Vess…el?...!
Pale cream feathers encircled around a small abode, hugging the corner of a deep, cragged forest. A loud *phwoom* rustled the leaves around the front door as a Pegasus swooped down and sat down; a male Pegasus pony named Console Command. He hung his head down low, using one of his hooves to push his dark brown mane from his face. His blanket had torn and lost a scrap as he was exploring the forest, and he had been looking all around for the scrap of cloth, but then remembered that he had also lost his sewing needle while leaving the forest. He flew to the roof of his house and looked back at the forest; he had been attacked by… some kind of shadow, and bolted out to avoid its clutches. He flew all over the forest and dropped a lot of supplies when frantically trying to get away, and he was now beating himself up for it. He looked into the forest, which was much darker than usual, as if the darkness was trying to eat its way out.
He shuffled his stance upright, before flying back to the door of his house. As he was turning towards the door, he noticed something… shiny to the side of one of the walls, almost seeming to glow. He galloped over to it, to see a giant sewing needle, the blade stuck into the ground, and the blade itself being slightly over half his length in its length; the “handle” was somehow even longer. Console adjusted his specs to see if he was seeing things, even taking his glasses to rub them against his mane, but the needle was all real.
“A… sewing needle?”
Well, if he couldn’t find the scrap, and his old needle was lost in the darkness, then this would have to do. He beat the needle with his wings to get it unstuck from the ground, snatched the handle of the large needle in his mouth, and without registering that a needle this size would not be fathomably useful for actual sewing, sped over to his door to bring it into his home. The hole left by the needle began… bleeding a pure black that began creeping towards his door, and the darkness consuming the forest seemed to be inching closer…
He set the needle by his station, before grabbing his torn maroon blanked to putting it on the table. He slipped a piece of thread through the almost-comically large hole and, against almost all logic, began sewing the blanket hole. It was working well for a few seconds, before he felt something nip at his tail. Console yelped in pain, dropping the needle before turning around to see what bit his tail; it was some kind of liquid darkness that immediately bolted towards the needle that feel to the ground, shaking it as it coated it in pure darkness.
The needle flashed back to its normal iron state, before lifting itself into the air, hooking the blanket in its now-smaller hole, before it began to sew the cloth on its own, with a strange, pure-black thread. What it was sewing was definitely not his normal blanket, the fabric became too smooth, and it became sealed, with a ruffled collar on one end and a ruffled cloak for the rest, which seemed to be built for a more bipedal shape…
The needle floated to the cloak’s side, before a strange, pitch-black shadow began filling its form; the bottom half was smoky and ethereal, while in the collar a head formed. The head was very oval-shaped near the front, and had two very long and sharp looking horns, and had pure glowing white eyes. The strange shadow looked at Console, who had backed himself into one of the walls. Console screamed at the mysterious form:
“What ARE YOU!”
The shape was silent, before it spoke in a feminine and echoing voice:
“H-Hornet… not ves-ves-ves… bargain, not ves-ves-vess-vess… not VESSEL.”
“Not… vessel?” Console Command asked in confusion, holding his shoulders.
“Not VESSEL… preven-prevent perpet… Ghost, PERPETUATE. VOID, NOT HO-OLLOW….”
The shape, now called “Hornet,” reeled its sharp needle back…
“VESS…EL? APOL… PLE…?”
Before Console could react, Hornet flung her weapon through his chest, the entire weapon seeming to go through him, before being reeled back to the shadow. While he was dazed and paralyzed from the shock, Hornet’s shadow had lodged her wispy remains into his chest cavity. Console gagged and thrashed from the intense pain; he looked down at his chest to see the shadow expanding… it was… consuming him?
Console staggered to his feet… his back feet, and hissed in pain; the darkness seemed to be… converting his flesh, his insides into… void?
The darkness made its way throughout his body, liquefying the converted flesh and insides into an ethereal, sturdy shadow. His very body structure changed, his bottom legs going from digitigrade hooves to straight plantigrade stubs. His mane and tail began to fall to clumps of dark-brown fur on the floor, and his cream body fur flattened and smoothed into the same black shadow. His cutie mark vanished entirely, simply becoming the same dark “void.” His back straightened, and front legs changed structure as well, becoming thin, lean arms with stubs for hands, and the same shadow. His sex became very ambiguous as it was assimilated into the dark carapace, but he- she definitely felt female.
necklace completely fell apart, and his necklace and glasses fell to pieces on the floor. His feathered wings vanished in a flume of darkness, as if they were never there in the first place. His ears melted into the rest of his head and his muzzle compacted as his head became shadow as well, his eyes turning a blank white and his head beginning to feel… fuzzy…
This headache was ceaseless, and his memory was fading from himself. From his chest emerged a strange, blaring-white orb that slowly rose to the front of his head; it started to expand in strange “plates” around it, like some kind of helmet or mask. Before long, the strange white had formed into a large, two-horned mask with two large eye holes; a mask made of... pure SOUL. The darkness converting her completed her head quickly, the void expanding her head to fit the form of the mask, her blank glowing eyes turning the same black as the rest of her body.
She kneeled forward, using one arm to keep herself in a kneeling position.
I’m so sorry, Console.
She slowly stood up and looked over to see her silken robe slumped sloppily on the floor, and her needle beside it. She quickly went over and put the single-component cloak on, and grasping her needle to hold it high; she would not let another ghost of the kingdom’s corpse perpetua-
Before she could finish her thought, a horrendous screech from afar rattled her shell; she looked out the window to see the sickly orange miasma overtake the world outside. She dashed out the door and used her needle to grapple onto the roof and looked over the forest; an enormous explosion of orange burst in the far range ahead.
A little too late.