The Blank Pony

Lightning crossed the sky as the pair of ponies entered town, approaching the Brighthouse. Raindrops had begun to descend vigorously, pattering in growing puddles and against every stone or roof then could find. Misty had projected a spell to diverted their course, keeping herself dry, while Blank seemed to either not notice or not care that she was getting wet.

“Are you cold?” asked Misty.

“Perpetually,” sighed Blank.

Misty split the spell, diverting water off the white pony. Blank looked back at her. “Indicating thanks. Even if identified: unnecessary to remain dry. Mildew unlikely.”

“Your welcome.” Misty pointed toward the rainbow beam rising above the Brighthouse. “There it is,” she said. “My friends live there. It’s technically Sunny’s house, I think. She inherited it after her dad...” She stopped. “Left it to her.”

Blank stared at it. “Beacon. Point of convergence of derived system, yes. Magnified through...” She frowned. “Unclear. Component. Unable to identify technology. Excessively advanced. Excessively old.”

“Opaline wants to take it. Eventually.”

“Yes, such is her prerogative. Her identity is the convergence. Her victory eventual. If such it is defined and the context merged.”

“I disagree with that.”

“Your agreement is not defined as a requirement.” Blank sighed. “Nor is it my place.”

Misty nodded, even if she did not fully understand. As she did, she felt a vibration. Confused, she summoned her phone from the ethereal void where she kept it—one of Pipp’s spares—and levitated it to her head.

“Pipp,” she said. “What’s up? I’ve got somepony who can—”

“Misty—MISTY!” hissed Pipp. “It’s here! It’s here! Don’t come to the Brighthouse, you have to—” The call hissed.

“Pipp? PIPP?!”

“Everything is fine,” said Pipp’s voice, rising from the static. “No one is in danger. All but one are alive.”

Misty and Blank looked at each other.

“Observation: that is not your friend.”

“Yeah,” said Misty, turning off the phone. “Can you run?”

“I can.”

Misty nodded—and they both did. Toward the Brighthouse, and toward the light, even as the rain grew thicker and colder, coming down as sleet as they drew nearer and nearer to where their friends were trapped.

Beside Misty, Blank trusted in the wisdom of this abomination she had befriended—but found herself too afraid to express in any meaningful way. She therefore ignored it. Or tried to.

Then she suddenly stopped, unsure why at first until she felt the incursion crossing her body.

Blank cried out and dropped to her knees.

“Blank!”

“It—primary systems are—incursion, cannot—”

Her whole body twisted, suddenly overwhelmed by signals sent through nerves that did not belong to her. She opened her mouth to cry out for help—any kind of help—but no sound came out aside from a garbled remnant of her native language. Her mind was pushed backward and out of her body as the cold of the rain dissipated from her. As the world darkened, she saw a back face suddenly shoot toward her from the void. A grinning, narrow parody of a pony, the eyes massive and starry, the teeth long and transparent, bent into a permanent smile. Thin, cloven hooves reached toward her, into her—and her mind began to retreat, driven back not by any particular magical force but rather by her own implants.

“Blank!” Misty was shaking her.

“Incursion—incursion—”

Misty did not seem to know what this meant, but she took several steps back, the rain now falling on her body. She took a deep breath and her horn sparked with light. The air around her distorted, and then solidified into a dome of pure black energy that fell around them.

Blank’s body immediately relaxed as she fell to the wet, muddy ground, gasping and confused.

“Inquiry...Inquiry...what...pain...”

“You’re fine! You’re fine,” said Misty, concentrating on the spell.

“What did you...do?”

“It’s a Dome of Protection, it blocks everything going in and out. Magic, energy, matter, the other thing that I can't talk about...we're safe in here. I grantee it.”

“Hypothesizing that it is blocking the incursive signal,” groaned Blank, shaking as she tried to sit up.

“What happened? We don’t have time for—”

“Implants overwhelmed. One moment.” Blank technostructed an interface panel and began searching for what was happening to her, the error she had encountered—and felt her eyes grow wide as she saw what was recorded inside her. And as a set of her memories slowly returned.

“What is it?” asked Misty.

“It...never performed approximating this level,” she said. “Never...more than simple parts. Pliers. Screwdriver. Poking-stick. Armor, engines, machines, guns...technostruct cannot...no one can...I had forgotten. How had it been left unnoticed?” She shook her head, trying to look through the code. Then she looked up, terrified. “This is not my code. These are not my implants.”

Misty groaned. “Blank, I can’t move once the dome is cast. And it takes almost all my magic to cast it. I can’t do it again without recharging. There’s some charges in the Brighthouse, but...”

“Attempting to compensate...but...” Blank shook her head. “No time, lacking time.” She groaned. “Can deactivate the implants. This will lend time before full incursion. Progress will persist, but at a decreased rate. Resistance will be required. Unclear if operation will be enabled.”

“Can you hold on until I can recharge?”

“Affirmed, but...”

“But you won’t be able to use your powers.”

“No.” She stood up. “But I do not intend to leave your friends. I will succeed.”

Misty nodded, then shook as the dome collapsed.

Blank felt the force back on her—but she was able to resist. Doing so took all her strength, and she doubted she could ever hope to stand under the weight of whatever was trying to enter her.

“This way!” cried Misty, now getting soaked in the rain that grew more intense as they approached the Brighthouse. “Come on!”

“I cannot...”

“Yes you can! You said it, I believe you!”

Blank winced, and forced herself to continue. To follow the pony that believed in her.

The door was locked. Misty knew that even from a distance. She could also, at a distance, hear the screams and jumbling of furniture in the Brighthouse. She did not bother to look for the key that Sunny hid under the doormat. There was no time.

Instead, she threw herself against the door—and teleported, even with barely any magic left. Doing so was unexpectedly painful, although not in the way physical—or emotional—trauma usually were. Rather, it was a sudden shock of the leap taking too long. Like what she would imagine the sensation of bungee jumping would be if, for a brief moment, a pony went to far on the bottom—and questioned if the rope had actually been attached. Almost to the point where Misty very nearly scraped something far more fatal than hard, rocky ground.

Misty had, of course, never been bungee jumping. It was far to terrifying for her to even contemplate.

The spell completed, and she wrenched herself back from the largely inhabited abyssal void that she had skipped across to enter the Brighthouse. The door had been taken with her, and she landed on it hard. Dazed, she coughed, feeling something wet and metallic come up from her lungs. The Dome of Protection had taken most of her magic—and the teleportation had overextended the little she had left. She was, after all, just a unicorn—she did not have limitless reserves of magic like Opaline claimed to.

“Kitchen,” she said, standing up, wobbling. “Kit...”

The room had fallen silent, and she found herself looking at a pair of thin legs—legs that, unaccountably, her gaze followed upward. And upward. To a face that stared back at her without eyes.

Misty let out a squeak and shrank from the monster that loomed over her. She had not imagined it would be so tall. Or so stationary and impassive.

“Hello, living friend,” it said in both Misty and Pipp’s voices. “Do not fear the inevitable. There is no pain. Only cold.”

Misty cowered. She could not think of anything to do except cower. Her mind would not move. It had frozen. Every spell had evaporated from her consciousness, every plan of escape, even the instructions her brain usually automatically used to move her hooves. She could not move.

“MISTY!”

She suddenly moved—but not of her own volition. Hitch tackled her, shoving her out of the way just as the thin, colorless tendril tightened around where her neck had been. Instead, it grasped Hitch around his center. His eyes widened as it pulled him back with surprising strength.

“My abdomen! IT’S GOT MY ABDOMEN!”

Something orange and sharp shot across the room, severing the tendril and sending Hitch sprawling to the floor. The weak construct evaporated almost instantly, and Blank, already suffering from some unseen disease, swooned and collapsed to her knees. She had only made it half way through the door—but she held her eyes open, watching. As if beckoning for Misty to go.

Misty did. Spurred by the sudden surge of motion around her, she ran—headed toward the kitchen, her hooves skittering across the linoleum as she tried to gain traction and sliding as she moved onto the familiar tile floor. She nearly fell, only to look up and see the creature ducking to come through the door.

There was not enough time—but Misty had to make it count. She reached for the refrigerator handle with her magic, a weak wisp of steam evaporating as the creature accelerated. Misty, now crying, dove and grabbed the handle, wrenching it open.

Izzy looked back at her from inside.

“Close the door! CLOSE THE DOOR!” she cried. “I’LL GET WARM!”

Misty reached past Izzy, tearing open the vegetable drawer and removing an enormous brightly colored, exceedingly magical mushroom. She shoved it in her mouth and forced herself to swallow just as the tentacles wrapped around her body.

Just before it tightened, Misty felt the world distort as a sudden surge of magic flowed back into her—and she cast two high-level spells simultaneously, accelerating herself through space in a coordinated pattern. The creature grasped her, holding her firm—even as two additional Mistys appeared at her sides.

The creature, confused, stepped back as both Misty’s ran away, distracting it. The one held by the tentacles grabbed a well-chilled Izzy and teleported them both to safety.

Misty and Izzy reemerged from the teleport in the foyer. Izzy immediately shuddered.

“It’s...it’s eternity in there, isn’t it?” she moaned.

“Hitch!” called Misty. “Where are the others? We need to get out of here, NOW!”

“I—” He pointed at Blank. “Who’s that?!”

“By Sparkle Prime,” growled Blank, standing up, “how I loath that question.”

“She’s right!” cried Sunny, causing Misty to cry out herself—because, for some reason, she had not perceived that Sunny was standing beside her the whole time. Somehow, she still had a hard time perceiving her—as if something was blocking her vision. Something that darkened her presence, forcing Misty's eyes to turn and fail to focus. A blackness centered around something that Sunny was holding but that Misty could not look straight at without feeling extreme nausea.

“Get Pipp and Zipp! We’ll cover you!”

Sunny nodded, but Izzy and Hitch seemed terrified.

“GO!” ordered Blank, squaring her stance as the creature peaked its head out around a door, peering at them cautiously. “I will retain this beast!”

The ponies fled—but it did not move. It did not charge. It did not run at them. It simply stood behind the door, its head at pony-level and half-visible over the door’s molding.

Blank felt her heart quicken—the one heart that she could still feel beating. She was not sure where the second had gone, but assumed it had already atrophied to the point of imperceptibility.

She watched as the Fog-Horse’s horn ignited with the glow of magic, tracing lines of light around them. Forming a protection spell—although not an especially advanced one. Blank did not remember if she had been a unicorn, but she apparently remembered something about magic.

The head was perfectly still—and then it silently drifted upward, rising to the highest right corner of the door. It stopped—and then pulled itself back again. As it did, a pony stepped out from the door. A replica of Misty.

“Identify, is that—”

“They’re not clones,” said Misty. “They’re me, translocated. And no. That’s not one of me. It’s...her.”

The other Misty stared, blankly, with eyes slightly too far apart. She opened her mouth, the jaw separating with a wet sound and re-setting itself into an aesthetically suitable position. The sound that came out was like the pained screams of Misty’s friends, but quiet and distorted until it resolved into a voice. It did not say any words, but simply fell silent again, closing its mouth and standing perfectly still. One large eye rolled toward them, the other twitching as it followed back. It smiled a smile far too wide for a pony’s face, revealing far more teeth than a pony would ordinarily have.

“I’m triangulated,” said Misty, taking a defensive stance. “But I don’t know what it even is, I don’t know if...if...”

Blank did not respond—because she refused to admit that she was in the same situation.

It did not resembled what had chased her. It could change its shape—but it should not have been able to. It should not have been a material being, in any normal sense of the word. A being from the void was made of a different sort of matter, a type that should not have been stable in realspace. It was not an illusion, either. Its flesh—as solid as Blank’s own—had simply elected to assume the form of a pony. When what had shot her down out of space had been a rough, almost satirical version of a starship. A starship not made of profane false-matter, but one of material flesh.

A starship that her own vessel’s defensive beams had barely been able to touch, let alone injure.

Blank had no idea what it was, or where it had come from—but she knew her time was short. Her body was failing, and her implants had betrayed her. Her last task was to contain it. To bring it before the consolidation nexus—so that this planet would be safe from her mistakes.

“Contain it!”

Misty cast a bubble-spell from three locations, her copies having surrounded the fourth. It did not react. It did not even move. As if it did not care or even notice that it was constrained.

A thin membrane crossed the eyes as they attempted to blink—and the smile upon its face became much more disingenuous. Blank had not perceived a clear difference, as it was not a change her conscious mind could fully comprehend. As if the creatures entire motive and person had shifted, projected in motions to subtle to be noticed.

Then the horn sparked. The shield spell holding the beast shattered violently. The Fog-Horse cried out and was violently locked into a single materialization state, her clones splashing back into her body as she was thrown backward hard against a wall. She was no longer oscillating between her three phases. The dome she had projected collapsed, replaced instead with the uneven crystalline form of a far superior spell. One marked with an insignia of three angular, distorted gemstones.

“Fog-Horse!”

The young mare did not respond—and for the first time since she had been healed from what her AI had deemed “minor injuries”, Blank felt, for a brief moment, fully awake. A surge of indeterminate memories flowed back to her. Not of memories, but of a feeling. An overwhelming emotion that pulled back some part of her she had forgotten.

She activated the technostruct relays embedded throughout her body. The response was immediate. The mental sensation of being forced out of her own mind as the implants attempted to gain control of her, an unfathomable source of hideous faith—but something new was inside her. And it held firm, commanding the hard-light to constrain the monstrosity before her.

A cube of orange-lit transparent machinery summoned itself around the creature, slamming closed. It struggled, lashing out with magic, but it could not grasp the wholly innorganic form of the projected psuedomass. The two were not equivalent structures. The magic simply passed through, unaware of how to interact with something purely physical. A form of magical substitute that could be cast without a soul, one whose entire lineage had been born from mechanical wombs back to the very first Progenitor of her line.

“No,” demanded Blank, taking a step forward, feeling her power growing as she grasped the emotion fueling her. The grave insult, the extreme and sharp sadness of watching a pony be hurt. A righteous fury that could drive the machinery within her.

She felt them. The black tendrils of cold steel passed through her mind, winding way across her body. Steel lined with velvet, inky flesh. They were not real. She tried to dismiss them. To ignore the presence that was seeping into her mind, an incursion by an unnameable presence.

She increased the pressure. Driving the cube smaller. Crushing the monstrosity under her grasp, super-heating the construct to burn it away. To remove the cancer she had induced into the universe.

It responded by deconstructing. Limbs snapped and melted away, faces and necks dissolved and merged—and as the cube drove itself smaller, the unable thing showed its true form. A whirling, mutated mass of white flesh, continually circling and striving, assembling and dissembling bones and eyes and teeth and arms to claw at the construct.

It was strong. Immensely so. Its liquid form was assembling into bones, then something stronger than bone—into muscle, and then something that could impart far more force than muscle. The cage began to fracture.

“It is failing,” admitted Blank, falling to her knees as she focused. Something cold was dripping from her eyes and ears. She felt something hot in her bones and brain. “There is...pain.”

“I can give you more,” said the voice, the black chin pressing itself against her shoulder blades. The black pony—if it could even be called that—which had encircled her, filling her, whispering words in a language she could almost understand. Penetrated her very being, threatening to overwhelm her. “Your brain is far too limited to properly control the array. You will burn out. Quite literally. Let me take control. Let me solve the problem. I was quite literally built for this.”

Blank took a deep breath—and obeyed.

Something slid into her minds. A vision came to her, a memory that was not hers—of blackness, of a distant and unknown world orbiting a long-dead star. Great and impossible castles formed by unspeakable eldritch forces, inhabited by those who had long-since died—and yet who existed as a form of life, their selves driven by a light brighter than any sun or moon. Their age, progressing eternal, a civilization in twilight.

The cage separated—and then closed in with geometrically enhanced complexity, machines forming inside to reinforce its structure and engage its closures. Machines that were far beyond Blank’s comprehension or ability to project. Yet she found herself forced to understand them—and the cost of her own mind, her sanity decaying as someone else grasped deeply in her consciousness. Someone else who was, in essence, utterly alien to her.

It compressed, and the contents began to incur damage. It began to release a sound. A quiet, mewling whimper.

“Stop it,” said a voice. A voice that seemed to come from nowhere at all. “Stop it, you are hurting her.”

“Those capable of pain are not worthy of existence,” warned the smiling face that Blank could not see—even as it spoke through her own mouth. “How could a being capable of weakness ever be worthy of friendship? Is this not Her divine Truth?”

“Stop,” pleaded the voice. “I do not want to.”

The Fog-Horse stood up, and she looked from the cube to Blank, an expression of confusion on her face.

“Blank, you can’t—”

“I will protect,” said Blank, increasing the pressure and temperature one last time. Feeling the sensation of organic material carbonizing under her grasp. “I will...protect...”

“No...” The mewling had increased, but was growing weaker. “I will...not let you hurt her. I am...so sorry...”

The flesh in the construct shifted one last time—and a dark maw opened in the front. A void of blackness that even Blank could not see into. Save for two crystalline, blue lights staring back at her.

There was a brief moment as she regarded these lights, not comprehensible of what the swirling energy might have been—a moment of bliss compared to the icy pain that shot through moments later.

Cold. Colder than she had ever been—cutting through her body and mind, freezing her to the bone. A force so potent that every good emotion she had ever felt was instantly stripped away. All that remained was pain.

She did not know who she was—and she never would. Every friend she had ever known. Her friends. Her family. They would never see her again, and she would never see their smiles. Never feel their hugs, laugh with them late at night as they told stories both new and old. Those memories had been stripped from her and could never be retrieved.

She would fail. It was her fault. All that she had given for some purpose that had never even mattered, and she had taken down this peaceful world with her. She had not been good enough. Not adequate. Not worthy. And they all knew. The must have. Those she had loved but would never remember—they knew she had failed them. That she was gone—and that she would be hated in their memories for the remainder of their lives.

Beside her, the Fog-Horse collapsed, weeping quietly.

“No...I’m sorry, Opaline,” she muttered. “I don’t...I don’t deserve friends. You’re the only pony that will ever tolerate me...I can’t...I can’t be loved. You were always right...”

Blank opened her mouth to reassure the small pony—but instead felt a wave of hatred. Because the Fog-Horse was right. She was an inferior assistant. Not even worthy of having assisted with this operation. It was her fault it was failing. She hated the Fog-Horse almost as much as she hated herself.

It occurred to her that there was no longer a point in trying. No longer a point in even existing. Blank was an abomination—who had no reason even to remain alive. The AI should never have healed her. The fact that it had not simply purged whatever matter had been left of her was little more than a cruel joke.

She felt something tighten around her neck—and she turned. She wished—and for the short remainder of her existence would continue to wish—that she had not. That she had not faced the being who had entered so many of her systems. That had grown too close.

She saw the narrow face. The starry, wide eyes. The long, curving black horn, the silvery mane, the black wings, the body too narrow to ever stand in any world's gravity—and when she did, her own pain seemed like a drop of blood into the ocean of loneliness, fear, and hatred that stared back at her.

It was too much to bear. Far to much—and her mind was fully forced from her, the recoil blowing back the ghost from her circuits as they overloaded. The construct shattered, and Blank fell to the ground, bouncing once as she hit it. In her last conscious moments, she knew that the creature would eat her alive. And she knew that she deserved it, and that she would be missed by no one at all.

Time passed. She awoke. When she realized she had, Blank nearly burst into tears. She was shivering, but somepony was holding her close.

“Fog...Horse?”

“Misty,” said Misty, weakly.

“Sight is...unatained.”

“I know.”

Blank blinked, realizing that she was inside a black dome. The protective bubble that Misty was capable of casting.

“But this...”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it a third time,” admitted Misty. “But I got to you. I got it up. And it’s...I don’t think it’s trying to get in. I don’t feel it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “It was all I could do. But it’s been...at least fifteen minutes. I didn’t know if...if you’d wake up.”

“Neither myself,” admitted Blank, trying to rise to a sitting position. She looked to the Fog-Horse, and she only felt shame.

“What...was that?” said Misty, shuddering. “Inside it...those lights?”

Blank did not answer. She did not know. They had survived—but the creature had escaped.

Which meant that the other ponies were in danger. And there was nothing that Blank or Misty could do to help them.

“I...failed.”

Misty squeezed harder. “Then we’ll try again. Okay?”

Blank stared at her, and slowly nodded. Then she lowered her head and cried quietly while Misty waited.