“Nuthin left.”

He kicked at the bone. It appeared as if an entire mountain had been picked clean of earth and just the skeleton was left.

He had heard stories of giants before, but mostly from his father, and how they had been big and terrifying. Wolves, he called them. Dogs were their descendants. This meant his ancestors had once been as big and towering as the skeleton before him. For some reason this caused a knot of fear to twist in his stomach like a dagger in the back.

After a few careful sniffs, he was content; the skeleton wasn’t coming back to life anytime soon. He knew that it wouldn’t have in the first place. It had not been buried underground, after all, thus its soul was able to escape the sheltering earth into the sky. It did not go back to the mud like those unlucky few. But still, better safe than sorry. A ghost of that size haunting the area would have been… terrifying, to say the least.

With a hesitant step he moved forward, always on the heels of his back-paws. His front-paws he rested most of his strength on his fingertips, where his weapons were located. The dirt caked underneath them, but he was used to this by now.

Skirting the edge of the skeleton that blocked out the sky, he stopped every dozen yards or so to see if there were any unsavory scents in the area. But like always there was nothing. No danger present.

There were no animals ready to strike from within the darkened forest. Even the forest, which had once bolstered much fear from him and the rest of his race for ages hence, due to instincts and memories long forgotten back in history, was silent.

He had never heard of such a thing. His father had said their ancestral lands of the woods were always alive with something going on, whether it be death, birth, eating, or all those at the same time. But now it just smelled like the skeleton and everything else in these cursed lands.

Dead.

The pony lands had once been so full of life, he remembered. Way back when he was still part of his pack.

The thought tickled his mind whenever he looked back on it. Him, a leader of his own pack? Just like the old tales, before diamond dogs had moved in the underground cities and abandoned their feral ways. The cities had offered him nothing for opportunities, so him and other outcasts had come here, to start their own pack, their own way of life.

Ha, what fools.

They had even made their own collars to commemorate what they believed to be their home. What morons they had been, bastardizing a collar’s oldest tradition of signifying home when they had never belonged there in the first place.

The town far off from him was abandoned. He once recalled when it had been filled with the ponies, all bright and cheerful and full of pleasant scents.

On the right sort of day with a lucky gust of wind he could even smell what was being cooked or baked in the bustling village: pies, scones, cakes, pastries, and so much more. Though the scent of cooked hay always left him a bit queasy.

Unfortunately, all those smells were gone, the ponies having left even further back.

Glancing back at the sky, he saw nothing other than infinite grey. A blanket had been thrown over his head where not even the moon or sun shone forth. Like the lands below, the sky above was just as dead. Useless. Like a corpse that just wouldn’t rot.

Actually, that in itself posed a good question. Where had the ponies gone to? They had up and abandoned town, and when him and the rest of his pack explored further when all had settled down, there was nothing. They had stayed clear of the village originally. From there a vile, pestering stink hung around the place like a foul ghost.

Looking back at the skeleton fit for a fallen god, he could only guess why.

There hadn’t been a pony in sight ever since the day they originally disappeared. No hide of an earth pony, nor horn of a unicorn, or even feather of a pegasus. Everyone had just disappeared like sand in the wind.

Originally it had seemed like a blessing. Now they could harvest as many gems as they wanted without interference. Make their fortunes not through sweat and toil like the other dogs, but the easy way.

But that feeling turned sour in only a few days, and finally died a suffocating death.

There was no sky to speak of, nor wind to breathe, or even a sound to make a peep. Like everything else in these lands, it was gone now and forever. It didn’t take the others long before they escaped. Before the madness could overtake them.

He stopped in his tracks.

Why was he still here then? He couldn’t remember how long he had stayed underground, in the tunnels, circling them left and right, up and down.

The others had already left him long ago. Said that lands outside of Equestria were still alive. Lands where there was still the sun and moon and hope. But only he had remained. For however long, he had no clue. Lack of a basic day and night cycle had thrown him off.

He was lost, lost, lost in this dead world. With only a giant skeleton to keep him company, the only sign of this fallen field left that there had once been life.

But wait… there was something else. There, near the white giant. A different scent. One of ponies from long before.

He tore off after it, arriving at his destination and the pony’s final one. It was just another skeleton, the only one of its kind left, even in death. It had a horn, and he could vaguely make out the last skeletal fragments of wings. Not much else to tell, really. Its body looked broken. The bones were cracked, with the horn in particular split down the middle and singed. He could still smell faint smoke from it, though not of any fire that he knew of.

Glancing from the skeleton of the giant and the bones of the pony, he attempted to imagine the circumstances that would result in the two of them dead while everyone else had left or disappeared.

But he drew no conclusion from his musings. He couldn’t even remember why he was still here. Still here in these long forgotten lands where time stood still except for a lone dog.

“Nuthin left.”