At this point, they knew Exe was not playing around, since he was able to make a game into a blood bath that was not even very fair, but he didn’t care.
The Mane Six and Spike woke up again, confused and baffled about how they were alive. Rainbow Dash gasped and coughed for air, Pinkie used her hooves to try and get something out of her mouth, Rarity and Spike looked over their bodies to find they weren’t impaled, Fluttershy looked up and down herself seeing she was in one piece again, Applejack looked at the lower part of her body to see if her organs were still clawed out, and Twilight shot straight up as she put a hoof to her chest to check if she could feel her heartbeat.
The 7 of them then looked around to see each other alive, and they all went in for a group hug.
“Oh, I’m so happy to see you all again. I thought you’d all be hurt or worse,” Twilight said with tears in her eyes, not knowing Exe had brutally murdered them.
They were each about to tell what happened to them, but they saw Exe leaning against the metal wall, tossing and catching a bird head while waiting for the 7 to be done with their friendship talk.
The moment they saw him, Dash and Applejack lashed out at him, only for him to teleport away. They kept on trying to hurt him, but he just kept teleporting away. After a few seconds, he stopped the two mares by putting his hand up.
“You two done yet?” Exe said with a hint of impatience in his voice.
The two just retreated back to the others, and Twilight stepped forward to Exe. He stared her down with a grin as she came forward to speak.
“Alright, Exe… we may have lost the first game, but you didn’t have to rip my heart out!”
Dash chimed in, “And you don’t just drown somepony for cheating! You never said anything about using our unique abilities being counted as cheating!”
Applejack then adds, “You didn’t have to turn into my little sister before killing me!”
Exe only chuckled, “Oh well, it was fun.”
Fluttershy did not like him one bit for killing her, her friends, and so many innocent animals.
Twilight narrowed her eyes, “Exe, let’s just move on. We may have lost the first game, but we will win this next one. With the power of friendship, we will defeat you!”
Exe gagged but then started laughing, “Yeah. The Power of Friendship will help me and my other friends win the next game.” Exe mocked, “Yeah right. This next game is pretty easy, all you need to do is make it to the end of this area, and you win. Simple, right?”
He teleported away, leaving the mane six and Spike alone at the beginning of this area.
Twilight sighed, “Well, let’s get this over with,” she said.
She and her friends started to travel through the scrap wasteland that had blood stains, rust stains, sawblades, and pits to Celestia knows what.
As they tried to traverse the area, Pinkie almost fell into a pit from a trap door that opened randomly.
“AHH-” she screamed before Applejack managed to grab her tail and pull her away from the pit.
“Phew! Thanks, Applejack,” Pinkie thanked.
“Don’t thank me just yet,” Applejack replied, “Once we’re out of this wasteland, then you can thank me.”
Rainbow flew a few inches from the ground since she was punished with drowning for flying up to the clouds last game, “ Tch, yeah yeah. But I swear, I’m going to beat that Exe up whenever get the chance!” she said, throwing punches in the air with her hooves.
Twilight sighed before responding, “Come on, girls, just stay close, and don’t wander off since we know what happened to Pinkie the last time she wandered away!”
Twilight then spotted another red ring, but this time she didn't want to go near it and stopped in her tracks. She made a whimpering noise that caught Rarity’s attention.
“What's wrong Darling?” she asked, seeing Twilight freeze up.
Twilight pointed at the red ring, making Rarity's face go pale. Then the others noticed and all stared at the ring. Pinkie then looked at everyone, wondering why they had all stopped.
“Huh what's wrong?” she asked, then noticed the ring and smiled, “Ooooh another ring!”
She began to trot towards it.
“Pinkie, don’t touch that!” Twilight shouted, making Pinkie stop right in the nick of time
“Oh, you want to hold it? Alrighty!” Pinkie said before using her curly mane to pick up the ring and toss it to Twilight.
“PINKIE, NO!” everyone shouted to her.
The moment it touched Twilight, she blacked out.
The rest of the mane six circled her to see if she was still alive. When they saw her breathing, confirming she was, they all glared at Pinkie.
Pinkie cocks her head, “What?”
Applejack sighed, facehooving herself before picking up Twilight and putting her on her back, “She’s still breathing, but we should still keep moving. If not, we may not get out of here.”
They then continue to make their way through whatever things Exe had put in their way. They came across a large pit, and Dash rolled her eyes and chuckled.
“Alright, let me handle this, who wants me to carry them across this bottomless pit?” she asked.
Applejack pulled an apple out of her hat and said, “Hold on there sugarcube, something seems fishy about this.”
She threw it into the pit, and a gloved hand came out and grabbed it and pulled it down, making a bunch of arms pop out, trying to reach over the pit to catch something or someone. Rainbow’s eyes widened and she slowly landed on the ground.
She chuckled nervously, “Guess flying is out of the question…”
“Look up there!” Rarity called out, pointing at the bars on the ceiling.
“Good idea Rarity, we could use those pipes to move over this pit,” Applejack said before everypony started to cross over the pit.
Rainbow crossed easily. Rarity cleaned the bars before grabbing them, and Spike followed behind her. Fluttershy slowly but surely made her way across with the help of Rainbow Dash. Pinkie had fun like she was playing with monkey bars. Applejack used her rope to tie Twilight to her before grabbing onto the first pipe, trying her best not to slip, but Rarity didn’t make it very easy for her from her cleaning the pipe.
After some time, she was only two pipes away from making it across when Twilight began to slip. Applejack tried to keep her up, but the moment she jumped to the next pipe, the rope holding her and Twilight together snapped before she could make it across. Applejack let go of the pipe and used her powerful hindlegs to buck her to the other side. The rest of the six saw a hand grab her and dragged her down into the pit.
“Applejack…” Spike said, watching every single hand go down too.
Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth and growled, “Alright, everypony, we need to win this! Let's move out!”
She put Twilight on her back and moved forward. Spike was the last one to leave the pit, hearing what sounded like limbs being torn apart. The next few minutes go by and they run into a tunnel with walls in the way, making tight corners if you were moving fast.
“Pinkie, darling, do you have any sweets? I am quite hungry,” Rarity asked.
Pinkie dug into her mane and pulled Gummy out, getting a confused look from Rarity and an eyeroll from Rainbow.
“Oh, hi Gummy! You shouldn’t be here though, It’s kinda dangerous.”
She dug back into her mane and pulled out a cupcake.
“AHA! Here you go Rarity,” she smiled, handing her the cupcake.
Rarity took the cupcake in her magic and began to bite into it.
At that moment, Pinkie spotted something at the corner of her eye. It looked like a red gem.
“Oooo! Shiny!” she exclaimed.
She caught the other’s attention as she picked up the gem, showing it to them.
“Look what I found!”
“Hey!” Spike added, “That gem looks just like the one me and Rarity found in a cave before we were killed!”
“He’s right,” Rarity said, teleporting the green gem in the middle of the group.
“Could they be important?” Fluttershy asked.
“They might be,” Rainbow answered, “I’m not Twilight, but I have a feeling we’ll be needing these later.”
Pinkie snatched both gems and placed them in her mane for safe keeping, and the group continued on the path.
“Uhm R-Rainbow,” Fluttershy called, catching Dash’s attention, “Do you think Twilight will wake up soon?”
“I don’t know Fluttershy,” Dash replied, “I don’t know. All I know is that we need to keep moving-”
“SNAKE!!!” Rarity shouted, startling the rest of the group.
They looked to see Exe as a snake, slithering towards them with a devilish gleam in his eyes.
“RUN!” Rainbow shouted, and everypony followed closed behind.
They all try their best to move around the sawblades, spikes, and pits. After they all jumped over a big pit, they didn’t notice Spike tripped over a metal robot leg. Fluttershy turned back and helped Spike get back up, but it was too late. They both screamed before being eaten by Exe.
After some time, the group stops running. Rainbow started a head count to make sure everyone was okay but realized Spike and Fluttershy were missing. Rarity began to cry, knowing that Fluttershy was dead.
”DAMN YOU EXE!” Rainbow shouted angrily, “We may have lost AJ, Spike, and Fluttershy, but we're close, I can feel it. Come on we need to keep moving.”
Rarity snapped at Rainbow, “REALLY?! We Just lost two of our friends, and you want us to just forget this?!”
Rainbow glared back at Rarity with tears in her eyes, “Rarity, I miss them too, but if we stay her, we’ll lose this game and our chance to go back home!”
Rarity and Rainbow glared at each other, and Pinkie looked back and forth between them.
“Girls, come on, we’re friends! Besides, we still have one game left, so I’m sure they’ll be back again,” Pinkie said, trying to lighten up the mood.
The two realized that for once, she was right.
“Pinkie has a point, darling,” Rarity sighed before looking back up.
“Well let's not keep waiting here, we must get a move on,” Rainbow said, calming down.
After some time, the air around them all felt cold and it made Pinkie a bit uncomfortable, but they pressed forward, and soon reached the end to see what appeared to be the end of the game: a long path that seemed to stretch for a good while.
“Welp looks were gonna have to run this,” Rainbow said before she started to move.
It was now only Pinkie, Rarity, Rainbow, and Twilight who was still knocked out on Dash’s back. They still had a chance at winning this sick game. As they moved forward, blood stains became more apparent, and soon it started to rain blood.
“OOooh strawberry chocolate sauce!” Pinkie says sticking out her tongue. The moment a drop hit her tongue, she gagged, “That's not strawberry sauce…”
Rarity rolled her eyes before a drop of blood landed on her mane, going down to her coat. She gasped and tried to cover her mane. “MY MANE!” she exclaimed, “Curse this blood rain! Do you know how long this takes to do it and get my coat clean!?”
“Rarity,” Dash said with a deadpanned expression, “You can fix your mane when we get home, but we can’t risk losing another pony if none of us get to the end… then we’ll lose this game too!”
She watched as Pinkie sped past her after stepping on what seemed like a boost pad.
“Weeeeeee!” she happily exclaimed, giggling as she continued going faster.
She turned around to see Rainbow and Rarity still running as she zoomed, mainly due to the slippery blood making her go faster. Pinkie then turned back to face in front of her, but only to see a wall of spikes. She screamed as she was about to crash, and managed to stop herself just a few inches away from being impaled.
“PINKIE! ARE YOU OKAY?!” Rarity shouted with a look of concern as they got closer to the pink pony.
Pinkie smiled nervously. “Yep. I stopped right before hitting these spikes.”
She then looked up to see a figure right behind her, and Pinkie gasped before smiling widely.
“MAUD! OH MY CELESTIA!!!” she shouts.
Pinkie then ran up and hugged Maud, soon Rarity and Rainbow joined the two sisters. They both have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t Maud, but who knows what could happen in this world?
“Girls, look who I found!!!” Pinkie said, her smile widening,
“Pinkie, I have a surprise for you,” Maud said.
Pinkie’s face beamed with excitement before saying, “OOO! What is it?”
Rainbow then spoke up as she raised an eyebrow, “Look, Maud, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for a gift. Also, what are you doing here?”
“I came here to see what new rocks I could find,” Maud answered.
Rarity tilted her head, “Then, how did you get into this nightmare of a world darling?”
Maud then looked at her with her normal stone-faced look, “Well there's a ba-”
Pinkie interrupted her as she made Maud look at her and her smiling face, “You still haven’t given me my gift and we are-”
Rainbow and Rarity cocked an eyebrow at each other after that response before Maud interrupted Pinkie.
“Okay, I’ll give you your gift. Your gift is this,” she said before getting closer to Pinkie and pushing her into the spiked wall, impaling her.
Maud just looked at Pinkie’s dead body, blood gushing out of the wound. Maud smiled devilishly while Rainbow and Rarity were dumbfounded, but also slightly angry.
“What. The. Fuck?!” Rainbow exclaimed.
The sound of cracking bone is suddenly heard as Maud's head turned all the way around to face the dumbfounded mares, and her face started to smile wider, her teeth yellow and stained with blood. Her skin began to peel off, revealing muscle then pure bone. Then all the flesh and bone distort to form Exe’s head. He then laughed before a gloved hand busted through the metal floor, grabbed him, and pulled him down into an endless abyss.
“SHIT!!!” Dash yelled angrily, “We’re down to us three now.”
Rarity turned away, not wanting to see Pinkie’s impaled body, and Dash stared into her eyes, once full of life.
Dash sighed and walked around the now bloody spiked wall, “Rarity, come on. We need to keep moving, we’re so close,” at that, Rarity followed soon behind.
After some time, they soon came up to a wall with 6 paths, each leading to different fates.
“Okay then. What are the odds that one of us dies…?” Rainbow said, turning to Rarity as she thought out loud, “We have a very small chance to get passed this. Stay here. I’m gonna check which of these is safe. Most of these must be traps, but I’ll try to fly fast enough so Exe doesn't catch me. Look after Twilight as she might be our only hope of getting out of here and figuring out what is going on.”
Rarity nodded as Dash set Twilight down on the metal ground. Rarity watched her fly in and out of 4 of the paths before coming back with a smirk.
“Welp, that was easy. Now we have a 50-50 chance to choose the right one. We have to choose wisely, as the wrong one might be fast enough to catch me since the others can learn quickly,” she said before looking at Rarity.
Rarity nodded as Dash walked to a path.
“I hope that path is not a trap, darling,” Rarity said, worried for Dash’s safety.
As Rainbow walked through the path, she kept her guard up in case something were to happen. However, she eventually stepped on something fleshy and looked to the ground, inspecting what she stepped on. What she saw baffled her as she muttered, “Exe?”
Rainbow then looked around the walls, ceiling, and floor. The entire room was made out of different Exe bodies.
“What the hell is all this…” Rainbow says before seeing something at the end of this path or in the way of it at least, she then walks closer, her guard up expecting anything.
At one point, she saw Exe waiting at the end of the path.
“Well, I’m surprised you’ve gone this far,” Exe said.
He smirked at her, making Dash grit her teeth.
“Yeah, surprised to see you’ve not killed any more of my friends, but am not letting us lose this game!” Rainbow said, keeping her distance from Exe.
“Oh yeah so very loyal of you~ You are the most awesome pony ever! Too bad you’re too insecure about losing,” Exe said, his voice mocking Scootaloo’s.
“Don’t you dare imitate her pure voice, you bastard!” she demanded, stomping her hooves on the ground and pointing at him.
“Rainbow Dash,” Exe said as his voice began to mock Dash’s mother, “You are a failure! You let your own friends die! No wonder why you're too slow, you can’t even save yourself.”
Rainbow’s rage was building up. How did he know who her parents were and about Scootaloo? He was really starting to get on her nerves.
“Dashie,” Exe said as his voice changed to her father’s, ”You are a horrible daughter, no wonder why you try to prove yourself to everyone, even if you know deep down, you're a failure!”
Rainbow couldn’t take it anymore. She yelled out a battle cry and was about to kick Exe, but he grabbed her left hoof and ripped it up, making it dangle while hardly attached to her body and bleeding heavily. Rainbow screamed before turning back and flying out of the path meeting back with Rarity and Twilight’s still unconscious body.
Rarity noticed Dash’s hoof and gasped, “OH MY GOODNESS, DASH, YOUR HOOF!” and let out a gag.
“Oh, this…” Dash replied solemnly, “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
Rarity wasn’t convinced. Dash’s hoof was hardly attached to her leg and bleeding profusely. She was shocked Dash hadn’t passed out by now from all the blood she had lost.
“Enough talk,” Dash said after dismissing her injury, “We need to continue. We’ll go down that path since we know it’s the safe one.”
Dash picked up Twilight and put her onto her back once more and Rarity followed her.
“Rainbow Dash,” Rarity asked Dash, “let me carry Twilight-”
“NO!” Dash shouted, not letting Rarity finish her question. She instantly lowered her voice, “I-I mean no. I can still carry her. Don’t worry about me, I got this…”
Rarity gave a concerned look. Dash was too stubborn to even think about what was happening to her.
“But darling, your hoof is hanging on by only a few threads of tissue! Let me see if I can find some fabric around here to at least make it stop bleeding. If not, you’ll bleed out and die, and it’ll just be me and Twilight’s unconscious body!” Rarity argued as she used her magic to create some fabric.
She then wrapped it around Rainbow’s hoof, making it stay in place and slow the bleeding.
“There you go, useful and fashionable, now I can guarantee we’ll both make it to the end alive.”
Dash smiled and rolled her eyes before looking at her hoof.
“Thanks, Rarity.”
Rarity smiled back, seeing Dash's expression soften up a bit.
“Of course, darling, now let’s not waste any more time.”
They continued on the path, Dash helping Rarity carry Twilight as they walked. Only one more obstacle stood in their way, it was a tall wall that Rainbow could easily fly over, there was one problem though, she would have to carry both Twilight and Rarity over it, and her injured hoof didn’t make it easier to carry both mares at once.
“Rainbow, darling, you take Twilight first then come back to help me get over it,” Rarity said, pointing up at the top of the wall with a hoof.
Rainbow nodded her head before carrying Twilight on her back as she flew up and over the wall. As Dash ascended further, she thought about everything that happened in this one game alone. Her friends had sacrificed themselves for the rest of them to move on, killed trying to help one another, or tricked by familiar faces and letting their guard down, getting killed because of it.
Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the wall. She lowered Twilight to the ground before flying back over it to get Rarity. When they made it over, Exe appeared and started to walk over to Twilight.
Rarity pointed at Exe, “Rainbow, darling, look!” she exclaimed.
Rainbow looked over and her eyes widened before letting Rarity go. Thankfully, they weren’t too far from the ground, so Rarity landed safely next to Twilight. Rainbow then reared her good hoof to punch Exe right in the cheek. As the attack landed, it sent Exe only a few feet away from Twilight, but he sat back up and laughed. A hand came out of the metal floor and grabbed him, pulling him down as he laughed. Rainbow snorted before returning to Rarity and Twilight.
“That guy is starting to get on my nerves,” She commented, “I hope we’re close to the end at least.”