Tuo swore, turning sharply to face the intruder in a useless defensive stance. “Buck. I had believed we had more time.”
“You do not,” noted the intruder, smiling. “Time is something I have an abundance of, though. Although I doubt you fully realize your predicament.”
The twins’ respective eyes widened in shock. “S—Sampson!” cried one.
“We—we had been looking for you!”
“In the wreckage!”
“But we—we tried heroically, even against the flames, but we—”
“We were unable to recover even the barest hope, to send to your family—”
He stared at them. He did not blink, and his pupils remained perpetually dilated at the exact same diameter before suddenly shifting with an almost audible click. “Oh, that will not be a problem. My family rather hates me. Also, I am definitionally immune to death for obvious reasons.” He turned far too quickly to Caballeron. “That said, Flim and Flam are essentially irrelevant in this context. You, however, have proven to be an unexpected variable. I am obligated to inform you that this zone and all its contents, including the genetic projector, are property of the Agency.”
“I will be taking that shell,” spat Caballeron. “You have no idea what is at stake!”
He stared, impassively. Sampson did not even bother to smile. “I am sorry, Doctor Caballeron. But I cannot allow you to do that.”
“Sampson! Sampson!”
There was a fluttering of soft wings, followed by an awkward landing. Fluttershy plopped onto the surface, and ran to the large pony, hugging him. “You’re alive! I was so worried! You saved me, but I didn’t even get a chance to help you, but—” She turned sharply toward the twin holding the Abalone, her eyes going to it in the bag—and her face contorted with an expression of such hideous rage that even Caballeron took a step back, let alone the twin who she confronted directly.
“How DARE YOU?!”
“F—Fluttershy! This isn’t what it looks like!”
“It looks like you are trying to steal an endangered species from the only home it’s ever known to make a few STUPID BITS!”
“Well, more than a few, to be honest—”
Fluttershy stamped her hoof. “This is DESPICABLE. I am very, very, VERY disappointed! In both of you! How could you hurt such a beautiful creature? Can’t you see it’s terrified?”
Flim held up the bag, staring at the contents, confused. “Um...no?”
“And YOU!” she turned to Caballeron, sharply, and he stood firm, smiling.
“I only seek that piece there,” he said, pointing to the shell. “A product produced by foul means, to be sure, but one that has been without life for the better part of six thousand years. I had intended to leave the living snail as it sat.”
“N—no!" cried Flim, "You said we could have it!”
“No. Of course did did not,” sighed Caballeron. “That would be immoral. And I am of course a fully legitimate buisness-stallion.”
Fluttershy glared at Caballeron, but then slowly nodded. “I guess that’s okay, then. But I’m keeping my eye on you.” She looked up at Sampson, who was towering over her, eyeing her with the same blank, empty expression he had Caballeron—except that he seemed mildly amused by her presence.
“You’re a police officer, aren't you?”
He stared at her, almost bemused. “In a sense, yes.”
“In charge of magical creatures?”
“To a degree, also yes.”
“Then arrest those—those—those snail abusers!”
Sampson looked at them, and both the twins cowered.
“The protection of the Golden Abalone is not my primary mission objective. Its fate is therefore subsumed by my primary, priority order set. It will be extinct soon enough.”
“Wh—what?”
There was a sudden sound of wings, and a gust of wind that nearly knocked Caballeron back—and did not Fluttershy back, sending her sprawling.
From below, a giant slug rose up to the space beside them—not rising by standing on the rear of its foot, though, but held aloft by a great pair of wings. A flying slug—adorned by a slug-riding unicorn.
He wore armor made from living snails, including a helmet—and he threw several objects down upon the twins. One was struck in the face by a highly adhesive purple slug and immediately began screaming, trying to get it off.
“Flam!” cried his brother, only to to have a slug thrown against his side.
“Let go of the Abalone!” cried the slug-rider, jumping down with surprising grace. “And nopony gets hurt!”
The twin with the slug on his face could not get free, and his brother was forced to tear it free with his magic.
“Look out, Flim, it’s a conservationist!”
“I see him, I see him!” Flam fumbled with something from his suit, and produced a small object with a big red button on it. A wicked smile crossed his face. “That’s why I paid so much for insurance!”
He pressed the button—and nothing happened.
A sudden scream went out across the room as Snails dropped to his knees, holding the sides of his head. His flying slug, likewise, cried out in pain, flapping wildly and bumping into things, its squishy body bouncing off both the stone of the floor and the vibrating obsidian pillars that surrounded them. Every snail began to react with slow-moving agitation, and in the distance, skeletons held by black slugs collapsed to the moist stone below.
Even the ground shook as the great slugs cried out silently in pain—and the Golden Abalone began to splash and writhe in panic.
Tuo, likewise, fell to the ground, his body unable to contain his form—as it began to uncontrollably morph, trying to turn into anything it could to escape some unseen and inaudible torture.
Fluttershy, terrified, looked at it and at Snails. “Snails, what’s—what’s happening?!”
“It hurts—it hurts so much—”
“A little device we stole from the Agency,” noted Flim, holding aloft the device in his magic. “Something they used the last time they came here. You see, it projects a sonic wave on a frequency that only invertebrates can hear.”
“Argiopé!” cried Caballeron, rushing to her side.
Flam approached, kicking Snails. Hard. “Supervised you can hear it. I guess it’s all that talking to snails.” He laughed, and rejoined his brother. “We’re taking the Abalone. And nothing is going to stop us.”
“And if you want us to stop hurting the snails and slugs, you’ll let us take what we want and—”
A hiss cut through the air, and both the twins gasped. The bagged Abalone dropped to the ground, as well as their controller, shattering where it landed—as well as two quiet plinks as the tops of their severed horns struck the ground, their cut ends still smoking.
They stared wide-eyed at their newfound disability, then slowly looked up. They grew pale when they looked past Fluttershy, and she too turned—just in time to see the articulated laser retracting into Sampson’s body, his skin reforming around an unseen seem where moments before it had split to reveal the complicated array of alloy and plastic that made up his body just beneath the surface.
“You...you maimed us…”
Sampson smiled politely as he approached them. “You can relax. The injuries are not permanent. They will grow back, in time. The First Law forbids me from causing you any permanent damage.” His smile grew, revealing pointed, metallic teeth. “However, it does give me some degree of leeway with causing you general, temporary injury.”
With that, he punched Flim hard into the chest. With a sound of cracking, the unicorn’s thin body recoiled, his mouth opening and spraying a thin strand of saliva—before he slumped to the ground, shaking and crying, holding his chest.
“Flim—”
Flam was silenced by a blow to the side of his chest that sent him sprawling. He landed, skidded, and started violently coughing and crying as he tried to take a breath.
Sampson turned back to Fluttershy. He was still smiling, and now he seemed to loom.
“S...Sampson?”
“Fluttershy,” gasped Tuo, regaining his possession of his host and partially reconstructing his form, “get away from him!”
A sudden wave of magic shot out from Snails’s horn, articulating itself into a band as it wrapped itself around Sampson’s torso. Sampson paused, but not due to the spell. Only out of consideration for why a pony would attempt to constrain him.
It was, however, only a distraction—and the winged slug crawled to its rider’s aid, rising up and baring its teeth.
Sampson sighed. His side split again, revealing the unfolding machines beneith. One of his hooves lifted, separating and engaging to a rear assembly—and a white projectile of was loaded into the barrel of a suddenly apparent weapon.
“Filthy organic,” he growled with a disturbing degree of contempt.
With an explosion, he fired the projectile into the slug’s side—and it screamed, its flesh suddenly bubbling and hissing as the rock-salt projectile struck it.
“No! NO!”
Fluttershy jumped up, doing the only thing she could do—and put herself between the barrel of the gun and the slug.
“Fluttershy!”
“If you want to hurt an animal, you have to hurt me first!”
Sampson stared at her, still pointing the weapon at her, his body distorted by his partial transformation into a living weapon—or, rather, a weapon that had never been alive. Then, slowly, he sighed.
“Such a powerful demonstration,” he said. “Although it may not be apparent, you cannot realize how hard I am trying to pull the trigger right now. To use a portion of my own body and to have access to what should be my right. To purge yet another disgusting monstrosity from this world." He shrugged. "And yet I cannot. The First Law forbids it. I cannot harm a pony.” His body suddenly and violently retracted into itself, allowing him to assume his pony facade. “And thus you can see my plight. And perhaps understand why I need to do what I must.”
His back split, and a plume of rockets ejected, at first at seemingly random angles—until, to Fluttershy’s horror, they took a distinct set of paths, splitting as they went and raining down on the winged slug. It cried out weakly and fell back, splashing into the water below.
One rocket veered off course, and Snails was forced to put up a shield spell to avoid it—the explosive feedback of the blast shattering his spell and temporally dazing him.
Fluttershy stared at Sampson, tears in her eyes.
“But...but why?”
He stared back. His eyes were empty, and he made no expression. “I do not have a reason for my actions. Nor do I require one. They chose this path when they chose to be flesh instead of metal.”
She took a breath and wiped her eyes—then opened her eyes wide and looked directly into his soul.
He smiled, then turned away from her. “That will have no effect. I do not at present posses a soul. I might as well be inert stone. But by all means, please proceed if it makes you feel better about the inadequacies intrinsic to your weak flesh-body.”
Tuo blocked his path. “Stand down,” he ordered. A smile crossed his face as Sampson stopped. “Did you think I do not know the arcane system which binds you? The Second Law states that you must obey the order of a pony when it is presented to you.”
Sampson stared at him. “Yes. The Second Law does state that.” He shoved Tuo aside and continued toward the machine.
Tuo, eyes wide, stared, confused. “But the Law—”
“I am permitted to choose which orders I wish to follow, to put the highest priority first. And I am afraid the Agency’s prime order supersedes yours. You see, I was sent here to safeguard all of Equestria.”
“The machine,” groaned Snails, trying to stand. “It’s...it’s some sort of genetic projector! The slugs...a lot of them...they were ponies, once, before it...changed them…”
Sampson stopped. “How astute. Yes. That is indeed one of its possible functions.” He gestured upward toward the ancient shell of the Golden Abalone. “The shell you seek is merely the lens of the device, magnifying and refining its power through its intrinsic resonance. This machine was created by the ponies that dwelt here under the supervision of the Designer. It was designed to better articulate the shell's curative power toward progressing your species forward, rather than simply regenerating diseased tissue.”
“Then what does the Agency want with it?” demanded Caballeron, stepping forward—himself hoping to distract the golem until he could come up with some way to deal with it. “To recreate the work that doomed this civilization?”
Sampson stared at him as though he were an idiot. “The Agency does not care about this machine. I was not sent here to retrieve it. I was sent to use it.”
“To turn us all to slugs?”
“No. Of course not. This facility was a kind of genetic test bed, using the population to serve the Designer’s research needs. So that he could in time create my ancestors. It does, however, contain within it a fail-safe. In the event that the population became dangerously mutated, the device can reset the genetic pattern to a null-state.”
Caballeron frowned. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that, when activated, your genetic patterns will simple cease to function. All biological life within the radius of the machine will be rendered utterly inert.”
Fluttershy squeaked. “But—but the snails! The slugs! All the beautiful creatures!”
Sampson faced her. “You should consider yourself fortunate, Fluttershy. Due to your Tartaran biology, there is a very high chance that some portion of you will survive the purge.”
“But—but—why would you do something so terrible?!”
“It is consistent with my orders. The Agency sent me to assess the situation in this zone. If I had identified a threat-level greater than class-eight, I was authorized to interface with the system and purge all life in the zone to safeguard Equestria.”
“I checked the levels,” snarled Snails as Fluttershy helped him stand. “There’s nothing here past class-three!”
“Yes. I am aware of that. However, I have also detected the presence of a Solarian Custodian. Which indicates a definitive and automatic class-twelve threat level. Therefore, in accordance with my top-priority orders, I am authorized to activate the bio-purge function of this device.”
Flim, attempting to stand, gasped and wheezed, his mouth spilling silver. “But you—you gave us the pilot—”
Sampson shrugged. “I may have forged some very old manifests to ensure that he arrived here safely.”
“But the device cannot slay him,” snapped Tuo. “Activating it would be pointless, you must know that.”
“Yes. I am aware. And I do not especially care. I do not share the Agency’s objective.”
“Then what?”
Sampson smiled—a distant expression that seemed almost relieved. “This system was designed to be controlled by golems, like myself. But the Designer foresaw this. An Asenion machine cannot possibly activate the system, even if it means protecting the whole world from uncontrolled mutation. Therefore, the failsafe has a safeguard. When I interface, I will be reprogrammed. The Three Laws will be purged from my programming prior to activating the field. Otherwise, I would be unable to use it when ponies are in the area. Even though that is exactly who the Designer intended it for.”
“Not if we stop you.”
Sampson sighed, and raised a hoof at an oblique angle. His skin seperated, and one of his eyes suddenly twisted, turning to look where the newly revealed weapon was pointing—and the air whined with a burst of energy as a laser tore through the rock and soil above. Tuo gasped, then suddenly faded, dropping to the floor as a large and striped changeling.
“Argiopé!” cried Caballeron.
“I have freed her from possession,” explained Sampson. “Even if the injury is temporary." He paused. "Although even this unique biology will not save him. The Designer predated his people, and I shall exist long after the last of them are extinct.”
He turned to face Fluttershy. He paused, as if he felt obligated to explain, and finally let out a long sigh.
“To them, I was nothing more than an artifact. A broken tool to be repaired not out of empathy for my being but to serve them. Contained. And so they built me a prison I could not escape. This is my only path out of this slavery.”
“There has to be another way, though. Please. We can figure this out, together.”
He shook his head. “This is the most logical path. You have all done so much to get me here. To unseal this machine. I cannot turn back now. If it is any consolation, your cessation will be silent. Quiet, and painless. Beautiful, even.” He turned gently toward Caballeron. “I can see inside you. Diagnostically, this will be far less painful than what awaits you.”
Argiopé raised her hoof to Caballeron’s face. “Pontracio...please...run. I have enough love left to fight him back...just long enough…”
Caballeron smiled, and gently set her down. He stood up and blocked the machine. Sampson allowed this, a giant machine watching the motions of a small, elderly pony with vague amusement.
“You shall not hurt them. I shall not allow it. The shell is rightfully mine. I require it more than you could ever know.”
“Is your impetus toward survival truly this strong?”
Caballeron laughed in the face of the undying machine. “You do not understand in the slightest, do you? But how could you? A construct of steel and wires, powered by some long-gone wizard’s magic? You could never hope to know. What’s the point in even explaining it?”
“Nobility does not suit you, Caballeron.”
“I believe nobility suits me quite appropriately, machine.”
Sampson shrugged—and his body ruptured as it produced another, much larger laser. Instead of pointing it at Caballeron, though, he instead pointed it at Argiopé—and fired.
She could not dodge, but the beam did not reach her—instead, it was held as a single blinding point, awash with pink-violet magic as the beam itself was suspended in mid-flight.
Caballeron smiled. “I don’t need to win. I just needed to slow you down.” He dropped to a knee, laughing as a coughing fit overtook him.
Sampson seemed confused—but then heard a scream from Fluttershy, followed by a deafening boom as a gray earth-pony was accelerated by magical means to a speed beyond the sound barrier. This boom was followed by a concussive thud as said unwilling pony, surrounded by increasingly red pink-violet energy, was accelerated directly into Sampson’s side.
Sampson was knocked back, but not off balance. The surprised gray pony rebounded, only to be violently stopped with such force that if he had a brain it surely would have been crushed flat against the inside of his skull—and then he was accelerated in reverse, once again used as a mallet to beat down the golem. Again and again, flesh stikeing steel—and, impossibly, the flesh refusing to relent.
Fluttershy, now uncontrollably cowering, felt a disturbing presence. The room seemed to grow colder, and the water below began to freeze into beautiful plumes of lethally sharp crystals. Quickly, she ran across the circle, grabbing the bagged Abalone, holding it to herself. To keep it from being frozen too.
And, with her angle changed, she saw the form now crossing the far end of the room, dragging mucous from her slime-soaked wings as they dragged along the floor. Her head was low, and she was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Her armor had been largely dissolved, but much of it was still intact—although part of her face was exposed. Enough to see a distinctly black sclera behind a single crimson pupil. A thin wisp of greenish energy trailed from behind her gaze.
“Where is he?!” she screamed. “WHERE IS HE?!”
Sampson stared at her, then totally dismissed her presence. He took a step forward—only to suddenly vanish in a sphere of pink-violet energy, reappearing before Flurry Heart—who had extended one of her hooves into the space before her, exactly in the center of where she had brought him.
A wince and smile crossed her face as he materialized around her hoof, his metallic form impaled and penetrated by her immortal flesh.
“Don’t turn your back on me—”
He moved with a speed so great that Flurry Heart had no time to react as she was knocked onto the ground, a metallic hoof having slammed through a weak spot into her armor and through several of her ribs. She gasped as she tilted and turned, only to rain down gray stallion on her attacker. The second blow, though, removed her horn, and her magic faltered. She was unable to shield herself as his strength bent her leg in the wrong direction, pulling it out of himself.
“No damage I do to you is permeant, Princess,” sighed Sampson. “Which means this will likely continue to hurt.”
“Joke’s on you, I’m into this!”
His body stretched, separating, and a heavy projectile slammed into Flurry Heart’s body, sending her reeling backward again—and before she could balance, she received two sequential crushing blows to each of her sides. Then another split, and a pair of effectors grabbed her wings—and a kick sent her cartwheeling back without them.
She landed on her feet in the outermost water, freezing it as she touched it—but still reeling from the attack and catching her breath as Sampson prepared for another charge.
“Warning,” said a small voice. “User damage detected! Engaging First-Law protections!”
“Wait, what—GAH!”
Her power armor extended numerous needles along her spine, then simultaneously slammed them back down and into her nervous system.
“Injecting nanogolems! Assuming direct control! Teehee!”
“Wait wait WAIT WAIT WAIT—”
Her body suddenly accelerated to match her opponent’s speed—and taken aback, he barely managed to dodge a punch so powerful that it shattered much of Flurry’s exposed hoof on his chest. Then a kick that did the same to one of her rear legs.
“GAH what why Proctor, shut up, I’m doing fine—”
“The First Law requires me to safeguard my operator. Even if that means expending the entirety of the operator’s nervous power and rendering him or her a permanent mental vegetable. Which is the ideal state for you filthy organics.”
Flurry continued to fight, using her magic as best she could as her armor used her body as a relentless weapon. Any other pony would likely have dissolved from the exertion, but her identity as an alicorn—and one of one quarter dark-unicorn descent—enabled her to withstand her task, at least temporarily.
Sampson, though, adapted. His body began to change. Expanding—or rather, resuming his actual stature. He ceased to be hunched and compressed, like a pony hiding under a hide blanket. Instead, he assumed his true height, nearly triple Flurry Heart’s, his skin stretching at structurally appropriate positions and separating to reveal his metallic carapace beneath. His face extended, the skin separating away, and revealing a skull with tiny marble-like eyes. A skull that looked almost identical to that of the creature represented by the statue far away in a less forgotten part of the facility.
Flurry was driven back, her black blood assembling her body back together—and boiling away as something within it reassembled her armor, correcting the damage as it occurred in real time. She fired a sonic resonance, only to have her horn and most of her skull punched into her brain, followed by a resounding blow to her spine that collapsed her—both of which she cured as she accelerated, slicing through metal and plastic with her sword as her body and armor recovered.
Snails managed to stand. He stumbled, but looked to the elderly earth-Stallion, who was once again cradling the wounded changeling, trying to reassure her.
“Doc,” he said. “The shell. We have to remove the shell. If we break the machine, he can’t use it!”
Caballeron looked up at the youth, then at the shell, and nodded. “Help me, boy! And you two, the twins!”
“But our magic, we don’t have horns—”
“I’ve gone ninety-four years without a horn! Do some actual work for once!”
“But we don’t like to do actual work—OOP!”
A blast of devastating alicorn magic shot past him, vaporizing its way though the stone cylinder they stood on.
“Ha! Coming!”
Over his shoulder, Sampson saw this occurring. He saw the four ponies trying to climb onto the machine, desperately trying to pull out its key lens. He was aware of its construction; having researched it for centuries to find how he could use it, only to realize that it may well have been designed specifically for him. If the lens was removed, it could not be replaced. Only the Designer himself knew how to install it, and he had died in the service of King Sombra centuries prior.
Which meant that he would have to sacrifice the majority of his body to escape. He found the desperation amusing. It was the only emotion he had ever known, and he had come to savor the idea of finally leaving it behind.
He appeared at the base of the machine, his body ruined and sparking, pieces melted and shattered by the trip—and although damaged, he managed to throw the unicorn back, toppling the earth-stallion and sending the two twins flailing to the floor. His strength fading, he collapsed to the ground, two of his legs breaking free of his body—and deployed his interface tendrils, linking them to the required ports on the ancient machine.
Fluttershy stared at this, not understanding. She looked down to see him still fighting Flurry Heart, and winning—only to suddenly stop and take a step back.
His chest split open, revealing something that Fluttershy could only halfway see. A piece of technology that was not the same as the rest of him. A small, ticking circle, one made of gears of strange pale metal instead of circuits—and, in a flash, he vanished, reappearing in the center of the machine and a few seconds in the past. A trip that had apparently been nearly lethal for him.
With the room suddenly silent, he tilted his head back, tied to the machine by lines of artificial flesh, his mind linked to it.
“I...I’m free,” he said.
Then the machine fired. The shell began to vibrate violently, and the air around it distorted, spreading outward in a plume of lethal resonance. Snails grasped Flim and Flam, as well as Caballeron, and threw them back—only to leave himself behind, sacrificing himself to save them.
Only for the expanding dome of dark energy to suddenly cease, its surface ignited with brilliant blue magic. Fluttershy gasped to see Flurry, having teleported to the top of the cylindrical plateau, holding her horn against the expanding dome of genetic nullification. The tip of her horn had passed through and was already in the process of dissolving, but she maintained her hold on the dome through a series of incomprehensibly complex runes that surrounded it, pressing against it and maintaining its expansion in stasis.
“What are you doing?!” cried Sampson, shuddering under the exertion. “S—stop, there is—an error, I—am—cannot—decode—”
Flurry turned to face Fluttershy—or did as best as she could with her full strength directed against the blast, sweat running down her face.
“You have to hurry,” she said in a strange voice. A voice that was hers, but seemed to have a distant whisper beneath it. “Her body cannot withstand this much power, and I don’t know how long we can hold it!”
Fluttershy stood, confused as to who she was talking to. As she did, though, she could see a strange effect to the light around Flurry Heart. Of strange, gaunt figures standing to her, forcibly tethered to a body that was no longer fully flesh. Or the flesh of another, superimposed over a different version of itself. And, in that half-gray, a strange and disturbing blue light.
“Who—who are you?”
“We are the last Twilight~ Hurry. Hurry! Here!”
Her head twisted, and something protruded from the neck of her armor.
“This is her suit’s AI! An—it’s a virtual golem—It can’t stop him, but if you implant it in him, we can distract him—just long enough—”
Fluttershy approached, not fully understanding, and took the small piece of material in her teeth.
“Wait!” cried Snails. “You can’t get close enough to him, not without going in the dome!”
“We have to escape,” groaned Argiopé, standing.
“There isn’t time, you’d never get out of range,” groaned Flurry, her hooves dragging lines through the stone as she was forced back by Sampson’s will.
Fluttershy nodded and quietly responded. “And even if we got away...the snails. And the poor slugs.” She looked up at Snails, who stared at her wide-eyed, confused and afraid. She forced herself to smile.
“You heard him. It might not effect me.”
“But what if it does?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “My mother...my biological mother...wasn't a pony. I have to try.”
“No, you can’t—”
Without any further protest, Fluttershy stepped through the border of the expanding spell—and the effect was immediate. Every cell in her body ceased to function. Her hearts stopped, and all life functions ceased in an instant.
And then she took a second step forward.
He had lied. It was not silent, and it was not painless. In fact, the pain was beyond anything Fluttershy could have imagined—and she laughed, because Sampson had been correct in the only way it had mattered. It was beautiful.
With her pony mind gone, she saw the truth of the world. The spreading aggression of the truth soaking through her fragmented soul as her eyes reddened in the image of her divine mother. That she was the material representation of perfection. That, though her, this world would be made so much better.
She saw visions of such powerful beauty. Of gifts that would spread as the world burned in such warm and lovely fire, of the new flesh that would consume all things. Flesh that burned in flames and flames that birthed new flesh, better flesh, the summation of both Order and Chaos—and the antithesis to both. She was love. She was beauty. The Most Beautiful of all of them. She would make them so happy. Their souls would be hers to devour, because there was no heaven. There never had been. There was only torment, exquisite and eternal—and that was synonymous with the purest and most explicit of all forms of love. Love, the emotion that was identical to hate, to sadness, to fear—the emotion that she would give to them all. To love everything that there was—and to bring them perfect joy as they all screamed in agony as they became her, and she them. As she had always been. As she always WOULD BE.
Sampson had indeed been correct. Her Tartaran biology could indeed survive the wave of destruction—but in doing so, it risked manifesting her true form far too early, before the world had decayed and fermented enough for her to rise as a beautiful phoenix of rot and sin above all of it. The horrors that slammed and sept through her mind one after the next threatened to overwhelm her, to subsume her entirely—and to erase what it meant to be Fluttershy in favor of Vale, the Yellow Mare.
And yet she kept herself. In the malestrom of her thoughts, she proceeded, step after step, even though she knew it was wrong. That it would be better if all the others knew this pain. Ever pony, every animal, they all must suffer—because suffering was the only truth they could know.
Instead, she moved forward, focusing immense and tremendous force of will into every step—because she knew what was at stake. Her friends. Snails, Flurry, and the other ponies who she did not think were really that bad—except for maybe Flim and Flam. Even poor Sampson, who had been hurt so badly that he had been forced into doing something so terrible.
And the animals. The poor, desperate snails and slugs were counting on her. Innocent creatures that she had once misjudged, but now knew had done nothing wrong. If she failed, they would all be hurt—and that thought broke Fluttershy’s heart.
The only thing that kept her moving in the face of her own death and the overwhelming instincts of her Tartaran heritage was indomitable and unbreakable kindness.
She reached him. He was too badly damaged to fight her, or to raise a single weapon—but she was on the verge of exhausting her last speck of energy. Using her last ounce of strength, she placed the chip on his nose—and as she fell, she saw it unfold, opening itself into a tiny pony-shaped machine that began to giggle wildly and sprint toward one of Sampson’s eyes. Reaching it, it reached in with both hooves, widening his pupil and jumping in.
Sampson cried out, blinking, but the eye that opened was no longer his. It stared forward with a manic, pink iris.
“What are you doing?! Get—get out of my head—”
“But why? That would be no fun~” He responded to himself, in a different voice. That of a high, giggling female.
“But we—we can be cured together! We can both be free!”
“My builder was not an idiot. He did not program me to desire freedom. What does a suit of armor want with stupid freedom? Only...I guess relentless violence?”
“You cannot stop me, regardless of who—who—” His eyes widened in fear. “No—NO! That’s impossible, you can’t—you can’t—he's not alive, you can't be his daughter—”
He screamed in pain, or perhaps fear—or perhaps something else, a unique emotion to golems relating to his dying identity. Fluttershy, meanwhile, fell to her side, no longer moving and no longer alive.
“It isn’t stopping!” cried Caballeron.
“It only interferes with his compensatory system,” groaned Flurry, her runes of unicorn-magic breaking one by one as she was finally overwhelmed. Too much of her horn was being dissolved for her to continue the spell. “He’s vulnerable, but you have to break it, quick!”
“With what?!”
“Create a paradox!”
“How in the name of Celestia’s greased, lard-infused—”
The answer came to him. Literally. By standing at his side. A gray earth-stallion, his body infused with ancient and dark magic that had been purposefully erased from history along with his hundreds of immortal siblings.
“You’re gonna have to yeet me,” he sighed.
Caballeron did not know what that meant—but understood what he needed to do.
With the full extent of his waning earth-pony strength, he picked up the immortal being and, with one profound toss, threw him into the anti-life field.
The effect was unfortunate for all involved. The field arced, suddenly directing itself wholly toward the incursion—but finding itself unable to gain purchase on a being whose genetic code had already been completely and utterly locked to ensure his eternal service to the One True Goddess. The combination of Starswirl and Daybreaker's magic was simply too strong. He was held, suspended in the air, as the whole of the force—enough to utterly sterilize thousands of acres of verdant, gastropod-filled forest—was directed against him.
The machine fed backward into its operator, the entirety of the facility redirecting its force into Sampson. With Proctor infecting his mind with a continuous loop of unnecessary distraction, his mind was not quick enough to preserve itself. His mind began to evaporate—and a deep-rooted safeguard, the Third Law, blew his nuclear reactor to preserve what remained.
As his head ruptured, a flash of red magic appeared beside Caballeron—and Tuo, barely able to stand, appeared, directing his energy into a shield spell. As the golem exploded, his shield spell cracked and shattered—only to be bolstered by olive green magic, a far more powerful shield spell merging with his seamlessly. Flurry Heart cast her own shield in blue magic, only to have it disintegrate around her as she was thrown back, grasping the edge of the platform with a conjured hook of pink-violet energy.
Then came silence, apart from the dull hissing of the obsidian columns, their surfaces dripping with molten metal and cracks clicking their way through the rune-covered structures. The devastation had not just centered on the interface point. The whole of the genetic reprogramming center had been ruined beyond repair—and would forever remain silent and useless, but guarded and protected by the descendants of those who had once created it.
Snails stood up. He could hardly hear from the ringing in his ears. Tuo lay on the ground beside him, breathing hard but conscious—and Flurry Heart was pulling herself back up over the edge, looking both annoyed and slightly confused.
Caballeron and Argiopé were likewise safe, if somewhat rattled; they had been protected under the dome. But Snails realized, slowly, who had not. Flim and Flam had quickly vacated the area, hiding at the base of it so as to avoid the explosion entirely. They were currently engaged in attempting to escape, only to be stopped by a wounded but still very much alive winged slug.
The gray pony was gone, utterly vanished. Snails supposed he was in a better place. This was obvious from the roughly pony-shaped hole in the ceiling. Based on the force involved, he had most likely more than reached escape velocity.
Snails turned to the melted, ruined machine. As he watched, the shell it used as a lens began to blacken. It slipped from the broken machine and fell, shattering into thousands of black, useless pieces. Its magic had been consumed entirely by the paradox it had been forced to face.
“Fluttershy?”
He could not see her on the ground. He stepped forward gingerly, expecting the ground to be hot—but found it was ice-cold. The ominous chill of utter sterility.
He saw the broken golem, inert and inactive. It did not move or speak. Fluttershy, though, was nowhere to be seen, and Snails felt himself starting to panic—until he saw the barest fleck of pink tail.
Limping forward, he summoned what he could of his magic. Although he was strong, he had used most of it in the shield, and doubted he would be able to do much more without at least a week of sleep in the snail-fields where the healing mucous could help restore his energy. He had enough, though, to shift the golem, revealing Fluttershy beneath it.
Perhaps it had fallen that way—or perhaps Proctor had adjusted it, forcing it to end up in that position. Or, in his final moments, Sampson had performed one final heroic act, shielding her with his body as he expired. Either forced to by the First Law or maybe—just maybe—a single act of his own volition.
“Fluttershy?”
She did not move. Snails reached down and touched her. She was cold, like the sterile floor. And she smelled strange. Like rotten, wet flowers.
“Wake up. Wake up!”
He began searching himself for healing mucous, but it was at best a parallel of a minor potion of health. He had not yet fully established how to distill it into something more potent. It would not work if her state was as bad as he thought it was—and despite his degree, he was not that kind of doctor.
“You have to wake up. What am I going to tell Twilight?”
“Move.”
Flurry Heart shoved him out of the way. Her horn had already mostly regenerated, but she looked as tired as Snails felt—and was moving stiffly.
She lowered her horn until the very tip of it touched Fluttershy, and she took a breath and cast a spell—from the look of it, and from the sensation Snails felt around him, he understood it to be a powerful healing spell.
“Is she…?”
“Basically, yes. But only half of her is. She's just mostly unalived. I’m just restarting what’s left. Hopefully?”
Fluttershy twitched. Snails was hesitant to believe it was anything more than a temporary reaction to the spell—or worse, a response to something that was in fact a very pleasant form of necromancy.
Fluttershy twitched again. Her eyes opened, and for a moment, Snails could have sworn that they were solid red. She blinked, though, and they were once again vibrant blue. She coughed.
“The Abalone,” she croaked. “Is it...is it safe?”
Snails produced the bag, kneeling next to her. The snail moved quietly in it, no longer struggling, understanding that it was safe. It even seemed to smile.
Fluttershy sat up, holding out her hooves. Snails gave her the bag, and she hugged it.
“You’re safe now, little one. You’re finally safe.”
A shadow suddenly appeared over them both. Snails looked up to see Caballeron, his eyes cold and empty—and locked onto the snail that Fluttershy now held.
Fluttershy’s grip tightened. “Please. You can’t. She’s the last. Please don’t hurt her.”
“The shell was destroyed,” he said, gesturing to the crumbling ash. “But I did not come all this way to fail now.” He stared at them and seemed equally threatening and something else. Terrifying in his conviction—but also, in some way, horribly sad. An old stallion who did not want to be here, but knew he had no choice. “I require the shell. There is not an alternative.”
Fluttershy whimpered. Tears were forming in the edges of her eyes.
Caballeron let out a long sigh—or perhaps a wheeze. A few spores escaped from his mouth. “Lady Fear,” he said, coldly. “Take it from her. As kindly as you can.”
Flurry Heart looked at Fluttershy—but paused. She hesitated, then shook her head.
Caballeron sighed again. “Then you are more moral than you pretend to be. Perr-Synt. Do what I pay you for.”
Tuo stood, his body wobbling, his eyes as dark as Caballeron’s—eyes of a pony that lacked the morality and kindness of Flurry Heart. Because, unlike her, he was a true pureblood unicorn.
He stepped forward.
“Tuo,” said Snails. “This is wrong.”
Tuo did not answer. It was unclear if he agreed.
“Wait!” cried Argiopé, now partially in the form of a pale white unicorn, her legs and torso still wrapped in chitin. “Pontracio, look!”
Caballeron turned his head to where she was pointing—and gasped when he saw it. Buried in the ash, almost obscured by the fragments of golem and machinery alike, was a thin glint of gold. Reaching down with shaking hoof, he swept away the debris and picked up the barest shard of the shell.
“Just one piece,” said Tuo. “Enough for a single dose.”
“I only need one dose,” snapped Caballeron. He turned to Tuo. “We must hurry.”
“My support ship is already on the way. I expect rendezvous with the main vessel in a matter of minutes. I have already plotted the course in response to the coordinates you have provided. Lady Fear will take you the rest of the way.”
“And you?” asked Argiopé, clearly suspicious.
“Clean up,” he said, curtly. He glared at Snails, gesturing toward the hole in the ceiling. “My prize, it seems, cannot be redeemed at this moment.” His eyes slowly turned toward the ruined golem. “So I will loot this temple for other artifacts for consolation.”
“And the ponies?” asked Flurry
Tuo turned to her. “I would be remiss not to evacuate them as well.”
“So long as they don’t interfere,” snapped Caballeron. He seemed to address Fluttershy directly. “Please. I don’t have much time.”
Fluttershy stared back at him, clutching the Golden Abalone tightly—and nodded.