Cracking the Elements of Harmony

Rarity awoke with a sensation of dizziness blurring her slowly opening eyes. A sharp pain was forming in her right hind leg, growing with every second. Before she could make out any details, she saw a yellow stream of light coming from the stairway. She realized she was on the other side of the basement, though how she got there would remain a mystery and she felt her fur itching with dust. Even though the rest of the basement was dark, she turned around to see what was causing her such pain, and in the fuzzy light that slashed through the basement from the door above, she caught a glimpse of a reflection. She tried stepping to the side to get a better view, dragging her right leg on the ground, but stopped almost instantly as the pain intensified tenfold to the sound of metal scraping against stone.

What?

She twisted her body to allow more light to pass onto the metal and finally saw it. Her right leg was trapped in a bear trap, the device tearing into it just below her cannon. She let out a short shriek at the sight of blood that was gently flowing from the wound. With panic setting in, she nervously looked around the basement for anything she could use to pry the trap open, but with only a single strip of light coming from above, she had no way of seeing what was around her, only the millions of barely visible shadows from the dirt on the floor. If all else fails, she though, I’ll pry it open just like that. But that wasn’t a favorable option. She knew she would have to perfectly grab the jaws of the trap with her magic and pull them apart in a single motion, or she would risk them slipping from her embrace and they would come crashing back against her leg, causing even more pain and damage. But first she had to see what she could grab from the basement, so she lightly focused to illuminate the room with magic and – nothing. She focused again, much too hard given the easiness of the spell, and tried to light up the horn again. And again.

Why. Doesn’t. It. -

She touched her horn with her hoof and felt a rough, jagged protrusion in place where it should have been. Instead of her panic getting worse, she tried to bury what she had just felt deep in her mind, not to think about it or recognize it. As long as she didn’t have to admit what she had felt, everything was manageable. With a deliberately slow motion, she moved her hoof away from her broken-off horn, but as it passed by her eyes on the way to the ground, she saw something glistening on the end of it. She paused and moved the hoof against the light.

Tiny droplets of some green substance, not quite liquid and not quite solid, but with the viscosity of honey, were stuck to the hoof. She quickly patted herself against her horn again to confirm the first thought that went through her mind. When the hoof returned to her eyes with even more droplets on it, she knew she had guessed right. The green substance was some kind of medicine, a localized pain-killer that had prevented her from feeling the excruciating pain a unicorn feels when the horn breaks. Not that she had had any experiences with that, but there were cautionary tales of it happening to others, and as made-up as many of them sounded, they had to be based on something. The only relief of the moment came when she quickly reminded herself that the damage was fully repairable, and that somepony had given her the medicine to ease her pain after what must have been one very nasty fall down the stairs. Now there was only one problem left to solve.

She put her hoof on the ground and looked back at the trap once again. Without magic, she would have to use some kind of a tool to pry it open, and as much as the thought of manual labor would normally cause her to shudder, the situation far outweighed that phobia. With the rest of the basement in darkness, there was only one place left to look, and with a cautious glance, she looked behind. And found herself looking at ripped-apart boxes. There were less of them now than she remembered seeing from the top of the stairway and there was a small pile of sugar at the side of a box closest to her. Her wonder only increased when she noticed a trail of it running from the box and underneath her. Then she realized the dirt on the floor wasn’t dirt. It was sugar, and it was going to the stairway. Without hesitation she licked her foreleg and she suddenly knew something was terribly wrong. Even the dust in her fur wasn’t dust. What she couldn’t see was a pony looking down at her, just far enough away from the door to the basement that the ambient light, that seeped into the darkness, provided the perfect blinding cover. As Rarity grew ever more concerned, to the point that she had almost dismissed the pain from the trap, the door to the basement slammed shut.

“Hello! Help me, I’m trapped down here!” She screamed, thinking that an inattentive Royal Guard, or somepony else involved with protecting the cottage, had wandered in to make sure nothing was stolen and was now back on his way out again. When she didn’t’ hear any hoofsteps, she screamed even louder. “HELP ME! PLEASE, HELP!” But there was no reply.

The only light source was now heavily diminished. Instead of a powerful beam of light striking through the darkness, there was now only a small slit at the bottom of the door. Her eyes strained to catch the bare minimum of light required to make out the surroundings and in a few minutes her eyes had adjusted to the newly formed darkness to the point that she could make out more of the basement than before, with the gentle stream of light evenly casting shadows on all sides, although not nearly as clearly. She squinted and looked to the sides for any nearby tool, all the while screaming for help in case the pony upstairs would suddenly grow a pair of ears. Just as she was giving up on the search for tools, her eyes caught tiny imperfections in the way light reached her, so she turned back to the door.

What is that? She thought as she saw tiny specs appearing at the slit below the door, and disappearing. They appeared, one by one, in perfect intervals, and always in the same place. Then, a new series formed a short distance away, and again, they appeared and disappeared with perfect timing. Then another series formed in the middle of the two. And another one to the side of the slit. Rarity went quiet. Her dilated pupils narrowed ever so slightly, although had she been outside, they would have turned to small dots. And in the perfect silence of the basement, she heard them coming closer. Ants.

It wasn’t long before the first shadows appeared close to her. Even in the darkness, she could see their antennae tapping the ground, searching for the source of the sugar. As some ants progressed forward, seemingly uninterested in the grains on the floor, others were grabbing the sugar as they came to it and carried it back from whence they came. Rarity’s hair stood on edge as the leading wave moved ever closer. She wanted to move out of their way, but the bear trap made sure she couldn’t make a movement larger than a gentle twist to the side. Oh, go away, she repeated in her mind. Her disgust over any dirty insects, as she thought of them, was guiding her thoughts in a specific direction. Icky! If these things get into my mane, I’m going to scream. The thought to scream suddenly awoke her from the obsession with not getting ants on her and she started screaming again.

“Hello! There are ants everywhere, get me out of here! Hello?!”

She again tried to use her magic, but stopped before putting in any real effort, as she remembered why she was still stuck in the bear trap. The only thing that surprised her more than the fact she had forgotten about her horn, was that she felt no pain in her leg, unless she tried to move it. Before she could consider the reasons behind this, she saw the first ants approaching her hooves. A sharp pain shot through her hind leg, through her torso and all the way to her muzzle as she instinctively jerked back. She didn’t even let out a shriek; she only grit her teeth and placed her hooves back on the ground, ants or no ants. And just as she accepted that she would have to brush the ants away until they left her alone, she felt something moving on her fur.

“Aaaaah, no!” She shrieked in a high-pitched voice, as befitting of a damsel in distress. It revealed more her disgust and displeasure at being stepped on by ants than by any pain or danger. At the same time, she snapped with her hoof, sending the ant flying. But as she was about to place the hoof back down, her eyes caught the sight of a dozen ants below it. She nudged her head backward and clenched her teeth together at the ungainly creatures, then went about swatting and brushing them away as fast as she could and for a few minutes her plan appeared to be working, as only a few scouts approached her in nearly perfect intervals. Feeling a sense of victory, and the first signs of exhaustion from the repetitive task, she looked past the few intruders. And stopped swatting.

While she was keeping herself busy with the scouts, more ants had come into the basement, carrying away the sugar from the floor en masse, in the same flowing patterns as she had seen them in the living room. Only those were the worker ants. Between them and her, however, there was now a circular band of much larger ants, rhythmically tapping their antennae against the ground but not moving within striking distance of Rarity’s hoof. She felt cornered, but she only realized the true danger she was in when she noticed the streams of ants beginning to disintegrate. Her lungs suddenly squeezed, trapping a small amount of air inside but preventing her from breathing. Her heart started beating so fast and so hard, she could not only feel it but also hear it. The ants had grown restless, and that could only mean one thing – they had run out of food. There was now only one place in the basement that could provide nourishment, and even that was marked with sugar for easier targeting.
For the first time since she had awoken in the basement, she let out a scream that would have broken glass, if there was any to break. A full, ear-piercing scream that released all of the fear, pain, and anger she had unconsciously bottled up since Fluttershy’s death. The sight of the ants moving toward her had shattered her façade of restrained elegance even in difficult situations. Now, she was allowing herself to feel the unbridled terror of fearing for one’s very existence.

Spurred on by the surge of adrenaline that had released with the scream, she started swiping left and right in front of her with both forelegs to force the danger away. She had put most of her weight on her left hind leg for support, but the need for balance during her wild swinging meant some of her weight had to go to the leg in the trap. Not that she could feel it – the adrenaline made sure of that. It also made sure that the bleeding had intensified under the pummeling load of the heart, but for a few moments, all Rarity could feel was a need to get the ants away from her. When they kept coming back, she started trampling them, then dragging her hoof across the ground to crush as many as possible, but even as layers of crushed exoskeleton slowly accumulated along her hooves, more ants were descending on her. Her breathing was also intensifying and her head was showing the first signs of dizziness from the blood loss and physical effort.

As her motions slowed, the first ants climbed past her hooves and onto her cannon. Then onwards. She combated this by occasionally grinding her legs against one another, but the unyielding wave in front of her meant she soon forgot about the few invaders and focused again on the main group. She twitched when she felt a bite on her left foreleg. Then again at a new one. By now she had slowed down so much that more than just a few ants were climbing up her legs and with every twitch she stopped for long enough to allow a few more to climb up. In a moment of exhaustion she put both her front hooves on the ground and looked at them. Like thin lines of ivy climbing up a tree, the ants were forming orderly rows on her legs. As soon as she saw them, she shook her legs violently to throw them off, but most ants were gripping to her fur with their jagged legs and powerful mandibles and as soon as she stopped, they dug into the fur, pulling the hairs out as they gathered the sugar melted to them. The pricks of pain left Rarity twitching ever so gently, as she tried getting the ants off, but more climbed on her with every second.

For a few minutes, Rarity yelped and shook her entire body as much as she could, but the skin of her forelegs was becoming ever more exposed to the stuffy basement air, the ants forming new blank patches all over her body. The first tears escaped her eyes, partially from the thousands of hairs being pulled out from her skin and partly because of the realization that she was going to walk out of the basement downright ugly, and possibly furless. But as the sugar drenched fur was being taken away from her in front of her very eyes by the endless line of ants, those that had come after them suddenly found themselves with no sugar left, the only thing facing them now being the irritated skin, tiny drops of blood forming in places. With hunger their only motive, the ants that had arrived on her legs now went after the only remaining food source, and began biting almost in unison.

The severity of the sudden attack surprised her. She jumped to the side, only to lose balance as she was pulled back by her hind leg, anchored in the trap. As soon as she hit the ground, she closed her eyes and focused all her energy on flailing around to force the ants off, but the endeavor was fruitless. She screamed as tiny patches of her skin were torn off by one ant, only for the exposed flesh to be attacked by the ant waiting behind. And now more and more were climbing on her, slowly covering her entire body. For every hundred she could crush by moving about, two hundred made it past. The bites, each at first as painful as a pierce by a hot needle, were becoming more painful with every bite the ants took and they grew in number as well. She could now feel them biting and tearing her skin and her flesh all over her body, from her wounded hind leg, to her flank, belly and neck. A few isolated bites had also started popping up on her muzzle and behind her ears.

She screamed even louder as she felt the ants bite at places too intimate to ever mention in public, but nothing could have prepared her for the pain she would soon feel as a group of ants made their way past the protective layer of fat– and Rarity had very little of it - on her left foreleg and dug in to the muscle below. Despite the exhaustion from the constant struggle, the dizziness from the blood loss and the numbness of the overwhelming pain, she lurched up into a seating position, but only for a second as the movement tore open the wounds on her back and legs. This was now no longer the pain of thousands of needles burning through her skin, it was a pain of boiling water being infused into her leg. She swatted against the open wound and for a moment, the impact dulled the pain, but the very next second, the even angrier ants in the wound resumed their work with even greater ferocity.

More such wounds followed in random places and every time one opened up, she tried to stomp on the wound to make it less painful, if only for a moment, even ignoring the pain she was now feeling at her lips and on her muzzle. In the convulsion that followed, she didn’t even register her leg snapping in the bear trap, only finding herself with a greater freedom of movement. But then something happened that she wasn’t ready for, even in this state. She felt ants climbing on her eyelids, taking small bites as they went along. “NO, NO, NOO!” was the only thing she could manage between screams as she covered her eyes with her bleeding legs, but they could not provide enough protection. From the gaps at the side of each leg, the ants tore into her eyelids. Small patches of light, if the darkened basement can even be called that, appeared in her black field of vision, and before her panicked mind could settle for a response, she felt the mandibles pierce the protective cover of the eye and dig into the soft inner structure.

The noises Rarity made from then on were no longer the sounds of ponies, but of wild animals, whose fur is being stripped from their living beings. Her vision didn’t go dark – not immediately anyway. She could see dark shadows borrowing in her eyes as the ants moved in the way of the light coming from beyond, followed by bright explosions as they tore into the retina, destroying the photoreceptors in the process. The world only went black when the ants started work on the optical nerve, but by that time Rarity had gone quiet. The pain was too much and there was too much of it and her body went into complete shock, maintaining only vital functions. Her lungs slowly pulsed to draw in a mixture of air and blood from. The ants were already cutting into her tongue and the inner walls of her mouth, but she was now no longer aware of the thousands of mandibles tearing into her flesh, slowly eating her from outside and in, and her mind took her back to Sweetie Belle and the Carousel Boutique. As the ants tore into her brain through the eye sockets, the idyllic image became warped, discolored and finally disappeared. As the mind went, the convulsions increased; the most primitive part of the brain reclaiming full control of the body and fighting against the pain with the only weapon at its disposal.

Suddenly, the ants stopped tearing at her flesh and raised their heads, touching the air with their antennae. A second later, they began leaving Rarity’s twitching body, only dispersing to every corner of the basement instead of following the gentle trail of light back to the cottage. Two pillars of darkness appeared, reducing the light further before an ever wider ray of light once again lit up the basement as the door opened ever so slowly.