//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6:  Ruby and Her Kin 
// Story: Fools and Drunks 
// by Jordan179 
//------------------------------//

Snails took a step back in alarm.  He wanted to bolt, but he was all too aware of the fact that Snips snored helplessly at his hooves.  Whatever the danger, he could never run -- and abandon his best friend.

He forced himself to look levelly into the filly's strange golden eyes.

"I'll never let you hurt my friend," he said. with what he hoped was determination.  He was painfully aware that his teeth were chattering, his legs shaking.  But he could not let Snips down.

Ruby Gift looked confused for a moment, then her eyes flashed with annoyance.  Literally -- Snails saw them briefly glow.

"No," she said.  "I do not threaten to kill ye.  I do warn you that my kinsponies will kill ye, if they can."

Snails had been momentarily distracted by the girl's glowing eyes, but he caught the gist of it.

"Why would they want to do that?" he asked in honest puzzlement.  "I haven't done anything to them!"

"'Tis a long and weary tale," said Ruby, looking around nervously.  "And one which would be folly to relate now with them closing in on ye.  I shall now simply say that they be cursed, and will not be swayed by sweet reason.  Now come, Snails.  We must leave this place, an ye wish to live!"

Snails nodded at the strange filly.  His drunken haze was beginning to partially dissipate, to be replaced by cold fear.  He bent down over Snips and nosed at his head, trying to prod him awake.  "Snips," he said urgently.  "Snipsy!  You've gotta get up, pal, we have to get out of here!"

"Hmmph?" commented Snips, stirring slightly in his alcoholic stupor.  "Whazzat?"  His eyes opened, rolled about.  "Whazz goin' on?"

"We've gotta scram!"  Snails said.  "Get up!"

"What?" asked Snips, trying to roll to his hooves, and failing.  "Why?"

"I met this filly, Ruby Gift --" he indicated her with a head motion.

Snips' eyes widened.  "H'lo, gorgeous!" he said to Ruby, leering.

Ruby looked exasperated, briefly scraping the ground with one hoof, as if wanting to charge something.

"-- and her kinsponies want to kill us," Snails continued.  "You and me, I mean."

"Wow!" said Snips, his eyes widening even further.  He belched, then said  "You're a fasht operator!"

"What?" asked Snails, not understanding for a moment.  Then, he realized Snips' implications.  "No!" he protested.  "It's nothing like that!  We just started talking!"

"Thass how it allus starts," mused Snips.  "Talkin'."  He inspected his friend closely, as if searching for incriminating evidence.  "Wow ... iss alluss the lasht one you'd think.  You don't look like a lady-killer ..."

Snails was utterly at a loss for words.

Ruby was not.

"Prithee pardon," she said sweetly to Snails, shouldering him aside and leaning in to put her face very close to that of Snips; in the process necessarily turning away from Snails.  "Snips?" she asked.  "Can you pay full heed to me?"

Snips nodded, waggling his eyebrows at Ruby in a manner which he probably imagined to be seductive.  "Sure, doll," he said, "an' lemme say you're --"

Light flared from Ruby Gift.

It started from her muzzle -- which Snails could not actually see, as Ruby was turned away from him -- and flashed rapidly back along her head, down her neck, down her body and limbs all the way to her hooves and tail.  It was yellowish-reddish-orange light, like fire save in that it gave no heat, instead radiating only the same intense chill that Snails had felt before, when Ruby had first appeared.

Like fire, it consumed her.

It burned away her flesh, and much of her hair.  It left naught but naked, black-charred bones, somehow still standing, perhaps held together by her scorched tendons, which Snails could see horribly moving, working the bones so that the skeletal thing which was there revealed could shift and stand, like any other creature that moved -- though Snails was unsure if it lived, properly speaking.

There was a strong stench of burned omelette and leather -- and suddenly, terribly, Snails realized that this was what he had smelled before from the direction of Sunney Towne.  He had smelled the horror that called itself Ruby Gift.

There was a spattering sound.  His fetlocks felt wet.  He smelled a strong odor of male urine.  His urine.  Ashamed, he realized that he had lost control of his bladder, wetting his own legs like a little foal.

The fact that he could also smell Snips' urine, meaning that he was hardly alone in this disgrace, did not lessen his sense of embarrassment.  For a moment, his humiliation even overrode his fear.

Ruby flashed with light again, this time purely the golden yellow of her eyes, and suddenly she was a normal living Pony filly again -- gray coat, streaked yellow mane, well-rounded and muscled flesh decently clothing her bones.  The stench of burning was gone.

"What -- what are you?" sobbed Snips, scuttering back against the tree, shocked for a moment into semi-sobriety.

"A lot like unto my kin," Ruby replied.  "Save that they wish to kill ye both.  I am the nice one."

Snips blanched, clearly considering the implications.

Snails was also shaken, but -- less drunk than Snips -- he could consider them a bit more deeply.  He had spent a lot of time around the Great and Powerful Trixie, and he had seen many of her illusions.  And he realized that at least part of what he had just seen had been an illusion, though one both more blatant and more extreme than Trixie's style.  What he did not know was -- which was the illusion?  The pretty teenaged filly?  Or the undead horror?

"Get to your hooves!" Ruby snapped at Snips.  "If you do wish to live!"

Snips instantly complied, rolling to his hooves and standing on all four of them.

And immediately fell to his belly as his legs buckled beneath him.

"Urk," said Snips.  "I doan' think I can shtand.  I think I drank too much."  He lowered his muzzle and began being noisily sick on the ground.

Ruby Gift looked at Snails helplessly, fear twisting her face.  She seemed all teenaged filly now, rather than undead horror.  "I can sense their advent," she tersely told Snails.  "They are now come very close."

The air around them chilled.  Ruby's kin were plainly approaching.  Snails did not want to meet them.

Coming to a sudden decision, Snails reached down and scooped up Snips, throwing him across his back sideways.  The effort was painful:  Snips was short but stocky, not exactly a light burden.  "Hold on to me!" Snails told his friend.

Snips' only audible response was an even sicker-sounding gurgle, followed by something warm and wet and nasty oozing down Snails' side.  The side from which Snips' head depended, thankfully, as Snails' nose confrimed.  But Snips' forelegs and hind legs clenched together around Snails' flanks, and Snails further steadied him with his aura.

Snails was normally rather prissy for a stallion; an atittude explainable by the fact that he was inwardly a mare.  But not even Glittershell cared very much right now about the fact that her lower legs were spattered with urine and her left side with vomitus.  It meant very little compared to her own survival and that of her best friend.  It was amazing how little hygiene mattered when oneself and one's dearest companion were in mortal danger.

Snails did do one self-indulgent thing, because it didn't really slow him down.  He picked up the jug of moonshine, now only less than a third full, and popped it into a saddlebag.  Why he did this he could not have rationally explained, but it felt wrong to leave his birthday present to his pursuers.

He looked at Ruby Gift.  "I'm ready," Snails said.

"To the main road!" urged Ruby.

They stepped out and onto the road to Sunney Towne, turned toward the main road -- and stopped, gaping in dismay.

A tongue of drifting, faintly-glowing fog had crept around and now completely covered the way to the main road.  As they watched, it thickened to complete opacity.  Two red-brown eyes, the color of dried blood, blazed from the murk.  Beside them, several other pairs of crimson-red eyes lit menacingly.

"Ruby ..." whispered a cold voice on the wind.  The voice was male, and sounded harsh and sibilant, like something between rocks grinding together and the hissing of a serpent.  "Give usss ... the interlopersss.  Father ... wantsss them."

"Gladstone!" gasped Ruby.  She stopped, concentrated for a moment.  Light flared from her Cutie Mark.  She turned toward Snails.  "I know a safe path.  We must hurry!"

She ran down the road toward Sunney Towne, Snails galloping behind her.  Behind them, Snails could hear other hoofbeats, ones that sounded strangely dragging, as if those making them were shambling, rather than assuming any normal Pony gait.  Yet those hoofbeats were following close behind them, perhaps conveyed by some dire magic of the very fog in which they moved.

More than once, Snails glanced back, trying to gauge the distance between themselves and their pursuers, but all he could see was a rolling wave of billowing, glowing fog.  He might or might not have been able to make out the brighter points of burning eyes within -- he was not sure whether or not this was real or a product of his fear-driven imagination.

"This way" said Ruby, and she turned off the road to the left, onto a side trail.  Snails did not hestiate in following her, though the new trail was clearly narrow and poorly-maintained.  He had cast the lot of both his life and that of Snips on Ruby's guidance; he had no choice now but to see this through to the end, whatever end that might be.

Suddenly Ruby darted into the underbrush.  "In here!" she cried.

Snails leaped in after her; as he did so, he looked back along the way he had come.  There was no sign of Gladstone's fog behind them; he realized with relief that Ruby's side trail must have thrown off that pursuit.  He looked at Ruby and started to open his mouth to speak, but she put one cold hoof gently over his muzzle, and pointed down the trail in the other direction, the one they had been going.

His eyes were drawn to motion.  For a moment, he could not identify that motion, but then he saw what was happening.  He blinked his eyes, rubbed them, then blinked again.  He still saw the same thing.

The plants were writhing, plainly visible in a strange blue radiance that was shining from one side of the path.

It was almost as if they were in a strong wind, but he could feel no wind, and see no other effects of wind, or motion anywhere other than that one place ahead on the trail.  As he examined this effect, the undergrowth parted, and something walking perpendicular to the path stepped onto it, and looked up and down along its extent.

Snails got a good clear look at what it was, too good and too clear for him to deny his vision, deny the reality of what he was seeing.

Much as he wanted to do so.

It had obviously once been a mare, by its lines and what still remained of its eroded features.  Where it still had scraps of coat, that coat was light green; in too many places, the coat and underlying flesh had been worn away to reveal naked bone, yellowed and brown with smudges of dirt.  Its mane, where it had not fallen off the skull and back of the neck, was an incredible mess of dark green hair, into which were tangled branches, leaves and other things perhaps best not examined too closely, as some of them seemed to be squirming.

In one sense, it was eyeless, as the sockets in its skull were empty of any soft tissues.  In a more important sense, it had truly terrible eyes, for orbs of blue flame burned and moved in both sockets, and stabbed out into the night like the beam from a coastal light-house.  The stress of that regard roved up and down the path, briefly passing over Snails and exerting an almost palpable though non-physical pressure upon him.  Fortunately, the creature seemed to overlook him, but surely she would not for long ... Snails stood frozen in fear ...

For the second time a chilly hoof fell on Snails, this time on his shoulder from behind.  Ruby pulled him back under cover, before the green thing could spot him.  Snails crouched and trembled, and found Ruby's cold presence beside him a comfort, even though even he had his own dreadful suspicions regarding her true nature.  Ruby was his friend, while, outside his cover, something that was not his friend searched for him with malign purpose.

Then, the blue light was gone.  Cautiously, Ruby and Snails poked their heads around the branches, to see that the green thing was gone.  He could dimly see the blue radiance, fading away to the right of the trail.

The same side they were on.

With the same idea they fearully looked around the other side of their shelter, only to see the blue light dimming there as well.  The green equinoid entity was clearly walking at an angle away from them.  They had evaded detection.

"Who -- what?"  Snails gasped.

"Three Leaf," Ruby said, very softly.  "Our herbalist, and healer.  The mother of Gladstone.  She may have seen us --"

Snails felt a sudden rush of fear.

"-- or not," continued Ruby.  "It is not easy to tell.  She is uncanny, even by our standards -- she was a witch in life, and now has strange ways of knowing and seeing.  But she was kind, in the days when we still drew breath; and even damned, she is one of the least malign of our number.  She may have sensed we were there, but chosen to overlook us."

Snails could not help but notice certain things Ruby had said, things which which confirmed Snails' suspicions about what Ruby must be.  But now did not seem to be a good time to discuss the matter, and to follow Ruby seemed the only chance for his survival, and that of the best friend who -- he turned his head and checked on his condition -- rested half-slumbering upon his back.  You're lucky to sleep through this, pal, Snails thought.  Better not to see what I've been seeing!

Ruby waited a few more moments, then concentrated briefly.  Her Cutie Mark flickered.

"Path ahead is safe again," she stated.  She moved out.

Snails followed.

They went down the trail a bit.  As they approached the place where Three Leaf had crossed, Ruby looked back at Snails.

"Try not to touch the plants here," the golden-eyed gray filly said.  "Three Leaf may have bound some to spy for her."

Snails nodded, and walked very carefully.  The forest seemed to be closing in on him from all sides, every stray branch and vine now a potential traitor.  It was a new level of fear, in what was already a nightmare.

They walked a ways without incident.  Then there was a brook on their right; Snails could hear it burbling beyond some bushes.  Beyond that stream, the terrain rose into a hill.

"Running water," commented Ruby.  "It does weaken us all, mine own self as well, though I am somewhat accustomed to it.  'Tis part of the safe haven toward which we fare.  Within the hill beyond is my special place.  They all know I love this hill, but only mine own dear mother knows just where I go when I desire to be away from the others.  We shall shelter there, 'til the morn."

She turned and smiled at Snails, and her smile was full warm, despite the chill she radiated.  "I know thou hast many questions, Master Snails.  I would of a certain in thine own place.  Soon we shall be safe, at least for a while.  Then I may answer all thy queries, straightly and at length."  

Ruby led Snails onto an even smaller side trail to the right.  A fallen log bridged a small stream -- it was no wider than a Pony's length, and in most spots shallower than his fetlocks, but nevertheless, somepony had plainly bothered to bridge the flow.  The log looked old and half-rotten and in the faint moonlight that filtered between the trees, Snails could see several other old, rotten logs which had been used to shore up the bank.  There were many of them, and the oldest ones sprouted foliage and were returning to the soil.

"I built this bridge," said Ruby.  "and most of the many before it.  The first --" she sighed, "-- that mine own father made for my mother and mine self, in happier days for us all."  She looked ahead, to where the land rose.  "My hill.  So many times my family climbed it, and ate and drank and played together on its sides and summit.  Mother and father would lie together, content in their love, and I would frisk around them, or snuggle with them.  Everything was so warm and bright ..."  She looked at Snails, smiling at her memories, and in that moment she seemed a very young and innocent creature, neither dark nor frightening at all, for all that her glow had actually brightened.

Then her face fell, and her inner light dimmed.  "I miss those days," she said very softly, almost in a whisper.  "So very greatly, I miss those days."

She led the way across the bridge.  As Ruby passed over the running water her form flickered, like a candle-flame caught in a sudden gust of wind.    For a moment, Snails saw the charred skeletal horror, and then a strange but lovely shape of colorful flowing strands of light, within which fluttered a beautiful butterfly- or bird-like shape, so brilliant and pure in its radiance that it almost hurt his eyes.  Then she stepped off onto the far bank, and she was once again Ruby Gift, a normal-looking filly.

Now Snails crossed.  He did not know if Ruby exterted weight through her hooves in an ordinary fashion, but Snails certainly did, and that weight was roughly doubled by the burden of Snips on his back.  The bridge creaked, and bent, and cracked alarmingly as Snails placed his hooves down, and at the last, sagged so extremely that Snails, despite his burden, simply leaped to the far bank.  The pressure exerted by his hind hooves in doing so caused the bridge to emit a loud crack and then, as it sprang back to the relief of his absent weight, the log snapped in half and fell into the stream.

Snails looked at Ruby with chagrin, ears drooping.  "I'm sorry, Miss Ruby!" he said.  "I broke your bridge."

Ruby merely smiled at him.  "I can cross that at need," she said, and mine own mother might not fear the passage.  But few of the others would dare:  certainly not to hunt thee and thy friend.   Our safety has been doubled!"  She grinned merrily at this, and Snails was reminded of somepony else, though he wasn't certain of whom.

"Come," said Ruby, leading him to the forest at the far side.  "'Tis not far now, to safe --" She looked back the way they had come, and her eyes suddenly widened with fear.  "Take cover!" she cried.  "He is here!"

Snails was not sure who he was, but whomever he was, Snails decided that he did not want to meet him.  So he followed close behind Ruby's flashing yellow tail, darting into the bushes.

They crouched down together behind a bush, laying like frightened lesser-deer pursued by some remorseless predator.  Snails' heart pounded.  When he saw the look on Ruby's delicate gray face, he was sure that hers would be pounding as well, were she still living.  Snails grew even more afraid, wondering what sort of monster could terrify one who was already dead.

Slowly, carefully, Ruby pushed her head between two bushes, stopping at a certain point.  Snails followed her example.  They were close side by side now, and Snails could feel Ruby's coolth against his own shoulders and flank.

They could see the stream, the broken bridge, the trees at the side from which they had crossed.  Only this, and nothing more.

Then, the fog gathered on the other side of the bridge.  Snails could see its unnatural thickness, and he knew from his previous encounters that of a certain some resident of spectral, fear-shadowed Sunney Towne lurked within.  He trembled, at the thought of what new horror the fog's lifting might reveal.

The first thing he saw, of course, were the eyes.

This time they were black, dead black like a starless and moonless night sky.  That color should not have been able to glow, yet glow it did.  They glowed black, and the whole fog-cloud glowed black from the reflected radiance, sucking in and dimming the light of the friendly Moon.

The black light glowed brighter, and began to absorb its section of fog.  Above the eyes unfolded an equally dark black mane.  It was a long mane, long and lush and full.

Gradually, out of the mists appeared a charcoal gray face.  And it was not at all the sort of face that Snails expected.  It was a fleshy face, a friendly face, the face of a Pony who loved life and loved to laugh, to spread and share his good cheer.  The black, black eyes under that black, black mane twinkled merrily in the gray face, promising laughter and welcome to all who viewed them.  It was a good and kindly face, and Glittershell felt a sudden surge of warmth, and realized how much this face resembled that of her fantasy stallion.

The mists lowered to reveal the body, and Glittershell saw that the Pony was very much a stallion.  Big, broadshouldered, and muscular under a plumpness that was not too fat, but rather just fat enough to promise a soft cushion against which a mare might rest while hugging him.  To Glittershell's eyes, he looked as if he would be a positive joy to hug, to rest happy and loved and warm in his embrace.  Certainly, he would be affectionate; he would hug her back in return.

He reminded Glittershell of her father -- not the detached and uncaring father Glittershell really had, but the father she had always wanted to have, back when she was just a little colt called Snails, who did not even realize that she was really a filly.  She had always wanted a father who loved her, who cared for her, who would take time out for her.  She wondered how things might nave been different for her had she been the daughter of a stallion such as the one she was seeing now.

"Why do ye hide from me?" the big kindly stallion asked.  "Why do not ye come out and let us be friends?  We shall have the time of our lives!  I shall amuse ye and throw you a most special party!"

His attitude reminded Glittershell of somepony else.  Pinkie Pie, she thought happily.  He's like Pinkie Pie.  He's a Party Pony.

There was something different, of course, but then this was a different Party Pony, and a male one at that.  Glittershell remembered Cheese Sandwich, and that his style had not been exactly the same as Pinkie's.

Who could be afraid of somepony like Pinkie Pie?  Maybe he had cupcakes?  Glittershell realized she wanted to run out and greet the black-eyed, black-maned Pony.  She gathered her muscles to stand ...

"Ha!" scoffed Ruby   "He is more than usually addle-pated!  If he thinks that he can tempt me, of all Ponies, by proffering a party, when 'twas at a party that he --"  Suddenly, Ruby's eyes widened.  "Snails?" she asked.  "Why art thou mare once again?"

"Huh?" asked Glittershll in surprise.  "Why, I"m --"   At that point, she realized two things.

The first was that Ruby could, evidently, see Glittershell, to the point that she looked like a mare to Ruby when she was thinking of herself as female.  The second was that she had been about to get up and run over to the Pony of whom Ruby had been afraid, one who had materialized out of a cloud of fog and was thus probably some sort of undead thing like all of the other inhabitants of Sunney Towne.  Why was I about to do that? Glittershell wondered.

Well, Glittershell thought, because he's so big and friendly and cuddly and nice and wonderful and he wants to throw me a party and maybe he'd love me and ...

Then why, her common sense piped up, is Ruby so afraid of him?

And with that thought, Glittershell trembled, because she had perhaps been about to do something remarkably, even suicidally stupid -- unwise and overly-trusting even by her own relaxed standards of caution, given Ruby's statement that her kinsponies meant to kill Snips and Glittershell.  And she was frightened, too, because she could not clearly explain to herself why she had been about to commit such folly.

She remembered a talk Princess Twilight had once given to some of the younger Ponies ... Snips and herself, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Diamond Tiara and a few others ... on hostile magic, and in particular how to recognize and defend against it.  Twilight had mentioned everything from energy bolts to bad-luck curses, but what Glittershell particularly remembered was what Twilight had called a "geas" -- essentially, mind-control magic.

A geas worked best when it compelled you to do something toward which you were already tempted.  The more you were naturally opposed to doing what the geas commanded, the stronger your resistance to the geas.  And if you knew that you were being subjected to a  geas, it increased your resistance, because all Ponies naturally wanted to be free and resented compulsion.  A very strong geas could overcome even strong resistance, but few mages could cast a geas strong enough without some physical device to amplify their power.

To cast a geas was normally illegal.  Seriously illegal.  

Of course, so was murder.

Ruby must have noticed Glittershell resisting the geas, because she calmed down.  "He was always silver-tongued," she informed Glittershell softly, her tone bitter.  "In life, Ponies loved him, and followed him loyally.  The curse made his Talent wax more mighty.  Now he holds them all, captives in his own damnation.  And lures yet more in to their destruction."

"Can't they be freed?" asked Glittershell.

"Most do not want their freedom," Ruby explained.  "They do not want to admit that they were mistaken to follow him at the start."

Glitteshell could still feel the geas, beating against her brain like the waves of the sea against a rocky cliff.  She was less afraid of it now.  She knew there was something she could do -- she wasn't sure just what, but something that helped her oppose it.

Trust me, said the geas.  Love me.  I'm a nice friendly jolly Pony.  Let's play together.  Let's all have a feast!  It was very seductive.  Part of Glittershell wanted to believe it, to join the party.

But now, Glittershell knew it was a lie, and that made all the difference.

Snips began to squirm sleepily on Glittershell's back, making noises of vague complaint.

"Thine friend succumbeth," Ruby said.  "We should leave this place."

Glittershell nodded.  They crawled backward a bit, then when they were under cover got up and began walking away, Ruby leading them on a path up the hill.

The black-eyed, black-maned Pony seemed to sense that they were departing, because he called out.  His voice was loud and resonant, far louder than any Pony's could have been at this distance without sonic magic, such as orators employed.

"Come, little visitors," the Pony said in a manner obviously meant to be reassuring.  "Ye need not fear me!  We shall welcome ye amongst us, here in jolly old Sunney Town!  Wby, ye shall enjoy your stay so well that ye shall never wish to go!  Do not flee!  Do not flee!!"  The voice began to take on an angry tone.  "How dare ye flee?  How dare ye shun me?!!"

They reached a section where the foliage opened slightly on the trail, giving them a clear view down again to the black-eyed, black-haired Pony.

"In his wrath, he loses mastery over his form," commented Ruby.  "See what he has become now, the truth of his soul."

Glittershell looked -- not without some trepidation, for she suspected it was unlikely to be pretty.  And it was not.

The handsome face eroded away, to be replaced by naked bone with tatters of what might have been hair or flesh or both.  It looked as though something had blasted him directly from the front, for flesh and bone looked damaged from that direction, forever marring his beauty.  He was still large, but that largeness was no longer reassuring, but rather the effect of a zone of shadow that extended outward from his center and obscured everything surrounding, shifting to match his movements, as if he were a moving wound in the world.

As Glittershell watched in horror, she fancied that he could see through that wound.  She briefly glimpsed a vast dead space, as great as all the normal firmament, in which there were neither Sun nor Moon nor Stars, only a great Shadow stretching in all directions, like a corpse far bigger than the Earth.  And within was motion, and the baleful glare of hateful yellow eyes.  It was only a glimpse, but he fell back gasping from that vision.

"Thou dost see him as he really is, now," Ruby said.  "Thou shalt not be tempted by him again, I do trow."  She looked a moment longer.  "He gives orders to his Guards.  We should hurry now."

Glittershell saw the mist further part.  There were Ponies standing back there, blackened skeletal horrors with glowing crimson eyes, and Glittershell realized that he had seen those eyes before, in the fog with Gladstone.  There were perhaps a half dozen of them, standing in a vaguely military line.  They bore no weapons nor wore any armor, but Glittershell supposed that their own natural powers might be enough.  How, after all, could one kill the dead?

Ruby continued up the hill and Glittershell hurried after her, breathing easier when they got over a lip of ground such that the solid hill itself would obscure them from the view of the monster that had once been a big handsome friendly-looking stallion.  Ruby slowed a bit, and Glittershell began "Those guards ... ?"

Ruby cocked her head inquiringly.

"Who were they?" Glittershell asked.  "More of his followers in life?"

"Nay," said Ruby sadly.  "Unfortunate travelers, Ponies who stumbled on this town and never made it out alive.  When such are slain, they rise again as walking corpses under the control of their slayers.  The curse keeps them from falling to pieces, and they continue to exist in their slayer's service."

"Forever?" asked Glittershell.

"Until they are able to work their minds free, and Pass On," Ruby explained.  "He would wish it were forever, no doubt, for then he would never have to replace them.  But only those who were most foul in life, bandits and the like, can he keep for long.  Ye do not seem like bad Ponies -- he would not have been able to keep ye more than a few months, years at the most, I ween."

Glittershell looked at her in horror.

"Oh, didst thou not ken?" asked Ruby.  "That is what he wanted ye for.  To drain your life and feed his own power, and then to be his thralls.  The feast he invited ye to would have been but your own devouring.  'Twould not, for you, have been enjoyable.  Not at all."

"He's not very nice," Glittershell commented.

Ruby looked at him oddly, the sort of look to which Glittershell was quite accustomed sometimes when she expressed an opinion.  A moment later, Glittershell realized why she had done that.

"Sorry," Glittershell said.  "I'm sometimes not very bright."

Ruby smiled.  "Better a good fool than an evil sage," she said.  "I think thou'rt honest, in any case."

"That's the second time somepony's said that to me today!" exclaimed Glittershell.  "Well, third or fourth time, actually."

Ruby actually giggled, a clear and merry sound that set Glittershell's mind at ease.  

Nopony who can laugh like that can possibly be bad, Glittershell thought.  Still, something nagged at her mind.

They reached a wide ledge.  Water cascaded down from a height and formed a pool, which then flowed down the slope.  Glittershell noticed with some relief that the watercourse was between them and the route which the black-eyed, black-maned horror and his minions would have to take to reach them.  If running water impeded the Sunney Towne Ponies, then this was additional defense.

A path led to the small waterfall.  Glittershell saw that a crevice led deeper within.

Then Glittershell realized the thought that was bothering her.

"Ruby?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"The black-eyed Pony.  The one you say damned all the others.  Who is he?  Is he somepony important to you?"

Ruby sighed, and paused on the trail.

"Yes," she replied.  "He is the one who slew me.  He is Grey Hoof, the leader of the Ponies of Sunney Towne."  She closed her eyes, her face drawn in pain, then continued, her voice deeply bitter.  "He was mine own dear-beloved father."

Glittershell gasped.

"Come!" said Ruby sharply.  "We are not yet safe, and Grey Hoof pursueth."

She dipped under the waterfall, the main flow not touching her, and Glittershell saw her form flicker as before on the bridge.

He followed her inside, into the hill.