The Devourer

by Dandelo

Prologue - A Heart and a Name

What is so special about the night that so many ponies fear it? What is the night? How many countless shadows does it cast on the world, how many unseen places does it consume without anypony suspecting something? When the sky above the animals, the treetops, the mountain peaks disappears, everything is lost in darkness. The night is blind – but sees everything. It’s the night that feeds our fears, that leaves its mark on even the most adventurous stories, fairy tales, myths and legends. It’s the night that provides a shelter for the most gruesome creatures anypony could think of, the night that breathes life into the darkest spots, far away from every light. It’s the night that transforms the smallest silhouettes into…

Giants.

Huge. Lonely. Dark. Silent. Lost.

This is the night.

Every night, covering the land with a cerement, year after year since the dawn of time, has its own core. It comes and goes, just like the darkness, and is never the same. The shadows are different – but their core, their place of deepest despair, stay. In these cores the night lives on. There, its force is as pure as a beating heart, its pulse consuming the air until you can’t hear anything except the echoes of your own fears.

Huge. Lonely. Dark. Silent. Lost.

Gigantic.

The night is blind. But it sees everything. Nothing escapes its grasp, not even its servants. They exist between the shadows where nopony can find them. Until they reveal themselves.

They see. Wait. Watch. Watch…

When she woke up she couldn’t see her own hoofs before her eyes.

Trixie had managed to find sleep after tossing and turning around in her bed for two hours, but it was uneasy and of no account. The last days had been hart and full of shame. Not even one month had passed since the incident in Ponyville, but word has gotten around what had happened. And what really was up with her.

No one believed the lies of the “great and powerful” Trixie anymore.

Leaving Ponyville she had been heading to the next villages. With the little money she had left she managed to buy board and lodging but soon her reputation had preceded her. Laughed at and frowned upon, disdained and outlawed: through the course of a few days her once so bright star had sunken. Her credibility, her identity, her life – everything was gone. She was a nothing; nopony wanted to deal with her anymore. Not even in her dreams she could find peace. It was so surreal, almost as if the taunts chased her into her dreams – as if it wanted to whip and torture her and chase her into the darkness. The militant neighing of her tormentors hit her, blank skulls snapped at her and the laughter of these pale faces sounded like the dry rustling of leaves. She flew into a dark forest, far away from civilization, but even between the deep furrows in the old trees and the mazy branches of young bushes there were phantoms, leering at her, laughing incessantly. Everything was drawn into a swampy vortex in which eerie flashes cast antic shadows. The world before her eyes alternated between murky and clear, the sounds ebbed away and swelled again. Out of every corner her name was hissed: Trixiiiie, Trixiiiie, Trixiiiie.

Even a few seconds after waking up she couldn’t distinguish dream and reality because in her sleep she managed to run into an actual forest. Moonlight danced on top of old trees. She didn’t know the name of the area – she couldn’t even be sure how much distance she had covered. It could be a forest near the village where she had rented a room, but considering how exhausted she was it was also possible that she had come a long way. The trees were so close-packed that no light was able to reach the forest floor. But Trixie didn’t use her unicorn magic to light the way – she didn’t have too. Soon her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see outlines and shapes; this was more than enough. She could see a small trail, made long ago and now overgrown but it still caught her eye as well as the place the trail was leading to. She could feel it with all her senses: she saw, smelled, felt, tasted, heard it. Alone in an unknown forest, far away from the safe surroundings of a city, many ponies would have been paralyzed by fear. But not Trixie. Not today.

Not now.

This place melted her fears. She felt connected with it, it was… it was right to be there. Something has led her to this place, had called her

(Trixiiiiiie Trixiiiiie Trixiiiiie)

and wanted to lead her even further. Between all the destitution of the past few days these unknown feeling was intoxicating. Something was blocking her thoughts, but thoughts would be wasted in this place anyway. There only longing counted – longing for what, whatever.

Encouraged by this foreign force Trixie ran to the place. Her legs didn’t belong to her anymore and the desire for the unknown obscured her mind. She couldn’t even remember the way, just that she suddenly was standing in front a massive stone wall. The thick trees with their greyish bark were giving a wide berth to the stone wall that didn’t look like a natural occurrence. It emerged approximately 16 feet into the air and was maybe two or three times as long. At the sides it decreased until it touched the floor.

Awestruck, Trixie looked the stonewall up and down. She swallowed, but her throat only clicked dryly. “What is this strange place?” she whispered soundlessly and was lost in the silence that entangled her.

She approached the weird formation up until four steps – stopped – why did it felt like she belonged here? - tiptoed nearer – only one more step. Finally the tip of her horn touched the wall. Right this second the floor jolted and dimly lit sparks embraced her. The light spots were floating and dancing before her eyes, concentrating until they formed a pearl of burning blaze that melted into the stone and set it on fire. The stone wall lit up like a flare and the fire was reaching for Trixie. The shock suffocated the scream that wanted to cross her lips. But the fire was burning cold. It didn’t hurt when the flames engulfed her fur and melted the flesh from her bones that vanished into the air shortly after. She was all burnt, but not dead. The memories of her body flowed into the stone, pierced and penetrated it until it reached through it.

Even the back of the wall was burning. There, Trixie was born again, like a phoenix out of the ashes. But what she saw in this place was more hideous than anything she had seen before. The flickering fire drew twitching shadows under the strange bulges on the walls; bulges that actually were an uncountable number of pony skulls – exactly like in Trixie’s dream. The huge holes where once friendly big eyes had sparkles were now staring into the empty, but for Trixie it seemed like every gaze focused on her.

And this was only the beginning of what was slowly unfolding in front of her.

She was in a huge, oval room, the ceiling too high to make out clearly. To her sides there were six big, pale porcelain masks seated between the skulls. A cold wind blew through the mask’s wide open mouths and produced different sounds from each mask. All sounds together were composing a hideous melody that crawled under your skin. The sounds changed with every tilt of your head but every variation of this shrill song sounded like the scratches of rusty nails on a slate and remembered her of a deeply buried panic. More importantly, the masks were watching Trixie, and it wasn’t just her imagination.

The masks were angled exactly towards her.

The floor was from another world. It looked like normal ground in the light but where the shadows touched the soil it glistened in a dark red. Thin wads of smoke emerged out of the earth. In front of her stakes were dug into the ground, confining a narrow path. Trixie couldn’t say if they were made from wood or bones – but she didn’t necessarily want to find out. On top of the stakes were shallow bowls bubbling up violet, red, yellow and white smoke. Trixie followed the path – and had she turned around she would have seen the masks watching her curiously. She didn’t want to; she had to. Something pulled her deeper into the horror that slept in this underground bone prison. Dry dust stuck to her fur and covered her hoofs. She could feel its weight, could feel the dust infiltrate her and sucking the warmth out of her body.

Nevertheless, she went on.

The path wasn’t long. Twelve flat steps led to a circular plateau. In the middle there was a low, black marble table. Dark statues stood around the table.

But the statues were alive.

They were twelve unicorns, above average size. Each one of them had jet black fur, mane and tail. Their hoofs showed a symmetrical zigzag pattern. Around their necks there were thin pale patterns looking like chain links. Right above the sternum the markings were forming a rune that Trixie couldn’t interpret. Every pony had a different rune, but apart from that they resembled each other perfectly.
What unsettled Trixie the most was the fact that the ponies didn’t have eyes – her skulls were covered with fur in the spots were their eyes should be. She felt a twinge in her heart when the singsong of the porcelain marks came to a halt. In this moment she could feel the fear that didn’t want to arise before. But now it was there; now she was paralyzed. Half of her wanted to flee – the other flee was yearning for the morbidly homey feeling that the twelve eye-less creatures omitted. She felt like she had to tear apart.

The pony that was nearest to Trixie came to hear and spoke: “Creature of the night. You are home.”

Her fear left as swiftly as it had arisen.

“You were out there for too long. The light has confused your mind and slowly poisoned it. But now we can welcome you again.” His voice was split into three parts: he spoke with a deep man’s voice, a high-pitched woman’s voice and a third one that sounded like the thuds of dozens of bones on a dusty ground.

“Where… am I?” Trixie asked hushed. Her gaze was on the ground.

“Home,” the first pony answered.

“The cradle of your power! ” the other eleven ponies chanted. Their voices were split in three parts, too, and echoed in the dark. Trixie felt like there were countless ponies everywhere staring at her, talking to her all at once.

“This is the core,” the first pony said and tilted his head in a circular movement in every direction. It sounded like coarse sand getting crushed by giant gear-wheels. “And it is…”

“What core?” Trixie asked.

“The core of the night!” the other ponies screamed. Trixie dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hoofs.

The first pony continued unperturbed: “... destined for you, Trixie.”

She hesitated to address the pony. “You know… my name?” she asked trembling without looking up.

A murmur filled the room; the ponies laughed. “We are the servants of the night,” the first servant said.

“We are blind!” they chanted. “We see all!”

“We have followed you. Our voices lured you to the core. To your home. To your destiny.”

Trixie peered through her hoofs. “Why me?” she whispered.

A few seconds passed. “Our sister has betrayed us,” the first pony finally answered.

“Nightmare Moon! Nightmare Moon betrayed us!”

“She went back into the light and betrayed her brothers. She was weak. She wasn’t a true servant of the night. But behold!” His voice rose. “Now you are with us! Sister!”

“Daughter of the Night!”

The first pony turned towards the marble table. “You’ve lost everything,” he said. “You trusted the light and it stole everything from you. Its minions stole what you are, who you are…”

“… who you were…”

“… who you can be once more.”

Trixie straightened up. “I can be who I was again?” she asked hopefully.

“The night knows who you were before, Trixie.”

“The great and powerful!” they chanted.

“They robbed your glory. The glory that defined you – stolen and destroyed by the light.” His voice entered her mind, darkened it, disoriented it. “We can give it back to you. We are the servants of the night.”

“We are blind! We see all!”

“Yes…” Trixie murmured numbly. She could feel her power coming back to her. The feeling of supremacy that she had felt during every performance, manipulating the ignorant and gullible, gushed inside her again.

Until this day in Ponyville…

“How can Trixie become the one everyone bows down to again?” she barked, incited with new volition, speaking of herself in the third person for the first time in a long time.

The first pony bowed down his head. Twelves runes that were spread around the table – the same the ponies had above their sternum – began to glow. Trixie approached the black table. It was only slightly taller than the flat steps.

“The core welcomes you, Daughter of the Night.”

“The great and powerful Trixie!”

She knelt down.

“A night for a life…”

“A life full of power!”

Her horn was touching the cold marble.

“Give yourself away…”

“And it will give you everything back!”

In the middle of the runes a new symbol appeared. It looked like a baroque and slightly crooked B and shimmered in a dark red. The glow transferred to Trixie’s Horn and captured her body. A bright mark formed on her throat and the symbol now shone forth on her chest and soul.

“What was and what is…”

“... what will be and will be gone…”

“... what will live forever and be mighty for eternity, that is the night. And we, her servants, are part of her divinity.”

The floor was raised a few inches and formed a thirteenth step. The porcelain masks, singing their shrill singsong again, where amended by a thirteenth mask, too. The skulls were quivering under the tremendous power that was awakening in their midst. And Trixie, lost in the delusion to get her old power back, darkened her mind and poisoned it with deadly thoughts. A deep rumble began to soar under the marble pedestal. Black smoke rose.

“Trixie, the great and powerful!” the first pony said.

“The great and powerful Trixie!” the ponies chanted.

“Witness your resurrection…”

“We are blind! We see all!”

“And with you, the night will rise.”

The choral began singing a fast, dark song, composed in a dead, hideous and gruesome language.

The earth quaked. The shadows grew longer.

The night rose.