She Slays

by Bandy

Chapter Two: She Slays Good Boy Energy Cosmic Caregivers

In the quaint hilltop town of L'épine, the church bells started to ring.

A teenage filly named Clearwater skipped down the town’s main avenue. This road was the axis on which her young life revolved. From her thatched roof home at the edge of town, it was a straight shot down the cobblestone street to school. Beyond that was the general store, then the tavern where she sometimes had to pick dad up after he and the other lumberjacks celebrated their temporary victories against the endless forests, then the cluster of older cottages where her friends lived and played.

At the very center of town, the hub from which everything else radiated, was the church.

She bowed her head reverently to the monk attending the door. The monk dipped his hoof into a bowl of clear water and anointed her forehead. “Peace and clarity,” he said.

“Peace and clarity,” she echoed back.

Inside, soaring stained glass windows threw splashes of colored light against the walls. Pairs of massive stone columns soared five stories into the air and met in arched points in the center of the ceiling. With weekly communal worship still a few days away, the monks had stacked all the benches against one wall so they could clean the floors. At the center of the circular chamber stood a raised well carved from a single massive piece of clear crystal. A continuous stream of water bubbled from a hole in the top and flowed down in a tiny waterfall. The sound of it filled Clearwater’s heart with calm. She was safe here. She was home.

The high priestess noticed Clearwater walk in. She set aside the brush she’d been using to scrub the floor. “Peace and clarity, Clearwater.” The space drenched her low voice in heavenly reverb. “Can I be of service?”

“Peace and clarity,” Clearwater said. “The stranger in the care of my family grows stronger, but her pain is still great.” Clearwater prostrated herself on the floor. “On her behalf, I beg a portion of healing water from the well.”

“You honor us, and the well, with your service to this stranger. You will receive the water you require.”

Clearwater kept her head down as the high priestess retrieved a ceremonial stone vase and placed it beneath the waterfall. The sound reminded her of a stallion using the toilet, but she brushed those thoughts away without breaking her composure. Be serious, she repeated in her mind. This is serious.

As she waited for the vase to fill, she noticed the floor smelled faintly of soap. The ceremonial chamber was huge, and could contain several hundred ponies at a time. Keeping the floors clean must have been an incredible labor for the high priestess and her attendant monks. Why bother? The prostration was purely ceremonial. Clearwater had never heard of a request for healing water being turned down. But maybe that was because no one had ever abused the privileges of the well. Clearwater wondered if she would ever become wise enough to understand why all this ceremony was necessary.

Clearwater returned home with the vase of water. Inside their humble thatched roof cottage, her mother Clarity was kneeling in front of Cozy Glow, coaxing the mare’s hind leg into a modest bend. Cozy Glow cried out and covered her face with her hooves.

“It’s not going,” she said, “You’re gonna hurt it. Stop.”

“Stay relaxed,” Clarity cooed, “it’ll go.”

“It’s not. Going.” Cozy Glow groaned in pain. “Stop it, stop it, stop it—”

Clearwater prepared a numbing salve out of herbs and healing water and applied it to Cozy Glow’s burns. Most of the young mare’s skin had come back okay, but her fur was still patchy. She wasn’t sure if it would ever grow back right.

Clearwater moved her attention from Cozy Glow’s lightly-damaged limbs to her belly, where the worst of her burns were. Cozy Glow sobbed as they spread the salve over new skin. The sobs subsided, and for a moment Clearwater thought she had actually passed out from the pain. A moment later she realized Cozy Glow was holding it in. She stared at the ceiling with half-lidded, unfocused eyes. Her limbs trembled uncontrollably.

When they were done, Cozy Glow curled up into a ball and wouldn’t move. It wasn’t until Clearwater put a cool towel on her head and spoon-fed her some porridge did she finally start to relax. The two spent the evening sitting beside each other. At some point, Cozy Glow gingerly wrapped her arms around Clearwater’s torso. Clearwater couldn’t hug back because of all the bandages, so she played with what was left of Cozy Glow’s mane instead.

Clearwater’s heart overflowed with love. She was reminded in that moment that she was a well of sorts, too. The same way the well gave them water, she gave the world love. She was powerless to stop its flow, the same way the well couldn’t stop its flow of water. Love was eternal—the water of the soul.

---

It took nearly a month of full-time care before Cozy Glow was able to function normally again. In that time, Clearwater and her mother Clarity were unable to work. The whole community rallied around them, providing food for their pantry and copper for their coin purse. The expectations for the community of L'épine were clear: help strangers, then help the ponies who helped the strangers. The help poured out to Clearwater like, for lack of a better word, a well.

One night, Clearwater returned home from the church to find Cozy Glow on her knees scrubbing the floors. Their thatched roof cottage only had one room, but it was fairly spacious. Scrubbing the floor was usually a two-pony job that lasted all day. Cozy Glow had somehow managed to do half the cottage in the hour it had taken Clearwater to run to the church and back.

“Cozy? What are you doing?” Clearwater set her vase of healing water down. “You’ll hurt yourself. Stop it.”

Cozy Glow kept on scrubbing. Her eyes were clear and laser-focused on the seams between two floorboards.

“Cozy Glow. Hey.” Clearwater carefully stepped around the part of the floor Cozy had already completed. “You’re gonna bust a stitch.” Cozy didn’t stop until Clearwater put her hooves on the sponge. “Take it easy. What’s wrong?”

Cozy’s eyes stayed down on the floor. “Let me finish the floor.”

“Cozy—”

“I wanted to do something nice for you.” Her voice turned dark. “Let me do this.”

The way Cozy Glow spoke scared Clearwater a little, but she relented and let Cozy finish the rest of the floor. She put a kettle on to boil and arranged slices of candied sweetbread on a pair of plates.

“I...” Cozy looked from Clearwater to the tea. “I’m not hungry.”

“Yes you are. I’ve done that chore a million times before. You can’t fool me.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“The tea will help with that.”

For a split second, it looked like Cozy Glow was about to hit her. Then her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She took the teacup and sipped it hesitantly. Clearwater waited patiently until Cozy Glow was ready to speak.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Cozy Glow said.

“Of course.”

“Why all this?”

Clearwater blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You, Clarity... the town. I don’t get it.”

“You don’t get kindness?” Clearwater said. She meant it as a joke, but Cozy Glow’s glower only grew deeper.

“It would take years to repay you for everything you’ve done.”

“I don’t want you to repay me. I want you to relax so I don’t have to stitch you up again.”

“But you’d do that. If I ripped them open right now for no reason other than to prove a point, you’d just get the sewing kit.”

Clearwater sipped her own tea. “What about it?”

“That’s not...” Cozy Glow huffed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Actually, it makes a great deal of sense. Where else would the town’s surplus go to, if not for helping those in need?”

“You could keep it.”

Cleawater shook her head. “You’re thinking like those bankers in Canterlot.”

“It’s not... you’re thinking about this all wrong. You... ugh.” A rivulet of tea spilled over the lip of Cozy Glow’s glass and ran down the side. “You shouldn’t be doing this. You should have—”

“Let you die in the mountains?”

“Yes.”

Clearwater shook her head. She took Cozy Glow’s hoof. “You’re a good pony. But you’re also a prideful pony. Pride makes you fragile.”

“I am a—” Cozy Glow stopped herself. “I’m not weak.”

“I didn’t say you were. I just said you were fragile.”

Cozy Glow looked up at Clearwater. “Do you feel called to be here?”

“Absolutely. I feel called to help ponies in need wherever they are.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, do you feel called to be here specifically. Like, here in L'épine.”

Clearwater considered the question. “I mean. I was born here. I feel connected to the well in a way that would make it very difficult to leave. If some higher power wanted me to be somewhere else, I would have been born there instead. But I wasn’t. I was born here.”

Cozy Glow nodded. “This might sound weird, but...” She bit her lip.

“It’s okay. Whatever you say, I promise you won’t sound as crazy as worshiping a hole in the ground.”

Cozy Glow chuckled. “Thanks. I was trying to say that I was called to be here too.” She took a long breath. “Someone else could have found me. Or I could have been found by a pack of wolves. But you found me. You, of all ponies.” She pointed at Clearwater. More tea ran down Cozy Glow’s cup. “Fate brought me into those mountains, and it’s fate that made you find me, and it’s fate that made you bring me back here.”

“Why do you think fate brought you here, specifically?”

Cozy Glow’s eyes moved to the window. Her eyes snapped back to Clearwater. “I don’t know.”

They drifted off into silence. The candles burned low. Clearwater set out blankets for Cozy Glow and bundled herself into bed. Her mind continued to work long after the last light had been snuffed out, turning over Cozy Glow’s words. Fate. Violence. Higher powers. It all seemed so foreign. The world was so much bigger than the little town of L'épine. That frightened her.

Cozy Glow believed some very toxic things. She might be smart enough to say them directly, but there was something frightening brewing behind that mare’s eyes. Clearwater couldn’t fix her. She could only do what she knew was right and hope Cozy Glow saw the light. The well could flow as well as ebb. The choice to love rested on even the most minute decision. The weight of all those little decisions threatened to crush poor Clearwater. When she slept, she dreamed of falling, of weight on her chest, of the ground falling away beneath her.

The next morning, Clearwater woke to change Cozy Glow’s dressings. But Cozy Glow was gone. Her bedsheets had been thrown aside in a tangle. One of their loaves of bread was also missing from the pantry.

---

Invisible to Clearwater, invisible to the rest of the world, a glowing trail of magic led Cozy Glow towards the center of town. To the Church.

The church door was guarded by a monk, so Cozy Glow had to sneak in through one of the back windows. She entered into an antechamber serving as the church’s sacristy. Peering out, she saw the main gathering space with the well in the center. The high priestess chatted idly with an attending monk as they scrubbed the floor.

Cozy Glow waited until they turned their backs, then dashed silently to the well. The fountain where the water cascaded down was much too small for her to fit through. Searching for another point of access, she discovered a trapdoor at the base of the well’s raised platform just barely big enough for an adult pony to squeeze through. She lifted the stone tile away as quietly as she could, silently cursed herself for eating that entire loaf of bread, and squeezed in.

She found herself in a sort of crawl space beneath the altar. Bioluminescent moss lit up at her touch. Glowing green fungus made a trail to the well hole. A single pipe brought water up from a deep bore. The hole was—again—just barely big enough for a single pony. Certainly not big enough for flight. She’d have to climb down on the pipe.

“Why’s it always gotta be a cave?” Cozy Glow muttered to herself as she gripped the pipe. “Can’t one of these guys live on a beach?”

The condensation grew worse the further down. Her descent turned to a barely-controlled slide.

Without warning, the confining walls of the well bore disappeared. The sudden change made her panic and let go of the pipe.

Before she could snap open her wings and stop the neck-snapping fall, she landed headfirst in a deep pool of water. She broke the surface sputtering and shivering, but alive. The waves kicked up by her landing activated more of the bioluminescent moss on the walls. A pale greenish glow crawled up the walls.

Cozy Glow flapped her wings once to clear the water away, then twice to get airborne. As she watched, the water beneath her slowly formed into a whirlpool. It drained into an unseen chamber, leaving a massive clump of debris and moss at the bottom.

The clump stirred.

“No,” Cozy Glow said. “You gotta be joking.”

Algae and fibrous strands of moss flexed like muscles. With a gaseous sigh, the clump of moss rolled into a sitting position. A bedrock face appeared. Then a pair of glowing green eyes. Waterfalls of tears cascaded down the demon’s broad face and pitter-pattered against the floor.

“Are you alright?” Its voice was muffled by all the moss and debris around its head. “I felt you fall.”

Cozy Glow said nothing.

“Don’t be afraid. I want to help.” The demon leaned closer, squinting. It smelled like chlorophyll and conifer needles. “Are you a villager?”

Cozy Glow eyed the demon as it stood up to its full height. Its two hands were made of jagged bedrock, as were its wide-padded feet. It took another step towards her.

“I can’t see,” Cozy Glow said, inflecting fear into her voice. “I hit my head on the way down, and now I can’t see.”

“You’re safe now. I can help you.”

“Is there still water down here? I don’t want to drown.”

“I protect this well and bless the ponies who worship it. You have my word that you will come to no harm.”

Cozy Glow faked a sob. “Please. I just want to go home.”

The demon held out a hoof, into which Cozy Glow settled. She curled up into a ball and made a whimpering sound. All the while, her eyes were scanning the demon for weak points. Its eyes were partially crusted over, the light fluttering faintly. She realized that it probably couldn’t see her very well. Good.

“I can raise the water level to push you to the top of the well,” it said. “All you have to do is float.”

“No!” Cozy Glow shrieked. “I don’t want to drown. Please.”

“I promise you—”

“No!”

The demon considered her with its cloudy green eyes. “How did you fall down here?”

“I was with the high priestess. There was something wrong with the well.”

“You are one of the new attendant monks?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

Her ears pinned back. She got ready to dodge. “Please just help me.”

She barely had time to bolt out of the demon’s hand before the other came crashing down on top of it. The whoof of air propelled her into the wall at bone-jarring speeds.

“You deceive me,” the demon said, its voice turning dark. “You are not who you say you are.”

The fear and panic slowly melted off Cozy Glow’s face, replaced by a snide, sinister sneer. “Took you long enough. Jeez. I thought I was gonna have to keep that schtick up all day.”

“I have felt rumblings in the earth. Rumblings of death.”

“That would be me.”

“The mountain grows still.”

“Also me.”

“The stars are consumed with worry.”

“Let ‘em shiver.”

A low rushing sound filled the cavern. Out of the corner of her eye, Cozy Glow noticed a small ring of water collecting at the bottom of the pool. She blinked, and it was already up past the demon’s bedrock toes.

“I know what you seek,” the demon said. “I will not allow you to have it.”

“What are you, my dad? I don’t need your permission.”

“Permission? What you’ll want from me soon enough is mercy.” The demon peered at her. “You’re little more than a child.”

“Hey, c’mon, I’m just small for my age.”

“Why would you place this terrible burden upon yourself?”

“Burden?” Cozy Glow laughed. “It’s not a burden. It’s a revolution. And you’re gonna help me start it.”

“You’ll die,” the demon said matter-of-factly. “You will start no revolution. Win no battles. Conquer no courts. You’ll die scared and alone.”

Cozy Glow’s mouth twitched in annoyance. “You’re saying that because you’re afraid. Afraid of a little filly. A little—”

“I’m trying to save your life.” The demon’s hand came up. Cozy Glow flinched, but it made no effort to attack her. “I persist down here in this well because doing so helps people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Help. Let me help you now. Abandon this path.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You stay down here because you’re scared. You have all this power, all this potential, yet you’re too scared to use it.”

“What would you use it for?”

Cozy Glow paused. The rushing sound grew quieter. The water level rose in silence. “Control.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all? With the power of your heart, I could unite the world. Imagine how many ponies that would help.”

The demon smiled sadly. “Perhaps you are too young to see the true nature of power.”

Cozy Glow grit her teeth. “Say that again.”

“I beg of you, heed my warning. I only want to—”

“Say that again.”

A stare-down ensued. Cozy Glow was too proud to blink. The demon had no eyelids. The water rose past the demon’s navel.

The demon finally broke the silence. “You have so much life to live. Why would you wish this upon yourself?”

“Because I’m a god.”

Cozy Glow rushed the demon. Her wings snapped down, cavitating the air. Magic beaded on the cutting edge of her wings. But she never got the chance to strike. The water frothed white and shot up, filling the rest of the cave in a fraction of a second. Cozy Glow was flung violently against the top of the wall. Stars swam in her vision. She sucked in a lungful of water and choked.

Visceral panic took hold as she inhaled more water. Through the foaming water, she saw the light of the well bore a few meters away. She swam towards it. The current pushed her along, an unsubtle kick in the rear by the demon. It wasn’t trying to kill her, she realized. It was trying to shoo her out.

She blushed red. That was somehow worse than if it had tried to kill her.

The water pressure in the well bore took hold of Cozy Glow and shot her upwards. She smacked the stone pad on which the well sat, and a moment later she was forcefully ejected out the trapdoor.

Cozy Glow, and about a thousand gallons of holy water, spilled into the main chamber of the church. The wave swamped the high priestess, who was on her knees scrubbing the floor. Several attendant monks rushed into the chamber to investigate the noise and were also swept off their hooves.

Cozy Glow retched up the water in her lungs, waited for the water to recede, then dove back into the well. Too young—her flank, she was too young. She’d make this demon respect her. Then she’d kill it.

The water level had retreated to where Cozy Glow could fly around the well chamber comfortably. She slapped the water and shouted, “Come out here! Hey!” She received no response. “Fight me!” Still nothing.

Thinking fast, she shouted, “I’ll burn down the church!”

A ripple passed through the water. A bedrock hand shot out of the depths and knocked Cozy Glow across the room. She expected to fall into the water, but to her horror the water level dropped from over a hundred feet to nothing in the time it took her to unstick from the wall. She splayed her wings out, barely able to slow herself before she hit the ground. The impact was still enough to rattle every bone in her body and leave a nasty bruise on her belly.

“Don’t do this,” the demon pleaded. It towered over her, its shoulders nearly half the height of the well chamber. Tears from its waterfall eyes splashed all around her. “You deserve a chance to live. To right your wrongs.”

Cozy Glow snarled and shot towards the demon. Its colossal size and the cramped confines of the well chamber meant it couldn’t dodge as she sliced a glaive of magic through its shoulder. The razor-sharp tip of her wing sank into its mossy flesh until it struck bedrock bone.

She circled around to observe the damage. Fresh moss was already growing back, repairing the wound. She would have to find a weak spot if she wanted to do any damage.

An idea occurred to her. What if the demon wasn’t solid all the way through? What if only parts of it were made of rock? She felt rock in its shoulder when she sliced through it, but what about center mass?

A wicked grin twisted the corners of her mouth. As the demon lined up to swing at her, she dove under its fist and pumped her wings as hard as she could, gathering what speed she could in the enclosed space. At the last second, she flipped herself over and planted her rear hooves square in the center of the demon’s chest.

The impact shook the well chamber and sent a jet of moss and debris shooting out the demon’s back. Cozy Glow retreated to inspect the damage and found to her immense satisfaction that she’d kicked a hole clean through to the other side. The demon may be big, but it had no structure. It was rot all the way down.

She rushed in again, this time aiming for its face. This time, the demon reacted. A jagged piece of the demon’s knuckle caught her in the leg, gouging a deep cut from her cutie mark all the way to her knee. A strange sickeningly sweet floral scent filled the air. A strange off-white powder erupted in her face, like the demon had thrown a fistfull of baby powder. A burning lance of pain shot up her hip.

It took her a precious second to realize what had happened. That second doomed her.

The powder was spores. She’d breathed some in. Some still lingered in her mane. But more alarmingly, a fine coating of the powder had gotten in the fresh wound.

The spores took root in her flesh. She blinked, and pale grey shoots were already rising, peeling apart the cut to allow for more shoots to surface. They spiraled up and looped and tangled over each other before sprouting flowering caps.

Cozy Glow screamed. She took hold of a clump and pulled hard. She felt a deep ache, like a bad muscle cramp. She pulled again. Her whole leg moved. She felt the shoots inside of her, constricting her movements. In her desperation, she tried to bite them off to no avail. The rough rubbery fibers left a bitter taste in her mouth.

The mushroom caps trembled in unison. They released their own miniature clouds of spores. Cozy Glow tried to pull away, but some of the cloud got on her face. Almost immediately, her eyes started to water. Her nose ran uncontrollably. Her lungs would not fill with air. She choked on her own saliva.

The demon rose above her and swatted her out of the sky like an insect. She had the presence of mind to fold her wings so they wouldn’t break on impact.

The impact sent a shower of rocks flying into the air. Something in her chest went click, accompanied by a sharp jolt of pain. Her lungs deflated and refused to work. Primary feathers caught against the rocky floor were shredded to ribbons.

So much for flying out, she thought.

Another glance down revealed the mushrooms were wrapping around her leg, immobilizing it, constricting the flow of blood. She was on the clock now. Unless she was somehow able to find a way to reverse this, the demon had already killed her.

I can figure this out, she thought. I can win. I’m a god. I’m—

One of her ribs moved independently of the others. Her whole body seized up. Agony swept her nerves.

Her resolve started to crack. I can figure this out, she said, but she could no longer ignore the panic creeping into her thoughts. Every attempt to bring her breathing under control brought her new depths of agony. A fearful whimper escaped her lips.

She collapsed onto her back. As she laid there, eyes watering uncontrollably, unable to draw in a breath from the continuously flowering toxic mushrooms, she felt a new, oddly calming sensation: rain. Through the poison spore cloud around her, she was just barely able to make out the hulking shape of the demon standing over her. It wasn’t rain, she remembered, but tears.

What a weepy sadsack. She tried to tell it as much, but all that came out was a wet croak.

“If I let you live,” the demon said, “you must agree to an accord.”

“Eat a cow pie,” Cozy Glow hissed. Her words came out slurred.

“You will never again seek the Secretkeeper’s power. You will spend the rest of your life as an attendant monk in the church of the well. You will never leave L'épine as long as you live.” A shower of tears fell over Cozy Glow. It momentarily cleared the air of poisonous spores, allowing her to take in a burning gulp of air. “You will have your life. That is most important.”

The tears of the demon numbed Cozy Glow’s many wounds. The open cuts in her skin started mending themselves. Where the tears landed on her fungus-choked leg, the stems detached themselves from her leg. She caught a few drops in her mouth and found those little drops were enough to slake her thirst. More tears fell into Cozy Glow’s eyes. When she blinked them away, she found she could see further than she could before.

That was when she noticed the tears weren’t coming from the demon’s eyes. They flowed down its face from a hole in the top of its head.

Her stomach flipped. Was it spinal fluid? Some other kind of fluid?

The demon saw the disgust on her face. “Peace, child. I am a living well. The living well. Worship me, as they do, and I can grant you many blessings.”

“Screw your blessings!”

“One of those blessings is humility. With it comes perspective, and empathy, and—”

“Shove it up your blowhole!”

“Very well.” The demon lifted its hand to squash her.

“Wait!” Her voice cracked. “Don’t.”

“You leave me no other choice.”

“No. Please. I agree to your terms. I yield. Don’t kill me.”

The demon’s bedrock hand hovered over Cozy Glow. The weight of all that rock fell upon her with immense gravity. It rendered her mute in the face of its killing potential.

The demon lowered its hand.

“Fly up to the church. Tell the high priestess nothing of what has transpired here. They may resent you if you told them about your plot to kill me.”

Cozy Glow found her voice. “What about my leg?”

“Bathe it in healing water every day for two years. The water will reverse the fungus’s paralytic effects without permanently damaging your leg.”

“What if I run away?”

“You won’t. You gave your vow.”

Cozy Glow sniffled. “Vows can be broken.”

“What is your relationship to the mare named Clearwater?”

The question took Cozy Glow completely by surprise. “I. Uh.” She staggered, grasping for words. “What? You’re down here. How did you—”

“I am the living water of L'épine. I hear what goes on. Clearwater has asked for enough healing water to fill a reservoir.”

Cozy Glow scowled. “That water didn’t heal me. It took two months before I could walk again.”

“She needed to learn patience, and you needed to be humbled. I took a crack at both problems at once. She passed with flying colors.” Its voice swelled with something like pride. “She’s an example to live by, wouldn’t you agree?”

Cozy Glow glow muttered in agreement. Her voice was high and thin, wavering like a foal’s.

“Last night,” the demon continued, “when you washed her floor—why did you do that?”

“I dunno.”

“I’d like you to think about why you made that choice. The answers may prove illuminating.” The demon’s bioluminescent green eyes wrinkled at the corners. Its mouth, set in stone though it was, curled up in what could generously be called a smile. “You’re part of L'épine now. Though something tells me you’ve already felt that way for some time now.”

The demon shifted its body away. The healing tears moved off. Cozy Glow stood up to her full height and flared her now-healed wings. Tears—her own tears—stained her face.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

“You’ll see me in every cloud. You’ll hear me in every gust of wind. Most importantly, you’ll feel me in the love you share.” It pointed to the well bore, the sole point of natural light. “Go. Submit yourself to the high priestess.”

Cozy Glow nodded. She flapped her wings and flew up to the well bore. As the smell of cool outside air tickled her nose, a smile played across her lips.

Her wings snapped shut against her sides. She gave a cry of alarm and pitched backwards in an uncontrolled backflip. She lashed out windly and struck the rim of the well bore with a great crack. A shower of jagged rocks and blood fell alongside her.

The demon saw this and stepped beneath her, arms extended to catch her.

Right where Cozy Glow wanted it to be.

She rolled over and snapped her wings out, shooting forwards like a bullet. The ringing in her ears was deafening and the splitting headache threatened to tear her brain apart, but Cozy Glow’s aim was true. She plunged into the watery well at the crown of the demon’s skull.

Down she swam. The voice of the demon rumbled like a thunderstorm. Her natural pegasus buoyancy fought her every inch of the way. But the further she swam, the more invigorated she felt. Her wounds sealed shut. The headache vanished. The mushrooms in her leg sloughed off in clumps. She would have paused there and soaked forever had she not felt the familiar dull ache of hypoxia in her lungs.

The water grew warm. The smooth tube opened up to a dark cave not unlike the well bore opened up to the cave.

She snapped her wings through the water with enough force to cavitate the air. Magic beaded on her wingtips to serve as a source of light.

In front of her, pink and pulsating, easily the size of a house, was the demon’s brain.

A repeating series of impacts made the inner well of the demon’s head tremble. Cozy Glow imagined it beating its head against the walls of the well, desperately trying to get her out. The image made her smile. She was going to enjoy this.

She unleashed a pent-up glaive of magic from one wing. Her swing was slightly slower due to water resistance, but it was still powerful enough to cleanly slice through the front of its brain. The second strike blew out the back of the demon’s brain, reducing the cerebellum to floating pink mush.

Just as she wound up for a third strike to sever its brain stem, the demon’s head shifted violently. The demon lost all control of its motor functions and lashed out wildly with its now-useless arms.

The strike hit the rim of the well bore. The earth trembled.

---

“Cozy?” Clearwater came around the bend. “Cozy Glow?”

Clearwater had circled the entire town looking for Cozy Glow. Her search had been methodical, starting at the outskirts of town and working in.

There was only one place left to search: the church.

Clearwater swayed side to side impatiently as the attendant monk anointed her head. She got two steps inside before slipping on a patch of holy water and falling flat on her face.

The church was in complete disarray. The stacks of pews had toppled in a heap. The brass candelabras had been overturned. Only the stained glass windows still provided light. Several incense thuribles had been overturned, spilling sweet-smelling ash into the water. Two attendant monks held a painting of the town’s founding over their heads so it wouldn’t be ruined. Their legs were trembling with effort.

The high priestess was huddled up with the remaining attendant monks near the rear of the church. Clearwater splashed her way towards them. “Hello? High priestess? What happened here?”

The high priestess turned to face Clearwater. The look on her face was confused, bordering on frightened.

“Clearwater, my child. Fate brought you here at this moment.” The high priestess’s robes fanned out around her, soaking up water. “Where is the outsider in your care?”

“I—uh—was about to ask you the same thing—”

The high priestess grabbed Clearwater’s shoulders with alarming strength. “Tell me where she is, child!”

Clearwater flinched. “I don’t know. I—”

The sound in the church shifted. The water in the well slowed to a trickle. Then it stopped. Clearwater and the high priestess both turned their heads in unison. Clearwater had never heard the church fall truly silent before. It sent an uneasy chill up her spine.

“High priestess,” Clearwater said, “what did she do?”

The earth rumbled beneath their hooves.

---

Inside the demon’s head, Cozy Glow started to drown.

An intrusive thought swam through her mind: second time today, The infinite healing water flooded down her nose and into her lungs. It plugged her ears. The corners of her vision swam. Her magic flickered. The familiar pang of her chest contracting in the absence of air set off alarm bells.

Except—wait. Those bells weren’t just in her head. The toll became a chorus. Then a cacophony. They were muted from traveling through layers of earth and water, but they were very real. And they were getting louder.

Cozy Glow started to swim up towards the light, but she was already starting to black out. She scrambled desperately at the exposed bedrock bone until wisps of red blood burst from her hooves. The light grew brighter. Her legs kicked furiously. Then they stopped working. She floated up, but too slow. Her vision closed to a pinprick of light.

She opened her mouth on reflex—and breathed in a lungful of dank, musty cave air. Her body didn’t know what to do. She vomited up a lungful of water, then the bread she stole from Clearwater’s pantry earlier that morning.

Her vision came back just in time to see the well ceiling buckle.

Fear took hold. She dove back beneath the living water. Earth rained down above her. Rocks the size of houses crushed the paralyzed demon, partially burying it in rubble. A particularly huge rock struck the demon’s head. Cozy heard its skull crack. Its head snapped sideways. More water buffeted her from side to side. She swallowed buckets of it, felt the taste turn from pure living water to a foul slurry of debris and bits of demon brain matter. She felt a chunk of something soft momentarily lodge itself in her nose. Then the force of the water cleared it, sent it down her throat and into her stomach.

The demon settled on its side amongst the ruins. Its skull split apart. The living water began to drain from the bottom. The vortex sucked Cozy Glow down to the bottom of the brain chamber, past its spinal cord, and finally out onto the jagged rocks of what had formerly been the center of L'épine.

She hit her head first on the lip of the demon’s fractured skull. Then a second time on the rocks below. The first hit actually saved her life, in a way. If it hadn’t concussed her, she wouldn’t have gone limp and ragdolled her way down the rest of the debris.

As she laid there, blood pouring from a dozen gashes in her head, she was momentarily blinded by a bright yellow light. For a moment, she thought she was dying. Then her eyes adjusted, and she realized she was looking at the sky. The sun was out. It was morning. The well ceiling had collapsed, taking the center of town down with it.

The church still stood.

At first, Cozy Glow couldn’t believe it. She thought her concussion was somehow making her see an afterimage of the church suspended in the air. But it was real. The church, however many hundreds of tons of polished stone and steel and glass, was balanced perfectly on the single pipe running down from the altar to the bottom of the well.

The town—what was left of it—came alive. Little dots of ponies appeared at the lip of the crater. A few almost fell in. Trumpet calls echoed through the mid-morning haze.

As Cozy Glow watched, the church door opened. A familiar pony peered out. Cozy Glow looked up at her. Their eyes met.

The pipe buckled.

---

Cozy Glow wondered if the collapse would ever end. The church just kept on falling, an endless crashing cascade of stone and glass. Only after what seemed like an eternity did the violence subside, leaving in its stead a silence more cavernous than the cavern in which she stood.

It’s not a cavern, she thought absently. She stepped over a hoof that had no owner. It’s a crater.

The church fell slightly sideways, spilling itself into one corner of the cave. Twisted steel spun out like fingers curling up from Tartarus. The tall arched roof had split down the middle like an exposed ribcage. In the center of the church, the decorated body of the high priestess laid beside the shattered well.

Rock dust lingered in the air. She tried holding her breath at first, but after being nearly drowned twice in a row, her body just wouldn’t let her. She breathed in the fine particles, felt them cake her throat and the inside of her nose. A wave of tiredness hit her, so intense she fell back onto her haunches. The sound of a landslide filled her ears. Stars cascaded over her eyes. She looked down at her hooves to try and steady herself. She saw the mushrooms enveloping her leg had all fallen off. Her fur on that leg was entirely gone. It looked like she’d taken a blowtorch to her leg and burned it all off.

Clearwater laid face down on a pile of shattered stained glass. She wasn’t moving.

Cozy Glow stood up slowly. She limped over to the demon’s exposed chest. Part of its rib cage had been cracked open by falling keystones. Bedrock bones jutted through the skin at impossible angles.

“Hey.” She patted the demon’s mossy hide. “Thought you were pretty smart, huh?” A joyless laugh escaped her. “Well, who’s the smart one now?”

Cozy Glow snapped her wings downward with enough force to cavitate the air. With her magic blades in place, she started slicing through the layers of moss covering the demon’s heart.

“Thought you could outsmart me?” she grunted. “Thought you could manipulate me—” She put a little extra into the next swing. “I scrubbed her floor so she’d love me. I wanted her to live.” Her voice rose. “You took her from me. You. Took her. I could have used her.” She swung wildly into its guts. “It’s so annoying. I need lackies.”

She reached the demon’s heart. An inequine howl rose from deep in her belly. The organ popped like a blister when she bit into it. It tasted of sweet decay, like rotting garbage and psychedelic cactus juice. She screamed and sobbed and stuffed herself until every last scrap had been devoured.

The town of L'épine was in such a panic that no one noticed Cozy Glow climb out of the sinkhole and slink off.

Comments

[overdue]

yo I thought that the pony side characters would survive. like the professor in the last chapter. The supernatural dying and the mundane living. would have been perfect. but oh myyyy goddddddd.

I have to hand it to cozy though, she didn't get lucky this time, she was clever. well played. still didn't almost die in 10 different ways at the same time

and did i forget to mention that her wings are cavitating the air