//------------------------------// // 28. True North // Story: A Ghost of a Chance // by Epsilon-Delta //------------------------------// Snow was a terrible place for a robot to be. These robots were so heavy and the snow so loose, so shifty that the trek forward became arduous. Boring too, as there wouldn’t be anything to look at for some time. Her robots would fall through the snow or go tumbling down dunes, spark mini-avalanches, or get half buried by a particularly vicious gust of air. Zest even lost a drone already, buried beneath the snow just enough to make digging them out not worth it. Zest even had to build little igloos each day to shelter the robots from the snow drifts so they wouldn’t get covered while she slept back at home. Thankfully, MSI didn’t expect all the drones to return. Zest could just tell them the robots got savagely devoured by horrors beyond comprehension. Had Zest the living tried to make this same trek, she’d be dead already. And this wasn’t even the truly dangerous part of the far reaches yet. But at least she had company the whole way. Zest could carry one ghost through the wires at a time, so she rotated between companions. Usually, it was Sugarcoat, but sometimes Indigo or Juniper. That and a little counter telling how much copper wire she’d unspooled was the only thing keeping her sane on the journey. It took days to get through seventy kilometers. Supposedly those glaciers would show up soon. “You know,” Zest said to Sugarcoat, floating alongside her robot body through the latest blizzard. MSI gave her a girl robot this time, so she didn’t have to talk with a deep masculine voice. “At this point, I’d take a tentacled horror over this snow.” “The moment one of them shows up, you’ll miss the snow,” said Sugarcoat. “Yeah, but that’s life.” Zest stopped a moment to look at what may have been an imposing giant in the distance, too obscured by snow to make out. Every so often she’d see such a figure, but they never got close. There were massive purple worms that move through the snow. Really nasty customers whose front ends were repulsive tubes of twisting fangs flaring in and out, big enough to swallow a pony whole. She mostly smelled them and saw the snow dunes rippling out of sync with the wind. But neither robots nor ghosts had anything they wanted. The purple worms would come up, drawn by the tremors of the robots, but always they’d decide it wasn’t worth it and simply fall still once close by. “I can’t smell that thing,” said Sugarcoat. “So it’s either undead or perhaps one of the glaciers.” “We should be getting close to the tenth parallel,” said Zest. “I bet it is a glacier!” She sent one of her drones bounding forward. Zest was getting a little better at this. She could actually use the communication synchro… chip… well she didn’t know what it was called but she could use it to briefly see through one of her drone’s eyes. And the image wasn’t particularly good. It was all blurry and ‘snowy’ (for lack of a better word) even when there wasn’t snow. Also, everything was green for some reason. So after having it scout ahead a good two or three kilometers Zest got back a mental image and… “Glacier!” She jumped in place, sinking barrel deep in snow. She awkwardly pulled herself back out. “Uh. It is glaciers.” And then it was safe to proceed. The air and ground changed before the ponies saw the glaciers themselves. The ground here was solid ice. Despite having just walked through a blizzard, barely a snowflake had drifted up here. It was as though the snow was too afraid to come to this place, and knew better than Zest through ages of experience. Or rather covered in solid ice. That gave the same effect as water, having a blue glow the deeper it went. Thanks to this, Zest could see the long-forgotten land below. She wondered how long it’d been since anypony had seen this dirt. There wouldn’t be any daylight here for some months. Even as a worm friend, Zest wouldn’t have thought a land of perpetual night was great for a ghost. Two days in would be enough to dispel that notion. The sun felt gross and made it hard to see, sure, but it also made sleep much easier and cozier. It’d be harder to rest up here. And much harder to eat. Nothing that could be burned, no animals with blood to freeze. Never had Zest seen such an utterly scentless place before. Usually, the ground and air had this tiny tinge of acidic scent to it from the heat absorbed through the sun. Even in those snowy dunes, there were creatures here and there with tightly held warmth. But here? Absolutely nothing but supreme, smothering cold. Zest could probably smell a lit match from a mile away in a place like this. The blurred figures came into view as they approached, becoming towering glaciers. They were hardly mountains of ice, not even as big as skyscrapers. they were slender like skyscrapers too. There was a twisted mess of them, thrust into the ground at odd angles, forming something not unlike a thorn bush leading far off into the distance. Their strange shape made Zest wonder if glacier was even the correct term. “Hey,” Zest whispered. “Aren’t glaciers supposed to be tiny guys on top and huge under the water? Or…?” “You’re thinking of icebergs.” Sugarcoat gave her that look. Zest was glad robots couldn’t blush. “Then what makes something a glacier?” Zest whispered the question to Sugarcoat. “That it moves.” Sugarcoat gestured to the ground just before one of the massive pillars. Now Zest thought of these glaciers as swords some huge pony scraped through the icy ground. Little fissures were torn through the ice, scars on the land, each one trailing behind one of the artic swords. And all the glaciers were moving away from the two ponies, towards the north poll from the looks of things. Though obviously at a glacial pace. “Though I’m curious why these cracks don’t fill with snow.” Sugarcoat looked down at them, then up at the nearest glacier. “Or what exactly is making them move.” “Hm.” Zest looked around. “Well I don’t think there’s any wind up here to push the snow in. The snow was blowing so hard just a little bit ago but now there’s nothing.” “You’re right.” Sugarcoat looked back down south. “And now that you mention it…” Sugarcoat‘s ears swiveled about. “Can you feel that? Something like an aura only…” “Only what?” Zest trotted closer to her mentor. Sugarcoat’s massive aura protected Zest from outside influences but also made it impossible to feel nuanced changes on the other side. “I only feel yours.” “I might be imagining it,” said Sugarcoat. “No. I think I figured it out. The black wind, Nightmare Moon’s aura. It doesn’t reach this far. It’s been so long I nearly forgot what it was like to be completely free from it.” “It’s good to know it doesn’t cover the entire planet,” said Zest. “Guess even her aura has its limits. Though that doesn’t explain why everything is so still up here. The fastest moving thing is these glaciers.” Zest took a tiny bit of snow still lodged on the back of one of her drones and dropped the powder. It went straight down, confirming the total lack of wind. “Unless.” Sugarcoat adjusted her glasses. “The black wind does reach this far, yet something is merely blocking it. Like how you can’t feel it when you’re inside my aura.” “I really don’t want to consider the possibility something even worse is living up here!” Zest shook her head. “If there is, it’s in a very deep slumber.” Sugarcoat pressed forward. “So don’t do anything to wake it up. Or anything else for that matter.” They continued onward. Without the snow under hoof it became much easier to walk. Yet at the same time, Zest was less and less comfortable with each step. Adding to lack of scent and wind to this place, Zest noted the total silence. Normally, her robot parts were too quiet to hear them move. This was the first time she heard the mechanical sounds of their joints. “So where do we go, exactly?” Zest looked at each of the passing glaciers. “This place is still pretty big. Do we carve little adverts into the ice, hoping Ostracon will see one?” “That might actually be a decent idea,” Sugarcoat admitted. “But first we need to set up a relief camp. And we’d need to be careful carving into the ice. It’s well known the creatures in the ice aren’t dead.” Yeah. MSI warned them about that. Be careful about what ice you dig into. Still. Zest had yet to see any of these… Zest saw one! In one of the pillars of ice was the creepiest freaking thing she’d ever seen. It was like… an eyeball hydra! From a gooey, stumpy body came eyestalks, long strings of nervous tissue, each with an eyeball at the end. Seven such eyeballs came out from where the thing’s neck should be, emerging from a tangled mess of nerves. And one of the eyeballs opened up to reveal a fanged mouth within. Zest stumbled back, spooked at the sudden appearance. But the eye-dra was frozen solid under five feet of ice. She couldn’t tell if it was an optical illusion or if those eyes were following her. “Try not to look at it,” Sugarcoat reminded her. Zest nodded. Another warning they gave. If it had eyes it could see you… but only if you made eye contact. Don’t gaze too long into their eyes. Zest averted her gaze and continued forward but felt those eyes in particular were still upon her. To be safe, Zest didn’t give any of them more than a glance after that. The glimpses she had were bad enough. Tentacles with spikes instead of suckers. Balls of fur covered in mouths. She’d still yet to see any of the truly enormous creatures of legend. She did notice a trend. They were always inside the glaciers, but never the thick layer of ice that made up the ground. And they always looked like they’d been in motion just before they got frozen. “Hey,” said Zest. “Do you get the impression there was some kind of fight here? Maybe I just see ice and think of fighting now, but…” “I thought the same thing,” Sugarcoat acknowledged. “A ghost would be biased toward that conclusion, of course. These all look like ice blades to me.” “Does anypony know what all of… this is?” Zest glanced at another one of the bizarre creatures before putting her eyes forward again. “The snow ponies don’t know,” said Sugarcoat. “Equestria only discovered this place two hundred years ago. If ponies had been here before then, it must have been in the early Royal Era before reliable historic records exist. And whatever happened was long before that.” “I don’t like that at all.” “Wait.” Sugarcoat motioned for Zest to halt. “That formation looks like a good spot.” There was a row of five thin glaciers close enough together to form a wall. Two more had collapsed together, atop one another and against that wall. The effect was to create a sort of cave. And at least from this distance, Zest didn’t notice any creepy crawlies inside these glaciers. Most didn’t have one in general. As they came even closer, they saw something unexpected. A small camp was already there! It wasn’t much, just a large tent. A tent within a tent as Zest soon found. The outer tent had a small table, a chest, a sled, and a smattering of nick knacks. The inner tent was made out of a thick, puffy cloth. It had a little chimney coming out of it and a canister of fuel just outside. Must have been a little stove or oven. The inside of that was a nest of heavy blankets. “Hardly anypony comes up here, but we just happen to bump into their camp?” Zest asked. “We started at the weather station,” said Sugarcoat. “The furthest north building Equestria has. And we went directly north from there. It’s a strategy that makes sense. If somepony else had the same idea, they would have passed through this exact spot. Seen this formation.” “You don’t think this is Ostracon’s camp, do you?” Zest flew around the outer tent, looking over some papers on the table. “I doubt an undead pony would need this much insulation,” said Sugarcoat. “Or heat. It’s likely a predead. We should be careful as anypony who comes up here is likely to be dangerous.” “But if it was a predead maybe they left for the winter?” Zest remembered the weather station was abandoned this time of year. “We can’t assume that. No normal living pony would be here in the first place.” Well they might be able to find out who it was by reading this stuff. Zest rifled through it. Sugarcoat was about to warn her not to mess with a potentially dangerous stranger’s possessions when Zest scored a promising find. “Hey! They left us a map!” Zest lifted it up. Sugarcoat came close to look it over with her. It was of the nearby area, textured with glacier concentrations and landmarks, but not exactly to scale. A few locations were marked up with notes, but those tended to be single numbers. The legend wasn’t immediately visible. There was a pile of notebooks, but Sugarcoat forbid Zest from riffling through even more things until they scoped out the area. One notable exception to this system stood out. One spot, not too far to the west, was marked as ‘Surprise’s body’. Around this was a wide circle, stretching past their current location. A series of smaller and smaller circles, each within the last one, cascade into the general direction of this location. “It looks like they were homing in on something over here,” Sugarcoat concluded, pointing to the smallest circle, ‘Surprise’s body’ off to one side of it. “Slowly narrowing their search.” “Were they looking for her body, maybe?” Zest guessed. “That name does sound familiar,” said Sugarcoat. “Yes. There was a famous slayer by that name who lived some centuries ago. A white pegasus. I’m not sure what became of her, so it is possible for all I know.” She looked over the map again. “But it seems unlikely our map maker found what they were looking for,” Sugarcoat concluded. “You don’t stay up here any longer than you need to. If they found it, they would have left. They wouldn’t have marked what they came for on the map after they got it, either. Perhaps they were just using that as a landmark. Or… they expect something to be close by wherever she died.” “Maybe we should go over there?” Zest asked. “If there’s something important in that area, Ostracon might show up over there at some point. We gotta find another place to set up our camp, anyway.” Sugarcoat agreed. They backtracked a little, not wanting whoever set up camp here to see their wires, then started forward again, hoping to reach the marked landmark. It was only another three kilometers. They’d go back home and rest for a day after that. Getting just a little closer, both ghosts perked up. They smelled something! It wasn’t a living pony, so not whoever that tent belonged to. It was fire. A very odd sort of fire Zest hadn’t smelt before. “It’s enchanted flames,” Sugarcoat told her. “Fire summoned with magic. Send in a drone.” Zest sent it running towards the smell. She only got a brief image as always but… “There’s a pony over there!” Zest warned. “He’s pinned against one glacier and the one across from him is melting! I think something’s coming out of it.” “Is that pony moving?” Sugarcoat asked. “If we can’t smell them they’re either dead or undead.” Zest concentrated to take a second look. Doing it in quick succession like this hurt her head but she managed. The image she got was nothing but a dozen eyes in that creepy green filter all looking at her. “I don’t think I can see.” Zest shook her head. “There’s absolutely something coming out of the ice. What do we do?” Sugarcoat bit her lip, having little time for hesitation. “We should try to freeze it again, either way, see what that heat source is. This could make our trip impossible even if there isn’t anypony to help over there.” Sugarcoat straightened up and held her forelegs wide, signaling to Zest. They practiced this move. Zest flew out of her robot and grabbed Sugarcoat from behind. Holding on to her like this, Zest could use lightning to swiftly move while Sugarcoat focused only on the attack. “But we’re only going to try and freeze it once,” said Sugarcoat. “If it doesn’t work, we’re running away immediately.” Zest nodded and bolted forward, carrying both of them to the top of a distant glacier with a single blast of lighting. They appeared overtop the scene in under a second. Now Zest saw a truly enormous monstrosity. This one was all eyes – one gigantic eyeball with countless normal-sized eyes covering its back. Thankfully, it was still almost completely frozen. An object covered in flames had been pinned into the ice just before it, slowly melting that ice. Only a tiny little crack had opened, exposing just the thinnest part of this abomination to the air. From that crack, like a vine, grew a long stalk of meaty nervous tissue, more eyes coming off of it like grapes. And that vine continued to grow rapidly. Wasting no time, Sugarcoat froze the entire appendage in solid ice. It stopped growing at its repulsive rate. “Did we get it?” Zest clung to Sugarcoat as they flew down a few meters. Sugarcoat held her answer a moment. “No.” The eyes on the vine all turned up towards them. Sugarcoat swung her foreleg, shattering the ice and everything inside with it. That would have killed nearly any living thing but Zest had no confidence it would work here. Sugarcoat froze the broken shards with a second layer of ice, even colder. “I’m not sure why,” said Sugarcoat. “Maybe my ice isn’t cold enough? Zest. I’m going to hit that flaming object. As soon as I do, we retreat.” Zest nodded, not wanting to be here when more of that stuff got freed. Before that she glanced behind her, just to make sure. “Hold on! I see the pony!” Zest called out. “He’s um…” There was a skeleton wrapped in a black cloak with forelegs spread out wide to either side, pinned up by two fancy swords. The way all this was set up, it seemed to Zest the skeleton guy was an offering but… what if that was Ostracon? Older liches were often skeletons. And they had fancy magical artifacts. “I found the pony I saw. It’s a skeleton, but–” “I got it. On the count of three, I’ll try to snuff out the fire, you hit it with electricity. If it's undead that might wake it up. Either way, we retreat.” Sugarcoat counted down and they launched their attacks of ice and lightning. Ice swirled around the source of the fire in a violent torrent, successfully quelling the flames. Zest’s lightning hit the skeleton, jolting the body in a way that a normal skeleton wouldn’t have. That was it! It must have been Ostracon. She saw two blue whisps of light appear in his eye sockets, tiny, the size of pupils only. Those two makeshift pupils moved upward to Zest. “Um.” “Fallback!” Sugarcoat reminded her. Zest took the advice, blasting off the way they came. Only to crash into something halfway back. She assumed it had been a wall of ice, but no! In their way stood that skeleton, fully animated with both swords drawn, one held in front as though he had blocked the lightning bold. To have moved faster than lightning… There was no doubt in Zest’s mind this was a lich now, that this was Ostracon. One of his swords looked almost made of ice and gave off a steady blue mist. The other was a deep purple, with a white feather hanging off the hilt. It was the latter he blocked them with and the latter he now swung forward, sending the two ghosts flying off. Zest lost her grip from Sugarcoat but there was only a small gap between them! Ostracon, who Zest realized had been floating in the air this whole time, landed on a nearby glacier. He turned his gaze first to the escaped pieces of the monster. With another swipe of his sword, a black vortex appeared over the new ice. Then the whole pile was devoured by black ice that didn’t melt, but disintegrated the ice and everything inside. With that done, he turned back to the ghosts. Zest and Sugarcoat tried rejoining, but he swung his sword a second time. Now a wave of fire came forth, pushing the two apart. “What’s your problem, guy?! We just saved your life!” Zest made her body crackle with electricity. They weren’t going to beat this buy, but they didn’t need to get far to escape. The robot was already in sight. Zest would literally bolt the first chance she got. Ostracon merely hummed as he watched Zest prepare. “You interrupted me,” said Ostracon. “I was in the middle of something important.” “Interrupted what?! Being devoured?!” “I was attempting to put myself in a hopeless situation where survival was impossible,” said Ostracon. “Wait, what?” Zest dropped her cowl of electricity. “Don’t do it!” Zest reached her forelegs out to him. “You have so much to live for! Like!” Ostracon watched her, nonplussed while Zest gapped, unable to think of anything to say. “Flowers?” She guessed, then shook her head. “Look, I just met you! I’m not going to have specific examples!” “I wasn’t trying to commit suicide. I was certain something would have saved me. But a specter?” Ostracon turned to Sugarcoat. “Of course a specter would show up now. This is another one of its jokes, isn’t it?” “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” said Sugarcoat. “You.” Ostracon lifted the purple sword, the feather swaying about. “How did it bring you here, exactly? Were you teleported?” “If only,” said Sugarcoat. “Tell me, are you Ostracon?” He paused. “Perhaps. Answer my question.” “We’re enemies of Nightmare Moon. Phantom Troupes said you were the same.” “Interesting.” Ostracon lowered his sword and relaxed his stance. “I wonder what he saw in the likes of you to have given you such information. Still, your meeting him must have happened some time ago. Could it really…?” He planted both swords in the ground and started muttering to himself. It was the same kind of way Sunny Flare muttered when doing calculations. “So it seems it won’t allow my situation to become completely hopeless. That’s its game?” Ostracon looked off towards some other glacier. “It really is pointless then… unless the test is to see if I’ll attempt this again either way? But then again, I risk angering it.” Sugarcoat watched him with her head tilted, Zest scratching her headphone. “Are you asking me?” Zest pointed to herself. “Because I have no idea what you’re even talking about.” “I apologize if we interrupted anything,” said Sugarcoat. “But I don’t think our actions were unreasonable.” Ostracon turned back to them as if just now remembering he had company. “I suppose you did give me a conclusion to my experiment, either way. I can’t be angry at you for that. But why, specifically, did you come looking to me?” Ostracon asked. “I have a great many tasks to complete. Know I don’t normally give ponies this much of my attention. Only this recommendation from Phantom Troupe keeps me here.” “Are you not interested in working with others?” Sugarcoat asked. “Allies are rarely worth the cost. I find myself too often carrying fools.” Ostracon held up his sword, letting that feather dangle in front of his face. “Oh, I could have used you not five days ago. After months of trying to convince one to come here with me, one simply comes here on her own. But now?” “We have connections to the Mad Science Institute,” said Sugarcoat. “And some information on an alicorn name Luna, connections to ponies she may have. Besides that, given that there seems to be some connection between our enemy and ghosts, it would be a good idea to have a specter willing to work with you at hoof. You admit you needed one before.” “Perhaps that last part is true.” Ostracon conceded with a nod of his head. “But this place is far too dangerous for even one such as yourself and especially your minion. There is nothing you can do for me here. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” That was better than nothing… It still felt like such a waste to come up here just for that. Sugarcoat hadn’t given up yet but struggled to think of any other cards to play. “Well you know what else is dangerous?” Zest moved forward on Sugarcoat’s hesitation. “Being hunted down by some unkillable nightmare god! I’ll admit I’m an idiot but everywhere is too dangerous for me, so I don’t see how this is any different. Leave us to die if it comes to that but we’ll be the ones to decide what risks we take!” “I can respect dying on your own terms, but such acts are ultimately meaningless,” said Ostracon. “Well what isn’t?” Zest asked. “Zest has a point,” Sugarcoat retook the lead. “We don’t exactly need your permission to be here. It sounds like there’s something important here in relation to our mission. We’re not simply going to stop investigating because you refuse to help us.” Ostracon pulled his swords back out of the ice. “There are certain treasures here that I’m not willing to share,” he warned. “I will kill you to prevent you from entering the place I’ve been.” “As your allies, we’ll respect that,” said Sugarcoat. “Tell us and you’ll have my word.” He watched Sugarcoat suspiciously. “You’re really going to…” Ostracon paused like he just remembered something. He lifted the hilt of his sword to look at the white feather, then over at Zest, then back to the feather. “I see. Perhaps I’m too strong. Is that it?” Ostracon murmured to himself. He pointed the feather sword at Lemon Zest. “You there! Perhaps we can make an arrangement after all. There’s an experiment that could move us towards our common goal of the destruction of Crater Cemetery. But there is something I need to see first. You heard of Phantom Troupe's plan to escape to the shadow realm?” “Yes?” Zest nodded. “I want you to swear here and now, loudly and clearly, that you will not escape no matter what happens, that you’ll continue this fight until the bitter end, no matter how hopeless it becomes.”