The extent of cruelty
I stumbled outside the hospital in a daze. T-things were a little blurry. The buildings weren’t exactly stable, they seemed wobbly, and ponies… well, they couldn’t be really called ponies anymore. Same went for the buffalos and such.
My eyes were half-drooped.
My weight seemed to shift as I tripped and bash my head against a cotton candy wall.
Face full of fluffy sugary pink goodness, I let the sweet scent invade my nostrils. It just gave me a fuzzy little warmth and a kick to go on. Still, with my face embedded into that wall, I could look inside what seemed to be a factory of some sort. My mind was a bit blank, so you’ll forgive me for not actually realizing they were making rainbows.
I couldn’t quite tell where I was anymore.
“Hey, sir or madam!” I shouted to a blue box that looked suspiciously like a phone booth.
The whole thing just shook, as if shocked out of its skin.
“Y-yes?” It asked with a British accent. “M-may I help you sir?”
And the voice was definitely masculine too.
“Do you know where I am?” I grumbled, pushing against the cotton candy, hoping to get myself out of this mess. “I’m kinda trying to find out where I can make a wish and annihilate my pops from existence.”
“KEY WORD RECOGNIZE – ANNIHILATE! ANNIHILATE!”
Red light flashing in my eyes, I only got the chance to stare at the cybernetic monsters slowly inching in my direction before facing my certain doom.
“Oh butter nuggets on a yellow submarine sandwich…”
The following scene was extracted from the official Royal Canterlot records, cannot be distributed outside of the library and its content must not be divulged to outsiders. Offenders will be prosecuted and risk facing punishments reserved for traitors against the crown.
The light blinded her.
“Applejack!” She screamed, louder than she had ever screamed before.
The air grew colder.
It… what had happened? Where were the others?
A feeling of fear creeping on her, she shot nervous, frightful glances at her surroundings, trying to make sense of it all. One minute, her friend was trying to pick a fight with a monstrous dragon and the next she was all alone in…
Where was she?
This certainly wasn’t Twilight’s library. It was a little too cozy for that.
Oh! Not that she meant that Twilight’s library was not comfortable, it was! … Probably… to some ponies… W-well, the books lying around on the floor could be a little… or just the general lack of organization… or maybe the few times Miss Cheerilie’s class had come on a field trip and wouldn’t stop talking loudly…
Errr… she really liked Twilight’s library… promise.
“Oh listen to me, I’m a horrible pony,” Fluttershy whispered, lowering her head with sadness. “I can’t even appreciate all the hard-work my friends do without feeling critical about it.”
She had some standards, she didn’t think that was a bad thing, but if it led to her clashing with her friends... For example, a floor should not be made of such soft and precious silk. It felt like such a waste of bits, not to mention that walking on that was a little dangerous. It was so smooth under the hooves!
A bloodcurdling screech shocked her out of her contemplation. Whereas her every instinct yelled her ears off for her to run and hide as quickly as possible, the rational part of her mind had identified the noise as something non-threatening. Quite the contrary. It was a call for help.
Fluttershy’s heart squeezed, knowing perfectly well who the owner of that voice was.
Panicked, prey to a terrible fear, the mare shot up a few meters in the air, hovering over the room to see as best as she could. Over the air moved by her wings, one could barely hear her heartbroken whisper. “A-Angel?”
She fell to the ground, strength leaving her body like her soul had been torn apart. Everything had crashed down on her at the sight of her Angel having his shoulder pierced by a snake’s fangs. The poor dear was flailing useless, hissing and kicking while the… the monster held more strongly.
“LET HIM GO!” Her voice boomed, sounding nothing alike the kind mare she was known as.
Feeling an uncharacteristically powerful fire burning in her veins, Fluttershy took off wildly, flying straight toward her precious pet. Her vision almost blurred with anger as she landed with a stomp, flattening the snake in one hit.
The reptile hurriedly slithered away from the enraged mare. It disappeared in a dark corner of the room, waiting in an unlit area for… perhaps… another chance at its future meal.
Heart pounding against the sides of her face, the mare could barely keep her anger in check, but it wasn’t what her Angel needed!
With a slap, she chastised herself for being so weak and focused her attention sorely on her pet bunny, who remained lying against the velvet carpet. Her hooves shaking, Fluttershy forced her gaze to stay entirely focused on him, running a mental list of wounds and poisons that could be inflicted by a snake. Gasping, she recognized the glistening fluid on the edge of the wounds.
Rainbow snake’s venom… there was no cure for that… It was fatal within the day following the bite, reaching a point where the body could no longer support the decaying organs, all slowly destroyed by the poison, and collapsed.
The most spectacular and unfortunate known case of these bites took the meaning literally, she had seen the pictures… They would haunt for the rest of her life. And now, the unfortunate pony in them was being replaced by her closest confident and first true friend.
Her tears fell. They rolled off her cheeks out of her control entirely, her body being shaken by sobs. ‘No… Angel… this can’t be true…’
A weak pat on her chest shattered her reminiscence of the gruesome images, allowing her to focus on the dying animal in her grasp.
He let out a pathetic, half grunt, eyes narrowed into an annoyed frown. It looked as if, even on the verge of death, he wanted her to get it together. He'd slap her silly if it was what she needed and if he had the strength to do so. He settled for a disgruntled noise, half a plea and half an order.
“N-no!”
She… she didn’t want to lose him! Not the first friend she had made herself! Not the little bunny that had seen her get her Cutie Mark! Not the one soul that always shared her bedroom whenever life got scary in Ponyville again.
On the floor, the pet convulsed twice, shrieking and screeching bloody murder. The poison was already making its way into his veins.
‘The pain starts to become unbearable within the first five minutes following the bite,’ she heard her teacher repeat again, taping a branch against the vivarium where the rainbow snake rested. It hissed and she backed away.
“A-Angel…” Fluttershy’s voice broke.
‘Then, if untreated in the following few instants, the damage is irreversible. What comes next is a slow and horrible agony.’
Angel looked in her eyes, as if asking her to indulge his selfishness one last time.
Her body moved again, her consciousness extinguished, rather following instinct and practice. There was only one way to help her precious Angel.
‘Most patients who came too late to be treated are given the strongest painkillers available, for a maximum of an hour. After that, they are put into an artificial coma, which will continue until their death.’
She poured her heart into her next few words. “I love you.”
She did not even flinch when the horrible sound of a snapping twig boomed into the deathly silent room.
Neither did the necklace she wore around her neck.
“Angel…” she whispered.
The fluffy body in her front legs was inert, forever immobile and a reminiscence of happiness lost to fatality. The warmth of life was already starting to desert it.
She held onto him for dear life, the reality of her own actions crashing down on her mind. But she could not accept it! He was not… he was not… DEAD!
“I love you, Angel!” She wailed, burying her face against his, wishing the world would just stop existing if such pain could be felt. “I’ll miss you so… so much!”
Angel was dead.
Nothing could change that. He was forever gone.
The room, though well-lit and lightened by the presence of multiple candles, grew colder and darker, an unpleasant place to be in.
“Angel…” She sobbed, again and again.
Her eyes seemed to be burning, sending pulsing waves of heat through her skull, yet she refused to do anything but stare. T-that snake… it had killed her poor bunny! S-she knew i-i-it was n-natural, but…
The image of her precious Angel flashed in her mind and suddenly, the rage was too powerful to contain. She roared, screaming her heart, her grief and her sorrow, out. The sound was as primal as it was scary.
It seemed as if the library itself trembled at the sound.
Carried away by her fury, she snarled, whipping her head around to scan the room for the presence of the monster that had taken Angel away from her, that wanted to eat him.
Her eyes fell on a shaking creature hiding away, capturing her complete attention.
And the serpent coiled on itself, almost perfectly paralyzed with an instinctual fear, its disgusting yellow eyes never leaving hers for a second.
She marched toward it, wings expending and making her silhouette larger. By that point, the reptile had lost the capacity to operate even in self-defense. Unusually lethargic, the Rainbow Snake slumped into a scaly mass of unmoving serpent. Its gaze was still transfixed by the Stare. It could not fight it. Nothing could.
Somewhere, in its primitive mind, the animal knew its doom was close, but the power of the mare’s eyes was nailing it in place. It screamed within its body, never heard by anything but its own pathetic self. Still, it could only look as its demise approached it, dancing shadows obscuring her frame and her expression.
It could only hear loud breathing, exhalations of rage and promises of pain.
Looking down on the animal, on that beast, Fluttershy’s heart demanded bloody revenge. It wanted satisfaction, the knowledge that Life wasn’t so unfair as to let Angel’s assassin go unpunished!
IT HAD TO DIE!
She brought down her hoof.
The Element of Kindness flashed once. No more.
The following scene was extracted from the official Royal Canterlot records, cannot be distributed outside of the library and its content must not be divulged to outsiders. Offenders will be prosecuted and risk facing punishments reserved for traitors against the crown.
“W-where am I?” She asked, her brain still actively trying to catch up with her body.
Just now, Twilight had awoken, seemingly on a metallic floor, which was strange considering her library was built inside a tree. Did her mattress broke or something?
“In my new and improved version of a building of knowledge.”
Her eyes shot open instantly as she simultaneously catapulted herself out of her sleeping position and turned toward the source of the noise.
Her face crunched up with anger and hatred at the sight of Equestria’s biggest enemy.
“DISCORD!” She shouted and lunged, only stopped by a series of metal bar. Contact between those and the tiara she was wearing made a noticeable crystalline sound.
“Yes, Twilight Sparkle?” The draconequus asked, flipping a page of his magazine, loafing around on a tree suspended between two hammocks.
He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the bright green pool he had created, floating above it while Twilight was confined to her cage by the wall.
She punched the metal limiting her freedom in her rage. She cared not for his antics and his games, her rage was putting them all in the background. She had but one question. “Where are my friends?!”
“Oh, you know, same old, same old.” He rolled his eyes, yawning. “In the mouth of the horse unsaddled, the spring comes-”
“Stop it with your stupid riddles already and answer my question!” Her horn glowed a bright light as she focused the brunt of her power into making the cage explode. “Or is the Spirit of Chaos so predictable that he will never dare give a straight answer.”
It was a good thing, at that moment, that the bearer of the Element of Magic’s eyesight was overwhelmed by the light of her own mana. Had she been able to see the monstrous expression of mortal fury that had quickly appeared and gone on the draconequus’ trait, she might have backed away out of sheer survival instinct.
“P-predictable?” Discord stuttered, hitting his forehead with his paw. “Not this again… I am very chaotic. Do I really need to prove it?”
“Tell me where they are!” She shrieked, pushing her magical reserves to their limits without managing to move the cage even an inch.
“You already know.”
“The only thing I know is that some sort of ancient weird dragon thing breathed light at Applejack!” The mare’s magic died out, leaving her panting on the ground. “The next… thing I knew… I was… trapped… here with... you!”
Not impressed, Discord crunched up his magazine into a little ball of paper, which was then disintegrated by miniature spacecraft. Twilight, ever the mare of knowledge, stared at the strange ships with wide, wildly interested eyes.
“Oh, that was just Rayrarhornyr,” he spoke, instantly getting her attention back. “An old dragon that owed me for pulling his youth out of harm’s way during the Greater Wars.”
This revelation had Twilight pause to organize her thoughts. ‘Greater Wars? I’ve never heard of such a thing before…’
“His breath can manipulate minds and space.”
“W-what?” She blinked. ‘That shouldn’t be possible. Dragons can’t use magic, not in such advanced forms…’ But the image of a certain number one assistant chose that time to float in her head. ‘A-at least, they normally can’t.’
“Your friends are around here and there, living some nice scenarios I cooked up for them. When they’re done, not a single one of them will be able to use the Elements against me. And, just like last time, you will only get to watch as those five crash and burn.”
Twilight’s lips twisted as the words left a terrible taste in her mouth. Though she did not show it, the idea of reliving the events of that terrible day had her stomach churn. “T-they know you, Discord. They won’t fall for your traps! They’re stronger than that!”
“The ‘heroic willpower’ speech? Oh, you bore me to death, Twilight Sparkle. Not that this is new. Always so methodical, always so scientific, no space for fantasy or flexibility in your mindset.” The Spirit of Chaos looked about ready to empty his stomach from sheer disgust. “Your friends must hate spend time with you.”
“T-that’s not true!” She hated how unsure she had sounded.
A deep, low pitched laughed filled the air.
“Don’t you ever wonder if they aren’t your friends simply because the fate of Equestria rides on your shoulders? Hum?” He slithered closer to her, one paw reaching into the cave and grabbing her chin.
Their gazes were locked together and in those yellow orbs of madness, she could feel tales of atrocity waiting to be unleashed. She wanted nothing more than to extinguish those eyes so they may never come to pass, but the movement necessary for lowering her horn was also beyond her current range of actions.
“How convenient, isn’t it, that your mentor, the all-knowing Celestia, sent you to make friends in Ponyville and that you suddenly made five friends, just in time to free her sister from her inner demons. Every event falls into place with another, almost as if it was a scenario written by someone with the power and authority to do it…”
A cold dread started to wash over her mind. His words were a poisonous whisper, planting ideas in her mind that she could not deny completely. It was a miracle that six so wildly different mares had become such good friends so quickly.
The draconequus placed a paw over his mouth, as if hiding a pitying smile. “It’s like your friendship was planned from the start.”
‘No… this is wrong,’ the mare thought. ‘I’m getting swallowed in his game. W-why am I even listening to him!?’
The doubts vanished. “No… I believe in them. It wasn’t just a lie.”
The silky, sweet, suave intrusive quality of his voice was abruptly lost. “What did you say?”
“I said: I believe in my friends and they believe in me! I won’t let them down, just as I know they will not let me down! That’s that and it’s final! Your mind games won’t WORK!”
“Tch, so much for having a nice open debate with you, Twilight. I think I just need better companions,” he grumbled, before snapping his claws and a blinding flash of light made the unicorn avert her gaze.
When she turned her eyes back to that same spot, her jaw fell.
“C-Cadence?!” Twilight shouted in disbelief.
For a brief moment, the purple mare’s heart lightened with relief and joy. For but a brief moment. Quickly, it sunk in her chest and froze.
She had seen the glare the alicorn had sent her way. The realization made her fall on her rump, against the bars of her cage.
The princess’ coat was an unhealthy shade of gray.
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This is getting past creepy into downright disturbing. I'm glad it updated again, but when this story end I might need to go question my sanity a little.
2707798 Oh, you flatterer you. If I had any coupon for a psychiatrist, I think I'd offer them to you. But hey I can always pat you on the back if that helps.
But out of curiosity, what might push you off the deep end?
2707910 It's not everything, but I understand it. I haven't been a statue for a few decades but some of Discords and HH's reasoning is perfectly understandable to me. I mean I don't understand why chickens are the worst thing, since frogs are much worse.
2707934 Oh no, no, you don't get it. It was no mere chicken. It looked like a chicken, but it wasn't. It was evil manifest.
Chickens in general are okay. In a duel to the death, frogs are probably going to win, but this was a not-chicken and Honest saw through that with his great deductive skills.
2707952 Deductive skills? I bet he got x-ray vision for that. You can't tell a chicken from evil without those.
2707961 Yes, the two are quite similar, but I can assure you that Havoc's vision is X-ray free. Or not. You might need to ask him for that...
2707984 As long as there's peanuts involved.
2707995 ...
Well played.
...
...
Man, I wish you could update this story more often!
2707995
I feel like I'm missing a reference here, or are you two just being silly?
Great chapter btw, I'm really liking Discord's self doubt. Does pure chaos actually become predictable?
Love it, you have a gift of weaving nonsense. Just read through both of you stories, and I cannot wait for more.
AND THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE ISSSSSS!!!!!
HATE!
2875406 the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Hate is merely a lack of love for an entity. In fact hate can be the byproduct of love. Misguided maybe but love nonetheless.
6054563
Then what’s the opposite of hate?
9085188
He already told you.