Fluttershy has done the unthinkable, and now because of it, she has ended up in hell. To escape, she must face herself to adapt to this harsh world, including the agonizing trials that go along with it.
Tired of her life as a natural shut-in and aimlessly wandering the contours of a black-and-white existence, Fluttershy has been hiding a secret from her friends for many long years: She is clinically depressed. Medicated for most of her waking life and unable to cope with the direction her life has been taking, she swallows far too many pills and finds herself falling asleep for the last time in Equestria.
However, this is not the end for her. Now she must find her way home through trials that no pony should ever have to go through--even if it means facing herself.
In the newly built cemetery altar, the gentle flickering of candles and the lovely smell of roses added to the grim scene that played out before a group of assembled friends.
One of them was dead.
Fluttershy sat in the open coffin, seeming as if she were simply asleep. Her friends knew she wasn’t. She was dead, and there was no hiding the truth.
Pinkie's mane had long ago fallen flat. Rarity's make-up dripped down her face in a black mix of tears and eyeliner. Twilight openly let tears run down her face as she sobbed hysterically. Rainbow Dash was curled in a small ball, thinking in the loneliness of her mind over and over again that it was her fault for her friend's death, and Applejack just sat there with a blank face, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“I-I can’t believe that she would do this.” Twilight managed to stammer. “I suspected she was depressed... but suicidal? I never would have thought it would come to...” she paused as she gestured wildly at her still friend before her, “this.”
Recently, Fluttershy had plummeted into a deep depression when her pet bunny, Angel had died. Her life had constantly went down a cliff. Her friends were always worried about her and constantly checking in on her to try to cheer her up. All futile. They all seemed to just make her even worse.
Applejack had made her apple fritters, Rarity tried giving her a makeover, Pinkie Pie had tried throwing a party, Rainbow dash did another sonic rainboom, and Twilight tried Psychology. Nothing was working.
When they got the news of Fluttershy’s suicide, they were all together in the library. Initial reactions were that the message was just some kind of sick joke. Eventually, however, the reality of the situation dawned on them. It seemed obvious that things had been coming to this. Just this one awful, devastating act had shattered the seemingly unbreakable bonds of friendship.
There was a strained silence, broken by a brief, strangled sob from Rarity. Applejack put an arm around her friend, their shared misery no easier to bear, but an attempt being made to do so anyway.
Finally, Princess Celestia spoke. “Words cannot describe the grief I feel for your loss.”
Pinkie Pie had flashed a glare of hatred and greif at the princess before staring at Fluttershy's lifeless face, missing how she talked, how she acted, and how she was still the element of kindness.
“I do not expect you to believe me, Pinkie Pie.” The princess spoke loudly enough for her to hear. “A life as long as mine has seen the doors close on more than a few dear friends. None of them have been easy for me. I wish I could make this easier for you.” She then focused her attention on her student. “Twilight, is there anything I can do to help?”
“Help? Well... there is one thing you could help with.”
"Anything"
“Is there any way that you could, well... bring her back?” Twilight said, her voice dropping to a low murmur that still managed to echo through the silent mausoleum.
"Y-you mean ressurect her?" the princess asked, initially shocked by her request. "I'm terribly sorry, Twilight but you know I can't do that. She needs to rest in peace and we musn't disturb that.
The young mare opened her mouth to argue, but Celestia looked at her meaningfully, and her mouth snapped shut again. She saw etched on her mentor’s face the sorrow of countless sins, optimistic experimentation and vague hopes dashed by hard-lived experience with something that she had only just begun to consider.
Perhaps words would never be able to describe the pain death brought with it.
The blank, white room seemed like it would never end. The little pony stalked through the empty corridor, her eyes wide with fear as she wondered what fate awaited her at the end.
“Um... He-Hello? Is anypony here?” Fluttershy said as she trotted through the seeming never ending white room she was in. “What is this place? Umm... Is anypony there? I-I don’t know where I am."
Fluttershy never felt so lonely in her life. She had no clue where she was, no memory of how she’d come to be teleported to such a bizarre land. She just wanted to see her friends.
Perhaps if she just kept walking, she would find her way out. So she kept walking... and walking... and walking for what seemed like days.
Just when the small pony was about to just give up, she spotted a speck of darkness in the distance. The first glimmer of hope showing at last, it slowly began to be replaced by that of fear as she began to make out the features of a gargantuan door with shades of black and dark crimson with a bright orange star that was spun upside-down and perfectly fitted inside a ring, with intricate carvings that went all around the marble door in a language unknown to the small, yellow mare. It read: Αυτό είναι το βασίλειο των κολασμένων, το μόνο που τίθεται εδώ θα είναι πλέον τα μέσα των βασανιστηρίων για όλη την αιωνιότητα. Αυτό είναι το βασίλειο της κόλασης και ο Σατανάς.
She was terrified of the thing before her, but decided she would never see her friends again if she let her cowardice get the better of her. She touched the door with her hoof.
A world-shattering screech wrenched at her, causing her to hunch down to the ground and put her hooves over her ears as the door slowly scraped against the hard bedrock under it. A dark opening loomed before her, prompting another shudder of terrified inaction from her.
Several minutes later, she poked her head out from between her hooves, looking into the black abyss beyond the door. If she was ever going to see her friends again, she had to go through this.
She stepped through the door.
Suddenly, it seemed as if she’d stepped through a portal. The ground materialized under her, causing her to stumble in surprise. The entire place was covered in a dark shade of crimson similar to the colors of the marble door. There were sharp rocks all around that seemed to have magma in the cracks of them.
Fluttershy saw a stairway that seemed to branch off in random directions, spidering along the walls as far as she could see. There was another upside-down star encircled by a ring embedded in the floor in front of her hooves and a sign with the same unknown language. This one said: Είστε στο βασίλειο της κόλασης, αυτό είναι όπου θα μείνετε για το υπόλοιπο της όλη την αιωνιότητα. Οι τιμωρίες σας έχουν αποφασιστεί από τις προηγούμενες Κύριός σας, ο Θεός. Μπορείτε τώρα ανήκει στον ηγεμόνα του βασιλείου, ο Σατανάς.
When the yellow mare decided to stop looking around, she had seen something in the corner of her eye. It looked to be some black creature like a dragon, yet it had three heads, definitely not something she’d seen with any dragons. Not that she’d seen many dragons.
It was flying toward her.
Fluttershy sat there, frozen in fear, the dragon diving down and swoopin up from the edge of the cliff by Fluttershy while letting out a haunting wail that made brought her hooves up into her ears once more.
Then the strange creature said something in a language unknown to her, it being the third time she couldn't understand the same language. "Τι κάνεις εδώ; Πηγαίνετε στα pits της φωτιάς ΑΜΕΣΩΣ ή θα αναγκαστώ να σας βάλει εκεί για σένα," the three-headed dragon growled angrily at her.
All she could do was sit there, paralyzed in fear, as the fearsome beast opened its jaws and three reptilian heads lunged at her.
Fluttershy sat there, paralyzed in fear as the gargantuan dragon lunged it’s heads at the horrified pony cowering before it. Bracing for the feeling of being ripped apart, she tightly shut the lids of her eyes and gritted her teeth, when instead of being ripped apart, she heard chains clanking.
The dragon had a red, transparent chain around each of it’s necks, keeping it from moving any closer toward the terrified mare before it, and with no warning, the dragon had dove back down into the black smoke below, much to Fluttershy’s confusement.
Fluttershy had checked herself to see if she was hurt anywhere shortly after the dragon’s disappearance into the black smoke. She had seemed just fine, just sore hooves was all, and a scarred mind from the dragon.
By that time she frantically went to the door she had entered from, finding it only to be locked shut. Horrified, Fluttershy went to the carving of the star and just lied down, hiding behind her mane, lightly weeping thinking that she would be here for the rest of however long she was supposed to stay here.
A minute? An hour? A year?
Fluttershy just wept, hoping she could be in Equestria with the beautiful Autumn leaves, the small animals that lived in the land, and most importantly, her friends.
Twilight sat in her bed, looking out her window towards the stars above the night sky, tears rolling down her cheeks as she sat in utter sorrow. It had been three weeks since Fluttershy’s suicide and she hadn’t heart from any of her friends since the visit in the altar, most likely because she hadn’t gone outside since then.
The entire library was spotless except Twilight’s bedroom, which was littered with tissues, photos, and broken glass. Spike was trying to bring Twilight food, water, books, about everything that the small, purple dragon thought could cheer her up and at one point, he had even thought that she killed herself after the first week of her seclusion, quickly being relieved to hear her light weeping. --- The caring little assistant knocked lightly on Twilight’s door. “Twilight? Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“Twilight? Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“Go away,” the lavender unicorn said bluntly through her lonesome grieving.
“Twilight, please come out. It’s been three weeks since Fluttershy... you know, and you need to come outside.” He paused for a few moments, waiting for a response, then continued. “You can’t just sit here like this forever. Please, just come out.”
“Just leave me alone. I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere. I just want to lie here.” She smacked her hoof against her pillow for emphasis, several feathers drifting out at the disturbance.
Feathers… just like on Fluttershy’s wings. Everything Twilight looked at reminded her of the friend she’d lost.
Twilight just lied down in her bed, tears lightly rolling down her cheeks thinking about Fluttershy and the adventures they she had gone along with. When they were going to wake up the dragon, when Photo Finish got a hole of her when she made her a model, also when she had turned Discord, the god of chaos, to good. Every second she though about Fluttershy, the farther she seemed to plummet into her horrible depression. She was gone, and nothing would bring her back.
Spike walked down the steps from Twilight’s room to the main section library where he had decided that he would write a letter to the princess. It read, Dear princess Celestia, Ever since Fluttershy committed suicide, Twilight has locked herself in her room and won’t come out. If you could, please come to the library as soon as possible. From, Spike, With an air of finality, Spike sent the letter. Perhaps this would rouse his best friend from her stupor.
Fluttershy had woken up, hoping that when she opened her eyes, she would be in her bed, in her cottage, in Equestria. Soon to realize that she wasn’t, she was still in the dark place she was before, looking blankly at the dark crimson stone wall. After checking her surroundings for what seemed like the hundredth time thinking she was just seeing things, realization finally sank in. She wasn’t in Equestria.
Checking her surroundings, her realization sank in deeper- she wasn’t in Equestria.
The petite, yellow mare sat up on her rump, trying her best to massage her sore hooves. A roar rumbled up from the abyss nearby, prompting a yelp of terror and another heavy dose of cowering. Finding that she wasn’t facing down a three-headed dragon, Fluttershy stood up on her hooves and gave her surroundings yet another survey.
Fluttershy stood up on her hooves, looking around again to see if anypony was around.
“Maybe somepony else got here like I did,” the pink-maned mare said out loud, just now realizing how silent this place was... too silent. Beads of sweat collected on Fluttershy’s forehead, then she felt something eyeing her. She looked around, only to see nothing on the black and crimson stone. Then, she caught something in the corner of her eye.
A flicker of movement was caught in the corner of her eye. Two glowing, orange eyes were staring at her, not showing any signs of hostility or fear, but instead curiosity.
The creature leaped down with utmost grace. It had black fur and pupils like a feline’s. It prowled around her in circles while sticking close to the hard, stone floor. The small mare could see a scar going across the cat’s face.
Fluttershy started to feel curious about this creature circling her, not seeming to want to kill her unlike most of the things she’s seen in here. “What, what are you,” The feline seemed to ease up when Fluttershy spoke to it, most likely feeling safe in her soft, kind voice.
The small, black-furred feline’s safe feeling was soon replaced with terror and fear as it heard what he forgot what he was hiding from. The feline flew off into a tunnel, a pack of demonic-looking dogs barging out of one of the many tunnels and stopping to smell the ground for the scent of the cat, resembling pit-bulls with glowing red eyes, black spiked collars, and prominent, sharp teeth. They rallied around what seemed to be a pack leader, a noticeably larger creature with three heads instead of just the one. On its collar was emblazoned the characters “Cερβερθσ.” It looked very familiar, as if Fluttershy had seen it before, though she couldn’t place her hoof on where it may have been.
The pack leader spoke up, in the same language as the many times before. “Λόκι, ο Απόλλων, Kerberos. Έλα, έχω τη μυρωδιά της runt. Ήταν εδώ πρόσφατα,”
Fluttershy let out another squeal of terror when the pack of dogs looked simultaneously at her.
Be warned, pony, a voice spoke, seeming to echo inside her head, if you look into a hellhound’s eyes three or more times, it means certain death. She looked up, seeing the familiar yellow eyes of the feline.
How did you? she thought to herself until she felt a cold breath on the back of her neck, turning to see one of the hellhounds standing there with a collar that read “Λοκι,” staring with hate-filled eyes. Two, the feline matter-of-factly stated.
The dog directly in front of her spoke in the same language she’d heard being spoken before. “Cερβερθσ, το άρωμα του runt είναι σε αυτό το πόνυ. Τι θέλετε να κάνετε με αυτό.”
“Καλό είναι να γνωρίζετε, Λόκι. Pony. Έχετε δει μια γάτα πουθενά; Αν μας πείτε πού είναι, θα σας αφήσει μόνο” the pack leader snarled in return, abruptly approaching Fluttershy.
Fluttershy simply stared in terror as the three-headed beast stalked up to her, its eyes boring into her soul, sizing her up as if she were a prize to be won.
“Must I speak in this language, or can you speak Greek?” The three headed dog asked, obviously annoyed.
The dog put his face close to the mare’s and snarled slowly, “Have you seen a small feline? Black fur and yellow eyes?”
“N-” Fluttershy managed to stutter out. They were then interrupted as the feline fell from a nook in the roof, landing with a thump right in the middle of the gathered hellhounds.
The cat and the hellhounds both looked at each other, piecing together what was happening.
The cat flipped around as the dogs lunged after it, the pair quickly dashing down a nearby tunnel. The other dogs seemed to realize that their prey had been within their grasp and was gaining distance on them, then took off barking after their leader, their lustful bays echoing behind them to ring into Fluttershy’s ears.
She stayed put for a long while after that, well after the vicious barks of the hellhounds had dissapeared and eerie silence regained once more.
Finally, she raised her head, took a deep breath, and stood on her hooves. She had to move.
Spirals. All she could see were spirals of a staircase that stretched endlessly upward before her. She could see no end, nor could she see the beginning anymore. The climb was timeless, meaningless. Yet, it was all she had to do. To give up was not an option.
The eerie silence unsettled her, and about every little noise she heard caused her to freeze in terror of the unknown. The only thing she heard with any frequency was that of her hooves hitting the stone stairs. As she distractedly put one hoof in front of the other, she would look at the black cloud below, try to read the scriptures on the wall (written in Greek, the language she didn't understand, if the familiar three-headed dog was to be believed), or recollect about her friends, animals, and Equestria.
Suddenly, the floor before her flattened into a bluff amazingly similar she had been on before.
Upon finding nothing dangerous, she lied down, quietly humming a song her parents sang to her when she was a filly. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she wasn’t afraid of what was around her, just for this brief moment in time. Perhaps it was induced by some mania which had crept into her brain, but she didn’t want to worry about that just now. She slipped away from conscious thoughts and worries and right into a dream.
Fluttershy dreamed of Equestria, the world she left behind. The thoughts of home she’d had earlier came back to her, the faces of her friends smiling and talking to her. She saw Applejack sneaking an apple into the food bowl of a squirrel she was nursing back to health. She saw Angel tapping his paw impatiently while she prepared his favorite salad. She saw Twilight absorbed in her thoughts reading a book, Fluttershy waiting patiently for her friend to look up and notice her existence.
Twilight did look up. Her eyes were full of evil and dripping with blood, as if she had been through a horrible internal torture and was about to pop. She looked directly at Fluttershy, then her gaze shifted back to her book. Fluttershy noticed a symbol on her forehead where her horn should be, seemingly burnt in like a ranchers brand, the same that she had seen several times before in the place she currently was, of a five-pointed star goat head in the middle, and a book with the exact same symbol, only bigger and with a bloody goat head in the center.
Her dream then became twisted and torturous. She and her friends were being hunted like elk. She saw all of their heads on plaques with the symbols around them, similar to the one she saw in her friend's book. To the side lay an empty one. She heard the sinister *snick* of a blade falling toward her outstretched neck. Just as she felt it flay the skin open, she woke up.
She started to cry, her mane soaking wet from sweat and her fragile mind being mentally scarred by something too horrid to bear.
She hadn’t even noticed the cat that creeped up behind her.
The cat grazed her, “Why do you cry, pony?”
“I-I” Fluttershy had managed to studder, “H-how do you live in a world like this?”
“I don’t,” the cat stated matter-of-factly. “When you stay down here long enough, you don’t live... you survive. The reason those hellhounds were chasing me is because I’m a cat. The creatures in this world don’t live; all of them survive running only on their primal instincts. All of the animals who live in this terrible place have some kind of stupid grudge with each other: The dragons, the hell hounds, the serpents, the bats, and the cat.”
Fluttershy’s curiosity had peaked at the cat’s last statement, “The cat? Are you the only one of your kind down here?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. My family was killed by those same hell hounds that you saw earlier, and the dragons killed the rest of my kind that panicked and ran separate ways. I was only a cub at the time, and ever since, the hell hounds have hunted me, haunting me every waking second.”
There was silence for several minutes. She had a feeling that any words of commiseration would only harm what small amount of friendliness was in this beast. Eventually, though, she decided to voice a nagging question she had. “What is under that thick smoke cloud down there?”
That is the last place you ever want to be. It has demons and monsters much worse than what manage to make it here on the cliffs. The creatures that live in one territory can’t go into the other territories. There’s the ones that belong in the bottom, and the ones who belong in the top. The three-headed dragons can go in both, including the Overlord.” He waited for Fluttershy’s questioning glance, then explained, “He’s a giant black dragon that cannot die, at least, I think he can't die, I've never dared to get close enough to be able to study him. Anything else can’t pass through the barrier between territories without burning.”
The silence stretched another few long moments. She decided to venture the first burning question in her mind: “Where are we?”
The cat chuckled—at least, she guessed it was a chuckle. It sounded like a mix between a cough and a purr. “We’re in Hell, little pony.” At her shocked frown, he continued, “It’s not as bad as the surface-worlders make it out to be. You are alive and not screaming in agony, are you not? I have heard many stories of the land above, but none of them seem as welcome to me as knowing what I truly am. You’ll learn that... if you survive long enough to. “What’s your name?” Fluttershy had asked, a bit embarrassed that she didn’t know his name yet.
“My name is Αβδθκαρ, or in your tongue, Abdukar.”
““Where does that kind of name come from?” she asked curiously.
Abdukar chuckled again. “Where from? It’s a Greek name, carried down by my ancestors. From my father, to his father, and to his father, and so on.”
Then, both of them became acutely aware of the sound of flapping wings.
“Fluttershy tightened as she heard a dragon behind the both of them. Turning around, Fluttershy could see the horribly terrifying dragon hovering in front of the both of them. It was a gargantuan dragon with black scales and jagged spikes protruding from it’s wings and back. It had purple eyes and purple highlights on random points of it’s body.
“Pony...” Abdukar frantically whispered.
“Y-yes?”
Terror struck into Fluttershy's heart as Abdukar frantically muttered. “Run. Now.”
“RUN!”
Directly following this pronouncement, the dragon opened its jaws and blasted a purple fire towards them, melting the stone ground that they had just vacated, the two new friends feeling their tails wilt and crinkle from the the wave of heat that wafted over the both of them.
The two swiftly sought to escape the ravaging fire chasing them from behind. They ran into one of the tunnels in the wall, the foreign characters scrawled on the hard rock reading, “Αυτός που εισάγετε εδώ πρέπει να λαμβάνονται από τη θάλασσα των νυχτερίδων.”
The princess of the sun was sitting in the library, sipping on a cup of tea as a golden aura shined around it. When the princess had gotten word of how bad Twilight had been getting in her depression, she dropped everything so she could help her most faithful student.
“Spike?”
Spike had nearly jumped from hearing the princess's voice from the silence while he was dusting bookshelves. “Yes, princess?”
“May I have a word with Twilight?”
“Oh, of course. Let me go get her.” Spike had quickly whisked up the stairs to Twilight’s bedroom door where he gently knocked on it. “Twilight? The princess is here, please come out.”
Twilight said nothing, she just opened the door and groggily made her way down the stairs, with a yellow feather pinned into her mane.
“Hello Twilight,” the princess of the sun said cheerfully, quickly turning into the smile she usually adorns.
“H-hi,” she said abruptly.
The princess’s smile immediately turned into a frown when she heard just how much life had left her excitable student: Twilight’s voice sounded scratchy and quiet; her mane was messy instead of handled with care; she didn’t even seem happy to see the mentor she looked up to more than any other pony in Equestria. Celestia knew then that Twilight needed help... before she did the same thing Fluttershy had done.
“Please, take a seat, Twilight.”
Twilight plumped down, “What did you need, princess?”
The princess tried to put a tender tone in her voice, “I just wanted to talk to you, Spike told me how you’ve been having problems coping with Fluttershy.”
Twilight’s back arched at her friend’s name. She stared soullessly at Spike, then shifted off her chair to the stairs.
“Twilight, please, I just want to help you get better,”
“I don’t need help. I’m just fine. Please, leave me alone.” Twilight stood up abruptly, seeking the comfort of her room once more.
She gave no haphazard goodbye, no words of parting to speak of. There was only a tension so thick that even Spike noticed and kept his mouth shut. As she ascended the stairs, the yellow feather fell from her mane, even Celestia herself shedding a tear.
It had been a full week since the visit with the princess. Still, Twilight just sat in her bed, getting worse every day. She didn’t eat, nor show any emotion in her eyes, other than sorrow.
Twilight suddenly gasped, sounding just like her old self, full of vigor and enthusiasm. “I got it!” she flew off of her bed immediately, flying downstairs into the library, pulling many books off of their shelves and getting some that already had fallen. Flipping through the pages of many works at once, she finally found it in Foreign Religions 101: How Other Species Worship. The section was titled
"The Star in the Ring."
Her eyes flew down the page seeking the information she sought, then hungrily devoured everything she'd been searching for. It is said in multiple religious beliefs that, were any creature to commit suicide, they will be transported into a place of agony and torture.This place is called Hell. the symbol is seen in figure three, and is called a pentagram.
Twilight’s spirit re-ignited with an extreme boost of adrenaline and enthusiasm. She dug through shelf after shelf, mentally noting that she needed to re-shelve these things so she could find them more quickly, until she found what she was looking for: Summoning Portals to Other Dimensions. She flipped through the pages in the black book until she located the spell she needed: Portal to Hell.
“I need to make a portal... she has to be there,” Twilight muttered under her breath. She then added, “I hope,” and prepared to cast the spell.
Her horn started shining. The room was lit by a reddish-purple aura. Sparks started flying from her horn, singing the wood beneath her with a loud hiss. Slowly, she channeled the power, narrowing it into a beam that let her etch into the floor of the library. She painstakingly drew the star within the ring that her book had illustrated, then gave away a year of her life in a breath which got sucked into the swiftly forming vortex in the middle.
Within the pentagram she’d etched, a strange face materialized in the center. It looked something like a... a goat. She definitely hadn’t drawn that. Then a massive wave of power washed over the library, shattering every window and blowing her backward, causing her to crash into one of the bookshelves like a ragdoll.
She had finally done it. She made the portal to Hell. Fluttershy was there, she just knew it.
It was dark crimson and black, lined with the pentagram in the center. It crackled with an energy somewhat familiar to her, that type which she had seen Princess Celestia use to incite darkness and that she’d used herself to defeat King Sombra’s door. It was a dangerous magic, one that she would never trust unless she had no alternative.
She tentatively reached her hoof toward the rift, her fear overpowered by her desire to see her friend again. She touched the shimmering surface, then it pulled her in all at once. She let out a surprised yelp, then found herself sprawled out on what appeared to be a clifftop.
(hr)
Fluttershy and Abdukar walked through the tunnel for what seemed like days since the dragon had chased them in. Both were too afraid to go back and see if it had left yet.
Fluttershy finally broke the eerie silence. “W-was that the Overlord?” she asked, still shaking from the terrifying sight, although it was long over.
“Yes. He takes things off the cliff and brings them under the smoke.”
Unwilling to find out her friend’s ideas on why the creature performed regular abductions, she quickly decided to change the conversation topic. “Um... how old are you?”
“I’ve lost count. Probably several dozen millennia.” As he saw Fluttershy trying to count on her hooves, he clarified, “Over ten thousand years. With all the hellhounds trying to kill me, I tend to lose count. I don’t even remember when my birthday is.”
At the mention of a birthday, Fluttershy was jarringly reminded of Pinkie Pie, who would have shrieked and done something crazy, like throw a million birthday parties at once. Her head drooped low, as did her ears. She stopped walking and just sat down. “Can we stop?” she asked in a broken voice.
“Of course.” Abdukar lied on the hard bedrock ground below and curled in a tight ball around Fluttershy. (i)This is my only friend here; I need to keep her safe,(/i) Abdukar thought to himself as he took a last look around for anything that could harm the fragile little pony he was protecting. Satisfied that they were safe for the moment, he laid his head down next to hers, emitting a low, rumbling purr.
Suddenly, the giant cat’s head shot back up, his ears flicking several times as his gaze seemed to fall on something far away.
Fluttershy, immediately noticing something was wrong, asked, "Did you see something?"
Abdukar shook his head. "I felt something. A new pony has joined us."
Fluttershy gasped. "A pony? Do you know who?"
Another shake of Abdukar's head. "No, but this one came here willingly."
"Willingly? Who would come here willingly?"
"I do not know. I get the feeling we will find out soon."
Twilight sat very still on the cliff, observing her surroundings and taking in every last detail. She immediately picked out some intricate marble carvings to the blood-stained rocks. If only she knew what they meant. She stood up on her hooves, noticing that some of her books had come through the portal as well.
She tried to levitate them. Nothing. She had no magic. She lost her horn again, not unlike when Discord took her horn when leading her and her friends through the Palace Labyrinth. She paced around the pentagram carved onto the floor, frantically trying to come up with a solution on how she'd get out of there in the first place.
After what she could have sworn was several hours of frantic whispering, pacing, and double-checking about five hundred times to see if her horn was there, she realized that she really wasn’t going to have magic in Hell.
"What am I going to do? Even if I find Fluttershy, how am I going to find a way out?" Twilight asked herself, half-expecting an answer. She suddenly made a dash for her books that were there—A Brief History of Starswirl The Bearded, The History Of The Mare On The Moon...
"Thank Celestia," Twilight breathed in relief when she pulled out the book: Foreign Religions 101: How Other Species Worship. She flipped through, awkwardly using her hooves, successfully ripping some pages as well and wincing at the torturous sound, until she got to the section named “The Star In The Ring.” It is believed that anything that goes to Hell loses certain characteristics; the characteristics lost vary from species to species. This has been observed with gryphons, which will lose their wings, as well as dragons and certain races of ponies, which lose some magical aspects of their nature.
She really should have done more research before creating the portal. She just wanted to see Fluttershy so badly... that she didn’t read enough beforehoof. Now she was hoping to get lucky with the information she found in here. She flipped through the book even further until she found another section titled “Hell: The Home of Demons and Creatures.“
Twilight started reading aloud, as if she were having Spike take a letter for Princess Celestia. "In the chaotic dimension known as Hell, there are many creatures believed to reside therein. Common creatures documented as living in Hell are: dragons (much more aggressive than normal), hydras, giant swarms of bats, and hellhounds (a breed of dog which closely resembles a pitbull). It is sai-"
That was it. The rest of the pages were burned to a black crisp, crumbling onto the hard bedrock below. Maybe the portal had burned it on the way through. She sighed in irritation, both at herself and at her unlucky situation.
"Well, at least I know a little bit about this place," she said to herself, trying to stay on the bright side of things. Something about this entire ordeal made her feel... down. Maybe it was just the atmosphere. Hell wasn't inherently bad, though... was it?
She sifted through her small pile of books again to make sure she hadn’t missed any potentially useful information. This wouldn’t have been a problem if she’d looked for them in the library. After coming up once again with nothing, she gazed at the walls around her and saw numerous tunnel entrances opening up, and, to her right and left, staircases. She took a deep breath and cantered into the tunnel marked "Η σήραγγα των νυχτερίδων."
If only she knew some Greek.
(hr)
Fluttershy was running. She had been running for so long. She was in Ponyville, but things weren't peaceful as usual. It was chaotic here, even worse than Discord could ever make it. The sky was red as blood, and there were patches of burned grass and broken arrows littering the ground. Fluttershy's wings had been torn right off, Canterlot Castle had crumbled, and changelings freely roamed the sky, taking out any ponies and quickly either murdering them or eating them alive.
She was running from her friends. They had no eyes, just darkness where their eyes should have been. Blood dripped down their coats.
They had the pentagram with the goat on their necks, screaming at Fluttershy with raspy, dark voices. The ground collapsed before her, a ring of dirt cascading down only to be replaced by fire. Serpents, dragons, bats, hellhounds... everything poured out from the ground and surrounded her.
She was defenseless.
She looked over and a feeling of pain washed through her, her veins turning purple as she was chained down where she stood. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. Her eyes started to disappear. She felt the pentagram symbol burning into her neck. The Overlord appeared, and all she could do was sit there and wait for the final blow. She felt the clawing of changelings, bats, and serpents...
She woke up. Tears and sweat flowed freely down her face, draining onto the coat of a solemn Abdukar. He looked pointedly at her and spoke as gently as possible. “Nightmares are common here, Fluttershy. Get used to them.” His eyes cast downward, back to where he no longer gazed into her terrified eyes. “Hell changes for no creature.”
Fluttershy leaned on the wall of the cave, staring blankly at the hard ground with a shard of bedrock in her hoof. She felt numb, the nightmares starting to infect her mind like poison. She just sat, her body still and hey eyes glazed over, for what seemed like hours. She was bruised, burned, and cut, and her sanity was slowly dissolving into little more than pure primal terror.
She felt Abdukar’s fur glide across hers and locked her eyes with his. “I know what you are going through, Fluttershy. The nightmares. Burns, bruises, and cuts.” He gestured to the dried blood running down her foreleg and the scabbing scars. “You are changing, Fluttershy. It has gotten to you. You will never be the same if you stay here long enough. We need to move; I cannot say where, but something else is here, and it is not a demon. We must move if we are to find it.”
The two rose from the hard ground, Fluttershy registering shockingly little emotion while they walked toward the end of the tunnel, wincing with every step she took. When she made it to the edge of the cliff, looking at the marks from the melted rock and looking down into the thick, black smoke below, she only gave a slight grimace.
She realized that Abdukar’s words were jarringly true. She knew if she did not escape soon, she’d be finished. She had no idea what would happen to her. Would she be tortured, die again, go back to normal, or just go away completely, like the white emptiness that she was in before?
She didn’t want to think about the possibility of dying again. She just wanted to see her friends. Hell was getting to her and she knew it. She didn’t feel afraid of the things that could happen anymore. She just felt numb, not wanting death nor survival. Quite frankly, she didn’t care at all.
Just then she and Abdukar heard a screeching sort of sound. Like bats, but rabid bats. She turned to face behind her to the tunnel, instinctively slamming her body to the floor as a black cloud of bats with burning red eyes shot out, a deafening sound of screeching piercing the air and drops of blood falling into her fur and mane, staining it to discoloration. She glanced upward and saw Abdukar getting swarmed by a small group of bats.
Fluttershy felt helpless. She was pinned down by a sea of rabit hell-bats while her only friend in Hell was being devoured by some of said bats. She took a deep breath as she quickly got up and ran to her helpless friend, trying her best to keep the bats away from him, getting slashed and bitten in the process. After what seemed like hours of swatting and screaming, she had finally gotten the small group of bats to join the sea of other bats swarming out of the cave.
She turned to look a bloodied Abdukar in his feral, adrenaline-pumped eyes. “A-are you okay?!” she frantically wailed, trying to find a way to help her only friend in Hell, scared to lose him.
Abdukar replied with an unhealthy wheeze, his body sinking to the ground. He gazed up at her fearfully, as if he already knew something that she didn’t. After a long period of relative silence punctuated by his wheezes and the soft pit-pat of blood on the ground,
Abdukar finally spoke. “Fluttershy. I will be fine. Just go.”
She was terrified. She couldn’t leave her only friend and protection in Hell. That would be a suicide mission. “No! I’m not going to leave you here to die like this!” Fluttershy scrambled to lift up the giant, bloody feline before her, obviously failing. After several minutes of trying to encourage Abdukar to rise, she finally realized something.
He wasn’t breathing.
“N-no. No no no no NO!” Fluttershy wailed as she pressed her head to the now dead Abdukar’s chest. She felt tears start to run down her face, a far too familiar feeling from her trip from Equestria, to Limbo, and finally to Hell. She sat on her rump and pressed her head on his chest, feeling his rough fur brushing against hers.
She eventually fell asleep there, curled up next to Abdukar’s eerily still body as she silently sobbed, mourning the death of her friend... and blaming herself for it.
Fluttershy knew again what it felt like to be fully alone. Her only protection and friend just died one of the most horrible deaths that she could have possibly conceived. Her yellow coat and pink mane were stained to such a strong discoloration that you couldn’t tell what they had used to look like.
She lost count of how many days that she had been wandering Hell. A day? A week? A year? She had no clue. She just wandered about, searching everywhere.
Yet, she didn’t know what she was searching for. Every once in a while she saw dragons fly by and she wouldn’t duck or even flinch. She’d just stare at them, waiting until they disappeared in the distance. The small shred of sanity that still remained refused to let her wonder about the consequences of if she were spotted.
Due to whatever morbid Stockholm syndrome had gripped her during her tenure, she actually started to like this place. She found some of the new styles of caves she found to be quite comforting.
There weren’t any more monsters in them, either, just an occasional bat which she paid no mind to. She couldn’t tell how she felt; she wasn’t afraid anymore, yet she wasn’t brave enough to walk around fearlessly.
Suddenly, she heard a loud metal pop followed by an intense searing pain. She dropped like a stone to the floor. She looked at her foreleg to see that she stepped on a bear trap... yet not a normal run-of-the-mill bear trap. It was laced with jagged spikes and barbs that pierced her foreleg, and on the pressure plate a morbid amount of spikes that latched through to the outside of her hoof from inside it.
She let out a blood curdling scream, smashing through the eerie silence of Hell. With tears pouring down her face, she attempted fruitlessly to open the morbid trap, but to no avail.
She then noticed the chain attached to the trap...
that was dragging her to a hole in the cave walls.
Twilight trudged along the complex cave systems of Hell.
She refused to admit it just yet, but she was lost.
She aimlessly eyed the carvings in the bedrock and marble walls. She didn’t really know what they said; they just piqued her interest.
"This place isn’t really that bad," Twilight thought to herself. She hadn’t been burned or impaled since she got there. Was this just an off day? Then she realized: She had no clue how long she’d been there. She hadn’t slept at all, but could stay up for a long time without even letting out a yawn.
She noticed the tunnel extended to a cave.
“When did this tunnel become a giant cave?” she mused out loud, using her horn to give her a little light.
“Scratch that, giant is an understatement,” she added, seeing the monstrosity of a cave before her. She couldn’t even see the top of it.
Then she bumped into something, something big. The room dazzled her with a blinding light, showing the entirety of the cave, including the large spikes at the top of it.
What she had hit with her muzzle was a switch, and said switch activated an explosive.
Narrowly dodging the giant bedrock spike hurdling at her, Twilight realized the rock below her hooves was thin, her face being burnt from the extreme heat of the lava below it. She knew what this room was—a death trap. More and more spikes started falling to the ground, giving her less and less ground to walk on. Her coat was soaked with pieces of rock and sweat. She ran to the tunnel, just barely escaping the lava that the next fallen spike would have plunged her into, along with the rest of the collapsing platform. It seemed the roof was caving in around Twilight, its sole purpose to take her down with it. She had no clue how to get out. All she could do now was sit and wait for death. She locked her eyes shut as she heard the spikes fall and take out the ground, her only chance of survival being whittled away while she lay helplessly on the ground.
*crush*
*crush*
*crush*
Suddenly, the crashing and splashing ceased. Looking up, she realized that there was one spike that hadn’t fallen onto her: the one right above her. It was extremely damaged, but it wasn’t going to fall by the looks of it.
"Of all the luck...." She let out an immense sigh of extreme relief and fell to her back, shocked that she had just survived one of Hell’s traps. She told herself in a shaky voice, “Well, now to find a way out.”
Fluttershy woke in a haze, her thoughts refusing to conform to normalcy. The last thing she could remember was being dragged into a hole while exploring a cave after being caught by some kind of bear trap.
When she finally regained her senses, she swiftly observed her surroundings, an exercise which was becoming all too familiar to her. She was in a small cave which was lit by a marble slab with crimson candles on each tip of the pentagram illustrated on it.
It was painted in blood.
The cave had one exit: a small crack in the wall, inside of which she could see another room with five strange shadows plastered on the wall, all speaking in Greek. They seemed to be arguing about something, but she had no idea what.
One of the creatures spoke out in a hushed tone, “Τι περιμένουμε; Όταν δεν έχουμε την ευκαιρία να heve διασκέδαση μας;”
“Σιωπή, θα αρχίσει όταν ξυπνά. Πρέπει να είστε υπομονετικοί.” another barked back in a dark, brooding voice.
Abruptly, she realized something: She was chained to the ceiling, dangling from shackles around her hooves, jagged pieces of obsidian anchored through them, dried blood having run down her forelegs and chest hours ago.
She tried to move, but let out a shriek of pain. The yell echoed through the cave.
“Μοιάζει μπορούμε να αρχίσουμε, έτσι δεν είναι;” growled the second voice.
Five hooded creatures walked in, all tall, brooding figures in crimson robes, plastered with golden pentagram buttons up their torsos.
Fluttershy’s heart dropped when she realized the items that they all were carrying. She took notice of cattle brands, scalpels, and several other unnamed jagged tools that made her sick with fear at the thought that they would soon be piercing her flesh.
One of them walked up to Fluttershy, a jagged, curved obsidian scalpel gripped in a shriveled, gray hand with long claws. He pressed the blade to Fluttershy’s forehead.
She trembled in fear, a small amount of blood slivering from the spot on her forehead.
She lifted her legs and kicked the terrifying creature with all her might, sending its robed figure tumbling backwards to the hard ground. It slowly got back up, eliciting animalistic groans and growls as it gripped the scalpel in its bony hands.
“Μπορείτε πραγματικά δεν έπρεπε να γίνει αυτό, σκουλήκι!” the creature growled as it lunged its arm forward.
Fluttershy screamed until her throat burned. She had never felt such a terrible pain in her whole life. She was screaming, kicking and flailing around as she kept screaming and screaming, blood pouring down her face and onto the floor.
“Κρατήστε ακόμα, αρουραίος!” the creature snarled as he wrapped his fingers around the knife.
Fluttershy trembled in terror as she saw the creature’s face, it's morbid, toothy grin and it's reptilian eyes.
She braced for what she knew was about to come.
The creature brutally ripped the jagged scalpel out of Fluttershy’s right eye, tearing and shredding through the socket, leaving a bloody mangled mess where the big green eye had once been.
She screamed out again, blood pouring from her right eye and tears pouring from her left.
“PLEASE! NO MORE! NO MORE!” she screamed as she trembled and cried from the searing pain in her eye.
The creature set down the freshly bloodied scalpel, putting it on one of the pentagram ends.
All five of the hooded creatures had walked out of the cave through the small exit, leaving Fluttershy as a trembling, bleeding mess, blood still pouring down her face and her chest, leaving a large pool of red below her hooves.
Fluttershy hung there in the dimly illuminated cave, trapped in her own negative thoughts. She had lost track of how long she had been tortured by these things, but she knew she must have been here for weeks, going through worse pains and hardships than she had imagined possible, being tortured every waking minute.
She had been been beaten, burned, cut up, and left a bloody pulp. She was completely scarred from head to toe. Even if somepony came to rescue her, they wouldn’t be able to tell who she used to be. Her tormentors had cut her pink mane off of her scalp, leaving a small ponytail in the center of her head with a pentagram carved decoratively around it. Crusted dried blood had long since run down the entirety of her body, causing her fur to change color from its soft and vibrant yellow to a muted ugly brown.
From her almost shaved head to her mangled and scruffy tail, she hated herself. In a twisted, ironic way, her physical appearance now more closely reflected the awful creature she had become. She had selfishly left all of her friends behind; she could only imagine the grief and sorrow that she had caused them by letting them lose her. She let herself down. She let her friends down.
She then turned her mind to her giant feline friend that she had let down. She had been too weak to help him. She was completely helpless to do anything.
By the time she had begun thinking of Abdukar, her small trickle of tears became a steady flow of them. She was trembling and screaming, the emotional pain deep in her heart forming a heavy knot of guilt in her stomach, the physical pain from of her body only amplifying her screams.
Then, to her horror, the creatures were face to face with her. Suddenly, she snapped.
“Leave… me… alone,” she growled in a low tone, her tidal wave of emotions all shifting to anger and ferocity.
The creature stepped forward, holding what seemed to be a jagged drill in its hands. When it was within range, she swung back in her chains and shot forward, sending a kick into the creature’s chest that would rival Celestia’s power.
The hood on the being’s head shot off as it was sent tumbling backwards onto the floor. It lay there, rasping for air. When it tried to stagger back to its stilted feet, Fluttershy sent another bone-crushing kick straight to its face.
She had knocked it out completely cold, leaving its gray, wrinkly figure lying there on the floor, blood streaming from its mouth.
Fluttershy hung in place, clenching her teeth as hard as she could, an inferno of anger rushing through her body. She couldn’t feel anything: no fear, no guilt, no remorse. All she could focus on was hurting these things for hurting her.
"An eye for an eye," she quietly growled.
Abdukar laid on the warm cave floor. The faint sound of his raspy breathing broke the silence of the dark place.
He slowly came to his senses, at first barely able to lift his eyelids, let alone any part of his body. He looked around, taking in his surroundings. He had no clue as to where he was; the last thing that he remembered was being attacked by a swarm of black bats.
He remembered dying.
The life drained out of him as Fluttershy bawled into his chest. His vision faded before turning black. He heard his families' voices once again.
