Something Sweet to Bite Too

by Knackerman

Ashes

Morning dawned without much fanfare. As the sunlight crept slowly through the towers bedroom window, the tentative rays brushed against Rainbow Dash's closed eye lids. Pillows and blankets were mounded on top of and around her in the remains of a fort, which shifted in slow collapse as she woke to the new day. To Dash's surprise, after staying up chatting with Celestia, she had apparently drifted off into dreamless sleep. Though she had only been out of it for a few hours, it was the best rest she'd had in months. She felt a bit of her old spirit flood her soul with each lung full of fresh morning air. Rising from the pile of pillows that had been her bed, she glanced out of the palace window at the gleaming dawn. The dew glistened on the well manicured grass below, only a few fluffy clouds marred an otherwise brilliant blue sky. It would've been a perfect morning if it wasn't for Shining Armor and a small regiment milling about in the inner ward and Trixie tapping her hoof impatiently beside them. It seemed that Celestia had let Dash sleep in as she had gone about raising the sun, which meant for the first time in a long time Rainbow Dash was late. It was kind of an odd sensation. For a moment she considered just wallowing in it for a while and letting Trixie fume. She would have too, but she remembered Celestia's words last night in Twilight's old tower, and all the stories they'd shared over the long evening they'd spent together. If Celestia really thought something terrible was about to happen then she'd already held them up long enough. Even if Trixie's tapping hoof made her want to roll over and go back to bed, the urgency couldn't be denied.

Leaping from the Castle balcony, Rainbow Dash hovered in the air over the soldiers. Before she could say anything Trixie spouted, "Finally! For the self proclaimed 'fastest Pegasus in Equestria' you certainly take your time getting out of bed!"

"I'm sure that Rainbow Dash arrived as quickly as she could," said Shining Armor, inserting himself between the two mares. To Dash he said, "Now that you're here we can move out. I've sent a few scouts ahead of us. They should meet us about halfway between here and Ponyville. We've lost a few patrols out there recently so I thought it would be prudent to be cautious, even in daylight."

"It's probably not a bad idea," admitted the blue flyer. "It might be more dangerous at night, but even I haven't spent much time on the ground around Ponyville in awhile. You earth bound ponies need to be careful, especially with the Ponyville Express out of commission." The broken down engine had been scrapped not long ago, though the burned out train cars still stood on the tracks next to the gutted train station in Ponyville.

"Oh please, with Trixie's skills and those of the Captain of the Royal Guard, what exactly do we have to be afraid of that you don't, feather brain? Trixie thinks if we're going, then we should go," she turned with a twirl of her cloak and set out through the palace gates. "We're wasting daylight."

As much as Rainbow Dash wanted to say otherwise, there really wasn't anything to do but follow the flamboyant unicorn.

---

What land that had been spared from Ponyville's burning seemed bleached and wilted. It was dead quiet in the fields around the burnt ruins. When spring had come, Dash had worried about how she was supposed to wrap up winter by herself, but with no crops to plant all she really had needed to do was wake the animals and melt the ice and snow. When she had gone to wake the critters from their burrows, however, they were strangely abandoned. Even the bear cave looked as though it had never seen any use. She went ahead and cleared out the clouds to make way for the sun and melt the snow, but those empty warrens still haunted her thoughts for many days afterwards. She finally decided all the animals must've just been spooked by the fire and had moved out of the area. Either that or the limp vegetation around Ponyville, with no ponies to care for it aside from Rainbow Dash, was unappealing to the critters. It was silly to think something had just swallowed up every animal around Ponyville, right?

The birds had eventually returned from the south, but they didn't stick around long. At least that's what Dash told herself. She didn't want to consider the alternative to why the skies were so empty and the hedgerows so quiet. Shining Armor's scouts had returned but they had little to report. Nothing living under that bright blue sky so much as twitched. There was only a cool breeze that played with ashes and dust that still clung in drifts here and there around the burned out town. The usual sounds that had accompanied their hooves were muffled by these ashes as they took their first steps into the shadow filled town. Though there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the sunlight didn't seem as bright here as it had on their trip from Canterlot. Of course that might've just been Rainbow Dash's nerves playing on her mind. This was the first time she'd set foot in Ponyville since the fire. At least outside of her nightmares anyways.

One of the soldiers knelt to pick up a half melted orange bucket. It had been in the shape of a pumpkin once, though the dried black sludge inside was no longer identifiable as the candy it had once contained. Trash like this was littered all over Ponyville. What hadn't been burned had largely gone undisturbed, even as Celestia had sent team after team to investigate what had happened here. The going theory among the populace of Canterlot was that there had been no one single cause for the fire that had consumed the sleepy little town. The best explanation that anypony could come up with was some kind of mass hysteria had gripped the populace and caused them to panic, leading some fires to be caused accidentally and others to be very much on purpose. It was the cause of this hysteria that nopony had been able to agree on. An invading force, internal strife, or something darker? There were as many theories as pony's left in Canterlot.

Being here, among the charred edifices that had haunted her dreams, Rainbow Dash felt sadness envelop her heart. She had thought she might be fearful or timid but instead, in the light of day, what was left of Ponyville was mainly just overwhelmingly depressing. Her melancholy seemed to stretch over the rest of the party as the others eyes strayed away from looking at the town directly as much as possible. The sun was bright, the air was cool and sweet, and the contrast with their surroundings only served to make the tragedy of what had taken place here more pronounced. It was Twilight's brother who was the first to shake himself free from gloomy thoughts and get down to business.

"Alright Trixie, this is your show now," intoned Shining Armor as his men fanned out to secure a perimeter. "My guards will keep you safe as you explore and will assist you to the best of their abilities. What exactly is it that we're looking for?"

"Nothing that you'll likely be able to perceive with your untrained senses," the showy unicorn responded. "Only the Great and Powerful Trixie has the skill and knowledge to detect the subtle workings of the ancient magics we seek. But don't worry, your men won't be completely useless. They can search the town for six points of desolation, areas where no life lingers, only rot and decay will remain. Trixie confesses it may be like looking for a needle in a hay stack here, but Trixie is confident you'll know it when you see it. In the meantime, Trixie needs absolute quiet to concentrate on the fluctuations in the ether."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, "I guess this is where I come in. I'll help coordinate things from above. With me in the air, I bet we'll find what we're looking for in ten seconds flat!"

---

But they hadn't found what they were looking for in ten seconds flat, or even ten minutes. Ten hours had ticked by without so much as a clue to go by. As the day wore on, the bright clear skies turned gloomier and gloomier, dark clouds moving in from the south. The sun slipped in and out of sight, it's welcome rays becoming difficult to find as the ponies continued their fruitless search. Everywhere they looked it was the same desolate grey earth with blackened timbers thrusting up like rotted teeth to mark where a house or shop once stood. Every pony was washed grey, no matter how colorful they had been before, covered in dust from stomping around the ghost town. So far they had found nothing like what Trixie had described. Sure there were plenty of desolate spots, but nothing had lived anywhere in Ponyville since the fire. There was nothing that seemed more or less desolate than the rest of the town, all of it slowly collapsing into broken glass, charred wood, and rubble. The guards explored what buildings seemed safe enough to enter, but had no better luck finding anything inside than out. Just the sad remnants of other ponies lives. It was the half melted, half burned Nightmare Night decorations all over town that really started to get on everypony's nerves. Something so festive, now twisted and rotten didn't help with their mood. The burned out, staring eyes and images of Nightmare Moon made even the most stalwart among the guards feel as though they were constantly being watched. More and more eyes glanced at the steadily sinking sun and the gathering clouds, and more than one pony muttered that they were wasting their time.

Even Rainbow Dash was starting to feel exhausted, her aching wings urging her to land and take a break. The cloud cover was making it difficult to coordinate with the guards on the ground, even with her bucking a few just to have a little daylight. After dispatching a particularly stubborn cloud, Dash spotted Trixie in the resulting shaft of sunlight, near where the Town Hall once stood. They never had gotten enough bits together to do more than superficial repairs on the old building. Just as well, really, given it was just a pile of rubble now. "Hey Trixie, any luck?" asked Dash as she landed on a small pile of stones that might have once been the west wall.

"Perhaps Trixie would have better luck if you stopped interrupting her concentration!" yelled the magical pony, unfairly. Her voice echoed loudly in the stillness as a vein throbbed in her forehead. Rainbow Dash hadn't so much as said a word to her in hours. "Honestly if it's not you, it's the guards! If it's not the guards it's that meddlesome Shining Armor! How is Trixie supposed to find traces of spell work nopony has done in thousands of years when Trixie can't even sort through all this background noise!? All this, this trash, isn't helping matters either! Why didn't somepony tidy up this place!? This was supposed to be simple! We were supposed to come out here, find the wretched sigils, purge them, and trace them to the source of whomever cast them."

"Well, maybe if we had more to go on than the vague description of 'look for a place more desolate than the rest', we might have found them already," said Dash exasperated and more than a little annoyed. "Are you sure you even know what you're looking for Trixie? If you haven't noticed, this entire town and everything around it is a wasteland!"

It was clear from how Trixie's face twisted and her nostrils flared that she was about to make a sharp tongued retort, when her eyes suddenly widened. "No...surely not," whispered Trixie to herself. "The power required for something like that, the sacrifices involved would be monstrous but..." The dark blue unicorn quickly dug around in her knapsack, furtively searching for something as if her life depended upon it.

"Are you okay Trixie?" asked Dash as Trixie produced a ball of clear crystal with a flourish. The orb caught the furtive rays of the sun and sent muted rainbows dancing across the grey landscape. Without hesitation she threw the orb at Rainbow Dash. "Hey!" reflexively, the azure flyer caught the ball.

"No time, fly as high as you can, high enough that you can look at all of Ponyville through that orb. Do it now before the suns light is lost completely."

"What am I looking for?"

"No time! Go now, worry about that when you get back down here! Go!" she shouted.

Hearing the panic rising in Trixie's voice, Dash gave a single powerful pulse of her wings that sent out a cloud of dust as she rose high into the heavens. Thinking about it, she didn't remember scheduling any rain for today. The clouds must have drifted over from the Everfree Forest. The weather there had been even more chaotic than usual, and had been effecting the weather around Ponyville. Dash didn't really mind, it made things more interesting in an otherwise dull day, but just now she sensed something menacing about the clouds she hadn't felt before. As if they weren't just a regular weather phenomena but some kind of menace that she should be wary of.

As she finally reached an altitude high enough to encompass all of Ponyville, Rainbow Dash placed the orb between herself and the dark stain of a town. Nothing happened. Was this some kind of joke? Was Trixie just trying to get rid of her? The tired pegasus felt like a fool taking off like that just on Trixie's say so, especially with her wings already aching. That stuck up, two bit magician! When I get back down I'll take her crystal ball and shove it right down her, "What?" Something interrupted her thoughts as a glimmer of something caught her eye. It was faint, yet something flashed across the surface of the crystal. Rainbow Dash moved the ball away from Ponyville to make sure it wasn't a trick of the light, but sure enough, as she moved the orb back and forth she could see a vague pattern layered over the town through the crystal ball. As the sun slipped behind the gathering storm clouds one last ray, bright and clear, struck the crystal just right. Rainbow Dash almost dropped the orb in shock. It was a face, a grinning maniacal face that seemed to leer at her, full of hunger, hate, and insane glee. As the sunlight faded, so too did the image in the crystal, giving way to something far more complex that seemed to be moving. It was as if Ponyville burned with light, and then suddenly, nothing.

"I saw a face." Rainbow Dash told the others once she had returned to the ground and they had gathered around the Town Hall. "It was horrible. But that's not all, I also saw what looked like weird writing that kept moving and changing, wrapping around the entire town. There were some other symbols too, but they spread completely across the town from end to end."

"This is worse than Trixie expected," said the unicorn, tucking the crystal ball back into her knapsack. The crystal had gone dark as the cloud cover began to stretch over the town. "Trixie did not bring the tools necessary to dispel a sigil the size of an entire town, even a small one like Ponyville. I'm not even sure Celestia has the power to break a curse of this magnitude."

"A curse? So you can confirm that Ponyville was cursed? Can you tell by whom?" asked Shining Armor, a stern look clouding his countenance and that of his fellow guards.

"The face, Rainbow Dash, did you recognize it?" probed Trixie.

"No," as soon as she said it, she knew it was a partial lie. She had seen that face before, but only in her nightmares. The shadows were growing thicker as Rainbow Dash spoke. She didn't know why, but that unnerved her greatly. "At least I don't think so. It's no pony I know, that's for sure. I'm not even sure it was a pony at all. The word that comes to mind is evil. Crazy evil, like I've never seen before. Whatever that thing was, it's bad news."

"Can you describe it in detail? Any detail, no matter how vague, may be the break we've been looking for," said the Captain of the Royal Guard imploringly. It was clear he was hoping to salvage what was increasingly beginning to look like a failed mission.

"I can try...but maybe we should start heading back to Canterlot now? The sun will be setting soon." Indeed, it was already far darker than it should've been for early evening. The clouds above them hung pregnant with the promise of rain. The trip home was already looking to be something of a wild one. As the clouds drifted in so too did a low, thin fog. The air was saturated with mist, granting a ghostly quality to the dead town. It seemed less like they were in for an autumnal storm and more like an oncoming monsoon. What exactly was going on here?

"There's nothing else you and your men can do here Captain. Trixie is the only one with the knowledge of how to break this sigil. It may take all night, but the Great and Powerful Trixie will find a way to break this curse, just you wait and see!" It started to rain, fat droplets falling into the dry ashes with soft plunks here and there. "Though Trixie thinks it might be easier if there were somewhere dry from which to work."

"The Library still seemed to be mostly intact," said one of the older guards. "We could set up for the night there."

"Yes, I doubt Celestia would want us to abandon Trixie to the gentle mercies of the night." Shining Armor smiled at Rainbow Dash. "You should probably get home though Miss Dash. I don't think we'll need your expertise in the towns layout further and it looks like it will be rotten weather for flying shortly. We can meet back up in the morning, if you wish to accompany us back to Canterlot. Thank you for all your help, but the Royal Guard can take it from here."

"If she can drag herself out of bed," muttered Trixie in such a way that everypony could hear.

Conflicted, Rainbow Dash didn't know how to respond. It was true she didn't want to be anywhere near Ponyville anymore, especially at night. It was just she didn't want any of her friends, and she found herself thinking of Shining Armor as just that, to be here after dark either. She could probably leave Trixie without feeling too bad, but not Twilight's brother and all of his men. That just felt disloyal somehow. There was also the matter of Celestia's dire warning. After seeing that twisted face in Trixie's crystal she was convinced, now more than ever, that the Princess was right and something truly awful was about to happen. This was so frustrating! What was wrong with her? Not that long ago she had been fearless, willing to take on any challenge, face any foe! Why was the thought of staying in these crumby old ruins so terrifying to her? She slept in her nice warm bed just above the town she was standing in nearly every night! Of course it didn't help that it was probably where her friends had died, cursed to death by some unknown evil that was still out there somewhere. Nor did it help that the library where the others planned on staying was the nightly setting where her nightmares occurred. Given that perspective, the choice was kind of obvious, especially with Shining Armor giving her such an easy out. So why did she hesitate?

Fortunately, Rainbow Dash didn't have to resolve this moment of indecision. A soft chuckle rose from the edifice that had been the town hall, followed by a soft sing song voice, "Nightmare Night..." As shadows and fog swept through the town a low rumbling, that could easily be mistaken for distant thunder, shook the charred edifices. "What a fright..." Hooves started bursting from the ground all around them. "Give us something..." They came out of demolished buildings, from under piles of rubble, and up through the dust in a myriad of multicolored madness. "Sweet to bite..."

Some were huge and dripping wet with goo, while others were sleek and shiny even in the gloom. Some shook, visibly brittle, and unable to support their own weight. Here and there a few watched from doorways, unwilling or unable to venture into the dimly lit town square. Even so, Rainbow Dash and her friends were suddenly surrounded on all sides by grinning faces made from a confectioner's worst nightmare. Jagged ribbon candy teeth, like broken glass, scraped together as they whispered and laughed. Their many voices rose in a cacophonous harmony "Nightmare Night, what a fright! Give us something..." "something!" "something sweet!" "give us! "sssweet..."

"Give us something sweet to bite!" The oncoming storm, and where to shelter from it, was suddenly the least of their concerns.

Comments

[CaiusTheShadowPony]

[violet_star_267]

6961077
Nice way of putting it

[lochbessie]

Here lies the main plot hole of the story.

If you just send out waves and waves of Pegasus recon squadrons over all of Equastria and then send out large platoons of Unicorn soldiers into the danger areas you can surely triangulate where the Candy Mare is and then Celestia can go and turn it into stone right?

We already established what makes the Candy Mare so good at killing. First it uses fear tactics and then it only attacks isolated weak pockets of soldiers or just civilians. Soldiers that are trained well should stand their ground. Soldiers also have weapons that can deal with the minions so just make them understand the situation and they will be devastating to the Candy army. I mean just look at Big Mac and Zecora they are just 2 civilians and they can take down so many of these things.

So here we are in the war room and that is our battleplan. Send out recon over large areas triangulate where the enemy is, send out soldiers with mages. the Pegasus provide crucial intel and can even provide air support by dropping rocks and homemade bombs onto the creatures. Meanwhile the soldiers dispatch the minions and the unicorns deal with the main threat. These soldiers will be plentiful and have tons of reserves. In fact you should even employ some civilians in the effort. When you defeat the Candy Mare you just have to either let Celestia turn it all into stone or dig a giant hole and cement it with the Candy Mare pieces inside of it.

So what did we learn today? Equastria is OP thank goodness for the devs nerfing them by making every character incompetent and stupid.

[Moosetasm]

10868652
Eh… not too sure about that take on things.

Calling the authorities incompetent and stupid is pretty unfair. We have the benefit of having read the first story, so we have a ton of information these characters are not privy to. Even with what we do know, there is nothing that we know of that is effective against the creatures. Twilight and every unicorn in Ponyville combined were unable to beat the thing. Luna wasn’t able to do anything either. Even if soldiers were deployed, their efficacy would be questionable at best, and more is definitely not better. Based on what we saw in the first story, this is a zombie apocalypse kind of fight. Every loss on your side is an immediate gain for the other, and on average, one of them is worth more than one untainted pony. If you employ civilians, then you’re outright making the enemy stronger.

As far as any kind of coordinated response, I’m surprised they were able to muster one at all. Imagine if 50% of the populace in a nation’s capital just vanished, like… say 50% of Washington DC. Not just the lawmakers, but the government employees, active and reserve national guard, local police, firefighters, hospital staff, merchants. It takes years to hire and train people for those positions when there isn’t a drastic unexplained loss of potential replacements. Losing half of the populace would be absolutely devastating. Even having put together an emergency response, they scoured the ruins and found nothing. They have no reason to deploy soldiers or do anything else there if there’s nothing there to find. Just remember no alarm was raised, and no one knows what happened other than that there were widespread fires. A good portion of the remaining government still thinks this was a foreign attack, they’re certainly not looking for the candymare, or some other less-than-tangible threat. As far as figuring out what’s going on or where the epicenter is, it’s only recently that they even came up with the idea of looking for the magical ritual, and it’s much larger than their on-hoof expert (Trixie is their expert, that’s how bad the loss of skilled labor is in the capital) had any suspicion of.

As for why team Zecora-Flutter-Mac has survived, you’re talking about a small, highly-skilled group of guerrilla insurgents. They don’t stick around and fight, the only reason they seem to be alive is because they just up & leave if they so much as suspect the thing is approaching. They’re not running in and killing these things then running out. And even being careful, they seem to be in really rough shape.

I dunno, I think that the plot is pretty solid so far, as far as internal consistency goes.

[Str8aura]

10868652
Isolated weak pockets? The first story ended with it attacking an entire town at once