Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"To Bring Light into Infernal Darkness."

It amazed me how much Good Fellows and the Equestrian Bureau of Investigation had learned about my network and business. They had wanted to interrogate me more, but then I met an extremely cross Princess Celestia—who had failed to raise the sun until past noon.

I knew.

I sat in an ugly green interrogation room that had a clock, a two-way mirror, and a dirty skylight that brightened so late that we all commented.

12:34 PM, in fact.

I was hobbled behind a table so I could touch nopony, the ring on my horn hurting whenever I reflexively reached for my glass of water or tried to calculate things like the bits it cost to shutter a street maintenance business to force the city to pay more to another I influenced. I had been told cooperation would ease the sentence given me. I had been about to relate information about my zebra herbalist Zecora in the Everfree when Celestia burst in. Her yellow magic held the door open and lifted Fellows, and his rapidly peddling interrogation assistant who had played the role of good-copper to his bad, into the hall.

She slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frosted panes in the skylight and to make the two green saucer-shaped lanterns sway.

After a flash bang, the mirror found itself covered in soot. My heart raced in dread.

"Princess!" I bowed my head and tried unsuccessfully not to cower.

The white alicorn stood in full gold regalia, crowned and armored, tall and elegant—and as scary as Tartarus. Her violet eyes, outlined in black mascara, pierced me as her mane waved around her in an ethereal zephyr. She ignored the too-small chairs as she folded between them, her legs underneath her. Even so, she still looked down on me—and I was a big pony.

"You," she said flatly, "What is your cutie mark talent?"

I explained. As I did, she materialized a scroll and a red feather quill with a gold nib. She scribed notes, scritch-scratching the surface loudly.

She remarked, "All ponies get cutie marks to help other ponies."

"Yours?" I blurted in sudden nerves, adding, "Your Majesty."

"To bring light into infernal darkness. Yours is special. Too bad you did not see how useful it could have been to encourage others to achieve their dreams."

She wrote on the scroll quietly until I asked, "What about my dreams?"

Her eyes narrowed, almost as if she had taken my question personally. Her jaw tightened as she thought further about my question, like she could find the right words that could get by a strict political censor, until she answered, "I got what I gave—why should yours be any different? What do you know about the Countess— about... Starlight Glimmer?"

"That she can take anypony's cutie mark away—"

Celestia rose with incredible swiftness, flaring her wings and knocking the interrogators' chairs against the walls hard enough that they splintered loudly. I froze in awe, then, splashed with a spell, I found all my muscles locked. The sheer burning anger that spread across her face made me fear she might simply crush me.

An alicorn was manifestly not a unicorn. Immortal, nopony knew an alicorn's limits, nor that of one's magic. More than rainbows and giggles. Stinking Rich's pals in the peerage speculated that alicorn magic was some baleful terrifying power, perhaps even dark magic kept under control by will alone.

"You are evil," she stated flatly with a finality that went against everything I had heard about her being a soft and loving princess. Her magic flared and I heard flames roar hungrily behind me. I tried to cringe, but couldn't, still frozen. Her magic made me weightless and rotated me so I could see a square golden mirror floating mid-air, framed in fire. The police hobbles crashed to the floor. As I floated closer, it cleared to show a bleak grey landscape that I'd soon learn was Tartarus.

As she pushed me through the glass as if it were a vertical pool of quicksilver, proceeded by a now wax-sealed scroll, I heard, "Think long on your crimes and what you could have done better. One day maybe you can yet be of service to Equestria. Forget Starlight Glimmer."

Yes. I really had ticked her off!

I arrived in a cloud-shadowed land, gray mountains looming to my right and left, and fell legs out, spinning on my belly across a white illuminated glassy surface that for my momentum was as slick as ice. The instant I stopped, chains materialized and clicked closed to secure me, hobbled again, to the ground. Stretched out, I couldn't even stand; there was no slack in the chains. The air was neither hot nor cold, but it smelled of something burnt, something faintly sulfury.

Something, not too distant, gave a trumpeting roar like its owner wasn't sure if it were a lion or an elephant. It was probably a chimera of both. Princess Celestia sent the monsters that invaded Equestria here.

And now she had sent me.

I was a monster.

I had suspected as much, but being tied down with something that sounded vicious and hungry near-by, having lost everything… I began to cry.

Before the tears pooling on my cheeks hit the glass ground, dark wings battered my face and body. Outraged caws echoed against the silver pyrite walls. A murder of crows mobbed me!

I screamed and thrashed, despite the cuffs of the chains that dug deeply into my legs. I was going to die. I knew it. I screamed and flailed out with my magic, despite outrageous stabbing pains and bright lights behind my eyelids because of the ring, but I was going to protect myself even if with the dimmest hope. I even bucked, which twisted me belly up, but at least I could bite at my attackers. Even in this state, I still remembered ghost stories about black monster birds that ate your eyes before eating you alive... and then remembered something by Eager Angry Pool that crows, more insidiously, caused you to fall into madness.

Nevermore.

And, like that, they stopped. I kept thrashing, and I'm pretty sure spraying foaming spittle from my mouth. They formed a line that circled me far enough away that none of my spit could reach them. Though I had pulled half the muscles in my body, and smeared the glassy surface with blood from fighting my restraints, I found pause in the sudden military perfection of their formation.

I was in Tartarus.

I quieted. Pinioned upside down, I peered at my…

Accusers? Judges?

The crows examined me with black beady eyes. As the dark clouds scudded away from the sun, a sudden break brought bright light that slid in from what I'll call the east, like a spotlight beamed on down from above. The birds went from black to prismatic, turning into all the colors of the rainbows the pegasi created. The brilliance and color made me gasp and try to protect my eyes with a hoof, but the chains rattled and prevented that. I squinted to protect myself from being dazzled.

One crow stepped forward, looking first red, then orange, then yellow. He stepped on the scroll Celestia sent ahead of me. He examined the seal with one eye for a moment, then peck-peck-pecked the wax free with powerful thrusts of his weathered beak. Clicks echoed around my prison. The wax jumped upward and landed on my flank, then bounded away on the glass.

Stepping on the edge of the scroll, the leader of the rainbow crows unrolled it with the opposite foot, jumping forward to read the Alicorn's writing in brown ink with a birdy, one-eyed tilted-head gaze.

He looked at me and jumped aside. The scroll closed itself with a loud thawap and spun away.

The leader said in beak-mangled Equestrian, "Using magic is prohibited. For you, using your special talent is prohibited. We see, hear, smell, and feel magic. We will know. We will attack you as we did today if you use magic, but we will hurt you next time. You see your chains? You are now under maximum restraint. Use your magic and you will experience it again, for hours the first time, then days or years as is necessary." The creature ended with a loud caw, echoed by his brethren.

The chains holding me down disappeared in a puff of smoke.

As I rolled over and stood, The crow intoned, his voice changing as he spoke, transforming into something pleasant and pony-like— "White Stockings… Running Mead." —and recognizable. It was Princess Celestia's voice! "My most honored Rainbow Crows are my eyes and ears in this pocket world safely removed from Equestria. You may have a chance of parole if you come to understand your mistakes and can make yourself of service to Equestria. Remember this."

The rainbow crows bowed as a group. Cawing, they cried, "Your Majesty!"

In pairs and in groups, the five dozen crows took flight, fluttering loudly skyward until none remained save the leader. He hopped, ready to take flight himself. I said, "Sir. What do I do?"

The now blue shimmering creature gave a birdy shrug. "Don't use magic. Don't get eaten. Don't cause anypony trouble." He leapt into the air, but circled me to say, "And don't forget anything Princess Celestia told you."

Oddly, that made me think of the last thing I'd heard before I landed in Tartarus.

"Forget Starlight Glimmer."

Why? Why was that important?