Empty Shell

by Azure-Spark

The Ghost

The Ghost

Imagine, floating in an empty white void, patches of hints of a normal reality. As if the practiced sketches of scenes from someone’s home on the page in an artist’s book were brought to life, exactly as they were, arranged in a shifting and haphazard manner. Brief windows of some wall, or floor, or corner of a room all float around each other through the ether, as if unsure what to do with themselves.

In this strange world, a small filly, herself appearing as an unfinished and uncolored drawing, sits upon one of these patches. She smiles, working with a coloring book at her hooves. Yet in her mouth is a gray crayon, and with each stroke on the page, existing color is lifted from the page and assumed upon the wax.

As she finished with the blue, she simply ate the crayon, turning herself blue for but a moment. Then she quickly clapped her hooves together, and upon opening them found a new, gray crayon waiting for her. She opened her mouth once more as the crayon ‘fell’ up to her waiting teeth, then clamped down to begin again.

This continued for a while or so. Specific time wasn’t particularly relevant in this space. A clock on one of the free-floating walls spun backwards with the minute hand and forwards with the hour at a varying rate, seemingly based on how close the wall drifted to the filly. It almost seemed to act as a propeller, driving the wall away from unfortunate collision with the pony. Meanwhile, a different wall showed an open window, through which the sun rose and fell independent of the moon, and both in straight lines. Every so often there was an eclipse, but the light remained the same regardless of what celestial bodies could be seen.

“Hellooo?” asked an echoing masculine voice.

The filly perked up suddenly. Her ears dropped back, and she nearly dropped the crayon. Tilting her head, she scanned around, looking for any sign of the source of the voice.

“Down here, little one.”

When the filly tilted her head and looked back at her coloring page, she gasped. There, in place of the slowly-graying flower patch she was un-working on was one large flower with a face upon it. The face was something of a grisly sight, with one yellow eye, one red eye, and a toothy grin.

Yet the filly smiled at the sight. Her smile was so wide it barely fit across her sketchy cheeks. “Daddy!” she said, giggling and clapping her hooves together.

The face in the book smiled back. “Yes, young one. It’s me, come to see you again.”

“I see, I see,” said the filly, swaying her head back and forth. “Am I doing a good job coloring? Huh? Huh?”

“Hm?” The eyes on the face tilted towards the page before it. “Oh, yes, coloring. Very good, very good. It’s just that that’s not why I’m here, darling.”

The filly laid down and flipped upside-down; the book automatically hovered off the floor and rotated around to face her. “What’s up, Daddy?” asked the filly. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” the face replied. “At least not exactly. I just need you to run an errand for me, that’s all.”

“Oh, of course!” said the filly with a giggle. “What do I gotta do?”

“Could you perhaps come to me? I’d rather talk this over face-to-face... so to speak.”

Just like that, the filly blinked her eyes and the face was gone from the book. She gasped and looked around, but it was nowhere else to be found. “D-Daddy?” she whimpered.

“Don’t worry, little one,” the voice continued, somehow coming from all around her. “I will explain everything once you find me.”

The filly giggled excitedly. “Sure thing, Daddy!”

Her coloring book simply drifted up and into the void, winking out of existence after some time. She herself, however, was more focused on the circling walls and floor patches. The windowed wall came close, but she let it pass. Then came the wall with the clock, but she ‘shoo’-ed that away just as quickly. When a pair of black floor splotches came by, she looked them over carefully before leaping towards one. Then, after realizing just how hard and solid that blackness was and dusting herself off from the effort, she leaped head-first into the other, a hole.

On the other side, she entered a new realm of pastel colors and a smiling sky. She fell down through the hole, then backwards once she reached there, as the other end looked more like a squirrel’s nest entrance on a giant tree. Everything in this new world looked to be painted on an oil canvas by a rushed child. Colors refused to stay in the lines, even the still-sketched filly’s, and half of everything had a smiley face of two dots and a curved line on it. This included the sun, which now trekked across the sky overtop of crude and squiggly rainbow in steps. The moon was always two ‘clicks’ behind it, as if the two were in a race.

On the ground, green hills rolled out in all directions, but only one seemed to have any true depth to it. The rest were more like paper cutouts with a void between them. The filly fell slowly from the tree, like a feather on a breeze, towards a forest of yarn-like grass on that hill. She aimed herself so she’d land hooves-first on one of the bent stalks, then bounced off it like a diving board. “Whee!” she yelled with this and each subsequent jump as she bounded across the top of the forest. The occasional butter-fly, golden-yellow and dripping and at least as big as the filly, fluttered by as she went. She caught a drop or two in her mouth, savoring the taste, but never stopped moving.

Finally, she found a pink stalk amongst the green, and jumped for it. It was solid and unwavering, unlike the others, though soft. She easily managed to hug and slide down the length towards another hole on the ground.

Outside, she found herself not in a void, but in a sphere of sky. Dozens of floating masses of rock, with large roots beneath as if they’d been torn from the earth, swirled around one central platform with a lavish temple built upon it. Each rock had something of its own that made it unique; the one the filly now fell from was covered in a forest of lollipops on the top, while another below her had a pink storm cloud smothering it from above. Only the temple in the middle didn’t seem so whimsical, if one could ignore the statues of a serpentine dragon encircling every inch of it.

All of this existed in an orb of clouds and blue sky, only limited by something like a massive shimmery mirror. The way it looked in the light from some angles, it almost looked more like a soap bubble. But it didn’t at the moment, as the filly rocketed forward to the temple. To her, it was just the edge of the world.

Despite flying towards the temple at blinding speeds, the filly kept smiling. The marble floor got closer and closer, almost impossibly so. The temple seemed to grow around her until she was the size of but an ant in comparison. Only then did she make impact, and all that happened was that she scrunched up and bounced back, something like a wad of gum.

Inside, the temple was a stark change from the worlds she’d seen before. Specks of dirt, lines and curls on the marble... the detail was uncanny. Even the filly herself looked different just upon entry; she was no longer a sketch of a pony, but a full, fleshed-out living being. She might still not have had any color, but it was a massive change nonetheless.

Either side of the temple was lined with pillars at the edge of shadows, each wrapped in a statue of a serpentine dragon-like being in some different pose. Some were menacing, others were welcoming, and still others were just odd, such as the one in which the dragon curled upon itself and had begun to eat its own tail.

And at the head of the temple, in the shining light of an open skylight, was a throne with said dragon-like creature upon it. In all his mismatched glory, there sat the real, not-a-statue Discord.

“Daddy!” the filly called out as she galloped towards the throne. With each step, her view grew higher and higher, until by the time she reached him, she was life-size once more.

Discord smiled and caught the filly in his lap, patting her on the back. “I knew I could count on you, little one,” he said. “That’s why I picked you.”

“Picked me?” the filly repeated, tilting her head.

“Why of course,” said Discord. “Of all my children, you have always been the most reliable.” He pat her on the head once more, then set her down at the foot of the throne. “But now, now, you must be curious as to what task I have for you today.”

The filly hopped in place. “Oh, boy, am I! Anything for you, Daddy!”

Discord chuckled behind a paw. “And such

“Take care of what? What? Tell me!”

“Settle down, settle down,” said Discord. He swirled around the filly and put a claw on her chin, inspecting every inch of her. “Yes, yes, nothing too abnormal... Might need a little sun, but you’ll do...”

“Oh, do I have to go change the sun again?” she asked. “I-I promise I won’t set anything on fire this time!”

“No, no, no,” said Discord, winking back to his throne in a flash of light. “No, darling, that work is behind you now! You get to do something much better, far greater.” He leaned in close and beckoned her in with a clawed finger. “You, little one, get to go to the ‘Surface’.”

“The S-surface?” asked the filly. She scratched her head. “Where’s that?”

“Oh, it’s not one of the isles,” said Discord. “Frankly, it’s a bit of a secret that it even exists. You see, there’s a world outside of mine, you know.”

The filly gasped. “No way! How is that even possible?!”

“Simple,” said Discord, pointing to the floor. “It’s below us, of course. Always has been, always will be. You just can’t see it.”

“Whoa...” said the filly. She pawed at the tiles beneath her hooves. “W-why do I have to go there?”

“Well I can’t go there myself, for starters. If I’m not here, who will maintain the magic? No, I have to stay just to keep home up and running, you see. But I also need to get something from the Surface. An old something that I once had, long ago.” He poked her on the nose. “Even before you were born, little one.”

The filly’s eyes got wider and wider as he spoke. “And you want m-me to get this super-special thing you lost?”

Discord quickly averted his eyes. “Well of course I didn’t so much lose them, so much as, well, left them there. Yes, I left them down there so I could get them when I felt like it. But now, I’m asking you to do it for me.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” said the filly.

“Up-up-up!” Discord pointed a claw at her and caught her mid bounce, hovering her in place in an invisible grip. “Now, darling, you have to understand: the Surface is very different. There are bad things down there: things that want to hurt you, ponies that want to hurt you. And even worse...” He paused for effect. “Rules. Lots of rules, rules that can’t be broken by you alone.”

The filly shivered and gulped. “I-I can do it, Daddy. After all, you can help me, r-right?”

“Only to an extent.” Discord set the filly down, then snapped his fingers. A pedestal rose through the marble underneath the filly’s hooves, and a new skylight opened in the ceiling to let the sun shine upon her. “You will have to figure out how to find it on your own, understand? I’ll only be there to talk to. I can’t help any more than that.”

“Y-yes, Daddy,” said the filly. She shook her head, then returned with a firmer expression. “I mean, yes, Daddy! Whatever you say!”

Discord chuckled again and pat her on the head, sparking her with magic; the jolt left her stumbling in place, off-balanced and cross-eyed. “Just think of it as an adventure,” he said. “No, a game! Yes, a game: ‘Find the Things Daddy Wants.’” The filly smiled, but Discord rolled his eyes. “Now, we’ve wasted enough time as it is. I’ll explain more once you’re out.”

“Out?”

No sooner had she asked than the skylight opened above her, sucking the filly out like a vacuum. Discord slinked halfway out the opening after her, smiling and waving as she flew away so fast the whipping wind began to sting.

“Have fun! Be safe!” he said. Though the words didn’t carry over the wind. They sounded in the filly’s head.

Before she had time to respond, she looked behind herself to see the shimmery edge of the world flying back towards her. She barely had time to shut her eyes before impact.

— — — — — —

In the Equestrian deserts to the south, it was about high noon, unfortunately for a pair of troopers stuck on watch out on top of a mesa. Underneath a wide blue sky and holding place over a wide expanse of rock and sand and nothingness, two ponies in silver-and-black rough-armored uniforms did what somepony had to do: keep watch for anything odd.

One of the two, a unicorn stallion, lay drenched in his own sweat at the edge of the mesa, holding up a pair of binoculars as he scanned the horizon. The most he could see, even from this high up, was more sand, rocks, and sand. The black clouds well out in the distance weren’t even a break from the droll task. He’d seen it all before.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Is it our lunch break yet? I’m dying up here.”

The other pony was busy half-underneath a large hunk of metal, working away with a wrench and hammer on the undercarriage of what looked like a chrome boat with no sail. The contraption had all sorts of lights on the sides and top, and a pair of round thrusters at the back. Towards the front was a black square with a pad embedded in front, with a list of instructions taped beside it.

“Don’t remind me,” said the mare at work between strains on a socket wrench. “Can you believe they wouldn’t let us stay in the garage for this? I mean, come on! This thing was clearly not up to snuff when we left.”

The unicorn stallion looked back and lowered the binoculars. “We will be able to get down without calling in for backup, right?”

From behind the vehicle, the mare flexed her pegasus wings. “Well one of us will,” she mocked.

“Oh hah-hah,” said the unicorn, rolling his eyes. “Just keep working, Scootaloo. Of all the ponies to get stuck up here with...”

Scootaloo popped up and waved a wrench at him. “Oh, you know you wouldn’t want to be stuck with anypony else. You’re just cranky in this heat. As usual.”

“Heat, I can deal with,” he said. “It’s getting slapped with the graveyard shifts and working through lunch that I have a problem with.”

As he turned back to the horizon, he didn’t even need to pull up his binoculars to see something out of the ordinary. It looked like a colossal, floating ball of water drifting across the desert, almost as big as the mesa they stood on. “What the flying—”

Scootaloo looked up and sighed. “Chaos Isles, man. Just give ‘em a look-over. Ten bits says nothing happens.”

The unicorn scanned the edges of the bubble intently. “Nothing called ‘the Chaos Isles’ is ever good news, alright? I don’t get how you can be so nonchalant about this.”

“Saw it pass by on my first day, actually,” said Scootaloo. She set down the wrench and undid the lock on the jack, letting the vehicle tilt back over until it was upright, then hopped on over to the unicorn’s side. “Don’t worry, it's pretty isolated. Just circles the desert, never bothers anypony.”

“Well I think it might this time,” said the unicorn, leaning into the binoculars. Just then, near the left edge of the bubble, he could barely make out a small silhouette dropping from down towards the wasteland below. “Uhh, might just be a rock though. Can’t really see too clearly on these things.”

Scootaloo tapped his shoulder. “Gimme. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“Suit yourself, Hawk-Eye,” said the unicorn, levitating the lenses up for Scootaloo.

After a quick jab at her partner’s side, Scootaloo took a look; her jaw immediately dropped. “Dude. Cross. Get in the skimmer.”

“What? Why?”

Scootaloo turned and galloped over for the vehicle and hopped on the front, tapping the screen with her hoof. The hunk of metal sprang to life, humming and whirring as it hovered off the ground. The thrusters below sent dust and rocks scattering all about. “That’s not a rock!” said Scootaloo, leaning to her right on the pad; the entire skimmer turned with her. “That’s a pony!”

Cross Talk didn’t need to be told twice.

— — — — — —

So this is the Surface... thought the filly as she exited the bubble. Well, that’s what she thought initially, as gravity was just taking hold. In that brief moment of weightlessness, she actually could feel wonder and began to dream of what else must lie out there. That is, before she truly entered free-fall.

As she fell, she felt as if most of her went before her hooves, which lingered behind a ways. She heard a bunch of cracks, like she’d broken open a rock, only they came from inside of her. It felt uncomfortable, yet not painful. Rather, it was a bit tingly, and with each crack another flash of white light came from her legs.

What’s going on? she thought. Why are my legs going all long and squiggly?!

It didn’t take long for the rest of her body to start to catch up. More cracks came from her back and her neck, and even some from her face. She frowned and wobbled her lip while the rest of her body grew out to fit her legs.

Suddenly there was one sharp crack from her spine; this time, the flash was delayed, and for a moment, she felt something strange, alien, and terrifying.

“Gaa-haaa!” she screamed. “Daddy! Daddy, help! I’m eating me!”

“I’m sorry, darling, I’m trying!” Discord spoke in her head. “Stay still. It’ll all be over soon.”

“Wh-what’s going on?” the once-filly sobbed. “I-is this because of the rules?”

“I’m afraid so,” Discord explained. “Here, things always fall downward, and a pony cannot stay a foal forever.”

The once-filly looked down ahead of herself at the fast-oncoming ground. “Wh-what happens when I hit that? Do I feel bad like that cracky-thingy again?”

“Don’t worry, darling. I’ll protect you.”

— — — — — —

“Faster, Scoot! Gun it!” yelled Cross Talk from the back of the skimmer. The two had made it down the mesa as fast as possible, but there was no way they’d make it in time to catch the plummeting pony at this rate. They just weren’t getting close enough.

Scootaloo leaned into the control pad and grit her teeth, sending the hover-boat into full-throttle. Cross Talk had to hold on for dear life in the back, but the extra burst of speed seemed to be worth it. “Come on, come on...” Scootaloo told herself.

Cross Talk shook his head. “We ain’t gonna—”

“Shut up and let me drive!” Scootaloo shouted back. Even still, as she watched, she knew he was right. They just weren’t fast enough. Not in a recon skimmer. “Wait,” said Scootaloo with a wild smirk. “I’ve got an idea!”

“Oh no,” said Cross Talk, his eyes going wide. “Scoot! Wait! Think about this first!”

“Too late,” Scootaloo muttered. In fact it was, as she had already unfurled her wings and lowered herself for the jump.

Scootaloo leaped out from the skimmer, leaving Cross Talk to frantically run up to the controls as their vehicle began to wobble off-course. This was behind her, however. Her eyes locked in on the falling pony; with enough extra speed, she might just get there...

“Yo, genius!” Cross Talk yelled over their headset com-link. “If you two collide, you’re both just gonna smash into the ground!”

Despite this evident flaw in the plan, Scootaloo kept flying. It wasn’t until she did the math that she made the logical connection: if a pony-weighted something hit a lighter-than air pony after falling hundreds of feet, something was getting squashed. Her heart skipped a beat as the pony neared impact. Yet as much as it pained her, Scootaloo knew what she had to do.

As the body fell by, she merely fluttered off to the side and shut her eyes tight.

But the impact was not what she was expecting at all. Rather than just a splat or thud or anything of the sort, there was a rather forceful-if-small-scale explosion that nearly knocked Scootaloo out of the sky and left a cloud of smoke in its wake. Nearby, Cross Talk turned the skimmer so sharply the side scraped and sparked across the dirt and rock.

The dust cleared with the next gust of wind, and Scootaloo quickly flew in to take a better look at the damage.

In the center of the ten-foot deep impact crater was a pallid pony, completely intact, if sparkling with a few white flashes here and there.

Scootaloo shook her head in disbelief for a moment, then swooped in near to the pony. To her surprise, the pony stood up all on her own. And astonishingly, she simply shook off the dirt and smiled, looking back and up as if thinking something to herself. Her eyes were a bit unnerving to look at, actually. Their pupils were faded, almost like that of a corpse, while a distinct white spiral cut through both purple-red irises.

“Oh, I see,” said the mystery mare. “Eat and drink? And sleep, too? But what if I don’t wanna?!”

Back in the skimmer, Cross Talk searched around a back compartment through their tools. “Careful, Scoot!” he yelled. “No idea what you’re dealing with here!”

“It’s a ‘she’, calm down!” Scootaloo yelled back. Though when she turned back to the mare in the crater, she hesitated; she was still talking to herself.

“Tired? Oh, and that was pain? Those don’t seem like very fun things to go through...”

“Hey!” Scootaloo yelled from a wary distance. “You okay there?”

The mare’s ears perked up. When she saw Scootaloo, she simply smiled brighter and waved. “Oh, hi there!” she said. “You must be one of those ‘Surface’ ponies Daddy was talking about.”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “Uhh, ‘Daddy’? Who’s that?”

“Oh, Daddy Discord, he—” She paused, looking up again, then nodded. “Oh, Daddy says you can’t hear him because he’s talking inside my head. Sorry!”

Behind her, Scootaloo heard the sound of a standard-issue pulse rifle priming, sort of a high-pitched electronic whine. Cross Talk, laying flat on the back of the skimmer, leveled such a weapon at the mare.

“Uhh, Cross?” Scootaloo asked. “What are you doing?”

“Discord, right?” Cross adjusted his position better angle the weapon. “Evil, chaos, and deceit are the first three things to know about him. This has got to be a trick if he’s involved, right?”

The mare frowned. “Oh, I don’t know about ‘evil’, but Daddy loves chaos and tricking ponies! He’s the best jokester in the world! Well, his world at least. Do you have a big Daddy for everypony here?”

“Uhh, his world?” asked Cross. “Don’t tell me the Chaos Isles—”

Scootaloo groaned. “What did you think they were called that for?” A second later, a new realization hit her, and she whipped back around to the white pony. “Wait, you actually survived a fall from there?! You should be dead!”

The mare frowned. “‘Dead’? What’s that?”

Cross sighed and put his weapon on his back, tapping the console on the skimmer and hopping off just as it set down. “It means you shouldn’t be living anymore. Shouldn’t still be here.”

“What?!” The mare’s lip began to quiver. “Th-that’s awful! Why would something make me do that? Wh-what could be so mean?!”

Scootaloo shuffled her hooves and whispered to Cross, “Geez, it’s like she’s a little kid...”

“Life, that’s what’s so mean,” said Cross, tilting his head. “Wow. What did Discord do to you in there?”

Now the mare tilted her head. “He... took good care of me? Me and all my brothers and sisters?” She paused. “Oh, oh, and now Daddy says you two can take care of me while I’m out an’ about!”

The two troopers stepped back and looked at each other. “Yo,” said Scootaloo. “Uhh, what’s-your-name, we’re not babysitters, alright? We can get you to a safe spot out of the wasteland, but that’s about it.”

“What’s my name?” repeated the mare. “Oh, gosh, I didn’t think I was that important! I’ve never gotten to have a name before.”

The other two stared at her in disbelief.

“Oh come on, you have to have been called something.” said Cross. “I mean, we can probably come up with something if you don’t already have one...”

Scootaloo smacked Cross on the back of the head. “What are we, her parents? And don’t answer that until you think good and hard about it!”

“It’s called doing her a favor, numbskull!” Cross yelled back. “Can’t you see it? This is her first time in the real world, as opposed to whatever Discord has in that bubble thingy. She needs help adjusting, that’s all. No tricks, no deception. She’s just a perfectly innocent pony who needs our help!”

“C-can you two p-please stop fighting?” the mare whimpered. “A-and hitting each other? I don’t want to see either of you turn dead. That would be very, very sad!”

“Ugh, fine,” said Scootaloo. “Sorry, Cross.”

“Apology accepted,” said Cross with a smirk. “Now, come on, help me think.”

“You need help with that? That’s a first.”

“Oh, shut up.” Cross trotted forward and paced around the white mare, looking her up and down. “Well, let’s see: she should probably be dead right now, if not for Discord’s intervention, she’s like an alien who barely understands our way of life, doesn’t really get ‘life and death’ to begin with, and, well, she’s the palest pony of all time. Seriously, she looks like she’s never gotten any sun ever.”

“I’d believe it,” said Scootaloo, pointing over her shoulder at the distant bubble of the Isles. “What’s that all add up to then, huh?”

Cross thought for a moment, then gasped. “I’ve got it! Scoot, fill in the blank: Pale as a...”

It took Scootaloo a moment. “Umm... sn— no, no... ghost! She’s as pale as a ghost!”

“Ghost it is!” said Cross, gesturing to the mare. “What do ya think? Do you mind if we call you that from now on?”

“Goo... go... Ghost?” asked the mare. “Ghost. Ghost! I dunno what that is, but I like it! It’s simple, and kinda silly sounding. Ghostie ghost ghost...”

Cross Talk trotted over and grabbed her by the front hoof. “My name’s Cross Talk,” he said. “And my friend’s Scootaloo. We’re gonna go for a ride now to go see some of our other friends, okay?”

Ghost snickered to herself as they walked over to the skimmer. “Scoooot! That’s a fun name, too!”

Scootaloo offered herself as a stepping stool for Ghost to get onto the craft. She then gave Cross a playful nudge. “See? I’m fun.”

Cross rolled his eyes. “Can you say my name, Ghost? Cross Talk?”

“Cross Talk?” she parroted. “Oh, th-that’s a nice one too. Just not so Scoootie or Ghostie. Sorry!”

“Hah!” said Scootaloo as she climbed on board. “Real smooth. That went about as well as I expected it to.”

“Oh, laugh it up,” said Cross Talk. The two took their positions, Cross Talk in the back keeping Ghost company and Scootaloo at the controls. “You keep forgetting one big thing,” Cross continued.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You owe me ten bits.”

As they sped across the dust, Scootaloo groaned even louder than the engines. All the sounds from their skimmer intermittently echoed amongst the rocks and empty space. The last thing that could be heard around the crater site was the equally loud voice of Ghost, imitating Scootaloo’s tone and volume:

“What’s a bit?”