On the crossroad of the abandoned street leading back home, Zest remained mostly underground with only her eyes poking out, waiting. The last of her dwindling contingency of orbs were her only company for now.
Zest hated coming here. They made sure to eat before approaching Maple Hill, but it was never enough. Always, that itch persisted at the back of her head. It wasn’t always terrible, but it never went away, and she couldn’t dare scratch it.
At least she had the easy job tonight. Zest acted as the second to last link in their relay chain. The others would head into town, scavenging what they could, then Zest would send the orbs back with the loot.
She’d been coming here once a week for months now, yet tonight was a little different than her previous runs. Until now, Sugarcoat would come back with little more than a few discarded newspapers, maybe a book or some small objects, and piles of cardboard.
Now that they had all the powers of a phantom at their disposal, they could delve much deeper into the more populated parts of the town without drawing attention. Indigo was the first to reach the Allgood Superstore located in the dead center of Maple Hill and, after a few days of espionage, discovered today was the day to make the big hit.
It sure felt as though they’d struck gold tonight. Already, Zest sent back boxes full of expired cooking oil, four board games that looked brand new, three new toasters, stacks of uninteresting books, a set of ugly porcelain bowls and kettles, an entire unassembled dresser drawer, and a big box of some brand of soap Zest had never heard of before.
All of this was much higher quality than the things Zest had become accustomed to seeing. Everything Zest owned these days were either dug out of the trash, decades-old, or hoof-crafted in the woods.
Sugarcoat and Indigo at last emerged from the town with their final haul of the night. Each carried two large bags filled with jackets. Zest briefly peered into one of the bags. The newness of the clothes filled her with doubt once again. They had no visible wear. The tags stuck to them were things she thought she’d never see again.
“And you’re a hundred percent sure you didn’t steal any of this?” Zest asked.
“Nah! I told you.” Indigo closed the bag back up. “Allgood’s trashes anything they can’t sell every three months all at once. You just gotta find the right day and you can get tons of free junk! This isn’t even half the stuff in that dumpster, believe me.”
“They just throw all this stuff out?” Zest asked. Somehow the excess of mainstream society seemed crueler to her now. “Aren’t we all supposed to be environmentalists? Didn’t we fight an entire war to stop pollution? Didn’t you, specifically, die in that war?”
“Blowing up Toxco didn’t stop all pollution and waste forever,” Indigo reminded her. “Just the worst of it. Sides, it’s good for us!”
“And what do we need clothes for, again?” Zest threw a jacket up over her head, letting it fall straight through her and to the ground.
“Raw material,” said Sugarcoat. “We can strip them down to make various bindings, among other things.”
“Yeah! Like Molotov cocktails!” Indigo spluttered. She stopped upon getting a look from the others. “Hey! You never know when you’re going to need to blow something up. Lucky for you two, I know how to make all kinds of explosives.”
Zest loaded up the remaining orbs, but still she was stuck carrying the last bag back home herself.
She sure spent a lot of time scavenging and scrapping these days. And now Zest was going to learn to make Molotovs? It felt vaguely familiar.
“Do you ever feel like we’re living in the Pinfall universe?” Zest asked.
“The what?” Indigo looked at her sideways, literally floating on her side to do so.
“Pinfall! How could you have not heard of those books?”
“I live out in the woods.” Indigo shrugged. “I’m not up to date on pop culture. What’s that one about?”
“It’s about this group of ponies who noticed the degeneracy and desensitization that playing pinball causes,” said Zest. “So they built this huge underground bunker and filled it with four hundred years’ worth of bonus buckets to starve out the inevitable collapse of society pinball will bring. But then four hundred years pass and their leader, Little Pip, has to go out into the now-wastelands of Equestria. And there’s like cannibals running around and you have to loot to survive.”
“Cannable predeads?” Indigo picked one issue of many. “I don’t know if you ever tried eating that much meat in life, but I’m pretty sure they’d be stuck on the toilet the entire next day.”
“No, no! See, the cannibal raiders have these ray guns,” Zest explained. “The laser turns you into oats and then they eat the oats. You don’t think something like that could actually happen, do you?”
“A ray gun that turns ponies into oats” Indigo considered it for the first time.
“No! Pinball causing Equestria to collapse!”
“Nah! They used to say the same thing about jazz music when I was a filly.”
“It wouldn’t affect us much either way,” Sugarcoat pointed out.
“Well at least I don’t to worry about the stock market.” Zest folded her forelegs and nodded to herself. As if she ever had a portfolio. “Not when I’m living in the woods.”
“The woods are a fine place to be!” Indigo smiled. “Equestria has so many beautiful, wild places! And we have them all to ourselves now. It’s great.”
“Yeah!” Zest’s face brightened. “If civilization collapses we can just go hang out on a beach!”
She hadn’t seen a beach since dying and wondered what the ocean looked like now. To her ghostly eyes, water had this strange effect where the deeper it went, the brighter and clearer it became. It was as though it had a thin film of translucent blue on top of otherwise crystal clear water. Very deep down, it almost seemed to glow.
Would the bottom of the ocean be like what a bright sunny day used to be?
“Beaches are kinda gross to ghosts.” Indigo stuck her tongue out. “Especially during the day. Nah, you wanna go to a cavern. Those are the most beautiful places in the world.”
“A cavern?” Zest thought about it. They’d be nice and dark, at least. Zest admitted she like being underground, the basement was always the most comfortable part of her new home. Things like dust no longer bothered her anymore, but rather made a room feel more homely. “Do we have any big caverns in Great Pines?”
Zest turned to her fellow northerner, but to her surprise, it was Indigo who answered.
“You’ve never been to Goldmare Caverns?” Indigo shook her head. “It’s the one behind Goldriver Falls. Then there’s the Pinch Mines under Pinecastle. Those are old diamond dog mines that go on forever. You must have heard about that one, yeah?”
She’d never heard of any of those places! Not even that waterfall or Pinecastle! And she lived here!
“The only cavern I’ve ever been in is Deepheart Cavern.” Zest tapped her forehooves together. They made her go there on a field trip once. She assumed everypony in Great Pines did the same.
“We can’t go there,” Indigo warned. “Too many predeads around. But we should visit one of the others sometime!”
She’d even heard of the field trip place!
“Have you spent a lot of time in Great Pines?” Zest asked.
“Like I said, I’ve been all over the place!” Indigo smirked. “You could throw me in just about any forest in Equestria and I’d know more or less where I was. Only place I’d get lost in is Crystal Vale or north of that. There is literally nothing in Crystal Vale. No reason to ever go there.”
“I’m originally from Crystal Vale,” Sugarcoat said, her voice betraying no opinion on the matter.
“Oh.” Indigo stopped floating forward, allowing Sugarcoat to get ahead before zipping back to her side. “Then you get what I’m saying!”
“I admit it makes the towns of Great Pines look like so many metropolises in comparison,” said Sugarcoat. “There isn’t nearly enough lumber for us to live off of up there, either.”
Zest could only hold in her embarrassment that a southerner was more familiar with North Equestria than she was. She’d never gone to Crystal Vale herself. Though, as Indigo implied, why would you?
That was to say nothing of how she’d barely even been anywhere inside Great Pines and had never been to another Equestrian province save a few steps into Sugarloaf. The worst of it was she couldn’t even take inspiration from this realization. Indigo, a seasoned traveler, had given her own assessment that such adventures were no longer safe.
“I wish I could travel places!” Zest lamented. “But I’m gonna be stuck here forever, aren’t I? I get that everybody hates us, but is there really nowhere for us to visit?”
“Old Manehattan?” Indigo turned to Sugarcoat, smiling as if that name were a punchline.
Zest remembered it. That was the one ghost city left.
“I have been planning to visit there once more,” Sugarcoat said, “perhaps this spring.”
“Really?” Zest flew out in front of Sugarcoat.
She knew close to nothing about that place, but at the moment was eager to take this trip. Manehattan stood much farther south than Zest had ever been. At least, she assumed ‘Old Manehattan’ was close to there. It sounded like a great adventure.
“I imagine things have deteriorated since last I visited.” Sugarcoat kept her eyes on Indigo, carefully watching her reaction to the suggestion. “I have an actual fraid now. There may be ghosts willing to retreat to the north with us. Have you heard any news from them since thirty-four?”
“Last I heard about that place was two years ago,” said Indigo. “Wanna know why I didn’t go there for help? Cause last time Crater Cemetery had some of their goons stationed in that place. For all I know, it’s already been destroyed. We gotta be careful approaching it.”
That was a concern Zest wasn’t used to.
Fog of war wasn’t something Zest had given much thought to. She had plenty of predead newspapers, but if this city she kept hearing about exploded right now, she might not hear about it for months or maybe years.
All her life, she’d taken for granted that if anything important happened, she’d hear about it in the news. She could watch things unfold with daily updates from the safety of four or five degrees of separations – a constant tap of important but nonetheless useless information.
Yet now, on the first issue that truly and directly affected her, Zest found herself completely blind. For the first time, the news would have been helpful, and for the first time, the news was silent. Why was it held in such high regard again?
“How long is this… war or whatever it is going to last?” Zest looked ahead; Shadowbolt Academy was within sight. They’d be able to relax soon. “Like at the rate we’re currently going, how long would it take us to get enough ghosts to beat this pony up?”
The mood of the conversation had been getting increasingly solemn all along, but Zest only now noticed how far it’d shifted. The other two moved more slowly and silently, neither wanting to answer her question. Even Indigo, who Zest was sure would have been pumped at the mention of victory, could only scowl as if offended by the question.
The silence grew awkward before either spoke.
“It’s unlikely we’re going to win,” Sugarcoat said at last.
As if hoping to leave it at that, the others retreated inside the schoolhouse.
Zest lingered outside a moment, stunned as she stared at the wall of the school. Where did that come from? She couldn’t just accept defeat from an enemy she’d yet to even see up close so easily! Zest regained her composure and rushed inside.
The others were set about unpacking but Zest wouldn’t let them drop this.
“What do you mean?” Zest grabbed Indigo right away. “If we’re just doomed then what are we even trying to do out here?!”
“This is called a full retreat.” Indigo’s smile returned but not the same as before. “It’s not glorious, but it’s our best option.”
“But we beat one of them already!” Zest shook Indigo.
“Hey!” Indigo didn’t fight the shaking. “I was really happy to get to eat again, but that was a really minor victory. That bitch still doesn’t even know we exist. That’s the kind of win we got.”
“This monster is far beyond any wight, yeti, or whatever else has threatened you until now,” said Sugarcoat. “You have no idea how overwhelmingly outpowered we are. You can fight, but you can’t win. You can run, but the end will always draw nearer.”
“Sure, maybe she’s too strong for us right now, but–”
“Even if you became ten times stronger than I am, it wouldn’t be nearly enough,” Sugarcoat said. “You have no idea how powerful our enemy is. She could obliterate all three of us in a single second.”
“Obviously I’m not going to personally charge in there.” Zest put both hooves on her heart. “I’m saying all the other ghosts have to hate her too, yeah? So we all just join forces and beat her up!”
She thought surely Indigo, a pony who’d charged into certain death would at least show some enthusiasm for the plan. Indigo’s expression was little better than Sugarcoat’s, however, offering Zest only a solen shake of her head.
“You’re not the first pony to think of that,” said Indigo. “The Spectral Federation already tried that one and guess how it turned out.”
“The what?” Zest turned to Sugarcoat.
“That was our semblance of a ghost government,” Sugarcoat explained. “It was a coalition of the specters who ruled over the five ghost cities. They were the strongest of the specters for a long time.”
“Bah! They never did anything in the first place.” Indigo shooed the idea away with a flick of her hoof. “The league of inaction was never going to save us.”
“They maintained our old communications networks,” said Sugarcoat. “And they did gain several concessions from the Equestrian government. If none of this had happened, I’m sure they would have made more serious progress by now.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Indigo clicked her tongue to substitute for a pointless argument. “Anyway, after like fifteen years of politely asking Crater Cemetery if they could pretty please stop enslaving the rest of us, they decided to finally get off their stupid plots and do something.”
“Four of them, anyway,” Sugarcoat added.
“Yeah!” Indigo crossed her forelegs. “Meltdown, he’s the guy in charge of Old Manehattan, wussed out. The other four got every ghost they could and charged in.”
“And?” Zest leaned forward, knowing already they lost but daring to hold onto the hope they at least got close.
“It was a complete slaughter!” Indigo threw her legs open. “The Spectral Federation never had the slightest hope. All four of those guys are blanked now so there goes that idea. You won’t find any ghosts willing to charge in again after seeing a rout like that.”
“It’s impossible for us to raise an army half that size again,” said Sugarcoat. “Perhaps by some miracle you could convince Meltdown to fight, giving you a thousand ghosts. I’ll grant you a second miracle in finding another one thousand willing to join in addition. Yet even with two miracles we’d be hopelessly outnumbered and outpowered.”
Zest could feel the hope she’d clung to these past few months slipping away. The presumption of eventually getting this fraid large enough to resist Crater Cemetery had always been a plan of action she’d taken for granted, had never even bothered discussing until now.
Yet somepony had already exceeded her fantasies ten-fold and still they failed? It was like something had been ripped away from her.
Come to think of it, ghosts were at a unique disadvantage against this monster, who could overpower your aura in a second. An army of ghosts was never going to work to begin with.
But ghosts weren’t the only power that existed in this world. If anything, ghosts, as a faction, were relatively weak in the grand scheme of things. There was a reason Zest hid from the SA and not the other way around!
Though then again, the SA did exist to slay ‘monsters’ like Zest. Even without asking, she knew the response she’d get had she suggested asking them for help.
Zest shook her head. She couldn’t really let herself become jaded this fast, could she? She’d been a predead just a few months ago! She knew they weren’t all pure evil. Even among the S-ranked ponies of the SA, there were some who’d take sympathy on her plight.
One such pony came to mind immediately; a hero Zest had looked up to ever since she was a filly.
“What about Pinkie Pie?” The S-ranked slayer Zest admired most was the first pony to come to mine. “She’s the strongest psychic, right? And she’s always getting in trouble for breaking the rules, so I bet she’d at least hear us out! Then we could have the strongest psychic fight the strongest ghost!”
Zest mashed her hooves together. She looked left and right to see neither of them taking the bait. Indigo again remained unmoved.
“Pinkie’s in her fifties, now. And she’s been in a lot of fights.” Indigo bonked herself on the head. “Getting hit so many times in the head starts adding up. I dunno if you’ve ever seen a retired S-rank pony, but… well Pinkie’s not half as fast as she was in her twenties. She’s practically retired from actual adventuring, and they say she’s gonna step down as president of the psychic’s guild soon, too.”
“Even if Pinkie suddenly became young again, it wouldn’t be enough,” Sugarcoat added. “You would need a significant Equestrian force to approach the pale of hope. She might listen to us, but she can’t summon an army at will. And you would have better odds of Pinkie magically regaining her youth than the SA mustering the force needed for our sake.”
“Yeah, you know how long it took them to finally go after Toxco?” Indigo asked. “They waited five years even after finding out Spatial Tear was actively trying to destroy the ecosystem.”
“And that was when they were directly threatened,” Sugarcoat added. “They don’t care so much for anypony in this room.”
“One thing I gotta admit is that bitch is smart,” said Indigo. “She’s careful to only go after other ghosts for now, because she knows no one else will stand up for us. Once we’re gone, maybe she’ll start going after the werewolves or vampires or liches, or who knows.”
So that was the plan? To slowly tear at the fraying edges of society, devouring the outcasts until the majority realized too late there weren’t enough ponies left to stop her? Maybe they’d notice before it was too late, but Zest was first on the chopping block from the sound of things. There didn’t seem to be much hope left in this game.
No! Even now she wouldn’t give up hope! If Zest could no longer rely on heroes, there was still one other direction to go.
“Well if we can’t get a hero maybe we can get a villain?” Zest asked. “I know liches don’t have a good reputation, but some of them are almost as strong as witches, and they’re not stupid. I bet I could convince one that they’re next. That it’s better to help us now than to wait until they’re alone! Even if we can’t convince them, we can go to werewolves or necromancers or– I dunno! Maybe a witch?”
Indigo laughed and hit her on the back.
“I’m liking you more every day, worm!” Indigo held her close and laughed more. “You got guts! Most ponies get kinda depressed and give up at this point! I think I chose the right fraid to join.”
Finally! Zest could smile again, getting even the slightest bit of encouragement, seizing it like a drop of water in the desert. But Indigo was only the easier of the two to win over. Sugarcoat remained as apathetic as ever, but hope lay in her not shooting down the idea immediately.
“So is that a good idea?” Zest asked her.
“That course of action has merit.” Sugarcoat at last gave Zest something. “It’s perhaps our second-best option. But it’s not something to pursue recklessly. Gathering allies often means gathering enemies, especially if you’re talking about going to necromancers, cultists, and even witches for help. Drawing too much attention to ourselves or gaining too much power too fast can be dangerous.”
“I see.” Zest lowered her head in contemplation. “If we stand out too much, Crater Cemetery will destroy us.”
“Or the SA!” Indigo gave her one last smack on the back before breaking off. “Think. They hear about a group of ghosts, werewolves, and liches all amassing a force together? Of course they’re gonna get suspicious and send an S-ranker to investigate. Maybe we get lucky, and they send one like Pinkie who listens to us. Or maybe they send in one of their battle maniacs who charge in swinging for the fences. Remember, S-rank just means you’re strong.”
She remembered Sugarcoat had said moments ago, that this was only their second best option in her estimation.
“Then what is our best strategy?” Zest asked. “To just hide forever? And hope she never finds us?”
“Close. It’s to simply outlast her,” said Sugarcoat. “There are powers greater than her in this world. There’s something higher on the food chain. It’s only a matter of time before she ‘kills the wrong crow’, as they say, only literary.”
At the mention of crows, Zest’s ears twitched. She knew immediately that meant a witch– the absolute most powerful type of monster in the world.
“You mean a witch?” Zest whispered the idea. She’d suggested it herself not long ago, but hadn’t been entirely serious about it. Allying with one of them really would turn the world against them. Then again, with a witch on your side you could stand against the world. “You really think it’s a good idea to go looking for one?”
“No, I meant that she would find one herself eventually,” said Sugarcoat. “Victory never leaves tyrants satisfied, only restless. She’ll become overconfident, wanting to fight more and more enemies. Inevitably, the urges that draw her against us will bring down the wrath of a witch upon her. It’s only a matter of time.”
It did make sense. A creature like that would draw the attention of those with true power eventually. Even in her wildest dreams, Zest could only imagine their enemy being as powerful as a witch. Even in that scenario, eventually multiple witches would feel threatened and come to her.
But Crater Cemetery was being too careful and witches more often secluded themselves. Bringing death upon herself could take a long, long time.
“Can we seriously last that long?” Zest asked. “That could take decades.”
“It could.” Sugarcoat nodded. “But ghosts can sleep for a long time. If we can gather a great deal of heat, we can devour it and sleep for ten or twenty years somewhere in the far reaches with the hopes of awakening to better times. If we can’t make progress anywhere else, that is our nearest hope.”
“Our greatest hope is to just hide underground and hope they make a mistake?” Zest asked.
“At this moment, it would be,” Sugarcoat confirmed. “We aren’t ready for anything else. We have little strength, no one to turn to for help and no knowledge. We don’t know where the specter of Crater Cemetery and her great power came from or even her name. We are helpless against this tide if it ever turns against us.”
And Zest had felt like things had been going so well recently too. Now she could hardly think of another step to be taken. All of this hard work and she’d only managed to bump into the first wall, only now realizing what a dark labyrinth she found herself in.
Never the type to let herself give in to pessimism, Zest ruffled her own mane trying to think of something else to suggest, some other concrete plan that could make her feel better.
Nothing came. Perhaps all her attempts at strategy really were little more than attempts to draw attention away from that growing pit in her stomach, from her own helplessness.
Her ears began to droop and her gaze cast downwards.
“Hey, I get where you’re coming from.” Indigo draped a foreleg over her shoulder. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve been surrounded and without hope.”
Zest lifted her head to look up at her.
“I mean back in the war.” Inidigo gestured back towards the south, towards where her body presumably still lay. “There was a moment where all of us knew for sure we were going to be blown to pieces, you know.”
In the moment, Zest wanted to say she could relate to that feeling of hopeless dread but perhaps that was wrong. The danger was still so far away from her.
“What’s that like?” She asked instead.
“I think everypony reacts to it differently.” Indigo looked up. “I admit a lot of the other ponies just broke down. They didn’t follow me and died anyway. But… I was just so angry at the idea that I couldn’t do anything and that nothing mattered anymore. I wanted so badly to act, even if it was completely meaningless. That’s just what I felt like doing.”
Indigo pointed at her chest and smirked.
“Just because you can’t win doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight,” said Indigo. “Even if all I can do is be annoying before it’s all over, that’s what I’ll do! And it’s like they say. No matter how bad it gets, there’s always a ghost of a chance.”