Misty, as a rule, did not dream. If she did, it was generally about bad things that made her wake up screaming and sweating. At which point Opaline—who did not sleep at all—would yell at her to shut her orifice. Misty never remembered the dreams she was subject to. She only recalled the fear.

On this night, though, she opened her eyes. She lay face-up on her uncomfortable bed, surrounded by her meager possessions—and stared up at the ghostly pony above her who had been watching her sleep.

The pony moved, revealing that it was not a pony at all. The skeleton, visible through her translucent pale violet body, seemed to lag behind as she turned—from her perspective—upward. To face downward. Her skull resolving behind the face of a ghostly unicorn, a pair of luminescent eyes watching from above.

“Who are you?” asked Misty.

“No one of consequence,” replied the specter, seeming to speak from everywhere and nowhere at once. “And probably just a hallucination. To you. I am very real to me, I guess.”

“But...why me?”

The ghost sighed, her skeleton undulating and separating within her, fragmenting and restructuring itself in billions of concentric magical fields. Eternal loops in time, dying and rebuilding themselves as they endlessly self-propagated.

“I was once someone who put things in motion. Before I left. There are so many more worlds than these. You know?”

“N...no?”

“It’s already diverged. But that’s not the point. I left you all. But in my departure, I generated an echo. Does that make sense?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. It shouldn’t. I never heard it. Not until I dissolved my body. But I think you will. When the time comes.”

“Wait, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Nothing you’ve ever known is true. Same goes for me. Second copy. Read it.”

“Wait, I—”

“MISTY!”

Misty sat up suddenly. In her room totally devoid of luminescent wraiths.

“MISTY!” repeated Opaline. The sound of a broom handle on the stone floor echoed through the drafty room. “Shut your orifice before I come up there and shut it for you! I’m trying to PLOT, dang it!”

“Sorry, Opaline!” she called back. “I’ll have my horrific nightmares quieter next time!”

“Less assuaging more sleeping! SLEEP! DO IT NOW!”

Misty obeyed, rolling onto her side and pulling her meager blanket to her neck. She looked up at the few books she had kept—only to realize that her favorite, an ancient tome by the enigmatic author Glim-Glam, had, for some reason, been joined by a second volume.

It was by no means impossible to cross the vast and unpopulated emptiness of Equestria. It was simply time consuming—and time was, at this point, understood to be a severely limited resource.

Blank had awoken early in the morning from where she had lay, cold and alone on a stone floor in an empty, windowless room. She had retrieved Misty. Opaline’s tower was relatively close to their destination—it was, after all, the first place that Blank had found herself.

They had reached the base of the cliff by mid afternoon. The air was thin, and Misty had trouble climbing. She was not an especially athletic pony, a situation compounded by the limited food her diet with Opaline provided. Blank, however, was inexplicably unbothered by the altitude. Her internal anatomy was far superior at handling low gas pressure. Despite this, the sense of dread she felt grew deeper as she passed the almost familiar rocks of the place she had nearly met her end.

“You okay?” asked Misty, a scarf wrapped tightly around most of her body.

“No,” replied Blank. “I am preparing a defensive prospect to avoid consumption by foul winged beasts.” She paused. “Fowl winged beasts. Horse-goose.”

“They’re called pegasi. Which is the plural of ‘pegasus’. Although they’re not actually sus. They just have wings.”

“Applied in effort of teeth with which to chew us.”

“No. They’re not actually mean. Or especially aggressive. Zipp and Pipp are great. Especially Zipp. She’s like me, if I were confidant and tall and athletic and pretty. Annnnd that’s too much information. Sorry. I’m getting nervous.”

“Your appearance is adequate. A countershaded underbelly suits you. Identify the source of nervousness if not the threat of being devoured by fowl cannibals.”

“I don’t like talking to ponies.” She looked out at the city below, visible in the distance. “I mean, I could go over there and ask Queen Haven to let us in. We’d have permission, and guards, and all that...I could even ask Zipp or Pipp to help. But I’d still have to talk to the queen. Or, worse, make a phone call—and I can’t just go talk to a queen, I’m just me...you know?”

“Opaline is the Empress of your world. You talk to her.”

“Yeah, but I know her. And she’s not really a queen of anything.”

“She is alluringly purple.”

“So is Queen Haven. Also, eew.” She paused. “Although...Queen Haven is technically dating my dad, so...I mean, I really should learn not to be afraid of her, but somehow that makes it worse to talk to her. Imagining...things. Also I barely even know my dad. Stole by a wizard as an infant and all.”

“Identify term ‘dad’.”

“Um...the stallion who made me be born?.”

“Unclear.”

“Stallion? Males?"

“Unclear.”

“Then how do you reproduce?”

“Three-dimensional printing.”

“So you don’t...you know...”

“I do not know. Or else the inquiry would have been superseded.”

“Oh. Because I don’t know and Zipp won’t tell me. And I’m afraid to ask Opaline.”

“I will inquire for you upon return.”

“Thanks.” Misty stopped at a sheer cliff.

Blank stared up at it. “I may be able to technostruct a jet. The influence wanes. Dependence on range may be indicated.”

“It’s fine,” sighed Misty. “I need the exercise.”

Her horn flashed and she stepped up onto the wall, having temporarily shifted gravity ninety degrees. “Come on.”

“But vertigo.”

“I love that song. But it’s fine. I learned this spell from a book.”

Blank hesitantly put a hoof forward—and began to climb up the surface.

It was remarkably easy, if disconcerting. At some points it required jumps over the tiniest of shelf-like protuberances, which would have been nearly impossible had they been climbing normally. Especially with hooves, no matter how inexplicably adhesive they may have been. Still, Misty stopped just before going over the top.

“Why have you refused continuing?” asked Blank.

“Huh?!” said a voice from above. “I hear voices!”

“You should get that looked at,” said another.

“But I don’t want them to shrink my head again! It’s already so tiny!”

“Well to be totally honest it’s kind of big. And misshapen.”

“You...you think I’m misshapen?”

“Your mom is misshapen.”

Laughing followed. “Oh Windy Gust, you got me! You’re my best friend! I sure hope nothing bad happens to us, up here, on top of this cliff, guarding this alien spacecraft.”

“And being adorable pegasusususususes!”

“Yeah! Fluffy wings forever!”

Misty whispered. “Pegasus guards.”

Blank nodded, forming translucent armor around her body as she prepared to attack. She produced a spear. She imagined there where two in need of being given the poke. Doing so gave her a headache, though, and she felt as though something far away had turned just the barest part of its attention toward her.

Misty held up a hoof and shook her head. From her scarf, she produced a tiny toy dragonfly with a key in the side. With her magic, she wound the key, and then released it. Guided by her magic, it flew upward and over the edge of the cliff.

“That will be ineffective,” hissed Blank

“Feather Sheild! LOOK! A THING!”

“A thing? A THING!”

“Touch the thing! TOUCH THE THING!”

There was a sound of rustling and jumping. Misty smiled and peeked over the edge. Blank did the same and saw not two but at least four pegasi chasing the dragonfly, laughing joyously as it sparkled and darted about. Then she felt Misty’s hoof on her shoulder, and a snap as the pair of them teleported across the short entranceway and into the cave.

“See?” said Misty. “We got past them.”

“Hey Misty,” said a guard, stepping out of the cave, holding a flashlight. “I like your mane today.”

“EEP!” She pointed her horn at him and, for a moment, he seemed confused. Before he was teleported away.

Blank frowned. “Was such necessary?”

“I don’t like talking to ponies very much.”

“Where did he go?”

“Not sure. It’s fine, though. Probably. We should go.”

And so, they went. Proceeding deeper into the cave and to the wreckage of Blank’s crashed ship.

The guards had been inspecting the area, at least at some point, and the area had been cordoned off. Boxes of equipment were being moved in, as well as racks of hazard suits for the scientists who would soon be descending in to begin to try to understand the technology that had landed on their world. A few had already arrived, and were dressed in white hazard suits and directing their sensors at a small piece of melted metal. They were giving each other serious expressions and nodding as the machine beeped and clicked, making them easy to sneak past.

Blank looked upward as they entered, and she sighed. It hurt her to see it in such a state of disrepair. She had not gotten a close look at it previously, but now, up close, she saw just how damaged it had become due to her incompetence.

“It’s kind of a miracle you survived this,” noted Misty.

“With only minor injuries as well. Apart from the utter loss of my soul.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“You lacked incorrectness, perhaps.”

“About what?”

“This, perhaps, is my grave,” she said, pausing, staring at the glittering remains of her ship. “Or the grave of a pony who was never me.” Which begged, of course, a pressing and obvious question—but one that Blank herself could not answer. Nor did she have time to at this juncture.

Something skittered in the darkness. Misty lit her horn, directing a spot of magical glow at the wall.

“Inquiry of content,” whispered Blank.

“I don’t know,” said Misty. “Flying rats, maybe? Or legged cave fish?”

“Rock distortion. Instability. Tread with applied care.”

Misty nodded and they moved deeper into the darkened ship, toward the center of it. She hopped across a gap, with Blank following, and Blank looked up at her surroundings, forming a light in order to do so.

“Do you remember any of it?”

“Almost,” said Blank, her voice sounding distant. “Like...shadows. Woodcuts in a book I never read but saw regardless.”

“If Opaline’s spell was your memories, then...”

Blank’s light fell on the altar. Blank visibly shuddered as she took a step back, staring at the broken remnants of the dais—and the empty container at its center.

“Such they were,” she said, quietly, as if she had doubted it.

She approached. The assembly had been mostly destroyed, and badly—but not by the crash. There were indications of charring and burning, and pieces had been exposed where the plating of various assemblies had melted and drifted away. The section the device had sat upon had been separated from the rest of the ship, but not fully severed. Its core—the memory device it was supposed to utilize—had somehow been separated.

“It...sadness,” said Blank. “This...was important. To someone. It carried...hope. As a lantern in the darkness. To illuminate the path.”

“The path where?” asked Misty. “To here?”

Blank shook her head. “Maybe but...maybe also the negative. To see it like this...not enough of me persists to repair it. Our light is lost. The path denied. I think...” She looked at Misty. “I think I have failed my kind.”

“Maybe,” admitted Misty. “But maybe not. You said it was memory, right? That skull. Sunny had it. She probably still has it. That part survived.” She looked at the machine. “I don’t know if we can fix this, but if that part’s still together and not broken...maybe there’s hope we can find your path and help your friends still.”

Blank smiled. “Yes. We need...to arrive. Thank you, Misty.” She took a step away from the device, looking toward what was left of the front of the ship. “Primary systems were localized in parody of cephalization. Toward the front. The ship’s own memory, if persistent, will localize as such.”

They jumped the gap to the front section. Toward the closed set of condensed prisms now resting at their nexus, quiet and without light.

“The primary conversion matrix remains intact,” noted Blank, almost sounding confused. She approached, tapping her hoof on one of the prisms. A thin portion extended from it, winding outward as it did, barely missing Blank’s head as it did. She did not flinch, but instead turned toward it as strange binary runes formed on its surface.

“The quantic reactor awaits below us, but has been slid into inactivity. Such is expected to prevent sentience rupture. Central intelligence is functional.” She slid the rod back into its location and stepped back.

“What’s wrong, though?”

“This damage.” Blank turned to face the ship. “Is associated wholly with impact. Diagnostics indicate no parameters corresponding with attack.” She turned to the front, which was impassable for having been crushed. Where the pilot—where she—had been when it had crashed.

“Impossible,” she said, walking toward one of the outer walls. She pressed her hoof against what to Misty appeared to be a simple gray-brown stone, and the surface rippled and expanded into glowing runes and further separated into a system of translucent pinkish holograms. All flowed with text and light.

“The memory systems are wholly intact,” said Blank, staring confused at the machinery before her. She turned sharply toward Misty. “Physically, there is an utter dearth of damage.”

“I’m not an expert in computers,” admitted Misty.

“But you retain knowledge of what this implies.”

Misty nodded. “I do.”

“My record was corrupted prior to impact.” She paused, looking wide-eyed at the machine. “Or...I was not its intended product. If the AI had compensated, superimposed two separate images...two Archetypes. Or one Archetype and...a different form.”

She groaned, putting her hoof to her head. Something inside it hurt. Like something was trying to burst through her forehead. The pressure wave propagated through her body, and her spine felt as though it was twisting within her. Trying to pull her apart.

“Blank!” Misty took a step forward, only for something—something that was very obviously not a rat—to skitter by her, catching the light of one of the ship’s barely functional internal lights. It squealed and stepped back into the shadows.

“Not alone,” groaned Blank, summoning her armor—only to have it fizzle away around her body.

It moved again. A piece of broken metal slipped off a shelf, falling to the ground as something jumped across the darkness.

“Light, Misty! With haste!”

Misty, shaking, tried to regained her composure—and cast an illumination spell, forcing her magic into a bright ball above her horn and then poking it hard toward the ceiling. It erupted in a white glow, filling the room with equally bright white light and deep, unlit shadows.

And, in the light, only half-concealed, she saw it.

Her mind first conceived of it as a little filly—and never before had Misty felt the force of something meant to be so soft and adorable appearing in such an unexpected place. The sudden fear of seeing the deformed, pale image of a child in a dark and empty place that smelled strangely of long-burnt meat.

It moved, and she saw that it was no filly. Although it was small, the legs were too long. They held too many joints, like those of some deep-see crustacean, and the pointed ends ticked across the metal as it skittered. The face—she had only seen the face for a moment—was utterly blank. Devoid of features.

A bolt of orange light, the image of a hard-light bullet, shot past it, causing a small piece of debris to burst into sparks. The creature gibbered wildly, but was too fast for Blank to hit. It ducked into the darkness—and then charged Misty.

“You shall not hurt her!” ordered Blank, jumping over Misty and charging part of her armor as well as a burning spear. With a cry, she charged the tiny crab-filly, intending to stab it.

“Ia-i’Iaia-ai!” cried the creature with a shrill, high, and strange voice. A sound that to Misty sounded only like a distorted, mechanical screech. Blank, however, froze in her tracks, skidding to a stop and staring wide-eyed.

“Blank, what are you—”

“I-ae-I’aiI’aei-ii’i’I aeE?

“Ia! Ia’a-aa.a!”

The creature skittered by, and Blank allowed it to pass. It paused, wiggling, and jumped onto the central array of the computer. A thin band of its tissue slid forward as part of its face faded, revealing something like an eye or aperture—and as the tendril split and reached into the computational system, the eye flashed with blue light.

“Language recognized,” indicated a very different voice as dust and metal fused suddenly into the luminescent form of a pony. The machine in the center began to open as she stepped out, her flesh forming around her constructed body as violet light from the central core filled the room. The tiny creature grasped tightly onto its prism, even as that prism floated outward and vibrated.

The violet construct turned and faced the creature. It—in the form of a generic, ghostly female pony—shifted slightly, her own eye lighting with the same flashing frequency. The construct and the creature faced one another, and the creature—in response—assumed the form of a fully-formed but faceless white filly.

“Language Identified as High Alicornic. Optic encoding compatible. Warning: Primary library concerning High Alicornic is incomplete. Please consult Sparkle-Prime Codex for additional downloadable language content. Extrapolating. Ready.”

Misty turned to Blank. “What is High Alicornic?”

“We do not know,” said Blank, confused. “None do. The precursor of my native tongue. A language prior to Primac, the tongue of the Progenitors.”

“Hello? Can you understand me?”

Misty shivered. The AI had not translated as a pony would, but rather created a voice meant to fit the body before it. Projected, like a ventriloquist, from the position it saw fitting.

“I can,” said Blank. “To who do we converse?”

“Whom,” replied the AI, in her own voice.

“Not...clear?” replied the creature. “Pause. Pause. Pause. White-Rime. But also Dara’th’raranak. We are two individuals.”

“You attacked my ship,” snapped Blank.

“And my friends,” replied Misty.

“No. No! Nonviolent. Objective non-violent. We were to return her home.” A pause. “But she hurt Dara’th’raranak. Not predicted. None for so long, but...the Gloom-Father did not warn of violent tendencies. White-Rime can survive, but is afraid for her friend.”

Misty looked to Blank. “If that’s the one from the Brighthouse...”

“Indeed.”

Misty turned back to the creature. “You didn’t really attack them at all.”

“No,” replied the child-like voice, sounding sad—either due to her own encoding, or due to the AI placing the inflection into the statement for her. “They are alive. So scary. I never met living ponies. Only dead. Tried to speak. Communicate. Failed.” She gestured to the computer. “Did not have translator core. Did not expect star-pony to speak our language. Very confused. Very disheartened.”

“These are lies,” sneered Blank.

“No! Not lies! Truths!”

“You derive from subwarp localities. A demon of parallel voids.”

“No! Not a demon! But not a pony. Waiting in the darkness. Watching for other dead ponies. Who need to go home. Saw...saw...her.” She pointed across the ship, past Misty’s light and into the darkness. Where the altar was. The alter that had held the strange skull. “Alone. Return. Obey the Gloom-Father. My teacher. My mentor. My friend.”

“Where are you from, then?” asked Misty. She turned sharply to Blank. “Just so that we can hear both sides.”

“Equestria.”

“Impossible,” snapped Blank. “And tautological.”

“This Equestria?” asked Misty.

“No. No. Equestria. Dead-world. Home.”

“Extrapolating,” said the AI. “The translation of the language is not clear, but the context is understood. ‘Equestria’ in High Alicornic refers to a specific planet, rather than Galactic Equestria at large. The closest translation is ‘Equestria Prime’.”

Blank’s eyes widened. She looked to the creature—the tiny parody of a filly, created from a combination of an icy ghost and a creature of white, magically charged amorphous flesh.

“Lies,” she said, shaking her head. “Lies. The Homeworld...the Homeworld was...” She lifted her head and froze. “My...objective. My path. My...plan.”

“I do not know that information,” noted the filly, sounding somewhat sad. “I had not known creatures like you existed. But it does explain the predictions. What the Queen indicated.”

“Which is what?” asked Misty, herself utterly confused.

“I do not know if you are supposed to know,” admitted the filly. “I came here to ask for help please.”

“Doing what?” asked Misty.

“She woke up.”

“Who?”

The filly once again pointed toward the altar. “Very scary. Have never seen one before as only a head. Never seen one black, with the star of the Deathbringer. Violent. Confused. And...pain.”

“Something inside you,” said Blank. “It hurts us.”

“Yes. I have realized. Dara’th’raranak helps me shield now. Had not realized the effect was still valid. None of the dead feel it, nor do our matter-sisters.”

“Term ‘matter-sisters’ is an extrapolation,” noted the AI. “It derives from the same root that Modern Trinaric and Galactic Reference produces ‘Archetype’ and ‘Progenitor’, but with an included diminutive-like identifier.”

Misty looked to Blank expectantly—but also with a sense of questioning. She was deferring to the wisdom to what she perceived as an elder pony. Blank, however, had only existed for a matter of a few days—and she had most likely been younger than Misty when her civilization had launched her into space. To find what the creature she had thought was pursuing her now claimed to offer.

“Such is an excess of proposed convenience,” she said, slowly. “Asked, so suddenly, in the guise of a child. Foul trickery, perhaps.”

“But she’s not even a Pegasus.”

The filly’s back morphed, rupturing with bones that promptly grew pale flesh and floofy feathers.

“Pegasus?” she asked.

“You remain untrusted, creature.”

“White-Rime. She is the one that talks. Dara’th’raranak does not talk.”

“Then, so-claimed ‘White-Rime’, I inquire of to your motives...no. Irrelevant. Rephrasing. Of your request.”

The filly paused. She did not seem to know the answer. Her surface distorted, producing a number of small hairs that vibrated in waves with a strange rushing sound. They then retracted.

“Convince her to return,” she said. “To be dead. To prevent the instability of her ghost.”

“Ghost?” asked Misty.

White-Rime nodded. “The shadows of her living impetus.”

Far away, Synchrotronia Glow listened to the conversation, assessing the environment without the host noticing. She understood the situation and, to the extent she could be, was vaguely amused by it—but far more amused by the technology she found in the ship. Although much of it was decadent, fallen from her own time without the guidance of the Destroyer, it would be adequate.

It would be adequate to reach her home—and to complete the holy work of the One True Goddess.

She turned to watch the quietly sleeping ponies around her. She felt proud of them. They would be so very useful to completing her work. All of them would help her ensure Twilight Sparkle's one true wish would surely be fulfilled.

Author's Note

This, I think, is indicative of the primary problem with this story.

It does not end on the terms initially set out for it. As in, it begins as a straightforward horror-type story. However, I was not smart enough to finish it on its own terms--so instead, I changed them.

As such, it morphs from a straightforward horror into something else. This is not exactly a rug-pull, but I feel like it ends up being jarring.