Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"Some Big Baddie I am!"

Over the next few months I settled into my new life. My life as a hermit grazing in the foothills lasted a week. I despised sleeping in the rain, forced to stand upright and dripping, despite needing a shower. Lukewarm rain wasn't comfortable.

I'm not a good companion for myself. I got tired of second and third guessing my actions leading up to ticking off Princess Celestia. Other than a certainty that the princess cared more about Starlight Glimmer than she did her first protégé, I'd discovered no lessons to be learned. No amount of rumination could change the past.

Time was immutable.

Finding other ponies proved easy. I headed away from the ring of mountains and found a dirt road. After about eight hours of walking, two days of travel since I wasn't used to all the exercise, I found an agricultural colony surrounded by green fields of alfalfa, borage, and cabbage—almost anything a pony could want to eat, including sugar cane and wheat, but no apples. Obviously too warm year-round for them.

What are ponies without apples? Cross? Mean? Sad?

Whomever had developed the settlement had built all the squat one-story buildings of the same brownish mud-brick, tiling the roofs with the same red tile. The walls showed major cracks repaired with crumbling whitish mortar multiple times over many centuries. Same with the roofs, some of which had been painted half black with the tar used to repair pulverized sections. The rest displayed yellow and blue lichen growth or brown stalagmites of mineral growth. Nothing was painted the pastel color ponies usually preferred.

No pride? Apathy? Punishment? No building supplies? The one six-story warehouse-like structure in the "civic center" looked no better.

At first everypony stared. Earth ponies raised their heads in the fields and soon I had a train of gold, pink, and minty green Earth and Pegasus ponies trailing me. Griffons and unicorns jogged toward me at the edge of the fields, joined swiftly with others as I sauntered down the main street. Their murmurs swiftly became a roar to drown the clip-clopping of my shod hooves on the silvery rock and tar pavement. None wore clothing, in contrast to my worse-for-wear yellow tweed jacket and torn dirty business shirt. Most wore wide-brimmed hoof-woven straw hats.

I decided to say nothing until addressed and kept on moving forward.

A snake as thick across as a big dinner plate slithered out of a glassless window. (I saw no glazed windows—couldn't be broken or used as a weapon, I suppose. I saw weathered wood shutters everywhere.) This snake had the same coloration as a dewy weed infested lawn, shades of green about her head shading into yellow and brown, but with scales that sparkled as she slithered into the sun. A rainbow of crystals, mostly blues shading prismatically to a smattering of red, crusted her under her neck and formed a crewcut mane of sorts that ended in a widows peak a hoof-length from her nostrils. She had a red cockatoo crest of feathers that slowly stood at attention. It made her look interested.

I stopped when she blocked my path and rose to address me. She said in a surprisingly pleasing contralto, "My name iss Jewel." Yes, she hissed the S sound. Yes, she displayed a red forked tongue. And teeth, stiletto teeth. Long enough to skewer zucchinis and onions for a barbecue.

Made me wonder what she ate. Suddenly I realized I'd seen no foals. Or elderly ponies for that matter.

I shuddered despite my better instincts before replying, "Appropriate name, Lady Jewel." Lady, by gender alone but a very fine thread mustache made her look subtly villainish.

Oh. Was that a blush. Interesting. She continued. "I'm a glitter cobra in case you didn't know. And those craven ssissies aren't talking to you because of that gnarlly ring on your horn. It's one of the few magickss allowed to work here and everyponyelse with one is under restraint." She looked up briefly. "There'ss two, I think. Three! Prong iss an oyrxicorn."

It would be interesting being an information broker in a town with a blabbermouth. Might be my number one client. Jewel could serve as my teacher, in any case.

She added, "They don't know what kind of baddie you are. For the record, I can protect myself." She snapped her jaws a few times, which sounded like steel clashing, and snapped her rattle-tipped tail a hoof length from my nose like a whip. It help also that, considering all her coils, she out-massed Celestia.

Yes, I had done bad things. Celestia had made the point I'd gone down the wrong path with a talent that was designed to do other ponies good. No need to tell anypony that my talent didn't require my horn, either—not that I'd ever risk being mobbed by a murder of rainbow crows ever again.

What to say to my new compatriots? "With this ring I can't lift a spoon to feed myself. Some big baddie I make!"

"You should remember this," a voice above me rumbled. I looked up to see a pepper-white griffon with golden lion haunches and a black crest. As he landed, he added, "No inmate may do magic, even pegasi who must use magic to fly."

He wore a gleaming bronze helmet, through which his crest of black feathers threaded, and a breastplate peppered with dents. He examined me with uncaring chocolate-colored eyes. He stuck his constable's baton against his chest armor.

That begged a question. "Sir?" I asked. "You fly."

"I'm the Warden and my name is Sharp Beak. Of course I can fly—Princess Celestia appointed me to administer the Tartarus province. I see you're never going to do magic. Don't fight, either. Pass me your commitment paper," he finished, pointing to the bulge in my jacket.

Like an earth pony, I bent my neck down to get my teeth into my pocket. Though the stiffness in my neck that had become chronic back home had gone away, it was a feat of manipulation I hadn't yet mastered. I snagged it, but it fluttered down to my hooves. I remembered rummaging through Starlight Glimmer's saddlebags and dropping her ponytailers and books to the ground and felt suddenly embarrassed. The warden tapped with a back paw, sharp claws clicking on the brick. I bent, bit the scroll and passed it over.

His was a power move, but ripe with information.

He took out a second scroll and wire-rimmed glasses. These were no ordinary glasses in that they had lens like soap bubbles displaying a prismatic sheen. He examined both scrolls side-by-side. The writing wasn't modern Equestrian and written in a strange cursive. Ten to one, the glasses were magic and they translated the script.

He eyed me and let both scrolls close with a thwack. "The rainbow crows will punish using your talent like any other magic." He put the glasses and both scrolls in his saddlebag.

"Sir. May I have mine back?"

He stopped, blinked, and glanced at the parchment. "Why? It's of no use to you."

"It's a reminder of Princess Celestia's instructions to me. Please, sir?"

Chocolate brown eagle eyes regarded me. He shrugged and flipped a scroll at me as he took flight.

Any of the earth ponies that had worked for me would have caught it with a mouth grab, but I let it tumble to my hooves. It bounced, making the popping noise cardboard tubes make when struck. Jewel swooped in. She grabbed it in a coil of her tail, which rattled faintly as she waved it before me then tucked it into my pocket.

"Thank you."

Her reptilian face appeared a half-pony-length from my face. Her scales resembled colorful terrazzo tiles and formed a hypnotic spiral around her neck. She said, "Sss-Celestia the Dark gave you instructions? That's reserved for the warden."

Two bits of unsolicited information there. "You can't use your talent, either." I pointed my nose at her neck. She'd likely used it to hypnotize prey and enemies, not to help anypony—but still.

"S-sad." Her tongue flicked out.

Though the crowd of villagers were closing in now, I whispered, "You share what you know with me first and we'll become fabulous friends." I could recognize a gossip hound, even in the guise of a snake.

She gave a decisive single shake of her rattle. "Instructions?" She had to know every first.

I hissed, "Promise."

Nictitating membranes blinked across her eyes as she regarded me. She glanced at the crowd and brought up the rattle end of her tail which resembled a small mummified spiral beehive made of the same stuff as a hoof. I tapped it with my hoof.

"Yesss," she said.

"Princess Celestia instructed me to forget Starlight Glimmer."

"Who?"

It was the start of a good business relationship with ready clients to which to sell a rare commodity and a lieutenant who I could depend upon to tell me juicy information first (often before blabbing in indiscriminately afterwards, alas). Unfortunately, there were no bits in Tartarus, certainly none in the agricultural colony which proved to be something of a commune. I confirmed quickly what I guessed: new inmates, especially pony ones, were rare. The last set had consisted of a Fillydelphian constable named Wolf Run, followed a few years later by his wife, Pear Brandy, and, surprisingly, by their son Brandywine. Nopony had seen the husband nor the son in four years. I found five-hundred ponies, assorted griffons, and token pony-compatible denizens such as antelope, golden stags, oyrxicorns, pachydermoseros, in addition to my new friend the chatterbox glitter cobra. They called the place Central City, though it seemed more like Morose Town. Little news of Equestria filtered into Tartarus. It made me a celebrity and as an information broker, I knew how to take advantage of it.

Like in any small town, everypony knew everypony else. Everypony worked; those that did less got less. Fortunately for me, I had workhorse blood in my veins. After an achy week of getting used to laboring, I could pull most any wagon. Tartarus had a magic that cured most ills and stopped aging. The creeping arthritis that had afflicted me in Equestria vanished in Tartarus during my first month.

Tartarus had other banes. Mostly unending routine and sameness. The oldest living pony here was a white unicorn stallion nopony remembered the name of. He had the closest thing to a solar cutie mark I'd ever seen save Sunset Shimmer's—obviously a ball of fire. The irascible cuss never spoke to anypony, but his magenta eyes followed you and if you encroached, he bellowed inarticulately. The word was that he was around five hundred and consumed by anger and resentment. He drank himself unconscious every night at the common kitchen.

It took me years to discover his name was Blare.

A few ponies recollected they had been here over three hundred years. Most inmates had lived here more than fifty years. I was the baby, except for Pear Brandy—and her son, who nopony had seen in a long time.

He was amongst the disappeared.

The longer an inmate lived, the more likely apathy sunk in. A red earth pony who everypony called Bauble was expected to disappear next. She had stopped talking the year before and had gone from corpulent to skeletal. The former jewel thief had specialized in magical amulets at the end of her career and had found one that allowed her to enslave anypony she touched with it.

Bauble often forgot to come in from the fields, even in the rain. I knew this because I tried to bring her in one day. She wouldn't budge. She was obviously half mule. Ponies figured she'd wander off one night. There were plenty of cliffs and other deadly places in Tartarus for the impatient.

The story was that the rainbow crows took care of the remains.

Nevermore.