//------------------------------// // 21 - The Restless Dead // Story: The Hollow Pony // by Type_Writer //------------------------------// It took us a while to scrounge up wood decent enough to burn. Eventually, we had managed to get a pitiful flame burning in the old campsite’s fire pit, and Trixie kept a watchful eye on it, in case it began to burn low. I busied myself by checking my equipment, and especially my bottomless bag, which I moved so that I wore it on my side. It was easily reached by my hoof there, should I need something in a hurry. A question had occurred to me. I knew it contained Zecora’s flask, and anything else I had put in, such as the purloined crystals. But what else did it contain? Either Zecora or Apple Bloom could have dumped all manner of alchemical supplies inside, or useful equipment. But the problem was that I didn’t know what had actually been placed inside. It was easy to imagine the flask and call it to my hoof, but picturing more abstract, vague concepts such as “herbs” or “salt” or “potions” yielded nothing. I was able to retrieve Zecora’s wood axe, and I gave it a few swings for the sake of nostalgia, but it was absolutely inferior to the shortsword I had now. The shortsword itself I continued to wear on my other side; I might be able to store it within the bag, but I didn’t want to reach inside and fumble out an entire weapon—let alone a sheathed one—in an emergency, unless I had to. Eventually, I came to a depressing conclusion. With both of the bag’s previous holders now Hollowed, there was nopony left who could tell me what they had stored inside it. There could have been a cure to save the world within the cold, black void of the bottomless bag, but unless I had at least a decent idea of what it looked like, and the general dimensions thereof, I would never be able to retrieve it. And if I fell next, then to whoever found the bag next, it might as well have been empty, with the contents lost to time and madness. At the very least, I had Zecora’s flask of sunlight, and it seemed as though it could be kept safely within the bag. I pulled it out to check how much had been replenished, and found myself pleasantly surprised when it was a bit more than half full. I sloshed the liquid around and watched the curious fluid as it glimmered, satisfied that it would safely refill itself while inside the bag. Wherever it went, it seemed that it was able to siphon a trickle of fire from me from within the depths. I returned the flask to the bag, and my attention moved to Trixie, who seemed satisfied with the campfire. Once more, I contemplated her offer. Trixie seemed to have no affection for me, but she didn’t hate me specifically, and we worked well enough as a team. While I wouldn’t trust her with a pile of gold bits, she didn’t seem randomly malicious; while she had proven herself very dangerous, her ire had so far only been directed towards those who threatened her, whether directly or indirectly. I doubted she would stab me in the back, unless I was the one holding the knife to begin with. “Hollow. You’re staring at me.” I coughed, pointedly looking back over the valley. The fact that she almost seemed to make a point of not remembering my name was also a sore point, but I suppose at this point I was beginning to simply accept it. “S-sorry. Was th-thinking about your of-offer again.” “Oh?” Trixie smirked, and cocked her head as she sat back. “What of it? Have you come to a decision this time?” After a moment, I nodded. “I’ll be y-your assistant, as l-long as you can t-teach me more P-Pyromancy.” “Excellent!” Trixie clapped her hooves together, then began to rub them to warm up. “Now, Trixie mentioned the humble fireball before?” I nodded. I knew the proper technique for meditation, and combustion seemed simple enough. I vaguely recalled tales of fireballs being slung by Pyromancers in combat, and the thought that I might be able to do the same was exciting. Trixie raised her hoof, and her own pyromancy flame sprung to life to demonstrate. “Excellent! A fireball is something very different to mere combustion. It’s not about just feeling your fire—you have to charge it. You can do this with intense focus, but calling an emotion from within is actually much easier. Anger, in particular, lends itself very well to fireballs.” I blinked in confusion, because that sounded very different to Zecora’s methods and teachings. Pyromancy so far had seemed a very peaceful sort of magic, as though it were self-actualization with the world around me. But then, for one to turn this magic to a purely offensive purpose, it did make a certain amount of sense. “An-anger?” “Yup! Anger, hate, annoyance, frustration, they all work very well. You need to focus on those feelings, feel how they get your blood pumping, and make your fur stand on end, and you need to focus that feeling onto the flame in your hoof.” Trixie’s gaze turned sharp as she glared at her hoof, and the fire above her frog swelled as it kindled with her emotions. After a moment, she had a pulsing ball of flame that seemed eager to escape from her grasp. “You need to hold it in place with your grip, because that isn't as ‘real’ as the world around you. As soon as it touches something that is, it’ll explode. It’s naturally unstable too, so you need to throw it quick, before it-” As she spoke, the ball of flame pulsed faster and faster, and the sphere distorted as the fire raged within. She was mid-sentence when the fireball made a whining noise, and she held it away from herself, while she covered her face with her other hoof. A loud ‘bang’ echoed across the campsite and through the valley, and I was knocked back a pace from the wave of pressure. Trixie was, surprisingly, relatively unharmed. Only her hoof was left smoking and the fur of her fores aflame, as well as the tip of her hat. She slapped her legs together to extinguish herself as she cursed, “Sire of an ass!” A moment later, she noticed her hat, and she grabbed it off her head to clap her hooves together around it, to douse those flames as well. When the fire was out, she panted heavily, and I stepped closer to make sure she was okay. She waved me off, though I could see her fur was noticeably much shorter. She seemed to have avoided any permanent burns, however. “Ahem. Before that happens. It’ll pop after a few seconds all on its own, so you need to throw it before it gets out of control, or you need to at least not be there when it does. “That’s the first thing I need to teach you, because it’s all well and good to have a fireball, but it’s going to be very painful if you only learn how to throw it afterward. Follow my movements, with an empty hoof—I’m going to show you how to throw one for absolute maximum distance.” Trixie summoned another fireball, much faster this time, and reared back on her hinds to swing her leg back. She threw it overhoof, as she swung her leg overhead in a blur, and the fireball sailed away over the valley. It left a burning trail through the fog, and finally, a loud pop echoed back as it disappeared in a flash just after it disappeared into the mists below. “You get that?” Trixie asked, as she landed back on all fours. I nodded, and she motioned with her head. “Alright then, show me. No fire, just the motion. You’re gonna be a little off-balance without the weight in your hoof, but it should be manageable.” “The...w-weight? I th-thought it was just a ball of m-magic and fire?” Trixie shook her head. “Nah, but I can see how you’d think that. Something about using an emotion to alter the physical world makes it heavy, as a side effect. Especially the emotions of a fireball. If you don’t use those emotions, they fly further, but they’re also a lot harder to aim, so it’s really just not worth it.” I nodded, and started to mimic Trixie’s throwing motion. She did it again to help, but as soon as I tried to stand on my hinds, I felt horrifically off-balance. My wings unfolded limply to stabilize myself, but they weren’t enough, and I felt myself topple backwards. At the very least, they were spread out when I flopped onto the stone, so I didn’t damage them. The back of my head, however, smacked into the stone, and my vision went dark. * * * When I came to, Trixie was tending the fire again. I groaned, and she glanced at me, before she knocked her hooves together and stood up. She walked over next to me, as I rolled onto my own hooves, and said with a smirk, “That wasn’t too long at all. So, you’re too far gone for the fancy techniques, then.” I nodded. “S-sorry.” Trixie chuckled. “Just be more careful. The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn't like to be kept waiting by her assistants!” When I was steady on my hooves once more, Trixie demonstrated a few different throwing motions that were a bit easier, but not quite as useful. Several were wide sideways swings, a few fancy kicks that I didn’t even try to imitate, and an underhoof lob that was good for flushing out a quarry behind a wall. I continued to have trouble with balance, but after the third time I fell over, Trixie went and found a rock that she said was more-or-less the right weight. I used that for practice, and tossed it at the stone wall at the back of the camp a few times, before Trixie got tired of fishing it out of the undergrowth. “Alright, you’ve got the technique down. Now, as for creating a fireball, it’s just like I said. Focus on things that make you angry, or annoyed, or things you really don’t like. Feel that power, and use it to charge the fire in your hoof.” I swallowed. “I...I d-don’t really have anyth-thing like that? I d-don’t really h-hate anything..?” Trixie burst out in laughter. “Pffft, yeah, right! Everypony’s got something, assistant. Really think about it, what’ve you been annoyed by as of late? What have you been angry at? Maybe those Apple bumpkins?” Anger? Hate? Neither of them suited me terribly well. It was hard for me to actually hate anypony I’d met, even Apple Bloom. She’d had her reasons, even if I still didn’t understand them. Applejack was closer, but I still found it hard to really hate her. I disliked her, but that dislike wasn’t strong enough to really be called hate. Annoyance…I could maybe work with that. I focused on Applejack, and how she’d yelled at me, yelled at Zecora. She’d shot me, she’d kicked me, she’d hurt so many ponies. Pinkie was clearly so annoyed at her, and I very much liked Pinkie. She’d thrown me and Dinky in jail, and Dinky was Hollowing out now because of her, just like untold numbers of ponies had before her. That last thought in particular inspired a surge of fire, and it joined the building bubble of searing warmth above my frog. The magic was strange to hold. It strained to escape, it bobbed and twitched, but all I did was hold it in my invisible grasp. I could feel it searching for an escape, and I focused on keeping the bubble of force around it sealed, so that it was contained. Trixie clapped her hooves together and leaned back. “Decent enough! Toss it, quick!” I swallowed as the fire raged inside the bubble, and I could feel it straining harder as I wound up. I loosed the bubble moments before it would have erupted, and it flew at the stone wall weakly. When it hit with a pop, I felt a wave of warm air roll back over us, before the cold mountain air flooded back in. The fire exploded out in a bright flash as the air ignited, but it was only that quick flash. After a few seconds, even the undergrowth that had been caught in the explosion had been extinguished by the moisture in the air, as the fires were unable to sustain themselves. Trixie nodded, as a smirk crossed her muzzle. “Adequate work, assistant! You have the concept, but your technique and power are both terrible. Keep practicing, and you might become skilled enough to use that in a fight! It’s also great stress relief, if you ever need to literally blow off some steam. I’m surprised your mentor didn’t teach you that, at least.” I shrugged, but I did feel a little bit less annoyed with Applejack. Was it just because I hadn’t really thought about her much before, and being forced to think about her in these terms made me really consider her actions? Or was the magic actually turning my emotions into power and burning it like fuel, in some way? Pyromancy was really strange. “Hmmm…what else?” Trixie sat back by the fire, and chewed her lip as she thought. “What else might get more of an ‘oomph’ from your fireballs...how about the demons, or the deer? You mentioned fighting them both in the past.” The deer...I didn’t hate them. I felt more sorry for them, than anything else. I doubted they had willingly been consumed by chaosfire, and it seemed to have permeated their entire forest. As for the demons themselves, again, I couldn’t hate them. They were dangerous, and they were a huge problem, but they were just animals, twisted by magic. Maybe if I ever learned where the fire came from, I could hate that. I shook my head, but I did start to charge another fireball to see if I could do it through focus alone. “What about…” Trixie smirked again. “What about whatever had been through the bookstore before us? You seemed to know what it was, maybe you have some history you can use?” The black knight? In an instant, I saw those eyes again, and remembered how it had looked at me with such hate in the forest. It would have no trouble at all creating a fireball, one strong enough to burn me to ashes. The thought of that almost instantly charged the flame held in my hoof, but it wasn’t charged with hate—it was charged with fear, instead, and that made the orb suddenly very heavy indeed. Trixie didn’t notice. She saw the fire, and stomped her hoof. “There we go! Toss it!” I tried. I really, genuinely tried to heave the leaden bubble as far as I could, but it barely left my hoof. I saw it fall in front of me, and I barely had enough time to cover my face with my hooves before a blinding wave of heat and fire rolled across my body. There was a loud thump, then another, and another, and they continued for several seconds, while I heard Trixie curse distantly. There was no pain at least, but as the explosions faded and I seemed to be unharmed, I became quite confused. How had I dodged such a powerful explosion? When I lowered my hooves and looked around, I found myself in the center of a dozen craters, and I stood in the only ground left untouched, although it was a bit more dry. Great heat had cracked the stone surface all around me, and burning soil had been blasted away to clear the ground. The campfire had been blown into debris, and that seemed to be why Trixie had cursed—the explosion had launched a pile of burning wood in every direction, including right at her. As I stared, she seemed to be preoccupied with extinguishing her hat once again. After a moment, I caught her eye. “You idiot! I said hate, not fear! That wasn’t a fireball!” “Wha-what-” Trixie finally extinguished her hat, and she glared at me as she pulled it back onto her head. “That was called a Firestorm. It’s a spell used to force attackers back and give yourself breathing room, and it’s powered by fear. I don’t use it, and I wasn’t going to teach it to you.” Well, then it was good I’d discovered it myself. “Wh-why not?” Trixie rolled her eyes. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has no use for the spell, and can’t cast it anyways—after all, she fears nopony and no creature! Without fear, it can’t be cast at all, nor does it need to be.” So that meant I was afraid...That was all too true, I knew. Even thinking about the Black Knight had instantly charged the spell, and I was certainly more afraid than hateful of nearly everything that threatened me.  If that meant I was weak, or cowardly, or...whatever Trixie was implying, then at least I had a use for it now. Maybe using the spell would make me less afraid, just like how the fireball had made me less annoyed with Applejack. I swallowed, and looked sadly at where the fire had been. Only the scattered stones of the firepit and a few smoldering lumps of wood remained. “I’m s-sorry about your hat.” “You can replace it later,” Trixie muttered. “I suppose that concludes our lessons then. It’s too damned cold up here without a fire, so we might as well keep moving.” I nodded, and Trixie led the way to the path down the hillside. It would take us directly into the valley, and as soon as we were on level ground once more, we could work out where to go from there. * * * “S-so Applejack s-said-” “Applesmack said this, Applerack said that,” Trixie interrupted, as she led the way down the thin trail into the fog. “Don’t you ever think for yourself? No, before you ask, we’re not going to do her little scouting mission. You said that crazed filly from before was protecting something out here, and we’re not leaving until we find what she wanted so dearly to keep us away from.” I turned my head back up the hillside. “Wh-what if we do the sc-scouting, and then c-come back with the m-militia? We d-don’t know how b-bad it is here, y-yet.” “And what, you think those buffoons will let us have whatever it is, instead of taking it themselves? You think they’ll give you a pat on the head, too, and say you did a good job, before they send you back out to get killed somewhere else?” Trixie snorted, and I turned back to face forward as we carefully picked our way down a steep part of the path. “I’ve no interest in being some Hollow madmare's attack dog. I’m thinking, if this was worth protecting, then it has to be powerful. Maybe a magical artifact of some sort.” Trixie suddenly turned back to face me, and stopped dead in the path. “Was the other filly a unicorn? Or another tribe? If this is some sort of pegasi-only artifact then it’s useless to me.” I stammered over my words as Trixie peered expectantly at me. “I-I-I, uh, y-yeah, sh-she was. A f-fily, just like Apple Bl-Bloom. B-but a unicorn.” “Excellent…” Trixie muttered, and she smirked as we resumed our careful descent. “So! My plan, assistant, is to find whatever this artifact is, take it for myself, and then the both of us will go back to Ponyville and deal with that damned bumpkin. I’ll get my wagon and finally leave that one-track town far behind, and you can break out your fillyfriend or whatever.” “D-deal with?” “And anypony who stands in my way!” Trixie crowed triumphantly, though as we moved into the thin sea of fog that covered the valley, her voice became slightly muffled. I had to follow Trixie a little bit closer so we could still hear each other clearly. “Wh-what about P-Ponyville?” Trixie shrugged as she peered through the fog, and the trees that were rising around us through the gloom. “What about Ponyville? The Great and Powerful Trixie has other venues to visit, ones that won’t throw her in jail over a petty thing like reclaiming her own property from a room they weren’t using anyways.” “B-but Applejack and the m-militia are protecting the t-town, what will hap-happen if she goes H-Hollow?” “Is she?” Trixie snorted, as the path approached the bottom of the valley. “Could’ve fooled me, it looked like the soldiers were doing most of the work. Either way, it’s not my problem. If you’re so concerned about having a place to stay, you and the filly can travel with me. One assistant or two, it doesn’t make too much difference.” That question silenced me, as our path terminated in a bridge over the black river, and then rejoined the road. Was Applejack actually causing more problems than she solved? Was having her as the commander of the militia a net positive for Ponyville, or would the town be better off without her now? Could we really do that? I had the distinct sense that no matter what we found out here, whether it was an artifact—like Trixie thought—or something else, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to fight all of the Ponyville Irregulars. After all, I doubted they’d simply let us...deal with Applejack. While I mulled it over, I looked all around us, as the valley was noticeably different to the mountain pass we’d followed up here. Trees were far fewer between, as either they had been mostly cleared when the dam was built, or they had been uprooted and destroyed when Cloudsdale crushed the forest. Broken and malformed lumps of solid clouds replaced them, where lumps of what had been part of the city had been scattered long ago. As we passed particularly close to one such lump, I stopped to inspect it, and Trixie stopped a moment later to see why I’d paused. I pushed a hoof against the pegasus building material, and expected some give, as though it were a sponge. Instead, my hoof scraped against the surface as though it were stone, and I jerked back as if it had burned me.Then I started to press my hoof against it once more, and slowly walked around the misshapen lump to see if it was uniform. It wasn’t a cloud any more, it only looked like one. It might as well have been a lump of clouded chalk, and not just for me—Trixie became curious, and tapped at the surface as well. Bits of hardened vapor crumbled away when she struck it with any force, and collected into a pile of dry powder at her hooves. “What the hay? This isn’t like any cloud I’ve ever heard of. How did this float?” “It d-didn’t,” I mumbled, as I racked my brain in confusion. “It’s l-like something tore the m-magic out of the c-cloud, but when it r-runs out, they’re supposed to j-just turn to vapor. Th-that way, they can j-just be recharged by ambient m-magic, but this...this is r-really wrong.” Trixie shook her head in confusion. “Alright, then why aren’t all the clouds like this? We’re walking through fog right now, do we need to worry about a block of it just turning solid and falling on us like a block of stone?” I glanced upwards through the veil of fog, through which I could just barely see the orange light of the sky. “I d-don’t think so, b-but I can’t s-say for sure. Watch out f-for any thick cl-clouds above, and if it st-starts to hail, we n-need to get under s-something f-fast.” Trixie went pale at the thought of literal hailstones, but I still wasn’t sure if that was possible or not. My knowledge of the sky and atmosphere seemed instinctual, and only faint memories of being taught about them remained. I had a vague flash of a small classroom with walls made of clouds, and then it was gone. “You can take the lead now, assistant.” Trixie muttered, as she gave the cloudstone a half-hearted kick. She barely knocked a layer from the surface, and she shivered as I started to follow the road once more, deeper into the mists. * * * The cloudstones became more and more frequent, and they seemed to be larger and better-defined as we pushed inwards. Formless lumps gained edges, and then curves to those edges. A few looked to have been larger, but they had collapsed under their own weight into a pile of broken debris. Even that became less frequent as time went on, and soon we found lumps of cloud with hard edges, doorways, and windows. Trixie finally caught on as we came across a crushed bedroom made entirely out of dense cloudstone, and a bleached skeleton trapped under the solid stone covers of the bed. The cloth sheets had long since deteriorated away, leaving only what had once been a soft filler of magical fluff. “These...these were houses. Cloudhomes.” I nodded, and we paused to inspect the skeleton. Whoever they had been, they were long dead now, and the sheet hung over their remains as if it were the gaping maw of a cave. Most of their bones were broken into jagged chunks, and the hollow bones filled with their dust as time whittled the remains away. Their skull, in particular, seemed to have been smashed into bits. “Th-they were alive when the c-clouds turned s-solid,” I mumbled. “I th-think they were t-trying to pull themselves free, wh-when the house hit the s-surface.” Trixie looked like she was going to be sick, but she forced it back down with a swallow and turned away. My own gaze turned back to the worn stone edges, and my hoof scraped at the chalky surface again. Whatever these clouds were now, they were brittle, and the moisture in the air was wearing them down. Did the powder turn back into clouds when they got wet? Was that where all of this fog was actually coming from—an entire city that flowed through the mountains, like a river of concrete vapor? “Let’s...let’s keep moving,” Trixie mumbled. “Keep an eye out for anything valuable that might have survived, but...we shouldn’t linger.” I nodded, and we left the bedroom behind as we returned to the road, and continued to follow it. As we passed by increasingly-intact structures, I couldn’t shake how uncomfortably similar the cloudstone looked to bleached-white bone. * * * We passed by another pile of bones that used to be a pony, left lying on the road, then another, and another. We quickly decided not to stop and inspect them—there were simply too many skeletons to determine how each one died, and I suspected there was really just the one answer anyways. When something moved, no matter whether it was on the ground or in the air, it left a wake behind it. An atmospheric dead zone that trailed just behind, where the air rushed in to fill the space left vacant. Something being “aerodynamic” meant that it moved through the air, without creating such a wake behind that it slowed down the object through the drag of friction. Pegasus wings, just like birds, barely created any wake at all as they flew across the sky. Conversely, a falling pony was always taught to spread out their legs as far as they could, to create as much drag as possible and fall slower. That way, maybe somepony could catch you, or maybe if you were very lucky, the impact wouldn’t kill you, because you landed on something soft. But there were limits, mostly depending on how big you were, and how heavy you were. That was why pegasi had hollow bones, so we could fall slower and catch ourselves with our wings. Cats could fall a lot further than the average pony could without getting hurt, but an elephant couldn’t fall very far at all. And a pony riding on the back of that elephant would fall just as fast as the elephant did, because when it fell, it was so non-aerodynamic that the pony would be trapped in its wake, and they’d be pushed flat as the air chased them all the way down. An entire floating city that suddenly turned to stone, filled with pegasi walking on the streets or sleeping in their homes, didn’t stand a chance—because they fell with the weight of a city. It was a miracle any of the buildings had even survived, and the entire urban cloudscape hadn’t been smashed to powder when it landed. Maybe the air hadn’t been able to get out the way fast enough, and that cushioned the blow, but that wasn’t enough to save the ponies that fell with it. Once again, the sheer horror of how many ponies must have died when Cloudsdale fell nearly overwhelmed me, and what didn’t help was how many skeletons were all around us now. We had to start stepping around and over the dead, as we tried to push in without disturbing their rest. Every once in a while, one of us would trip, and the hollow rattle of bones echoed through the fog. Was that what had happened to me? The bookstore seemed as though it was still relatively soft, but the walls had undeniably been more stiff than they should have been. Maybe it was far enough away from the blast that it only caught the edge of whatever magic had done this, and fell slow enough that I didn’t die on impact? I vaguely recalled that the Cloudsdale stadium was on the other side of town from the weather factory, since it was natural to want to separate the ugly industrial buildings from the clean shops and attractive businesses of the tourist area around it. But then, what of the soldiers? Neither of them had been pegasi, so it would have been uncommon to see them in Cloudsdale. I doubted that they had survived well enough to walk and patrol the area, and I hadn’t. They must have happened across the building after it fell, but what about me? I had been killed by the Black Knight, I knew that for a fact now. Had I fallen with the building, or had I stumbled across it just like the soldiers had? Or perhaps it had chased me down, and I sought shelter within, to attempt to hide from my pursuer? Being smashed to smithereens would explain why I couldn’t recall anything, but then, why had I awoken with a sword pinned through me into the wall? Perhaps I had awoken, and the Black Knight pinned me down when I first began to stir? But I had clearly been there for a while, much longer than it should have taken to regenerate what was a less-than-fatal wound, aside from blood loss. None of it made any sense. None of it answered any of my questions. I still didn’t know who I was, or where I’d come from. I didn’t know what had happened to the world, or even Cloudsdale. All I could hope was that whenever we found what Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were protecting, and what Trixie was so focused on finding, that at least some of it would give me an answer.  I was pulled from my thoughts by a shout from Trixie, and when I looked up from my hooves to see what was wrong, I found myself staring into two burning orbs within an empty skull. I let out a yelp of my own as I stumbled backwards and collided with Trixie, and we both tripped over the bones at our hooves. Skeletons fell apart and scattered like matchsticks, as we found ourselves staring in horror at the standing skeleton before us. It was alone, and we must have both been so distracted that we hadn’t seen it, not to mention how well it blended into the ruined houses and pony remains around us. The bright red embers of the dead pony’s eyes lit up the fog around us, and it seemed to stand without any assistance, or any obvious magic to hold it together. The bones were still spaced as though they had flesh and connective tissue connecting them, as far as I could tell, meaning the skeleton was more like a suspended anatomical model than a solid being. But it clearly lived, as it took a step towards us, and the bones of the creature’s wings rattled against each other as they were spread—like a bird puffing itself up to look bigger. Ancient teeth chattered together to make an unsettling clacking noise, as if it were shivering. Most strangely of all, I could feel warmth within the skeleton—faint, so faint that it was like a ghost of fire, but undeniably present. The flame of a soul forced this corpse to walk, and I felt an awful kinship with this long-dead pegasus. It was not life, but something akin to it. “What are you doing?” Trixie hissed from behind me. “Hit it! Kill it!” I stumbled again as I fumbled for my shortsword, and Trixie stepped away, which forced the skeleton to split its attention between the two of us. My sword was unsheathed with a scraping sound, and that seemed to make the decision for our opponent. Those bright red eyes locked back onto me, and the skeleton’s teeth chattered loudly—like a desiccated snarl—as it lunged for my throat. The first blow was struck when I slammed the blade of my sword into the side of the skeleton’s neck, and the bones exploded into splinters as it fell away. A cloud of dry dust erupted from where my blade had struck the skeleton, and slowly began to descend as the larger bones scattered across the road. The skull cracked against the hard dirt as it bounced a few hoof-lengths away, and came to a rest, eyes still aglow. Trixie blinked in surprise as the glow of her horn went dark, and she began to relax. “Uh. Okay? That was- that was actually really easy-” She trailed off as the bones rattled against the road, and began to scrape back towards each other. They bounced and rolled as they were drawn back to a single point, and snapped into place as the skeleton began to reassemble itself before our eyes. The bones of the creature’s neck were still broken and pulverized, but they hung in the air as dust ran off of them, with new gaps formed in the cracks between. I had only stunned it, at best. The skeleton’s teeth chattered as it leapt at me again, and I sidestepped to dodge. As the head turned to follow me, I lowered my shoulder and raised my sword, before slamming both against my opponent’s shoulder. As my weight staggered it and knocked the skeleton off-balance, the tip of my sword continued forward and pierced the ribcage—or at least, that was what was supposed to happen. There was no flesh to pierce, no vital organs to target. The skeleton had neither heart nor lungs, and my sword simply rattled as it slid between the empty ribs, and barely scraped at the bones thereof. It was off-balance for only a moment, before my confusion gave it an opening, and the skeleton’s jaw clamped around my neck in a crushing bite. I thanked the wind that ponies had flat teeth for crushing our food instead of sharp fangs, for if the skeleton’s teeth had been any sharper, then it would have pierced my throat and ended me right then. Without muscles, it seemed to be lacking the absolute strength required to crush my neck. I felt my tongue fill my throat, and I could no longer draw air, not that I needed to breathe anyways. I still panicked at the sudden feeling of suffocation, and I shoved it away with a hacking cough, and a sudden sharp pain in my neck. The skeleton staggered to a stop a few paces from me, with a thin strip of my flesh stuck in its teeth, and we glared at each other as I felt a wet ebb of ichor spatter into the collar of my padded barding. It must have trapped my skin between its teeth at the last second. “Smash the skull!” Trixie shouted from behind me. “That’s where fire is…wait…” She trailed off, but that was enough for me, and it made sense. Go for the head to kill the skeleton properly. I grasped my sword again as the skeleton lunged forward, and this time I stepped back so it fell short. As it landed on its ribcage with a loud clatter, I brought my sword up, and then down towards the eggshell-white dome of my opponent’s skull. To my annoyance, the blade only bounced off with a scraping noise—in fact, the force of the blow caused the skeleton’s jaw to slam into the road with a crack, as it had done more damage than the edge of the sword itself. This was the wrong weapon for this job. A shortsword could stab and slash, but it could not crush or shatter as this foe required. I’d have more luck smacking the skeleton with the blunt pommel of the weapon. I let out a frustrated cry of “Scat!” as I dropped the shortsword into the piles of bones around me—I didn’t have the time to spare to sheathe it properly—and leapt for my opponent with my bare hooves. The skeleton’s jaw was broken, and dangled loosely from one side as it raised its head. I’m sure it would have been chattering at me again, if it could. I didn’t give it time to piece itself back together before my pyromancer’s grasp grabbed the skull with booth hooves, and I slammed it back down against the surface of the road. There was another ‘crack’ as the jaw splintered entirely, and the skull jerked oddly. Skeletal hooves battered at the flesh of my own, but I kept my grasp steady, and leaned back to pull the skeleton’s head up for a second strike. As it clawed at me with worn bones, I brought the skull down on the road with my full weight, which admittedly wasn’t much. There was another ‘crack,’ and this time I felt the skull fracture, though my opponent still lived and fought. The hooves twitched spasmodically, escaping the boundaries of traditional anatomy to swipe directly at my face, as if they were being levitated like clubs. One final time, I pulled the skull up, and slammed the entire weight of my body down through my forelegs, into my hooves, all to force the skull that they held against the road. There was a loud, splintering crunch of bones turning to shards, and a flash of heat as the trapped fire within was pulled into my own- fearpainLOSSacceptancedissolution It was only a flash, and I didn’t understand any of what I saw. It was impossible to pick out a single experience, because it felt like hundreds had run through my mind in a single instant. I had a thousand eyes that all saw something different, a thousand ears that heard a single great explosion and the rushing of wind, and my nerves were on fire as I felt a thousand deaths. It all turned to white noise, impossible to distinguish a single voice, a single experience, and then it was gone. I staggered away from the pile of shards that had been the skull of a pegasus, and shook my head to try and chase away the phantoms. At least the skeleton was dead, and I saw my previously-animated opponent’s bones rolling away from where I’d ground it to powder, which was all the confirmation I needed. That skeleton would not rise again. Suddenly, a red light flickered to life at the edge of my vision, and I turned my head to look at it. Another discarded skull had suddenly become illuminated, with red embers within the eye sockets, just like the last skeleton had. Then another, and another beside that. Dozens of embers burst to life within the empty eye sockets of the restless dead that surrounded me, and the bones that carpeted the road all began to rattle and scrape across the ground towards them. I swallowed as I found myself backed into a circle of skulls, which all began to rise while the rest of their skeletons assembled under them. One grabbed my discarded shortsword with its teeth, and they all lowered themselves into intimidating stances as dozens of sets of teeth all chattered wildly around me. “T-t-t-t-Trixie!” I yelped in panic, as I spun around, looking for my companion. Where had she gone? She had left me, I was alone, I couldn’t fight this many at once! I felt fear fill me, and I realized this would be a perfect use for the Firestorm spell I had just learned, if I could get enough time to cast it- Suddenly, like a switch had been thrown, all of the red embers in the skulls around me winked out. Whatever magic had been animating them was suddenly cut off, and without that, they were nothing but the bones of the dead once more. They collapsed back into lifeless heaps, and a cacophony of hollow rattles echoed through the fog around me as the skeletons fell as one. My sword made a clatter of its own as it fell into a pile of bones, and I was nearly too stunned at what had just happened to retrieve it. Eventually, I did, although I couldn’t keep myself from flicking my head back and forth just in case more arrived. “T-Trixie?” I asked of the fog, and my voice seemed to echo in the lonely world around me for a few moments. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone for long. “Hey! Over here, assistant!” I turned to look, and spotted the glow of Trixie’s horn as she projected a light towards me. She stood in the window of a broken two-story cloudhome, and I galloped over to join her as quick as I could. She met me at the top of the stairs within. “While you were providing a fantastic distraction, the Great and Powerful Trixie followed the magic back to the source! Come and see.” We entered the remains of the master bedroom, which was littered with dust and bones, most conspicuously a pile of bones that had very likely been an animated skeleton only moments before. Sitting next to the window was a dead, Hollowed unicorn mare, clad in brown, hooded robes. I recognized Trixie’s sword—it had been stabbed downwards, past her collarbone, and had been left hilt-deep, sticking out alongside her limp neck. The dead Hollow looked as though she had been surprised, with her mouth wide open and her limbs askew, as she laid back against the chalky wall of cloud. Trixie’s grin gleamed brighter than the sun itself. “Turns out, if all of your focus is dedicated and split up into a bunch of skeletons, your own body is left pretty vulnerable. Also, it turns out that the junk sword the bumpkin gave me is still perfectly serviceable for stabbing, if you have all the time in the world to line it up.” “H-how did you…?” I mumbled in confusion, as I moved close to inspect her body. “The Great and Powerful Trixie saw a thin strand of magic connecting that skeleton you were fighting to somewhere else, and while you kept it busy, she followed that strand over here! She also made herself invisible, to get the drop on the morbid puppeteer, and—hold your applause—also managed to sneak in past the skeletal guards she left to watch the house, to find the mare herself, and slay her with a single blow!” Trixie sat back and spread her hooves, to indicate that now was the appropriate time for applause. I stomped my hoof against the floor a few times to humor her, and she bowed in response. “Anyway, what’d you learn? Did smashing the skull work?” I nodded, as I turned my attention back to the dead mare’s robes. Her fire was already gone, so Trixie must have drained her as I made my way over. “Uh, y-yeah, though it was t-tricky. Our swords d-don’t work for sm-smashing, so I had t-to use my b-bare hooves.” “Makes sense,” Trixie mused, “I should be able to make do with my magic, either by squeezing their heads until they pop, or by blasting them with pyromancy. We should keep an eye out for anything you can use as a cudgel, though.” I winced at the thought of using such a heavy, unwieldy weapon, but it made sense. Unfortunately, the dead mare had nothing in her robes, and I didn’t feel like peeling them from her corpse would do anything except get me tangled up in a fight. “D-did you see anyth-thing useful? When you d-drained her?” Trixie shrugged, as she grabbed her sword with her magic and began to wiggle it loose. The blade seemed stuck, and it made disgusting sucking noises as Trixie pulled it out of the dead mare’s throat. Ebbs of ichor welled up with it, and stained the corpse’s cloak. “Nothing too useful. There’s a lot more of these idiots further into the ruins, enough that they have sort of a village set up in there. They use the skeletons as guards, and for manual labor as puppets. This mare got picked to watch the road, because she could use her horn to fire a flare if anypony got past her—which we don’t have to worry about now.” The sword finally slid free with one last sucking noise, and another ebb of ichor. Trixie started to wipe the rusted blade clean on the dead mare’s robes, and I moved to the window. “A v-village? Inside the r-ruins of the c-city?” That seemed wrong, somehow, and disrespectful of the dead. Not that these ponies seemed to care terribly much to begin with. Once more, I remembered that each one of these skeletons had been a pony. I especially thought of the one whose skull I had been forced to smash into dust; what if that skeleton had been Dinky’s mother? I would never know for sure, and even if it wasn’t, that had still been a pony once. They deserved a more respectful end than becoming a disposable golem of bone. Trixie finished cleaning off her sword, and sheathed it with a shrug. “Seems like. We probably can’t take all of them at once, so it’s especially good that I handled the perimeter guard quietly. We can probably sneak around them entirely until we know where they’re keeping the artifact.” I shook my head, and Trixie raised an eyebrow. “It’s n-not down here in the f-fog. That w-wasn’t where the m-memory was, it w-was on a l-lake.” “Atop the dam then?” Trixie considered that for a few moments. “Alright, that should be easy enough to get around to without raising suspicion. So long as they haven’t moved it, at least. It’s still a good place to start, maybe it can give us a good idea of what we’re looking for. Let’s go.” I nodded, and we left the bedroom—and the dead necromancer within—where she had fallen. Eventually, just like all the other Hollows, she’d awaken and begin wandering through these fading structures once more. It was ironic to think that putting the dead to rest meant leaving her wandering in their place.