Devastator writhes in pain as Exarchon's mutant spark attempts to usurp the gestalt consciousness that guides the mighty combiner... but unlike Exarchon's other victims, Devastator is not one mind, but seven, and inside his own mind it's Scrapper who rallies the defense and inspires the Constructicons to hold on and fight back against the infection. To Exarchon's shock, they successfully repel his assault... but the strain causes Devastator to collapse back into his individual components, and a frustrated Exarchon, unwilling to control just one body, turns his attention to finding another puppet. Realizing that they've been had, Slipstream and the other members of "Team Stream" promptly cut their ties and flee... but realize that they've left Flamewar behind! As Flamewar criticizes the weakened Constructicons, she's utterly oblivious to the danger at hand until Exarchon grabs her, opens his spark chamber, and prepares to assimilate the mouthy Decepticon into his collective—before he can complete the process, however, his minion Soundblaster warns him to hurry before their enemies can regroup. Soundblaster's words remind Exarchon of his true purpose on this world; in disgust he tosses Flamewar aside and allows the mouthy little Decepticon to transform and zip away before Onslaught or Brawl can react.

Outside the Sonic Canyons, Cyclonus and his illusory companions watch as Pyra Magna, Sixshot, and their respective followers regroup. While his ghosts bicker amongst themselves as usual, Cyclonus observes the arrival of Bitstream, Mindwipe, and Sparkstalker, who, acting on Megatron's orders, have devised a weapon that might win this war. Using some salvaged technology from the ruined Forge Pyramid, they've successfully refitted Perceptor's spark-containment technology into a trap designed specifically to take out Exarchon: Mindwipe's hypnotic powers will persuade Exarchon to possess the spark, but the device will only allow him to enter, not exit, and seal him away forever. Pyra balks at the notion of using an unborn spark to kill Exarchon, but Cyclonus points out that Pyra, who's already sacrificed plenty of innocents in the past, has no room to talk. If Pyra won't do it, then he'll go with Mindwipe: one way or another, the war ends now.

Inside the bunker, armies of Skywarp clones busy themselves as Exarchon prepares for his final ascension. Having rigged his drill-tank with a rudimentary spark chamber, Exarchon implants a third of himself into the enormous machine—then, with the pull of a lever, activates the machine and sends it tunnelling into the living fabric of Cybertron, down towards the Allspark at the planet's core. Watching the scene from his hiding place, Pointblank informs Landmine and Geomotus that they need to move, and fills in Sureshot and Zetar on what's happened: Exarchon's on the move. To pursue him, they'll need Zetar's drilling skills, Geomotus's knowledge of the planet's interior... and Landmine, whose last expedition into the planetary strata ended in disaster and left him traumatized. Despite his friend's reservations, Geomotus tells Landmine that this is something they need to do, whether they want to or not; seconds later, Frenzy and Rumble round the corner and open fire. While Sureshot and Pointblank hold off the infiltration troopers, the two scientists follow Zetar underground. Inside the main antechamber, meanwhile, Exarchon proudly stares down at the passage of the drill-tank, confident that his ascension has begun—but when Soundblaster relays news of a renewed surface assault, Exarchon orders Soundblaster to stand guard while he leads his clone swarm into battle. No sooner does Exarchon leave, however, then do Frenzy and Rumble arrive, and warn him that the Autobots have pursued Exarchon beneath Cybertron. With no other options, Soundblaster and his minions leap down the borehole to cut the Autobots off...

As the Combaticons and Skywarp clones hold off the combined Autobot-Decepticon alliance, Sixshot tackles Brawl, but himself takes a point-blank shot from Onslaught—while, unbeknownst to either side, the real Skywarp teleports in, dodging weaponsfire and exploding clones as he heads for the canyon floor. With only seconds to spare until Exarchon closes in, Sixshot orders Mindwipe into action, who promptly hits Exarchon with a full-force hypnotic assault until Vortex punches him away. With only moments before the hypnosis wears off, Cyclonus shouts for Pyra to open the Titanspark chamber and trap Exarchon... but when she falters, Cyclonus snatches the device from her hands and opens it just as Exarchon releases his own spark, permanently trapping the warlord within. Sixshot takes the spark, ready to return it to Iacon... but before he can leave, Pyra uses her axe to smash the chamber and destroy the spark for good: as long as she stands, Megatron will not get a Titanspark.

With two-thirds of Exarchon gone, Landmine and the rest of the team pursue Exarchon's final iteration as he tunnels down towards the Allspark, into a vast underground cavern. Exarchon continues digging, while Landmine shouts for the other Autobots to fire on the engines and cut him off... only for Soundblaster, Rumble, and Frenzy to drop in!

Inside the abandoned bunker, the mercurial Skywarp skulks through the empty building, idly searching for anything he can use to generate some more excitement... and is intrigued when he stumbles across the leftover imploder weapon. Meanwhile, the underground Autobots take on Soundblaster and the cassettes, and a desperate Landmine transforms to vehicle mode and plows into Exarchon's drilling machine. The impact damages the machine and freezes it in place long enough for Zetar to core through the stalled vehicle, destroy it, and finally put down Exarchon for good. The explosion triggers a massive cave-in—and while the Autobots work together to escape the disaster, a fallen chunk of debris leaves Frenzy trapped in his alternate mode and unable to move. Although Frenzy tries to surrender, a vengeful Landmine, angry at him for murdering Brainstorm and kicking off this entire mess, simply leaves him to his fate as he and the others follow Zetar back up to the surface.

With Exarchon dispatched, the tentative alliance between the Companions and Sixshot's Decepticons quickly collapses; though Pyra wants to sweep the base, Sixshot announces that he and his forces are leaving to escort the Constructicons to Iacon, and warns Pyra to keep away, lest the next war start again on the site of the old. When Sixshot orders Cyclonus to come with the other Decepticons, however, the old warrior declines: he'll be sitting the current war out. All that matters to him now is enjoying the end of the War of the Threefold Spark, the demise of Exarchon, and the fact that his long, lonely burden has finally been lifted. Inside Exarchon's abandoned base, meanwhile, Landmine and the other Autobots claw their way back up into the central antechamber, just in time to hear Skywarp teleporting away. Not immediately recognizing the sound, the confused Autobots look around to see who could've caused it before Pointblank draws their attention to a corner of the bunker: didn't there used to be an imploder in the corner...?

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in hallucinatory form.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots

Decepticons

Threefold Spark

Others

Cindersaur (20)
Roughstuff (21)
Swift (22)
Sixshot (23)
Sparkstalker (33)
Mindwipe (34)
Bitstream (35)
Rumble (42)
Frenzy (43)
Skywarp (45)

Exarchon (2)
Skywarp drones (36)

Devastator (1)
Hook (3)
Long Haul (4)
Scavenger (5)
Bonecrusher (6)
Scrapper (7)
Mixmaster (8)
Grudge (27)
Cyclonus (28)
Highfire (29)
Paragon (30)
Provoke (31)
Gridlock (32)

Quotes

"Did we leave Flamewar?"
"Do we care?"

—Shadow Striker and Hyperdrive

"You're all in there? All of you, like, merged into one? That sounds terrible. How can you even think that's a good idea? I do get the appeal of the whole giant, smashing, crushing thing. But mixing yourself up with others like that? Can you hear me? C'mon. I'm interested."

—Flamewar bothers the Constructicons

"I'm very tired. I've been waiting megacycles to stop being tired. One way or the other, I'm done waiting."

—Cyclonus

"It is far, far too late to do anything but hope for my mercy."

—Exarchon

"There are things about Cybertron you think you know, but you don't really understand until you see it. Feel it. You can think you know that this is a living planet. But then you go deep. You see fluid flows, you see moving light. You find shape-shifting matter and structures of crystal metal. Inexplicable voids and hollows and cavities. And it's only then you start to really understand. It's life all the way down."

—Landmine

"You're the one they say killed Brainstorm, Frenzy. That true?"
"Get this stuff off me!"
"It's true, isn't it? You killed him. He wasn't perfect, Brainstorm, but he was a whole lot better than you. I was buried for a long time once. Thought I might have to stay there forever. Thought everyone had forgotten me."
"Wait! Wait! Don't leave me!"
"You're everything that's gone wrong with Cybertron, Frenzy. Best if you're forgotten."

—Landmine consigns Frenzy to a terrible fate

"You're eager to get back to your precious war. Not me. I'm going to sit here for a while—maybe a long while—and enjoy the end of the last one."

—Cyclonus

Notes

Continuity notes

This issue is set in between the events of Transformers #42 and #43, and flows directly into the final issue of IDW's Transformers ongoing. Transformers #43 ended on a cliffhanger, with Skywarp threatening Optimus Prime and the other Autobots using the imploder he stole here, although artist Juan Samu drew the weapon as a cartoonish Fat Man-type bomb, quite differently to how the weapon appears in both this issue and the 2021 annual.
The Constructicons' mental battle against Exarchon's corruption is drawn and framed in such a way that recalls their early struggles in Galaxies #1. Devastator's components all speak of Devastator's "single consciousness" as something apart from their individual psyches; their learning to embrace the mindless, primal anger of that single consciousness was a major plot point throughout the "Constructicons Rising" arc.
An angry Cyclonus points out that Pyra sacrificed lives in the past; Pyra's ill-fated pursuit of Turmoil's ship and her inadvertent role in the death of Cyclonus's lover Paragon has been a point of friction between the two for a long time.
In a conversation with Soundblaster, Exarchon notes that he provided Shockwave with the scientific resources and knowledge required to conduct cloning experiments, as related in issue #34; this issue also reveals that Soundblaster possesses a "demi-spark", likely as a result of him being an artificially created clone.
As the cave falls down around them, Landmine lays into Frenzy indirectly kickstarting this entire mess in the first place—having killed Brainstorm just before the events of #1 after an energon robbery went wrong, Frenzy's stupidity pretty much kicked off the entire domino chain that led to Rubble's death, the rise of Megatron and the Decepticons, the destruction of the Tether, and the return of Exarchon, among various other terrible things. Hooray, comeuppance!

Errors

Cyclonus tells Jumpstream to stay behind for the final assault on Exarchon, to avert the "bad future" that she witnessed where she and Cyclonus died fighting in the Sonic Canyons. She appears to join in on the attack anyway, which might be an error or perhaps she simply ignored the warning. Meanwhile, poor Groundbreaker and Rust Dust are completely absent from this issue, despite being present in previous parts of this series.

Other trivia

Backmatter for this bonus-sized issues includes a brief "creator process" page highlighting the progression of page two from pencils, to inks, to colors.

Covers (3)

Cover A: Exarchon KILLS the IDW universe, by Jack Lawrence and Rebecca Nalty
Cover B: Geomotus and Landmine run from Exarchon’s drill, by Philip Murphy
Retailer incentive cover: Exarchon versus the Decepticons and Companions, by Dan Khanna and David García Cruz

Captain Action: The Classic Collection
Transformers: Fate of Cybertron
Star Trek: Year Five
Junkwraith
Transformers: King Grimlock
Best of TMNT Collection
Parker
Beast Wars Annual
The Kill Lock: The Artisan Wraith
Transformers: Last Bot Standing

Reprints

Transformers Volume 6: War's End (November 16, 2022) ISBN 1684059410 / ISBN 978-1684059416
- Collects Transformers (2019) issues #37–43, War's End issues #1–4, and Fate of Cybertron.
- Bonus material currently unknown, most likely alternate covers.
- Hardcover format.