Bellesmith shivered, overcome with a numb wave of horror. When she spoke, it was as if a fragile part of herself was crumbling, and the pitiful sound of it came out instead of a voice.
“Her eyes weren't green,” she whimpered, turning the apple over in her hoof. She buckled, sniffled, and held the precious little fruit against her moist cheek. “Spark, help me. I... I c-can still smell her hair.” She gnashed her teeth. “Nnngh... sawdust... vanilla... a touch of cinnammon. She never knew. Oh Spark, she never knew... she never knew she never knew she never knew...”
Pilate's voice was a knife thrown from a mile behind her. “Bellesmith? Who are you talking about?”
The next sob that Belle choked on was mammoth. She nearly collapsed on her haunches, but instead leaned against the kitchen counter, trying to catch her breaths.
“Belle, darling, do you need to lie down? You're starting to frighten me...”
Belle seethed through her teeth. She looked at the apple through foggy eyes. Suddenly, without hesitation, she leaned in and took a bite. The moist pulp danced between her tongue and cheek. It swished around and went slimily down her throat.
“I taste...” Belle exhaled heavily, her insides feeling as hollow as they did before the bite. “...nothing.”
“Belle?”
Her face contorted in a painful wince. Rubbing her eyes dry, Bellesmith turned around. She gazed at Pilate.
Pilate gazed past her from afar, his mouth hanging open in confusion.
She wasn't confused. “Pilate...” Slowly, her cheeks curved. She stepped towards him with the grace of a sleeping dancer. “Pilate, my beloved...”
He trembled slightly as she approached, like a mirror's edge buckling under a heavy weight.
She brought a hoof up to his monochromatic muzzle, stroking it endearingly. “You are my one and only stallion, my precious mate, my beloved—granted by the brilliance of the Spark. And I love you more than I love life itself.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She inhaled sharply and murmured, “But you died, Pilate. I watched you plummet to your death. And as much as I don't want that to be, I can't deny the truth.”
“Belle...” His voice vibrated against her forelimb before he gripped it with a tender hoof. His breath came out in quivering vapors. “I don't understand. How could I be dead if I'm here?”
“But you're not.” She gulped heavily as she shook her head. Two more tears fell. “You're not, beloved. And...” She hissed through her teeth. “I have to move on.”
“What... what do you m-mean?”
She stepped back from him, steeling herself with icy resolve. “I mean that you've done well, not just now, but on several occasions. But you've gone too far, and there's no going further than this.”
Pilate leaned his head to the side, locked in confusion. Soon, the black and white stripes of his visage matched the dull shadows of the room.
A growl rose from the back of Belle's throat. “It's over, Nightshade. Whatever you were hoping to drag from me, you can just give it up. This whole exercise is pointless.”
Pilate remained perfectly still, but the rest of the room didn't. Marching out from the contours of the wall, painted with the same shadows that were always there to begin with, Nightshade glared at the mare, her nostrils fuming.
“Very well,” she muttered. A pair of purple eyes glowed with otherworldly brilliance, melting the shadows around Pilate to dust. “I was kind enough to give you love. Now, I shall give you pain.”
With that said, she yanked Pilate up by his mane, spun around in one motion, and flung him clear off the edge of the Steel Wing.
“No!” Belle shouted, for she was plunging after him, plummeting, sailing into the burning fields of Foxtaur below. She screamed helplessly as Pilate splattered across a plateau of stones beneath her, exploding into a field of bubbling crimson.
Not long after, she splashed after him. Her face was drenched in blood and bile. Breathless, Belle rocketed through the scarlet currents, ripping through waves of muscle and sinew like a serrated torpedo. She swam through miles of soft organs, crunched through broken bone and cartilidge, and then finally emerged on the other side, bursting like a splinter through the skin. She writhed like a leech, her mane and horn dripping with entrails. Looking left and right, she saw fields of black and white stripes, occasionally punctuated by shattered bone and loose teeth.
The sun blacked out over the death fields of soaked hair.
She looked up, sputtering up vomit and zebra blood. The sky was full of bodies, and all of them shaped like her love.
A long, wailing scream escaped her lips as they all fell on top of her, crushing and pulverizing themselves into a pulp on top of the mare, until she was drowning in every ounce of her beloved.
Three chapters back to back?! Awesome!
What the....
Finally!
But now what?
We all knew it was fake, some of us had doubts, but it was fake... How did nightshade get Belle in the first place?
Well, I lost track of what happened after Pilate was thrown off the Steel Wing again. But two things are for certain:
1. Belle has figured out that the commentators were correct all along
2. Belle never said the "Buck you Nightshade" line I was waiting for... Maybe next chapter, right IC?
fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/209/d/7/lyra_thumbsup_by_applebeans-d58ybwq.gif
HA! Called it...now I want Nightshade to die a LOT for what she is doing. Bellesmith will be too strong for her in the end but still...
Elaborate mental torture.
I take back what I said about Nightshade. She's just another hollow monster like Shell, convinced that the ends justify the bloody, appalling means.
...wouldn't it be awful if Belle, after waking from all this, sees Pilate actually alive and didn't believe it?
2899302
Rocket to Insanity?
huh. glad i was wrong. and i think an Eww is an appropriate word for this chapter.
Seas of blood and bone... seas of blood and bone, hm... ah yes, I think I'm getting a rather vivid image of that.
Wonderland is destroyed! MY MIND IS IN RUINS!
2899021Honeytiger is scarred for life.
Called it. Hmm. If dying or falling in some fashion pulls you out of a dream in inception, does it work in here also? Cuz damn, NS is a bitch.
2898959
Wait, who's eyes were green? I forgot.
2899156
Yeah...ditto on that...what a twisted bitch.
That's messed up,Nightshade.
Took you long enough, Belle. I kinda want to know exactly where truth split from fiction, though. Where did Nightshade get Belle? Or did Belle never actually escape? Blargh.
2901458
...
Applejack.
You meant "cartilage."
Huh.
Not Shell.
I wonder how far back it goes...
I do hope this means our dear tattooed loudmouth is still alive
Oh. It was an apple. There's that mystery solved.
If Dash doesn't get some sort of a happy ending with AJ after this whole billion word kerfuffle is over, I will be quite distraught. Its just so tragic!
And that fourth last paragraph. Here is where I wish your descriptive powers weren't quite so effective. Apparently "Up" is not the only place Belle can go from here.
Well, off to see how this mayhem turns out. Nightshade seriously has to stop revisiting her brother's horrors on other people. You'd think knowing how much it traumatized him (not to mention herself) would keep her from resorting to that sort of thing.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
Whoa...that was dark...also, go Belle! This truly shows how resilient and, dare I say, awesome she is. But the question is - how much of this is a memory? From when she woke up with Kera? Probably. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
Well that was a weird nightmare.
i called it!!! for once i finally called something that came true,YAH!!!
Oh, Nightshade. You're so whacky.
WE HAVE TO GO DEEPER
2899021 dude, that's creepy!
Not to over emphasize the pop cultural juggarnaut's influence, bu the touching scene where Belle decides Pilate is fake really reminded me of the scene in inception where Cobb comes to terms with the same concept with Mal. :pinkiecry:
... Oh.
-Spirit
Still in nightshade... CALLED IT!!!!
So . . . this was all a dream? Damn . . .
i KNEW it was nightshade!!!!! HA!!!!
already? mhpf. I'm not sure I like this conclusion. I mean, I never really believed that everything after Austraeoh was fake (though I was hoping ). But still... if Belle knew that it wasn't, why did she tell Pilate everything? I guess she was clueless until she got the vision from Dash? Mh. Maybe it will be explained more later.
At least this means Kera isn't dead. And from a different perspective, this is actually kind of clever, because it means that all the events that have been told from non-Belle perspectives are still valid. Phoenix really did get captured. The Dash stuff happened. The EE stuff happened. And Belle... I guess they just never managed to free her from sequencing.
So, this isn't actually that huge of a change after all. Belle is captured, but not by Shell. This isn't that bad. I don't think she will be treated that terribly (though I might be wrong). And Dash can still come to save everypony.
2899021
the longer you look at it, the more horrifying it gets!
So it all comes down... and nightshade still has the easy power to screw with her. This begs the question of where she had been before... did Belle never leave the sequencing?
Nightshade.
Well, that's an image I could've done without while eating.
At least we now have Belle see the truth that she's dreaming. But... things took a really intense and dark turn right there. Time to keep going on, I guess.
~SolidFire
Woah. That went dark waaayyyyyyy too fast. But then again, you've done this before, Colon, I should have known better.
HA! Bellesmith 1, mindfuck 0.
And... damn. We know that Pilate is alive, but Belle doesn't. Disbelieving this dream is made a thousand times harder by that.
Gross.
Then Kera is all alive..
NNNGGGHHHHHHHH I'M SO GLAD AAAAAAA.
Well...if that isn't a wake up call.
Ha! I was right
I think
Well then... so Nightshade did access herself through Belle after all.
Also to those who actually thought Kera died, her death was way too sudden to be true. She hasn't even developed yet. Her backstory, her motives, her powers, she's just a child and there's so much more to write about her. Killing youths like that in this sort of series is just plain tragedy and mind rape.
Hmm.
I do hope this isn't going to complicate matters when Belle and Pilate meet again.
9806426
I was about to say that. 2 years later
I forgot how evil Nightshade is, this is some IHNMAIMS, AM-level oxdung. Vile.