1 - The Blank Slate
1 - The Blank Slate
“Who am I?”
I don’t know. I can’t remember my name...or anything of who I was. It’s so hard to remember…but some of it’s coming back in bits and pieces.
I was with my friends, in that creepy steeple...gah, my head hurts so much...and then we found that crazy owner. They looked like some kind of ghost with a blue cone hat, and those piercing red eyes it had...they could see into my very soul.
That thing kept calling me “Slick” or something, like it was my name...IS that my name? I don’t know...but then it challenged me and my friends after we confronted it about what it was doing to the townsfolk! Turning them all into pigs out of boredom? What was this thing thinking?!
We had managed to give it a good fight, but then it stared at me...and those red eyes glinted for a moment before it vanished. Whatever it was, it placed some green glowy field around me...and then they morphed into me!
Well, it didn’t really look like me. It had my looks and my physical shape, but the color was all wrong. It looked like a dark purple shadow of me.
After it changed, the fight became much more difficult. Unlike a transformed changeling, it had all of my physical feats and abilities. That only seemed to delay the inevitable as we defeated it...but I can’t remember anything else. I just remembered crumpling to the floor, and when I awoke, I was alone in the bell tower.
I had to get out of that steeple. It hurt my head too much to remember, and being in there was only making things worse. I made my way down the tower, and opened the door into the main hall.
I remember this place. The giant stained-glass windows depicted that same ghostly creature my friends and I fought in the tower. The ends of the mirror depicted some plants I didn’t recognize. They looked like red bulbous plants with white dots and sharp teeth. It looked so foreign to me then...and it still does now. I don’t know any of these things, or where they came from.
I heard an eerie giggle behind me, and turned around to face a strange white rounded creature with fangs. It was laughing at me for a minute...and soon I heard more laughter as hundreds of these things materialized out of thin air.
My stomach churned at the sight of so many of these things staring at me. Then they started to spin around me. A whirling vortex of white swirled around me, and moved with me wherever I walked.
One of them touched my flank, and I jumped as a freezing chill crept down my spine. My leap took me from the balcony I was standing on down to the floor below, but the white creatures stayed with me the whole way.
Another grabbed at me, and I tried to shake them off, but to no avail. A third took hold, then a fourth and fifth. In a matter of seconds, ten of them had a firm grip on my body, and I felt lighter and lighter as I realized they were lifting me into the air.
As my hooves left the ground, the vortex of fanged creatures swirled faster and faster around me, making it impossible for me to see any of the steeple walls, even the one with the stained glass. My vision blurred into nothing as I sank into unconsciousness, my last visions being of the hundreds of black, beady eyes bearing down upon me.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since those white orbs with teeth surrounded me. But when I awoke, I found myself resting on the steps leading up to the steeple. Rising to my hooves, I took in the sights around me.
An old, bent iron fence acted as the main entrance for my friends and I. It looked like it could fall over at any moment, but it stood strong as it was held up by gray brick walls on either side of it. Hundreds of dead trees with no leaves upon them extended beyond the fence line, giving the gloomy impression that these woods haven’t seen life in them for decades. And then there was the steeple, in all its aged glory as it stood out against a blood-red sky, with a large yellow moon dimly lighting the world around me.
It was as I was refreshing my memory of the surroundings that a revelation struck me: I didn’t know where my home was. I struggled to recall something, anything of where my home was...and at last something came to me.
I remembered a town called Ponyville, the town we saved from that creature.
“Maybe that’s where my home is.”
I had nowhere better to go, anyway. Anywhere was better than this steeple. Being around it was hurting my head, and I didn’t want to go back inside to deal with those white things again.
I lost track of time as I wandered through the woods. I didn’t really know where I was going, so all I could do was follow the path worn through the trees and grass. The chill in the air left me shivering with every step I took.
Strange flowers with cheery faces on them skittered about the pathway, their feet shuffling faster than I had thought was possible. None of them seemed to pay any attention to me, which was very strange. When I came through here with my friends the first time, they kept getting in our way, and sang some strange tune that made all of us drowsy.
I remember one of my friends desperately moving around, trying to keep us all awake and alert. Falling asleep in the middle of the Everfree would only lead to disaster, and she was doing her best to prevent that from ever happening to us.
Thankfully, as I reached an open clearing just past the border of the forest, I took in a breath of relief. The pale yellow moon and red sky gave way to a deep blue sea littered with stars and a brilliant white sphere. Nighttime was upon me, and I could see lights stemming from houses in the nearby town that caught my eye.
“That must be Ponyville,” I thought. My target, my destination was now within trotting distance.
However, just as I took a few steps toward the sleeping town, a grating voice assaulted my ears.
“Hey there, Slick!”
My knees rattled as I realized it was the same voice that belonged to that crazy owner of the steeple.
“No! I thought we defeated him! How is he still here?! WHAT’S GOING ON?!”
My eyes darted around, desperately seeking the source of the voice.
“Where are you? How are you alive?!” I shouted into the darkness.
“How? Sheesh, you’re slow on the uptake, Slick. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You might want to do that first.”
I still couldn’t locate the voice, but my thoughts lingered on his question. I hadn’t checked my appearance since I woke up, but I didn’t understand why he was questioning it.
The sound of rushing water reached my ears as I located a nearby river. I figured that was the closest thing I had to a mirror, so I trotted over to it to decipher what he meant.
The scene before me was on a level of horror I could not describe. My entire body was covered in a dark purple shadow. I couldn’t see my eyes, my nose, or even make out my lips.
I was nothing but a dark outline of a pony filled with purple paint. I didn’t even have a mane or a tail. I shivered, but I couldn’t even feel my coat bristle. There was nothing I could use to identify myself, nothing I could use to tell me who I was before I became this...nothing at all.
“Finally figure it out, Slick?” The steeple owner asked in a mocking tone.
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!” My voice grew hoarse as I emptied my lungs.
He chuckled, “That’s easy! I just stole your identity! And I gotta say, you ponies have quite the easygoing life here.”
“How...how did you do that?!”
“Slow down there, Slick. I was getting to that. You remember what I did about halfway through the battle, right? I leered at you with my devilish red eyes, vanished, and became a shadow of you. Remember?”
I hazily recalled the moment he described to me, and everything happened exactly the way he stated it. “I do.”
I still couldn’t see him, but I could feel his eyes boring into me as he continued. “Well, when I finally went down, I decided to throw in a change-up where I swapped you with my shadow duplicate. Now you’re the shadow, and I’m you!”
“That still doesn’t explain how you did it.”
“Come on, Slick! Do I need to spell it out for you? I used MAGIC to do it, that’s how!”
The world froze in an instant upon hearing that word. Magic...the word sounded so familiar to me. I faintly recalled other ponies like me that could use magic, and they needed...something on their head to do it, some kind of protrusion sticking out like an antenna of some kind. I rubbed my temple with a hoof as the stinging pain came back to my head again from trying to remember it.
The steeple owner sneered, “Having trouble remembering things, Slick? Don’t worry, that’s totally part of the spell I used. You’ll be able to remember common things in time, but good luck trying to remember things that tell you who you are.
“You won’t be able to remember your name, your hobbies, or even what you looked like in any way...but if by some chance you do, you won’t be able to say it to anyone. You’re a nobody now, and that’s how you’ll remain for the rest of your miserable life!”
Sorrow tugged at my heartstrings as the steeple owner’s words tore through my soul. I didn’t want to believe a single word he was saying...but I saw my reflection in that river. I saw what he did to me, and visions came to life in my mind in intricate detail of many other horrors he could inflict on me even now.
I wasn’t just scared of him. I feared him. I felt like running, but somehow I knew he would find me anyway. It seemed like that was an easy feat for him to accomplish, so all I’d be doing is delaying the inevitable.
“He’s clearly very capable, and could even kill me if he wanted to...so why is he just talking to me now?”
I summoned what little courage I had within me to ask him a question. “Then why not just do away with me then? You’ve already taken my identity, so what more do you want from me?”
He chuckled, “Funny thing you asked me that, Slick. See, the whole reason I started messing with this town was because I was bored. Not that I’m saying being you is boring, though. In fact, it’s a pretty sweet gig! But I’m not done having fun with you yet.
“See, in order for me to become you forever, I need to kill you. Nothing personal, that’s the deal with this magic I used. However, you were pretty fun to fight back there, so I’ve decided to offer you a chance to earn your identity back by playing a little game with me. How does that sound? Do you accept?”
“Do I accept? Why wouldn’t I accept? This guy is hanging my identity over my head like it’s some prize to be won! How arrogant is this guy?!
“But...this is probably also my only chance to get my body and life back. It’s either that or he’ll kill me, so what choice do I have but to play his game?”
“...I accept.”