Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns

by Pokonic

And Now, For Something Completely Different

"I-I'm so sorry!"

"You will be."

---

I wasn't a stranger to dangerous places; Goddesses knew that you couldn't cross the border down south before finding some abandoned Equestrian military complex filled with robots and monsters ready to blow bits off you and/or eat you, and some of the Stables could get weird.

I should know. Heck, me and my squad mates had raided not one, not two, but three Stables, and only one of them still had ponies in it, which still kinda sucked considering the hellhole that Stable was.

It was filled with a bunch of drug addicts and raiders and damn did they take their sweet time dying when they had more drugs than blood in their veins. One crazy mare tried to bite my neck open, but the good thing about wearing heavy-ass stripped down power armor all day is that it's really fucking useful when you can move around quickly when you are surrounded by crazy drugged up ponies who think they can open you up like a can of cram with their teeth. My guys spent three days clearing it out, and when we got out we got a commendation from the top guys and a pat on the back from the President herself, for all it mattered.

But I did all that for the NCR, and the NCR is in the middle of 'reconstructing' right now, so it pretty much means that it's as dead and defunct as anything else that doesn't have a functioning leadership, which is kinda sucky because I wanted to get payed for the last year and a half of doing shit for ponies who sat in their chairs and played war with eight foot tall brahman heads and tribals and Steel Rangers and all that jazz. I was seriously looking forward to getting a medal for taking a minotaur arrow in my lower left leg, but nooo, the Desert Rangers needed more money then the poor ol' boys on the front!

So, right now I'm sitting with three other of ponies and the boss in a cave in the middle of nowhere, and we have no clue what's going to happen to us, especially because we kinda-not-really-technically deserted the NCR a day and a half before everything started to collapse. So on the off chance that it did reform we would be on the hit list, because two members of the Heavy Infantry corps wearing very expensive equipment led under a rogue CO would be one of their biggest targets.

But that's a tangent, because the mad dog they are afraid of is really good at killing things, and I knew better to get in her way. And I ditched the armor back in Braymont, because it's was really fucking heavy anyway, and because the boss said so. I liked the boss though, from a certain point of view, and she made sense. I couldn't run in armor that heavy, and running's a pretty good thing to be able to do when you're deserting the military.

Besides, contrary to popular belief, Charnel is a pretty great gal to hang out with during wartime, because if you stayed behind her you could get a glimpse of her killing everything in front of her. Ponies, minotaurs, griffons, pegusi, monsters; she's killed them all, and her free time where she wasn't killing things was usually spent either talking about killing things or preparing to kill things. I mean, I was one of her bodyguards and all, but she's probably saved me and my partner's skin more than I have her.

Also, she has a pretty nice ass.

I mean, I'm not stupid enough to try anything, but as the great pre-war philosopher Savage Love once said, 'Crazy is fun, from a distance'.

Sure, she once tied up a Steel Ranger who tried to defect to the NCR and blasted him with a flamethrower while he was in his power armor after it got disabled from a shock grenade, and then cracked open his suit and fed his remains to some dogs, but that barely qualifies as a war crime anyway.

...

I mean, sure, she does have a alcohol problem, and a anger problem, and but in the old days if you were crazy and worth keeping alive you got called 'eccentric', so that's what everypony in the NCR's brass called her in when there was a chance that one of her ponies was listening. As it happens, I was and still am one of her ponies, so I'v probably heard that word more than most ponies should have to.

Those are, after all, stories, and I don't believe she, for instance, supposedly stuffed a tribal's foal in a pressure cooker, or that the rumor about Three Foot Dick having to change his name to Two Foot and Five Inch Dick after he tried to flirt with her while the two of them were drunk and she had a knife has any weight to it. I don't think the supposed time when she stuck a funnel in one mare's privates and poured liquid nitrogen down it happened either, because knowing Charnel, she probably would have let her choose a hole she wouldn't pour the stuff into. The version where the mare got swapped out for a minotaur female, though, I could believe that.

Again, Charnel's a fun gal to be around, from a distance.

If I ever need to stop myself from thinking about asking her out, I just have to think about the incident with whisky bottle and the hooker.

...

Regardless of the fact that Charnel's a great gal to be around, I couldn't say I liked her sense of direction.

When I asked to where we were going after she shot up the inspection team in Braymont and skipped town, Charnel only said 'North', which is possibly the most useless answer to anypony alive in Caledonia besides, quite possibly, 'South'. Of course, I didn't say anything, because Charnel doesn't take questions well and her team of four hoof-picked soldiers got reduced to three when Hayseed wanted to know what the hell was wrong with her and got roasted for it.

I lost track of where we were after we went underground in some bunker to the west of Braymont that Charnel knew about, and that bunker led to some crazy long tunnels that kept going on and on and on. Sometimes we went up, sometimes we went down, and while Charnel just kept saying we were heading to a safe place I wondered if we were going to exit out of a mountaintop or something, because after a week down underground I couldn't tell how high or low I was, and neither could anypony else.

Even Path Finder, the one guy in the whole of the NCR who's cutie mark was about finding directions had no clue where we were. Path Finder, the stallion whose job description was to figure out where he was, had no clue where he was, but I couldn't blame him for that. He ended up as the other casualty in the trip in the tunnels, due to Charnel apparently not liking how he kept talking about where she should be going.

Charnel had the three of us that were left walking for what felt like a month, but was probably closer to three days, and eventually we came out in the middle of some hills, like, literally in the middle of some hills. From there, we just followed Charnel some more until we came to this cave, a old crumbly thing that was hidden behind a pile of rocks..

Now, the outside of the cave looked pretty normal, but Charnel just told us to wait outside it as she went in it herself. She said there was something she needed to check on, and when Ivory questioned her she just narrowed her eyes and didn't say anything else when she walked into the darkness.

The hills were greyish, all rock and no grass, and as cold as it was I wished I brought some warmer clothing. Even in the mouth of the cave, the air was cold and harsh, and I had to try and pretend that I wasn't as cold as I was as I rubbed my hooves together.

We didn't bring much with us, on Charnel's orders. Ivory carried what was probably half the kitchens with her, and Path Finder and Grease each had a battle saddle armed with two shotguns and two jury-rigged flamethrowers respectively, which meant that I had a new battle saddle.

Ivory was a different sort of pony, though. First of all, she was the only other unicorn besides Charnel in our little squad of misfits. Secondly, she wasn't military.

Not that that really meant anything, with the NCR the clusterfuck that it is, but she knew absolutely nothing about shooting a gun and was only around in camp because she knew how to heal things. She was only there because Charnel let her live after Grease spotted her trailing behind us as we fled camp. She was a scavenger who lived in Braymont, she said, but with her clean hair and coat and just from the way she acted all prim and proper I wasn't so sure if I believed her. Charnel, though? She just shrugged her shoulders and told her that she could come with us if she could keep up.

She's a understanding gal, that Charnel.

---

Grease had the smart idea to start a fire near the mouth of the cave for warmth, and the four of us were gathered around it, waiting. It felt like Charnel had been down in the cave for a hour now, and I was tempted to try and head back through the tunnels.

"This is stupid." I mumbled, looking away from the fire and out into the bare rocky wilds outside the cave, trying to spot something interesting, for probably the twentieth time by then. "I didn't sign up for this."

"Buttermilk, be quiet." Grease mumbled back, huddled up in what looked like a jacket made out of stitched together kitchen rags, "If you keep whining I'll tell Charnel the reason I had to burn yah was because you started talking 'bout killing her."

Grease kept the big easy grin on his face before breaking out in a little easy laugh, one I couldn't help but share. He was a black coated stallion who had the hair and voice to live up to his name, all except the white stripe down the center of his otherwise mussy mane. Rumor had it that he had a zebra in his family, with how small his muzzle was and how his hair was colored, but I never asked about it, and I didn't especially care. He was actually the only guy I knew personally from camp; he was one of Charnel's favored guys, and we kinda had to become friends with the whole issue of turnover rate in Colonial Cook-Cook's service.

At least he was a fun guy.

"You know, Grease?" I said, low and slow-like, "I wouldn't be the one talking about-"

Somepony let out a snort, and it took me a few moments to figure out who.

"About what? Being stupid?" Grease growled, shaking his head at me like I was a foal.

"Stop fighting!" Ivory half-wheezed without raising her head off the ground, still tired from carrying her things and was content until this moment to just lay near the fire and pretend that she was asleep. "Seriously, stooooop it."

Ivory, apparently not caring a bit about her flawless white-gold hair, laid her head back down on the cavern floor and groaned like an impatient child. "I mean, all I have heard you guys do is argue about who has the bigger dick and tell horror stories about how many ghouls could've been down in that tunnel! Don't you have lives?"

Grease shrugged his chiseled shoulders, and gave the mare a unsympathetic look. "You got anything better to talk about?"

Ivory, in return, met his gaze with a similarly uncaring look and a roll of her big blue eyes. "Well, let's see... I don't really know either of you two, only that you work for the crazy pony who dragged us to this cave and you both worked for the NCR."

She prodded her head up on the ground with a hoof and kicked her legs in the air, an act more appropriate for a pony half her age. "Also, Charnel's some sort of crazy pony, he," she stopped talking, to point at me with a polished hoof, "has onion breath and has a stupid little scruffy beard, and you," she stopped again, to point at Grease with another, similarly pristine little hoof, "look and smell like you bath in cooking oil and are one of the foulest mouthed ponies I have ever met."

The mare crossed her front legs together so she could rest her head on them, as if raising either of them was some sort of terrible trial.

"I take offence to that." Grease spoke up, smiling at Ivory all friendly-like, "I bath in vegetable oil, thank you very much."

Ivory sniffed indignantly, and scooted over to the fire using only her front hooves, so she looked a bit like a worm with a nice ass.

"Buah, you guys are jerks." she mumbled.

I was bored, and slightly annoyed, and while the stark landscape around us was sort of pretty to an extent, we were still in the middle of fucking nowhere and not a single radio signal seemed to penetrate the great white-brown cliffs around us, so I decided to humor the pretty, petulant mare who I wasn't sure if I was attracted to or repulsed by.

"How about this," I decided to say, trying to sound as casual as possible, "We could play a game."

Grease looked up from the fire and blinked at me.

"Are you a fucking foal or something, Buttermilk?" he said bluntly, waving a hoof over the fire, "We don't have no cards, no cash-"

"Oh, I know a thing we could do!" Ivory spoke up, eyes glittering, "I ask one question, and you have to answer it! And then you get to ask me a question, and so on and on!"

Grease's smile grew thin. "How old are you?"

"Old enough to know what counts in this big ol' world of ours!" Ivory said chipperly, fluttering her big eyelashes for effect.

Closing my eyes and shaking my head, I was ready to say something along the lines of an insult when a sound came deep from within the cave. It was so twisted and loud and desperate I thought it was a animal cry at first, the cry of a wounded animal that knew it wouldn't live for more than a few more minutes. But then it kept getting louder and louder until finally dropping into silence, and no animal I knew could scream.

None of us made any sudden movements at the noise, but Grease looked plain spooked and Ivory was sitting very still and wide-eyed.

Me?

I was just happy I hadn't had anything to drink in a while.

"I think we should see what that was." Ivory suggested helpfully, sounding only a little frantic, "Because we are waiting for Charnel, so somepony might as well see if she's alive."

Grease shook his head. "I'd sooner head for the tunnels then go down in that cave. Charnel's crazier than a rat in a nuthouse."

The zony had a point, but as much as I didn't want to be around Charnel, we were alone and we were still in a pretty bad place. Better to have more allies then none at all, anyway.

"Well, yeah, but she's the closest thing to protection we have." I said, "And I think we should see what was up with that scream."

Grease frowned at my words, and pointed a hoof over to the darkness behind us. "Who knows! Who cares! All I need to know is that Charnel would kill me and probably do something horrible with my corpse if I go down there!"

"I think we need to see what's down there." Ivory added, which made me feel slightly better about even bringing up the topic of seeing what the crazy pony was doing in the cave, "I mean, if that scream was Charnel's, she would be dead and we should leave."

"Charnel isn't the sort of pony who dies in a cave." Grease replied, "It's probably some sort of monster or something."

The topic of monsters brought some strange images to mind. There was only so many things that could live in a cave. Bears, wolves, giant rats; the sorts of things that ponies really needed to stay away from. But nothing Charnel and her flamethrower couldn't deal with. The only monster down there was probably, well, Charnel.

"That's true, I guess." I said, putting on my most reasonable face, "But we don't know what's down there, even. Charnel could be dead right now."

"Charnel could be dead right now." Grease repeated in a high-pitched mocking tone, gesticulating wildly with his hooves, "Yeah, and I'm the prince of Prance! Buttermilk, don't be stupid. Charnel has a better chance of walking out of that cave with a fancy pair of wings then to be dead."

"Huh?" Ivory said intelligently.

"I mean, shit, do you remember Equimalt?" Grease continued, seemingly not caring that Ivory had spoken.

I winced. I did. There was a tribalistic raider army, sixty ponies strong, held up in a old airport in a town called Equimalt. The high command said that it was too risky to head in there to investigate the rumors that there was a few chariot-style aircraft inside it giving the high risk factor and the distance from supply lines. Charnel went out by herself, on her own free time and will, apparently killed almost every member of the tribe, and reported that there was a half-dozen Equestrian-styled sky wagons in it but nothing else of note.

She got a promotion from that, I think.

"Okay, fine. But still, I think we should see what's going on down there."

Grease rolled his eyes. "Come on, Buttermilk, you have to be smarter than that."

He had a point, but I was really bored and seeing what the crazy mare down in the cave was doing was a good idea at the time.

"I guess not, Grease." I said amicably, nodding my head, "I think it would be best to see what is going on down there, anyway."

At that, he rolled his eyes once again and started making his way outside the cave, looking dejected.

"Okay, I'll be waiting back over to the entrance."

Ivory spoke up before I did, looking slightly frantic. "Where are you going?"

"Well," he said, "If you don't come out of the cave in a hour, I'm heading back through the tunnel so I don't get killed by Charnel when she comes up after killing you all."

I really couldn't argue with that sort of logic, so I just shrugged and gave him a smart look.

As he left the cave, I felt a little bad about the whole thing, but I wasn't going to let one stallion's soured mood make me turn against a decision I had already made.

Ivory, after Grease was a decent distance from the cave mouth, turned towards me and shook her head.

"Was he your friend?" she asked, almost sounding innocent enough to make me believe that she wasn't a immature brat.

"He still is." I clarified, "And I guess you're coming with me in the cave?"

She shrugged, and her horn flickered on, a bright grey-white light coming off from it.

"I guess. I'm bored and stuff, and caves are fun even if we don't meet you're crazy boss." she said, like what she was saying was a perfectly normal thing to say, "And I think you might need some light, anyway."

I blinked when I realized that she might have just said the first intelligent thing I have heard out of her mouth since I had met her, and shrugged. "You're right."

She shrugged back at me. "I know."

We stared at one another, and as I went for my battle saddle she grabbed the little pistol she picked up her own little pistol, and soon enough we were heading into the darkness.

---

"Caves are stupid."

Ivory, I was figuring out, wasn't a smart pony.

The cave started out wide enough, but it quickly became clear at a certain point that we had to move single-file. Overall, it was pretty boring; the rocks were rocks and the floor was cold and hard, but otherwise nothing really popped out to me as being interesting. The odd, ghostly light of Ivory's horn did give the uneven cavern walls some definition, but otherwise there was nothing more for me to focus on than Ivory herself, who decided to walk ahead of me because 'ladies first'.

Not that I was complaining, of course.

"Hey, Ivory."

"Huwha?" the unicorn mare replied.

"Are you nervous?" I asked, hoping to get a conversation brewing.

"Nope."

"Ah." I said, feeling slightly stupid. "So, mind telling me where you're from?"

Ivory made a sudden right turn into what I thought was nothingness, and I walked a little faster so I could catch up behind her. The rock was a darker sort of brown there, and the floor was colder and harder than before. It felt like we were slowly, but surely, going deeper underground, and my only hope was that whatever made that noise wasn't pony-sized.

"Why should I?" Ivory quipped, surprising me slightly, "If you want to ask something like that, you gotta say something about yourself, silly."

I had never been called 'silly' since I was eight, probably, so my cheeks flushed slightly and it took me a few moments to come up with something worth saying.

"I grew up in a small town."

"Yeah, so has half the ponies in the country!" Ivory exclaimed cheerfully, pausing slightly as she moved down a steep incline that I slowly followed.

"Okay, fine. I grew up in Oak Creek." I relented, feeling a little annoyed at the mare. "It's a farming town."

Ivory was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again I was surprised that she sounded honestly interested. "That must have been nice, growing up around all that food."

I felt a tinge of anger at her reply, but I reminded myself that she didn't know what she was talking about.

"No, not really. It used to grow high grasses, but then some cattle ranchers from the south decided that they wanted the land for their brahman. Oak Creek was a small town and the ranchers fed the NCR, so the ponies there kinda had to give up their land."

"Oh, that sucks." Ivory said amicably, "So, did you get drafted into fighting for them or something?"

I felt a wave of anger at her, but I shook my head tried not to sound like I was upset. "No, I joined the military as soon as I could. My special talent is caring for brahman, so when I got the milk bottle on my ass I wasn't exactly everypony's favorite guy. The military doesn't care where you're from, so I joined when I could."

That shut Ivory up, and for what was probably a minute we just walked in silence. Even with her horn, the darkness around us was a presence of it's own, and the rock walls, although smoother then I expected, kept getting caught on my saddle.

When she spoke, it startled me, but what was truly surprising was how quiet she was.

"How did you meet Grease, then?"

I didn't expect that sort of question, so I took my time to consider it.

"We got paired up as a firing team on our first real battle together. We got stuck in a abandoned building for half a day because of rain, so we just sort of broke down and got to know each other."

"He seems like a funny pony." she replied.

"Yeah, he is. We kept getting paired up together, and eventually we just ended up being Charnel's bodyguards."

"What's her story?" Ivory asked quizzically, before ducking to walk under a hanging slagtight.

"She's a crazy bitch." I said without irony, "I'm surprised you really don't know her."

"I don't know much about the NCR." she admitted, "Only that the top general's name is Olive Leaf and the ambassador to Paradise is named Susanna."

That was an interesting thing to hear from the mare who I assumed had roughly as much sense as a bunch of rocks.

"You from Dise?" I asked, raising a eyebrow.

"Heh, you could say that." she mumbled under her breath, "You know, it's hard to keep a casino running right."

I stopped walking involuntarily. Son of a mule.

"You are here to kill Charnel." I said. It wasn't a question.

"Nope!" she said cheerfully, in a way that made me realize that it was almost certainly wasn't forced, "I'm not here to hurt her at all! All I'm saying is that The Moon doesn't take well to one of their own getting half their face ripped off by a pony and getting away with it."

I winced. The dancer some of the guy's hired for Charnel was a cute little thing, but when she leaned in to kiss Charnel, the mare bit off most of the flesh on the dancer's lower jaw and spat it out. And then she stuck the whisky bottle down her throat after she kicked the mare down to the floor, because she could. Most of the guy's there were spooked enough and got the message to not fuck with their CO.

Unfortunately, it also seemed to attract attention.

"Okay." I relented, "I won't stop you from killing her, but-"

"Oh, come on!" Ivory snapped at me, turning around so she could look me in the eye. Her horn's ghostly glow gave her face a oddly menacing look, even with her pretty face. "If I was going to kill her, I would've done it when I first saw her!"

I bit my lip. She was right; Charnel needed to sleep like every other pony in the world, which might be proof that even the Goddesses had mercy.

"Okay." I relented. "So let's say I believe you. Why shouldn't I kill you?"

Ivory's light suddenly flickered out. The only reason I knew she was still there was because I heard her breathing.

"I get it." I said after a few panicked seconds, "Farm colt moment there."

When her horn lit up again, Ivory was smiling, but it was a honest smile. "You sound adorable when you are scared, you know that Buttermilk?"

It took me a few moments to realize that she just called me by name for the first time, and I couldn't help but blush a little.

She patted me on the head like I was her quirky little brother, even though she was built like she was half my age, but when she turned around and started walking there was a swing in her step, and I knew she had to be doing it on purpose.

In my silly, confused mind, I began to be under the impression that I had a chance with the cute mare with a pair of crossed fangs for a cutie mark.

---

We walked in mostly silence for quite some time. The cave, we were quickly discovering, was long; for all I knew we were going to exit out of it in the middle of zebra-land and be greeted by Grease's second cousin twice removed.

The cave, we were discovering, wasn't entirely a cave; I first noticed the grooves on the sides of the wall and what looked like stone safety bars, of all things, while Ivory's horn-light revealed that the ceiling and floors were getting smoothed out as we continued.

The clincher, though, was when we came to a genuine room, shaped like a half-circle.

It had to have been sculpted by something, pony or not; there was even a old moldering mattress sitting off to the left side of it, one that was obviously from before the war if only because of all the debris around it. There was a small stack of books and a lantern off to the side of the bed as well, and the latter was burnt out and looked like it had a filmy coating on the outside. No signs of food or drink, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to eat anything that came from down here anyway.

But, most importantly and damning that this was some sort of manufactured area, there was a door set in the wall directly in front of us, made from some sort of black, dull material that was certainly not metal. Metal doesn't look like like that.

Ivory immediately went for the books, while I stared at the door. It didn't have a handle or door knob, but it was certainly a door. It had a frame of the same material it itself was made of, all twisty and strange to look at.

"Hey, Ivo-"

"This one book is neat." the mare half-shouted before I could finish, "The title is in some weird twisty language, but the word's are in equish."

She shoved a open book in front of me with her magic, and I glanced at a single passage. I didn't understand half of what I was reading. I wasn't sure if I could understand what I was reading, either.

'They flitter wickedly and swiftly in the cold places where the Prince has been and the Queen has blessed in her eternal hate and eternal despair. While the wind howls with Their voices, the frost cries out with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city with Their ice and snow, yet may not forest or city behold the hooves that brings their doom. The Kind King in his cold waste hath known and fought Them, but what mare can say to have seen The Kind King brought low, in his wisdom and might? The Qatgani of the fiery deserts of the East and the sunken isles of the Kin of Oceanus have been given gifts from The Kind King, but the Southern tyranny of She Of The Burning Sun and The Dark One remain indolent and insolent, refusing to bring the savage might of the Coward Tribes to face their true foes. In their unwillingness to assist Him in bringing Those who have brought ruin to ponies once, they will undoubtedly prove to do so again.'

I stared at the book and knocked it away from me, making Ivory groan.

"That's really fucking creepy." I said, giving her a unnerved look.

"I think you mean interesting!" Ivory said without missing a beat, putting the book back where it belonged. "I mean, sure, half of it's probably the rantings of a madmare, but still, it's pretty interesting. Maybe when we find out what made th-"

The sound of a piercing scream assaulted my ears for a few seconds, and it came from behind the door. It was a mare's scream, a sure cry for help. It was the scream of somepony who wanted to die.

"-e scream." Ivory finished after a few moments, eyes the size of dinnerplates.

"You know, if we head back up, we could get out of here and meet Grease." I half-rambled, already heading for the way out.

"Hey!" Ivory yelled at me, stomping a hoof to get my attention, "There's a mare in there that needs our help!"

In a fit of shame and rage at my cowardly first act, I trotted towards the smooth featureless door and tapped it lightly with a hoof. It felt like I was touching a solid chunk of the cave wall itself, so I turned to Ivory and shrugged.

"See, it won't budge, let's get out of here and-"

Ivory huffed and pushed me out of the way. "Hey, let me try!"

I relented and watched the unicorn try and open the door, which was clearly sealed shut.

I felt my mouth open when the door simply vanished when her hoof touched it.

"Ooh, a magic door!" Ivory squealed out, before rushing into the pitch darkness in front of her.

Stunned by her sudden action, I quickly followed her, and I was so focused in trying to keep up with her I almost didn't notice that she had stopped moving until I was right beside her.

She was looking down, and when I saw what she was looking at, I couldn't help but stare too.

The surface we were standing on was made of the same hard, dull black material as the door was, but the floor was covered in small grooves and markings, all interconnected. Spirals folded into squares and rectangles and lines cris-crossed with other thin, almost unnoticeable lines, making it all look like it was part of one big picture. Even with Ivory's light revealing a good three feet of ground under us, it didn't look like the markings were just around us. I couldn't help but think of that we were looking at what could be sort of like the world's biggest scrimshaw piece, a massive engraving on a hard surface.

"Whoa."

I had to agree. This place was giving me the creeps. "What do you think this place is, Ivory? You're the unicorn."

She turned to me, looking puzzled. "I think...I don't know. The scratches on the ground sort of look like what you can find in a robot, though."

I blinked. "What?"

"I mean, in the arcane ones. Magic runes and glyph-marks and stuff."

She prodded one patch on the ground that sort of looked like two lines twisting around each other. "This place could be just magical, like a really secret magic place..."

"Honey, the door to this place vanished when it touched you. If it's not magic, I don't know what else it could be."

Ivory huffed loudly and looked down once more to look at the markings. "This is probably like, a megaspell chamber or something."

I stared at her, feeling a sudden wave of nausea. "Don't say something like that."

She let out a tense giggle. "Why? I mean, it fits. It's a big empty place in the middle of some place in the middle of nowhere, and the crazy pony we are trying to find is around here trying to make it work."

The mentioning of Charnel made me remember the scream, so I just shook my head and sighed. "We need to either find a way out of here or find out where that scream is coming from."

"Okay, okay, fine." Ivory said, sounding only a little dejected, "I guess we coul...oh!"

Her sudden tremble in her voice terrified me to my core, and when I saw her face, a caricature of pain, I felt my heart speed up.

"Ivory, what's the matter!" I heard myself say, not really thinking about what I was doing as I rushed over to her, hooves feeling heavier than they ever have been.

She didn't answer me, but she didn't need to when I saw what was happening to her.

The light of her horn changed swiftly from a pale gossamer light to a strange, uneven unholy gold-green flecked with unnatural purple blisters that seemed to almost bubble up from her horn like blood from a wound, marrow from a cracked bone. The unnatural spire of magic grew larger and more exaggerated every second, and as I took a step back I could feel the air grow sicker and hotter, a cloying smell like a overripe fruit drafting down from above. Black lightning crackled around her horn like nothing I had ever seen before, like little ebony fingers clutching around her head, and even with her eyes closed and her mouth only making sounds like a whimpering foal I knew she was in complete and utter agony.

When she threw back her head and screamed, what happened next wasn't like any spell I had ever seen; it just looked like her throwing all her might and will into making a big tall blast of green-purple magic straight towards whatever ceiling this hellish place had, but whatever she did I felt it.

It isn't a easy thing to describe, because it wasn't physical, or the sort of electrical not-sensation when get when you touch magic. It felt like every single good quality I could imagine about what I was doing and who I was suddenly inverted, and all I could comprehend was how much of a horrid, stupid fool I was, the country boy who went down in the pitch-black hell cavern that was probably going to be my death.

I touched her magical aura for less than a few seconds, and I was starting to cry. Even when she finished casting her not-spell, Ivory's horn was still covered in the hideous purple pustules of magic.

Before I could say anything, like scream or yell or shake Ivory so she would get out of her trance, the room exploded in a burst of nightmare-colors.

Green and gold and purple flames flew up and danced around the rim of the cavern, which I suddenly realized was easily the size of a small town and taller than anything I could think of, besides, perhaps, a skyscraper. The markings under me and all around me started to glow a dark green-purple, constantly switching and churning like spots of oil in a stew pot, and while I didn't feel anything when I touched them Ivory started to whimper and scream with her eyes wide open, sounding like she was trying to say something when all she could get out was horrible not-noises, and when she fell on the ground she did it without even trying to keep herself on all fours, holding her front hooves on her head even as flashes of pitch darkness started to dance on her horn.

I tried to grab a hold on her to pick her up and get us out of here, away from this horrible place, but I was a stupid farm pony who couldn't get a hold on the thrashing mare who needed my help, and so after a few seconds I just

stopped

and looked up, because that's what my mamma used to say to do, before you try and pray to the Goddesses

but I didn't see nothing like the sky, where the Goddesses were supposed to be

those two mares I didn't really think were real

but I did see something looking down on me, framed with some flickering purple magic a color lighter than the shadows that framed the walls

set between outcrops of the jagged darkness around me, all sharp angles and twisting triangles that didn't look right

was something that was judging me

and I looked at it, that big unholy piercing red eye, until it vanished, closing upon itself like a real eye would

along with the flames on the wall, which sputtered out until purple embers and green sparks finally flickered and died

until the only thing lighting the room was the shimmering lights coming off from the ground.

After a few moments, stunned and hurt and upset and afraid, I looked down at the mare I wanted to keep alive, who I wanted to help, only to realize that she wasn't breathing.

I didn't say anything when I realized that, so I just looked up and turned around, hoping to see a exit or something, only to find that I was looking at the pony of death.

He was standing only a few feet away from me, clad in a black, ragged cloak that clung tight enough to his emaciated frame to where it almost resembled a hide. His face was a rotten mass of greenish, putrid flesh and oily black hair, and his maneless head was topped with a almost exaggerated pitch-black horn, sharper than any unicorn horn I could think of and framed with little motes of black light that wasn't unlike but different than the magic that tormented Ivory. His ears looked like they had long since rotted off, and his teeth, yellow-brown with visible roots, looked sharp and jagged, poking out from under his lips like little knives in grey hilts. He was a tad shorter than me and almost fleshless, and his shoulder blades, all yellow-white bone and greyish green meat, jutted from out of the rotten cloak and framed his head in a odd way.

The pony of death looked at me with two piss-yellow eyes like jelly in their sockets, eyes without warmth or kindness, eyes that glowed like a cats set in the dim light of the cavern.

When he spoke, it sounded like everything I would imagine the caretaker of Pony Hell would sound like. It was a voice that was ragged from rot and deep with disgust for the universe at large.

"Pathetic." so said the pony of death, pointing at me with a rotten hoof so decayed I could see the joint where it was attached to the foreleg.

"Oh sweet Celestia." I gasped, putting myself between the stallion and Ivory, which caused the pony of death to snort in disgust.

"The Princesses have no power here, worm." replied the pony of death, taking a step forward on it's rotten limbs, "They have never had power here and now they never shall."

"Oh Goddess." I said reflexively, thinking only of Luna. Luna Protects, after all.

The pony of death looked almost offended. "Nor does the result of Twilight Sparkle's final folly. I command you to step away from the mare."

I was afraid, scared, and wondering if I was going to die then, all because I was too foolish to not obey the command given to me by the living concept of death itself, or to ask it who the heck was this Sparkle pony.

"No." I said stupidly.

The pony of death stared at me, it's pestilent eyes widening ever so slightly. I saw the shadows on his horn gathering strength, and it soon resembled a great miniature maelstrom of darkness, dark and cold and strange.

I closed my eyes, and awaited death.

"Hey, dad, don't kill him. He's one of my guys."

When I opened my eyes, I saw that the pony of death had turned slightly to the right.

I had never seen Charnel with her hair down before, or without some object she could use to kill something with nearby, before that moment, so let me talk about what she looked like then.

She was an athletic sort of mare, coal-colored and muscled in a that faint way, and she really did have striking eyes, grey and bright. But with her maroon mane down, she looked less like the hardass I knew and more like, well, a young thirtysomething who looked like she wanted to go to sleep, or do other things ponies who weren't crazy sociopaths did in their free time. In the light of the cavern, her sharp smile looked more unnerving than usual, especially when I saw what looked like, impossibly, purple smoke framing her eyes like the most literal form of eyeshadow I could imagine. It waved around in the air in a solid mass, like it was a physical extension of her head.

"He's an incompetent one." said the pony of death, sounding almost sour about the whole thing. "I thought you did better than this."

Charnel rolled her eyes and beckoned me over towards her, which I did wordlessly, because I was confused and I didn't want to die.

"Eh, but he does do what he's told. Isn't that right, Buttermilk?"

She said that sweetly, sweeter then any words that come from the mouth of a shark-toothed crazy mare had any right to be, but I looked at Ivory.

The pony of death was focusing his magic's on her, little black motes solidifying into solid shapes and forms unlike any other magic I had ever seen before, and he held his long horn over Ivory's form without saying a word.

"Who...he's your dad?" I asked quietly, almost believing it myself, "The pony of death is your dad?"

Charnel gave me a dumbfounded look of confusion that was almost funny on her face, and when she broke into laughter I almost wanted to join in. Her laughter was a new thing for me to hear too; It almost wasn't as evil I would have thought it would sound like. Less of a cackle and more of a throaty chuckle.

"I am flattered." the pony who was apparently not the pony of death said tonelessly, continuing to hold his horn over Ivory. "But I must deny that I am a sort of psychopomp."

"Sort of the opposite of that, right dad?" Charnel drawled.

"Insolent child." muttered the pony who said that he wasn't a ps-something, right before his stark horn flickered in a burst of shadow-light, and Ivory took a breath.

I stared at the breathing form of the mare who I thought was dead, and I pointed a shaky hoof at the stallion before Charnel shook her head at me, frowning slightly.

"She's okay." Charnel said to me, "She's going to take a while to get up, though. Dying's rough."

Her words almost went past me, but when I comprehended them I let out a shuddering breath. "She died?"

"Yes. But she's alive right now." Charnel replied, as if that was supposed to make up for it. The look on her face told me enough; she was looking at me like I was asking about, like, how a air conditioner worked or something.

I was silent for some time, because I wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"What is this place? Why are you calling him your dad? Why are you're..." I paused, looking at her eyes "Why are your eyes doing that thing?"

Charnel shrugged, and her eyes continued to do the shadowy wavy thing, taunting me.

"This place... well, that needs some explanation, but think of it as a megaspell chamber before there were megaspell chambers."

"Oh." I said, feeling stupid, "That's sort of what Ivory said."

Charnel raised a beshadowed eyebrow, but I heard the stallion let out a rasping cough of a laugh.

"Then she shall be useful, then."

I wanted to question directly what he meant by that, but Charnel decided to continue talking.

"As for my eyes, " she said, before shaking her head and looking far more like she usually does, slightly smug and sure of herself, "It's because I've used powerful magic in the past. This is why my teeth are sharp, too. I can explain about it in more detail later, if you want, but it's sort of pointless. Unicorn stuff."

She made a little dismissive motion with her hoof and shook her head. I was still expecting to see a pair of wings, at this point.

"That sounds painful." I commented, "About your teeth."

She smiled and shrugged slightly, a very un-Charnel like action. "Not really." Her teeth were almost the same color as her eyes; five years of standing around and doing my best impression of a statue in heavy armor, and it took today for me to figure that out.

I stopped talking again, and considered asking about the screaming, but I decided to find out what was the name of the stallion that wasn't the pony of death.

"So, is he really your dad?" I asked.

"By adoption." Charnel said amicably, but gave me that 'are you kidding me?' look again. "I mean, do I look dead to you?"

"Ah." I said, noticing that the stallion who was dead and not the pony of death was now looking at me oddly. "Uh, sir, what's your name?"

The dead pony who wasn't the pony of death continued to look at me oddly. Ivory breathed gently a few feet away from him.

"My name is Silent Night." the dead pony rasped, after a while.

Comments

[Forum Explorer]

Well I guess we couldn't have Boffinspark without Silent Night

[Pokonic]

4131865 Of course not. It would be like having Abbott without Costello.