From the Shadows

"Princess Cadence!"

The coral colored alicorn looked up from her readings, shifting her legs underneath her as she adjusted her position on her bed to turn her ears towards the familiar voice, just outside her door. She knew it to belong to one of her best-known guards, somepony she trusted and held very high in her mind's eye, especially with her husband's absence.

"Come in!" she responded cordially, and after a few seconds passed, the vaulted doors to her chamber were thrown open by a trio of guards, one of them entering the room to stand before her with a package in his hooves.

His white face was grim; unusual for him, as he normally adorned either a friendly smile, or the stoic expression of a guard on patrol.

"Your highness," he iterated, bowing a bit as he came to a halt and saluted her.

He held out the package, a red box of sorts with a baby blue ribbon tied up in a bow over its top, and explained, "this just arrived, delivered by a courier from Equestria. She said it was for the matriarch of the castle; you. What to do with it is at your discretion."

Cadence hopped off of her mattress, and glided through the air over to the guard, stopping in front of him. She tilted her head to examine the source address, made out in thick, dark letters on one of the box's corners.

"Oh, It's from Ponyville," she stated, growing a bit excited.

The mare went to take the crimson package from the guard, but he recoiled a bit, temporarily preventing her from taking the delivery into her custody.

"If I may, your highness, I would request that you allow the guard to inspect the contents first. We don't know what's inside. It could be some sort of..."

"Nonsense," said Cadence gleefully, contrasting the stern expression on the guard's brow, "Ponyville is where my sister-in-law lives, and where Shining is staying. It's probably from one of them. It's nothing more than a bit of mail."

Cadence took the scarlet box from the guard, whose white hooves had been tainted a bit red, and found that its exterior was moist.

"Odd," she said to herself, "It must be leaking."

She began to pull at the bow wrapped around the box, and the guard handed her a small note, sealed in an envelope.

"This was also with the package," he said, "The courier said you would know what it means."

Cadence set the box down, rubbing her hooves together to dry them from the sticky crimson fluid seeping from the box's exterior. She tore open the envelope, and unfolded the white paper. On the paper's face, written in bold, dark, thick letters in very formal writing, was inscribed a haunting message.

Cadence,

'Til death do you part?

If you meant that, then you are free.

Not that you'll remember, but today marks the day you inherited something of mine all those years ago. I'm coming back for it. I'd use your new freedom to stay out of my way, because if you're still around when I arrive, you and your husband will be reunited again. Believe me, it's not as good as it sounds.

P.S. I hope you like my present.

The King

Cadence's eyes grew larger as she finished the note, her smile of anticipation receding into an expression of fear. She let the letter flutter to the ground at her hooves, and cautiously stooped to open the package. Slowly, she stood back up with the package in her hooves, and even slower, she began to open the sealing.

She dropped the package as she gasped upon seeing its contents, and fell backwards onto her rump, kicking frantically as she pushed herself back up against the foot of her bed. Her breath came quickly and in short little gasps, and bitter tears graced her cheeks and the fur of her stomach as they fell in streams.

The guard, who hadn't seen the interior of the box, cautiously and concernedly opened the package, and dropped it himself as he doubled over, throwing up on the floor of the princess's chamber. As the package teetered over, he gagged again, averting his eyes to avoid looking upon the atrocity of the hornless head of the prince rolling out onto the floor, staining its ivory tiles red.

****************

The six froze at the tree-line, gaping downhill in horror. Their eyes grew wide, and sparkled with both tears of despair, and the reflections of the fires that stared back at them.

Ponyville, home, was in flames.

The entirety of the town was engulfed; every building, every home, every landmark, every memory, and almost every pony, set ablaze in the red and yellow inferno. Even from a distance, they could feel the heat, smell the smoke, and hear the screams of agony; the orange sky made by the setting sun matched the terrestrial radiance perfectly.

"Oh Celestia, help us," whispered Rarity, her jaw hanging loosely open due to shock and horror.

They were frozen by the sight of the fire, at least, until they were shaken from their terrified trance.

"We have to help!" yelled Twilight, her face contorted into a sort of worried glare, as she began pulling her friends down the hill after her, and together, however a bit hesitantly, they ran towards the rising pillars of smoke and flame.

They reached the town in moments; none of them, even Rainbow Dash, had ever gone so fast in their lives. They entered the town, the cobblestones of the road, though not ablaze, scalding their hooves. The streets were all that were immune to the fire though, and even then, the sheer heat was beginning to soften the stone surface.

"What do we do?!" yelled Pinkie over the crackling of embers and the crashing of collapsing foundations.

Still running forwards, Twilight turned her head around, and answered, "We have to try to help as many as we can!"

As if on queue, a frantic scream approached them from up the street, and a pony, a mare by her high pitched, shrill sound, came into view, running down the street towards them, her body ablaze.

Twilight stepped into the street in front of the oncoming equine, raising her hooves and screaming for her to stop, but she ran straight by, crying and screaming in pain and panic. The others blocked her path, and the mare slowed, falling to her knees amidst them, her cries growing softer as the fire slowly consumed her flesh.

Twilight and Applejack began urgently trying to extinguish the flames, Applejack beating them with her hat and Twilight trying to smother them with her hooves and wings, but it was to no avail, and the pony soon went still.

However, they didn't stop trying to put out the fire on her hide; eventually, they did, and the orange glow faded from the mare's lifeless body.

Panting and exhausted, Twilight and Applejack looked down at the body, its charred flesh raw and blistered in the spaces that weren't completely turned to charcoal. Strips of blackened hair still clung to her head and rump, but other than a few secluded areas on her body, all of the skin had been seared off completely.

"Who is it?" asked Rarity, crying at the sight.

"I don' know," drawled the response.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I can't tell who it is," said Applejack, sniffing as she wiped at her eyes, looking down at the unrecognizably disfigured body at her hooves.

"This can't be happening," whimpered Twilight, just before another nearby scream registered in her ears.

The six took off towards the sound, their vision blurred by tears caused by both the blinding smoke as well as the sheer tragedy they now occupied.

They arrived at the source of the sound in mere moments; a building, unrecognizable, as every structure in town had been reduced to a uniform inferno, with small, weak voices crying out in high-pitched wails within. The fire was blinding against the darkening sky as Twilight, Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash began trying to pry the door open, some with magic, others with muscle. It was almost like the door was locked, and despite its slow transformation from wood into ash, it held fast against their straining backs and waves of spells.

Yet, for how desperately they tried to gain entry, the cries within grew weaker with each passing moment, regressing into infantile crying. That was when, with a bit of aide from a panicked remark from Pinkie, they realized just which building they were beholding.

"It's Sugar-Cube Corner!" yelled Pinkie Pie, horrified, as she pointed to a blackened, scorched sign swinging above the sealed entrance.

The four at the door looked to each other in horror as they realized why the screams inside sounded so small, so weak. Rainbow Dash reared back suddenly, a fit of blind panic and adrenaline fueling a pair of savage kicks on the door; on the second, the wood gave, or rather, the deadbolt, and the threshold swung open. They all made to enter the building, but a sudden outflowing of flame, caused by the release of the door, caused all but one of them to step back, shielding their faces from the searing flames.

Rainbow Dash disappeared into the licking tongues of fire, darting inside without hesitation, and into the mouth of the blaze. The crying kept coming, but as each second Dash spent within came to pass, they grew weaker. Moments evolved into minutes, and the five stood outside, unable to enter the home, waiting, hoping, praying, that their friend would emerge, if not this second, then the next.

What was a little more than a minute felt like a lifetime, and as the screams went silent, Rainbow Dash came hurdling out of the building, but not from the door; she burst through one of the windows on the buildings lateral wall, landing in the grass, ablaze. As she landed, two small objects rolled away from her, and the cyan Pegasus, with frantic help from Applejack and Rarity, began trying to extinguish the flames.

Dash was screaming as she and the other two slapped at her left wing, the flames clinging to her feathers, tainting them black and possibly killing chances for future flight. It took a short time, but a great deal of pain, before the fire was smothered, and Rainbow Dash sat up in the blackened grass, panting and coughing frantically a she struggled for air. A.J. and Rarity stuck to trying to help their friend breathe, but Twilight and the others hurried to what Dash had rescued from the fire.

Lying in the grass, still, were two foals; one of them, an infant, alabaster with an ash tainted coat, a Pegasus, was looking into the night sky blankly with an open mouth, not breathing, and not moving. The other, a unicorn, barely able to inflate her struggling lungs, was clinging hard to life, but as Twilight began to try to resuscitate, her sparkling eyes went dark.

The alicorn suppressed the urge to scream as she cradled the lifeless body in her hooves, Pinkie doing the same with bitter tears flowing down her face to the other foal. Twilight felt herself doing the same as she hugged the body of the infant, cleaning the smudge on her face with her tears. They looked like dolls, no longer like living, breathing, innocent little souls filled with happiness and joy; they were dead, and it was unbearable.

Rainbow, still struggling to take in air as her wing kept on smoldering, tried to speak.

"Are, cufgh, cufgh. Are Poun, cufgh. Di, cufgh. Did, cufgh. Did Pound and, cufgh, Pumpkin make it?"

She was not answered by words; rather, a tearful frown from Pinkie confirmed her fears.

"No!" she yelled as she tore away from Applejack and Rarity, pounding the ash-coated grass with both hooves, and rolling off of her flanks.

"Why was the, cufgh, door locked!?" the Pegasus shouted, looking angrily, not out of blame, but out of frustration, at Twilight.

"Wait," Twilight said suddenly, looking up with tearful concern, "It was locked?"

"Yeah, cufgh. It had to be. How else could that door be, cufgh, shut so tight?"

"Why would they lock their own door?" asked Twilight, more stating a fact than asking a question.

Just then, it all made sense; why the town was suddenly in flames, why the door had been locked, why the fire department was nowhere to be seen, but her mind was seized by more urgent matters at present.

"What about Mr. and Mrs. Cake?" asked Fluttershy urgently.

Rainbow, air finally having evicted the smoke from her lungs, shook her head 'no'.

"They were with Pumpkin and Pound when I found them, but..." she lowered her head as she finished.

Suddenly, Twilight's mind drifted back home.

"Spike," she said quietly, and took off down the road, dodging falling embers as she went, Applejack following her closely.

But, the other four stayed.

"Will you be okay Rainbow?" asked Rarity, slowly stepping back away from her friend.

"I'll be okay, but I need to get out of here. It's hard to breathe," she said weakly.

"Can you make it back on your own?"

"I think so," she sputtered, and, though it was a struggle, brought herself to stand.

"Okay," Rarity said, panicked, "Okay, try and follow the road, you won't get lost that way. I need to try and find Sweetie Belle."

With that, Rarity turned, and disappeared into the flames, running for home as fast as she could.

"I need to find my animals," Fluttershy stammered, as she backed away slowly, "I'll see you when I get back, okay."

And before another second passed, Fluttershy too was gone.

Pinkie Pie turned her eyes to Rainbow Dash, reverently placing the body of Pumpkin Cake on the ground as she walked to her living friend's side.

"I'll help you back, okay Dashie." she said, forcing a smile as tears, on the rare occasion, flowing from her baby-blue eyes.

She positioned herself underneath Rainbow Dash's charred wing, and together, they began limping back, away from the fires, but suddenly, a new sound, one louder than the crackling of the fire, came to their ears.

A laugh, low and foreboding, growing louder as its source danced with the flames. The two found themselves backing away, the characteristic warmth of the flames, reaching out to grab them, at their flanks.

"Sombra!" yelled Dash, challenging the shadow within the fire, feigning courage in a moment of sheer terror.

But the laughing only grew more hardy, and the mares kept backing away together, trying to keep their eyes off of the embers rising into the night sky.

Then, from above, they heard a new sound, the splitting of wood, and whipped around to see the timber of a crumbling house descending towards them.

****************