//------------------------------//
// 84.6 Candy Apple on a Stick 
// Story: Prey and a Lamb 
// by Lambs Prey 
//------------------------------//

From the thestral Clan of Myrrdon, a prophecy by an unrecorded elder sometime between 320 - 340 A.C. 

'Despair under a sweet tasting sky of pink, because up will be down and down will be up, and how shall we fly away when we fly in reverse?'





It was late in the new year, approaching the end of January, and already the weather teams were pushing Canterlot rapidly back towards the warmer temperatures and climate that ponykind so adored. 

The ISND had already completed two separate cases to catch some small time smugglers, quite by accident uncovering them when searching for the griffin spies which didn't exist. Really, the smuggling ring had been nothing big.

And then, at the end of the first month of the year, chaos did reign.


------


Self-deceiving liars. Ponies who thought they were something special, who'd been told their whole lives growing up they were something special, whose cutie marks convinced them they were something special. A unicorn who was exceptionally skilled at ice magic, a pegasus who could fly the fastest, an earth pony who could crush boulders with their hooves.

They all thought that made them special. Unique. Powerful. That's what they thought.

'All those arrogant ponies, with their pride and their precious harmony and their shallow friendship. And somehow that makes them oh-so special.'

Prey wasn't special. Despite all he'd done, survived, and achieved, he was anything but special. The Deeper Green, Snake, the Resistance, Dreverton, the mimics, any and all of it. He should be dead. He should not have survived all of that. It was nothing but blind luck. He might've fought, struggled, and crawled, giving it his every breath and sacrificing everything, but that didn't make him special. 

Others had done the same long before he had. But they were still dead and he was the one alive. Why? That wasn't fair or balanced. He wasn't special.

People always think if you're special, and if you have the one thing you can do better than anyone else, that somehow makes you better. Unique. Skilful. More likely to survive.

Prey wasn't the fastest. He wasn't the strongest, the smartest, the luckiest, the most ambitious, the most resilient, the best liar, the best tactician, the most determined, flexible, perceptive, shrewd, focused, resourceful, creative, daring, skilful, or even the cruellest.

Prey couldn't claim to be the best at any of those. And he wasn't. He wasn't the best at any of them. There were people who were more at any of those than he could ever be. Prey was a survivor, but he wasn't special.

He was just a scared little runt lamb who wanted to be left alone.

'The sun rises, the sun sets. But we all have to cross the river someday.'

Everyone but immortals, that is.


-----|-|-|-|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|-|-|-|-----


Prey's head was hurting. It was behind his eyes and thudding in his ears.

His head was hurting. Why was he hurting-? Oh, that was right.

That's right. He remembered. He could remember.

What was he remembering? His head was hurting. His shut eyes were throbbing. He remembered he was-

He was running! Prey surged back to his hooves, and then flailed wildly as he went to far. His stomach lurched, the cobble stones just below his hooves. Everything was wrong, he was almost weightless, he was starting to tip into a summersault. 
The road came back into reach-Yes! His hooves scraped on the stones and-

-And gravity snapped back as if it had never left. Prey hit the hard cobbles on his front, the air painfully leaving his lungs. He desperately clung to the cobbles with all four limbs. That was the rule, he had to keep at least one hoof on the road at all times or he would 'slip'.

He flinched as a horn blasted deafeningly close by. Trumpets joined in out of nowhere, trumpeting away with no tune. It was deafening.

*Jangle* *Smash* Was that breaking glass? Metal? An odd, flowery smell filled his nose. Prey looked down at the road.

The cobbles were bars of white soap, embedded in the cement of the road.

Prey shouted and recoiled in shock, almost losing hold. And then he did lose hold, the soapy cobbles becoming too slippery just to spite him.

'No no no!'


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There was a cart spinning end over end at obscene speeds, locked in place in the air. Wind whistled dangerously with its rotation speed. The crumpled wheels lay smashed into splinters below deep indents against the far wall, showing where the extreme rotations had hurled them with lethal force when they'd sheared free. 

Prey's head was really hurting. It was a specific kind of hurt, thudding behind his eyes and ringing in his ears.

He was afraid. There was fear lacing his blood, weakening his muscles and making his legs shake.

'Gloom, and... where's Crimson?!'

"Round and round we go! Life's a merry~go~round, round round around~!"

Prey flinched and glanced upwards fearfully, although he hadn't a clue if that's where the screechy shrill singing had come from. It could literally all be in his head. The sky was red and purple and every other colour too. It was a riotous patchwork, but horrible, nasty, and malicious in a way you couldn't describe, only behold.

He didn't know what was going on. Nothing made sense, everything was wrong and he was alone and afraid.

Or not alone anymore. Prey felt the moment the air around him shifted and that fact of truth changed. 'Alone' to 'not alone', he just knew it. The shattered sky of horrible throbbing and pulsing colours laughed down at him.

"Round round-around, merry~go~round around!" Shrieked in his ears, loud enough to nearly deafen him.

Prey spun around, just as the grating shriek had told him to. It was almost upon him, rushing and tumbling and trumpeting.

An amalgamation of percussion instruments, blaring horns, crashing brass, smashing cymbals, all mixed up together into a tumbleweed thing the size of a house, and it was rolling towards him.

The voice, it was coming from there, on top of the insane mishmash of banging and sounding instruments. A unicorn, a mare, wild mane greyed out and crazy, enraptured joy plastered across her features, was prancing atop the ball. One of the crazies. Prey stared, and realised she was rolling the instrumental ball, like a circus performer.

She looked down at Prey, face lit up with glee, "Round and round, merry~go~round we go! Sing!" She cackled, and the instruments cackled with her in tones of brass and metal.

The mad mare accelerated the ball, capering and dancing atop it, rushing forwards upon Prey. She was purposefully trying to squash him. "Round round I get around~!"

Prey snapped out of his stunned horror at the impossibility of it and ran. The mare rolled after him, clashing and bang and trumpeting, cackling and shouting for him to come back.

That was just the start. Or the end. Or maybe the middle? When up is down and left is right, who's to say when and where events happened?

Something huge and yellow and bubbling oozed over the roof top and splattered down-

No no, wait! Wait. This wasn't in the right order, this was supposed to be a memory of before, not happening now.

'Foolish, foolish.' He chided himself. Why would the world happen sequentially? That wasn't how insanity worked.

The three of them, Gloom, Crimson, and him. In the Night Guard section of the Lower Palace, near the end of their shift. Just walking from the ISND office towards the mess hall. Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary or ominous.

It grabbed hold of Prey, like invisible static washing over him. The sense of some awful balancing scale being flipped. He only had half a second.

Pain spiked behind Prey's eyes as he froze, but not in his hooves. 

"-!" He didn't get the chance to shout anything.

The corridor... 'peeled' open. The floor, the ceiling, the left and right walls, all rolled back on themselves like sheaf's of parchment rolling up into a scroll, as if not stone, brick, and mortar. It was so fast. Ahead, the corridor rolled up, the disappearing floor racing towards the three of them. Beyond, in the opened up space, was the rest of the Palace.

Prey could see into it, see an impossible twisting and changing network of tunnels, walls, and everything in between. He saw panicking ponies clinging to anything they could as the Palace twisted and reformed from the inside out. Prey saw internal internal water pipes stretching and elongating impossibly, glass breaking apart like a jigsaw puzzle but not actually shattering-

But that was all there was time for, and then the rapidly vanishing floor was upon them.

Both Crimson and Gloom instinctively jumped upwards, wings flapping open. The ground was impossibly collapsing and they could both fly, or even just glide. But Prey had no wings.

"Prey!" Crimson realised and dove forwards, coming back down. Gloom was only a second behind him as he too remembered Prey's helplessness.

Too late. 

Prey was flinching backwards, away from his friend's stretching hoof even if he hadn't meant to, but they wouldn't have reached him in time. It was already too late.

The floor dropped away. His stomach rose, and then dropped with him as a scream was ripped away in the rushing air.


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Crimson was alive. That was all Prey knew. He had the electrite feather, and as long as he did Prey would know he was alive. But where in this forsaken mess of a imploding city, he didn't know. No time, no time! No time to stop and find out! Crimson was at least still alive somewhere, that would have to be good enough.

'Don't you dare die Crimson.'

An entire line of houses ripped free of the earth, a huge cascade of dirt, water, and stone falling like hale. Earth blinded Prey as he dived beneath cover-


---|?|?|?|?|---


Two more ponies, two more of the crazies, those who had gone insane. A wife and her husband. The mare had once been overweight, and the stallion unhealthy thin.

She had been turned into a being of cake, and he was trying to eat her. 

The mare was running in circles around a street lamp that was shinning down darkness, not light, while he chased her, jaws snapping like a wild dog's. Round they galloped in a mindless circle, she whinnying and he hungrily chasing, neither getting closer. There was no rational thought left in them, neither tried to dodge or run away or simply reverse direction. Mindless. Crazy.

Prey ran past them heedlessly, heart pounding, breath sawing, desperate to get away before they switched focus to him or reality suddenly betrayed him yet again. 

That was how it had began, back at the Palace with Prey falling. Except, it wasn't how this madness had really begun, because Prey didn't know what had sparked this disaster.

'The Sun Wolf, and Luna. What are they doing? Do they not care about their prize holiday home?! Zoma'Grika, is any of this even bloody real?'

Prey was just trying to get to the tunnel. If he could get down to his crystal lair, the runic defences there should help. Must help! He had to get there, he had to be safe. He didn't know, but if Lemon Pink had any semblance of sense, she would already be there ahead of him.

'But Crimson, Crimson got left behind. Where could he be? Where's Crimson?' Prey thought that, but he didn't stop running. He couldn't. 

He didn't know where Crimson was in this citywide spanning disaster, and while his heart hurt as much as his pounding head, there was nothing he could do in this twisted land. He didn't know where Crimson was, or what could've happened to him, or if the pegasus was stuck inside a gravity loop in the sky, or one of the pink clouds crackling with lightning, or any other terrifyingly-insanely-real possibility.

'Get to the lair. Get safe. Get to the lair. Get safe. Just get to the-'


---|?|?|?|?|---


At every twisted turn, at every warped corner, down every self looping path and road, beneath every floating building and over every submerged house Prey ran, or tripped, or crawled, or floated, or swam.

His head hurt so much, the chaos picking away ceaselessly at the edges of his mind.

There was a chequered path, black and white. He tried to cross it and lost time. When the grey buzzing cleared from his stuffy head, he found himself lying on the pavement, struggling to breathe, and desperately clutching his ribbon with both forehooves. He remembered, or he thought he could remember, for a moment-

Drowning in custard. A floating bowl as big as a warehouse tipping up above him and washing him away.

Prey staggered back to his hooves. 'Gotta' get to the lair. If I can just get there...'

A raucous caw behind him, louder than any crow or raven. Prey looked back over his shoulder, dreading what he would see.

A crazy Pegasus melded with a crow, three hooves replaced with claws, a black beak slapped on the end of their muzzle, one eye the beady black gleam of a birds, the other rolling wildly. Their tail and mane were each replaced a fan of bristling black feathers.

*Kraaww!*

They dived, flopped, fell at Prey, beak wide, three bird talons grasping. Prey recoiled, they were so much bigger than him, bristling feathers doubling their size.

He ducked. They swiped, then pecked, huge beak darting in. Prey realised their beady bird eye was fixed on the golden tracer bands circling his legs.

'Bird. A black bird. It's a Magpie.'

"Really?!" Prey screamed in terrified frustration, "I. Hate. You. Luna!"

The twisted pegasus's next darting peck almost took his eye out. Prey lashed out with a hoof as its head withdrew. 

Prey wasn't strong. His blow wouldn't even have unbalanced the amalgamation with his strength, but it wasn't about that.

Prey only needed a touch to break a mind. Just a touch.

'Break!'

The twisted pegasus collapsed. Their bird bits kept spasming wildly, wings loudly thrashing the air, beating frantically the pavement with the thwap of feathers. But the pony bits of them lay unresponsive. Prey hopped out of range of the bird half's wild thrashing.

He turned and ran without looking back.


---|?|?|?|?|---


More crazies. More who appeared out of nowhere, insane, twisted, impossible. Prey tried to flee, but when he couldn't outrun or escape whatever was wrong with them, he broke their minds too. No remorse. No guilt. Only desperation.

His touch was distressingly unreliable. Three, five, nine, then twelve more crazies-


---|?|?|?|?|---


Prey staggered down the stone steps, so glad they were still there. He'd made it. He didn't know how, he didn't remember it all, but he'd finally made it down to what passed for Lower Canterlot now, and to the maintenance hatch into the overflow pipe.

From there, he could get into the cave tunnels, and then if he could just make it to his lair...

Prey staggered to a stop, staring at what was ahead.

"No. No no no. No that's not fair." Prey whined, the strength leaving his limbs.

He sagged against the closest wall, "That's just not fair..."

The steel access door was tiny. It had shrunk down to the size of a mouse hole, resting at the floor level. Prey had thought he'd been looking at the wrong wall to begin with, but no. Only a rodent could fit through it now.

There was no way for Prey to get through. What was he going to do now? How was he supposed to reach the safety of his lair?

He wasn't. He wasn't supposed to make it, because of course he wasn't. Could he get down into the tunnels through one of the other entrances perhaps? But how? He'd have to brave the twisted city again, risk the crazies and the chaos. He'd have to do it all over again and hope that the other entrances weren't likewise warped.

'I won't make it.'

Prey's head hurt, his eyes stung, his ears felt like they were constantly popping. He wouldn't be able to make it a second time. The madness, the chaos of what had once been Canterlot, it had been getting worse.

If Prey dared to brave it again, he wouldn't make it through to the other side.

But was there any other choice?


---


Prey clambered weakly back up the stone steps, out onto the warped street beneath the pulsing purple and red sky. He stood there, one hoof clutching the free end of his ribbon, and stared around tiredly. 

The pressure behind his eyes spiked in itching waves, wanting him to give in to, to... to something. Over there was a house turned inside out, stairs crazily crisscrossing its roof. There were far off clouds in every colour and geometric shapes. The distant water fountain at the end of the lane now flowed with milk.

Some twisted changes were almost tame, like those few. Harmless.

But then there were others which weren't, swinging far to the opposite extreme. There was every variety of impossible change, and some of those were just as dangerous as others were harmless.

A side street suddenly turned down ninety degrees and plunged into a hundred meter drop to concrete. 

A rooted street lamp which had gone crazy, and was lashing around in a blur of metal like a whip, striking everything within its reach. It smashed paving stones in half, turned a fence into kindling, and battered other street lamps into scrap.

And the worst, the most dangerous and unpredictable threat; the roaming crazies. You never knew which side of the line the warped pony fell on until it was too late.

There was a hapless pegasus flying along backwards, shouting something mangled in reverse. And then there was a unicorn who's hooves were now made of fire. They ran about, greedily trying to snatch up anything they could, and setting it all ablaze.

Prey let his ribbon go and weakly passed his hoof over his eyes. But nothing had changed when he looked again.

Crimson was out there somewhere in this dangerous madness. Gloom too, and Lemon Pink. Were they even still alive?

'Please don't be dead Crimson.'

There was a sudden huge explosion, the howl of blistered wind, somewhere above him in the city. 

Prey ducked back down, clutching his ears until the distant crashing echoes passed. He didn't know what that had been, it had been far away, but it had sounded destructive. Prey nervously looked around himself again. He couldn't stay here. If he stayed here, he would die. The whole city was an uneven, ever expanding knot of chaos.

Prey looked up to the boiling violet sky, looking out beyond Canterlot's edges and squinted towards the horizon. 

Way out, miles away, he saw the pale blue of the normal sky. Beyond the sickening pulsing of this sky, there was a border marking the end of the reach of this sickness. 

A border of hope. This insanity hadn't infected the whole world. There was still normal, natural lands beyond this. Prey's mind locked a hold of that.

'I'm getting out of here. I'm going to get away.'

All he had to do was get off Mount Canter and down to ground level.

All he had to do was get off a mountain. Prey wheezed a laugh.

Get off a mountain, how simple the words were. He just had to get out of Canterlot and down a mountainside as it all erupted in a volcano of insanity.

If everything were still normal, getting out of Canterlot would have been a task in simplicity.

If he'd still had access to the cave tunnels, he could've simply gone down through the greenstone tunnels, and emerged safely out in front of where he had buried his veropede and the thieves.

But he didn't have access. 

If only he had been born a pegasus, or a thestral, or a griffin and had wings, he could've flown off the side of Canterlot. But he didn't have those either

Prey laughed again, harder. His head really hurt.

"He-he-ke, and, and if wishes were oat cakes, ke-he-he." 

He was a runt lamb. Just a pathetic runt lamb.

He wasn't a unicorn who could teleport, and even the teleportation platforms which catered to rich paying pony customers wouldn't be working in all this madness, even if he trusted a disgusting unicorn enough to let them use teleportation magic on him.

There was only clear way left down off the mountain, and that was the train tracks. Not that the train would be running, but he could follow the cleared tracks themselves down the side of the mountain. Assuming the trains hadn't turned into giant hungry caterpillars who hungered for flesh or something.

'But then, what's the alternative choice? Staying here?'

There was no choice. To stay here was to die, either to the warping chaos or to the crazies. Or break and turn into one of them. Loosing his mind was the same as death to Prey.

With no choice, afraid and alone, Prey set out into the chaos.


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His head hurt fiercely, the constant internal pressure still fighting away behind his eyes.

His harsh breathing was distant in his own ears, the blood rushing through his head much louder.

As he ran, or skidded, or crawled in places, desperately not looking at the insane dangers he was forced to move past, the fields of effect of some of it literally only a hairs breath away as he inched passed, he remembered something he'd once thought about Canterlot. It had been not long after Luna had press ganged him into service. It felt so long ago, but he remembered his thoughts. One thought in particular.

He'd seen Canterlot suspended off the side of its mountain on the massive supports, and wanted to set the whole golden city on fire, find a good spot from outside, and watch it fall.

But now when what had been an impossible wish actually looked like it might happen, he was still inside the city


---|?|?|?|?|---


Prey's memory was a bit hazy on him getting to the train station. He at least remembered going around the side and slipping into the tracks, panting and tired, rather than try going through the warped station itself.

There had been giant chess pieces, but no spilt between black and white. Instead, all the pieces were striped in bands of white and black. Knights, pawns, and kings, as tall as trees, levitating and then smashing down inside the station itself. His view was blocked as to what the moving pieces were stomping on. 

The dark thought that it was people the pieces were crushing came to him and wouldn't leave, although Prey didn't actually see anything.

It didn't matter. His head, eyes, and ears were all hurting too much. He had to get out of Canterlot. 

It was probably only by perverse luck that the rails weren't giant snakes guarding the train tracks or something similar. He started off down the train tracks as fast as his tired, wobbly legs would carry him, beginning the long, winding trek off the mountain.

Prey never made it to the bottom of the mountain by following the tracks.


---<O>---


Prey's throat was parched. His legs hurt as he forced himself on under the boiling, pulsing, wrong sky.

Sweat clung to his brow as he panted. He didn't look back. But by chance, he did look up.

The vast sky pulsed in glaring shades of purples and reds, stinging Prey's eyes. He squinted against the glare, some shifting patches of the sky were as bright as noonday, and others patches like clouded night. 

The sky was so vast, the riot of sickening light and colour so huge, that Prey almost missed it.

It. Cold tendrils sunk into Prey's wool. There was something up there, swimming through the open air, a long something, serpentine, lazily winding its way through the sky.

It was distant, far away, and his eyes were bad, but Prey could make out four legs, horns on its head, the long tufted tail. He'd seen something like it once before, a stone statue in the Palace Gardens.

But this one was alive, languid, and terrifying. It was hundreds of meters away and up, but Prey shied away.

Fear, danger, the cold hoof of it pressed down on him. He somehow knew that the creature up there in the sky was responsible for all of this, the mad instigator of all this destruction and insanity.

One yellow eye swivelled in the creatures head. Across all that distance, it somehow looked straight at Prey, and somehow Prey saw it looking at him. 

The twisted creature did not turn its head, did not stop its lazy swimming flight, did not open its jaws or slow. Yet it spoke to Prey.

The voice whined in Prey's ears, not grating, but cloying, and utterly without any empathy or mercy; "Ah, the next toy in my toy box. An itty bitty sheep, my first new sheep. What shall I do with you?"

The terrible question which somehow reached across the distance and crawled into Prey's head froze the breath in his lungs. 

He choked down a bubbling hiccup of fear, because the creature had asked; 'what shall I do with you?' But it wasn't what the thing had really said. It had meant was; 'What shall I do to you?'

"L-Leave me alone." Prey stuttered out, drawing fruitlessly back against the cut rock of the mountain face. 

The crawling, clinging voice went right on as if it hadn't heard him. Maybe it hadn't. Or it just didn't care.

"A cute toy you are, and a cute toy you will be-Oh, what is this? What is this?! Already a toy? Someone has beat me to the punch line, already a cute little lamb doll. Who do you belong to, I wonder?"

Finally, the creature in the sky turned its head, and with malicious glee its full attention bore down on Prey. He saw mismatched yellow eyes, the warped grin as it spread, the jaw full of teeth. 

"No, leave me alone! Go away, go back to what you were doing! Go away."

Those eyes, that face, that expression. So vast, so powerful, and yet so recognisably petty. It was the temperament of a cruel child who pulled the legs off of insects. And to the impossibly powerful creature, everyone was an insect if it wanted them to be.

Prey turned around and ran, back towards the self destructing Canterlot, it didn't matter, as long as it wasn't here. He had to get away.

The creature opened its clawed hand and... Reached. It reached across the empty space between them, yellow bird talons spread wide, covering the distance like an optical illusion. Except the illusion was real.

The grasping claw was suddenly right on top of Prey, massive, bigger than a dining table. Prey ducked, and the hand snatched him up anyway without any effort.

Prey struggled for all he was worth, hammering on the huge claws wrapped around his middle, the beast was touching him!

"Let me go let me go! Let go!"

When he frantically looked up, the twisted face of the serpentine thing was looming right over him, eyes wide wide too wide, and teeth sharp sharp sharp. Its horns, its fur, its body, it was all wrong.

Prey couldn't look away. His hoof fell to the huge claws holding him airborne. 'Break.'

The huge serpentine beast twitched. And nothing else happened. 

"Oh, oh ho? What have we here? That wasn't very nice of a toy. Or friendly. Toys should be child friendly. Especially a toy child-No, what is this? Already someone else's toy, yes, but what is-? Oh, these perhaps?"

Prey was panicking, kicking, despaired, trying to think, gasping for breath. The shadow of the things heavy grizzly bear paw, claws long and heavy, overshadowed him. He looked up, and the massive paw grabbed his left foreleg.

"No! Let go!"

It was like being gripped by a baloth. His foreleg, his own flesh, was completely out of his power now. The paw effortlessly snared his right foreleg next as he attempted to evade. Prey was hyperventilating, the immovable strength holding him utterly helpless.

"These then? Is it these?" The massive paw withdrew.

Prey's forelegs felt wrong, too light. He looked at them, wide eyed, terrified he'd see bloody stumps- Nothing. White wool and fur. His hooves. Normal. Nothing.

No gold.

He looked up. On the end of two of the huge bear claws tips, the two tracer bands sat like rings.

It had removed the alicorn tracer bands. Just like that. Just. Like. That.

The beast held up the rings a few inches from its mad yellow eyes, scrutinising them. Prey stared, frozen. 

The thing frowned, and then... ate the two golden tracer bands consideringly.

"No," It mused, "No not these. The taste is wrong. But if not little mad Nightmare's toy-Oh ho! Wait what is this? Not make sense, this doesn't."

The beast's eyes spun back to Prey like two spotlights, freezing him into immobility. The beast raised him up, closer, closer to its mad face, closer to its teeth and unblinking ringed red-yellow eyes. "What is this? What is...?"

And then it roared with laughter. A gale force of breath blew into Prey's face. It stank of age and hidden rot, like the inside of a fallen tree trunk. Perhaps it was the fear, perhaps it was the smell of wrongness, but Prey almost threw up. His throat burned. His pounding head and throbbing eyes were hurting so much. But he could only stare in frozen shock up at the thing which had so casually circumvented and eaten alicorn magic.

He didn't... he couldn't... impossible. Should have been impossible. Yet it clearly wasn't.

It was mad. The beast was mad. Prey knew madness, and how dangerous it was. This creature in front of him was mad. It was laughing at him, laughing and talking and making no sense.

"That's it! I see, I see, yes yes! Ehe-he-he! Oho-ho-ho! Aha-ha-ha! All of the styles, don't you know it's good for you to laugh? Good for your soul! Already a lovely dolly, aren't you? Where's your soul, little black hearted doll~?"

Its huge bear paw came back, blocking out Prey's whole face, and then the chimeric beast stroked his head. Roughly, with strength to match its size, the force dragging Prey's head back. Like a rough child stroking some small pet, "Perfectly cute and innocent. Yes, oh yes. Yes, hmm, hmhmhm, heh, Ha Ha! Blue eyes, blue ribbon, its so sickly sweet my teeth might just rot if I gobbled you up next!"

Prey hated being laughed at. "Let me go." The words were silent, without any force behind them. Because Prey had no power here.

Maybe the beast holding him heard him. Maybe it didn't. It achieved nothing either way.

"A delightful toy, the best type of toy! The one's with hidden secrets inside! What else is there? Give it to me, entertain me! What else is locked away up behind those bay blues? Little lamb, little lamb, won't you let me come in~" It's gleeful voice flipped into a perfect mimicry of Prey's own, "Not by the fluffy wool of my chinny-chin-chin, I will not let you in!"

The mismatched paw, bigger than Prey's whole body five times over and with enough strength to crush him like a grape, made a fist and rapped a single knuckle against his head. Prey reeled, the force bruising, but it was more than the 'light' impact. His head was ringing.

'What's happening to me?!'

His mindscape shook with each 'knock', the ashen grey of his mental landscape pulling away from the resonating force that battered him.

A vicious gale blew back the blanketing ash in his mind, trying to uncover what hid underneath, a gleeful hiss in the wind, 'Let me in, let me in little lamb. I want to come in!'

'Stay out, stay out of my head!' No one, not until the sky froze and the world ended, would Prey ever allow someone to crawl into his head and pollute his mind. Never. 

'STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!' Prey shook. He desperately tried to shut out the world and focus. What was that sound-? His teeth were chattering. 

'Letme' in, letme' in, letme' in! I want to see in! How fun, a puzzle box doll, a nesting doll! Let me see what's inside.'

The words assaulted Prey's senses, all of his senses. The demand rang as a repeating echo in his ears, crawled across his wool, curdled on his tongue, burned his nostrils, and darkened his vision. "Let me in like a good little toy lamb is supposed to. Didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to make a guest wait outside?"

The way the thing uttered those words, it was on purpose. It had somehow gleaned enough to know the shock it would cause. Prey jerked, his mental defences shaken for just an instant. Too late. Immediately the raucous laughter drove in, sweeping away more ash of his mindscape before Prey could re-brace himself and halt its advance again.

This was nothing like his battle with Night Watcher had been, no chance of victory. He couldn't win here, only hold out.

Cold sweat sprung across Prey's back as he shook, but that was outside. He couldn't focus on that, he was inside, keeping what was outside out.

'Let me in!'

'Never.' Prey grabbed ahold of his desperation, his fear, all of it. His anger, his terror, his hate, and bundled it all up and forced it to turn into kindling. He lit the fuel, made it burn, frantically blew on the fire to give it strength. He drew on everything he could muster. Even what he shouldn't have.

In response his inner mindscape rose up, the ocean water rising higher and higher, until it smashed the bottom of his outer mindscape, shoring it up and making sure it wouldn't fall. But only because there wasn't any space left under it for it to safely fall into anymore.

There is always a cost. Mental pain whited out Prey's world as his two mindscapes collided in a way they had never been meant to. 

Prey lost time. 

Ringing white noise that was so high pitched it wasn't noise. There were only words left for those seconds of white noise. 

'Stay out of my head.'

Prey returned to his senses just as the laughter took a turn for the worse, "Stubborn little toy, that's no fun. What use is a toy that won't play?"

Whether he was hearing the words within or without his mind, Prey didn't even know. He'd almost completely lost feeling in his body out in the real world. He just couldn't let the words in. But the words of the mad beast weren't finished yet. They took with them knowledge of the uncovered pieces which had been hidden beneath the obscuring ash of his mindscape:

"There we go, that wasn't so hard now was it Prey? Little Hunted One? Or rather, is it Gossamer?"

Fuzzily, Prey's blurry eyes swam back into focus. The wetness of tears trickled over the uneven scars on his cheeks. A shadow was over him. The terrifying mismatched face of the beast loomed, pressed right up close. A horrible teeth filled grin so impossibly wide and gleeful at his misery, but those burning red and yellow eyes, those eyes were old and mad.

"Gossamer, Fleece. Fleece and Gossamer. One for the price of two, don'cha know it should be two for the price of one? Now who is this woolly Fleece? Let's see where it's written, and aha! A nobody! An absolute nobody! Because he's got no body! A broken body for Breaker, a bad bothersome brother bashing border baddie. Hmm, not my best verse. Eh, you win some, you loose some."

Prey had successfully defended his inner mind. Luna herself couldn't break directly into his dreaming mind without him at least being aware. In body, he was a weak, hornless runt lamb. In mind, he couldn't even claim to be sound, but he was at least strong. This creature of chaos could kill him in a moment, all it had to do was flex its claws. Physically and magically, it was so much stronger than him, stronger even than an alicorn! 

But it still couldn't push any further into his mind. 

Likely it didn't care to even try, because where was the 'fun' in that? Prey was merely a distraction for a few minutes, an unexpected toy, but that was it. Why should it care what secrets a toy fought so hard to hide? Why should it work to unlock all the secrets of its puzzle box? It wanted immediate satisfaction now now now! Any longer than that and it became 'boring'. 

So it didn't try to get any further into his mind. But that was also because it didn't need to.

In that first moment of attack, and then with the second moment of weakness where this vicious creature had attacked him with the terrible word 'mother', it had still managed to find enough to gleefully hurt him with. Just like the toy it kept calling him, and like a giant spoilt child, he was to be broken for its selfish amusement, then carelessly discarded in the search for the next toy.

Prey had no hope. Hope was a cruel, cruel thing. Yet he still struggled.

"L-let me go, let m-me go!" He gasped, struggling, crying, and kicking against the yellow talons holding him. They might as well have been solid iron. He pushed wildly and beat at them anyway for all the good it did. He tried mind breaking the beast again knowing it wouldn't work-

The beasts face twitched in annoyance, "Stop that!" 

It shook Prey like a misbehaving puppy trying to bite. Prey's teeth clacked together so hard he thought he felt them chip. Hot pain ran up into his gums and he felt blood in his mouth. 

He wheezed, unable to cry out to express the pain, only able to hang limply. His head spun sickenly from the whiplash. He was going to be sick.

"Your defiance was amusing, but now it's boooooooring! Show me something new, huh? Huh?! Have you got anything else good left in you, anymore delightful amusement?"

There was a beat of sudden silence as it held Prey up, waiting, like it really did desperately want him to say yes and perform another new trick to hold its interest. It stared at him, into him as it peered close, waiting with baited, sweet-yet-rotten smelling breath.

"No?" It asked into the silence.

Prey stiffly lifted his head on strained neck muscles and weakly glared up through the silent tears.

"No." It repeated almost sadly. Its red and yellow eyes dulled as the curiosity they'd held became boredom, "On to the next thing, then."

On to find the next person to break, to torment for a few minutes perverse entertainment, then discard. But first-

"-Waste not, want not."

The creature's thumb claw lifted up from the first it held Prey grasped in. The pointed end of the thumb claw, almost as long as Prey's whole body, came down on top of his head.

It was going to skewer him! Punch through his head and impale his brain like an olive on a cocktail stick!

Prey screamed, high pitched, "No!"

The talon's squeezed, "Oh stop fussing." The thumb claw poked against the top of his head. 

Prey jerked like he'd been electrocuted. His sight went fuzzy. What felt like a blast of boiling air enveloped his body for a second, and then was gone.

In the aftermath, Prey felt suddenly exposed and cold-No, not cold, it wasn't cold. Numb. His eyesight returned, and he frantically lifted his fore hooves up his eyes. He was wrong, his legs were too light, like they didn't weight anything at all.

Pink. He was pink. His wool was pink spun candyfloss. 

Numbness. No weight, no mass. No sense of touch. He was made out of candyfloss. 

Prey couldn't...

He didn't... 

How could even...

A joke. A sick joke. Something only an insane would find funny.

He'd been turned into candy. Sugar with no substance. It was a death sentence.

Prey couldn't look away from his hooves. 'I'm as good as dead.' No tears of despair welled up, his body couldn't make them anymore. His body?

No, this thing wasn't him. His runt body was gone, stolen. He was going to die. His body was gone. He couldn't eat, he couldn't drink, he was made of sugar. Candyfloss. He was as delicate as cloud fluff. As delicate as gossamer. A breeze would blow him away.

Candyfloss. Roasted sugar. Water would melt him like bone rot. He was already dead.

"Oh perfect, perfect I say! I do have such a sweet tooth, and you already looked so sickenly sweet before, but now, why, I could just gobble you up." The delighted, terrible voice sounded right in his ear.

Prey whipped his head around, the beast's head was right beside him, it had bent its long serpentine neck to his height. Its mouth full of grinning teeth was right there-

It bit his drooping candyfloss ear off. Sudden half-deafness. Numbness. Spun sugar didn't feel pain. It just bit his ear off!

His left ear. His ear with the ribbon. 

The abominations whole face abruptly went still, the fanged grin freezing. 

Very carefully, the creature opened back up its jaws and stuck its long, prehensile tongue out. Stuck in its saliva, the blue silk of the ribbon glistened.

The talons abruptly dropped Prey. He fell back to the train tracks. He landed softly, so softly. No weight. 

The beast didn't even notice. It frantically grabbed the ribbon off its tongue, pinched between thumb and index talon and ripped it away like it burned. It held the ribbon away from it, drew in a deep breath, and then bellowed like a wild beast:

"GGGRAAAAAA!" It whipped its claw behind itself and flung Prey's ribbon off the mountain side. The length of silk fell away, a brief fluttering spiral which vanished.

"Raaagh! Ghaaa! Gha! Gha, Gha, GhaaaaAA!"

It hunched over, clawing at its tongue, before rounding on Prey in a blur, "Thow't thaf' was funnie'? You thought that was funny?! You don't make jokes, ONLY I MAKE THE JOKES!"

Prey was terrified, stunned, and utterly numb, half deaf, futilely trying to come to terms with what had just happened to him. He couldn't make his limbs obey him. He didn't have enough strength to even push himself off the hard rocks. He was made of candyfloss. But the tiniest worm of spiteful satisfaction crawled into his mouth at the creatures fury, and twitched his lips up in a bitter smile. It tasted like ash, but it was all he had.

"Ha." He weakly muttered.

"I'll give you Ha! HA, HA, and HA!"

The second of spiteful revenge blew away like the ash it was, leaving only wordless, trembling fear as the thing grew bigger and bigger in anger, reaching out its huge talon for him.


---


Prey was candyfloss. He couldn't feel. He didn't understand why he wasn't dead instead of living sugar. Candyfloss doesn't bleed.

It was a small mercy. Such a blessed mercy for something so horrible. That he couldn't feel.

The beast ate his other candyfloss ear. Then it ate his legs, one after the other.

A child pulling the wings of butterflies, indeed.

Then it plopped Prey back down on the train tracks. It propped him up in the gap between two of the planks, critically examining its work, tilting its long head back and forth, then all the way upside down.

Prey couldn't look. He couldn't, wouldn't turn his head. He couldn't look at himself. He just stared at the black grey metal of thick thick train rail just in front of his face. He focused on that, on the metal scratches along the polished metal, on the dark matt texture of the rest, on the bolts with their tightly fitted nuts, and on nothing else.

"Hm. Hmm. Yes, yes, there we go. That'll do. And for the finishing touch..."

It snapped its huge talons sharply, an action Prey had only known griffins were capable of. 

White. Silver and reflections appeared all around him-

Prey clenched his eyes shut just in the nick of time. He hadn't seen, or only just a glimpse for a half-second.

"And there we go! Perfect!" The muffled voice of the cruel creature still reached him, even if little else did.

Mirrors. Prey was surrounded by mirrors. A dome of silvery mirrors, all reflecting back in at him, and themselves, repeating in every direction from now and on into eternity.

The creature really had seen enough in his head to hurt him with, after all.

"Now you just wait right there, don't move even a smidge. Ha! Well I'm off, places to be, chaos to spread, you know how it is. Well, cheerio, ta ta for now~!"

Prey didn't hear it leave, but it left.

Left him there, helpless, crippled, ribbonless, in a web of terrible mirrors.

Silence. Without his ears, he couldn't even hear the low wind blowing on the mountain.

There was only darkness of his eyelids, and the mirrors waiting just beyond. 


---


All Prey could hear in the dark was his own breathing. It was too loud, too uneven. Even without his large ears to catch the sound, he could still hear that. He couldn't feel anything, just hear.

Out there Beyond his tightly shut eyes, the mirrors were waiting.

Legless. Powerless. Cotton candyfloss. Insanity raining down across the land. Anarchy. No ribbon. No Lemon Pink or Crimson. Maybe not even any hated alicorns anymore. 

Prey was alone here. 

'But I'm going to survive, aren't I? I'm going to find some clever way to turn this all around, aren't I?'

Nothing. Out there the mirrors kept waiting.

'Some will come along. Lemon Pink will make another appearance in the nick of time again, won't she?'

Nothing. He waited. 

He counted a thousand of his too fast breaths... then a thousand more... and another thousand just to be sure...

'I'm not going to die like this. It's too ridiculous. I'm not allowed to die like this. It'll get fixed, right? All turned back to how it's supposed to be. That thing can't just turn me to candyfloss, eat my limbs, take my ribbon, and expect to win. Right?'

Prey rode out a wave a panic until it passed. He'd done so a dozen times already trapped here. 

'I'll get better, I'll get fixed. I will get it all back. I survived the Deeper Green, Dreverton, Captain Valour, Luna, kindersnatches, scarecrows, Wolf Woods, all of it. This won't be it. This can't be it.'

He breathed. Just blackness. Surrounded by mirrors. He breathed, and counted, and waited, and... and nothing.

'That creature, it can't win, it's impossible. The worlds too big, there's too much for it to destroy it all, right? Even Nightmare Moon got stopped in the end. Somehow, someway, it'll get defeated to. It must be. And then, and then its mad magic will wear off. I'll go back to normal. And get my full, repaired runt body back. Right?'

The was nobody but Prey here. Nobody came. Somewhere out there, Canterlot burned and the world twisted.

'Right?' Prey repeatedly asked himself, 'Right? Right? Right?'

But Garrow didn't answer him. Snake didn't answer him. Gossamer didn't answer him. Not even Prey could answer himself.

Prey couldn't feel Crimson, and he didn't know when he'd lost the link to the electrite feather. 

Was it before after this had been done to him? Because he hadn't noticed at the time. If it had been after, then it was because of his current state. But if it had been before, then... then Crimson might be gone forever.

Prey didn't think about that, didn't dwell on either possibility. He couldn't know for certain. So he didn't think about it. Couldn't think about it, just couldn't summon up the proper fear over Crimson's fate when it was his own that held him gripped helpless in its jaws.

His ribbon, his precious ribbon was gone. But something in him was hungry.

'I'm going to get my ribbon back too. It'll turn up, or blow in on a breeze, or just appear back with me. It must. It's supposed to come back to me, and I'm going to get fixed, and the mirrors will go away, and I'm going to survive. Because it's not allowed to end like this. There are rules somewhere, right? I mean, right? Right...? Right...'

But Prey waited and persevered in vain. He breathed, and counted, and finally lost count in the self imposed blackness. 

His head didn't hurt anymore. Nor did his eyes. He was just numb, and sort of cold.

'It's not getting fixed.'

'I'm not getting better.'

'No one's going to do anything.'

'We all have to cross he river someday.'

'The worlds not fair.'

'The worlds never been fair.'

'It's not fair.'

So why not make it fair?

Wait. Wait. Before he did that, he just had to wait. Just a little while longer. Just wait out the seconds, the minutes, the hours. He could surrender and give in any time, so why not wait just a little bit longer? What was one more breath to wait, and then one more?

Just wait little more. 

He waited. But nothing changed. 

Still Prey counted his breaths and waited. Because if it was really inevitable, then why not wait a little bit longer? He'd already waited so long, so why not? The days, the years, the endless unfairness of a mortals' dwindling time. 

Prey could give in. He'd always had the option to give in. At any time, in anyplace, anywhere. Give in, let them out, make it all fair.

For when there is nothing left, everything is equally fair. 

Prey breathed, and counted, and waited, and delayed giving in.

Just one more breath, then he'd decide if it was finally time. And then one more. What was the hurry? It was all going to be made fair in annihilation, so why hurry? 

He could give in at any time, any second he wanted to, Prey told himself that over and over.

He'd choose the second, the exact second, and no one else could force him into it if he didn't want them to. Not that there was anyone else trapped in here. It was up to him. Him and only him.

There was a terrible peace in that. The peace of ruination.

He could wait, or... not wait. That simple. It was completely up to him. So as each second came, Prey decided to wait at least one more. 

And then one more. 

And then one more again.

He breathed, and let the numb peace of despair overtake him. His churning background thoughts slowed. One more breath. And one more.

The silent world and still mirrors waited to see if there would be yet one more. And in morbid, broken fascination, Prey waited along with it.


---


Breathe in. He held his breath, teetering. One more? He breathed out. Yes, at least one more.


---


How about now? Or now? Now was as good a second as any. He wasn't holding out hope of rescue.


---


Another second. Another now. The same choice. 


---


The same choice again. Another now, and another then as it passed.


---


Perhaps Prey didn't have any right to either make or delay the choice? He was just a murderer after all. Shortly to be deceased. No one else knew he was here. He was all alone here in his blindness.


---


He didn't have the right to make the choice, not when the consequences went beyond him. But he was still going to make the choice, was making it, again and again as every second passed. Choosing to choose again.


---


There were others out there, somewhere in the world who had it worse than him, Prey knew. He wasn't special, he knew that. Just a runt lamb who'd survived longer than his allotted time through murder. He wasn't special. He wasn't unique. He wasn't an immortal. And everyone but alicorns die in the end. Rich, poor, bond, and free.


---


'Is there a point to all this waiting...? Is there a point to not waiting?' Prey didn't know if there was anyone living still out there. The world could have ended beyond this dome of deadly mirrors.


---


'Let's just make it one more second. And now one more...'


-–-


Prey knew what was happening. He had stopped lying to himself. The truth was he'd given up. He was trapped. He was crippled. He would be dead in a few days regardless of anything that happened. He was limbless and made of candyfloss, and that mad creature was still out there.


-–-


'I'm just a dead sheep walking anyway. Or laying. I can't walk. There's no point in waiting. This isn't like all those other times. I was never been mortally wounded before back then. There's no point.'


-–-


Prey didn't have any anger left. No fury. It wasn't even despair anymore. Not even the hate he so carefully hoarded despite how badly it scorched his insides. It had all drained away. There was only cold numbness.


-–-


So Prey made his choice. The one he kept choosing to make. Why? He didn't know. There was no hope. 

But he kept waiting anyway. Death could have him when it was time. But up until his last second, his very last rattling breath, he would keep making his choice. And choosing no, and no, and no, and no again.





In the history books, this period of time would be recorded as The Return of Discord. How long this period lasted, however brief, is less certain. The already recently disturbed day and night cycle of Equss was once again disrupted. Just ten months previously, The Return of Nightmare Moon had also taken place.

As a tangent, this second disruption would unofficially lead to the breakdown of all attempts at reconciliation with the Griffonian Empire for years. Historians have only recently been able to back track and link these events, however the first cause, if any, which led to the deterioration in the first place is still left unconfirmed.

But from time pieces recording outside the radius of effect centering on Canterlot, Discord's return lasted for only seventeen hours, and roughly twenty minutes.

However within the chaos field of effect, the passage of natural time has been brought into question. 

There are many conflicting reports from ponies caught inside, both recovered victims, and those who managed to hide and wait. Recovered time keeping devices from inside all differed wildly, even after the purging of chaos by Her Royal Majesty, Princess Twilight Sparkle of Magic, forever may she reign, with the Elements of Harmony.

Relegated to relying upon the wildly conflicting testimonies of ponies, the most reliably accepted time frame for The Return of Discord is between the aforementioned seventeen hours and twenty minutes, and up to forty-eight hours.

This humble historian leaves the unanswered question up to the discretion of the reader and the first hoof accounts of the poor ponies caught up in the events.





Distant, far, far away. A booming, musical chime. Almost like church bells, but also not.

The air changed. The world held its breath for what was about to come.

Prey couldn't see. He couldn't open his eyes to look. He hadn't the limbs to move to try and escape. But he felt the moment. 

Then there was living colour. 

Prey saw it, even through his closed eyelids, he saw the living, dancing aroura of breathing colour consume the world in a wave.

Bright. Lightness. Warmth. Silent, living laughter. It touched everything. It filled every inch of air, blanketed the heavens in its passing, caressed everything with its beautiful touch. 

Prey had seen this living light once before. The Elements of Harmony.

There only existed the living, ever-changing light to Prey. That was all the world was for those seconds, minutes, hours, or however long from one breath to the next lasted.

The numbness fled from him as if it had never been. And then, elation so strong yet sour that it felt like his bones would melt with warmth, all at once Prey feel his legs once again, his ears, his whole body.

Impossible. A miracle. Undeserved, unearned, but a gift given regardless.

The swell of emotions in that single moment... Prey didn't even know or understand all of what he was feeling.

'I, I can-I can, I can feel. I can feel. I can feel!'

His hooves were his own. His ears were his own. His wool was his own. His hated, and yet so precious runt body was his own once again. He could feel the living light as much as he could see, the gentle force softly ruffling the fur across his whole body like a warm wind. 

He was warm, like he couldn't even recall the memory of having ever been cold. He was so warm. So very warm.

He was burning.

Prey screamed and heard nothing.


------


Time lost meaning for a passage of, with no other word for it, 'time'. It passed beyond memory and words, and became something that was Prey. There was Prey before the burning, and then Prey after the burning. 

He was still Prey, he'd always been Prey, he was just... a different Prey now.

The sky was blue. So blue and bright. No more poisonous pulsing violet and red. Blue like the ribbon he didn't have. So bright and clear above him.

Prey lay on his back, staring up. He couldn't feel the hard rock, knobbly beneath him. His back was numb. No whip scar cramp attack. Everything was just terribly numb. A scoured, raw, numb. 

Like one of those insects which had split their own skin to crawled to crawl out from their own skeleton. Numb and tender. Exhausted. The phantom sensations of burning.

The sky was so bright and blue. 

He couldn't quite feel the fresh air against his wet cheeks, but it yet somehow still stung.

Prey didn't know if he'd ever seen the sky so blue. He didn't remember looking. It took up his whole field of view. Just blue sky, and the edge of Mount Canter peeking into the top of his vision. He couldn't turn his head to see if the rest of the world had returned to normal, he didn't have the strength.

He was as weak as a newly hatched chick. Or as a dying sparrow.

A quiet stillness. The sound of a mountain breeze blowing up the slopes was a low, constant background noise. Sometimes swelling, sometimes waning, but always blowing. The sky was blue, that bright, crystalline blue you only saw under the skies of Equestria. His ribbon was gone. The rock was hard and unyielding beneath him, only slightly warmed by the sun.

Normal. It was all back. It had been real, but now it was all back as if it never had been. There were no mirror's left.

All reset to how it had been before, like a clock hand turned backwards. Like a careless pink earth pony mare's death impossibly reversed. And that was the power of Harmony, wasn't it? He'd thought it impossible, and yet he'd seen a resurrection, a miracle, with his own two eyes. He'd begged, and had been told that the Elements of Harmony weren't something that could bring Gossamer's mother and brother back.

He'd thought it had been Luna's selfish choice. Now, he saw it was because Harmony was too big to care. It was almost like nature. Nature. Does. Not. Care.

And yet that was also false, because Harmony obviously did care, or at least it could be harnessed, like a stream could be diverted off from a huge river. It could be focused down to a small enough scale to return someone from the land of the dead, not just wipe away the insanity of an entire land.

Prey chocked a laugh. It came out as barely more than a whisper. Ha! Small! As if bringing a person back to life was small!

Harmony. A joke. What a joke. What a hilariously bad joke! 

A fools jest, and he, Prey, was the biggest fool of all for first dismissing, and then later thinking he understood it, and now it turned out he'd been wrong from the very start. 

The magic of 'Harmony' didn't mean harmony at all. It didn't even mean peace. Rather it meant the power of absolute control. An imposed ideal of perfection that rejected everything that didn't fit. This type of Harmony didn't mean natural balance at all. It went so far beyond and above that. It meant redefining what the scales of balance were, and making it the new balance. 

It was a giant, cosmic joke, a laugh at the expense of everything which thought it understood anything.

It had reset death. Death was uncaring, merciless, and yet utterly and completely natural. Immortals were unnatural. Immortals were unfair. And who decided that ideal? Did anyone? Gods? Goddesses?

And the biggest, most ironic joke of all? No, actually the second most ironic part of the joke? It was that he'd had no control, had done nothing, hadn't survived through any merit of his own. His runes and defences had availed him nothing against the chimeric, miss-matched serpentine creature of chaos. Absolutely nothing. It had been the all consuming power of Harmony which had won the day.

And the biggest joke was that he, Prey, the unbeliever, had benefitted from the pony worshipped power of Harmony.

A part of Prey's unbalanced, waxing and waning mind put forth the idea for what took third place for irony about the nature of pony Harmony. 

'And Harmony didn't like me, not one bit. It saw straight through my lies to who I am in an instant. No kindness. No generosity. No loyalty. No laughter. No honesty. And definitely no magic. How utterly natural that its touch would burn me.'

The sky was blue, and open, and empty. So high and so far above his reach. Prey felt there was a metaphor in there somewhere for his whole life.

His thoughts drifted in the quiet of the mountainside, 'So that was Harmony in all its glory, huh. For the second time.'

During that period, as the living light was burning-when it had burned him, Prey had... Prey had thought he was dying. Had known he was dying.

Prey didn't know why he was still alive. Had Harmony let him live? Given him another chance?

Prey didn't feel that was the reason. Maybe there wasn't a reason, but inside, he felt it wasn't because Harmony had decided to show pity. It had felt different from a trial too, somehow. Prey didn't feel he'd been granted mercy. He felt like he'd survived. The distinction between one and the other was huge. Enough to live or die over, apparently.

He couldn't remember precisely... 'what'... had happened while he was burning. His own infallible mind leech memory had in this instance... failed him. But Prey thought he remembered the fleeting sensation of... he didn't know what it had been, because he didn't have any comparison to the feeling. 

Not a sight. Not a sound. Just a feeling of unravelling and burning. 

Of coming undone, of being split open even as he was glued back together. Like a length of straining cloth caught at both ends, the threads in the middle ripping, but with the tears being seamlessly sewn back together faster than they formed. Like a torn silk ribbon. Prey didn't understand, but he was sure that no person should be able to feel what he'd felt. 

Beyond the pain, beyond the burning, the actual sensation of it had utterly frightened him because of how unnatural it was. Because it hadn't been hot, or burning, or what he understood as pain. It hadn't even been the numb cold of death and ice. 

It had been nothing. It had been the powerless nothing of being reduced to a 'thing'. Like a rock, or a branch, or a hat. A thing.

Pain was pain. The burning of Harmony's light had been agonising, and you could not ask someone to willingly choose between one torture and another. And yet the nothing which had briefly followed the burning...

He hadn't had any free will. No mind. No thoughts. No feelings. Just a thing being held and shaped in the hooves of something so much bigger than him into something it wanted him to be.

Or maybe Prey was completely wrong about all of that. He hadn't exactly been able to think clearly at the time. The power that was Harmony was so big, so vast, so beyond understanding, that why would something like it care about a tiny mote of dust when it was cleansing the whole land?

For all he knew, that terrible, terrible burning that he couldn't even properly conceptualise had happened to everyone when the chaos was purged from them. Prey was assuming that it had fixed all the ponies of Canterlot. He couldn't conceive it not doing so. Perhaps its light only burned to non-pony's? That would certainly fit in as the fourth biggest joke of the day. 

Prey didn't know what to think. Nothing, perhaps? Everything? He didn't understand. The sky was blue, his precious ribbon was missing, his body was weak and numb, and everything was just so... just so...

"...But alive. I'm still alive."

Presently, Prey heard a bird. The noisy wing beats sounded like a pigeon. It got closer and louder, and then too loud to be a bird. A pegasus. Someone, by luck or chance, had found him.

Prey had resigned himself to being left here, probably for an entire night, before he was finally found. By then he might've regained enough strength to have moved himself. Or have faded away forever.

But to his complete surprise, it sounded like someone had found him ahead of schedule. He heard the pegasus pull up and land on the train tacks a little distance away.

It wasn't Crimson, Prey sadly already knew that. They'd made too much noise for one, and weren't flying fast enough to have been his red furred friend either. And no electrite feather. Just a random pegasus then. But who were they?

Summoning up all his strength, Prey lifted and twisted his head towards the hoof clops cautiously approaching over stone.

A grey, sallow faced pegasus. They looked sickly, too thin, fur and mane unevenly long, and so unhealthy looking that Prey couldn't immediately tell their gender.

The budding hope that had nevertheless been strongly tinged with caution immediately turned into bubbling alarm in Prey's chest. Something was very wrong with them.

'A crazy?! Has everything not been fixed?'

The subtly wrong pegasus kept coming closer, stumbling hoof steps shuffling and cautious. They were staring at Prey with milky eyes. 

Prey stared back, transfixed. He searched for the strength to move. He couldn't find it.

'Move!' His numb body quivered, rose an inch off the stone, and then fell back exhausted. He hadn't even gotten his wool fully clear of the ground. 

Then the thin grey gender less pegasus crossed into Prey's mental perception range, and Prey instantly knew what they were.

"Mimic." Prey weakly hissed.

The mimic stopped. There was caution in its tense stance as it stared at Prey. Prey didn't know what was wrong with its disguise, but it looked damaged. Weakened.

It occurred to Prey in a flash that he hadn't been the only one scoured by the Elements of Harmony.

"Khe-he-he." The weak giggle slipped out.

The mimic defensively shifted its stance lower to the ground. 

It was scared of him. Of him! Here he was, unable to move and powerless, a weak runt lamb, and yet it was hesitating, afraid of a trick or a trap. It wasn't stupid. It knew what Prey had done. It was waiting to see if he really was as helpless as he appeared.

"Come to scout if all the ponies have been magically restarted, have you?" Prey grinned at the false pegasus, heart thumping, "By the living light, yez'? I mean, yes? It burned, didn't it?"

The mimic bared a mouth full of thick, black fangs at him and hissed.

Prey barely managed to hide his flinch. He could not afford to let his mask slip. But did it matter? This thing could feel his emotions. Or could it? In that weakened and battered state, who could tell?

Prey held onto that hope. Not because he believed in it, but rather because the emotion wouldn't give him away to the mimic.

"You're a scout, then. But only one, all by your lonesome. No back up? You're all weakened, aren't you? All you who survived my fire. Did any of you survive my fire? Or are you fresh? A fresh pawn to be sacrificed? Certainly looks like it, what with how you've been sent up here alone to see if you can discover anything useful before you inevitably die."

The mimic didn't react. It's milky eyes didn't leave Prey for an instant. Prey was beginning to wonder if it was somehow deaf, or couldn't understand him from how utterly reactionless it was, when it opened its jaws and a voice came out.

It spoke wrong. Its lips and jaws did not sync with the words, "You understand nothing of us, hateful worm. We are the swarm, and we have already seen all you tried to hide. You have murdered individuals, but we still saw all. A drone is nothing. This one is nothing. The swarm will live. The queen will triumph."

A broken, hissing monologue. A cliché in any other circumstance. So bowel looseningly real when it happened right in front of you, coming out of the fanged maw of a twisted shapeshifter.

Prey snatched at the first thing that came to him, a question, merely a tactic to stall, "Why were you in Mayflower? What were you doing pretending to be the Border Guard Shimmer?" He demanded.

The hollow creature in front of him, a drone, like a bee? Prey didn't know. It spoke again, mouth still not syncing to the rasping guttural words it uttered.

"The swarm does not forget. The queen does not forgive. Crawling worm rotten with hate, you will no longer stymie the swarms progress. We are the living tide. The seat of pony kind will fall. The pods are ready, the hatcheries are bursting. How can one worm stop us? You can't."

"Oh I'm shaking in my wool. I'm one runt lamb, and I've destroyed all your efforts? Oh how mighty this swarm must be, then. Look at you, one drone, all burnt and twisted by the Elements of Harmony, which you already failed to steal once! Did you know, I was there? I saw Luna destroy your fake griffin ambassador." Prey half spat, and half coughed. 

He hated Canterlot, he didn't care if it fell, and it infuriated him that he had been forced to defend it as this mimic had said.

"We know," It garbled, horribly wet and hissing, "We know all. We saw through our eyes the Second Sister that night. We are the hive. We saw you break and beg. We saw you cry. We saw you lie. We saw everything."

Prey's tired and strained mind raced through the impossible implications of what he'd just heard. 

It was impossible. Yet it wasn't. It all fitted, the reckless way the mimics were willing to sacrifice individuals, the co-ordination, the fact that there was only one mimic here in front of him, meaning it had been sent up to scout the state of Canterlot. Only one was needed, and even if it died, as long as it saw enough before it perished, then the rest would know. It was only by pure miserable just bad luck it'd encountered him on the way up the mountainside.

The milky eyed mimic was still rasping out its message, "The swarm will take all. The Elements will be accounted for. The Sun Tyrant's defences will only delay us, we will find a way. We are ready. We are so very hungry."

'We are hungry.' Prey knew hunger. At those words, a frozen claw of dread speared through Prey before he could hide the feeling.

The mimic's broken hissing was rising in pitch, feverishly repeating itself, "The hatcheries are bursting. We must eat. And so, our queen shall take what is hers. We will roll forth as the tide. We will wait no longer. Discord's chaos has struck with perfection, there is no better time, the swarm of war will feast!"

Days. The mimics were talking about days. Not weeks or months. Days.

They had an army, and they were going to attack within days.

War. The mimics were going to go to war. Come here to war. 

Prey's vision went grey and foggy for a second as his mind swam. War.

Tumbling puzzle pieces fell into place, locking together into a terrible undeniable image as Prey suddenly saw it all.

He'd suspected it, he'd worried over maybe's, he'd weighed if's, but hadn't known. He hadn't known. But now he saw the whole terrible picture.

The mimics had been scouting out the crystal caverns under the mountain since before he'd been brought from Dreverton. They'd meant to flood the city from the inside, and had been securing the maze of lightless tunnels for their building army.

And then he'd come along, claiming the crystal cavern for himself and getting in their way. His conflict with the thieves, the diamond dogs, all the while the mimics had been biding their time in the shadows beneath the rocks. Waiting.

Back then, their army hadn't been ready, so they hadn't rushed in to retake the caves. But they hadn't predicted how utterly Prey could lay claim to anything with his runes. Their recent increase in movement, their probing pushes which left mimics dead and burnt, it was because they now needed those tunnels back under their control.

The mimics had known about the true nature of the Elements of Harmony before Prey had, back when he hadn't believed. That was why they'd hijacked the Griffonian's scheme for their own. Prey himself had ended up down in Ponyville on the very night the fake Felyawn had attempted to steal the Elements.

They'd been trying to pre-emptively remove a threat to their coming invasion. To claim the super weapon for their own side, maybe. But the theft had failed, Luna herself had arrived on the scene, so the mimics had turned to a darker solution. Resource denial.

The disguised mimic had not hesitated and had stuck a knife in the brain of that pink mare the instant the opportunity presented itself. Such swift thinking. Without all six of the bonded bearers, supposedly the Element's either didn't work, or were at least greatly weakened. 

And then the moment of victory was snatched away.

The Elements had resurrected their bearer. Death had been undone, and the impossible happened. And just like that, the mimics efforts had become null and void.

The oblivious and uninformed Element Bearer's were effectively untouchable. The six mares, despite being utterly ignorant, effectively gained an untouchable aura, because there was no point in going after them anymore. If they were killed, apparently they would just be returned from even death.

The Bearers were out. Only directly removing the Elements would work. And the Elements had been quietly recalled to Canterlot, where they now were locked away behind mighty doors and magic.

But now the mimics had an army. And they were about to invade. They must have a different plan to stop the Elements.

A secret way into the vaults. A method to capture and hold one of the Bearers, or simply split them up. Kill them over and over every time they resurrected. Or possibly even ignore them entirely.

Prey had seen war. And while in his bitter experience, all armies always came down to one individual killing another in the mud, he was no fool. He could think on the grander scale required for war. An army. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers, or rather drones.

The mimics had an army. The phrase reverberated in his skull. They had an army. A shortly to be starving army. A desperate army. 

Prey didn't know what their exact plan was. He didn't know if it would succeed either, but it didn't matter. Because the mimics had bred an army and they were going to try. There was no other choice left for them, they'd backed themselves into a corner.

Take Canterlot, and then Equestria for its bountiful supplies and rich lands, or have the bulk of their new army whittled down by starvation, thousands and thousands of deaths, until only a smaller, sustainable number of mimics remained. Win or die.

But Prey wouldn't be around to see that army pouring up out of the tunnels in a few days time. He was lying here on the rocks, helpless, without his ribbon, and unable to move.

The mimic had hesitated long enough. It had cautiously observed Prey, and Prey knew it had seen the truth. It knew he wasn't faking, and that he didn't have some secret defence.

Burnt and injured as the sallow thing was, Prey was still the one who didn't have the strength to move. It could literally taste the helplessness he tried to hide.

It took a slow step closer towards him. And then another. And another. Its milky blue eyes glared into Prey, its fur patchy and limbs stick like, but its oversized jaw filled with black fangs. 

Prey's eyes darted to the sky, to the sides, all around. But there was nothing to help him. It was even worse than that. 

Another mimic had climbed up the rocky slope while he hadn't been looking. Prey's heart thudded painfully. Two, no, four, seven of them. Or more. All of them hollowed out and burnt from the light. All looked like wrong versions of skeletal ponies. All still able and willing to kill him.

The first mimic hadn't just been assessing him. It had been waiting for reinforcements. They were going to make sure this time, no poison in a mug of hot chocolate

After all the madness, the chaos creature, and the burning, this was how it went.

Bitterness gripped his lungs, and sour fear coated the back of his tongue. He couldn't look at the approaching mimic. He didn't want to.

Prey could only weakly turn his head slightly to the side, to look away. But he couldn't even have that, because the other mimics were creeping in closer too. He was surrounded. If only he still had his ribbon-! It wasn't fair.

"...But life has never been fair." He let the words float out on his breath.

The mimic opened its jaws wide, and scurried suddenly forwards. Prey tensed up. He didn't-! 

A lunge. Milky white, then sky blue eyes. 

The sky was clear and empty above them all.


-------


I am free. So wonderfully free. I love no one, and no one loves me.


----I---


Prey had not forgiven or forgotten. It didn't help him in the end.

[End of Arc 6]