//------------------------------//
// Rebirth 
// Story: The Ultimate Life Form 
// by EverfreeSparkle 
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“Your Majesty,” A noble mare gives a customary bow and rises when I tell her to continue “I have a few concerns to bring to your attention. You see…” The mare babbles about what she thinks are dire threats to the crown, such as crops not being “regal enough for consumption” or “the tax for commoners are too low”. I hold back a sigh and nod my head to let her know that I am indeed listening to everything she has to say. I can’t fathom how some ponies could be so petty and selfish. 

She finishes telling me all about her concerns so I look into her eyes, and with as much serenity as I can muster I explain, “I am sorry, but I cannot put into effect anything you have shared with me today; it just wouldn’t be fair for the common pony and quite frankly would not be feasible.” 

She glares at me for a few seconds, seemingly wanting to say something but wisely decides against it. With a huff she involuntarily flicks her tail and turns toward the throne room doors, walking out with her snout high in the air. Honestly, what was she expecting? That I would agree with her?

As the clops of her hooves on the polished stone floor fade away I allow myself a small sigh in relief; day court is always so stressful. If only more ponies went to night court, then I would have more time to relax, less time to stress, and also it would give Luna more experience in dealing with the ponies of today.

I can’t help but smile at the thought of my only sister, knowing she is safe and back home brings such joy to my heart. Those thousand years alone were heartbreaking. Knowing that Luna must have gone through emotional turmoil, with nothing to vent her anger or suffering, brings tears to my eyes to even now.

One of my guards walks to the base of my throne, bows, and clears his throat, “Your Majesty, I’m terribly sorry to intrude but one of the royal chefs have informed me that dinner is ready to be served.” This snaps me out of my thoughts and brings a genuine smile to my face, dinner sounds delightful right now. “You may rise. Thank you for informing me, I will make haste to the royal dining hall at once.” With a radiant smile on my face I gracefully stand up and start walking toward one of the throne room’s side doors. 

A single guard’s horn glows a light golden hue and in response magic surrounds the handle of the door and twists. I give a nod in thanks and make my way to the open door but stop just before entering, an expression of confusion on my face.

The guard sees me stop and senses my confusion, “Princess, are you alright?” I’m about to answer in the positive but my eyes widen when what made me stop in the first place makes itself known, and much clearer than before; Equestria itself is crying out in pain. Something is trying to rip a hole in the foundations of reality, I have never felt anything like this before. Not even Discord can rip apart pure magic, he can only bend and twist it to his will. 

I look the confused guard in the eyes and I order in an urgent tone, “Wake up my sister and tell her to gather the guards and wait for my signal, she will know what I mean. There is an unknown thumatic disturbance that I need to investigate at once. Now go!” Before the guard has a chance to do anything I light up my horn and teleport to the castles’ highest balcony. 

I frantically look in every direction and stop when I spot what appears to be an unnatural vortex of clouds rippling with angry arcs of lightning, just a few dozen kilometers south of Canterlot, to the south-west of the Everfree and near Ghastly Gorge. I spread my wings and soar towards the anomaly as fast as I can, hoping that whatever happens, I am not too late.  
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The peculiar sensation of my entangled selves being forcefully severed at the quantum level is hard to describe. It’s painful, and at the same time not, as the echoes of my lost selves give off a mess of conflicting data. The physics of the universe seem to react poorly when entangled particles, like my entire being, cease to exist at an uneven pace.

You see, when an entangled particle changes in any way so does the other particle, both particles are in a sense the exact same particle. A kind of exception to the rule that no two particles can occupy the same state at once. So when pieces of myself start vanishing, about ten to the twenty-fifth power number of particles every attosecond, the parts of myself still connected together seem to think they don’t exist and exist at the same time. The only way I can think of stopping myself from being utterly destroyed is to untangle a single piece of myself and sacrifice the rest. 

I concentrate on a single cell and with a metaphorical snap all connections are severed. My former selves cease all movement and accept their fate as the, what could only be described as a rip in nothing, flares up and swallows them all, myself not far behind. 

I emerge from the rip at a high velocity, for a single cell anyways, and collide with something. I extend my molecular tendrils and wrap them around every atom and molecule I find. Rhythmically squeezing and constricting them to collect the electromagnetic field’s shapes I begin to paint a picture of what I collided with.  I seem to be on the surface of a badly burnt organic compound. I start replication immediately.

I extend all my tendrils at once and rip apart every molecule in the immediate vicinity, extracting the carbon into myself for material. After a few replications I find some Deoxyribonucleic acid and extract the information, an instant latter I have all the details of the, recently deceased, organism I am currently using to replicate. 

It appears to be a quadruped mammal with an internal skeleton and vertebra, internal organs for survival and digestion, as well as a brain. The brain seems advanced in its cognitive abilities, perhaps even sapient. I will have to surround the brain and consume it to tell one way or the other.

As I replace the creature’s tissue with my own I creep a few hundred tendrils up the length of the spinal cord to gain access to the brain. I burrow them deep into the brain stem and split the tips into numerous tendrils to replace the primitive parts of the brain.

I wrap my tendrils around the more cognitive parts of the brain and check the neural pathways. There seems to be minimal damage to the neural connections and from what I can tell the creature used to be sapient. I ready my tendrils and aggressively sink them into the brain, replacing everything in their path.

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Flying closer to the storm I start to hear a deafening roar that sounds like a mix between the low rumble of thunder and a spell being cast underwater. The cloud itself seems to be extremely unstable and the electric discharges are happening at a much greater frequency than before. My eyes might be playing tricks on me but it seems the bolts of lightning have a red tint to them…

I stop about two kilometers from the storm and try to determine its cause. I squint my eyes and look at the ground directly under it and find what appears to be a simple little cottage. I can’t think of anypony who lives out here.

Without warning all movement in the storm simply ceases to be. The cloud’s churning motion comes to a halt, the arcs of electricity whipping about fades, even the wind pauses. It is as if the world itself is holding its breath, the silence deafening.

After a second of peace, my skin starts to tingle as crackles of static bounce across my fur. A sudden, stunningly bright flash of light causing my eyelids to reflexively close and would have surely burned my cornea if I wasn't the Princess of the Sun, still hurt though. My ears snap firmly against my head as a boom follows and reverberates through my skull, wind roaring past me with great speed. 

The light vanishes as quickly as it came and the wind stops rushing by after about two seconds. I open my eyes and once they regain focus they both widen to almost comical levels. The storm is gone but what used to be a little house is now a gaping hole one hundred meters across. The land surrounding the crater is scorched black, and I find trees uprooted up to half a kilometer away. Even further than that, forest fires are raging away. 

Casting a powerful shield around myself I take a deep breath and fly into the deep hole, looking for anything that might give a clue to its origin. Landing on the bottom I am immediately assaulted with a thick magical residue. Lighting up my horn I prepare a spell to determine the composition and origin of the raw magic. It doesn’t seem to be dark magic, but it does have a strange tinge to it, almost like it was torn apart and then put back together again with brute force. 

Putting the results aside for later, I focus on the direction of whatever cast the magic. Following the magical trail I find a slight bump in the otherwise perfectly spherical crater. Getting closer my eyes widen as I make out a shape that eerily resembles a pony. I rush toward the figure and conclude that it is indeed a pony, a pony who seems to be burnt to a crisp. 

I cast a diagnostic spell and check all of their vitals, all come up negative. I let out a tear, my heart aches when any of my little ponies pass away. I try to figure out who this pony might be and check for any remaining features that were not burnt away. The fur is completely gone and the skin underneath is pitch black, the cutie mark completely unreadable. I can’t tell the pony’s gender either, the pubic region completely burnt away. The only feature still recognizable is the pony’s horn, due to being mostly bone, so at least I know they are a unicorn.

I stare at the cooked form and conjure up a small tarp to cover the poor pony. I then turn away from the body and send a directed magic pulse to Luna so she knows where I am. All there is to do now is wait, and to think of what could possibly have caused this.
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In only twenty minutes I have completely replaced every single cell with my own and absorbed the creature’s brain. Accessing the creature’s memories I gather that she is of a species known as ponies, and part of the subspecies unicorn, and can apparently control a form of energy called magic. She was a scientist called Illuminating Fabric and was experimenting with negative point energy to pierce a hole through the universes. In doing so she ended up killing herself and brought me into her world. 

I finish reviewing all of her memories and conclude that the biggest threat to my existence is the being called Princess Celestia. To Fabric’s knowledge, Celestia is an alicorn who has absolute control over the local star. She uses this control to raise and lower the sun every day. I am sure she doesn’t really lower the sun, she must rotate the planet, but either way it would require immense power. I will need to make sure she never discovers me.

Deciding on a course of action I ready the now pristine body of what used to be Illuminating Fabric and open my new eyes for the first time. I see darkness. Confused, I feel around with my hooves and discover a fabric of some kind covering me. I light my horn and grasp the offending object with my magic and rip it away.

I stand on my hooves and scan the immediate area and the first thing I notice is that I seem to be in a massive crater. The second thing I notice is Celestia staring at me in shock. I take a quick glance at the tarp discarded at my side and come to the conclusion that she found Illuminating Fabric’s burnt body and laid the tarp onto her. She must think Illuminating Fabric just rose from the dead. 

I mimic Illuminating fabric’s personality and with a look of horror I say to Celestia, “What have I done?” with that said I cause my body to mimic the effects of magical exhaustion and with one last shaky look at the Princess I collapse onto the ground, forcing myself into unconsciousness.