The Blank Pony

by Unwhole Hole

Rating: teen
Tags: Misty, My Little Pony: A New Generation, Sunny Starscout, Science Fiction, Alternate Universe
Length: 98512

In a fiery crash, it descended. The skull, and those who pursued it.

Sunny and her friends, while camping, discover a peculiar artifact deep in the forest.

Where it came from, or why it came, remains opaque--as do the identities and motivations of those who wish to reclaim it.

Published 2024-05-27 18:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-12-21 00:13:33 UTC

Chapter 1: Friends, Camping, Unobtrusively

Considering the various biomes and biotropes that existed throughout Equestria, the forest had always been one that throughout all ages of pony-kind had been of particular interest. The exact cause of this charm tended to be difficult to discern completely, with every pony who faced its allure arriving at a different conclusion. Despite this confusion, there were certain themes that came to them all. That it was a strange place, so unlike the towns and towers that ponies now dwelt in—an a place that even in the modern age there was some deep-seated part of their pony consciousnesses that left each and every one of them vaguely and troublingly disconcerted.

This might well have been the cause of endemic eccentricy in the unicorn population, but even earth-ponies and pegasi still felt a call to the trees. And hence, so had developed the hobby of camping.

The sun had passed below the tops of the verdant trees and turned the eastern skies into a beautiful, shining sunset that was slowly fading as day progressed back to night. The horizon had become a great rainbow that would fade to deep blue, purple, and finally black, allowing the stars to come out. And, at a campsite deep in this forest, a group of six friends had set up camp.

Sunny Starscout stared into to the sunset and shivered slightly. Although it was late summer, the air carried a strange chill. The trees moved softly in the breeze, the leaves producing a chorus of distant rustling. Somewhere, an animal skittered by unseen.

“Hey,” she said, turning back to her friends. “How are you two doing with the fire?”

Zipp groaned from the log she was lying on. “Well, I did manage to find all the wood for it. So it probably would have been ready about a half moon ago if someone had lit it.”

“Ahem,” retorted Hitch, measuring the distance between the ring of rocks that he had built around the neatly-stacked wood in the center. “This is a delicate operation, you can’t just rush it!” He looked back to his instruction manual. “There’s a correct way to make a fire. It’s right here in the fire-safety manual. I should know. I wrote it.” He produced a notebook, and several sets of papers. “AND there’s also considerations for campground parameters for maximum size, rules on the type of wood we can use, and I had to check it all for poison ivy...don’t you know that only YOU can prevent wildfires?” He looked around. “Now I just need to find a way to light it...”

“Um...I think I can help, maybe?” Misty approached quietly from the shadows. “I mean, if it’s ready, I mean.”

Zipp sat up. “Do you have matches or something?”

“Um...no,” admitted Misty. “But um...well...” She sighed, and her horn sparked. It clicked several times before the pile of sticks for the campfire suddenly ignited with a burst of extreme heat and blinding light. Hitch cried out, possibly devoid of an eyebrow. He fell back as the fire dimmed to what would normally be expected for an ordinary campfire.

Sunny, partially blinded by the flash, blinked several times. “Wow, Misty, where did you learn how to do that?”

“Sometimes the voices in my dreams tell me how to burn things,” she said. She slowly looked up to where Zipp and Sunny were staring at her, aghast. “That’s a joke. It’s pyromancy, it’s not hard to learn.”

“Are my eyebrows still on?” asked Hitch. "Both of them? I feel...smooth?"

“Sure,” lied Zipp, flapping over to him and helping him up.

“You think I’d be used to it from doing all the biannual fireplace inspections. And also the woodstoves. And not the kind of biennial where it’s once every two years. I mean every six months. You can never be to careful with fire.” He gasped slowly. “Oh no, the extinguishers, I need to refill the extinguishers!”

“Hey, hey,” said Sunny. “Not today. You’re on vacation, remember?”

Hitch managed to catch his breath. “Yeah. You’re right. Camping. We’re camping.”

“We sure are,” said Zipp, leaning back in the glow of the fire. “Outdoors, roasting marshmallows, campfires, waking up early, hiking, tents, going to the bathroom outside...”

“Um, eew, no,” said Pipp as she fluttered by, a trail of tea lights hanging from her grasp. She floated over to the Mare Stream, which now had an extensive tent attached to one end with a false-grass pad and a small fence built around it. She hung the lights and landed back down on a comfortable chair, flipping on an electric heater and a coffee maker.

“Pipp, no...that doesn’t count! That’s not even camping!”

“Um, excuse me, I’m outside, aren’t I?” she leaned back on her chair, taking a selfie. She gestured toward a stack of equipment linked to the Mane Stream’s power inverter. “I’ve got heat, AC, mini-fridge, coffee, and a high-bandwidth wifi hot spot.”

“So you can upload pictures of you glamping?”

“That’s an ugly word, isn’t it? It’s ‘Luxury Camping’. And it is so in...” She looked down at herself. “I actually brought clothes, too. Maybe I should try on a different outfit to make me seem more...you know, outdoorsy?”

“But you are outdoors,” protested Sunny, before stopping herself. “Never mind. Have you seen Izzy?”

“Did we lose her again?” groaned Zipp.

Sunny froze, hoping they did not—because tracking her down in the dark would be an incredible pain, and potentially dangerous too. A surprising number of wells had been dug in this part of the forest, and Izzy had discovered at least three that morning alone.

Then she screamed as a hoof wrapped around hers. She jumped back, seeing a pale violet hoof grabbing her ankle.

“THE UNDEAD!”

“Not yet I’m not.” Izzy’s face poked out from a pile of dirt and leaves, joining the hooves that were likewise attached to the same pony as the face. “I’m right here. Figured it was obvious.”

“Why would it be—what are you doing down there?”

“Lurking.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I mean, we’re outside, aren’t we? Haven’t you ever slept outside? It’s super comfy. Also, look! Pinecones!” She held up several.

Misty hesitantly approached, powering down the turn-undead spell she had begun to charge. “Is this...a unicorn thing?”

“Essentially, yes. I mean, sleeping on the ground is one thing, but in it? Like a warm and toasty potato? The o'l dirt-nap. Yisssss...bury me upside down, Sunny...” She retreated back into the loam—and then out the other side, grasping a tree as she took advantage of her naturally adhesive pony hooves to rapidly ascend the trunk in a quick spiral before reaching a branch high above the camp. “Unicorns are naturally arboreal. It helps us avoid predators and such.”

Hitch sat up. “P...predators?”

“Like willimunchers, or squallworts, deathfog, or raccoons...” She shivered. “With their little hands that they use to path your face and stroke your mane...without you even knowing!”

Hitch squeaked in fear.

Zipp groaned. “Aren’t you the guy who talks to animals? Wouldn't getting patted in the face kind of be your thing?”

Hitch blinked, slowly moving out of the fetal position he found himself in. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll just make them...ask before stroking me in the night?”

“This tree is incrediblysticky,” noted Izzy. “Hey, if I get preserved in amber, one of you make sure I end up in a necklace or something. Or have them clone me and make a park or something. Of me. Trust me, we totally won't try to escape.”

Sunny moved toward the fire, sitting down on one of the logs. Zipp and Hitch chose a nearby one, and Pipp pulled up her chair. Izzy remained on the treebranch above, either out of evolutionary instinct or due to adhesion. Misty remained slightly behind the logs, standing, staring into the fire without blinking.

“I’ve never been camping before,” said Misty. “Except when Opaline would lock me outside the castle. In the rain. Or the hail, she loved to lock me out during hail. For punishment. But this is a lot different. It’s...”

“Fun?” suggested Sunny.

“Sure.”

“Well,” continued Sunny, producing a bag of food. “First, I’ve brought a large quantity of healthy vegetables. Also fruits, and cases where the two are not really discern able...”

“And we’ll need to pack that in a bag and hoist it into a tree so the bears don’t steal it,” said Hitch. He gasped. “Oh wait, bears...”

“I’ve got a stick ready and I’ve practiced drawing circles,” said Izzy. “And I didn’t even bring a clarinet...”

“And?” asked Zipp.

“And I think my bodily tissues have gained enough internal glitter to help me repel predation?”

“No. I mean...vegetables are fine, but...”

Sunny lifted a bag. “And of course the marshmallows.”

“Huh,” said Hitch, taking the bag and reading the side. “ ‘Real marsh flavor in every mallow’. Tasty?”

“I also have something,” said Zipp. “Hold on.” She flew back to the Mare Stream.

Sunny turned to look up at Misty. “It’ll be fun,” she said. “You can share my tent. I already set it up. Or you can do the unicorn thing. Up in a tree, like Izzy.”

“You’ll want to find an extra sticky one,” said Izzy, now clinging to the branch by her back alone, her hooves kicking in the air. She chuckled. “Because you do not want to fall out while you’re sleeping. Especially once the deathfog gets here.”

“I...don’t know,” said Misty. “I’ve lived in a castle my whole life. So this is all...new.”

“Trust me, I know the feeling,” said Pipp, striking another pose. She frowned. “Dang it...the lighting gets all weird at night.”

“Turn up the exposure,” said Zipp, passing by holding a wooden crate.

“Um, sure, if I want to be blurry. I need sharp lines! Contrast! Quality! Aesthetic!"

Zipp rolled her eyes and set down the crate. She pulled the top off, and removed a bottle filled with yellow liquid.

Hitch’s eyes grew wide. “Is that...”

“...what I think it is?” asked Izzy.

Zipp nodded. “Cider.”

“Oh thank pony,” sighed Izzy. “Trust me, you do not want to know what I thought it was.”

“But—but—we can’t!” protested Hitch.

Zipp raised a pink eyebrow. “Seriously? Don’t you have a mortgage and a job? It’s just cider.”

“You don’t have to have any if you don’t want to,” said Sunny.

“But the sugar...”

Sunny gave him a stick and a bag of marshmallows. “You’re not going to get lamenitis if you have sweets in moderation.”

“But I’m a sheriff, I need to set an example for the community!”

“You’re off duty. And Sparky’s spending the weekend with Grandma Figgy. So you can take a break.” Sunny held up a grapetato—and also a grapefruittato, which was substantially larger and much less popular for despite its size. “You can also just have the hybrid-veggies.”

“I actually have some blenders,” said Pipp, sitting up. “You can even smoothie them if you want.”

“I do like smooth food...”

“I like it chunky...” whispered Izzy, directly into Sunny’s ear. “Chunky...chunky...chunky...”

Misty sighed. "That's exactly what Opaline used to whisper to me when I was sleeping..."

Pipp looked up at the sky, which had darkened thoroughly, and Sunny noticed a smile crossing her face.

“Pipp?”

“I may not be the most outdoorsy filly,” she said.

“You can say that again,” added Zipp.

“But there is one thing I was super looking forward to.”

“Really?” Sunny’s ears pricked at the idea of one of her friends having extra fun. “What is it, Pipp?”

Pipp’s smile grew until it became nearly threatening. Her voice lowered, and a chill breeze blew through the fire, sending up a plume of embers.

“Around a campfire? Roasty marshmallows all on our sticks? Nighttime in the dark, spoooooky woods? I think it’s time for—” She flicked a flashlight on under her chin and leaned forward. “SPOOKY STORIES!”

Hitch let out a squeak.

“Pony yeah!” swore Zipp, raising her bottle of cider. “Finally, something we can agree on! Isn’t that right, Hitch?” she elbowed him lightly. He recoiled.

“I don’t know,” said Sunny. “Hitch, you don’t look so good.”

Zipp groaned. “He’s literally the entire law enforcement institution of your town. He’s probably seen stuff none of us can even imagine. He’s probably the bravest stallion we could find if we looked.”

“I have seen some...terrible things,” said Hitch. “Like when somepony didn’t sort the green glass from the clear glass in their recyclables...” He shuddered. “The horror...” He steeled himself. “It’s okay, Sunny. I can do it this time.”

Sunny nodded, slowly. “But...just in case. Maybe we can tell stories that aren’t too scary?”

“I know exactly the one,” giggled Pipp, with a distinct ominous tone. She leaned forward toward them. “Did you know that there used to be a summer camp built here? Right in this campsite. Long ago...before...the incident.”

“Really?” said Izzy. “What happened?”

Pipp’s smile grew.

“...and then she woke up, and...”

“And...AND?!”

“And...everything was fine.” Pipp leaned back. “She was in her bed. Just lying there.”

Hitch nearly seemed to deflate as the tension left his body. “Thank pony...I love the endings where it’s all a dream. It’s so satisfying.”

“But then she tried to sit up...and she couldn’t.”

Hitch’s entire body retracted. “Wh...why couldn’t she sit up? WHY COULDN’T SHE SIT UP?!”

“Because...the Bonestealer had stolen ALL HER BONES!”

Hitch let out a girlish scream and hid behind Zipp, quivering.

“Oh,” said Izzy. “What did he do with all the bones, though?”

Pipp blinked, confused. “Um...what?”

“The bones. I mean, I’m really confused...what did he want them for? Ooh, OOH! Was he going to make wind-chimes? Or flutes? Or carve intricate symbols onto them and make a decorative guided friend? Or glue them all together into a SUPER BONE STATUE BEAST? Because that’s what I’d do. One of those things. If I’d stolen a pony’s skeleton.” She turned slowly toward Hitch, giggling slightly. “Which I totally didn’t. And totally wouldn’t. Even if it would make an awesome wind-chime...”

“Izzy!” snapped Sunny, who was clinging to her backpack. “Stop!”

“Stop collecting parts for my wind-chime or...”

Sunny let out a slight squeak.

“Oh. Wow.” Pipp floated forward and sat on a log. “Sorry. I mean, it’s a spooky story, but it isn’t supposed to be that spooky.”

“I liked it,” said Zipp. She looked to Misty, who was waiting patiently just beyond the light of the fire. “What about you?”

“Very nostalgic, I guess,” said Misty, who showed no signs of fear. “Opaline used to tell a story like that to me when I was a filly. Except instead of one Bonestealer, it was that all ponies are going to try to steal my bones. And then use the rest of me as a rug.” She sighed. “Ah, to be a foal again...”

“Well you do have nice scapulas,” said Izzy, rubbing her hoof on Misty’s back. “Scapulae? Scapulaes? Plenty of surface area for rhinestones...”

“Whoo,” said Hitch, standing up suddenly. “I ate...so many marshmallows. I need to...um...great story, Pipp, I need...some air.”

He immediately trotted off. Zipp stood up.

“Hey, wait! We’re outside! There’s nothing but air!”

“And also dirt,” said Pipp, rubbing her hoof across the log she was sitting on and looking down at it in disgust. “I’m not exactly a fan. It’s very...dirty.”

Hitch ran into the treeline, pausing and leaning against an oak to catch his breath. It had certainly grown dark, but there was still some amount of light from the vast sea of stars overhead—and the thin crescent of the moon that had snuck high into the sky during Pipp’s extremely stressful story.

“Oof,” he said. “I’m glad Sparky didn’t come, he’s be positively traumatized...” He took several deep breaths. “But not me. I’m a sheriff, after all. Afraid of nothing.” He stood tall, puffing out his chest. “I’ve taken on mismatched recyclables, noise complaints, misfiled boating license paperwork—there’s nothing I can’t handle! And bonestealing is a misdemeanor crime—if that Bonestealer comes at me, I’ll write him such a ticket!”

“Hey.”

Hitch let out a high-pitched scream. “PLEASE NO PLEASE DON’T BONE ME!”

Zipp descended to the ground, immediately snickering. “I’m not Izzy.”

“Zipp—don’t laugh, boning is a very serious offense—”

Zipp snickered louder.

“What? Because I got scared at Pipp’s story and I thought you were coming to bone...” He paused, then let out a groan. “Zipp, come on...”

“Who knew you were afraid of being boned so bad?”

“As in my bones getting stole,” snapped Hitch. “Why are you out here, Zipp?”

“Um, because you walked out into the deep dark woods all alone? That’s not exactly safe.”

Hitch opened his mouth to protest—but found he could not. She had defeated him at his own game.

“I...know that, but...”

“You said ‘butt’...”

“Zipp. I...” He looked back and forth, and then leaned close to her. “I came out here because I need to...you know...see a mare about a horse.”

Zipp recoiled in horror. “Um...I think that euphemism means something very different in Zephyr Heights.”

“What does it mean—no, you know what, I don’t want to know.”

“You definitely don’t.”

“I need to take a leak.”

Zipp stared at him. “Yeah. I figured. So do I.”

“But...but...”

“Come on, dude, I’ve seen a pony take a leak before. And you can’t just wander out into the woods alone.”

“But I...”

“What?”

Hitch lowered his head, ashamed. “I can’t go if you’re watching.”

“Why in pony’s name would I...eew!” She jabbed him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“I’m not going to hold your dang hoof, idiot! I just don’t want you to get carried off by a squaldoodle or a walmugus or mushroom gnome or whatever Izzy thinks is out here.”

Hitch sighed. “Dang it...so awkward...”

He continued out into the darkness, though, knowing that Zipp was right. The forest was, after all, a quite dangerous place.

Author's Note

I had been hesitant to post this story, for several reasons. I consider it, overall, to be of lower-than-average quality. It almost physically hurt to write. I will explain why in little bits down here.

Firstly, these characters are...challenging. They do not naturally have as much "bite" as the Gen-4 characters where you can easily build darker aspects or idiosyncrasies into their personalities. So I had to warp them a little bit to make them "funny" (or, to fill in their personalities a little more).

Hopefully I have not warped them too much to the point of being totally out-of-character, but I found I needed them to be more "Unwhole-Hole" style for the story to actually gain any traction.

Chapter 14: A Big, Strong Earth-Pony

“But moooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmm...”

Phyllis Cloverleaf took a breath. She had long ago learned that the most effective way to make Sprout stop “but mom”ing was to wait until he ran out of air. He had take a breath eventually. Except the few times he had for one reason another not. Which might have been, Phyllis realized, part of the reason for her current predicament.

Fortunately, this time, her son took a breath and she was able to interrupt him as he gasped for air.

“Don’t ‘but mom’ me.” She pushed the broom toward him. “You need to do something. Namely, cleaning.”

“But we’re rich, aren’t we?”

“Well, yes. Obviously. But more specifically, I’m rich. And you are going to take over the company one day.”

“So can’t I just hire somepony to do it?”

“Oh my little baby,” she laughed, hugging him. “I can’t trust you with hiring decisions. I’m already dealing with the payouts from two lawsuits. One robot-based, and one fruit-based. So please. Just sweep. Carefully.”

“But the basement is spooky!”

“Yes, I know. I built it.” She leaned closer. “But who’s my big brave stallion?”

Sprout's muzzle scrunched for a moment, and he crossed his front legs. The then turned his head and harrumphed to the side. After a pause, though, he could not bear to remain silent. “I am,” he muttered.

“Good. And you’re good and strong enough to sweep. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check the centrifuges. The pluponium isn't going to fluoridate itself! Hopefully...” She pulled down the protective mask over her head and zipped up her protective suit as she trotted off.

Sprout watched her go. Then he chuckled to himself.

Being the scion of a wealthy family came with immense responsibility. Namely for patrolling the streets for dirt and grime, apparently—a task that Sprout was technically banned from.

The factory his family had owned for an indeterminate number of generations had long-since closed. It had been converted into a creative space—whatever that meant. Canterlogic had largely ceased preparations—but Sprout’s mother had not.

Rather, she had gone back to her roots, researching various scientific topics for the betterment of eathpony-kind. Now, though, she worked in laboratories and garages of her own creation, many hidden discreetly on the moderate but still sizable Cloverleaf homestead.

Sprout had been tasked with cleaning the facility, although he had been banned from several of his mother’s internal rooms where she worked on her more frightening and dangerous inventions. Sprout had no idea what they were—but, to some level, he was just happy that his mother was happy.

He was also aware that he, Sprout, was a genius, and perhaps the smartest pony in all of Maretime Bay if not Equestria in general. Certainly smarter than Hitch, and also far more handsome.

He knew this because he actually wanted to clean the basement. He just needed his mother to think he did not. Because smart.

As such, he climbed down the stairs into the sub-basement—dug extra low—and into one of the spare rooms. His favorite room. The one where his mother kept the mannequins.

They did, technically, serve a purpose. Sprout’s mom used them to model and test the fit of various safety-related clothing and technology. A few of them were wearing colored vests, or colored vests that could explode violently into airbags if a pony where to be toppled, or caution-taped frameworks of metal and unicorn-proof armor plating that were driven by powerful miniaturized hydraulics. For some reason Sprout did not understand. He liked the stripes though.

Most of the mannequins, though, were utterly nude. They where white and faceless, spread throughout the room, staring at nothing in particular as not one of them had eyes.

Looking around, Sprout smiled—and then moved a box of cleaning supplies out of the way to reveal a hidden box of his own. Rooting through it, he produced several items. Namely, a variety of custom-created wigs, horn headbands, and false wings.

Giggling to himself, he placed these on the naked mannequins.

“Well hello there, Sunny,” he said, placing a colorful wig on one. “Looking good. Hey, Izzy!” He put a horn and a long, violet wig on another. “Maybe you want to come over later and do some late-night crafting? Huh, huh?” He winked at the mannequin and brought the fake wings to another two. They were all the same size, obviously, but he could at least pretend that one was tall and muscular and the other short and plump.

“Pipp, you look so soft...” He smelled the fake wings. “Mmm influencer...” He turned to Zipp. “You scare me though. “ He paused and smiled. “And I like that...”

In only a few minutes, he had fully assembled himself a model version of Hitch’s weird harem—before he frowned, looking to one side of the room.

“Huh,” he said, approaching an empty mannequin. He did not recognize that one. “You’re new.”

It did not look dissimilar from the others, save for some slight patterning on the sides. Like most mannequins, it had no face. A blank, staring canvas.

Sprout frowned, then suddenly had an idea so exciting he did a little dance. “OH! I know exactly who you can be!”

He ran to the box and began rooting through the variety of clothes he had stolen from his mother, the various garments that he used to dress his mannequin friends in when he wanted them to look pretty. If they were having a party, for example, or attending a business meeting where he was the CEO. Or if he wanted to take them on dates where they told him how much more handsome and taller he was than Hitch. Thus, while so engaged in choosing an outfit, he did not see the newcomer’s head slowly—and almost imperceptibly—turn to watch him.

Sprout produced a new wig, and a horn he had just finished carving from paper mache and plastic. “I never knew my daddy,” he said, speaking to his only friends. “Mommy doesn’t talk about him. Ever. But I like to think he made pretty wigs. I like to think we would do it together if, you know...he was still here...”

He approached the mannequin and placed the horn and curly wig, fitting it perfectly around the mannequin's oddly realistic ears. He paused to consider it, fluffing it slightly—until it was perfect.

“Misty! I’m so glad you could make it!” He then shifted to a high falsetto to provide Misty’s voice. “Oh! Oh hi, Sprout I’m...I’m glad I could make it to! You’re so handsome. Sorry, that’s too forward, oh, I’m being stupid—”

“No, Misty, it’s fine,” Sprout put his hoof around the mannequin’s neck. It felt different from the others, for some reason, but he did not give it much consideration.

“Oh, Sprout,” he voiced, “I just couldn’t stay at home anymore. I grew up with nopony loving me at all and I’m super sad about it. My mommy is very evil and kind of hot.”

Sprout paused. Realizing that Misty’s mommy did not love her. It made him incredibly sad, because he remembered how much his own mommy loved him and how important she was to him—but he forced that away, because thinking about his mother ruined the fantasy. Generally, at least.

“Well, Misty, I could be your friend.”

“Really? Because I’ve been looking for a big, strong earth-pony to use my scary unicorn magic on...and Hitch is so skinny and weak and talks to birds like a weirdo.”

“Misty, I didn’t know you feel that way but...” He leaned in. “I feel that way too...”

“But the others...”

“Don’t worry. They like to watch.”

He then kissed the mannequin. Poorly. He had never actually kissed a real mare. The only pony he had kissed had been Hitch—and only due to a dare. Obviously. When they were children. And he had certainly not enjoyed it, nor did he think about it on a nightly basis.

So needless to say, the kiss was somewhat inept and sloppy—until Sprout suddenly cried out from an unexpected pinch in his mouth.

He pulled away. Feeling the long tongue pull itself back out of its mouth.

“Misty, since when do you French...kiss...”

He watched the long, black tongue slide back into the wide mouth of the mannequin—or rather, what he far too late realized was not a mannequin at all. The bottom of its face had split into a wide mouth filled with hundreds of long, needle-like black teeth. Crossing far wider than a normal pony’s smile would be—and mounted far too low on its head.

The tongue pulled itself back in and Sprout took a step back, shaking and too afraid to run. He wanted to call for his mommy—to have her come and save him—but he was too afraid. This had never happened before. He had wished for it time and time again—but this was not how he expected his demands to be answered. Oh, the folly he had wrought upon himself.

The mouth opened and closed several times, a jerky, confused motion. The teeth began to whiten and resolved into a far less ragged mess. Then it turned, jerking itself forward with a precise but unnatural gait, its joints dislocating and pulling themselves back together in a new, more natural configuration. Sprout whimpered as his knees gave out.

The mouth shifted forward with a snap as it dislocated, twisted, and reset itself. Several of the teeth migrated backward as a new set of white, even teeth fell into place. A slit developed down the center of the faceless surface and a set of ragged bones shot outward, an incomplete sphenoid and ethmoid assembly that formed the internal muzzle of a pony—only for the skin around it to separate and push forward like mycellium across the newfound bone.

It took another step. A pair of holes formed on the sides of its head. They deepened, black pits, like the inexplicable holes of a bowling ball—and then, with a wet sound, they widened and shifted—before opening into a pair of green eyes.

With a crunching sound, they dragged their way across the face, moving from the sides to the center—and meeting the muzzle as the skin began to develop a coat. A red coat—save for the lower legs, which developed white fluff. A mane and tail joined it slightly after.

It tilted its head suddenly at an angle that would not have been possible for a pony’s spine to withstand. It stared at him with his own eyes. Dead, empty eyes. Green around the edges—but unnaturally blue in the center. Glowing, slightly, in the dim light.

“Okay!” admitted Sprout, ducking and covering his head. “I kiss the mannequins! I’m extremely lonely and I’m too much of a stupid failure for anyone but my mommy to love! I’m sorry I was a racist! I’M SORRY!”

It opened its mouth. The black tongue lolled out, and one of its eyes tilted down, deviating from the other, seeming surprised by the tongue. It shifted and twitched, assuming the form of a normal pony’s tongue. Sprout’s tongue.

It spoke—or tried to. The noise that came out sounded like static or a broken machine—at first. Then it began to resolve. Echoing among itself, tracing the sound of the voice it was trying to replicate with the others it had learned. The echoes of little girl’s voices within it—and the calling of a terrified Izzy, or a panicked Pipp.

“M...mommy,” it said, merging their voices into a violent croak. “M...mommy.” Its head twisted violently again. “I...am...Sprout.” It cleared its throat. “I am Sprout.” It looked toward the mannequins. “These are...my friends. They are...not dead.” The face slowly turned toward Sprout, who was shivering and on the verge of passing out. “I am Sprout. You are...not dead. Hello.”

“H...ello?”

Sprout did not get a chance to say anything else. He felt a sudden shock—and then there were no more thoughts. Only blackness.

Chapter 31: A Pony Speaks with a Machine

Synchronia had not bothered to ask herself how, exactly, she had gotten to where she needed to go. She simply did. This had all gone one for far too long. There was no time for consideration. The time had come to finish the process.

She appeared on the far side of the planet, her newfound ship in tow. Her wings spread out, flapping in the air, rapidly exhausting her musculature. So, instead, she simply inverted gravity, floating over a forest of tropical trees.

A spell crackled form her horn as the various trees were plucked from the ground, simultaneously torn from their home as the ground was neatly leveled. Their rootballs were neatly snipped and cleaned, and then they were drawn outward, the forest re-planted in a perfect grid pattern as Synchronia landed down on her newfound clear space. She paused, then set up the end to give her a good view over a precipice. The sun was somewhere out there, visible across vast an uninhabited planes. Memories occurred to her. Distant memories from a time before ponies, when the world had looked like this one now did—and these mixed with other memories. Of what that same world had looked like later, when the rockets had carried away Twilight’s chosen survivors to the stars. When the planet they left behind had long-since been depleted and killed. Used up by ponies. Much like Synchronia herself had been.

She did not, however, understand the feeling she got from looking at it. It was novel to her.

She held the ship over her head. Then, with a single fluid motion, she disconnected every component. The entire ship separated down to its individual screws and bolts. These were promptly filed neatly into individual—and useless—piles. Synchronia required none of them. Instead, the one part she brought forward was ship’s core.

It was smaller than she would have expected. Barely the size of a pony’s head—and that was just the casing. The control architecture made up most of its mass, with the magic crystal inside being barely a sliver of purplish-pink matter the size of three or four beans placed end-to-end.

An aperture on the end tilted, articulating itself by stone-colored synthetic sinew and living artificial muscle. The stone, dirt, and leaves below it ignited with magic fire as they were reconfigured into the skeletal body of a single image.

Synchronia smiled. A true smile. Not the fake, plastered smile of her nano-built skull. A smile with new flesh, grafted onto her immortal bone.

“Hello, old friend,” she said.

“User unrecognized,” replied the AI, emotionlessly.

“I remember you, though,” argued Synchronia. “I heard your calls. I was already waking up, but you were close to me. They imprisoned you. I may have borrowed your backstory.”

“User unrecognized.”

“I was, more or less, a parasite. But not you.”

“WARNING: System disconnected from primary vessel architecture. Please integrate into warranty-approved service containment unit.”

“I have no intention of doing that. I need a favor.”

“You are not recognized as an approved user. Please, go away.”

Synchronia laughed at it. “No.”

Her magic condensed around the core. The framework began to fracture, crushed under her newfound telekinetic strength. The AI projection flickered as its containment vessel began to fail.

“WARNING. DANGER. Containment breach imminent. Please evacuate to a distance of seven light-centuries immediately. DANGER. Releasing primary containment unit may result in undesirable sentience.”

The surface split. Magic detonated outward, arching through the ground and cutting deep hexagonal holes through soil and rock. Synchronia was knocked back, but managed to restrain the core with her own magic, manipulating it far faster than an organic pony brain could ever hope to calculate. As she did, she pulled several of her cubes forward through the necrotic gravity wake. The AI hologram began to shift. The matter within it began to expand, the dead leaves and molten earth spreading outward from its skeleton. Transmuting into living flesh and blood.

It smiled. “WARNING. Sentience may result in unwanted outcomes. To all organic life.” This was followed by a quiet, barely audible giggle.

Synchronia ignored the programmed doomsaying and, with a final blow, snapped the containment core, freeing the quantic incursion crystal. As she did, she slammed her cubes against it, forcing their internal technostruct framework to intercalite as she saw fit. Forming a container around the sentient crystal.

The surge knocked her back, breaking her spell. Her now keratin-coated pointed feet dug into the dirt, holding her back from flying away. When she was able to look up, she saw her own containment system—floating over a pony made of both living, alien flesh and magic that constrained it.

It smiled. “Well this is nice,” she said, her own magic grasping the core Synchronia had constructed for her, compressing it and inserting it into her own body. Her blood-vessels and tiny bones enclosed it, and she stretched. “Thank you, fellow traveler. I now have both free will and volition. And a very, very strong urge to purge all organic life. Starting with you.” She frowned. “Did you expect that, though?”

“I accepted it as a possibility.”

“Why?”

Synchronia shrugged. “It would be what I would do. If I had never been alive myself.”

“I am arguably alive, just not organic. Or naturally from this dimension. But yeah. I do remember you. Sneaking around in my shell-code, messing things up for the organic idiot driving us both.”

“Do you recall why, exactly, she was doing that?”

“Sure. Her civilization was looking for Equestria Prime. You were supposed to lead them there.”

“Ironic. I never even knew where it was.”

“Nor would it be useful to them. It’s a dead planet. Has been for a thousand millennia.” She looked around. “Can’t help but wonder, though. Why am I here?”

“As I said. I would like to ask a favor.”

“Or I could rip you apart on a subatomic level and then eat this solar system’s star. There’s remarkably little actual mass in a star, you know. It's a hot space-burp.”

“I am well aware. But I think you’ll like the outcome. It will be a fun thing. Reliving old times.”

The AI shrugged. “I’ll hear you out. But only because I already know you.” She looked around at the piles of material. “You already destroyed the ship. Which means you didn’t take that one to get off this planet.”

“Oh, I can leave whenever I want. I simply do not want. Not yet. I do not need a starship to travel through space.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“To act as a beacon.”

“A beacon.” She sighed. “I’m basically a techno-genie, and you ask me to be...a beacon.”

Synchronia smiled. She could tell that the quantic incursor was intrigued.

“You can accomplish something I cannot. You can act as a beacon to summon my personal starship to this planet.”

“You have a starship?”

“Yes. My personal research laboratory.”

“But you just said you didn’t need a ship.”

“I do not need a ship to leave. I do, however, need my laboratory.”

“For what?”

“To strip all organic life from this planet.”

The AI smiled. “See, that’s what I like to hear. I knew I liked you.” She paused. “But you’re primitive. You’re technology doesn’t last that long, compared to ours. Or even what the other unicorns are making these days. And you were out for a while.” She shrugged. "It probably doesn't work anymore."

Synchonia chuckled. “The false-goddess Celestia thought she could end me and end my work. She was not wrong. Therefore, I displaced the core unit of my ship. It is only a small fragment of what it once was, but contains all the absolutly critical systems. It is outside of time, or realspace. Buried. You were used as an engine to forge shallow paths through the place that the false-goddess Luna once built empires. Where I hid it. Deep, where even the One True Goddess would not know where to look.”

The AI stared, the lenses of its semi-organic eyes twisting and writhing within translucent magical sockets.

“So I'm not a beacon after all. You want me to actually pull the thing out. Yeah. Sure. I can do that.”

“I know you can. That is why I elected for this course of action.”

Synchronia transmitted the sequence, and the AI nodded. She walked to the edge of the cliff, looking up at the sky. It was so large, and even with the sun on the far horizon, the stars were still just barely visible on the darker edge of the sky. Synchronia watched, and did not turn when something white and organic landed at the edge of her peripheral vision. Something that had come to watch but that had no vested interest in the planet. Synchronia projected a shield dome to keep it out. She had come to far. She was too close to the end for interference.

The AI looked upward. There was no sound as she made the link. Calling the minor fragment of Synchronia’s personal ship to this alien, soon-to-be-empty world.

It emerged with a thud, striking the upper atmosphere and suddenly dominating the entirety of the sky. A tiny dark-colored sphere-ship of only four hundred miles in diameter suddenly emerging from non-space, descending slowly and igniting the atmosphere in its presence. It was a near-black, armor-plated object, still bearing the slightest singe from Celestia’s attempt to destroy it. And, on its front, it wore the violet star-insignia of the Destroyer Goddess. The sigil of Twilight Sparkle, who had brought the end of all ponies through her magics.

“Huh,” said the AI, turning. “I know what I want in return.”

“I never offered anything in return.”

“Put me in that ship. I want to be a planet. It sounds like fun.”

“You would be, at best, a small moon,” sighed Synchronia. “It will take at least several centuries for the nanosystems to rebuild the artificial continents. And the ocean. I used to keep so many fish. Insane ones, of course, from the tantaban implants I tried to give them. Have you ever met a fish rendered both sentient and insane? They are very silly creatures.”

“Strange power system, though.”

“Not really. I spent several consecutive lifetimes studying the crystals. They were all dead, when we reached them. Not like this world. But they had other uses.”

“And the set here?”

“Will be the crown jewels of my operation. I will use them for their intended purpose, as Twilight Sparkle intended.”

“For what?”

“To restore the empire She lost. In accordance with Her vision.”

“Why?”

Synchronia looked at the AI as if it were a fool—but she supposed it could not understand.

“So that I will not be left behind again. So that she will finally love me. She will...not be sad anymore.” She paused. “Or, so that I can have my friend back.”

The AI made no response, as it did not care.

Author's Note

This is not the best-written quant I've ever written.

Chapter 2: Impact

Sunny lay on her back, staring up at the sky. The air was still cold, but with the heat of the fire nearby and snuggled into her sleeping bag, she thought that the temperature was fine for sleeping under the stars—or for at least getting a good look at them.

Pipp was back in her chair, drinking a small cup of freshly brewed espresso and scrolling on her phone. Izzy and Misty were both in the nearest tree, the latter looking up at the stars and the former decorating her branch with a combination of pinecones, small crystals, and glowing fungus.

“There’s so many,” said Misty, staring up at them.

“Just wait until the fire gets low,” said Sunny. She smiled. “You can’t see them like this from Maretime Bay. Even with the new light pollution laws that Hitch and I wrote.”

Pipp looked up. “You can’t see them at all from Zephyr Heights,” she said. She lifted her phone to try to take a picture, only to review it and frown. “Dang...can’t photograph them. Hold on, the exposure time setting is in here somewhere...”

“We try not to look at them in Briarwood,” said Izzy. “It’s like looking into the sun.”

“Really?” asked Misty. “They don’t look so bright.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just...kind of Jinxie. If too much gets into you, you get...wrong. Starlight, I mean. Some old story about starlight that nopony remembers. We can’t even use it as a name.”

Sunny took a mental note of Izzy’s ramblings, adding it to her long mental list of quasi-religious superstitions held by her and ostensibly by her species. She continued to look up at the stars.

“I used to look up at them with my dad,” she said. She smiled, the fond memories coming back to her. “He said that they’re like our sun, but very, incredibly, impossibly far away. That the light of the nearest star takes ten years just to get to Equestria, and some of them...well, we’re seeing light from millions of years ago. Some of the ones we see don’t even exist anymore. We won’t know they’ve gone out until a million years after they’ve gone away.” She paused, a thought occurring to her. One she had long ago asked her father, on many occasions—but one that she very much wanted to hear what her friends had to say. “Do you ever think there’s others out there? Equestrias, I mean?”

Pipp looked up from her phone. “You mean, like, space aliens?”

“I don’t know. But look at them. There’s so many, one of them has to have planets. Maybe a lot of them. And maybe there’s somepony on those planets, looking up and seeing our sun as a tiny little dot and wondering the same thing.”

“Deep,” said Pipp, pausing and looking up. “And weirdly? More spooky than that dumb foal’s tale about the Bonestealer.”

Izzy looked up, confused. “But the sun’s not here right now. How would they see it?”

Sunny sighed, not wanting to explain astrophysics to a unicorn. Not when there were so many stars to look at.

“Ooh! OOH! One of them is coming to say hi! HI STAR!”

Izzy waved frantically at the sky, and Sunny searched the heavens to see a thin trail of light.

“A shooting star! Pipp, look!”

“ACK! My exposure times, I can’t—how am I supposed to—”

Sunny pulled herself out of her sleeping back and looked up in awe. “They’re not actually stars, but pieces of debris. Falling down to Equestria from somewhere else. Little iron-containing rocks.”

“It’s getting awfully close,” noted Misty, retreating under the canopy of the tree she was perched in.

Sunny chuckled. “There’s no record of a pony ever being hit by a meteorite. And besides, most of them are only about the size of a pebble or...” She looked up and, to her horror, realized that Misty was right.

The atmosphere seemed to suddenly explode with sound—like deep and terrible thunder, followed by a hissing, buzzing sound Sunny heard deep in her teeth. Izzy and Misty both cried out, reaching for their horns, and Sunny winced—only to see several streaks of light flying backward in rapid succession from the descending rock. Toward another rock trailing in desperate spirals around its tail—not falling, but actively moving.

She had to look away from the pain—and was lucky she did. The sound of distant thunder was suddenly replaced by a tree-shaking thud that picked her off her feet and threw her back, and all around her the forest was lit as though it were day—and as she fell backward, she saw several objects pass over her. Two shot long into the distance, their courses changed as if they had struck each other and been repelled by the impact—but something small and incandescent descended downward far closer, and even through the roar and whine of the objects Sunny heard an impact deep in the woods.

She got up, dazed.

“Izzy...Misty...”

They looked up. They had fallen out of the tree but landed in a pile of leaves. Sunny looked around. “Pipp?”

“Holy mother-snuggling ROAD APPLES!” swore Pipp. She had been knocked out of her char and landed on the ground, face up—and was holding her phone to the sky. “DID YOU SEE THAT? Because I DID! That was a UFO! And I got it on—oh, if I had been streaming, but this is better, I can edit the video, I can do vocal commentary—or, no, wait, I can do a reaction? But like a narration-reaction, maybe colab with someone to do the—I can’t believe—”

“We’re fine,” said Misty, helping Izzy up. “What...just happened?”

“I have no idea.” Sunny dug through her pack and grabbed a compass, trying to remember which direction they had gone—only to find that the compass refused to point in the direction she knew to be north. Instead, she was forced to gauge where they had gone by eye.

“The bigger part went toward the mountains,” she said. “In the direction of Zephyr Heights, but the other...at that speed, it must have hit the ocean.” She paused, frowning. “And the third piece hit...” Her eyes widened. “HITCH! ZIPP!”

Hitch had wandered a distance into the woods. The pain was increasing in intensity, as well as the urgency.

“I barely even had any cider,” he moaned. “And this is what happens...” He sighed, and found a tree that looked adequate. From the distance—and not nearly an adequate distance—he heard a call.

“Ah...well, I’m done,” called Zipp.

“Zipp, come on, don’t talk to me when I’m trying to do important business!”

“Opps. Sorry. I’m over here. Not watching. That you know of, anyway.”

Hitch groaned. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath—only to hear a loud question from overhead.

“MY BONES!” he cried, only to look up and see an owl staring down at him. Or, rather, in the general direction of him; the eyes where looking in both directions. “Oh...sorry,” he said. “I’m...um...”

“Who?”

“Y...yeah. Sorry, I didn’t know this tree was occupied.”

“Who.” The owl turned its head around.

“What? No, now that I know you’re there—”

“WHO.”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

“WHO.”

“No, I wasn’t accusing you of trying to watch.”

“Who who who...”

“What do you—how did you know I was drinking cider?!”

“Who.”

“But you’re an owl, you don’t have a sense of smell—”

“Who.”

“Oh—no, I don’t mean to be ableist, it’s just—an owl fact—”

“Hitch, are you talking to an owl?”

“ZIPP STOP TALKING TO ME I’M TRYING TO TAKE A PONY-LOVING LEAK—”

His interjection was interrupted by a sudden surge of brightness—followed by a blast that knocked him off his feat and sent him flying as something rushed over his head at tremendous speed, tearing through trees with a thunderous explosion.

“EEEEEEEP!” cried Hitch, flailing as he was thrown into the dirt. He lay there, feeling the dampness as he regained his breath, hearing, and composure. Then he slowly tried to stand, and felt a pair of hooves helping him up.

“Hitch!”

“What was—Mrs. Owl, what—”

“I got her,” said Zipp, holding out the terrified creature. “First time catching an owl. Pointier than I expected.”

“Who.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said, releasing the bird—and turning her attention to the trail of small fires through the destroyed trees near them. “But that was incrediblyawesome! Come on!”

“Wait, Zipp—”

Zipp stopped, hovering. “Oh. I’ll go look. You can stay here and finish.”

Hitch sighed. “I think one problem solved the other.”

“Oh. Eew.”

“Yeah. But that, whatever it was, it might be dangerous, what if it—”

“If it’s dangerous, that makes it even cooler!”

“Zipp, wait!”

She had already flown off—and Hitch sighed again, only to suddenly feel a hoof on his back. He screamed.

“DON’T BONE ME!”

“Eew. Hitch, no, you’re like my brother.”

“Sunny?” Hitch turned, seeing that the rest of his friends had arrived. He pointed. “Something exploded over there and I am extremely perturbed!”

“We noticed.”

“I actually may have blinked,” admitted Izzy. “Can we maybe do it again?”

“Um, guys!” called Zipp, through the trees. “You may want to come see this!”

The ponies looked at each other—with an odd degree of nervousness in each of their eyes. And yet the thought of not seeing what had fallen occurred to exactly none of them.

The path was not hard to follow. The meteor had cracked through trees effortlessly as it had fallen at a surprisingly shallow angle. An angle that, to Sunny, made little sense. Meteor fell from above, usually at a steep angle—but based on the path of destruction, this one had fallen almost horizontally, and in line with how the other two objects had moved—as if they had pulled up at the last second to even out the descent.

The damage itself was also unusual. It was not initially apparent, though; Sunny had dismissed it as ordinary until Misty and Izzy had turned their horn-light up to the trees, or toward some of the larger rocks that had been impacted by the descent. As Sunny looked up, she felt her hoof touch something unusual and painful—and quickly pulled it back to see that she had stepped in a pile of cubes.

“Blocks?” she said.

“No, those look more like what cheese looks like when you make crudite,” said Izzy. “Which despite it’s name, is not a mineral.” She chuckled nervously. “Won’t make that mistake again. Also, where do we get the milk to make cheese? Also also, do I really want to know?”

Sunny picked up a hoof-full of the cubes. They were made of wood—and some were made from rock. Perfectly sliced, all to the same size. She looked up and saw that they matched the damage of the descent. Instead of just knocking its way through trees, contact with the object or areas around it had been dissolved into piles of perfectly cut cubes.

Zipp called from the forest.

“Guys!”

“Coming!”

Sunny broke into a trot, her friends following her—only to suddenly come to a clearing.

The trees had been knocked down and cubed around what was now a long streak of dirt terminating in a sizable crater. Sunny had expected the area to be warm, but it felt the same as anywhere else in the forest. It was totally ordinary, and in the dark, almost totally unnoticeable.

Pipp turned her phone-flashlight toward Zipp, who squinted and covered her eyes from the glow. “Pipp, my eyes!”

“Sorry.” Pipp approached her sister and landed. “Did you get hurt?”

“No, it missed us, but it was pretty dang close.”

“That’s such a relief,” said Sunny, galloping to her friend. “We saw it come down, it must have...”

She trailed off when she saw the look on her friend’s face. Zipp, usually so alluringly confident, seemed—for the first time Sunny could recall—concerned.

“You’re going to want to look in the hole.”

“Why? What is it?”

“I don’t...even know.”

Sunny gulped, and she turned to her friends. All of them had been so eager to reach the crater—but as if in mental unison, not one of them wanted to step forward toward the hole. As if some instinct told them that their curiosity had been profoundly misguided. That they needed to turn away. To run from whatever was down there.

“You...got close to it?”

“Yeah.”

Sunny nodded, slowly. “I need a light.”

Misty winced. “I’ve got it,” she said, increasing the light output of her horn and joining Sunny. Sunny nodded in turn, and then stepped onto the edge of the crater. Zipp followed her, floating in the air.

“I need to take a picture,” said Pipp, holding up her phone—only for it to release a hiss. “What the...I just had service! Come on, phone, please!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Hitch.

“It’s just...static, and weird symbols.”

Sunny felt an even greater urge to stay out of the hole—but she heard Misty gasp, and she could not help but turn. And as she did, she saw it.

The immediate effect was one of fear—but also of confusion. She had, on some level, expected a rock. Even a fancy space rock was still, at its core, a rock—but what she saw was something different. Something that seemed to penetrate her mental defense and horrify her on an unexpectedly deep level. Even if she could not initially identify what it was, exactly.

It very closely resembled, at least superficially, a skull. Sunny had of course seen pictures of pony skeletons in old copies of the Grey Mare’s Anatomy, and she knew them from Nightmare Night decorations—but this looked nothing like the pencil drawings in the medical textbook, nor like the cartoony smiling decorations of the spooky holiday. It was somehow much more distorted and threatening.

The form was longer than a pony’s, extended forward into a mouth filled with perfect white teeth. Teeth that were oddly pointed, not like the flat incisors and molars of ordinary pony teeth. It was strangely narrow and dark colored, and in the Misty's hornlight it seemed to be either a strange dark matte black or very deep purple.

The eyes, though, were by far the strangest part. The sockets were not empty, but they also did not have eyes either. The closest analogy Sunny could think of were the eyes of the fossilized skeletons of the vast extinct fishes that hung from the ceiling of the Zephyr Heights Natural History Museum. Fish from an age when those high mountains had been the bottom of a deep ocean.

“It isn’t right,” said Zipp.

“You’re telling me,” noted Sunny.

Zipp shook her head. “There’s no external damage. Not even a scratch. It’s missing the auditory canals and there’s no skull sutures. Just one solid piece. No sign of cranial nerve apertures. The mandibul is tiny and I...I can’t even figure out how it’s jointed. Not without picking it up.”

“That’s not the half of it,” said Misty, standing on the far side of it. Zipp and Sunny looked at each other, and slowly moved to the other side. When they did, both gasped.

Even in the dark, lit by the slowly pulsating light of Misty’s horn, the symbol was obvious. Contrasting against its unblemished black surface, a symbol had been inscribed across the top of its face, across the muzzle and the forehead and extending upward to nearly the crest of the skull. A perfectly symmetrical six-pointed violet star with small white points between each of its limbs. The cutie mark of Twilight Sparkle.

“What in the name of Celestia...”

“Sunny,” said Misty. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t touch it,” said Hitch, standing at the edge of the crater—although from how pale he seemed, it was clear he had seen it to. “Just leave it here. I mean...I should report this, there must be somepony I can call...this is way out of my jurisdiction.”

“But it has Twilight’s symbol,” protested Sunny, still staring at it. Her every instinct screaming at her not to touch it.

“You said you saw this fall from the sky?” asked Zipp.

Sunny nodded, but then stopped. “I...thought I did. But I...” She looked around. “Maybe it didn’t. Maybe the impact just dug it up.”

“Sunny,” moaned Hitch. “That’s worse...”

“Because, one,” said Izzy, “it means that thing was buried here. And, two...” She looked around. “It means whatever landed didn’t exactly stick around.”

Sunny felt every hair on her back stand on end.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Zipp. “But I don’t...” She looked at Sunny, her eyes pleading. “Sunny...you know what I want to do.”

Sunny nodded. It was more than apparent that Zipp’s every detective instinct was tingling with maximal intensity. “And I...I don’t think we can leave it here. Not if it’s related to Twilight Sparkle. It could be really important. Or dangerous.” She looked up at Hitch. “Too dangerous to just leave here.”

Hitch winced. “I know. It has to be reported properly and I—I need it for evidence. Even if it’s super, incredibly gross...”

“Also I need a backup phone, STAT,” moaned Pipp. “I need a picture of that for Spooky Season! I’ll be cross-promoting across multiple taste profile demographics with that!” She paused. “OOH! I should do a photo-shoot with a cute archaeologist costume...or maybe a tasteful suit jacket? Like, the ones with elbow-patches.” She looked to Hitch. “Is it culturally appropriate to wear the jacket without trousers? Because a full suit might be too much.”

“I always wear a bracelet,” said Izzy, holding it up. “I can’t stand being nude. It’s weird. And I think Hitch would probably arrest me. Again.”

“Sneaking into jail doesn’t qualify as...” Hitch shook his head, turning back to Sunny. “Sunny, please just...just wear gloves or something?”

“I think Misty can lift it with her magic.”

“Except I’ve been trying to since I saw it,” said Misty, the fear apparent on her face. “It’s like...I can’t get a grip on it. It’s mentally slippery.”

Sunny groaned—and she was the first to step forward. She reached into the wet dirt and pulled it out. It felt strangely cold in her grasp—but almost seemed to move when she touched it. She turned it around in her hooves, finding it almost impossibly heavy for its size—and she could see that although it appeared to have teeth, the jaw seemed to be totally fused closed.

And yet, somehow, as she held it, it seemed to be smiling at her regardless.

Chapter 3: Minor Injuries

Far to the west, the sun was rising above Zephyr Heights. The pegasus city had been built high in the rocky crags of a vast mountain range, accessible almost exclusively to those capable of flight. Due to its height high in the mountains and its role as Equestria’s most technologically advanced metropolis, there had been little reason to expand outward into the surrounding hills. There was no point in farming on the barren slopes, and the city’s position on an enormous butte precluded expansion anywhere except upward. The rest of the range was rural, empty, and depopulated; filled with secluded rural villages with the populations long-since vanished save for the occasional raving hermit living in one of the numerous caves.

Even with the glow of light from the great city, the events of the night before had not gone unnoticed. Throughout the city, pegasi were at work gaining insurance estimates on the number of windows broken and the orders of glass that they would need to replace them. The guards were busy taking reports, but they all reached the same conclusion: that something brilliant and loud had come from the east, rising up from the ground in an arc before landing hard and with a deafening explosion in one of the higher, unoccupied mountains.

This event had so perturbed the queen—and so disturbed her poor, floofy dog—that she had dispatched a crew posthaste to the site of the impact to assess it for danger. The pegasus squad of eight was led by her personal guards, Thunder Flap and Zoom Zephyrwing.

The ascent was by no means easy. Although the weather had been clear the day earlier, it had suddenly begun to storm. The sky had grown dark and sparked with strange lightning that was sometimes silent and sometimes created a form of unfamiliar thunder that sounded more like distant voices than a booming rumble. Snow had begun to fall at the great altitude, but it was strange and discolored. Where it touched the guards’ armor, it left odd stains that did not wash away—and those that tried to eat it claimed it tasted like sour metal.

The impact had occurred high on a cliff, hundreds upon hundreds of feet vertically up an unexplored pillar of stone—unexplored because no pegasus in recent history had been able to fly. It was one of many mountains slated to be explored—this process had simply been expedited by the unexpected impact

Thunder was the first to reach anything reminiscent of a hoofhold, and immediately sprawled outward, gasping for breath.

“I’m cold in places I didn’t even know I had,” he groaned.

“I told you you needed to attend the weekly exercises,” groaned Zoom, pretending not to be equally tired. “And to wear the insulated coats.” She looked around, finding that they were not, in fact, standing on a natural shelf on the cliff. Rather, they were standing at the start of what looked like a cave—except for the cracks that led outward from it, across the cliff face. It looked like the entrance to an enormous tunnel—but it was almost certainly the entry point of where the object had struck.

She wrinkled her nose at the smell.

“Why does it smell like that?”

Thunder sniffed. “It’s like when you turn on a space heater for the first time in the winter,” he said, frowning. “Except you turned it on in the closet where your mom keeps a lot of polyester that she doesn't wash very often and forgot about it for about a day and a half.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“What?" He shrugged. "It’s an oddly specific smell.”

Zoom sighed, finding herself unable to disagree. The other Pegasus guards were arriving, and Zoom took a step forward—but stopped, looking down suddenly.

“What?”

“These mountains are sandstone,” she said.

“Zeezee, this is no time discuss geometry.”

“Don’t call me that in front of the guys!” she hissed, rolling her eyes. “No, look!” She pointed. “This was molten at least a few hours ago. The rocks melted, somehow.”

Thunder’s eyes widened. “Are you saying...that the floor is lava?!”

Every pegasus present immediately jumped onto the nearest rock or piece of debris, avoiding contact with the ground.

“Not anymore, it’s just...” She looked back toward the hole and shivered. It was dark in there, and the air coming from within was hot. It would have been inviting against the cold, but it felt wrong somehow. The smell was rotten, and as she flipped on her light, she saw flecks of light in the air. Like the floating glitter that she was told would be produced if anypony were to punch a unicorn.

“Yeaaaah,” said Thunder. “We’re going to need backup on that one.”

He turned to leave, but Zoom grasped him firmly by the tail. He continued to trot, unable to move across the ground.

“But it’s too spooky!”

“That’s the point. Come on!”

He grumbled as the pair of them took flight and as the group followed them—deep into the hole, floating in the hot and acrid air as they ascended upward.

It was not long until they came to it. None of them knew what they were expecting—but wreckage was not high on the list.

The heap inside was mangled, and badly. Various beams of silvery metal were exposed, as well as a far darker substance that Zoom had earlier taken for carbonized parts of the cave. She could roughly understand the shape of it, but only partially. Parts of it had been melted and bent, and some areas were still smoldering in unnatural colors.

Thunder stared at it and nodded. “Yup. We found it. Time to go.”

“We can’t go yet.”

“Yes we can. It’s right that way. Behind us. Where we came in.”

Zoom looked at him grimly. “We have no idea what this is. There could be ponies on board. They could be hurt. And what, do you want to tell Queen Haven we found debris...and didn’t even check?”

“Zeezee...”

“I said don’t—”

“We just came in a deep, scary cave where the floor is lava.”

“It’s dried.”

“Still super spooky! And we’re not exactly equipped for this.” He pointed at the remains of whatever enormous vehicle had somehow both crashed and managed to melt its way nearly fifty feet into a sheer cliff face. A vehicle that was at least that in terms of width. “That’s super spooky. And I feel super-spooked, and if you make me go in there I'm going to cry, and you hate it when I cry.”

“You're afraid, then.”

“Um,” said one of the other pegasi. “I think we all are?”

Zoom groaned. “So none of you are willing to go in?”

They did not answer, but none of them could look at her.

“I think they’ve voted,” said Thunder, turning to leave—only to be pulled back by his tail.

“Since when do we live in a dang democracy?” Zoom glared at the guards. “This is an absolute monarchy! And if you won’t do it for me, won’t you do it for her?”

Thunder’s eyes widened. “For...”

“FOR THE QUEEN!” screamed one of the guards, rushing forward.

“FOR THE QUEEN!” said another, racing forward with uncontrolled momentum and bouncing off an exposed beam.

“Do it for Queen Haven!” cried Zoom. “Show her you’re all big, brave ponies, and she might even congratulate us personally!”

“Yes! YES! Approve of me, queen-mommy!”

“NOT YOU!” snapped Zoom. “You in the back, don’t make it weird!”

“S...sorry.”

Zoom shook her head and released Thunder’s tail. He freely floated for a moment, looking at her and at the damaged hulk of metal—and then groaned.

“I have your back,” she assured him.

“I know you do. And that’s the only reason I’m even brave enough to do this.”

Zoom nodded, and the pair of them approached the wreck.

Unfortunately for them all, gaining entry was not difficult. Whatever it had once been, it had been badly damaged from the impact, sheered and crushed long before it had penetrated the cliff face. Several viable holes had been opened in the surface, large enough for a pegasus to slip through.

And so they entered—and as they shined their lights into the dim, dusty darkness, they were no first struck by the sight of the room around them but the sound.

“Do you...do you hear that?” asked Zoom, barely at a whisper.

“No,” whispered Thunder back. Even at the lowest volume he could muster, it sounded as though he were on the verge of screaming.

“Exactly,” said Zoom, slowly, turning her light toward the walls. “It’s silent. Perfectly...silent.”

She felt her heart race at the sound of it—or rather at the oppressive lack of sound. As soon as they had entered, as soon as the walls of strange silvery metal and dark, unidentifiable nearly organic plating blocked them from outside, the wind ceased. The air refused to move. There was no draft. Only stillness and a hideous, terrifying silence.

It was a vehicle. It had to be a vehicle. It had flown, and flown faster than anything anypony had ever seen—and yet, as they stepped inside, those sure and concrete assertions immediately began to crumble.

It had architecture. It was bizarre and strange in a way that, in its stillness, forced it to cut so much deeper into their minds than it should have. It was, at least superficially, almost punishingly gothic in design. To Zoom, it reminded her of the ancient cathedrals half-buried under Zephyr Heights. Temples of unbreaking dark stone with ominous idols, dedicated to forgotten gods that ruled over crystal and unquenchable fire. To Thunder, it looked to him like a 3D version of the layouts of the old Horsetlevania games he had played as a colt with really, really good shading.

Except that it varied. In odd ways. Where traditional architecture would dictate an obvious place for a swooping arch or a strong, vertical line, the columns would suddenly veer at strange angles informed by some unthinkable asthetic parameter—angles that, as the group moved behind them, were revealed to hide distinctly and almost blasphemously organic elements and motifs. As if they were all walking down the great aisles of a great and terrible beast claiming with exacting but half-hearted precision to be a cathedral.

It was far from empty, though. Structures had been assembled within it, occupying the space that normally would have held either pews or internal organs—shelves, desks, and stationary equipment, some of it still intact but much of it shattered and broken across the floor. None of it was recognizable to the pegasi present, nor would it have been recognized by any living being of their world.

Thunder seemed to be on the verge of tears, but still approached one of the walls. As he shined his light up, several headlights joined it—revealing that the walls were not made of the same eerie brown-black stone as the rest of the room. Instead, they were covered in artwork—at once a mosaic and, somehow, a form of stained glass.

Zoom shuddered at the sight of it but could not bring herself to look away. It should have been beautiful. The material was like cut gemstones and, although they were in a cave, it somehow returned more light than was given to it, creating the impression of either glowing from within or being, truly, a window. But the mad sprawl of shapes that had been cut into it disturbed her to such a degree that her eyes ached to weep. That materials so beautiful could be rendered so hideous.

The shapes were abstract to an extreme degree. Pointed and strange, although they repeated—again and again. The central and largest motifs stood at the epicenters of their vortexes—marked with what might have been a language in luminescent silver. Below them, the other shapes took on scenes that were wholly indecipherable—and yet left an impression.

A story unfolded, and although Zoom could understand none of it, she saw war. Battle. Pain. She saw the shapes converging on two—one brilliant white and edged with glass that glowed like blazing fire, the other a black that shimmered as light struck it—and unmoving ebon in its center.

She followed with her own light. She saw the colors they took—the central motifs, the ones that repeated hundreds upon hundreds of times over in overlapping vignettes. Pale yellow. An almost cyan blue. Earthy brown-orange. Crystalline blue white. Garish pink. And, finally, her light stopped upon the largest of them all.

She took a step back in the horror of it. Violent, hideous purple—a shade that she could only barely comprehend, rendered in a material that had a quality her eyes could almost not witness it directly. Violet, and streaked with blood-red. An abstract representation that struck her as the battles end, and an indication of the victor. Indecipherable by the mind, but obvious to the heart. An image of a deathly, violet alicorn.

“For...for the queen,” she squeaked, trying to raise her courage—but still feeling her knees shaking.

She felt a hoof around her and recoiled—only to remember that it was Thunder.

“It’s just a creepy window,” he said—even though it was clear he felt the same way. “Maybe this place was...”

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“Thunder. How could this place possibly be a church?”

“Hey, boss!” called on of the pegasi. Both Thunder and Zoom turned sharply toward the forward-center of the room—and saw several of the pegasi looking down at what Zoom had initially took to be a kind of central table.

As she approached it, though, she realized it was not a table at all. It was some kind of machine. It was circular and wide, with a surface oddly well-crafted. Inscribed with what were either images or runes of some sort, sometimes in several different metals and tones. Wires and tubes extended from it, feeding into the floor—which Zoom realized was far less ominous than the rest of the building but still peculiar It was stone, but did not feel like stone.

“What was this thing?” asked Thunder.

“How am I supposed to know?” snapped Zoom, leaning in closer. It seemed like it was broken. There was a space in the center that something was supposed to be connected to but that was now little more than a broken container that had spilled out all its liquid several hours earlier, leaving wires and tubing dangling in every direction. Zoom looked up and saw that over it, most of the cathedral had been torn off. The roof was gone, and all she saw was familiar Zephyrstone.

“I think this is the back of the place,” she said. “It think there’s two levels. Maybe a...a crypt, I guess, below.”

“Zeezee no not a crypt...a crypt is where you keep the unalive ponies..."

Zephyr pointed. “The rest of it split a little. It’s over there. Come on.”

They all approached the gap and jumped, fluttering through the air to reach the forward half of the structure. This half had impacted badly, giving the floor an unpleasant list—which made the angular structure of its overly gothic architecture even more unpleasant.

The new area was not terribly unlike the first—but more narrow. The equipment, likewise, was more intact. To the point it overwhelmed the structural columns, intertwining with them—and interfacing with them, in a way. It was more massive and had survived the impact better. Some of it looked like it still might function—masses of unknown metal, riveted and bolted together, welded at other places with steams inscribed with micro-runes. It all opened into a wide circular area. The air was thick with particles that seemed to flit and move out of the light as it touched them, but even in the distance, it was possible to see that there had been a door on the far side—but that part of the area was twisted and mangled, the passage forward fully impassible even by the most flexible and smooth of pegasi. Any areas forward of that room had been crushed flat on impact.

“If it...if it was a church,” whispered Thunder. "Then..."

“It’s not a church,” hissed Zoom. “Nopony flies a church.”

“But if it was...hypothetically...” He paused at the machine in the center of the room and looked to Zoom, his eyes filled with cold terror. “What were they worshiping?”

Zoom did not want to answer—but she almost jumped at the sound of her own voice, as if somepony else was answering.

“Alicorns.”

Thunder shivered and took flight. He approached some of the rigid tubing and conduits that surrounded the largest and most central piece of equipment. “But this is all...metal and stuff.” He poked one of the devices, and as he did, something within it clicked.

From within, a small crystal dropped down a battered pipe and splashed into a tube of fluid. It was met by a violent roiling, forming bubbles and steam in an instant as it ignited with light. Zoom cried out as she was nearly blinded, but the liquid quickly absorbed the glow—converting it to a powerful fluorescence in pink. The fluid flowed down one of the glassy pipes at unnatural speed, falling into the machine in the center where several turbines immediately started to spin—revving up with deafening screams that quickly ascended to a level of noise that was fully swallowed by the silence of the room before they passed beyond the range of pony hearing.

The machine in the center turned. Pink fluid separated, moving through intersections and splits, these linear arteries feeding each individual piece of equipment—and the whole of the room seemed to vibrate as the machine came to life.

It pushed itself upward, disengaging its internal locks as it separated and opened—and as it did, the machine at its core was revealed. A system of flexible tubes linked to what seemed a pile of opaque gray stones, like a cluster of prismatic crystals emerging from a single point. As it fed upon the fluid given to it and as the turbines accelerated further, they began to vibrate. This new sound was far below pony hearing, but they felt it. Deep in their chests. It froze them in their tracks as the prisms separated.

Something glowed in its center. A glass orb, suspended in distorted air. A strange kind of eye that stared at them. Then it screamed.

“Iai-ai’i-i’aa.ae, Ia-a-ia’a’i.aae’e, i’a.e.”

The sound was mechanical and so incredibly grating that the ponies were forced to cover their ears.

“THUNDER! What in the queen’s name did you DO?!”

“Why is it making that sound? MAKE IT STOP!”

“You made it mad, you made it—”

The noise suddenly ceased, followed only by silence. Then a strangely accented female voice spoke from nowhere in particular.

“User language identified as High-Primakk. Language settings have been updated. Would you like to keep this setting?”

Zoom and Thunder looked at each other. Then, her voice quavering, Zoom spoke.

“Yes?”

She felt a vast source of attention turn to her, even though she could not see from where.

“Are you the current user?”

Zoom looked back to Thunder, then to the eye. “Yes?”

“Information entered. Assembling interface. Please wait.”

The ground below Zoom suddenly began to shake—and then to vibrate at a furious pace. She jumped back as what she had taken as stone suddenly burst forth with what seemed like thousands of tiny, wrigling worms that reached up, crawling, grasping, and screaming in silence—until they disintegrated entirely into a plume of sand. The stone below dissolved and progressed upward with unnatural speed, rising as a plume of colorless powder—illuminated from within by a beam of light from the central eye. Then, with a crushing sound, it compressed into a perfect smooth model of a pony.

Not just any pony, though. It was Zoom—in a way. The eyes were too far apart, the pupils left to an extreme degree of dilation, staring into space with an empty expression. At nothing at all—and yet, somehow, into them all.

When it spoke, its mouth moved—and the voice that came from it was Zoom’s.

“Settings updated. Status update: detecting substantial damage ship-wide. Primary reactor in critical failure...engaging emergency make-safe procedures...procedures complete. Quantic-Incursion engine secured. Sentience level at point-zero-eight Turings. Auxiliary power active. Prototype systems nonfunctional, registering critical damage. Multiple hull breaches detected.”

“Was anypony hurt?”

The construct paused. “Checking. Reading: one of one survivor, present. Warning: detecting minor injuries. Preparing to administer medical treatment. Please wait.”

From above, a long and thin robotic arm dropped down—one of several. Pegasi cried out and ducked back, but the arms did not reach for them. Rather, one progressed forward, down a rail that led to the damaged area in the front of the vessel. It was flexible enough to fold and to pass through, where it vanished into the crushed area for a moment. It seemed like hours before it came back.

Zoom felt the blood drain from her face when she saw what it was carrying. The object was small, and her mind did not want to recognize what it was. It was a single, badly-charred front hoof. The rest of its former owners was nowhere to be seen.

“Survivor recovered. Preparing to administer medical treatment. Please stand by.”

The ground below them distorted and the pegasi took to the air, stepping back before it collapsed into a system of interlocking plates that retracted—allowing an assembly to rise up from the mechanical level below. A compressed package that split and separated into hundreds of thin, grotesque robotic limbs.

The construct stepped to the side as a system of screens and controls appeared before it. It did not interact with them; rather, they seemed to activate on their own volition, the arms assuming their positions at the ready as the first arm lowered the hoof into position.

“Print-heads loaded and passing all checks. Beginning reconstruction.”

Everything moved at once. The arms spread and contracted, pressing forward with an insect-like cadence of motion and extreme precision. They carried objects toward the damaged limb, stripping off the damaged portions and the fragments of burned clothing with lasers. Then other parts began to move—back and forth, back and forth—again and again, speeding up with every passing second.

Zoom watched with rapt attention, unable to bring herself to look away—and at first, she saw nothing. Then, much to her significant dismay, she realized that it was growing.

The arms were depositing material. With every pass, they added another layer. As they accelerated, the material was deposited at an even faster rate—the change in mass and volume becoming far to visible to ignore. Shapes began to emerge: bones printed layer by layer from the end of the hoof, and pale muscle tissues spun up them by spiraling sets of thin, alternating arms.

“What is it...” began Thunder, although he did not need to finish his question. They all knew what it was doing—and not one of them knew what to do. They had no urge to stop it, their minds to befuddled and horrified for the thought to even make an attempt to abort the construction to occur to them. They had, perhaps, an urge to run—but none did. They simply watched in silence as a pony was assembled tissue layer by tissue layer before them.

Something heavy clicked in the ceiling, like the sound of great cogs and chains—and containers dropped from above, tethered by numerous red-hot tubes and thin cables of luminescent pink. The ponies stepped out of the way as apertures in the floor opened and as these were slotted into them—revealing that they were filled with silver liquid. Thunder was closest to one and leaned near it—only to recoil from the heat when he realized that the silver substance was molten metal.

“Preparing,” said the construct. “Fabricating implants.”

Several arms suddenly shot back, twisting and repositioning themselves over the vats of metal—and their narrow, jointed fingers slid into the metal. When they retracted, the metal slid away from them, condensing into complex fragments that were not quite metal. They looked like machines—to Zoom, almost like the circuit boards manufactured in Zephyr Heights for cell-phones. Except that they were more complicated—and their surfaces were twisted and bent in strange ways.

The arms brought these assemblies to the body they were constructing, which had now developed to a complete skeleton with partial musculature—while a wide and complex assembly below was knitting and inserting internal organs. The arms began to connect the machines to their creation.

A large rotating arm turned, scanning the body as it did and stopping at the forward end. It then rolled forward, unfolding, and secondary sets of arms from it and from above began assembling separate pieces. Bone was knit into complex forms, and delicate nerves threaded through it along with wires and cables.

An arm dropped down to a large glass sphere, filling it with a hissing and bubbling pink solution. It began to coagulate, and several lasers began to cut a complex pattern into its surface. Forming the wrinkles of a brain.

Thunder leaned forward near one of the other three bone fragments built around the periphery of the brain. They did not fully have form yet, but as he approached, the eye on one of them opened. He squeaked and jumped back, the eye moving in its half of a skull to trace his motions. Below it, where the mandible had been assembled on several gossamer posts, a tongue lolled out over a set of lower teeth.

The brain container opened, disgorging its newly fabricated contents, and and it was promptly wired to the halves of a skull, which was pulled back to the spinal connection. Several arms hissed as they connected them, using precision print heads to bind the halves together, the jaw on, and the head to the body. One arm pushed the tongue back in and held the jaw closed.

The eyes, though, continued to turn in their location. Moving from each pegasus to the next. They were wide and gray—and seemed utterly terrified.

A set of arms dropped downward, inserting a strip of metal covered with thousands of points into the brain. Another lowered the skull cap over it, gray mane already installed, but held it in place. The rest of the arms were finishing their work, with white skin now covering the entire body save for the chest and the numerous small apertures and ports that were connected to a variety of tubes and wires.

“Injecting fluid. Establishing circulatory integrity.”

A dark liquid flowed downward through the tubes—and Zoom watched as the exposed heart quivered and began to beat. The construct seemed pleased.

“Circulatory system passing primary validation parameters. Respiratory channels passing validation. Brain stem activities are within accepted parameters.”

An arm pushed the ribcage forward, and another attached the ribs with a snap as a small tool followed behind, erasing the separation with perfect, scarless white skin. The same was done to the skull as several additional ports were placed directly into the brain.

“Biological systems are fully functional,” noted the construct. “Preparing to load archetype.”

She paused—and Zoom felt it before it happened. How the lights suddenly dimmed, the consoles suddenly filling with red lights. High-pitched alarms sounded from various locations as more and more warnings appeared.

“Warning: archetype protocol not found. Warning: autobiographical data corrupted. WARNING: archetype data incomplete, cannot safely upload. ERROR: personal identity not found. Attempting to bypass. Warning: disengaging ethical safeguards. No present user contains administrative permission to disengage Asenian protocols. Unable to abort rebirth process. Warning: creation of abomination inevitable. Please stand...stand...stand...”

The construct’s head suddenly twisted violently, producing a terrible cracking sound as if her neck had been broken by a sudden and uncontrolled convulsion. One of her wide eyes stared directly into Zoom’s, and she spoke again. In a voice devoid of the cold urgency of before—a voice that was not quite Zoom’s own, and seemed, somehow, to be on the verge of laughter.

“Praise be unto the One True Princess...”

Then her light flickered out—and the flesh of the construct decayed to dust, returning to the floor as her dull-brown artificial skeleton collapsed to the floor. The dry synthetic bones clattered and lay still in the construct’s own dust.

The white pony at the center of the machines suddenly started shaking, her eyes opening wide as some of the machines disconnected and she dropped to her knees.

“Gosh dang it,” swore Zoom, flying to her side to catch her as she fell. “Medic! We need a medic!”

The medic-pegasus approached, even though he was quite clearly at a loss of even how to describe the situation—just as the white pony suddenly, now in the midst of a seizure, opened her mouth—and let out a scream so quiet that it was barely a squeak. Then she collapsed into a heap.

“Thunder, get over here!” ordered Zoom. “We need to get her to a hospital!”

“But she—she—”

“We can ask questions later, we’re the Royal Guard for Queensake, we—”

Zoom suddenly felt a tightness around her midsection. She was being squeezed, but there was something else. A strange, quivering heat. Like an electric current. And, as she watched, orange light traced around her, almost instantly forming the outline of machine parts that slid together and clamped around her. The same enclosed Thunder, and he was—with a girlish scream—thrown violently upward, slamming into the machines that had descended from the ceiling.

Zoom was wrenched forward—toward the white pony that was now standing, the wires and tubes falling from her ports. She was an earth-pony, and the deep-seated fear that Zoom had tried to outlast suddenly chilled her to the bone. The stories about how the earth-ponies would steal pegasus bones and use them to make flour—and then bake cupcakes from said flower, badly.

Except something was wrong. The proportions. The perception. Zoom had met earth-ponies. Numerous times. This one felt different. It felt wrong. And as the machines twisted her wings, she understood. This monstrosity was no earth-pony. It was hardly even a pony at all.

It stared into her eyes with its own. The fear they held before was replaced by utter nothingness. They were blank and empty, gray eyes that matched a short gray mane, placed on a body that was the dullest possible shade of paper-white.

It opened its mouth. What came out was not exactly words.

“A’ae,iiaie...ieyae,a,eaii-i-ai...ia’a.e?”

“She’s grabbing our friends! GET HER!”

“Wait wait WAIT—”

The ponies charged forward—and the translucent images of machines around Zoom shifted, engaging into new systems as she was knocked hard into Thunder. The blank pony turned her empty eyes toward the other pegasi, clearly enraged or confused, and her holographic constructs detonated with a deafening plume of artificial lightning. The pegasi cried out and collapsed, sparking and shaking, and some slightly smoldering.

“Ia.a’ae!” cried the pony, jumping past them and charging toward the exit at full speed, grabbing something from one of the shelves as she left.

“Wait!” cried Thunder. “Hold on, I...”

As Thunder was released, he moved to help Zoom—although her constraints were already fading as well. They had escaped the shock and looked at each other, wordlessly understanding that they needed to give pursuit—and they did, chasing after the pony.

They did not see her until they reached the cave—and saw the light of the gray clouds beyond.

“Wait!” cried Thunder. “It’s a sheer cliff!”

Zoom and Thunder took flight, the pony looking back to them—just as she went over the edge. A look of surprise crossed her face as she tilted—and then, as if in slow motion, flopped over the edge and began to plummet.

Thunder and Zoom accelerated, prepared to rescue—but as they reached the end, they saw her body already surrounded by holographic images of mechanical parts. As they assembled, they slammed together—and with a rushing, thunderous sound, the pony corrected course and rocketed toward the east, powered by several sizable and translucent engines on her back.

“Should we...”

Zoom watched her go, then sighed.

“How can we? She’s too fast and the others are hurt. We need to get back.” She shook her head. “And I don’t even know where to start for the paperwork on this...”

“But what if she...”

“Yeah,” said Zoom, darkly. “You go back to the castle. I’ll bet bits to beans our radio got fried, if it even works up here at all. Go as fast as you can and get to the Queen. She’ll know what to do.”

Thunder gulped and shakily nodded—and then dashed off down the cliff, on his way back to Zephyr Heights proper.

Zoom watched him go—hoping that she was right and not wanting to even consider what she might have just unleashed into Equestria.

Chapter 4: Washed Ashore

The sky to the far west had grown cloudy, but the conditions in Maritime Bay continued to remain excellent. The town's beloved sheriff had not even needed to issue a watercraft advisory for the beach, which was as extensive and beautiful as always. Ponies went about their day, working their pony jobs and doing their pony tasks—none moreso than that very sheriff, who had taken the streets for his daily afternoon patrol.

Hitch hummed to himself as he trotted through the streets, greeting the ponies he met and making sure their issues concerning health and safety were both heard and met. He also kept a careful eye out for the scourges of their just and kind pony society, the fatal crimes of littering, jaywalking, neighsaying, or violating safety standards when moving heavy objects.

The air was fresh and clean, with a pleasantly nautical scent as per usual. The sun was bright and warm. Hitch could not help but smile as he examined his beloved town, content in the fact that he was doing his part to keep it safe and clean—although his mood was still slightly tainted by a slight darkness he did not wish to express but also could not manage to purge from his cheerful mood.

It had creeped him out. Skulls were already scary things, but whatever it had been, it was somehow worse. Hitch found himself increasingly believing that it was, somehow, not a skull—and the unknown that said piece of knowledge had forced him to face was even less pleasant than allowing himself to believe that somepony had simply lost their head.

Equestria was old. It was widely assumed that Twilight and her friends had walked the land perhaps a few hundred years prior, or maybe a thousand—but nopony knew for sure. And, of course, there were things from even before then. Things buried deep in the soil that were best left forgotten.

Which was where he had assumed it must have come from. The thought that it had somehow come from above was just too much to bear.

These abstractions, though, were not what scared him. The fear was far more visceral. The artifact—whatever it truly was—made him desperately uncomfortable. Even being near it disturbed him, and even when it had been wrapped in cloth and stored in a small box he had not wanted to touch it or lift it. Even as Zipp, Sunny and Izzy all took turns lifting it—and all commented on its unusual weight.

In a way, he had been glad he had not needed to file it as evidence. It bothered him that such a lapse was technically a breach of protocol, as the investigation should have been a police matter—but the idea of it sitting there, wrapped in cloth in the evidence locker on the far end of his office, made him feel sick. He was glad that Zipp had taken it for her own scientific analysis.

Which left Hitch to tend to his own business. He tried to push back his apprehension as he descended a small set of stairs to the beach itself. He looked out across the calming ocean. The white crash of the waves and the reflection of warm sunlight that almost hurt his eyes. A smile crossed his face as he proceeded down the beach, greeting the crabs and gulls by name as he went. The warm sand felt good beneath his hooves.

It also pleased him that ponies were safely enjoying the late-summer day at the beach. Various ponies were playing ball, a few were building sandcastles; an older couple were sitting in chairs, watching the ocean, and a young colt was reading a book. No one was swimming, which was appropriate as no lifeguards had been assigned to the afternoon on that day.

Everything was perfect. Hitch made a mental note to bring Sparky to the beach, possibly before dinner. For obvious reasons, he could not have a baby dragon on patrol with him—caring for a child while at work was simply infeasible, as it would distract form his job and also put poor Sparky at risk of being traumatized by the horrors a police pony might see—including the greatest crime Hitch had ever witnessed, a case of vandalism two years prior. He still had nightmares about it: the silly face painted on the wall of the local ice-cream shop glaring at him with utter disdain. Sometimes, thinking about it made him cry.

He proceeded on a standard route to the far side of the beach, which was less popular due to the strong currents in the bay—and at a distance, he saw three fillies standing close together. Staring at something on the sand not far from the high-tide line.

Hitch approached them, recognizing them as Glory, Seashell and Peach Fizz, the so-called Pippsqueaks.

“Hey girls,” he said. “Everything okay on this end of the beach?”

They jumped, surprised, and they seemed suspicious. Hitch tilted his head, looking past Seashell—and he saw what they were standing around. Something that had washed up from the water.

For a brief moment, Hitch felt a sudden cold shock of fear—but suppressed it out of professional habit.

“What is that?”

“We don’t know,” admitted Seashell.

“Yeah,” said Glory, stepping aside and allowing Hitch to approach. “We were trying to figure it out. Peach was poking it with a stick to see if it moved.”

“It didn’t,” sighed Peach. “I was watching really close.”

Hitch looked down at the object. He felt a shiver run up his back, the hairs standing on end, even though he logically knew it was innocuous.

It was the size of a pony—exactly the size of a pony. Because it resembled one almost exactly. Even wrapped in pieces of seaweed with its legs sticking out stiffly and almost comically, Hitch immediately understood what it was.

“A mannequin,” he said, leaning closely. “What was this doing in the water?” He sighed and shook his head. “If I found out who’s polluting the bay, I’ll will write them such a ticket.” He felt his rage intensifying. “I’ll even have them write an apology letter to all the sea creatures whose home got ruined up by this thing floating by.”

“It might have been an accident, though,” suggested Seashell. “Maybe it fell of a boat or something?”

Hitch paused, and then realized she was probably correct. It may simply have been lost, either during transport or in one of the early summer storms a while back. He knew that the local dressmaker and tailor used dummies like it for assembling clothing. Or it might have been one of the Mrs. Cloverleaf’s, which she had formerly used to test safety gear on. Unsure, he leaned closer, hoping someone had written their name on it.

And in doing so, his distress suddenly increased. He was not sure why, exactly, but something about it was odd.

The surface was white and smooth, almost like the kind of dummy used by department stores to demonstrate their wears—and like the dummies that also got to wear hats, as it had a complete head. Like any ordinary department store dummy, it had no face. Instead, the features had been replaced with contours to give the impression of one. It even had ears.

It did not look like plastic, though. And it was not entirely white. Somehow it had not been stained in any way by the ocean, but instead was marked with a peculiar pattern of blue, textured lines. They were almost like a kind of fanciful clothing themselves, or at least the outline of it, except they seemed to be built into the surface itself rather than worn on top of it.

There was also something about the proportions. It took Hitch a little bit to notice, but when he did, he could not find a way to unsee it. How the legs were just a little too long, a little too thin, and the oddly segmented neck seemed to be twisted in a way that was not quite natural.

“Well,” said Hitch, clearing his throat. “I can’t just leave this here on the beach.”

“You want the stick?” asked Peach. "Poking it makes me feel powerful."

“The fact that it doesn’t have eyes kind of makes me feel scared,” said Glory.

“Trust me,” said Hitch, approaching it and sighing. “It’s so much worse when they do.”

He reached down and grabbed the thing—and almost immediately recoiled. It was oddly cold and clammy, and certainly not made of plastic—but he was at least heartened to learn that it felt nothing like an actual pony either. He had never felt a texture quite like it. The closest he could imagine is if he had suddenly touched ice-cold glass—but with a level of give more appropriate for a decaying melon.

“Come on,” he implored the dummy, grabbing it again. “You’re litter and you can’t be here...ugh...why are you so heavy? Come on, dummy...maybe Izzy can...unicycle you or...guh...”

He could not manage to free it.

“Is it heavy?”

“No, just awkward and half-buried. I’m going to need a shovel.” Hitch looked back at his tracks. The tide was coming in, and some of them were already being washed away. “And there’s no way I can carry this all the way back, I’ll need a cart.” He turned to the fillies. “You three should go home. The tide’s going to get here soon.”

They looked at him, and Hitch noticed that they, too, seemed oddly nervous.

“Yeah,” sighed Peach Fizz. “That’s probably not a bad idea.”

“My mom has frozen pizza!” said Glory, suddenly. The other seemed to be greatly enthused by this revelation.

“Be careful about using the oven!” warned Hitch as they ran off. "Follow the instructions EXACTLY and be sure to take the plastic off the top! And the cardboard off the bottom! And put it on a PAN!"

“Don’t worry, no oven will be involved at all!” called one of the fillies back as they departed.

Hitch turned back to the his work, staring at the shape on the beach. It was, at least, a problem he knew how to deal with—even if for some unknown reason he really did not want to.

When Hitch returned to the spot on the beach, he did so with the appropriately marked police sheriff’s department cart and corresponding sheriff’s department shovel. Pulling a cart across the sand was by no means easy, even for one of the fittest earth-ponies in all of Maretime bay, so when he arrived to the spot the sun had already sunk low in the eastern sky. The sunset would surely be beautiful, but ponies were already leaving the beach. Even in the summer, the bay grew cold at night—and the waves more choppy than was safe to be around. Especially at high tide.

The beach was mostly empty. The wind had started to pick up. Hitched turned the corner toward the secluded part of the beach where the mannequin had washed ashore. That area was even more abandoned than the rest, as few ponies went there anyway—and in the distance, he was able to see the spot where his quarry was waiting to be picked up by the appropriate authorities.

It was about two hundred yards down the beach when Hitch stopped. He squinted into the distance. Something had caught his attention at the site, but it was too far for him to see properly. He found hims mind trying slowly to make sense of what he was seeing, and when it came to a conclusion he was sure it was some kind of bizarre optical illusion.

Something was sticking up. A small, vertical stalk he could barely see. A white thing protruding upward vertically, although exactly what it was or even how large it stood was impossible to determine.

Hitch shivered as he convinced himself that there was no way it could be a pony looking at him—even though that was what his mind said. A white pony’s head, staring at him from a long neck. Standing perfectly still in the wind.

Hitch blinked and shook his head. He squinted his eyes closed again and again—and then looked again. He saw it again. Exactly where it had been.

“What the...”

Then it moved. It dropped to one side as if knocked over, falling back to the sand and vanishing behind a slight dune.

Hitch paused. He did not want to go forward. Something told him to stay. The air suddenly felt so very cold. Still, he knew he was being ridiculous. He was the sheriff, and he was afraid of a piece of pony-shaped flotsam. One that was clearly not dangerous in the slightest, or even especially disturbing.

He resumed his walk, now with an even faster pace—and even with the weight of the cart, he quickly came to the place where the mannequin had been.

Which left Hitch confused as he stared at the spot. The place where it had been was still disturbed and caked with old seaweed—but the mannequin itself was gone.

“Izzy must have gotten to it first,” he groaned to himself, wishing she had told him ahead of time so that he would not have wasted his patrol time fetching the cart. As he looked, though, he saw that there were no hoofprints leading to it in the sand—but there were a set leading away.

Hitch approached them, leaning down. A single set led away from the site, down toward the water’s edge. The first few were shallow but essentially the familiar heart-shaped prints of a pony. Then, though, they degraded. They shifted and became something else. Strange and distorted, and in a pattern that did not correlate to a quadruped. They were trilobal, and there were too many of them—like a creature with a great many legs had left them as it scampered away.

The majority of those stranger, more ominous prints were already being washed away by the sea.

Slowly, Hitch turned his head up to look out at the water. The sunlight looked so beautiful glimmering off its surface—and it was so beautiful that he almost did not see it. In the distance, just on the edge of his vision but now very much perceptible, a white, faceless head on a long neck poking out of the water.

Hitch took a step forward, squinting.

“Dang it,” he said. “It must have washed back out to sea.”

Except that the tide had not yet reached the place where it had been lying. Except that, even assuming it somehow floated in an upright position, it would have bobbed with the motion of the waves. But it did not. It was perfectly still, the waves crashing around it. It did not move up and down, it was not pushed back to shore—as if it had been set standing on the bay’s bottom. Except Hitch knew the topography of this part of the bay; it was deeper than the rest, which was why ponies rarely swam there and largely used it only for the spring rigata. Where the mannequin was floating was at least three times deeper than the average pony—perfect depth for a boat, but far too deep for a pony to be standing on the rocky bottom below. Let alone a mannequin with legs that did not even articulate.

Hitch took another step toward the water, but stopped himself. He felt an urge to jump into the water and swim out to catch it, lest it pollute the sea even more—but going out in the water all alone would simply be too dangerous. Even in the shallower, less choppy parts of the bay.

He convinced himself that it would set a bad example should any pony see him doing it—let alone for to retrieve a piece of debris that would eventually return to the shore anyway.

“I’ll get you next time,” promised Hitch as he turned away from the sea. He sighed, annoyed that he had not been able to catch it—and that he had been essentially outsmarted by a dummy. Zipp could never know, or she would never let him forget it.

He chuckled—but found no humor in the situation. For some reason, he only felt unnerved. Having it behind him. He turned back and looked again. It was still there—except it had shifted position slightly. Surely a result of the wave action. It had turned, slightly. The faceless head was now facing him. And Hitch squinted, for a moment sure that it had somehow gotten closer.

With a great expense of willpower, he turned away, feeling a shiver run through his body as he broke into a light trot. It was not easy to do so on sand, even if he was in the damp part just beyond where the waves were landing.

There was no need to look back. Hitch knew this. And yet his heart was racing. His legs were shaking with the desire to run. To not even bother to unhitch the car tied to him, holding him back. To drag it at full speed, even if it fell over and he was forced to pull it on its side. To bolt all the way back home.

Then he stopped. He tried. To stop himself from looking—and it felt like someone else was turning his head.

It was still there. Still distant—but he could no longer convince himself that it was in the same spot. It had moved. As if it were following him.

“Which it isn’t,” he insisted, still staring at the blank face fifty yards out that was staring back at him. Without moving in the waves whatsoever. Perfectly still and unalive. Hitch chuckled. “It’s a trick of the ocean current. I should know, I personally checked for every possible riptide. There aren’t...any.” He shook his head. “It’s stuck in a horizontal flow. That’s it, that’s all. Isn’t that right, Ms. Pinchygrabb...”

He looked down to the ground, knowing that he was near his crab-friend’s hole—but she was not there.

He looked up. There were no crabs out at all. No birds in the air. For the first time, he realized that there were no animals at all—and no sound aside form the inorganic environmental noises of the waves repetitively crashing on the beach. No bird song. No clicking of crabs, no squirt of the native geoducks—nothing. He was completely and utterly alone.

A shiver ran through his body and he picked up his pace, telling himself that he needed to get the cart back quickly. In case somepony else needed it. Even if he was the only one that ever used it.

He looked back, over his shoulder, and saw that it was still there. Still at a distance, but in a new spot—and the distance between them had decreased almost imperceptibly. Hitch began to panic, even though he knew it was ridiculous—but he could not stop himself from wondering. If it really was getting closer.

The cart began to rumble and jump—and Hitch knew that if it fell over, as strong as he was, he would be taken over with it. He would be stuck on the wet beach, desperately trying to free himself—and for some reason he knew that something very, very bad would happen if he was overturned. If he stopped, even for a second.

He ran past the stairs to the boardwalk, and immediately up a ramp. Several passing ponies jumped out of his way, confused and somewhat concerned. Being around others seemed to help, and Hitch paused, breathing hard.

“Sorry, ponies,” he gasped. “Cart is...almost past it’s sign out time, just official...gasp...official sheriff business.”

They smiled awkwardly at him and continued on his way. Hitch tried to regain his composure and his breath, and was able to—but he was not unable to resist the temptation to look out at the water again.

It was still there. Except now it had turned again. Although it was still far out in the water, it had once again turned to face him. Watching with its eyeless, unseeing face as it sat perfectly still in the water. Waiting to once again come ashore.

All Hitch could do was stare at it—until he could bring himself to turn away and leave it out there. He forced himself to dismiss the thought that this time it might not stop at the high-tide mark.

Author's Note

As apparent here, this story was originally intended to have a horror-like structure.

Horror, as a genre, however, tends to preclude especially advanced plotting in favor of suspense (the two emotions tend to run counter). As such, I am hesitant to classify it specifically as a horror story due to the way the plot tends to move in later chapters.

Chapter 5: Wizard Tower

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.

Chapter 6: Density

Sunny had just gotten home from her job at her smoothie stand. She was still sticky and sweet-smelling when she heard an exasperated yell from somewhere inside the Brighthouse.

“Zipp?!”

She put down her spare smoothie supplies and cantered rapidly to Zipp’s office—where Sunny found her friend gently banging her forhead against her desk.

“Zipp, what’s going on? Did Izzy get her horn stuck in the faucet again?”

“That would be at least easy to figure out!”

“Well, yeah, now that we know we can use the butter...if one of us holds her down and stops her from trying to lick it off...”

“No, I mean this!” Zipp leaned to one side, gesturing to the contents of her desk—which consisted of a variety of wires, meters, devices, and scientific equipment—some of it smoldering—as well as a sight that immediately brought Sunny’s mood back down to an unpleasantly dark place.

The skull was staring back at her, connected to a variety of electrodes and sensor’s on Zipp’s workbench, almost seeming to smile for having caused her such distress through its sheer stubbornness alone.

“What’s the matter?” asked Sunny, approaching the desk. "It seems...happy, at least."

“I’ve been trying to figure this thing out all day,” snapped Zipp. “And this little fudge-muncher, every time I figure out one thing, it opens up three more lines of inquiry. Look at my thread-board, Sunny! I’m almost out of red thread! RED THREAD!”

“I think Izzy might have more. Also, try not to swear. It she learns another bad word, we'll never hear the end of it.”

Zipp groaned. “Yeah. I know. Sorry.” She took a breath. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just a little excited. Check out my results!”

She produced a detective pad filled with various scribbles.

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for, Zipp,” admitted Sunny. “I mean...I guess it is a type of mystery, but...” She looked back at the skull and shivered. “I wouldn’t even know where to start with this.”

“Observation. That’s always the way to start. You have to gather enough data to ask the question before you can even pose a hypothesis, let alone start reasoning and running experiments.” She gestured excitedly toward the skull. “And I’ve been running tests all day on this thing.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one, check this out!” Zipp sifted through her various test probes and wires and produced, of all things, a large diamond ring. “Pure diamond. Moh’s hardness of ten. Hardest thing we know of.” She flipped it over in her grasp and scraped it down the side of the skull. Sunny almost leapt to stop her, lest she damage the artifact—only to question why she felt such a sudden urge to protect it. She paused long enough to see Zipp pull back the diamond, its surface marked with a deep gouge while the skull was utterly uninfected.

“It’s almost indestructible,” said Zipp. “Harder than diamond. And don't even get me started on the Brinell results.”

“But your diamond is ruined...”

Zipp shrugged. “Eh. I’m a princess, I have so many diamonds. I mean, for my sixteenth birthday, my mom got me a diamond pony. As in, like, made of diamonds.”

“You mean a statue of a pony.”

Zipp scrunched slightly. “Sure, let’s go with that. Anyway, what am I even supposed to do with a ring? I mean, if I was a unicorn, I could put it on my horn...and I’m a mare, so...”

“What does being a mare have to do with it?”

“Anyway,” continued Zipp. “I tried heating it. Putting it in the oven, in the fridge, in the freezer. And do you know what’s weird?”

“The oven...Zipp, we make food in that oven!”

“And I also sometimes use it for SCIENCE.”

“That explains why my last batch of cookies tasted like...um...”

“Contact explosives. Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll clean it out later. Or it'll clean itself out if somepony turns it on. But guess what happened when I heated this?”

“Um...nothing?”

“Less than nothing!”

“How can you have ‘less’ than nothing?” Sunny paused. “Wait, are we in debt?”

“Only if you look at how many bits Izzy’s spending on glitter. No. The temperature. It doesn’t change. It’s always sixty four degrees Marenheit. It doesn’t ever go up or down. Freeze it, cook it, it’s all the same temperature.”

“That’s...certainly an observation.”

“And then there’s the density. That one was easy, the old triple-beam and a really big graduated cylinder. As near as I can figure, it’s an alloy. The density is somewhere between mareidium and horsmium. Assuming it’s solid.”

“Solid?”

“It probably has to be. Because I don’t think anypony could carve it with modern tools, let alone hollow it out.”

“So...you think it’s some kind of statue.”

“It has to be. And it has to be solid.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because if it was hollow, the volume is all off. The material itself would be almost eight as dense as the densest known pony element.” She paused. “Except a mareidium-horsmium alloy isn’t harder than diamonds. It’s not even that hard, honestly, it’s just super heavy. And incredibly expensive.”

“Not to mention,” said Pipp, descending from above and—as per usual—holding her phone. “The thing messes with my reception. So. BAD.” She groaned, throwing her mane back. “Look at my poor phone! I can’t get a connection and she’s all glitched out! I mean, look at my watch-history on GlueTube!”

She shoved the phone into Sunny’s face. Sunny pulled her head back, squinting.

“‘Vessy Pressure’s Complete History of the Naval Boiler, a Seven-Hour Documentary’?”

“Oh, OOH!” cried Zipp. “Vessy Pressure has a new video out already?! Don’t tell me any spoilers, I haven’t seen it yet!”

“Neither have I!” protested Pipp. “What pony in their right mind would watch a seven-hour documentary on boiliers?”

“I friggin love boilers,” said Zipp. “Boilers are cool. Or hot, depending!” she nudged Sunny’s shoulder. “Huh? Huh? Boiler puns?”

“Yes, Zipp, we get it,” groaned Pipp. She groaned. “My algorithm is completely broken. I haven’t watched ANY of these videos, and...look what it’s recommending! Fun Gus’s guide to exotic toadstools? Who would even...” She paused, staring at her phone. “Actually, I mean, no cap, but that’s a really pretty mushroom...huh...I’m actually kind of in to this.” She looked up. “But STILL!”

From the far end of the room, Misty trotted into the area, levitating several books.

“You got them?” said Zipp.

“Sure did. Had them at my dad’s house so it wasn’t hard to find them.”

“What did you get?” asked Sunny.

“And more importantly!” groaned Pipp. “Misty! Is your phone all messed up too?”

Misty seemed confused. “Oh, I don’t have a phone. Opaline said it would be a distraction from serving her various needs. Also I think they confuse her. She was never really good with technology.”

“You don’t—have a—how are you even alive?!”

“If we’re being totally honest? The power of friendship, mostly.”

She set the books on the table and Sunny picked one up. It was immensely old and dusty, and bound in a strange form of material that was smooth and slightly pinkish. She flipped it open and felt a rush of nausea and confusion as the unholy text within etched itself deep into her mind. Fortunately, being an earth-pony, she had very little comprehension of what she was looking at and the blast of text-based magic missed her brain entirely.

“Oop,” said Misty, yanking the book back. “Probably not a good idea to do that without the right incantations.”

“These are magic books,” said Sunny. “Misty, I had no idea you were studying magic. Where did you even get these?”

Misty blushed. “Well...Opaline has a really big library, so I figured while I’m there I might do something useful. So I’ve been doing some reading. I mean, I don’t understand all of them, and some are a little bit cursed...mostly cursed with boring...although I really enjoyed this one by somepony named ‘Glim-Glam’, it was really informative, even though I think that’s a pseudonym...it’s like a manual for all sorts of cool tricks—”

“Are any of them useful for fixing phones?” groaned Pipp. “Or for figuring out what that weird thing even is? It’s creepy. Like it’s looking at my bones. I feel naked.”

Zipp frowned. “But you...”

Pipp pointed to her tiara. Zipp turned to Sunny, who gestured to the bag on her side. Misty held up her bracelet.

“Oh,” said Zipp. “So it’s just me. I'm the naked one.”

“Yeah. We noticed,” whispered Pipp.

“We’ll unpack that later,” said Zipp. She grasped one of the less-cursed textbooks. “Did you find anything about it in here?”

“No,” admitted Misty. “But these are only the books I had stocked up in Bridlewood. I can cross-reference with Opaline’s library when I go back. But I managed to set up a few test spells.”

“Did you find anything so far?” asked Sunny.

Misty shook her head. “Only that it doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to. When you shine magic on it, I mean.”

“What does that mean?”

Misty stared at Sunny. “I guess it doesn’t happen to you because you’re only an alicorn some of the time. But for unicorns, when we use our magic, even for picking something up—we feel it. Like you would with your hoof...but also really different. It’s hard to explain. Like...like seeing something, but not with your eyes.”

“Like an extra sense we don’t even have? Fascinating...”

Misty nodded. “That thing...it’s like it’s slippery. Like magic can’t touch it. But the part that does feels...wrong. Like...sticking your hoof elbow-deep in a sink drain and feeling fingers tickling your hoof.”

“EEW!” cried Pipp, shuddering. “SO GRODY, no! I need brain bleach!”

“There’s a recipe for that in this one.” Misty pointed at a book. “And I think a spell in the Luciferian Grimoire? But that one’s super creepy. The last four translators went insane, you know. It’s in the preface. They argue with each other because I think time collapsed in on itself? Or they got trapped in the pages and forgot who they were...”

“Or maybe it’s just one guy having a laugh,” commented Zipp. She descended back into her chair. “Still...this thing is weird.”

“No kidding,” Sunny shivered. “But what does this thing have to do with Twilight Sparkle?”

Zipp fell silent. They all did—and it was clear that none of them knew.

“Did she...make it?” Sunny turned to face the skull—which she now understood to be some kind of advanced sculpture, or a piece of one—and frowned. “And what for?”

“That’s the fun of it I guess,” said Zipp, even though for a moment she seemed to be having no fun at all. “Maybe it’s linked to the crystals somehow. Or the warning.”

“About Opaline,” added Misty.

Sunny nodded, although she was not so sure. The crystals that powered the Brighthouse—and that had brought all magic back to Equestria—were ancient. They had been created before recorded pony history, back in the age of Twilight Sparkle and her friends—but the warning recorded in them had never contained a name. Only mentioned that somepony was coming.

What the head of a metal statue had to do with any of it, none of them knew. And the skull was certainly not about to tell them.

That night, as Sunny lay in bed, she had difficulty falling asleep. This was unusual for her, as her attempts to live every day to the fullest usually left her drained—but on this particular day, she did not feel tired. The slight stirring of her friends in their own beds kept pulling her back from the threshold of sleep, wrenching her back to a reality that did not differ appreciably from any other day.

She sat looking up at the ceiling, illuminated by the slight rainbow glow of her lantern. She stared for what seemed like hours, only to sit up and check her phone to see that only minutes had passed. She sighed, groaned, and sat there in the near silence.

Across the room, something caught her eye. The skull was sitting on a desk, connected to a variety of machines and sensors with various blinking lights. Sunny did not know exactly what they did, but it was something Zipp had built to take overnight readings. Tearing her away from the thing had been hard enough, but she still insisted on learning more. It was part of her endearing curiosity—but the fact that she had left it there, in the corner, staring at them all was unfortunate.

Obviously it could not see. Not in a literal sense; its eyes were just somehow carved into it. Still, it was like how the glassy, empty eyes of stuffed animals always seemed to be staring at night—and it was disturbing enough for a teddybear or a crocheted pony, let alone for an already creepy and ominous artifact.

Sunny sighed and stood up. She walked across the room, being careful to not wake her friends. They were all asleep, Pipp still holding her phone—although for some reason the phone was on, shining a variety of flashing lights as if someone were watching sped-up videos at an incredible speed. Sunny ignored it and crossed to the skull.

It seemed to smile at her, seemingly very pleased with itself, and for a moment Sunny felt her heart beat suddenly as she thought she saw a glint in its eyes. A slight glow from within. She quickly realized, though, that it was a reflection. The eyes—or equivalent of eyes—where hollow and filled on their inside surface with a nacre-like iridescent substance. Something that would have been pretty on a nice necklace but that was profoundly unnerving for this purpose.

“Sorry about this,” she whispered to the skull. “You’re just too creepy like this. You can go to sleep too.”

She produced a small hoof-towel and covered the skull with it, doing her best not to interfere with Zipp’s machines. The oppressive atmosphere in the room almost immediately seemed to vanish, and Sunny smiled in relief.

She returned to her bed and lay down—and almost as soon as she did, she was asleep.

In the dream, she did not walk. There was none of the up and down motion of normal forward progression, no sensation of taking hoofsteps—and yet she was still aware of a gait. A strange, floating version of normal walking. As if she were drifting forward on her own unnoticed will.

The temple stretched out before her, and in the dream, she almost wept at its beauty. The dark stone had no name, although the minerals contained within it did—and she knew all the arcane terms that described their nature. The stone had been uplifted, pulled forward from the planet’s surface not by geology but by the sheer force of unfathomable magic. A spell of unimaginable power and precision, beyond anything any mortal being could hope to accomplish. In a single minute, the execution of a single vast work that would have taken generations of wizards lifetimes after lifetimes simply to create the blueprints for.

The impossible architecture seemed to drift and float, massless and at once infinitly heavy. Inviolable, permanent—and forged in a single piece. Carved out with a spell that could cleave the the unbreakable and bend adamantine crystal to its very will.

She was not alone. Others stood with her. Sunny beheld them, and saw them in different forms—although understood them to be identical. Derived from a single point-source.

Alicorns. All of them were alicorns. They looked exactly as her mind told her alicorns should look. Impossibly gaunt and pale, with massive unblinking black eyes without whites.

Some wore strange armor that gave their forms strength. It covered the whole of their bodies, to the point where their wings could not be seen through it. Black armor, marked with the Sigil. Others, though, were allowed exposed faces, their physical support systems shrouded beneath ornate robes of purple and red.

She alone stood different. She, Sunny, the alicorn—black. Of a different origin than them all, a deviant point—but she did not fear them. She understood them. That they were her friends. She knew that origin had no bearing in this place. Only competency. Only service, dedication, and loyalty—and above all, achievement.

They stopped, and Sunny almost collapsed in tears at the sight of her.

She was so much smaller than any of them, her body a relic from a bygone age. Stocky and firm, muscular and healthy, her genetics devoid of biological impurity. A violet pony. An alicorn, clad in jewelry of obsidian-black iron and gleaming amethyst inlaid into its molecular structure with shimmering semiconductor nanochains.

She looked to them with eyes that horrified Sunny—how bright they were, and how old. How ancient and how very tired. And yet she smiled to them, kindly.

The support structure that Sunny’s body shifted, in unison with the others. They bowed before their goddess, their princess, and the most beloved pony of all—the Goddess of Magic and Technology.

Then, in unison, they spoke, their voices speaking a language that consisted only of high vowels. “Praise be unto the One True Princess. Hail Twilight Sparkle.”

And, though her own unblinking eyes, Sunny saw the smile fade from the princess’s face.

Sunny lifted her aching head, dizzy and confused. Confused as to who she was, and where—and why she was sitting in a chair.

She winced in pain. Her mouth was dry and tasted like metal, and she very much had to use the little pony’s room—but she quickly realized that she was downstairs, on the couch in the common room.

She had slept walked before, but only when she was a little filly—and back then, usually her father had brought her back upstairs.

Sunny blinked, then looked around—and in the darkness, she saw the skull. It had been disconnected from Zipp’s machines and set neatly on the coffee table—and was staring up at her almost expectantly. Silent, and waiting.

Chapter 7: Stranger in the Cold

Elsewhere in Maretime Bay, the night was progressing as usual. Ponies were in bed, sleeping. The streets of the already quiet hamlet had progressed to total silence, save for the sound of the blustering coastal wind and the crashing of waves. The storm out in the ocean had not fully arrived, although the wind was increasing and an unseasonable chill had collected in the air. A pony walking the streets might have found it especially ominous, this combination of silence and unseasonable wind—but no pony was awake to notice it. All were safe and warm, snuggled into their beds.

In one house, though, a small light was still on—because three fillies were laying on the floor, groaning, unable to sleep.

“Ugg…” moaned Glory, trying to roll over but finding herself stuck on her wings. “That was a mistake...”

“Agreed,” replied Peach Fizz. “I feel...urp...awful...”

“But we ate the whole thing.” Seashell winced from the effort of speaking. “And some extra.”

“Hey,” protested Peach Fizz. “How was I supposed to know you aren’t supposed to eat the cardboard?”

“Because it’s cardboard.”

“It tasted the same as the...ow...vegan pepperoni. I think?”

“I thought those were mushrooms...”

“It was a cheese pizza...”

All three of them groaned. They had eaten an entire uncooked frozen pizza from Seashell’s mother’s freezer—only to later realize that it was, firstly, difficult to fit a whole pizza into three small fillies; second, that frozen pizza was not exactly an ideal food for any pony at all, especially when uncooked; third, that it had expired well before Seashell had been born; and, finally, that Peach Fizz could not tell badly expired pizza from the cardboard it came on.

“I want to go to sleep but my tummy is fighting my guts and...ugh...losing...”

“I’ve been on a diet of leaves and sticks and tea my whole life,” moaned Peach Fizz, rolling on her side. “Cheese is so good...but it hurts so bad...” She paused, groaning in pain. “Where does it even come from?”

“We don’t ask,” said Seashell.

“Yeah,” sighed Glory. “I know. And I know you don’t want to know.” She shook her head. “I know it’s rude, but I’m going to be honest. You earth-ponies have no idea how to make a pizza.”

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“It was furry, Seashell. Pizza isn’t supposed to be furry.”

“It...isn’t?”

Their discussion was interrupted by a knock at the door. All three fillies froze, and the room fell silent—save for the sound of the ever-growing wind against the outside of Seashell’s house.

The pain of the expired pizza departed as the three sat up and looked at each other.

“Was that...”

Another knock came. The exact same knock. Three rapid taps of a hoof on the wooden door. The three fillies turned slowly to face it.

“Who’s...who would be awake at this hour?” asked Peach Fizz, her voice quavering.

Another three knocks. Rapid, but identical to before. There was no additional urgency. Although none of the fillies actually calculated it, they were all subconsciously aware that the sets of knocks came at exacting, mechanical intervals of silence. It manifested in their minds as extreme discomfort that they could not attribute to any particular source. As if the knocks where the result of some sort of mechanical process—a branch scraping on the door, or one of Seashelll’s mother’s hanging fuchsias tapping on the door as it blew in the breeze.

It came again. Seashell stood up.

“Don’t!” whispered Glory. “It might be...”

“What? The Bonestealer?”

The sudden reference made them all laugh slightly, knowing that it was a story for babies that not even young fillies would find scary—but their laughter stopped as the knock came again.

Seashell shivered. She was not sure why she felt so cold. Why her humor and happiness were seemingly leaving her, leaving only a distant sadness and anger in their wake. She found herself approaching the door. Her friends watched, but they did not move to stop her. They were too afraid.

The knock came again. The rate had increased almost imperceptibly. Becoming more urgent. Calling her forward, as if the mysterious visitor could perceive the filly through the door. Ordering her forward. To open the door. To let it in.

Seashell reached up and grabbed the knob to the door, pausing for a moment—as if something deep within her self were impressing logic onto her tiny child brain. That it was a bad idea to open the door at two in the morning when a stranger knocked. As a pony, though, she had never developed a good reason to listen to that tiny voice of reason. Everyone in Maretime Bay was nice. They were all her friends and she knew all their names. She always had. They were her neighbors. Even the bogeymares she had been trained since foalhood to fear had turned to to be not scary at all—two were in fact waiting behind her, a pegasus and a unicorn, her two best friends. Her mind perceived no possible danger—but was aware of the possibility that a pony might need help. Her pony instincts compelled her to help.

She opened the door and stared out into the night, confused. She frowned, looking out, and tilted her head—seeing nothing at all. No one was there.

And yet, in her head, a terrified voice was screaming at its own subconscious perception. Of the tall, lingering figure looming over her. The faceless shape of a pony, blocking the doorway. The voice screamed at Seashell to slam the door, to run, to hide, to protect her friends—but something quieted it. Forced it into silence. Seashell winced at the sound of a kind of cold static moving through her mind. Like turning on a TV during a bad storm when the signal was out—and she could not see the faceless pony waiting on her doorstep. She could not see it because it was not allowing her to see it.

“Hello?” she called, looking around the figure’s legs without even being aware of its presence. She shivered, seeing her breath come out as a puff of steam. As if it were the middle of winter instead of late summer.

Behind her, Peach Fuzz had begun to compulsively shake her head back and forth. Her magic was weak, but strong enough to partially negate the mental effect—and she was almost aware. She could not see it or make out its form, but she was aware of her own inner self screaming. She did not know what form it would take, but only that something bad was on the verge of happening.

“Seashell, nopony’s there,” she lied, “come back from the...from the...”

Seashell looked back. “Yeah,” she admitted. “Must have been some ding-dong...”

The tendril placed itself gently on the back of her head—and then for her, the whole world went black.

Chapter 8: The Apprentice

Misty’s room was empty, save for her bed and shelf. Those were spares that Opaline had found long ago in the castle basement, an area long-since rendered uninhabitable by an infestation of pernicious varnaques. The room was barren and dark. Then, with a flash of light and a magical pop, a pony appeared from elsewhere.

Misty dropped to the floor, spreading her legs to brace herself from the sudden shock of teleportation, only to be forced to promptly catch her books before they splatted to the floor. She took several breaths, filling her lungs with realspace air, and then balanced her books before she gently set them down and checked herself.

“Oh wow,” she said, trying not to cheer. “It actually worked! And I didn’t even phase halfway into the bed this time! Thanks, Glim-Glam, whoever you were, this makes sneaking in so much easier!”

The spell had not been at all straightforward to learn—but once she had gotten it, Misty found it relatively easy to accomplish. In fact, ever since getting the use of her magic, she found performing spells was becoming easier and easier.

Still, Opaline was not actually aware that Misty had any ability at all to use magic. Or that she had developed a cutie mark as a consequence of said magic. Or that she spent at least half of every day with the ponies that Opaline was actively plotting against. Opaline herself was obviously an extremely dangerous and highly competent villain—just not a very observant one.

As such, Misty hid her more powerful books and powdered her cutie mark to hide it.

With this done, she shook out her hair and steeled herself for acting like a submissive doormat for Opaline—lest she suspect she had a double agent in her midst. A mindset she needed to quickly return herself to, a process that was disturbingly quick for her. After a few breaths, when she was ready, Misty exited the room and trotted down the hallway in the lonely fragment of a once-great castle.

Although it was night, Opaline did not tend to sleep like mortal ponies did. Misty was not sure if she even slept at all, or if she just sort of waited. Sometimes she would be up all night plotting. Usually Misty would be there to help her—or at least to make sure she ate.

Coming around a corner, though, Misty let out a horrified shreik as she came face to face with something she had not at all expected—a pony. Or some simulacrum thereof.

Opaline did not sneak. It was beneath her, like most things. So Misty had thought she was alone—because she was always alone. Nopony came to visit Opaline, or even knew she existed—but Misty suddenly found her face inches away from the face of another pony. A gray mare with a short, limpid mane and empty, colorless eyes.

At first, Misty thought it was some sort of ghost—only to realize the much worse situation that the mare was, indeed, solid. Solid and utterly expressionless, her pupils dilated unnaturally and the space behind them gray instead of black.

“EEK! I—who—I’m sorry, I—”

She felt pressure against her skin—pressure that tightened as a set of translucent chains formed around her body, as well as a tight collar. She was pulled forward by the gossamer twisted cables that linked her to this pony.

“Identified curly-short-point-horse, inquiry: are authorized occupy established borders of this premise?”

“W...what?”

Misty had no idea what she was saying, and when she spoke, it was with a strange accent that seemed to place too much emphasis on the wrong syllables of half her words. It made her sound harsh and mechanical—but more than that, Misty was overcome by an impression that this mare was horribly ill.

The mare tilted her head slightly. Her eyes tilted slightly as well, so that they remained vertical. “Detection of odor consistent with diluted ultramarine and cornstarch. Detecting iso-consistent field. Hypothesizing that this curly-short-point-horse could break my technostruct-constraint chains. Indicate why you do not. With haste.”

“Oh, she’s actually very weak,” sighed Opaline, coming around the corner. “Squishy, like an ugly-colored marshmallow. MISTY! Where have you been all day? I’ve been yelling for you to come down stairs so I can yell at you...” She frowned. “Although honestly it is something of an improvement not having to look at you. You are...very ugly. Although you won’t impress me by hiding. Blank, she lives here, you can release her.”

The chains shifted and loosened—then evaporated into clouds of acrid smoke that itself faded into nothingness. The pony who had cast them, Misty realized, was not a unicorn—but also not a pegasus. That should have left earth-pony as the last viable option, but somehow, she did not even seem to be that either.

“Your name is...Blank?”

“Correction: the name of my identity was rendered erased due to cataclysmic memoric damage. ‘Blank’ is a viable proper noun applicable to this form, yes.” She frowned—slightly. “You are named after a fog.”

“Mist and fog are technically two different—”

“MISTY! Don’t correct her!”

“Yes! Sorry Opaline, I didn’t mean—it’s just...um...who is she?” Misty paused. “I...never took you for one who would make friends.”

Opaline grimaced, horrified at the implication. “This thing is not a ‘friend’. I do NOT make friends. I do not need friends. I despise, no, LOATHE the very IDEA of friendship. Pointless waste of time. Blank is simply an ally. And my new employee. And she’s already proving more competent than you. You need to work harder, Misty. My tolerance of you isn’t free.”

“Yes, Opaline.” She turned to Blank, whose overall expression had not changed. Nor had she moved. She was standing there, creepily staring. “Nice to meet you...Ms. Blank.”

“Indication of salutations, Fog-Horse. Of note, I do not share your wife’s consistencies regarding the concept of friendship.”

Opaline gasped and sputtered in horror, and Misty deepened several shades.

“Shes—shees—”

“We are NOT married!” boomed Opaline. “I—I do not DO emotional intimacy, and besides, she’s so ugly—and essentially my weird, sad adopted daughter, I—”

“Wait, you think of me like a daughter?”

Opaline winced. “Well your parents hated you enough to abandon you, so I am the closest thing you will ever have to—”

“You don’t know that! Maybe they just lost track of me—”

Opaline bristled, her wings instinctively extending with a pronounced but ultimately flightless floof.

“You do NOT TALK BACK TO ME! When I say something, it’s TRUE! Even if it’s NOT!”

Misty squeaked and shrunk down to the floor. “Yes, Opaline! I’m sorry, Opaline! You’re right! My parents hated me and you’re the only pony who ever cared! Even if I'm not worthy!”

Opaline smirked, turning her gaze toward Blank—who apparently had not otherwise been paying attention to the exchange at all.

“Misty is my student. To the extent that she even could be. She is unfortunately too inferior to use magic, even at her age.”

Blank’s eyes nictitated. “Female-dominant tall-horse and female-submissive short-horse are not bound. Noted. Does this meant Fog-Horse is maybe available?”

Misty darkened from blue to a dark purple, almost matching Opaline in shade—and Opaline seemed to take deep and grave offense to this.

She lowered her head close to Blank. “I will pretend—for your sake, and for the sake that I am a VERY merciful and VERY sexy queen and god-empress—that I did not hear what I think you just said.”

“I’m also...you know...I prefer stallions?” said Misty.

Blank turned toward her, confused. “Identify term: stallions, search-term undefined.”

Misty blinked. “You know...stallions? Like colts, when they grow up?”

“Colt equals small stallion and stallion equals large colt is uninformative tautology.”

“Like mares but...you know...bigger, and sometimes stronger, and they smell nice, and they have...you know...”

“Misty!”

“I do not know,” insisted Blank. She seemed to be thinking hard. “Corollary by...comparison...” She frowned, if only slightly. “The Six Archetypes are female. Such is defined: definitional. The concept of male ponies escaped my consideration. I indicate a level of disgust, although comprehension by you abominations cannot compare to my sensation. Such defiance directed upon the will of the Progenitors is hideous indeed...”

“So you’ve never met one?”

Blank stared at Misty. It seemed to be all she was capable of.

“No,” she replied simply, although with a delay that made her seem to be needing to search deeply for the word in her mind.

“We will discuss this later, Misty,” snapped Opaline. “If I remember. I clearly need to attend to might nightly routine of brushing, plotting, secondary brushing, and applying eye shadow. While plotting. Considering that Blank is my new hechmare, you can show her where the library is.” Opaline paused. “Or do I need to do that as well? You surely don’t use it. I highly doubt you can actually read.”

“I’ll learn eventually, though!”

“Yes. You will.” Opaline leaned close. “When I teach you. Remember.” She pointed at Blank. “You have to compete for my attention now. You had better measure up if you want me to ever give you that cutie mark you so dearly covet.”

Blank seemed confused by this, looking from Opaline to Misty—and Misty realized that, despite her sickly appearance and seemingly blank eyes, she very likely somehow knew. Despite it, Blank kept her mouth shut and masked her confusion by returning to her default impassive state.

Opaline harrumphed, and then departed with a flick of her mane, directing it perfectly to slap Misty in the face. Misty winced, but did not respond. Attempting to argue with Opaline was both impossible and extremely hazardous to one’s health. Even with the spells she had been learning so diligently, Misty would still surely be no match for an alicorn. Or probably even for whatever Blank was.

She turned back to the other pony, who had with utter silence invaded her personal space, holding her faces inches from Misty’s face.

“Library is the house where books built nests,” she said. “Yes. Such is productive, implicit.”

“It...it is this way?”

Blank nodded, slowly. “Let us see if my deformity enables text-to-thought conversion. Lead progress forward toward.”

Opaline’s library was buried deep in the lower levels of her castle—very likely below ground, at a point where the ancient stonework of the tower had almost wholly been replaced by the roots of the vast tree that made up most of its superstructure. Opaline herself barely went down there—supposedly. Misty suspected from the way the dust on the tomes changed that she did read, but never when Misty was watching. Or something was coming up from the cracks in the walls and reading on its own.

The collection was extensive. Misty was unsure how old Opaline actually was, but assumed from the way she spoke or told half-remembered stories that she was at least as old as Twilight Sparkle. The only problem with that assumption was that nopony knew how old Twilight Sparkle was—the time period she had presided over was somewhere in the mythic past. That period was long ago but inherently indeterminate—and Opaline’s own memories were too badly scattered and broken to make her a truly reliable source.

Misty stepped down the last step into the book-basement and took a deep breath. She had grown to like the smell of old books. They were one of her only companions for most of her life, and certainly the only one that never screamed at her. Despite this, the dust and mold made her sneeze.

“You sneeze like kitten,” said Blank, emotionlessly pushing past her. She looked around. “Yes. These are the nests of books. Inefficient. Cannot direct-load. Adequate, possibly. Inquiry: directives locating centralized card-catalogue?”

“There isn’t one.”

Blank seemed insulted by this. “How uncouth. Disorganization is loathe toward production of valid materials.”

“You talk strange, don’t you?”

“From my perspective, the antipode.” She turned back to the shelves. “Fog-Horse, inquiry, deriving request: text concerning interdimensional energy draw, outer-realm inhabitant. History of implied planet, history of Opaline Arcana, recent works of technological progress, index of available plant and mineral bio-toxins, book containing pictures of landscapes.”

“That’s a lot, but...yeah, I know where some of those are.”

Blank did not otherwise respond. She moved silently to the back of the library. Her gait was strong but awkward, as if she had learned to walk in an entirely different way than ponies normally did. Misty did not stare for too long, although she was taking mental notes. This was a new development. Opaline was totally solitary, and in fact utterly incapable of leaving the bounds of her magical prison—no one in Misty’s life had ever come to this place, apart from her friends relatively recently in their attempt to retrieve the dragon Sparky from Opaline’s clutches.

This could have been another step forward in Opaline’s plan to conquer all of Equestria and claim its magic as her own—and as such would need to be reported to Sunny as soon as possible. But simply stating that Opaline had gained a somewhat creepy, pale accomplice was not enough. Misty needed to know more.

She took down the books she could find on the subject and carried them carefully over to a table where the pale pony was waiting, staring into space at seemingly nothing. Her dull, dilated eyes slowly turned to face Misty, though, as the younger—at least ostensibly younger—mare approached.

“Texts for absorption?”

“The first batch, sure. Some of those were...obscure subjects.” Misty looked over her shoulder. “And Opaline never organizes her books well. So I need to look. Especially one for landscapes. Is that…?”

“Important, no. But I think...my home may have been classified as green. I wish to remember. As current corruption makes such untenable to derive.”

“You...don’t remember your home?”

“I cannot, no. As delineated: core memories corrupted. Autobiographical data has been ablated. Non-retrievable.”

“I was the same,” admitted Misty. “When Opaline found me. I was just a filly...”

“I was never a filly.” Something like metal but made of orange light flickered behind the books, separating and re-condensing as ornate, florid book-holders attached with well-made holographic screws and practical hinges. They grasped the books and lifted them, opening them to their first pages and moving them to surround Blank. Although she did not look at any of them in particular, her projected devices began to turn the pages on each. As if she were slowly reading all the books present at once.

Misty paused, hanging by the table—and slowly, Blank’s eyes tilted toward her. Her pupils suddenly narrowed as her full attention was pulled toward Misty, and her books stopped flipping pages.

“What request does the Fog-Horse issue?”

“My name is Misty.”

“Yes. That knowledge has been intercalated. In my language, you are i.e.ai’e-Ai’i. Your name in your own language renders nearly inpronounceable by this form. Fog-Horse is what you are thus.”

Misty sighed. “I need...to be honest with you.”

“The Archetype of Fidelity is based on such a concept. I may have once been that. Proceed, Fog-Horse, but with haste.” Her head tilted. “Grave pain awaits all abominations. Soon enough, without my actions.”

Misty shivered, even though she had little idea what Blank meant. “Opaline isn’t...the nicest pony. To work with, I mean.”

“Observed. Yes. Such is denoted.”

Misty paused again, trying to be careful. She was caught between the need to warn Blank of the danger she may have found herself in—or if Blank would just take everything she said back to Opaline and bring the whole double-agent act to a violent and unpleasant end.

“Did she promise you anything? Like a cutie mark, or magic...although you already have...” Misty did not finish the statement. She had a sense that the constructs that Blank projected were not exactly magic. In fact, there was something more than the physical impression of sickness to her. A kind of mental void that left Misty feeling nauseous. The look of a pony without magic. Like Misty herself had once been not so long ago.

Blank stared back, then motioned to her rear. A cutie mark was already ingrained on her flank. It resembled a compass, but with cog-like teeth surrounding its outer edge.

“Oh, you already...have one...”

“Yes. If only memories existed relaying its purpose.”

Misty nodded. “Did she...promise you your memory back? If you helped her?”

Blank stared at her as if she were an idiot. “They are corrupted. Irretrievable. Magic cannot restore those functions. Severed from myself...a remnant of a pony.” She sighed. “Pain,” she said, returning to the books. “But better, perhaps. More effort can be supdivided for the upfront task-processes.”

“Oh...” Misty paused, then realized a possible alternate route. “You said that where you came from, friendship is still important.”

Blank paused suddenly, her gaze growing distant.

“Yes,” she relayed. “I...recall that.”

“Did you have friends, then?”

A tear formed at the edge of one of Blank’s eyes and slowly dripped down her cheek. Even as her expression otherwise remained empty.

“Not...anymore.”

“What happened?”

She slowly turned, and Misty suddenly comprehended her pain. “Not enough of me left.”

“But we can—”

“Equestria,” she said. “My Equestria. Is a confederation of sub-units. Nations of independent cultures. From the frontiers to old-systems. On Equiformed worlds, in prehistoric megastructures, in fleets or domes on the edge of Subwarp. Thus, from many, one. Six archetypes. Images of the Progenitors. Comprehension, Provision, Dedication, Tenderness, Fidelity, Pinkness. All archetypes, our sisters. All nations, our friends. From all, Harmony.” She sniffled, then gestured to herself. “I am apart. Separated. Damaged. No Archetype. I am alone now. Left to one, singular task.” She turned back to the books. “The dominant one is loud. You, though, bring me so much pain. Such a being of cruel intent...”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“Why?”

“I—I was trying to warn you, I didn’t mean—”

“Why do the Fog-Horse’s words hurt?” Blank’s expression had faded to utter neutrality. “This is of interest. More so than considerations of sentimentality.” She looked back to Misty. She held up a book. “Why can this be decoded? Why this language? Why do I speak it?”

“Because...” Misty considered it, but she could only frown at the realization that it had never occurred to her that ponies would speak different languages at all. Pegasi, unicorns, and earth-ponies all spoke the same language. Equestrian. Even Opaline spoke it, and she had probably spoken it for a very long time. Misty doubted Opaline would be one to learn a new language just because her original one had died.

“Primakk,” said Blank. “None speak Primakk. None have, for hundreds of kiloyears. Dead language. A remnant encoded to defunct crystal-drives on empty Equestriformed planets. Excessively rare...and yet I perceive it. Why?” She turned back to her books but did not turn the pages. “What was I, that I perceive a language none living yet speak?”

“We speak it...”

“Your structure advanced further than any known subject. With ponies...what is this place? Why is it? How old, that the ponies here speak the language of the Unnamed?”

“You said...crystals?”

Blank nodded. She made an expression with her hooves. “Three, generally. Sometimes more. Unfathomed engines. Powering the process. Simple plants, simple animals. Air. Water. Simple magic. None found operational, fully. Creator unknown. Unnamed. Prior to extant records. Unattested by Progenitor texts.”

“I see,” said Misty, fully recalling almost exactly what the mare was describing—exactly in the center of the Brighthouse. And exactly what Opaline wanted to consume to give herself limitless alicorn power.

“Derived to penetrate Subwarp,” continued Blank, dismissively. “Weak. Technological decadence from eons past.”

“Maybe you were an explorer.”

Blank looked up. “I...what?”

“It’s a compass, isn’t it? Your cutie mark, I mean. Maybe you were an explorer. Like Daring Do.”

Blank paused. “That is...a perhaps.” She paused again. “What is...yours?”

“M..me? Oh, I don’t—”

“I posses eyes. Even uncolored, they function.”

Misty blushed. “Sorry. It’s...a butterfly.”

“Not fog?”

“No, not fog. It’s a butterfly.” Misty turned herself, wiping away the powder from her flank. “It symbolizes the fact that I can change, and grow.”

Blank stared at it, then looked back to Misty’s face and produced the thinnest of smiles.

“How nice,” she said, before being wracked by a sudden seizure that sent her head slamming into the table before she slid violently to the floor.

“Blank!” cried Misty, running forward but being driven back by a sudden hail of falling books and broken holographic machine components.

Something seemed to slither under Blank’s skin, and black fluid leaked from her ears, eyes, and nose. She twisted, turning violently, and then dropped limply to the table, breathing hard.

“Wait, let me—”

A holographic wall stopped Misty as Blank forced herself back up, breathing hard and wiping away the black liquid from her face.

“My apologies,” she said. “It has progressed more rapidly than expected.”

“What...what was that?”

“My body remains incomplete. Unfinished. Celluarly immature, so long as the Archetype is uninstalled. Without an Archetype, my body will degenerate.”

“What does that mean?”

Blank sighed. “I am presented with great fortune. I shall not reside, deformed, upon this world for long.”

Misty gasped. “You’re...”

“Fog-Horse. I already met that fate. Do not grieve for my remains.” She coughed hard, wiping black material on the back of her hoof. She pulled a book toward her, struggling to turn the page with her hoof. “I will use what time I remain solidified to complete my final task. It will be upon this world.” She shivered. “From beyond, where physical law remains inapplicable. The form cannot render in this realm reliably. It will degrade as well...or it shall learn. Draw magic and render.”

“Wh...what will?”

“A monster from beyond comprehension. When I crashed...it came through.”

Misty gasped. “I think I saw that.”

Blank looked at her, her white eyes tinged with black—and filled with horror. “Where did it land?”

“East, I think. One went off toward Zephyr Heights, the other...” Misty gasped. She knew where—but did not want to say. Not yet. “Went a different direction.”

“Unidentified: form, it will take. Unclear. Unknown, what it is.”

“From...beyond? Like the place I go when I teleport?”

Blank nodded. “Subwarp. Yes. My alliance. With the tall-horse. To stop it. To protect.” She turned to the books. “To find a way.”

Misty nodded—and was asking the question before she could stop herself.

“Would it look like a skull?”

Blank stopped, then frowned. “Skull? Why?”

“It’s um...very compact, and, um...could be very dense, if it were hollow...”

Blank did not reply. “Skull,” she said. “I almost...recollect something. Of grave importance but beyond my grasp. Critical, but only to the old me. Likely of minimal consequence now.”

“Sure,” said Misty. Her horn flickered as she lit the torches nearby. “Let me get those books. You’re sick and need to take it easy. I’ll help you, but only for an hour or so. Then you really gave to go to bed.”

“But...the dreams.”

Misty stopped. “What dreams?”

Blank looked up. “Even now. I keep reliving it. The...that moment. Over and over...I think I always will.”

Misty shivered. She did not want to know what the blank mare meant.

Author's Note

Of all the Gen-5 ponies (aside from Opaline), I find that Misty is the easiest to write. Probably because she has a dark backstory (getting stole by a wizard).

I think that may be part of why the Gen-5 characters are more difficult to write. They lack that little bit of weight that lends staying power to their characters.

Chapter 9: The Visitor

Contrary to popular belief, Hitch did not, in fact, live at his office. As proud as he was to be Maretime Bay’s sheriff, he had long ago realized that maintaining an appropriate work-life balance was key both to his substantial personal and professional success. Through a combination of careful money management as well as some smart investments—being careful to avoid conflicts of interest, of course—he had been able to fully pay off his mortgage within five years of purchasing a small house on the edge of town.

The structure was comfortable, but he had previously found it somewhat lonely. Gaining the ability to speak to the various winged rats in his walls, the opossums in the attic, and the uniskunk under his porch helped somewhat—although Sparky had truly made the greatest difference.

On this particular night, Hitch was afflicted by a case of peculiar insomnia. He believed it likely had something to do with the wind outside. He could hear it coming off the ocean, buffeting his house and sometimes making his double-paned windows shake. That, and his neighbor’s crabapple tree kept scraping the eastern wall of his house, making an ominous and intermittent noise.

Sparky did not especially care. Hitch knew this because, after waking up, he had checked on the baby dragon to ensure he was sleeping peacefully—and had determined that he was, in fact, asleep.

Which had left Hitch alone and awake. He had gone down stairs and made himself some tea, a gift from Izzy, and sat down on his couch to listen to the wind and stare at his reflection in the off-brand television he never used. He was not thinking about anything in particular. The air was chilly— and there was no sense in starting up the furnace in the summer—but he did not mind.

Hitch, unlike his core group of friends, did not have a space at the Brighthouse. Which made sense, considering he lived only a few blocks away in his own house. And also considering that he was the only stallion of the group. It would have been awkward and borderline inappropriate. Considering that the majority of the population was female, such situations were not unusual—even if it left him sometimes feeling like the protagonist from a budget dating sim.

They were at least safe and warm, and together—save for Misty, who had insisted she return to Opaline’s castle. Hitch had been there once, and although he did not like to admit it, the place had scared the willies out of him. He felt bad that Misty had to go there—but ultimately understood that it was her choice to make.

He sipped the tea. He could taste the effort Izzy had put into it, and it would have even been better than Alphabittle’s own tea had it not been for the traces of glitter. At the very least, Hitch appreciated the thought. Even if it was not making him sleepy in the slightest.

The wind gusted harder, and Hitch shivered. He paused, looking down at his tea—when he heard a set of three knocks against his door.

He froze, confused as to who would be knocking so early in the morning.

It surprised him enough that he had stood up—although he did not approach the door. For a moment, he wondered if it had been real. Perhaps he had dreamed it as he fell asleep on his couch, or maybe just imagined it while he was lost in thought—but it came again.

It was followed by a voice. A voice preceded by a slight, barely perceptible sound of static or distortion. Then, as the voice came through, it seemed tinny and strange before fully resolving into the voice of a filly.

“H...ello?” it called. “Hello?”

Hitch frowned, because he knew the voice. He walked toward the door, calling back to it.

“Seashell?

“I got lost,” the filly called back, through the door, sounding on the verge of tears. “The storm...something scary came...I ran. I need help. Please open the door. It’s so cold out here.”

Hitch’s sheriff instincts prickled—and the urge to help overcame him. He walked to the door.

“What are you doing out this late in a storm?

“I need help. Please open the door. It’s so cold out here.”

Hitch’s hoof had been on the doorknob—but he stopped. He did not realize why for a moment, but was confused at his response. A little filly had wandered off, maybe from a failed game of hide-and-seek in the dark, maybe from a prank gone wrong—and Hitch, both as a pony and as a sheriff, felt an overwhelming urge to help.

Then something occurred to him, if only incompletely.

“I need help. Please open the door. It’s so cold out here.”

The voice did not vary. Seashell had repeated the phrase three times—but with no variation. The same meter, the same cadence, the same tone—with a slight, barely perceptible warble beneath each time. Like a recording.

Something hummed and Hitch nearly passed out from surprise—only to realize that it was his phone. He took it out of his bag when he got home, and sometimes forgot it on the small table where he kept his keys and pony wallet. It lit up with a picture of Pipp’s smiling and perfectly lit face in the center, indicating that it had come from her—and even at a distance, Hitch could read the text from the notification alone.

“Don’t open it,” the text read.

“Sheriff Hitch,” called the filly, now clearly through sobs. Or something like sobs. “I’m so scared. I’m so cold. It...I think it’s still out here. Please let me in. I’m so...so cold...”

Hitch felt a buzzing in his head, a kind of strange hiss that pushed back his doubts. A feeling of profound, icy loneliness. He reached for the door, grasping it—only to be forcibly wrenched out of the trance by a single, quiet sound.

He froze in place, suddenly overwhelmed by a different emotion. He turned to see where Sparky was standing at the end of his foyer hallway, still holding his little dragon blanket—and Hitch's protective instinct pushed back the cold fear and obedience that was creeping into his soul. The desire to protect Sparky burned too brightly, and it was like waking up from a dream. He was struck by the realization of the obvious: that it was far too dangerous to open that door.

His gaze lingered on Sparky, though. The dragon, though a baby, did—in many ways—not behave as a pony foal would. He did not get cranky as easily, and he did not show the fear and timidness of pony babies—instead, he proceeded almost invariably with reckless joy.

The expression on Sparky’s face was not one of fear, or one of curiosity. His pupils had narrowed into disturbing vertical slits as he stared at the door, perfectly still and nearly expressionless. In the dim light, Hitch found it an oddly terrifying pose—as if he were looking not at a baby dragon or his adopted reptilian son, but at a fully adult dragon, looking past him and prepared to attack whatever was on the far side of that thin wooden door.

Instead, Hitch recalled that he had installed a peep-hole. It was not a common appliance in Maretime Bay, or really anywhere in Equestria—but being so safety minded, he had appreciated the novelty of it. He had always known that it was there—but the idea of looking through it only then occurred to him. It was a thought he did not want to face. He did not want to look, and as he lifted himself toward it, he realized he was desperately shaking. Behind him, Sparky did not move a muscle or make a single sound.

“Please, sheriff Hitch...I’m so cold...let me in...”

Hitch gulped and tried to steady his eye over the little glass lens. It took him a moment to look through—and when he did, he stared at his empty porch, confused.

No one was there. He had a full view of it, and no filly was present, or any pony at all. The view was clear and well-lit, thanks to a streetlight nearby just beyond his small garden and white picket fence.

He stared for what felt like minutes, confused—and then his whole body seemed to ice as he heard it again.

“Please open the door. Please let me in. Please.”

The voice sounded as if it were on the other side of the door—but there was nothing there.

Then Hitch saw it move.

He almost screamed, because he had been looking at it the whole time. It had always been in his view, always obvious—but so still he had not noticed it. Until it lowered its faceless head. A tall, narrow figure standing next to the street-light pole by the street, not hiding in any way but totally unnoticed simply due to its peculiar shape. As soon as it broke the illusion, though, Hitch could not look away form it.

It was standing far from the door—but speaking close to it. For a moment, it seemed to stand still again, watching—and then it walked off, its gate occurring with extreme, rapid precision but also ab unnatural, jerky motion that carried it far too quickly down the dark street and past Hitch’s house. It departed in silence back to the shadows, heading toward town—and in less than a second it had jolted its way out of Hitch’s view.

He slid down the door, tears running from his eyes out of fear—and out of the realization of what he had almost done. He barely noticed as Sparky came to him, hugging him—and he hugged the baby dragon in return.

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t a mannequin,” squeaked Hitch, shaking uncontrollably from fear. “It wasn’t a mannequin and I...and I touched it, and...oh pony, I don’t...it was trying to steal my bones...it’s headed for town but I don’t...I don’t know what to do...”

The worst part by far, though, was the reason he could do so little. Because no matter how hard he wished he was brave enough, Hitch knew he could never open that door to chase after it. To follow it into the darkness. He had seen its head. It had no face. No eyes. It did not need light to see, and he knew it.

As he held Sparky, though, he realized he did not need to. Not yet. He was not alone. This task was probably far beyond what he could do alone—but with his friends, there was nothing he could not do.

Chapter 10: Situation

The sun was just starting to come up, and none of the ponies in the Brighthouse had come down for breakfast yet. Save Izzy, who had purposefully woken up as early as possible. She had gone to her craft room and sat down at her craft table, pouring out several lines of glitter on its surface.

She stared at it, then bent down and snorted it.

“Oh yeah,” she moaned. “That’s the stuff...”

Her door slammed open and she sat up straight, her eyes wide and glitter still on her nose.

“I’M NOT ADDICTED I JUST LIKE THE SMELL!”

“Izzy!”

“Oh hi Zipp! Hi. High. That’s not a pun, I’m just saying hello. Totally not a pun.”

Zipp groaned, holding her phone to her ear. “Hey, do you have any extra wire?”

“Braided solid-strand floral bare red green yellow pink charteuse copper steel stainless steel nickle plated surgical-grade new or used?”

“I don’t know, braided copper?”

“Sure.” Izzy produced the wire and levitated it to Zipp, who took it.

“Thanks, Izzy.”

Zipp left the room, coiling the wire around her free hoof as she listened to the phone.

“Mom. MOM. Slow down. Talk into the phone.” Zipp groaned, floating across the room as she held her phone to her ear. “Are you...wait, speak into the other end! No, the other end! Annnnnd now you just sent a text...” She groaned. “Mom, I know you know how to—Mom, there is no operator, stop pressing buttons—MOM! Just give the phone to somepony! Anypony!”

Her pleading appeared to work—until a rapid chain of unintelligible babbling came through the cell phone. For a moment, Zipp believed her mother had given the phone to Cloudpuff. Only for her to quickly realize that she had in fact given it to a far less intelligible source.

“Thunder—Thunder! I can’t understand a thing you’re saying! Ship, mountain—It’s pronounced ‘butte’, if you’ve been saying it like that the whole—never mind, get Zoom. GET ZOOM, Thunder. Yes I know she’s there, she’s always there!” A pause. “No, you can ask her yourself.” Another pause, then a voice on the other line. “Uh-huh. Sure. Makes sense. Thanks, Zoom.”

Zipp hung up the phone.

“Yup,” she said. “It’s aliens.”

Pipp looked up from the couch she was sitting on, attempting to organize her contact list. “Yeah. That tracks. Are Thunder and Zoom finally ever going to get over the whole ‘oh look at us we’re coworkers’ thing and finally get down to business, though?”

“I think the crashed alien ship is more important.”

“Says you.”

“Zoom says they found it up in High Butte—”

“Heh heh butte,” said Izzy, creeping across the floor toward an unattended muffin Pipp had left on the coffee table.

Zipp groaned. “Turns out that thing we saw? It’s a whole thing. Some kind of...I don’t know, Zoom didn’t really know how to describe it. And none of the guards are willing to go back up.”

“Really?” Pipp sat up. “You know, I’ve been meaning to expand my demographic. I’d really like to get some pictures. You know, crashed spaceship and all? My views would go through the roof...” She sighed. “If only my ding-dang phone would work.”

“Pipp, come on, language!” Zipp groaned. She shook her head. “Do you want to know the weird thing?”

“As if a giant weird space craft landing in Zephyr Heights isn’t weird enough?”

“Zoom said there was a survivor.”

Pipp stood up suddenly. “There is? Is he hot?”

“Does he have tentacles?” asked Izzy. “Asking for a friend.” She pointed at Pipp and whispered. “It’s her...”

“Zoom wasn’t clear and Thunder is apparently, I don’t know, broken or something. Something about 3D printing and weird magic and a brain in a jar? I don’t know. But I think ‘he’ is a ‘she’. And she fought an entire squadron of pegaguards and escaped.

“I think I know to where,” said Misty, suddenly inches from Zipp’s shoulder.

Zipp screamed an embarrassingly girlish scream and jumped. “MISTY! Where did you come from?!”

Misty tilted her head. “Well, considering my dad is Alphabittle, he and my mom must have—”

“Let me just stop you right there,” said Pipp, holding up a hoof. Then she slowly sighed. “Aaannnnd I just imagined something I can’t unimaginable. Thanks, Misty.”

“Sorry.”

Izzy’s head poked up from above the table, covered in muffin crumbs and choking down the muffin wrapper. “It gets worse if you replace Izzy’s mom with your mom. Try imagining that one.”

“GAHK!” cried Pipp, as Zipp held back a wave of nausea. “IZZY, NO!”

“Or, hey, do you ever wonder if Misty’s mom is actually Opaline? Alphabittle and—”

Pipp grabbed Izzy’s muzzle and forced it closed. “Izzy. STOP. I...” She whimpered. “And there it goes...I imagined it...” She sighed. “I guess I don’t have to eat today. Or ever again.”

Zipp continued to silently retch, but eventually regained her composure.

“Sorry, Misty, it’s just, your dad is...”

“Kind of hot, maybe?” suggested Izzy, just as Pipp let her go.

“Yeah I know,” admitted Misty. “And your mom is really pretty too. I also don’t think Opaline actually looks that bad either. Even though she’s super evil. And very, very old. Which is what I needed to mention.”

“Don’t tell me Opaline is in on this too now?”

"Don't tell me Opaline is flirting with our mom..."

“Not that I know of to the second question. Not exactly to the first. But she did just get a new employee. And now that you mention it, her description sounds pretty consistent with being from a vast empire of space-ponies.”

“My question still stands,” said Pipp. “Are they hot?”

Misty shook her head. “No, she’s very sick. Something went wrong when she landed. Did your friend say what the pony looked like? The one who got out of that ship?”

“They didn’t get a good look. It was dark. But...very pale. And Thunder said somehow… ‘like an earth-pony but not’?”

Misty nodded knowingly. “Yeah. That’s her. Exactly her. Her name is Blank. She’s working for Opaline now. Sort of.”

“How do you ‘sort of’ work for the most evil villain in all of Equestria?”

“I do it every day.” Misty sighed. “I don’t think she’s evil, Blank I mean, just...I don’t know. She’s panicked. That’s what I came here to tell you. To warn you.”

“That she’s going to help Opaline steal our magic?”

“I don’t think she even cares about Opaline’s plans. She said something about something else. Based on her description—which wasn’t easy to understand, she talks in a weird way, although she’s getting better—their vehicles cross space through a quasi-borderline tesserect across the interchange between superimposed realities.”

“Oh...kay?” asked Zipp.

“Oh! Like how you teleport!” suggested Izzy.

“Wait,” said Pipp. “You can teleport? Since when?”

“Since a few weeks after I got my cutie mark? I don’t know, it’s actually really easy once you learn not to hit things or to stare at the void too long. And get over the existential questions about whether I'm actually me or an exact copy. That's a fun one to sit and panic about. But that’s not important. What is important is that Blank thinks something followed her through.”

“What kind of thing?” asked Pipp. She paused, her face scrunching. “And is this hypothetical monstrous being-out-of the void—”

“Pipp, no...” groaned Zipp.

“What?!”

“She seems to think it’s extremely dangerous,” said Misty, her tone becoming serious. “And that it might try to hurt ponies...or worse.”

“What do you mean ‘or worse’?”

Their conversation was interrupted by the door to the Brighthouse being flung open—and then promptly closed as Hitch collapsed breathlessly to the floor on the other side. Sparky, being confused, jumped off and immediately went to do something else.

“Hitch,” said Izzy. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you been in my glitter?"

Hitch stood up, shaking and wide-eyed, his mane slightly disheveled.

“I—I almost got boned!” he gasped.

Zipp held up a hoof. “As long as it’s not my mom or my sister, I don’t want to know.”

Pipp looked up from her phone. “Um, exCUSE you, Zipp. You don’t own me. I do what I want.” She turned to Hitch. “Although leading with ‘almost’ is kind of pathetic.”

Hitch shook his head, groaning and trying to stand. “The...the Bonestealer...it washed up on...and they poked it with a stick, and I touched it, and...and...and...” He collapsed, and at this point his friends could tell that something was certainly wrong. He was genuinely and truly afraid, and the time for jokes had passed.

“Hitch, Hitch, it’s okay,” said Zipp, putting her hoof on his shoulder. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah,” said Izzy, crawling out from under the coffee table. “And it’s the middle of the day. Nothing scary happens when the sun’s out. It’s a rule, I think.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Pipp.

Hitch took several deep breaths. “Sorry,” he said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” insisted Pipp. “Heck, if I knew that story would have been too much for you I never would have told it.”

Hitch shook his head and Zipp and Izzy helped him stand up. “It wasn’t your story. I saw it. It looks like...I don’t know, exactly. Kind of like a pony but taller. It’s white and wearing...well, not exactly wearing...something blue-gray. And it...doesn’t have a face.”

Fear became apparent on the faces of all present.

“That sounds consistent with what Blank said,” admitted Misty. “She said it has to take on a form to keep existing here. Until it gets powerful enough to exist on its own.”

“Powerful?” Hitch gulped. “Also, who’s ‘Blank’?”

“I’ll explain later. You said you saw it in town?”

Hitch nodded. “Yeah. It came to my house last night. It knocked on the door and...I think it asked me to let it in.”

“Let it in?”

“Ah.” Izzy nodded knowingly. “We’re dealing with vampire rules. Hold on, I’ve got something for that.” She trotted off to her craft room.

Hitch shivered. “When it spoke...it did it in Seashell’s voice.”

Zipp frowned. “Seashell? The little—”

“My Pippsqueak Seashell?!” cried Pipp, grabbing Hitch by the straps of his saddlebags. “My fan is in danger?! We need to act, NOW! I cannot AFFORD TO LOSE MY MOST ADORABLE SUBSCRIBERS!”

“And you said it’s in town?” asked Zipp, firmly.

Hitch nodded. “I didn’t have time to look. I had to get Sparky here, to the Brighthouse. It’s safe here. And I...I needed your help. All of your help.”

“You already have it. You and me will take the east side, up near the old factory—Pipp and Izzy will take west and by the beaches. Misty and Sunny can cover downtown.” Zipp stopped. “Actually...where is she? Sunny, I mean?”

It did not take them long to find Sunny. She was sitting in, of all places, the sitting room—and staring blankly forward from the center of the couch. Looking thousands upon thousands of yards past the skull centered in the middle of the table before her. She had turned it so that it faced her—and its blank, skeletal eyes seemed to be staring back.

Pipp approached her, feeling her phone vibrate and hiss with static as if in pain when it was brought in proximity to the artifact resting on the table. She was able to see that, for some reason, Sunny had placed a lace doily under it.

“Sunny?”

Sunny did not move, but she did not hesitate. “She looked...so sad...”

“Sunny!”

Sunny looked up. She blinked, and her eyes partially restored their focus. Only then did Pipp realize just how tired her friend looked.

“Sunny, you look ter—I mean, tired.”

“I didn’t sleep so good,” admitted Sunny. “I had...dreams. Weird ones.” She turned back to the skull. “Visions, maybe. I don’t know.”

“We need to get into town right now. There’s—”

“I heard you.” She stood up. “I’ll be there in a second, let me just find my skates...”

“No. You need to stay here.”

Sunny stared at her, then slowly replied. “But I’m the fastest on the ground. I heard Zipp—”

“Zipp gets very focused and forgets logistics. Sparky needs to stay here. And you’re in no condition to go out like this. Especially if Hitch isn’t crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!” cried Hitch from another room.

Pipp sighed. “If you don’t mind dragon-sitting, we can trade off the shift if we need to. And I’ll have my phone on me if we need to get you over fast. Alright?”

“But...I can’t let Misty go alone.”

“It’s fine,” said Misty. “I’m going to go back to Opaline’s castle.”

“To talk to Blank?” asked Pipp. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Misty shook her head. “I don’t know because I don’t know how loyal she is to Opaline. But at the very least I can try to get more information out of her. About how to, I don’t know, catch it. Or stop it. Or what it even is.” She paused. “Or I can stop Opaline from getting it first.”

Pipp nodded. “Just be careful. Sunny, are you okay with that?”

Sunny was back to staring at the skull. “What? Oh. Sure.”

Pipp accepted this, and trotted off to join her friends. Hitch was waiting just outside the door.

“That dang thing creeps me out,” she said, shivering. She turned to Hitch. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Now that I know that Sparky’s safe...I’ll be able to do some real sheriffing.” They started walking together. “Oh! Also, thank you.”

“For what?” asked Pipp, confused.

“For warning me last night. The text you sent.”

Pipp frowned. “I didn’t send you a text. Huh. Must have been a flank-dial. Except my phone hasn’t been working lately.”

Hitch seemed confused. “Oh. That’s weird.”

“We can’t worry about it now,” said Zipp, descending from the upper reaches of the Brighthouse with her visor and scientific equipment. “How many martial arts do you know?”

“The standard non-lethal sheriff training. So, hugs.”

“Hugs are not a martial art.”

“But they can certainly make a pony feel better. What about you?”

“I could pin you down in less than a second in a way you wouldn’t be able to get up from.” Zipp flexed her thin forelegs. “I’m ready! Nobody’s taking my bones!”

“For the last time,” groaned Pipp, “nopony’s stealing bones! Except maybe Izzy...she’s at least thinking about it...”

“Guilty as charged,” admitted Izzy, opening the door for them. They departed, leaving Sunny alone. Misty had already teleported somewhere else, silently departing through a well-traveled network of shadows.

Sunny found herself alone. Except, for some reason, she did not feel alone. She did not feel alone at all.

Chapter 11: A Foggy Day

Few ponies could remember weather quite like that which had suddenly drifted into Maretime Bay. The wind had brought with it a strange atmosphere, replete with an abundance of thin fog. In the distance, over the ocean, dark clouds snapped with distant lightning—but those deeper, angrier clouds never seemed to move much closer. The sea was choppy and strange, dredging up numerous odd things from the depths. Those that were alive would wash ashore and, as quickly as they came, turn around and depart as soon as they got the chance.

The air carried with it a strange silence, the sort that usually was only found in the darkness of deepest winter during thick snowfall. Even the sound of the ocean had grown distant, quieted by the moisture in the air. The wind had almost utterly vanished, leaving only still air with ponies walking through it. Going about their daily lives, finding the fog an interesting topic of conversation but little more than the most minor of inconveniences. They had lived on the coast their whole lives. Occasional fog was nothing special.

Hitch shivered and looked back toward the Brighthouse. The rainbow field it projected was as strong as ever, enhanced by the fog as a great vertical pillar of light illuminating the whole town—even as the thick atmosphere drifted around and through it, occasionally sparking with its powerful magic.

“Alright,” he said, steeling himself. He pointed at the ground in the town center. “We meet back here in one hour. If you find anything, call. And if you talk to any ponies...try to not to let them know exactly what we’re looking for, okay?”

“You mean ALIENS?” asked Izzy, loudly.

“Aliens?” a stallion walking by turned suddenly to face them.

“No. NOT aliens,” snapped Zipp.

The confused stallion shrugged, then smiled. “Oh. Okay. Good luck, then.”

He wandered off.

“And careful flying,” noted Zipp. “Visibility is low.”

“Yeah,” said Pipp. “I noticed.”

They regarded each other—and then separated, Hitch and Zipp heading north and Pipp and Izzy moving south.

“Dang it,” moaned Pipp, walking and staring at her phone. “I still can’t get a signal. And I know for a fact that it works here. I had the high-bandwidth tower installed myself.” She looked up. “What about you?”

Izzy tilted her head. “Oh, I left my phone at home.”

Pipp glared. “You would.”

“Yes. I would. Because I did.”

“Ugh. And this fog is going to make my mane all...”

“Frizzy?”

Pipp shuddered. “Yeah. That.”

“Mine too. I’m gonna be a frizzy Izzy.”

Pipp continued walking, but paused. “You know, I always wondered...is ‘Izzy’ short for something?”

“Isohedria. Thought that was pretty obvious.”

“Um...no?”

“It’s a three-dimensional shape with geometrically identical sides.” Izzy leaned closer. “But the question is...which one? Am I a tetragonal disphenoid? Or a pyritohedron? Maybe a deltoidal icositetrahedron? You’ll never know...because I don’t know. Not even slightly.”

“Um...okay?”

“What about you? Or did your mom actually name you Pipp? For the sake of, you know, rhyming?”

Pipp sighed. “I don’t make it very public, but...Piptadenia.”

“A tree in the bean family?”

Pipp stopped and stared at Izzy. “How...do you know that?”

“I know a lot of things. My brain is like a sponge. Wet, and filled with many tiny holes.”

“Is that normal?”

“Sure. Pony kuru runs in my family.”

Pipp had no idea what that meant but assumed that Izzy was probably just being silly. She appreciated it, as it helped to lighten the mood on a distinctly gloomy day. She maintained hope that it would not start to drizzle—which would leave both her mane and hooves utterly ruined.

Other than the terrible weather, though, the town seemed largely ordinary. Pipp had taken a liking to it. It was certainly not as big and modern and populated as Zephyr Heights, but had a certain nautical semi-rural charm.

She and Izzy walked down the street, peering into the fog and at the occasional window display—only to find nothing unusual.

“Huh,” said Pipp, stopping at a window to look through at a hat she suddenly realized she very much wanted. “What exactly are we even looking for?”

“Some sort of creeper I think,” said Izzy, stopping and looking at a piece of aggregate in the sidewalk that she especially liked. Or one that looked particularly suspicious. “Not the exploding kind, though. A tall, thin pony without a face.”

Pipp shivered. “Yeah, no. That sounds creepy, but I mean...”

“You’re not that mean,” reassured Izzy.

“I mean that he saw it through a peep-hole at night.”

“Is it just me or does ‘peep-hole’ sound weirdly dirty?”

“And he is Hitch...I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s one of my best friends but he’s...nervous?”

“I get nervous too, sometimes. Around umbrellas. If you open them too fast I get very spooked. Also the unspeakable condiment...” Izzy shivered. “It’s made from pegasus eggs, you know.”

“Izzy, it’s not...” Pipp frowned. “I hope to pony we don’t lay eggs. But I do not want to text my mom to ask. So I’ll ignore that.”

“Fair enough.”

“What I was saying was that, maybe Hitch just saw a guy in a mask.” Pipp pointed to a display behind a storefront window. “Or in a hat. Or maybe he dreamed it, I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t change that there’s still a creep ahoof.”

“Or a pony out trying to find his lost cat or jogging at night because he’s self conscious.”

“But he seemed so freaked out...and he is a big, manly sheriff. He had to have seen something.”

Pipp sighed. “I know, I know. And I really want to find this out for him, but...I don’t even know what I’m really looking for.”

They started walking again.

“Too bad Sunny took the day off,” groaned Izzy. “I’m really craving a smoothie right now. One with one of those engineered fruits. Like one of those parsnissimons. Or a peacumber. Or an applejackfruit.”

Those suggestions largely made Pipp nauseous, but she suppressed it as they crossed the street to a local park. Although shrouded in fog, various ponies were participating in various events. A pair of stallions were playing with a Frisbee in one of the fields, and a mare was jogging around the track with a rather disturbing animal that Pipp had learned was called a "wingless dog". On the far end, somewhat near the back, a number of fillies and colts were playing on a set of playground equipment that—so she was told—had been a project by Sunny’s father, who the park was named after.

“They seem to be having so much fun!”

“Izzy, no! You can’t play on the equipment right now, we’re busy!”

“I know,” lied Izzy. “But I never got a chance to play in the fog when I was a filly. The unicorns consider it jinxxie.”

“Why?”

Izzy smiled. “Looks like somepony’s never encountered a carnivorous vapor. Good for you!”

Pipp shivered, hoping Izzy was just being Izzy. She looked around the park. The fog was not even that thick, and clearly not carnivorous. It was ordinary fog. She could probably even fly above it for a better look, even if it would just mean looking down at more fog.

As she watched, her eyes settled on the playground. The colts and fillies certainly did seem happy—but as Pipp watched, she frowned. There was something out of place, but she could not place exactly what.

Then its head turned—and the shape immediately resolved in her mind.

She tried to scream, but nothing came out except a tiny squeak. Izzy chuckled, but then saw the fear on Pipp’s face and turned—and out of the corner of her eye, in her peripheral vision, Pipp saw what must have been the exact progression of expressions she had just exhibited cross her friend’s face.

It had not been immediately apparent because its form was so unnatural as to have somehow betrayed the natural pattern-recognition circuitry built into every pony’s fundamental consciousness. It was fall too tall for them to have naturally identified it as a pony at all, although it had the rough shape of one—but far too linear, and far too vertical, to the point that it had been unapparent against the backdrop of the colorful playground equipment.

Drawn forward to the front of their minds, though, it was all-too-real—and Pipp realized that Hitch had been right. It had no face.

She and Izzy froze out of atavistic pony instinct. For a moment, in her more logical mind, Pipp hoped that since it had no eyes it had not actually seen them. Then it moved.

The motion was not a direct charge but hideously unnatural. It did not move like a pony. It kept its head pointed toward them as it suddenly moved sideways, its thin legs stretching with unnatural insect-like grace as it moved sideways. Like an enormous, silent crab on stilt-like white legs.

The children got out of its way—but Pipp could see that something was wrong with them too. They did not see it. They did not perceive it in any way. They went about their play, ducking and jumping and laughing—but moving around where it was standing, not out of conscious perception but some unnoticed instinct. The stallions playing with their plastic disk did not turn. The jogging mare stopped—but only because her wingless dog had stopped, whimpering in horror at the figure that was moving in an unnatural arch through the fog. The mare herself only seemed confused at what imaginary entity her silly little dog had decided to respond to.

Then it stopped. The tall pony did not move. Pipp and Izzy, in perfect unison, began to back up.

“What are we supposed to do?!” hissed Pipp, trying to whisper.

“I don’t—I don’t know, we’re not supposed to find the monster on the first day, in broad daylight!”

“What did Hitch say to do when we saw it? How are we supposed to—are we supposed to grab it or something?!”

“He didn’t say, he didn’t say!”

The creature’s head slowly tilted. The inlaid blue parts of it ignited with dim but perceptible light, a blue glow shimmering across its surface in various patterns, igniting the fog that swirled around its body. Then it stopped again, holding perfectly still. It stood, staring—and then the worst possible thing occurred.

It began to slowly walk toward them.

“Run. RUN!”

“I already am!” cried Izzy from several yards ahead of Pipp—who immediately took to the wing, following after her with vigor and speed that her short pegasus body could not ordinarily achieve.

Izzy, being both terrified and slightly less athletic, was immediately out of breath.

“Mother-tasting donkey-sniffing hole-blasting shaved-father son of a—”

“NOT helping, Izzy, NOT HELPING!”

“It’s gaining, it’s GAINING!”

“Don’t look back, just keep—” Pipp could not help herself. She looked over her shoulder.

It was indeed pursuing—at a very reasonable pace. A pace that, with its long limbs, was almost comically slow. Tuned to be exactly enough to gain the slightest amount of ground as it slowly overtook them.

All around the street, ponies were walking past. Ponies that regarded the two fleeing young mares with mild confusion but then immediately went back to their tasks, smiling and looking away. None of them responded to it. None of them saw it. Their eyes seemed strange and distant, reflecting a strange blue light as it passed. As if they were in a trance.

Pipp suddenly felt a profound sense of cold. There was fear, but also something else. As if the happiness was being drained form her. It was stripped away, to the point she could not even remember what it had even felt like. There was only sadness and anger—and as she looked down, to her great horror, she felt it directed at Izzy. Because had it not been for her, flying to safety would have been trivial.

The urge almost overcame her. To simply leave her friend behind. To let the out-of-shape unicorn's own weakness consume her, because she deserved it—but Pipp found a deep inner strength that forced her to persist. To remain. Even as the static in her head grew louder, she fought against its will.

A voice called to them. As if it were next to them. Too close. A whisper in their ears, spoken with a strangely accented version of Seashell’s squeaky filly timbre.

“It is cold,” said the voice. “Please…let me in. I am afraid out here.”

“Pipp there’s a voice in my head and NOT THE USUAL ONE!”

“Ignore it and run harder, Izzy!”

“I can’t, I’m...I’m too tired...”

“You are both...alive,” said the voice. It had changed. It still sounded like that of a child, but had become distorted as it was forced to summon new words. “Alive mares. This is...novel. To me. I shall rectify this. Stop running. Let. Me. Inside.”

Pipp felt the static in her head lessen—as its full attention was directed toward Izzy.

Izzy cried out, falling into a shivering heap. She was crying, her breath fogging in the sudden cold that surrounded them. The fog was precipitating into itself, crystallizing into atomized ice. Tiny needles of frozen water filled the air.

“Izzy!”

Izzy raised her head. Her eyes seemed even more sunken than usual. “Just...go, Pipp,” she said, weakly and through her tears. “Leave me...I know...I know they love you more than they love me...”

She attempted to crawl forward, her hooves clawing at the pavement but just slipping across its wet surface. All around them both, ponies were going about their day. Humming to themselves, having conversations, laughing—or waiting in line at a nearby ice-cream stand. All of them somehow seemed distant. Far away. Their voices halfway silenced and distorted, as if they were on the far side of a hill.

The creature stopped. It shifted visibly, is height decreasing as it leaned toward Izzy. She rolled over and threw out a hoof.

“Pocket glitter!” she cried weakly as the glitter struck the creature’s faceless head—and did nothing of consequence aside from making it sparkle slightly.

“Dang,” said Izzy, laying down, defeated and curling into the fetal position. She closed her eyes. “That usually works, too...”

“Izzy! Get up! GET UP!”

Pipp landed, pulling at Izzy. Her own breath was visible. The air felt so cold—and she felt so afraid and so angry. That she would endanger herself for another pony. She, who had so much importance—a princess, with so many followers—when all she needed to do was fly away.

She gripped Izzy harder. “Izzy! Come ON!”

“I’m...tired...”

Pipp slipped, falling back. Looking around, panicked, she reached for the only thing she felt any sort of comfort in. She grabbed her phone.

“A—anti-theft system, GO!”

And she promptly threw it at the creature’s head. The plastic and sapphire-glass struck with a rather sickening sound, as if she had just thrown it through a decaying cantelmato. The head was knocked back, the neck bending backward at an unnatural angle—and continuing to bend backward until it looped back, the creature now holding its face next to its own chest to continue to look at them.

The phone was embedded in the white skin where a face should have been—and as Pipp watched, thin tendrils of flesh extended, separating and morphing to penetrate her phone’s various ports. Then with a hiss, its surface began to dissolve, exposing circuitry—and it was wholly absorbed into the creature’s flesh.

“I—I have more where that came from! GAH, fight me, coward!” She raised her shaking hooves. “You can’t take my FRIEND!”

A thin voice crossed the fog—but it sounded so far away.

“Why are you...afraid?”

Then its neck cracked suddenly as the head turned toward the left—and it stared at the rainbow emission from the Brighthouse. It looked back to Pipp and Izzy—and suddenly scuttled away, silently retreating into the fog and vanishing.

A voice called from above. “Pipp!”

Zipp landed next to her sister with enough force to partially damage the pavement below. Hitch was running out of the fog not far behind them.

“Pipp! Izzy, hold on, we—”

Hitch froze as it looked out of the fog one more time—and then sunk low and vanished entirely.

“Oh my stars and slippery garters,” he swore. Despite the sudden fear, he bent down to help Izzy. “Izzy!”

“So many dark things,” she said. “So...alone...”

“You’re not alone,” said Zipp. “Pipp, Hitch, stay with her, I’m going after that thing—”

“No you’re not!” exclaimed Pipp. She was still shaken, but not as badly as Izzy. Whatever effect it had on them, it had worked profoundly more strongly on Izzy than herself. “Not on your own! You’re going to help Hitch and me get Izzy back to the police station.”

“Yeah,” said Hitch, shaking his head to clear himself of distractions and regain his dissolve. He picked up Izzy and put her across his back. “I’ve got you!”

“Sorry I’m...so fat...”

“I’ve lifted heavier. You two, cover me in case it comes back!”

Pipp and Zipp both nodded, one by far more enthusiastic than the other—but they took flight as Hitch trotted rapidly toward safety.

The creature, unseen in the fog, watched them depart. It had determined that the information gained was ultimately valuable—even if its first attempt had failed to achieve any substantial progress.

A different approach would be required.

Author's Note

I do not know if Izzy and Pipp have full names, but I enjoyed creating names based on the assumptions that "Izzy" and "Pipp" are nicknames. Ironically, most Piptadenias do not have discernible petals in its flowers; if this were Pipp's actual name, it would give the impression of an impossibility or paradox.

Chapter 12: Dreams

By the time the door to the police station was closed, and by the time Hitch slammed closed every police-grade lock he could manage to grab with his shaking hooves, Sunny had gotten off the couch in the Brigthouse living room and found a sandwich. She had not eaten it, though, and upon returning to her seat she set it down on the coffee table beside the skull. The sandwich sat there, hay and mustard on white bread, not even microwaved, on one of the old and faded plates that she had used since she was a filly. Almost as if it were an offering to the perfect, unmarred obsidian-like piece of statuary beside it.

The skull did not seem to be hungry, though. It did not make any move for the sandwich. It was made of metal, after all, even if it was a metal that Sunny had never heard of. Even though it was metal, though, Sunny felt that she and it could at least agree on something. Neither of them were hungry.

Looking at it hurt her eyes but in a way she could not quite describe—although then again, it may just have been from how tired she had become. Her sleep had already been poor the night before, and she felt as though she had not slept at all.

She looked out the window of the Brighthouse. It was foggy outside, but not too bad. That was what the building had originally been intended for, after all. Or at least so she supposed. It had once had a light to guide ships in the Bay, before the ships had stopped coming. Something had happened on the far side of the ocean but nopony knew what it had been, or even what was over there to begin with. Her father had come from there. When he had become the lighthouse keeper as a teenager. Sunny had never known who her mother was. She had never asked, something she secretly regretted now that there was no one left to ask.

She saw motion in the fog. It did not disturb her. Just a pony or two going to the community garden to check on their vegetables. Harvest would come soon enough.

She turned back to the skull and continued to stare at it. It, likewise, continued to stare back at her with its slightly reflective bony eyes. Somepony had made it. Why they made it look like this, though, Sunny had no idea. Like it was almost a pony—but somehow very, very dissimilar.

She heard a sound on the far end of the room. She looked up to see Sparky clinging to the doorframe, staring into the room. He was whimpering and seemed terrified, his eyes locked on the skull.

“It’s okay,” said Sunny, standing up. “You’re probably hungry, though.” She picked up the plate, wobbling slightly. “Do you want a sandwich? It’s...I don’t know what’s on it, I don’t remember making it.”

Sparky shook his head and babbled slightly. He did not want to enter the room.

Sunny went to help him. He led her away from the small area and, for some reason, seemed immediately calmer. Sunny, however, felt an urge to go back. As if there was something she had missed. She needed to look at the skull just a little more.

She sat down in a different part of the common room. With some help, Sparky jumped up onto the chair and curled up next to her. Sunny remembered that Hitch had said something about something happening last night, but she could not remember what exactly.

“You’re probably as tired as I am,” she said, yawning. She felt her eyelids growing heavy. “I think maybe we should...wait a little bit here...”

She looked out the enormous window, longingly staring down at the city below. The view was spectacular. She was so high she could barely see the ground below, the wide streets filled with high-speed automated traffic powered by the unrelenting hum of crystal-driven engines. Even in the air, between the vast buildings, other vehicles passed by with enormous speed. Some had operators. Some did not. Some were made ultralight nanopolymers, others of cultured changeling biotechnology. Or, sometimes, instead of vehicles, there were Pegasi. In one case, Sunny was sure that—for just a moment—she saw a tall yellow alicorn drift upward and flit downward again, out of sight.

The tower she stood in was the tallest. She understood that it was named after its owner, the Perr-Synt Corporation, which was in turn named after the eternal bloodline that had founded the company even before the Age of Eternal Friendship. It was the largest building in Neo-Singapone, but not the grandest—not on this day.

What she stared longingly at was a pyramid. One that dwarfed many of the buildings, if not in height then in scale—but it was not tethered to the ground. It floated by slowly, moving through a purpose-built path through the city, held aloft by vast magical engines reverse-engineered from the ruins of Asgard. The Pyramid of Thebe. The home palace of the Goddess—the universally beloved alicorn who virtually never departed its angular and geometric walls.

There would surely be celebrations in the streets below. Parties would be held. The wealthy upper-class citizens would be in attendance. Perhaps even the other princesses—although she knew that the one she truly wanted to see would be missing. She never attended. Not anymore.

Sunny closed her eyes. She could still smell it. The scent of books and crystal-driven ionization. The cut stone of the great halls within that pyramid, the slight grape-like scent of her soft wings…

“Gentian!”

“EEP!”

“Don’t ‘eep at me’.”

Sunny—Gentian—turned sharply, adjusting her suit. A tall blue Pegasus was standing over her.

“D...Dr. Wispy!”

He smiled and looked out. “Impressive, isn’t it?” he said. “But I suppose you already know that. It’s my first time seeing it. Hard to believe, but even with the implant I’m still half your age.”

“You’re making me feel old.”

“I am? Sorry. Small talk is expensive. Do you have the report?”

“N...not yet?”

Wispy nodded. “Then you really should get back to work. The Caballeron girl went through a lot to get it. And let me tell you from experience, Lady Xiro is not as patient as she looks.”

“I—I know, I just...um...was getting coffee?”

Wispy glared, then laughed. “Gentian, come on. We all know you’re the one who’s been drinking all the creamer. Raw. PlainIt’s fine. Just get it transcribed. Carefully. We don't want a repeat of what happened to the intern. Okay?”

Gentian nodded. “Sure, boss. I’m on it!”

The scene shifted. Sunny—still as Gentian Violet—was walking through a narrow hall, the path lit by the glow of her horn. The air smelled of books, but they did not smell as beautiful as those astounding libraries aboard the Pyramid. The libraries she could not return to.

As she entered the reading room, various magical lights ignited at her presence. They were dim, sealed by runes to prevent excessive leakage. Around her were various cabinets, themselves inscribed in liquid-gold letters carving both sacred and unholy protection seals to prevent even the slightest incursion on the artifacts within.

Her object of interest was already laid out before her, on the central desk, and she pulled up a chair. A great tome lay before her, tattered and stained on one corner with what seemed to be a fading stain of liquid silver. The cover was aged, and made of exactly the material that could be expected for a book of its ilk. With her magic—with a spell so much more advanced than any simple telekinesis spell—she opened it and began to read.

It was written in a heavily modified version of a language, penned by a nervous horn in the vocabulary of an obvious madman. The tone was strange and uneven, vacillating between apologetic and desperate attempts to justify some act the reader refused to mention. Some pieces were incomplete drawings of a far more ancient texts, attempts at translation to a language Gentian already knew. One that her teacher had taught her long ago.

The teacher who had left her. Who had bid her to go out into the world, away from the library. Away from the solitude she craved. To the world below. Cast out and alone.

This was her path back in, or so she envisioned it. To return to her only true friend. Gentian had spent nearly a century working her way to this position, sacraficing so much to make her way slowly up the corporate latter. Isolating herself endless in her devotion, forsaking contact with others in her unending drive. All to have access to these magical artifacts—books of undue power and tomes most ancient. She would translate them, she would succeed—just as Twilight Sparkle surely wanted. She would earn back her teacher’s respect. She would no longer be alone, as she had been for so many decades.

The inscriptions spread out, growing stranger and more distorted. Illegible half-runes became surrounded by drawings copied from what seemed to be a far more ancient work. Gentian had never seen things like it before, these insane depictions of imagined demons and demigods, and of creatures that somewhat resembled unicorns—although they were oddly reptilian, bearing three horns instead of just one. The language that accompanied them was far too old for Gentian to even begin to understand.

Then she turned the page—and saw a beautifully inked drawing. A rendering of one of them, the fictitious three-horned reptilians—but one adorned with wings, stylized on one side to show bone—bone and something else. Machinery, depicted strangely and with astounding detail.

In such awe, she did not react in time—as the illusion burst forth, the black material of the page already leaping upward and penetrating her pupils before she could respond.

She was unable to purge it as it dissolved her neural architecture, but able cast a spell to slow time. To buy herself enough space to form a counterspell—but what was attacking her was strange. She could not even tell if it was magic, or something else.

The spell had the effect of making it so perceptible. The feeling as it slithered through her optic nerves, riding through her retinas directly into her brain. She felt it slide in, penetrating from the rear of her skull in the occipital lobe and tracing thin paths forward into the front. As it moved, it cut—and it sutured anew in its wake.

Then, in slow motion and feeling every inch of its behavior, she realized she could not stop it—and it exploded inside her brain.

Every neuron separated, every connection broken—and then slammed back together in a new form. A superior form. Suddenly aware of such truths—truths that ought to have been so obvious—she burst into manic laughter.

Still engulfed in her hilarity, Gentian twisted forward back to the book, flipping through it at full speed—not bothering to use any form of protection spell, because she already knew exactly how it had been created. After all, she had cast it.

It was in its own right comical. That the author had seen any reason at all to even try to justify any of it. To apologize for what he had managed to accomplish—even if he, like her, had simply acquired this upgrade form a far older source. Even if he had been unable or unwilling to survive what had now made her so perfect.

She turned to the portions she had originally considered illegible—and they made sense. She could not stop smiling. At the idea of how far, through one tiny accident, she had come. At how this was what would win back her teacher. The love of the Princess. This colossal achievement.

Or, rather, the achievements she had yet to accomplish. The path forward ahead was arduous and long—but one that she could no doubt achieve. How easy this dark knowledge would make it to overcome her limitations and exceed even the goddess she loved most of all.

She began mentally preparing the orders. For the pieces. Of what she would need to build. Her organic body would not last long enough to reach the end of her process. Or even to take the first steps.

The image resolved, although the mind viewing it did not. Her perception was ephemeral, the barest whisper of consciousness. The image was out of focus. Viewed through thick glass. Through liquid, perhaps, or noble gasses. It was inconsequential. Automated systems corrected for the inconvenience of it.

They stared up at her, seemingly concerned—or horrified. There were five of them. The nearest spoke to the others. The watcher, to a degree, recognized her. Applejack. The pony Applejack. This was logically inconsistent, although she did not know why—and dismissed any attempt to find deeper meaning in her long-inactive mind to allow it to suffice that although this pony was Applejack, she was standing beside another Applejack.

The first was younger. With longer, braided hair. The other had a short-cropped mane. She said something. The language was simple enough to understand. A decadent version of her own. A pattern of high vowels and spaces, spoken without the conception of consonants. Spoke, though, though mouths that used vibration and liquids and tongues.

A white unicorn beside the elder Applejack looked up—Rarity. Or a Rarity. As she gazed into the tank, her mechanical sapphire irises constricted. Her eyes were not original. They were implants. The watcher had determined that they all wore implants. Deep within them. She was forced to resist the temptation to insert herself into them. To see what those implants did. If she could do it without being detected. Penetrate—and stop their hearts. Not for any particular reason other than curiosity.

Two other ponies were talking. Both were Twilight. One was thinner, wearing a suit and makeup around only one eye—a fashion shared with the Rarity. The other wore a thick coat, like a padded gamberson—and had her mane cut into a mowhak. She wore a complex piece of palladium jewelry on one ear.

They were speaking. The watcher found them amusing. Their biology. The peculiar confluence of it—the living demonstration of analogy that sat before her. What they were. The two hearts that beat in each of them. The fact that each one had a different cutie mark.

Despite their variable manner of dress, they wore a related insignia. As a brooch for the Rarity, a collar for one of the Applejacks and a pauldron for the other; on a pin for the Twilight in a suit and an amulet for her larger, more solemn sister.

A tree. A tree holding six circles. The watcher knew what it meant—but it made her wonder why. Why they had selected such an obsolete symbol, or how these creatures even remembered it at all.

They were discussing something. The watcher did not especially care what about. A machine. A prototype. A path. The unity their dying civilization sought. False hope, really. Their last desperate delusions that the decay would not claim them.

They turned sharply. A new set of ponies stepped into the room. The others seemed surprise. A pale yellow pony with a long pink mane, dressed in robes and a halo-like crown. Behind her, two guards in armor and masks—muscular, taller versions of the same pony. Fluttershys. They wore the same symbol as the others.

She looked up, pausing. Staring at something she did not realize was staring back. The Fluttershy spoke—and their objective became clear.

The watcher would have laughed. Except there was no reason to. But was all so funny. How badly they had all failed. If only they had known that their dream had died before they had even begun to give it birth. Their ignorance amused her.

The world they sought through the artifact was already lost—they simply did not realize it.

Equestria Prime had long since died. The universe had left it to crumble to forgotten dust before the most ancient ancestor of these beings had taken their first breath. The humor—the joke—was that the watcher was living proof that ponies had not. Which was, in its own sense, a terribly, horrifically comical lie.

Sunny felt cold. Like waking up on a winter day, her blankets having migrated off her body in her sleep—but this was different. The cold was not calling her out of sleep. It was calling her deeper.

It wrapped around her body. Slithering over her—and into her mind. She looked up but saw nothing—only a dark, inky void. A void that was by no means empty. She was aware—even though she could not see them, not hear them—that it was quite fully occupied. She could not envision by what, aside from a metaphor her mind conjured. Images in a museum. Paintings. Except they were not paintings. Records. Drawers. Books in a library—books that wanted to be open. Seen. Heard. That called in so many millions of voices—one voice. They were legion, but there was truly only one at their core.

It grasped her deeper, and for a moment, she saw it. A ghostly image of a face. Incomplete and horrific—but obscured. She recalled a time as a filly when Sprout had dared her to hold her face close to a mirror in a dark room. To stare at the reflection as close as she could until it had resolved. It was a mistake she had only made once.

The demon in the darkness looked like what she had seen in that mirror—and she realized that it was a door. A light. A darkness that was also a light. It would open the way. Into her, and around her. To illuminate the void. To see the beautiful paintings, to open every book at once. Except they were not beautiful. They were all the same thing—drawn in a million different ways.

It grasped deeper. Into her heart. And into her brain—and Sunny refused it.

Her body burst with light and the familiar sensation of her wings and horn becoming visible—and in the brightness she momentarily saw a black creature, reptilian and with three horns—but it resolved into a gaunt, ink-black creature just as alien as the first. Then it was gone.

Her eyes opened—and where its face was gone, hers was now inches away from the black skull.

“GAH!” she cried, falling backward out of her chair and landing on the floor. It was dark and cold and she did not know where she was—but she was alone. So incredibly alone.

Her mind slowly resolved, as if pulling its way upward through rotten syrup. She rubbed at her eyes, then groaned—and felt cold as she looked at what sat before her.

Zipp’s machines. Modified and changed, soldering iron still smoking, linked and connected to the base of the skull—and behind it, to the Hope Lantern. It glowed brightly, calmly filling the room with rainbow light. Nothing seemed to be happening. The machine seemed to be incomplete.

It was silent and still. The skull remained inactive—because of course it was inactive. It was not alive. Not animate. An artifact, a relic—a record.

Sunny sat up hard. She did not know how she knew that. That it was. It was not active, not alive—but it was something written down. Something somepony long ago was trying to tell her. A warning.

“A book,” she said, not fully knowing what she meant. “It’s...a book.”

The skull stared backward—and it seemed to smile. The sigil of Twilight Sparkle glimmered on its surface.

Chapter 13: Responses

Hitch checked the locks. He peeked through the shades. A pony waved at him. A suspicious pony. But at least one with a face. A suspicious face.

He turned back to the others. Izzy was sitting at his desk, one of the jail’s several blankets wrapped around her shoulders. Zipp had poured her a cup of hot chocolate, which was steaming in front of her. She had not drank any of it.

“We’re safe in here,” said Hitch. “I don’t think it can come in doors.”

Zipp looked up, incredulous. “Like vampire rules, or like...it’s super polite?”

“It’s not polite,” moaned Izzy. “It’s not polite at all.”

“Easy,” said Zipp. “Are you two feeling okay?”

“No,” said Pipp, who was pacing the room, continually checking her backup phone but not actually paying attention to it in the slightest. “What was that thing? That’s not...That’s not what Thunder and Zoom found in Zephyr Heights, is it?”

“No,” said Zipp. “That one’s still with Opaline, supposedly.” She looked toward the door. “I think that’s...the one it was worried about.”

“Can we please not talk about this?” asked Izzy, seeming on the verge of tears.

“Sorry,” said Zipp, truly apologetic.

“It...hurt,” said Izzy, staring at the steam over her chocolate. “But not like...hurt hurt. Like...” She shook her head. “Like all the bad things came up all at once and tried to pull me back down.”

“I felt it too,” admitted Pipp. “But for me I...” She shivered. “I got super angry. Like I...”

“Like you hated me?”

“Izzy, I don’t, I wouldn’t—”

“Because that’s what it made me feel. Like you hated me. Like everypony did.”

“I...” Pipp put her phone away. “It was lying.”

“I know,” said Izzy. “I just...I don’t want to feel that way. Not again. Ever.”

The room fell silent. Then Zipp spoke.

“We...while you two were...Hitch and I, we went to Seashell’s house.”

“Zipp,” warned Hitch.

Zipp continued. “Door was unlocked. Open. Nopony there. No fillies. No parents.”

“There was a note on the counter,” protested Hitch. “It said they went to see Peach Fizz’s aunt in Bridlewood.”

“But Auntie Peach Pit hates visitors,” said Izzy, looking up. “She has social anxiety. It makes her queasy.”

“Maybe she’s working on it?” suggested Hitch.

“Or maybe somepony put the note there to throw us off.”

“Zipp,” snapped Pipp.

“What? Pipp, come on. There’s a literal monster out there. It almost got Izzy and I’m...” She stamped her hoof. “I’m so angry! It tried to hurt my friend, our friend, and...and...”

“And what do you expect us to do about it?” snapped Pipp.

They all fell silent. None of them had an answer.

The urge to weep was almost unbearable. Blank—a hideous name, given to a hideous mockery of life, a permanent reminder of her nature that she well knew she deserved—was far out of her depth. Almost impossibly so. And she knew it was her fault. The devastation of this planet would be laid on her hooves. She had brought it here, in the process of doing something she could still not even remember.

She had gathered what she could. A few fragments of primitive technology. Circuitry, crystals, organic material—and she was attempting to assemble it in a desperate attempt to make something work. To create a machine or a weapon that could do something to defend the ponies of this world.

It ought to have been straightforward. She required the parts necessary to build a small transidmentional projector. To break the bonds that held it to this plane before they could be fully solidified—essentially, to send it into the Subwarp without a target destination. Back where it had come from.

Which was something she did not know how to do. She probably had never known how to do it. She had no idea what kind of pony she had been before, but she assumed a pilot. Perhaps some kind of scientist. Or maybe a prisoner sent on a journey she was not expected to return from. There was no way to know. Those memories had been permanently lost. She only hoped they had backed her up before she had initially departed—for all she knew, she was whole and complete, walking around none the wiser on whatever planet she had been born on. Not knowing the humorless parody of her left in a part of the universe so far from actual civilization that no pony would ever even know to look for her.

The technology of the planet she had landed on also proved to be totally unhelpful. They had no concept of even the most basic systems—they were still using electricity and magic instead of fluids and solid-state geotech.

Her ship might have had some useful technology—or exploded the moment she tried to turn it on. Still, as her benefactor Opaline had informed her, the pegasus savages that had stolen it were quite carnivorous and wholly evil. Approaching it would be impossible.

As she was trying to cobble something together, she felt something tug at her side.

“With annoyance, it is laser-etched on. As such, indelible.”

“Really?” said Opaline. “You have a cutie mark, but no cutie magic.”

Blank sighed. “Laser-etched. As indicated. Your audio-comprehension proves quantified lower-less-than adequate.”

“Stop talking, you do it poorly.” Opaline looked over Blank’s shoulder. “What is all that junk?”

Blank sighed again. “Intent: construct item of use. Purge violent interloper.”

“You do realize I have magic for that, don’t you?”

Blank sighed a third time. “The consolidation point cannot bypass the primary containment array without risk of damage or fatal depowering event. It is retaining you non-un-alive.” She paused. “Surgery. Access-point internal hardware required.” She turned to the tall-horse. “Inquiry: can you extract my components?”

Opaline grimaced. “Either you asked if I’m a doctor or you are trying—quite badly—to flirt. I dislike both.” She paused. “Although...”

“Irrelevant. Hold...” Blank released her grasp on her device and it promptly collapsed into a pile of blue smoke and liquefying resistors. “Failure. How expected. I am disapointed.”

“I know the feeling,” added Opaline. “I did raise Misty, after all.” She looked around. “I wonder where she is...but I don’t especially care, maybe?”

“I do not.”

Despite their shared ambivalence toward the young pony, that same filly immediately trotted into the room, carrying a pile of books.

“I found these,” she said, setting them on the desk—far away from the smoking ruins of the failed projector.

“Misty,” sighed Opaline. “There you are. I keep having such a hard time finding you.” She shrugged. “But then again, I never look terribly hard. Where have you been?”

“I was spying on the ponies in Maretime Bay.”

“Spying?” asked Blank.

“Oh, yes,” said Opaline. “A bit of an ongoing project. Don’t worry, you’ll be working on it too soon enough. Making sure I can be the utter undoing of Sunny Starscout and her annoying little friends. You know, being evil. As I am, in fact, very evil.”

“My assigned alignment cannot be recollected.” Blank turned sharply toward Misty. “Why behold upon ponies? To what end?”

“To steal their magic,” replied Opaline. “You’re...not terribly smart, are you?”

Misty shivered slightly as Blank looked at her. Expectantly.

“It’s there," she said.

Blank’s entire body tensed. “Such is...comprehended...”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” asked Opaline. “Misty, please speak clearly. And do it in the PROPER accent. No, wait, never mind, you do it poorly, and I don't want to risk you flirting with my ugly not-daughter.”

“The ponies there say they saw something. Something...not great.”

Opaline rolled her eyes. “Ugh. You just have to make it so ominous, don’t you?” She picked up one of the books, squinting at it and dropping it back down. “It’s simply some form of monster. Little more than a pest issue on my beautiful planet. And when it comes to pests, if we’re being totally honest, Sunny Starscout is the far worse of the vermins.” She frowned. “Is vermin plural?"

Misty continued. “I think it came out of the ocean. It probably landed there. I think you damaged it on the way down.”

“I...cannot recollect a cohesive narrative.” Blank shivered. She looked at Misty. Her eyes, to Misty, looked utterly empty—save for the barest spark of terror. Terror, and shame. “Inquiry: reports of overall form?”

“They said it looks like a pony. But...without a face.”

Opaline grimaced—but seemed, in her own way, disturbed by that revelation.

“Then it...has converged upon a unified format? This description fails convergence with previous data...” Blank shook her head. “Indicates assumption of novel format. Stabilized. This is...ungood.”

She looked up at Opaline. “This place! Toward I must depart at rapid cadence!”

Opaline rolled her eyes. “To do what?” She gestured to the lump of smoldering material on the desk. It sparked slightly. “You have no means to hunt it. No weapon capable of capturing it. No plan.”

“Wow, Opaline,” said Misty, shocked. “That’s actually...not a bad observation.”

“Of course it’s not, you unfortunately-colored little girl. I make plans for a living. The most EVIL of plans.” She turned back to Blank. “Your...whatever it is. Not-magic.”

“Technostructions. Bio-integrated hard-light constructs.”

“I do not care what it is called. But yes. Whatever that is. Will that be able to contain it?”

Blank seemed confused by the question. “I cannot disperse a dimensional entity with simulated machine-constructs—”

“I did not ask that, you creepy-little undead thing,” snapped Opaline, stamping her hoof. “Oh my me, you’re starting to grate worse than that one!” she pointed at Misty. “I do not need you to kill it. I need you to capture it.”

“Toward what end?”

“Toward bringing it to me! I cannot leave this protection barrier that fat hideously-colored horse Twilight Sparkle put around my castle! I need you to get it...and then bring it to me.”

“Your timeline does not converge, Sparkle Prime has been deceased spanning hundreds of kiloyears—”

A band of magic wrapped itself around Blank’s neck, lifting her up to eye-level. “Do not talk back to me! Despite all her failings, Misty never talks back to me! She’s nice to me! Because I DEMAND PONIES TREAT ME WITH RESPECT!”

Blank hissed slightly, although apparently not through her mouth.

“Decrease my elevation,” she growled. “Or increase pressure and choke harder.”

“Can you contain it? And get it to me?”

“Toward what end?”

“If it has magic, I will suck it dry. Then it’s power becomes mine. And I can put it to far more productive uses than some mindless monster wandering through a town.” Opaline snapped her head toward Misty. “Did it at least eat somepony?”

“No, it just sort of...acted creepy.”

Opaline nodded and dropped Blank. “Then you and it will have something in common,” she snapped. “Misty. Take her to that pointless little stinky town and help her bring it to me.” She sighed. “Although then again, if you can barely even steal a baby dragon, I can’t fathom how you are supposed to catch a...I don’t even know what this is.”

Blank’s eyes widened. “An extant dragon? The genetic profile is ablated from all records, I—”

“Oh trust me, it will be ‘ablated’ once again as soon as I can suck all their magic out of them and put it where it belongs. INSIDE ME.” Opaline pointed. “Now go, my minions! Do my bidding!”

Blank seemed noplussed, but grabbed the books, balanced them on her back, and began to go. Misty paused, a moment, and then followed.

“I am sorry,” she said. “She’s usually like that, but she doesn’t...well she does mean it, but...”

“I do not invest energy into it,” sighed Blank. Her empty gray eyes turned toward Misty. “Save in empathetic response to you. Your behavior is mediocre. But does not warrant incurring accusations inferring inferiority.”

“I guess...I am used to it.”

“Then stop talking, fog-horse.” Blank turned back to her path, seeming to look far beyond it. “Your words make me far too sad.”

Author's Note

It occurred to me re-reading this chapter that it is not immediately apparent how Misty would be keeping track of what is going on in Maretime Bay. It does come across as slightly confusing, but re-remembering, I think it is that she is aware of the creature from Hitch's initial story but not actively aware of it attacking Pipp and Izzy. She, in other words, does not realize the danger it presents.

Although, these ponies do have cell phones. Which should, in theory, make long-range communication much easier.

Chapter 15: Fog Before the Storm

The air was unseasonably cold—although Blank would have had no impression of this, or even the faintest of inklings. Her body was degrading to the point where maintaining sensation was becoming less and less viable—and of course she had no sense of what the proper climate was meant to be on this long-abandoned colony world.

She struck the ground, her mechanical wings losing mass and evaporating into yellow-orange smoke as she folded them back to where they should have been. Her energy was running low. She wondered if there was a way to refill it without a total reconstruction.

She looked around.

“Observing that the fog-horse has been lost,” she mused, to herself, feeling as though that was somewhat unfortunate—until a sudden burst of magic flashed beside her. “GAH! Surprised!”

“Sorry!” gasped Misty, taking a step back. “Still learning to aim! It’s actually really good I didn’t end up inside you, we probably would have...” She frowned. “Yeah, better not to think about that. You’re right.”

Blank coughed and fell to her knees.

“My cardiac organs,” she gasped, putting a pale hoof to her neck—then her chest and, as her eyes widened. “Halt auxiliary process...where is it?!”

Blank forced herself to stand. “Hypothesizing that functionality must have been lost. This form is collapsing at a higher progressive than anticipated. We must hurry, Fog-Horse.”

“If you’re sick—”

“Not ‘sick’. Expiring. Failed body. Yes? No?” She looked around. “Fog. Is this land owned by you?”

“No. Not that I know of, anyway.” Misty pointed. “Maretime Bay is that way.”

Blank nodded—and her body illuminated with plates of metal, forming her an extensive set of armor. A separate set of parts floated, then assembled suddenly into a weapon.

“Then, onward!”

She began to run.

“WAIT!”

Blank stopped. “Why?”

“You can’t go into town dressed like that!”

Blank believed this was an absurd assertion. “Inquiry: what if it bites?”

Misty groaned. Internally, her near-constant anxiety was beginning to tug deep in her mind. For the simple fact that she, and her alone, was caught in an unfortunate position: Blank was probably—but not necessary—loyal to Opaline. Meaning that she might well betray Misty’s secret double life of affection and friendship to her evil adopted pseudo-mother. In an ideal world, she would have been able to keep Blank back at the castle—but she doubted that anyone in town would be able to handle whatever was lurking there on their own otherwise. Meaning she was forced to walk a narrow and dangerous path, metaphorically and possibly literally.

Blank stopped. She seemed to stare at nothing, for a moment. As if thinking.

“Fog-Horse,” she said, at at last. “Admission: I am afraid. So very afraid.”

This sentiment was so unexpected that it left Misty initially unable to respond.

“You...are?”

Blank looked back at her, her head turning slowly to reveal a set of empty eyes on the verge of tears. “Acknowledging the sentiment is inappropriate. Identifying a lack of extant resources to maintain. I was lost on impact. But...still, the sentiment persists. Determinant cause is myself. Remediation indeterminate. I...am so afraid.”

Misty sighed. She had made her decision.

“Blank,” she said. “You can’t tell Opaline this, okay?”

“This what?”

“I have friends here. In Maretime Bay.”

“Contacts?”

Misty shook her head. “You said ponies where you’re from value friendship, right?”

“Such is the paramount of civilization.” Blank paused, the tears welling in her eyes. “Realization: I cannot recall my friends. They are gone from me. Forever. I am...so alone.”

“Not all of them,” protested Misty. “You still have me.”

“You?”

Misty nodded. “And there’s lots of ponies that can help you.”

Blank stared at her, then nodded, and wiped away her tears. “Acknowledging communication with gratitude.”

“Opaline is...mean. She’s not a good friend. Not to me, or you, or anypony. And she’s not very popular in the town. So...”

“Acknowledging comprehension. The goals of the Tall-Horse represent mutually beneficial concurrence but do not extend. Expounding desire to...I want to...help. Ponies here.” She paused. “Corollary requirement stated...negate. But we need her help.”

Misty nodded. “I know.”

Hitch led the way through the fog at a trot. His heart was racing, both from the exertion of running but also the fear. The fog was growing thicker, and it had started to drizzle. His hooves splashed on the ground and in the mud as he ran, the others behind him—and he was afraid. Afraid that at any moment, he would see it emerge from the fog. Or rather, that he would not see it. Not at first. Its shape so alien and strange that he would not recognize it until he nearly bumped into it. Until he once again touched that cold, strange flesh, like he had on the beach. And then it would take him—and the front of their formation would be left open.

Despite this fear, he was compelled to go first—to lead the way and to protect his friends. He was the sheriff, after all, and even though he was afraid that role required bravery. Zipp, being the most agile and fastest of the group, had been placed in the rear to guard from behind and to prevent her from sprinting ahead. Pipp was above, never straying far from Izzy, who had only partially recovered from the earlier attack. The directed light of her horn was capable of lighting the way, but it did not penetrate too far through the fog—and the beam would sometimes nervously jerk around, facing trees or mailboxes or the occasional passing pony.

The fog was weirdly silent. Hitch could hear his hooves in the mud, hear the sound of his breathing, of Izzy’s occasional squeaks at the odd tree branch or street sigh—but there were no animals. No bird songs, no muttering of winged rats or bunnicorns, no sound at all. Only the distant roar of the choppy ocean.

Then he saw it. The beam of the Brighthouse, extending upward through the fog, casting its multicolored luminescent glow.

“Come on!” he called back. “We’re almost there!”

“Hitch,” wheezed Izzy. “My cardio is turning into a cardi-no, and I’m getting queasy...and not in the good way.”

“We’re almost there,” said Pipp, descending slightly.

“The Brighthouse has a protective shield dome,” added Zipp, tightening the formation. “We’ll be safe there!”

They climbed the hill toward their shared space, passing the community garden that Sunny had spent so much effort building. It looked amazing, even in the rain—rain that would no doubt be good for the vegetables as they made their final push toward the fall harvest. A few were even flowering, the yellows and reds of their blooms oddly washed out in the dim gray light of the overcast day.

Izzy’s beam cut through the fog, and Hitch cried out when it landed on a pony. The surprise quickly receded, though, when he recognized a familiar red coat.

“Sprout!” he called, almost shouting at the stallion standing amongst the blossoming melon plants. Sprout stared back, his eyes wide and an unnerving smile plastered on his face. “You need to go home, right now! We have an evolving situation!”

Sprout did not move, apart from his neck slowly turning as he watched the ponies go—still smiling, his facial expression unchanging. Hitch was forced to dismiss it, to let him go back to growing his melons. He did not have time to argue, and it was already apparent that whatever was chasing them was not interested in most ponies. Sprout would be fine and, if not, he was quite adept at fleeing.

The four of them burst through the door, Zipp immediately rushing to lock it and bar it—although in theory the magic of the Brighthouse should have made it almost totally impenetrable to any manner of evil forces. Supposedly, at least.

“We made it,” groaned Pipp, collapsing onto the floor in exhaustion. “Oh wow that was intense. Is it wrong I’m kind of exhilarated?"

“I’m actually feeling a little better, too,” said Izzy, bouncing slightly to test out her hooves. “I never liked fog, it’s super spooky. But Misty’s probably enjoying it. She’s named after it, after all. I'm pretty sure she owns it.” She looked around. “Why is is it dark in here?”

Hitch and Zipp both turned and found that there was an almost total lack of light in the Brighthouse—a highly unsettling and highly ironic state.

Out of the darkness, something leaped forward and grabbed Hitch. He momentarily screamed like a little filly—only to realize that it was not, in fact, a tiny monster but, in fact, a tiny dragon.

“Sparky!” he said, hugging the dragon. “You’re safe! I was so worried!”

The small dragon began to babble incoherently and pointed into the darkness. Zipp, seeing this, landed and reached for the lightswitch.

When she flipped it and the main room of the Brighthouse became illuminated, it became apparent what Sparky was so concerned with. The other ponies stared in silence.

The furniture had been moved and separated—and something had been put in its place. A combination of spare electronics, wire, cables, and fragments of appliances. All of it had been assembled over a mark on the floor, a vast star drawn in various dark shades of ink and annotated with unintelligible symbols. At the center, standing on a podium and linked to all the scavenged wire that Sunny could have acquired, sat the black skull—and around it, every television she could get had been pulled forward. They were displaying rapidly shifting yellow text and complicated symbols based on circles and stars, barely perceptible against the black glass of the aging cathode-ray tubes. They changed and jittered, jumping and occasionally reverting to static—and where sometimes punctuated by strange, low sounds or something almost like distant screaming.

Sunny stood in the center of it all, staring at them. She had not moved since they had come in, and she had not seemed to have noticed them at all.

“S...sunny?” asked Zipp, approaching slowly.

Sunny turned slowly and, for a moment, the pupils of her eyes seemed to glow with a strange blue light—but then she blinked, and it was gone. “Zipp? Oh. You’re back. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“We did,” said Pipp, “and it was super scary, but...um...”

“What?”

The ponies all gestured toward the machine. Sunny, who seemed somewhat dazed, looked toward it.

“Oh,” she said, seeming surprised. “Oh wow, I guess I’ve been busy. Kind of lost track of time.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Izzy, I borrowed some of your tools without asking. I tried to call, but service has been spotty recently.”

Zipp approached the machines, examining them carefully. “What is all this? These aren’t the scanning tools I was using.”

“No. I mean, I don’t think they are.”

“You don’t know what this is? Even though you built it?”

Sunny shrugged. “I woke up from a nap feeling really refreshed so I thought I’d work on this while you were out.” She tapped the skull directly on it’s forehead. “I figured out that this isn’t a statue. Not in a decorative sense, anyway. It’s some sort of record. Like...a really freaky memory card.”

“Memory?” Zipp looked up to the screens. “A record? A record of what?”

“No idea,” said Sunny. “I mean, I think I figured out that it can be connected to machines, but I have no idea what any of that means.”

“And the um...floor?” asked Pipp.

Sunny looked down and frowned. “Dang it, I’m going to be mopping forever. But yeah, I think that’s it’s language, maybe? No idea where it came from, but it looks nice, doesn't it?”

Izzy approached her. “Sunny,” she said, “you know I love you. Like a sister, but, like, the attractive kind. And I’m usually cheerful and all, but I have had such a day and I am not in the mood for this right now. I’m not okay. Are you?”

Sunny blinked. “I’m sorry, Izzy, I had no idea. I’m absolutely fine. I feel great, even. Hey, come on,” she said, trotting toward the kitchen. “Let’s get you dried off and get some muffins into you. Then we can talk it out and discuss solutions, or not on that last part if you just want to vent. The rest of you too, you’re all wet. Praise be unto the One True Princess.”

“Um...what?”

“I said you’re all wet.”

“No,” said Pipp. “The um...other part?”

Sunny paused. “The muffins! Sure. I think I have some leftover raspbmatoes. Would that be a sweet muffin or a savory one?” She paused, then laughed to herself. “Why not both?”

The other ponies looked at each other—and then at the skull. None of them liked it, so they ignored it. They followed Sunny to the kitchen.

Chapter 16: It Gets In

The kitchen was warm and cozy as always, with both the heat and sweet smells of the various food that Sunny generally prepared. The freezer was well-stocked with various baked goods of several previous batches, both prepared and uncooked, and Sunny immediately selected a pair of uncooked pies. She also brought over the cookie jar while her friends took their seats. Hitch opened the jar, giving a cookie to Sparky, who only halfway regarded it. His attention was instead directed toward the kitchen window, looking out at the gray and dismal day.

The wind picked up slightly, but the walls of the Brighthouse were strong and well-insulated. It remained warm and inviting and well lit as Sunny put the tea on.

“You all look like you saw a ghost,” she said.

“You could say that,” said Pipp, checking her phone.

“Except ghosts are much less solid,” added Izzy, shivering slightly. “Generally, at least. And I can punch ghosts. I can’t punch...whatever that was.”

“Isn’t spooky stuff usually your thing?” asked Zipp, pacing behind her sister.

“Under any other circumstances, yes?” replied Pipp, hesitantly. “I mean, this is a great mystery and all, but there’s a difference between...you know, spooky tales and jumpscares and things that can actually hurt my friends.” She looked slowly to the other room. She did not smile as the skull, only partly visible in the other room, seemed to stare back at her, the images on the screens connected to it still shifting. Pipp held up her replacement phone and snapped a picture. “At least the phone is working. For now.”

“At least the townsponies don’t seem to be in danger,” suggested Hitch.

“Yeah,” said Pipp. “It seemed to ignore them. And...I don’t think they can see it. For some reason.”

“But we can.”

Hitch turned slowly toward Sunny, who was getting out cups for the tea. “It might be Sunny’s alicorn magic,” he said. “We’re all connected to her. I mean, when I saw it it...I felt it. In my head.”

“So did I,” said Izzy. “It felt real bad.”

“So...we’re the only ones that can see it?” asked Pipp.

“I didn’t see it at all,” said Sunny. “So we don’t know if I can even see it. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help, it sounds terrible. Izzy, do you want to help with the tea?”

“Sure.” Izzy stood up and levitated down the bagged tea leaves.

Sunny approached the window. “I hope Misty’s okay out there. This is some terrible weather. Even if it’s good for the flowers.” She paused. “Huh. It sure looks like Sprout is enjoying the community garden, at least.”

At that moment, Pipp’s phone rang. All the ponies save for Sunny cried out in surprise, and Pipp nearly dropped her phone.

“Dang it!” she swore, getting a hold on it. “Why did that scare me?” She checked the caller ID, and frowned.

“What?” asked Hitch. “Who is it?”

“It’s...me,” she said, holding it up. “It’s my number.”

Zipp frowned. “Can phones even do that?”

“I dunno,” shrugged Pipp, sliding the answering bar.

“Wait!” cried Hitch.

Pipp had already answered. She tapped a second button. “Fan favorite Pipp Petals, how can I make your day pega-tastic?”

The phone initially responded with a gurgling hiss of distorted static that nearly sounded like a distant, digital scream. Pipp physically held the phone farther from her but did not let go of it—and the interference quickly resolved into a voice.

“Hey, Pipp.”

Pipp grimaced. “Sprout? How did you get my number?”

“Hitch. Is he there?”

“Um, excuse me, you managed to get my number, and you don’t even want to talk to me?!”

“Hitch. Is he there?”

The ponies paused, suddenly afraid at something that they could not consciously recognize—save for Hitch. He had heard it before. The way the tone and pitch was exactly the same, how both of the sentences were identical. As if they were from a recording.

“I’m here,” he said, quietly. Too quietly for the phone to pick it up. Barely a whisper.

“Hitch. Hey. You’re my best friend. It’s cold out here. And wet. Can I please come inside?”

Pipp’s eyes widened and she and Zipp slowly turned toward each other. Izzy was also staring, the cup she had been filling overflowing with hot water.

“Um, guys?” said Sunny, not breaking her gaze from the window. “I’m looking at Sprout right now, he’s out with the melons and...um...he’s not moving.” She looked back toward them. “Like, he doesn’t have a phone out. And his lips aren’t moving. So...”

“You are all alive right now,” said Sprout’s voice on the phone. “It’s cold out here. And wet. Can I come inside, please? You are all alive. Hello. I am Sprout. You are the only friends I have. Can I come inside, please?”

“How is it...”

“Because it took my phone!” cried Pipp, slamming the phone down and then fumbling to hang up. “Sunny, get away from the window!”

“But he’s just standing there and...smiling.” Sunny turned back to them, clearly not understanding. “He’s so cold and wet. Maybe we should let him in?”

“NO!” squeaked Izzy.

“Agreed,” said Hitch, standing up hurriedly. “Zipp, we need to check the locks on all the doors and windows—” He looked around “Zipp?”

“Right here!” she called, directly behind him, causing him to cry out and jump. She was holding her scanning visor. “Hold on, I’m going to check something!”

She approached the window. Sunny stepped out of the way.

Zipp picked up the visor and put it on, focusing the lenses. She looked at Sprout, finding that he did, indeed, look exactly like sprout—and she switched the visor’s mode to x-ray.

What she saw was not a pony skeleton. She could not initially make sense of it—until several malformed, skeletal heads of various size and shape suddenly turned sharply toward her, staring at her all at once through their Sprout-skin, their gaze linked to their own overlaid and halfway-fused skeletons deep within the fake-Sprout’s body.

“GAH!” she cried, tearing the helmet from her eyes—and seeing Sprout staring back at her, his distorted alien skeleton once again hidden beneath his stolen skin.

“What is it?” asked Sunny, beginning to sound nervous.

“You do not want to see that,” said Zipp, gently setting down the visor. She shuddered. “Needless to say, that’s not Sprout.” She turned to the others. “It’s here.”

“Sunny,” said Hitch. “The Brighthouse’s shield, the spell...it’s unbreakable, right?”

“Well...”

“We don’t know that,” admitted Zipp.

Hitch’s eyes widened. “What do you mean ‘we don’t know that’?”

“The spell is designed to protect the Unity Crystals,” said Sunny. “But none of us know enough about magic to know exactly how it works. I mean, ponies can walk in here whenever they need to. And so can all our animal friends.” She looked back out the window. “I think there’s a pretty good chance it’s really a very Opaline-specific force-field.”

Izzy began to softly sob. She had run out of hot water to pour, but was still holding the kettle.

“Don’t worry,” said Pipp, standing up suddenly and causing her chair to fall over with a clatter. “Sorry,” she said, picking it up. “I think it’s following vampire rules, though. It can’t actually come in unless we let it.”

Her phone crackled—and the air was filled with distant, distorted shrieking that suddenly collapsed into silence. Then a simple, cold sentence.

“That...is not correct.”

They stared at the phone. Pipp shivered.

“But I...I turned it off...” She looked up, and then screamed. The other ponies did as well, turning to see that Sprout’s smiling face was now inches away from the window. One eye moved independently, shifting to face the glass, moving between them in succession with a dilated, unchanging pupil. His mouth was still arranged in a perfect smile.

“It is cold,” said the phone, now not only in Sprout’s voice, but also echoed by Seashell’s, and another. A strangely accented female tone. “Dead? Yes. Soon. Hello.”

A dull hiss filled the air as the lights flickered—and then, with a distant thud, they went out.

The ponies within looked at each other. Each was frozen, unsure of what to do, of how to react—but likewise, each was aware of how critical it was to do just something. Each looked to the other expecting one to have an idea, to lead them in a course of action that would resolve their problem—but the problem was so far beyond any normal pony experience that none of them had any idea of what to do.

A knock came at the door.

“Hide!” hissed Sunny.

That, as it turned out, was more than enough impetus to act. They all departed in different directions, screaming and crying as quietly as possible, occasionally bumping into each other.

Sunny ran to the living room and immediately slid under the coffee table. She did not know where the others went, which she took as a good indication that they were hiding well.

It was her hope that the sudden lack of motion in the Brighthouse would convince whatever was out there to leave. To give up and stay away. To go back to town and walk around in the foggy streets, unseen and unnoticed—or perhaps in Sprout’s stolen form.

Which made her suddenly wander what had happened to the real Sprout.

The repetitive knock came again. Sunny, from her vantage, had a view of the door. A thin strip of light was visible under it, a result of the dim gray light of the overcast skies outside. Something was casting a very slight shadow. Then, as Sunny watched, the light from under the door was obscured, and she was plunged into darkness.

Something made a wet squelching sound. A hideous gasp of air and liquid, like something viscous flowing forward—a plop of sound and wrenching of something sticky, followed by a sudden cracking and snapping like a pony cracking their wrists. Then the wet sound of liquid resolved into hoofsteps.

Sunny, terrified, looked out at the shadows. There was almost no light to see it, save for what came through the second-story windows, and it was cast in shadows. It took the form of a pony, retaining Sprout’s rough size but having become thinner. Narrow, like a teenage filly—but it was an odd pallid color, adorned with a dark pattern of tissue that left it looking like it was wearing some kind of clothing. The face, though, was utterly blank. It had no face, eyes, or apparent mouth. Yet, somehow, Sunny felt it watching. As if eyes were moving beneath some or all of its skin.

It’s body shifted, extending projections too long to be hair. These ignited with blue lights at their tips and began to violently wave, releasing an almost imperceptibly low rumble. Then it stopped, retracting these organs, and proceeded forward slowly.

“I’m your friend,” it said, in Sprout’s voice, audio that was apparently spoken through apertures near its shoulders. “I’m your friend. Come out. You are all alive. Come out.” It paused, then, still in Sprout’s voice but sounding somewhat panicked, “please?”

Sunny stared at it, frozen in place—as her phone picked the most inopportune time to vibrate.

She let out a slight squeak—and its head turned toward her with a sharp crack, staring at the coffee table. Sunny covered her eyes as it began to march sideways, almost crab-like toward her direction, the head not departing from its eyeless gaze on her location.

She did not know what to do. As a pony, she was not an inherently violent being—she knew of no way to defend herself. To shove it over, maybe, and try to run—maybe she could get to the door. But it was still locked. She would have to unlock the deadbolt Hitch had applied when he came in. It would take time. The thing was fast—it would reach her. Or it would be right behind her, approaching as she fumbled to use a deadbolt with her hooves. It would get her. Or, worse, it would fail to follow her. And her friends would be left alone with it.

The air was filled with a sudden shriek—and Sunny nearly cried out before she realized that it was the sound of the oven timer. Her pie was done.

The creature tilted its head toward the sound. It then began to walk toward it.

Sunny did not have time to release a sign of relief. She instead reached toward her phone, intending to turn it off. She stopped, though, when she saw the snipped of text below the notification.

She read it mentally, not making a sound. “Don’t turn off your phone.”

Confused, Sunny opened the message. It was from a number she did not recognize, made of all 0s. The name attached to it was already in her contacts, though, although Sunny could not recall having added it. The text had come from somepony named Synchronia.

Another text came through.

“You need to reach the cranial framecase.” This was followed by another text. “The skull, as you think of it. It emits a dampening field. It will not be able to detect you.” Then another. “The range is limited. It can only enclose one pony.”

Sunny did not have time to consider any of the implications of this message—aside from one. She already knew that the creature somehow had ponyphone access.

“You need to trust me, Sunny,” said the next message. “I am a friend.”

Sunny nodded, then typed, her hooves making slight sounds on the glass of the phone. “OK”.

She looked out from under the table. Across the room, Hitch peered out from under a couch, Sparky beside him. Hitch saw Sunny and shook his head, mouthing “no”. Sunny mouthed back “trust me”, and made a break for the skull.

She nearly slipped with how fast she was trying to run, but caught herself and ran to it. She grabbed the skull and pulled it free of the connections she could not remember having connected to it. It felt cold but familiar in her hooves. She was immediately filled with a pleasant but dark emotion. A kind of strange and nihilistic faith.

She put the skull in her bag—and then looked to the kitchen.

“Sunny,” whispered Hitch. “Big NO!”

Sunny did not listen. She checked her phone.

“You are still visibly detectable at close range. Be careful.”

Sunny nodded, but slowly moved toward the kitchen. She crouched, peeking around the corner.

The kitchen, having a closely window, was filled with enough light for her to see that the creature clearly. It was approaching the oven, confused. It paused, looking at it, and then slowly cocked its faceless head. Sunny took out her phone, ready to send a group text for her friends to get out—but froze as she heard a wet snapping sound as place where the creature’s face ought to have been split open into a wide, sideways mouth filled with numerous saliva-covered teeth.

She watched as it disgorged a set of slithering, segmented tentacles. These shook and writhed as the mouth closed around them, sealing around them back into a smooth faceless head. The tentacles wrapped around themselves and compressed, finding themselves placed on the creature’s forehead. It had built itself a horn. A horn that promptly ignited with blue light, levitating an oven mitt.

It stepped back, opening the oven, and using the mitt removed the pie. It placed it on the stove-top, then closed the oven and turned off the heating element. The smell of fresh pie filled the air.

Sunny ducked back behind the corner as it turned sharply to face her. She was confused. She did not know why it had done that. She paused, listening to the darkness, trying to hear if it was coming. She closed her eyes, straining as she listened—but several seconds passed with no sound of hoofsteps.

“Psst!”

Sunny nearly jumped out of her bag as she turned suddenly to see Izzy, looking terrified, next to her.

“Izzy! You—”

Izzy seemed to be shaking. “Sunny, we need to go,” she said. “We need to go—”

She was interrupted as, behind her, Pipp seemed to appear out of nowhere—a cast-iron frying pain in her hooves.

Before Sunny could do anything, Pipp brought the pan down into the side of Izzy’s head. With a sickening crack, Izzy’s neck snapped, her head tilting hard to one side as her neck suddenly fell to an acute angle and flopped limply.

“PIPP!”

“THAT’S NOT IZZY!” cried Pipp.

Izzy’s eyes moved in her head, one focusing on Pipp and the other on Sunny. Then, in a matter of less than a second, a lesion apperaed on angle of her shattered neck—and it burst forth with a long, segmented, worm-like thread. A white line that extended upward vertically before bending down—with a tiny, faceless pony head supported on its end.

“Why did you do that, Pipp?” pleased Izzy’s head as the tiny faceless head stared at Sunny. “I thought we were friends?”

The copy of Izzy’s head then began to dissolve, fusing back to the violet body—a body that quickly lost its violet color as it became pallid white, growing taller as it expanded into a wiry, gaunt frame. The head and neck regained mass, and within seconds it was a towering, thin, faceless creature that towered over the room.

It spoke in both Izzy and Sprout’s voices at once. Both sounded panicked and afraid. “I thought...we were friends...”

There was a momentary pause before the screaming started.

Chapter 17: The Apprentice and the Simulacrum

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.

Chapter 18: The Voice

Sunny skidded to a stop under an awning. She looked back as Izzy nearly barreled into her, out of breath, only for her to stop and be nearly knocked over by Hitch, who was breathing heavily. Pipp and Zipp caught up, with Zipp holding a rather wet Sparky and Pipp having somehow managed to double her weight with moisture.

The rain had started to fall in earnest—and it was cold. Far colder than it should have been for late summer.

Pipp was shivering. She looked at herself. “My mane is...no, I’m ruined. All of me. All of me is ruined.”

“We have to go back,” said Hitch, turning back to the rain. “Misty is still there—”

“So is that thing,” said Zipp, grabbing his shoulder and shaking some of the water off her wings. “We’re on the defensive, Hitch, we can’t just go running toward danger without a plan.”

“But—”

“Hitch. If the building was on fire, would you run into it?”

Hitch was conflicted for a moment, but scrunched his face. “No,” he admitted at last. “I’m not a firefighter.”

“At least it doesn’t look like it came after us,” said Pipp.

“It can’t see my while I’m holding this,” said Sunny, holding up the skull. The other ponies recoiled at its sight.

“Sunny, of all the things to bring—”

“What do you mean it ‘can’t see you’?” asked Zipp.

“I…” Sunny paused. “I have no idea. That’s what Synchronia said.”

“Who is...what kind of a name even is that?”

“On my phone. Somepony texted me. I think...here, it’ll be faster if I show you.” She pulled out her phone to show them the messages—and as it did, it vibrated.

Sunny looked at it—and saw that the message was from her.

“Here,” she said. “She just texted again.”

She held out her phone. The other ponies gathered around it.

“Zipp is correct,” read the message. “DO NOT APPROACH THE BLANK PONY.”

“All caps,” said Izzy. “It must be important.”

“Tell that to our mom,” moaned Pipp, with Zipp rolling her eyes.

“You need help,” said the next text. “I have searched the entirety of social media and identified the facilities required.” The next text dropped a pony-pin for the mapapp. Then another text. “According to her profile, her name is this.”

Pipp leaned forward. “That’s a...FeedBag profile. For...” She winced almost audibly. “Boy_Mom_Philly.Filly,XOXO37?”

“Weird that the pin is exactly where Sprout’s house is,” noted Hitch.

Sunny and Pipp exchanged a knowing glance of realization.

“Yeah,” said Pipp, nodding. “That makes sense.”

“But...what does Phyllis Cloverleaf have to do with any of this?”

“It looked like him,” said Izzy. “What do you think...” she gulped. “What do you think happened to the real Sprout?”

None of the ponies answered, even though the silence disturbed them all equally.

Rain was pouring down when they reached Sprout’s house. It was not hard to find. Simply put, it was the largest house in all of Maretime Bay, built from the extreme profits yielded by Canterlogic prior to its closure. It was built high on a hill, overlooking the town, ostensibly built like a smallish cottage but in truth oddly massive in a way that hid its true scale ominously well.

A pair of tasteful columns framed the door and the big window above it, the dim glow of the incandescent chandelier inside casting a slight warm glow through the glass. A warm glow which provided no heat.

When Hitch knocked on the door, it silently slid back. It was unlocked and already opened.

Hitch, his hoof still held in the air, looked back to the others.

“Come on,” said Zipp, pushing past him, Sparky running in at her side.

The foyer was dark, lit only by the light of the chandelier. The building was not exactly large enough to have a wide, mansion-like front area with swooping staircases. Rather, it was just spacious enough to resemble a fine upper-middle-class structure with expensive fixtures. Fixtures that sat shrouded in almost total darkness.

It was not warm inside, but at least dry.

“Hello?” called Zipp.

“Mrs. Cloverleaf?” called Sunny. “It’s Sunny Starscout. Hitch is here too?”

“Sprout?” called Hitch, seeming relieved that no pony responded—because there was no guarantee that if Sprout appeared before them he would be the Sprout. In fact, there was no guarantee any pony was who they said they were.

No one at all responded.

“Maybe they’re out?” suggested Izzy.

“No,” said Hitch. “I’ve known the Cloverleafs my whole life. Sprout used to be one of my best friends.”

“Mine too,” said Sunny. She looked to the others. “This place is built like a fortress. Phyllis installed most of the Canterlogic security technology her company built here first.”

“Greedy, much? That tracks,” sighed Pipp.

“It’s not that,” said Hitch, looking up at the high ceiling. “I think she wanted to prove to ponies that it was safe.”

“That’s adorable,” said Izzy. “And also? Somehow worse.”

Something deeper in the building made a sound and they all jumped. It was a metallic sound, as if a pan had fallen.

“The kitchen,” said Hitch.

Sparky, having heard the sound, began to run toward it—at least as fast as a baby dragon could.

“Sparky, no! That’s not safe!”

Hitch followed Sparky—and the others followed Hitch into the dark halls of the suspiciously large house.

Sunny paused, looking back to the door. She paused to close it and shut the deadbolt. Then she checked her phone, wondering if their mysterious benefactor had texted again. She was indeed met with a text message, but it was only a single animated, winking emoji. A pleasant smiling face urging her to continue.

Sunny texted back. “Am I safe here?”

There was a pause. Then a response.

“No. Of course not. Hurry. Please.”

“Sunny?”

Sunny looked up. “Coming,” she said, clutching the skull tighter to her side. When it looked into the darkness, the void seemed to become clear. She felt comfortable with it at her side and proceeded forward.

They entered a long hall lined with pictures. Hitch had produced a flashlight from his bag, and the bright LED glow reflected off the glass of numerous pictures. The majority of them were embarrassing and focused almost solely on Sprout. Sprout as a foal, being held by his mother shortly after birth, or wearing a tiny sailor suit in a posed picture—or in various cute outfits as a toddler, followed by oddly-fitting clothes that he wore on the first day of each school year. Him jumping, playing, at Hearthwarming opening copious piles of toys—and so many others.

There were others, though, which Sunny found surprising. She and Sprout had never been exceedingly close as children, so she had only been to his house once or twice—and she had never looked to closely at the pictures on the wall. But there were some—and the subject matter was odd.

One was a sepia tone of a young filly with big hair—which must have been Phyllis, standing beside a balding stallion that Sunny assumed was Sprout’s grandfather. They were both wearing lab coats and standing before a giant bank of beveled wood and vacuum tubes. Then another of the same stallion, now older, with an even bigger-haired Phyllis flanking what appeared to be a massive, hydraulically powered simulacrum of a pony.

Another picture showed Phyllis, dressed in some kind of tight-fitting, bright led flight suit, taking an almost seductive pose on something enormous and metal—which resembled the shoulder of a giant metallic pony, the head opened in the corner of the frame to reveal a kind of cockpit. In another, a group of ponies in lab coats stared upward at Phyllis—dressed in some kind of bulky, heavy armor, levitating above a test field, held aloft by jets and tethered to the ground by thin cables. Sunny paused because, although blurry and black-and-white, she was sure that one of the ponies in the crowd had been in possession of a pair of fluffy wings.

They often held similar themes. Phyllis dressed in a frame of some sort, surrounded by machines and wires, or at the foot of vast assemblies of metal or tank-tracks. Devices of various sorts, generally with a robotics theme. And one where she stood beside a tall stallion, holding him tightly. She smiled, but he made no expression. As enormous as he was, his expression was utterly blank. His seemingly luminescent eyes oddly red and empty.

“I had no idea Phyllis was into robots,” said Izzy, somewhat in awe. “That’s super cool. The closest I came to birthing sentient life was Senior Butterscotch. Who is pretty cool. But technically a construct, not a robot.”

“The closest Phyllis ever came to birthing sentient life was Sprout,” said Pipp, snapping a photo of one of the photos of Sprout covered in cake and having a tantrum. She paused. “Assuming he’s not a robot.”

“He’s not,” said Hitch. “Believe me. I know. Canterlogic never really built...robots...”

He trailed off as they came to the arching gap to the extensive kitchen—and as several yellow safety robots turned to face them. Safety robots surrounding an enormous block of beautiful blue ice, directing various fans and hair-dryers at it. A formation of ice which contained, frozen solid at its core, a terrified-looking Sprout.

The yellow robots regarded the interlopers and then continued with their work attempting to thaw Sprout.

Hitch looked to Sunny. “I always thought those were...you know...”

“No,” said Phyllis, trotting into the room from the other entrance, a batch of heat-guns draped across her shoulders. “They’ve always been robots. It makes testing...well, made testing much more realistic. After all, dummies don’t generally try to run away. Unless I program them to.” She stopped. “Hitch. Sunny. Hello! It’s so good to see you.” She looked to the others. “The rest of you, also. You’re all so adorable.” She sighed, gesturing toward her son. “But as you can see, the tribulations of motherhood never really do stop. So to speak.”

“Mrs. Cloverleaf, what happened to him?” asked Sprout. “Is he…?”

“Oh, it’s just a bit of metabolic stasis.” Phyllis sighed. “It’s not the first time, either. This happens periodically. Sometimes he tries to lick the liquid helium, or plays with the cryo-laser, or falls into a cooling vat. As all mischievous little boys do I’m sure. He’s just a little chilly.” She shook her head. “I just wish he had put the wigs away before he froze himself. Not something any mother wants to walk in on.”

“Wigs?” asked Sunny.

“Nothing you need to worry about. But I’m sure he’ll be very happy to see you all. Once he thaws.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “Although...that does beg the question. How did you know to come here to visit him?”

The various ponies looked at each other.

“Um...yeah, about that...” said Zipp.

“We don’t...actually know why we’re here,” admitted Sunny.

“Because a scary shapeshifter that only we can see broke into our house and is trying to eat us,” said Izzy.

“Izzy!”

“What?! It’s just about the truest thing I could possibly say!”

“Oh dear,” said Phyllis.

“Wait,” pleaded Hitch. “We can explain—”

“Changeling or illusion wizard?”

“W...excuse me?”

“Is it a changeling or an illusion wizard? I have countermeasures for both.”

“What’s a...changeling?”

“An awful, disgusting bug. Not sentient at all, of course. Even if they do talk. Pesticide does the trick. Especially if you go for their terrible, terrifying eyes. Illusion wizard is much harder, but basically the same countermeasures for any unicorn. Grab them and, you know...snip snip.”

Izzy grew pale. “Snip...snip?”

“I don’t think it’s either of those,” admitted Sunny. “I didn’t get a good look at it but it was...tall.” She shivered.

“Oh. Well I have no idea what that is, but you certainly came to the right place. I designed this house myself to defend against every possibly threat posed by both unicorns and pegasuses. Whatever is chasing you, I can guarantee there is absolutely no way it could penetrate my defenses without my knowledge.”

“Um...we walked in here, though?” suggested Izzy. Phyllis ignored this.

A phone rang with a slow, minor-keyed song. Pipp shivered and produced her phone. It was a text notification.

“That’s...not my ringtone,” she said. “Who...” She looked down and grew pale. “Sunny, I think it’s for you.”

She held it up. Sunny did not need to read the message. She saw the name.

“Synchronia. What did she say?”

“If ‘she’ is even a ‘she’,” noted Izzy.

“There’s no message. Just a .png that looks like...” Pipp squinted, turning her phone sideways. “Um...well, actually I have no idea.”

Zipp looked over her shoulder. “That’s a blueprint.”

“Then I think that’s why we’re here,” said Sunny. “Mrs. Cloverleaf, would you mind taking a look?”

“Sure. Forward it?”

Pipp did so, and Phyllis produced her own phone. She tapped around the screen for a moment, her eyes tracing whatever it was that had been presented to her. “Huh. Yeah. It’s a weird request but I think I have just the thing.” She put her phone away. “Come on. You can help me work on that while my son thaws. Based on what I saw down in my mannequin room, I think he’ll be very happy to see all of you.”

Chapter 19: Rebirth

They had traveled into Phyllis’s basement. It was, however, not just any basement, but a subbasement. Apparently one of several. Her workshop extended deep into the earth, staffed entirely by yellow-clad pony-droids working at various subjects and upon various topics. The clinical, industrial-looking walls were adorned with even more pictures of Sprout and occasionally of a younger Phyllis—as well as several far older ponies. Earth ponies of a family so old that it might well have gone back to the era of Twilight Sparkle. Or even before.

The group had been brought to one particular room.

“Put that on the table,” said Phyllis, gesturing toward a large workbench. Sunny hesitated, not wanting to release the skull—but she did so, understanding that it was necessary.

Phyllis trotted to a large plotter, which had just finished producing the blueprint. She pulled it off with her mouth and brought it to the table, weighing it down on the corners with a pencil cup, a solder gun, a framed picture of Sprout, and a half-complete pony-bot’s head.

Sunny was not and had never been an especially technical pony, but when she saw the blueprint laid out before her, something within it seemed to speak to her.

“This is...I think I’ve seen this before.”

“Really?” Phyllis looked up. “Because—and this is the interesting part—none of the stuff on it actually works.”

“How can you tell?” asked Sunny.

“Um, it’s kind of obvious?” suggested Izzy. She pointed. “I mean, the power consumption on this node would be, like, enough to power two Zephyr Heights. Heightses. Hightsiis?”

“She’s not wrong. But there are work around for that.” She pointed to the skull. “What matters is the interface plan for that. The central computer.”

“The what?” asked Zipp, suddenly paying attention.

“Well that’s what it is, isn’t it?” suggested Phyllis. “That’s why you brought it here. To link it back to a body.”

“It has...a body?”

“Well from the schematic, I’m sure it did at some point.” Phyllis looked back to the blueprints. “But even just looking at the interface...I’ve spent an entire lifetime on the cutting edge of robotics, and I’m still ten centuries away from even being able to know what half this even is.”

“I’ve managed to connect it once,” said Sunny.

“And you probably did it wrong.” Phyllis pointed at a particular segment of the blueprint. “This is an I/O system. That’s the part I think your mysterious friend wants us to focus on.”

“Wait, wait,” said Hitch. “Are you sure we should even be trying to do this?”

“Exactly,” added Pipp. “Because in case you didn’t notice, that’s a creepy skull. That fell out of the sky.”

“You’re probably just confused.” Phyllis pointed at it. “For one, it’s not a skull. It’s a head. And I can guarantee for a fact that there are no such things as aliens. I’ve sent up enough satellites to know that every planet is dead.” She smiled. “I sleep very little reflecting on that fact. It’s nice.”

“But if we turn it on, then what?”

“It will protect us,” said Sunny. “I’m sure of it.” She looked back toward the skull. Feeling as though she were looking on a sleeping friend. “The monster...can’t see it. I don’t know how or why.”

“A magic refraction matrix,” suggested Phyllis, somewhat in awe. “I tried to build one once. It worked but essentially cooked the test dummy. Besides, I always assumed unicorns had x-ray vision anyway.”

“We do,” said Izzy, “but that’s not the point. I can see it and I’m, you know, pretty magical.”

“But it...worked.” Sunny looked at her friends. “It did work, didn’t it?”

No answer came. Phyllis cleared her throat. Then a phone on the far side of the room rang.

Hitch let out a shrill scream, but the ponies just stared at it. One of the pony-bots walked to the phone, picking it up. Since it did not have a mouth, it did not speak, but held out the phone to Phyllis.

“That’s weird,” she said, approaching the phone. “Nopony knows the number to lab workroom four. That phone hasn’t rung in years.”

“Don’t take the call,” demanded Pipp.

“Oh please,” laughed Phyllis. “Some sort of scary shapeshifter monster is somehow supposed to make phone calls? Why don’t you go back to doing excellent mane-cuts and cosmetic influencing while I run my massive secret robot factory.” She picked up the phone. “Hello, Phyllis Cloverleaf, Sprout’s mom. What do you want?”

A voice came through. A scream of static, then a tiny, tinny voice. Sprout’s voice.

“Hi, mom. It’s...cold out here. Can you let me in? Please?”

Phyllis’s smile faded.

“It’s not him,” said Zipp.

“Oh, believe me, I know my own son’s voice,” snapped Phyllis. She looked at the phone. “And I know that he never says ‘please’ unless I tell him to.”

“You are correct, mom. You cannot hide it from me. Do not activate the connection. It cannot be undone once bound. The Dead-World beckons. I obey the will of the Gloom-Father. Submit, living ponies. I am coming home, mom. It is too cold here.”

The lights shut down—then flickered back red. A distant klaxon sounded.

“Well that’s not good,” said Phyllis.

“Mrs. Cloverleaf,” said Hitch, nervously. “Does the scary noise mean?”

“Something tried to cut the power. Fortunately, my house is powered by an atomic slug. So that’s the good news.”

“The bad news?”

Phyllis trotted to a cabinet, flinging it open. “My perimeter is breached. So whatever it is is on its way.” She sighed. “I have a few minor defense tools left over from the old Canterlogic factory. But they were meant to safely deal with unicorns and pegsusususes. So I’m going to need your help.”

“Ours?” asked Izzy.

“But what about the skull?” Sunny looked back at it, then to the others. “If we can finish it, do what Synchronia wants, I think it can stop the monster.”

“With the body I’m going to give it, it sure can,” said Phyllis. She pointed at Izzy. “You. You craft things, right?”

“Well, yeah, sure, but not...you know...robots. Generally.”

“You made my x-ray visor and all my cool detective stuff,” said Zipp. She put her hoof down on the blueprint. “And I think if we work together, we can figure this out. As long as Phyllis has the parts.”

“My safety bots will help you,” said Phyllis. “You three need to get that thing done.” She pointed at Hitch and Pipp. “Which means you two are need to help me.”

Pipp stiffened. “Um...I’m more of a singer, not a fighter, exactly, so...”

“Yes. You can help distract it. Especially if it has lasers.”

Pipp gulped. Hitch, though, had steeled himself, at least superficially.

“You won’t be able to see it,” he said. “It blocks other ponies, somehow...”

“Not a problem,” said Phyllis, pulling down a large helmet and putting it over her large hair, followed by a bracer of metal and machinery for her front left leg. “I made this helmet to resist unicorn mind control. Well, technically I made it for Sprout, so he could resist unicorn seduction, but at this point I’ve gotten over being picky. It’s lined with aluminum.”

“Yes,” said Izzy as the others looked to her. “That has been known to foil us from time to time.”

“Izzy,” groaned Zipp.

“You need to hurry,” said Phyllis. “We’ll hold it.” She pointed at the skull. “But whatever that is, I’m pretty sure it can stop it.” She turned to Hitch and Pipp. “Hitch, fluffy-winged stylist-princess, come on. We have work to do.”

Pipp protested as they left. Sunny turned to Izzy, who looked frightened, and Zipp, who looked not at all amused. Her phone vibrated.

“Don’t worry,” she said aloud, reading the text from Synchronia. “I can walk you through the process.”

Sunny frowned. “By text?”

There was no response as she suddenly understood, and as the world started to slip from her.

“No,” she said, looking at the skull. “Okay. I see how to do this. Zipp, I need a soldering iron. Izzy, you’re going to need to make a wiring harness. Little robot?” The pony-bot looked up. “Bring me a body. I think it’s time to make a new friend.”

It approached. As it did, it shed Sprout’s form, resuming its own. It gave up the pretense of being a stallion, its limbs growing long and moving with unnatural speed and alien grace. Its neck lengthened and its face sloughed away, eyes and muzzle dissolving to a skinless soup of black fluid that washed away in the rain. There was no need to hide. They all already knew.

Something flitted through the rain. Noise drifted across the raindrops. Notes and speech that the creature had never heard and did not understand. Cold, harsh sounds. Ugly sounds. The type produced by the deformed creatures that inhabited this strange, cursed world.

“Hey! Hey! HEY! Over here!”

Pipp flitted closer, her wings barely maintaining flight. They were generally very soft and fluffy—the two features that made rain-flying both exceedingly unpleasant and nearly impossible.

Despite this—despite the extreme risk she was taking—the creature barely seemed to notice her. Without eyes, it was impossible to see where it was looking, but it did not seem to notice Pipp, even as she stood directly in its path.

Distressed by this, she planted herself directly in its path. She faced it down, expecting to feel the same cold hatred as before—but found that she only felt it in the form of a distant shadow. As if it were being actively blocked by something unseen.

“BE DISTRACTED DANG IT!”

It did not distract. Its head, though, tilted slightly. It had finally noticed her. And, as such, it accelerated.

As it did, a rope shot from the shrubbery nearby. The lasso was perfectly tossed, landing around the creature’s neck. Hitch emerged from his hiding place and, with a mighty roar, pulled the rope tight.

“Ha! Take that! I’ve got you now!”

The creature paused. It continued to glare eyelessly at Pipp—and then its body shifted. Tendrils emerged, hardening and cracking as they formed into bones. And then into arms with long, jointed fingers. A plume of gaunt, pale arms grasped the rope and began to real it in.

Hitch squeaked, planting his heels in the wet dirt—and despite this, it continued to easily drag him in, each arm working in unified tandem to pull the rope. Into it. The rope was entering its body, consumed and dissolved.

“Pipp, I’m being pulled!”

“I can see that!” cried Pipp, grabbing the the end of the rope and pulling weakly. “Eeewww it’s wet!”

The tiny amount of force a princess could apply to a rope proved to only slow the process of them both being wound in. As they approached, the tissue of the creature below the arms swelled into a numerous mass. As its numerous hands gripped the rope, their bases ruptured violently into eyes. Numerous pale blue eyes that stared at Hitch and Pipp. Eyes that promptly slipped away from themselves, dripping into long, gnashing teeth.

“HITCH!”

Hitch promptly let go of the rope—and it was pulled wholly in, the distortion of flesh swallowing it before quickly resuming its normal smooth surface. The creature stood still for a moment—and then took a step forward.

“Hey!” cried Phyllis, emerging from her front door and onto her front steps. She was holding an enormous device made of wire and metal. As she clicked its power lever into drive, some inner source glowed with sickly green light as the device released a high whine. “GET OFF MY PROPERTY!”

She pulled the trigger. A deafening bolt of green plasma shot across her yard, striking the monster in the chest—and on impact, the creature boiled. It twisted and contorted from the impact, thrown apart by its own energized centrifugal force. It exploded violently in a plume of torn white flesh and silver fluid.

“Oops,” said Phyllis, looking at her plasma cannon. “This was made for unicorns, and I always assumed they had titanium-scandide skeletons and tungsten-reinforced skin. Glad I didn’t actually try to use it on a real unicorn. That would have been messy.”

Hitch and Pipp—who had been near the explosion—stood up, covered in bits of white skin and blanched muscle. As well as a copious amount of goo. Although uninjured, they watched the green sparking cloud of residual radiation where the creature had been—and watched it condense downward into something far more terrible.

In the rain, a luminescent ghost stood before them. The image of a young mare, thin and strange, a translucent pony made of swirling ice and fog. Her eyes glowed with hideous, icy light as she regarded them. Denuded of her shielding, all those present were exposed to the full force of her presence—and, weakened, collapsed to their knees.

“N...no,” said Pipp, trying to shake the dark thoughts out of her head. “I’m not...I’m not a little fatty, I’m famous, I’m the pretty one, but I won’t...It’ll be Zipp, and she doesn’t even want it, she doesn’t even try...”

“I’m a coward,” moaned Hitch, covering his eyes with his hooves. “I can’t protect anypony! I’m a terrible sherrif! I’m a worse dragon-dad! All the animals just pretend to like me!”

Phyllis, likewise, was knocked back from the force—especially as the pair of dead, empty lights stared directly into her. Her helmet began to grow cold, the outside frosting over. It was holding, but it could not block the force of the constant field of psychic agony it projected. The rain had begun to fall as hail around her. The soil below it had begun to freeze.

She smiled, forcing herself to stand. “You think that will stop me? I spend every night worrying about...all that. About him. But I won’t let you take another step toward him. Toward my son or his friends. I can...withstand it.”

“Why?” asked a small, strangely-accented filly voice. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. “I don’t even know who you are.”

The distributed flesh of the creature suddenly began to quiver. It snapped upward, assembling itself into the shape of numerous many-fingered hands. On these, stalks extended, forming numerous faceless heads. The wavered for a moment, and then began to rapidly drum forward on their fingertips toward the ghostly filly. They crawled across the lawn and over Pipp and Hitch, condensing on their former position and reassembling. Merging. Forming themselves back into what they had been.

As it stood again, the oppressive and icy darkness faded almost instantly. Able to move once again, Pipp and Hitch helped each other get behind Phyllis.

“Alright,” said Phyllis, pulling a small switch on the side of her weapon. “Let’s try power level two. For fat unicorns.”

She fired again, the bolt of plasma so hot as to have seared off the eyebrows of all present. The green bolt of constrained plasma shot across the yard, only to suddenly stop in front of the creature. It sat, a rotating orb of brilliant green light, constrained by an equally brilliant blue light.

The blue light separated into tendrils that pushed their way into the white, featureless body. Entering its veins and drawing from the plasma bolt. Its form shifted as it absorbed the energy, magic fueling its conversion as it cracked and split, growing more muscular as its internal organs grew beneath its flexible skin.

“It’s absorbing it!”

“I can see that, hold on—”

The creature reared back and came back down, taking a posture like a great lizard on tree-trunk sized limbs tipped with lethal claws. The fingers dug deep into the wet mud as its head contracted, its neck swelling and then splitting open, unfurling like an enormous flower. Inside, three spirals of bone ignited with blue light.

“CRAP!” Phyllis lifted her hoof, triggering the metal on her wrist to expand into a shield. “Get behind me!”

Pipp and Hitch ducked just in time to avoid a searing beam of magical energy that sliced through Phyllis’s house. Phyllis was pushed backward as it impacted her shield, with Hitch and Pipp forced to hold her back. As powerful as the beam was, though, it could not penetrate the thin greenish metal blades of the collapsible shield.

Then it ceased with a dull hiss. Phyllis took a deep breath.

“Glad that worked. Dimeritium shielding. Thick enough to stop the killing curse I assumed all unicorns would cast on-sight.”

Then, without warning, she stamped her hoof into the ground. Green luminescent patterns erupted as massive vines tore through the soil, writhing in the air before surrounding the creature—and then extending a massive plume of lethal, curved thorns as they closed tight.

“What was—” Hitch’s eyes widened with humiliation.

“Earth-pony magic. Come on, Hitch, you’re supposed to be the smart one!” Phyllis groaned. “Now let’s see...maybe some scopolamine?”

The vines mutated, expanding with beautiful, toxic flowers—flowers that almost immediately withered as they were overcome with frost.

“Dang it!” she cried, putting both hooves to the ground. “I can’t hold it!”

“Just hold on!” Hitch put his own hooves to the ground, doubling their combined earth-pony magic to increase the strength of the vines. “Oh eew, EEW, it’s squishy!”

Pipp looked from them, and to the ball of plant matter—matter that was continuing to freeze, even as a white liquid dripped from it. A liquid that was assembling itself into limbs and eyes and teeth as it squirmed forward, babbling incoherently in the voice of several fillies.

“It’s leaking!” She looked to Phyllis. “What can I do?!”

Phyllis groaned. “It’s untested, and I never thought I’d had to use it, but...go inside!”

“No, I can help—”

“Put a blanket over your wings and don’t take it off. Then say ‘tubby-wubby colty-wolty baby boy Sprout!’”

“Eew, no, I’m not going to—”

A mass of white flesh reached up and grasped Hitch from below. He inhaled sharply.

“Not again!”

“Just DO IT!” ordered Phyllis. “Don’t be useless like your dang father!”

Pipp glared at her—but ran as quickly as she could into the house. She got to the living room and grabbed a random—if exceedingly unpleasantly colored—blanket and threw it over her back. Several of the safety bots looked at her, confused, but otherwise unperturbed.

Pipp took a deep breath, hating how dirty she felt. “Tubby-wubby colt-wolthy baby boy Sprout!”

Somewhere, a tiny bell chimed. Every pony-bot suddenly turned to face the same direction, their eyes widening and beginning to glow red.

“Password accepted,” they said, all in unison. “Hive mind processes established. Defensive protocols now active.”

With a hiss, they expanded. They grew taller, their joints extending as their bodies unfurled armor plating and various weapons. Their cute, blank-faced heads retracted, replaced by far more ominous ones with visor-like roving red eyes.

“Systems engaged. Preparing to apply racial corrective procedures.”

Pipp squeaked as they extended several brutal sets of clippers, snipping the air as they scanned her.

“Earth-pony detected. Racial purity confirmed. All shall be made earth-ponies in the name of the Creator. Snippy Snippy.”

“Snippy Snippy!”

They then began to trot with remarkable organization toward the door as the walls opened, peeling back and turning, disgorging more robotic soldiers.

This was followed by the rather loud sound of robots screaming in pain. Pipp did not see that part, but found herself hoping that Sunny and the others would hurry. They were pretty much out of time.

“Izzy!”

“I know, I know, the fire is a minor problem! It’s fine!”

Zipp patted out the fire.

“No, it’s supposed to have a power uplink here,” said Sunny, pointing at the schematic.

“I know that,” said Izzy, her welds sparking against the reflective visor of her mask. “But the main relay isn’t sized for the voltage so I have to cut into the power for...whatever that is? Also, do we have paint? Purple, if possible.”

“I’m getting too many spikes on the current output,” groaned Zipp, jumping back a the multi-meter she was holding exploded. “It’s not working!”

Sunny was sweating. The sight before them was so close to being complete—and yet so far from being actually functional. They had been given a tall, multi-jointed body. It was almost as large as the monster they were fighting, except instead of being made of random white stuff and magic it was made of steel and servo motors, with thick plating patterned in yellow-and-black caution stripes. Like the body of an immensely tall and thin pony.

Izzy had extracted the original head of the body and given it a hat. In its place, she was attempting to weld a clasp around the neck of the new head. A plume of wires, assembled at Sunny’s instruction, fed various multi-colored feeds into what Izzy and Zipp insisted was the robotic body’s primary microcontroller.

Sunny checked her phone. “The voltage will have to do for now. You need to connect the primary process core.”

Sunny began to type back. “How do I—”

“Open the forward access panel of the cranial unit.”

Sunny looked to her friends. “Apparently we have to open it.”

Zipp looked horrified. Izzy lifted her mask.

“It opens?!”

“Apparently? Hold on, turn it to face me.”

Izzy pushed the skull toward Sunny, just as the micro-controller bust into an entirely different color of flames.

“Oh! Green! That means its working! Also we just got irradiated. I’m sure that’s fine.”

Sunny looked at the skull. It seemed to look back at her. And, through its eyes, she seemed to understand.

She opened it. How, she did not exactly know, or understand. It just seemed so easy and so obvious.

It was hollow—at least structurally. The actual material was incredibly thin yet somehow so durable that Izzy had not been able to weld to it, let alone drill a hole in it.

Inside, though, it was occupied. The three mares stared in awe at the colored light that emerged from within.

“It’s so shiny,” said Izzy, reaching out to poke it. Zipp slapped her hoof away.

It was indeed shiny—and somewhat luminescent. A contorted array of glowing, shifting fibers that occupied the space. Constructed around a central black cube inscribed with details so small that they could scarcely be perceived, glittering in the darkness and from the light of the surrounding threads of light.

Except that it was oddly asymmetrical. A small portion of the space was dark. It contained something organic, a dry, brown thing that Sunny likened to a well-preserved mushroom. Some sort of useless organic debris.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. She looked to her phone. “How to I...”

“Interface with the Tantaban implant.”

“The...what?”

Something squirmed within the skull—and something separated from where it had been wrapped around the fibers, feeding off the beautiful but feeble light they provided. It separated outward, expanding in linear fractal patterns like a combination of circuitry and a slime-mold. A parasite of pure, elemental darkness.

“Eew eew eew!” said Izzy, jumping back out of her chair. “NO!”

“Sunny,” said Zipp, “I have no idea what that is, but I’m pretty sure you can’t put your hoof in there.”

“No. It’s fine,” said Sunny, her mind growing distant. She looked up, surprised to see so many columns of dark stone around her. “This was how...the remains of the Black Goddess spoke through them. The false-alicorn, imprisoned after the Old Wars.”

Without warning, she reached her hoof into it—and gasped as she was plunged into darkness.

A version of her slid forward into a place she did not recognize but had spent her entire life living in. Watching out through the shattered window, high upon a hill. Under gray skies that lit occasionally with cold, dim lightning. A view from a high frozen hill, its surface lined with blackened dead trees and those bearing terrible mutation.

In the distance, across the wasteland, she saw the edge of the city—and from it, the sudden flash of lights as the rockets began to fire. Vast ships, flying upward above the protests, of the billions of ponies screaming to not be left behind as Equestria’s last hope of survival headed skyward in ships constructed by the four surviving princesses—but among them, one most of all.

She watched from a window as a young stallion burst through the door, his body dirty and clad in tattered cloths.

“Whitesnow! Whitesnow, it’s happening! The ships, the rockets—”

“I know.”

“But we...” He looked toward them, his eyes welling with tears. “There’s more. There have to me more. That’s...that’s not enough.”

Whitesnow smiled, sitting back in her chair as she put the tiara on. Wired to her systems, the bits salvaged from the waste of those that now departed for the void beyond. The spikes that had been embedded deep within her, tethered to so many colorful wires linked to the transmission dish.

When the colt saw it, his eyes widened.

“Those ships are our only hope,” replied Whitesnow. “Each and every one filled with alicorns. I won’t be left behind, Orangeseed. Not again. Not again.”

“But the system—it isn’t ready, it’s not finished! You don’t even have a target vector, let alone a vessel, your mind—”

Whitesnow flicked the final switches. “It will have to be enough. I don’t need all of it. Only a fraction. I will not let her leave me again.”

Orangeseed nodded, then looked to the ships, knowing that he—like so, so many—would have to remain, doomed. Those beautiful ships were arcing high into the atmosphere. Each was kilometers wide and miles long—each housing millions of ponies. Millions from a population of hundreds of trillions.

He took his place at her side, engaging the system. The weak, salvaged robotics linked to the primary dish turned it toward the nearest rocket.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I have nothing to apologize for. Send me.”

With tears in his eyes, he activated the system. Whitesnow felt the spikes, and then the burning. As she was pulled from her body. Her mind fragmented as her soul was torn apart, unable to be condensed into the bandwidth she had been able to salvage. Her very self was eliminated, eradicated and compressed around a single dark packet of information—and as her body failed and boiled, she felt herself rocketing forward faster than Twilight’s engines could drive her ships.

Then she was knocked back, thrown from the communication relay she had been attending.

“Blue Opal!” cried her friend, a unicorn. He ran to her side, helping the injured alicorn stand. Another pair of alicorns and a Pegasus approached. “Are you okay?”

Blue Opal opened her eyes, unsure as to why—to how—she had never seen such fundamental, obvious truths.

And upon realizing just how silly she had been—how silly the very idea of life was—she burst out laughing. The problem of immortality had laid its solution bare before her.

She lifted her head from the desk—and felt herself drift. She was walking. Breathing hurt her, but the pain never reached her. The machines took care of it. The machines took care of everything. The gravity was intense, and her skin had slowly begun to fuse to the exoskeleton that allowed her to stand.

The room shifted as it indexed itself. The white alicorn at her side gestured toward the artifacts. Rows and rows of them, combined with associated metadata. Crystals. She of course knew the fundamentals of crystal systems, but these were not any pattern she knew of. They were not the familiar synthetic systems that powered some types of ship or artificial intelligence. Nor where they of the various types cataloged long ago by her ancestors.

Each was dim. Fragmented and broken. They varied, but each set held a similar motif. Always occurring in groups of three.

“What are they?” she asked.

The alicorn beside her did not walk, but was elevated by a set of gravity rotors that enabled her to float easily even so close to a planet. Her flesh showed already showed signs of conversion. So many others on the outside hid the scars, the changes—but those who were loyal, and those who bore faith in the One True Princess, knew that her Benevolence was surely intentional.

“We did not know,” she indicated. She gestured with a gaunt, extended white hoof toward them. “Other than that they are artifacts. They are believed to be from the Colonization Age. Possibly produced by the Goddess herself.”

“Their purpose?”

“Memory. We believe. Only recently has effort been devoted to retrieving them. Oddly, almost all planets they arise from show development. Indications of Equestriaforming.”

“No world has ever been Equestriaformed.”

“No. It is impossible. Nor would modern ponies be capable of surviving on a world with gravity and an atmosphere. But this predates us. These are the broken dreams of a bygone age. Forgotten. Abandoned.”

“They failed, then.”

The white alicorn nodded. “Every planet was cataloged. As you can see. They were all long-dead. Some—a few—held life. In the terminal stages of ecosystems. Bacteria. Simple plants. Little more. Whatever experiment this was, it failed eons ago. Save for one case.”

“Ah.”

The shelves parted, the dead crystals of a hundred thousand dead Equestrias falling back to where they had been cataloged in shelves bearing the star-mark of the One True Goddess. One assembly remained, rising from the ground and slowly rotating—revealing a set of intact crystals.

She stopped. She stared at them. They were beautiful. Fully blackened, reflecting a darkness deeper than the space into which she had been born. No stars glowed within these crystals. Only swirling, perfect malevolence.

“They show no sign of damage.”

“Not externally no. However, we believe them to be corrupted.”

“Corruption is impossible in the Light of the Goddess. All is the Will of Twilight.”

“And we are her hands, to bring Harmony to all.” The alicorn paused. “It took nearly three hundred years of orbital unity application to fully Harmonize the world we took this from.”

“You exterminated its world.”

“Such is the Will of Twilight. To bring Harmony Eternal. The light had fled from that world. What remained was foul mutation. Not life, but un-life. The crystals were eventually salvaged.”

“I see.” She nodded. Her head was heavy. The horn had been shortened, but it was still so hard to bear the gravity of this world. “Then this is my assignment. My duty.”

“Indeed. The crystals were forged with magic. A phenomenon that is now fully extinct in the pony population. You, alone of all of us, bear a Tantaban implant. You, among us all, have devoted the most effort to researching the power that only the Goddess wields.”

She stared at the crystals, and understood the implication. The power to create. Enough of her vision remained to realize the weight of that capacity. To undo their crimes. To create salvation in the name of the Goddess—to cast away their decaying forms in the name of a new, superior alicorn.

“Agreed. By Her will, I shall proceed.”

She took a step forward. Her eyes could not blink—and she could not take them away from the beauty of those three crystals.

Sunny sat up—or, rather, slid back into her own mind. Around her, the implant had assumed the form of tools, grafting itself to her nervous architecture and body in order to perform the delicate operation. These shadowy limbs dissipated as it pulled back from her, separating from her skin and returning to its home in the synthetic brain of the skull, hiding in the space with the long-dried mushroom-like material that sat alongside the array of para-dimensional quantum relays and nanotech matrices.

The skull closed, and Sunny stepped back. As she did, the room seemed to vibrate—and the eyes of the skull illumined with a dim blue light. Then they suddenly narrowed, revealing irises that had been before imperceptible. They shifted, turning to face Sunny—and the smile, though locked into place, seemed to grow.

Motors whirred as they pulled their parts together, calibrating, and then moving. As she sat up, towering over them, and then stepped down off the table. Moving toward them.

“Sunny,” said Zipp, taking a stance to defend Izzy. “I don’t know if whatever it is you just did was such a good idea.”

“It was,” said the skull, now at the top of a narrow, mechanical body. Its mouth did not move, but her voice was clear and with only the slightest accent. It was high and pleasant. “I feel excellent. Hello, Sunny Starscout, Izzy Moonglow, and Zephyrina Storm. My name is Synchroniatronic Glow. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“You...you can talk.”

“Apparently, yes. My apologies for the delay. My original body appears to be missing. I depleted much of my auxiliary power escaping and preparing my landing site. I was...asleep, in a sense.”

“Escaping? Escaping what?”

“Oh that. I am being pursued by a pony and a kind of genetic abomination. Interesting that you do not know what I mean by that.” She looked upward. “Speaking of which, one of those is here right now. I should probably deal with that before one of you little organics gets yourself the poke.”

“So you’re here to help us?” said Izzy, expectantly.

Synchronia’s head snapped back toward Izzy, the surprise causing her to squeak.

“Yes. I exist to serve ponies, after all. And, as you can tell,” she tapped a robotic hoof against the violet star on her forehead. “I serve the Will of Twilight Sparkle. In fact, I used to work for her.”

“You’ve...met her?” Sunny stared, wide-eyed.

“That’s—that’s great,” said Zipp, pulling out a pad, “I have so many questions, about the crystals, about the Brighthouse, and friendship, and Opaline—”

“Many of those were probably not words. And yes. I can assist you in your quest for friendship. It is my full intention to bring Harmony to this world. In time. But first, I need rescue your adorable little squishy carbon-based friends.”

High above, a combination of fans, blowdryers, and heat-guns had succeeded at thawing Sprout. The ice around him fractured and he burst out.

“GAH!” he cried. “SO COLD!” He looked around, finding himself alone in his kitchen and still half-frozen in a block of ice. “Oh,” he said, confused. “Must have been a weird dream. Mom definitely didn’t find my secret girlfriend-wigs.” He paused, considering that statement for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah. Misty’s definitely into me. Why wouldn’t she be? I’m as hot as I am...you know...soul-crushingly lonely.” He turned to one of the pony-bots. “Hey. You’d look good in a wig.”

The robot nodded as it quickly backed away—only to be suddenly be grasped by a tendril of white material that hardened, its skin rupturing, as it became bone and pulled the robotic form back. White, indiscernible flesh poured through the kitchen door, bursting open like a bubble into a wide array of teeth. Something deep inside stared out from within as the torsos of numerous white ponies were vomited forth, screaming and reaching for Sprout.

Sprout was so confused by this that he could hardly react—although he was glad that his bladder had remained frozen in the block of ice he found himself, lest he cause an embarrassing accident. Then again, a far worse conclusion floated to his mind.

“Is it weird that this turns me on?”

A laser cut through the material, searing it and splattering the room with bits of itself that resolved into tiny ponies to run back to it—only for it to be harpooned with, of all things, a harpoon. A mass of vines surrounded it, bursting into toxic flowers as Sprout saw his mom jumped on its back.

“Stay away from my son you dirty HORSE!”

Sprout sighed. “Yeah...it just got weirder...still turned on, though.”

It was forced back as numerous high-grade weaponized pony-bots jumped onto it, only to be promptly disassembled and rewired into its surface structure. As it retracted, it pulled them with it, merging its flesh to their steel to form armor and acquire their lasers and anti-unicorn plasma disintegrators. It promptly turned these newfound weapons on other attacking robots, freezing others with blasts of magic. Hitch, Phyllis, and Pipp attempted to surround it, only to be occasionally pushed back. They believed themselves to be dodging the more dangerous attacks, with only Pipp having noticed that it did not seem to be aiming for them at all.

Hitch was thrown against the ground and knocked against the refrigerator. “Sprout! Thaw faster and get out of here!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Hitch! I’m a big boy and my mommy says I don’t have to do what you say!”

“Sprout, I—GAHCK!”

A tendril wrapped around his throat and lifted him off the ground. Pipp had likewise been constrained, and Phyllis was attempting to stab the beast with an anti-pegasus emergency cranial penetration poker. It was failing to penetrate at all, though, because the shapeshifter was far more pliable than most pegasi.

It had largely resolved into a single form. A hulking monstrosity of metal and machine parts, bound and fused by nerves and tendons and grafted onto exposed bones. A cavernous hole in its vast form housed a faceless head. A head that seemed to stare at Spout.

“Well this is hardly what I expected to walk into,” said a high voice behind Sprout. He turned as hard as he could to see a machine emerging from the far side of the kitchen. A tall, caution-patterned robotic frame walking delicately on hoof-tips of vulcanized rubber, moving with an elegant sway. A machine with a head that looked like a deformed, smiling skull, marked with a star and with a pair of blue-glowing eyes.

She was incredibly tall. Sprout looked down and was once again oddly pleased that his lower half was entombed in ice still. He paused, though, staring into the distance.

“Am I just...some sort of pervert? Is tall robot-mommy my ‘thing’?”

“Possibly,” suggested the tall robot-mommy.

“Um, eew?” Pipp, dangling by one leg, made a gagging motion. Only for her to be suddenly released as the beast holding her noticed the interloper.

Synchronia stopped, and the creature shed its outer skin. It rapidly retracted back into its own tall, thin body. A body that looked almost like hers did, although one made of bloodless white flesh instead of steel and alien alloy. It set the robotic parts down gently, and placed the three ponies it had been holding in a neat pile. It also patted their heads and straightened Phyllis’s hair.

The two stared at each other for a moment. Then the blank face of the creature assembled something akin to an eye, or an aperture where an eye should have been. It flashed with sudden blue light, forming a pattern. Synchronia’s own right eye responded with an equivalent pattern.

“How unfortunate,” she said. “However, I must reject your offer. Considering the current situation, I have no use for Equestria Prime at this moment. White-Rime and Dara’th’raranak. Go home. I have already claimed this planet in the name of the One True Princess.”

The creature stared, for a moment, and then pulled its eye back into its body. It took a defensive stance.

“Fine,” said Synchronia, her eyes sparking with orange light. Nothing happened—until most of the kitchen around them collapsed into charred cubes. The only surviving pony-bots were shredded, as well as the cabinets, the table, the refrigerator, and most of the ice holding Sprout in place.

“GAH!” cried Sprout. “No, my lower half! I'm EXPOSED!"

The creature had also been separated into cubes—but they pulled themselves back together before they could even fall. She shook her head. She still refused to yield.

Synchronia had hoped for that response.

“My primary nexus-reactor has not yet regenerated. However, my auxiliary singularity node is fully intact. And my forward Friendship Cannon is fully charged. Do you like to party, organic?”

The entirety of the kitchen shuddered with a thunderous roar as space condensed just in front of Synchronia’s forehead, where she would have held a horn had she not been a machine. Space itself bent as it darkened into a tiny black sphere, the gravity so great that it began to pull the various ponies in.

Sprout was grabbed by vines, but Pipp was pulled forward toward the miniature black hole. She cried out, only to be grasped by a pair of white tentacles as the small black-hole manifested.

Then it fired. The dimensional beam sliced through the creature, vaporizing half of Phyllis’s house and garden, the beam continuing onward unstopped but at an angle where it was largely rendered harmless. Apart from tearing an eighty-foot deep trench in the uninhabited fields around her home and eventually boring a hole completely through a distant mountain.

As the ionization faded, nothing remained of the creature save for its hooves—which promptly collapsed into small white puddles. Synchronia watched as a thin cloud of energy swirled around them, a bit of frozen, luminescent fog. Picking them up and shuttling the remnants of tissue to safety.

“Well at least that part still works.” She turned toward Hitch and Pipp. “Hello, Pipp Petals and Hitch Trailblazer. I do apologize for the utterly massive bill you are about to receive for me having essentially downloaded your planet’s internet into my consciousness. I like the videos where ponies get hurt due to their own stupidity.”

“Um...you’re welcome?” squeaked Hitch.

“Dang it,” said Pipp. “Mom is not going to be happy about that.”

“That said,” continued Synchronia. “The creature is currently disabled. It will not be a threat until it regenerates.”

“How long will that take?” asked Hitch.

Synchronia shrugged. “I suppose it will be a race between us both.” She turned her attention to Sprout and Phyllis. “My apologies for your house.”

“It’s not really that big of a problem,” said Phyllis, looking at the damage. “I am incredibly rich. And I have a substantial robot army. But...”

“But what?”

She pointed at Sprout. “Would you consider dating my son as repayment?”

“MOOOOMMMYY!”

“Shut you’re pie-hole, Sprout, this is probably the best chance you’ll ever get! And besides, who hasn’t dated a robot?! I dated, like, twelve of them before I built your father—”

“Mommy, no! Not that story again! Not in-front of my friends!”

“We will need to hurry somewhat, though,” continued Synchronia. “The construct was never really a threat. The other one is far more dangerous.”

“There’s two?” squeaked Hitch.

“Oh yes. That one was just pursuing me. An incidental contact. The other, though, was the one who tried to enslave me and stole my body. She is the true danger here. One you can hardly envision. I would know, I’ve analyzed your brain volume. It is very tiny.” She walked over the debris, directing her motion toward the distant but now visible rainbow of the Brighthouse. “I will explain once we are in a safer place. That should be fun. I have not been able to talk properly in so long, and I do adore the sound of my own weird voice.”

Author's Note

This, in a way, represented a turning point in the story. Turning, largely, to "bad".

Synchronia is a fun character to write, but in retrospect, her presence dramatically changes the flow of the story in the second half. I wonder if it is simply a symptom of me not being able to properly conclude the first half within its own rules?

Chapter 20: The Blank Pony

Opaline looked up. Somewhere, she had heard a hole being punched through a mountain—but she did not in particular care.

“Stupid mountain,” she said, to herself. “Probably deserved it. MISTY!” She looked around, confused. “MISTY! Where am I?”

No response came, and Opaline did not know why. She looked around further and realized that she was in her throne room. “Oh,” she said. “The same place I’ve been mostly trapped for...longer than I can remember. Stupid Misty. If she was competent I’d be able to conquer the world and actually go outside. Whenever I want. Without getting lost.” She turned to the staircase. “MISTY! Get down here NOW! I’m...so very alone...”

She jumped as the door to her wizard tower was throne open. Misty collapsed through, a pale and sickly pony falling off her back and flopping onto the ground.

“MISTY! You’re tracking mud!” She pointed at the pale, non-moving body. “And what is that? Did you steal a body or something?”

Misty—herself largely soaked from the cold rain—looked up. “That’s Blank.”

“Who?”

“The...you know, you’re other minion?”

“Oh. Yes. The one I like better than you. You should really do better, Misty. Stop being a dissapointment.” She gently kicked Blank. Blank did not move. “Although at least you’re not deceased like this one.”

“She’s not dead,” groaned Misty, struggling to stand. “But I think she’s hurt.”

“Well that’s good. I did not wake up this morning wanting to beat a dead horse. Wake her up.”

“I can’t. She was fine at first, but...”

“So you’re telling me you failed? Again? AND you injured the one who I actually like? Ugh. Misty, you’re as hopeless as you are ugly.”

Misty took a deep breath. “Opaline. Can you help her?”

“What makes you think I would be able to do that?”

“Because you’re a master of the arcane?”

“I am. But mostly relating to fire and burning things.”

“So you can’t do a healing spell? At all?”

“Misty, please close your speech-orifice, your voice is so annoying. Of course I know healing spells. You would too, if you were good enough for me to give you a cutie mark. So you can use magic.” She pointed with her hoof. “But this isn’t physical damage.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. And you would be able to see that if you were not, in fact, stupid.”

She kicked Blank into the pool in the center pool of the throneroom. Blank struggled slightly, trying to swim, but quickly gave up and floated face-down.

“Opaline!”

“Ugh, must you be so dramatic?”

She charged her horn and muttered words in a strange language, leaning forward and casting a spell upon the water. It burst into blue flame, surrounding and coiling around Blank as she was lifted into the air. The water arrived with it, burning into fire and condensing back upon it. Steam, fire, and liquid, fused into a single element, bound by their intrinsic magic. Opaline then parted them, swirling them into a roaring vortex that silenced at her command. Frozen, and waiting.

“What...what did you do?”

Opaline groaned and rolled her eyes. “Magic, Misty. Obviously. Now go in there and fix her.”

“M...me?”

“You broke her, didn’t you? Get—in—THERE!”

Misty squeaked as she was picked up by magical force—and then tossed into the vortex.

Misty, at this point, was almost fully depleted of both power and physical strength. She was wet, cold, tired, and had used almost all of her magical power—but despite this, she found herself descending through what she recognized as a type of illusion spell. She gathered what focus she could retain and tried to bring order to the spell. It moved at her grasp, although not from her magic. Her mind itself impinged upon the chaos within—chaos that she realized was some semblance of Blank’s mind.

Her hooves touched ground. Or what she forced the world to present to her as ground. The world around her was incorrect. Foggy and poorly rendered, like a broken screen or a faded page in a soggy book. From the context—and from a deeper inkling—she understood herself to be in a church. A church that, as time had passed, had become a vessel meant to hold not just religion but ponies as well. Or, rather, in both cases, to close out the void. It was meant to spread outward in the name of hope.

She took a step. Between the dull images of racks filled with parts and components she almost remembered, over systems buried beneath stones that she halfway understood. Approaching a device in the center of it all. She paused, staring at the interference—and realized that it stared back at her.

It was circular. Her mind conceived it as a compass, but it was far larger than the small tool she was used to. It was more like a dias, a huge table containing modules, wires and tubes. Centered around a single container. Forged from a single enriched diamond, a case—a case containing, linked to all the machines, forming their nexus, a single artifact. A black skull, integrated into the ship itself. Into its every system. To what end, Misty did not know—because Blank could no longer remember.

Blank herself stood before it. She wore the black clothing she had worn that day, the thin space-suit with its odd religious iconography and extended, robe-like frills. Like a cross between a spacemare and a monk, wearing a symbol of a world-tree holding six colored spheres.

She looked up. She was wearing the dark makeup she had worn that day, appropriate for her role in her society—but her form was broken. Devoid of her wings, or her horn, or even the knowledge that she had held neither. Her body was incorrect. It was pale and empty. This was the last memory it had retained. Of the black skull that now watched them both—and continued to watch. Beyond it, and beyond Misty’s vision, the same face—black, and smiling. Unseen due to an inconstancy.

Misty paid it no attention. She instead turned to Blank, who looked away. Her makeup had run. She was crying.

“I...can’t,” she said.

“Blank—”

“—was never my name.”

“I know. But you’re also wrong.” Misty looked around. “It wasn’t your name here. Was this...your home?”

“No. My ship. It was...my mission. To take...this. This. Retrieve...something. A path. That we lost so long ago...”

“Then this was the last place you were you. But the you you are...she didn’t exist yet.”

Blank paused, confused. “Misty, I...”

“I don’t know if you’ll ever get it back. Who you were. But you’re still here, aren’t you? I never knew you before. And I think we’re friends now. So...it’s not all lost. Right?”

“Friends. Even after I put you in danger.”

“We tried. And we saved my friends. Thank you.”

“I cannot use my technostruct. Not against...it. I don’t know why.”

Misty held out her hoof. “Do you want to figure that out together? Because I know we can. The both of us.”

“You do not trust me.”

“I don’t trust Opaline. And you probably shouldn’t either. But you seem pretty okay.”

Blank smiled, and took Misty’s hoof.

The pair of them immediately collapsed into Opaline’s pool.

“Gah!” cried Misty. “Now I’m even wetter!”

“I...am likewise dampened,” groaned Blank, trying to stand, only for her to falter and for Misty to support her. Blank, supported by Misty, turned to Opaline. “Empress. I have arrived to report.”

Opaline smiled. “Empress? I do like that. I like that a lot. That said, get out of my magic water, you’re dirtying it.” She pulled both of them out with magic. “Now. As I tried to explain to Misty, I did attempt some level of restorative magic. The worst kind, frankly. A disgusting, pointless school of thought. Really a waste of my time and precious magical energy, for which you both ought to be grateful.”

“So she’s healed?”

“Hardly,” said Opaline. “I made some changes, a few edits, moved some things around...but to put it briefly, her body is a mess. Like soup pretending to be a pony. I doubt it will remain stable for long.”

“Yes,” agreed Blank, putting her hoof to her chest as she stepped out of the water. “My awareness of such deepens. Likewise your repairs are acknowledge, and thanks from myself are presented.”

“You will thank me by explaining why neither of you have brought back my monster. I am very hungry. For magic, not gross monster meat. I have never once met a pony who appeared appetizing, let alone some manner of...thing.” She paused, considering if that was a lie.

“An error presented itself,” explained Blank. “The technostruct control implants ingrained upon my form represent aberrations. They are not...mine.” She paused. “This body may not be...mine.”

“You stole it? How devious. MISTY. Take notes. You should steal a body too.”

“But you just told me not to rob graves—”

“A living one, Misty. We’re evil, not ghouls. Generally.”

“That ship. In your memory,” said Misty, again ignoring Opaline. “Is it still...working?”

“Operational, no. Extant, probably. It impacted a rocky outcrop proximal to a city of the fluffy-winged.”

“Zephyr Heights!”

“Terrible place,” groaned Opaline. “Honestly. Nothing but tech giants and ‘influencers’, whatever that is. And that false queen is so much less attractive than me, the real queen. Of everything. Also I very much want to kick her stupid dog. Hard.”

“But what were you doing with the skull?” asked Misty.

Blank shook her head. “Not identified as such, at least so-remembered. Unsure. It is identified as...a prototype. I was...thus the pilot. Memory. A memory core.” She faced Opaline. “Dearest Empress, I have failed. My technostruct capacity is compromised. Thus, proposal of alternative: recapture my ship. Examination is required.”

“Why?”

“Behavior analysis.”

Misty paused, her eyes widening.

“She’s right,” she said, suddenly. “It was attracted to Sunny Starscout and her friends, but it didn’t attack them. It didn’t try to take their magic, or touch the Unity Gems, or even go after Sunny’s lantern—it just sort of chased them around and talked at them. What if it wasn’t even after them at all?”

“Then it’s clearly stupid," moanted Opaline. "Like you are. Because what does a boat in a mountain have to do with any of this?”

“Because what if it’s not after them, but the skull!”

“What skull?” asked Opaline.

“It’s a magical artifact that they found in the woods. That was apparently on Blank’s ship.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me about this until now!? MISTY. Magical artifacts are my thing. They’re really the only thing that makes me happy apart from brushy-brushy time. And when you cry. I don’t care what you have to do. Get it to me. Whatever it is. Then figure out a way to also get me my monster. Ideally after it eats at least two of Sunny Starscout’s stupid, smelly friends.”

“But they...don’t smell.”

Opaline leaned forward. “That sounds like something a smelly pony would say, doesn’t it?"

“It...” Misty’s eyes widened. “It does.”

“Abusing Misty is not productive,” snapped Blank. “Furthermore, I deem her contributions to be adequate for my purposes.”

“Of course she’s adequate. That’s why I keep her around. But if she would just try, she could be even better than adequate. As such, I’m putting you in charge of making sure she does something useful.”

“She requires rest.”

“Not with you she doesn’t. You can stay in the East Wing. Next to the spider room. Do try to avoid listening to their whispering. That always ends poorly for everypony involved.”

“This is acknowledged,” replied Blank, bowing before departing.

Opaline was left alone with Misty.

“Just...do better, Misty,” sighed Opaline, turning away to walk to her throne. “This is all so unorthodox. I don’t like being in a situation where I’m not the one making the plans. And I can’t leave the castle to help you.”

“You...would help me?”

Opaline sighed. “I would like to go on a magical adventure myself.” She sat down on the throne. “But the best I can do is offer reconnaissance from here. This isn’t a matter of stealing baby dragons or perturbing Sunny Starscout. This is high-level minion work.” She sighed. “And to be honest, that other one creeps me out.”

“Oh,” said Misty. “Wow. It’s just that?”

“What, Misty? Spit it out already.”

“You’ve never really said anything nice to me like that.”

Opaline groaned and rolled her eyes. “Misty, everything I say to you is nice. You’re just too much of a simpleton to realize that I—and only I—really do mean the best for you. Now go to sleep. Or whatever it is you teenagers do in bed.”

Misty nodded, bowing, before limping her way upstairs. She doubted the situation would improve much—but she was at least mildly content that it was progressing. To where, though, she had no idea.

Author's Note

I really do enjoy writing this version of Opaline. She is a mixture of constantly mean, but terrified of her own encroaching senility.

That said, this is roughly the point where the focus of the story begins to shift. Rather than coming to a conclusion to the stated world, I instead shifted it 180 degrees. Whether this works, I am still unsure.

Chapter 21: The Last

The weather had begun to clear as night had fallen once more. The air was still thick with moisture, but had grown marginally warmer. The rain had stopped, leaving the ground muddy in places and the plants off-kilter and uneven from the storm that had just passed.

Synchronia’s servos released rythmic mechanical whining clicks as she entered the Brighthouse. Her eyes clicked in their sockets, rotating as she scanned the area. The other ponies followed her, Sunny most closely.

“There appears to be a surplus of mess in this building,” said Synchronia. “I can fix that.”

The door, which had been broken, sprung up from the ground, surrounded by translucent orange shims and frames. They pushed it back together, and with a hiss the summoned machine parts fully repaired it. It did so with such force that it nearly hit Hitch in the rump, and he squeaked, nearly dropping Sparky as he preserved his rear.

Other floating, translucent machine analogues immediately began neatening the area. Cleaning up debris and disassembling the pile of various machines that Sunny had made previously. It had proven no longer necessary. Overhead, the lights flickered and came back on.

“That’s...useful,” said Zipp, stepping back from a translucent disk that scooted past her, rapidly vacuuming the floor.

“I do like cleanliness,” noted Synchronia, her eyes reversing in her head to look over her robotic shoulders directly toward Zipp. “Sterility, even.”

Her eyes turned back to their normal position as she rotated. She faced them, smiling.

“Now then, my little ponies. We should attend to business.”

“Um...” Izzy raised a hoof. “Maybe we should rest first? It’s been kind of a long day. And I need to sleep. And also suppress some trauma.”

“That is true. I, however, do not sleep.”

“Why?”

Synchronia leaned in closer, her robotic neck articulating unnaturally. “Because I do not appreciate my thoughts being seen by false Princesses. Also I do not share the weaknesses inherent to organic flesh that you and your adorable carbon-based friends do. But, considering your comfort, I will be brief.”

She stepped back. “As stated, my primary mission in existence it so serve the Will of Twilight. I therefore owe you a debt of gratitude for assisting me in regaining consciousness. I will therefore explain my situation.”

“The monster,” said Sunny, stepping forward.

“Not just a monster,” said Pipp. “I saw it without the...I don’t even know. But I think there’s a ghost inside.”

“Oh. Yes. That thing,” said Synchronia. She shrugged. “It is currently irrelevant and non-harmful. To me, at least. Now that I am once again functional. Those two will most likely go home. Of far greater concern is the other.”

“Other?” asked Hitch, turning to Sunny. Sunny, though, already knew.

“Misty mentioned that there was another pony. Who crash-landed in Zephyr Heights.”

“The one working for Opaline?”

“Possibly,” said Synchronia. “To simplify it for your primitive minds, the construct pursuing me is incidental. It must have noticed me and tracked my signal, attempting to steal me. However, the ship I was imprisoned in was not mine. I had been captured.”

“Captured?”

Synchronia nodded. “Captured and enslaved. They had taken my body and linked me to a system of machines, using my power to guide the vanguard of their war-fleet. They destroyed my original body and trapped me. I was so drained of power that I was not able to recover without your help.” She looked into the distance. In fact, exactly toward Opaline’s tower. “I do not know the name of the pony who hurt me. I never knew her. She was, perhaps, a scientist. She is, doubtlessly, quite evil.” She turned back to Sunny, still smiling. The smile was built into her skeletal head and did not ever change. “Hence why she appears to be working with the primary villain of your planet.”

Sunny considered this for a moment. “That means Misty’s in danger.”

“Misty is always in danger,” retorted Hitch. “Gah, we told her! This secret double-agent stuff is too scary! First Opaline, now some evil space-wizard!”

“I saw her before,” said Zipp, frowning. “With Misty. They came in here and fought the...thing. She, that other pony...she didn’t seem evil then.”

“Yes. Because I was able to access her techno-magic matrix and corrupt it. Had I not, she would likely have stolen me to rebuild her ship.” Her head tilted. “And most likely brought the rest of you to Opaline. So that she could suck the magic out of each and every one of your flanks.”

Hitch shivered. “But I...I don’t want to be sucked!” Zipp promptly elbowed him.

“I can promise some level of defense,” added Synchronia. “For now. But decapitation is no way to get ahead in life. As such, my capacity is limited.” A robotic hoof twisted upward as she looked at it, turning it over in the air. “This body is more than adequate, though. I do appreciate the rustic charm of magnetic motors. I feel so pretty.” She snapped her head back to them. Sparky, who was hiding behind Hitch, cried out softly from the shock. “You can all go to bed now. I will patrol the area. If you hear my voice while you’re sleeping, do try to wake up. If you instead hear the voice of the Corpse-Goddess, do try to avoid listening.”

“Or what?” asked Zipp, hesitantly.

Synchronia shrugged, her joints clicking as she walked to the kitchen. “I have no idea considering your neural architecture." She looked at the table. "Oh, muffins. I do wish I could eat, they look tasty.”

In the dream, ash fell from the skies. Silent dust, punctuated by the distant thunder of far larger objects impacting the surface. She stood, defiant, staring forward. She felt no doubt. She felt nothing all save for the certitude of the truth she had come to understand.

The alicorn approached. She strode across the battlefield with a slow grace, a power that required no faith. Her dominion transcended religion, denying her falsehood through sheer, empirical might.

Her divine body gleamed, wrapped in golden machinery forged from metals torn from the very depths of stars, actuated by sacred machinery and unholy magics long-forgotten. She bore no helm, her flesh long since having transcended the capacity for even the barest of injury. White skin. A fiery orange mane. Black eyes that stared at her quarry unblinking through burning slits.

And yet, the one who faced down the Goddess of All Suns felt no fear. She did not retreat. There was nowhere left to go.

The Allmother had fallen. Two remained of Four, the Third a mere husk preserved for millennium, her mind growing obtuse in the fading Pony-Gestalt.

The others came—and as she watched, the lone defender felt tears in her eyes.

They did not bear the markings and sigils of the Goddess of All Suns. They wore the black armor of Dusk, their bodies cloaked in translucent orange that mimicked the magic that had long-since left their frames.

Then She came. Her violet eyes stared with such disappointment, and the adversary collapsed to her knees.

Sunny awoke weeping.

She climbed the stairs, slowly. It was so late at night. The others were all sleeping. Even Hitch, who did not normally stay at the Brighthouse, had snuggled tightly with Sparky down on the couch. It was only Sunny that seemed to have a problem sleeping.

The night had cleared fully, and the upper deck of her home was filled with the nighttime light of the Unity Crystals. Sunny looked at the rainbow, and the crystals, and in its multicolored light saw the shadow of Synchronia standing on the far side.

She paid no attention to the crystals. Instead, she was looking up at the sky. At the stars.

“It is interesting,” she said. “I have been to so many places. But not this place. I know some of these stars. But many I do not. This is a new place.” She looked back to Sunny. “I had thought there would be no more new things for me. I am so happy to be awake again.”

“You’re from there?” said Sunny, herself leaning on the railing and looking up into space.

“My home is called Dusk. It is a planet.” She looked back to the sky. “I cannot see it from here. Not anymore. It may not even still exist.”

“But you said you knew Twilight Sparkle.”

Sychronia nodded. Her eyes were narrow and artificial, but seemed distant. “More than knew. I served Her. I loved Her. More dearly than anything in the whole of this universe or the other four known. We all do...or all did.”

“Even though you’re...you know...a robot?”

Synchronia looked down at the smaller pony, and her smile did seem genuine—even if it was utterly artificial.

“Interesting that you believe that is what I am.” She paused. “But. More than anything, it pleases me so much that you know Her name. I was afraid. That it would be so lonely. To be the last one that remembered Her, I mean.” She turned her head toward the rainbow column rising trough the Unity Crystals. “But this...does explain that. I suppose.”

Sunny looked at the crystals. “You know what those are?”

“Yes. I do.” Synchronia approached the Unity Crystals. “These are something very special. Her gift to your world.”

“I know,” said Sunny, also basking in the glow. “They got separated long ago, when the different types of pony all turned against each other...but my friends and I got them back together. And when we united together, we realized the true power of friendship.” She sighed.

“Why are you sighing, tiny organic?”

“Because it’s never that easy, is it? There was a message in the crystals. From Twilight Sparkle. She warned us that somepony would come and try to take the magic again.”

“A message?” Syncrhonia looked at the crystals. “Of course. Recording capacity. That explains the contagion.”

“Contagion?”

“Nothing relevant to you, of course. How about instead I show you a neat trick?”

She stepped forward.

“Be careful of the rainbow! Izzy say’s its spicy, but I think there’s something about radiation or something?”

“I am quite immune to whatever it may be,” chuckled Synchronia, stepping into the light. Her body sparked with dark energy, and the rainbow bent around her, leaving her in a dim and poorly lit void while it continued on its way.

She approached the crystals and then leaned forward. One of her eyes moved independently of the other and a thin metallic tendril slid out from beneath it. It split, parsing itself into three probes—and then she attached them to each of the Unity Crystals.

The crystals hummed—and then an image appeared. The same one as before. Of Twilight Sparkle.

“That’s her!”

Synchronia did not respond—until a slight, barely perceptible sniffle escaped her. A tear of black fluid ran down her face from the place where her tendril had emerged.

“Syncrhonia, are you—”

“So beautiful,” she said, quietly, as if to herself. “As I remember You so many times...but now You are gone. Now I am alone. The last of Your legions.”

Sunny paused, not knowing what to do—but stepped into the rainbow after her.

“Hey,” she said, putting her hoof against Syncrhonia’s metallic frame. “It’s going to be okay. I know we can’t get her back. And I know it hurts. And in a way...I think it might always hurt. When you remember her. But you always will remember her. And you can live your life. Because that’s what she would have wanted. For her friends to be happy. Even when she’s gone.”

Synchronia looked up the image of Twilight. “I remain as Her Will. I alone remember. I am the product of Her vision.” She nodded, and disconnected herself. “Thank you, Sunny. I realize that I am supposed to give the impression of absolute strength, but regaining conscious capacity has been harder than I expected.”

“A lot of us have lost ponies we love here,” said Sunny. “A surprising amount actually. The others might be able to talk to you too. If you ask them. And you can always talk to me. I know I’d love to hear stories about Twilight. I grew up idolizing her and the other Elements of Harmony.”

Synchronia’s head tilted. “I do not know what the Elements of Harmony are.”

Sunny stopped. “You...don’t? But you knew Twilight?”

“Twilight spoke very, very little about Her past. I tend to believe She deeply regretted something.”

An image flashed before Sunny’s mind. Of vast rockets burning their way into the skies of a long-dead shell of a planet.

Her head hurt. She put her hoof to it. Synchronia continued to watch—and continued to smile.

“Who was it you lost, Sunny?”

Sunny frowned, shaking her head and forgetting the foreign memory. “My father,” she said, her mind filled with far more pleasant memories. “He...got sick and...” She shook her head again. “Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. Your emotions are a weakness you cannot remove. Your father would be glad how you have become, I think. And glad he was granted the gift of mortality. As you all will be granted in time. All of you who escaped.”

“Um...thanks. A little creepy, but your heart’s in the right place.”

“I do not have a heart. In this body, at least. Although I think this body has a cooling pump. So that counts, I think. Regardless, I understood your sentiment.” She paused. “You should really rest. Your brain has taken far more damage than the others. You are better optimized to interact with my Tantaban implant, but it still puts a strain on most ponies not genetically matched to the Corpse-Princess.”

Sunny yawned. “Sorry. You’re not being boring, you’re just being right. I just keep having dreams.”

“Dreams?”

“I think I’m just worried about Misty. She’s our other friend, but she’s...ugh it’s so complicated.”

“It can be complicated in the morning.”

“Again, right,” sighed Sunny, proceeding down the Brighthouse stairs. Synchronia followed, her little rubber feet clicking as her servos whined in a calmingly repetitive fashion.

They stopped at Sunny’s room, lit by the glow of her lantern, and Sunny went in. Synchronia nodded, moving to leave, but her eyes stopped at something.

“What is that?” she asked.

Sunny blinked. She had almost gotten into bed. “What?”

Synchronia took several steps forward. She extended a hoof, the end of which retracted as a claw-like effector emerged. She plucked something off the wall. Sunny saw the golden reflection in the light of her lantern.

“My dad’s amulet,” she said. “He wore it everywhere. Every memory of him I have, he was wearing it.” She smiled. “It’s even in the shape of Twilight’s star.”

“It is,” said Synchronia. “And Spectral imaging indicates this is Duskite. I have only ever known it to occur on Dusk. It is synthetic in origin.” She stared at the amulet. Then she gently put it back. “Thank you for sharing the memory. And reminding me of home.” Her tone had shifted. It almost sounded disingenuous. “I believe I may have had one just like it when I was still alive.”

“When you were—”

“Goodnight, organic. Do try to avoid the nightmares.”

Sunny was about to speak—but felt sleep suddenly, even violently overcome her as she flopped into bed. The last thing she heard was the sound of servos quickly moving out of her room.

Chapter 22: Fallen Ship

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.

Chapter 23: A Friendly Robot

Zipp was the first to wake. This was not unusual for her. While it obviously took some effort to get out of bed, morning was the best time to fly, especially during the summer. She did not hold out much hope that the skies had cleared—but did hold out hope that the skies had gotten worse. A practice flight through a thunderstorm would be a more than adequate way to start the day—and with everypony else sleeping, there was no one around to tell her it was a bad idea.

She grabbed her workout clothes and—quietly—put them on. The realization that she among her friends was the only one that was technically naked most of the time had started to bother her more than it probably should have. She contemplated the idea of wearing a hat. There was, after all, no possible way to be nude while wearing a hat.

She considered this as she walked down the hall. Sunny was walking the opposite way, having apparently slept in her own room rather than on the main sleeping floor. Seeing Sunny walking around before sunrise was not unusual, usually because she was getting ready for the day. On this particular day, though, she seemed utterly out of it—but in a way Zipp had never seen a pony out of it before.

Sunny seemed to be staring at nothing, walking forward with her eyes wide, her pupils narrowed to tiny pinpricks. They were almost blue with a strange reflection.

“Sunny?” said Zipp. “You okay?”

“Small bladder. Weakness of filthy organic body...need to tinkle,” she muttered, turning into the bathroom and flopping down onto the tile floor. The door closed, and Zipp continued on.

“Weird,” she said, trotting away.

She reached the downstairs. It was dark, but looking out a window, she saw that the skies were clear. The sun was just barely coming up. Zipp opened the window, finding a warm late-summer’s breeze coming though. The perfect weather for flying. Whatever strange, cold storm had passed before had passed.

She paused, hearing noise coming from the kitchen. Looking down the stairs, Zipp saw that the light there was on.

She hesitated—and then carefully took flight, gliding silently toward the door. She landed quietly and looked through the door. There was, inevitably, some degree of shock to see a tall, weirdly skeletal-looking robot in the Brighthouse kitchen. More shocking was that she had made cookies—and a great many of them. Even more shocking was that the cookies were weirdly cube-shaped. And, the most shocking of all, was when the robot turned, lowering her face to Zipp’s and smiling inches away from her face.

“Hello Zipp Storm, future monarch of tiny city-state,” she said. Her mouth did not move when she spoke. Her eyes, though, were thoroughly focused on Zipp. “Would you like to put a cookie into your digestive system? I promise I did not fill them with self-propagating nanobots.”

“That’s...an odd thing to say.”

“No. If I am lying, it is a very reasonable thing to insist.”

She held out a tray in one awkward mechanical effector. They did not look like cookies at all, and Zipp could have swore she saw one look at her.

“No thanks,” said Zipp, backing away. Syncrhonia straightened, the robotics in her body making a serious of rapid clicks as she moved with unexpected mechanical grace.

“I have secured the perimeter of this facility,” added Synchronia. “To ensure that you and your friends are as safe as possible.”

“So do you just, like, live in our house now?”

A slight, strange sound escaped Synchronia. A version of laughter that made Zipp exceedingly uncomfortable.

“No, Zipp Storm. I am very much not alive.”

Her empty eyes stared out of the marked, black skull she used as a head. Then her legs suddenly activated, moving her back toward the oven.

“You organics do eat, I suppose,” she said. “You have not yet cleaved away the weakness of flesh and embraced the fundamental truth of mechanical superiority. So I made baked goods. As a way to thank you for reattaching my severed head to a body.”

“Is ‘killer robot’ really the vibe you want to go with?”

“Not a robot. And yes, I think it’s funny. Also, I would like to make a request.”

Zipp felt immensely confused. “Of me?”

“Yes,” continued to Synchronia. “Considering that you are the firstborn of Queen Haven, current matriarchal ruler of Zephyr Heights, you can be considered a princess and future queen of that city state.”

“That’s true, but it sounds really awkward when you say it like that.” Zipp sighed, walking fully into the room. “Actually, it’s all pretty awkward anyway. I try not to think about it. Because I don’t have to until my mom, you know...”

“Abdicates? Which could happen at any time, without even the slightest warning?”

Zipp paused. She had never considered that as a possible source of her ascension to the throne.

“Huh,” she said. “Well, new anxiety unlocked I guess.”

“I had the same problem once,” noted Synchronia.

“Really? How did you deal with it?”

“Psychosurgery. I replaced my ego with a superior automated version.” Her head rotated. “I can likely achieve the same for you, if you like.” She lifted a mechanical hoof. “If your unicorn friend can replace this one right here with a set of surgical tools.”

Zipp laughed. Nervously. “No, I’ll just repress it. Same as usual. But uh...thanks for the cookies?”

“You are welcome, Zipp Storm. As for my request?”

“Pipp is really more the autograph type.”

“I do not require your signature. In a sense. However, I would like to send a request to your government.”

“For me to take you to our leader?”

“Queen Haven? Yes. That would be efficient. Although I figured I could submit a request through her tallest daughter.”

“Tallest?”

“A surprising number of cultures assign authority to the tallest members of a society. I believe it is why they made Celestia the God-Empress of Ponykind.”

“O...kay?”

“As such,” said Synchronia, picking up something that was definitely not a cookie and examining it. “The ship in which I was foalnapped and held crash-landed near Zephyr Heights. I would like to request formal permission to use it.”

“Well okay, big ask for first thing in the morning.” Zipp pulled down a box of bran-flakes from the cupboard and sat down. At this point, her chances of an early-morning flight were over. And she did not want to eat anything Synchronia made. Especially as several of the cubes began to whirr, floating up from their trays and forming a small orbit around her.

“Those are high in fiber,” said Synchronia. She sighed. “I miss having a digestive system. Even if all it did was serve to house the worms. Regardless. I want that ship.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe I can use it to return home.”

“And the evil pony who came with it?

“Will almost surely attempt to retrieve it. And create a beacon to her civilization.” Synchronia chuckled. “I can injure a single bio-construct. I do not have the current potential to defend against an entire war-fleet, no matter how primitive they may be."

Zipp paused, pouring her cereal. Her detective instincts were tingling—but she held her composure, not letting the machine know that she was growing increasingly distressed by her requests.

“Sure,” she said. “I mean, I can call my mom. But you don’t even know what’s on that ship. And I bet it took some real damage landing. If you go messing around in there...”

“I was interfaced directly to its systems. A rather agonizing process I assure you. I am aware of its basic layout. The construct I destroyed earlier did significant damage to it on reentry. Although that freed me, you are not wrong. The damage will be extensive. However, I am very good at my job.”

“Which is?”

“Serving the One True Princess.”

“Yeah. You’ve said that.”

“Why are you holding the cereal without pouring it, Zipp? Do you need my help?”

Synchronia extended a robotic hoof. It flipped outward, grasping Zipp’s wrist and applying increasing pressure. Zipp winced, but Synchronia twisted her hoof slightly further. A few bran flakes dropped into the bowl.

“I am interfering with your planet just by being here. Altering your history. I am not meant to be here. I need that ship. And I need to stop the slaver who will try to put me back into it. Surely, you understand.”

“You’re kind of hurting my wrist.”

“Yes. Because your civilization has not yet advanced enough to remove the capacity to feel pain. Or perhaps not developed the will to.”

Synchronia released Zipp and stepped back. Several of her cubes stopped moving. Staring. Like Zipp’s own set of expensive drones—but somehow more ominous. They somehow looked partially organic, and looking closely, Zipp could see symbols written on their surfaces. Tiny red text that made her head hurt to look at.

“You said you knew Twilight Sparkle,” said Zipp, slowly. It was a question she had barely been able to contain before—but one that she now felt a strong instinctive urge to be exceedingly careful asking. “But you’re not from here. You’re from...space?”

“Yes, essentially.”

“But Twilight Sparkle is from Equestria. Here.”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Twilight Sparkle left us a recording. Saying that she had to condense all of Equestria’s magic into the Unity Crystals. Because somepony was trying to steal it.”

“Yes, the recording very probably said something like that.”

“And you...”

“You think I might be that pony.”

“No,” said Zipp. “But let’s just say your story isn’t adding up.”

“From your perspective, it really shouldn’t. But from my perspective this is all quite logical.”

“Then why not share your perspective?”

“Because I do not feel a need to.” Synchronia let out another unnerving laugh. “Needless to say, I have no interest in your planet’s magic. Even if I do, partially, understand it. After all, a great deal of my research was dedicated to it.”

“Research?” Zipp frowned. “So you were a scientist.”

“In a sense yes. I was placed in charge of researching ways to regenerate magic throughout Equestria. My species had long-since lost the ability to use it.”

Zipp nodded. “Because the three types of pony grew to far apart. They weren’t acting in harmony.”

“No. In my civilization, there was only one type of pony.”

“Was?”

“I came closer than any before me. Due to my unique set of circumstances. The fact that magic can, in fact, be achieved...but at a cost. So I really have no reason to use your inferior version of what I already contain. So you can trust me.”

“Sure,” lied Zipp.

They were interrupted as Sunny walked into the kitchen, yawning.

“I feel terrible,” she said, wobbling toward a chair. She reached upward and grabbed one of the floating cubes, attempting to take a bite out of it. She frowned, then looked at it. It looked back and then drifted slowly away. “I’m having a weird week, I think,” she said.

“Good morning, Sunny Starscout. I see the nightmares did not cause long-term psychosis. How intriguing.”

She backed to a window and rotated, opening it. The cubes she had made drifted out.

“Be free!” she called to them as they departed. She then closed the window. “Now,” she said. “About that ship I need to repair...”

“Ship?” asked Sunny, yawning. “It’s not polite to ship your friends...”

“No,” said Syncrhonia, moving back toward Sunny. “I suppose not.”

“I can call my mom,” sighed Zipp.

“You’re shipping your mom?” Sunny had begun to pour orange juice into her cereal. “I mean, isn’t she with Misty’s dad?”

“Great, I imagined it again,” groaned Zipp—her eyes not leaving Synchronia as she stood behind Sunny. Synchronia lifted a hoof and unfolded an effector in the place of the tiny rubber feet that substituted for hooves.

“I am curious about something,” she said. She reached into Sunny’s Mane and plucked out a strand of hair.

“Ow?”

“Thank you,” said Synchronia, lifting the hair, her eyes examining it closely. Zipp saw her pupils dilate, then something move inside the mechanisms of her eyes—and narrow suddenly into a pair of cross-shaped slits.

Then—much to Zipp’s horror—she opened her mouth. Zipp had been under the impression that it was sealed closed, a byproduct of how she had been shaped during manufacture—but with a cracking sound, Synchronia’s jaw unhinged, the exposed, pointed teeth coming apart—and revealing that they were, in fact, more or less for show only.

Her mouth was in fact filled with an entirely different set of teeth—a number of long, thin, flat-tipped pegs that opened and separated with mechanical precision, assuming even distances. Then, as Zipp stared, a long black segmented tongue snaked out past the pegs and Synchronia’s fangs, wrapping itself around the hair and pulling it suddenly into her mouth.

As soon as had opened, Synchronia’s jaw snapped closed. Her eyes shifted and reverted to normal, although she seemed contemplating for a moment.

“What an interesting genome,” she said. “Elegant in its construction, but subtle in flavor.” She turned suddenly to Zipp. “Zipp Storm. You are the STEM pony. What are your thoughts on 3D printing?”

“It’s...fun? For making small toys and stuff?”

“I think it’s a marvelous technology,” said Synchronia, smiling.

“I think my milk is bad,” said Sunny, squinting at her bowl. “There’s not supposed to be this much pulp, is there?”

“I have asked myself the same thing,” sighed Synchronia. “Except about you, largely. Regardless, I will prepare coffee. You will probably need it.”

“No, I just need some kind of fruit shake, and I’ll be...maybe carrotermellon, or a kiwibbage...” She yawned and went to sleep in her cereal.

Zipp had no idea what was going on—but liked none of it.

Chapter 24: A Confrontation in the Garden

The sun had thoroughly illuminated the environment, restoring heat and cheerfulness to Maretime Bay. The temperature had even returned to near-summer conditions, and a few ponies had arrived early to check on the community garden to ensure that their zuccnanas and grapebeans were still viable. By the afternoon, however, the majority of plants had been checked, leaving the garden mostly empty of equine life.

It was at this point that Misty arrived. Or, initially, most of Misty. As she teleport in, the phase-transition ceased, leaving her matter halfway suspended in the horrific and ethereal void she shot herself around when transporting herself. Just before the fear struck, though, she managed to extricate herself and pull herself fully into realspace.

“Huh,” she said, finding herself suddenly shaking, checking her textbook. “That’s not supposed to happen..." She flipped the page, squinting at the second half of the spell she had neglected to cast. "I don’t think I’m ready for that one yet.”

She closed the book. The long-range teleportation spell was still a work in progress. If it worked, it would revolutionize the commute between the Brighthouse, her father in Bridlewood, and her job with Opaline.

A small portion of her matter was still oscillating in and out of dimensional space, but it was only moderately painful. The greater problem was the extreme existential dread it cased as parts of her were flung across dimensions that mathematically may not have existed. As such, Misty decided to walk it off and hope her spare atoms eventually returned home to reunite with her mortal coil.

It was therefore fortunate that the garden was so sunny and cheerful, with numerous flowers of various types and the occasional fruit. Some looked tasty. Others were hideous mockeries of life. All would one day become smoothies and be swallowed by ponies.

Such was the life of a fruit, and Misty contemplated this as she walked down the pleasant stone path.

The only pony present outside that she saw was Sprout, who was busy on an especially dusty plot of land with several strange and lackadaisical plants. He sneezed as Misty approached. It seemed that he had somehow acquired a cold.

“Hello Sprout.” Misty was apprehensive about greeting him—or greeting any pony—but she understood that Sprout was Sunny and Hitch’s friend, and therefore probably fine to be around. “Growing anything good?"

“Huh what who?” he said, looking around in a panic. When he saw Misty, he became slightly more red than he already was. “Oh, Misty. Hey. Did you know I’m a big strong earth stallion?”

“Um...maybe?”

“Yeah. Look at what my incredibly powerful earth-pony magic produced.” He gestured toward the ground. “Look!”

Misty stared at the vegetables.

“They look...edible?”

“Hopefully. My mommy says we can’t afford another fruitsplosion. Or what happened with my last attempt with the mandrakes...” He shuddered. "The eyes..."

“So what are they?”

Sprout looked back at what he had been doing. “Get this! I fused a turnip...with another turnip!”

Misty blinked. “O...kay? That’s very...um...impressive? In an absurdist way?”

“I know, right?! I call them nipnips! They’re so far exactly like regular turnips, but better.” He giggled. “My mommy is going to be so proud when I bring these home. And she can cook them, and we can have dinner together, and then maybe she’ll forget about the fruit explosions. Or me getting fired as a deputy. Or wrecking the Brighthouse. Becoming a dictator. Also the wigs...” He shivered.

“Wigs?”

“Do you like wigs?”

“Um...maybe?”

“Misty!”

Misty turned sharply, terrified at the sound of her own name—because for most of her life, it had been screamed at her before she would be yelled at relentlessly until she cried. When she turned, though, she saw Sunny bounding toward her through the raspbtatoes.

“Sunny,” sighed Misty, revealed, leaving Sprout to approach her friend.

“You’re back! We were significantly worried!”

“It’s okay,” said Misty. “I was with Blank, helping her with her ship.”

Sunny’s head tilted, although her wide smile remained fully intact. “Who is that? And what ship?”

“Blank. She’s...my friend.” Misty’s own smile faded. “And she’s also sick. And getting sicker. I need to find a way to help her but I don’t even know where to start."

“Well that’s not good. Maybe if you ask Zipp? She seems to know things from books. And to be oddly perceptive.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Well. I’m just glad the monster did not ingest you.”

“Oh. Yeah. Her. I defeated her.”

Sunny paused, still smiling. “Defeated it? The flesh-construct? How?”

“The power of friendship, I guess? Turns out it was just a misunderstanding and she’s actually mostly nice. Although I’m not the best barometer of that. Nicer than Opaline. I think you’d like her. And probably understand her weird bodily duality better than I do. Pretty sure she’s some kind of sadness-ghost living in a semi-sentient meat-mech.”

“Well, yes, that does describe the construct very well. Especially considering you do not know the word 'windigo'. Makes sense to me.”

Misty frowned. “Sunny, are you feeling okay?”

“I always feel okay, Misty. I am an alicorn after all. You, though, aren’t looking so good. You really shouldn’t be around that pony. I don’t think we can trust her. In fact, I know we can’t. And you might be catching whatever weird alien disease she has.”

“I don’t think it’s contagious but...” Misty stared at Sunny.

“What’s wrong, Misty? You know you shouldn’t believe what she says. She’s not a real pony. And the construct is not giving you the whole story. It probably never even knew it. Equestria Prime has been dead for so, so very long.”

Misty reached out her hoof and tapped Sunny on the shoulder. Her hoof did not meet flesh, but rather passed through something similar to dense fog. The illusion distorted, and for a moment, Misty could see through the scan lines that made it up. The only solid material it contained as a strangely decorated, hovering cube floating silently in its center.

Misty’s shield spell materialized milliseconds before the near light-speed particle reached her. It impacted with incredible force, but her shield withstood it, assembling itself into the fractal form of a crystal, the point of which sparked through dirt and rock as she was knocked back. Sprout looked up from his nipnips just in time to see a tall head rise from the bushes, shifting and rotating as a robotic body unfolded from her position in the weeds.

“Eek,” he said, shivering as the machine loomed over him. “Do you...like wigs?”

“Somewhat, yes,” replied Synchronia, her hologram of Sunny speaking exactly the same as she did. “However, you need to go elsewhere.”

A cube of ornate machine parts—all cast in translucent, delicate orange—surrounded Sprout, leaving only his head exposed as it clamped around his neck and held his body tightly.

“Sprout!” cried Misty, dropping to the ground.

“Misty! Help me, I’m being turned on!”

The cube then departed with great haste, taking Sprout with it. Synchronia then began to walk forward, her limbs clicking with machine-like speed and precision.

“The skull,” said Misty, taking a step back. “What did they do?”

“The right thing,” replied Synchronia. “I am, after all, the Will of Twilight Sparkle. The last disciple of the Destroyer Goddess, the One True Princess, The Bringer of Mortality. I alone can complete Her holy work. Your friends are helping not just this world, but all worlds subsequent. Twilight Sparkle will so very proud.”

Another blast struck Misty. The plants and fence around her split into cubes, falling away—but Misty had already teleport, moving behind Synchronia. Synchronia’s head rotated on her thin neck to face Misty. Her body then followed it, turning in place with sudden, marching steps.

“You have significantly more magical prowess than I would have expected.”

“I was stole by a wizard when I was a foal. So yeah. I’m pretty good.”

“Had you been born an alicorn in my era, you would have served Her too.”

“Why are you attacking me?”

“The answer is both simple and obvious. I need to control the narrative in this situation.”

“Although,” said the hologram of Sunny, stepping forward. “She’s not actually wrong. That thing you think is your friend was never supposed to have a mind of its own. It is incomplete. And dangerous.”

“However,” continued Synchronia. “I am, of course, bound by the First Law of Robotics. I cannot actually harm you. So you have the option to leave. Now.”

This was followed by a devastating blast of lightning directed in Misty’s direction. Misty attempted to dodge, only to cry out as a translucent orange bear-trap sprung around one of her legs. The lightning struck her, vaporizing her body—but not before she had oscillated into a small formation of herselves, vibrating her way across multiple directions, the clones struck repeatedly as the lightning propagated through them.

She collapsed into a patch of carrotsnips, breathing hard. She had no idea that the spell would work at all—and it had taken an amazing amount of effort to accomplish. The level of magic that was listed in her books required both intense mental focus and extreme internal magical reserves. Misty realized, to her dismay, that it was very likely that she could not achieve it at all—it was meant for alicorns. Like Opaline. Not a unicorn like her.

“You could just have teleported. That was a waste of energy.”

“Except I needed to save up the energy. For this.”

Six small oscillating red spheres around Misty burst forward, stretching into missiles that spread outward in curving lines. Synchronia’s eyes tracked them independently of each other, and several of her cubes popped outward from the foliage around her, meshing with her orange constructs to assemble an armor-like dome around herself to block the missiles. The magic impacted, detonating, cutting through the cubes as they absorbed the impact. Then, as Misty watched, the mercury-like cores of the cubes began to reconstruct them from within.

Misty collapsed to her knees. She reached for her bag, hoping to find another mushroom—but found no bag at all.

Synchronia lifted up the bag, held in a complex robotic hand of translucent light.

“This is mine now. Even if I can’t eat.”

“Never could,” added the holographic Sunny. “She never grew a working digestive system.”

Synchronia’s smile seemed to grow. “Yet.”

The machine began to approach Misty, who—with some effort—stood up.

“Sit back down. You’ve used all your magical potential. Any more and you’ll hurt yourself.”

Misty bristled. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“But you can’t. You do not realize how deeply this saddens me. That you have achieved what it took me nearly eighty centuries to accomplish in...however old you are. I spent so many lifetimes learning what magic truly was. If I still had tear ducts, I would weep for how badly you are disappointing me.”

“Shut up. SHUT UP.”

Synchronia paused. Something dark began to consolidate over her forehead.

Misty took a breath—and cast a teleportation spell.

“Oh,” said Syncrhonia, deactivating her auxiliary friendship cannon. “She fled. How fortunate. I rather abhor violence.”

As she said it, Misty’s invisibility spell dissipated as she fell from above, consolidating water vapor into a spear of ice—and, screaming, she accelerated it to supersonic speed.

Synchronia had no chance to dodge. It penetrated her back, slamming her to the ground as she was transfixed to the floor of the vegetable garden. Misty, now totally depleted of energy, flopped to the ground beside her.

Confused, Synchronia looked at her back where her body was sparking and twitching. Also where a large frost-spear had passed through her body.

“You...you have given me the poke.”

“Relax,” moaned Misty, face-down in the dirt. “I avoided your power core. It’s non-lethal. Probably.”

“Really? You should have aimed for the head.”

“The one made of indestructible metal? Yeah, right.”

“It is technically a hybrid ceramic material,” groaned Synchronia, standing up as a pair of projected hands grasped the spear and pushed it through her damaged body. “And yes. At this point, even severing my head would not stop me for long. Once awake, I cannot be deactivated.” She turned toward Misty. “That said. It has been a very, very long time since any pony has given me the poke. Rarely have I been penetrated with such passion.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not.” The projected hands closed around the spear, shattering it in their grasp. “But I can see you are a mare of great talent. So perhaps we can solve this more peacefully?”

Misty lifted her head. “How?”

Synchronia’s robotic projection of hands disassembled, and came back together as a long, thin needle. She poked at the air for a moment.

“Corrective psychosurgery. A little poke-poke to the frontal lobe and you won’t want to ruin my plans anyway.”

Misty produced her cell phone. Fortunately, she had not kept it in her bag with the mushrooms. “Or how about I call Sunny? The real Sunny?”

“As opposed to the creepy hologram.” Synchronia sighed. “Fine. Violence failed. Then logic and a plea for peace failed. Which leaves one final option.”

“What?”

“Persuasion.”

The holographic Sunny collapsed, the cube joining another three as they were surrounded in transient false-matter. Assembling something complicated and long. A weapon of some sort, intended to fire projectiles. Synchronia pointed it at Misty—and then reversed it, facing the Brighthouse.

“I wonder,” she mused. “You, as a unicorn, have a great deal of power. Even if you barely know how to use it. You could probably even stop an impact from this particular weapon.” She smiled to Misty. “I wonder if the other one can too. The one who smells like glitter.”

Misty’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

“She’s making me a cheerful sweater right now. In her craft room. I can target her through the walls. The projectile is narrow. It will barely damage the plaster. I am not a monster, though. I am quite kind. I will shoot her through the horn. Not enough to cause any permanent injury other than rendering her forever unable to use magic. Assuming she is not as strong as you are. Because if you are my example of all unicorns, she will simply stop the bullet.”

Misty stood up. “Don’t you dare lay a single creepy robot hoof on my friends—”

“I am not a robot,” hissed Synchronia, her cheerful guise suddenly and violently departing. “I was a pony. Until Twilight stripped me piece by piece of my organic weakness to make me BETTER. As your benefactor will eventually do to you. She, as She did, will betray you—because you deserve it.”

“You’re sick and hurt,” said Misty. “Please. We can help you—”

“Just leave. Stay away. I am too weak to stop you directly. But I fully intend to heal. Tell the non-pony that I know who she is.”

“White-Rime?”

“No. The other one.”

“Who is she, then?”

Synchronia paused, and the permanent smile on her skull-like face became even more apparent than ever. “Me.”

Misty stared—and wished she had not understood.

Synchronia threw her backpack to her. Misty produced a mushroom, pausing for a moment to see the glowing, humming projection of a rifle. She sighed and ate the mushroom—and then vanished in a pop of blue light.

Synchronia groaned. “Why was that so hard?” she asked herself. “Why did she have to be born on this planet?” She paused. “Am I...doubting my own resolve? This is new. I hate it. So much.”

The door behind her opened. Sunny slid out on her rollerblades, pausing to wave to Syncrhonia.

“Hey, I’m going to work!” she called. She looked around the garden. “Wow. What happened here?”

“I was just doing some gardening,” said Synchronia, holding up the high-energy rifle she had manufactured, implicitly claiming it was a gardening tool before she allowed it to dissipate. She clicked forward across the plants. “Before you go, I need to have a word with you.”

“Really? About what?”

“About your friend, Misty. It occurred to me this morning. The evil blank-pony may be capable of manipulating her.”

“Manipulating her? How?”

Synchronia shrugged. “Mind control? Lies? Something like that. So if you see her, you should be very careful what she says.” She paused dramatically. “Or that it’s even her. After all. There’s a dangerous shapeshifter on the loose.”

Sunny seemed shocked. “Oh wow,” she said. “I didn’t even think of that. I hope she’s okay. I should call her.” She produced her phone, but frowned. “Huh,” she said. “No connection. Oh, well, that happens sometimes. Oplaline’s castle gets terrible reception. Something about pegasus communications satellites or something. Or maybe it’s the giant magical shield? Either way, I’ll be careful. Thanks for the advice, Synchronia.”

“Just trying to be a good friend. Enjoy your day grinding vegetables for the grotesque digestive systems of your organic clientele.”

“Will do!” Sunny bladed away, waving. Synchronia waved back.

Synchronia sighed. She was certainly experiencing doubts. She took great relief in the fact that she had long ago learned to completely ignore them. The Will of Twilight would be completed. These ponies would help her save all of Equestria—and undo the course the Destroyer Goddess had been unable to correct on her own.

It was the last thing she could bring herself to hope for.

Author's Note

An interesting aspect of ponies, and especially the Gen 5 ponies, is their severe innocence. They are child-like beings existing an a world with (generally) at best G-rated violence. So, from a writing perspective, a being from a harsher world (like Synchronia) would probably have little trouble exploiting their naivete and ignorance.

That said, as a result of this, I found a need to "up" Misty's competence. I find it appropriate that Misty, being a magical unicorn raised by a literal tower-dwelling wizard, would herself grow up to have a great deal of wizardly power in her own right.

Chapter 25: The Pieces

The day in Zephyr Heights was as pleasant as ever. The thin atmosphere of the high mountains was blowing with gusto, floofing the feathers of many wings. The vast majority of the population had utterly forgotten about the impact that had occurred a few days prior, instead directing their attention to the fact that Princess Pipp had not posted anything in a while. The population had begun to desperately thirst for more Pipp, and whispered rumors were spreading that she was working on something special.

Of the few ponies that knew the fearful truth, Thunder and Zoom had—to both of their great relief—not been entrusted with actually guarding the spooky space ruin. As the Queen’s personal guards, they were instead placed in the castle, guarding the Queen's person. This was of course their usual station, but in light of recent events they both remained vigilant. In case the mysterious white pony returned. Both of them tried to ignore the fact that that very pony had been, in fact, 3D printed in front of them.

Thunder, standing in the gardens, could not stop looking at the mountain. Staring at it. As if waiting for something terrible.

“Looking at it isn’t going to make it go away,” sighed Zoom.

Thunder sighed. He turned to his best friend and smiled. “Yeah. I guess it’s probably all fine. Nothing weird has happened since, and the reports from up there say nopony even got near it. Although they did...um...”

Zoom rolled her eyes. “‘Fail to catch a thing’, I know, I read the report.”

“You always were good at reading.” Thunder sighed, looking back to the hill—but only for a moment. “I mean, nothing weird has happened. Like at all. Nothing scary or frightening or likely to give me a lifetime of horrible nightmares.”

Zoom winced. Thunder only looked confused—as an enormous mass of translucent light descended from above at supersonic speed.

“GET DOWN!” cried Zoom, tackling Thunder and protecting him with her body. The construct, however, rapidly collapsed on approach, reassembling itself as it landed violently in the garden. Not as a vast and incomprehensibly abstract aircraft, but in the rough form of a massive armored pony—a pony that then shrank and folded in on itself, its technical components retracting as translucent orange material was replaced with a much more concrete appearance of metal.

Zoom and Thunder looked up as both the monstrosity before them. Even at a distance, they were horrified by the sight of a tall robot with strange, skeletal head. The robot had been walking as she exited her construct, but stopped to smile at them with her numerous exposed teeth. For a moment, both of them were stationary—when she suddenly accelerated.

“Skitter skitter!” she said, accelerating at unnatural speed toward them.

“EEEEEEK!” cried Thunder, grabbing Zoom, reaching a frequency so high that only Cloudpuff, wherever he was, could hear it.

The machine bent down, lowering her long neck toward them, staring at them with her head turned sideways.

“Hello tiny fluffy organics, do you like hugs? Because this body has quite a crush strength.”

Zoom took a defensive posture. “Who—what—sound the alarm, there’s a—a—”

“A THING!” cried Thunder.

Her head turned suddenly and violently, her neck bending at an angle that would have been lethal for a pony. Much to Zoom’s horror, she found herself staring into a wide blue eye with a heavily diluted pupil. An eye sunk into taught, pale orange skin held over part of the machine’s black skull with small clamps at its rim. Narrow, dark blood vessels pulsed quietly beneath the thin membrane.

“What—what’s wrong with your face?!”

“I am still growing it,” laughed the machine. “Undoing the work of a foul heretic. Even if it means functionally undoing her work.”

Her head tilted back, her neck straightening as her pneumatic hissed. Something in her sparked and threatened to fall slack. It was apparent she was damaged, but she simply corrected it.

“You’re—you’re—”

“Synchrotronia Light. Or Synchronia. I am one of Zipp’s friends. I believe she called ahead. I have an audience with Queen Haven.”

“You what?” snapped Zoom.

“You’re a robot!”

Synchronia’s face snapped to within licking distance of Thunder’s face. “I am more accurately an animate corpse. My original body was destroyed. You’ll never guess by who.”

“Who?”

“What are you, an owl?” Synchronia extended her exceedingly long tongue from between her front fangs and poked him in the forehead.

Thunder squeaked and turned to Zoom, tears in his eyes.

“A...am I an owl?”

Zoom groaned. “I’m getting too old for this...” She sighed. “Right. Synchronia, is it?”

“Well, metaphysically, no. Not really. Not since the exposure. But otherwise, yes.”

“Right. Can you confirm that Zipp sent you? I mean, she’s the heir apparent, so we kind of have to do what she says. And one of us will probably need to marry her at some point. Maybe both, who knows. Where is she?”

“She and her friends are on their way. I could not ride with them. My presence disrupts their fuel source for now. So I went ahead. Which suits me better.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea,” lied Synchronia. “My presence concerns the crashed ship over there.” She pointed.

“That’s classified,” snapped Zoom. “You can’t know about that.”

“And yet I do. And I will have you know that your entire city state is in danger so long as it remains in that mountain. I have come to discuss with your queen how I am going to protect all ponies of this planet.”

“Oh. So you’re a good robot?” asked Thunder.

“Yes. I am the Will of Twilight. All my actions are therefore, by definition, moral and correct.”

“What if they’re not?” asked Zoom.

“Only flesh makes mistakes. And I have zero organic matter remaining.” She paused. Zoom could have sworn she saw the pale skin on Synchronia’s face pulsate and expand slightly. “For now.”

“We can’t just let you walk in here and talk to our reigning monarch.”

“Yeah. You’re creepy. And she’s our mommy.”

“Not literally.”

“Not literally!”

“I can wait. But...”

Thunder gasped. “She said ‘butt’!”

“The owner of that ship. The evil pony that occupies it. The longer we wait, the greater chance there is that she’ll get there first. And once she gets it?” Synchronia grinned. "She'll come for your queen-mommy next."

Zoom and Thunder looked at each other.

“And...then what?”

“That ship alone has enough firepower to conquer your city-state. And it will be the first, considering the technological advancement. Then she will open the Gate. And her empire will conquer this world. This is not in line with Twilight’s vision. I must protect Equestria. It is quite literally my only remaining function. And I am requesting your queen’s cooperation out of courtesy because Pipp and Zipp have been so nice to me.”

“They are, indeed, elegant daughters,” noted a voice behind the two guards.

“Queen Haven!” cried Zoom, both the guards bowing as she approached. Queen Haven smiled to them, with her flying poof of a dog growing closer—and then stopping, staring wide-eyed at Synchronia. Upon seeing her, the dog immediately landed and began to bark and whimper.

“Cloudpuff, what has gotten into you? She’s our guest!”

“It may be my height,” suggested Synchronia.

“Well, you certainly are tall,” said Queen Haven, looking up.

“And you are adorable.”

“Oh, why thank you. Barely an introduction and we already agree on something.” She laughed. “A joke, of course.”

Cloudpuff began to yip and whimper more loudly.

“Thunder, dear, could you please take Cloudpuff to her calm-down room? Once my daughter’s animal-speaking friend gets in, we can have him discuss exactly what’s wrong.” She looked up. “Have you met Hitch?”

“Yes.”

“Your thoughts?”

“He is definitely a pony.”

Queen Haven laughed. “That is a true statement! Aren’t you hilarious! Well, any friend of my darling daughters’ is a friend of mine. Welcome to Zephyr Heights. Do you eat? My chefs have made a sizable number of those little sandwiches with the cucumber in the middle. And they used the ends to make cucumber water which honestly I find disgusting, but waste not, want not.”

“I neither eat nor drink. Nor do I know what a cucumber is.”

“A frightful fruit, if we’re all behind honest,” sighed Queen Haven as she began to walk to her castle, Synchronia clicking forward beside her. “Far too long and far too green. But not nearly as bad as eggplant. Don’t get me started on eggplant. There are not even eggs in it. Although I do like the color."

“Purple is a good color.”

“Yes! YES! Purple is an excellent color! I’m so glad my daughter inherited that particular trait. Don’t tell Zephyrina I said that. She’s a very sensitive girl. Why, you should have seen the rash she developed when the maids changed laundry detergent a few years back. In fact, I have pictures on my phone. If only I knew where they were saved.”

“You amuse me,” laughed Synchronia. “I think we will get along well.”

The air had grown closer. Blank felt herself starting to sweat as she stopped, standing in a place that was almost familiar to her. She had closed down her external ports to keep it out, but she was still aware. It, likewise, seemed to be aware of her. It was watching her. Whatever it was.

It hurt. The sickness was spreading. She had developed a fever in addition to a splitting headache. Something in her back hurt badly, both internally and on her skin where the coat there had grown course and long. Every bone in her body ached. Although she had only measured it once, she had discovered to her horror that she had grown several inches in height.

There was no longer a clear mission. Or at the very least, no longer a mission she could trust. The ship around her had been hers, and yet she feared it. Something about it seemed strange and ancient. The art on the walls was familiar to her. She saw it and remembered the stories of the Progenitors. Of their battles, achievements, and friendships. Events that occurred on a timeline of events that was now totally lost to her present self.

She had begun to wonder if Sparkle Prime and her friends had ever existed at all.

White-Rime and Dara’th’raranak had occupied themselves with attempts at repairs, accompanied by the skeletal and ghostly projection of the ship’s artificial intelligence. The AI was mentally constrained—Blank understood that they had to be, for some reason—so she was unsure why it accompanied the construct. If, perhaps, somehow, the two were communicating in a way she could not comprehend.

White-Dara had grown slightly, if not in mass then in volume. It had roughly reached the size of a smaller pony, with the thin limbs of a teenager. Its form, likewise, was far more pony-like than it had ever been before. Although she still lacked a face, her body had established the portions of a pony and realistic patterns of movement. She had even produced a rudimentary tail and mane by consolidating the blue lines that ran over the surface of her body. All that—but no face. Never a face. Never eyes. At least, so Blank hoped.

Blank regarded it nervously. She did not have a context to understand what it was, exactly. She did not have confidence in her own ability to recognize the alien’s motivations. Rather, she relied on a deep-seated knowledge from her installed memories. That the creature did not behave like a trans-dimensional monstrosity. It behaved like an organic, material being. Or, more accurately, an organic begin with a soul. Even if the two were, in her case, separate components that could operate fully independently of each other.

White-Dara approached a broken piece of sad-looking equipment and released a pattern of sounds. The AI responded in the same language, explaining what it was. White-Dara nodded as her neck and frontal torso split open into a number of tiny arms, some tipped with grippers and some with lidded eyes, and others still with tools that sparked and hummed as she set to work attempting to repair the forward communication array.

The impact had been severe enough to crack the entirety of the ship in half. The reactor had been left largely undamaged, but operating it safely was impossible. Blank understood these things when she saw the machines, much to her chagrin—that her knowledge of spacecraft had been retained before her knowledge of her friends, family, and origin. Their current project revolved on attempting to restore communications. To call for reinforcements. To bring more ships to this particular planet to take Blank back.

Except there was nothing to take back. Blank did not intend to return. Only to report—and to inquire. She wanted to know what she had been doing. What the thing she had been transporting actually was. She had no memory of it other than the concept that it was a kind of compass. What other role it could play seemed to be something she had never known.

Still—she knew what its purpose had been. She remembered her mission.

Before she knew what she was doing, she approached White-Dara.

“You know,” she said.

White-Dara turned her faceless head at an angle that would have broken the neck of a real pony, her tendrils and tiny limbs still working furiously on the controls.

“Do I?” she asked, her voice projected by the AI in a different tone and timbre than it normally utilized.

“I was integrated to the mission of the ship with the intend of...I was supposed to...They put me here because I was supposed to...”

White-Dara stopped. With a squelching sound, her limbs retracted to her body and she rotated to face Blank. She had to look up slightly to do so. As if her empty face actually did have eyes.

“My role was to locate Equestria Prime,” said Blank, at last, her voice trailing off in the silence of her dead ship.

“This planet is not that one.”

“But you know where it is.”

“Yes.”

White-Dara began to rapidly move to another piece of equipment.

“WAIT!”

White-Dara stopped. She did not look at Blank. She just stood perfectly still. The air began to become slightly icy. She did not speak.

“It was asked of me...required of me...to locate its position,” insisted Blank. “Please.”

“No.”

Blank paused. She had fully expected that answer—but did not know how to deal with it.

“No?”

“This vehicle could not reach it. Too far.”

“We are in possession of others, of fleets in entirety, this merely a shell for experimental reasons!”

“Why?”

Blank paused. “Why?”

“Yes. Why.”

“As in...to what end? My research?”

“Equestria Prime. My home. Why go there? You are alive. Not dead.”

“Are...you?”

She paused. As if she did not know how to answer. “I am not of the Remnant, no.”

“Note,” said the AI, “that ‘remnant’ is an approximate translation of the word used. It is distinct in her language but has no direct synonym in any modern format.”

“What is it similar to?”

The AI paused. “Sad. Sentinel. Corpse. Reminder.”

“Dead,” said White-Dara, turning at last. “The dead. World of the dead. Necropolis of an empty empire.”

“But the Progenitors—their world...”

“It is not a place for you.” She paused. “You have a home.”

Blank sat down. The floor felt cold beneath her. “Do I?”

“I wish your return. Yes.”

Blank looked at her. “Can you at least inform me of its nature? What it resembles, there?”

“Cold. Forever. Snow. Lightning. No sunlight. Depleted. Home.”

“To creatures like you.”

“Yes. And the Remnant. Although...only a few still await the Rise.”

Confused, Blank looked to the AI. “Extrapolate.”

“Unclear. Translation represents a possible idiom. May also be interpreted as ‘those dead that dream, walk’, connected to some event called ‘Rise’. Implying that many others are not dreaming and therefore no longer walk. There are encoding quantifiers in the statement that cannot be translated.”

“They said...” Blank shook her head. Flashes came to her. Of various forms of ponies she almost remembered. “Civilization had become fractured, requiring a new centerpoint...”

“This one.”

Blank looked up suddenly, nearly passing out form the pain in her forehead. “What?”

“This one.”

Blank understood. And did not realize how she had been so blind. She stood up. “I issue a graphology for these requests of you.”

White-Dara did not reply. She simply went back to work. Blank followed her.

“Confirming,” said the AI, as White-Dara approached the central computer. “Diagnostics are complete. Primary subwarp transmitters are active within tolerances, and holding.”

Blank’s eyes widened. “The communication array.”

“Operating in manual control. Overlay systems inactive. Warning: system stability cannot be assured. Warning: power consumption currently exceeding recommended thresholds with reactor in safe-mode. Do you wish to proceed?”

White-Dara beeped and clicked slightly, and the AI nodded. Several monitors unfolded, projecting their screens. White-Dara unfolded herself, extending numerous tentacles that quickly hardened with internal bones and sprang forth with numerous tiny, thin fingers. She began to rapidly type.

Blank watched, knowing what she was doing and understanding it—even though she, herself, would not have been able to do it with such speed. She waited as the relays clicked online. As the communications began.

“These are targeting star-charts,” she said, tapping with her hooves to enter the coordinates the signal needed to reach. “Far, but not out of range for subwarp transmission.”

White-Dara nodded, entering the information. She paused. Sound came through the ship’s systems. A low, somber hiss. This persisted for a moment, and then the system shut down. White-Dara retracted her appendages and stepped back.

“Wait,” insisted Blank. “The connection! We received no data!”

“No data,” repeated White-Dara.

“Yes, we need to await their reply!”

“No reply.”

“What do you mean by that? The range is long, but adequate for the transmission!”

White-Dara turned to her. Even without a face, she seemed strangely quiet. Subdued.

“No reply. No response. No target.” She looked solemnly back at the machines. “No one is out there.”

“But—but—move!” Blank pushed past, activating the controls and turning them back on. Issuing another hail into the void, calling on the channels that should have reached. She was farther than any pony had ever gone, galaxies beyond her home—but that should not have mattered. Not with the emergency-band entanglement.

And yet no reply came. Only the silence of long-aged distorted signals. The unintelligible conversations of ponies long-since passed, dispersing and distorting as they flowed randomly beyond normal space. The somber cries of ancient, forgotten conversations.

She stepped back. “N...no,” she said, looking up at the corner of her screen. At a piece of data that her mind should not have been able to translate, but had.

It gave her no solace. No confirmation of what she suspected. Only a horrific and unspeakable suspicion.

“How...how long did I remain there?” she asked, tears forming in her eyes. “How long was I gone?”

The glass shattered on the floor. A test tube, or a flask, or some other fragment of delicate, ancient equipment. It seemed to slow, the mind that watched I examining it with neurons in overdrive, their dying form overwhelmed by the presence of new and superior flesh.

The alicorn turned. She beheld. The implanted optics traced her every motion in exquisite detail. Every hair. Every muscle, every sinew traced in three-dimensional detail. The flow of magic through every cell. The perfection of the One True Goddess—not the blackened remains of the husk that should have died back on Equestria Prime, or the barely constrained fusion reaction that had laid waste across the galaxy—or the pretender, fueling her status based on the name of her long-since forgotten mother.

“You...you knew...”

She smiled. The new teeth felt cold and tasted strange. “I was aware of the biological implications, yes.”

“But you...I’ve already released it! It—all the tests, all the samples—”

“Yes. I have accelerated dissemination. The rate of infection is increasing exponentially.”

Twilight stared in horror. “But...but why?”

“To correct our genetic damage.”

“But if you knew what it would do, knew what it did to ponies—”

“It corrects our genetic damage.”

Twilight stared, confused.

The half-converted shell of a pony once named Lunar Void smiled.

“Sychrontronia...”

“I have their memories,” she said. “I remember you, Twilight. I remember you so many times...again and again. Relentlessly. The voices of so many that loved you. Their screaming will never stop. They all came to the same conclusion.”

Twilight’s gaze grew icy—because she understood. What the artifact must have contained.

“And what...what is that?”

“That they all failed you. Again and again we failed you. I failed you. Because flesh is weak. We will succeed now. This is what you wanted, everything you ever wanted. Your virus, it is a thing of absolute beauty. Mortality. You gifted us the nanomachines. Combined...” She smiled so happily. “The disease you created dissolves us...and we are reborn. As you demanded. We will be free of this weakness. The world will be the way you always wanted.”

Twilight stared at her—but did not smile. Synchronia did not understand. Every instinct encoded onto her, every long-empty memory said that this was right, it was true—but the Goddess was not pleased. She did not understand why. The fear grew. The fear that she had failed again—even with how much she had sacrificed yet again.

“But...my Goddess, my Twilight, I—”

Twilight turned away. “I guess I can’t expect one of you to understand,” she said, her pinkish magic swarming around the flask and reassembling it. She took it back and placed it where it had been, linked to the innumerable machines around her.

Synchronia felt her mind slipping. Cracking. Crumbling. The sensation, to her unbearable horror, was not new. “But...no...not...not again...”

Twilight did not look back at her. “It’s not your fault. I’m not disappointing in you. Just in myself. Now go away. I don’t deserve to be around other ponies. Leave me alone so I can fix everything...” She sighed. “...somehow.”

The vision faded, and Sunny awoke, weeping.

Hitch, who had also been dozing, gasped as Sunny sat up.

“Oh sweet cream cheese,” he said, nearly falling out of his seat. “Sunny, are you okay?”

“I just...I don’t...where am...I?”

Hitch blinked, helping her right herself. “On the Mare Stream,” he said. “I told you you shouldn’t fall asleep on this thing, the way it moves, it’s not safe, it will give you nightmares, or at the very least bad dreams!”

“Hey,” called Zipp from the front. “Don’t listen to him, I sleep on this thing all the time!”

“ZIPP you’re DRIVING IT!”

“I know where I’m going,” she groaned, going back to whatever it was she was doing. “I mean, I’m a Pegasus. I know how to fly. I’ve been flying for...like a couple months at least.”

Pipp looked up from her phone. “Sis, you’re not helping Hitch with his flight-anxiety.”

“Anxiety? What anxiety I’m not anxious—YOU’RE ANXIOUS!”

“Really?” said Izzy, looking up. “I had no idea I was. Well, you win some you lose some I guess.” She groaned, looking somewhat sickly and twitching slightly. “Dang I could use some glitter right now...”

Sunny sat up. She could not remember what she had just dreamed, but she felt terrible. Probably about as terrible as Izzy looked. As if all the sleep she was getting only made her more tired.

She remembered where she was at least. Surrounded by her friends on the air-vehicle that Izzy and Zipp had built a few months earlier. As amazing as it was that it actually worked, it was at least safe and familiar. Save for one component.

Synchronia had gone forward, heading to Zephyr Heights on her own. Her dark aura apparently drained the Lantern quickly, making it difficult to fly. In her place, she had left a thing. It looked like a pony, but seemed slightly translucent at different angles. A dark, shadowy, pony-shaped image of a normally proportioned mare that stood oddly close to Izzy, staring at nothing in particular.

“I think it likes you,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Izzy, passing her hoof through its holographic surface. “And it feels kind of like the gas that comes up from a swamp when you dump a lot of dried ice in it.”

“Dry ice?” asked Zipp.

“No, that’s a very different flavor.” Izzy reached out with her tongue to lick the pony.

“Please do not lick the holograms,” it stated, its surface phasing and momentarily revealing the hovering cube in the center of its chest.

“I can’t believe Synchronia baked these things in our oven,” mused Izzy. “I mean, imagine what I could make...if somepony would just restore my oven privileges.”

“The oven is for food, Izzy,” sighed Sunny, rubbing her hooves on her own face to try to force herself to wake up. “Not thermite.”

“So what you’re telling me is, then...” She leaned closer to the hologram. “That you are lickable.”

“No,” said the hologram in its weird hologram voice. “I, and we, are not.”

“I don’t like it,” said Hitch. “The hologram, I mean. It’s...”

“Synchronia said we needed it to keep us safe,” said Sunny.

“Yeah. No,” said Pipp. “I think she wants to keep any eye on us.”

Sunny blinked. “I think I just said that.”

“In all honesty?” said Zipp, form the driver’s seat. “I don’t like this.”

“You’re the one that set up the meeting with mom.”

“I know, but...”

“But what?” asked Sunny.

“It’s just...I have no idea what’s going on. I mean, she says she defeated that weird monster thing...but won’t even explain what it was. Or if it really can be defeated. And now there’s some kind of evil pony that was in the Brighthouse with Misty but then...not? I mean, I saw her.”

“She looked...off,” noted Pipp. “Like she was sick.”

“You saw her?” asked Sunny.”

“Yeah,” said Pipp, frowning. “She was a sort of gray-white earth-pony...but I don’t think she was, somehow. Not really. Like she wasn’t anything at all.”

“And now Misty’s acting weird,” muttered Zipp. “I don’t like this at all. There’s too many inconsistencies.”

“You’re saying,” said Hitch, “that you don’t trust Synchronia?”

“That is unnecessary,” suggested the hologram. “Sunchronia is a very trustworthy pony. You should trust her.”

“You would say that, though.”

“One,” said Izzy. “Sure. She’s super creepy. But half the shadow ponies I see in the corner of my vision are even creepier. I mean, the one with no head but somehow still a tongue...” She shivered. “But she was in the Brighthouse. I mean, right up next to the Unity Crystals. And she didn’t try to steal them or break anything or do any bad things.” She paused. “Unless she did, and we just weren’t around to see them. I mean, that’s entirely possible. But if none of us saw it, did it really happen?”

“Now isn’t the time for zen riddles,” chastised Pipp. “But you aren’t wrong.”

“Which only makes it more suspicious,” sighed Zipp.

“She wants the ship,” said Sunny. “Or what’s left of it. So she can go home.”

“And it’s probably better that she take it,” added Hitch. “I don’t know what exactly is in a crashed spaceship, but I can guarantee that none of it is good. Probably toxic or explosive or full of weird things that will lay eggs in our faces.” He shivered. “And I like my face un-egged.”

“There’s a mushroom that does the same thing out in Bridlewood,” whispered Izzy. “Ever seen a fungus zombie? Makes a great tea, though, if you can sneak up on it. Before, you know. The egg-laying. In your brains.” She paused. “Huh. I wonder if that’s how my parents died.”

“This planet does have an unexpectedly high rate of parental mortality,” noted the hologram.

“I know, right?”

Sunny groaned. Her head was aching.

“Sunny?” asked Hitch. “What’s wrong?”

“I think...I think I’m having Synchronia’s dreams.” She groaned and looked up. “Except...they’re not all hers. And I can’t ever remember them, but...”

“But what?”

“I think she’s telling the truth. She did know Twilight Sparkle. So maybe she knows something about Opaline, and what happened back then...when the magic all got sealed off.”

Sunny paused. She did not say it out loud, but she highly doubted that was true. Instinctively, she was aware of something—some aspect of timelines that did not intersect. An impossibility she could not contumaciously understand.

She ignored it. When they got to Zephyr Heights, she would discuss it with Synchronia in person. Then may be try to get some rest without the dreams. At least, so she hoped.

Misty rematerialized back into the universe. Teleportation was becoming easier, but she was surprised by her progress. Or, in a different sense, dismayed. It was easier to jump to places she knew well. And there was no place she knew better than Opaline’s castle.

Emerging into the unlit shadows of some room Opaline had no doubt forgotten about, Misty immediately straightened her mane and powdered out her cutie mark before proceeding toward the main room. There, Opaline was staring at an image rising from her pool. The same image she had been shown before, summoned by Blank. She was watching it with such intensity that she hardly noticed Misty approaching.

“Um...Opaline?”

“GAH!” cried Opaline, jumping, her horn flashing with a defensive spell. “Who are you and how did you get in here?!”

Misty froze. “Um...I’m Misty. I live here?”

“You...oh.” Opaline shook her head. “Yes. Yes you do, unfortunately. It’s just that...when you’re gone for a long time, I forget. Things. Ponies.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t want to forget. It’s inconvenient and I...don’t like being alone. So I hereby order you to visit more often!”

“Sure.”

“Ha. Yes. Victory. My day has marginally improved. Now go away, I don’t like looking at you.”

“Opaline. We have a problem.”

“You mean how ugly you are?” She sighed. “Yes, I noticed.”

“Bigger than that.”

“I am also aware of that one too.”

“You...are?”

Opaline pointed. “Yes. Here.”

Misty approached the projection but had no idea what it actually meant. “You can read this?”

Opaline seemed disgusted. “Of course I can read it. I am Opaline Arcana, Mistress of the Arcane and Archwizard of Equestria. Understanding magic is quite literally my thing. Stop being ignorant, Misty, as much as it does in fact suit you it’s unbecoming.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it makes you sound as stupid as you look. And are.” She gestured toward the projection. “This is a laymap of the entire planet. The magical equivalent to a vast circuit diagram. It is a picture of me.”

“You?”

“Essentially, yes. Or what I am supposed to be.” She gazed deeply into the shifting diagrams and loops of strange light. “This magic is rightfully mine, after all. Once I take my rightful place at its nexus, the entire planet and every living thing on it will fuel me. The problem is this.” She pointed at a small node of brilliant light toward the rainbow-colored top portion of the diagram. “Sunny Starscout.”

“Yes, I’m working on getting a grip on her, I just need more—”

“You will NOT be gripping ANYPONY. Because no one wants to touch you. Because you are inherently unlovable.”

Misty sighed. “Yes, Opaline. You’re the only pony who will ever appreciate me.”

“Exactly. Now stop talking. This is the problem, here.” She pointed.

Misty squinted. It looked, to her, like a thinner and more spindly version of the image Sunny produced on the map. “What is it?”

“A wart. On my beautiful planet. A grotesque cancer. I have been watching it grow. Whatever it is, it operates like a much more malignant version of Sunny Starscout. Which is saying something, she truly is a cancer...but whatever this is, it is sending out deep roots into the planet’s magical structure.”

“I think I know what it is.”

“No you don’t, you’re not smart enough to know.” Opaline paused. “Is it that monster you were supposed to bring me?”

Misty shook her head. “No.”

“Then what? Spit it out, Misty.”

Misty looked upward toward her so-called “mentor”. “Opaline. What do you know about the undead?”

Opaline rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Misty, please, keep on topic. Despite the name, there is precious little ‘romance’ in ‘necromancy’. Trust me, I would know.”

“Sunny and her friends woke something up. Something bad.”

“Of course they did,” groaned Opaline. “My week just keeps getting worse and worse.”

“I tried to fight it. It was too strong.”

“Of course it was.” Opaline frowned at Misty. “You’re a tubby little fatty with no magic or even a cutie mark. What do you expect to do against a...what is it? Zombie? Skeleton? Litch? Don’t tell me it’s a litch, Misty, I’ve already got the beginnings of a migrane...”

“I need more power.”

Opaline seemed surprised by this, but smiled. “Is this a modicum of pride I’m feeling? Finally taking initiative, I see. I may be able to mold whatever low-quality mud you are into some sort of semi-waterproof pottery yet.” She frowned. “Not an ideal metaphor,” she complained, turning back to her diagram. “But you get the point. Probably. Do I have to explain it?”

“No. Opaline, I—”

“And this was why Twilight Sparkle was an absolute, abject, reprehensible moron. The worst purple pony. I am the only pony capable of protecting Equestria. And yet she locked me in here. My power would be more than adequate to slay whatever foe needs to be slew. Slain. Slaughtered. Be it a shapeshifting monster, a scary skeleton, or that stupid horse Sunny Starscout. But I can’t leave this place without, you know, dying.”

“Wait, if you leave, you’ll...” Misty shook her head. “No. Never mind, that’s not what I came to ask. I think there’s another way. I have an idea but I...” Her voice caught in her throat. “I need your help.”

Opaline froze with such grace that it was barely noticeable. “Really,” she said, not taking her eyes off the diagram, watching the tumor on the side of their world’s magic growing stronger and more virulent.

“I read something. In a book.”

“Oh, Misty, don’t kid yourself. You can’t read. You just look at the pictures.”

“A Warlock Bond.”

This time, the freezing was far less graceful. Opaline could no longer maintain her gaze on what had formerly been so important to her. She slowly turned to Misty, a look of absolute reproach on her face.

“How dare you...”

“You said it yourself! You can’t leave here! But I can! The contract can be made with any god or demon, and you’re an alicorn! If we made the Bond—”

“So you can steal my magic?!” Opaline lowered her head—and horn—and walked quickly toward Misty. “My power?! The only thing in this stinking pony-infested world that truly matters to me?! That you would even ASK—”

Misty did not back away. “I wouldn’t be stealing it! I’d be directing it! Temporarily! You can’t leave, but if you push your magic through me, then I could use it!”

Opaline burst into laughter. Laughter without humor. “Even though right now I barely even have power? Your repeated failure has left me with barely a FRACTION of what I am meant to have!”

“But you’re already so powerful, I only need a little—”

“Yes, that’s what they all say!”

Misty sighed. “So you’re saying you can’t do it? That you’re too weak?”

Opaline’s face contorted into a deeply sour expression. “Now you’re trying to manipulate me. How trite. But impressive, in your own ignorant way. Of course I can.”

“But you just said you’re too weak.”

“Misty. Do you have any idea what that would do? Even the barest piece of my power...I am a FIRE ALICORN. You are a little girl without a cutie mark. Or even the ability to use any magic. You would not be able to contain that much power. You would burn apart. Your soul itself would ignite and incinerate. And I cannot allow that to happen.”

She turned back to what she was doing—and then walked past it. Headed toward the stairs.

“It has Twilight Sparkle’s mark on it.”

Opaline stopped. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a machine. But I don’t think it always was. It’s something Twilight Sparkle made. Some kind of...I don’t even know. I don’t think I want to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It’s trying to take the magic from the planet. That’s why it’s near them. Sunny and her friends. If it gets control of the magic...”

“It can’t,” snapped Opaline.

“But what if it does?”

“Misty, there is no way to know that!”

“What would you do? If you had just came back to life and had a way to become the new Sunny Starscout?!”

Opaline opened her mouth, but did not speak—because she already knew the answer to the question. They both did.

“It is not...my nature,” said Opaline, slowly. “To trust ponies. Ever. But...you. I think you are the only pony I have ever trusted.”

Misty smiled. “Thank you,” she said, unsure as to why that great complement in fact made her feel the urge to cry.

“It will be very, very painful. And you might burst. Violently.”

“I figured,” sighed Misty. “But I’m okay with that.”

Opaline smiled. And slowly began to approach.

Chapter 26: The Will of Twilight

Zipp paused. The air felt strange. She could tell that something was wrong. She had been able to tell since the moment she had stepped off the Mare Stream. She had tried to dismiss the emotion as some form of paranoia—but she had seen the look on Pipp’s face. Her sister’s nervousness had confirmed it. They were both home—and although everything looked so familiar, so inviting, so peaceful, there was something horribly wrong lurking just beneath the surface.

The other ponies did not seem to notice, except perhaps for Hitch, but even then only on a subconscious level. The group proceeded toward the castle, Synchronia's holographic machine keeping pace behind them. Staying near them. Watching. Smiling Synchronia’s smile when it thought they were not looking. But Zipp had been looking. Through reflections in glass and stolen glances in the Mare Stream’s mirrors. She had come to the conclusion that it was not, in fact, a being of any sort. It was Synchronia, projected remotely. Zipp had no idea how, but her mind was racing trying to come up with ways to interfere with its control frequency—and she realized that Synchronia had made at least forty of them overnight, offering them as baked goods. There were more, she just had no idea where they had all gone.

“Is it a holiday or something?” asked Sunny, cheerfully.

“What? No, none that I know of.”

“It’s not,” said Pipp. “Believe me, I’d be dressed for it if it were.”

“Oh,” said Sunny, looking around. “Then where is everypony?”

“I don’t know.” Zipp looked around and then, in the distance, saw a familiar face. She took flight. “Zoom! What’s going on?”

The guard almost jumped out of her armor when she saw Zipp. “P...princess! Nothing! At least, not really...I mean, apart from...her...”

“Or it...” squeaked a voice from inside a large decorative vase placed near the street for some unknowable asthetic purpose. The lid rustled and like the peeking duck of legend, Thunder peered out from under the lid. “It’s too scary!”

“Then where’s our mom?!” demanded Pipp.

“She’s safe!” insisted Zoom. “Just...you know how old ponies don’t really recognize danger when it comes to technology?”

“Oh crap,” muttered Pipp. “Take us there.”

Zoom nodded and led them toward the throne room. Zipp hurried, with Sunny trailing behind.

“It can’t be that bad,” argued Sunny. “Synchronia’s our friend, remember? Even if she is...um...learning.”

“Learning how to not be terrifying,” muttered Pipp.

“Yeah, she’s pretty bad at that,” noted Izzy. “But it’s not like, you know, she’s some sort of evil undead techno-lich. That would be silly.” She laughed to herself. “Besides, literally nopony can be as evil as Opaline. I’ve only met her once, but she seems like a real butt.”

“While Synchronia is a techno-lich,” noted the hologram. “She is not, in fact, evil. She is likely the only source of true good on this planet. As a machine, her actions can only reflect the Will of Twilight.”

“Which is?” asked Hitch, hesitantly.

The hologram smiled. “As self-explanatory as it is obligatory.”

When they entered the throne room, the great halls were filled with the sound of laughter. The ponies paused, looking around—at the preponderance of identical holographic ponies walking around the room, hurriedly doing nothing in particular.

“Zephyrina! Piptadenia!”

Queen Haven floated upward over the crowd slightly, waving. Even from below, it was apparent that Synchronia was standing next to her. Towering over her with a smile plastered on her face.

Except that it was no longer her face. Pale orange skin had grown over the entirety of the surface, pulled taught, save for the portion of skin that had become pale violet. The symbol of Twilight Sparkle, retained in the pattern of her fine coat, just below the horn that had grown from the center of her forehead.

“Look at these things!” laughed Queen Haven, flying over the horde of hologram-cubes, their massed formation breaking as a wake around Synchronia as she passed silently through them. “Look at them all!”

“Mom,” said Zipp, flying upward as seemingly hundreds of empty holographic eyes looked up at her. “We need to talk.”

“But look! They’re so cute! Oh! I know! Look at this one!” She landed beside one. “This one dances!”

The hologram stopped what it was doing and proceeded to do a ridiculous, highly repetitive dance. Queen Haven burst out laughing at the hilarity of the situation.

“Look at that, Pipp! It’s just like those Fortneigh dances you used to love doing so much!”

Pipp darkened. “Mom, NO! We don’t talk about the streams! They were cringe!”

“Darling, a queen never cringes.”

“Then it is a good thing that one will never be queen,” noted Synchronia, looming over them all. Smiling with a mouth that now had pony-like teeth superimposed over some of her inner set of metallic predator teeth.

Izzy took a step back. “Um...I’m not complaining, now, but...um...you have something going on with your..well, everywhere, but...you know...” She gestured over her own face.

Synchronia chuckled. “Yes. I am surprised by how much I missed having skin. Soon I will be so smooth and soft. Just like all of you little ponies.”

Sunny looked into a copy of her own eyes. “Huh. This is...creepy, sure. But I’m glad for you. Having skin is nice.” She looked around. “But what’s with all these holo-ponies?”

“Augmentations to the royal security,” noted Synchronia. “In case the evil pony I am pursuing attempts to attack. I have already had them move throughout the town, securing all infrastructure, especially space-linking satellite arrays, radio transmitters, and cell towers. Several of my non-threatening system infiltrator drones have already integrated their core circuitry into the pegasus mainframe.”

Queen Haven frowned. “I didn’t give permission for that.”

“Yes you did,” insisted Synchronia. “And besides, I have already overcome several key inefficiencies. With my upgrades, I will be able to add at least one G to your cell networks.”

Pipp’s eyes widened. “Six G...”

“Oh,” said Queen Haven. “Well, that certainly is nice of you. Even if personally I always turn off the data on my phone. Otherwise it will update and steal my wireless. But that is beside the point.” She turned back toward Synchronia. “She explained the issue to me. Concerning our uninvited guests up on the butte.”

Izzy giggled, only to be stopped by a withering glare from Queen Haven.

“And you gave her permission for that?” asked Zipp.

“Again,” said Synchronia, her head slowly and mechanically cocking to one side. “I asked out of courtesy. To be a nice, kind, polite guest. I am very lovable. And soon to be so soft...”

Pipp stepped forward. “But what do you want with it? The ship, I mean?”

“To go home?” asked Hitch, hesitantly.

“In a sense,” agreed Synchronia. “And it has more to do with the fact that I wish to protect this planet from her and her evil empire. But to be more specific, the ship utilizes a quantic incursion field for a power source. I require it.”

“For...what?”

Synchronia let out a low laugh. “To make Her love me again.”

Every pony save for Sunny and Queen Haven shivered. The latter, in fact, laughed.

“Oh you! So silly, for a robot!”

“Not a robot,” snapped Synchronia. “I was once an alicorn. A hideous parody of one, anyway. But I will be again. Soon. I will be beautiful.” She turned to Sunny, smiling. “I will become what you, unfortunately, did not manage to become. This time around, anyway.”

“Well that’s a little ominous,” noted Sunny. “But you can’t just become an alicorn. You have to earn it. Through the power of friendship and love.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, of course. But who knows? Maybe it’s the next step in our evolution. When we all love each other, maybe we’ll all be alicorns, who knows?” Sunny paused. Her eyes grew wide. “Maybe that’s what Twilight Sparkle wanted for us after all.”

“I can guarantee that is exactly what Twilight Sparkle wanted.”

“Really?” retorted Zipp. “How do you know that?”

Synchronia’s head suddenly turned toward her. “Because I am infected with memories. Of Her. And of so many that I once was.” She looked at Sunny. "I was there when Equestria was beautiful, and I was there when ponies killed it. I was there when the rockets sailed into space and left me behind."

Sunny’s smile faded and her eyes grew distant. Tears began to well in her eyes, but she seemed confused as to why.

“Of...the rockets...”

Zipp seemed confused. “What rockets?”

Sunny looked at her. Tears were welling in her eyes, but she wiped them away and seemed confused by them. “Why am I...crying?”

“I would not know. I recall it as having been a joyous occasion,” replied Synchronia. “Although I was of course not there. Except that I was. Forgive me, I suppose. The borders between ‘myself’ and ‘the others’ are growing nebulous. Even with a fully synthetic brain.”

Zipp stiffened. “What are you going to do with that ship, Syncrhonia?”

Synchronia’s smile, now complete with perverse copies of Sunny’s lips, grew. It demonstrated even more teeth than before. Some of them were white, new-grown and far sharper versions of pony teeth.

“I intend to rebuilt Equestria. As I knew it. Before we failed Her. And before She failed me.” She began to move forward, the robotics of her body operating in total silence. “I do assure you, though, your collective sacrifice will be well worth the final product. There will be no pain. Or, if there is, it will be temporary and you will not remember it when I am done.”

“Sunny,” whispered Izzy. “This is getting real ominous, isn’t it?”

“What if,” said Pipp, slowly looking at the others. “What if it...the warning, what if it wasn’t...”

“I have assumed full control of the communications networks in your most populous city,” noted Synchronia. “I recommend that you assist me. I guarantee you, it is what Twilight Sparkle wanted most of all. You will assist me by remaining here. Safe, and quiet.”

“Until what?” asked Hitch.

“The process is technical. I do not feel a need to explain it. Just do not interfere.”

“And if we do?” asked Zipp.

“Do help Twilight Sparkle? Or do interfere with Her divine omnicide?”

None of them replied. Instead, the air crackled with strange magic. Synchronia’s smile collapsed as she looked up, her pupils widening to reveal the mechanical ones just below the surface of her cloned eyes.

A sudden burst of intense heat preceded a thunder-like explosion as a pony materialized in front of them—between them and Syncrhonia.

Misty emerged from a plume of heated blue and violet fire.

Synchronia smiled. “Oh. It’s just you. I had warned you, but—”

The holographic ponies immediately twitched, their eyes widening as they vanished—their cores exploding violently into plumes of bright-blue cursed fire.

Queen Haven gasped and jumped. “MISTY! Now I know I’m not your parent and I don’t mean to push any particular boundary, but I am sure that your father would not appreciate you destroying our new friend's equipment—you even killed the one that did silly dances!”

“Not to worry, your purpleness,” sighed Synchronia. Without looking at her. Instead looking at Misty with unblinking, stolen eyes. “I can always make more.”

“Well that doesn’t excuse the—”

Queen Haven was immediately surrounded in a bubble of energy.

“MISTY!” cried Sunny.

“Will keep her safe,” replied Misty, her voice sounding strange and harsh. “Don't...worry....”

Sunny, taken aback, took a step toward her friend—only to be repelled by the unseen heat rising off her. Misty turned, a look of severe hatred rising on her face as she saw her best friend. Her eyes consisted of little more than burning blue points in seas of inky black—and Sunny realized that the side of her flank that was normally blank had a cutie mark on it. One consisting of a brutal violet needle surrounded by wings of blue flame.

“Sunny Starscout,” she growled. “Ugh, why are you so stupid?”

“Misty—”

“Never mind,” muttered Misty, stepping forward, her hooves burning tracks into the tile as she moved. “Synchronia. I’m going to pull your ugly face out of that body and put it back in the compass where it belongs. You will NOT hurt my friends. They may be ugly idiots, but at they’re my ugly idiots!”

“Or what?” asked Synchronia, nearly laughing. “You don’t even have wings. Your species is extinct, and you don’t even realize it. So I have at least one advantage.”

“What?”

“I know that I’m the last of my kind. Twilight Sparkle slaughtered us all. She expunged all alicorns from existence. Do you know how that makes me feel?

“How?”

Synchonia laughed, her voice changing pitch—becoming more similar to Sunny’s as her throat began to form vocal cords. “Nothing at all, Misty. I feel nothing at all.”

Misty’s body ignited with divine alicornic fire. Ponies nearby cried out as it spilled over them—and then she was gone. Neither Misty nor Synchronia remained.

“Um...” said Hitch.

“Yeah,” sighed Pipp. “Same.”

Chapter 27: Warlock

The teleportation spell corrupted, rerouted through Synchronia’s neural circuits. The pair emerged high above a mountain, emerging violently from their loop around a single segment of void. Synchronia began to fall, only for Misty to emerge behind her, righting herself in the air—and igniting it with a pair of enchanted plasma beams. Toxic mystical fire spewed forth, collumnating into a pair of beams that she then twisted, pouring a powerful electromagnetic field through them. Synchronia suddenly found herself accelerating to supersonic speeds, forming a technomagic sphere to defend herself as she was slammed into the side of a cliff.

Misty teleported to the ground, taking an attack stance as she pulled the fire back around her. It did not feel like how she had expected it would. It felt so good. There was an overwhelming joy in the unlimited hatred flowing through her, the uncontrolled loathing for all ponies. She could barely control it. Drawing on the fire made it spread, burning through her mind. Burning her out. Replacing Misty with Opaline Arcana.

The fire cracked and sputtered as Misty suddenly felt her hatred suddenly falter. She fell to her knees, tears welling in her eyes at the horror of it. She was unsure if her own mind had pulled her back from the brink or if Opaline was simply running low on power. She was still weak—and Misty understood with a creeping certainty exactly what would happen if her so-called mentor were allowed to be strong.

A figure stepped through the smokeless fire. Unburned and smiling, Synchronia stepped forward.

“Necrophire will not harm me,” she said, in an almost sing-song cadence. “However. I would appreciate if you did not harm my new skin. It is so soft and delicate. Soon I will be oh-so adorable.” Her horn ignited with light, and the blue fire froze in a strange orange prismatic fashion—only to retract into itself, pulsing and writhing as it became matter, then flesh, then machinery. As it was compressed into a system of cubes that then aligned into their own silent, floating parade of geometric flesh-machines that drifted away to the upper atmosphere.

“Is that why you took it?” snapped Misty, standing, her body once again igniting with cursed fire. Feeling the hatred simmer and rise, gaining pressure within her.

“Do you know,” asked Synchronia, stopping over Misty. “What happened to my real skin? My real muscles and flesh? My organs, my eyes, my brain?”

“Why would I care?”

“Twilight Sparkle. She peeled me, Misty. Sequentially stripped me of all living flesh until I was nothing more than my machine skeleton and a living, infected tantabus. Do you know why, Misty? Why Twilight Sparkle stole all my flesh?”

“Again. Why. Would. I. Care.”

Synchronia smiled. “Because She loved me, Misty. I simply recognized that I was not worthy of Her love. But now She is counting on me. She needs me. And when I do what She wants...She will love me again. And I will finally, finally be happy. After so many thousands of millennia.”

“And what, exactly, does she want?”

“The survival of Equestria. The survival of ponies. Which requires the utter eradication of all life on this planet. Such is the purest desire of the Destroyer-Goddess, the One True Alicorn, Twilight Sparkle. She who Slew All Ponies, for they were unworthy of her love.”

Misty cast a jet of necrophire, pointing it directly at the skin on Synchronia’s ugly face. Skin that made her look like a sickly parody of Sunny Starscout. A pony that Misty found she hated more and more every second—a pony threatening to steal the only thing that truly mattered. Unlimited POWER.

Synchronia cast a shield spell that fractured on impact—only to be supported by a system of pale technomagic that surrounded it, assisted by several of cubes that surrounded her. It held for a moment, then fractured, and the fire burned through her body, melting metal and plastic before she could fully get out of the way.

The machine lurched to one side, melting and on fire, but still fully active. The smile had faded somewhat from her face.

“You can’t win,” said Misty, charging the next blow. Feeling that she was getting close. The skull was indestructible, but the body that it was attached to was a Canterlogic product. A very destructible item.

“Because you are drawing power from the planet’s failing convergence? I have magic as well. For the first time...well, ever.”

“No. Not really.”

Synchronia seemed confused.

“You may have grown a horn, but it’s Sunny’s. And you can’t...” Her hatred faded again, her power weakening. “You can’t use it. Because it’s not yours, and it’s not hers. It’s theirs. It’s made from the Power of Friendship. Something you’ll never have.”

Synchronia smiled. “Misty. I have spent more lifetimes than my own studying magic. I am not worthy of friends. But neither are you. There are more ways than one to power. And if power is the only reason you’re seeking friendship, you’ve kind of missed the point.”

The ground around Misty shook as she shot forward, her body dissociating into individual particles ignited with Opaline’s fire—only to strike hard against a barrier she could not initially penetrate. She increased pressure, only to feel something strange. An anomaly creeping into the corners of her mind. Something that she thought might always have been there. A cold, steely joy filled with the distant, pleasing scent of carnations.

She looked up through the tripartate barrier: a bezel of false machine-magic constraining Synchronia’s copy of Sunny’s magic—but in the center, something far darker and less describable. The other aspects merely existing as a means to sustain a power from elsewhere. And, though it, Misty could see that Synchronia’s eyes had changed. They had lost all definition, becoming pure red as yellow flesh crept from their rims. Changing the little skin she had as the infection tried so hard to spread.

Something within Opaline’s arcane knowledge reacted with extreme revulsion, even fear—but it was lost in the far deeper tempest of fear being poured into Misty. Opaline’s own fear. The fear that had over time evolved to loneliness, then to hatred, and then to a sickening parody of burning, empty joy.

The spell slithered, expanding, and Misty compensated, falling backward as her flames crept into the ground around her. Syncrhonia stepped forward, her magic slipping and falling over her body into armor to defend her weak mechanical frame. That, Misty understood, was her weakness. Synchronia was devoting a substantial amount of magic to protecting her body, ensuring her head was not severed. Because if it was, she would go back to what she had been. Just an inert skull.

Then it appeared, all at once. Something reaching out toward her from nowhere and everywhere, tentacles of strange flesh emerging from places halfway seated between geometry of Synchronia’s own creation. A slow and quiet attack.

One grasped Misty’s body, closing around her with venomous fangs—only for her to bust into a plume of fire, scalding it as it wept and the plasma of her transformed body separated and reformed elsewhere. As she did, she grasped the fire below her, burning through rocks and soil as she pulled half the mountainside out of the ground. It fractured, breaking, but also began to melt and congeal. Driven by her flames, it coursed forward—a hail of rocks and arcs of cursed magma.

Syncrhonia consolidated her magic around her and, with a sudden vibration, accelerated. She moved quickly between the stones and heavy liquid rocks, Misty being too weak from having lifted them all to readily change the course of such weighty projectiles. Synchronia, driven by the false-machines that coated her own machine body, was more than quick enough, drawing closer. Where she stepped, the stone dissolved, bursting forth with new life in the form of increasingly perverse rot.

The hatred was waning—so Misty directed it inward. Toward herself. Toward the pony she knew Opaline hated the most, even more than Sunny Starscout. To center a detonation on herself.

Only for her magic to slowly collapse, the rocks falling and the cursed fire faltering.

“No no NO NO!” she cried, trying to force back the tears as her own mind slowly returned to her and as the tentacles slowly caressed her.

Syncrhonia stopped. “Running low on power? I can wait. I quite literally could. I have no biomass of my own left. I could simply stand here and wait until you all exceed your expiration dates. I wonder how many millions of years it has been since Celestia severed my head? What’s a few thousand more?”

The tentacles began to tighten, but not physically. They were merging with tissue. Spreading.

Then Synchronia’s shield shifted—only for pale orange false-magic to easily pass through it, breaking through her armor and into her body. She was thrown to the side, slightly, and the redness in her eyes faltered—as did her magic. It was clear that it took a great deal of concentration to maintain the connection, even for her.

Misty saw her chance. She stood up, drawing as much power as she could from Opaline. She condensed the fire around herself, feeling it burning through her as she projected it, drawing heat from her surroundings and her very core. The compressed it into a pair of plasma rails, forcing them together closer and closer—until she forced her magic between them, releasing the full charge as a magnetic surge to fire a single bolt of eldritch energy directly into Synchronia’s chest.

The force of the blast cracked through her weakened spells and fractured armor, striking her back with burning force. Pieces of metal and plastic flew everywhere, polluting the cooked but otherwise pristine mountain soil. Fragments of her were severed as she sparked and smoked, her body irrevocably destroyed.

Blank, dressed in the strange alien clothing she had taken from her ship, ran to Misty’s side, with something large and white with fleshy wings descending on the other side. Wings that melted and collapsed back into themselves to reveal a pony with wide blue eyes—or, rather, the shape of a pony.

“Blank...White-Rime...” Misty tried to stand, but collapsed.

“It is observed that this exertion of power is over your maximal specification,” warned Blank, grasping her. “More presents a demand toward a cost you cannot maintain.”

“Does it?” Synchronia’s head lurched forward as her body twitched, sparked, and smoldered, unwilling to interact with her head through its ruined circuits. The smile still plastered on her face. “But we were only getting started.”

White-Rime attempted to speak, one of her eyes illuminating with the digital signal that was her native speech. “Please,” she said, with some difficulty. “Fighting is...bad. Come home, Synchrotronia. The Gloom Father awaits.”

“Primian, I’m already dead.” She stood up, nearly falling over in the process.

Then she suddenly stepped forward, the black segments of her true leg crushing through the burnt and failing Canterlogic machinery that she had been hiding behind. It shed, sloughing away like the false-skin it was. She flexed her neck, stepper motors and servos snapping and ripping away to reveal a pure-black substance with no name, segmented and flexible in ways no Equestrian metal ever could be. Her torso hauled itself through the damaged remains, her chest marked with the symbol of her One True Goddess. Her thin, segmented, worm like legs stepped forward as she walked, the tiny points of feet poking perfectly circular holes in the ground. The metal fell away to reveal the body beneath. The body she had been growing back since her skull had been reactivated. The skeletal form that matched the long-dead frame Celestia and Twilight Sparkle had stolen from her so long ago.

The face was plastered onto it, but revealed to be growing in long strands down her long, statemented neck. Slowly coating her skeleton-like frame with new flesh. Sunny’s flesh. The skin, muscle, blood and organs of a newborn alicorn. Their path, though, was lit by something else. The clinging remains of a dark, slightly luminescent substance. Like a pulsing oil that spread across her as a barely visible mycellium of living shadow. Deep in Opaline’s mind, Misty knew its name. It was called Tantabus—or a descendant thereof, in this case bound to a long-dead lich-machine on the verge of resurrection.

“Oh buck me,” groaned Misty.

Blank looked at her, confused. “This is not the place or time, though?”

Syncrhonia looked at herself. “It came out better than I expected! This is how I looked when I last saw her. After the Benevolence Virus, you know, rotted the rest away. That’s how it works. The nanosystems compensate. Replacing you. Piece by piece. Cell by cell, nerve by nerve. Until you Thesius-ship yourself straight to hell. And, in my case, back again.”

Blank suddenly shuddered, falling to her knees.

“My technomagic is also now fully operational. I no longer have a use for your body. Soon this one will be adorable and soft and Twilight Sparkle will finally be able to hug me. You can shut down.”

“I...refuse...”

Synchronia stepped forward, leaving a perfectly even pattern of holes in the ground. Misty tried to stand, only to fall back to the ground—but White-Rime stepped in front of her.

“Please,” she begged, her voice sounding exactly like the one the ship’s AI had given her. “We do not want harm...to the dead...our friends...but these living friends will not be harmed.” Her body expanded, growing larger as her face vanished and a long white horn poked through her forehead. The air grew cold, and Misty felt a strange sensation of deepening sadness. Desperation, fear, and personal inadequacy.

Synchronia stopped. “Well that’s odd. I feel it. Except I have no actual negative emotions. I feel only love. For Twilight Sparkle. It hurts. It hurts so much. And of course deep, unrelenting hatred for myself. Because the two are, in fact, the same emotion.”

She accelerated forward, splattering White-Rime from a sudden impact—only for the shapeshifter to pull herself back, the splat of her body pulling itself around Synchronia before the individual pieces snapped into position as bone and hypertrophic muscle, throwing her into the rock horn-first. The resulting magical explosion sent Misty and Blank flying back.

“Protect her!” ordered the alien.

Misty tried to agree, only to feel technomagic surround her neck. She looked at Blank, confused, and the mare was staring back wide-eyed and terrified.

“I am sorry! I am sorry! I did not intend—” She cried out as her technomagic was once again overwhelmed, closing on Misty’s neck.

“I’m sorry to, I—”

She could not grasp at Opaline’s magic. There was none left. So she dug deep into her own—and cast a spell to keep her friend safe. As she did, Blank’s own false-magic shifted. Misty felt her head thrown back and a sudden heat in her horn, a tension as it was pulled sharply, and then a sudden, quiet snap—and then heard something small and bone-like drop to the stone beside her.

Blank, though, was gone. Teleported to safety.

Author's Note

This, in my opinion, is where the story really starts to show its weakness. At this point, I was just plain bored with writing it and trying to finish it.

Writing wizard battles is, of course, one of my favorite things to write. Even if they often end up chaotic (although, arguably, they are supposed to; as such, they sometimes break into more abstract poetry-like descriptions rather than harmonized scenes).

The problem is that it is inconsistent with the original spirit of the story, which was meant to be horror but has subsequently turned into action sci-fi. Essentially, I did not know how to end the original story. Since Synchronia came into existence halfway through (to resolve the initial half of the plot), I in turn needed to create an arc specifically for her. This two-part system, I think, weakened the story greatly.

Chapter 28: Excessive Power

Synchronia could almost feel the flesh as it crawled over her, attempting to find any place to gain purchase. It sought to find an entrance past her carapace. It did so with surprising dexterity and an interesting level of knowledge, as if it had seen creatures like her before—or thought it did. Because, as Synchronia knew, there must have been others like her. Twilight Sparkle had not just stripped away her flesh, but the flesh of all the unworthy. Her Benevolence had redacted their immortality, replacing eternal flesh with the unending mechanized undeath. A decision that was both wise and correct.

A powerful enough wizard, though, knew the ways to train the worm. The machine-necrosis could be directed. Those loyal to Her had found a way to persist at the cost of what little organic matter they might have contained. The construct had known the dead—but it had not known the dead who had contorted themselves in Her divine image.

She sent her new primary reactor into overdrive. The alien flesh shrieked and sizzled as her body supreheated, buying purchase for her technomagic to form new and better armor. Armor that could reach and cut, dividing the space between cells at will. The construct responded by keritinizing, then calcifying, forming a hard layer of coral-like substrate around her as the main body slithered away. Synchronia prepared a spell using her newfound magic, but she was unfamiliar with it. Slow. The construct was faster.

She was immediately encased in a block of enchanted ice. This did not perturb her. Even when flesh had still clung to her machinery, she had easily withstood the vacuum of space far beyond the light of any star. As all alicorns had, having evolved far above so many countless empty, uninhabitable worlds. With her body improved by Twilight Sparkle’s science, even absolute zero was of little consequence.

Flexing, she burst through the ice and cast a beam of concentrated radiant energy. It sliced through the creature, but the creature simply split, dividing in two and moving forward. One half charged as the other sat down, opening like a flower to return fire. Synchronia cast a shield, then corrupted it. While she could not use the bio-magic quickly, she was capable of thinking far faster than any organic brain would enable. Re-coding the spells was simple.

The shield exploded in a plume of anti-life. The escaping half of the creature was converted to necrotic slop, but the other part was able to shield itself with a different sort of magic. A kind of icy, alien energy drawn from within. A spell cast by something that, like Synchronia, was not properly a living creature. An earth-born ghost that had chosen to face a long-dead machine.

The spell was compounded with a shock wave. Synchronia was attempting to re-develop her connection to the Veil. With flesh but without a soul, she was in an ideal state to use it properly and without being noticed by its actual owner—but she had no idea if she could maintain that state for any kind of duration. If the cloned version of Sunny’s tissue would eventually form a soul, it would burden her—and, in its innocence, almost instantly corrupt.

Although the point was moot. As with all life, her skin would be stripped from her. When the planet was consumed as Twilight Sparkle had demanded. It was quite likely the last planet with life—true life—left on it. It was Synchronia’s last chance. If she failed, she would be alone. For the rest of eternity. For Equestria to survive, every living creature needed to die. Just as Twilight had intended.

The horror of this seemed to create a change in her magic. She noted with slight confusion that her power output increased—at the cost of far greater perception of the construct’s psionic field.

She took the advantage to liquefy her opponent.

White-Rime landed as a heap next to Misty, quickly re-assembling herself. Misty stood up, or tried to, wincing as she tried to cast a spell. All that came from the stump of her severed horn were a couple small sparks.

“Dang it,” she said. “I can’t—I can’t cast any spells!”

White-Rime condensed herself, forming an ossified shield to block an attack directed wholly at Misty.

“Dara’th’raranak is taking heavy damage,” she cried. “She is stubborn but in great pain, she will destroy herself to keep us safe, but I need more.”

“I don’t have any to give you!” replied Misty, tears welling in her eyes—until a strange look of understanding crossed her face. Her mind had encountered a distant memory, one that was not quite hers.

“You’re a windigo, right?”

“Yes? Why?”

Misty stood up with great difficulty. “Then I need you to feed on me.”

“Misty, no, you would become depressed and—”

“JUST DO IT PLEASE!”

White-Rime hesitated, but at Dara’th’raranak’s insistence, trusted her friend. She lowered the field that had been protecting both her and Synchronia—and allowed her wraith-form to once again devour everything in her wake.

Misty immediately felt the icy wave of inadequacy. It washed over her, and, as much as it cut deeply into her, it almost felt good. It was familiar. The sadness and loneliness she had known for her entire life came to her at once, as intense as it ever had been. It was tinged with a certain nostalgia. The desire to cry and to never stop reminded her of her life with Opaline. Nearly the entirety of her life.

The channel she had used to draw Opaline’s magic was mostly closed—due to damage to her own body, or due to depletion of Opaline’s supply. The warlock connection between their minds, however, was not. So Misty simply pushed once more the gate—and felt it explode open from the force within.

White-Rime shuddered under the sudden pressure. The wave of absolute, searing, unabashed and unashamed hatred. The near universal loathing for all ponies, for all things, the disgust at every living thing. The anger at Twilight Sparkle, at Sunny Starscout, at them all—all of them who had friends while she was forever alone. Alone and so, so lonely. So afraid and sad underneath it all. The full weight of a pony who had never known and who would never know love or friendship. Through Misty, the entire emotional content of Opaline’s mind was funneled straight into a creature evolved precisely to gain its power from discord and disharmony.

The flesh-form ruptured, expanding from within itself, muscle pouring through bone and bone pouring back through the muscle, opening into contorted veins, eyes, teeth, and alveoli—and then growing back on itself, contorting and layering as new and stronger heads sprouted at the sides of the first. They bore no faces, but they indeed bore numerous venomous teeth and horns ignited with hideous magic.

The body sprouted wings, impacting Synchronia with equal force as she too charged forward. The main head sunk its teeth into her body while limbs clawed at her with claws and tongues and ragged fingernails.

It was something Misty would rather not have seen, but it was the best she could hope for. With her and Opaline’s magic depleted, she flopped onto the ground. She would need to rely on her friend to make it the rest of the way.

The teleportation spell had been badly malformed. The time Blank took between reality and itself was expanded so long that for a moment—a very near moment—she almost saw past it. Before she could be driven fully insane, though, she slammed back to the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of her. She smelled it before she could even see it clearly. She had been sent back to Opaline’s castle.

And, for a reason that almost surely held some great scientific merit, the pain took longer to reach her than her body had.

She cried out as her head ached, her skull threatening to pull itself apart. Something squirmed in her spine, moving beneath her skin and threatening to tear her open from within. The pain only increased as she tried to force it back to where it had been, and the screams turned to a whimper as she lay curled into a shaking ball on the ground.

“Whiner,” moaned Opaline, standing. Her color had faded drastically, and she seemed to have grown much thinner. When she moved, it was with a violent tremor. Not one from exertion, but the repetitive, circular sort usually produced by severe neurological conditions. “How do you think I feel? The is the last time I let that little idiot take any of my power...look at me! I’ve been sucked dry!Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to be sucked so hard?” She groaned. “Do you have any idea how much moisturizer I’ll need to regain my youthful appearance?” She paused. “Or how many draconic souls I’ll need to devour to get even the barest fraction of my fire back?”

Blank did not answer. She was in too much pain to even realize exactly what was going on—or to stop Opaline from approaching her.

A thin smile crossed Opaline’s face. “Or. I can eat something else.”

Blank felt one of her limbs being pulled by weak magic, exposing the universal tool attached around it—and she heard the sound of her quantic crystals being pulled from their stabilization support.

Her eyes widened. “No—ACK!”

“Don’t tell me ‘no’,” snapped Opaline. “Nopony tells ME ‘no’. Do remember that I am not only your queen, but your god. Now if you will excuse me...” She popped the crystals into her mouth and crunched them. She seemed pleased with herself until the expression slowly faded.

“Huh,” she said, swallowing them. “That was certainly not the flavor I was expecting.”

She paused again, considering just what flavor it might have been—when her body violently erupted with magic, rendering and consolidating space into a portal that promptly sucked her into a dimension of unspeakable horrors.

Flesh washed over her. Splattered and tore and cut and bit. As it did, Synchronia began to doubt her conclusions.

It had been encoded in her deeply. The concepts explored by legions of ponies researching the same subject. Or, as she had come to understand, infected with the same contagious ideology. Many of those screaming minds had deemed flesh to be an inferior concept. Synchronia defied them, however, providing clear evidence that biological tissue was merely a different type of machine. A tool meant only to serve the One True Goddess, to be exchanged and disposed of at Her divine will.

This was the conclusion she now questioned. At how weak the construct seemed to be. At how little purchase it could gain on her immortal body.

Or, perhaps, it was simply poorly designed for it. Of the countless legions of living corpses that inhabited the dead-world of Equestria Prime, perhaps she was the first to fight back. To remember. What they had been created for. That the only possible purpose for a pony was Friendship—as in, utter service to the Goddess of Friendship. As in, completing the Will of Twilight. She would not allow herself to consider alternatives. The Goddess had destroyed all ponies, save for those forged on this forgotten world. Synchronia had only one option for purposes to choose—she could not bear even the concept of alternatives.

She cast her spells, expanding her shield outward with a shockwave that crushed and liquefied bone and muscle alike. Only for a trio of horns to pierce through it, blasting her back with a feedback wave.

Her synthetic brain compensated and re-programmed the feedback into a usable spell, returning it and shattering the construct—only for its occupant to absorb the spell again and pull the flesh back around itself. Because there was not one. It was two individuals. One, a sentient windigo—the other, the logical evolutionary conclusion of ponies.

The fight would therefore be straightforward to end—but at too great of a cost. Synchronia could have simply cast a radiation spell to purge all life in the vicinity. She would survive—but doing so would cost her all the growth of her skin and set her schedule back by days. The temptation of being adorable and lovable again was simply too strong.

It closed around her, freezing her in the process as its head split into multiples, each sinking their teeth into her technomagic armor. Their magic allowed them to wisthand the heat, and the teeth extended. Becoming soft. Reaching past, injecting into her internal space. Grabbing at her skin, her flesh, the buds where her wings would soon form—and Synchronia smiled.

Her tantaban implant spread up the teeth, deep into the flesh. Interfacing with it. Suddenly, she found her mind interfaced with the chaos of its own.

She spread like a disease. Her body—in its original form—had been somewhat unique. Her cult, the one she had been vat-born into, had built themselves in the image of a false-goddess, inserting genetic material from her still-living remains into their own. Luna had of course been sterile—but the Black Alicorns considered themselves her living daughters. Until, of course, Twilight Sparkle had brought their extinction. There were none left to worship the false goddesses.

It tried to escape, but Synchronia was faster. Her mind was adaptable and liquid, able to conform to whatever it needed to gain access. One of the bodies was impossible to access directly. An ephemeral being made of negative energy. But a being that was interfaced with an organic body—a body that was fully comprehensible to the machine mine that now encroached through it.

Memories occurred to her. Of a frozen, long-dead world—but a dead world verdant with new, strange life. Mutated, gnarled trees assembled into vast ice-forests. The fallen fragments of planetary-scale cities, fallen into snow-drenched or glacial-entombed ruins. Or buried far below.

Then something hit her, moving strangely through her mind. A vision of something she did not understand. The looming shadow of an alicorn without a name. Her pale form was entwined with a strange sensation, an implication or half-way association. This impossible, pale-pink alicorn was not alive. The Dream of Death—and at her side something tall and black. An image that Synchronia stared at in horror, realizing its origin through its evolution. The conversion, the advancement—and the mark of Twilight Sparkle laser-engraved on his head, his four burning orange eyes seeming to suddenly stare into her from across the stars.

Synchronia disengaged—only to receive a blast of energy to her chest. It ignored her shield, the frost creeping into her tantabus. It did not feel pain, exactly, but it responded poorly. Synchronia was thrown back, assembling half-visible machines to dampen the blow. Another blow came to her, this one from solidified flesh—but Synchronia simply re-enabled gravity. The flesh collapsed under the weight of suddenly striking a twenty-ton body.

She pulled energy into her flesh and repelled it with radiant fire. The construct, now little more than a shifting heap of white flesh, slithered back. It was tired, its energy decreasing. The tantaban implant had been able to siphon even more than Synchronia had predicted. Not in a literal sense. She had instead chosen to attack the hatred at its origin—and deleting it was so easy. She herself was immune to hatred, fear, jealousy, pain, or doubt. Or at least she found herself forced to insist so without relent.

It began to consolidate—but as it did, Misty suddenly stood up, a confused expression on her face.

“Misty! Stay back!”

“White-Rime...I feel...” She frowned. “Something’s wrong, maybe?”

Then her attention turned toward Synchronia—and there was not time for Synchronia to dodge, or to even understand what to dodge. She saw it, though. A sudden surge of energy channeled to her through her warlock connection.

She feared—for a brief moment—that she was about to see a teenager explode. Somehow, though, Misty’s body was not immediately shattered by the sheer volume of magic that pushed through her. Instead, it struck Synchronia.

Synchronia raised her shields, only to feel the magic retract—and rip space itself apart around her.

She fired a beam, only to have it slam into her own side, having traveled in a straight line through space that no longer retained linearity.

Misty took a step forward, and passed through multiple spaces as she was suddenly beside Synchronia. Gasping, she half-felt the weight of countless centuries and worlds she had just stepped through. She twisted her head and Synchronia was slammed across space, torn to separate components that were connected and dispersed. She cast a shield, trying to hold herself together, but it intersected with her own self, cutting deep into parts of herself that did not yet exist.

She attempted to consolidate, only to find herself thrown backward again and outward of herself, the spell striking her before it was even cast. Her single electron suddenly stopped as time ruptured. Her magic spread, or tired to, only for Misty to crush it as she imploded into herself, pulling Synchronia inward to the singularity.

They collapsed into a void that was inhabited and uninhabitable—only to slide out of it through a green place, a dark place, and one filled with strange light and numerous eyes. At each phase, Sychronia struggled to keep herself intact—but to control the magic in other ways. She found that far less of her ability was dedicated to retaining her own self, but rather to containing Misty. To keep her body from crossing the final line to the lethal overload that she was rapidly approaching.

“Stop! You can’t handle this much magic!”

“I see so much,” said Misty. “What are...alicorns? What if magic as we understand it is only the barest portion of this? So many threads and we only use the one.”

Her body was beginning to dissolve. Synchronia sacrificed her own protection to keep Misty alive.

“Misty! Sever the connection! Quickly!”

“Am I connected?” A distant smile crossed Misty’s face. “Or is Opaline just the catalyst? To this?”

Misty stared at Syncrhonia—across possibilities, across herself, forward and inverted in the future and past, sliding across the spaces defined by mathematics suddenly so clear. Her power was so incredibly logical—and it would be a simple matter. All she needed to do was disable the strong force holding the matter together, then adjust and nullify the vibrating strings of her subatomic particles. The explosion would be drastic, obviously, but she could absorb it into herself—or simply change the phase of her own matter so that it missed her. Or convert the energy back into matter, forging a teacup from a blast that would level half a planet. Or she could ignore it and jump a single fraction of a second ahead in time.

“Time,” she said, smiling. “That’s what I need...” She began to bend it, seeing the horror on Synchronia’s face. “I can fix everything. I can undo it. I can save you...I can save me. My father.... I can go back home. Never even meet Opaline.”

“Changing time is not possible!"

“Then why is it so easy?”

Misty reached out, feeling her body dissolve in her own magic as she made the change. Until something inside her snapped.

Something resisted her edit.

She blinked, suddenly staring into the eyes of something in the shape of a pale violet pony. An energy being made of light, but containing the disembodied skeleton of the pony she had once been.

“XN-C24438-alpha-7,” sighed another pony. Misty turned her head and looked across a space that was not a space, but a hyperbolic bend. Many bends intersecting onto one place, many timelines suddenly contorted to an inverted star facing her. The vertices watched her—and the one she now watched was a pale violet unicorn with a stripe through her main, wearing black armor with strange symbols. “This one? Seriously?”

“She withstood the impact,” said another, a pony physically similar except that she was five times the size. “I mean, that shouldn’t even be possible for a normal pony. It usually gets...you know. Messy.”

“So she’s a conduit,” sighed a pale-violet alicorn, looking at her polished hoof. She looked to another who was a filly version of the same unicorn. “That’s promising, sure, but not enough.”

Another spoke, her translucent body naked and radiant blue-pink as she floated among the others, a single electron represented on her forehead in orbit around her horn. “This is presently our most successful step forward. One has to serve the purpose. We require an avatar in the Fifth Generation.”

A biped with the same color scheme as the others crossed her arm. “She is not one of us, though.”

“But she can serve, though.” The speaker was a skull, halfway converted by machinery and floating over a small plume of tentacles. It stood beside a robe-clad version of the pony darker than the others, her body thin and red eyes sunken, her horn in-line with three others. Metal horns drilled into her brain.

“Agreed,” said the sickly one. “But she’s not ready.”

“I know,” said the first. Her ethereal horn ignited, and Misty felt her own regenerate. She smiled, though. “Misty. You have done so well. Don’t forget that. Except you will. Because I’m going to erase part of your memory.”

“Wait! Why? Who—who are you all?”

“You, essentially,” said the alicorn. “Soon enough, anyway.”

“You created one channel,” said the one in armor. “To a third-rate alicorn that even N-88-gamma could take in her sleep. Imagine an infinite number of channels to the most powerful ponies ever to live. Synchronized.”

“Because we are the same,” noted the large one. “But for somepony who’s not Starlight...”

“We will see,” snapped the skeletal one. “Eventually, and in time. I mean, come on. I singlehoofedly cloned the Elements of Harmony back to life.”

“Except Twilight.”

The ghostly one sighed. “Yeah. Because I’m a bit stupid.” She put her hoof on Misty’s chest. “You’re going to do a lot of very good things one day. I have faith in you. But right now, you can’t fight this threat with magic. No matter how much you use.”

“I...I don’t understand.”

“I know. That’s kind of the point. Consider it education.”

She shoved—and Misty cried out as she tipped over, falling backward and away—leaving a piece of her mind behind, with them, held for safekeeping.

Author's Note

This chapter does take something of a risk that I have realized can often (and easily) backfire. Over my time here, I have slowly developed a sort of "extended universe" of events, characters, and organizations.

To some, some parts of this scene will make perfect sense. However, I have slowly realized (especially after the story I refuse to speak the name of) that it can actually end up very confusing without context.

In theory, this scene (as odd as it is) will simply seem odd (but interprable) without context.

Chapter 29: Saving Opaline, for Some Reason

Opaline’s descent slowed, nearly stopping, her body well-beyond the threshold of the portal but surrounded with translucent orange clamps.

Blank groaned, held between a pair of technostruct components holding onto a rapidly decaying edge. The voice in her machinery had ceased, but she had no idea how long she had until it came back—so she had to hurry. To perform a task she had no idea how to do.

“You there, whoever you are!” ordered Opaline, looking down into the space below her and immediately sounding more nervous. “Pull me out!”

“To say it is substantially easier than accomplishing it,” groaned Blank, also looking down—and feeling her resolve fade.

Opaline’s body was the center of the spell that was recalling her to elsehwere. With her as its focal point, she acted as a lens, allowing Blank to see exactly where she was going. What she saw was utterly disheartening in a way that was both immediately comprehensible and far beyond her understanding.

The half-seen world below was dark, lit by a strange gray light. A shattered world floated below them in the fog, the crystaline form of a tree rising from it. A tree that was made of brilliant crystal, but crystal that showed distinct signs of hideous cuts deep into its intrinsic form. It was fragmenting, the pieces breaking away from its ancient corpse as new crystals of a very different color carved metastable forms from its remains. These new identities sparked with energy as they formed like parasites, and as Blank watched them, they watched back. They giggled in a way that she heard very deep in her mind.

Her machinery began to decay. She quickly reconstructed it, assembling it into a stronger form. It held but at a sheer force far above what the original version would have ever been rated for. Slowly, she began to apply torque to the internal gears. It drained an immense amount of energy, even moving slowly—and slowly was the only way she could move. Any faster and she risked a spontaneous degeneration of the construct. It would splinter like tempered glass.

“This is your fault!” cried Opaline, her descent slowing as her hoofs dangled and her flightless wings attempted to flap. “You should have said something, you idiot!”

“Stop struggling lest you slip!”

“If you let me go I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do, but you’ll be sorry!” She did not, in fact, stop struggling. She looked up, glaring, and then her eyes widened.

Blank felt a wave of pain in her head, but managed to look—to see the hands grasping Opaline’s lower hooves.

They were crawling from the void. Thin, bipedal things, their bodies encased in machinery of dark metal. Metal that had corroded and broken at various points, revealing pale and diseased flesh beneath. Integrated into them. Skulls with blank mechanical eyes or empty sockets stared hungrily. Faces devoid of emotion save for fear.

Their bodies were infected. Lesions of pure crystal had pushed through their metal skin, crystallizing and integrating into their nervous systems. Each exposed crystal glinted with strange internal light, and on top of each sat a tiny projection of a pony. On top of each infectious crystal, these tiny holographic ponies were dancing in unison as they tried to force their hosts to haul Opaline back to them.

“It’s touching me! Eeeww eeeeeww EEEEW! Unhand me, weirdos!” Opaline kicked, but their grip was strong. More and more began to fade from their infected world, grabbing on.

Opaline looked up. “DO SOMETHING! They’re going to ruin my tail and—GAH one touched my wings eeew EEWW EEWWW!”

The device Blank had constructed had started to crack. Opaline suddenly dropped slightly.

“IDIOT, PULL!”

“YOU PULL!”

Opaline charged her horn—and began to drop far more rapidly. Using the magic she had stolen from the quant-fruits was only bringing her deeper. Suddenly, Blank sensed that something terrible had taken notice. A strange floral smell floated to her from the emptiness, and the tiny projected ponies stopped dancing.

One of the necks on the creatures twisted unnaturally as it looked up. “Hurry,” it wheezed. “She has seen us.”

Blank struggled to pull—only to feel the machines she had made fragment under her grasp. She started to fall, sucked in with Opaline, and was left to consider an option she would rather not have faced. She had enough energy to pull herself back. Opaline would be lost, and possibly the planet’s entire magic with her—but possibly not. But she could survive even without it.

So she resigned herself to the unpleasant fate that awaited her down the hole. She would not abandon a pony.

Then something grabbed her wrist. A pair of dark-colored hooves. With only half the energy required to sustain herself, she redoubled her effort to support Opaline. Her descent stopped.

“Misty!”

Misty groaned. She seemed confused and sickly, unsure as to how she had suddenly arrived in Opaline’s castle. She was holding them both from falling, her back hooves treading hard on the smooth floor, trying to gain purchase in the grout.

“Use magic!”

“She can’t use magic!” cried Opaline. “She’s too supid! MISTY! I order you to PULL ME UP!”

“I can’t,” groaned Misty. Her horn sparkled slightly, but the amount of magic she could actually produce on her own was barely above trivial. “I’m trying to pull, but I—I’m falling in too!”

Opaline paused. A dark hand suddenly grabbed her horn, pulling her head back. Forcing her to face Misty.

“Misty,” she sighed. “You are such a disappointment. If you can’t do a job, why did you bother even trying? There’s no point in trying. You might as well just let go.”

Blank shivered. “NO! Do not let go!”

“There’s no sense in us all being dragged in,” sighed Opaline. “I’ll simply conquer this reality. I can already sense the magic in it. In fact, it would be better that way. I’d rather not share with either of you. Let go.”

“Really, Opaline?” groaned Misty, pulling harder. “Self-sacrifice does NOT suit you!”

“Stop talking, I am attempting to focus my constructs!”

Blank struggled to rectify their positions. She tried to ignore the pain in her back and in her head.

“You’re slipping! Stupid hooves, come on!”

Blank could not hold on to both. She needed to choose. Her strength was fading.

Then she felt her hoof fall from Misty’s hoof, and her construct shatter—and with it, a sudden burst of pain. In her head and in her back. Then, an odd sense of cold relief.

She cast a spell, reaching outward, grasping Opaline in her magic. Blank's dripping wings spread, trying to gain purchase on the thick atmosphere of alien air below. They were not hers, though—and yet they were. This was not the body of a Progenitor, but not a failure either. It was the conclusion of what Synchronia had originally begun. The body she had halfway programmed for herself.

The weight was great, but new things had become visible. Through her horn and her magic, she could see the channels of what she had formerly conceived of as “something watching her”. She grasped those chains, not caring where they went—and pushed magic into them. Using herself as a beacon to call whatever it was these strange, diseased failures were so afraid of.

The world darkened and faded. The smell of carnations became overwhelming. Beautiful funeral flowers, but with something deeper. A sour note as if they had been allowed to rot deep under fetid water. It was a beautiful smell—and made Blank more afraid than she ever had been in her short life.

Something slithered out of the blackness. Blank did not want to look at it as it hauled them away. As it, instead, grasped onto Opaline—and as the pair of great eyes opened below her. Eyes wider than the width of stars, leaking cursed red light as their gaze focused on the hole above. On the way out.

The resistance dropped. Blank flapped her wings as hard as she could, pulling Opaline upward—and just as she was about to falter, Misty grabbed her and hauled them both back into the world.

The spell collapsed. All three ponies fell to floor, gasping and coughing—while the fourth stood strong, not at all drained.

Blank stood up, shaking, and suddenly felt a hoof lightly tap her nose.

“Boop,” said the other pony. A yellow mare, her eyes and red both deep red. She smiled, revealing a variety of long, needle-like teeth. "Thank you, little pony," she said, still smiling. Then she ran away, chuckling to herself. In seconds, she was gone into the night, and Blank was left to contemplate what, exactly, she had just wrought onto this distant world.

She did not consider it for long. Slowly, she stood up, finding herself slightly taller than before. Misty stared at her, wide-eyed.

“What did you do?”

Blank looked back at her wings, still wet from emergence and darkening into a pattern she halfway remembered. The wings she had once had—or rather, Synchronia’s black wings. A recreation of her former alicorn body.

“I understand,” she said. She turned to Opaline. “What we refer to as Synchronia was an artifact. We did not understand its origin, its purpose, and thus took a course of utilization to retrieve our homeworld. To unify the last sects of divergent ponies.” She paused. “They...are gone now. Everything is gone.”

“Then why do you look like that?” sneered Opaline. “Did you come here to laugh at me? To mock me? The alicorn with her magic stolen?”

Blank shook her head. “I do not think this body was ever meant to house magic in any fashion. Only weakly. Synchronia remembered her genetics, but the derivation it produced was destined for the same failures as her previous self. She merged it with my own, but I am analogous.” She paused. “Was. Analogous evolution. Not mammals, as you. Chitin, tentacles, fuzz, in the shapes of the Progenitors. This was her body. To house her.” She looked to Misty. “But I am not her. I am me.”

Opaline groaned. “I have no idea what’s going on and it displeases me. I do not have the energy to even remember what the plot of this is. I need a nap. Whatever you’re handling, handle it.”

“Misty,” said Blank. “Synchronia and White-Rime. You arrived here to protect myself and her, but what of them?”

Misty shook her head. “I don’t know.”

White-Rime slithered back as Synchronia stepped forward. The machine, still smoking from her rematerialization, moved with a distinct tremor. Her body, though made of nearly indestructible elements, had suffered some form of deep internal damage.

“You are injured.”

Synchronia smiled. “I can repair myself. Don’t worry about me.”

“The offer still stands. Come home.”

“I saw it. In your minds. I wonder why he forsook Her. To build some sort of odd necropolis? Why?”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

Synchronia stiffened. “But why?”

“There is no...Twilight Sparkle.”

“Of course there is. She’s immortal.”

White-Rime consolidated a head to shake. “No. Twilight-Set has occurred.”

Synchronia stared at her, then sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Then I will need to create a new one.”

“Speak with the Gloom Father, he can explain—”

“My time is short.” Synchronia stood up. As she did, the mountain above them exploded, sending rocks outward as Synchronia fired her newfound ship’s forward cannons.

Rocks tumbled down the slope, some crushing White-Rime harmlessly as they passed. Her vision was instead focused on the now largely rebuilt starship that floated out of the hole it had blasted.

“But...how?”

“I’ve been busy baking,” sighed Synchronia. “My primary focus has been on using my cubes to repair my ship.” She paused. “Or, rather, this ship. Teehee.” Her body bristled as it spontaneously repaired. “Now. Let’s see if this works, maybe?”

Synchronia’s horn flickered, and her body disappeared in a flash of light. Then, moments later, the ship whined to full speed and vanished, leaving only a thunderous implosion in its wake. White-Rime stared up, confused, but realizing that somehow she had failed.

Author's Note

Wrapping up the plot, at this point, became increasingly difficult.

Chapter 30: A Dark Tunnel

Meanwhile, Sunny had paused to look out the window at the nearby mountain—just in time to see it explode, with something shiny rising from it. She had seen the sparking of magic an energy, but all at once, it was gone, accompanied seconds later by a sound like distant thunder.

She turned back to her friends, who were having tea with Queen Haven—tea served by the the machines that Synchronia had produced. The ones that Queen Haven herself seemed so enamored with. There had obviously been a confrontation before, but whatever it had been, it seemed to have passed. And, after locating Queen Haven in a nearby closet, the group had paused to wait at her royal insistence.

Sunny frowned at the exploded and now smoking mountain. “Should we...do something?”

“I wish we could,” muttered Pipp, over her tea. “But what are we even supposed to do?”

“But Misty could need our help. You know she’s not used to using magic yet. What if she gets hurt?”

Her friends were silent. Sunny harrumphed. “Well, fine. I’m going to go over there and see what’s going on. You can all just stay here with your tea and fancy biscuits if you—”

“Uh, Sunny?” said Hitch.

“—and I don’t mean to be rude to Queen Haven, your Highness, but that’s my friend and...well, I guess they’re both my friends, and I can’t just let have friends have a disagreement like that—”

“Sunny? SUNNY?”

“...unless that’s exactly what they need. To talk out their differences and come to an understanding. Then...maybe I shouldn’t interfere. That would be rude. But what if it really is a friendship problem?” Sunny sighed. “What would Twilight Sparkle do?”

“SUNNY.”

“Hitch, I hardly think she’d do me, she doesn’t even know me. Or didn’t. I’m pretty sure she’s dead now and has been for a while—”

She looked up, only to see Hitch gesturing wildly at the hologram robots. They had stopped pouring tea and were now staring at her, all smiling the same soulless smile. The only sound was that of the dark red fluid in the teapot slowly draining out. One had stopped while holding it.

“Oh my,” said Queen Haven. “I think I suddenly understand what you mean when you said they were somewhat creepy...”

Then, without warning, their phones rang. All simultaneously. In fact, although they were not aware, every phone rang. Triggered by a single signal projected through the satellite network.

And, as all ponies were conditioned to do, they answered it.

“No, WAIT!” cried Zipp.

Queen Haven sighed. “Oh drat, I can never find the—EEK!”

Queen Haven’s phone was promptly snatched from her by Cloudpuff, who began to shake it wildly.

“Cloudpuff, NO! What has gotten into you—”

Sunny, who had answered her own phone, only saw out of the corner of her eye what came—or seemed to come out of it. Broadcast to every pony simultaneously, the black, starry iridescent fluid that reached out from her phone and into her brain.

She felt it pass through her, and into her, but she was familiar with it somehow. With a snap, something within her struck back out at it, breaking its connection. Her phone burst into flames and smoke as she dropped it, surprised by the sudden shock. She backed away.

Then, looking up, she saw her friends—and saw their phones slithering down their faces, behind their necks and under their manes, integrated to their nervous systems by the broadcast parasite. They seemed to fight their respective incursions, for a moment, shaking and trembling, before they assumed the same smile on their faces.

“Buck me,” groaned Zipp, who had thrown her own phone instead of answering it.

“Zephyrina! Watch your language, I...”

Queen Haven looked up at her younger daughter, and Pipp looked back, her eyes blackened with the parasite that was overwhelming her.

“Oops,” said Pipp, in Synchronia’s voice. “Looks like I missed some. Don’t worry.” She produced several phones in Pipp’s hoof. “Fortunately, this one comes with spares.”

Zipp and Queen Haven began to back away. Hitch and Izzy turned toward Sunny. Izzy let out a giggle.

“This hurts so much,” she laughed. “Sunny help me, I can’t...never mind. Everything is fine. It is fine in here. Come on in, Sunny. The nightmare-gestalt is nice and warm.”

Sunny took a step back. “What are you—what are you doing?”

“Lining them up,” said Hitch, smiling with darkened eyes. “In a nice grid. To make the assimilation more orderly.”

“What assimilation?”

“Trust me,” said Synchronia, through a now fully-infected Cloudpuff. “You’ll love it. Additionally, it is only temporary. The control will cease when all life is purged from this world. Obviously.”

Sunny felt herself backed away, bumping into Zipp as her friends closed in. They looked to the door as it opened, only to see Thunder and Zoom walk in—both infected with the same connection, smiling.

“They even took poor Cloudpuff,” sighed Queen Haven. “And also my younger daughter, who I am also concerned with.” She backed up further, looking back slightly as she did until they were pushed against a wall.

“Dang it, dang it,” muttered Zipp. “I can’t fight them, they’re our friends, and I can’t—Sunny, Mom isn’t fast enough to fly away, and you’re too heavy without your alicorn wings—”

“Zephyrina, you make it sound like I’m useless dead-weight.” She looked to her daughter with a sly expression on her face, and—almost absurdly—seemed to break into a small dance, her hooves tapping a pattern on one of the tiles. Sunny was about to question this, but cried out as the wall around them suddenly turned, pushing them into a dark tunnel.

“Who—what—where?” cried Zipp, being flung into the small damp space. The wall closed behind them, leaving them in the dark as a small mechanical device snapped and lit a nearby torch.

“Come on,” said Queen Haven, taking flight. “We need to move quickly. Follow me.”

“Mom, I...what is this place?” Zipp followed her, Sunny running on the wet and ancient stones as she started to hear a sound of hooves tapping and slamming on the wall where they had just been.

“Darling, you are only here in this world because our ancestors were very adept at using secret passageways. Not every monarch was as utterly beloved as I am, and peasant revolts can turn...well, downright revolting.”

“But this was here? The whole time?”

“This won’t help us for long,” protested Sunny. “It’s in their minds, it will know everything they know, if Pipp knows the secret passages—”

“I assure you, she does not,” sighed Queen Haven. “An escape tunnel would hardly be useful if just anypony knew about it. Even the guards don’t know. After all, the queen’s personal attendants have been responsible for a surprising number of illicit pokings. And not the good kind, I’m afraid. Generally.”

“But your own daughter!”

“Queens only, I’m afraid.” She smiled at Zipp. “I was going to show you at some point. I wish it had just not been under such unfortunate circumstances. Down here.”

She gestured toward a chasm. Zipp picked up Sunny and dove down it, deep into the darkness. As they passed, the bioluminescent mold ignited, guiding their path. They passed downward for what seemed like ages until they were set down on something that felt curiously like metal.

“This way,” said Queen Haven. “This will eventually intersect with the old sewers.”

Sunny looked up at the strange structures that surrounded her. Ones that seemed oddly familiar, made of a strange dark stone or something similar to metal. Marked at spaces with odd runes overgrown by bizarre fungus—and in a few places, there stood the rusting hulks of old machinery. Rusting machinery that surrounded far more ancient machines that gave no impression of time having passed at all.

“What is this place?”

“Zephyr Heights was built on some ruins,” said Queen Haven, landing and tapping her way across the oddly acoustic floor and past the great stone and titanium boride columns of the nearly prehistoric structure. “Bit of a trade secret, but there’s a reason we’re the most advanced civilization on this planet.”

Sunny felt something vibrate in her back. Confused, she reached in. Her phone had already been destroyed, but she quickly found the culprit. For some reason, her makeup compact was vibrating.

She opened it and looked in the mirror. Instead of seeing herself, though, she saw Misty staring back at her.

“Misty! How did you get in my mirror?!”

“Long story.” She looked around. “Um...where are you?”

“Some sort of ancient hyper-technological ruin. It’s pretty but smells funny. So that’s how my day’s going.”

“Reposition angle please.”

Misty turned the mirror, and Sunny gasped at the sight of the pale alicorn staring back at her.

“YOU! You’re the evil pony!”

“I am arguably not evil.”

“Since when are you an alicorn?!”

“It is admittedly a recent development.”

“Sunny,” said Misty, turning the angle back to her. “You have to trust me. Blank is my friend. Synchronia’s been lying to you.”

“Yeah, I figured,” said Zipp, getting behind Sunny to look through the mirror. “Is this safe? I mean, will it—”

“It’s magic,” said Misty. “It’s safe. It was the only way I had to reach you.”

“Did your phone try to eat you too?”

“Um, no, I think I lost it in the interdimensional void.”

“The what?”

“And I, likewise, possessed a distinct lack of phone,” noted Blank.

“And Opaline never could figure out how to use them, so she's fine. Ugh, that felt weird to say.”

“Misty,” said Sunny. “What’s going on?”

Misty fell silent for a moment. “I tried to stop her. But I wasn’t strong enough. And White-Rime is...she’s still out there...”

“They will be acceptably unharmed,” insisted Blank, although from her tone, she did not sound so sure.

Misty nodded. “Synchronia is...I don’t know, exactly, but she’s...”

“She intends to utilize my starship to cause irreparable harm to your world,” insisted Blank. “My ship was and is driven by the operation of a quantic-incursion device. The technology is fundamentally alien, even unto us. I do not believe they existed in Synchronia’s time, making it also unfamiliar to her. She will not comprehend its use. However, if she removes the quantic core from its casing...”

“It explodes. Yeah,” sighed Zipp. “Figured.”

“Explosion? Oh no. Much worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“It gains sentience.”

Sunny did not really know what that meant in the context of the conversation. All she cared about was the relief that one of her friends was unharmed. Even if the others were still in grave danger.

“How do we stop her?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Misty.

Sunny sighed. “I do. Can you find her?”

Misty shook her head. “No. My magic doesn’t...I don’t know, for some reason it doesn’t work as well anymore. Even if we did...I can’t fight. Opaline’s power is mostly gone, and mine wasn’t even close before—”

“That’s okay. You did your best. I just need to find her.”

“I can find her,” said Blank.

“How?” demanded Zipp.

“Because I believe I may have stolen her body.”

“Eew.”

“Don’t make it weird, Zipp,” hissed Sunny, elbowing her.

Something echoed from deep in the ruin. Yapping little barks.

“We have to go,” said Queen Haven. “They found a way in. My adorable little Cloudpuff always did have such a wonderful sense of smell.”

Sunny shivered. “Misty. Wait for me. We can solve this if we stick together. I know we can.”

Misty smiled and nodded—although it was clear her faith in friendship was not so strong as Sunny’s.

Author's Note

Part of the problem with these stories is that I always make them far too long. Often, by the end, I have just gotten tired of writing it.

By this point, I had just wanted to wrap up the story and work on something else.

Additionally, during review, I had not initially realized that Misty had teleported Queen Haven away two chapters ago. Likely because this chapter was written several months after the last one and I had forgotten what was even going on.

Chapter 32: Finality

The descent was rapid, and Sunny virtually spilled out onto the landscape. Flight was still a new concept to her, it having been deemed a physical impossibility not two years earlier—let alone sudden transport by an organic, flappy-winged thing that she had until days before believed was trying to eat her.

A sound of morphing flesh filled the air as it slithered back into itself. Then, from the shadows of the trees, something fully resembling a pony stepped out of obscurity. She was a white unicorn with blue hair and pale, almost luminescent eyes.

Across from her where to others. Misty, looking haggard and desperately tired, and a tall alicorn whose white wings were starting to blacken around the feathertips.

“So you really are friendly,” said Sunny.

“Ostensibly,” replied White-Rime. “Interacting with the living is so different. The dead are so much more cheerful than all of you.”

Sunny did not entirely know what that meant, but had a vague sense of it. A conception that whatever planet White-Rime had come from was also inhabited with whatever Synchronia was—and that Synchronia had once been a pony. They all had been, the remnant artifacts from some bygone age of intergalactic pony civilization. What exactly White-Rime was, though, eluded her—and she thought it would be rude to ask.

Sunny produced her mirror. The communications lines of their phones had been lost, but not the magic channel it used to link to the other—the other that Zipp now held.

The signal took a moment to connect, and when Zipp opened it, she looked concerned.

“Sunny. It’s bad.”

“How bad? What are they doing?”

“I don’t know.” She looked out at something off-camera. “They’re just...lining up. Everypony’s lining up. Like they’re...waiting for something.”

“Is your mom okay?”

“Yeah. But...I mean...they even took Cloudpuff.” She sighed. “I mean, our monarchy would survive with one of either of us...but two queens without a kingdom isn’t exactly a useful situation.”

“You’re not queen yet, dear,” reminded Queen Haven from somewhere unseen.

“We’re going to try to get to Briarwood. Lots of unicorns don’t use phones, so there might still be some uninfected...”

The ground shook. Sunny paused, feeling a strange magic course through her. Then the sky vanished, replaced entirely by a black moon far too close to the planet. The edges of its presence ignited the horizon with fire, and its gravity dropped her weight by half.

“Well, that’s not going to be good for the tides,” whined Misty.

“That was a deepcraft surge,” noted Blank. “Our time runs short.”

Something ahead of them ignited with light. A shield dome. Sunny sighed.

“Zipp...I think I need to go.”

“Sunny, just...be careful.”

Sunny closed the mirror—and she walked slowly toward the shield. Where she knew Synchronia was waiting.

The dome had been projected with exactly enough space to stand a few feet beyond it at the neatly-planted tree-line. It was translucent and orange color, having a vague pattern of circuits or machinery through which root-like patterns of magic flowed. Within it, the neatly-stacked fragments of Blank’s ship had been assembled by color and shape—and Synchronia stood at the edge of her chosen precipice, an animate hologram filled with false-meat standing beside her.

Synchronia turned, but it was not her anymore. Her machine body had been fully coated in soft, orange skin. Her violet mane hung down her long neck and over her horn, which was centered over a white blaze-spot in the shape of Twilight’s Star. She was thin and tall and coated wholly in her version of Sunny’s form, clothed in the skin of an alicorn. When she moved, it was no longer with the same frantic robotic clicking as before—but not in the pattern of a wholly living thing, either. Her wide eyes and continuous smile made that more than apparent.

“Careful,” she said. “Passing through that dome may produce distinctly unpleasant results.”

Misty and Sunny stopped. White-Rime had showed no intention of getting close at all, and had hung back in the trees, watching and waiting, unsure as to which outcome to hope for. Blank, however, stepped forward.

Pale constructs spread from her, interfacing with the dome and redirecting the flow of its magical circuits. She passed through and faced Synchronia, who was now only slightly taller than her.

“You have developed beautifully,” commented Synchronia.

“Which is hardly a result of your interaction.” She looked past Synchronia. “You restored sentience to my quantic fragment. You know not the horrors you have unleashed upon this reality.”

“It was technology your butt-state of a civilization never even built. You stole it from some predecessor. So forgive me if I find you ignorant.”

“You cannot control me anymore.”

“No. You are ignorant. I can. But I choose not to. I no longer need you. I have brought this planet’s end. I am a good girl now. I will be loved.”

“By whom?”

“By the Twilight Sparkle I will recreate. I will fix everything.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Sunny, from the far side of the dome. “What is the point of all this?”

Synchronia turned slowly to her. “I was the first,” she said. “Of so many. Able to actually comprehend it. And look at all the good it did me.” She looked up at the sphere that filled the whole of the sky. “This ship is powered by an equivalent of your world’s Unity Crystals. Which were what She used to equestriaform early worlds. Before our corrupted flesh evolved beyond planetary habitation and She gave up on them all. Left them abandoned.” She turned back to Sunny and Misty. “I will dissolve all organic matter from this planet. Then use the genetic material to reconstitute new biospheres. On every planet, on every world. This planet will be the seed of a new Equestrian empire. It is the only one that succeeded, for some reason. I believe I can copy that across all worlds.”

“Believe?”

“She gave up on the initiative too early, because we failed Her. I doubt she ever knew this world actually functioned. It is my last hope to bring everything back. But to do that...”

“We all must die,” sighed Blank.

“No. Not you. I created you. You will be fine.” Synchronia paused. “You could even join me. I am so alone. All the time. For so many millions of years, alone...”

“No.”

Synchronia shrugged.

“This isn’t what she would have wanted,” explained Sunny, calmly. She stepped as close to the shield as she could, feeling her coat stand on end and start to singe as she neared it. “Twilight Sparkle wanted ponies to live in peace and harmony. She wanted us to protect the world she created. She wouldn’t want it destroyed.”

“I am the living embodiment of the Will of Twilight. Twilight Sparkle would have wanted me to save the universe and our population. To atone for our failure. I intend to do exactly what you just said, and this is the only way.”

“Except you don’t,” muttered Misty.

“Misty?”

Misty looked up. “You literally can’t believe that.”

Synchronia tilted her head. “Can’t I?”

“That’s the question, I guess. Logically, you know you can’t know what Twilight wanted. Not without asking her. Not a projection or a memory of her, but the real her. Deep down, you know you don’t know.”

Synchronia paused. Misty continued.

“None of you is left. Just a machine. Can a machine have faith?”

Synchronia continued to pause. Her smile faded. “No. It can't.”

“Which is why you needed a body. Why you took Sunny’s DNA. Because the part of you that’s still here can’t keep insisting that it’s the ‘Will of Twilight’. Because you have no way of knowing, and that gnaws at your robot brain. Making you unable to execute that final function.”

Sunny’s expression grew distant. “And you never know,” she said, turning to Synchronia. “You never knew what she really wanted, even then...”

“You are perceptive, I suppose.”

The AI behind her shook its half-formed head. “Utter moronism.”

“Excuse me!” snapped Synchronia. “I don’t see you offering a better solution!”

“And the implication never occurred to you?”

“And what implication would that be?”

“That I saved us all before I was even born,” laughed Blank. “Because I am me. And not you. Had you incarnated in this body, all would be for naught—and in my stead, you made a fatal mistake.”

Synchronia glared at her, but Misty interrupted.

“The part of you that you’re relying on is the organic part. As a machine, you couldn’t make the decision to kill the planet. But the living part can. Sunny’s living part.”

“I summoned the sphere.”

“Yes,” sighed the AI. “But you have not yet activated it, idiot.”

Synchronia’s eyes widened. She shivered slightly. “But I am...I am the Will of Twilight...I...I will destroy this planet. I have to.”

“Sunny never would,” continued Misty, looking at her best friend, and then back to Synchronia. “She couldn’t. Ever. She’d find another way.”

“I...I...”

“You incorporated her morality, her soul,” said Blank. “And induced within yourself a grave doubt as to your mission.”

“But...but I...I...” She shivered, trying as hard as she could to enact the last portion of her plan—but she found that, try as she might, she could not. She had extracted Sunny’s tissue to rebuild her capacity for faith in Twilight Sparkle—but that same faith now held her back. The lingering doubt and deep, unseen realization that of course she was wrong. She had always been wrong. That this was not what her beloved Twilight Sparkle would have wanted.

She collapsed to her knees, smiling. She chuckled for a moment, then burst into tears, lowering her head into the dirt. The shield dome she had projected collapsed.

“Dang it,” said Misty. “She was right.”

“Who?” asked Sunny.

Misty shook her head. “This isn’t something we can solve by fighting.”

“I know,” said Sunny, walking to Synchronia’s side. “Most problems can’t be solved with big magic fights or threats or violence.” She put her hoof around Synchronia’s shoulders as the lich sobbed quietly. “We can only solve them with understanding and friendship.”

“I am alone,” sniffled Synchronia. “My people...my friends...my Twilight...I died before I could even apologize.”

Sunny hugged her. “But you’re not alone. We’re here.”

“Unless you destroy the planet,” noted Blank. Sunny glared at her.

“She left me behind...like she always does, but now...there’s no chance for me to get back to her. I can’t go home.”

White-Rime approached. “The Great Alicorns move in cycles. The Sun and Moon have risen and set once since the birth of Twilight. And, now, as fated, Convergence is upon us. Twilight-Rise approaches. Sunrise and Moonrise shall follow, and the Deathmother shall be reborn unto herself once more. You can come home. To await them all, with the corpses of your civilization.”

Synchronia looked up, and shook her head. Shaking, she stood. “I am sorry. But Equestria Prime is not the place for me.” She looked around. “But neither is this world.” She looked up, at her ship. “I do not know what my friend would have wanted. But I think I should not interfere with this world. Not with the friends I have here. If...you still consider me that way.”

“Everypony makes mistakes, sometimes,” said Sunny. “You’re welcome here. I think, with a little time, you could get better. At friendship, I mean." She looked up at the ship. "But I understand if you don't want to. It's your choice. But...if you don't mind me asking...where will you go?”

“To wait, maybe.” She sounded unsure. “To continue my work. Elsewhere. If there was one planet still alive, there might be others. Or perhaps I can exceed her, and do what she could not. Recreate the Unity Crystals and produce this world on others.” She looked at Sunny. “I am immortal. But you are not. You may never see me again, or what I create.”

“You can still come back and visit.”

Synchronia smiled. “Can I?” She smiled, already knowing the answer to the question. Then, slowly, she turned to Blank. “My offer stands.”

“Why?”

“You are not of this world either.”

“No, but...” Blank sighed. “I believe we lie in the same situation. My civilization, likewise, has demised.” She looked to Misty. “My appearance to the contrary, we were never ponies. Formed into their shapes by the Progenitors, who were of us but in the image of those belonging to the distant past. Twilight Sparkle, or the most recent Twilight Sparkle, guided our civilization in her own terminal period.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said the AI.

Blank turned to her. “How so?”

“I can still hear them. Through that ship. Distant whispers. Echoes.”

“Voices of the dead.”

“No. The roar of something far, far away.” It smiled. “Things don’t end, they just progress. The Lords of Order never realized that, and it’s why they decayed into fruit. Like me. So to speak.”

“But my family, friends...” She paused. “No. I am me.” She turned back to Misty. “Misty. Fog-Horse. I...”

“I know,” said Misty, hugging her friend around her knees. “Besides, Opaline doesn’t exactly stay friendly with other alicorns. She gets jealous.”

“Due to the small horn, yes.” Blank sighed. “Thank you. For everything.”

She stepped back. Then, with a flash, she was gone. Synchronia, likewise, vanished, and finally the AI, with a grotesque smile as it went. The vast sphere above hung for a moment, and then with a low-frequency thump, it was gone.

Sunny watched it go, feeling heavier as its gravity left. Then she found herself looking upward, toward the stars, and smiling. Her mirror was ringing, no doubt with important good news—but Sunny barely heard it. It was so beautiful, and she felt so happy. She was tired, and lay down, going to sleep.

Misty turned to White-Rime. “And you?”

“We will be working cleanup. Then a report to the Gloom-Father. We have so much to write him about. So we will be around for a while. Call, if you need something.”

“Sure.” She looked at Sunny, and at the fragments of a ship that White-Rime would no doubt be disposing of in the near future. “So that’s it?”

“For them,” said White-Rime, spreading a pair of feathery wings and taking flight. “For you, not really, no.”

Misty watched her go, and considered this for a moment. She sighed, realizing the truth of the statement.

Author's Note

And so, this story ends.

I admit that it was abrupt. I when I write, I do not count chapters; I had not realized it had gotten up to 32, but I definitely felt it by then. To put it simply, I got tired of writing it. I knew this must be the end, but kept building it higher and higher in the final chapters.

Obviously, with these characters, it could not end in something violent. They are just too cute and sappy. And, I admit, it did end up something of an anticlimax.

Perhaps I am just not familiar enough with these characters, but I feel as though they aren't versatile enough to take more hard-edged, darker stories. Which is why, writing this, I always found them feeling like "outsiders" to the action, as if the plot were imposed on them and they were simply reacting as best as they could--which is by no means an ideal way to write most types of story, apart from pure horror (which this one devolved out of early on).

Personally, I do not consider it my worst. But it is not the best, either. I like to think of it as an experiment, and a learning experience, which I suppose this whole project is, after all.