Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity all know something is wrong in Equestria, but can they discover the truth before they suffer the curse of the Candy Cult?
After the events of 'Something Sweet Bites Back' and the destruction of the human side of the Crystal Mirror, Twilight Sparkle discovers the shattered remains of the portal to the Equestria Girls universe. Realizing that she has not heard from Sunset Shimmer in some time, she tries to figure out what happened to her friend and inadvertently discovers that there may be a new darkness worming its way into Equestria!
Meanwhile, Applejack and Rarity discover that many of the townsfolk of Ponyville are behaving in odd ways. Is it another changeling invasion? Mind control? Or just a Nightmare Night prank gone wrong? The pair will have to work together to discover the truth... but when they do will it already be too late!?
As the sun sets, our heroes must race against time to try to stop Equestria from being drowned in blood and candy by a terrifying old foe and an unexpected new threat! Will anyone be spared the curse of the Candy Cult!?
Nightmare night, what a fright! It's time for Something Sweet to Bite!
"Wait... I recognize that voice!" Twilight’s eyes widened in recognition, "Starlight, is that you? But it can't be..."
"Sssstarlight..." hissed the figure on the throne. For the first time, she seemed to lean forward, the folds of her voluminous crimson robe spilling onto the dais. "Yess. They once called me that. But that wasss another time, another place. That was before our arrival in this world."
"Wait, yer 'arrival'?” Applejack was clearly confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
"It means she's not from here. Right?" Pinkie answered her friend, realization dawning. "You're another Starlight, from another world. Where are you from?"
"A place of pain and death. Not like thisss world. No, nor like the world that isss to come. It won't be long now..."
Rarity turned paler than usual. "There's another 'world' coming? Are you talking about some kind of invasion or...?"
"Invasion? Hah!" it was a harsh, painful bark of a laughter that was drawn from 'Starlight'. A wet chuckle that quickly subsided into a coughing fit as she seemed to gasp and struggle for air. Even so, it was with another labored laugh that she continued. "You could call it that. Though It's not a threat from outssside you ssshould be worried about..."
"Enough with this cryptic nonsense!” yelled Rainbow Dash, “We're here to stop you once and for all! Now are you gonna come quietly or are you gonna put up a fight?”
Another round of painful laughter that caused the seated pony’s body to quiver and her robes to slip aside. As the gore soaked cloth fell away, it revealed a gravid and swollen belly. Thick dark veins spider-webbed across the painfully stretched flesh. Her skin was almost parchment thin, as if her stomach was threatening to rupture at any moment, each laugh causing the stretch marks to expand a little more. Already, rips and tears in the ragged flesh were widening, spilling thick orange puss from the opening wounds. Indeed, it seemed the reason that ‘Starlight’ hadn't risen from her makeshift throne this entire time was because her very body was fused to her seat by the effluence oozing from her.
The stench became overpowering, and all the more horrifying because now they could finally see the source. A pool of thick, dark fluid spread beneath ‘Starlight’, dripping down the dais towards the girls as the sick and distorted creature before them finally ceased her laughter and instead raised her hooves to pull off her hood. Her face was just as bloated and deformed as her belly. Her horn was almost lost in the mounds of lumpy flesh, covered in the boils, cankers, and sores that remained of her face. It was the thick black filth that dribbled from her mouth as she exposed her rotten smile that made the girls collectively take a step back. Nothing so clearly in pain should be able to smile like that. "It'sss too late to fight. Ssshe is coming. You are blesssed. You will bear witnesss. The fruit of all my labor. Our ssssavior and our deliverance. Ssssoon we will... all... be... free..."
"The Candy Mare..." As if in response to her voice something shifted beneath the skin of the swollen belly, stretching the already taut flesh to the breaking point. Starlight’s gut distended further than before, the thing that had once been a pony let out a soul shriveling scream. "The time has come!" she sobbed, flecks of black filth flying from the corners of her mouth as equally dark tears spilled from her bulging eyes. “Give thanks that you are allowed to witness... her rebirth!!! EeeeeeaaaAAAAGGHHH!!!"
As her final words rose into a scream, her jaws split in half with a wet popping noise. Not just her jaw, but her entire body seemed to rupture as a huge gash spread down from her mouth, cleaving her throat down to her belly. Flesh ripped and muscle tore as bones were bent at unnatural angles and the unicorn howled in incoherent agony, very much still alive despite everything. Her insides seemed to slither and writhe, searching for a way out!
"What's happening!?"
"We have to stop this!"
"Do something!"
What happened next in the already dreadful tableau made the girls own guts churn. Starlight's high pitched screams had deteriorated into harsh animal squealing, but now they changed again to high girlish giggle! A chill ran up their collective spines at the sheer madness encapsulated in that horrible sound! But no, it wasn't her, it wasn't Starlight. The unicorn's eyes had rolled back into her head and thick foam was pouring from the remains of her ruined mouth. That childish, insane laughter was coming from somewhere else.
With a horrendous sound that one could usually only expect to hear in a slaughterhouse, the bloated belly at last popped like a wet balloon. Blood, guts, and viscera cascaded down from the throne in a warm red tide of filth. Damp skin hanging in shredded tatters, as the unfortunate pony was completely hollowed out. Starlight's lifeless carcass was now draped like a discarded coat over what remained of her throne. In her final moments she had been almost completely emptied...
Almost.
Something stood on four hooves, trembling slightly in the steaming pile of innards that remained piled beneath her. Something with long, slick, red and black liquorice instead of hair, and a tiny body drench in gore, shiny with the riot of colorful candies that she seemed to be composed of. Twin lollipop eyes opened, swirled pink and blue with madness, glowing gently in the gloom.
As the girls watched, stunned, a grin spread slowly on a tiny face that belonged solely in a realm of nightmares. A candy corn grin, razor sharp and stained with the fetid blood of her 'rebirth'. That predatory smile parted and again it laughed, high and sharp, sweet and shrill. All over her body new mouths opened to join in. The heavenly laughter of children, filtered through the mouths of hell.
Dumbfounded, the Twilight and her friends realized there were words mixed into that bone chilling sound.
"Happy birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Candy... Happy birthday to me!" She laughed and laughed as if this was the best joke in the world.
“Are you... Are you the Candy Mare?” asked Twilight, still somewhat in shock and unable to believe her eyes.
Rarity and Applejack shared a look of doubt and confusion. “Play what?”
“A game, a game, a guessing game!” shrilled the abomination madly as it excitedly leaped back and forth from candied hoof to candied hoof. “Guess what happens now!”
“We don’t know dear,”replied Rarity, trembling. “Perhaps you should tell us.”
The candy coated creature laughed and turned around and around in a circle like the world's tiniest and most psychotic ballerina. “That’s easy! Now... we begin!”
"Ugh...At last," groaned Mayor Mare, stretching as she left behind the confines of Town Hall, "I can finally call it a night."
The hour had indeed grown late and the night had darkened as clouds swallowed up the moon and blotted out the stars, leaving only the fitful light of street lamps to illuminate the dirt roads of Ponyville. The warm glow of the thatch roofed cottages had long since subsided as ponies had long ago blown out candles and snuffed the lights of lanterns for the evening and gone to pursue a good night's sleep. If only Mayor Mare hadn’t worked so late, she might have been numbered among them.
As it was, it was an unseasonably warm and muggy night as the mayor of Ponyville stepped out into the gloom. For the night before Nightmare Night, it was particularly odd that it should be so warm, but then a storm was clearly boiling on the horizon and it was likely all this warm air was being pushed before it. The public servant couldn’t help reflecting for a moment that in Detrot they had taken to calling this night 'Tirek’s Night', and played destructive pranks on one another. Mayor Mare imagined that tonight was about as hot as it got in Tartarus, so for once the name for the fiendish night seemed appropriate.
The air was so thick she could practically taste it. As the dampness on the wind curled her mane, she hurriedly turned back to the main entrance of town hall and firmly locked the heavy double doors. Usually this would be her assistants job, but Raven Inkwell had been absent from work that day, which was why the mayor herself had to work late in the first place. Still, securing the old building wasn’t that much of a chore, even for a mare as blessed with years as the mayor, though it did give her a little time for reflection as her mind wandered to the whereabouts of her missing assistant.
It was unusual for Raven to miss work. The Earth Pony was very dedicated to her job, and would often suffer through the very worst that allergy and flu season had to offer just so she could be at work bright and early to greet the mayor on her way into the office. Thinking about it, Mayor Mare decided she’d have to drop by and visit her tomorrow morning before work and make sure everything was alright. It wasn’t like the municipal leader of Ponyville had been lonely or anything, what with all the extra work to keep her busy. Sure, as late as it was,getting home and out of the clammy air was first and foremost on her mind, but Raven wasn’t just a valued employee she was also a friend. Friends need to watch out for each other, the mayor thought to herself. "But I'll deal with that in the morning."
Double checking the doors and windows were secured, the public servant gave a satisfied nod and set out into the damp , dripping evening. To the Earth Pony it felt like the air was a second layer of skin, moisture clinging to her coat and making her mane droop with the additional weight. It wasn’t just her hair, but every object seemed to have a thin layer of condensation gleaming on its surface. The street lamps were practically shining and everything dripped wetly under their orange light. To say she felt uncomfortable would have been something of an understatement. As a few flickering flashes of lightning overhead strobed in the sky her already unsettled expression deepened into a frown. It seemed the storm might just overtake her before she made it to the safety of her home. It was bad enough to be out on an unpleasant night like this, but she didn’t relish the idea of being caught in a sudden downpour as well.
Looking around, the mayor realized there was no pony out on the street but herself. Perhaps Rainbow Dash had warned everypony ahead of time about the coming storm and Mayor Mare, cooped up in town hall all day doing the job of two ponies, had just been left out of the loop? Of course it wouldn't be the first time that the rainbow maned weather pony had 'forgotten' to give proper notification before a scheduled storm. Then again, maybe it was simply later than the mayor thought and the weather pony had assumed that everypony would already be off the streets and tucked away in bed. Not really an unfair assumption, but one that made the Earth Pony grimace. Normally she would have long since slipped between cool cotton sheets and layers of warm quilts, as opposed to trudging through abandoned streets, laboring under layers of humidity just to trot home.
As the distant grumble of thunder drew closer, Mayor Mare noticed wisps of sickly green fog drifting in between the thatch roofed houses. They reminded her of nothing less than ghosts, lost spirits wandering the night in search of long dead loved ones. Or perhaps, seeking revenge! The thought came dramatically, and Mayor Mare chuckled at herself and her overactive imagination. She had always had a flair for theatrics, and had considered auditioning for Bridleway before she had gone into politics. It was hardly a surprise that she would be in such a frame of mind of course. Nightmare Night was tomorrow, one of her favorite holidays, and one of the few times a year she got to dust off her acting skills to entertain young trick or treaters and party goers. It was entirely predictable that her imagination would be occupied by at least a few ghouls and goblins given the circumstances.
Despite being more than capable of laughing at her thoughts, she was still somewhat unnerved by the situation. After all, she might be the important and gifted Mayor Mare walking the peaceful streets of Ponyville... But she was also a mare who was all alone on a dark and apparently soon to be stormy night. Already her imagination had started to populate the darkness with seasonally appropriate specters and night terrors. Many a campfire tale had started with just such a scenario, with a mare walking home alone, oblivious to the terrors that awaited her before the stories abrupt and shocking conclusion. It was ridiculous to obsess over such make believe, but with nopony else to talk to, no distractions for her imagination, it was hard for her not to dwell on just what horrors might lurk around every corner.
"Hahaha!" laughed the mayor, a somewhat lonely sound on these empty streets. "You're not a filly, old girl, no need to go spooking yourself!"
Of course such musings were just as silly as imagining the patches of fog were ‘ghosts’. It didn’t matter that the mayor’s hoof-steps echoed forlornly in the empty sleeping town, or that the lamp light only served to deepen the pools of shadow that lurked just beyond the edge of her vision. It didn’t matter that the humid air caused her glasses to fog up so that she had to pause every few steps to wipe them off on her ascot or risk walking headlong into a tree. It didn’t matter that she felt, at those times when her vision was blurred, like she was being watched very closely by hidden eyes.
It didn't matter that she was oh so very alone, and if anything was out there she might not see it until it was too late...
A clap of not so distant thunder made the Earth Pony jump, and she would have laughed at herself again for winding herself up like a little filly, but she realized the reason the air was so very heavy was that the storm she thought distant but moments ago was just about to break. There were prudent reasons to quicken her pace beyond the ghouls and goblins that her imagination was populating the shadows with. Yes, she needed to make it home before the storm broke. She couldn’t afford to be caught out in such nasty weather and run the risk of falling ill herself. The town couldn’t run if both the mayor and her trusty assistant were out of office for an extended period. She had plenty of reasons to run, almost none of which had to do with the very real anxiety that was building in her heart.
"Perhaps I should just... Hurry on."
Mayor Mare quickened her pace, galloping down the street as fast as her hooves would take her. She wanted to get indoors as fast as possible. That was why she had ducked into a blind alley to take a shortcut. She wasn’t running to get home. She didn’t feel like there was some malevolent thing out there in the darkness stalking her. She couldn’t feel her heart racing and her breath coming in ragged gasps as panic gripped her heart. That was all just her imagination. The walls weren’t really closing in on her.
But, with a start, Mayor Mare realized she was no longer alone anymore. As she came around a corner she nearly barreled into another pony. So startled was she that she actually let out a brief scream before getting ahold of herself enough to apologize.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she began to say, “I was just on my way home and I was trying to beat... the storm... when...” her words trailed off and faded to a whisper.
Mayor Mare knew something was wrong right away.
In the middle of her path stood a pale figure hunched over in a circle of lamplight. Though she stood on all four hooves she was bent over at an odd angle, so that her long dark, unkempt mane hung limply in front of her face. Her matted hair hid her features, save for her muzzle which was cracked open in a long, silent moan. Every now and then, a soft clicking or rattling noise would drift from that impossibly wide stretched mouth, as though the other pony was trying to scream or cry, but couldn’t quite manage to make a sound.
At first the mayor thought this must be some sort of Nightmare Night prank. That was why it didn’t dawn on the earth pony immediately that she actually knew the poor soul in silent agony before her. It wasn’t until she glanced at the poor souls cutie mark, a quill pen and inkwell, that she realized who the pained pony was crouching in the street.
It was her missing assistant, Raven...
“Oh, Raven, what happened to you?” concern flooded the mayor's voice. She felt compelled to rush forward and embrace her friend but, at the same time, she also felt inexplicably repelled. It was as if her every instinct was screaming at her to stay away, to run far and fast, and to not stop at all despite wanting to do anything she could to relieve her friends suffering. These conflicting instincts and emotions left Mayor Mare paralyzed with indecision.
Friends needed to look out for one another, but what did you do when all of your senses were assuring you that the one in front of you was no ‘friend’?
That was when three ponies stepped out of the shadows, surrounding her. They each wore long crimson cloaks and hoods that hid their features, but the mayor could feel their gaze as they stared eyelessly at her. As intimidating as their sudden appearance was, it was Raven that held the mayor’s rapt attention. As she watched, her friend and coworker began to twitch and jerk back and forth on her hooves as though she were experiencing a sudden seizure. Her bones cracked and her spine bent at an awkward angle as droplets of moisture shook free from her humidity drenched body. There was something unnatural and repulsive about her as she flopped about on the ground, squirming on the damp back alley cobbles like an animal carcass full of maggots. As Raven threw back her head to wordlessly howl it was only then that Mayor Mare caught a glimpse of the full horror unfolding before her eyes.
She wasn’t looking at one pony, but two!
Raven's face was split, with two muzzles poking out of her face! One grinned madly, smiling far too wide in an unhealthy and unfriendly way as it’s eyes rolled and spun in what could only be pleasure. The other side of her ‘face’ seemed to be half submerged, and sinking fast into the flesh of the other pony, melting and fusing together with the madly grinning mare! The look of full terror and pain in the poor filly’s eyes as she struggled to try and pull away, leading to the strange and distorted writhing of her limbs, told the mayor everything she needed to know about the agony she was in.
It was with a sinking drop of her stomach that Mayor Mare realized that Raven was trying to pull her mouth free from that ghastly grin so as to speak... Or maybe just to scream. With a slow, sickening rip the mare managed to dislodge her head at the cost of the flesh of half her face, revealing slick pink muscle and a swollen ‘third’ eye that had already begun to partially liquify. Her jaw hung slack on one side, the tendons long since dissolved, but even so she managed to choke out two words through the pain...
“...R-run...mayor.....”
Presented with such a sight Mayor Mare did the only logical thing she could do.
She screamed!
Or at least she had wanted to scream.
She was trying to scream.
Instead, as soon as she opened her mouth one of the cloaked figures pounced on her, and wrapped their forelimb around her mouth. Rather than the air she had tried to draw in to give voice to her horror, she instead inhaled the pony’s foreleg. No, rather it seemed to pass through the soft flesh of her cheeks and gums and embed itself in her face. The hapless mayor tried to part her lips, to spit out the offending appendage, but the cloaked figures hoof was stuck fast inside her mouth. Worse, she could feel it starting to fuse with her teeth and tongue!
As the earth pony struggled to pull her mouth free she could feel the thick strands of melting skin as they stretched thin and then snapped back with elastic force. The realization of what was happening to her caused the mayor to vomit, but with her mouth sealed as it was there was nowhere for it to go, so she was forced to swallow back down her stomach's contents. Mixed with the rancid bile was a sickeningly sugary flavor, and the cloying scent that drifted from the pony who was invading her body flooded the mayors nostrils. The sweet, sour stench of rot and decay drove her mad, and she tried desperately to back away, to peel herself free from the bizarre and horrifying pony who seemed to impassively watch her struggles the way a cruel child might regard a fly after it had torn off its wings.
Planting all four of her hoofs and giving a mighty wrench of her head, a surge of Earth Pony strength she hadn’t felt in years flooded Mayor Mare! She thought she’d black out from the pain as she felt her teeth suddenly wrench out of their sockets, but with a load pop she was able to rip herself free!
Or so she thought...
It was not her flesh which had given way with her panicked application of strength, but rather the foreleg of the cloaked pony. The mysterious and silent figure didn't so much as groan in pain, didn't whimper or show the least signs of discomfort. Still that beguiling scarlet hood regarded her eyelessly, but not blindly, as it's soul searing gaze bore into the earth pony’s mind. Something writhed and twisted in the cloaked pony's now empty sleeve. Without so much as a whisper, a new limb took shape, gleaming wet and new as it regrew from the stump of the one the pony had lost!
And what of that lost limb? where had it gone? Looking down in horror, Mayor Mare could see that the limb was still attached, dangling and twitching from her mouth, the exposed bone of the long leg scraping the cobbles as she stumbled backward in horror and revulsion... And right into another cloaked pony.
All three of the frightening figures closed in around her now. The crimson clad creatures began to chant, slow and sad and menacing. “Nightmare Night...What a fright...” They didn’t attack, they didn’t need to. "Give us something sweet to bite..." As Mayor Mare turned wildly back and forth between them, spinning in a circle as she tried desperately to find some way to escape, some way to run... the limb hanging onto her face suddenly exploded, shards of broken bone bursting from the pale sickly, sweet flesh like a bear trap closing in reverse! Blood spurt in every direction as the ‘teeth’ of an enormous makeshift mouth sank into the mayor’s neck from every angle, engulfing her head!
Mayor Mare stood unsteadily for a moment, hooves clip-clopping back and forth, before her body realized her head was no longer connected. She slumped down on the back alley cobbles, rivulets of blood spurting like a waterfall over her ascot, dying the blue material purple.
Only now did their chanting rise from something more than a whisper. Something more like a primal cry, a plea, a call to arms! "Nightmare Night...What a fright...Give us something...!”
A featureless fleshy bubble occupied the space where Mayor Mare's face once had been. Eyeless, mouthless, the gorey sack writhed and stretched with the sound of grinding teeth and pulverized bone. At last, three slits opened as if cut in the sickly flesh; blood, spit, and other effluvia spilling out as new eyes appeared in the fresh sockets and new sharp teeth and a long black and orange striped tongue emerged from the larger hole.
'Mayor Mare' herself, rising once more to her hooves as the crimson cloaked ponies backed away, joined in with the final words of the chant. "Give us Something Sweet to Bite!"
The storm quickly overtook the crescent slash of the moon. The sound of roaring wind and rain engulfed Ponyville, drowning out all other sound, lulling the already dreaming populace into even deeper dreams. The occasional crack of thunder or greenish flash of lightning did little to disturb Twilight Sparkle, up late into the evening and already well into burning tonight's supply of midnight oil. The Princess of Friendship had been so busy lately, she hardly remembered a time when she had been simply been Princess Celestia's most faithful student. Back then she would stay up long into the night, often by choice, just to study so as to impress her mentor with her accumulated knowledge. Now she wore so many hats: Princess of Friends, Headmare of her own school, and last but not least Best Aunt Friend Forever to a very precocious and powerful baby alicorn, that she had little choice in what hours she had to sleep and what hours had to be dedicated to catching up on all her many obligations.
It was for her role as aunt in particular that had Twilight up so late this evening. Cadance and Shining Armor had decided that their adorable daughter would spend her first Nightmare Night in Ponyville. Partially, Twilight knew it was so the long suffering Prince and Princess could have some alone time, probably to cuddle in front of a fire with a few cups of warm apple cider, or whatever it was married couples got up to once the foalsitter took over. But she also knew that the citizens of the Crystal Empire tended to fawn over the baby princess, swarming the scene of almost all of her outings to snap a picture of various life events. Flurry Heart's first ice cream, her first trip down a slide, her first check up with the pediatrician, all of these had been events so popularized across the Empire that Flurry had almost missed out on each because of the crowd of eager would be witnesses it had attracted. In some ways, the loving populace of the empire were every bit as bad as the worst helicopter parent you could imagine, obsessing over the royal family to a ridiculous degree. It would be a nice change of pace for one of Flurry's firsts in life to be far away from her adoring fans, so she could actually enjoy it in peace.
But when Twilight realized she was going to be taking a foal, who had barely started walking, out to see all the sights and sounds that Nightmare Night had to offer, Twilight had felt a surge of rising panic. The last outing Auntie Twilight and her niece had taken together hadn't exactly gone according to plan. While Flurry was an adorable little girl, she was still an Alicorn, and when she had gotten upset she had nearly torn a children's hospital to pieces. Though her wild alicorn magic had calmed somewhat since then, thanks to her Crystaler Sunburst, she was still a baby with all of the might of an Alicorn at her disposal. Things might not end very well if she were say, to get spooked. Nightmare Night practically existed to spook fillies and colts!
So Twilight did what she knew she had to do! She embraced the panic!
The first thing she had done earlier that day was send out a royal proclamation to all the citizens of Ponyville that Flurry Heart was coming, and that while Nightmare Night would go forward as planned all spooky, scary, or otherwise frightening decorations and costumes were to be toned down for the toddlers first Nightmare Night. The response from the citizens had been, thankfully, an understanding one and most had agreed to keep the truly horrific and macabre behind closed doors for the evening. For a pony who was as prone to worry as Twilight, it had actually been a very sensible thing to do on her part. She was surprised how easy to had been to solve the problem.
Of course that just meant that she now felt it had been too easy.
That was when she started eyeing the Nightmare Night decorations in her own castle. Were those spider webs too spooky? Were the ghosts hanging from the chandelier too scary? Were skeletons really something appropriate for a foal to see? Everywhere she looked, Twilight saw some decoration or another that she was certain would upset her niece.
"Hmm, are bats too scary? They're kind of cute. Maybe not vampire bats though," Twilight mused to herself as she debated removing the fangs from a few fake bats dangling from the ceiling. "Well if they were vampire fruit bats, maybe that would make it okay?"
So here Twilight was, up late into the night, taking down decorations and putting them back up again modified to be less scary. The only problem was, it wouldn't be long before she would take them down again, still unsatisfied with the results. She was like a storm of indecision raging inside of her own castle. She didn't even notice the rain lashing the town outside.
"Ooh!" she groaned, her anxiety getting the better of her. "I'll deal with this later! There are so many rooms I haven't even started on yet!"
She was flying all over the castle, to rooms she had barely visited since she had taken on her new role as Headmare. It was fortunate that she was flying actually. That way she avoided cutting herself on all the broken glass...
"Oh no!" she gasped, as she surveyed the damage.
Twilight had a hard time processing what exactly she was seeing when she came across it. This room was one she had once spent quite a lot of time in. It had served as a makeshift library while she had been busy transferring books that had been salvaged from the Golden Oak library which, had been destroyed by Tirek what felt like ages ago. As Twilight looked at the ruined frame amid shards of glass in the middle of the room, it was like seeing the charred husk of the former Ponyville Library all over again. Only this time she wasn't looking at a place that had been home to her since she had left Canterlot, but rather the charred remains of what had once been the Crystal Mirror!
"What happened?"
The mirror was a device of Starswirl the Bearded's design, one of many that had served to link Equestria with worlds beyond. Though there were many like it, the Crystal Mirror itself had been rather special to Twilight. The alicorn remembered the first time she had passed through the mirror to the human world. Memories of exploring a bizarre place called Canterlot High School while chasing down Sunset Shimmer, who at the time had stolen her Element of Harmony, came flooding back to Twilight. Though the misadventure had seemed harrowing at the time, it wasn't long before Twilight had made friends, including with Sunset herself. How long had it been since Twilight had spoken to Sunset Shimmer and her human friends? Truthfully, Twilight had been so busy with one thing and another in Equestria that she'd almost completely forgotten about the human world.
A pang of guilt registered in Twilight's chest as she recalled the journal that the pair once used to communicate with one another while the portal was closed. She had since used it as part of a device to force the portal to be open at all times, since originally it could only stay open for a few days once every thirty moons, but that device now lay in a broken heap around the mirror's frame. Carefully sifting through the wreckage, Twilight found not one, but two books. One was the journal in question, singed but otherwise whole, and with a sigh of relief Twilight found that none of the pages had been so badly burnt that they were not still legible. The other book she had found, the former librarian at first thought had fared much worse in the explosion, until on further inspection she discovered that the tome was simply exceedingly old and worn. Ancient in fact, with yellowing manuscript and a nearly completely broken spine.
"Wow... Do I even own a book that's this old?" Twilight couldn't quite make out the title, but the book was not the most pressing mystery at hand.
Though the Crystal Mirror was an ancient artifact as well, it should not have been so easy to break. As Twilight looked at the glittering shards spread out over the floor, she thought she saw something shift and move beyond the silvery surface of each gleaming shard. A wave or foreboding stole over Twilight in that moment. It felt as if she were being watched!
Using her magic, Twilight carefully gathered up the pieces of the broken mirror in a nearby dust bin. Only after she had secured the lid did the sense of a foreign presence observing her dissipate. Finding the mirror in pieces like this had already shaken her, so she would have been happy to dismiss the feeling as nerves, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong. The superstitious might say, after all, that a broken mirror was seven years bad luck, but this feeling she had went beyond that. No, Twilight needed answers about what could have destroyed the Crystal Mirror... and she also need to find out if the ones she cared for were okay.
"I hope Sunset Shimmer and the others are alright," Twilight cradle the journal to her chest as tears welled up in her eyes, worrying that the Crystal Mirror's fate might bode ill for the fortunes of her friends.
Deep in her gut, Twilight knew that the clue to the cause of the mirrors destruction would be found in the two books she had discovered in the wreckage. She carefully, almost reverently, set down the older tome before placing Sunset's journal atop it. With a heavy sigh, she flipped open the pages, and read what the last communication had been from the human world...
With morning came a brisk autumn breeze that chilled the air and turned water droplets from last night's storm into frost on the window pains in Ponyville.
Applejack took in a deep breath of that fresh fall air and held it in her lungs until she felt like she might burst. She exhaled all at once in one big, happy sigh. This time of year was always Applejack's favorite. The harvest was in and it was that short lull between apple-bucking season and cider season when all the promise of festivals and holidays to come loomed large on the horizon. Speaking of which, the cart of carmel apples she was towing behind her were for exactly that. The biggest night of the year short of Hearth's Warming eve, Nightmare Night! Mrs. Cake had put in a larger than usual order for the candied apple treats for this years and Applejack was on her way to Sugarcube Corner to deliver them personally into the care of her good friend Pinkie Pie.
As she rolled into town Applejack couldn't help but smile at all the festive Nightmare Night decorations. The bales of hay and large orange pumpkins were everywhere, but that was a common sight in town in the autumn. No, it was the spider and bat shaped streamers, flickering strings of purple and green lights, and the huge orange and black balloons strung up everywhere that really brought a smile to her face. There was even a skeletal pegasus hanging on display in a store window over there, right alongside a stand covered in colorful jack-o-lantern shaped pales for carrying treats later that night. Thinking about all those excited fillies and colts trundling through the streets in their silly costumes singing 'Give us something sweet to bite' warmed her heart something fierce.
"Good morning Applejack," greeted Roseluck with a wide smile as the farm pony passed her flower stand.
"And a good mornin' ta you too missy!" Applejack replied cheerfully as she encountered the first of the townsfolk she had seen so far. Despite the muddy road she had trudged down with her laden wagon, AJ was in very fine spirits thanks to the cool autumn weather and the seasonal decor.
"Good morning Applejack," Burnt Oak, a friend of the family shouted, giving her a wave and a huge grin.
"Mornin' sir, glad ta see yer in good health!" was her polite response. That had been a little odd but not unwelcome. Normally the old stallion would give a grunt or a nod, or at best a gruff howdy when he saw Applejack in the early hours of the day, but he seemed positively jolly just now. It was true that he had a special connection to the Apples since he'd been best friends with AJ's father, but he was usually much more reserved than that. Then again, maybe the festive atmosphere had just gotten to him like it had with Applejack? That'd make sense.
"Good morning Applejack! - Good Morning Applejack!" called Lyra and Bon Bon in unison, twin broad smiles plastered across their faces.
"Er...Mornin' you two!" called back the blond maned pony, a little weirded out now. This was starting to get a little creepy. Not because of how cheerful the two good friends had been but because they had waved and spoken in perfect sync. Applejack just shook her head. That must have been the reaction they were going for and it was just some kind of early Nightmare Night prank. That sort of thing wasn't uncommon, though most ponies usually at least waited for the sun to go down.
Somewhat troubled, but still in good spirits, Applejack arrived at Sugarcube Corner at last. As if on cue, out popped Pinkie Pie with a huge smile on her face that put every grin the farm pony had seen so far that day to shame. Applejack couldn't help but reflect that smile as her friend practically screamed "GOOD MORNING APPLEJACK!~" Before AJ could return her greeting, Pinkie's eyes grew as wide as a pair of saucers as she looked at the cargo the earth pony was hauling. "Oh boy! Are those the candied apples we ordered AJ?"
"The very same Pinkie and, let me tell ya, they have turned out just deee-lightful. That recipe you gave us to try this year was a might peculiar, but Ah can't rightly argue with the results. They've gotta be some of the most scrumptious carmel apples Sweet Apple Acres has ever produced," Unhitching herself, Applejack went round to the back of the wagon and pulled out one of the sweet treats, before asking with a knowing grin, "Care to try one? Ah made one extra with you in mind."
"Would I!" There was no need to ask Pinkie twice. With a flip of her curly mane the toffee covered treat left Applejack's hoof and went sailing through the air before landing squarely in Pinkie's mouth. The sugar coated treat was decimated with a series of crunches and gulps, stick and all, that left the pink ponies gob a sticky mess as she tried to speak. "Mm-rpplem-ack, m-ris m-is m-erfect!" the pink pony practically swooned. Though her teeth were somewhat glued together with the sticky candy, Applejack was pleased to hear that such an aficionado for treats as Pinkie Pie thought her wares were perfect. Pinkie swallowed down the gob of fruit and candy then spat out the popsicle stick the apple had previously been skewered on into a nearby bin. "Those are exactly what we needed for Nightmare Night! Thank you so much Applejack!"
"Well Ah can't take all the credit," demurred the simple farm mare. "Granny Smith and the rest of the Apple family pitched in to help get the order done on time. An' like Ah said before, that recipe you gave us was somethin' else. Where did ya get it from?"
Pinkie grinned mischievously, "That's a S-E-C-R-E-T!"
"Aw, come on now, surely ya can tell yer old friend Applejack?" pressed AJ playfully.
"NO!" The pink pony shriek, all joy and humor suddenly replaced with barely repressed rage. Then she was all smiles again, as if the flicker of rage had never occured. "That would ruin the surprise, silly!"
"O-oh... Well shucks, Ah'd sure hate to do that," the farm pony replied weakly. What had that been all about? Had she just imagined her friends anger?
Applejack began to wonder if the problem wasn't with everpony else, but with herself. It wasn't that long of a haul between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres, but she had been up late into the night slaving over a hot cauldron full of caramel to get this large order of treats done on time. Maybe she was just tired, and seeing things?
Of course there was always the chance that this was just Pinkie being Pinkie. It was hard to tell sometimes what might upset the gal, as she could be oddly sensitive about the most random things while letting slights and insults that would rankle anypony else roll off of her like water off a duck's back. "Why don't Ah start unloading these?" offered Applejack, trying to clear the air a bit. "If ya'd be so kind as ta direct me ta where y'all are planning to store them, Ah'd be happy to help ya put these away."
"Oh, there won't be any need for that," replied Pinkie, a toothy grin on her face that was just a bit too wide for Applejack's liking.
"Beg pardon?"
"I've already got somepony to help me take care of these treats," the pink pony looked up over Applejack's head "Right Rainbow Dash?'
With a rush of wind, the blue pegasus was suddenly there, a broad smile plastered on her face, startling the farm pony "You got it Pinkie! Good morning Applejack!"
"Morning Dash, didn't see ya there!" If the speedy pegasus noticed the slight rebuke in AJ's voice, she didn't acknowledge it. Instead the rainbow maned mare went straight to moving arm loads of caramel apples at breakneck speed, darting between the wagon and the inside of Sugarcube Corner. Before you could so much as say 'apple core' the heavily laden wagon was completely emptied.
"Hah! Hows that? Ten seconds flat!" boasted the speedster as if she'd just won a bet. For what it was worth, Pinkie Pie cheered as if she had.
"Great job Dashie! Now we're all ready for tonight! Go and tell Starlight we're ready whenever she is," chirped the pink party pony.
"Oh, is Starlight helpin' out with the party preparations this year Pinkie?" Applejack asked, actually more than a little surprised. Pinkie normally got downright proprietary when it came to party planning, as if she were the only one in Ponyville who was allowed to throw together a shindig. It as often more trouble than it was worth to persuade her to just let other folks handle planning their own birthdays, weddings, and cuteceneras. There had even been that whole mess with Cheese Sandwich once upon a time, when Pinkie had gotten particularly defensive about being Ponyville's number one party pony. In short, it was a surprise she'd let anyone else handle Nightmare Night's party prep, even their friend Starlight.
"You could say that AJ," replied Pinkie coyly before bursting into a fit of giggles. "Though you might want to keep that under your hat. Wouldn't want to spoil things for everypony now, would you?"
That last bit sounded suspiciously like a threat but... this was Pinkie. She was almost as harmless as fluttershy. I'm sure she's just being secretive for a good reason. Whatever Pinkie and Starlight have planned, it must be one heck of a humdinger, thought Applejack. "Don't you worry none Pinkie, mah lips are sealed."
"Oh I hope not darling," came a croquetish voice from just around the corner of the bakery, "However will we share the latest gossip if that charming mouth of yours is shut tight?" Rarity appeared, as ravishing in the morning light as she would look at the party later that evening.
"Good morning Rarity - Good morning Rarity," Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash said in unison, waving to the unicorn at exactly the same time in exactly the same way. Rarity hesitated, clearly taken aback for a moment.
Okay, now AJ was starting to worry again. What had just happened was very similar to what had occured with Lyra and Bonbon. Maybe that's just a popular prank this year. AJ thought to herself. If there were two ponies who would know all about the latest pranks, it'd be Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. Their pranking wars were the stuff of legend around Ponyville. Yeah, that must have been it. "Howdy there Rarity. What brings ya around this neck of the woods so early in the mornin'?"
The classy unicorn seemed to recover from her confusion and slid smoothly back into her usual poised, if somewhat theatrical patter, "Why, for my morning danish of course dear," but her calm demeanor only returned for a moment before her eyes lit up and she practically shouted, "And to show off our costumes for this evening!"
As if appearing from nowhere, the unicorn pulled a wheeled dress rack into view that displayed five elaborate Nightmare Night costumes. One for each of their friends, minus Fluttershy who tended to have other plans most Nightmare Nights. It was obvious that they were all hoof made by Rarity herself, and while they were a little flashy for Applejack's taste there was no denying their obvious quality.
"Whoo-whee! Ya sure outdid yerself this year Rarity! Ah imagine there won't be a group of ponies that'll look half as sharp as we will tonight!" Applejack wasn't sure what the theme was, but each of the costumes were clearly modeled off a similar aesthetic.
"Pinkie Pie and I already have costumes for tonight," Rainbow Dash said bluntly.
"Yeah, we kind of already have plans," added Pinkie, a bit more diplomatically.
"Oh, that's so disappointing! And here I was so looking forward to seeing Rainbow Dash in her Miss Mare-vel outfit and you in your little Jokey costume. It took me ever so long to work out how to get the headpiece right. There aren't many things you can make horns that long out of that won't be an awful pain in a mares neck, you know," Rarity pouted, lifting the headpiece in question, a golden tiara with long curling gold horns that seemed to be part of an otherwise green leather outfit.
"Now, now Rarity, ah'm sure the girls'll wear your outfits next summer when we go to the Power Pony convention," comforted Applejack, finally recognizing the super hero theme. "We can all dress up as Equestria's Mightiest Heroes then."
"Of course darling, but I did work ever so hard," The fashionista sighed and pushed the rack of clothing back out of view. "Whatever shall the two of you be wearing for Nightmare Night instead?"
"It's a surprise! -It's a surprise!" the pair replied in unison, the iris's of their eyes contracting until their pupils were sharp little pin pricks.
Okay this had gone on long enough.
"Alright, cut that out! Y'all have been acting weird all mornin'. It ain't too much to ask for ya to let Rarity know what y'all are going ta be dressin' up as since ya turned down the outfits she so painstakingly crafted for the pair of ya!" Applejack chided, giving an angry snort more akin to a bull than a pony. "It's bad enough bein' ungrateful but now y'all are just bein' plain rude!"
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash glanced at one another, their smiling expressions unchanging. Applejack started to blush, feeling like a right fool for snapping at them like that. But the blood that had rushed to her face drained into the pit of her stomach as she paled. The wide smiles that her friends had been sporting suddenly seemed to turn sharper, predatory. Their eyes seemed to grow colder as well and their gaze gre so piercing it felt as if their eyes were boring right through her.
"If we told you..." Rainbow Dash began with a hiss...
"...We'd have to kill you," finished Pinkie, sweet as arsenic pie.
The pair then burst into laughter, high and strange, as if they had just told the best joke in the world!
Applejack didn’t see what was so funny.
"Hahaha!" said Rarity, urgently. (She didn't laugh, she actually said 'ha-ha-ha') "Would you just look at the time!? Come along Applejack, we simply mustn't be late, or we'll run out of time for your...uh... fitting! Yes, have to make those last minute adjustments to make sure your costume fits just right. At my Boutique. And not here. NOW!"
Rarity hurriedly shove Applejack away from Sugarcube Corner. "But mah wagon!"
"You can come back for it later," the unicorn replied emphatically, "Fashion waits for no pony!"
Once they were safely out of ear shot Applejack couldn’t help but ask “And just what do ya suppose that was all about?”
“Do you mean the mad cackling? Or the death glare our 'friends' were giving you?” Rarity questioned in a stage whisper. “It was obviously the kind of situation that ends in a basement or an abandoned factory somewhere.”
“You got that vibe too huh?”
“Darling, I’ve been a damsel in distress more than my fair share of times by now. I can recognize the hallmarks,” Rarity replied with a wry smile.
“So... What do ya thinks going on then? Dash and Pinkie are our friends. Ya figure they’ve been replaced by Changelings or something?”
“AJ! Don’t let Ocellus hear you say that,” scolded Rarity, “Or any of the other Changelings for that matter. They’ve reformed! They don’t go around impersonating ponies anymore. At least not in public...”
“What was that sugarcube?” Applejack hadn't quite heard that last part.
“Oh nothing darling! At least nothing you need concern yourself with,” Rarity’s face suddenly grew serious. “No, I’m thinking we’re dealing with some kind of mind control.”
“Artifact based or the spellcaster kind?”
“It's terrible that we've had enough experience with this that you know to make that distinction," was the debutants response as she gave an exasperated sigh. "Well did either of the ladies in question have any new accessories? Or did you notice them clinging particularly guardedly to a possibly cursed book, perchance?”
“Ah can’t say as they did. Seemed pretty normal for the most part... Right up til they weren’t no more. Reckon that leaves some kind of hoodoo then. Think King Sombra is back in town?”
“He’s not one for subtlety. Besides, he likes to use those positively tacky helmets on his mind slaves. I think we would have noticed that, or the glowing purple and green eyes.”
“Fair point,” conceded Applejack. “Ah seem to recall Pinkie Pie mentioned Starlight while we were chatting. Don’t suppose she might have fallen off the wagon and gone back to her old hypnosis tricks do you?”
“Oh I certainly hope not,” the dainty unicorn winced. “I still remember the migraine I had from the last time she thought using mind control magic to solve her 'friendship problems' was a good idea. Surely there must be some other explanation?”
“We live in a magical land full of all kinds of strange monsters and ancient enchanted artifacts. Just about any yahoo with a horn in the middle of their forehead and time on their hooves could have cast Celestia-knows-what kind of spell on our friends and we’d have no way of knowing it,” the farm pony pointed out bluntly. “There are plenty of possible explanations but it ain’t likely the pair of us are going to be able to narrow it down on our own. Ah think this is something we need to take to Twilight.”
“While I don’t disagree with you dear, must we? I’d really prefer to have more of an idea of what is going on aside from ‘gee Twilight we think your first student, whom you have entrusted as student counselor in your school of friendship and replacement Headmare, might be behaving villainously again and mind controlling half the town’,” Rarity mimed as if she was having a conversation with the Princess. “I can’t see her exactly taking that very well.”
“Wait, half the town? Ah thought this was just about Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash?”
“Oh please darling, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how nearly everypony who greeted us on the road has a fixed smile on their face?” The white unicorn rolled her eyes and flipped her elegantly coiffed mane. “It’s practically a reprise of ‘Our Town’ out here today.”
“Now that ya mention it, them smiles are a might too wide. They’re obviously not real,” the realization dawned on the farm pony slowly that she hadn’t met anypony aside from Rarity that was acting quite like themselves that day. “Is that why we’re headin’ out of town instead of to your boutique?”
“Very observant darling,” Rarity smiled, genuinely impressed. “While I think it may be a little early to take our concerns to Twilight, there is someone else who might be able to help us. Although you may not be happy about it.”
They had just crested a hill and the noon day sun shined down on the only building that lay in this direction from Ponyville: Fluttershy’s Cottage.
“Oh, no! Ya can’t mean him!” cried AJ, all too aware that it wasn’t their shy friend who loved animals whom Rarity was referring to. “Ya think things ain’t bad enough already that we gotta go and involve Discord too?”
“Believe me Applejack, if I could think of a better alternative I wouldn’t dream of seeking help from that barely penitent miscreant, but he can be helpful when he has a mind to be. Remember that time Celestia had him hunt down Tirek based on his ability to detect magical fluctuations in Equestria?”
“Yeah, and Ah also remember him going on ta team up with Tirek and drain us all dry.”
“That’s beside the point,” sniffed Rarity, turning up her nose. “The fact of the matter is if there is any magical foul play at work in Ponyville, Discord should be able to not only detect it, but also whoever is responsible. I dare say if he’s in a good mood he may even reverse the spells for us!”
“And Ah reckon it doesn’t hurt that if Ponyville is in peril then that likely means Fluttershy is as well, huh?” Applejack arched one eyebrow as she and Rarity shared a grin. It was no secret how much Discord cared for Fluttershy.
Rarity gave her a little wink. “That goes without saying darling. And if it all turns out to be nothing, well I was wanting to check in with Fluttershy before the sun went down anyway. You know how she gets on Nightmare Night.”
It wasn’t long before they were standing on Fluttershy’s doorstep. Rarity knocked daintily, with all the grace and poise of a lady. They stood there for a moment before Applejack leaned in and knocked a bit more aggressively, shaking the wooden door on its hinges. Her friend glared at her, but Applejack just shrugged.
There was no answer.
They both listened, hoping to hear the hushed fall of approaching hoofbeats. It wasn’t unusual for it to be quiet around Fluttershy’s Cottage, but it was just plain eerie today.
“Ya hear that?” Applejack nudged Rarity.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Me neither. No birds, no bugs. Ya might not notice it since ya don’t spend much time outdoors, but there’s usually this dull background roar of little critters making little sounds all around here.”
Rarity perked up her ears, “Ooh, that can’t be a good sign. I can’t even hear any of Fluttershy’s chickens.”
Indeed the only sound was the wind in the dry autumn leaves and the babbling of the nearby brook. That is, until a painfully loud and slow creak that made the pair of ponies jump signaled the opening of Fluttershy's front door.
The door swung loosely on it's hinges... as if it had simply been blown open by the wind.
Had it been unlocked this whole time?
Had they just shook the door loose from its jamb? Or had someone opened it for them and quickly ducked out of sight? It was too dark inside to tell... much darker than it should have been in the middle of the day...
As the ponies nervously stared into the darkened doorway the first thing that struck them was the smell. Fluttershy loved her animals, so it wasn't uncommon for there to be a certain musky odor about the place. It had lessened only after she had opened her animal sanctuary, but even with less animals staying in the yellow pegasi's care, there was still the distinct scent of many animal bodies pressed together in close quarters. The stench that wafted out of the cottage was different, but no less overpowering. A certain sour sweetness that clung to the back of the throat as they inhaled.
Rarity tried to suppress a gag while Applejack's eyes narrowed. This was the smell of death.
Now that the door was open, sound had also returned to the vicinity around Fluttershy's home, but it was not a sound that boded well. A soft, but constant buzzing noise emanated from inside the home, the kind of sound one might expect from thousands of tiny insectile wings busily fluttering away. Sure enough, as Applejack stepped inside to investigate further, a small cloud of flies blossomed from the open door and streamed out into the sunshine. Their haphazard and random flight caused Applejack to jump back afresh. She whipped off her hat and used to to swat at the boiling swarm, "Shoo! Go on now! Get!"
"Ew, ew, ew, ew!" Rarity used her magic to zap any of the fat blue bottles that came near, while prancing in place with her delicate hooves.
After the swarm dissipated somewhat, Applejack placed her hat back atop her head and once again peered inside the gloomy cottage. "Hello? Anypony home?"
"Why yes! Thanks for asking!" Discord popped out of the darkness like a spring loaded jack-in-the-box! His features were pale and ghastly, and he wore a manic grin, both eyes wide and staring. Then he laughed. "Hoo hoo! You should have seen the looks on your faces! Priceless! How's that for a Nightmare Night greeting, huh?" His face briefly poofed into a pumpkin with his laughing face carved into it and a candle glowing merrily inside.
"Landsakes Discord, ya scared us half to death!" huffed Applejack.
"Where's Fluttershy?" asked Rarity, pretending to be unperturbed by Discord's antics. "Is she home?"
"Why yes, of course she is. She's in the kitchen preparing afternoon tea," Discord's head poofed back to his usual appearance, which wasn't much of an improvement as far as the pair of ponies were concerned. "Do come in and join us. That is, if you're not afraid..." He gave his most theatrical evil chuckle before fading back into the darkness from whence he came.
Something was off about all this... And not just the usual off as far as it concerned Discord. But they had come this far. Rarity shrugged and gave a nod of her head to indicate Applejack should proceed her. A steely look entered Applejack's eyes as she nodded in return, and then the earth pony and unicorn stepped across the threshold.
The smell was even worse once they were inside. They could see why now. Every bare surface of every table, chair, and even parts of the floor were completely covered in candy! The flies seemed to be attracted to the sugary treats, buzzing about here and there.
"Oh my goodness!" Rarity was struck almost speechless, but she still managed to squeak out. "What is all this for?"
"Why, for Nightmare Night of course, my dear Rarity," answered Discord, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world before he popped a piece of candy corn casually into his mouth, scooped up off the pile on the floor.
"Is this your doing?" questioned Applejack aggresively.
"Heavens no! I wish I could take credit, but this is all Fluttershy's handy work," explained Discord, taking a seat in midair on a stool that poofed into existence beneath him. "She's been cooking up a storm for weeks now! She's like a thing possessed! Honestly I think she's made a little much, but as I understand it these 'tricker treaters', or whatever you call them, can be quiet the voracious little monsters. And then there's the annual sacrifice to Princess Luna's more interesting half." Discord leaned forward and whispered, "I really hope the portion of all this candy that the flies have been getting at go to her."
"Wait, Fluttershy made all this?" Rarity asked, her eyes going wide.
"Hold on, does that mean that she's planning to actually participate in Nightmare Night!?" This was unprecedented, unheard of. Well there was that one time, but Fluttershy had pretty much sworn off the holiday after it turned out she was a little too good at scaring her friends. Something the usually timid yellow pegasus was not at all proud of.
Rarity and Applejack both gave each other a look and an unspoken understanding blossomed between them. Something was extremely wrong. Fluttershy would sooner kiss a manticore or have a staring contest with a fire breathing dragon than have anything to do with Nightmare Night.
"Well of course girls," came a quiet voice from the direction of the kitchen. In flew Fluttershy, gliding through the darkness on her softly flapping wings while she held a tray containing a steaming teapot, four cups, and a plate of black and orange swirled frosted cookies. "It's going to be Discord's first Nightmare Night. I might not care for the Holiday much myself, but that's no reason for me to deprive him of a good time is it?"
That almost made sense. If it wasn't for the broad grin on Fluttershy's face and her wide staring eyes, Applejack and Rarity might even have been convinced. It was when one of the flies flew lazily through the air and landed on Fluttershy's unblinking eyeball that their doubts resurfaced in full force. The insect walked lazily over the jellied surface of the wide open orb, pausing only a moment to rub it's tiny forelimbs together. Fluttershy didn't so much as even blink.
While it was true that it could be said that Fluttershy would not even hurt a fly, this was ridiculous.
"I'm really looking forward to it," added Discord, removing a steaming teacup from the tray and a single cookie. He somehow dipped the teacup in the cookie, then brought the delicate porcelain to his mouth and took a bite with a loud crunch. The tea hung suspended in the now broken cup without spilling, holding the shape as if the container were still whole. "I doubt scaring ponies will be as satisfying as tormenting them with a little chaos, but I do understand the importance of tradition, even if I prefer to change things up when I can."
"Right... say Fluttershy, is it alright if we speak to Discord alone for a bit?" Applejack smiled sweetly enough, but her eyes were worried.
"Oh, I'm sure anything you have to say to him you can say to me," replied Fluttershy, setting down the tea tray atop a tottering pile of Nightmare Night treats.
"We really must insist darling," chimed in Rarity. "I'm afraid the matter is rather urgent."
A ding from the kitchen suddenly caught Fluttershy's attention. "Ah, that batch is done! Time to start on the next batch!" Fluttershy gilded slowly out of the room, her friends and Discord completely forgotten.
"Well, I suppose that's a yes then," Discord, nonchalantly tossed his teacup in his mouth and swallowing without chewing before slurping up his cookie as if it were made of liquid. "A bit sweet for my taste, but we could all use something sweet to bite, from time to time. So then, what would you two lovely mares care to discuss with the Lord of Chaos? Bare in mind, neither of you are my best friend Fluttershy, so any requests you might have are likely going to be given very low priority."
Rarity ignored this and got straight to the matter at hand, "Have you noticed anything...strange about Fluttershy?"
"You mean aside from the vacant smile, unblinking eyes, and obsession with candy production? No, I can't say that I have," quipped Discord with a yawn.
"And yer not concerned by any of that?" queried Applejack, incredulous.
"Not really," was the draconequus's terse reply. "I was somewhat perturbed before, but Starlight explained everything to me. It was actually a rather lovely conversation! It made everything so clear."
"Starlight again," muttered Rarity, her brow knit in concern. "Oh dear..."
"What exactly did she explain to ya?" asked the farm pony, pressing the issue.
"Why, everything Applejack. Absolutely everything. Every... little... thing." A broad grin slowly spread on Discord's face. It grew wider and wider until it threatened to wrap completely around his head, before shrinking back down to something more natural looking. "For once in my life it all made sense. Oh, what fun there is in making sense!"
Applejack and Rarity both winced as if they had been lashed with a scourge tipped with broken glass.
"Is that so..."
"Oh dear, oh dear, oh my..."
"It will all make sense to the two of you as well, before the end," Discord chuckled dreamily. "Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!"
Discord's laughter at that moment was perhaps the most terrifying thing either the farm pony or the fashionista had ever heard. The sound shook the drowsing flies from their sugary daze, and as their buzzing joined the sound of the Spirit of Disharmony's chortling, the pair felt like their spines had turned to solid ice. It wasn't just that which chilled them to the bone of course, but the realization that their ace in the hole that they had planned to rely on to fix whatever was wrong had already been hopelessly compromised.
"Hoo-nelly!” exclaimed Applejack nervously, “I'm sure looking forward to that. Everything making sense I mean. Not the end obviously. Not that I'd be unhappy with an end, mind you."
"I think it rather depends on the 'end'," mumbled Rarity, before saying a little louder. "That reminds me, we simply must be heading out. So much to do before sundown, you know how it is. So sorry we can't stay. Do give our regards to Fluttershy won't you?"
The pair hurriedly backed out of the room, unwilling to take their eyes off of Discord, who continued to chuckle quietly to himself. "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure she won't mind. We'll be seeing you again very soon."
As they passed the threshold of the cottage, the door slammed in the their faces. Rarity and Applejack took a moment to gulp down several breaths of the fresh air. To bask in the sunshine, outside of that oppressive dark room filled with noisome flies, rotten candy, and obvious madness, was a luxury neither could resist in that moment.
"Well, Discord doesn't seem like he's going to be any help after all..." admitted Rarity weakly.
"Eeyup," replied Applejack, taking a page out of her brothers play book. "Race ya ta Twilight's?"
"Oh, you just try to keep up with me, darling," and they both took off as fast as their hooves could carry them.
Clip-clip, clip-clop, clip-clop... the sound echoed as Twilight paced in the Cutie Map room . Every now and then she would steal worried glances at the eponymous map, but she wouldn’t dare look for too long.
This is bad, she thought to herself. This is really, really bad!
She had known instinctively that the Crystal Mirror breaking had been an extremely bad omen, but after staying up all night reading she was now certain that circumstances were far more dire than she had first imagined. After making sure there were no other magical anomalies within the castle that might explain the mirrors destruction, her worst fears were realized. It was faint, but she could detect a strange energy that clung to the now magicaless shards of glass as well as the entire room that had housed it. The energy was wild and destructive, and it took much of Twilight’s evening jus to contain it.
Twilight had then tried to send a message to Sunset to see if the destruction had carried over to her side of the portal as well, but as she feared there had been no response. Twilight couldn’t stave off the wave of guilt as she though, Just like Sunset hadn't received any response from mein Celestia knows how long!
It hadn't really been Twilight's fault that she missed Sunset's messages. If she wasn't solving friendship problems, defending the realm with her friends, or shaping young minds as Headmare of the School of Friendship, then chances were she was caught up in one of her friends many misadventures or off doing some sort of good will or charity work as the Princess of Friendship. Even so, Twilight couldn't shake a deep sense of guilt at having ignored the journal that she had once used to communicate with Sunset for so long. It seemed the unicorn turned teenager had been dealing with some truly dire problems, and if the state of the Crystal Mirror was any indication then things might have turned out very badly indeed...
And Twilight hadn’t been there to help her.
Clip-clop, clip-clip, clip-clop...
Her pacing increased as Twilight thought of Sunset having to face some forgotten Equestrian monster all on her own. Some bizarre creature that had been banished who knew how long ago. Sure, Sunset had the human world version of her friends to back her up, but what if they hadn't been enough? What if Sunset had really needed her and Twilight just... wasn't there? The thought shook her to her core, but that wasn't the worst of it. The last message in the journal hadn't been from Sunset, but rather Twilight's own assistant Spike!
Spike had pulled some reference materials for Sunset at her request and sent her a fairly detailed transcript. It hadn’t taken Twilight long to realize the information could be found in the other book she had found in the remains of the Crystal Mirror. What she had read in the journal was so unbelievable, so horrible, that she had double checked the ancient and crumbling text just to make sure Spike hadn’t made some kind of terrible mistake. What her eyes had confirmed for themselves only served to make her blood run cold.
'Ye Olde Tricks and Treats'
Never had Twilight found herself more disturbed by the written word than when she had cracked open that tomes creaking spine and beheld the contents within. The ink was so faded it almost had the appearance of dried blood, but still she was able to read most of the text. Some of the folklore and legends were familiar, but also very different, older versions of campfire tales and superstitions that many a fillyhood sleepover might be populated with but twisted almost beyond recognition. They were unsettlingly darker, and far more violent than their modern day counterparts, and very few of them had anything that remotely resembled a happy ending. Even relatively innocent stories like the tale of the Horrible Headless-Horse, which even Twilight had once told on a rainy night when Applejack and Rarity had slept over at the Golden Oaks Library years ago, was something that made Twilight's stomach churn and her knees shake.
It didn't help that the book was written as if it were recounting factual occurrences, going into detail about the ponies whom had encountered the boogie-mares and horrible hauntings and gotten away... And more than a few who had not been so fortunate. Not only that but it gave details about where and when one could expect to encounter such horrors. It also went into graphic detail about what one could expect to endure if they were so unfortunate as to meet these creatures themselves, complete with some rather grisley woodcuts. If Twilight had noticed she had been reading right through breakfast and into lunch it would not have mattered, as those images proved sufficient to make her lose any appetite she might have otherwise had.
Of course those were only the stories she recognized. There were other tales, far older, that the princess of friendship had never heard of. Ancient cautionary tales that had to do with creatures and beings she had never heard of; The Mares of Diomedes, The Star in Yellow, and the Colour from Beyond the Sky. But there was one story in particular that made Twilight's breathing quicken and her mouth go dry... The one which Spike had quoted from - ‘The Tale of the Candy Mare’.
Twilight's eyes raced across the words as adrenaline pumped through her veins, darting faster and faster as she flipped the pages with her horn. As she came to the end of the story and turned to the next page, all she found was a list of ingredients... Recipes for candy that could only be described as 'cursed'. She flipped back to the start of the story, reading slower now, trying to see if there was some detail she had missed. Some clue or nugget of information that Twilight had overlooked.
As Twilight paced next to the Cutie Map now, she couldn’t stop herself from experiencing some of the panic she had felt then afresh. It made Twilight pause in mid-stride and once again glance nervously at the Cutie Map. She chewed on her lower lip so hard that she actually drew a tiny bead of blood. That fillyhood song of “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite,” seemed to echo in the cavernous room. Twilight couldn't help but dwell on a nightmare that Sunset Shimmer had written about. She had described an encounter with a terrifying little girl, maliciously cruel and clearly dead, that all too hauntingly fit the description of what one might think of as a human version of the Candy Mare herself.
Nightmare Night... How could something previously so innocent suddenly have such sinister connotations? Spike's message to her had been about the folklore surrounding the Candy Mare. If there had been any more replies from Sunset after that, then the books magic hadn’t transmitted it. Was it possible? Could a creature like the Candy Mare, or someone afflicted with her curse, have crossed over to the human world? Twilight knew that Equestria was full of deadly creatures, but she thought she would have noticed if somepony like that had used the Crystal Mirror. But then... Maybe a monster like the Candy Mare wouldn’t need to use the Crystal Mirror, using some supernatural power to cross between realms? Maybe there was just something that was very much like her in the human world... Something just as deadly. Twilight shook her head, as the line of thinking was too ridiculous. Nothing so horrible as the Candy Mare could come to exist in the human world.
There's no way that there could be any truth to such a horrible story, in this world or theirs. Could there?
It didn't make sense. Surely if something like that had happened everypony in Equestria would know about it. A legend like that couldn't just fade away, could it? But the more Twilight thought of it, the more she knew it must have been true. She remembered how, when Luna returned from her exile on the moon, there were few ponies that had remembered the legend of her return. At the time, even Twilight herself had only recently read the tale of the 'Mare in the Moon' a mere day before her return. Of course, that wasn't all. She had never heard of Ponehenge, of the Pillars of Harmony, or of the ‘Pony of Shadows’ until Sunburst had discovered stories of their exploits in an old book he'd just happened to buy from an antique shop. There was much and more that had been lost to the annals of history than Twilight had ever dreamed of.
There were many stories that had faded and others, Twilight suspected, that had been buried intentionally. Whether it was merely because such tales stretched the limits of credulity and had been dismissed as tall-tales or if it was some misguided effort to protect ponies by eliminating the knowledge of such horrors from history, Twilight couldn't say.
There was a pony who might know, however.
Twilight had been avoiding contacting Starswirl the Bearded, as he had the other Pillars of Harmony were carefully monitoring changes in the Everfree Forest since the sudden destruction of the Tree of Harmony. Even so, he was nearby, and the ancient sorcerer was a font of knowledge from ages past. If there was any pony living today who might have insight into the veracity of legends like those in 'Ye Olde Tricks and Treats', then it stood to reason that it would be a living legend like Starswirl.
Twilight had contacted the old unicorn some time ago. As she had prepared the message, she had set down the pair of books on the cutie map so she could focus on writing the letter herself. Spike was out running errands in preparation for the night's festivities, so she’d have to send the message magically herself.
She was just setting quill to parchment when it had happened. The entire surface, the projection of Equestria the Cutie Map maintained, just blipped out of existence. In place of the Equestria Twilight knew and loved a new landscape slowly began to rise. She could only describe this new landscape as alien, yet somehow tantalizingly familiar. The shape and contours of Equestria were still there, underneath, if you knew what to look for. She had still been able to pick out Mount Aris and Ghastly Gorge. Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and even parts Of Canterlot were all still present, though the royal palace seemed to have been knocked from its perch and slid down the mountain. But everything else had ever so subtly warped and changed. The grass was red, the rivers and lakes a glowing green, and every last surface glistened wetly in a riot of shapes and colors. It took Twilight more than a few moments for her mind to register exactly what she was seeing.
It was Equestria, but an Equestria Twilight had never seen before... One completely made of candy!
The forests were a riot of of bare peppermint limbs all twisted and grasping for the sky. Each mountain was dusted with sparkling sugar. Every city seemed to be a lifeless candy coated husk. Even the badlands and desert wastes had a look more of dessert than desert to Twilight's slowly widening eyes. The horror of what she was seeing had finally dawned on her. The map had done this once before, when it had come in contact with Starswirl's time traveling spell. Twilight was seeing an alternate Equestria that had been conquered... no, completely obliterated by the Candy Mare! If such a creature had found its way into the human world then there was no exaggerating the danger Sunset and her friends had been in! Were in? Sweet Celestia, there was no way to know!
Twilight had wasted no time in quickly teleporting her urgent summons to the part of the Everfree Forest where Starswirl had set up camp and prayed that the unicorn would read her letter and respond to her request for aid with haste. Briefly, Twilight had wondered if this was how Celestia had felt all those times she had called Twilight and her friends to the palace in Canterlot, but she didn't have much room in her head to dwell on such thoughts for long. She was too busy worrying about what all of this could mean, not just for her and her friends but for all of Equestria as well!
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop!
So she had begun to pace.
Her thoughts ran wild as she almost galloped back and forth across the room again and again. Twilight had so many questions. Too many questions. What should she do? What could she do?
That was why, when Starswirl suddenly appeared in the room with a flash of light and magic, Twilight didn't bother greeting him but immediately whirled on him and began to bombard him with questions!
"Is there a way to fix the Crystal Mirror if it has been shattered? Do you know if alternate Equestria's shown by the Cutie Map show alternate dimensions or possible futures? How many legends are true and how many of them were just made up to scare fillies and colts into obeying their parents? How important is offering candy to statues of Nightmare Moon?" At some point Twilight had seized Starswirl with both hooves and was shaking him with enough force that it made the bells on his wizarding hat jingle madly. Twilight coughed nervously and let the fabric of the sorcerers cloak go, but it was obvious she had yet to regain her composure despite the faux pas she had committed by grabbing the unicorn she idolized.
"Whoa, whoa my child, slow down," was Starswirl's gentle reply when he finally had a chance to respond to the fearsomely inquisitive and slightly panicky princess. "I know not if ponies have mastered the art of conveying information instantaneously without the need of having a conversation in this era, but it was not a skill mastered in my day and age. Please, take a deep breath and start again."
Twilight visibly shook herself, took a deep breath as Starswirl suggested, and exhaled. "What can you tell me about the Candy Mare?"
The older unicorn visibly paled. "The Candy Mare? That is a name I have not heard in a very long time. Indeed, it is one I had hoped to never hear again in this or any other lifetime.” His features grew concerned as he realized that Twilight’s interest might not be purely academic. “Why do you ask?"
Starswirl listened to Twilight in silence, his expression growing more grave with each new detail. Twilight explained about Sunset Shimmer, the Crystal Mirror, and the journals that they had used both to communicate and to keep the portal open. He grimaced once as Twilight explained what had last been written in the journal, and how she had come to discover the tome “Ye Olde Tricks and Treats” and he seemed somewhat surprised by what she had read inside. With trepidation, Twilight pressed on, but though Starswirl’s face paled further when she showed him the state of the Cutie Map, he never broke his silence. For a supreme sorcerer of Starswirl’s nature and temperament it was odd that he would allow someone else to have the lead in a conversation for so long, but Twilight was too absorbed in her own concerns to consider just how ill opened his grim muteness would appear under normal circumstances. When at last he spoke, it was with such a heavy sigh Twilight thought she could hear the old stallions bones creak.
“These are dark tidings indeed. Far darker than you may have guessed,” with a pulse of magic from his horn, the lighting in the room dimmed and a sphere composed of millions of tiny dots appeared projected above the Cutie Map.
The image wasn’t static, but instead moved and flowed in a swirl of countless currents, moving between and through one another in a complex dance. This was not all, as Twilight watched, some of the dots faded away only for a new dots to bud off from an existing one and shoot off into new directions. It was dizzying and made her eyes hurt to look at.
“What you see before you is a rough model of the multiverse. Ours is but one of a series of countless realities, some good, some bad. Most are places where life as we know it cannot exist, has yet to come into existence, or went extinct long ago. The universe is vast and at times cruel, and this is reflected in the higher spheres.”
“I’ve heard this theory before, about many worlds and the universes that they exist in,” Twilight said with awe, “But I didn’t know anypony had tried to map it.”
“As I said, this is nothing but a crude model. New realities are born and die far too quickly for a reliable map to ever be made. Even this, is at best a guess as to the real shape of the multiverse. Though considerable efforts I tried to study the nature of reality by establishing tethers to our nearest alternate realities, our closest sister-dimensions,” as Starswirl said this the model shifted and grew larger so the dots became a cluster of spheres. Even here, they were still in constant motion, flowing around and through one another. “As you can see, each reality effects the other in ways both subtle and overt. The effect only becomes more pronounced when they are linked. Though it is true that opposites sometimes attract, which is why one of the first realities I traveled to was one that mirrored our own universe perfectly, a more complete understanding of the ways of the macrocosm have led me to believe that the phrase ‘like calls to like’ would be more appropriate.”
“So even though the mirror dimension was one occupied by ponies who were our opposites...” Twilight began.
“It was still one populated by ponies,” Starswirl concluded. “With a similar world, similar society, and similar peoples. Even the human world on the other side of the Crystal Mirror was far more like our world than some realities that exist out there on the fringes of exploration. Like calls to like. Realities similar to our own are drawn to ours and exist side by side, reinforcing and indeed creating one another moment by moment.”
“Creating one another?” asked Twilight, perplexed. “You mean the interactions of different realities create new universes? Isn’t that a process that takes trillions of years? How is that possible?”
“It happens with more frequency than you might think. A reality with billions of years of history can be created in the blink of an eye,” Starswirl’s model showed two spheres converging, and as they parted a third took shape and drifted away. “It comes into existence already old, already established... Because again, like calls to like, it is similar to the realities that spawned it. As you told me once before, your student Starlight Glimmer used this Cutie Map to travel through time. The realities you were sent to were a direct result of her meddling with such forces, similar enough to the reality you knew to still be recognizable, but flawed due to the cataclysmic event of their creation.”
“So the reason the ‘present’ I would return to kept getting worse...” Twilight’s eyes lit up,” Was because they were new realities! Flawed copies of flawed copies, born from Starlight’s spell. Each one different, but similar. So does that mean those timelines still exist somewhere out there in the multiverse?”
Starswirl nodded gravely. “There is every possibility that is the case. Just because you were fortunate enough to return to your own reality and timeline that doesn’t mean those tangent realities did not persist. However, you must understand that realities can fade away and die, consumed by a darkness so complete no spell to date has been able to account for their fall. They simply cease to exist, only their echos remaining, and they too fade with time.”
Twilight shuddered. She imagined her world just suddenly blipping out of existence like one of the tiny dots in the model multiverse. Would there be no warning? Would she even know when it was happening? As peaceful as Equestria was it was still a dangerous place and, given the many close calls she and her friends had in the past it was impossible for Twilight not to think about her own mortality from time to time. This was something else entirely though, on a whole new level, much larger and nearly unfathomable to her. It was one thing to die tragically and leave behind your friends and family, and whatever passed for your legacy. It was another thing for all that to just stop existing all at once.
“So what you’re telling me is that it’s possible the world Sunset Shimmer was in isn’t there anymore,” Twilight couldn’t quite keep the tremor out of her voice. “That’s why the mirror was destroyed and I can’t seem to contact her.”
“It is possible, but unlikely,” Starswirl answered, not unkindly. “With the destruction of the Crystal Mirror, the two realities have merely come untethered. There are other points scattered across Equestria where our worlds touch one another. The pony and human worlds are very close to one another and often overlap. To answer a question you asked me before, I believe that I can repair the Crystal Mirror. However, I am not certain it would be wise to establish the connection it previously had just yet.”
This time Twilight didn’t need to ask any questions, as she could tell that Starswirl was about to tell her what she wanted to know. The model multiverse winked out, but with a flare of his horn a new image took shape over the Cutie Map. At first Twilight thought that it was distorted, by some unstable magic or perhaps simple bad memory, but it was with dawning horror she realized what she was seeing. Etched into the air by lines of arcane power, there was an ever shifting three dimensional image of a filly with a maniacal grin. Though the image was colorless, there was a sickly sheen to her skin, that Twilight realized was composed of myriad pieces of candy. Even her teeth and mane seemed to be composed of sweets, and as she watched the creature seemed to morph and twist, her long liquorice hair writhing like tentacles as she grew and shrank. Dozens of tiny mouths opened and appeared to laugh or scream across the surface of her body, and new lethal appendages grew and shrank in what seemed to be a display of the creatures potential for cruelty.
“You asked me before what I could tell you about the Candy Mare,” Starswirl began. “Know that the creature before you is just one of her many guises. She is a parasite of both magic and souls, who seems to feed and grow strong on fear and suffering as well as the flesh of her victims. She is at once a kind of magical virus and a living grudge, born of the tormented souls of dozens, if not hundreds, of murdered children and their parents.”
“So this... This awful creature is real?” Twilight gaped at the filly as it smiled mischievously, it’s lips twisting as it’s candy corn teeth moved around inside her mouth like some kind of bizarre inverted buzzsaw.
“I’m afraid she is all too real. I have tried to protect Equestria for many years. I have had many successes, it is true, but also no small amount of failures,” Starswirl bowed his head sadly. “Unfortunately, she was one of my greatest failures.”
“What do you mean?” Twilight had never heard of Starswirl failing at anything, ever.
“I and my companions, the Pillars, worked hard to banish darkness from Equestria. As dangerous as our world is for ponies, it was far worse in our time, in the age when the pony tribes had not yet united. Though I like to think I was more forward thinking than my peers, I confess that I may have suffered from some of the egotism and elitism that was prevalent in unicorns of the time,” Starswirl smiled weakly, then hung his head in shame as he reflected on his past mistakes. “The Candy Mare was unlike any threat ponies had faced before. She was the product of our own hatred, greed, dishonesty, cruelty, and betrayal made manifest. Never before was there a creature that held up such a dark mirror to our own society, and our own selves. Her victims quickly grew beyond counting. Even now it’s uncertain how many she took and how many simply disappeared. I could never find a cure for the curse she spread, and instead had to dedicate myself and others to doing the only thing we viably could do: contain her. To that end, I went to great effort to wipe every mention of her from the annals of history. In retrospect, it was likely that I did it as much to hide my failure as it was to protect the ponies of Equestria...”
“That would explain why I’ve never heard about her before,” nodded Twilight. “Then I wonder how the story ended up in ‘Ye Olde Tricks and Treats’?”
“There were those even then that didn’t agree with my decisions, who could see rightly that I had grown arrogant in my role of Equestria’s protector. Those that wanted to share the story, to warn the ponies of Equestria of the danger that lurked in the dark, were actually ponies who were close to me, my former apprentice Clover the Clever chief among them. I suspect she was the one who managed to sneak the story into circulation by pretending it was just a legend to scare little fillies and colts. Gifted as she was with foresight beyond even my own, I would not doubt she anticipated a future where such knowledge would be vital to the safety of Equestria,” Starswirl’s face grew all the gloomier with this admission, but then his frown twisted into a smile. “Still, I was gratified to learn princess Luna had succeeded where I could not, and defeated the Candy Mare. Perhaps Clover ‘the Clever’ thought the danger had passed, and thus there would be no harm in commemorating Luna’s deed.”
“Was it really so dangerous for ponies to know about the Candy Mare?” Twilight couldn't help wondering aloud. “I have to agree with Clover the Clever, it seems wrong to keep such information a secret, even if you wanted to keep the knowledge from falling into the wrong hooves. It might keep ponies from panicking, but even if the real cause was to protect the reputation of the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, it seems like it would be a measure that would do little good in the long run. ” She added the last part quickly, hoping it wouldn’t offend Starswirl too much.
If the sorcerer took offense, he did not show it. Instead he slowly shook his head, “No, it was vital for the protection of the realm, or so I thought at the time. I had feared that the more her story spread, the more it would warp our reality, and shape the realities around our own,” Starswirl paused, eyeing the silently laughing monstrosity. “Remember, like calls to like. That was the reason we worked so hard to banish the darkness from Equestria. If there was no darkness here to attract others, then our realm might become one filled with light. I see now that the theory was flawed. In the end, simply containing the Candy Mare in this reality may not have been enough to stop her from triumphing in other realms. Especially if some version of her was able to manifest in the human world.”
“Do you think it’s possible that a being like the Candy Mare just came into existence in the human world?” asked Twilight, trying to explore all possibilities.
Starswirl appeared to give this some thought. “No. No the magic in that realm is too thin to support such a powerful manifestation, let alone generate it. Perhaps somewhere in their ancient history such beings existed, but that was long before our realities became tethered. No, I think it most likely that a Candy Mare from another universe, a universe more like our own, found some way to cross over into that dimension. If that is the case, then Equestria, and all our sister realms are in great peril.”
“But Luna defeated the Candy Mare!" the Princess of Friendship cried out, "Or at least she defeated our version of the Candy Mare, right? Shouldn’t that mean she was defeated in the other realms, if like calls to like?”
“The differing realities are similar but not the same. In some realms she doubtlessly was defeated. In others, her defeat may not have been quite so fulsome or as lasting as in our own. Indeed it is likely that there are many realities where she triumphed. I suspect one such realm corresponds with the candy coated Equestria that you told me manifested on the Cutie Map. However, this should be an outlier outcome.” The image of the Candy Mare faded and the model of the multiverse appeared again. “Imagine a drop of oil falling in a pool of water. The oil does not mix with the water, but is repelled, scattered. As the water churns the oil is diluted. Now imagine instead a drop of water falling into a pool of oil. The oil engulfs and consumes it, leaving almost no trace of the water discernable in the pool of oil, yet it is still there, though badly polluted. The Candy Mare’s mere presence is corruptive, but it should not be so all consuming as to spread throughout the multiverse. Even so, with the proper triggering event, she might eventually find a way to spread her poison to a series of new worlds. All her darkness would need to spread is another similar darkness to call to her.”
“Like calls to like. Darkness calls to darkness,” Twilight muttered to herself. Then she gasped, “The Pony of Shadows!”
“Yes. Bringing his evil back into Equestria, even briefly, may have pulled our reality towards a much darker part of the multiverse,” The model at last faded away and Starswirl turned to Twilight. “I had hoped since you and your student managed to save Stygian and quickly banish the darkness that we might have avoided this fate. But what you saw only confirms that dark days are ahead for us all. Worse... it seems undeniable where the threat will come from.”
“The Candy Mare...” the Princess of Friendship whispered her name and barely suppressed a shudder. “We need to contact the other Princesses at once. We need to get the word out all over Equestria. No, more than that, we need to warn the other races as well! If what the Cutie Map revealed is true then no creature is safe if the Candy Mare is trying to enter our world! I know you thought it best to keep the story of the Candy Mare suppressed before, but we need to act now before it’s too late!”
“Yes, I quite agree with you,” Starswirl’s reply was swift and sure. When he saw Twilight’s relieved expression he couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “I tried my best to protect Equestria, and in the process I may have made decisions that put her more at risk in the long term for the sake of its short term safety. Though I will do all I can to assist you, Equestria has new protectors now, and it’s up to you and your friends to best decide how to protect Equestria going forward.”
“Thank you Starswirl,” Twilight levitated over a parchment and quill, but hesitated before setting pen to paper. “How do I write this? It seems like there’s an awful lot to explain. Just thinking about it, if I received a letter about half of what we’ve discussed I’d suspect the sender had lost their mind!”
“Perhaps these are things best said in person?” suggested Starswirl. As he said this, he at last undimmed the lights, but the room remained somewhat dark. The sun had already started setting while they had been talking, and the rising moon was just starting to cast its pale brilliance through the castles stained glass windows. “Besides, the hour grows late. I think if we are to take action we must hurry before the one pony who has experience in defeating the Candy Mare sets about her nightly routine.”
“Of course! Princess Luna,” Twilight, who had unconsciously been frowning this entire time managed to smile thinking about her mentors sister. Luna may have still frightened some ponies but Twilight admired her strength, both of her magic and of her heart. If there was one pony that might be able to help them weather whatever storm was coming, it would be Princess Luna. “Let’s go Starswirl!” Twilight grabbed a saddle bag and headed for the door.
Starswirl, for his part, looked perplexed for a moment before asking, “Where are you going?”
“To Canterlot of course,” was Twilight’s matter of fact reply. “If we hurry we can catch the next train.”
“Far be it from me to question the new generation of Equestria’s protectors but,” Starswirl paused, choosing his words carefully. “Why not just teleport to Canterlot?”
Twilight screwed up her eyes in thought and then blushed slightly. “Er, well, you know the train industry relies on unicorns to pay to travel just as much as Pegasi and Earth Ponies. It wouldn’t be fair to them if we just... Cut out the middle Mare like that, right?”
The old sorcerer merely stared at her.
“Though I suppose it is an emergency, with the fate of all of Equestria hanging in the balance...” Twilight finished weakly. "And the train doesn't exactly have lines to all the other leaders of all the other races.
Smiling, but not saying another word, Starswirl vanished in a flash of magic. A moment later Twilight did the same.
It around that time that Twilight’s friends, Applejack and Rarity, burst into the throne room, but it was too late. Twilight was already gone.
“Twilight!” thundered Applejack as she burst into the map room, “We got us a whole heap of trouble sugarcube!”
There was a faint shimmer to the air, marking where Twilight had been just moments before she had teleported away, byt Applejack had no way of knowing that. She was too busy trying to catch her breath after having sprinted all the way from one edge of town to the other. If even the champion rodeo pony was winded, then it was really no surprise when Rarity tottered into the room panting in a quite unladylike fashion. Even so, Rarity had enough breath to shout, “Twilight! Get those big book-reading brains of yours out here right now! We have a serious problem and you’re the one pony who can solve it!” It was a shameless appeal to Twilight's intellectual curiosity, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
A pity the alicorn princess wasn't present to hear them.
While it was true it was a rather large castle, Twilight usually wasn't far from the cutie map. She should have at least been within shouting distance, if she were at home. They paused, listening, but the castle was as quiet as a crypt. “Ya reckon they already got to her too then?” Applejack whispered, just in case the castle wasn't as empty as it seemed.
“If they have darling, I'd really rather not find out about it,” moaned Rarity. “The way everyone has been acting today, I don’t think I could handle seeing Twilight’s face with that fake smile plastered across it. I’d positively die.”
“Vhat’s that about dying?” asked the last voice either of the worried ponies wanted to hear, as Starlight Glimmer stepped into the throne room. She was wearing a long crimson robe with a vampire bat motif and a high collar. The costume was clearly store bought, as were the fake fangs that slightly altered her normal speech.
Applejack froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins. “Nothin’!” she blurted. “Ah mean, nopony was talkin’ about dyin’ or getting murdered. Not that anyone was accusin’ anypony of murder, that’d be silly, just taking over their mi-“
The flow of nervous words were quickly stymied by a hoof placed firmly over Applejack’s mouth. A glare was the only warning Rarity gave to her friend before she put on her most charming smile and laughed disarmingly, saying, “What Applejack is trying to say, Starlight, is that we were looking for Twilight. Is she in, perchance? Perhaps studying somewhere in the castle where our voices cannot reach her? Or perhaps she has stepped out for a bit?"
A look of confusion washed over Starlight’s face. “No, Twilight should be here. Ve’re supposed to be meeting the others soon. Ve’ve got a big surprise planned! You guys should come along too!” she added with a big, and to their eyes, horrifying smile. “The more the merrier, as they say!”
That was the straw that broke the exhausted Rarity's back. She fell to her knees and in a sudden rush of tears sobbed, “Please don’t take over our m-m-mi-hi-hi-hinds!!!”
These were not the dainty tears that Rarity sometimes employed to gain sympathy but big, ugly, snotty sobs that twisted the unicorn’s beautiful features and made her mascara trail down her cheeks. She grabbed the hem of Starlight’s cloak, begging unicorn's mercy, which caused Starlight to involuntarily take a step back.
“Ah’m sure ya think you’ve got a good reason for doin’ it, but taking away everypony’s will just ain’t right!” admonished Applejack, suddenly furious. Her cheeks were so rosey red, they almost looked like apples themselves. “We’re yer friends Starlight, and ya ought ta treat us like yer friends! We're not just tools for ya to use when we’re convenient!”
“Whoa, whoa! Where is all this coming from?” sputtered Starlight as she spat out her false vampire fangs, shocked by her friends sudden emotional outbursts. “What are you girls talking about?”
“Do you mean to say you... don’t plan to take over our minds?” asked Rarity, tentatively.
“No! Of course not,” replied Starlight sternly. “I learned my lesson from last time.”
“So... Ya ain’t been goin’ around and turnin’ everypony into yer mind slaves?” Applejack smiled nervously.
“Why would I do that!? I just said I had learned my lesson!” under her breath she added “Besides, it’s not like any of you were particularly useful under the effects of Fiducia Compelus..”
Rarity shared an anxious look and then both burst out laughing. “Hahaha! Oh dear! I can’t believe we jumped to such wild conclusions!”
Applejack looked fit to burst, “Heheh! We've been runnin’ around all day like a pair of fillies lost in a corn maze!’
“Would either of you mind explaining what’s so funny?” Starlight frowned. “I’m glad I could give you two such a good chuckle but I’m still kind of angry that you still don’t trust me.”
“Oh, we are so sorry Starlight,” apologized Rarity.”I think we just let some silly things our friends said about their preparations for Nightmare Night get the best of us.”
“Yeah, we’re plumb sorry there Starlight, we didn’t mean to doubt ya,” Applejack held her hat in one hoof and bowed her head. “Ah think we just let our imaginations run wild there for a bit. Don’t worry none about it, it ain’t no reflection on you, it’s just us bein’ silly.”
“Well... Okay, I guess,. Apology accepted,” there was a sudden knock at the castles front door. Starlight brightened, “Oh, they must finally be here! You two can finish your explanation later.”
The pink unicorn rushed to the front of the castle and threw open the door. On the other side, a furry gremlin and a hideous ogre stood menacingly. “Twick’a’tweet!” “Trick or Treat!” they cried in unison.
An over large pair of wings flopped out from the gremlins back as Flurry Heart flapped into the air. Sunburst, her tutor and occasional babysitter, grinned dazzlingly from behind his glasses. “Wow, great costumes you two!” complimented Starlight. “Very scary!”
“Thanks!” The somewhat nerdy unicorn continued to beam. “I made them myself. I might have gone a little overboard with the green though. Do you think it’s too much?”
“No, no, green is definitely your color,” Starlight giggled.
“Well, howdy there Sunburst,” greeted Applejack, “What brings ya around our neck of the woods?”
“Hey Applejack, Rarity,” Sunburst replied, a bit sheepishly now that he realized he had a small audience. “I’m just in town dropping off Flurry Heart with her aunt for the evening and then Starlight and I are heading to a party at Maud’s. Is Twilight home?”
“Shoot, I guess that you may have just missed her," Starlight looked back over her shoulder. "I know she had been pacing around in the cutie map room earlier, muttering to herself. I left to pick up my costume a little while ago and by the time I got back she was gone. Rarity and Applejack were just saying how they were looking for her as well.”
“We were hoping to get her help in clearing up our... misunderstanding," Rarity cleared her throat. "Though I suppose that’s no longer necessary.”
“Well I hope she gets back soon,” fretted Sunburst as Flurry Heart pinwheeled through the air with her candy bucket clutched in her mouth, making tiny growling and snarling noises. “The suns already setting and there are loads of trick or treaters on the streets. We’ll be lucky if we make it to the center of town in time for the big surprise.”
“What exactly is this surprise everypony keeps talkin’ about?” asked Applejack. “Not gettin’ a straight answer is kind what led us to our ‘misunderstandin’ in the first place.”
“Truthfully, I don’t really know,” admitted Starlight. “All I know is it’s going to be big, and it involves a ton of candy. It’s going down at Town Hall as soon as the sun completely sets. Sunburst and I planned on checking it out before heading for the party. Would you two care to join us?”
“We’d love to darling, just let us stop by my boutique on the way over so we can grab our costumes.”
“Reckon Ah got nothin’ better ta do. Why not?”
“Which just leaves finding Twilight so we can give Flurry Heart to her,” said Sunburst, “Flurry has been so excited to see her aunt she hardly held still the whole way over here. Not that she ever holds still for long anyway-“
“Uh... Where is Flurry Heart?” interrupted Starlight. "Wasn't she just here?"
Everypony looked around for the baby Alicorn, but there was no sign of her. A high pitched giggle caused them all to look out the front door that had been left wide open. They were just in time to see somepony, dressed in a long red cloak, whisking a squealing Flurry Heart out of the castle.
“Hey! Come back here!” Sunburst shouted, alarmed, and ran after the fleeing figure. Sunburst suddenly came to a stop once he stepped outside, and when the others caught up with him they could see why.
The setting sun cast a warm orange glow over the scene of trick or treaters in every kind of costume you could imagine happily running and skipping through the streets with their bags and buckets ready to collect the night’s treats. Almost every adult, however, wore the same long crimson robes and pointed faceless hoods as Flurry Hearts foalnapper. As the quartet of ponies stood, gaping at the sea of ghostly red figures, one or two turned to stare eyelessly at them, before carefully tugging their children away and along the road.
“Seems like red hooded robes are the ‘in’ costume this year,” Rarity joked lamely. "How ghastly."
“How are we gonna find the person that took Flurry Heart in the middle of all of this!?” Starlight worried aloud.
A high pitched giggle off to the left gave the unicorn her answer. “There he goes! After him!” cried Sunburst, renewing the chase. The others followed as he plunged into the crowd.
No one seemed to notice the strange fog that was spilling rapidly into town, or how none of the houses the trick or treaters stopped at seemed to be occupied.
Instead the cloaked adults guided the children steadily towards the center of town, where the light from flickering torches were already throwing strange shadows in the gathering dusk.
Faint music, like a circus calliope, floated through the air lending a festive mood.
Maybe it was the music, or maybe the fog, that masked the screams...
“Pinkie, dear, are the twins ready yet!?” called Mrs. Cake up the stairs. “♩♬Nightmare Night is about to begin~♪♫!” The owner of Sugarcube Corner had just finished clearing out the last of the days customers from the bakery. It wasn’t unusual for the sweet shop to be doing business late into the night during Equestria’s spookiest time of the year, but since this was the first Nightmare Night that Pound and Pumpkin Cake would be old enough to trick or treat, Mrs. Cake and her husband had decided that they would close up shop early so as to be there to see their little faces light up with delight as they were assuredly showered with candy on account of how sweet and precious they were!
Of course, they thought it was wise to be present just in case something went wrong as well. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Pinkie Pie, the twins semi-official babysitter, but there were some meltdowns only mama or papa would have any chance of dealing with. The Cake twins had never expressed fear of monsters under their bed or in their closet, but that didn’t mean that seeing their friends and neighbors in spooky costumes might not set off the little trick or treaters. Better to be safe than sorry.
As Mrs. Cake finished covering up the trays of left baked goods to be sold the next day at half price, she suddenly realized that she hadn’t heard a reply from her live in employee. It wasn't like Pinkie Pie to ignore her, at least not intentionally. She was just about to cry out again when there was a sudden loud ringing that made her jump about a mile into the air, nearly sending a tray of bat shaped brownies flying. Mrs. Cake turned and glared at the source of the startling noise just as the sound pierced the silence of the bakery once more.
Of course, it was just the telephone. No cause for alarm.
Mrs. Cake hated the new fangled contraption. Apparently they were all the rage in Manehattan and other large cities but were relatively uncommon in places like Ponyville. That had change recently when Rarity had introduced Mr. Cake to the concept of 'take out' orders that could then be picked up by the customer or delivered, for an extra fee. It had certainly expanded their business and made it easier for ponies to buy things that they might otherwise have done without if it meant traveling all the way to the bakery themselves. Even so, Mrs. Cake was of the opinion that a couple of tin cans on a string would have been a better investment than the shrill sounding device.
But, a customer was a customer, and it would have been rude to let the phone just keep ringing. She picked up the receiver, cradling it against her shoulder, “Hello, you’ve reached Sugarcube Corner. I’m sorry to say that we are closing early this evening, and won’t be accepting new orders until tomorrow morning,”
“Hello,” came an unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line, as if they hadn’t heard what Mrs. Cake just said. “Who is this?”
“This is Sugarcube Corner,” replied the earth pony, a little perplexed. So far they hadn’t received any calls from anypony that had not been intentionally trying to reach them. But there was a chance this was a wrong number. “Who are you trying to reach?”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. She could hear heavy breathing in the silence that made her uncomfortable, “What number is this?” The voice finally said.
“What number are you trying to reach?” Mrs. Cake asked instead of answering. She didn’t feel comfortable giving out the number to the shop to just anyone, especially some stranger on the phone. While she was unfamiliar with the idea of crank calls, there was something about the voice on the other end of the line that didn’t inspire a whole lot of trust. “I think you have the wrong number dearie.”
“Do I?” the question was cold and without inflection. It was then that’s Mrs. Cake got the feeling that the call wasn’t meant to do anything but waste her time.
“I’m afraid so. But that’s alright dear. Have a happy Nightmare Night and better luck next time!” she said brightly before hanging up. The baker shook her head and looked back to the disturbed tray of brownies. They were jumbled together like a half finished jigsaw puzzle now, where before they had been formed into neat little rows. She’d have to worry about fixing their appearance later, as she could see the last rays of sunlight fading fast through the shops front windows.
“Pinkie, are the twins in their costumes yet!?” Mrs. Cake called out again, moving towards the stairs. As she did, the phone began to ring once more. Another interruption? If this kept up they were going to end up missing out on Nightmare Night altogether! Frustrated, Mr.s Cake stomped back to the counter, “Hello?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I dialed the wrong number,” it was the same person who had called before.
“Then why did you dial it again?” asked Mrs. Cake, losing her patience.
“To apologize,” was the simple reply. They didn’t sound very apologetic.
“Well your forgiven dear, but as I said before we are closed,” the bakery owner emphasized. “Bye-bye now.”
“Wait, no, don’t hang up!” the voice on the other end of the line yelped urgently.
“Why not?”
“I want to talk to you for a second.”
“Goodbye ma'am,” she replied icily.
Mrs. Cake slammed the receiver down. This was getting ridiculous. She still needed to go get changed for the evening herself. While her apron was comfortable and her usual clothing of choice while working, it wouldn’t actually make for much of a costume. She was just about to take off the article of clothing and head upstairs when the phone rang again.
The earth ponies nostrils flared in anger. She was tempted to just let the phone ring at this point, but there was the off chance that the call might be important, however much she personally doubted it. It could be Carrot Cake calling to explain why he was so late getting back from the last of the nights deliveries. Or it might even be the authorities calling to say he'd been caught in some kind of accident. That thought gave Mrs. Cake pause.
Taking a few calming breaths, she turned and answered the phone one more time. “Yes?”
“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” It was! The! Same! Caller! Arghh!
“Who is this!?” Mrs. Cake demanded. She wanted to know who was responsible for this silly game and put a stop to it once and for all.
“Why don’t you tell me your name and then I’ll tell you mine?” The reply was teasing. Childish. Infuriating!
“I think not.”
She was about to hang up on the prankster for the third and final time when they said “What’s your favorite scary story?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Favorite scary story. Everypony has one,” was the somewhat bored reply.
“I... Don’t know. I haven’t really thought about such things since I was a filly,” she was completely caught off guard by the question., which is why she answered, “The tale of the Headless Horse, I guess.”
“Ooh, a classic! All those frightened teens running around out in the woods. The camp councilors screaming, 'Don't lose your heads!' Heeheehee!” The voice on the phone was getting excited now. “Betcha can’t guess what my favorite scary story is though!”
“I really don’t have time for this. Is this some kind of Nightmare Night prank?”
“Go on, guess!”
There were so many scary stories Mrs. Cake had heard in her youth that she hadn’t thought of in years. Stories she and Pear Butter had swapped with Bright Mac and Burnt Oak sitting around the campfire. And of course there were stories that a young Carrot Cake had whispered to her as well... Stories to make her cuddle close in the dark.
Mrs. Cake was beginning to have her doubts about who exactly was on the other end of the phone. “The Tale of the Olden Pony?”
“Is that the one with the rusty horseshoe?”
“Yes. She goes around saying ‘Who’s got my rusty horseshoe’, searching for it.”
“That’s a really good guess, but no."
"Mother Trudy?"
"That's really more of a fairy tale, dontcha think?
"Well it was scary to me."
"Do you give up?”
“Sure. Fine. If it will make you happy and you’ll stop calling, what is your favorite scary story?”
“It’s yours Mrs. Cake.” the caller practically squealed in delight.
“... What?”
“My favorite scary story is the one you’re in right now! You haven’t checked on your children in awhile Mrs. Cake. Maaaaybe that would be a good idea, dontcha think?” \
The line went dead.
Eyes widening in horror, Mrs. Cake dropped the receiver on the floor and raced up the stairs. The second floor was quiet, far more quiet than it should be with two toddlers and a Pinkie Pie present. Instead there was only the sound of the evening breeze whistling through the curtains at the end of the hall. Mrs. Cake rushed for the nursery, her heart thundering in her chest. She threw open the door to her children’s room and found... Nothing.
No Pound.
No Pumpkin.
No Pinkie Pie.
The room was completely deserted.
“Pound! Pumpkin, sweetie! Come to mommy!” Mrs. Cake called forlornly. It wasn’t unheard of for the party pony and her charges to engage in games of hide and seek, but they would normally stop when she called out to them. “Pinkie Pie? Come on out! You’re starting to worry me...”
But there was no answer.
It was as if they had simply vanished into thin air. The tears started to spill unbidden from Mrs. Cakes eyes as she started searching for any sign of them' opening the toy chest, the closet, searching frantically under their bed, checking every nook and cranny. Finally she had to accept it... her babies were gone!
A ringing sound came from downstairs. The baker wiped her tears away with her apron, and a hot look of fury filled her eyes. She thundered down the stairs almost as quickly as she had flown up them and scooped the phone up... Not pausing to think that someone would have had to put the receiver back on the phones cradle for it to start ringing again... “I swear, if you so much as harm a single hair on their heads i’ll...”
“Knock knock, Mrs. Cake.”
A loud knock on the front door caused the baker’s heart to leap up into her throat. Earlier she had locked up to make sure no late customers might try to sneak in to buy some last minute party treats. She could just barely make out the silhouette of somepony standing outside now, silhouetted by the setting sun. Mrs. Cake clutched the phone as if it were a weapon, and slowly crept towards the door.
It was possible that on the other side of the door there was just a customer, only an innocent uninvolved pony, that hadn’t taken the hint that they were closed for the day. Or since the sun was already setting, maybe it was an early trick or treater, hitting up the biggest purveyor of sweets in town. But given the words of the terrifying anonymous caller, it seemed more likely that there was a nasty surprise for Mrs. Cake waiting on the other side of that door. Somepony ready to pounce on the poor middle aged pony, or some other kind of gruesome surprise. Well, she’d show them, whoever they were.
Gritting her teeth, Mrs. Cake gave a mighty yell as she unlocked the door and threw it open all in one rush, ready to smite whoever or whatever was on the other side of the door!
“Whoa! I’m sorry I’m late dear, but you don’t have to take my head off just because I forgot my keys!” Mr. Cake crouched before his panicked wife, shielding his head as best he could while balancing a tray of empty cupcake tins on his back.
The fury drained out of Mrs. Cake and she started crying again as she grabbed Mr. Cake in a tight hug. She clung to him, sobbing, “Oh Carrot, it’s just awful, awful!”
“Hey. Hey now! What’s this all about Honeybun,” he did his best to comfort his distraught wife, returning her embrace and patting her back, but Mr. Cake was completely clueless as to what had brought all of this on.
“It’s the twins, Carrot!” she replied, sobbing harder. “They’ve taken the twins!”
"What?" her answer didn't make any sense to him, "Who's taken them?"
Just then, there was a distant boom as of thunder and a sudden rush of wind, followed by a warm wetness pit-pattering down onto the pair of ponies and the dusty earth like a late autumn rain.
In her arms, Mr. Cake went limp. Her husband's full weight unexpectedly sagging against her left Mrs. Cake staggering for a moment, before she could try to make sense of what had just happened. Blinking away her tears, it took her vision some time to clear enough for her to see why he had slumped against her the way he had.
For a moment, all she could see was red, as a fountain of crimson slowly subsided with fitful spurts back into the stump of Carrot Cake's throat. The corded red muscle, the exposed bone, and the twitching hole that was all that remained of her husbands neck swam sharply into focus. It was only then that Cup Cake realized that she was staring at the place her husband's head was once attached...
She screamed, unable to processes his sudden death, but terrified all the same, as she let his body fall to the ground.
“What’s the matter Mrs Cake? I thought you liked the tale of the Headless Horse!” came the distant, tiny voice on the phone still clutched in her hooves. The high-pitched, mocking laughter that followed only made the knot of terror tighten in Mrs. Cake's throat.
The baker stumbled backwards, back inside Sugarcube Corner. It was a good thing she had, because at just that exact moment a crimson blur slammed into her husband's corpse, sending up another shower of blood and gore before rocketing away into the stratosphere. What was left of his body had exploded across the road and the side of the building, pulverizing his remains. The scarlet splatter on exterior of the building were all that marked that Carrot Cake had ever been there at all.
Mrs. Cake's breathing was coming rapidly now. It wasn’t just fear and confusion that gripped her heart, but also the first flickering jolts of madness that threatened to overtake her sanity. Had she really just watched her husband die before her eyes? Had their last moments together really just occurred before something swooped down from the sky and ripped off his head? What was going on? How could something so horrible as that happen? Was she losing her mind?
There was no time to contemplate this as the crimson streak of color from before suddenly smashed through the storefronts window and roared into the opposite wall, punching a hole through the wood and plaster and exiting out the other side. Mrs. Cake screamed and ducked under the service counter as it came back again, shattering glass and sending cakes and pastries flying everywhere as it flew back out the front of the building.
Over and over the unstoppable blur tore through the building, causing walls to crumble and the ceiling to collapse as the support beams gave way. Mrs. Cake screamed and screamed as her lungs filled with dust and her body was crushed beneath a steadily increasing pile of debris. Her mind was reeling, hysteria threatening to overwhelm her at any minute. If that happened there would be no hope for survival! She had to keep it together! She had to find a way to escape! She had to save her babies!
Finally the main support beam snapped and the entire structure gave out, causing Sugarcube Corner to at collapse entirely atop Mrs. Cake, crushing her ribcage until they shattered, the shards of bone piercing her heart and lungs, bringing a horrible, final end to her story.
The crimson cloaked blur that had caused all of this damaged landed softly next to the demolished building as the first stars of the evening began to wink overhead. If anypony has noticed the destruction, or thought to try and render aid, it was clear from the sounds of distant screams and the smell of smoke that they already had their own problems to deal with. The red robed figure tapped one hoof impatiently as it folded blue wings against its body, as if to say 'Well? I'm waiting.'
From the pile of rubble a door suddenly opened. Out from the cellar, beneath the now destroyed bakery, popped a second hooded and robed figure, a pair of foals laying across its back as they dozed in what looked to be some kind of drug induced stupor. Needless to say it was Pound and Pumpkin, the Cake Twins, whom the ghoulish figure had hidden away where their mother had not thought to find them.
As the crimson cloaked ponies approached one another, neither spoke a word, but silently extended a hoof to one another. Hoof-bumping, both seemed satisfied with themselves, as the Pony carrying the twins bounced joyfully towards the center of town, with her apparent companion following swiftly behind her.
Neither looked back at the freshly carved jack-o-lanterns that had suddenly appeared on the front stoop of the flattened bakery. They couldn’t see the tortured and weeping faces that seemed to move in the soft candle light that flickered within the gourds. But if they had, they surely would have laughed at the cruelty of their prank.
All around the forest the ebb and flow of autumn was on full display.
The skeletal limbs of the trees reached deep into the late afternoon sky, spreading their delicate branches like fingers which twisted, yearning towards the heavens. The sweet, sour scent of fallen leaves rose up from the forest floor, mixing with the sharper smell of pine needles and other evergreens to create a heady fragrance that tantalized the senses and soothed the soul. Tree Hugger felt a deep sense of bliss spread through her as she took in the vibes of nature. She inhaled heavily as she opened her mind to all that the green world, now turned golden, had to offer her.
Traveling to Ponyville to visit her friend Fluttershy for Nightmare Night had been the right call. Neither the naturalist pony nor her more timid yellow friend particularly cared for a holiday, one that was all about fear and consumerism. That kind of thing totally harshed Tree Hugger's mellow. But the autumn season itself, when nature seemed to dip its paint brush into the heart of a crackling bonfire and spread its colors across the forest, that was a truly radical sight to behold.
Taking another deep breath of the forests scent and shivering with satisfaction, the pony hippie had only one thing to say about it all as she exhaled the word, “Groovy~,” into the chilly air.
Despite the inner peace that welled up inside her, about halfway over the small bridge that spanned the stream that ran playfully beside Fluttershy’s home, Tree Hugger was suddenly hit with a vibe that caused the needle to scratch noisily across the record of her inner peace. She paused for a moment, trying to work out what was responsible for the sour note in nature’s harmony.
Fluttershy’s cottage stood dark against the the brilliant orange and red of the sky, cloaked in a gloom that was almost as palpable to the senses as a thick fog. Indeed, a thick, greenish mist seemed to spill from the domicile, spreading into the surrounding woodlands. There was a seriously wild aura around the entire edifice, which at a casual glance looked as if it had been abandoned. Dirty windows, peeling paint, and overgrown flower pots welcomed Tree Hugger with a sense of cold foreboding, where before the merry little cottage had been so warm and inviting.
“Whoa, like, it looks like nopony has lived here in a long time,” Tree Hugger had a bad habit of speaking her thoughts aloud. Specifically, others thought of it as a bad habit, while the earth pony herself thought of it as the best way to keep her own thoughts straight. An important skill for someone who was known o let her mind wander from time to time. “I hope Fluttershy didn’t move without telling me.”
A sudden booming noise nearby made the mellow pony jump. The wind was picking up as the sun went down and was rushing through the fallen leaves with a sound less like a rustle and more like a roar. When the booming sound happened again, this time Tree Hugger was not surprised, as she could see it was coming from the cottages front door creaking slowly back and forth on its hinges and occasionally slamming open. With more than a little trepidation, which was unusual for her, she held open the door and peered inside.
The house was dark. Despite this, there seemed to be a soft orange glow coming from further inside. Tree Hugger always liked to think positive thoughts and assume the best in any situation, but the weird feeling she was getting from the cottage and the homes dilapidated appearance couldn’t help but make her assume the worst. Fluttershy was a very private pony and liked to keep to herself. If something happened to her while she was out here all on her own, how soon would any of her friends think to come and check on her? How soon would they realize her absence wasn’t just Fluttershy being her usual somewhat reclusive self and instead the result of an accident? Or a break in?
Tree Hugger was a pacifist by both nature and choice, but if Fluttershy was in trouble then no amount of danger would keep her from trying to help the shy pegasus. Taking a moment to steady her breathing and align her chakras, Tree Hugger made a small gesture of love and peace to the universe, before stepping inside...
The scent that bombarded the earth pony’s nose once she was inside made her instantly question her karma. A sick, sour sweetness hung so thick on the air that she could practically taste it. Worse, underneath that stinging saccharine scent, there lurked the obvious stench of decay. The sound of a room full of buzzing flies came as no surprise to the earthy pony. Though she didn't fault natures little janitors their busy work, it didn't do anything to make Tree Hugger feel better about Fluttershy's fate. The stink of death was all about her.
Tree Hugger had devoted her life to studying rare animals of Equestria, and that wasn’t limited just to herbivores but to carnivores as well, so she was familiar with that rancid smell. Even so, no den or lair of even the most blood thirsty animals she had ever encountered had reeked like this. Contrary to what many unfamiliar with wild creatures might think, animals valued cleanliness, seeing it not just as a point of good hygiene but also as a survival trait. An animal that had allowed its den to get as bad as this would have to either be severely sick, injured, or even dead themselves.
This realization only increased Tree Hugger’s worries. Had Fluttershy taken in some kind of creature that was ill and bitten off more than she could chew? Or maybe, more poignantly, had it bitten off something of Fluttershy's to chew in it's diseased delirium? The yellow pony had a big heart, but sometimes even her laid back friend thought she was a little naive when it came to caring for some creatures.
Regardless of how disorienting the smell was, Tree Hugger would have to press forward and find out what had happened. As she made her way through the darkened cottage, she slipped and slid a few times over the slick floors. There was something hard beneath her hooves, like stones or shards of ice, that slid out from underneath her as she walked. She had to be careful making her way toward the light source she saw earlier, setting each hoof down tentatively.
Finally, after what felt like hours but had only been a few minutes, the earth pony made her way into the cottages small kitchen. There, arraigned on the kitchen table, was the strangest sight. Somepony had taken a lot of time and effort to carve pumpkins, turnips, squash, and other tiny root vegetables and gourds into jack-o-lanterns. As Tree Hugger looked closely, she could see that the faces were unusual, each in the shape of a tiny animal. As she watched, a trick of the dancing candlelight made the faces change and move as if the animals were shivering, frightened, and in pain. Tree Hugger had no idea why anypony would want to so meticulously carve such a disturbing array of heart breaking images.
Suddenly, somewhere in the claustrophobic stillness, there came the distinct sound of a snap.
Light flooded the cottage, blazing up from every lamp, lantern, and sconce at once. It was blinding after the preternatural darkness that came before, and left Tree Hugger’s vision swimming. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, however, she found that she wished that her surroundings had remained hidden by the gloom.
Tree Hugger gagged, feeling bile and the oats she had eaten for lunch rise up in her throat as her stomach roiled. There were stories she had heard of creatures who hunted for fun, for sport, rather than sustenance. These savage brutes liked to keep pieces of their prey as trophies, usually the bones or skins, which they would use to decorate their dens.
This was nothing like that...
This was an abattoir.
The kitchen had been turned into a makeshift slaughterhouse. Blood and gore was smeared across every surface and dripped from the ceiling to pool in congealed puddles on the floor. The butchered carcasses of animals of every shape and size told a story of long hours of agony and pain before their lives had finally been snuffed out. Skins had been nailed to the walls while entrails and organs had been arraigned about the room in ritualistic patterns, hung from the bones of the very creatures who once contained them. The entire room was alive with the pulsing of maggots, wriggling deeper into the decaying meat that they feasted on in order to escape the sudden intrusion of light on their grizzly banquet.
Kitchen knives of all shapes and sizes were scattered about the room, some still stabbed into the meat that had once been a living creature before the serrated blades had slipped in and done their work. Other blades were buried to the hilt inside skulls of creatures who were hopefully long dead before they had been used to slice out the pulp of their eyes. It was the churning contents of the blender on the kitchen counter that finally turned Tree Hugger’s stomach enough for her to vomit, sending her last meal splattering across the filthy pattern of offal spread on the floor.
What kind of heartless monster could do something so heinous to such innocent creatures?
The earth pony took shallow breaths, trying to steady herself. It also helped, but only barely, to keep her from drawing into much of the corrupt miasma that hung in the atmosphere. Her head was just starting to clear when there was a second snap, this coming from nearby.
Up tempo jazz music started to play as an old phonograph in the living room suddenly wheezed scratchily to life. Tree Hugger had no idea of Fluttershy owned such a device, but she had no time to wonder over the source of the music as bits and pieces of animal carcass suddenly shifted and began to twitch into life as well!
Skulls turned towards the Tree Hugger one by one, and those that still had jaws attached began to laugh uncontrollably! Pieces of bone and meat began to dance about, with even the entrails twitching and slithering to the cheerful beat of the jazzy music. The kitchen, which had moments ago been smeared wall to wall with death, was suddenly alive and pulsing as cabinets and drawers opened and closed by themselves. Mocking laughter filled the cottage, as the blender turned on full blast and sprayed it's contents into the air, showering the hippie with it's horrible living contents. The other appliances and even the knives began to dance and sing, spinning around the room as they floated through the air with an unnatural life of their own!
This was all starting to remind Tree Hugger of the time the chieftain of the Buffalo Tribe had shared with her some of their 'sacred' mushrooms. It had started out as a very loving and peaceful show of respect but had quickly overwhelmed the earth ponies sense and left her feeling like she was a thin patina of paint spread across the desert that the nomadic tribe was traveling through. It took her almost a full day, and a lot of water, before she felt anything like herself again. Where that had been a mind opening experience in the most positive sense of the term, this was having an equal but opposite effect on Tree Hugger’s state of mind.
It was no surprise, that in the face of such a bizarre display, that she was losing her grip on her sanity. Part of her felt like laughing and dancing along with the ruined animal carcasses. Laughing at how short and cruel life could be, dancing as a way to express how she was still alive. Laughing at how transient flesh ultimately was, and how even the mightiest predator would eventually be nothing but worm food! Dancing, desperately, to shake off the buzzing flies before they could lay their eggs in her flesh and make her worm food herself!
Tree Hugger caught herself chuckling nervously, on the edge of hysteria, but managed to clamp her mouth closed and slowly back out of the kitchen. That was when she was suddenly struck with a vision. In a snap, it was as if time suddenly flowed backwards, as day and night flashed on and off outside the cottages no longer gore slicked windows. The ruin and decay inside was slowly reversed, leaving the kitchen suddenly bright and spotless!
Fluttershy stepped into the room. It was a beautiful autumn day outside. She wasn't alone, but had her pet, Angel Bunny with her. Tree Hugger watched as she tickled the tiny rabbit beneath his chin, but the puffball of white wasn’t having any of it. He was making a grumpy face with his arms crossed and pouting. That didn't seem to perturb the pegasus, as Fluttershy smiled ever so sweetly and offered something small and colorful to the little guy. It was a bright, perfect, piece of candy.
Most pet owners know that feeding your pets sweets is a bad idea, but there are some exceptions, including treats specially made for animals that looked like candy but were made with different ingredients. The rabbit hopped with joy and quickly popped the treat into its mouth, giving every sign that he found it to be delicious.
Then Fluttershy casually picked him up by the scruff of the neck, slammed him inside of the blender, and hit the highest setting. Tufts of white fur and blood were sent showering everywhere!
“This can’t be real,” was Tree Hugger’s horrified response. But as the familiar liquid churned to a stop inside the glass container, the scene skipped to what was clearly another time, but the same place.
The vision seemed to be sped up now. One after another Fluttershy repeated the same actions. Smiling with love and affection she would give one of the animals in her care a treat, a piece of candy, and then she’d kill them in increasingly brutal and tortuous fashion. As time went on the animals came less willingly. Some had to be dragged into the kitchen and force fed their candy. Others were incapacitated or injured before they even entered the room, then bled ceremoniously after the candy had been placed directly into their stomachs via a gash in their bellies that spilled their guts across the floor. Always the one thing that remained unchanged was that innocent, guileless smile on Fluttershy’s face. No matter how blood-stained her face and mane became, no matter how the gore and viscera piled up around her, she still smiled the beatific and patient smile of a saint.
“This isn’t real!” Tree Hugger shouted more forcefully. The kitchen began to take on the appearance it had moments ago, before the dessicated flesh of all those murdered creatures had begun to sing and dance.
At last, the visions slowed. Fluttershy stood, lit from below by the glowing collection of jack-o-lanterns on the kitchen table. Tree Hugger hadn't seen Fluttershy carve them, but instead they had just appeared one by one, over the course of time. It was clear the kitchen was still in use, as despite the filthy state of ever surface there were pans and bowls of candy everywhere and signs of more merrily bubbling away on the stove top. As Tree Hugger watched, unable to move or to so much as make a sound, a new creature suddenly appeared beside Fluttershy.
She had met him once, a long time ago at the Grand Galloping Gala. What was his name? This Bored? Dick Cord? Oh, that was right! Discord!
Discord had appeared in a flash of light beside the busy Fluttershy, holding a tray of what appeared to be cucumber sandwiches and a steaming teapot in his other claws. So busy was Fluttershy, in fact, that she hadn't taken the time to wash off any of the blood from of all the animals from her sanctuary that she had ritualistically sacrificed.
Still, her beautiful smile beamed from her gentle face. Still she spread her bloody hooves to embrace her friend, even as the tea pot and snacks fell to the floor, so shocked as he was at the appearance of both the now no longer yellow pegasus and what had become of all the animals she loved and cherished so dearly. Still she looked nothing but innocent as she wrapped her forelimbs around Discord and gave him a warm and loving hug.
It was only when she started to melt into him that her smile finally cracked, spreading wide as her eyes swirled with madness.
Discord tried to resist. Tried to pry himself out of Fluttershy’s grasp, but it was too late. She was moving, almost swimming, beneath his skin. Flowing up through his body. Before she completely submerged inside him one hoof reached out and deposited a single piece of candy inside of his mouth... before sealing it closed with a kiss.
As Tree Hugger watched their faces melt into one another, watched the terrified emotions fade from Discord’s eyes, she managed to shout, “This! Isn’t! Real!” At the top of her lungs.
The vision shattered! Again she was in the kitchen. Again all was darkness. Again there was only the soft candle-lit glow coming from the kitchen table. But now something had changed. The light wasn’t coming from a collection of various carved vegetables, but instead it spilled out of the open mouth and gouged out eye sockets of a pony’s severed head! If the long, curly red hair that spilled like tentacles around the bloody stump were not enough of a hint, then the bandana that matched the one Tree Hugger herself wore was a dead giveaway. The decapitated head was her own!
As she backed away in horror at the sight of the apparition, the head floated off of the table and flew through the air until it was muzzle to muzzle with the terrified earth pony. In a voice like the hiss of dying flames it whispered, “Isss thisss real enough, for you...?”
Tree Hugger screamed, causing this last vision to fade and the horrifying kitchen to once more fill with dancing and singing meat. Now, standing in the middle of the kitchen were two figures in hooded red robes. Though their faces were completely covered, Tree Hugger had a good guess who they might be as the much taller and more slender of the two reached out his claws and gave a short, sharp, snap. At once, the spinning squealing bedlam ceased, and every skull, knife, and even appliance seemed to turn to stare at Tree Hugger.
She did the only thing it felt logical to do at the time.
She turned and ran!
As she sprinted through the cottages front rooms, she could see that every surface was covered in candy. That was what she had slipped on when she was walking through the room in the dark before. What she hadn’t seen then, and could see clearly now, were that the bodies of butchered and mutilated animals just barely hidden beneath the heaps of candy.
As she ran past them, to her horror, they began to shift and rise their empty eye sockets eyeing her hungrily. Not all of the creatures were strictly speaking animals, as one or two Dragons, Yaks, Griffins, Changelings, Hippogriffs, and even ponies began to rise from beneath the piles of sweets, smiling hungrily with fleshless mouths as candy slowly started to slither up their bones, giving them false candy flesh. Not that the she took a good long look, as the earth pony only had time for a glance at the horrors before she burst through the front door and out into the evening air!
Legs pumping, Tree Hugger sprinted down the path and over the bridge and into the woods, making a bee line for town. She had to tell somepony about what she had seen! She had to make them listen, no matter how wild they might think her story!
But as Tree Hugger galloped through the forest, the wind began to howl, louder and louder around her. Or was that the wind? In her minds eye she couldn’t help but imagine strange dead creatures with candy where flesh had once been filling the dark woods. As the wind whipped around her, the fallen leaves seemed to intentional leap into her face; cutting her, blinding her, and causing her steps to falter. Worse, the trees moved and swayed around her in the sudden gale. Their long skeletal limbs, which she had been admiring only moments ago, now seemed to reach for her!
Something was strange about these woods. Fluttershy didn't live that far from town. At the rate Tree Hugger had been running she should have at least seen another house by now. But no, just endless forest, stretched as far as she could see in every direction.
Only now did she notice the strange glowing fog from before had shrouded the wilderness in every direction, lending a strange dreamlike quality to her surroundings. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and get her bearings. That was a mistake.
The trees started to whisper. Out of the corner of her eye, the earth pony saw one stretch it's roots and shuffle it's long limbs the way a spider might, crawling just out of sight. It stopped once she turned to look at it, but even as it did she could hear other limbs moving through the leaves around her.
Too late, she felt the first questing tendrils of tree roots slide up her legs. She tried to kick herself free, to flee from this new and terrifying sensation, but it was no use... The trees had firmly held her hooves to the ground. Now that she was no longer running and could take a good look at the towering trees all around her she could see that there was something painfully wrong with them. Eyes opened all across their limbs and trunks. Drooling mouths with long, razor sharp teeth cracked open the bark revealing the stinking rot and decay inside. Even the roots that bound her were no different, as she could feel the damp wetness of eyes opening against her flesh and sticky tongues dragging themselves up her legs as tiny but sharp teeth nipped at her flesh.
"Dude! What in Celestia’s name is going on!?" was the panicking free spirits confused cry as she finally lost the last vestiges of her composure. The sight of the creatures who held her and the the foreign sensation enough to drive Tree hugger to the very edge of her sanity! "Somepony! Anypony! HELP!!!"
Already the roots were tightening as they slithered further up her body, squeezing her in an embrace that threatened to grind her bones to powder. The trees loomed over her, bringing their limbs into play, jabbing her painfully on all sides as they raked her flesh with wooden claws and hungry mouths, each eager to take a bloody bite. Her skin tore and great rips and tears formed all over her body. Tree Hugger wept pathetically and messily as tears poured from her face as the forest she had so admired and loved was turned against her.
A large mass of roots with wagging tongues and crooked teeth rose up and pressed itself against her abdomen. The ponies screams rose several octaves higher as they pushed into her soft places and began to force their way inside her. What resistance she could put up in this position was too little, too late as the questing roots shot deep inside her and began to devour her from the inside.
Tree Hugger's screams were at last silenced as blood, along with roots and leaves. vomited forth from her mouth. There also came the wet, glistening pieces of her formerly 'internal' organs, as the chewed remains were forced up through her throat and out into the cold night. Thorn covered branches forced her eyes out of their sockets along with minced chunks of grey and pink matter that had been her brain. At the very least, the dying pony was now no longer aware of her pain.
The plants inside of her continued to grow and flourish as Tree Hugger's body rose slowly into the air, suspended by the thickening trunk of a new sapling that now impaled her and rooted itself in the blood drenched earth. Her muffled crying was just reflex now as her body went into shock. She was already brain dead, though her heart still beat quickly, watering the soil with a soft and steady scarlet rain.
When she finally stopped twitching, the tall red robed figure who had been watching her from a distance snapped his fingers again, returning the trees to dormancy. He looked down at his smaller companion, as if for approval, and received a nod.
The yard in front of Fluttershy's cottage was now strewn with so many jack-o-lanterns that there was hardly room enough to contain them all. Some were perched on the window sills and even the roof while others lined the bridge and bobbed along in the stream below, their candle light unable to be extinguished by the rushing water. Amongst the glowing gordes, dark shapes began to move just as the first stars began to twinkle in the sky above.
The pair of crimson cloaked figures each hefted heavy sacks that were clearly spilling over with candy, packed so full the stitches threatened to burst at the seams. Even so, they seemed to have little difficulty shouldering the weight, as they set off towards the distant lights of Ponyville.
Death trailed behind them, pausing only briefly to lick the blood stained earth beneath the tattered remains that hugged the trees.
The chase through Ponyville was a maddening thing.
Starlight tried to get ahead of Flurry Heart’s kidnapper by teleporting, but each time she did the cloaked figure would dash off in a new direction and they would be lost to the crowd. Matters were only made worse by bystanders who seemed to actively get in the way of Starlight and her friends, closing in to block their path at every turn.
What was with everypony? Not only did they ignore Applejack and Rarity’s cries of "Stop! Thief!” and “Foalnapper!", but they also seemed to block any bolts of magic Sunburst or Starlight aimed at the fleeing figure at the most inopportune times. More than once, Sunburst nearly blasted a pony right in face, causing the little trick or treater that was with them to start sobbing wildly, thinking they were being attacked.
There was no time to slow down or to ask questions or find out why, if they took their eyes off the criminal for even a moment there was a good chance they would lose them entirely. Fortunately, Flurry Heart’s giggles, high and shrill, gave away the red robed menace any time they slipped out of sight or tried to hide. To the Alicorn toddler this all must have seemed like some fantastic game of tag, or hide and seek.
Houses and Nightmare Night decorations blurred past as the pursuers flew through the crowd of trick or treaters. Finally, after what seemed like an agonizing amount of time, the crowds thinned and there was no longer anyone for the kidnapper to hide behind. It had seemed like they had been led all over town but now, finally, but now with no readily available cover the Princess's foalnapper turned and instead seemed to be heading toward... the Everfree Forest!
Starlight grit her teeth, well aware of how dangerous the woods were at night. Worse, there was a very real chance that the densely packed together trees would allow the child snatcher ample cover to make their escape! Trying to track them through the dense undergrowth would have been no easy task even in daylight. If they were going to put a stop to this, they needed to overtake them now.
Without warning an Alicorn suddenly reared out of the darkness! Her wings were spread wide and front hooves pawed at the air. The hooded pony skidded to a halt and cringed before the imposing figure, giving Starlight and the others time to surround her. Only then did the crimson robed child thief seem to become aware of the mistake they had made. The looming Alicorn was not real. It was only a statue of Nightmare Moon, the self same that trick or treaters all over Ponyville would be visiting later that night to leave their traditional offerings of sweets!.
As Starlight and her friends closed in on the foal napper, she suddenly straightened and shouted,”Trick or Treat!”
With only that for warning, the cloaked pony tossed the bundle containing Flurry Heart, still laughing and squealing, into the air with careless abandon. As all eyes turned to the imperiled infant, the child snatcher took the opportunity to vanish in flash of magic!
“Ah got her!” cried Applejack.
“No, I’ve got her darling!” assured Rarity.
“Well, somepony get her!” cried Sunburst in alarm as all three dashed forward to catch the tumbling toddler.
It should have been predictable that only moments later all three would collide with one another and end up in a tangled heap on the ground.
Fortunately Starlight had maintained her composure, using her magic to gently levitate the young princess safely onto her back. For her party, Flurry merely laughed excitedly and cried "Again! Again!"
Starlight breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from her brow, “We got her back guys! Good job!”
The pile of ponies gave a weak and rather dazed ‘Yay,” as the trio, groaning, disentangled their limbs and shackley got back on all four hooves.
“I wonder who that pony was though. That magic they used seemed so familiar...” murmured Starlight as she began to unwrap the swaddling cloth to make sure Flurry Heart was unharmed. As soon as she peeled back the cloth, the unicorn gave an ear splitting shriek, dropping the bundle onto the ground!
“Starlight, no, the baby!” Sunburst exclaimed, horrified.
“That ain’t no baby,” Applejack drawled, a look of disgust twisting her face.
“Oh good heavens, what is that!” Rarity gagged.
All four ponies could see clearly why Starlight had reacted to the sight of ‘Flurry Heart’ the way she had. What they had thought was Twilight’s niece turned out to be a severed head bundled up with a few random pieces of gore smeared candy! It would have been more accurate to call the thing a skull since most of the raw, wet flesh had been stripped away from the bloody bone beneath. Even so, the half melted spectacles and the shock of grey hair, with pink roots just starting to show were something of a dead give away.
“Is that... is that Mayor Mare?” whispered Sunburst.
As if mentioning its name were a magic word, the skull began to laugh and squeal. The sound was high and manic and shrill, but disturbingly not at all unlike the burbling cries of an infant. They had been fooled!
The sound of hideous laughter joined that of the skull, briefly, before a bolt of dark magic shot down from the statue of Nightmare Moon and shattered the severed head like an overripe pumpkin. As the four ponies looked atop the statue, they beheld the robed figure, balancing perfectly on the tip of Nightmare Moon’s horn.
“Trick, Trick, Trick!” She cackled, “I do hope you don’t mind, but everypony is entitled to one good trick on Nightmare Night!”
“Who are you!?” shouted Starlight.
“Tell us where to find Flurry Heart!” demanded Sunburst.
“Tsk tsk! Such impatience!” The robed figure began to twirl on one hoof like a ballerina, turning and twirling slowly on the tip of the statue’s horn. With a mad little giggle she continued, “All will be revealed shortly. Or longly, if you prefer?”
“What we would prefer, would be for you to speak plainly you... you, robbing hoodlum you!” Rarity stomped for emphasis, puffing out her chest.
“Oooh you think I’m just a common criminal! How cute! I admit I’ve done my time in the big house, but now I’m free, free, free!” The crimson clad pony ceased her dancing and instead reared up on her hind legs and began to flap her long loose robed forelimbs. “Free as a Bat! Or is it a bird? Animals were never my strong suit.”
“Whatever manner of varmint ya might be, spare us the bad comedy if ya don’t mind,” chastised Applejack as she glared at the mysterious pony. “Let’s have it- In order! Who are ya? What have ya done with Flurry Heart? And no more of this dancin’ around and actin’ a fool! Speak plainly afore Ah introduce ya to Bucky McGillicuddy and Kicks McGee!”
“You want to play?” The hooded pony suddenly froze and turned serious. “Fine, let’s play! You’re all invited anyway! Just look behind you and you’ll see we’ve already rolled out the red carpet to welcome you! Heehee!”
The four ponies glanced back towards Ponyville and gasped. The town was awash in flames!
A line of houses, one across the street from the other, ran in parallel lines that spiraled through Ponyville and back towards the center of town. They could smell the smoke and hear the screams of panic and alarm from here. They sounded strangely faint, however, as though muffled. Stranger still they could see more red clad figures moving along the winding path as though the flames were not there, walking calmly towards the middle of town. Belatedly, the four ponies realized the path of destruction was the same as the path they had followed as they had chased after what they had thought was Flurry Heart. Was this the ‘red carpet’ the foalnapper had spoken of?
Of course, when they turned back she had vanished again.
“Ah can’t believe we fell for that,” groaned Applejack.
Suddenly a clap of thunder drew all eyes to the sky. Where night had been blossoming as the stars had winked one one by one, now suddenly there was a golden glow that seemed to spread over all of Ponyville. As they watched in awe, the radiant energy fell over the town and spilled down to the ground, enveloping everything in a large and glowing bubble.
Before the others could recover from their shock, Applejack squinted at the shimmering energy and rubbed her chin“Wait... Ain’t we seen something like this before?”
“Oh no, no, no!” panicked Sunburst. “I recognize this magic too! That must be why they abducted Flurry Heart! Someone’s using her to generate a shield spell to keep everypony out while they do who knows what to Ponyville!”
“I'm not so sure... She did say we were invited...” Starlight reached out a hoof to the glowing golden shield. Instead of meeting with any resistance, she passed right through. “Ah, I thought so...”
Starlight reached through the bubble as if t wasn't there. As she tried to draw her hoof back out, however, she met with resistance. She tugged and strained, but no amount of force would allow her to withdraw her foreleg. As Starlight's horn began to glow with an attempted spell there was a loud pop, like a juicy bluebottle fly smacking into a glowing bug zapper, which echoed inside the bubble and sent Starlight crumpling to the ground. Grimacing, a wisp of smoke drifting from the scorched tip of her horn, Starlight slowly stood back up, her hoof still stuck halfway inside the bubble.
“It seems like this shield is designed to keep everypony in, not to keep anypony out." She gave another experimental tug, and then cast her gaze upwards to her still smoking horn. "It’s even suppressing my magic.”
“That can’t be good,” observed Applejack.
“I don’t understand. Why create a shield around Ponyville and reverse how it would normally operate?” asked Rarity.
“Because something bad is about to happen in Ponyville, and whoever or wha ever is behind all this doesn’t want anypony to escape,” answered Starlight grimly.
“You’ve got to find a way out of there Starlight! We should all go get help,” suggested Sunburst. “Whatever is going on it’s clearly too big for us to handle on our own!”
“I agree with you. You all should go get help,” replied Starlight, turning her back towards the glowing barrier. “Even if I could pull myself free, there’s no way I can leave until I save Flurry Heart. As long as she’s in that crazy pony’s clutches nopony will be able to leave Ponyville. I’ve got to find out what’s happening and put a stop to it! You three just-“
But before she could finish what she was saying, Starlight felt a comforting forelimb wrap around her shoulder from both sides. “Sounds like a plan Starlight, there’s just one teensy change Ah think we’re gonna have ya make...”
“We’re going with you,” finished Rarity, simply. “After all, it is our friends and family who are in danger. We couldn’t possibly expect you to shoulder the burden of their safety and well being on your own!”
With a nod and a smile, the three ponies stepped forward the rest of the way through the glowing dome. They turned and waved to Sunburst, showing they had passed through okay.
“You three are crazy!” Sunburst looked like he was about to have an aneurism. Or a heart attack. “You need to get out of there now! We have no idea what we’re up against!”
“You’re right Sunburst, but it’s not like we have a choice now,” Starlight hugged Rarity and Applejack back before turning back to her oldest friend. “You need to go find Twilight, or Celestia and Luna. Or, heck, go find Shining Armor and Cadance! If anypony will know how to take down this shield from the outside, it’ll be them.”
“Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can from the inside,” added Rarity.
“We’ll just have ta hold down the fort till help arrives!” finished Applejack.
“But what if something happens to you!?” wailed Sunburst, eyes locked with Starlight.
“It’ll be okay Sunburst,” was the unicorn’s reply. “Just go. I can take care of myself.”
For his part the, scraggly bearded unicorn still seemed conflicted. His hooves pumped in place, as his body vacillated toward and away from the boundary that separates the inside of the shield from the outside. Finally he seemed to reach a decision, “just be careful! Don’t get hurt! I'll be back with help as soon as I can!”
Starlight smiled warmly,”You be safe too, Sunburst. Be careful!”
With a nod, Sunburst turned and galloped off into the night.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” swooned Rarity dramatically, raising one hoof to her brow.
Starlight blushed.
“If’n y’all are done bein’ romantical, Ah’d like to remind ya that the town is on fire and there’s a bunch of freaky ponies in robes and hoods that appear to be congregating in the middle of town. Ah reckon they might have somethin' to do with that princess stealin' kook we've been chasin'.”
“Right!” blustered Starlight. “Let’s get down there and get some answers!"
As the girls made there way back into Ponyville, their gallop suddenly slowed to a trot.Without any of them so much as uttering a single word to one another, all three took in their surroundings and found them... Strange.
Something was seriously wrong with Ponyville, beyond merely being on fire. The town seemed completely abandoned. Not just that, but the shops and houses were all in run-down and dilapidated states of disrepair. While fire ravaged the buildings, the flames didn’t really appear to be doing any damage. In fact, many of the Nightmare Night decorations that the city had hung up were still fully intact, despite being engulfed by the blaze.
Starlight reached out a hoof, and sure enough, it passed right through the fire without so much as singeing her fur. “That is so weird,” was all she could say.
“Is it some kind of illusion?” guessed Rarity.
“If it is, it’s not magic. I’m not sensing any kind of spell,” replied Starlight, perplexed. “It’s almost like...”
“Like ghostly flames...” finished Applejack. “Ah heard tale of somethin' like this, though usually it's only somethin' ya get on the high seas before a storm. Fire that blazes bright but don't burn. Look over there.”
Applejack’s friends looked where she was pointing and they were surprised to see someone moving through a blazing store front. Illuminated by the flames, they could see what they could only describe as three skeletal ponies, drifting back and forth as though slowly dancing inside conflagration. They looked up, as though they sensed being watched, and stared eyelessly at the trio of ponies outside the shop window. Then their forms wavered and evaporated like smoke, drifting away on an unfelt breeze.
“Alright, I’ve seen some fairly strange things on Nightmare Night, but this doesn’t just take the cake, it takes the entire bakery!” exclaimed Rarity.
“Speaking of, look over here,” Starlight said sadly. Walking further up the street, she had stopped beside a pile of rubble that had once been a building. The sign for Sugarcube Corner blazed merrily, without actually burning, though it did seem to have broken in half when the bakery had fallen down. “What do you think happened here?”
“Ah can’t rightly say,” admitted Applejack. “All’s Ah know is Ah don’t much like the looks of these jack-o-lanterns.”
That drew the other two ponies attention to the round glowing pumpkins that were almost lost in the flames. Like the rest of the building they didn’t seem to be any worse for being on fire, but internally they blazed with a strange glow that made the miserable faces carved into their flesh seem to twist and move.
Having noticed them, the girls could now see similar jack-o-lanterns lined up and down the street, in front of houses and stores, and those that didn’t have them seemed to be infested with the same strange ghostly skeletons they faded in and out like wisps of smoke.
“I’m detecting a huge amount of magic inside these pumpkin shells, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before! Like the fire, I’m not sure what we are seeing is actually what is really there.” Starlight nudged one of the jack-o-lanterns with her hoof and the orange gourd rocked back and forth gently at her touch. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to figure out what any of this means just hanging around here. We should head for where the hooded ponies are gathering.”
Rarity and Applejack nodded in agreement, and they resumed their trek, passing more homes and businesses that looked as if they had been abandoned for years, as well as those buildings that were burning brightly against the night sky. Or was it night? With all the smoke and flames it was hard to tell, but the sky didn’t look how it should for this time of day.
“Starlight... darling...” worry choked Rarity’s voice more than the smoke, “What is wrong with the sky?”
Behind the screen of smoke and the golden glow of the shield spell, the sky seemed to shine a mysterious blue. Not the blue of a sunny day, but an almost bioluminescent color that was swirled with pink clouds that seemed to glow from within. The sky was churning, never still, swirling around a central point that sat over the middle of the town.
“I’m not sure,” admitted Starlight. “It might just be an effect of all this strange magic clashing with Equestria’s natural background of thaumic radiation. It seems to be creating some kind of vortex above Ponyville.”
“It seems to be?” questioned Applejack, not at all pleased with the uncertainty of the answer, or the situation.
“Yes, it seems to be!” snapped Starlight, losing her temper a bit. “It’s not like I’m anymore familiar with what is going on than you are. I may have studied magic for years, but I did that on my own. It’s not like I went to some school for 'Gifted Unicorns' like Twilight and Sunburst. The best I can give you is my self-educated guess.”
“And that’s all anyone expects of you dear,” Rarity said soothingly, playing peacemaker to try and mollify the situation. “I’m sure if you knew more you’d tell us.”
“Of course!”
Though what Starlight didn’t say was that the vortex looked a lot like a portal of some kind. One large enough to engulf all of Ponyville that was getting larger by the minute. But the kind of magic it would take to rip time and space a new hole was beyond anything she could imagine, so for now she was dismissing it as a side effect of what they had seen thus far. Her friends didn’t need to know any of this, as it would just needlessly worry them. Starlight was plenty worried enough for all three of them.
“I should be able to give you a clearer answer once we reach...”
The center of town.
As Starlight, Rarity, and Applejack laid eyes on it, each remembered times in the past that they had enjoyed the little public space around Town Hall. Parties, festivals, market days... there were so many memories of picnics, flying kites, and spending time with friends and family.
They’d never be able to look at the place the same way again after tonight.
It looked as if a bomb had gone off. Dead bodies lay strewn on the ground as far as they could see. Many were grown ponies, but most of the bodies were tiny... Scraps of their Nightmare Night costumes still clung to their broken and bloodstained bodies.
No buildings still stood in the immediate area, though on their charred frames banners of raw red flesh snapped and twisted in the heat from the still raging flames. At the center of all this destruction, an army of red robed and hooded figures swayed as they chanted and sang, bowing in worship to a pit where Town Hall used to be. Drowning out their droning were the screams and cries of terrified children, colts and fillies of all ages who were surrounded by the crowd who had pushed them to the very edge of the pit.
Around the pit, and the circle of ponies, were inscribed complicated geometrical shapes and magical glyphs. They had been meticulously gouged into the earth and stained a rich, dark red. It didn’t take much thought to figure out where the red coloration had come from, as the coppery stench of fresh blood saturated the square.
The happy little stream that had once flowed through the center of town now ran red, choked with gore and other strange and unsettling things. Jack-o-lanterns, apples, and even pieces of candy bobbed along in the filthy stream. It was a strange sight, to see all the colorful confections merrily floating along amid the tiny white skulls of murdered ponies. A particularly small skull, which must have once belonged to a very young foal indeed, lolled to one side as it was caught in an eddy, and turned at just the right angle to show the glazed eyes still embedded in their sunken eye sockets.
Away from the stream and at the far end of the pit a massive sculpture made of candy rose. It was clearly meant to be in the shape of a pony, or some demonic pony-like beast. The thing had crazed eyes made from lollipops and a mouth locked in a wide predatory grin made of thousands of pieces of candy corn. The rest of the body was a riot of mixed up sweets, with red and black liquorice hair, peppermint dimples, taffy skin, and butterscotch freckles all mixed in with confections of every color and hue of the rainbow. The sculpture was in a position as though it was laying on its stomach with its hooves held together in front of its face, as though it were holding something before it's mouth about to be devoured. Or perhaps waiting for something to fall into its greedy clutches?
Indeed as the girls watched, stunned, a line of what could only be described as cultists walked in somber procession up cleverly hidden steps to stand on those hooves. It was clear this served as some holy kind of holy dais, and a profane alter to the horrifying creature that was the object of their worship.
It wasn’t long after that the first child, a little unicorn colt dressed like some sort of superhero, was dragged in front of the pit. He squirmed and fought, his tiny horn discharging tiny sparks of feeble magic all the while, but his captors seemed unfazed. As the child was forced to stand at the very edge of the pit, the central hooded figure drew close to him, offering him a single piece of candy. When he resisted, it was forcefully shoved into his mouth... which was then held closed as he was forced to swallow. Once this was done, the apparently lead cultist brandished a long, wavy bladed ceremonial dagger so that it caught the fire light just right to cust it's ruddy light over the crowd.
Before that cruel blade could descend, a single word, “STOP!!!” thundered across the square. The crying children all fell silent as the hidden faces of the cultists turned to the source of the interruption. For her part, even Starlight seemed momentarily shocked by the volume of her own voice. But that moment quickly passed as she said authoritatively, “Do not harm that child! Release him!”
The knife wielding cultist tilted its head to one side, as if considering this. Then, without so much as a word, shoved the child off the edge of the dais and into the pit below. His tiny, shrill scream ended in a splash. The screams quieted, only to become louder, shriller, and more insistent as a geyser of blood exploded from the depths of the pit and showered everypony in a rain of gore! The screaming went on for some time, before a bloody carcass flew out of the pit and landed with a soft splash in the nearby stream.
What could only be described as a ‘burp’ echoed from below.
With that, the five figures who stood upon the candied dais removed their hoods. Three of them were ponies; Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy, all grinning without a shred of sanity between them. The fourth was, of course, Discord. He grinned just as manically and gave Applejack, and Rarity a little wave.
The fifth and final figure who had removed her hood, and apparent lead cultist. was hard to make out. She seemed to be a unicorn, but her face was a mass of scars, held together by rough stitching. It was clear that she was rotting, as sticky black liquid and pus oozed from the wounds in her face. Even so, her broken grin was just as mad as those around her, and her eyes burned with an intensity that would put the fires of hell to shame.
It was only when she spoke that Starlight and her friends recognized her voice. “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to our bright and glorious feast! Here, on this hallowed ground before the eyes of the all-devouring one, know that you are welcomed by the Candy Cult!"This was the same pony who had led them to the edge of town.
“The Candy Cult?” Applejack grit her teeth, anger flaring deep inside her heart at the caulous murder all around her “and just what exactly is that!?”
“It’s us, of course AJ, duh!” was Rainbow Dash’s somewhat childish reply, “Everypony you see here is a loyal follower of the Candy Mare!”
“And what about your friends? What about Equestria?” demanded Rarity, equally hot under the collar as her earth pony friend.
“What a laugh!” cried Pinkie Pie, giggling brightly. “You really don’t get what’s going on here at all, do you!?”
“Well, maybe you should explain?” suggested Starlight, her voice cold and calm, though she shared her friends anger and perplexity. Truthfully though, she was just playing for time. Keep them talking. Villains loved to monologue, and she should know. While they were busy talking, her eyes darted around as she tried to think of a way to save the other children before they too were dumped into the pit. With Discord apparently on their side it made things difficult... But not impossible.
“It would be the kind thing to do,” agreed Fluttershy, pulling a nearby filly into a tight hug with one foreleg while holding a sacrificial blade to her throat with the other. “We have time before the ceremony is complete.”
“Very well,” replied the scarred unicorn. “It’s probably fastest just to show you.”
Saying that, the leader of the cultists held out her foreleg and, as the three ponies watched, something horrifying with dozens of spidery limbs and sharp fangs crawled out from the inside of her robe. Needless to say, the unnatural creature appeared to be made of candy.
“It’s all thanks to these little guys. Not much to look at, I know, but they work extremely well at taking over a pony from the inside out," The scarred unicorn said, stroking the disgusting thing with her other hoof. "It’s amazing really. They were originally created to work in a low magic environment, so in a world like this one they are even more effective. Your friends never really stood a chance.”
Having said that, the creature leaped from the end of her hoof and landed on the face of the filly Fluttershy was holding. This set the child to shrieking as the insectile candy creature began to burrow into her face, sending chunks of meat, teeth, and blood flying. As the creature slid down her throat the screaming was muffled for a second, but it swiftly resumed even louder and far more agonized as the insectile monster could be seen swimming beneath her flesh!
Then the screaming stopped.
And the child started to laugh.
As the girls watched on in horror, the filly seemed to grow a new face, new teeth, and a new smile absolutely devoid of sanity spread across her freshly grown lips. The change was so sudden and complete it was like the whole thing had been some kind of bizarre magic trick.
The filly reached up with her own hoof and took the knife from Fluttershy, jamming it roughly into the side of her own neck and dragging it through her throat with such strength she nearly decapitated herself. Having done that, she stepped willingly over the edge and plummeted into the pit below. A moment later a fresh geyser of blood sprayed forth, and the assembled cultists cheered.
“You sick.. Twisted... Fiend!” whispered Rarity.
“Just what kinda monsters are y’all!?” roared Applejack.
“Oh, we’re the very worst kind,” replied the lead cultist. “Isn’t that right, Starlight?”
Apparently her maneuvering had not gone unnoticed as she had gotten into position, but it was too late for Starlight to back out now. With a roar, a sudden pulse of magic ignited her horn and sent a massive beam of blue energy flying through the crowd of cultists aimed right at Discord! In seconds part of the crowd, and the draconequus in question, were gone! They had been banished from Ponyville and, with any luck, freed from whatever control those disgusting spidery creatures might have been exerting over them.
Applejack and Rarity followed her lead, plunging into the gap Starlight had made and running straight for the crying children. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash flew into their path, blocking them from their goal, but Applejack simply slid beneath the two pegasi while Rarity gracefully dodged around them like a dancer.
Now was not the time to get bogged down in fighting. Though Starlight had dramatically reduced the number of enemies, they would still be overwhelmed if they tried to fight the cultists directly. The only logical thing to do was to get to the children and get out as fast as they could!
But that seemed like it was going to be easier said than done as, laughing maniacally, Pinkie began bouncing through the cowering children, pushing them one after the other into the pit as Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash grabbed at Applejack and Rarity’s manes and tails to slow them down.
It was horrifying, being so close yet unable to act.
Fortunately Starlight’s magic caught each of the children and levitated them away from the pit. As Applejack and Rarity kicked themselves free of their mind controlled friends, Starlight teleported to join them beside the children.
“Everypony gather close!” With that barked command, Starlight’s horn blazed with light one more time, and they as well as all of the children vanished!
Or at least, that was what was supposed to happen...
The sound of snapping fingers prevented the spell from going off when instead of the innocent children it was just Starlight’s horn that suddenly vanished!
“Do you have any idea how much it stings when someone banishes all the flesh from your body?” asked a deep and angry voice as Discord suddenly appeared. Or at least, it had the shape of Discord. There was the eagle claw, and the lion paw, and even the snake tail. Yet each and every last piece of Discord glistened with powdered sugar or gleamed beneath a candy shell. The spirit of chaos looked boney and gnarled, but he was also completely candified! From the expression on his chocolate face, having his fleshy exterior removed had not improved his mood. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a version of myself to hold still long enough for me to to skin him in one piece!?”
“Can’t you just, snap your fingers and cover yourself in flesh again with your magic?” asked Fluttershy dreamily.
“Well, yes Fluttershy dear, but that’s not the point now, is it?” groused the candified Discord. “It’s having the hide stripped from my magnificent self by some two-bit Twilight in training that rankles me!”
“Why not show her exactly how you feel then?” suggested the cult leader, a dark smile popping the stitches on her rotting face.
“What a positively marvelous suggestion...” A sinister smile twisted the monstrous Discord’s already grotesque features as he raised one claw into the air and made a fist.
Starlight rose from the earth and helplessly hung in the air in the grip vice like magic she was now powerless to resist. Without her horn there was no way for her to counter Discord's magic! That didn’t stop her from struggling, but she knew that her efforts were meaningless. Just as she knew, with soul shuddering certainty, that what was about to come next was not going to be pleasant.
Applejack and Rarity both tried to help, but by now the cultists had recovered and were holding each of them back. Willing or otherwise, they would be forced to only bear witness to what was about to unfold.
Discord took his time. What played out was as strange as it was disturbing. With one hand still 'holding' Starlight tight in his invisible grip, the candy draconequus used the other to slowly ‘peel’ the air above the fist as if he were holding an unseen banana. The results of this gesture were immediate and excruciatingly clear as Starlight’s skin split and began to tear itself off in long, thin strips!
Starlight bit her lip, trying to fight against the scream of agony building inside her even as tears welled up in her eyes. The bits of flesh hung off her, drooping as they drizzled a slow yet steady stream of her life's blood into the hungering mouth of the pit. From below there were the sound of lapping and guzzling noises, as though something down in the dark was enjoying every last drop of pain sadistically wrung from the unicorn's body.
“Starlight, no!”
“Let her go!”
For his part, Discord almost seemed bored, pausing to pantomime a yawn, before his sinister smirk returned to his and his claws raked through the air. This time there was no stifling her cries of pain as the rest of her skin was torn from her bones dragging hunks of her flesh with them. A high pitched wail erupted from Starlight’s throat, as Discord carelessly tossed the invisible banana ‘peel’ over his shoulder, sending the skinned Starlight’s hide flying through the air to land at the cult leaders hooves with an unceremonious splat.
At last, Discord’s grip relented and Starlight fell limply to the edge of the pit. There the hornless and skinless unicorn shivered, teeth chattering, both from shock and pain as well as from the sudden chill of the evening air is it whispered over every raw exposed nerve in her body. Starlight's eyes began to glaze over. She had lost a lot of blood...
“No... no... this can’t be real.”
“Stay with us Starlight! You gotta stay awake! We’ll find a way ta fix ya, Ah promise.”
Something long and red slithered up from the pit. It almost looked like a string of liquorice. There was only a brief moment to see it, however, before it disappeared again, dragging its prize down into the darkness below. What was left of Starlight was gone. There was no wailing or cries of pain this time, and no geyser of blood. Perhaps Starlight had lost too much to create such a fountain? But there was a sound of gnashing teeth and cracking bones, and the grunts and moans of some hideous monster enjoying its grotesque meal.
“Yer gonna pay for this! Who ever ya are, mark my words,” Applejack glared daggers at the cult leader, “Yer gonna pay!”
“You know, I tried paying my debt to society once,” replied the crimson robed unicorn, her rotten flesh drooping as she bowed her head. “That’s how I wound up here.”
Then the unicorn did something wholly inexplicable. She began to remove her robe, letting the garment pool around her hooves. Her body was as horrifying and deformed as her face, bloated with disgusting fluids and rancid lesions that were barely held closed by thick black stitches. The smell of rotten meat rising off of her was so powerful that it overwhelmed the stink of fresh blood that had previously dominated the town square. What the unicorn did next was even more uncanny, as she reached back behind her head and began to undo the stitches!
With deft movements that spoke to how many times the unicorn had done this before, she began to peel off first her face and then the rest of the flesh that hung limply from her body. What lay underneath was, unsurprisingly, horrific but in a different way from her bloated and filthy appearance before. Now, instead, exposed muscles and tendons stretched tight over gleaming white bone. What was even more gut churning was the fact that the flesh she had worn, once completely discarded, began to move on its own as dozens more of the tiny insectile creatures that she had shown them before began to burrow out of the flesh and scurried over to Starlight’s still slightly steaming pelt.
The insectile candy monsters drug the pony hide back to their now skinless master, and the unicorn’s horn began to glow brightly as the candy creatures swarmed over her and enveloped her in the tattered rags of Starlight's stripped flesh. With a burst of magic, the slack skin began to tighten, gripping the exposed muscle as new stitches magically appeared. Slowly the patchwork took form, and where before there had been a grotesque monstrosity there now stood...
Starlight Glimmer.
If it were not for the stitches criss-crossing her features, her Applejack and Rarity would have sworn that their tortured friend had somehow pulled some kind of ghastly magic trick. The cult leader's bone structure, the way she stood, even her mannerisms as she shook out her new mane, admiring it as she levitated a hand mirror to look at herself... Everything about her said that this pony was Starlight.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” said the pony wearing Starlight’s skin, as she adjusted a slightly sagging cheek with a little magic. “This isn’t the first of my doppelgangers I've had flayed alive, and you can rest assured that it won't be the last." Satisfied, she smiled and put the mirror back in the folds of her robes. "A side effect of the radiation poisoning I'm afraid. My mistress was able to preserve me internally, but there's no amount of magic that can keep my epidermis from deteriorating over time."
“You... You’re Starlight Glimmer, too?” Rarity managed to choke out. “But how is that possible!?”
“Are you ponies not familiar with the concept of other universes? I’m sure your Twilight has prattled on about it before,” the cult leader raised the back of her forelimb to her face and gave a little sniff, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Ugh, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the stench of horse flesh! I have no idea how you equines live with yourselves. If it wasn't required that we cloak ourselves in your skins when visiting a new world, I don't think I would even bother with this anymore.”
“So that’s it. Yer some kind of evil Starlight from another dimension,” reasoned Applejack. “So we were right when we thought Starlight might be behind all this, we were just wrong about which ‘Starlight’ was responsible.”
“Hah! Hardly,” chortled the pony in question, her laughter stretching her newly acquired skin in strange ways. “Though I’d love to ham it up with some evil monologging here, I would never take responsibility for all that has befallen this world and all that is yet to come! I would never steal that glory away from the all-devouring one.”
“Hail the devourer of all!” cried out the other cultists in unison.
“And just what exactly is about to befall our world?”
“Something amazing,” the Starlight from another world replied with a grin. “But we’re still waiting for the guest of honor to arrive. Would you two prefer to be the next sacrifices, or should we just move on to the main event?”
As if by magic, a sleeping Flurry Heart appeared cradled in the cult leaders forelimb. Though unconscious, the baby's horn still glowed brightly, feeding the bubble that surrounded Ponyville. Despite this, ‘Starlight’ pressed a ceremonial dagger to the sleeping infants throat, her grin widening as she saw Rarity and Applejack’s horrified expressions.
Suddenly an explosion of violet light blinded all who were gathered in the town square as a pillar of magic erupted fro mthe sky! The other worldly Starlight recoiled in pain and fear.
While Flurry Heart peacefully slept on, she now was cradled in the grip of a very calm and almost serene Twilight Sparkle. The Alicorn Princess's eyes blazed with magic as she turned her attention to the cult leader wearing her protogese skin and in a cold calm voice she said, “Hooves off my niece.”
Magic flickered about Twilight Sparkle like summer lightning, silent but ever present. Her mane swept behind her as though caught in a spring breeze. Where her hooves touched the ground, tiny sparks of lightning ground fell like autumn leaves. Even so, her eyes were filled with a wintery chill as she glared at the monsters who had so horribly abused her friends.
As striking as her appearance was, the Princess of Friendship was merely the herald of a greater force as the sky was suddenly swarming with winged forms descending from on high. Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Griffins, Changelings, and Dragons all teemed together as one massive flight. Meanwhile royal guards, both Earth Pony and Unicorn, aided by heavily armored Yaks and Crystal Ponies, surrounded the cultists on all sides. Celestia, Luna, Queen Novo, Dragon Lord Ember, and Thorax all descended from above while Prince Rutherford, Princess Cadance, Shining Armor, Sunburst, Starswirl, and the rest of the Pillars of Equestria stood tall at the head of more ground based troops as they marched into Ponyville.
“You are woefully outnumbered,” Twilight spoke with the certainty of the grave. “Surrender is your only option. Release the children you have stolen, without a fight, and I can promise you that your time in Tartarus will not be as miserable as it should be.”
“Such a tempting offer Twilight!” Starlight grinned, causing the cult leader's freshly peeled skin to crawl strangely over her bones. “If you want the little rascals, by all means, they’re all yours!”
The children rushed from the sacrificial altar, fleeing to the sides of the soldiers and clung to them, frightened and shivering but clearly thankful to be saved. Twilight passed the still sleeping Flurry Heart to Sunburst, and the scruffy unicorn quickly took the child to her parents side. Princess Cadance gave the cult leader a look of pure hatred while Shining Armor fussed over his sleeping daughter.
“What have you done to her?” the enraged mother asked.
“Nothing that matters anymore,” replied the evil unicorn, with a flare of her horn. The magic around the sleeping Alicorn faded and she awoke with a sob, burying her face in her fathers chest.
“Applejack, Rarity, are you alright?” asked Twilight, not taking her eyes off the manically grinning cult leader.
“She killed Starlight,” Applejack’s voice was dead calm. “Discord, or some version of him, is on their side along with Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. Ah don’t know how many others, but it seems like half the town's been taken over and the other half....”
“They killed so many,” whispered Rarity. “Too many. She has some kind of, I don't know, candy monstrosities at her command. It changes you. Makes you into a monster like them.”
“I know,” was Twilight’s solemn reply. Addressing the cultists once again. “We will not allow you to resurrect the Candy Mare. She will not be reborn into this world. No matter who or what you have corrupted we will not falter, the full might of Equestria stands against you now!”
“I know! Isn’t it fantastic!?" Starlight could barely contain her reply as it spilled forth with a fit of giggling. “You’re all right where we want you! Finally all the guests have arrived and the feast of a million souls can begin!"
As if her words were a trigger, the children that had so recently trembled in fear and terror began to sing. “Nightmare Night, what a fright. Give us something sweet to bite!” Even the babies; Flurry Heart, Pound, and Pumpkin Cake burbled their way along with the eerie sing-song melody. All was silent as the assembled might of Equestria, to a man, stared in dumbfounded disbelief. What was going on?
Then, one by one, the children exploded. Razor sharp shrapnel made from candy and living bone scythed through the gathered soldiers all at once.
Flurry Heart hugged both her parents tight as she burst in a shower of gore that shredded her parents to pieces and maimed Sunburst who had his hind legs ripped off by the blast!
Worse, the bits and pieces of those merely injured in the explosion began to rise, flesh dripping from their ravaged bones as magical candy burst forth from within! In fact, Sunburst himself barely had time to howl his shock and pain to the sky before his cries turned into manic laughter, fresh candy legs growing to replace the ones he had lost. Others around him suffered the same fate as the dead and dying became what could only be described as an army of freshly made candy ghouls!
The chaos on the ground was mirrored in the skies above as suddenly the gathered armies seemed to turn on themselves. Flesh and blood rained down from above as candied Pegasi, Griffins, Hippogryphs, Dragons, and Changelings all shed their meaty disguises at once, revealing just how deeply the candy cult had infiltrated not just one but every race in Equestria!
Flickering orange and green dragon fire erupted in the sky as the candified creatures fell upon their fellows with hungry glee and reckless abandon. Each body that fell with a sickening thud from the sky would, only moments later, rise again to re-enforce the diabolical Candy Cultists. Already the numbers were shifting against Equestria, and that was without counting those cultists still gathered around the sacrificial pit.
“This is worse than I feared. They seem to have infiltrated our ranks completely!” cried Starswirl in despair as he fought alongside his friends to try and stave off the hungry teeth of the very ponies they were meant to protect. “The Candy Mare never did anything like this before!”
“Well of course she didn’t! What did you think? We served your worlds Candy Mare? That poor shriveled up wretch is still sealed in eternal slumber in a statue somewhere!” The laughter from the leader of the Candy Cult was so derisive and intense her new skin began to slide off ehr skull, causing it to flap free for a moment from the corruption underneath. “I’m sorry to say that you had one detail very wrong from the start. This ritual was never meant to bring back the Candy Mare. You see... She's already here!”
With a dramatic hoof raised to the sky, Starlight pointed to what had been concealed by Flurry Heart's barrier spell up until now. With the death of the infant alicorn, the magic bubble had faded away and the sky above was at last visible. Or was it the sky? What had appeared moments before like the clear blue heavens swirled with a spiral of pink clouds suddenly seemed to pull back, lifting away from the tiny world, revealing a truth that caused the hearts of all those still living to shrivel and stop within their chests.
It was as if time had suddenly stopped as the minds of the living tried desperately, hopelessly to process the information that their brains refused to accept.
The vast blue and pink disc was not the sky, but instead a wide and unblinking eye. One enormously massive orb swirled with madness beyond the comprehension of mortals. The huge lollipop eye retreated until it was merely the size of a large planet, hovering in a sky that was suddenly alive with twisting red tendrils of liquorice and colossal mouths filled with gnashing candy corn fangs the size of worlds. A rumbling sound that shook the earth and rattled the Equestrian's bones, rang out from above, only to be echoed from the mouth of every psychotic cultist and candied creature below.
"It's some kind of vortex," shouted Starswirl over the booming laughter of the damned, "An aberration! A wound in the fabric of time and space!”
“Gaze upon the majesty of the one who devours all!" roared the leader of the Candy Cult, her eyes filled with nearly as much madness as her titanic master's. "She who has corrupted civilizations and eaten worlds! She who is a universe unto herself! Behold the Candyverse in all it's riotous, joyous splendor! Rejoice! For the Candy Mare is all and all are one in the Candy Mare! Give praise to-“
The cultists crazed ranting was cut short as a sizzling bolt of pure magic cut through her with enough force to blow her stolen skin from her charred and disfigured hide.
Whatever had been holding her body together seemed to give out as the alternate Starlight crumbled into a pile of blackened bone and spoiled meat. Smoke curled from the tip of Twilight’s horn. Though her eyes were flooded with tears of anguish, at all the horrors she had witness just in the past few moments, still they blazed with righteous fury as she whispered, “Enough. Enough madness. Enough pain. I don’t care how many Equestrias have fallen to you monsters, it ends here!” She rose into the air, her magic sweeping out among the soldiers, vaporizing monstrosities and candy cultists alike as they struggled to flee before the Alicorn’s unleashed wrath.
Emboldened, the armies of the living pressed their advantage. Unicorn magic was added to Twilight's destructive spell, as was dragon fire that swept from above, obliterating the candy ghouls with searing heat. Meanwhile the ground forces literally tore the creatures apart, sending showers of candy gore spurting into the air as the cultists fell beneath hoof and claw, Prince Rutherford and his loyal Yak soldiers leading the charge as the enemy were literally smashed to pieces!
Celestia and Luna combined their power against the candified Discord. At first it seemed the agile serpent would get the better of them, but working together in a harmony they were able to corner the candified creature and slam him with twin beams of radiant solar energy and moonlit power, vaporizing him in one mighty blast!
As the surge of magic faded from Twilight, the tide of battle had turned. The forces of Equestria seemed to have the upper hand. Rarity and Applejack moved to stand by their friends side as Twilight slowly levitated back down to earth, both with worried looks on their faces. With good cause... They had never seen Twilight lash out like this before. But then, they were not all that surprised. What Twilight had done was what had to be done after the cultists cowardly attack that had obliterated so many of their friends.
Twilight turned to perhaps her last two living friends, embracing them even as sobs that wracked her frame exploded from inside. In short order she had lost her brother, her niece, and one of her oldest and dearest friends who had become like a sister to her. Not to mention half of her circle of friends had been seemingly turned into murderous monsters. All around the Twilight and her friends the screams and the laughter of the dead mixed with the terrified wails of the dying. There was only so much one little pony could take, even an Alicorn princess.
“Oh, good job Princess!” croaked the scorched skull of the cult leader.
Even as the girls watch in disbelief, the living corpse slowly pieced itself back together one gangrenous chunk at a time. New eyes festered, quivering inside the hollow sockets of the reforming head, blossoming into existence as the skulls grin widened. In mere seconds, the leader of the Candy Cult was whole again, save for her skinless and obviously rotting appearance.
“But it is one thing to stand before me and my minions, and it is quite another to stand before my master! After all, as above,” the skinless Starlight raised her head to the heavens, before looking pointedly down into the sacrificial pit, “So below.”
The ground suddenly shook more violently than before, rolling like some great beast awakening from a long slumber. Falling to their knees as the tortured earth moaned, the living could only watch in disgust as something vile and stinking of sugar and death vomited up from the depths of the earth.
Some horrible, organic thing slowly rose beyond the precipice of the pit. It was like a mound of offal, covered in the twitching limbs and wailing faces of candified creatures all mangled and mashed up into one huge wad of candy coated insanity. It was like a glimpse into a very special kind of hell, reserved for the gluttonous and the deranged. Liquorice tendrils heaved and twitched as the hideous bulk rose into the air, a pillar of suffering, a twisted bulb covered in teeth and claws crowning the tallest point.
As the tremors subsided, those living dead who had not been crushed or vaporized by the armies of Equestria turned and swayed back and forth, chanting “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite! Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!” As they did, the grotesque bulb in the center of the pillar of suffering candied flesh split, blood weeping from the cracks that suddenly appeared in the delicate membrane. The bulb blossomed, revealing itself to in fact be a single massive corpse flower, that sent forth a horrifying stench and a shower of filth on all below as it opened in the hellish fire light. Amidst the petals of wet steaming flesh, seated on a throne of children’s teeth and bones, a tiny filly reclined. Her smile was so wicked and cruel it filled the hearts of both the living and the dead with dread. Of course, there was only one pony that this could be...
“It’s her,” whispered Starswirl hoarsely.
“Are you the one responsible for all this?” demanded Twilight, fighting hard to maintain her composure.
In a flash, the throne was empty. Twilight swung her head back and forth, trying to see where the filly might have escaped to. Twilight focused her mind, trying to sense any traces of magic that might reveal where the filly had gone. Instead, the grinning child was suddenly standing right in front of Twilight Sparkle, a gleam in her lollipop eyes and a fresh gob of flesh held tight in her teeth.
“My names Candy Mare! Wanna play?” The precocious little pony’s grin only widened as Twilight backed away in surprise and confusion. The monstrous filly gleefully chewed and swallowed the bloody morsel of flesh in her mouth before flashing a fiendish blood stained smile. “Just kidding!”
Twilight’s confusion only grew more pronounced as a wave of pain and dizziness assailed her. She tried to speak, to cry out for someone to help her, but all that escaped her throat was a bubbling wheeze and a splash of fresh blood as it gushed down her chest. Just as fast as that, her throat had been completely gouged out!
Rarity and Applejack were both screaming, but Twilight could only distantly hear them. Why were they so far away? Why did it hurt so much when she coughed? Why did her mouth taste like blood? Why was it getting so dark?
There were so many unanswered questions that the Princess Of Friendship had as she finally fell. She never guessed that the chunk of flesh that the Candy Mare had chewed up and swallowed was, in fact, her own throat.
The filly sized Candy Mare grew as she stalked towards her fallen prey and grinned viciously at every pony present. A crown of seven unicorn horns sprouted upon her head and seven wings spread down the ridge of her expanding spine. By the time anyone had a chance to react, the Candy Mare had grown to the size of a small dragon and leered menacingly down at all nearby. Like a beast with a fresh kill, she crouched over Twilight’s lifeless form and laughed savagely with thousands of tiny mouths that opened and closed along the length of her massive body.
No, it was worse than a nightmare. Nightmares you could wake up from.
This, this was horror unimaginable, unleashed upon the waking world. This wasn’t just death run amok, but run wild! The Candy Mare flew faster than any living pegasus, was stronger than the staunchest earth pony, and seemed to have strange and unpredictable magic powers that nullified both offensive and defensive spells alike. With the added benefit of her malleable magic fuel form and ability to change shape and size, there was no stopping her. It was as if a maelstrom madness, a tornado of teeth, had been unleashed in the midst of the living armies of Equestria.
There was no hope of stopping it.
Long candy corn fangs rotated over every inch of the Candy Mare's ever changing body, turning her limbs into living chainsaws, the teeth of which cut through flesh and grinding bone to powder. She literally danced, like a gleeful child, through the forces of the living as she swept back and forth over Ponyville decimating all who still lived. She left nothing but blood and carnage in her wake. There were many creatures she didn’t even bother killing, merely removing their limbs and leaving them to splash their stumps uselessly in pools of their own viscera. Their screams were perhaps the worst, as hungry ghouls and grinning cultists closed in on their pathetically wailing forms.
Those who tried to flee beyond The Candy Mare's reach were quickly snagged by tendrils of liquorice, either from the Candy Mare’s own scalp or from thick roots of the stuff that erupted from under the ground. Creatures who had been proud warriors moments ago struggled in panic and misery as they hung from the whipping liquorice vines like ripe fruit awaiting the smiling reapers grizzly harvest of flesh. Those that were not tossed unceremoniously into the Candy Mare's ever hungering maw were sent to join their fellows below with enough force to shatter every bone in their bodies on impact with the ground.
The candy cultists exulted and cheered as their unliving god made short work of their enemies. Even those who had previously fallen rose anew, invigorated by the Candy Mare’s presence, some even piecing themselves back together from fragments as small as fine pieces of dust. Even as they were reborn, they immediately fell onto the living with their sharp knives, teeth, and claws, mercilessly shredding the maimed and brutalized left in their master’s wake. Many were being eaten alive, if not in one horrifying gulp by the Candy Mare then bits and pieces at a time by her followers, adding a note of soul sapping horror to the already shrill screams of despair.
Rarity and Applejack held each other and wept. All hope of victory, of justice, snuffed out inside them with Twilight's death. All around them the world had turned into a carnival of madness and pain as massive candy eyes leered down from the hole in the sky above. Nothing made sense. Nothing seemed real.
“What are they blubbering about?” grumped Rainbow Dash, as the blue flier landed roughly nearby. Her coat was matted with blood and grey matter from several skulls she had shattered with her hooves at Mach speeds.
“Oh, you know, the usual. All their friends and family are dead. Their world is literally coming to an end,” remarked Pinkie Pie flippantly as she chewed noisily on some stallions severed leg. From the look of the ragged red haunch, it likely previously belonged to Prince Shining Armor. “Same old, same old.”
“The poor dears,” whispered Fluttershy dreamily as her blood stained hooves quested through the innards of a fallen dragon. Seizing upon what she was looking for, she drew a long black knife from deep inside its guts and gave the gore encrusted blade a long, slow lick. “Somepony should really put them out of their misery.”
“I couldn’t agree more...”
Though she still lacked any skin, that didn’t seem to keep the leader of the Candy Cult from adding her own remarks. Her crimson robe was wrapped tight around her her raw red flesh, shot through with blackest corruption, though she only seemed to bleed when she smiled. Of course, she was smiling very broadly now, so blood ran in tiny rivulets over her teeth and gums as her lidless eyes stared hungrily at Rarity and Applejack.
“I think I know just the way to do it too,” saying that, the skinless unicorn bent low over Twilight’s corpse. Her blood slick cloths began to squirm and twitch.
“You stay away from her!” shouted Applejack, launching herself at the cult leader, but finding herself held firmly back by Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash before she could move more than a few feet.
Rarity’s horn began to glow, “Now see here! Don’t you dare...” but whatever she was going to say trailed off as the tip of Fluttershy’s dagger drew a single bead of blood from the soft white underside of her chin. The yellow pegasus made a shushing noise, her other hoof pressed to her lips, and then pointed at Twilight’s corpse.
Slowly, the cult leader moved towards the ragged corpse of their friend, draping the hem of her robe over the cadaver. As she did this, a swarm of insectile candy monsters burst from her cloak, slamming into Twilight's cooling flesh and burrowed deep inside her. The body jumped and shook with the violence of the unnatural creatures, before once more laying perfectly still.
At first It didn’t seem as if the grisly spectacle had any effect. Twilight laid as still and motionless as she had before. As the moments passed, however, the Alicorn's wings began to ever so subtly twitch. They fluttered slowly, like they were flapping under water. The tremors spread through their fallen friends body, until Twilight began to twitch and bend at unnatural angles, her bones popping in and out of socket.
Applejack and Rarity could only watch on in horror as their friend slowly, painfully, rose like a broken doll to once more stand before the,. Blood still drizzled the earth from the hollowed out wound where her throat had once been. They could see clear through to her bony spine, and Rarity had to turn her head as the vocal cords began to twitch and vibrate.
Twilight’s voice was strange and hollow as she spoke, “Where am I? What happened?” Her eyes were still closed.
“You walk once more among the living, Twilight Sparkle, though you are still dead,” intoned the skinless unicorn as the light faded from her horn, her sorcerous work done. The cruel mockery of Starlight grinned savagely as she “How do you feel?”
“I feel,” The Princess's eyelids fluttered open to reveal lustrous black orbs that showed no whites. “Hungry!” The undead Twilight grinned as she said it, the muscles in her exposed throat twitching as she swallowed the saliva welling up in her mouth. This made the cultists laugh.
“Well good news there,” grinned Rainbow Dash as she twisted Applejacks forelegs behind her back painfully, forcing the earth pony to rear up on her hind legs. “We’ve got some fresh, tasty apples for you right here!”
“Yeah!” agreed Pinkie Pie, pushing the earth pony to the ground and knocking the hat off Applejack’s head, “All ya can eat!”
“And when you’re done with that,” sighed Fluttershy languidly, drawing the tip of her blade slowly down Rarity’s chin to rest in the hollow of her throat, leaving a small shallow cut, “You can have marshmallows here for dessert.”
“Welcome to the Candy Cult Twilight Sparkle! Bon appetit!” The skinless Starlight laughed as Twilight turned her soulless gaze on her still living friends.
As she stalked towards the proffered victims, Twilight's body began to warp and change. Her fur fell out in clumps revealing a slick, shiny purple body beneath. Her feathers fell away as well, her wing bones growing long, sharp, and serrated. Her teeth popped out, one by one, the flat little bones replaced by jagged black fangs that stretched into a hungry smile that stank of black currant juice and the sickly sweet stench of grape flavored candy.
“Sooo... hungry,” the new born candy ghoul moaned. The hole in her throat sprouted teeth of its own and began to gnash and salivate in expectation as she suddenly lunged for Applejack.
A beam of searing light, like a ray of purest daylight, scythed through the monstrous Twilight and sent her skittering back in pain. She hissed and her slowly candified flesh sizzled as an equally potent beam of darkness shot down in a wide circle, forcing the crazed candy cultist away from Rarity and Applejack.
To either side of the wounded friends, two massive shapes suddenly slammed into the earth, scattering the cultists back still further. Celestia and Luna, the royal sisters bore their fair share of battle scars, but at this time and in this place neither had ever before looked so fierce or powerful.
“Are you alright, my little ponies?” asked Celestia with kindness.
“No. Not really,” answered the ever honest Applejack, retrieving her hat. “But we’re still in one piece, if that’s what ya mean’.”
“We are leaving,” said Luna in a commanding voice, not taking her eyes off the cultists as they clambered back to their hooves, before adding more softly for only the living's ears, “Our forces are routed. We must regroup.”
“I’m fine with going anywhere so long as it’s not here,” whispered Rarity in reply as she wiped the blood from beneath her chin, the shallow cut stinging.
“Hah! So you’re going to run? Do you really think there is anywhere you can? Anywhere that you can flee to? That you can escape being devoured?” mocked the skinless Starlight, “Run as far and as fast as you can, you’ll just die tired in the end!”
“No.” The word rumbled through all who were present. “No running. No games. You. Will. Kneel!”
As the words continued to roll like thunder, the earth cracked open as fresh tentacles of writhing liquorice exploded from below and seized Celestia and Luna. Though they struggled, the tendrils burrowed deep into their flesh, binding their wings and forcing the twin monarchs to their knees! Their heads were likewise pulled down into a deep bow as the Candy Mare suddenly appeared before them.
Celestia and Luna's horns began to glow with their powerful magic, but faded to nothing as the questing tendrils found their way up their spines and straight into their soft and vulnerable brains. Their eyes glazed over as the Candy Mare all but cooed “That’s better,” her fiendish grin threatening to remove the top of her head from the rest of her body as she stroked Celestia and Luna’s flowing manes. "It never gets old, seeing the two of you like this."
In a flash of magic, Starswirl the Bearded suddenly appeared. “Quickly!” He shouted, and Rarity and Applejack ran to his side. Just as swiftly as he had appeared, the unicorn vanished, taking the pair with him.
"No! They're mine!" howled the thing that used to be Twilight, long black tongue lashing out between her fangs.
"I guess we should go after them...?" Rainbow Dash asked doubtfully.
"Ugh... Do we have to?" groaned Pinkie Pie. "There are still some living quadruple amputees I wanna play with!"
"B-but... hungry!" pouted Twilight.
“It doesn’t matter. They’re just leftovers now,” grinned the fleshless cult leader, “we can always eat them later, isn't that right master?”
“Hah! Well said Starlight,” praised the Candy Mare, turning from the now mindless royal sisters. As one, the cultists bowed deeply, even their leader lowering her head until her horn scraped the dirt. “Another world falls to us. A world ripe with flesh and souls for us to devour! DISCORD!”
For a moment nothing happened, and then with a tiny pop of light and a rush of air, the candy draconequus that had to all appearances been vaporized by the royal sisters moments ago suddenly rematerialized. “You bellowed, your majesty?” The trickster said with a mocking bow.
“And just where have you been this whole time?” asked the Candy Mare tapping one hoof with the petulance of a child accustomed to having things her way.
“Why, watching you work of course!” exclaimed the spirit of chaos, brandishing a bucket of popcorn. Although, what was inside the tub was not exactly popcorn... Instead the writhing mass was in fact a division of the Royal Guard that had been shrunk down to miniature. Their tiny screams would have been fairly amusing if they didn’t accompany the sound of their cracking bones and popping flesh as Discord casually popped a fist full of them into his mouth. He chewed noisily, and then talked with is mouth full, “You know how entertaining it is for me when the mortals lose their will to fight in the face of your jubilant self expression! So much despair! So much delightful chaos!”
He offered a second bucket to the Candy Mare, but two tendrils of liquorice whipped out from the monstrous mare's mane and snagged both buckets. She then placed them beneath the muzzles of the royal sisters, where Luna and Celestia began to mindlessly eat, like beasts of burden led to a feeding troth. The Candy Mare couldn’t quite stifle a giggle at the tiny screams of the diminutive soldiers went up an octave higher as they realized they were being eaten alive by the very monarchs they had sworn to serve! “Heheh... I bet they never thought that they would serve their Princesses quite like this!”
“Oh, excellent pun your majesty,” applauded Discord, pouting somewhat at having his snacks confiscated. “You should consider coming to the Candy Cult's comedy night. I’m sure you’d have them rolling in the aisles!”
The Candy Mare frowned and turned an angry glare in the draconequus’s direction. “That’s enough out of you. Unless you would like me to make dinner arrangements for your new Fluttershy. It's so hard to restrain myself from devouring them, you know. It feels like I'm leaving a loose end every time I let you have one for your plaything.”
“No, no, I’ll be good!” panicked Discord, clearly distressed, joining the other cultists on the ground. He bowed so deeply now that his face was pressed flat into the gorey mud. This returned the Candy Mare's smile to her face.
Of course, this was all pantomime.
The Candy Mare could unmake or recreate any of her candy ghouls and each of the candy cultists as she saw fit, at any time. Though the cultists had an echo of their original personalities, their wills were ultimately still under their masters control. Even so, her puppets fear was deliciously satisfying, and she beamed beautifically down on Discord's cowering form as any smiling god might do to a penitent supplicant. “Good. Then you can start widening the gaps between dimensions. I want this world to be fully a part of the Candyverse before Nightmare Night is over.”
“Right away! As you command!” salute Discord, before flying up into the sky, and dragging his claws through reality. More and more of the strange alien sky spilled across the heavens over Equestria as the undead embodiment of chaos slowly widened the wound the cult had worked so hard to create with their ritual sacrifices.
“Now, as for the rest of you,” growled soul devouring flesh eater said sternly, causing her minions to cower afresh. “Enough with the bowing! It’s Nightmare Night! Oh what a fright! And we have so many wonderful sweets to bite! Go forth and feast!” Making her minions cower might be fun, but it was time for the real revels to begin!
"Hungry?" the thing that had been Twilight asked quizzically, the first to raise her head.
"Not for long," the Candy Mare replied with a fierce grin.
A cheer went up among the cultists as they leaped to their hooves! They spread throughout the still burning remains of the haunted Ponyville that both did and do not belong in this reality, hunting the retreating armies with laughter and great cheer!
The Candy Mare looked upon their joyous slaughter, and she found it good.
“You’ve got to let your followers cut loose every once in awhile, don’t ya think?” she asked Celestia and Luna as the lobotomized rulers continued to eat like docile cattle.
With little fanfare, The Candy Mare swept two saw toothed appendages through the monarch's thick trunk-like necks. Like many rulers of Equestria before them, the Candy Mare felt that decapitation was the most fitting end for royalty. The fact that the few remaining shrunken soldiers trapped inside the popcorn buckets in front of them were now destined to drown in the sudden flood of gore from their Princess's severed heads only added a bit of novelty to an otherwise boring occasion.
“Yeah, you have to appreciate the little things sometimes. Otherwise what is the point of living?"
At first, the fabric of Equestria’s reality unraveled almost whimsically.
Though sark storm clouds spread over the land, alive with flashes of green and orange lightning, the citizens of Equestria who had not seen the massacre in Ponyville firsthand were none the wiser that anything was wrong beyond the strange storm clouds The first the civilian population had any inkling something wasn’t right was when the storm clouds opened and candy began to shower down from above. Fillies and colts rushed outside with bags and buckets, collecting the heaven sent treats.
It was Nightmare Night, after all, and many children were already out and about trick or treating. The thought never occurred to them that there might be something dangerous or deadly about the candy. For all they new, this was some new and delightful spell cast by one of the many princesses of Equestria to help celebrate the spooky holiday. All the children needed to do was raise their receptacle of choice to the sky and watch in wonder as it filled with lollipops, candy corn, peppermint sticks, chocolates, and other sugar frosted sweets. How could this not be some wonderful gift from one of their benevolent rulers? Even a few wary adults got in on the act, carrying bowls and barrels outside to catch the treats, just as delighted by the strange turn of events as Equestria's children.
But delight swiftly turned to horror as piece by piece, terrible monstrosities built themselves up and rose from every barrel, bowl, bucket, and bag. Candy ghouls, in a riot of colors, shapes, and sizes spilled onto the ground and leaped into the air, falling upon their unsuspecting victims with wild abandon. There was almost a carnival atmosphere among the monstrosities as they laughed and sang and shredded their prey to gory pieces.
The most unfortunate, of course, had been those greedy ponies (adult and child alike) who had scarfed down the diabolical candies as swiftly as they had fallen from the sky. Their stomachs roiled and churned as unnatural life took shape inside them. It was not long before candy ghouls ripped through flesh and bone to be unnaturally birthed into the world. They burst giggling out of bellies, chests, and backs, many eating their way to freedom, devouring their 'hosts' alive from the inside out. A few merely clawed their way back up the throats of those who had swallowed them, dislocating and ripping of the jaws that had so recently chewed them. As the candy abominations were disgorged steaming into the night, they left behind ruined but, perhaps more horrifically, still very much alive ponies shaking in shock and pain who made for helpless playthings for the sadistic monsters games.
The ghouls feasted on the living and dead alike, but teases and tormented the living the way a cat might torment a mouse. Those they slaughtered soon rose again, candified, and joined the growing horde as it crashed like a tidal wave over the countryside. A flood of carnivorous candy spread outwards from the heart of Equestria, changing and warping the land in its wake. Plants and trees melted and twisted as they were coated in caustic candy, smothered by the living candy that sheathed it. The ground itself began to harden and turn brittle as sweets seeded the earth, tendrils of candy spreading and taking root deep in the ground. Even the water in the rivers and lakes were not immune as the cursed treats that still rained from the storm clouds dissolved in the water, turning it to a viscous and fizzing green soda.
All this was thanks to the widening rift that linked this universe and the Candyverse. Soon, there would no longer be a way to tell one from the other.
As the reality storm reached the Everfree Forest it was impossible to block out the screams of the animals that made the deadly forest their home. The echoing snap of ancient tree limbs as they shattered under the weight of the blighted candy rain was just as unnerving. Try as they might, Rarity and Applejack could do nothing to block out the cries of the world outside dying all around them. Though they seemed to be safe, for now, in the tree house shelter that was all that remained of the protective Tree of Harmony.
They were two among the few survivors that had retreated from the Candy Mare's onslaught and with the aid of Starswirl the Bearded, had the time to take shelter in the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters. Thankfully not long after it had been destroyed by King Sombra, the remains of the Tree of Harmony had reforged itself into a sanctuary of sorts that offered the remaining survivors protection they desperately needed. At the time that the new building had sprouted up from the earth, no one was certain why it had taken the form of shelter, but now it was clear that it was in case of a situation just like this one.
The cursed candy rain steamed away to nothing as it came in contact with the fortresses outer walls, but that didn’t stop candy ghouls from hungrily prowling the ruins outside. Though the survivors might be safe for the moment, they were trapped here, and unable to do anything as the world beyond their enchanted shelter suffocated and died under the hellish candy rain.
It would only be a matter of time until the cultists, or the Candy Mare herself, would find the refugees. It was not certain that the edifice could withstand an assault from the self styled goddess or her acolytes, but even if it could the air of hopelessness inside the sacred shelter was palpable.
Fortunately, there were those that had not yet given up hope. Starswirl the Bearded and a few of the other Pillars of Harmony were busy coordinating with those they had managed to rescue. It was an eclectic mix of soldiers and civilians; ponies, griffins, and dragons alike. All shivered in terror as they listened to the agony of the living and the laughter of the dead outside in the dark forest, but they did their best to carry out the instructions of the Pillars to help secure their refuge from invasion. Everyone here had lost somebody, a family member, a friend, or even a lover. Even the Pillars had not gone unscathed as poor Mistmane and brave Rockhoof were numbered among those who had fallen in battle, felled by cruel cultist daggers or the relentless assault of the candy ghouls. It was all the more reason to listen carefully to what the legendary heroes had to say, for even they were not invulnerable against the madness that had consumed the world.
The Pillars were having a hushed meeting now, clumped away from the others.
Mage Meadowbrook looked the most distressed, and with good cause. She had exhausted her supply of medicines trying to treat those who had been injured in the assault. Sadly, she had watched the injured succumb one by one to the Candy Curse, and been forced to listen as their cries of pain morphed into howls of laughter. Those who it was deemed could not be saved were swiftly dumped over the walls, left to die outside only to rise again moments later and join the growing horde of riotous ghouls.
Starswirl spoke to his friends more stoically, if no less grimly. He had been responsible for weeding out those less obviously infected than the injured from the healthy with his magic. Those who were deemed contaminated were not immediately condemned to die, however. Starswirl knew all about the contagion that would be boiling beneath the skin of the afflicted. This gave those infected a ray of hope that, unfortunately, the sorcerer did not share. Where Mage Meadowbrooks medicines had simply failed, however, his familiarity with the curse seemed to only deepen rather than lessen his own sense of despair. He knew from prior experience that his spells and cantrips would were useless in reversing the rot and corruption before he even tried them. Despite, try them he still did, unwilling to let even a single soul pass into the Candy Mare's collection without some kind of fight. If they could lessen their adversaries numbers by even one by denying them a new convert to her grizzly army, then it was worth the expenditure of his magic and skill. Unfortunately his spells faired little better than Meadowbrook’s potions, delaying the inevitable just long enough for those already infected to be isolated and eventually teleported outside.
Flash Magnus had watched on with agitation as one by one, soldiers he had fought beside succumbed horrifically to the Candy Curse. At first he had tried to embody the stolid resolve expected of a seasoned soldier, but as his comrades fell into gibbering madness it was plain to see that his calm veneer was cracking. The pegasus was restless, pacing, flexing his wings as if he would leap into the sky at any moment. Perhaps he wanted to leap back into the fray, to live and die his last moments fighting an enemy he could at least get his hooves on. Doing some sort of damage to those who had taken so many of his fellow soldiers and friends, even if such a defiant act would be his final one. His words were the harshest and the most easily overheard as the Pillars held their impromptu meeting. What he had to say was hardly comforting to those who tried to listen.
In contrast, Somnambula was quiet and calm, almost serene. It was almost like she was somehow above it all, looking down on a world lost to madness not with horror, disgust, or even anger, but instead with pity and infinite patience. Her words did not seem to do anything to soothe her comrades agitation, but her mere presence was enough to calm those who looked upon her. Her demeanor alone was enough to make the survivors dare to hope. Hope for what though? For justice? For survival? For a chance for revenge? It was hard to say. It was clear that even if they could stop the Candy Mare, there wouldn’t be much left of Equestria to save.
The Pillars seemed to reach some kind of agreement. Rarity was surprised when Somnambula broke off from the others and approached her and Applejack, where they stood staring out over the battlements as tornadoes of liquorice swept back and forth over the land. Applejack, to the contrary, sort of saw this coming. It wasn't a secret that there were some among the survivors that were not looking to the remaining Pillars for salvation, but the last two Elements of Harmony to somehow save the day...
“How are the two of you holding up?” asked the Pillar of Hope with a slightly foreign sounding accent.
“About as well as could be expected, given everypony we know and love are dead or dyin’ and we got front row seats to watch the end of Equestria,” replied the farm pony cynically. It was clear she did not share the survivors hope that the Elements of Harmony would somehow be able to win the day.
“We’re positively ghastly dear. We’ve lost so much so quickly I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The fact I was most worried about whether or not my friends would like the costumes I had made for them at the start of today seems so ridiculous,” murmured Rarity with a sad little smile. “I know I used to say this often before, and there were many times I really meant, but the statement has never been as true as it is now: This is the Worst. Possible. Thing.”
Somnambula nodded her understanding. “It is likely to only get worse from here. Starswirl believes that the Tree of Harmony was diminished by its destruction, and that this edifice only contains a fraction of its power. As this world becomes less ours and more and more hers, even that remnant of protection shall fade. Even with Starswirl and the other unicorns working to enhance that protection, we will not be able to shelter here much longer.”
“So what do you propose we do!?” yelled Applejack, suddenly angry. “Just give up and throw ourselves inta the enemies jaws!? Horseapples to that!”
“No! Ah’m tired of tryin’ ta stay calm and think things through, and act like... like none of this is happening, or somehow it’s all some stupid joke and things are somehow gonna work out!” Thick, hot tears were running down AJ’s muzzle now, trickling over her freckles and cascading to the floor. “Mah family is dead! Mah friends are dead! The farm I grew up in and town Ah loved is gone! Everythin’ and everyone Ah ever loved or cared for is gone! An’ it’s all because of some sugar dusted tart from some other dimension and her gaggle of psychopathic followers! Ah am completely done with bein’ calm!”
Irritation flashed in Rarity’s eyes as she tried, and failed, to bite back the words she said next. “Do you think it’s any easier for the rest of us? For me!?” Hot tears of her own were even now melting her mascara, thin black tears fell leaving dark trails through her white fur. “You’re not the only one who watched her friends die today! Nor are you the only one who is hiding out in this Celestia-forsaken corner of Equestria, huddled against a storm of murder and madness that’s roaring just beyond the thickness of a few walls! You aren’t the only one who lost family and loved ones today Applejack!”
“So what?” barked the farm pony, before she really had a chance to realize what she was saying. “Just because everyone else is sufferin’ that don’t mean Ah gotta keep it all bottled up inside! It don’t mean that Ah gotta act like this ain’t the end! Face it! Everycreature is just waitin’ ta die!”
“I hate you,” hissed Rarity, causing Applejack to reel back as if she had been physically struck. “You’re always like this. You think bluntly stating the obvious is somehow a virtue because it’s honest, but do you really think that kind of honesty is what we need right now? Everyone here is sad and afraid, and you flying into a rage isn’t helping anyone!”
“An’ what? Do ya think yer helpin’ them any by so generously concealing the truth?” shot back the farm pony, causing the fashionista to wince as well. “Dress it up however ya like, but no matter how pretty you try to paint it there is no hiding the truth. We’ve lost. The end. Do you get that? We’ve lost!”
“But you haven’t lost each other,” Somnambula said calmly. Her presence had practically been forgotten up to this moment, but the pegasi’s words made both the earth pony and unicorn fall silent.
Rarity and Applejack locked eyes with one another. It was clear that they were both frightened and angry. They were confused by how things had managed to go so bad so quickly. They were looking for anyone to blame, but the truth was it was that neither of them were at fault. They were friends. At that moment, they were all they still had.
“Ah reckon ya might be right about that,” admitted Applejack, her anger fading as quickly as it had risen.
“Indeed,” agreed Rarity. “We still have at least one friend we haven’t lost yet.”
“We have all had much taken from us by this Candy Mare,” continued Somnambula. “But there is still hope, if the two of you are willing to help us.”
The pair of friends shared a glance again before Applejack asked the question in both their minds, “How? What can we do?”
“My friends and I are divided on how to proceed,” explained the pegasus from ancient times, “In the past there were seven of us to make decisions, which led to many problems, but we always had a tie breaking vote if there was no majority. Now there are only four of us, and we remain deadlocked.”
“Pardon me dear,” interjected Rarity. “But I don’t see how adding Applejack and myself to your vote would be helpful were we to... disagree with one another on how to proceed. We may be friends, but that does not mean we always see eye to eye. You still might have a tie.”
Somnambula snorted slightly. A laugh neither of the ponies understood until she said, “You would not be helping us to vote. Allow me to explain. As I said before, this shelter will not last long. The Candy Mare is sure to come here once she is done ravaging our world, to devour the last of the survivors gathered here. Such is her way. Meadowbrook and I have proposed fleeing to another world to escape, saving as many as we can from the coming slaughter in hope of returning one day to reclaim what has been lost. Flash and Starswirl, however, wish to gamble on one last stand, though it may mean the destruction of us all.”
“But why? We weren’t able to defeat the Candy Mare with the full might of Equestria,” Rarity pointed out. “How could we possibly stand against her with the few who remain?”
The pegasus from another time sadly cast down her eyes. “They do not intend to survive. Starswirl is convinced that the Candy Mare will simply follow us should we flee, no matter how many realities we might cross. Instead he and Flash intend to do everything in their power to cripple her, so that what has happened here may not happen to another realm. If that means that the survivors they leave behind have to travel to another world afterwards, then so be it. At least then any pursuit might be delayed.”
“Sacrifice ourselves ta save the multiverse,” muttered Applejack. “Yeah, that sounds like an idea Starswirl’d cook up. Can’t say as Ah like the idea of dyin’ for a temporary solution though.”
“Nor I,” admitted Somnambula. “But there is a third option. Though we lost our good friends Mistmane and Rockhoof, the inheritors of their power still remain, the sole survivors of their own circle of friends. Call it fate or happenstance, if we were to combine our forces there is a brighter hope we might achieve. It may be possible to end the threat of the Candy Mare once and for all, if you are willing.”
“I don’t understand,” Rarity confessed, confused. “What exactly are you proposing?”
“Banishing the Candy Mare, just like the Pony of Shadows,” answered Applejack as understanding dawned. “Ah reckon that’s the real reason why we’re here. They don’t want ta run or ta fight. They want ta lure the Candy Mare inta a trap!”
“With us as the bait!” blurted her friend as the shape of the plan at last took shape in herm ind. “But when the Pony of Shadows was banished to limbo, we had the Elements of Harmony. Without them, would we be able to banish the Candy Mare?”
“Yer thinkin’ about the second time he was banished, Rarity,” the earth pony said matter-of-factly. “The first time they didn’t need the Elements. But Ah think yer right to be concerned. Ah reckon Ah already know the cost of performin’ that little trick without em. Limbo.”
“That is correct,” Somnambula sighed, “Starswirl thinks tapping into the last of the Tree of Harmony’s power we can open a portal to Limbo, trapping the Candy Mare outside of time and space. But it will require the two of you working with the four remaining Pillars to be successful... And even then, we will be pulled into Limbo with her. Neither we nor the survivors would have to die, but we would be sacrificing our freedom once more to ensure the Candy Mare's eternal imprisonment.”
The three ponies fell silent. Removing a creature as terrible as the Candy Mare from the multiverse sounded like the best course of action, but the cost would be consigning themselves to the same oblivion to which they would send her. It was a weighty cost to consider.
“Does it hurt?” asked Rarity.
“What?”
“Being trapped in Limbo.”
“There is no sense of the passage of time. Just a momentary blackness, like falling asleep, and then nothing," assured Somnambula. "One moment we were at Ponehenge in my time, the next we awakened in your time. A thousand years, gone in an instant, but we remained blissfully unaware.”
"Ah guess that don't sound so bad..." though she said this, something still seemed to be on the country mare's mind. "But are ya sure it'll work? Me and Rarity might have helped save Equestria a time or two, but we ain't exactly Legendary, like Mistmae and Rockhoof were."
At this, Somnambula smiled, "Yet isn't it strange that you, those chosen by the Tree of Harmony to be the inheritors of their powers, should happen to be the sole survivors from your circle of friends. That you would just happen to live on after they fell today. As individuals they were larger than life, irreplaceable, but they still live on through the two of you. Some may think me a little naive, but I can't help but see the hand of fate at work in this, and that fills me with hope and certainty that this is the correct path for us to follow. That we will succeed if we work together, combining the knowledge of the past with the hope for the future... How can we fail?"
There was no shock or surprise when the Candy Mare finally came for the last survivors of doomed Equestria. Her approach was heralded long before her arrival.
It started when the candy ghouls, who had been swarmed around the walls, suddenly retreated into the Everfree Forest. It reminded those present of a nautical frame of mind of the seas retreat before the inevitable return of the dreadful tsunami. After hours of their cacophonous laughter, shrieks, and screams the sudden silence as their childish songs faded into the distance was welcome, but not comforting. Now lifeless, the candied Everfree Forest lay around them perfectly still. There were no bird song, insect cries, or even the sigh of wind in the trees to offer the illusion of normalcy. The quiet was foreboding, the calm before the storm, pregnant with malignancy.
That was when the storm began to loom thick on the horizon, a swirl of unnaturally verdant glowing clouds towered in stark contrast to the rest of the dark night sky. Orange and green lightning branched out like spider webs across the heavens, and in the distance they could just barely make out the drumming counterpoint of rumbling thunder. A new rain began to fall, not candy this time, but one that was warm sand salty. Blood, sizzling hot, splashed against the exterior of the refuge the last living creatures in Equestria. It stained the white edifice like the evening gown of a particularly unfortunate prom queen after a rather cruel prank involving pigs blood.
It was not long before the living realized the strange green clouds were moving towards them. As they did, a thick unnatural fog began to spill from the Everfree Forest at the same time. It flowed like a river into the ravine that surrounded the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters on one side and welled up to envelop the first floor of the fortress’s structure. With the fog, there returned the sound of the candy ghouls. they were no longer laughing and screaming, but instead singing silently in almost hushed reverence. They sang in the voices of family and friends, who now lay dead or walked about on corrupted candy limbs. They sang "Nightmare Night, what a fright" not as a childish refrain, but with all the deliberation and metre of a sacred chant. They surrounded the fortress in even greater number than before, candy creatures of all shapes and sizes and every species present for this, the final sacrifice to their horrific master.
There was a distant crash, that some mistook for thunder at first, as massive candy creatures began to stomp through the dead trees of the Everfree Forest. Dragons, Hydra, Tatzulwurm, and even massive Ursa Majors had been candified, and now flattened the trees like massive undead siege engines that left nothing but devastation in their wake. It seemed that the Candy Mare had found the time to raid Tartarus as well as all manner of candified creatures, including a towering red Tirek made of cinnamon candy, marched towards the last bastion of life in Equestria. Green and blue flames licked out between the candied teeth of former Dragon Lord Torch and his daughter Dragon Lord Ember, setting the sugar coated forest alight with an intense blue flame. Though the fires spread quickly, they generated no heat and didn’t seem to harm any of the candy creatures, animal or plant.
As the gargantuan candy ghouls blazed a trail through the forest, at last, the living could see that they were making way for something even more colossal. What they had only blurily perceived from a distance came into focus as it began to follow the trail of destruction. It was, of course, the Candy Mare’s massive throne of candified flesh and bone that towered in the distance, wreathed in a clouds of souls. It had only grown larger as more and more victims had been added to it, and the miserable dead who made up the base of the the throne moaned their pain as with thousands of arms and legs they drug their inconceivable bulk agonizingly across the earth.
What had been mistaken for verdant clouds from a distance, the survivors could see clearly were actually a vast bank of wailing souls that seethed and boiled about the apex of the throne. It was like a vast maelstrom suspended in the sky, an ever churning whirlpool that was sucked into the top of the pillar of sugar dusted flesh and bone, spilling into the wide open maw of the thrones solitary occupant. The mobile throne moved deceptively quickly, and it was not long before they could see the Candy Mare sitting atop her living throne, mouth wide as she gorged herself on the spirits of the slain. All those souls crying out there last as they were lost to the bottomless depths of her hunger made the survivors experience new depths of terror yet unplumbed as they realized that their deaths would not be the end of their suffering, but only the beginning.
All around the Candy Mare, jack-o-lanterns popped into existence, floating and bobbing in the wake left of the passage of the devoured spirits. The gourds leered with madness and delighted cruelty as the souls that spawned them were dissolved into the horrific oneness that was the Candy Mare. They spread out over the sky, floating almost serenely into the clouds, where no doubt they were responsible for the production of both the rain of cursed candy and boiling blood alike. Who knew what dark and obscene magic was at work within those grinning pumpkin shells? No one, perhaps, but the Candy Mare herself.
There was nowhere to run. The ruined castle was surrounded by a great sea of candied cannibal corpses. Their chant now grew more insistnet, more fervent as their master approached, rising to a fevered crescendo as they practically foamed at the mouth as they eyed the last living morsels of flesh in this dying world.
Though the idea of time had died when the sun and moon they were familiar with had disappeared from the sky, there might have been some added layer of significance to this moment if the living knew that the hour was fast approaching midnight. Soon it would be the witching hour, when all masks come off, and Nightmare Night traditionally came to an end. Of course, that had little meaning so long as the Candy Mare was around. As long as she existed, Nightmare Night would last forever.
For all the menacing ghouls massed around the fortress walls, not one of them had made an attempt to breach the structure. The few that drew near gave a loud hiss as their skin melted and caramelized, driving them back. Though fading, it seemed the protection of the Tree of Harmony was still potent enough to keep the horrific horde at bay. As the Candy Mare's throne loomed tall over the fortress, it seemed as though she intended to crush the building beneath the massive bulk of the twisted bodies she had gather. The force of such a blow would surely be more than enough to crack their defenses, bursting open the fortress like some kind of perverse pinata, allowing the candified monsters to spill in and devour their 'party guests'.
Instead, the Candy Mare’s throne came to a groaning stop. A wide channel spread in the undead armies midst, opening a wide thoroughfare between the base of the throne and the steps leading up to the front door of the fortress. Even the fog seemed to clear itself from the path, as orange flashes of sheet lightning and the glow of the gathered souls of the departed illuminated the scene below. Without warning, the jack-o-lanterns descended to line a glowing pathway between the throne and the front door of the fortress, the pumpkin light lending a nightmarish illumination to the ghoulish proceedings to follow.
Suddenly, the Candy Mare lept from her throne and plummeted to the earth below. Just as she was about to slam into the ground at full speed, all momentum seemed to leave her. She gracefully floated to the earth with an eerie grace, her red liquorice mane floating about her head in a nimbus that made it dance like flame. As all four hooves settled onto the ground, the wings and crown that adorned her body seemed to fade away as she shrunk down to assume the appearance of just a filly once more. The skinless Starlight, leader of the Candy Cult, parted the wall of candy ghouls and presented her diminutive master with what appeared to be a bucket in the shape of a pumpkin, an innocent grin painted on its surface. This all seemed to be some elaborate pageantry that the Candy Cult had prepared ahead of time.
The Candy Mare gracefully accepted the festive candy bucket, clenching it's handle tight in her own smiling teeth before she skipped merrily up to the front door of the fortress. With bated breath, the survivors watched as the cosmic horror in filly shape tottered down the pathway in obscene mockery of an innocent trick or treater. She paused just a moment as she reached the front door, looking upwards at the watching refugees above to give them a hungry grin that threatened to spread the full length of her body, before she reached forward and gave the door three short knocks.
For such a tiny creature, her knocks boomed on the door, sounding more like blows from a massive battering ram than the polite knocks of a filly that they appeared to be. Though before when one of the candy creatures had touched the fortress there had been a hiss and sputtering of caramelized candy flesh followed by a howl of agony and a quick retreat. There was none now, which made the assembled army of sugary death give a raucous cheer... That is, until it was silenced by a glare from over the Candy Mare's shoulder. As the ghouls fell silent, the abomination in filly form set down her bucket and cheerfully cried, “Nightmare Night, what a fright! Give me something sweet to bite”
That seemed to be the cue for the gathered ghouls to howl with laughter and cheer in triumph, their earlier outburst receiving a glare only because it had been premature. The Tree of Harmony demonstrably held no power over the Candy Mare herself, whatever protection it offered against her followers. She had eaten too many of its avatars, ingested too much of their magic, for it to have the same effect on her as on her newly risen army. Though one might hope she would pose less of a threat to the protective walls as a tiny filly, the echoing booms of her knock gave the lie to her form, revealing the farce at play. The only reason the Candy Mare had refrained from unleashing her true power was that she enjoyed watching her victims squirm! This childish pantomime was engineered solely for her amusement and to crush any last hope her soon to be victims might have. "Trick or Treat!" she called again.
The Candy Mare smiled viciously as she resumed knocking, harder this time. Visible cracks spread across the surface of the door, and indeed the entire building, as the fortress shook with the raw power behind the dainty blows of her tiny hooves. For all she seemed to be doing this in jest, the Candy Mare actually seemed to be growing angrier and angrier that the door was not being opened with each passing moment. Her body shook as it suddenly began to swell, adding on mass that made her as tall as a mare, a stallion, an Alicorn, and then more and more until her army had to stampede away to make room for her as she came to tower over even the Ursa Majors and Dragons who gathered fearfully around her knees like children witnessing a mother's rage for the first time. The Candy Mare, now dwarfing even her massive throne, inhaled the cloud of souls that hung around it in one terrible breath. As she exhaled, her breath spilled out like the foul miasma that could only be produced by a million rotting corpses as her voice thundered with rage “I SAID, TRICK OR TREAT!!!!!”
Surprisingly, the door to the fortress cracked open ever so slightly. A pair of ponies, a white unicorn and an orange earth pony, stepped outside. The unicorn was levitating a bowl of candy and the earth pony seemed to be doing her best to balance a tray of candy apples on her back.
“We heard ya, we heard ya! Hold yer horses! It takes a minute ta get ta the front door from the kitchen!” Applejack called out.
With a suddenness that was so quick her loss of mass caused a small thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the suddenly vacant space, the Candy Mare once again appeared in her filly form, smiling up at Rarity and Applejack. “Oh boy, oh boy! Are you gonna give me something sweet to bite!?” she sang cheerfully, just like any normal child excited to receive a sugary treat might. It would have almost been cute if not for her bizarre candy body and blood stained appearance.
“And if we give you something sweet to bite you’ll be a good girl and not pull any nasty tricks on us?” asked Rarity as she magically manipulated a hoof full of candy so it floated over the Candy Mare’s pumpkin bucket, without actually letting any fall in yet.
“Oh of course!” agreed the Candy Mare. “Everyone knows the rules. As long as you give out a good treat, you won’t get tricked,” she replied, smiling innocently. This, of course, was part of the game too. The 'rules' the Candy Mare spoke were riddled with loopholes. At any time after the treats were given, she could just claim that the sweets were not ‘good enough treats’ to stave off one of her nightmarish 'tricks'. Of course, if they didn't play along at all then she would just kill them and have her minions swarm over their bodies. No matter what they did, the same result of them dying and the Candy Mare being entertained would be achieved, such were the nature of the 'rules' of this game the Candy Cult had devised.
But of course, the living knew this was a game too. Starswirl the Bearded knew well the Candy Mare's tendency towards overconfidence and sadistic games when she thought her prey cornered. Deadly and dangerous and designed to facilitate their demise as it was, it might just give them the chance they would need to spring their trap!
“Ah don’t know Rarity. This one here looks like she might be a bit too old for Trick or Treat,” said the farm pony speculatively. “Are you sure ya deserve one of mah delicious candy apples?”
The Candy Mare frowned. This was not how the game was usually played, but she rolled with it. “Oh, believe me, you’re never too old for Trick or Treat! And I’m so very, very hungry. If I don’t get something sweet to bite soon I just might die!” This drew huge peels of laughter from the gathered ghouls. Of course she wouldn’t die, she was already dead! Not to mention she had been gorging herself on flesh and souls all night. The Candy Mare practically hummed with power, but she seemed to draw some perverse joy from pretending to be a starving waif, begging for treats.
Strangely, the ponies seemed willing to continue with the game. “Oh the poor dear!” cried out Rarity, draping one hoof over her brow dramatically. “She looks as though she’s about to positively waste away! We simply must invite her inside for spider cider and spice cakes.”
Applejack nodded her agreement, “Ah reckon so. Ain’t no way a few pieces of candy and a candy apple will satisfy her,” the pair of ponies turned and walked back inside. “Come on in. We’ll make sure that ya get what’s comin’ to ya.”
The doors were left wide open. Even so, the interior was so dark as to be black as pitch. The Candy Mare was noponies fool and the trap was obvious. A leer over her shoulder told her minions that the Candy Mare was well aware and felt she had nothing to dread. If this was how they wanted to play the game, fine. Once they sprung their feeble little trap the game would be over. Then her armies would crash down on these mortal fools from all sides, ending their pathetic lives. Just the thought put a spring in her step and, picking up her candy bucket, the Candy Mare skipped joyfully over the threshold...
And right into the middle of a magic hexagram.
The ring around the hexagrams six points flared with ancient magic, which had an immediate effect on the Candy Mare, forcing an agonized scream from her tiny lungs that spilled forth in a million overlapped voices. Though they hadn’t had much time, Starswirl had carved the necessary runes into the crystal surface of the floor, draining and focusing the power that remained in the Tree of Harmony into this final spell. It was no wonder that the walls had shook and cracked at the touch of the Candy Mare! All of the protective energy had been redirected to the trap she now found herself standing in. Standing at the apex of each point of the six sided star, the four remaining Pillars, Applejack, and Rarity stood, ready to invoke the seal that would banish all within to limbo!
“Well darling, you wanted your treat and here it is,” Rarity said as she held Mistmane’s flower, the symbol of the power of Beauty, high.
“But now, Ah reckon ya gotta take the trick that goes with it,” added Applejack with a smirk as she lifted Rockhoof’s shovel.
The Candy Mare's form exploded into teeth, claws, and tendrils as her form struggled to contain her rage, but the magic of the circle held her at bay as the other four ponies took their position. One after the other they raised their icons into the air and began to channel their power into the spell that would banish the frothing monster to the void once and for all! Still, her struggles were mighty, and though the ponies were protected for now, her wild thrashing began to damage the runes carved into the floor beneath her. White hot magic burst within the circle and the Candy Mare’s screams of pain turned to a cry of outrage as part of her candy body was partially syphoned off into the ether.
“Concentrate!” bellowed Starswirl. “We must finish the spell before she damages the wards further!”
“We're givin’ it all we got!” cried Applejack in reply. She then turned to the unicorn who she had fought and feuded with so many times. To her dearest friend, “See ya on the other side sugarcube.”
“Of course darling,” was Rarity's reply. She smiled fiercely even though she was crying. “At least we’ll always have each other.”
A swirling black and white void opened above the circle, drawing the ponies and their captive into the air. The Candy Mare did not go quietly, changing form and stretching herself like a piece of taffy as she scrabbled uselessly at the spell carved into the floor beneath her. “Not like this!” she screamed. “Not again! I WON’T! BE! A! PRISONER! AGAIN!” But even she could only resist for so long. Taking shape after shape, growing, shrinking, turning to jelly, to liquid, to fog. Finally she took the form most familiar to her, that of a tiny skeletal filly with limp red curls and a look of stubborn hatred in her eyes. “You’ll never hold me! Not so long as there is a Nightmare Night. It will be back some day. I WILL BE BACK SOME DAY!”
Howling with laughter, high and sharp and mad, the Candy Mare’s body fell apart. Each individual piece of candy was sucked up into the vortex, turning it into a crazy swirling rainbow of insane laughter before the the portal finally closed with a pop... And the laughter stopped.
Outside, the army of candy ghouls suddenly froze. From the tiniest pony to the tallest dragon, the candied monstrosities stood stock still. High above, the heavens began to clear. As cloud and fog dissipated the light of the moon shone down on the ghastly army that had now fallen silent and still as the grave. There was no sign of the horrible candy realm known as the Candyverse hovering like sure and certain doom over Equestria anymore. Indeed, were it not for the statue-like abominations outside the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters, it would have been easy to dismiss everything that had happened as some kind of terrible dream...
A collective nightmare that they had all, at last, woken up from.
The fortress that had withstood the Candy Mare’s assault evaporated along with the fog, fading like mist, it’s power sacrificed by Starswirl's spell. Shivering in the chill autumn breeze, in the clearing at the heart of what was now a dead forest, there were few cheers of victory. The living had lost too much. Too many had died, and though the survivors were relieved to still be alive, they couldn’t help but take little joy in being spared only to face life in a world completely changed. They huddled together for warmth and tried not to think about the struggle of simple survival that lay ahead.
Though the Candy Mare was gone, her laughter still rang loud and long in their minds.
Not a breath of wind stirred in the stillness of the Canterlot Gardens.
Normally at this time of morning the grounds would be alive with the chirp of crickets and the soft rhythmic song of small tree frogs, before fading in the coming hours as bird song would herald the coming of daylight. But beneath the waning moon, a thick layer of candy covered all the now dead vegetation that would have attracted such creatures, even if they too hadn’t been wiped out by the rain of deadly sugary sweets. The world had become entombed in candy, and now only silence reigned in the sugar-dusted wasteland. Night too, it seemed, stretched on unnaturally with no royal princess to raise the sun.
Even so, in Canterlot Castle the lights burned bright, though not as many as before. The few remaining survivors had traveled here in hopes of finding some way to escape this suddenly barren world through one of the legendary mirrors of Starswirl the Bearded that they had been quickly told of before the old mage had began inscribing the spell that ultimately saved their lives. Failing that, at least they hoped they might discover a way to raise the sun once more and end the eternal night that had inadvertently fallen across the land. Such a device, they knew, had been in possession of Princess Twilight Sparkle as she had prepared to assume leadership. It was hoped that, perhaps, the rays of the sun might melt away the terrible cursed candy and in time restore life to Equestria.
But it was not only the living who had traveled to Canterlot with hope in their hearts. Those in the castle took no notice of the circle of candlelight in the royal gardens, as it flickered to life around a single statue that clutched a flag of victory.
“Is this all of them?” croaked the familiar voice of the Candy Cult leader, coming from a limp figure bound in a hastily salvaged wheelchair.
“It better be, as long as it took to haul them here,” grumbled Rainbow Dash, her voice raspy and dry as dead leaves.
“Cheer up Dashie, pretty soon we’ll be back to our good old selves again!” exclaimed Pinkie, though her words were sharp and brittle as her smile.
“Our old selves,” murmured Fluttershy dreamily, as something thick and red dripped from the corner of her mouth, along with a few dislodged teeth. “I wonder what that would be like?”
In a semicircle the few surviving Candy Cultists stood around a small pile of stones gathered around the base of the statue. They had seen better days, but each of them had been invested with enough of the Candy Mare's own essence that they could survive, albeit temporarily, without basking in her presence . Each of them seemed to be smaller and slightly misshapen under their billowing crimson cloaks. The robes themselves were streaked, stained, and torn. In the dim candle light, what little of their faces showed beneath their hoods glistened wetly, tattered flesh hanging limply from the brittle candy beneath. Without the sustaining power of the Candy Mare the cultists were all skinless, rotting things, much like the human turned pony Starlight, who herself seemed even worse and weaker than she had been before. Each of them were barely held together and living on borrowed time.
The stones they had gathered had also seen better days, for it seemed they had all once been part of larger statues. Here was a hoof, there a head, and here a hunk of flank. Notably each piece seemed to come from the same kind of statue, though they were all clearly from different copies of the same piece of art. From the stone in the shape of a head the visage of Nightmare Moon leered up in the moonlight, the eternal night she had longed for at last achieved though not in the way she had dreamed, though her fierce expression seemed rather pathetic in the dirt beneath the statue of victory.
“I can’t promise it will be like old times,” croaked Starlight. After all, for her, ‘old times’ might mean having the humanity she had rejected the moment she allied herself with the Candy Mare restored. It might mean being sent back to a world where the magic that sustained her life as it was now would be in precious short supply. But even if that were a possible risk, it would be better than the fate that awaited them if they didn't do something. The long, slow decline as their bodies decayed into nothingness that awaited the living dead without their master was not a destiny to even be contemplated. “I can't promise you anything really. But hopefully it’ll keep us from falling apart.”
The few candy cultists who remained were the ones who were least composed of candy. Other members who were closer to the Candy Ghouls, like Discord and Twilight, had ended up frozen in time. At first none of the cultists understood what had happened, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that they had lost their master. With the Candy Mare locked away in a timeless limbo, the army that was an extension of herself had also become frozen, like insects caught in amber. The cultists had even watched in horror as some of the living who had survived had set about smashing the frozen candy monstrosities to pieces, and had to hide as the living took up hammers and torches, hunting down cultists and shattering their suddenly brittle bodies likewise.
Though they had done their best to escape, the candy enhancements sloughed off of their bodies along with their rotting skin, like the liquifying shell of an overripe pumpkin. Between the angry mob and their own rotting forms, it was a wonder that any of them had managed to get away. It had taken all their efforts just to drag the bits and pieces of themselves together again so they could form some kind of plan. With no way to return to the un-life sustaining realm of the Candyverse, and no knowledge on how to free their master, they had little choice in how they might proceed.
It was the fear, not of utter destruction, but of being forced to experience it to its utmost extent that drove them. The idea not that their un-lives would end, but that they would only fade as they decayed, being eternally conscious of the pain of their dissolution. Even if they failed in what they were about to attempt, exhausting what little magic sustained them, surely that would be preferable to such a fate?
“Stand back,” groaned the cult leader as the unicorn heaved herself bodily out of the wheelchair and onto the ground. With her now useless and broken limbs, she still managed to inch her way into position and raise her head to the sky above to begin her chant. As she did, her horn began to glow a soft green as the statue fragments began to rise into the air in the nimbus of the forming spell. Slowly, tendrils of orange magic rose from the cultists and was syphoned into the fragments of stone.
Starlight's eyes should have been closed in concentration at this point, and they would have been if she still had eyelids, but instead she stared at the statue of victory. The sculpture within which was hidden the largest hunk of the body which they were trying desperately to resurrect now. The stone began to crack and crumble as bits and pieces of the shriveled, dried corpse emerged from the fragmenting rock. At last, a spiderweb of green light erupted from the cracks within the still standing statue, and it exploded in a shower of dust that send the flag of victory spinning away as the form of another pony entirely took the place of the avatar of victory.
There was a loud thump as something soft and dry landed in the soil. As the dust cleared, the gathered cultists could see by the glow of flickering candlelight the shape of a tiny corpse. She was more than a filly, but one that after many centuries had at been made whole by their power once again!
If they still needed to breathe, they would have held their breath in that moment, and then breathed a sigh of relief as the corpse slowly twitched to life and started to move!
“Bring forth the offering!” cried the cult leader manically, her voice cracking.
Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie struggled to drag a large burlap sack into the mystic circle. As they drew close to the child's corpse they bowed reverently, before lifting the bag and dumping its contents onto the struggling creature. Candy showered down over her, a small heap of the stuff, more than enough to completely conceal the fledgling undead. These, of course, were cursed candies that Fluttershy had produced in her cottage. Though much of the magic of the cursed candy was suspended along with the Candy Mare, it was hoped that it still might serve a protective sheath for the newly reborn pony.
Sure enough, the cadaver slithered beneath the pile of candy, sweeping back and forth with a rustle of crinkled candy wrappers and a low moan. Piece by piece, the candy took shape, and at last rose up into the form of a familiar figure crouched on the earth. The ghoul hunched low, her face concealed by long strands of red liquorice that served as her mane. “Wh... Where?”
“You’re in Canterlot, in Equestria my mistress,” croaked the skinless Starlight, not missing a beat as she squirmed her way towards her new master. “You have been sealed away for some time. But fear not, those who did this to you have been punished!”
“B-by who?” whispered the corpse, her eyes palely glowing behind two blue and pink swirled lollipops.
“By you! Sort of,” chimed in Pinkie. "Well, another you."
“Shush! Let Starlight explain it,” chided Rainbow Dash.
“By us,” corrected Starlight, glaring at her subordinate. “We are the Candy Cult. We exist to serve you. We were formed by a version of you from another universe. Unfortunately she was... defeated. Locked away, much as you were. But with your rebirth, we can free her! You can empower us and we can gather new flesh and souls for you to feed on! Once you have claimed the height of your powers, the barriers between dimensions will be nothing to you! Worlds without end spread out like a lavish feast before you!”
Her fiery oratory had roused the cultists into a frenzy. Already they could feel new power flowing into their ruined bodies from their new master! Already they could taste the despair of the survivors as they would soon be confronted by a new Candy Mare, a revived Candy Cult, ravenous and ready to punish them for the audacious crime of continuing to live! The cultists shrill voices raised to join Starlight's as they chanted ‘Candy Mare! Candy Mare! Candy Mare!”
The only one oddly unmoved by the cult leader's words was the 'Candy Mare' herself.
The newly awakened filly darted her glowing eyes back and forth, around the circle of cheering cultists. It was unclear, in that moment, what she was thinking when she muttered, “Hungry...” the cultists continued to chant, raising their hooves in the air thinking this was their master finally joining in their revelry, when the undead child suddenly growled louder, “Hungry!”
“Of course, of course,” soothed Starlight with a nervous chuckle. “Shall we go get you someone to eat?”
The creature shook her head, and again muttered “Hungry.” Her loyal cultists didn’t seem to understand her meaning, until she smiled wide and bright and fierce. The grin of a predator. She rose to her hooves, and looked over Starlight’s crippled form. “Don’t want to be fed. Want to hunt. Want to kill. Want to scare!”
Chuckling even more nervously, the cult leader shivered under her mistress hungry gaze. “Of course, but we can help mistress. We can-“ but her 'mistress' cut her of.
“Pumpkin Patch doesn't want to share...” seemed to be her final word on the subject, said with all the petulance of a stubborn child. Then the candy corn grin suddenly returned to her face as she clapped her hooves madly and sang. “Nightmare Night, what a fright. Give me something... Sweet. To. Bite!”
If the survivors in Canterlot heard the despair choked screams of the cult members, they probably dismissed them as some lingering echo of the nightmare they had lived through. By the time one of the unicorns found the device that allowed them to raise the sun, all that remained of the Candy Cult were a few candle stubs and blood soaked rags strewn about a pile of rubble where a statue had once stood.
Of Pumpkin Patch, there was no trace, save for a few tiny hoof prints and four shattered pumpkin shells.
