//------------------------------// // Wake Up // Story: Something Sweet to Bite Too // by Knackerman //------------------------------// "Wake up! Come on now, rise and shine!" A sharp pain wrenched Dash's side, making her scream. Some pony was twisting her injured wing, bending and turning it so that the delicate bones almost popped out of socket. "There we are! You know Rainbow Dash, you're a very heavy sleeper. I was beginning to wonder if you'd sleep the rest of Nightmare Night away," spoke the Candy Mare through Luna's broken mouth, her rancid breath hot by Rainbow Dash's ear. Her eyes flew open and she screamed anew, not from pain this time, but from the scene that spread before her. All around her, candy ponies shuffled and laughed, singing that stupid Nightmare Night rhyme as they ate. What they feasted on were the prone and passed out forms of Celestia's guards. Jack-o-lanterns burned brightly all around them, and more popped into existence as Dash watched. The guards on which the dead were feeding were slowly being converted by the candy curse into a fresh power source for the Candy Mare. Celestia still stood, but her eyes were glazed over, lost in some kind of trance. Rainbow Dash had to force herself to look away as a swarm of converted guards descended on her in a feeding frenzy. She just stood there, not moving or even acknowledging the creatures who were eating her, as if the part of her that had been Celestia was already long dead. Zecora wasn't far away, curled into a tight ball, the flesh slowly being stripped from her head by a pair of industrious candy abominations. Fluttershy was nearby as well, still in her strange candy insect form, still passed out. She lay where she had fallen when the Candy Mare had let out that awful ear piercing shriek. She alone the carnivorous corpses ignored. Of course Rainbow Dash was only able to see this all, because she was held aloft by the Candy Mare's black liquorice tendrils. They held tight to her limbs, pulling her painfully in four different directions at once. The Candy Mare herself was barely inches away from her. Or rather Luna's stinking carcass. This close she could see into her empty eye sockets, deep into the corpses hollowed out skull. Inside, a mass of red liquorice writhed and shifted, pulsing like a nest of maggots. Rainbow Dash felt sick, and it wasn't just from the smell coming from Luna's rotten mouth. "What? How? We beat you! We killed you! We watched you burn!" she wailed, in anger and despair. The mass of candy in the corpses skull wriggled faster as laughter burst from Luna's fetid gob, "Is that what you dreamed? Oh, how delightful! I hope you enjoyed it!" The red liquorice strands began to twitch and extend themselves from Luna's eye sockets. To Rainbow Dash's horror they stretched towards her and started poking and prodding at her face. She tried to pull away, but Dash couldn't move her head far enough. "As to the how, it's simple really. When that strange aberration down there you call Fluttershy attacked me, I was truly surprised. I've never had a candy puppet turn on me like that before. I should've been prepared for such an eventuality, given how treacherous unicorn magic can be, but I'd never considered the possibility. So I used an ability that came natural to this body. Have you ever heard of the Official Royal Canterlot Voice? I must admit it was something that was more or less after my time, but it is incredibly loud, piercing really. And with this body's damaged vocal cords it can apparently prove quite devastating!" Rainbow Dash struggled harder as the red liquorice began to probe around her nose and mouth. She didn't know what to do. "I don't understand! I heard you scream, and saw Fluttershy fall, but that's all that happened! Celestia woke up and blew you away with her magic!" To her relief, the tiny red whips pulled back, settling for writhing around Luna's empty eye sockets instead. "Is that what you think happened? It's so fascinating how a pony's mind can take things that happened in real life and twist them to be part of a dream." The Candy Mare seemed to be delighted by this, but she quickly turned her attention back to Rainbow Dash. "No, I'm afraid 'Luna's' voice had a little more impact than that. Every last one of you passed out, though from the sound or the pain I'm not sure. It was ease itself to wake my little puppets and set them to harvesting life force for me. Even now, they're creeping out of the Everfree Forest and into the rest of the world. I'm afraid Nightmare Night is going to be quite the blood bath for this world. At least five more cities will be devastated before midnight. With that my Ritual Harvest will be complete, and I will have more than enough life force to expand into the nightmares of every creature that dreams." "No!" "cried Rainbow Dash, tears streaming down her face. Broken, she whimpered "we watched you burn. This can't be how it ends!" she shouted the words to the heavens, willing them to be true. "Of course this isn't how it ends," said the Candy Mare. "I learned much from Luna in our time together. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. But energy, sweet delicious energy, can be consumed in all it's forms. I will feed on the life force of every planet, every star. Then once this universe has gone dark and cold, all I have to do is move on and begin again. And again. And again. Oh no Rainbow Dash, this isn't the end, we've only just begun!" cackled the Candy Mare. "But I have to admit, as expanded as my knowledge has become from consuming Luna's life and the many lives of the ponies of Equestria, there are some things I still don't understand. When I was a little filly, it wasn't so much the high lords and lady's of the unicorn's I was envious of. They were graceful and gorgeous, fascinating really, but I didn't play pretend I was a princess like the other earth ponies. You see, I always imagined what it would be like to be a pegasus! To spread my wings, to soar through the air, quick as the wind! Now that Luna has served her purpose, I'm afraid her sad little wings wouldn't be up to the task of carrying me anywhere." A thick black tendril rubbed Rainbow Dash's injured wing suggestively. The pain in it had stopped, but a wave of revulsion moved through Dash as the disgusting candy appendage stroked her flank. "W-What are you saying. You have your own body don't you? You can make candy wings and fly." "I haven't had what you would call a real body in a long time. Even if I did as you suggest, I'm afraid the mechanical side of equine aviation perplexes me. My puppets can barely stay aloft, despite being pegasi in their previous lives. I think a more intimate knowledge of how a living pegasi's wings work in motion might prove illuminating. And besides, poor tattered Luna doesn't actually look very nice anymore. All these dark drab colors, so very dull." She stroked Rainbow Dash's multi-colored mane with one half-rotted hoof. "I've always loved bright colors myself. I think you'll do just fine. Like I said Rainbow Dash, you and I, we've only just begun!" "What do you mean!?" the azure flyer asked in panic. In answer, the Candy Mare pulled away from her, and lowered her gently to the ground so that she stood awkwardly on her two hind legs. For a moment, Rainbow Dash thought the Candy Mare was letting her go, as the writhing twitching tendrils slid back into Luna's empty eye sockets. But then the corpses bloated and distended bell burst, the flesh peeling back and blossoming open like a putrid flower. What dangled from the ruptured guts were not intestines, however, but more candy. From that squirming mass, something that looked like a half formed fetus emerged. It's body was corpse pale, save where it was slick with fresh blood. Tiny, underdeveloped limbs that had lost their hooves long ago wriggled out of the mess and twitched slowly across the gore choked earth. It's toothless mouth was open as it panted for breath, a tiny tongue flicking over thin dry lips. It's eyes were like no eyes a pony could ever have, mismatched and multicolor candy swirled. They almost seemed to glow with hatred, madness, and something that made Rainbow Dash scream uncontrollably, thrashing against the candy shackles that bound her. What burned brightly in those terrible eyes was absolute, overwhelming delight. "Kill me...kill me..." murmured the empty husk that was Luna's body over and over. "Kill me...please just let me die." Through all this pain and torment, the Alicorn Princess was still alive. The sight was all the more horrifying for Rainbow Dash now realized that this was the fate that had been planned for her all along. Zecora and the others had it wrong this whole time. The Candy Mare didn't just want to kill, she also wanted to live. To live, she needed a body. A living body. With every sign of a filly's anticipation for opening presents on Hearths Warming day the malformed filly, that Rainbow Dash recognized as the very core of the Candy Mare, drew closer to her. The wet, filthy thing slid up Dash's leg, and she couldn't shake it off no matter how hard she squirmed and kicked. The horrid leech clung to Dash's body, and slowly slithered up her belly to her chest. Dash struggled harder, but the black liquorice tendrils that thrust up from the earth held her still. She could feel her heart beating as the tiny hoofless appendages of the thing reached her lips. Dash clenched her mouth shut so hard she was afraid she was going to shatter her own teeth. It didn't matter though. A red tendril twisted her wing again and her body betrayed her, opening her mouth wide in a scream that was equal parts pain, frustration, and despair. She felt the horrid thing slide past her teeth, over her tongue, and deep down her throat. Even as she gagged, amidst her revulsion, she couldn't help but notice that foul as the thing was... It tasted sweet.