My Little Pony: Flank Deep in the Dead

Prologue

In a timeless place beyond physical space something terrible stirred. He was a glorious abomination, an artist of malevolence and cruelty surpassing the dreams of serial killers and dictators.

As he stirred back into wakefulness, the Prince of Darkness surveyed his realm and found it dull. There was nothing new or fresh here. The screams of damned mortals just didn't excite anymore. The pleasure of ripping flesh and snapping bones paled when you knew your victim had already experienced these torments a hundred thousand times before.

He idly reached down to an imp that was deboning some priest for the trillionth time and pulled one of the spiky brown creature’s arms out of its socket and waited for its piggy screams to fade away.

The act brought no satisfaction.

The Prince sagged back into his titanic throne and let out a rumbling sigh that reverberated throughout the bowels of hell. “What we need” he said as he plucked another screaming holy man up from the teaming masses “is some fresh blood around here.” He punctuated the end of the sentence by crushing the man’s pelvis between his thumb and forefinger before tossing the shrieking form into one of the massive hell fire braziers by his throne.

Something near his foot coughed. It was the being known only as the Spider Mastermind, the queen of the arachnotrons. Those had been a real stroke of genius on the Prince’s part. A gigantic, cynical, sadistic brain that moved about on a heavily armored cybernetic spider body, and the Mastermind was greater than all of them combined in terms of sociopathic cruelty and calculating manipulation.

The Mastermind peered up at her master with icy blue eyes and permitted herself a small amount of satisfaction for correctly predicting the Prince’s attitude upon waking. She hissed “My Lord, I may have a solution to your boredom.”

There was a noise like the feeling of a glass of water being drunk and the Prince stood on eye level with the Mastermind, barely a fraction of former size.

“Well, what is this solution? And please, keep in mind the price for wasting my time woman.”

The Mastermind was smart enough not to be coy or beat around the bush, not with the Prince. He had a terrible habit of drowning demons that did that in a sea of flaming hot feces for a millennium or two.

“A new world my Lord, one that is disgustingly innocent and poorly guarded.”

The Prince strode over to the Master mind and lovingly stroked the quivering membrane over her massive brain, trailing it down to tiny skull like face at the front, where he thrust one of his black nailed thumbs into Mastermind’s eye. “I do believe that I warned you about not wasting my time dear” he purred as the Mastermind squealed in agony “there are no other worlds, and even if there were we cannot come unbidden. Now, give me a reason not to put out both of your eyes.”

“A weakness! YWH-“ the Prince twisted the thumb in the Mastermind’s eye socket and forced her to the ground “Forgive me Master!” she squealed “I did not mean to speak that name, I swear to you by my power and all the souls in my realm that we can take this world! They broke the barrier themselves!”

The Prince paused, his handsome brow furrowing in thought. “If what you say is true, then why has this realm not yet been ravaged? Why did I not awake to the screams of its people?”

The Mastermind hesitated; she had been dreading this question. It was one of those where even a being like her could not predict the Prince’s response. She was not given time to deliberate, as the Prince twisted his thumb again and dragged her to her feet, her metal forelegs scrabbling at the air. “I ordered them not to my lord! Please forgive me, I sought only to save the conquest for you!”

Relief came as the Prince pulled his thumb out of the ruined socket. “More likely you thought to increase your standing still more. I know that you covet Beelzebub’s realm my dear. If I find this world to my liking, you shall be rewarded, but please do not think to deceive me.” He popped his ichor covered thumb into his mouth and sucked it clean. “I am the Author of All Lies after all, now see to the preparations for our invasion, and make it swift, or I shall see what else I can fit into your eye socket.”

The Spider Mastermind bowed, an awkward motion on an arachnid body and began to scuttle off to fulfill his orders.

The Prince returned to his full height and sat back on his throne. He had a feeling this was going to be fun.
***

Rarity snarled in frustration, and bit back a cutting comment about silly old ponies that couldn't make up their minds about what sort of dress they wanted, and then said it anyways since she was alone in her workshop, and then promptly felt bad about it.

She had begun this dress a week ago, a special request from Granny Smith for a something fancy yet practical to wear out to the Ponyville senior citizens annual springtime brunch, an event for respectable old mares to gossip, eat tiny sandwiches and show one another pictures of their grandchildren.

Rarity was a soft touch when it came to ponies who didn't have much of a net income[1], and so had agreed to make the dress at a significant discount. She had reluctantly come to the conclusion that this was a mistake. Even at cost, which in her heart Rarity knew she wouldn't have charged the old mare anyways, the dress would be a loss for her. She’d had to delay three other jobs to get this one done.

The problem was that when she got about three quarters of the way done with any current incarnation of the dress Granny Smith would come in and decide that it wasn't quite what she wanted after all. First it had been too frilly, then it had been too showy, then it hadn't been quite showy enough, and last time it had been a color that Granny Smith associated with some “good for nothing Stallion who..” Rarity shuddered. There were some things that you never wanted to hear an old mare describe in detail and she suspected that it would take her years to forget the part about the eels.

The worst part of it all was that right now her friends were away in Canterlot, quite likely bored out of their skulls by the day to day workings of the administrations. They’d all decided to go and support Twilight as she learned her new duties as a princess[2], but Rarity knew her obligations and so had delayed the trip to finish the dress.

On the plus side, since they were all, Twilight included, going to return to Ponyville at the end of the month, that meant that Rarity would have less of a chance to run into Prince Blueblood and thus would be less likely to commit treason by tossing the pompous swine off of a balcony. Rarity was a generous soul and was willing to assume the best about everypony, but even she had her limits.

Two hours later Granny Smith was looking at the dress, a simple yet fetching red number trimmed with lace, while humming and rubbing her chin with her hoof as Rarity stood to one side with a nervous smile on her face, and the pink horned rimmed glasses she wore when she needed to study small details perched on the end of her muzzle.

The old green mare finally sat back and said “well I suppose it will do” and as Rarity let out a massive sigh of relief “you don’t think it will look a bit forward do you deary?”

Rarity had to stop for a moment to remind herself that dressmakers shouldn't throttle customers, or strangle them with the tape measure.

Before she could continue, Granny Smith began debating with herself again “then again at my time of life I suppose I can use all the help I can get…” Rarity felt like screaming, and in fact was about to go find herself a nice paper bag to hyperventilate into when Granny Smith said “I’ll take it! Now we agreed on a hundred bits yes?”

Back when this whole mess had begun yes, and by all rights Rarity should have charged at least three times that for all the hassle that had gone into the dress, but well the Apples were her friends and they didn't make enough to go in for extravagance that often, and the dress really would look fantastic on the old girl[3]. “Yes, 100 bits Granny.”

“Nonsense my girl” Granny Smith said, hobbling her way over to Rarity and putting a foreleg over her shoulder as she fished around in the battered old saddle bag she wore “you did a fine job, and I know I ain't the easiest of ponies to work with, you deserve a more than 100 bits for this.”

Rarity smiled and was about to say “Oh no my dear, don’t worry about it” when Granny pulled a small bag that clinked with money from the saddle bag with her toothless mouth and proffered it to Rarity who picked it up with her telekinesis. “I put 25 extra bits in there for your trouble!” the old mare practically cackled.

Rarity felt unbalanced. It was more than she’d expected yes, but still less than even the cost of wasted fabric on the dresses previous incarnations. “You… you really shouldn't have” she said in a slightly confused voice.

“Nonsense my dear! Now don’t you go spending all that on drink and loose stallions. I’d better get going now, got a brunch to get ready for.” And with that the old mare practically skipped out, grabbing the dress in her teeth (an act which caused Rarity to wince) on her way.

A lot of emotions ran through Rarities mind just then, relief that the ordeal was finally done, anger at the frustration and wasted time, outrage at the pittance she’d been paid, and a part of her screaming about how granny had been dragging the beautiful red dress along the ground.

Rarity let out a truly massive sigh and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked frightful, her dark purple mane, usually lovingly curled and coiffed was crumpled and hung slightly limp against side of her neck, bags under her bright blue eyes, even her coat normally pure white looked slightly grey and dull.

In spite of herself Rarity felt a smile come on. Tomorrow morning she’d be on the train to Canterlot and would spend a lovely time in high society, and more importantly with her best friends, but for now she’d have herself a lovely hot bath and get some well deserved rest.
***

The next morning she sat happily on the train as it pulled out of the station, pouring over her copy of Twerp’s Peerage[4], and making plans to educate Twilight about all of the various rules of etiquette that she’d need to know as a princess (the other girls, while having many, many fine qualities to recommend them, were not overly concerned with things like table manners, and Twilight herself had a strictly utilitarian view of pretty much all social rules).

Several hours later, having finished the entry on Sir Twaddlesforth XXVI[5] the smell of smoke tore rarity away from her book.

She looked up just in time to see the ball of green fire heading for the car in front of her, and began screaming a second before a massive explosion derailed the train.

It is a narrative convention that when a terrible catastrophe happens, a character’s perception of time slows down. This is not what happened for Rarity. In her case everything seemed to go faster than was natural, and yet her mind’s eye took in every detail. From the sickening feeling of weightlessness, to the blossom of fiery green energy that exploded out from the car ahead of her, to the defeaning WUMP sound of the explosion. She could remember the way all of the windows shattered inwards, and could practically count the number of shards of glass large enough to be dangerous.

She felt herself slam hard into the roof of the car, and heard the sickening crack as the earth pony sitting in front of her slammed her head at an unfortunate angle. She knew the car rolled exactly eight times as it flew off of the track and over the rocky ground.

Finally the car came to a stop roughly the right side up, and a concussed Rarity stared out the window in uncomprehending horror. She could see Canterlot from here.

It was burning.

[1] The Apple family at first seems quite wealthy in terms of gross income, however their farm, Sweet Apple Acres, is best described as a money sink what with the cost of repairing the barn which gets destroyed at least three times a year, the lack of homeowners insurance due to their proximity to the dreaded Everfree Forest, and the fact they only make money six months out of the year during the apple harvest, the zap apple harvest, and cider sales which usually last only a week before their supply of non alcoholic cider runs out (their profits on alcoholic cider and skumble are year round, but tend to be minimal as most ponies can make a single jug last all year provided they aren't named Berry Punch or Twilight Sparkle). The end result is that despite the bulk of Ponyville’s economy depending on them they have very little spending money at the end of the year.
[2] In most societies the duties of a princess are to look pretty and get married for political reasons, however Equestrian custom held that held that rulers should never take a title that indicated absolute power. This leads to a lot of confusion in outsiders as there are no less than 18 princesses and 27 princes, only 7 of which wield any actual political power. Looking for the alicorns is a fairly reliable way of spotting the ones that are actually useful to know, but even then most of them are just in charge of things like the International Kitten Census or the Ministry of Incredibly Pointless Things.
[3] It is a useful insight into Rarities character that she didn't view herself as a dressmaker so much as an artist whose work just happened to need a living person to be displayed properly.
[4] The definitive guide to Canterlot nobility, written by Alistair Twerp, a unicorn General and by all accounts a hard drinking fighting stallion who kept extensive notes on the nobility of the land mostly out of a sense of extreme paranoia.
[5] May of the entries in Twerps peerage are quite short, consisting of a variation on the phrase “jumped up little arrogant ponce” if Twerp never felt the urge to get to know them better.

Author's Note

Well here we are with the prologue! Thus far it has been edited only for grammar and spelling, but I am a drunken sod and thus probably missed a lot of errors. I am not terribly concerned with this as when it comes time to do a more thorough round of editing I'll make the English professor I have tied up in the basement proofread it. Haha! Kidnapping.

Mostly what I'm looking for criticism of is characterization, structure and tone. Badassery follows in the next chapter.