Her altitude began to decay as her energy finally depleted. Distantly, she felt the decrease in elevation, the growing density of the air, and eventually she heard the beeping of her internal control architecture sending out a final warning—but it faded as the world swam and her consciousness slipped away from her.

Trees caressed her violently as she dropped to the ground, the technostruct engines breaking apart as the projected pieces split and fell, rebounding off the bark of the trees with a sound like glass breaking as they fizzed into smoke before dissipating utterly. Then she struck the ground hard and bounced once, rolling over before skidding to a stop in the alien dirt.

It hurt—or at the very least she believed it should have hurt. The sensation was distant, as if somepony else where feeling it—which was, in the most terrible way possible, true. That pony was her.

She lay in the dirt, unmoving but nominally alive. Her mind was swimming, each second oscillating between extreme fear and panic and groggy emptiness.

There was no way for her to know if this was normal. She could not remember if she had been reconstructed before—but knew that she must have been. At one point. The first time, at least. The way all ponies were born, implanted with their first Archetype, the blank and unblemished copy of their Progenitor—carried in an unbroken chain. A chain whose links had shattered upon her rebirth. She understood that she was an abomination. A false-being, denuded of her Archetype and severed from her Progenitor.

The pony did not know who she was, or who she had been. And yet she still lived. Stripped of her Archetype, her self, her soul—and forced to persist in a state of confusion and fear. Her mind, terrified of her state, continued to reach back into its past, searching her memories, but always only finding the same one.

The sound of metal bending. Of the ship beginning to tear itself apart—and a brief moment of hope as it, aflame and ringing out with every warning it could issue—began to pull up. Then the mountain. A sudden realization—and a feeling that everything went into motion. Everything began to move in a way that was like being shaken out of a deep sleep, a sudden and violent blast of cold heat and noise and light. Over and over again, her mind played it. The feeling of the non-fatal injuries that had violently destroyed her entire body. A single violent blast that had shoved her into the void of temporary non-existence.

Then awake. Facing abominations so terrible that she had never even conceived that they could exist, let alone that they would. They wore the false-faces of ponies, but they bore no Archetypes. They were not one of the six possible allowable states of a pony. They were monsters—a monster that this deformed atrocity of a mare now realized that she, too, had become.

And yet something willed her to continue. She was aware of more than she would have wished to be—a massive quantity of disjointed technical knowledge spanning numerous subjects. It was jumbled and confused, refusing to be mapped to an autobiographical history—but it existed. Which implied that she had been somewhat important and well trained. And, although she could not remember what it was, she recalled that she had been performing a critical mission. When something had gone wrong. Horribly wrong in a way that terrified her, even though she had no idea what she was so afraid of.

She knew what had happened to her. Understood that the files used to reconstruct her mind had been damaged—but instead of a drooling blank, she had been created simply without her fundamental self. Only the mission and the knowledge necessary to complete it had persisted.

The blank mare pulled her hoof close to her. Upon awakening, she had been so desperately confused that she had only been able to grab one object from what she assumed had been her ship. She had not initially known what it was, but now realized that it was a piece of clothing. A cover for one of her hooves, from the ankle to elbow. It was a tool, and considering that in interfaced wirelessly to her neurografts, the mare assumed it was something she had used before. She felt a familiarity to it.

She turned it over. The underside was marked with a symbol of a tree containing six colored circles. She understood the meaning of the circles: they were representations of the Elemental Progenitors, the Founders of the Six Archetypes. She did not, however, recognize the tree or what it meant. She supposed it was a bit of religious iconography related to whatever sect she belonged to.

With some difficulty, she stood. Her body had been formed with comparatively little body fat, meaning that her energy had depleted quickly. She was tired, and it hurt, but there was a far deeper problem as well. A confusion that manifested in a purely physical sense. She had no idea what she was supposed to be. She was not sure if she was a Pegasus missing her wings, a unicorn missing her horn, and what was left could not proceed with the confidence of form native to an earth-pony. Her existence ached, every second wracked with fundamental discomfort.

She ignored it, calling on the artifact attached to her hoof. It directed her mind, tracing her path. She proceeded forward on hoof through a forest filled with plant species she did not recognize. It had grown dark, and the sky was filled with stars and a moon. Unfamiliar ones. Unfamiliar, and yet the mare could not remember exactly what her own home had been. Various images floated to her of different plants, different soil, different air—but she could not recall what any of them meant. They were too badly corrupted.

She came to a clearing high above a hill and, looking down, paused to generate her final path to her destination. Her systems had automatically traced the surface of the planet for the nearest source of magic. There where two primary outputs. One was immensely powerful, possibly some kind of beacon, but that one had been too far for the blank mare to reach on hoof or even with the technostruct jets. She had instead elected to pursue the second strongest.

As she looked down from the hill on which she had landed, she saw a tower. Some remnant of a far larger and far more immense cliff-side structure that had long since vanished to time, a final rampart of some great castle, overgrown with plants and stained with moss and lichen.

It was the sort of tower a wizard would live in—but from a distance, it was impossible to know if it was still inhabited. Regardless, the blank mare proceeded forward. A storm was gathering. She did not wish to be caught out in the rain.

Somewhat peculiarly, the doors were not locked. The blank mare somewhat understood why. There was no habitation surrounding this ancient redoubt. No ponies had come close to it or settled around it. If the hideous Archetypeless abominations could even be considered ‘ponies’, although the mare had no better way to refer to them.

The structure appeared to have been built by them, only to be overgrown much later. The architecture suggested it had been constructed at least partially through the use of magic, with high, angular walls and integrated crystal elements. All of it surrounded by a surprising amount of tree. It was apparent that whatever wizard had lived here had most likely long-since left or otherwise been ingested by their own creations. Such a place was far to lonely for any pony to want to stay for long.

She proceeded down a hallway toward an oddly ornate door. Pressing on it, she found it opened easily, revealing a kind of throne room. The back was overgrown with an especially large root, and contained what seemed to be a ceremonial dias lit by magical flames. The blank mare dismissed it, instead focusing on the pool in the center of the room. She sensed, on some level, the magic of it, and understood it to be a type of interface device.

The blank approached it, staring into the liquid—and seeing her reflection staring back. Without an Archetype installed, her body had not assumed any color—it could barely even be called white, excluding even the Archetype of Provision from her possible origins. Rather, she had assumed a kind of pallid gray. Her mane had darkened slightly, but it was still colorless and dull—and her eyes seemed as empty as her mind and heart felt. Her face bore no expression, even though staring at it made her want to scream and weep. She simply could not remember how to do either.

Staring, she was suddenly entrapped in a sphere of magic. Confused, she poked it, finding it oddly sticky.

“Well well well,” mused a shadowy figure, drifting elegantly down a staircase built into the tree root. “Well. Now what exactly do I have here?”

The blank looked through the bubble, confused as to what she was seeing. She could not even identify what it was. It was very purple.

“Iae’ee’eia.a.i’a? I’a IiaEaa.ia...”

The pony-like creature frowned. “Excuse me? Was that...words? Are you seriously going to walk into my lair and talk at me with...that? How am I supposed to understand you when you plead and beg and whimper...and also grovelling. Possibly cute squeaking when I squeeze the juice out of you. MISTY!” She turned around, yelling up the stairs. “Get down here! NOW! And bring a scroll, you’re going to need to write down a lot of ideas!” She turned back to the blank. “And you, you’re in Equestria, learn to speak Equestrian!”

The blank frowned and rolled her eyes.

“Identify: Primakk,” she said, distantly and only partially recalling how to speak the long-dead tongue. “Ugly guttural language of the gods. Dominant-female tall-horse, inquiry: identify nature. Request priority moderate.”

“Excuse me?! What did you just call me?!”

“Dominant-female tall-horse purple ugly eye-shadow pattern green.”

“Are you INSULTING ME?! In my own throne room?!”

“Correction: no. These statements are identified: declarative. Fact."

“I—I should have you squeezed of ALL your magic for this!” She paused. “Actually, maybe I will. MISTY! Get me—I don’t know, some kind of juicer—”

“Issuing request: contact required to service failed reconstruction. Home. Inquest: high-bandwidth entanglement cross-wave transmitter?”

The purple thing stared with a confused expression on its face. Then yelled. “MISTY! Get down here, I think I broke it! And I didn't even squeeze it yet! MISTY!”

“Revised inquest: subspace resonance propagator?”

“You are saying words...but it would seem I do not care enough to know what you are babbling about.”

The blank’s desperation was increasing. “Inquest...Starlight Corps incursion beacon? Even old?” Her panic was increasing. “Even...Unspoilt Maiden-priest of the Veil?”

“What did you just call me?”

“Dominant-female tall-horse has elected purposefully to be least possible helpful?”

She stamped her hoof, the room shaking with unexpected seismic force and the torches around the room igniting with unexpected fire. “My NAME is Opaline Arcana, not ‘tall-horse’! Mistress of the Arcane, alicorn goddess, and one true ruler of all Equestria—”

The activated her technostruct implants. She did not have enough power to fly, but had recovered enough to form a basic structure. Her default armor encased her, then expanded outward into a hedgehog-phalanx formation. The translucent orange spikes surged outward, popping the bubble that she was in. The purple tall-horse—apparently named Opaline—took step back, disgusted and surprised by the fact that her spell was broken. As the blank stepped forward, though, she felt magic pass through her. Not an offensive spell, but rather one that looked deep into her. The wizard’s eyes widened.

“That was not magic,” she said, slowly. “Are you aware that you do not currently have a soul?”

“Thoroughly. Identify: alicorn. Search term unknown.”

The purple stared at the blank. She then lifted her wings. “Alicorn? I am a divine magical being. The most perfect of all possible ponies. Alicorn. Celestia, Luna? ME? Do you even read?”

“Those identifiers are not indexed. No Archetype possesses your format. This is novel. I don’t like it.”

“Did I ask you what you like? Why would I even care? Why are you in my house?”

“Identify: you are a wizard.”

Opaline scoffed loudly. “Don’t be so vulgar, of course not. Wizards are old and smelly and...old. I am very clearly young and beautiful. To reiterate: Opaline Arcana. Mistress of the Arcane. Does nopony read anymore? I’m very important. In fact, you should be bowing. Grovelling, even. Turning over and showing me your soft underbelly” She paused, as if considering. “MISTY! Get down here and show this weird pale mare how to grovel properly! You have a pale underbelly, you'd know! You’re almost adequate at it!”

The blank raised her hoof, and gave it a slight flick. The air above it condensed and flashed with pink light, resolving suddenly into a black cube the dropped onto her hoof.

Opaline stared at it. “That was magic. Weak stupid magic. But better than Misty can do. What is that?”

“The black box.”

“Yes, I can see that. Are you slow, like my fat assistant Misty?”

“The vehicle that constructed me is possessed by bird-horses.” The blank paused. “Pegasuses. Internal coding deficient. Memories corrupted. Physical systems damaged vastly upon impact. Cannot recover. Quantic incursion field down. Auxiliary stored upon encode here. Utilizes magic.” She looked at the box. “Crux: can be decoded by Archetype: Provision or Archetype: Comprehension only.” She looked at the purple-horse with ugly eyeshadow. “Required: wizard.”

“Not a wizard.” She paused. “However. I am exceedingly magical. Since all magic in Equestria is rightfully my property. Unfortunately, some tiny fluffy little theifs are stealing it from me.” She paused. “Also I will be eradicating the entire dragon race. Not because I hate dragons, even though I do, but because I need to drink all their magic juice. Because, again, I already own it.”

“Conclusion: you lack the magic to decode the black box.”

This seemed to offend her deeply. She indicated this by scoffing even louder.

“Of course I can! I just do not want to!”

“Conclusion: unchanged.”

Opaline’s horn flickered—and then fizzled. “Ugh,” she groaned. “This cursed lack of magical power...I would have given you the most dreadful smiting otherwise. You would be completely smote.”

“Smitten.”

“Well, yes, of course you are,” she said, trotting over. “I am, after all, Best Pony. How could you not be attracted to me?”

“Ugly eye-shadow.”

“IT MATCHES! IT’S BASED ON A COLOR WHEEL!”

“Too saturated.”

“YOU are about to be ‘too saturated’ in that seeing pool in a moment if you don’t shut your yap-hole. Me-dang it, you’re worst than my fat and ugly assistant. You haven’t met her yet, but I assure you, she is not easy to look at.” Opaline levitated the box in her magic. “To be honest I somewhat like you more. Misty is a terrible doormat if I’m being honest. No ambition at all. It’s no wonder no one likes her. Except for me, of course. I am the only one benevolent enough to tolerate her.”

“Process note: I do not care.”

“Exactly. You see my point.” Opaline shifted the box in her magic, and then quickly separated it by unseen seems, pulling it apart and twisting the various angles as she disassembled its magical fields. “What a peculiar artifact. The magic reeks of that ugly purple book-horse, but it’s essentially crude compared to my sheer brilliance. I think I just need to turn here...and press this...and not get my horn stuck on...ACK!”

The cube suddenly erupted into pink magic, expanding as it separated into a system of geometric shapes that orbited a central black sphere—and then it paused, holding, and retracted to close range. The color dimmed and began to drip downward and outward, forming effervescent chains of light that undulated and twisted like flitting smoke.

“What is it...doing?”

“Observing language preference is Fourth Unity. I can read it. Text only.” She blank frowned. It was unfortunate. She had not recorded an image of her physical form—which would have immediately identified her Archetype. That part had either been left out as oversight, or had somehow been corrupted. Which should have been impossible. The black box existed in a linked pocket dimension. It was inaccessible to any physical phenomena. A non-magical supernova could not even touch it. The only logical solution was that the blank—when she had still possessed a name and form—had activated it improperly.

And yet, as her eyes trailed the liquid text, she found that pieces were missing. Scattered absences permeated the record, areas that had become illegible and indecipherable. At first, she had thought—nearly prayed—that it was a defect in her own mind. That a piece of her technical skill had been lost along with her fundamental self. Unfortunately, though, it became apparent that the record itself was damaged. Somehow, and by some unknown mechanism, it was incomplete.

With an unexpected level of skill, she translated verbally—mostly for the good of the ugly purple creature that had assisted her.

“The recording opens,” she said. “Identified: mission from the Neo-Manehattan Institute of Comprehension. Time code: 45372.e.33.i. Winter in my home. I laughed. Charging system, all parameters match expected. From on-world tests. Engaging incursion. Incursion executed.”

The blank stepped back, her eyes widening as ghostly images crossed into her mind, entering violently and without warning. The dull, gray memories of the cockpit of the ship—a small ship she was operating alone, made from old technology that she had only recently begun to understand. Ancient—but something else. There was something else there with her, but she did not know what. Something that brought her joy—and fear. Deeper than she could possibly remember—because she did not remember. Whatever it had been, she doubted she ever knew.

“Compass,” she said, not understanding why she chose that word. She looked up at the violet pony. “Memory: scientist, archaeologist. Unidentified test. Had penetrated, skimming Subwarp void-delineation. Deep. So deep...”

Opaline looked back at her, remaining silent—but with an eerie level of comprehension in her cruel eyes. Primakk had no good words for the concept of the Subwarp, but if she truly was as powerful a wizard as she claimed, Opaline had likely made a connection to the concept. One no doubt written in her culture and books a very different way as the blank’s own.

“Then...something failed.” The blank looked up, seeing the shadows of her former self narrating. Listing parameters that in retrospect were unhelpful. Perhaps for the sake of informing posterity—although if a ship sunk in the Subwarp, there was nothing that could be done. The fastest built only skimmed its nearest surface—few if any could go to any substantial depth and come back with the occupants sane and whole.

“Incursion. Something...came up. Something saw me.”

Opaline frowned. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Pursued. Not...from this side. It came from there. In the void. Realm of monsters incomprehensible, elder things and things un-yet born.” The blank shuddered, hard. “Failed. Emerged...here. In rapid descent. In pursuit. Tried...tried to generate adequate defense. Attacked. Damaged. Impact.” She reached out. “Here. This...came. From within.”

The smoke-like liquid text reconfigured at her input—and assumed a ghostly form of something only half-rendered by the black box’s limited magical scanners. What had come from the incomprehensible non-space below and behind the universe and pursued her ship into realspace.

It undulated as it moved, but at different rates depending on the parts of its body. The rear was long, like a fleshy tail that twisted into an elegant spiral—and it bore something like wings, although they neither flapped nor acted as sails. Rather, thin gossamer threads of flesh hung behind them, undulating and glimmering as they moved. The front was tortuous and alien—and surrounded by a number of teeth. It was only a fraction of what it seemed—because it changed. Into forms that could not be fully recorded. The shape it had taken at that moment was transient.

“Ugh,” said Opaline. “That is...” She paused. “Would it happen to be magic?”

“Not in any mortal sense no.”

Opaline smiled. “Well then I suppose I’m terribly fortunate not to be a mortal being.”

The blank glared at her. “Observing that you are not comprehending magnitude of potential deleterious effect incurred in accordance with stated events.”

“Don’t I?”

“It came through. Here. Landed. Dimensional cannons generated no wound, no injury. Unbreakable. Devastating. Monster, horror untold. Released on your planet.” She paused. “By...my actions.” Actions for a cause that still eluded her. “Test,” she said. “Test...operated a test. Of a...what? Unknown. Important.” She shook her head.

“Does it matter?”

“No,” admitted the blank, realizing that it did not. Her own fate was irrelevant. She had already met her end, the surviving fraction resurrected only to complete the mission. Not to complete the test—but because she was the only one who could undo the grave danger she had brought to this world. “This...world.”

“Equestria, yes. I rule it. Or would, if they would let me out of this accursed bubble.”

The blank shook her head. “No, no...why, am I? Where? You...alicorn, non-species. Pegasus of wings, unicorn of magic, earth-pony of strength...six Archetypes. Six Elements. Six Progenitors. No others. Ever other planet long-dead. Yet ponies of sorts admittedly and empirically persist here. Why?”

“Because this is Equestria.”

The blank reached out and grasped the center of the black box. She pulled the sphere back—and from within it, extracted a glowing violet crystal. One that was unwise to ever look too long at it, lest a pony begin to count how many sides it had.

She walked to the pool in the center of the room and gently pushed the crystal out over the pool. The water immediately responded, drawing itself up into a roil.

“My seeing-pool! You little twit, what do you think—”

Then it shuddered, rendering a schematic hologram in magic around the floating crystal. The blank observed, manipulating it with her technostruct appendages until she had gained administrative access to the fundamental system—and the schematic of the entire planet was laid out before her.

She felt her eyes widen. Even without a soul, she felt awe at the sight of the truth set before her eyes. A thing which she could not possibly have expected to even exist.

“Now that is magic,” said Opaline, almost overjoyed—and trying to lick her lips without being noticed.

“Indeed. The shattered remains of the fruit of the children of the Soth’oth retains vestiges of hideous quantic intelligence.”

“And if a pony where, say...to attempt to absorb that level of power?”

“Instant liquefaction.”

Opaline did not seem put off by that potential outcome. Still, she looked up at the projection.

“I have used this pool for...I don’t really know how long anymore. I have never seen this.”

“Schematic identifier. Obvious evidence of Equestriforming. Non-planetary synthetic, old. Impossibly old. Engine. Accumulator. Projector...beacon?” She slowly turned to the purple alicorn—and for the first time understood. What she was.

“Attempting consolidation event,” she explained, or tried to. “Sudden exponential rise in output. Spontaneous generation of bio-consolidator. The system wishes to recover the excursion.” She turned back to the projection. Then she pointed. “But this. Secondary leakage. Unknown output interfaced to primary system. Secondary alicorn.”

“Sunny Starscout,” growled Opaline. “Of course she would have something to do with this.”

“Siphoning power from...this.” The blank pointed at an extremely powerful and unknown power output that appeared to be focused through a lens—although the parameters of how the lens fed back into the system suggested it was something far more complex. A control system that drove the vast magical accumulator that formed the vast majority of the psuedo-planet.

Something stirred deep within her. This was not Equestrian technology—not from the Equestria she knew. The one that had printed her as one of the Six Archetypes. Something far older. Older before memories, before history, before pre-history. Technology and magic lost eons prior to the birth of modern Poly-Galactic Equestria.

It was a system built in an age when those powers—magic and technology—had still been strong. An era when the ancient myths claimed that Sparkle Prime had still ruled the universe with an unyielding grasp.

“Colony world,” said the blank mare, in awe. “None have...ever succeeded. And I have submitted it to its end.”

“Wait,” said Opaline. “Backup, please, I was ignoring you because you speak very poorly. What did you say about my world ending?”

“I am the gate,” said the mare, collapsing to her knees but still not crying. Only staring at the feast she had provided the unspeakable demon she had pulled back. “The channel. It wanted...this. This world. This magic.”

“My magic.”

“Yes. Your magic.”

Opaline seemed almost shocked—as if no pony had ever acknowledged the fundamental fact that, as its consolidation point, she was the rightful owner of the planet’s magic. A body constructed specifically to hold and wield it—and one that would already be well toward succeeding had an unexpected siphon not peeled so much of it off.

It was empirical. Listed in the schematic. The blank mare found herself fortunate to have found this pony of power—even if she was in danger. Her, or the other output.

“Goddess of this world,” implored the blank. “Request: assist me. To save your world.”

Opaline did not admittedly answer. She looked at the hologram floating over her pool. “I have been meaning to hire some extra hench-ponies. A minion, even. Not a goon, though, never goons." She sighed. "Misty has been growing oddly distant. Teenage hormones I’m sure. And I can hardly allow my magic to fall in the hands of some gross fish-worm-squirrel thing.”

“Inquiry confirmation: you will help?”

“I will allow you to serve me,” said Opaline, a wide smile crossing her face. “To save Equestria, of course. As its owner and beloved Princess, I suppose I can take some time out of my schedule to give you the orders you need to get it done.” She tilted her head, staring down her nose at the blank mare. “And you do look so lovely on your knees like that. Like ponies are supposed to be. I would even consider letting you kiss my hooves if the idea of you touching me wasn’t so utterly repulsive.”

“Hesitantly I give thanks?”

“Although. Do you have a name? I need to know. So I can scream at you properly.”

The blank mare felt tears welling in her eyes. “It was lost. I am...blank.”

“Blank is a disgusting name for a disgusting little pale-pony.” Opaline smiled. “It suits you. Welcome to the wonderful world of working for Opaline Arcana, Blank. You will enjoy serving me. Or else.”

Blank looked up at her. She might have found the situation comical had her ability to feel emotions not been almost utterly blunted—and the fact that there was so much work to be done. A monster was stalking the forests of this world—and Blank was the only hope to stop it.

Author's Note

I had originally written this story before the more recent seasons of the television show, hence why Opaline remains un-murdered in this version.

Which is fortunate, as she is exceedingly fun to write. For some reason I most enjoy writing characters who are constantly mean. Her personality is like if Spoiled Rich were less abrasive and more senile.

However, this chapter does illustrate an consistent issue with the story. Namely, that the science fiction half-plot involving Blank precludes and occasionally undermines the horror tones throughout.