Evil lurks in Equestria. Stories about that evil lurk in this anthology.
The Carver-Man: In the black of winter, a killer stalks the outskirts of the Crystal Empire. Due to dwindling resources, the once-mighty city is forced to send out under-equipped, under-funded wave after wave of guard to catch the preternatural threat. Will Bronze Cog and his squad be able to defeat it, or will the Carver-Man claim yet another victim?
The Restless Heart: Shining Armor was surprised to see Flurry Heart waiting for him when he returned home from work. But, after all, can a daughter's love for her father really be held back by such mundane things as wooden coffin and six feet of cold earth?
The Old Orchard: Braeburn returns to his childhood home, and spends the day reminiscing about his past; the arson, the murder and the way it made him the stallion he is.
The One with Pinkie Pie in it: (Second Person) You are Anon, and you just managed to score yourself a date with the party pony. However, as the night progresses, you can't shake the feeling that when she said that she'd have you over for dinner, she meant it literally.
Three arrows, jagged and knife-carved, cut into the skull of anything unlucky enough to cross his path. That was his symbol. It was becoming far too frequent about the Crystal Empire for anybody’s liking. Bronze Cog’s party was sent out into the heath – those misty barren moors of thorny salt that clustered around the city state like wild dogs at a kill – with orders not to return until they had found the killer, the one the townsfolk dubbed, hateful and wary, the Carver-Man.
So, there journeyed six guardsponies – terrified conscripts from the slums – through the clawing rock and twisted shrubland. They trotted in a line, straight and single-file. Cog found himself at the back because he had drawn the short straw; he was the last one in their troop. So too, was talking forbidden. Any voice breaking the chill silence could set their quarry off; Cog prayed that the icy crunch of his boots had done that already. The night was beginning to rise, and the oil in their lanterns – more than his family’s weekly ration – seemed suddenly so little, and its flames so gray against the muddy dirt. He adjusted his clumsy grip on his spear, and he hoped desperately that dull edge of iron the quartermaster had given him would suffice. He hoped that he wouldn’t need it at all.
It was a cloudy night so far from home’s great walls, and those grey clouds strangled the starlight like tobacco smoke in a man’s lung. The lanterns jangled in the young stallion’s shivering grasps, to the tune of their frozen march and clattering teeth. Hours past, each one in aching suspense of plodding about frosted death, praying to all who would listen that the Carver-Man’s wicked blade would pass them by.
Then, Cog realized something. Judging by a flash of Luna’s white amidst the charcoal heavens, the moon was only halfway high. And worse yet, his lantern’s fuel was now far more than halfway gone. He levitated his spear from its rest atop his worn woolen coat and checked that it was still sharp. It wasn’t, but he wasn’t so sure anymore that mere iron, dagger-keen or otherwise, could down something with teeth for fingernails and a knife for a tongue. Two hours later, two hours that followed much like the linemen did – paranoid and gloomy – the fuel all but ran out. Nobody dared protest, and nobody else would notice that a lighter evening meant a blacker mourning.
By starlight and tailheld trust alone, Cog and his comrades continued their white knuckled, red faced, black hoped trek around the Empire’s walls. Then, something slipped. It was a tail, and the rump that was attached to it had gone missing. Jack stood there, shivering, holding the last soaking remnant of his friend – at least, until the sun staggered up again, and his mutilated remains would be found. He screamed, and nobody heard him.
Eventually, he stopped screaming once no hooves ran his way and no voices called his name. Collapsing to the ground, pressing himself flat as possible against the towering crystal walls, he waited. Hours passed, at least, he hoped they did. There he lay, teeth chattering with fright and spear brandished, air fogging in the one foot he could see. There, against uncaring frost, and despite every urge he knew telling him to flee desperate into the cold black heath beyond, he waited.
Lightning twisted far in the distance, silent skeletal wrath. It briefly lit up Cog’s world, and all he could see was the blood soaking into tundra beside him – black-red under the white horror of the dry storm, it shocked him to his core. Again, he screamed; again, he received no response.
Seconds fled, each a jaw-slamming heartbeat, as the fiery light of the heavens bit the earth again, setting aflame a distant tree. The thing conflagrated in a furious orange hatred, illuminated the carnage that proper surrounded the conscript. His friends, all of them, lay dead. Their blood pooled, and steamed, and froze into the rock. One missed a tail. Another, his left side. All, though, possessed the Carver-Man’s mark – three arrows, hacked right into the skin of their pain-froze skulls for all who still lived to see.
Cog didn’t stop screaming until the winter took his voice away, leaving him reduced to harsh rasps and wracking whispers.
He didn’t stop crying until the night took his tears away and left him reduced to tear-frozen lines and quietened sobs.
He didn’t stop living, until empty midnight shadows bled away from the rest. The Carver-Man approached with carving knife in hand, and left him reduced to lightning-struck ash and hazy memory.
Shining Armor tried to open the door and found that it was locked. He fumbled in his pocket for the key and cursed when he realized that it was still in his coat, which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor of his living room. He sighed, his breath fogging against the door of his patrol car, and he grabbed a nearby garden gnome.
The vehicle’s window shattered in the chill winter morning. Shining wrenched the door open and clambered inside the car, wincing as the jagged shards of glass stabbing into his legs. Pushing the pain aside, the policeman tore open the compartment beside the steering wheel and tried to hotwire his own car with shivering hands.
More glass exploded as the thing crashed through an upstairs window and smashed like a meteorite into the gravel driveway, just a few feet behind the number plate. Shining looked back down, keeping his head low and jamming wires together and praying for a spark.
Its footsteps were an uneven rotted clop and scrape as it lurched towards him. The thing that was Flurry Heart approached the broken window like a demented stop motion as its father worked desperately.
“Daddy.” Whispered the thing as its face came into view.
“You’re dead. You’re not real.” Shining muttered, try more to convince himself of that than stave of the horror.
“Read me a story.” It demanded, tugging at the door handle with worm-eaten hands covered it grave dirt.
“Go away. Go away. Just leave, please!”
“But I miss you. We all do.” The thing reached into the car, blindly clawing for its father.
It sunk its filthy nails into Shining’s shoulder just as the car roared to life. Shining hammered down the accelerator with and screamed. His ride finally obeyed and lurched forward, the wickedly sharp chunks of broken glass still fixed to the door ripped the zombie’s arm off with a spray of black blood.
Miles later, Shining ripped the still-twitching thing out of his arm and tossed it onto the highway tarmac. As it watched the wretched limb crawl back home, he spotted Flurry Heart in his rear-view mirror, galloping after him like a rabid dog. He shoved down the gas pedal again, but the dead girl was gaining.
It took a lot to feel things these days; Braeburn Apple noted mentally. A lot indeed, his mind affirmed as his body strode silently through a forgotten collection of decrepit farmhouses. Around him loomed -like vicious crows- the burned-out corpses of his childhood, Each a blackened and stained monument to a collection of sins too hideous for modern print.
Braeburn felt a great kinship with them.
Despite the cloying scent of the charred cherry orchard’s perpetual decay, he strode on unchanged through it, like a thief sneaks through a house at night. He recalled vaguely the former significance of this place, and he remembered likening this rotting haven of his to the kitchen of some great long-gone giant.
The whole farm had almost been a playground to the tired stallion a decade or so before. The forest specifically was a dining hall to Braeburn, with the great boughs that towered above him becoming the legs of some massive table, and the carmine canopy of the blossoms themselves the room’s tablecloth. He used to feel safe there; huddled in his ramshackle treehouse, safe from the thunderous wrath of both storms atmospheric and storms domestic.
Though he no longer felt cold, or warm, or much of anything else for that matter, his scarred hooves still subconsciously went to the buttons of his shroud as a shiver ran up his spine. He had arrived at the still.
The still; whose awful stench of homemade brew stank strongly in the morning air. The still, whose surrounding grass remained a few shades blacker than the rest of the farm’s. The still, where his mother used to drink herself asleep, and where she would be found most evenings. A single tear rolled down what little face he had left. This place, this temple of intoxicated damnation, was where the whole thing began. It was where his life began.
Just as he had so many times before, he leaned idly against the repurposed boiler – now little more than charred rust – and pictured the scene in his mind: His mother, Miss Candy Apple, and his father, some unknown farmhand, passionately in love against one of the nearby trees. He recalled himself, in a horrifically similar position, calling out for his mother, who lay dead to the world against a different tree, not fifteen feet away. It was a day much like this when he had decided; decided that enough was enough! It was a day much like this one, cold enough for a living stallion to feel but hot enough for the perpetually unpicked apples to smell, when he limped back to the farmhouse fifteen lonely years ago with tears in his eyes. It was a day, much like this, when Braeburn distinctly recalled his younger self dragging a leaky jerry can of petrol back to his treehouse, and waiting there until his bitch of a parent had woken up and dragged her sorry hide back home.
Atop his exploded throne, Braeburn then grinned a scorched, scarred grin full of a smouldering malice and a pride that burned stronger than his fear.
Suddenly, like the scarecrow he now resembled, and as if struck by the lightning of Victory herself, he sprung to his feet. Though nothing could hear him now, he still cheered. He cheered with all that his skeletal form had on a moldy Spring solstice – both here and now and fifteen years ago today – as he felt properly sure about the only thing he had felt sure about. He danced as he did it, a clumsy waltz of festering revenge, as he swung and spilled the fuel all over mother’s brewery. He chuckled and cheered as he lit his fuse and watched his ever-so-cunning plot come to fruition.
Braeburn Apple remembered winning for once and yelling angrily and screaming curses all the adults so often yelled at him as the fire snaked triumphant towards that terrible shack. Then, quite predictably, it exploded and blew the colts’s face clean off his skull.
The next part, Braeburn recalled with a shiver as his unliving corpse returned to its stumbling pilgrimage.
The fire had spread.
It had spread right back to the supply shed, where it had set the buildings menagerie of inflammability alight. That too, had exploded. That concoction of flames had then spread to the living quarters.
He remembered watching incorporeal as it had stuck to his mother’s skin like napalm, and how she had run screaming out of her house. He too recalled, with a wry grimace, how she had still attempted to search for her son, and save little Braeburn from the inferno. Obviously, she had failed.
His annual journey came to an end not a few seconds after that awful memory did. He was at the Tree. The Tree was the only one on the property still to bloom majestic every Spring. The dead stallion knelt down on shaking, decaying flesh and bone, and scrabbled about in the black earth.
Beneath that silver sky, that empty monochrome clear yet overcast, Braeburns’s skull managed another pained smile as he found what he always searched for: A skull.
It took a lot to feel things these days; Braeburn noted mentally. A lot in indeed. But giving his mother that kiss goodbye always did.
It sounded like a straightforward request when you first heard it. Apparently, Pinkie Pie, a waitress at your favourite café, was rather fond of you. Come to think of it, you were also rather fond of her, especially after a few drinks. So when one of her friends, an abrasive rainbow-haired Pegasus, suggested you ask her out, you did so almost immediately.
To make a long story short enough to fit with the style of this anthology, Pinkie said yes. In fact, she invited you over her apartment above Sugarcube Corner for dinner. To say that you were thanking your lucky stars was an understatement, you were prepared to donate Luna both of your kidneys if she requested them.
You appeared at the door to the café holding an annoying expensive bottle of apple brandy. A gorgeous mare invited you in almost immediately and led you inside. She wore a polka dot cocktail dress and a good two pounds of makeup. Not that you were complaining, it all accented her features and you liked them quite curvy. Who doesn’t?
Only after you sat down a table for two in the now-romanticised café, complete with rose petals and candles, you realized that the mare was actually your date. You were used to seeing Pinkie in nothing at all, or an apron at the most.
Apologizing, she rushed off into the kitchen, likely to fetch dinner. She returned a minute or two later, carrying two platters of steaming food. Pinkie explained that it was Prench, totally organic, and hot as Tartarus itself. You were pleasantly surprised to see that it was a steak and chips. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d eaten meat, it must’ve been years by this point, before you were sucked into the world of your favourite cartoon.
But honestly, you didn’t really care for dinner. You wanted to skip straight to “dessert” but Pinkie did manage to be an interesting conversationalist. It turned out that there was more to her character than just baking pasty and hosting parties. For instance, she was also a fantastic buckball player, and she the flanks to prove it.
Eventually, your conversation drifted back to the café itself and, with it, Fleur des Lis. The mare was, curiously enough, one of your drinking buddies, formerly anyway. You two had hit it off over a discussion of modelling, her being one and you having had a tendency to binge watch Project Runway. But she had moved back to Canterlot quite suddenly one day a few weeks ago, not even saying goodbye. Pinkie, you recall, had hated her for some or other reason, likely because Fleur didn’t particularly enjoy cake due to its figure-ruining properties.
Pinkie went on and on after that about how delicious and tasteful the meal was. Personally, you thought it was fine at best, maybe a bit on the rare side and the seasoning could have been a bit better. Beef was a nice change from pastry and vegetables, certainly, but the party-pony had begun to grate. Mostly because she mentioned that she was saving herself for marriage.
You reached for your jacket just as a thought dawned on you. Fleur was Prench. And you had just devoured a plate of Steak au Poivre et Jument. Damnit.
Pinkie’s grin grew to maniacal proportions as the bile rose in your throat and the colour drained from your face. You had just eaten a pony. You retched and gasped as your date stuffed a cupcake into your mouth, its tranquilizing properties kicking in almost instantly. Not again.
Slack-jawed and lying near-comatose on the floor, you heard the doorbell ring. It was Rainbow Dash. All you could pick up were a few phrases, like “eye candy” and “ice cream scoop.” You guess that you really did come over for dessert after all.
