Panting heavily, both Rainbow Dash and the Princesses alighted in the clearing where the other Elements, and the crystallized form of Discord were waiting.
"Rainbow Dash told us about Discord already." Surprisingly, the first speaker was Luna. "Tell me, what were his injuries? He doesn't hibernate from minor wounds, he has to bleed out."
"That's the thing, your Highness." Twilight was pacing nervously, knowing intellectually that the draconequus was alive, but not quite emotionally. She was busy inspecting each and every inch of the frozen spirit, looking for anything that hinted at there not being life under the surface of the shifting rainbow crystals. "He wasn't injured, so much as...aged wrong. And he had this weird metal eye that was glowing green."
Spike joined in. "It was like some parts of him were a baby, and other parts an old dragon...goat...chimera...immortal chaos spirit thingy."
Celestia furrowed her brow. "I don't know why his eye was replaced, but that sounds like temporal flow exposure. That takes a lot of magic, and very specialized equipment to do even accidentally, and I know Discord's magic-he can't affect time like that, only observe it." Celestia looked at the sleeping face of the being in question. "This was intentional, and very cruel-the only natural predator I know of that does this is a Tindalan Wolf, and they don't even injure you that badly-they just make a pony older or younger a year or so while they feed on your potential future."
"Remind me never to go to Tindala, then," said Rarity, busy inspecting the chrysalis. "I really don't want to deal with wrinkles ahead of time."
"Good to see ya have your priorities straight."
"Actually, Applejack, I do. I'm trying to figure out how to get Discord out of this gem so we can treat him without it in the way. Unlike you, who seem to be just standing there, not helping-"
"HEY! I DRAGGED HIM HERE, DIDN'T I!?"
"ENOUGH! FIGHTING WILL GET THOU NOWHERE!" Luna stomped a hoof. "IN ANY CASE-ahem, in any case, releasing Discord from this Chrysalis Grotesque would be a monumentally bad idea, for all parties involved. He has returned to his base form of chaotic energies while his body destroys any coherent patterns that, if he returned to physical form, would become injuries and secondary complications thereof. Releasing him would result in a rather large explosion of magical energy that was once him."
Rarity looked at Luna quizzically. "Chrysalis...Grotesque? This beautiful thing?"
"Something tells me that would hurt Mr. Discord's feelings." Fluttershy appeared to be massively spooked by the events of the week and trying to make herself invisible.
Luna shrugged. "I didn't name it. It is a Celebrant thing, apparently."
Something echoed in Twilight's memory. "'Celebrant'? He said that's why he didn't need to go to the hospital. I thought he was a draconequus."
"He is, Twilight," said Celestia. "That is the form he took to interact with the physical world."
"'Form he took?' Your Highness, can you start from the beginning?" Rainbow Dash looked about as lost as could be expected.
Celestia blew a bit of mane out of her face. "All right then: the Celebrants are basically a race of primeval planet-hopping chaos spirits, some of the first beings to ever exist. They were first born in the waning days of the creation of existence as we know it, as enough Order entered the world to fully contrast against Chaos, and a tiny bit of Order mixed with Chaos to form sapient minds. However, their only have enough Order in them to form coherent thoughts and identities, and everything else about them is a product of Chaos. They've been called many names over the eons-demons, great old ones, children of the Trickster, Advocates, idigam (though that last one technically belongs to a very specific set of them), ones beyond, but they use the term Celebrant. They exist to bring more Chaos to the world, extremes of pain and pleasure, creation and corruption for its own sake."
"Wait, so we are in a Lovework novel? He's a freaking Thing That Should Not Be!?"
"Two things." Luna sounded immensely offended. "One, 'Thing That Should Not Be' is something completely different, and is more in reference to intrusions from the Abyss, a collection of broken realities, and that phrase is a product of his own xenophobia. A Celebrant is a child of the young universe, and may in fact be vital to its continued function by ensuring things can still move. Secondly, one of the things Chaos embodies is emotion and passion, including altruism. Celebrants have a very alien viewpoint on matters of morality, but when they play with your mind, most of them are attempting to help you see things from a different perspective, and thus achieve enlightenment and greater understanding of yourself."
"Aw shucks," said a very deadpan Applejack. "Knowing he turned me into a habitual liar and my brother into a dog to help us see things in a new way made it all up to me. I can't see nothing why I would still be angry with him."
"We never said that was a good thing, Applejack," said Celestia. "Most Celebrants, including Discord until very recently, don't understand the lasting hurt their actions can cause, and some just don't care. There's a reason why we petrified him when he got out of control."
"While this is all very informative, what do you think did this to him?" Rarity poked the Chrysalis again. "If he is an ancient being of chaos from the dawn of time, I would imagine not a lot of ponies are capable of reducing him to primal soup."
"The same thing capable of erasing all mortal memory of Pinkie Pie, apparently." Luna looked extremely worried. "And that is more than a little disturbing, since most beings at that level are perfectly deserving of the word 'divine', like myself and Tia. This could take weeks to investigate-"
"Actually, um," Twilight said as she produced the dream pearl. "I think this might help. He said it was a dream containing everything he knew about the God-Machine, whatever that is."
Perfect silence.
"Um...Princesses, what's wrong?"
Hesitantly, Celestia spoke up first. "The....God-Machine, you say?"
"....well," said Luna. "That would explain a lot, actually."
"Wait, you know what this is?" Rainbow zoomed up to the Princesses' eye level. "Tell us! Tell us everything you know! If we're going to fight this thing to save Pinkie-"
"Act-ually.." Celesita looked immensely ill at ease. "He could probably explain it much better than I ever could. Luna, activate the dream pearl."
"H-hey wait a minute..." Fluttershy piped up, her full voice fully returning. "I-if he is a being who plays with minds to cause understanding through trauma...wouldn't he, um, add a little spice to get his point across?"
"Fluttershy!" Rarity shot a glare at her, causing her to jump. "That's an immensely mean thing to say about an unconscious friend!"
"Be at piece, Rarity." Luna was eyeing the pearl suspiciously. "I do not think Fluttershy meant any harm, especially given that's how Celebrants think. Still, a little madness might be preferable to being completely rational when dealing with anything involving the God-Machine."
Her eyes glowed. "Hold on to your flanks,"
A beam of moonlight hit the pearl, and a spiderweb of multicolored energy bounced between the Elements and the princesses. The world swam around them, and they quickly fell asleep.
The first word that came to Twilight as she looked around the dreamscape was "painterly."
The second was "confusing."
The third was "okay, what part of this is the sky?"
All around her, a surreal landscape of strange, subdued colors extended. It was impossible to make out any landmarks among the blur, although that was more because of the color scheme being the same-it was impossible to pick out any definite geographical features, or indeed, if she was walking on the ground or the sky. The face that significant parts of the dream flowed like the sea didn't help.
The fourth thought was "wait, dream. Duh."
Shaking her head, Twilight looked around for the other ponies. "Guys? Hey guys? Is there anyone out there? ....This isn't a nightmare where we're all isolated from each other?"
"No."
"Not at all."
"No?"
"Got ya covered, Twilight."
"We're here, my student."
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FUR!?"
The others in question had turned the same surreal colors of the mindscape, and a quick glance confirmed that yes, so had Twilight. The only thing that hadn't changed shades were their eyes, which resulted in something of a ghostly effect as they almost appeared to be floating in a patch of pony-shaped space.
Rarity was not at all pleased with this. "My beautiful white coat....gone! Replaced by this...garish hallucination of a color scheme! Even my mane!"
"Oh come on!" Rainbow Dash seemed to be hovering, although she could just have been standing on a frozen wave. "Seriously, my daydreams have more happening in them than this!"
"And my nightmares often have similar plots." Nobody could really tell, but Rarity's lower lip was trembling. "I'm walking in Canterlot, surrounded by tacky fashion and clashing colors, which I try so hard to fight with my designs and ideas...then I look down, and I'm-"
"Oh yes, I remember that dream. It was indeed a terror." Luna's voice. "Red and green...gah, even I found that scary, and my job is to get rid of those dreams."
Dash snorted dismissively, then squeaked as both glared at her, which was actually rather funny to Twilight-again, only visible trait being eyes. Suppressing a snicker, she brought up the obvious. "Anyway, we're supposed to be here to learn what Discord knows. Unless what he knows is a tie-dye shirt factory, I would say there's the recorded dream version of a play button some-"
"WELCOME TO LAND-THAT-RESEMBLES-THE-LEGALLY-DISTINCT-COUNTRY OF MAGICANT!"
The sound of Discord's voice booming across the dreamscape, while not exactly the scariest thing Twilight had ever heard (that was the awful sound of his voice being hacked out through prematurely aged lips), it was certainly the most startling.
Applejack reacted first. "Discord!? You're awake!?"
"NO, ACTUALLY I AM NOT. THIS IS A SHADOW OF MY MAIN MIND, A TOUR GUIDE ROBOT. BEEP."
"CAN THE TOUR GUIDE ROBOT NOT SHOUT DIRECTIONS, PLEASE!?" Rainbow Dash did not sound at all happy.
"WHAT?"
"I SAID CAN THE ROBOT NOT SHOUT!?"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID-"
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU, SO I'M NOT SURE IF YOU'RE EVEN FARTHER AWAY THAN I THOUGHT! I'M GOING TO SHOUT REALLY LOUD NOW-"
"DISCORD! STOP!"
Everypony looked at Fluttershy's eyes.
"If that's okay with you."
"Oh all right."
Discord's eyes materialized in the upward direction.
"I'm not really an intelligent being, so I'm going to start my story now. If the real me had more time, he would have magicked the Eliza package into me, and we could have had a productive conversation consisting of me rephrasing your own responses into questions. It's a very good way to better understand the contents of your navel, I've heard."
Discord chuckled at his incomprehensible joke, then his eyes narrowed. "In all seriousness, though, what you are about to see is no laughing matter. Behold, the God-Machine, the one thing that can make even me serious. But first, perhaps, a change in scenery...?"
Suddenly, the dreamscape began to grow increasingly active. The waves began to crash into each other, but rather than flow apart, they fused into ever-larger waves. In time, these waves came to a halt, but rather than stop, they began to tremble and twitch, like hatching eggs. The one Rainbow Dash had perched on broke in two with a strange sound, almost like the crackling of a newborn fire (her yelp was less strange). From within, a strange, bioluminescent shape, with so many tentacles it was difficult to tell if the creature had that many or was more akin to an extremely large worm, coiled infinitely upon itself. Ten intelligent eyes, each a different mix of colors, looked out, timidly, curiously, into the strange, painterly world. More waves followed suit, at a far enough distance that none of the ponies could make out the shapes within, but enough could be seen to tell that every one of them was unique.
Luna caught on first. "This isn't a basic dream, without any adornments..."
"I assume either Luna and-slash-or Celesita is with you, in which case they have already told you what I am. And yes, this is the genesis of we Celebrants, the shape the cosmos took before it knew what it wanted to look like..."
In the beginning....
Actually, that's a horrible intro. The world already began, my family came later. Nobody knows how the world began, we have to infer, each theory could be a book in its own right. No, I'm skipping to the parts that actually concern us, since that's the non-boring bit.
In the beginning of the period after the Celebrants had gotten our bearings....
...Well, as many bearings as you can have when the world looks like this...
We lived in blind innocence. It wasn't anything much, mind; as beings born in the beginnings of the universe, we possessed an inherent knowledge of its workings, but infancy is still infancy, no matter how smart you are when you're born. You only learn the things that everyone else does, like the universe exists beyond you, personally (though some individuals forget that. Ahem). But it was certainly...existent. Frankly, the primordial universe was rather boring when it comes down to it.
The newborn Celebrants played with the world-smudge, arranging it into definite shapes with stable colors.
Eventually we settled on to the idea of doing more than just staring at the smudge and each other all eon, and we learned how to focus it into form and concrete substance. Simple, single color spheres, cubes and polyhedrons.
A polyhedral die came into being.
Nerds came directly afterwards.
The Celebrant who made the die held up a placard saying OLD SCHOOL IS BEST SCHOOL. He immediately had other dice thrown at him.
In time however, we came to grow bored with these creations too, experimenting with new shapes, in all dimensions.
The Celebrants started collapsing some shapes into paper-thin cutouts, some were distorted into strange, eye-bending ones that didn't seem possible in reality.
This, too, grew boring after a while.
Then, some of us found an interesting new avenue of activity.
The worm-tentacle Celebrant angrily hit its own multidimensional spike polyhedron with an eye, then shrieked more in surprise then anything as it jumped back, multicolored energy bleeding from the wounded organ.
We found ways to remake our own forms.
The Celebrant's other eyes looked in amazement at its own "blood", then cut a plain tentacle to watch more join it. It then cut a similarly amazed fellow, and they booth watched the pooling energy. The other Celebrant then looked at the bleeding socket, and then reshaped it back into an eye, a different shape then before.
It was in that moment that we understood what our quest was-to explore the true flexibility of form, in ourselves and others.
Rarity gagged slightly.
Of course, we soon realized that soul and personality were forms as well as flesh. We also soon realized that flesh was not the true body, that was the mind and will. And we experimented with all of them, creating an entire society based around the changing of form. Before you ask-no, we didn't guide the universe as it formed, and indeed, we were pretty flabbergasted when the blur suddenly began to form into stars and planets, galaxies and dark matter.
The blur did so, finally causing the ponies to return to visibility.
Everypony sighed in relief as the migraine eased.
But we did take advantage of it.
The Celebrants examined the forming planets, then, grinning (an unsettling act, many of them having multiple mouths to smile with) released chaos energy onto many of them, causing their surface to reform into new and bizarre shapes.
And once or twice we did accidentally create life.
Some of the bizarre shapes wiggled.
If our precious existence was infancy, this was childhood. Glorious childhood, free enough to not be ignorant yet not knowledgeable enough to not be innocent. We danced among the stars, carved our names into planets, created powerful monsters that still remain in the species memory of sapient species to this day...that was the life.
It should also be noted, however, that I am also a fairly young Celebrant, who can only experience this in my own studies of of our history. Temporal magic of any sort beyond basic psychometry (reading something's personal history) isn't my forte, not even conveniently editing the universe so a meteor hits the guy I am aiming at. I could be looking through a nostalgia filter, and it may have been completely different from the good old days.
I am saying this because I am not at all kidding that, compared to what came after, anything would seem better by comparison.
One of the changed worlds shuddered, before a terrible sound like a metal saw grinding through metal as electricity sparked through the open air rang out across the dream. To the horror of the Celebrants, metallic parts ripped out of the planet, blossoming like mechanical flowers into vast, ticking constructions of gears and cogs that covered the planet, releasing smoke and steam into the air to create a blanket of smog. Twenty great white wings, constructed of beautifully made machinery, unfurled from behind the planet.
Because one day, we found the God-Machine.
Or perhaps, it found us.
Not one of us knows who built that thing, when, or why.
I'll let that sink in for a moment. The afterbirth of the universe does not know how the God-Machine came to be.
It could be that nobody built it, it just was the first bit of Order given enough Chaos for mobility and movement. Perhaps it predated the universe, maybe even created it for its own reasons. Maybe it, meta-temporally speaking, hasn't actually been created yet, and the Machine traveled back in time to ensure its own existence. Given how easy it is to change the past without actually changing a divine being even if you altered their personal history, it's not as far fetched as it sounds.
In the end, it only matters in an academic matter. The thing you need to know is that it's here, it's alien, and it does not care about you enough to be even called malevolent.
The Clock of Eternity is a vast intellect, but not a conscious one. It can't think about what it's thinking or second-guess itself, which is useful on many occasions, worse in many others. Really, it should be glad that its powerful enough where it doesn't need peers to complete its schemes and can manufacture its own minions. At least, if its capable of that emotion. Or any others. The only thing we've ever seen it act on is cold logic, to the point where we're not even sure if it can think about anything, or if its mind resembles an incredibly complex set of directives and directions. If A, then B, if C, then D.
Only having the mind of a calculator, however, doesn't stop it from being incredibly intelligent. While we Celebrants are far from ignorant, it understands more about the physical than any five of us, put together, can match. To say nothing of the supernatural. It's probably easier to list what laws it doesn't understand, or at least that which only beings on its level could. It is the product of knowledge so advanced that it isn't just sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, it is magic, but so sufficiently analyzed and tamed as to be technology. Sorcery, engineering, raw math; all of it is simply more data for the God-Machine.
Of course, and again, there are major downsides of not having a conscious mind, which is why it creates servants. While there are many organic life forms created directly by it to serve needed functions where mobility is required, for the most part its servants are sapient beings spliced off directly from whatever strange realm fuels it. Divine subroutines and independent program-spirits, made in the image of its occult programming code, running on the hardware of specially adapted terrestrial systems, brought into this world from nothing by unknowing and/or delusional cultists. They have no proper name-they simply are-but many worlds have called them by the world 'angel' or its equivalents, and whatever dim outer reflex of its sensory programs set to observe mortal affairs recognize those titles as theirs, and they will answer to those names.
These angels have many tasks, and even more functions, as well as great leeway in accomplishing them, but they all serve the same ultimate purpose, what we call the Logos, the core program of the God-Machine.
What's that, you ask? We don't know. One of the Machine's traits is that it can't do things instantly and spontaneously, it has to prepare the stage using its occult matrices. While this has proven to be a great boon in fighting against it, it also means that it can also have multiple plans running at once or create substitute ones if a single plan proves untenable. We honestly have no idea what its ultimate scheme is, or even if it has a final goal at all. Especially when it repeatedly shows it needs to do research or logistics
We do know, however, what the Universal Engine is willing to do to advance the Logos. Or, in simple terms: Whatever is in its path, it controls. Whatever it cannot control, it assimilates. Whatever it cannot assimilate, it destroys.
It doesn't care if that thing is a person, a family, a city, or a nation-to it, it's just another cog to be inserted into itself, to be refitted for insertion into itself, or irreparably faulty and to be ignored or melted for scrap. In the end, the God-Machine doesn't hate the people who oppose it, or indeed all other life. It just doesn't care.
The Celebrants, horrified, fired off chaotic energies at the clanking machine world. The first few bolts hit, causing the metal surface to be damaged severely as hit areas of it changed form randomly, releasing vast geysers of oil and smoke from the damage. The rest were stopped by a wing, that moved too fast for its size, and only changed colors briefly before returning to pristine white. A strange, frightening emotional impression, like the planet was glaring angrily at the Celebrants, echoed through the dreamscape.
While we did not know all this at first, we only needed to take one good look at the Machine and the order it brings to realize we wanted nothing to do with it. We struck first, and we struck hard, but we made a great error-we assumed the Machine was something that could fought directly, something that had one core body or force.
The wings extended from behind the machine planet, revealing that they were not attached to the planet in any sense, simply flying in formation. Each one, as it came into view, had hundreds of feathers, each one a city in its own right. And from those feather-arcologies, a hundred lights flew.
The God-Machine is infinitely more. It isn't one core computer node directing millions more, or even several with its own force. It's an entire mechanical ecosystem, with every part as vital and as unnecessary to the whole as all other parts.
The lights became pony-sized mechanical creatures, animal-like constructions of brass, glass and a material that looked unpleasantly like grey-colored organic muscle. They separated into groups, each pack or flock brutally attacking a single Celebrant. Just from the way they were fighting, one could tell this battle was meant for one thing only: killing the other guy as soon as possible, without mercy or compassion.
Naturally, it retaliated.
This was the opening shots of what is offcially the Empyrean War, but really, it's a Vendetta. Celebrants and God-Machine embody cosmic forces that are naturally opposed, but really, the first thing on our minds is our latest defeat at angelic hands and what we lost in that battle. The God-Machine has also altered its program to curtail and stop our influence whenever its sensors or scouts find us. Make no mistake, it stopped being about politics and philosophies a long time ago. For us at least, its become something very personal. We spare no quarter for the Machine, and neither does it for us.
The dream faded, with only the lingering sounds of war, blood and screams, ripping flesh and tearing metal, echoing behind.
Now, some of you may ask why I'm so unhappy about the war. I hate the God-Machine as much as the next Celebrant, correct?
......
I would explain why, except I think the real me should tell you.
A flash in the dream, apparently something so powerful that Discord could not keep it out of the pearl, of a much younger Discord pulling on the hair of a very wet-looking draconequus while laughing, with sense of something having been said in the immediate past: Discord? Stop pranking your father,
Point is, I want no part of the Vendetta, and that's why I moved to Equestria. The God-Machine may touch all, but it had little direct operations here.
Had, it needs to be emphasized. I created this dream before I went off to fight, but I'm not exactly the weakest of the Celebrants. If you're seeing this, that means it had enough resources in the Golden Beach to kick my tail.
But this leads to another question: What would be so bad?
Oh, you have no idea...
Grey.
That was what ran through the heads of the ponies standing in the new place they found themselves. A great, grey city, made of concrete and metal, with not even the rainy sky to break up the grey. Admittedly, the city was a technological marvel-not even Canterlot could build those buildings in the distance that high. But taken in with the rest of the city, it seemed almost as if the tallest buildings were rusted swords, clutched in the rigor mortis of a fallen solider.
This is Earth, planet of the humans.
Everypony mortal gasped.
Heh. Bet you thought they were a myth, hm?
No, the Bleak Ones are a very real alien species, and they did visit Equestria in the distant past. That's not important for this story.
What is important to this story is how they got that moniker, and why they're so often viewed as the living embodiment of suspicion and cynicism in myth.
Suddenly, humans, dozens of them, began to mill about their lives in the city. Most of them walked with an odd bundled hunch, too practiced to be something to ensure as little of them got wet as possible. Discord led the ponies over to one, a dark-skinned, red-haired female, who was walking slightly more briskly then many of her contemporaries, looking scared. Behind her, two lighter-skinned males, dressed in trenchcoats, strode like timber wolves about to take down an errant rabbit. She looked behind her at the stalkers, her eyes widened, and then broke out into a jog, accidentally knocking down a random man who cursed in a staccato, brisk language. She ducked into an alley and attempted to run, but tripped on high-heel shoes, allowing the males to catch up and grab her. One doused a rag in in a strong-smelling liquid and thrust it in her mouth, as the other took out a spray stencil of a runic circle and a spray can. Quickly, the runes were sprayed on to create graffiti that Twilight recognized as a teleportation spell, and the holder of the unconscious female put her hand to it.
A flash.
The female, still unconscious, appeared in an ornate room lined with bookshelves, with a haggard, guilty-looking male examining his desk. He looked up, and then calmly strode over to her, looked over her (her hair in particular) then went over to a bookself and bent down several fake books, opening a secret door built into the bare wall. Heaving the woman over his shoulder, he went downstairs, followed by the observers in the dream.
There, they found a concrete chamber, covered in occult sigils and calculations. The male looked over them as if to double check, then opened a closet where four humans, of both genders, fell out, all bound and unconscious. Each one had a different collection of hair and skin colors. The male then strode over to the far wall, retrieved a gold and lapis lauzli athame knife, then took the original woman to a brass tub with designs of turtles, cranes, and cicadas. He raised the athame...
I think you've got the idea.
The scene froze.
Let us fast forward a bit. I never agreed with bad horror movies.
Screaming, the female woke up in a bed, glanced around in terror, then cradled her head. As she got out however, all observers could see a crescent scar, running across her back.
Dr. Remy Darabont back there isn't a cruel man, simply one who is afraid of an enemy he can't defeat like the dozens of other monsters he's hunted over his, potentially immortal, life. Suffice to say, he takes every measure necessary to avoid killing the donors of the blood he needs to give him youth and vigor for another year. Indeed, that's why he requires people who appear so unusual for their ethnicity for his ritual-there's symbolic power in the rare and unique, more than enough to make up for the lack of the occult power in fatal sacrifice. But nobody's perfect.
I show you this because this kind of thing happens on Earth all the time.
If it isn't blood magicians out for youth and power like Darabont, and it usually isn't, it's hungry vampires. When they're not around, it's changelings, desperate part-fairies, who want to absorb your emotions to fuel their magic. Leaving aside those who feed on life, there are werewolves, shapeshifting warriors who literally have no inherent instinct against justifiable murder, prometheans, reanimated corpses who are such aberrations that the world would destroy itself to get rid of them, mages, who are all too frequently embody the maxim of power corrupting, the occasional serial killer, and a thousand other things besides. To say nothing of the mundane problems. It's gotten to the point where most humans train themselves to look the other way in order to remain sane.
And the God-Machine likes it that way.
See, sapients become simple when they're scared or sad. A scared person is guaranteed to look out for their own safety first and everything else second, while a sad person doesn't act on their dreams. To the Machine, this is infinitely better than a happy or brave populace-it's easier to predict someone who is going to choose whatever is going to make them feel safe or what they think is the best thing they're going to get out of life. Easier predictions means less things that could go wrong, less things that could go wrong means less wasted resources, hence why it won't let things get better if it has any say in the matter.
That, my little ponies, is the stakes.
Remember what I said about the God-Machine liking momentum? Well, whatever it's planning, I can gurantee that it will gather momentum here in Equestria if allowed to reach its planned conclusion. From the success of that plan, it will make the ground fertile for more, bigger plans, and gain a greater foothold on this world. As it brings Equestria under its dominion, it will also go out of its way to ensure it has an ideal environment for plans, and since it doesn't want to waste resources, that means crushing hopes, creating hidden monsters, and offering routes to power that benefit the few at the cost of everyone else.
Eventually, Equestria will become like Earth; a grey, spiritually desolate planet filled with beings who have become cynical and suspicious to even survive, stabbing other ponies in the back so other ponies won't get the chance. A world of darkness and shadows, draped in despair and bitterness.
And that is why you have to stop it. Forget about just rescuing Pinkie, this is saving the world.