A manic earthen mare with powers beyond comprehension has been killing and eating folk all over Equestria. Now she has reached Ponyville, and her next victim to be is Rainbow Dash. But the creature was being followed. Vengeance being his objective.
That day half of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony had been out of town for more than two weeks dealing with a lynch mob that had formed in Appleoosa due to a stallion finding out that his wife to be was a changeling the whole time, and she had not told him about it. But that is another story for another time.
What were are talking about now is the incident of four Luna's Return, or as it was better known to the press at the time, and later the offices of the O.S.S -Occult. Science. Service.- as "The Cupcake Killings". It wasn't the worse I had seen, but it was certainly the first time I got to actually meet the Element Bearers. I consider that it's worth talking about, specially now that it's Nightmare Night.
This is how we brought an end to the 'She-Devil of Arkham'.
4L.R. (Luna’s Return) 5th of the 11th Month 7:12 AM
< > Translated from Sheba Dialect
For the record, me name be Arcanum Folklore. I be the founder of the Occult Science Service, and, at the time, Knight of the Realm by decree of Princess Luna and the ghosts of the Ironclad Order. I was on my third day of tracking the cunt from the ‘blasted heath’ in north Mareachusetts to bloody Ponyville just south of Canterlot. That day I tracked what was known as the ‘She-Devil of Arkham’ to the outskirts of northeastern Ponyville where her gingerbread house materialized last...
That day was only partially cloudy, the wind picking up speed. And the temperature was chilling up to around thirteen degrees Celsius. The winds were blowing to the southeast into the Everfree, the ecological and magical freak show of the North Equestrian continent. Its trees are a strange amalgamation of tropical and northern fauna, ancient and shifting, the ether within it unstable, wild and unpredictable. The forest itself is filled with the remaining populations of the chimeric beasts created by mad sorcerers from around the world from zebra, Xing, and unicorn alike. All somehow drawn to it for reasons unknown.
Compasses don’t work within the maw of its borders. A place that no one can tame, that be the Everfree.
And one of my oldest friends lived in it, funny how the world works.
I saw the place; it gave the sort of wild ether one can only dream of, haven’t felt anything like it back then except for my odyssey back home from Zebrica.
I entered and followed the smoky magical trail she left behind; she knew that I was coming, of course she always knew. She wouldn’t be a magic practitioner on my par if she didn’t know that I was coming.
I could already feel the manticores and the bloody timberwolves gathering around me, vigilant, but unsure. They could smell the blood I’d shed; they were more concerned that another predator is in their territory than me being dinner. They were scared, and they ought to have been. I had killed bigger, and I could make short work of them if I hadn’t had more dangerous prey to deal with. Manticore pelt and timberwolf wood, while good, expensive commodities are not the sort of thing that I should be concerned with. I wasn’t a mercenary hunter anymore, I no longer needed to sell parts of the monsters I’d killed for extra earnings, I had a decent salary.
I eventually reached a Treegrowth home in a non-disclosed location in the Everfree. Treegrowth homes are created by sorcerers from ancient trees that are susceptible to be shaped by ethereal forces. Structures tend to grow with the tree so while the sorcerer is living in it, it still lives as its own living being. As such I noticed the dozens upon dozens of fermenting hoofmade potions hanging from the branches. And the totem guardians looking at me incredulously.
I noticed that there was no light inside; even so, the door opened and I trotted in without second thought. Then all thirteen candles in the surrounding area of the interior lit up in an ethereal green. And a brown cloaked figure sat next to a an iron cauldron. The entire area had shelves with worn down texts and all sorts of herbs and pickled wild life.
The figure revealed itself to be the Shiba Kingdom Shaman, Zecora, also known one time as Lady Sight. Her sapphire eyes, gray coat, and unique striped pattern were unmistakable. Though she now carried golden enchanted rings on her neck and golden earrings, things she didn’t have when I last saw her. And she hadn’t aged a day to boot.
<”You felt the abomination as well, did you not?”>
She looked at me, worried; she tried to see this thing for what it really was, it probably wasn’t too keen on the eyes.
<”Not only felt, but I saw the thing’s birth!”>
She narrowed her eyes at me, almost scrutinizing my soul. <”And you let it escape your sword!?”>
I decided to stop beating around the bush.
“It looked like a mirror pool copy of the element of laughter, Pinkamena Diane Pie, and from what I have heard of that mare’s unique abilities, I think that you can assert that it wasn’t within my power to stop her leaving the place from whence she came.”
She then looked at her cauldron, probably thinking on my next words.
“It escaped your grasp and it has struck terror through the land. But knowing you, you intend to end it at last.” She said that, and she was right. I had no intention on letting this continue.
I needed another experienced magic user for this, so I went with my pitch.
“Zecora, I have a plan, and it’s going to need a sorceress of your caliber to pull it off, though I will warn you now that considering what I have to work with, you will not like a part of it.”
She looked at me with those angry and worried eyes; she knew what I meant when I brought those terms, and she probably needed an explanation.
“You lure death to you, Lore, what you face is of no known race!”
I got closer and told her, “Ye are more correct than you know.”
So I told Zecora what happened in detail. I think it's best ye lot listened to it as well. ______________________________________________________________________________ Blasted Heath, Mareachusetts
I was taking samples from the grayed soil in the ‘blasted heath’, noticing glowing greenish particulate in the air that seemed to move in an odd and almost uniform pattern. The air almost glowed in an unidentifiable color that I couldn’t really describe.
I was staying in an abandoned house within the area with three others: Powder, Twitch, and Nail. Three combat ponynnel of the O.S.S. that I brought as accordance to protocol, all squads for missions are of four. No exceptions.
Some twenty meters to the southeast I noticed what appeared to be a pink, blue eyed mare, with a puffy––almost cotton candy looking––mane in the distance. She materialized a hookah from thin air and quickly filled it with the gray ashen dirt and some of the green particulate floating around. I began to gallop in her direction and she had already lighted it, and then took a massive hit from the hookah whose hashish was the alien soil of the ‘blasted heath’.
I stopped trying to get near her when I noticed what she had just done. She then began to vibrate rapidly, and before I could blink she jumped more than a hundred meters in the air until she fell through the roof of the abandoned house we were staying at.
I galloped back as fast as my legs could take me, and I began hearing submachine gun and pistol fire from the earthens Powder and Nail, and an ether blast or two that probably came from the ‘Range’ unicorn Twitch. I heard the screams and the ripping of flesh.
Then I arrived, and I was almost too afraid to open the door just based on the silence. But nonetheless I bucked the door open, and I spotted what looked like Twitch’s salmon pink body wearing his green fatigue uniform without his head; it looked like it was literally bitten off, and the blood afterwards geysered out of his body as it fell to the ground, leaving splatter on the ceiling, wall, and the wooden floor.
I quickly made my way to the second floor.
Nail, the jet-black earthen, had been ripped in half, still wearing his uniform. His upper body hanging by his entrails from the ceiling of what I could only guess was a guest bedroom, now covered in blood and other secretions, his pistol right under him.
And finally Powder, whose Tinker submachine gun had been impaled through his uniformed torso in the hallway, and his head literally shoved up the arse of Nail’s bottom half.
I hyperventilated for a while, but then I got to getting their tags. And I began tracking her down.
“Son of a bitch.” ______________________________________________________________________________ Zecora’s Treegrowth, Everfree
“I hope that explains what we are dealing with. I already have the necessary things to prepare here. I just need your help for the spell.”
Zecora trotted slowly to a case on the far right table and took from it a Four Barrelled Shiba Runed Rifle.
<”Shall we begin then?”>
And we began, with a plan built from what I learned of the witch as I analyzed the various remains of victims, and the tales of those that have heard her maniacal butchering of their neighbors and friends. From town to town, she killed, feasted, and left within the day. But now, I had her where I want her, and I no longer cared for her to be carted-off to face trial. She would die that day; I was making bloody sure of that.
4 L.R. (Luna’s Return) 5th of the 11th Month 6:40 PM
As I came closer I noticed how similar the place looked to an establishment that I had spotted within Ponyville, a small town bakery and sweet shop known as Sugarcube Corner. It was eerie just how far this abomination went into luring in her victims, most of whom were foals.
I stopped right in front of the door and I took in just how eerily innocent it looked, made me feel nauseous because of its sheer insidiousness. Just like a gingerbread sculpture at a Hearth's Warming party.
I wasn’t wearing my usual attire of a black woolen overcoat and matching fedora. I was wearing a large brown military trench coat made with direwolf leather for its magic conductive properties. With additional internal pockets to keep ammunition, my white shirt and black vest, a grenade sash with four Vulcan 40 incendiary grenades over that, a long sword and my holstered Coal 981 pistol under the coat and to my left flank, and also under my coat to the left, my trusty Kurdish dagger, and a SA1 Garand rifle and a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun on my back.
By then I hadn’t shaved or combed my black mane for three days, my mane was wild and the beginnings of a beard/mustache combination was forming over the greyish-blue fur of me face, and I had been smoking nonstop for those three long days, to the point that I had half a Jade Dragon brand cigarette hanging off me mouth, unlit due to the fact that I had mostly forgotten that it was there in the first place.
I saturated the door with me ether, making it glow a bright orange while it radiated a subtle heat. I then bucked it, causing it to explode in wooden shrapnel and glass, and I instantly had my 981 pistol at the ready aiming at the seemingly empty bakery.
I noticed the ether of two mares below me; the trail started at the door and went through the kitchen. Something told me I needed to hurry.
I was disturbed by just how much the place looked like an ordinary small town bakery. Everything was perfectly replicated to exact detail on the look of Sugarcube Corner. The place looked wholesome, almost inoffensive. But what I felt was off; the ethereal signature didn’t seem like the objects it resembled and actually felt like upon touch. To me, it was like looking at a changeling; like the movement of ethereal energies was something of a different size and species than what it looked like. The aura it gave was sickening to me, like a perpetually starved lion licking its fangs right before pouncing on its prey. I then felt a spike of energy coming from the two mares, so I hurried.
I galloped, surprised that there weren’t any traps, but it is possible that it didn’t know that I was on its trail.
I followed that trail to a hidden door behind the kitchen’s industrial-sized professional refrigerator. I pushed it open and I found a flight of stairs leading to a hidden basement; the trail of ether was still hot, but the the stairs were just as cold as the assumed inside of the very refrigerator I had just pushed away telekinetically. I decided to activate my ‘perception amulet’ at that moment, in the hopes that I could have the jump on the ‘witch’.
I could hear a faint wailing of misery and pain, not from downstairs, but from around me, everywhere at once. Words like “stop” and “no” were particularly prevalent; more than that was the weeping of both grown mares and stallions, and fillies and colts. Despite the steps being dry, I could practically feel their blood under my hooves. Death was all around me again and instead of frightening me like it did when I was younger, it enraged me with both outrage and self-loathing. I took too long. I didn't figure out that it was a copy fast enough and it escaped my grasp before I could hear it say a word, it just sat there smoking the unfathomable lifeform that permeated everything in the ‘blasted heath’ with a damn hookah!
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that something that very much resembled Pinkamena Diane Pie lift a scalpel to use on a very much still living and chained to a surgery table Rainbow Dash, who she then began having a conversation with the moment that the latter gained consciousness.
The room itself was decorated in a horror show of macabre uses for equine body parts in a style that gave an air of an almost sociopathic cheerfulness. All sorts of organs were repurposed into helium balloons, painted skulls were everywhere, some skin was used as streamers, and there was furniture all made with chemically preserved flesh and bone.
And then there was the abomination. She was wearing a dress made from the hide of a dozen ponies, adorned with with six pegasus wings; she wore a necklace of stubby unicorn horns around her neck. Her blue eyes, puffy pink mane, and pink fur did not belong on such a monster; she was just an imitation of a real mare. She had even begun using a griffon skull in a sickening ventriloquism act that only a monster would find amusing. Especially considering that from what I heard, that skull belonged to a friend of the current victim.
I did my best to get closer and avoid detection as I thought of the best way to be able to get the first strike in. Eventually I got within a couple of meters from the ‘Pink Witch’.
Once she finished the conversation, she immediately began to carve out Miss Rainbow Dash’s mark from her right flank.
I jumped to her right side and immediately blasted the ‘Witch Pinkamena’ off of Miss Dash with a telekinetic concussion blast from my horn, sending her flying to my left and into a table with some partially painted earthen skulls.
She instantly got up and threw one of the skulls in my direction with such force that it caused a shock wave, and it left a small crater on the brick wall behind me. I barely managed to dodge it, feeling as I had just been grazed by a cannonball.
She looked at me with the crazed eyes of a bloodsoaked South Asian tiger and lunged at me, right hoof first, holding the scalpel, within that moment. She was fast, but my telekinetic draw was faster. I blasted her with the 12-gauge shotgun before she could make contact with me, sending her halfway back from whence she tried to strike. She then stood on her back legs.
Had she been an ordinary earthen mare, she would have had a gaping hole in her abdomen, but instead I saw a cluster of holes where the buckshot hit. I started seeing trails of smoke coming out of the holes as each pellet was pushed out, covered in blood.
She then moved with her scalpel, striking with it as if it were a knife, and I blocked it with my Kurdish dagger. Then she retreated and struck again, causing me to dodge haphazardly to the the left due to the shockwave emitted by the speed and force of her movement. Had I not seen it coming a second before, my face would have been split open with the small surgical instrument.
I regained my bearings not a second too soon as she struck again from below, and I instantly parried the strike with my Kurdish dagger, my telekinetic grip charged with the vibration of that parry.
At the moment she was going to strike again, I pyrokinetically ignited the air and moved forward, setting the witch aflame. The horrid screeching brought me to near nausea. I then galloped towards Miss Rainbow Dash.
I telekinetically ripped the chains that held Miss Rainbow Dash on the surgical table and she promptly jumped with a look on her face that was equal parts fear and anger.
And she then yanked my 12-gauge from my telekinetic grip.
“Fucking hell!”
And started shooting away at the ‘Witch Pinkamena’. She screamed like a lion while doing so, her eyes watering in fury.
Until she exhausted the ammo on my pump-action 12-gauge.
“Done?”
Miss Dash then looked back at me with her ragged bright prism mane and magenta eyes. She then asked, “You think it worked?”
As if to the universe wanted to spit on her face, the witch got up and, in a blink of eye, she closed the distance between us and her. She then took the 12-gauge and swung it at Rainbow Dash, only for me to block it with my telekinetically held longsword, the steel dug into the wooden stock.
I felt her charge up behind me, so I told her what she needed to do.
“RUN, GET TO A TELEGRAPH AND YOUR FRIENDS!”
She then yelled at me back, “ARE YOU CRAZY!?”
After she said that I concussion blasted the ‘Witch Pinkamena’ across the room, finally ending getting the 12-gauge shotgun dislodged from my longsword.
“YES, NOW GO!”
As I said that, Rainbow Dash flew of in an ethereal discharge that probably propelled her off at full speed.
Then I felt that the whole structure began to move and enclose slowly. I galloped as fast as my hooves could take me outside, while shards of glass were being shot seemingly out of nowhere as I reached the kitchen, and I ran past the dining area of the fake Sugarcube Corner.
I leapt, smashing through the pink wooden door and onto the wild grass as the moon was above in the night sky.
The structure began to contort into something that looked like a snake made from stone glass and wood. I personally decided to just wing it. I spit out the cigarette that I was amazed was still there and I lit it aflame, summoning in a large king cobra that seemed to be made of fog, who I know to be the former demon Botis. He and the structure began to battle, coiling around each other in a struggle of titans, but from the structure’s side burst ‘Witch Pinkamena’, completely devoid of her macabre dress and her fur and mane missing, her skin burned, and her blue eyes bulging with hunger.
Her fur and puffy mane started regenerating with red ethereal discharges, and her mouth extended until it was a meter wide. She was a good forty meters away yet her left hoof launched stretched across the distance at an insane speed. I managed to use my blade to harbor the blunt of the strike but my back was soon met with the solid trunk of an Everfree tree that I heard splinter to the impact, which made me glad I was wearing a Direwolf leather trench-coat that took the force of the impact with the tree.
The hoof then retracted back all the way back to the pink menace, and such menace known as ‘Witch Pinkamena’ then jumped from forty meters away and was in midair until she was hit by four flaming green bullets that hit her in the chest and forced her to fall prematurely.
I didn’t see where the shots came from but I knew who they belonged to. In the distance I saw that Botis had left and that the structure had transformed to an ORGANIC pitch black serpent the size of a three story building with about fourteen glowing green eyes on each side of its large face. I saw this from a distance and I galloped into the Everfree forest, not wanting to confront it directly.
As I galloped I started to hear laughter, the laughter of a mare. And I had an idea who it was.
“I have to admit, of all the party poopers you certainly are the most entertaining.”
I heard that all round me and through me at once. It was like she was everywhere, the bloody fucking ‘Witch Pinkamena’ was everywhere. I continued to trot through the Everfree, both longsword and SA1 Garand rifle held by ethereal grip. I heard, from above, a large rustling of the leaves and branches, only to see the damned pink menace falling towards me, its mouth now normal-sized but filled with sharp feline-like teeth, her hooves transformed into large claws.
She slashed, I rolled to the side, and she then landed in my previous position. I fired a shot from my SA1 Garand, instinctively pulling the bolt for the next shot. The bullet blew off her ear, spilling yellow blood, but it began to regenerate in that second.
She and I then began to have a back-and-forth with our respective blades: her claws and me longsword.
‘Witch Pinkamena’ kept me on the defensive, having to use my longsword to parry each strike she threw at me, causing sparks to form as a result. I pyrokinetically lit my longsword and I managed to slice of her right forehoof/claw off.
The scream it emanated could not be described; it sounded like the shriek of hundreds of distinct beings at once. Its seemingly puffy hair straightened out, aligned to my direction, and began firing like a machine gun at me. I galloped as fast as I could while her trail of fire was behind my tail, each hair actually piercing the various trees and small creatures behind me.
Until a few of the needle hairs hit me on the right rear leg.
I rolled once and I fought the pain with a bit of nervous system manipulation, but the bleeding was still something that was obviously happening. So I quickly got up until we both heard it––the rumbling. The pitch black snake from earlier slithered quickly like an earthquake, laying waste to trees in its wake until it flanked me. And here I had the ‘She-Devil of Arkham’ behind me and the Pitch-Black-Serpent right in front of me.
Until I heard the same rifle fire from before behind me, obviously being fired at the ‘She-Devil’. I then ran toward the Pitch-Black-Serpent as it opened its horrifying maw with transparent, needle-like teeth. I telekinetically took my Vulcan 40 grenade sash and threw it into the serpent’s maw. I then jumped to the side, barely avoiding being swallowed by the large reptile.
Then a large clay-red Lion Golem, easily four times the size of an actual lion, shielded me as I telekinetically ignited the Vulcan 40 grenades. The explosion shook the earth and I covered my ears knowing the damage and pain that would befall them if I didn’t. I also smelled of the blood, flesh, and entrails of what I can only guess was the Pitch-Black-Serpent, and they smelled foul, like a combination between rotting sea life and the Manehattan sewage system during the summer.
I decided to move from behind the lion to to the front, only to realize that the front half was missing, and in fact was probably destroyed in the explosion.
Behind me came Zecora with her Four Barreled Shiba Runned rifle on her back. I decided to place my SA1 Garand rifle on my back and sheath my longsword.
“You were right, for distaste I feel in the actions we will do tonight.”
I replied in kind. “Better options were not exactly available. Now let’s move, it’s only a matter of time before the fucking She-Devil returns.”
So Zecora led the way to the trap we planned together, and I limped behind her––still bleeding, but at a lesser rate. I took out a few opiate pills and threw them in my mouth, chewing them due to a lack of drink. But I would fix that later. I also noticed how more vibrant the forest was with the yellow blood splatter and entrails of the Pitch-Black-Snake. I still had good vision despite the fact that the sun had long since fallen. And I intended to take full advantage of it. ______________________________________________________________________________
The Trap Site, right Outside the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters
I was an area deeper within the Everfree Forest near the castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. The old castle casted a shadow over us, as we were in front of the bridged chasm, the bridge we cut for security.
The cleanup crew was in the castle, waiting for the deed to be done. A couple of Flamethrower Troopers (or F.T.T’s) who were rather muscular earthen stallions clad in thick industrial built armor with a sophisticated flamethrower system of my design––its Etherfuel based flames burns on and under water, and can even melt stone––were flanking the Elder Sign Aray, that Zecora and I performed on the floor directly in front of the squad of three O.S.S. soldiers armed with Bright Automatic Rifles, all in the hooves of unicorns that could activate the incendiary enchanted bullets.
In the Elder Sign Aray were two middle aged stallions: Throat and Bat, the Brass Brothers. A couple of gangsters from Bronkston, one wine-red and the other yellow-oak, with knives for marks, and they were Celtic unicorns––like me––that I had bound in iron chains with magic repressing runes. I had helped convict them back in detective days. The two were responsible for equine trafficking, extortion, and hundreds of murders––either directly or indirectly. They were doing life, but I made a stop in Bronkston in the Gravel Equestrian Penitentiary. I talked to the warden that, by all standards, was more than happy to get rid of them. They were essentially living in luxury with all the contacts they had outside, and they left the business to their daughters.
Bat was always the one to talk so. “Folklore, ya bastard! You cannot get away with this, it’s illegal! And even if ya get away with it, my little girl Axey will want yer head!”
I hadn’t noticed before then, but my Direwolf trench-coat was a bit ragged with some wear and tear. I was covered in bruises, bloodied cuts, and the now-caking yellow blood of the Pitch-Black-Serpent covering parts of my coat and legs. And that essentially just made me give even less of a shit for his plight.
“Consider yours and your brother’s sacrifice a service to not only Equestria but the world, Bat. I’ll make sure to come see ya both when I reach Sheol.”
He pulled at his restraints in anger, naturally finding offense in my comment.
“Fuck you! Ya filthy half-earthen motherfucker!”
I ignored him and sat behind the Flamethrower Troopers; Zecora appeared beside me in a pillar of green flame.
< “We shall start.” > Zecora said in a tone that told me that, more than anything, she wanted this over with.
We sat in out lotus sitting positions. We began the spell, knowing that the abomination was heading our way.
We chanted in the old lemurian; the powers we were calling upon were that ancient.
And then we heard it––the shriek from the abomination. ‘Witch Pinkamena’. The haunting song of hundreds of life-forms at once.
She appeared, jumping out of the forest and into the starry sky, her mouth open at an unfathomable size. She landed right in the array and chomped down on both of the Brass Brothers at once, ripping the chains instantly along with their heads. Their blood geysered from their necks, spilling on the soldiers, Zecora, and me alike.
Then it happened––the witch couldn’t move. She tried pulling harder and harder; her body started turning from pink into something we couldn’t quite identify, her tail turning into something like another leg. Her mass increased sevenfold, eyes began sprouting all over her back, her legs became a combination of insectoid and arthropod, her pained shrieks almost unbearable, along with the crunch and morphing of her bones, until the witch became something that could never have been considered once an equine shape. Into something almost indescribable. But it was now in its true form, and now devoid of its power, it was vulnerable.
The the Flamethrower Troopers struck, covering her in the steel melting flame; afterwards, the Bright Automatic Rifle squad activated their horns and began firing at will at the creature with their incendiary rounds.
The sound of popping, bursting flesh, and spilling blood and fluids in the flames could be heard, along with an ever increasing shrieking.
Both Zecora and I focused and increased the intensity of the flames; the skies darkened and lightning began to form and strike. Both Zecora and I were bleeding from our muzzles from the strain of pulling this much raw ether, there only because of the flesh and souls of the Brass Brothers. The flames began to form into a spinning mass of flame to keep the creature cooking.
Until finally a large lightning bolt struck from the sky to the pillar of flame, and it was over. The Flamethrower Troopers stopped torching it, the O.S.S. Soldiers in their green fatigues exhausted their Bright Automatic Rifles, and both Zecora and I fell on our backs.
It was over.
I begrudgingly groaned and got up as everypony collapsed to the floor in relative relief. I walked to where the Elder Sign Aray was only to see a puddle of black goo in its place.
It was over. The bridge was later tied back up and the cleanup crew came to take care of the rest. The rest of us though, we needed sleep. I had explaining to prepare for.
9th of the 11th Month, The Castle of Friendship 2:22 PM
I had just finished telling the tale to our illustrious protector: the Element Bearers, six young mares barely out of their twenties, who by gathering the most powerful magical purification tool in the last twelve hundred years saved the nation from certain doom in about two occasions. Then they fought in the Changeling Invasion of Canterlot in 2 L.R (Luna’s Return) and then the subsequent exploding of the Warlock Lich and self-proclaimed king Sombra. Both times, it was either the Shining 'poster-boy' Armor and his wife Cadenza, the self proclaimed leader of the Crystal ‘not actually an’ Empire, or the adoptive son of Princess Celestia, Prince Spike Dragül Solaris, that actually managed to save the day.
Let’s not forget the embarrassing Plunder Weed incident that I could have solved had I been in the country instead of being in the Wild Lands with Daring Do and an O.S.S. squadron, nor the Tirek incident that I could have solved had I not been in with another O.S.S. squadron fighting Dark Young.
Let’s not forget that year’s brand of madness. Mark removal spellcraft, cult of stupidity that used such mark removal spellcraft, the cult leader that fucked with the fabric of space and time, and the fact that only through dumb luck did Twilight ‘coma-wings’ Sparkle manage to unfuck that debacle in time for us not to become a blasted wasteland done in by the aforementioned stupidity.
Oh, shall I also mention the house arrest and reformation of the former cult leader that helped in stopping another changeling invasion that year, along with Discord, and some travelling stage magician name Trixie Lulamoon? That, by the way, let the Faerie Queen of the Cunts (Chrysalis) escape and is now another thing that I have to deal with. At least that second invasion was dealt with a lot less bloodshed.
Oh, and let’s not forget the return of six of the legends of old and the purification of a brilliant sorcerer that managed to be using the power of Nyarlathotep.
All of ya can only imagine my ““JOY””.
Naturally, ‘Coma-wings’ talked first.
“You voluntarily went and asked for a warden of the Equestrian Penitentiary System to go ahead and give you two convicted felons, which you then fed to a horrid mutated creature to keep it still enough to use spellcraft with my friend Zecora to use their ethereal presences as fuel to activate what you and Zecora call an ‘Elder Sign’!?”
So said Miss Twilight Sparkle, the lavender-purple former protege of Princess Celestia, and possibly the most rawly powerful unicorn in the last century. She also is grossly uncreative in the spells she uses, despite being able to use any spell by just fucking looking at it.
I also winced at the comment; truth be told despite what Throat and Bat had done to the City of Bronkston, they were still equine. Though considering that they were breezing by their sentences, I considered that they should face the execution they deserved while also being key to stopping a possible world ending threat that killed and ate wantonly without mercy.
“Well, it was beyond me organization's current capacity to get etherlectrical generators large enough to power an Elder Sign Array of sufficient complexity for the job on sight, and on the small time window I had to act. It was actually faster for me to go outside the law and call in a favor in exchange for another favor. You can blame me for their deaths, but the Mareachusetts warden that shall not be named was just as guilty of those deaths. And Throat and Bat were essentially living as comfortably as they did outside of prison using the their daughters current control of their organization as a means of acquiring that comfort.”
Twilight the alicorn lass’s eye twitched at that. And naturally she replied in her anger.
“Doesn’t matter! You are still a murderer!”
I narrowed my eyes and gave her a firm look. I already knew that I was a murderer and nothing was going to change that.
“So?”
She recoiled at that, not expecting that answer.
I was sitting on the floor next to the thrones of the Element of Laughter and the Element of Kindness, facing across the table from Miss Sparkle.
I was wearing my usual black overcoat and fedora hat, though underneath at my abdomen, my whole right rear leg and my right foreleg were covered in bandages; so was half my face.
There was a tomato and mozzarella loaf sandwich that the dragon Spike had brought me along with a full pitcher of coffee. I hadn’t touched any of it since I started talking, so I figured it would the best time to eat it. I took a large bite out of it, and I washed it down with the slightly above lukewarm black coffee that I drank straight from the pitcher––no sugar or milk added––leaving half a pitcher when I finished.
Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy were staring at me, eyes wide open, after that.
Miss Apple was the first to speak; wearing a Stetson hat indoors was odd to me, but she seemed alright by my book. “Look, ah don’t feel too good about what ya did, but a can understand why ya did it. An’ if that thang was as ya described then can’t blame ya doing it.”
Miss Rainbow Dash spoke next. “Yeah! Come on Twilight, you weren’t there! I shot that thing seven times with HIS shotgun while it was on fire and it still got up and tried to kill us!”
Miss Rarity spoke next. “Well I think that it certainly isn’t justified, though I can still understand why you did what you did. Still, you could have called on us if you wanted to.”
I just looked at her, wondering if math wasn’t something you picked up as a designer.
“Miss Rarity, ya and ye friends were not in Ponyville at the time with the exception of Rainbow Dash and Miss Apple, who was on her farm on the other side of town. None of ya would have made it in time to help me, and there was no guarantee that you could solve the problem or even survive it. I’ll also remind all of ya that ya took two days to get to Ponyville after we destroyed the abomination.”
It was at that moment that Fluttershy got onto the solid diamond table, turned her head around and stared at me. She was using a bit of posthypnotic suggestion, something that hasn’t quite worked on me in over ten years. So I decided to project a glimpse of some of my memories to the poor girl.
She then began to shed tears silently, and her legs failing her as they wobbled eventually causing her to collapsed on the table and reach a state of unconsciousness.
“All right, let me make something clear. I have been solving crimes and slaying monsters since you ladies were mere fillies at most. I have faced darker boogies than you lasses have thought-up in even ya worst fucking nightmares.
“Through the application of science and help from me colleagues and friends I have bathed in the blood of beings that where feared throughout the ages.
“Not only me, but your friends Yearling and Zecora as well.
“Since Princess Luna returned, the world could end at any moment! Things long forgotten, from dark eras steeped in legend are resurfacing into the world!
“None of you faced the more insidious, or the more vicious of that lot because Celestia herself deems that none of ye are psychologically equipped to deal with them. And let’s be fair, all of ya are like family to her, and she wouldn’t send her family to die!
“None of ye can comprehend yet what is out there. No matter how powerful ya are, Twilight, or how powerful the Tree of Harmony is, we are all insignificant upon the presence of what is returning to the world.
“Ye should consider it a blessing that ya can have the luxury of blissful ignorance. Let us soldiers and old wizards do the bleeding, we have been here long before even the blasted Tree of Harmony, ready to face the things beyond the void.
“If you need confirmation of what I just said, talk to Starswirl. He will tell ya almost the same.”
With that, I took what was left of the tomato and mozzarella sandwich and threw it in my mouth; I also drank the remaining coffee.
I then left them all sitting in their respective thrones, all except of the bearer of the Element of Laughter, Pinkamena Diane Pie, who was not present during my report.
I limped through the door and into the hallways of the crystal castle. Spike was heading in the opposite direction into the Map Room as he passed by me.
“Thanks for the sandwich, kid.”
I heard a “you’re welcome” but I just kept on limping. I kept going until I saw in the hallway Pinkamena Diane Pie, her hair down, and she was hunched, looking at the cold crystal floor, crying. Her sobs were almost heartbreaking really; I understood why too. That thing was born from a mirror pool clone. And she must have made that clone, and it must have ran away at some point. That thing went around killing and feasting on ponies wearing her face. I understood perfectly the guilt she must have felt, that something that one has created was used for so much evil.
I limped closer to her; she noticed me and looked to me at eye level, a bandaged up, greyish-blue bearded Celtic unicorn. Her eyes were filled with tears, and the whites of those eyes were red from all the crying. Blue eyes that would be lovely, if anything. A pink mare with balloons for her mark, and she was the second saddest pony I had seen in my life.
“I’m sorry,” she said. And at that moment I began to shed some tears of my own. I embraced her in a hug and squeezed tight.
“You have nothing to say sorry for. Nothing at all.”
At that moment her hair poofed up out of nowhere, and I jumped back.
“GAH!”
Screaming a bit in pain due to the sudden movement. And she then giggled, even if she still had some tears, but that certainly made me feel better.
“I do have to say sorry for that though,” she said. That made me grin.
“I’ll see ya around,” I said and I left her in the hallway as I continued limping to get outside.
Eventually I opened the large entrance to the Castle of Friendship, and as I limped out I closed the door behind me.
I took out my pack of cigarettes, opened them and tapped the pack against the crystal wall of the castle. I took one in my mouth, then I lit with a spark of pyrokinesis.
I took a drag from it, looking at the nice and only partially cloudy Ponyville afternoon.
Then I noticed that one of the cleanup crew, a white pegasus with a silver mane by the name of Windcutter, landed in front of me, wearing his green uniform fatigues.
“Sir, would you mind following me?”
I said, “Sure.”
I followed him despite my state. But then I would find out why.
We arrived at the Sunflower Cafe in Ponyville. Nice place with a roofed porch, with plenty of tables. Some of them were lined together and in those tables were sitting Zecora, the Bright Automatic Rifle squad, and the Flamethrower Troopers that were with me in the destruction of that abomination, though they were devoid of their armor of course.
Among them was none other than Princess Luna herself, drinking a nice cup of coffee. I limped to that table and joined them.
Luna herself had a small smile, the rest of the ponies in the table looked at me not with questioning but oddly, wonder. The Princess was the first to speak.
“I take you weren’t too harsh on them?”
I winced a bit; I actually was harsher than I should have been. She sighed at that and said.
“I’ll talk to them later.”
One of the O.S.S. soldiers––one of the unicorns––I think that his name was Sparky––spoke.
But then none of ya would know what Luna told her afterwards, or what Celestia told her after that, and then what I told her about certain things about our universe.
In reality, I had no problem with Miss Sparkle other than her neurotic tendencies cripple her out of being a true scientist. In many ways, her inability to be fascinated by the bizarre instead of being attracted to it stunts her intellectual potential, severing her of her own creativity and the capacity to see the whole picture.
I warned Princess Celestia about it, telling her that Twilight’s devotion to her craft, and her infatuation with her is getting in the way of her doing great good in the world. She simply told that she agrees but Miss Sparkle is already too old to stop her from being set in her ways by talk. She needs to instead learn the hard way that the world has no right or reason to actually make sense.
I also told Celestia that that is what happens when ya teach somepony with that much raw potential in the New World style of the discipline of sorcery instead of the old ways of magical practice.
Ya only see the safe and rational part of the world instead of all its bizarre and barely explainable contents, and once ya are set in the thinking ya voluntarily refuse new knowledge that contradicts the narrow institutionalized view of the world instead of the dangerous and wild truth of the the flow of Ether and its extensive relationship with all life on a cellular level.
Though I cannot really blame Miss Sparkle. When you train someone to constantly control themselves in order to relate more to others and avoid harming them, essentially making them afraid of their own power, you get a Twilight Sparkle, a pony that in a way even when she ascends to alicornhood, is afraid of being exceptional.
But in an odd sort of way, it is for the best. I am a destroyer, the Black Knight, a merciless killer that serves as a force that instills fear and horror upon those that oppose my master. It just so happens that my master this time is no one less than Princess Luna. In many ways, I destroy monsters and criminals like myself, and when it’s all said and done, Twilight purifies and reforms all she can.
I preserve the legacy of Equine kind and destroy the horrors from the blackest parts of the eons of our existence, and leave the fields fertile and bare. She, on the other hoof, will take that and bring new life and peace to the baren world.
In the end she was meant to be pure forgiveness and renewal, and I was meant to be harsh justice and the manifestation of all those that die in horror and with their lives left unfulfilled and barren. I was the vengeance of all those that suffered the injustices of the world, a wrathful phantom made from the sorrow and pain of countless souls screaming for mercy, but never received nor shall ever receive such.
I will die with no glory, no recognition, and no love so that she can be remembered as the manifestation of harmony and peace.
That is what the Tree of Harmony wanted after all, and truth be told I really hated that thing.
For quite a good reason too, it basically behaved like a brainless divine being, warping reality around certain individuals that met its flawed and downright strict criteria for purity of heart. It also partially warps reality and gives the advantage to all the land, beings––either plant or animal––and even the damned air around all twenty-five million square kilometers of the North Equestrian Continent. As in, it benefits nothing but what is in that area, and even then sometimes the things outside of that area get worse or suffer misfortune so that area may become better and more prosperous.
Basically, it messes with free will, and it is guilty of favoritism.
Not that I could have proven it at the time; it was just a hypothesis back in the day, dismissed because it was more likely that I had simply grew resentful of the Elements of Harmony because they were making me, and others like me––the heroes, monsters hunters, and wizards of old––obsolete. They said that I unfortunately never planed for a life in peace where I could focus my abilities in more mundane pursuits, so that was why I concentrated so much in finding blame on one of the greatest resources in Equestria, and that I should seek psychiatric help…
Nevertheless, I brought Twilight Sparkle along with me to inspect the damage and see how the cleanup crew was faring.
“You know, it almost makes me think that you are jealous of us, how we lived in blissful ignorance,” said Miss Twilight Sparkle with the utmost smugness that she could muster. Part of me considered that that was how others felt with dealing with when I think I got the upper hoof in an argument.
I mustered a low groan as a response at that and said as a response the following.
“Ya like to have all the answers, thinking that the world, in its core, cares, like it even has a conscience, do ya? I have nothing against ya or yer friends, sweetheart. I just feel that, considering yer position, ya do not have the right to be that innocent in the real nature of life. Like ya think that everypony that confronts ya is just an insecure schoolyard bully with magical power.”
She naturally rolled her eyes.
“I’m not in the thought that you are a schoolyard bully that never grew up, as you are trying to point out. You seem to me like someone that has seen something so horrible that you gave up in following a moral compass and just does anything to win. No matter how horrible that action may be. It would seem to me that half a decade in prison would give you time to reflect.”
I exhaled and did my best to not get an aneurysm there and then. Did she not know that the prison that I would be sentenced too housed some savages that I placed there myself? Or how bad it is at actually reforming ponies? I had those thoughts swirling in me as I heard her words. She said it with such innocence too, probably thinking that it was nothing but a timeout in a secure building. Probably only read about it, must have never been in one herself.
“But Luna told me that you were there in Manehattan when the Thule Esoteric Order summoned Nightmare Moon, you were the first to confront her and you nearly died doing so. There is also the fact that you were the first pony to approach Luna without fear, even before she came over to Ponyville for Nightmare Night almost three years ago now. Not to mention the friendship that you both share. It makes me think that underneath the stallion of blood and iron lies a heart. Am I wrong?”
I looked at her with the utmost incredulity. I did not expect that was what Luna told her, and to be fair she probably told her more. I did not know whether she was asking me a trick question. One minute, she wishes me to fight for my life, probably leading to the deaths of quite a few as I make the hasty escape of whatever prison I would be sentenced to. The next, she is talking to me as if I were something more admirable. I was wondering if that mare would make up her damn mind already.
“Luna seems to have told ya quite a lot. But why the change of heart? Surely ya may think that she is just biased.”
She stopped trotting, and looked to her right at me. She gave me a smile, a rather adorable one if I can say that, and then sat. She closed her eyes and coughed before continuing with with her answer.
“Not at all; in fact, what she told me made me realize that you deserve another chance. In all, I think that you qualify for reformation here; the girls and I might actually turn you into the hero you are supposed to be. Sure you would need some five years, but that is only because your case is almost as bad as Starlight’s. But don’t worry, I see you passing with flying colors already.”
I could not believe a word of what I was hearing. It baffled me, it felt impossible, but that is what she said.
“Pfffffffffftt!! Hahahahaha! Really!? Ya cannot be serious, Sparkle. Do you even understand what you are saying? I mean, don't ya know? Yer standard of heroism is a modern invention, Miss Sparkle.”
I said that last sentence with the straightest face that I could muster at the time. Har jaw was left open as she continued to give me that one thousand meter stare of despair.
“Celestia, at some point, thought it through and decided that the old ways had to change, so Celestia started backing more individualistic philosophies only some four hundred years ago. Ya heard me, the idea of individual ownership and the right to vote has only been around for the last four hundred years or so with the rise of modern Equestria and Celestia’s fostering of more democratic and individualistic thinking.
“Back at, minimum, a thousand years ago, murder and rape on the streets was common, filth and disease afflicted most of the citizenry to the point that only nobility and royalty knew of hygiene! Go further back and in the ancient world the gods roamed and screwed over all mortal kind with reckless abandon, while basic cleanliness was certainly more common because of the existence of Empires like Romulus, and Ancient Xing. Wars were common, so common that most were not even named, and every empire of the time maintained a constantly grinding aptitude for war over resources and the wims of selfish and egotistical deities. Without the Witchers from the south of the Slavic Lands, the various monster hunting schools, The Ironclad Knights, the Druids of Erenn, and Celestia and Luna. The world would make what Discord did to this continent over a millennium ago seem like paradise!
“Oh, and let us not forget the fact that just how common bloodshed was. Do you have any idea how many lives Luna took before her time as Nightmare Moon during the Battle of Kamikazee in the country of Nipon, barely a year before Celestia’s and Luna’s arrival at the western shores of Equestria? I will tell ya, one hundred thousand and forty Xing and Mongolians died on the Pacific Ocean that day, attempting to invade Nipon, and she killed them all with the storm she created and the Zambato given to her by the legendary swordsmith Kaze. Bodies drifted to the western shores of Nipon for DAYS!
“Celestia brought down two ships, each with crews numbering in the hundreds, during her time gallivanting and eloping with Sinbad the Sailor. And let us not forget the thousands that died during the Unification War, the War Against Discord, and last but not least, the Celestial Vault Civil War that had seen the rise and imprisonment of Nightmare Moon. And that is just covering the BASICS. I could stand here talking for literal years about the entire history of war and divine intervention on our mortal plain, and it wouldn't be enough.
“With that said, it is insanely clear that heroics of the clean and bloodless kind are a new phenomenon of this modern age. And that most of Equine history has been bathed in blood, oceans of it!”
She slumped, she looked down at the grass, tears forming in her eyes, I could hear the slight wimpers of “Luna caused the Kamikaze? Celestia killed others?”.
She braced herself, but then told me this in retaliation.
“That was the past, we do not have to be like that anymore! What good is it we keep fighting if nothing has changed?”I looked at her, and then felt a sudden buck in the gut. The look on her tear filled eyes and flushed cheeks made me feel guilty, like a took away all that was good of the world before her very eyes.
“Not ‘we’ Miss Sparkle, but ye. Ya and yer friends are the ones that will give new life to the world, after all is done. Me, Luna, and the rest of my ilk are what is left of the old world. Those that have to make up for their sins and clear the path for ya to make a new kinder world. Me and Luna? As penance for our sins, we have to push back the ancient darkness of eons past, and dismantle the new rising evils. So that ye and yer friends can make right where we did so much wrong.”
She looked at me with understanding, probably in an attempt to give me some semblance of solace.
“It doesn’t seem fair for you. Why give up a chance at reformation?” Miss Sparkle said.
I sighed, I knew the answer. It was one that I had convinced myself again and again. One that I came to realize that, after going through therapy, I refused to follow my shrink’s advice to run the O.S.S. from a desk, to stop fueling the night terrors and settle down. That I should seek a more fulfilling and more stable life. But that is the thing, isn’t it? They just don’t train War Mages like me anymore.
“Something is coming, Miss Sparkle, smoke, the iron like smell of blood, the heat of the fire. I can already feel them. War is coming, a war like no other in history, things are stirring, things from eons before even the stone and the fire that were around even before the dinosaurs, and even the first dragons. We as a species have been eating away at the shadows, pushing back the monsters of old into deeper and more remote pits. Closer and closer they get to the resting place of ancient terrible things that no civilization can truly recall completely but were there before us, the dragons; before mountains, and before oceans.
“It will start with the burning of books, and it will continue with the burning of ponies. Equines will be the first to fight for dominion over the world against each other in the old world. I fear that the bloodshed and destruction will be more than ever in history, and that will stir the monsters that even the gods feared and could not themselves destroy when they were alive.
“Sorry to say, Twilight, but I cannot afford to be ‘fixed’. The world is going to need monsters like me one last time. I decide to be at peace and I would be turning my back on our species. Plus, I am thirty-nine; if there was a chance for me to have a family and settle down, it passed me already. My work might be the only chance. Though I suspect that I may be overestimating it.”
She shook a bit in frustration, her teeth gritting as she held back her answer––an answer she wasn’t going to hold for long anyway.
“I refuse…. I refuse! I refuse to believe that there is something out there so terrible and unfathomable that your way is the only sane way to deal with it! Maybe you, the Pillars, all the others that fought for the world and Equestria that came before me and my friends may have brought yourselves to think that way, to the point that even Celestia and Luna think that way. But me and my friends have something that they never had, and that Celestia and Luna only had for a brief span of time, The Elements of Harmony.
“Are you telling me that the seed planted by the Pillars is useless against what is coming? Me and my friends have faced Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra, Tirek, and more! Surely we are ready for whatever you are afraid of.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at her straight in the eye.
“By the way, no offence to ya or Celestia’s stepson, but the Ether Crystal grenade didn’t really quite finish the job. I had to be telegraphed and then brought in to track Sombra’s new body and clean up yer mess. And finally, I can assure you that the Tree of Harmony is insignificant to Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep. Let us not forget that it would not even care to help anyway.”
She started to dry her tears with her right forehoof, followed by a gentle tilting of the head to me in absolute confusion.
“Why? Why would it not help?”
I sighed, This was going to be painful for her.
“Because Yog-Sothoth is an entity of thought, knowledge, and order, while Nyarlathotep is one of deceit and chaos. They came to our world at the same time, intending to fight for control of the continents in a way that could be considered, in a way, harmony by the Tree’s stupid standards. That and, in the end, both Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep are beyond our comprehension and could have destroyed our world if it pleased them. But from what I can tell, one gives to his followers despite them not understanding what they really want and indivertibly always leads them to their doom, to the point that his followers embrace it as Yog’s plan. The other is a sadistic motherfucker that likes to see us suffer as part of his daily masturbation sessions, and does this mostly by manipulation and shapeshifting.”
She then looked up at the stars, and said her piece.
“If what you are saying is true, then in the grim abysmal darkness in our universe, there is only madness and horror. That we are so small, that like ants we would be stepped on without much notice….”
I decided to start trotting toward one of the O.S.S. tents that I see in the distance. I heard her as she got up and galloped to keep up. She reached me, and speaked to me with a worried voice.
“So that’s it? You tell me that there is no hope and you just trot away? Look, even if that is the case, you shouldn’t live like you do: like a dead stallion trotting. Going from case to case, and if not, from analysis to analysis with the weight of the world on your back. That sort of thing drives ponies crazy, hollows them out and makes them be more and more vicious individuals. If you keep on being ‘pragmatic’ then you will become no better than the creatures and madponies you fight!”
I don’t think she got the memo of me not expecting to live for long.
“And ya point is? I’m a doomed stallion, Sparkle, there is no happy ending for somepony like me. I try to be a good pony, and I become less effective in my decision making. I hate to break it to you, but in this situation I think that I made the right call.”
She sighed, she was going to say something.
“That is how it starts: you make one pragmatic decision, and then another one, and then another one. You trade lives, at first the wicked, then probably the weak next. And finally once it all is said and done you are left alone in an empty, dead, and scorched land if you are lucky. No, more likely you would be killed long before that conclusion.”
I stopped…
“I appreciate your concern. I’ll think it over.”
She wasn't entirely right, but not entirely wrong either. In the end, at least I could appreciate that she saw something decent in me. If only because she is genuinely a good pony.
In the end we kept on trotting, the sun was setting and Celestia was waiting for us both at the end with a smile on her face.
…..And that is probably the best you can hope for.
