, but they inevitably reverted to the same awful pattern, as they always did now. Ever since the royal wedding. It had been four years since then, four long years of anguish and toil, of despair and plotting.
Twilight remembered how astonished she’d been. She’d made several unsuccessful attempts to discuss what this meant with her friends, but they had all dismissed it. Everything had worked out okay so there was no problem, they’d rationalized. Nopony else would see this for the problem it clearly was, and so she’d pretended to be over it. She too acted like everything was okay after the fact, but it was not. Things were very far from okay.
It troubled her that they couldn’t even seem to comprehend the dilemma this posed; that their supposed deity-status ruler had been defeated by a mere changeling. It did not matter that she was the Changeling Queen, Chrysalis was still mortal. She had no divine powers. She did not control the sun, for Celestia’s sake!
No, Twilight told herself as she finished the stitching on her experiment. She mustn’t use such phrases anymore, it seems they no longer apply. Checking a heart monitor, she leaned back in brief satisfaction at the stable readings.
Yes, it seems Celestia’s divinity has been disproven, and with it so has all of ponykind’s mythology and belief systems. Thousands of years of philosophical development now irrelevant. Their god is dead, and no one even realizes it.
No one except Twilight Sparkle. And this was her solution.
Strapped to the table before her was a mass of throbbing flesh, the work of several ponies’ body parts and augmented machinery melded together. Mutilated hide was stretched taut over the hulking form of the grotesquely muscular pony-being, encompassed in an outfit of turbulent leather, tight straps and valves irregularly placed—likely serving to hold it together. Sharp metal protruded from the spine, that too enhanced with a steel support.
It breathed raggedly, a painful fleshy sound emitting from its throat. It’s vocal cords would need tuning, Twilight noted as she checked it for loose seams.
She remembered how she’d withdrawn into a secluded depression after the wedding, telling the others she was just deep in studying. Of course that excuse had worn thin before long and her friends had grown concerned for her, worried that she was lonely, but their efforts to reach out had fallen on deaf ears. It was too late by then.
The truth was Twilight had been consumed by the implications of Celestia’s defeat, what it meant that Equestria was no longer ruled by a divine being. That it never had been. God is dead, and all the old rules and codes and values no longer apply.
Sure, Princess Celestia had never actually said she’d created the earth, but it was understandably assumed, given her immortality and apparent command of the heavens. And she’d never seen fit to relieve her subjects of their speculations either, instead choosing to watch on as they wallowed in lies and baselessly praised her.
Everything was built on that fallacious idea.
How could they go on living like this? What was the point if there was nothing to give value? Life has no purpose, and all of her accomplishments were meaningless. Twilight had grieved for long over this, and then she really had gone into a period of deep study. There must to be something worth living for, she’d reasoned. She’d hoped. There had to be some way to regain value in this miserable existence.
So she’d exhausted the library's store of philosophical works in her search, but they had borne no fruit and she had sent for more volumes from Canterlot. And ironically, it was during this period of waiting for the shipment that she discovered her existential remedy. Anxiety eating her, Twilight hadn’t been able to sit around waiting, but instead reverted to reading texts about science, seeking small comfort in the familiar. And she’d been morosely reading one biology volume, barely paying it attention, when it had mentioned the reprehensible experiments of Josef Mustangele and the abominations to life he’d created by transplanting organs.
At first she had been thoroughly disgusted by what she’d read, it was so perversely unnatural, but then Twilight understood. Of course it was unnatural, and that was the beauty of it. Science had conquered the old ways of creation and developed a new form of life.
Celestia was no longer capable of providing purpose, so there must be something else, something to fill the void and be the foundation of value. Something new.
If God is dead, then a new God must be created.
Twilight gave her behemoth a pat on its misshapen head, careful not to irritate the synthetic metal horn, and it only whined in response, its body pinned under the table straps.
She’d been using the organ resources of visitors and tourists for her preliminary experiments, but that method was insufficient for her final product. Ponyville just didn’t get visitors frequently enough, and traveling was too risky lest somepony discover her research. So she’d had to turn to her town’s residents. She’d first considered using orphans like Scootaloo, but they wouldn’t work very well; their parts were much too small. And it was that same track of logic that had prevented the unicorn from restricting her harvest to ponies she had little contact with.
If she was to succeed, Twilight would need to use the finest specimens available and despite her feelings on the matter, the clinically best candidates were Big Macintosh, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash. Ponies she knew all too well.
But they were the most athletic, their organs were the highest quality. It was simply science.
“No hard feelings, right?” she asked.
The creature’s head, which had mostly once belonged to Big Mac, turned to her and it uttered a shrill moan. She gave a weak smile and twisted a valve at the base of its neck, turning off the vocal cords.
It truly was the pinnacle of efficient anatomy, and possessed what must be the finest pair of wings in Equestria. Even poor Spike had been used, a victim of his own curiosity, and his arms now served as the forelegs of Twilight’s solution, thoroughly augmented of course.
But that was only half of the equation, maybe even less. While her pet project was a fine example of physicality, it would need an overabundance of magic to become a god. That was the most difficult part. It had been a field of study in its own right, determining what made up the magic of a unicorn so she could transfer it. It wasn’t like she could just transplant a horn and expect it to function, and certainly not her’s.
Twilight crossed the basement room to the desk on which her notes sat, reviewing her calculations. At times like these, she was grateful she’d been the Princess’s star pupil. Her previous studies had certainly come in handy when cracking the code to magic; for what was magic but a form of science? And she finally knew what made it all work.
Her meticulous planning was paying off.
In only an hour, Rarity would be arriving to continue the search for their friends who had disappeared a week ago. Of course, Rarity had no idea that she actually was to become an ingredient in Equestria’s new deity, but the prim unicorn would understand. She had an appreciation for the finer things of life.
And this initial transfer of magic was still only the beginning. What passed for its brain had undergone so much alteration that the patchwork monstrosity had no memory of its previous existence, yet that also meant it currently possessed the intelligence of a foal. That would change once she introduced the magic to its system.
Then the next phase of her plan can commence.
Rarity’s magic will set the whole process in motion; once imbued, the creature will gain true sentience. Then, upon Twilight instructing it of its divine destiny, they’ll set out together and siphon even more power. Many sacrifices will need to be made for the advancement of all ponies, not stopping until they have amassed enough magic to overthrow the hollow alicorn princesses. Celestia will be made suffer for hiding the truth. And once those pretenders lie dying at his feet, her scientific prometheus will absorb their magical essence too and claim his rightful position as all-powerful god of ponykind.
Stallion and mare will finally know salvation.
But for now, all she had to do was get things set for Rarity. Twilight moved back to the operating table, grinning. She grasped him in her hooves.
“You shall be named Zarathustra, and together we will reinvent the world.”
