//------------------------------//
// Chapter 64: Necroforge 
// Story: Daring Do and the Hand of Doom 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

The entire facility shuddered. Dulcimer felt the vibration, but felt it even deeper, down to his core. The ancient stone resisted valiantly, transferring the force of the blast downward and into the dry earth below, but it was not enough. The amount of magic being released was unfathomable. Containment was failing. 
He burst into the observation room. A sealed chamber, more modern than the rest of the castle, part of the central sphere that Dulcimer had spent many lifetimes constructing. Carillon was already there, no longer dressed in pure armor but instead in a white containment suit. Others were at her side: the smartest of her children, as well as advanced machine-golems, the sort that were powered by magnificently pure crystals. 
“Carillon!” cried Dulcimer as another shockwave tore through the castle. “REPORT!”
“I don’t have time to report! I’m busy fixing the problem!” 
Her magic swirled across the control systems, forming a secondary interface. She took full control of the systems, desperately trying to regain control. Dulcimer looked through the observation window, a riveted-on piece of twelve-inch thick diamond. On the far side, he could see the central chamber, the core of the Necroforge. It was white and sterile, and an operating table had been set up in the center. Lying on it was the pony Absence. She was screaming and writhing in agony. The ponies and golems that had been sent to perform the procedure had been thrown back. Many of the white Pegasi were unconscious, while the robots were destroyed completely. 
Absence sat up. The cables tore free from her body and she cried out, weeping through a mixture of several languages. The Hand ignited once again, glowing with powerful and incomprehensible magic. A surge went out. Dulcimer produced a shield spell around himself and the others, and despite its presence they were still pushed back. 
“She’s rejecting the connectors!” cried Carillon, lunging back to the controls. An image appeared, and Dulcimer winced. It was a real-time x-ray of the subject’s body. It showed her bones- -and the cables that ran through her, filling the intermediate space and propagating new and unfathomable implants. 
“Are we losing containment?”
“Grandmaster- -”
“ARE WE LOSING CONTAINMENT?”
“No,” said Carillon with full authority. “It’s advancing faster than we anticipated, but she’s fighting.”
“She had better. If we can’t stop the progression- -”
“We WILL stop it.” Carillon suddenly cried out and ran her hoof through the control hologram, shattering it. “This won’t work, I have to do it manually!” 
She ran to the door, grabbing a bandoleer of drugs and supplies as she did so. Dulcimer followed her. He knew what she was planning and how dangerous it was. It made him proud but also afraid. He loved her dearly, even if he knew that she, like all of them, was expendable. 
The main entry port to the central chamber sat down a staircase just outside of the observation chamber. Carillon leapt down the stairs, landing hard on the concrete below.
“Mother!” cried one of the Pegasi guarding the airlock. “You can’t go in there! It’s too dangerous!”
“Get out of my way!” Carillon’s horn ignited and she threw the Pegasus down, sending him skittering across the floor. She then directed her magic up at the release crank overhead, turning it swiftly using incredible force. 
“Grandmaster,” she said. “You need to stay behind.”
“No. I won’t let you go alone.”
“You built this machine. You know how to use it without me.”	
“But I don’t know how to use her. At this point that may be the more important element.”
Carillon looked at him, and he saw the thankfulness on her face. Then she nodded and pulled open the door. 
They both stepped inside. The rear one closed. Almost instantly the room was filled with acrid gas that sprayed their bodies at high pressure. Carillon coughed and choked, and resisted the urge to cry out. It was toxic to organic tissue. Ponies were not meant to go through without full-body suits, but there had been no time to don one. Dulcimer did not react in the slightest. 

Absence doubled over in pain. She screamed and wept. She did not want to scream and weep, but the pain was too intense. Her body felt as though it was burning, as though something was cutting through her and tearing her apart. In her long life, she had experienced many surgeries. She had even withstood the sort that were done awake, as was her duty, knowing the whole time that her younger sisters often experienced far worse. But that paled in comparison to this.
She did not want to cry. She wanted to make her mother proud, to serve the purpose she had been made for. But she could not. SHE would not let her. The voice in her head that screamed and brought visions of the Black Tower, the unending and eternal Monolith, drawn from countless eons of memories that were not hers. They were HERS. Had it been the physical pain alone, Absence might have borne it. Perhaps she could have withstood, screaming and writhing but still completing her mission. But the mental pain was too much. Her sanity was being torn apart, and her identity was failing.  
The airlock opened. Distantly, Absence was aware of two ponies entering the room. Yet she knew exactly who they were. She could smell them, and feel the presence of a heartbeat. With a herculean effort, she tried to suppress the pain long enough to look impressive. Because if she failed, her mother would be so very disappointed. 
Absence sat up. What few cables were left pulled out of her back, their ends corroded by the acid that was running through her veins. She tried to stand, but her bones felt as though they had been shattered. Instead, she simply flopped to one side and fell to the floor. Her hand tapped against the white stone, catching her. Its fingers tore deep gouges into the synthetic marble. Absence felt it staring back at her, felt HER wondering what exactly SHE was connected to, and why it was resisting so powerfully. 
And that was exactly what Absence did. She resisted. Forcing it back with all her will, and with all the strength she had been constructed with. For just a moment, her screaming stopped. 
“Absence.”
Absence looked up, for a moment overjoyed. Her mother had said her name. 
Carillon knelt down beside her. “Absence. I’m here. You have to listen to me. Please. I built you. I grew you, from my own flesh. I know you, and know that you’re strong. You have to be strong for me now, Absence, stronger than you’ve ever been. We have to get you into the machine, finish the implantation. It’s the only way.”
“I- -I can’t! Mother, it hurts!” 
Absence did not know what language she said it in, but Carillon seemed to understand. 
“I can’t help you if you don’t help me!”
“I- -I’m trying, mother, I’m trying- -”
“I have more of the drugs.” Carillon removed a syringe from her bandoleer. 
“Will they- -will they make the pain stop?”
“No.” Carillon shook her head gravely. “They will make it much, much worse, but they will give you more control. They will slow it down.” 
“Please- -please don’t make it worse. I can’t- -I can’t- -”
Carillon lifted Absence’s head and stared into her eyes. “You can, Absence, and you will. I know you will. You are my greatest creation. The strongest of my children. And the only one born from my own womb.” 
Absence’s eyes widened. She did not know if it was true, or if her mother was only trying to make her feel better- -but she held onto the idea. That she was not born in a tank, that she was truly her mother’s daughter. Although somehow that made her feel worse. A nagging voice within her sounded with an air of deepset hatred. Hatred was something that SHE understood, and SHE grasped onto it, burrowing deeper into Absence’s head.
Absence screamed. Carillon levitated the syringes, and then hugged her daughter. Absence felt the needles hit their mark, finding the veins in her neck. The drug flowed into her, and with it unimaginable agony. 
No scream came from her. She only convulsed. Her mother reached forward and wrapped her daughter in a hug. Absence could feel her golden metallic hooves surrounding her. 
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Daughter, my daughter. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
Absence closed her eyes, and felt herself hugging back- -but realized that it was not by her own will. The Hand was moving on its own accord, and she felt it lay itself on her mother’s back. Absence’s eyes suddenly widened with horror when she felt what it was doing. She felt the program rising within it, the design and blueprints for the thing that she would soon become. They were being transferred. The disease was being transmitted. 
“NO!” she screamed.
The Hand did not expect the sudden surge of resistance. For just a moment, Absence subsumed its control. She commanded its power for just a fraction of a second, but it was enough.
The hand ignited with a massive explosion of blood-red magic. Carillon arched her back and screamed as the magic struck her. She had no shield spell and no runes to protect her, and the blast tore her apart.
A surge of orange came from behind, but Dulcimer was already too late. He tore Carillon away and threw her onto the white floor. She bounced once but then fell still. She lay here, smoking, and she did not move.
“M…mother?” said Absence. “Mother?”
There was no response. And no motion. 
Absence suddenly began to cry. Not weeping, and not screaming, but quiet sobbing. “Mother,” she said, softly. “Mother…why? What have I done?”
The drugs took effect, and Absence tilted, falling to her side on the cold marble. She shook as Dulcimer approached him. The only sound that came from her was a soft cheeping, like the sound of a baby chick. 
Dulcimer did not know why the tank-grown clones made that sound when under extreme duress, but he had come to hate it. He hated it because it demonstrated what he had been reduced to, how an ancient Order of over twenty bloodlines now relied on things that were not even real ponies. More secretly, though, he hated it because of what it meant, and what he had been reduced to doing. 
He turned to one of the other white Pegasi, but did not even need to give the order. They had already surrounded what was left of Carrilon and were administering first aid using the medical equipment that had been meant for Absence.
“Is she…”
“These wounds are substantial,” said one of the Pegasi, looking up with tears in his eyes. 
“Can they be repaired?”
“Not by us. But by her maybe.”	
“Then get her to a surgical suite and get her conscious.”
The Pegasus’s eyes widened. “But Grandmaster, these injuries, the amount of pain and cognitive dissonance- -”
Dulcimer pointed at Absence. “If this one can handle this, I expect a knight to be able to handle at least what I’m ordering of her. I need her alive. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, my lord. Brothers! Sisters! Prep for transport!” 
“No, I’ll take her,” said Dulcimer, levitating the limp but strangely light body. “Give me a skeleton crew but leave the rest here. Get that clone connected to the Necroforge! NOW!”
The terrified Pegasi saluted, and they obeyed their master’s orders with precision and absolute dedication. Somehow, Dulcimer did not think that it would be enough. 

Dulcimer was not a surgeon, at least not on living flesh. In his long life he had learned many things, but by no means all of them. That was an interesting fact that he had not understood in his youth, when he thought that knowledge had been finite. Nine thousand eight hundred and seventy eight years later, there were still things he failed to know. Things he wish he had. 
Yet the surgery continued as he watched. Ponies walked through the room, carrying various pieces of surgical equipment and supplies- -or at least the images of ponies. They were transparent, almost mechanical-looking constructs made from orange light. Carillon’s magic. A team of imaginary surgeons projected by her own will and magic, a team to allow her to complete the vision and procedures she saw within her own head. 
Dulcimer was forced to look away, to keep his eyes focused on the darkness of the room and not at the operating table in the center. Not just because of the surgery, but because of its costs. Costs that Carillon was callous enough to deal with but that Dulcimer himself would rather not have known. Once again his own adage echoed through his mind: that it was possible to escape death, if only one was willing to pay the price. 
Then the surgeons stopped. They set down their tools and stood at attention before fading unceremoniously as the spell dissipated. 
“Carillon?” said Dulcimer. His voice echoed through the otherwise empty room as though it were a tomb.
“I’m here,” she said. Her voice was ragged and quiet. It was apparent that she was exhausted.
Carillon sat up, and Dulcimer saw what she had done. Carillon stared at him, though her one orange eye- -and through a red eye that sat in the other socket. 
She turned on the operating bed and lifted her front hooves. They were no longer metal. Instead, they were covered in soft, white fur. As was much of her, including a sizable portion of her face that surrounded her new eye. As impeccable as her work had been, the stitches between the white and teal components of her body were still just barely visible.
“You have hooves.”
“Yes,” said Carillon, flexing them. “I’ve been meaning to do this for some time. I suppose I never had the impetus to do so until now.” She looked at the substantial part of her side that had been replaced, knowing that new organs sat beneath it. A new stomach, a new spleen, part of a new liver- -and a new heart that beat very different from her own. 
“I’m calico,” she said. “I…I suppose I can dye it. Nopony will even be able to…to tell…”
Her face scrunched up in a frown and she covered it with her foreleg. So that Dulcimer would not see her cry. 
“Carillon? What’s wrong?”     
“Nothing. My body…this…this is an acceptable cost. For our goal. But…but…”
Dulcimer approached her and helped her off the table. She stood on her shaky legs, and he hugged her, kissing her forehead just below her horn. “You are alive. That’s what counts. I was so afraid. I was prepared to offer it to you again. The choice I made.”
Carillon shook her head. “No. No, I’m not ready to pay that cost. I can’t.”	
“And I would never ask it of you. Not for any cause in the world. It is a choice one must make on their own.”
“And one you regret?”
Dulcimer frowned. “I do not have the capacity to regret.” 
“But…but…” She looked up at him. Both of her eyes were filled with tears. “This body. I’m…never mind. If I was not able to continue our bloodline before, being more ugly hardly matters.”
“You are not ugly. Your scars only show your devotion to the Order. And I imagine stereoscopic vision is a benefit as well.”
Carillon smiled. “It is nice to be able to see you properly again.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t sew wings onto yourself.”
“Don’t be ludicrous, it doesn’t suit you.”
They hugged again. As they did, the door opened behind them.
Dulcimer turned as a robot stepped in. His single lens focused on them. 
“Grandmaster Dulcimer. High Seneschal Carillon,” it said, speaking in a voice that almost betrayed sentience. 
“The core?”
“Stabilized for now. I have been able to slow progression but not stop it. Regardless, a more pressing matter requires your attention.”
Dulcimer frowned. “What kind of matter?”
“An intruder has breached the lower flight bay.” 

Solum Finis stepped through the Questlord base with absolute impudence. The bay had been meant to sustain a small air force; in ancient times, it would have housed the vast steel flying machines that unicorn soldiers would have used to engage in air-battles. A few of the ancient machines still existed, rusted and decayed, the knowledge of their function long-since lost by all but the deepest of loremasters. Instead, it had been coopted into a hanger and deployment area for Pegasi. Pegasi who quite obviously did not appreciate an enormous silver pony walking down their runway and through the enclosed hanger. 
They had opened fire. Their weapons were numerous and varied: there were ones that threw bullets, arrows, and rockets, as well as weapons charged using magical crystals or other sources of magic. Others swarmed around him like tiny uniformed bees, trying to find openings to attack.
Yet their efforts were completely in vain. No projectile could penetrate Solum Finis’s armored skin, and bullets and arrows bounced away harmlessly without even producing dents. Magical beams were reflected, even though he bore no runes. Even when the Pegasi decided to concentrate their fire on the damaged parts of his body, Solum Finis received no damage. 
This did not especially amuse the Argasis but it did not bother him either. It did make him wonder, though. His kind and those that had created them had been rendered extinct in a war that he could barely remember. They had been swatted down like flies, consumed by protean liquid flesh. Yet these ponies, the greatest warriors of their civilization, could not even harm a dying Argasus. Had the War occurred in this latter age, their world would have burned in a matter of minutes. 
He passed through unhindered, only to find that they had closed the blast doors at the rear of the hanger. This had effectively sealed the Pegasi in with him. That seemed crude of them, but he imagined that they were analogous to the expendable castes in his own society.
A door, of course, meant nothing. He extended his wings forward and slid the bladed metal feathers through the steel. It cut away like butter against his body’s silver, and he pushed it apart with ease using his hooves. The hallways inside were narrower, but a few of them were large, meant for heavy transport coming out of ancient antigravity carriers. He followed those, moving unhindered deeply into the base. 

Dulcimer and Carrilon found him deep in the facility, in a quiet, darkened area. The cool, sterile stone of the ancient structure had been overlaid with new, modern equiptment that supported a number of pods. Each one glowed lightly from within. Solum Finis was leaning toward one, staring at the contents: a tiny, white fetus linked by its naval to an artificial placenta. The walls were covered with them, peacefully sleeping and growing, their minds already being programmed for the wars that they would fight. The particular one that Solum Finis was observing would become a stallion. He already had a tiny pair of wings growing. 
Carillon approached Solum Finis angrily. He knew she was there but could not see her. He had no eye on that side of his face. He had torn it out on a whim long ago. 
“You,” she said. “Break one of my pods and I will break you.” 
“I doubt you could,” he said, not taking his eyes off the adorable fetus. “My body is made of hypercrystalline silver. Your civilization does not even have the capacity to manufacture it.”
“And just how would you know about our civilization?” asked Dulcimer, joining the now bicolored female knight that stood at his side.  
Solum Finis turned. The mechanisms in his eye narrowed on the knights. “These children,” he said, gesturing to the countless artificial wombs. “Tell me. You are their mother, little one. Do they dream?”
“They don’t have developed brains.”	
“Don’t they? Neither do I. In fact I lack what you would even call a brain, or a nervous system. Yet I still dream. I like to think that they do too. Perhaps they dream the same dreams I have, but on a much shorter scale.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I have witnessed the rise of your civilization. I have seen endless war and the birth of gods, witnessed the lives of the creatures you call ponies.” He turned back to the fetuses. “I have never dreamed this, though. I like it. Aren’t they adorable? They remind me of me. I like them was forged in a vat, grown from a single spore by a master Aurasus child-crafter.” He paused, and gently put his silver hoof on the glass of the pod. The baby Pegasus within smiled and twitched slightly. “I was beautiful once. Like them.”
“Don’t touch that.”
Solum Finis smiled and removed his hoof. 
“Why are you here?” asked Dulcimer.
“Because I can sense the Hand. Because it calls to me.”
“You won’t take it.”
Solum Finis stared at him and smiled. He had teeth, and they were unpleasantly sharp. “If I had wanted to do that, I already would have. But that is not my goal. You are the bearers now. You have taken my curse. And yet the dreams still haunt me. And the Hand still calls.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Because he’s insane,” added Carillon.
“Not insane. No. But I’ve dreamt. I’ve dreamt in both directions.”
Carillon rolled her eyes, but Dulcimer gave pause. He alone remembered the ancient seers, the ones who had made profound sacrifices not for life but for sight.
“And what did you see?”
“I peered into the past,” said Solum Finis. “Across impossible expanses of time. To my own era, but that only made me sad at what I have lost. So I looked further. So much further…”
“What did you see?” demanded Dulcimer, stepping forward with anticipation.
“I saw our creation,” said Solum Finis. A disconerning smile crossed his face. “Not my own. I already know that. We are the Argasi. We were created by the Aurasi to assuage their loneliness. Just as we created the Brontasi to serve as workers. What you call a Neightonic hierarchy.”
“The lie we tell the Pegasi,” said Carillon.
“But much more visceral. The Aurasi were the most perfect beings to exist. Beings with bodies of pure gold. And of them, atop the summit of Olympus, sat the greatest of all. The Golden Lord.” He leaned forward suddenly. Neither unicorn backed away. “But,” he said, “who was it who created the first of the Aurasi? Who was it that gave our kind life?”	
“Don’t waste our time with rhetorical questions,” ordered Carillon. 
“Such a boring mare. The feathery one would not have been so sour. Fine. I have looked into the past, and I saw THEM. The creatures of legend, those that gave birth to the Golden Lord and to the Aurasi. The Adamantasi. The creatures who descended from the sky and breathed life into us in the era of the Blue-Lit Flowers.” He laughed suddenly. It was a grating, broken sound. “And only later did I realize what that meant, what I truly was guarding.”
“And what was that?”
“A Hand of the Creator.” 
Dulcimer shivered. He had considered the possibility that the Hand was, in fact, a Hand, but had refused to allow himself to consider what it might have come from. It was easier to leave that line of reasoning alone, and to consider it an extremely dangerous artifact, as powerful as it was deadly, if not more so. 
“Noble creature of silver,” he said. “What is it you seek?” 
“I have seen the future. I have witnessed the return of the Golden Lord, born again from his sacrifice and changed only in bearing one amethyst eye, the mark of his resurrection. From him our civilization will be reborn.”
“And that I cannot allow,” said Dulcimer, suddenly. “You know that. I have sacrificed everything to ensure that ponies govern themselves rather than be ruled by immortal kings or queens.”
Solum Finis stared at him, almost in disgust. “Why would we have an interest in ruling YOU? You are insignificant to us. Insects, barely. I only find you cute because I lived alone in a cave for two million years. Our only interest would be in ruling ourselves. Your Equestria is not our concern.” 
“I cannot guarantee that.”
“No. I suppose you can’t. But I know the Hand. Better than anypony. And I know that I can control it. Better than you can, at least.”
Dulcimer looked at Carillon, and could tell that she did not approve. 
“For what price?”
“For the resurrection of a single Aurasi. A single golden god. A working Necroforge would have more than enough power. To do that and more. The Hand of the Vandrare willed us to be once, and it will will us again. I’m sure of it.” 
Dulcimer paused, considering. “If you can provide useful help,” he said, slowly, “then we will offer you help as a friend and ally of our cause.”
“I do not agree with this course of action,” said Carillon.
“Your disagreement is noted,” said Dulcimer. “But the final decision rests with me.”
“Of course, Grandmaster. Thank you for considering my input.”
Dulcimer did not know if that was meant to be sarcastic, nor did he care. “Please. Let her children sleep. Come with me. Absence is in great pain but holding. See if you can help her.”
“Of course,” said Solum Finis, smiling. He followed the ponies, wondering if they knew. He doubted the female did, but the male- -or the one that had once been male- -might have known. They were now locked in a game, but it was a simple game, one with only one outcome. Solum Finis already knew that he would not be the one to betray them. That would happen all on its own.