Sweetie Belle’s fall was not a pleasant one. After falling free for a few moments, she bounced against the hard wall, feeling as though her head were going to split open. the ride didn’t end there— far from it. She tumbled and slid down the sharp volcanic rock, grunting in pain every single bounce of the way down.
Finally, she bounced hard enough to escape from the slope, and fell with a crunch next to a pit of bubbling lava. The hot rocks singed her poor rump, and Sweetie Belle jumped to her hooves, running around in circles, under the odd impression that that would put the flame out.
Coming to the eventual realization that we all come to eventually when our own butts are on fire, Sweetie stuck her backside into the nearest pool of liquid. She sighed in contentment as the fire was doused, but her eyes widened in horror when she realized that it was in fact a pool of lava she dumped her rump into.
Pulling out the charred plot, she took a look back, bracing for the worst. Her flanks had gone from the light grey they had once been to a rustic charcoal brown. Her tail was nothing more than a twisted burnt remnant of its former glory. Sitting down and wincing in pain, she began to cry, not only for her butthurt, but also for her hopeless and eternal situation, with no way to escape or possibly learn from her actions.
“Gah! Don’t cry on me, I’m made of clay!” came a small, nerve-grating voice. Sweetie Belle wiped her eyes, and looked around to see where the annoying sound was coming from. Looking down at the cracked brimstone beneath her, she saw an odd bright-red bipedal figurine. True to how it had spoken, it was made of clay, in addition to harboring small wings on its back and small horn on its head. It carried a pitchfork, and wore a small loincloth over its privates.
“Seriously! It’s hard enough not to melt when the temperature is high enough to boil lead, I don’t need you crying on me!” the little figure squeaked.
“W-what are you?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“It would have been more polite to ask who I am, but...” the clay being sighed. “I am Squibb, an imp. And you are?”
“I’m Sweetie Belle, a unicorn,” Sweetie Belle said, the heat having evaporated her tears.
“Wait,” said Squibb, narrowing his eyes. “Aren’t unicorns pure and holy and all that nonsense? I was certain you types go to heaven!”
“I stole a candy bar,” Sweetie Belle explained.
Squibb nodded. “Ah, a class four infraction. Which would explain why you’re here, in the Fourth Circle of Hell!” Squibb gleefully exclaimed, spinning around in a circle. Sweetie Belle gave him an odd look.
“Here, I’ll give you the tour.” Squibb hoped up onto the unicorn’s head, and moved her head to the side by grasping her horn and turning her in the way the little imp wanted her to move. Soon, he was piloting her around lava pits and moaning bodies of all species.
“Right now, you’re at an entry zone,” Squibb explain, jerking up on Sweetie’s horn so she hoped over the half-burned body of a man in a suit, clutching a fistful of what looked like green paper. “Since our gate, Avernus, is a charred volcanic wasteland of rubble, it leaks out onto the places it connects on each level. However, Level Four (named Phlegethos for those keeping score at home) in general is a fiery wasteland as well, which is convenient because it saves me the trouble of explaining different environments to you!” The two reached a cliff, and Sweetie’s mouth dropped open. Before them lay a huge wasteland, almost as big as how she imagined Equestria looked from a high vantage point, except for that it was covered in volcanos, and harbored a distinct lack of green things. Sweetie Belle was also fairly sure that Equestria in general wasn’t filled with the pained moans of the wretched.
“Level Four is for greedy souls like you, who thought it would be a good idea to steal, or screw over their friends for personal gain,” Squibb told Sweetie Belle.
“But Scootaloo is the one who told me to do all this! She pressured me into taking the candy bar,” Sweetie Belle grumbled in despair.
“Ah yes, treachery. She’s going to the endless pits of Nessus for that Level Nine infraction there,” Squibb said thoughtfully. “Anyway, it’s time for you to serve out your eternity with useless punishments. I think I’ll set you to work pushing a giant candy bar up a volcano, and come back in a two or three million years to see how you’re doing.”
Sweetie Belle began to sweat, and not just because her mane had caught fire from having the imp sitting on it for so long. “Wait! Isn’t there a way I can do something less ironic?”
“Absolutely not,” the imp said with a sense of finality. “Now, get down there!”
Squibb attempted to pilot Sweetie Belle towards the cliff and have her fall down into the great expanse of Phlegethos in order for her to serve out her meaningless punishment, but the filly had other plans. Shaking her head violently from side to side, she didn’t stop until Squibb was dislodged. The cursing imp fell down the very cliff Sweetie was forcing him towards.
Sweetie Belle began to run back to the area where she came, but all of the cavern walls looked the same! She could even swear that the moaning bodies all looked alike. Stopping to catch her breath by an odd extrusion from the nearest cave wall, she screamed when it began to speak to her.
“Sweetie Belle? Is that you?” the wall asked. Sweetie Belle examined it further. It appeared to be the frozen and torn body of an earth pony stallion.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked, frightful.
“Hehe, when one’s in hell for all eternity, you learn to dwell on every moment of your once fantastic mortal life...”
Sweetie Belle stared at him, waiting for her question to be answered. The stallion caught on, cleared his throat, and continued. “Right, anyway, I’m your friend Apple Bloom’s father! I died when she was just a newborn, as I’m sure she told you. Really wish I’d be able to see her grow up... I was good friends with your parents though, so I remember how you looked when you were young as well.”
“Wait, why are you here in Hell then?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Let’s just say I may have touched my older son and daughter in places they shouldn’t have been touched,” the stallion said regretfully.
“Wait, that’s lust!” said Squibb, who had rejoined the fleeing unicorn. “You should be on level two, Dis!”
“I threw you down the cliff!” Sweetie Belle pointed out, annoyed. “How’d you get back here?”
Squibb pointed towards his wings, a flat look on his face. Turning back to the earth pony shackled to the wall, he demanded, “Why aren’t you in your proper place?”
“Sometimes I come down here to thaw out a bit,” the pedophilic stallion admitted. “The eternal winds above the City of Dis get rather chilly, you know.”
“Well, you’re going to have to go back there now!” yelled Squibb, smashing a part of the wall with his tiny fist. The cave ceiling above his crumbled away, and a howling wind followed. Sweetie Belle could see a huge, steel grey sky covered in turbulent clouds through the gaping hole. The incestuous earth pony was whisked away, and the hole closed once more.
Squibb turned to Sweetie. “Come on! That chocolate isn’t going to reach the top of a volcano for no good reason at all by itself, you know!”