Deadly as a Snowflake
11 months earilier…
“My little ponies, we gather here today to mourn the loss of our loved ones….”
Princess Luna stood at a podium in the north courtyard of what use to be Canterlot Castle. She, Cadence and a few other lucky ponies that were consulting with the Princesses were spared the horrors of the fires. The two princesses managed to create a force field to protect them and the ponies next to them. However, the heat of the fires, along with the pressure that it brought with it, rendering them all unconscious. When they awoke, all they saw were ashes, and a single crying mare.
A tear fell from the night mare’s eye. “It was just a few short weeks ago that the hellish demon only identified as ‘Hellfire’ appeared from the very earth itself, and took the lives of so many good ponies.”
And many ponies there were. Behind the podium and stage were more new graves, ranging in the hundreds. Several of the caskets were empty as there was nothing left of the pony. Some were filled with bits of burnt skin and tattered clothing that were recognized to belong to them, in fact, there was only one casket that had a corpse in it, and it wasn’t the body of a pony.
“Many great and caring mares and stallions were lost, ponies’ friends and family. Ponies’ brothers and…” she looked to a particularly large casket, one that was pure white as the snow, with the symbol of the sun on it. “… And sisters. Great, great sisters. Many loved ones, and they will all be missed. But we must remember not their passing, but the great memories that we have had with them, and I know we should all take comfort knowing that they are all in a better place now.”
Oh, the irony of that last bit. Rarity, who was standing within the crowd of mourners, knew all too well where they were, and it was definitely not a better place. It took all her strength to keep her tears at bay, but it was a losing battle. She collapsed to her knees as she let it all out. The loss of her love, the loss of everything and everypony she cared for. She cried until her eyes ran dry and red. She realised that other ponies were staring at her, that the whole ceremony had stopped to bask in her pity.
“What?” she growled as she got up to her hooves and fixing her black coat. “You’ve never seen a mare cry before?!” She pushed through the crowd of ponies. Where do they get the nerve? Staring at me in my moment of weakness? Am I not allowed to express emotion?
No pony followed her when she broke from the crowd. She made her way towards a large oak tree, where there was a small patch of grass that was shaded from the falling snow. Taking a seat down, she stayed there in silence, thinking of the only thing that could stop her from mourning.
The thought of saving a friend.
“To choose one friend over the other,” she mumbled. “What sort of cruel torture is this?”
“What torture?”
The white mare looked up, the princess of the night was standing over her, and the cheerful smile that graced her face during the Gala was long gone, replaced with a sorrowful frown like the unicorn.
“Princess Luna,” Rarity said bluntly.
“Rarity,” responded the princess. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”
“I see no reason why not.”
The large blue mare took a seat next to the unicorn, her starry mane blowing unnaturally in the non-existent wind. “How are you?” she asked.
“Not very well, all things considered,” she groaned.
“I understand,” sighed Luna. “I wish you did not leave so early, but I understand if it was too much for you. What you’ve seen, that night must have been horrible for you.”
“Believe me princess,” the white mare muttered. “It was hell.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” asked the princess, putting a hoof on her shoulder.
“I’d rather not.”
“Then do you mind if I tell you?” Luna asked. “I really need to talk to somepony.” Rarity nodded as the princess started to talk. “I feel so alone, to be honest. You think I would know loneliness, having spent a thousand years alone on the moon, but it was nothing like this. When I was on the moon, I at least knew that my sister was down there, and that she still cared for me….” She started to tear up. “Even after all the terrible things that I did, she still loved me, and now she’s gone!” There were full on water works now as the night mare dug her face into the unicorn’s shoulder. “She’s really gone, Rarity!”
“There, there, princess,” the white mare said in a calm, soothing voice. “We will all miss her. She was a great inspiration to everypony.”
“Do you ever wish you could bring someone back from the dead?”
“What?” gasped Rarity.
“To bring somepony back to life?” Luna sniffed. “I would give anything to have my sister back. I’d go back to the moon for eternity if I could just have the knowledge that Celestia was still with us.”
“Try not to think thoughts like that,” said Rarity as she gave the dark mare a hug around her long blue neck. “It’ll drive you mad, trust me.”
*****
Rarity clutched her coat around her. “Is it always this cold in Hell?”
What Rarity and Frostbite had walked into was a completely different world than the one above: a world of ice. There was no sun, but rather a blue light that illuminated the land. In the distance, she could make out what looked like a dense, temperate forest, filled with snowy evergreen trees. Beyond that was what looked like a frozen sea, but she couldn’t tell, and in the farthest distance, perhaps at the edge of this world, was a sparkling blue city.
“Isis, city in the frost,” said Frostbite, the shade hovering alongside the mare. “A jewel in the icy mist, and a haven that all souls doomed here try to reach.”
“Is it really a haven?” asked Rarity curiously as she took a few steps down the wintery stairs and onto the cold, hard ground.
“Compared to the rest of this world, it’s a paradise,” the dragon spectre said. “Though, the journey to Isis is quite hellish.” He looked to the unicorn beside him, he could see the fear in her eyes. “Oh, yes, your friends. I’m sure that they made it to the city,” he smiled. “We have hope, remember.” He dragged his claw through the blue flames of the fire, the flames bending and licking around his fingers. “Never lose hope Rarity, especially when facing him.”
“I won’t,” she whispered, walking down the small path and into the snow. “Where exactly are we?”
“The Boneyard,” Frostbite said. “The first of many plains that all souls must wander through. It is a pass that leads through frozen beasts, and not all of them are dead.”
“Monsters?”
“Worse,” he said, as they continued off the small mountain and to flat land. “Ponies.”
“Ponies?”
“Yes, poor little mares and colts that lost their way. Too weak to move on, some even begged Hellfire for help, trading their sanity for thicker coats and teeth, doomed to forever hunt in this tundra of bones” the dragon sighed. “It is a sad sight to see how such good souls turn into beasts. We are here.”
They approached the base of a canyon, but instead of walls of rocks that walled the path, it was a wall of bones, a hall of white ivory. Several million kinds of bones, ranging from small squirrel skeletons to hydra skulls, all packed together to form the inescapable walls of the boneyard. The ground itself was littered with carcasses of various dead animals, slowly rotting in the snow. And the smell...
“It’s so... Revolting” gasped Rarity, clenching her nose as she gazed into the abyss of death. “How in Equestria is this possible?”
“As I said before, Mistress,” the shade of the dragon said. “This world is driven by madness and hatred. Sculpted in the vision of a cruel and unforgiving mind, and we must venture through it if we ever have hope of seeing Isis.”
“Very well,” sighed the mare. “Let us proceed.”
The duo took their first steps onto the fleshy ground of the Boneyard and Rarity cringed as she felt her hoofs becoming wet with decaying walrus fat and gore. Frostbite simply hovered over the ground as they continued walking. The skulls of the dead stared at them with their hollow eyes, always watching, yet never actually looking. There was rattling in the walls of the canyon, as small little creatures started to peek out, staying just out of sight and in the shadows. The white mare looked worried as she saw the beady eyes of the unknown creatures stare at her and the spectre.
“Do not fear them Mistress,” reassured the dragon. “They are more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“You have every reason to be afraid, Miss Rarity,” said Frostbite. “But remember, you have hope, and that will protect you as long as you maintain it.”
“So I’ve been told.”
They continued walking down the icy trail of flesh, snow and bones, passing over elephant skulls and through dragon ribs.
*****
11 months earlier…
Rarity slowly opened the room to her hotel suite, she had gone all out, and had gotten the honeymoon penthouse in one of the most well received hotels in Canterlot. She had planned to come back here with Spike after the ball, but now…
She stared at the empty bed. It was a princess size, she refused to sleep in anything other, especially if she were to share with an almost fully grown dragon. Shaking that thought out of her head, the white mare slowly walked on, and fell on the bed.
She laid there for what seemed like hours, just staring at the wall. It was an ugly shade of pink, looking horrid against the dark cherry wood dresser and other furniture that lofted around the room. She counted every knob on the drawers, every leg on the small table, and watched the same fly buzz around the room, ramming into the window seventeen times. It must have been an awful life to be a fly. Rarity rolled off the bed, purposely falling to the ground so she could just lie there on the fuzzy carpet.
She had asked it to be scented with lavender, the room, and she could still smell it linger within the fibers of the rug. It was his favourite, she would spray a puff on whenever they had a date, and she knew it drove him crazy with desire. Rarity pressed her nose against it, inhaling the bitter aroma of the perfume. She grew intoxicated on the fumes, her eyes getting red and teary as she grabbed the covers from off the bed and pulled them down to her, rolling and wrapping herself in a cocoon of the soft silk sheets.
But she still felt cold.
Squeezing tighter and tighter into the blankets, trying to feel warm again, doing everything she could to mimic her love’s caring and strong hold. But there were things that she could never replace, his strong arms around her body, his rugged scales that massaged her every muscle when she was scared or stressed, the steady beat of his loving heart that would lull her into a sleep and into a dream…
But that feeling felt like a dream away now.
Rarity finally gave in to her emotions, her tears now flowing freely onto the carpet and blankets, she missed Spike so much, more than anything in the world, but did she miss her more than her other friends? Fluttershy, who they had had several weekly spa dates, and the timid yellow mare would always listen to her gossip and the other first world problems in her life. The poor thing, she had no idea what would happen to her animal friends, or who would take care of Angel Bunny, or wake up all the woodland animals when this dreaded winter was finally over.
The snow was building up against the window, blocking out the white winter sun. Luna had taken up the duty of bearing the sun as well as the moon, just like her sister had done in her absence. The room was now shadowed, dark as it should have been, and it just reminded Rarity that she was alone.
And that she could only save one.
*****
“I can’t believe it…” gasped Rarity as she gazed at the obstacle that laid in her way. “How is this even possible?”
“Well, I assume it must be prehistoric,” said Frostbite, floating by Rarity’s side. “That is all I can think of.”
“It’s just so big,” said the white mare. “It can’t be real, there’s just no way this thing ever existed.”
“Miss Rarity, we are in a frozen underworld, you are traveling with a talking dead dragon and are trying to save a loved one, and the thing you find difficult to believe is that a rabbit could be the size of a house?”
She blushed as she looked over at the abnormally large rabbit skeleton, lying in the snow. Its bones were white, bleached from centuries of blizzards and hard falling snow. The skull itself was like a large boulder, and could probably house a couple of ponies from the cold. It was sad that such a large and seemingly sweet creature was doomed to lie in this frozen waste.
“We should continue, Mistress,” suggested Frostbite, as he started to continue down their path.
“Of course,” sighed Rarity, giving one last look at the rabbit, before heading down the snowy path.
It was a quiet walk down the slopes of the bone filled canyon. The snow was still falling down at its normal rate, not so fast like a blizzard or as calm as a gentle snowfall, a sort of middle ground between the two.
“How much longer must we walk?”
“Not much further I believe…” said the spectre, stopping mid step. “Wait, do you see that up ahead…”
“What is it?” asked the mare, as she looked past the ghostly dragon and to a lone figure standing away down the path. It resembled the shape of a pony, but seemed bigger and more beastly, the coat was much longer and thicker to brave the cold, and what use to be the mane was frayed and messy. It was hunched over something, maybe it was digging into the snow, or maybe it was doing something else… “It seems familiar… Like I know them.”
“Stay back, Mistress,” warned Frostbite. “These ponies tend to be territorial and hostile.”
“I’ll be quite fine,” she smiled, as she pressed her blue-flamed torch close to her chest. “I still have hope that there is some good down here.” She carefully walked down the snowy path to the strange creature. It was a lot bigger than she had originally though, possibly the size of a grizzly bear. Its yellow fur was stained with patches of reddish-brown, and was probably not dirt. But the most peculiar thing about this creature was its hair, the long and entangled pink hair… “O-oh my… F-f-f…”
The creature stopped what it was doing as it slowly turned around. The beast’s face was like a pony’s but much more rugged and grown, her mouth was dripping with red blood, a furry hunk of meat caught between her sharp, wolf like teeth. But it was her eyes that gave it away, those two big aqua green orbs that even now started at her timidly.
“Flu—Fluttershy?”
The yellow beast winced at the sound of here name, almost ashamed to hear it. Cold tears rolled down her face. They were frozen before they could even fall, stuck to her blood-matted fur.
“Fluttershy, is that really you?”
“Please…” the thing that was Fluttershy whispered, her voice was just as soft as it was when she was alive. “Please…”
“Fluttershy, darling!” the white mare panted, gently placing a hoof on her shoulder. Her body was bony and cold, the winters of this world had not been kind to her friend. “What in Equestria happened to you?” she asked. “You look positively ill.”
“I’m a monster…” Fluttershy whimpered, spitting out the hunk of meat from her mouth and onto the icy ground. “I was so cold… So hungry and alone…” More tears froze on her face.
“What are you saying dear?”
“They abandoned me…” the yellow beast cried. “They were my friends and they abandoned me…”
“The others?” thought Rarity. “Twilight and the rest of them, are they here as well?”
“They left…” sighed Fluttershy, slumping into the snow, as she started to lazily lick the blood from the now frozen meat. “There was a blizzard and we got separated, I got lost in the snow.” She took a bite of the meat. “I was so cold, so hungry. There was no bread, or flowers, not even grass to graze on…” She started to choke up a bit as she swallowed her meat. “There were just lost animals…”
“There, there Fluttershy,” sniffed the unicorn, as she started to stroke her mane. “No pony blames you, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t want to do it!” she bellowed, digging her face into the snow. “I love animals! I really do, but I was so hungry… And he said the flesh would keep me warm.”
“He?”
“The…” the yellow beast looked around the frozen tundra, before leaning into Rarity’s ear. “The demon pony, Hellfire,” she whispered.
The white mare gulped. “What did he do to you?”
“It’s so cold…” Fluttershy moaned. “Can we go to my cave?”
“Of course dear, let’s get you out of the cold…” said Rarity, helping her friend up.
“Umm, Mistress,” Frostbite piped up, “I do hate to ruin your reunion, but perhaps we should get on our way…”
“Frostbite! How can I just abandon my friend like this? I didn’t know you could be so uncouth.”
“Forgive me, but I must insist that we continue.”
“It’s okay…” whimpered Fluttershy, as she walked to one of the walls of bones. “I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Don’t listen to him, Fluttershy,” said Rarity, running up to her large friend. “He obviously left his manners back in his body.”
“Thank you…” she said quietly as the two mares walked into the mouth of a dead dragon and out of the snowfall outside. “It’s much better in here.”
Fluttershy’s cave was dark, damp and full of discarded skeletons of small animals that Rarity could only assume were the past meals of her friend. “Certainty less cold darling,” she finally muttered.
“He came by today…” whispered Fluttershy.
“I’m sorry dear, I didn’t quite catch that?”
“He came, Hellfire,” repeated the yellow creature, turning around, her eyes were no longer timid and scared, but had become morbid and cold as the frozen corpses that surrounded the cave. “He told me that you would be coming…” Her nostrils flared. “For Spike.”
“Oh dear,” gasped Rarity as she carefully pulled out her torch. “Fluttershy, you must know that I could only choose one, it was a hard decision for me!” She was starting to tear up now. “I could only choose one…”
“So where was I on your list of choices?” Fluttershy growled. “I clearly wasn’t the first, so what was I Rarity?” she started to advance on her friend. “Was I second? Third? I was probably the last pony you would save, wasn’t I? Just Fluttershy the doormat! Fluttershy the pushover!” she roared.
“No, darling it wasn’t like tha—“
“I would have chosen you!” the yellow beast cried.
“You… Would have chosen me?”
“You were my best friend!” Fluttershy squeaked, her words growing hysterical. “You were always my best friend. All those spa dates we had, how we always worked together on the Winter Wrap Ups, did those mean nothing to you?!”
“I-I didn’t know!” begged Rarity, wielding her torch like a sword against the large yellow beast that was slowly advancing on her. “Stay back Fluttershy! I don’t want to hurt you!”
“He gave me an offer when he came by,” Fluttershy snarled, her eyes growing wide as she stared at her friend. “He said that if I killed you, he would let me be free, away from the cold, away from this hell!”
“I-I…” Rarity could hardly talk. She was caught in Fluttershy’s infamous stare. Every single cell in her brain was screaming for her to run away, but her muscles wouldn’t respond to their calls.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” growled the yellow beast, as she hovered over Rarity with her imposing figure. “But you made the wrong choice.”
“Stop!”
The spirit of Frostbite phased through the boney walls of the cave, passing right through the white mare and floating with between her and Fluttershy, obscuring their visions of each other.
Rarity felt her muscles relax again as she regained the feelings in her legs.
“Run!” he shouted to her.
She didn’t need to be told; the unicorn quickly turned tail and ran out of the cave. She had the idea to smack the top of the jaw with her torch, making the top part of the skull fall down, sealing the entrance of the cave. She started to sprint down the snowy path. The blizzard had picked up since they had entered Fluttershy’s cave. The thick heavy snow pelted her face, stinging like daggers with each contact to her fragile face.
Frostbite quickly flew up to her, “I told you we should have kept going!” he said.
“Is this really the time?” hissed Rarity, as she looked back to the cave. “Do you think that will hold her?”
A large yellow paw shattered through the thick skull of the dragon, a very angry Fluttershy crawling out of the large hole.
“I guess not…”
“Come back!” roared Fluttershy, snarling as she galloped after the white mare. “Come back so I can KILL YOU!”
Rarity ran faster than she had ever ran before, but Fluttershy was much larger and faster. Every stride that the hulking mare took was equal to eight of Rarity’s. Soon the yellow beast was upon the small mare, with one swipe of her massive claw, Fluttershy knocked Rarity into a heap of snow and bones. She lunged on top of her, snarling as drool dripped from her fangs, her eyes red and bloodshot. This wasn’t the sweet shy mare that took care of animals, or the timid little creature that was her friend. This was a monster, a monster she had had a hoof in making.
Rarity looked up into Fluttershy’s feral eyes, the once element was a shadow of her former self. All the kindness was gone, chipped away from a year in the cold, and the betrayal of her best friend…
“I’m sorry, Fluttershy,” whispered the white mare, tightening her grip on her torch. “But I have to save Spike!”
TH-WACK!!!
Rarity drove the head of the flames into her friend’s face, knocking the yellow beast off of her. Fluttershy hissed as she staggered back, her damp pink mane singed black from the blue fires of hope, something that she had lost.
The white mare scrambled back to her hooves as Fluttershy sneered at her. The left side of her face was burnt black and bubbling under the fresh burns. The hulking pony slowly circled the unicorn, keeping at bay from the torch that she wielded.
“Mistress, up here,” whispered Frostbite, who had flown up the bone wall. He was pointing at a large bone that was sticking out from the others, a femur from the looks of it. “It’s the key bone on the wall, see if you can knock it out!”
The mare looked at the bone next to the floating dragon, then back to the feral mare. She started waving her torch around, scaring the beast of her friend back against the wall. Fluttershy roared and growled at her, like a wild animal, until her flank bumped into the wall.
“Please forgive me…” Rarity sighed, her horn glowing with a faint blue glow. The bone that Frostbite had pointed out started to glow with the same coloured aura. It began to wiggle slowly, and it soon popped out. “...My friend.”
Fluttershy looked up and yelped as the wall of cold bones and carcasses fell down on the poor beast, burying her under ten feet of skulls, skeletons, and the other frozen remains of the dead. Rarity averted her eyes from the tremor of kicked up snow, and when it all floated back down, it there was no sign of the pink maned beast.
“That did it,” commented Frostbite, as he floated back next to Rarity. “Shall we press on?”
Rarity stared at the fallen pile. “What happened to her Frostbite?” cried the unicorn. “What happened to my friend?”
“The same thing that happens to everypony down here,” sighed the dragon spectre. “I know that it is hard to understand… But that thing,” he pointed to the bone heap, “is not your friend anymore. She’s just another lost soul corrupted by Hellfire.”
“Don’t talk about her like that!” scowled Rarity, tears still dripping down her reddened cheeks. “She’s still my friend!”
“No she isn’t, Mistress,” said Frostbite. “You can’t see them like that anymore… Would your friend try to kill you?”
“No…”
“Then that was not your friend…” the ghost drake sighed. “You must understand that he has changed them, shattered their minds and bodies in this icy underworld, and molded them into parodies of their past lives. You must promise me that you will survive, that you will see what they are, and not what they were.”
“It’s just… They’re…”
“Have hope, Miss Rarity,” said the dragon spectre. “Remember, you must keep believing that you will make it out of this, you must. Do you understand me?”
The white mare stared at the drake, his glassy and ghostly eyes spoke no lies, he would not hide the truth from her, he wanted to see her get out of this and would not sugar coat the situation. She sighed at this truth, over the past year she thought that she was the one that was tortured, that Hellfire had been cruel to her and her alone, ignorant of her friends face. It was selfish of her to think this way, she could have been here, she could have had Fluttershy’s fate, trapped in the cold, forced to eat flesh to survive.
These were not her friends anymore, and she would have to learn to accept this fact is she was to make it to Isis. Make it to Spike.
“Let us continue,” Rarity sighed, her head hung low as she and the ghost continued down the long narrow path of the Frozen Boneyard.
Stats
Page generated in 0.05 seconds
Total duration
871 users online
453,294 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
You're taking an interesting route with this. I figured for sure you were going to stop at Chapter 3, that was a good end point. I do like where you're going though, it's... different, but not in a bad way.
Whoa.. That whole scene with Fluttershy was just crazy.
This story just keeps on getting better and better. I look forward for the next chapter.
Wow... Why do I get the feeling that Rarity's being led into a trap ?
Poor Fluttershy and poor Rarity, this is going to be one difficult trip to endure.
Do keep up the good work.
Oh my god, this is freakin amazing. This story must continue!
Are all of her friends beasts like Fluttershy or will they have different forms?
Broken minds, distorted bodies, I think the ones you should fear the least were your pegusai friends Rarity. The greatest challenges have yet to come and I do recall him telling all your old friends that you came to save Spike and not them. Which I imagine would lead the most fearful opponent for you in this hellish frozen wasteland Twilight Sparkle to go protect the final passage before your darling love. Provided she retained any of her mind at all I imagine she would become a bit like the Cheshire cat to the extent that she would be clever and cunning full of power and mad all at the same time. Which would her quite the adversary really. But I'm not really sure where you were planning on taking her so that's just my insight. I know you'll do what ever you had in mind originally and it will come out great and spectacular. Still not sure about dragon ghost, in a place like this I'd find it very hard to trust anyone. He's also being almost too helpful, but that's just an opinion.
Would you, Fluttershy? Or would you pick your childhood friend Rainbow Dash?
Welcome to Hell. We have much to see, and all of eternity. Many levels await us, each worse than the last.
"Hell is other people" -Joseph Garcin
Wow... just wow.
I thought that Fluttershy was going to start swinging immediately when she saw Rarity, but seeing Fluttershy devolve in front of Rarity makes the maddness even more terrifying.
I liked the red for the "kill you" line. I heard Fluttershy's voice dropping from her normal voice to, 20 octaves into deep bass on that line.
I forsee either Pinkie or Twilight being Rarity's toughest fight.
)
(Bonus points if Pinkie went full cupcakes while in hell and fashioned herself a tent or a dress from cutie marks and appendeges.
If this was a game the boss fights would be as such:
(Im calling it now, Celestia is going to show up(dunno about Shining Armor(he is dead right?)))
vl 1 boss: Fluttershy
lvl 2 boss: Applejack
lvl 3: Rainbow Dash
lvl 4: Pinkie
lvl 5: Twilight
lvl 6: Celestia
Life is cruel to us all, like its currently being to Rarity.
Though remember:
freewebs.com/freakyfools/protect_your_nuts_closeup.jpg
Looking foward to the next update!!
I dunno... the entire scene between Rairty and Fluttershy was over all too soon... never really got the connection, the agony and guilt of her decision...
And I think. As powerful as Hellfire is, with hope. Rarity CAN redeem her friends.
Oh and BTW, ' she miss her more'... Spike's a him, not a her.
I hate that Hellfire.
oh my...
this is not going to end well...
very good story, though...
Wow...poor Fluttershy.
This is the most moving story I've ever read. I can't wait to see where you're going to go with this.
Yeah life does that, I'm still trying to recover my "nuts" since the last week of November. Anyway, the story makes me think of Silent Hill or any other survival horror game and keep up the good work yo.
2001555
I agree with this. When it gets down to Rainbow Dash, Pinkie, and Twilight, I bet the fights are really going to get nasty. But I hope I'm not underestimating Applejack here!
Lovely chapter though. It's strange how the dead still need to eat. I suppose that one's spirit in this universe still needs all the things one needed on the living plane? I can understand cold, but hunger?
Anyway, I'm betting there's a trap at the end, just for Rarity's hope to give out and Hellfire to finally get her.
2022462
With AJ, Rarity just has to worry about geting her skull crushed in by AJ's superior body strength where as the others have a large amount of unpredictability. Both Pinkie and Twi have shown mental instabilities in the past AND are both powerful in their own way.
Heck, AJ may be the only one able to swallow the difficult pill that Rarity chose Spike, Rarity's fiance, over herself and let Rarity go by with just a little emotional damage from guilt.
Well when your in hell, it makes sense to have all of the bodily sensations and drivers to cause misery.
In this chapter, hunger drove Fluttershy to eat, and perhaps kill, small animals in order to satiate her hunger. Though doing so makes her feel terrible since she loves animals and hates to see anything in pain or die.
I think in Dante's Inferno, that there is a section of hell with gluttons that were starving.
Then again, I haven't read it.
2022927
Nice. I suppose having to feel all of the bodily sensations during life and yet not have them fulfilled is a terrible form of torture. Yeesh, poor Mane 5. I also haven't read Dante's Inferno either so all of this is rather interesting.
2023625
By all accounts, true hunger and/or thirst is among the worst sensations a human can feel(apparently the worst pain is a broken femur(strongest bone in the body)).
With hunger, the body will actually begin to "cannibalize itself" by drawing protein from the muscles after fat stores have been drained.
Another thing the body will do with extreame hunger, is to modify what is considered "tasty" so that the conscious mind wont reject what was previously considered "disgusting" food sources for missing essential vitamins, minerals, and fats. There is a story of a guy stuck on a life boat at sea for weeks or months (I dont remember the time frame). He was able to catch fish to eat and desalinate enough water to live. Initially, he would just eat the normal fish flesh, like he would at a restaurant, and get rid of the guts and bones. That was enough for calories to keep going but he wasn't getting various vitamins for essential bodily functions. So after a while his body started (subconsciously) telling him stuff like "eat that organ, it tastes like chicken", "eat the eyes, they are sweet tasting", and "eat the fins, its like beef jerky". Towards the end of his time stranded, he would eat EVERY PART of the fish he caught. (THIS is why Bear Grylis eats all kinds of animals, bugs, carcasses, and eyes)
The Hellfire bastard must die.
I was sad when Princess Celestia and the others died, but at least Luna and Cadence survived.
Poor Fluttershy.
Suffer not the Mutant to live.