Narcissa
“What is up, Pippsqueaks!”
Pipp’s angelic voice bounced off the slick dark walls of the cave and crashed down onto the device held lovingly in her hooves.
“I bet you’re all wondering what I’m doing down here in the spooooooky caves beneath Maretime Bay,” Pipp went on, adding a delightfully chaste wink to the camera. “Well, I could tell you… but I’d have to kill you!”
Pipp giggled to herself, allowing her viewers adequate time to respond to the lighthearted threat. She relished the flood of reactions in the chat as her fans speculated on her current predicament with reckless abandon.
Mavvverick: Whats up today?? Pipp going dark????
xXDarkSnowXx: Pipppppp omg dont die 😭😭😭
Tool3216748: id let pipp kill me tbh
CherryBlossomAlpha: No way she tops last week’s challenge that sht was crazy💀
“Tsk, language!” Pipp scolded. “Jazzy?”
The request was met with a silent but instantaneous alert in the chat:
CherryBlossomAlpha has been kicked from the chat. Toodles!
It swiftly disappeared behind another barrage of aimless chatter.
“We like to keep it family-friendly around here, isn’t that right, Pippsqueaks?” Pipp offered another hint of a smile at the camera—just bubbly enough to be clean, just tantalizing enough to keep the colts watching.
“Anyways.” Pipp gave her mane a bit of a flip-and-fluff as she refocused on the matter at hoof. “Y’all know me: I’m a gossip at heart! I’d never ever be able to keep something this juicy all to myself, and I just had to share it with you!”
Delicately placed. Not a ‘you all’, a ‘you’—always slipped in with the grace and subtlety of a… of a…
Pipp couldn’t think of a good comparison. She was pretty sure only streamers had to be this good with ponies.
“It’s a great story, so kick back and relax while I tell you all about the legend of the Spirit-Eater. But first, you know who else can read you super-spooky stories while you stay all nice and snuggly at home? It’s today’s sponsor: Audible!”
Perfectly smooth transition.
Every time.
Pipp gave herself a mental pat on the back for her professionalism as she recited the ad into her phone’s camera while she continued to plunge deeper and deeper into the darkness ahead—all lit by the white light of her phone’s flash. She was absolutely, positively, the undisputed queen of streaming. She knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even down here, in these disgusting smelly caves, she would be able to grow her audience to sizes the likes of which the world had never seen.
That was, of course, the point of all of this. To be the best. To have the most eyes on her.
“You—yes, you, Pippsqueaks!—can try Audible for one month, completely free, when you use the code ‘PippPipp24’. That’s my name twice, the number two, the number four. Thanks again to Audible for sponsoring this stream!” Pipp maintained a joyful innocence, even as she felt her hooves slip against the floor of the cave. “Whoops! Almost took a tumble, there! Now, where was I? Oh, right! The caves!”
Pipp turned the camera around and swept the light over the tunnel ahead.
The caves were appropriately dark and scary, but honestly weren’t all that interesting. This fact did make Pipp a little bit nervous—after all, what good is a kind of spooky cave for a challenge video?—but she trusted in her good streamer’s instincts.
They certainly had good ambiance, even if they weren’t much to look at. The plain, slick walls offered a lovely echo effect (enough to hear, but not too much to overwhelm her microphone), and somewhere in the distance a steady dripping sound filled in all other blanks for her audience.
“Pretty creepy, right?” Pipp said, spilling over with glee. “Legend says that, like, a thousand years ago, some teacher-type guys came down here. Like archeologists or something? Professors and stuff.”
As she said it, she slipped, and a tiny feminine squeak escaped her lips as she felt herself about to go down hard.
“Eek!” Pipp reiterated as she regained her balance. “This place is kinda dangerous!”
Pipp whipped her phone around to capture her own face for another quick moment, just enough to share that little bit of intimacy with her fans in her moment of vulnerability, before pointing it down the barrel of the cave once more.
“So! All these guys dug down here looking for an ancient spirit or whatever because, like, I guess that mattered to them?” Pipp rolled her eyes. “I dunno. Nerds can get kinda caught up in, like, the quest for knowledge or something. My sister Zipp is starting to get that way… It’s like, chill, right? The world doesn’t need more books! There’s enough already!”
An explosion of hearts appeared on her screen, preceding a kaleidoscopic display of whirling petals that announced Pipp had a—
“Oh my hoofness, a new subscriber!” Pipp fluttered her wings. “Pipp-Pipp hooray and welcome, geekhatr68!”
The ever-scrolling chat likewise welcomed this new addition to the herd.
“Yeah, so, anyways…” Pipp pressed forward with a carefree finesse her fans could only dream of. “We don’t really know what happened to all those guys, but there’s a ton of, like, warning signs and things about dying horribly and having your life force sucked out and, like, the crazy-high death toll and stuff. And then also they put this giant scary building on top. It’s, like, spikes or whatever.”
Pipp turned the camera back on herself to make an exaggerated face of boredom and disinterest.
“I’m gonna have my moderator put up a picture. Jazzy?”
Right on command, a horrifying image flashed on the screen: a field of enormous spires, each of them leaning at precarious angles and stretching up into the sky at dizzying heights. The ground was a barren expanse of gravel and sparse, brown shrubs. The entire image oozed a hostile, angry, lifeless atmosphere.
The sign said it best: This place is not a place of honor.
Actually, that would be a totally cool tagline for the HoofTube upload…
“Tsk, the one with me in it, Jazz!” Pipp quickly corrected, maintaining a predictably jovial tone.
After only a second’s delay, a new image appeared on the screen. This one was somewhat more predictable: a selfie of Pipp, among the foreboding spires, doing her best look of shock and horror while still showing off her adorable plot.
“That’s where the legend bit comes in,” Pipp went on. “All those guys came down here in search of a monster called the Spirit-Eater—I think it was called Puma or something in some other crazy language. Doesn’t matter.”
Pipp felt her way forward along the cool floor of the cave. It was starting to dip down again, and the angle felt a bit precarious. But she would be fine! She just had to keep her cool while the cameras were rolling.
“So. Get this: the Spirit-Eater wants to collect bodies for its army of evil, right?” she explained. Her words were chosen carefully: not too vivid, not too scary. “And so, like, it sneaks into your brain and shows you visions of the thing you want the most in the world until you decide to stay in the dream world! Then, once it has enough ponies, it can take over the world…”
She let the thought hang.
The ambient echo helped her out.
“So it’s like… is that what happened to all those professor guys?” Pipp asked her camera in a conspiratorial whisper. “Is there an army of ponies waiting to grab me at the bottom of this tunnel? Or is the Spirit-Eater totally gonna get me as its next victim?”
πνεῦμα: the walls have ears my dear
πνεῦμα: be careful what you wish for
Pipp frowned at the strange message. She didn’t even know you could type in non-Equuish symbols on ClipClop.
πνεῦμα has been banned from the chat. Toodles!
“Um… And with that, Pippsqueaks, I’m going to have to sign off!” Pipp announced, shaking off the odd chill that had run up her spine. “Gotta conserve my cell battery. I just have no idea how long I’ll be down here, and the signal amplification spells really eat up your power! Pipp-Pipp Hooray, and I’ll see you later!”
A final explosion of hearts and flowers.
Pipp watched the adoration roll in for one more second, threw in a wink with the teeniest bit of exposed tongue, and ended the stream.
Right on cue, her phone buzzed with an incoming call.
Pipp sighed to herself and picked up. “Jazzy, I told you a thousand times, this can’t look too scary! Otherwise no one else will want to do the challenge!” Pipp scolded, her cheery demeanor waning with each word. “And that’s the point, right? If I start the challenge, I get a little bit of attention from every other video that—”
“I’m starting to not feel so good about this,” Jazzy cut in.
Pipp’s eye twitched. “You—what?”
“About the challenge, Pipp!” Jazzy whined. “HoofTube’s viewer metrics say that more than sixty percent of your audience is younger than eight… maybe we should reframe this. I-I’m just worried about the legal ramifications if someone ends up getting hurt and—”
“Jazzy?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Mhm?”
“This is what I do now,” Pipp said, her voice scarily even. “I’m a challenge streamer. You were the one who got me into all this stuff anyway. Remember?”
Another silence.
“Jazz?”
“Mhm…”
“If it’s bothering you that much, maybe look into getting a lawyer or something,” Pipp said dismissively. “In the meantime, please do your fucking job! Okay?”
“O-okay…”
Pipp hung up.
She continued deeper into the cave.
- - -
“I just feel like I’m not getting the response I used to get,” Pipp moaned, throwing her head over the back of the couch. “It’s been sooooo long since anyone shaved my name into their flanks… where’s the dedication? Where’s the devotion?”
Zipp snorted, not bothering to look up from her own phone. “Devotion?” she repeated. “You’re a vlogger.”
Pipp sat back up straight. “Um, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Zipp’s face pinched almost imperceptibly as she realized she’d made a critical blunder. “Uh…” She switched her phone screen off and settled in her lap. “Nothin’.”
“Lies!”
“Look, it’s just—” Zipp tapped her forehooves together as she tried to think of a polite way to phrase what she’d meant. “Vlogging is sort of… old school?”
“Old school?” Pipp repeated.
Zipp shrugged. “I dunno. I feel like I haven’t really seen a vlogger blow up since…” She rubbed the back of her head with one hoof. “Prob’ly before the magic came back, honestly.”
“That long?!”
“Pipp, chill,” Zipp instructed. “You’re literally a princess. What, do you somehow need even more attention than that?”
Pipp scoffed, but did not reply.
“That’s a yes,” Zipp muttered, returning to her phone.
“Well—well, what are you watching that’s so good?” Pipp demanded.
Zipp shrugged. “Just stuff. Mostly video essays,” she said. “Lately I’ve been watching this series about writing effective horror; There’s this really cool video about how we find the unknown almost inherently terrifying, and how you can use that your advantage by never fully revealing the nature of the—”
“Boring!” Pipp proclaimed.
Zipp rolled her eyes.
“What do non-nerds watch?” Pipp clarified.
“I don’t know, Pipp,” Zipp replied, almost robotic in her boredom. “Music videos? Pranks? Challenges?”
“Ew. You sound so old.”
Zippster95: Whatever. Sounds like something you should be talking to Jazzy about. Why don’t you go bother her instead of pestering me?
Pipp blinked. “Huh?”
Zipp gave her sister a withering stare. “Jazzy? Your manager?”
“B-but you said…”
Pipp trailed off.
PippPetals: well that was super weird
PippPetals: who talks like that
PippPetals: announcing her dialogue with her whole screen name like that
PippPetals: like shes some kind of professional wrestler
Zipp waited another moment or two for her sister to catch up with the conversation, but Pipp seemed lost to the world. Sick of waiting, she sighed, shook her head, and picked up her phone once more to resume reading the rather interesting article about the (purely hypothetical) storage of nuclear waste.
After a minute of aimless daydreams, Pipp at last returned to reality.
“I should talk to Jazzy,” she announced as she stood up from the couch. “It’s her job to have her hoof on the pulse. I’m sure she’ll know how to revive my dying career.”
“That seems like an over-exaggeration, but knock yourself out.”
- - -
Pipp had been lying about the battery.
If she was wont for anything, it wasn’t power. Her phone would last her a full twenty-four hours, and she had enough external batteries charged up to keep her going for a whole month down here.
It was a tactic. One that Jazzy had suggested, actually.
Though it seemed counter-intuitive, Pipp stood to gain far more subscribers by keeping her streams sparse. This both kept her from oversaturating the market (a problem for big-time streamers like herself), and created a sense of urgency in non-subscribers—their only chance to catch a rare streaming event was to subscribe, thereby ensuring a barrage of notifications each time Pipp picked up her phone.
PippPetals: millions of ponies seeing the same message at the same time
PippPetals: all from me
PippPetals: for one moment millions of ponies will be thinking only of me
That felt pretty good, even if Pipp thought her usual head-voice was sounding a bit off today.
Pipp pulled out her phone to check the time. According to her clock, she’d been down in the caves for about an hour, and it had been nearly twenty minutes since her last stream. Perhaps it was time to fire it up again and give the viewers another taste of adventure?
It was really supposed to be Jazzy’s job to monitor the hype and find the optimal time to start streaming again.
Pipp clicked her phone screen off, and was met with the shimmering black mirror beyond the content. The hideously unfashionable headlamp she’d strapped on lit her face in the harsh white glow.
She thought she looked sort of nice in harsh lighting, actually.
PippPetals: who really cares what Jazzy thinks?
Pipp frowned.
Her head-voice was really standing out today.
She was quickly distracted by how photogenic her pout was, and started to examine her face for her best angle.
PippPetals: im the one with 6.8 million subscribers
PippPetals: how many subscribers does she have?
PippPetals: none
PippPetals: none at all
PippPetals: no one cares about jazzy
PippPetals: shes riding on your fame
PippPetals: your coattails
“Right on, head-voice!” Pipp said.
She didn’t find it concerning in the least that she was already talking to herself, or that her head-voice had already become such a distinct entity. Then again, she figured she talked to herself a ton when she was streaming. Maybe it was just a…
PippPetals: side effect
“Yeah,” Pipp agreed. “A side effect.”
Smiling to herself, Pipp plopped down against the wall of the cave and whipped out her phone. She caught her reflection in the phone’s shimmering black screen once more, and gazed lovingly at her round cheeks and sparkling eyes—even through the grime—before pulling her headlamp off her head.
By now, starting a new stream was like breathing.
“Hiya, Pippsqueaks!” Pipp said, looking only at her own video feed. “Sorry for the no-warning stream, but… well, I guess that’s how we find out who the real fans are, huh?”
PippPippPippPipp: I LOVE U SM PIPP
hooflickerX: hck yesssssss been waitin since last stream ended
Pipp beamed at the wave of adoration that washed over her, if only from a few ponies.
Her eyes drifted from her own reflection to the ‘current viewer’ count. She watched it climb… ever so slowly. Inching up through orders of magnitude.
It was almost addicting.
πνεῦμα: yes
πνεῦμα: almost
“Yeah… almost,” Pipp sighed to herself.
She caught herself before the chat realized she was already getting sort of delirious.
“Can you believe how far we’ve come in just a few short months, Pippsqueaks?” she said, almost wistfully. “It feels like just yesterday we were doing the cinnamon challenge together… remember that?”
- - -
“Ew… that sounds disgusting, Jazzy,” Pipp said as she eyed the spoonful of cinnamon. She stuck out her tongue and shook her head vigorously. “I changed my mind. It just sounds gross. And I don't want to be gross.”
The light in Jazzy’s eyes died. “I-it’s not gross!” she insisted. “It’s, like… dangerous!”
Pipp frowned and folded her forelegs over her chest. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Just looks dry.”
“It’s supposed to be hot.”
“That’s even dumber!”
Jazzy took a long, steadying breath. “Look, Pipp: you don’t have to believe it’s dangerous,” she said. “You just have to make your viewers believe it’s dangerous. A little drama, a little showmareship… you’re great at that!”
Pipp’s frown deepened to a sneer. “Ew. Double ew.”
Jazzy closed her eyes, clearly restraining herself, and set the container of cinnamon down on the tabletop. “You told me you wanted more subscribers, Pipp,” she said slowly. “This is how you get more subscribers. I did a ton of research, talked to experts, other big time streamers—your competitors—and this is what they’re doing!”
“They’re eating big spoonfuls of cinnamon?” Pipp grumbled.
“They’re taking risks!” Jazzy suggested. “Subscribers like to see streamers living on the edge! They call it ex-streaming—like extreme streaming?”
Jazzy held out the spoonful of cinnamon to Pipp with an uneasy smile.
Pipp eyed it warily.
It still looked pretty dry and, honestly, she wasn’t in the habit of making herself uncomfortable for her viewers.
PippPetals: what does that make me anyway
PippPetals: some kind of clown
πνεῦμα: smearing your face in whipped cream for children to laugh at
Pipp frowned. “My head-voice is really in a mood today…” she grumbled. “Does yours ever get like that? All… talk-backy?”
Jazzy smiled in relief. “We’ll use some movie magic to make you look amazing,” she said.
As if Pipp hadn’t said anything at all.
“Uh…” Pipp furrowed her brow. “Not what I said, Jazz.”
“Yeah. Big ol’ cup of milk, right out of the shot,” Jazz agreed.
“Wait, wait.” Pipp took two steps away from her manager. “I don’t remember it going this way.”
“So you’ll do it?”
Her voice was echoing. Just like—
Pipp gasped and put a hoof over her mouth. “I’m still in the caves!”
Jazzy only stood still.
Smiling.
Nodding.
Listening to the script that Pipp had barrelled off of.
“Eugh, creepy!” Pipp shrieked, giving her manager a shove.
“This is what you want, isn’t it?” Jazzy asked.
πνεῦμα: To be loved?
πνεῦμα: To have attention?
πνεῦμα: Adoration?
πνεῦμα: Fans round the world, all thinking of you at the exact same instant?
The words were coming from her, but also kind of… weren’t. Like she was moving her mouth but they didn’t quite match—plus Pipp’s head-voice was jabbering at the same time. It was all kind of confusing, honestly. The whole stream-chat thing could have been explained better.
Despite the echoes and the weird way Jazzy was sort of disintegrating, Pipp heard the message loud and clear.
Pipp scoffed. “Um, duh?” she rolled her eyes. “Who wouldn’t want that? I feel like most foals want to be ClipClop famous nowadays. Being a firefighter when you grow up is, like, so over.”
The Jazzy-ish pony in front of Pipp didn’t seem all that impressed by her answer. More importantly, her skin was starting to peel off.
Maybe it had started peeling earlier? Pipp hadn’t really noticed until the big pieces of Jazzy’s flank-flesh were hitting the ground with loud disgusting plop sounds.
PippPetals: ew nasty
At least her and her head-voice finally seemed to be back on the same page.
Pipp took another few big steps away from Jazzy, even as Jazzy’s decrepit corpse advanced. Pipp’s back hoof landed in a small puddle, which made a shiver run up her spine.
PippPetals: this doesnt look like the caves, though…
πνεῦμα: That’s what makes it scary, stupid!
PippPetals: ok
PippPetals: rude
Pipp scrunched her eyes shut and groaned. “Ugh, I’m just, like, super confused right now!” she complained. “I thought this happened a long time ago? Like way back when I first decided to become a challenge streamer?”
The corpse of Jazzy—
PippPetals: kinda just looks like the corpse of some other guy tho
PippPetals: like some stallion
—or whoever paused.
Then, with a skeletal mouth, it said, “uh-huh?”
“Um…” Pipp frowned. “And then… I started doing more and more dangerous stuff…”
“Uh-huh…” the corpse prompted, tapping one hoof impatiently. “And then?”
Pipp thought about it. Her tongue snuck out of her mouth as her face contorted in concentration. “Uh…” She pouted. “I guess I don’t really remember.”
The corpse let out a long, tortured sigh. “Do you need a reminder?” it offered through gritted teeth.
“Oh!” Pipp smiled. “That would actually be super helpful!”
The corpse rolled its eyes.
There was a knock at the door.
Pipp didn’t really know what door, or where she was right now, or even when ‘now’ was, exactly, but she opened the door to reveal a familiar face.
“What’s up, Hitch?” Pipp asked, both eyes still glued to her phone. “You wanna make a video or something?”
“What?” Hitch balked at the mere suggestion. “Um… no? Where’s your sister, Pipp?”
“Ugh, that attention hog?” Pipp turned her phone screen off and tucked it away. “Haven’t seen her in a hot minute. Why?”
Hitch nickered softly. “Shoot. I’ve been looking for her all over,” he said. “There’s this, um—actually, I have a picture.”
Pipp leaned coolly against the doorframe and Hitch scrolled urgently through the photos in his phone’s gallery. After a moment of searching, he held one up to Pipp:
A vast field of spires. All of them stretching towards the sky, heralding a warning from another—
“And?” Pipp asked impatiently.
Hitch withdrew the photo. “It’s part of this weird… monument? I dunno,” he admitted. “Sunny found some evidence of it in one of her father’s journals. I was going to take Zipp out to investigate the area with me, see what’s what. Something kind of related to that old legend of the Pneuma? The uh… Spirit-Eater I think they called it”
At this, Pipp perked up. “Oh?”
Hitch chuckled. “The pegasi had the same legend, huh?”
Pipp opened her mouth to say more, but Hitch cut her off.
“Why did you go into those caves, Pipp?” he asked.
“Why—huh?”
“I told you explicitly not to go in those caves.”
“You… did?”
“Now we’re all out looking for you,” Hitch said. “And for what? For a few more subscribers? Are you not getting enough attention?”
Pipp didn’t know what else to do. She slammed the door in his face.
When she turned around, Jazzy was holding out a spoonful of cinnamon, smiling expectantly.
- - -
“Can I ask you a question?”
Jazzy’s voice was quiet, sort of muffled through the speaker on Pipp’s phone.
Pipp sighed. “Sure.”
“Why do you do this?” Jazzy asked. “Like… stream?”
Pipp was quiet. She let the question wash over her, considering it fully and completely.
“I just mean like—” Jazzy paused, sighed, and tried again. “I dunno. It seems hard? Not even the challenge stuff, just being so… public. It makes you so vulnerable all the time. I feel like you’d have to be kinda brave to do it at all, let alone… how you do it.”
Pipp laughed. “Oh, Jazzy. It’s not hard at all! I’m just naturally loveable,” she said, flipping her mane over her shoulder (even though Jazzy couldn’t see it). “I simply have to share it with the masses. Don’t you agree?”
“Um…” Jazzy seemed to squirm on the other end. “S-sure! I just meant, like… well, more why you started streaming. Was it because… because your sister was getting so much attention from your mom?”
“Ew. No.” Pipp scoffed.
“But… you’re saying you don’t hold any ill will towards your sister?” Jazzy pressed. “She’s, like… gonna be the queen? Isn’t that sort of your thing?”
“Um, no?” Pipp laughed again. “My thing is streaming, Jazzy! Like, hello, are we even having the same conversation?”
Jazzy sighed again, this time a bit tense. “You don’t think that maybe your desire for attention via HoofTube and ClipClop is at all related to the lack of attention you received from your mother?” she pressed. “In favor of your sister, the future queen?”
Pipp stuck out her bottom lip. “I don’t think my mom ever gave Zipp more attention than me,” she said.
“You… don’t?”
Pipp thought about it some more, then shook her head.
“You don’t see yourself as Narcissus, gazing into his reflection, obsessed with his own image to the point of no return?” Jazzy went on. “You don’t think you are, perhaps, trying in vain to capture your youthful self in full bloom, to prove to everyone that you not only have what it takes to rule, but are more worthy than the current heir?”
Pipp blinked.
“Hello?”
“I’m a mare?” Pipp reminded her manager. “Who’s Narcissus, anyway? That’s a stupid name.”
“You…” Jazzy trailed off. “You don’t get what’s happening here?”
Pipp scoffed. “Um, I get that I’m stuck in this dumb cave and I haven’t even gotten more than a lousy ten thousand subscribers out of it!” she whined. “Some manager you are. Can’t even get me a hundred thousand out of an actual haunted cave…”
“Pipp.”
“What?”
πνεῦμα: Pipp!
“What!” Pipp shrieked. “Stop being stupid, Jazzy!”
πνεῦμα: I’m not being stupid.
πνεῦμα: You are being stupid.
“Ugh, rude!” Pipp yelled, her voice bouncing off the walls of the cave and echoing much further down than where she currently stood. “I’m trying to put on a good show for my subscribers, and so far all I did was almost fall! I’ve been down here for, like, a trillion years!”
πνεῦμα: You have been down here for an hour and forty-three minutes.
“Yeah, right.”
πνεῦμα: Fine.
πνεῦμα: You said you were looking to put on a show for your audience.
πνεῦμα: Perhaps I can help with that.
Pipp did not reply. Only waited for the offer to be read off in full.
πνεῦμα: Why don’t you turn your camera on, Pipp?
Pipp rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she grumbled, already navigating to ClipClop to start her stream. “But not because I’m taking orders. Because I’m just so bored I could die.”
πνεῦμα: You said it yourself, dear.
πνεῦμα: You wanted to be an ex-streamer.
Pipp wasn’t really paying attention, though.
“Hi, Pippsqueaks…” she grumbled. “Look, I’ll be honest: the cave has been sort of a bust. I’ve been down here for, like, ever, and nothing even a little bit scary has happened. I wouldn’t call this a ‘challenge’ to anything except my boredom. Yawn!”
πνεῦμα: Turn your camera upon me, Pipp!
“Shut up, head-voice!”
πνεῦμα: Give your audience a show!
Pneuma: Let them see my true form!
Spirit-Eater: And despair!
Pipp, having no other options, turned her camera on the source of the head-voice—now distinctly outside her head. She wasn’t really sure when that happened. Not that it mattered.
Before her stood the disgusting, bedraggled husk of what had once been a pony. It wasn’t quite a skeleton, not quite a corpse—pieces of it appeared to have been preserved in near-prefect condition, as if he had been up and around just the day before. Other patches seemed like fresh wounds, dripping blood and viscera. Still others were bloated and attracting flies. Some places ate all the way to bleach-white bone.
“Ew,” Pipp commented. “You’re just, like, some guy?”
πνεῦμα: You gaze upon the last body I stole.
πνεῦμα: A kind stallion, consumed by the loss of his love, Ivory.
πνεῦμα: His name was Cal—
“Ooh! We just got a new subscriber!” Pipp’s wings fluttered in excitement. “Pipp-Pipp hooray and welcome, Onkalo! Cool name!”
πνεῦμα: Are you even paying attention.
“Wow, the subscriptions are flooding in!” Pipp peered around her phone and gave the corpse before her a knowing smile. “Are you sure you’re not the one who’s obsessed with getting other ponies’ attention, Spirit-Eater?”
πνεῦμα: What is that supposed to mean.
“Okay, no need to get, like, huffy or anything,” Pipp said as she hauled herself to her hooves. “It just seems like you actually care about getting on camera a lot.”
πνεῦμα: That is not pertinent.
πνεῦμα: You have no way of understanding what my true goals are.
“So tell the camera!” Pipp said, holding her phone right in the corpse’s face.
It made a sound of disgust and backed away.
πνεῦμα: Um.
πνεῦμα: No.
“Oh, don’t get all shy now!” Pipp teased. “You’re the Spirit-Eater, right? So you eat, like, souls or something?”
πνεῦμα: I do not prefer that name.
πνεῦμα: And no.
“So what do you do, then?”
πνεῦμα: I am a thought.
πνεῦμα: My power comes from your thoughts of me.
πνεῦμα: I ask only to share your mind, to walk out of this cave and re-enter the world, where I might regain my strength as I come back into the minds of many.
“You literally just described being an influencer!” Pipp said, beaming with pride. “That’s so cool! You’re like a monster influencer. Oh my hoofness, I bet you vlogged! Just like me!”
πνεῦμα: NO.
πνεῦμα: My goals are not nearly as insipid as to gain a following.
πνεῦμα: My goals are grander than you could possibly comprehend.
πνεῦμα: Even viewing a tiny fraction of my world, my mind, my plans would overwhelm you so greatly your skull would crack in two.
πνεῦμα: You cannot possibly begin to imagine my plans for your world. Or for you.
“M'kay. Could have been a little nicer. Especially if you want to share my brain or whatever.”
πνεῦμα: I.
πνεῦμα: I am beginning to think that might not be worth the effort.
“Also, didn’t you just say you stole that body?”
Pipp looked the corpse up and down once more.
It was not looking any more appetizing than it did upon first reveal. The Spirit-Eater took a few steps away, retreating into the dark. It was almost as if it was embarrassed about having been caught in the lie.
πνεῦμα: Um.
πνεῦμα: No?
Pipp turned the camera on herself once more. “Jazzy, can we get a replay?”
[MODERATOR] JazzyHooves555: Pipp we’re not seeing or hearing anything?
[MODERATOR] JazzyHooves555: Is there maybe something wrong with your camera? Or mic?
Pipp quickly hugged her phone to her chest.
The cave before her was empty.
“Huh.” She looked up and down the cave, searching for any sign of the corpse. She didn’t even smell it anymore. “Weird.”
[MODERATOR] JazzyHooves555: Also Hitch is pretty mad at us.
[MODERATOR] JazzyHooves555: Maybe it’s time to call it off?
- - -
Pipp sat on the back of an ambulance, a heavy felt blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She swung her rear hooves slowly, watching as the waning light danced off her shimmering hooficure.
“Izzy, don’t you think you could get me a blanket that’s a little more stylish?” Pipp whined. “I’m going to look so washed out in the news photos. Who thought grey would be a good look?”
Izzy giggled. “I’m pretty sure that’s the only color shock blankets come in,” she said. “Oh! I do have an emergency button kit though! Would that help?”
Pipp sighed wistfully. “No…”
Izzy merely shrugged. “Okay. Well, I’m gonna go see if I can help Sunny.”
“With what?”
“With the new designs!” Izzy clapped her hooves together excitedly. “She said that, according to her dad’s journal, all the spires and scary signs and stuff were supposed to keep ponies away. Since they don’t seem to be working anymore, we need to brainstorm something new! I’m kind of excited—I’ve never done architecture before!”
Before Pipp could ask any more questions, Izzy was gone.
πνεῦμα: I must thank you.
Pipp frowned. “Ugh. You again? I thought we were done.”
πνεῦμα: I was short-sighted.
πνεῦμα: Your escapades in my prison surely will lure other young ponies down here.
πνεῦμα: I must only have patience.
πνεῦμα: It appears that you have led my plan to—
“Oh, for the love of—!”
πνεῦμα has been kicked from the chat. Toodles!