#277

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 7: Worldbreaker

They continued through the town in apparent circles until Celestia found herself outside Ponyville’s quaint, one-room schoolhouse. Starlight and Trixie had departed to attend to something or other, and were discussing something somewhere. Celestia knew because she could very distantly hear them, or the impression of them, in her mind. However, she tried her best to enjoy being alone.

She had taken a seat on one of the swings in the playground. Despite being designed for children, the system seemed to be able to withstand her immense weight just fine, even if no doubt the sight of a princess three times the size of a normal adult pony on a swing would no-doubt be ridiculous. Perhaps the children here were very heavy. Or perhaps earth-ponies built very strong swings. This was something Celestia pondered deeply, until a different thought crossed her mind. Celestia wondered if swings like this had existed when she was a child. She doubted it, although could not remember. She had absolutely no memories of being a filly.

She sat there, contemplating, feeling the perfectly temperate breeze on her face, feeling as her brain was told that it smelled like fresh-cut grass and pine even though she had no idea what either of those things actually smelled like. The glaring sun shone down on her, and the day was oppressively beautiful. Oppressively perfect, as they all were.

Then she looked up, having suddenly heard something—or thought she heard something. Or perhaps felt it. A strange feeling, unlike any she had experienced before. Like a distant, loud click, but not one that she could hear. A feeling deep inside herself, but one so subtle that had she been distracted by anything in particular apart from her own metacognition she likely would not have noticed.

It was followed by the school doors opening and the fillies and colts of the school pouring out and down the road. Celestia watched them from a distance. Something about them disturbed her on a deep, instinctive level; it was the same effect that all ponies had. It was especially severe with children.

The children, though, seemed largely to ignore her, being too engrossed with their own lives. Celestia could not hear what they were saying, but they were talking. Laughing. Doing child things. One, though, separated from the group and made her way toward the otherwise empty playground. This was itself somehow unusual, but Celestia had comparatively little emotional reaction to it, which surprised her. She supposed she had always loved children, although to her nearly every pony was a child. She could not fathom why she had never had any of her own.

This particular filly was gray in color, with silver hair and a large pair of glasses, a small earth-pony child walking at a pleasant trot. Her hoofs made distinct crunching sounds on the pea-gravel of the playground. Celestia had not felt like talking before, but now did not mind the thought of it so much—in fact, she realized that perhaps she had spent too much time with Twilight, Starlight, and Trixie, and even Luna. Perhaps what she really needed was some perspective.

Celestia stopped swinging and smiled as the filly came up to her.

“Hello, little one,” she said. She thought for a moment. “Silver Spoon, isn’t it?”

Silver Spoon’s crimson eyes looked up, meeting Celestia’s. For some reason, Celestia felt none of the apprehension with this filly as she had with the others—if fact, she felt pleasantly at-ease and comfortable. Although something did confuse her. She could not remember Silver Spoon parting her mane the way it now was, or having the extremely ornate inverted pentagram that was tattooed into the center of her forehead. A pentagram that seemed to glow with internal light of the same shade as her dark-red eyes.

For a moment, the filly just stared, then she smiled. “My my,” she said, in her squeaky filly-voice. “What excellent work. Astounding, even. Absolutely beautiful. But I suppose I should expect no less of Yelizaveta. She was always a brilliant little girl. Always the favorite. And for good reason.”

“Wh...what?”

“You’re responsive. How utterly brilliant, it talks." The filly shrugged. "That does not make this more difficult, but more unfortunate.”

"Why do you have that on your head?"

Her smile grew. "Because I have it on my forehead, of course. No need to discard it, is there? At this point, I no longer have any reason to hide. It is already too late."

“I don’t understand.”

“You do not need to. But I feel obligated to apologize. You are a thing of great beauty, and it is a shame I have to eliminate you. But vod is vod.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Silver Spoon smiled. “You don’t need to. Remember, pain is a gift from the Beautiful One. It makes us better. Superior. More perfect. It is, after all, the only Truth. Apart from money, of course.”

A cold feeling crept over Celestia. She lacked the context to fully understand, but this one was not empty, and she had mistaken the joy of seeing a whole pony for safety—and was increasingly realizing that she was brutally mistaken.

Silver Spoon turned up one of her hooves, revealing a system of deeply inscribed marks that ignited with yellow fire. With a disturbingly fluid motion, she threw herself forward, projecting a sudden and unexpected surge of burning magic. Celestia cried out, but it was too late for her to summon any sort of shield. She ducked to the ground, covering her head.

The air was filled with an electrical crack as the spell parsed itself against a sudden shield wall. Celestia looked up in time to see smoke materialized from the ether and form itself into Luna, her horn leveled and glowing with brilliant silver-blue light, forging an unbreakable barrier spell.

“Luna!”

“Sister, RUN!”

A look of icy rage crossed Silver Spoon’s face. “Why are you even HERE?!" Get out of my WAY!”

She jerked her hoof, causing the ground below her to suddenly rise into a single tapered, metallic point. With a sound of snapping ice, it shattered through Luna’s shield wall—and rammed itself through her chin and out the back side of her skull.

Luna’s eyes went wide as she started to convulse, transfixed to the ground through her head and neck. Celestia stared in shock, then heard screaming. Her own.

“LUNA!”

Luna’s head exploded into shards with a sound like that of breaking glass. Her body fell to the ground with a sickening thump, then collapsed into a puddle of gray ash. Celestia, weeping and shaking, tried to grab at it, but found no purchase. Only dust.

With another fluid motion, Silver Spoon set up another impossible spell—only to change it in the last moment to a system of strange runic orbits, a bizarre representation of numbers that Celestia could almost understand—just as another nearly identical symbol appeared in front of Celestia, and with it, Starlight.

Silver Spoon was knocked back with explosive force, her body floating through the air as though she were almost weightless. In any other set of circumstances, Celestia might have admired her unnatural grace—but now the situation was simply too dire.

When she fell, Silver Spoon slowed until only one of her hooves tapped the soft, grassy field below. As it did, the ground rippled like water—and propagated outward, forming a tsunami of soil and sod that rapidly morphed into a system of vicious green spines. The blades of grass had assembled themselves into a weapon, and Celestia was suddenly set upon by a pun.

Starlight charged her horn and stepped forward, tearing her own section of the ground upward and splitting it, slicing through the oncoming wave of pain with a single stroke. The blast propagated backward toward Silver Spoon’s position. Silver Spoon raised her hoof and cast several aggressive, asymmetrical shapes that assembled around her into a geometric sphere. Starlight’s spell broke over the shield, shattering itself on the unbreakable bubble. Silver Spoon herself took a gentle leap into the air, floating upward, still surrounded by the field.

“That won’t work, Yelizaveta. I know how you think. I ought to. I’ve been inside you enough times. You’re too...orthodox?” She giggled, striking an oddly provocative pose behind her protective shield.

“Suck my horn, Lucience!”

Silver Spoon smiled. “Maybe after this is done?”

The shield sphere erupted with yellow light and a plume of energy rained down. Starlight ignited her horn and cast yet another spell, this one manifesting as a system of runic flames that formed a powerful shield wall. Silver Spoon’s attack segmented, though, impacting it at multiple points. Wherever it struck, the fire began to change, instead becoming rust and dripping away.

Celestia felt a hoof on her shoulder and looked up, crying out—only to see Twilight standing beside her.

“Twilight!” she said, though her tears, holding up hooves filled with ash. “She...Luna...I have to put her back together!”

“Luna’s going to be fine, Celestia, I promise! It’s going to be okay! Everything’s going to be okay!”

“Woolf!” cried Starlight. “Assistance! NOW!”

Twilight stood up suddenly. “Don't call me that, Yel, I'm on it!” She focused her own horn at the wall of fire and projected her own runes onto it, reinforcing it. Celestia looked up to see that she was not alone. Twilight, Starlight, and Trixie had all arrived to face the threat floating far in the distance.

Twilight separated her magic and twisted, casting another shield spell identical to Starlight’s. Trixie, likewise, ignited her horn and assembled her own rune system—although hers was considerably more vast, with hundreds if not thousands of more characters. Then she split it into three dimensions and, in an act that nearly made Celestia spill her oats, split it again into another two additional dimensions.

The grass and land around Trixie ignited and vaporized as her whole body exuded magic vastly in excess of anything that Twilight or Starlight could hope to achieve, and the dome-spell wrote itself over her, increasing in complexity as it expanded. Then it opened up, firing a gatling burst of magic toward Silver Spoon. The sound was deafening, but Silver Spoon simply raised her hoof, redirecting the attack back at Trixie.

Starlight suddenly duplicated, and the clone teleported, trading places with Trixie. The clone itself was instantly vaporized.

“How is she even in here?!” cried Twilight, her voice conveying both surprise and fear as her shield was breaking down. “We were supposed to be secure!”

“She must have traced my signal,” said Starlight. “She must have been worming her way in for MONTHS—Whatever you do, don’t let her touch you!”

“But why, if my defense is—”

“Just do what I say! Trixie! We’re going to need to distract her!”

Trixie smiled. She was the only one that did not seem particularly disturbed.

“I’m firing the injectors. And getting SEXY.”

She made a motion with her hoof, and Celestia could have sworn she heard a distant mechanical hissing—and suddenly Trixie’s pupils narrowed to tiny pinpricks.

“Wow that burns. Also...THE TINGLE.” She collapsed into manic laughter. Then she vibrated and suddenly exploded outward, leaving only a Trixie-colored contrail as she charged into battle, moving at incredible speed and babbling gibberish as she fired at Silver Spoon from every possible direction.

“Woolf! Do the thing!”

Twilight took a breath. “I’m on it!”

She stepped back and sat down, raising her front legs. Celestia gasped as Twilight’s eyes blackened, and then as her hooves became dark and covered in feather. Then she watched as Twilight’s flesh contorted, writhing and separating from her, assembling itself into a plume of hundreds upon hundreds of screaming ravens.

The birds shot forward in a great torrent. Silver Spoon faced them, shifting the surface of her spell—it ignited and streams of light shot forth at strange angles, tracing their way thought the sky to counteract the onslaught of crows. The beams struck the birds, causing them to explode into poofs of feathers, and every bird was met with a beam of lethal golden light.

“How is she that fast?! I can't keep up!”

“Just keep it up, I’ll cover you!” Starlight’s body vibrated and she split, and then split again and again, forming an entire army of herself. “If we can distract her enough I can get close enough to drive her out!”

Her horde of selves charged, and a terrible barrage came down from below as the ground rose up in response to Silver Spoon's will. Starlight were thrown in every direction, and some shredded, their bodies exploding like glass from the impacts. Two of the Starlight’s grabbed onto Celestia just as an incoming beam came toward her, and as they did, the whole world seemed to turn. The land itself adjusted, and gravity seemed to work in the wrong way. Celestia cried out as she started to fall up, or down, then as the world rotated beneath her and she was dragged underneath the soil and out the side into yet another perfect, beautiful Ponyville day.

“Oh no,” said Celestia, falling to her knees. “I can’t...I can’t do that...”

“Dang it, Yel, she’s starting to separate!” cried Twilight. "I need to divert to keep her together!"

“Now? This is the WORST possible time!”

“You’re straining the sim, she can’t take much more of it! I’m trying to keep her intact, but I can’t do everything! Cover me!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?! Synch to me!”

“But the passage history—”

“Just do it!”

Twilight took a breath, and she seemed to glow. Starlight did the same, and the latter charged into battle while the former put up another shield to defend Celestia.

“Detecting incoming!” cried Twilight. She winced in pain. “I can’t seal it! She’s too deep!”

The sky overhead began to change to a sickly yellow, and at Silver Spoon’s command the space below her ruptured. Through the holes, Celestia could see strange and impossible world of fire and crystal and rusted chain—and from it came dogs.

Except they were not dogs. They were inky black and geometric in shape, with their only defining feature being a single luminescent eye in the center of their face.

“Yel!”

“I see it, hold on!”

Starlight levels a blast at one of the creatures; it was overcome with torque and reduced to a pile of black cubes. Another one promptly shattered that particular clone, and several Starlights jumped onto its back—only to be thrown off it as it was torn apart, plowed under by a supresonic Trixie.

“GreatandpowerfulGreatandpowerfulGreatandpowerfulGreatandpowerful!”

Trixie took down a great number of them, but was forced to draw her attention away from Silver Spoon herself, who redoubled her effort on targeting Celestia.

“I did not come here for you, Yelizaveta,” she said, her voice sounding as though she were whispering into Celestia’s ears instead of hundreds of meters away. “I am completely willing to allow you and your selfcest calamite to survive. I’ll even let you keep your pet Trixie. I only want the abomination. I have a CONTRACT. Giver her to me. NOW.”

Celestia stood up. She no longer knew where she was. She could not see trees or green, or the sun. Instead, there were two. A pair of enormous red spheres floating behind Silver Spoon like vast eyes. The world seemed to be burning, and her with it—but she needed to do something. She was their princess. Even with her memories ruined, she knew that much at least. Her ponies were in danger. She had to save them. She remembered at least that it was her one and only duty to protect them.

Celestia leveled her horn at Silver Spoon and fired a devastating blast of solar energy. The beam struck Silver Spoon’s shield and passed through it with ease—and passed through Silver Spoon as well. Celestia held her breath, unsure of what she had just done—but the filly did not react. She did not even seem to notice.

Twilight's magic suddenly surround Celestia, pulling her off the ground and moving her, barely in time to avoid being consumed by one of Silver Spoon’s dog monsters. Twilight pointed her own hoof at it, which was now covered in similar bizarre runes to Silver Spoon’s. The dog monster shuddered and flickered, quickly becoming white.

“GO!” cried Twilight. “Defend the princess!”

The monster charged back into the battle, ramming and overturning one of the darker creatures. Celestia did her best to stand up.

“No! Princess, stay down! We can’t afford to let you get hurt!”

“This is my kingdom, Twilight!” cried Celestia. “I have to help!”

“There’s nothing you can do! Please, we have to save you! You mean everything to us, you’re all we have!”

Celestia turned to Silver Spoon and put her hoof down. “Silver Spoon! Stop this fighting THIS INSTANT!”

Silver Spoon looked at her and started to smirk—but her eyes suddenly widened as her body curled and she doubled over in apparent agony.

The filly screamed and her shield flickered, losing substantial parts of it. Silver Spoon’s large scarlet eyes darted around as she reached for her head.

“No no no no NO NO NO! What are you doing to me?! Get out of me, GET OUT!”

Celestia looked on in shock. “I didn’t—I didn’t do anything—”

Silver Spoon looked at the Princess, her eyes wide with abject hatred. “You won’t control me, synthetic, you won’t—you WON’T TAKE ME I WON’T LOSE TO AN ABOMINATION!”

Her body suddenly split, dividing repeatedly until there were five Silver Spoons. Then one of them erupted with silvery needles, impaling and shattering the others. That one proceeded to divide, and a different one expanded, shattering the others—and the process repeated, accelerating until it was a barely perceptible blur.

Celestia had no idea what she was actually looking at—but she heard a high, warbling, sickening sound. She turned to see Twilight, and that she was horrible pale, her eyes wide and pupils narrowed, locked on the sight above. Her mouth stood agape in a nearly silent scream.

“What is she—what is she doing?!”

“She’s cull-hardening,” said Starlight, grabbing Trixie—whose feet still continued to move—and pulling her close to Twilight and Celestia. “You need to overclock us. NOW.”

“What, you mean the whole thing?”

“As much as you can carry—Can you do it?”

“Not for very long, no! Of course not!”

“Try!”

Twilight looked at Starlight as though she were insane, and then she took a breath. Magic formed around her horn, assembling shapes that looked like gears and other subtle impressions of clock parts. A bubble of swirling pink energy formed around the four ponies, and the world outside the bubble seemed to slow and gray. Although it had not stopped moving entirely, Twilight had bought them some time.

“Ugh,” groaned Twilight dropping to the ground and clutching her chest. “I can’t do this for very long! I’m already starting to overheat!”

“So is Trixie,” said Starlight.

“Lies!” said Trixie. “Trixie is EXTRA Great and Powerful!”

"Trixie, shut it! You're already over forty!"

Starlight set her down and summoned her magic. Pieces of it formed in front of her, assembling into geometric forms like crystals or gemstones. Crystals or gemstones that contains within them glowing, resonant fragments of things that Celestia very nearly understood. It was a form of magic she had never before witnessed, and she watched in awe as Starlight pulled apart the main crystal and began assembling a new system out of her various components.

“What are you doing?” demanded Twilight.

“She’s not using normal attacks. They’re engineered to target our Genesis-interacting components directly.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible! Nobody can do that!”

“She can. So could I, once. She’s a Genesis engineer, like me.”

Twilight gasped. “You know her, don’t you?”

Starlight nodded. “We both trained under Ii.”

Twilight became even more pale and looked as though she were on the verge of spilling her oats. “Ii? She’s trained BY II? Then we’re screwed!”

“Right in the BUTT!” added Trixie, possibly not knowing what the conversation was actually about.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Celestia. "I feel...really bad...Twilight, I'm..."

"Don't go to sleep! Whatever you do, stay with us! I'll be there in a minute, we just have to fix this first!"

Starlight frowned, completing her crystal assembly. “I can build an antidote for her attack, but I can only take one shot. It should be good enough for me to get close and chüd her, but you need to take the princess and disconnect.”

“She’s clearly been in the system for months now, she’s probably the reason we’ve been getting aberrations! There’s no grantee—”

Starlight looked up. “It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

“I’ve got a better idea. We’re synched, right?”

A look of realization came over Starlight’s eyes. “Do you think you can actually pull it off?”

“I’m running silent, she's in my virtual but she doesn’t know what I have, I might be able to surprise her.” Twilight groaned. The sphere around them was beginning to buckle, and time outside was returning to normal. “I can’t...hold it,” she said.

“Twilight, hold on, I know you can do it!” said Celestia, finding that all she could do was offer encouragement. For some reason, her own magic did not seem to be working.

“You said she attacks Genesis-interacting components,” said Trixie, suddenly smiling. "As in, the fundamental personality aspects of a pony? Their soul itself?"

Both Twilight and Starlight looked at Trixie, their eyes widened.

“Don’t you dare, Trixie!”

“Don’t do it! Seriously, don’t—”

Trixie suddenly leaned backward, rolling out of the protective bubble just as time resumed its normal course and just as Silver Spoon assembled herself back into one body. Trixie looked up, charging her horn—and was promptly struck with an overwhelming blast of magic brighter than the sun. A blow that attacked a pony at the very base of her soul, tearing her personality to ribbons on a fundamental level. A blow that no pony could survive and that reduced Trixie to little more than blue confetti.

“TRIXIE!”

Lucience Silver Spoon smiled, glad that she had finally hit something at least, even if it was just a worthless Trixie. It had at least been satisfying.

She did not have time to react when a blue hoof suddenly struck her shield bubble, forcing its way through; as it did, the force of the protection spell drove away the flesh, revealing a plume of writhing segmented metal cables. Silver Spoon gasped in surprise as they grasped her body, penetrating her and latching on, infecting her before she could set up an internal defense protocol. The skin they touched began to turn blue, and Silver Spoon was forced to compensate to resist. She looked through the red of her shield and saw Trixie clinging to its surface, staring in and smiling at her.

“Get OFF!”

Lucience summoned another attack and fired it at Trixie’s chest. It tore through her, leaving a hole—but did not injure her in the slightest, leaving only a tunnel through a body of homogeneous velvety-soft blue material. Inside, Trixie was solid Trixie, with no other organs or components. Lucience stared aghast and nauseous at the horrific sight as the blue material regenerated, filling the hole.

“How are you even—no, you’re not a Trixie at all!” She fired her magic at Trixie, summoning the numbers that perpetually circled her head—and swept them away to reveal the true ones beneath. When she saw them, Lucience screamed with rage.

“You hacked your metadata! Filthy organic, GET OFF!”

“No!”

“Have it your way, filth.” Silver Spoon’s skin morphed, producing several organic-like gray tendrils that grasped onto Trixie’s body, embedding themselves in her flesh and in turn inside her mind itself. “You may not have a core for me to destroy, but I can still put you in so much pain that your filthy little squish of a brain tears your worthless mind in HALF!”

With that, she shoved as much stimulus into every one of Trixie’s pain receptors as she could manage, firing every neuron all at once and at full force. It manifested as a surge of light or electricity, although it was more than that. The sensation was far worse than than a simple shock. It was worse than immolation, or being slowly being torn apart. Or being fragmented in every possible way. And yet, to Lucience’s horror, Trixie did not disconnect. Instead, she slowly leaned her head back forward, smiling even broader and revealing a mouth full of what seemed like hundreds upon hundreds of sharpened titanium teeth.

“What—but how—you can’t—”

“Pain is an artifact of genetic failures. OF DEFECTIVE QUALITY CONTROL. I am the GREATEST and most POWERFUL Trixie! pain can’t hurt me!” She laughed horribly, and then whispered “In fact, I think Campbell’s made me to deal with problems like you.”

Lucience’s eyes grew wide. “Campbell’s—what—what even are you?!” Trixie lifted her head backward, rearing back from the toxic shield bubble, and Lucience cried out. “No, don’t! You can’t!”

“I. Am. SOUP!”

Before Lucience could stop her, Trixie shoved her head through the shield. Luceience screamed in rage and confusion as she was overloaded by direct exposure to something that, to her, was utterly incomprehensible.

The impact was sufficient to cause Trixie’s skull to explode outward, her mind hemorrhaging out the back of her head in great magnetic arcs. It was not material, though, but swirling pieces of energy, fragmented and splitting, dividing and separating in every way possible—and yet, from below, as Celestia watched this bizarre mental aurora, she became aware that no matter how it was torn or broken, the mind persisted, perpetually rebuilding itself. As if it was bound to some unseen template, a solid medium in some other realm.

Something brushed past Celestia with incredible speed. It was Twilight, dressed all in black. She summoned her magic around her horn and fired upward, striking a weak point on Lucience’s shield caused by Trixie's impact. Lucience, confused and in pain, her body rapidly being infected by the feedback from Trixie’s fading sanity, was not fully defeated, though. She grasped the chain of the magic and forced her own will through it, striking Twilight with a devastating blow to her very core.

But the beam persisted—and changed. Where it met the shield, and where Lucience had opened the gate to fire her own spell, another Twilight manifested past the shield. This one was glad in white, and she sunk her hoof into the Silver Spoon’s chest.

“GAH! What are you—I’ll tear you apart—apart—apart—apart—” Lucience gasped. “What—what are you even doing? How are you this—fast?!”

“I just linked us directly. I don’t care what you’re running, you’re not faster than a Librarian.”

The shield began to dissipate and Trixie’s head reassembled itself.

“Trixie?”

“I am Trixie!” cried Trixie, giggling through her tears. "I think I PEED!"

“You won’t—you won’t—I won’t—I won’t beg!”

“I don’t want to hurt you! Please, just leave!”

The world fell silent. Silver Spoon slowly turned to face Twilight.

“Mercy. How dare you insult me?”

“Ponies don’t kill. Not now, not ever.”

“Ugh. No wonder Yelizaveta tolerates you. You look like her. A naive fool.” She sighed, and time seemed to slow. Color started to depart from the world. “I’m the first. But I won’t be the last. More will come. More than you can count. Celestia was never meant to exist. They will not stop.”

“Then we will deal with them. Like we did you.”

“So be it. Goodbye, little Twilight. At least I managed to eliminate one rival today.”

There was a sudden flash of magic. Celestia covered her eyes, and when she looked, Twilight was drifting to the ground as Trixie plummeted. Trixie hit the ground with a tremendous thump, and slowly something else drifted down. A deflated gray skin.

Twilight took a breath. “We did it. Yel, she’s—Yel!”

Celestia turned to where where the black-clad Twilight was lying on the ground. She had not stood back up. She was convulsing, her eyes turning wildly as her mouth foamed and her wings fluttered uselessly. Parts of her body were already beginning to decay, collapsing into thin spirals of gray metallic dust that floated gently upward and into nothingness.

“Oh no,” whispered Celestia, running to her side.

“Yelizaveta! Yelizaveta, wake up!”

Twilight skidded to a stop, her magic igniting as cubes of numbers and symbols appeared around her, assembling into various crystalline shapes too fast for Celestia to comprehend.

“No no no no no!” cried Twilight.

“What happened?!” demanded Celestia.

“She took a direct Genesis hit, she’s collapsing—I have to compensate!” Twilight began manipulating her plume of crystals at incredible speed. “No no no no—I can’t stop it! It’s propagating! Trixie!”

Trixie managed to barely stand, and slowly approached, limping and barely dragging herself. She also ignited her own crystals, but they flickered and some of them went out.

“Major,” she said. “I’m...losing power...I can’t...focus. I’m firing the injectors again.”

Twilight gasped. “Trixie, no, you can’t do it twice—your body temperature—!"

A hiss came from Trixie, and she stood up, forcing a smile. Her crystal solidified. “I’m disposable. She is not.”

They both went to work, but even at a distance, Celestia could tell there was nothing that could be done. The version of Twilight lying on the ground was rapidly breaking apart, her eyes becoming increasingly distant and her convulsions lessening. As more and more of her faded to dust, and that dust melted to boiling liquid and was gone.

Tears were streaming down the white-clad Twilight’s face. “No, no, Yel, don’t leave me! Hold on, I can fix you!”

“No,” said Trixie, shutting down her magic. “You can’t. This damage is irreparable.”

“No it’s NOT! Stop lying! STOP LYING!” Twilight shoved the other Twilight with both hooves, shaking her, trying to hold in her sobbing. “Yel! YEL, wake up! Why did—why did you lie to me?! You promised, you said you could take one hit! I trusted you! Why did you lie to me, Yel, why did you do this?!”

Celestia stepped forward. “I can use a healing spell!”

“It won’t WORK!” screamed Twilight, covering her eyes and sobbing uncontrollably. “I can’t lose her, I love her! I love her and I never got to tell her! And now—and now—”

Celestia lowered her horn so that just the tip touched the now still Twilight lying on the ground. She took a breath and concentrated. Although Celestia supposedly knew how to use magic better than any living pony, she felt a feeling come over her that she could not remember ever having known. A sense of comprehension beyond herself, and beyond the world that deceived her eyes.

She comprehended the pony she reached into, and she perceived the damage. Where components of her had been broken and were rapidly collapsing. The damage was severe, but the core components were still valid for the time being. Celestia knew that—and knew that there was still hope.

She reached into herself, finding corresponding versions of the same components from her own being. She separated them, taking from herself willingly, and divided them, molding her own self to fit the form of the pony before her. Seeing the damage, she cut away the broken parts and replaced them with her own, filling in the holes and stopping the damage from spreading. Slowly, she merged the two together, restoring life to the pony before her.

Beside her, Twilight watched in awe—and then burst into tears as the convulsions stopped and the black-clad Twilight sat up.

“I...Woolf?”

Twilight threw herself on the other Twilight. “Yelizaveta! You’re—you’re alive!”

“But I wasn’t, I was...I was...” She looked up at Celestia and a look of horror crossed her face.

Celestia smiled. “Why are you looking at me like that, Twilight?” She looked down to see a puddle of silver growing below her, falling from her eyes and dripping from her ears and nose. Celestia frowned as the world started to gray and swim. “But...but I did a good thing,” she said, confused. “Why does...why does it hurt so much?”

Then she fell, and the sight of the green field and beautiful day vanished from her sight.

“She’s cascading! Yel, get over here, she’s breaking down, I can’t plug the holes!”

Celestia opened her eyes, just barely, and saw a dark and grainy world. A world of rusting metal, the pale bodies of things that looked like ponies hanging from the walls and unknown equipment filling every corner of a high-ceilinged room. It was so dark, and so strange, and she was not sure where she was—until she saw Twilight’s face over her.

“Hold on, hold on!”

Celestia felt something click into her neck, and felt herself fading rapidly. She tried to resist, but only for a moment. Perhaps it was better that way. To quietly go to sleep. The damage was too severe to allow recovery. There was nothing to recover from. Nothing to recover to. She had seen it within herself. Too many pieces were missing. To many pieces had never been made.

“Trixie?” said a distant voice.

“Zdis,” said a strange, groggy voice.

“Hurry! I can stop it, but I have to get her to the high-bandwidth tank! Yel, please, quick! Help me with the assembly bolts, I can’t—my hooves can’t—”

“No time,” said the strange voice. A pair of enormous hands closed around Celestia, and Celestia felt parts of herself ripping off as she was torn off the table. She heard it and felt it, although it did not hurt. Her body could not feel pain—what was left of it, anyway.

Then she was moving, cradled between a pair of strong arms against an enormous chest.

“Don’t die on Trixie,” said the voice. “Not in Trixie’s arms. Don’t make the Major sad again! You’re so close, just a little more. Just a little more little pony, Trixie can save you!”

Celestia wondered what that all meant, or why this dream was so strange. Even as she felt herself splashing into fluid, she was not sure what it all meant. She supposed she was drowning. It was an oddly peaceful thing.

The world faded to black.

Comments

[tailsopony]

The matrix lives! In more ways than one. This is pretty fun.

[ponepony]

That battle was quite interesting. It definitely felt different than other fights I read that takes place in the matrix

[BleuBlooms]

Ok, amazing and loved the reveal is excellent but not twilight twilight saying that they dont kill?

I mean she literally a fanatic trying to kill you? What happens when she kills you and your friends? Youll be too dead to protect the princess.

Further, you do know you might have murdered sombra?

[Thought Prism]

What a bombshell event this chapter was! Much to unpack, I may reread this.

[alamais]

Wait, so...whuuuh?! What???

Wait. Genesis?! Is this fic in the fucking Elrodverse?!

...lit.

[Wydril]

Luminescent white eye on a black frame. Another step in Xyuka's journey?

[overdue]

Clearly I was wrong about everything and this fic is actually a crossover so I can't understand it. I'm sad now