Her diabolical Plan was in it's final stages! SS was checking over the last of the six vast trees of runic inscriptions once again and made sure everything was perfect. Her dark sacrifices were in perfect condition for the rite too and soon the stars would be in alignment and aid in her dark rite. Her oven made a cheerful little *ding* to signify that the time was right to start.
Quickly her Horn lit up and opened the oven, withdrawing from it the charred remains of six rosebushes, roasted alive just before their first bud was about to open.
In a voice like cracked parchment she began:
"The hot ashes of six virgins, burned just before their prime, shall power this rite, they shall call you, oh Mother of the Stars. Your children shall aid in your escape on this shortest of Nights in the Thousandst year. And I will crumble your Prison!" She intoned, crumbling the remains within the circles at the outer end of the runes.
Next she withdrew a the crushed remains of an hedgehog from the freezer. "The rotten carcass of a senseless death, forgotten and unburied, shall tear down Loyalty." The carcass went into the first of the Circles.
"An unwanted foal, killed before it could scream it's first breath, shall tear down Kindness." Here there went a rotten apple, one of it's seeds cut in two with a knife.
"A stolen good, taken out of spite, shall tear down Generosity." The third circle contained the pen she took off of that one rude conductor who wrote her a ticked because her senior's pass was out of date. What did he think? That she somehow got younger in the meantime? And she even accidentally bought a day ticked that day even though she had a month ticked already, so she payed twice for that train ride! And she still had to pay that stupid fee! If this wasn't spite, she doesn't know what is! And indeed, the pen released enough Magic to cancel the Element trice over.
"Tears of an innocent, bullied for no reason, shall tear down Laughter." She pressed the piece of Onion against her eye until she was crying. HA! If only Bordy Woodenfloor would know that his "harmless roughhousing" would one day be the key to her triumph! It was with a little relief that she saw the Magic accepting the sacrifice, as it would mean that she could release the little muskrat she caught last week as a backup.
"A back of lief, grafted for berfonal gain, shall dear down Honefdy!" She should have done the Laughter one last. Good thing the ritual didn't depend on correct pronounciation. (Which would be silly anyway, it's not like anyone needs to hear the words, they just need to be said.) As the Magic tore up the Autobiography of Sweet Singer(Who was actually called Hieter Hohlen!) she blew her nose and readied the last and most important sacrifice, the one she spend two years preparing, just getting it ready on time.
"A weapon of racism, slayer of a thousand beings, hated for what they were born as, shall tear down the Element of Love!" And with that the kitchen knife she used to cut up all those disgusting mushrooms was consumed. Ew, Mushrooms are dead rotten things risen from the earth again!(Not that she could talk.) They are not plants, but closer in chemical makeup, and therefore taste, to insects, flies and bugs! She hated those Treedamn things and even worse sometimes they put them in your food without writing it on the menu! She couldn't count the times she wanted to eat a nice cucumber au four and there were Mushrooms in the ragout! Not to forget that in the last two years she found a new hatred for the things, as finding them neccessiated going out and hobbling through the forest when it was damp and warm outside, giving her a constant throbbing pain in her aged joints.
The last circle flared and finally their Magic flowed through the complex diagramms describing what it shoud do. It reached out to the heavens and blasted through her roof, setting it on fire. It kept growing and growing, creating a bridge all the way to the Moon... And then she stepped into the middle of the circle and raised a single pale blue gemstone, cut into the shape of a Heart.
This was the moment she would backstab her patrons!
Her horn glowed and flashed, before darkening and being engulfed in shadows, even as her eyes turned green and began to leak purple smoke. The small Heart of Crystal in turn began to shine not with light, but with Darkness, as it began to suck at the connection between Moon and Equus.
"THE POWER OF DARKNESS FLOW INTO THIS CHRYSTAL HEART! GRANT ME ETERNAL LIFE!" Really, why power her immortality with the suffering of hundreds of Ponies, when there is a large reservoir of dark power already on the Moon, sitting idle?
...
...
Nothing happened. Once the Chrystal Heart sucked up all of the Energies of her Rite and snapped it's connection SS sat dumbly in her burning kitchen, wondering what went wrong. Looking up at the smoldering hole in her roof she gasped. The Mare in the Moon was gone... Someone else had preempted her!
"THEY SHALL PAY!"
If there was anyone living near the home of "the Creepiest Cat Lady" they would have been astounded the old mare could reach such a volume despite normally only speaking in whispers. Those philistines probably never heard of the phrase 'dread whisper'.
"Attend to me! I am going smiting!"
At her shout there was a great rustling as her servants exited their hiding places. Shambling skeletons clattered out of her closets, bringing with them her armor, cloak and her more offensively oriented magic Items and began weaving them into her hair with their bony fingers.
"Mr Fluffles," she hissed to her currently alive cat, "I will need some more diggers if I am going to do the grave robbing necessary for Plan B. Take Wuffie and Bello and eat some moles."
The medallion around the cats neck began to glow and an eerie echoing monotone answered. "Wouldn't it be easier and more effective to simply dig up some Diamond Dogs in the Splendid Valley Cemetery. It would even be grave robbing. Two birds with one stone."
SS narrowed her eyes. "For all those enchantments you are still a dumb animal. If we did that we could make a lot of enemies, but nobody will care if a cat eats moles. Heck, see if you can't go over to the Flatbread family and ask them if you can earn some bits doing pest control."
"Yes Master." The cat shook her head and left the premises, two Mummified Dogs in tow.
Meanwhile her skeleton squirrels were done with her hair and her skeleton birds(wearing rubber gloves over their wings) fitted her exoskeleton and had draped her hood over her head. A gem shone on her chest and her horn lit up with dark power as she synchronized the hundreds of mouse bones to her movements. She collected her umbrameter and fitted it over her head leaving the house.
Once she was in the village, out of the range of her own wards and enchantments powered by miscellaneous dark rites and sacrifices she told it to filter out her own Magic and the world around her fell away into invisibility.
Faint sparks of hatred came from her fellow ponies, things so petty and weak that only the close proximity made them visible. Behind her of course her own dark domicile was still full with dark Magic. Far away shone the polka dotted and pinstriped sun of malevolence and Chaos that was Canterlot. Above the dark hatred of the star demons surrounded Equestria, just like the stars themselves. Their hatred was slow and ponderous, their reaction time measured in millennia and it would take them millions of years to form any plan of attack. From down below she saw the remnants of the malevolence that once resided in the Sun, now long dead by Ponies' horns. And there, far away, in a little village below Canterlot, the Mother of the Star demons, the being Ponies called the Mare in the Moon. Free. Unbound.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Sweetie?"
"Why is Granny Creepy wearing an antenna helmet and staring at that wall? Is she dressed up for the Summer Sun Celebration? Is she an Alien? I thought ponies only dress up for Nightmare Night? Can I dress up as a Pirate?"
"No Sweetie, and don't call her that. Her name is Smiling Swallow. Also she is already really old, so maybe she has forgotten what day it is. But it's still not nice to make fun of her for that. It happens when Ponies get too old."
Sadly the Vendors and depots had closed for the Night, as well as the holiday. SS spend the rest of the night trying to get in contact with some place that was still open and would sell her large amounts of nonperishables, before they would become the most valuable things in Equestria. At the same time her Minions packed up all her stuff and prepared for her trip to the Zebran Empire, which would probably be plunged into Eternal Twilight and thus remain the only livable area on the planet. She had to pay a lot extra to get it delivered in the middle of the night, but didn't especially mind, as she suspected the bit would start to devalue pretty soon. In the midst of loading another big container of grain on her wagon she felt a curious sensation go through her.
Wondering what happened and looking around, she froze as the magical diagram in her kitchen burst to life, sending a shower of sparks through the hole in her roof. Oh no! Had the Nightmare tracked her? She quickly galloped into her kitchen, ignoring her aching joints, just in time to see the Circle with the rotten apple crack and shatter, sending sparks every which way as it was obliterated. Next was the Tears, taking her fridge with it. Then the pen and finally the magical nexus containing the roadkilled hedgehog.
The half melted knife began pulsing and creaking, the swirling sparks being picked up in an invisible wind, surging, waiting for the final seal to crack. Casting containments and diagnoses she determined that something pushed at the connections to the seals that had kept the Mother on the Moon. She threw on her umbrameter to get an inkling of what was happening, but it couldn't even see the sparks. Seeing as whatever Magic was at work here was uncontrollable and more powerful than anything she had ever seen, SS did the only sensible thing and ran back to her cart, throwing her enhanced back into shoving the second to last crate onto her cart, planning to leave the last one behind to be divided up and carried by her servants, if it seams unlikely they would be followed.
One last shove and the crate was on the wagon. She went around it just as the last seal exploded, violently.
Her house was shattered and a thousand ghostly mushrooms flowed over her, around her, through her and finally into her very soul, cleansing it of darkness.
Taking away her strengthening and invigorating enchantments.
Suddenly she felt every single of her one hundred and twenty six years. "Mistress." Mr Fluffles was at her side, licking her face. His canine underlings brought several potions and poultrices from the back of the wagon and he instructed the Squirreltons to drag a pot of water into the burning wreckage to heat it up. "Don't worry." came the emotionless voice. "I will have you up and running again in no time."
"The blue one will restore my connection to the Armor." He gave her that one first, after which she could stand up and take the others in quick succession. "I guess I should hurry up with my Vampirification... on all the ways my life could be threatened, "Vengeful Mushrooms" were quite low on the list. But wait? They can't be vengeful spirits! They performed a purification! Spirits made of Positive Energy! I could use that to bind..." Was as far as she came before a ripple of positive Energy washed over her, blowing like an invisible Wind that swept away the dark powers surrounding her home. Her servants clattered to the ground lifeless.
"What. Was. That.", she asked.
"Miow.", came the answer.
"Fluffles!" She tried to bend down to check on her familiar, but only managed to topple herself. "Ouch! Stupid Armor!" Reflexively she tried to realign her Armor once again, but when she tried to call upon the dark Magic she found it gone. No longer was it filled with the bones of the innocent. The only thing that remained was a bone shaped mass of calcium phosphate and carbonate glued together with collagen, but none of the magic that made it a bone and a dead thing.
She struggled to get it off. She felt for her servants... none. She tried to undo the straps with her magic, but she couldn't see them and they were designed for squirrel fingers. She tried to cut them, but they were enchanted to be unbreakable, because she didn't want to risk someone being able to disable her by breaking her armor and having it's weight drag her down.
"Hello?" came her despairing cry, what if that WAS the Mother, seeking revenge for her planned betrayal? Without her servants and Armor she was helpless! And Ponies would soon turn on to each other! If anyone DID find her out here, they would only rob her for her precious food.
Which of course was when the sun came up.
...
"Great. Now what do I do with all this food?"
"Miow."
"Now I remember why I didn't program emotional emphasis into your necklace you smug little baf- Uah, stop licking me, you stupid furball!"
Author's Note
First I thought the birds would need special made rubber wings. Then I remembered what a rubber glove looks like in Equestria.
