CHAPTER THE FIRST: THE BEGININGING
As the armies of the Skeleton King charged down Skull Mountain with a thunderous pounding of millions of cloven feet, Twilight Sparkle charged the magic in her horn and stood tall. She was undaunted by the hordes of the re-animated bones of fallen warriors past, and ready to take them head-on in brutal combat.
“Is everypony ready?” She asked, turning to her best friends behind her.
“Are you kidding?” Rainbow Dash boasted, flapping her wings with ancestral pride. “I was born ready!”
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” said Applejack, hiding her apprehension with a purposeful stomping of her front hooves.
“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie cried, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball powered by sheer joy. “Let’s show them how to really party!”
Fluttershy just squeaked.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Rarity asked, as the south wind started to blow from behind them, causing their manes to billow forward like the sails upon Viking battleships of old.
“It’s not a matter of being sure,” said Twilight Sparkle, staring down the legions of soldiers spawned from the womb of the Hellmother. “It’s a matter of doing what needs to be done.”
With that, she reared back, cycling her front hoofs in the air as Spike clung to her mane, and she charged, releasing her magic beam like a righteous arrow of justice. It incinerated 500 skeleton warriors in front of her, turning them into dust, and caused another 500 to flee in terror. That left five million, seventeen thousand, six hundred and forty-two more of them were left. None of them would be left standing.
The Skeleton King watched the slaughter of his minions from his throne of flesh and gristle, putting a bony digit to his chin. Had he lips, he would have frowned. “IT WOULD SEEM THAT I HAD GREATLY UNDERESTIMATED THE POWER OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP,” he said aloud.
“What say you, sire?” asked his goblin minion, quivering like a bowl of rancid eyeball jelly.
“NOTHING, YOU IGNORANT BUCKET OF SLUG SLIME!” The Skeleton King punted the Goblin so hard that he sailed through the air, right into the gaping maw of an active volcano, where he no doubt perished an awful, fiery death of melting eyeballs and flesh. Damn, thought the Skeleton King. He was going to have to replace that Goblin. He’d gone through so many of them he wasn’t sure if he could afford to keep killing them all the time. He had to admit, though, killing Goblins was one of the few joys he got out of his wretched existence nowadays… well, that, and capturing Princess Celestia, queen of all Equestria!
“FETCH ME ANOTHER GOBLIN!” The Skeleton King bellowed. “I will need one before this battle is through!”
Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash was using the Mystical Armor of the lost Pegasus Queen, and barreled through a legion of skeletons, exploding them into bits of fragmented bone and dust. The blades on her wings sliced through their numbers, leaving a brilliant rainbow trail of destruction in her wake.
“How are you holding up, Applejack?” Rainbow Dash cried out.
Applejack kicked twelve skeleton warriors in half. “I’m hangin’ in there, Sugarcube. Don’t you worry about me! Rarity?”
Rarity was concentrating intensely on creating a barrage of gems that erupted from the earth and flew upward, into the skeletons, hacking them to pieces in a hailstorm of jeweled fury. “I’m just fine, darling!” she said through gritted teeth, as her Magic Power was slowly draining. She was going to have to obtain more Mana.
The orange earth pony scanned the battlefield for a flash of pink. “Pinkie Pie?”
Pinkie Pie popped out a pile of bones, wearing the skull of her enemies as though it were a trophy of war… or a delightful party hat. “Yeah?”
“You jus’… keep doin’ what yer doin’, then.” Applejack turned away from the grim spectacle, her stomach churning a little.
“WHERE’S FLUTTERSHY?” Twilight Sparkle shouted above the hellish din, as Spike impaled twenty bone warriors on his damned hell-spear, which he stole from a Goblin that was running towards the Skeleton Tower.
Fluttershy did not respond. Instead, she was busy shrieking to the heavens, calling swarm of her animal friends, all that she could find in the cursed Skull Kingdom: bats, snakes, lizards, frogs, wyverns, salamanders, toads, rats, and the odd nematode or three. They covered the ground like a writhing carpet of animal flesh, and blotted the sky, which was as red and thick as Satan’s menstrual blood. The skeleton army stood no chance against the battalion of vermin, and fell in dusty heaps upon the scorched earth, like the shattered dreams of starving African children.
Twilight Sparkle watched this from the bottom of the stairs to the spire. “Hold on, Spike,” she said to her reptilian servant, “it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Spike clamped his sphincter shut in anticipation. He gulped. “Let’s go.”
The purple unicorn reared back with a fearsome whinny, and charged up the spiral stair. Stone crumbled and broke underneath the pounding force of her hoofbeats, as she ascended closer heavenward, closer to the Skeleton King. She would tear him asunder, she thought. There would be nary a bone fragment left when she was through with him, no! There would not even be even the tiniest atom left, as she was going to fuckstart him out of existence itself.
She reached the top of the stair, and stood in front of the Skeleton King, her horn already starting to glow with magic. “All right, Skeleton King!” She shouted. “Hand over the Princess, if you know what’s good for you!”
“NEVER!” bellowed the King, and opened his skeletal jaws, unleashing a torrent of flames from beyond the boundaries of Hell. Twilight dodged the flames with an expertly executed backflip, and made a 9.3 landing, with a score of 7.2 from the French judge.
“WHERE DID YOU LEARN THAT?” the Skeleton King cried out in surprise.
“I read it… in a book!” Twilight retorted, and shot a beam of white hot magic into the boney breastplate of the Skeleton King, rocketing him back into a column made of the petrified nightmares harvested from Bosch himself.
The infernal monarch let out a pained howl that sounded as though a million cats were being strangled at the same time, coincidentally causing a million cats to be strangled at the same time. Twilight winced, as the noise caused her to feel as though her very soul was being touched inappropriately. She shook it off, and shouted to Spike. “Now! Throw it now!”
Spike climbed onto Twilight’s head, and with a great heave he hurled the Hell Spear. It sailed through the air, like a comet made out of steel and wood, hurtling towards the accursed emperor’s flaming eyeball as though it were guided by divine providence. It pierced the burning orb, tearing the optic lens and eliciting another pained shriek from the tyrant. He reached two fingers to rip the offending implement from his socket, causing his wound to ooze a foul, black jelly.
“Give her up, Skeleton King!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, “or else you’re going to get a heck of a lot more where that came from!”
The Skeleton King choked out a hoarse laugh. “YOU THINK I’M GOING TO GIVE UP YOUR PRINCESS TO YOU THAT EASILY?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash flew up from below, and landed beside Twilight Sparkle. “That’s exactly what we think, buster!”
No sooner had Rainbow Dash spoken when a shining, jeweled hand slammed down on the floor, and pulled up a glittering gem golem. Upon the golem’s crown stood Rarity, her head held high and her gaze as cold and hard as the creature that served as her steed. “I do hope you’ve packed you bags, dearie,” she said, “because you’re about to go on a permanent vacation.”
“Nice one, Rarity!” Rainbow Dash shouted.
“You think so?” asked Rarity, checking her mane. “I was working on it the entire trip up.”
The tower shook again as a mighty Skelepede burst into the main chamber, its thousands of legs skittering against the stone floor. Upon its back was Applejack, who held onto the beast via a lasso that was made of the woven hair of the dreaded Manticorn, which was like a Maticore, except it has a unicorn horn as it was the damned hellchild of a unicorn warrior and a particularly tipsy manticoreness. It was common knowledge that there was only one Manticorn left in existence. Now, it was clear to the Skeleton King that there were no Manticorns left in existence.
“Howdy!” chirped Applejack, whipping her mane out of her face. “I ain’t late, am I?”
“We’re still waiting for Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy before we can let things get serious,” Twilight Sparkle explained.
“Why is that anyway?” Rainbow Dash inquired, hovering closer to Twilight.
“Those are the rules,” Twilight answered with a shrug.
“Rules?” Rainbow Dash asked with a cocked brow.
“RULES?” The Skeleton King echoed. “YOU THINK THAT I AM SUBJECT TO YOUR UNWRITTEN RULES?”
“Sorry I’m late,” said Fluttershy, landing daintily on the spire. She was flocked at all sides by an army of flesh-eating Devil Bats. They snorted out clouds of dense steam through their pointed nostrils, and let out inhuman screeches that caused the teeth of the ponies to rattle inside of their skulls.
“There, there, dears, it’s okay,” Fluttershy cooed to her minions, nuzzling a Devil Bat. “You’ve been ever so helpful to me.”
“There ya are!” said Applejack, prancing towards Fluttershy. “Been waitin’ fer ya. Twilight said we couldn’t start this big showdown until everybody was here ’cause them’s the rules, but this Skeleton King feller is lookin’ like he wants t’ give us a hard time about it.”
The Skeleton King spoke up again. “AS I WAS SAYING, I HAVE NO NEED FOR YOUR-”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” said Fluttershy. “That would be breaking the rules.”
“That’s what I said!” Twilight interjected.
“Wait, how is it that you guys know about these rules?” Rainbow Dash asked, finally coming down from the air and landing on her hooves. “Nobody told me anything about any rules! What about you, Rarity?”
“Well, I thought you knew, dear,” said Rarity, as her golem held the white unicorn in its hand, and lowered her closer to the ground. “Weren’t you paying attention when we organized this raid?”
“Y-yeah,” Rainbow Dash stuttered. “Sort of…”
“Sort of?” Twilight echoed.
“Uh…” Rainbow Dash started to blush, her face turning from blue to a soft purple in embarrassment.
“Rainbow Dash, you weren’t paying attention at all, were you?” Spike spoke up from Twilight’s back, giving the blue Pegasus as stern a glance as his chubby baby dragon face could muster.
“It’s not like I spent the whole time thinking up cool pranks with Pinkie Pie!” Rainbow Dash blurted out. The other ponies stared at her, and Rainbow Dash could feel her face growing hotter.
“Oh, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight Sparkle sighed, rolling her eyes.
“I’M STILL HERE, YOU KNOW,” The Skeleton King reminded them.
“Hold yer horses, we’ll deal with you when we’re good an’ ready!” Applejack hollered.
“Talk about rude,” Rarity huffed. “No wonder he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Well, that and he’s ugly,” said Rainbow Dash.
“An’ he can’t talk without shoutin’,” Applejack added.
“And kidnapping princesses isn’t very nice,” said Fluttershy bashfully.
The Skeleton King found that his patience was quickly wearing thin. “I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNO-”
“LOOK AT ME, I’M THE SKELETON KING,” Rainbow Dash said, crossing her eyes and holding up her front hooves as she mimicked the monstrous monarch. “I HAVE NO FRIENDS AND I’M SOOOOOO STUPID, BLUH BLUH BLUH.” The other ponies giggled in response.
“C’mon, quit horsing around,” said Twilight, trying her hardest to maintain some sense of gravity. “We’re supposed to be-”
“I SMELL LIKE POOTS AND WET THE BED!” Rainbow Dash continued. “I’M SO DUMB I BOB FOR APPLES IN THE TOILET!”
“ENOUGH!” The Skeleton King roared, unleashing twin pillars of spiraling flame, fucking the vagina of the Heavens with his flaming phallic symbols. The ponies looked upon the display with open-mouthed awe. “I DO NOT SMELL LIKE POOTS!”
“Hey guys!” Pinkie Pie bounced into the chamber, still wearing her skull trophy/party hat. “Did I miss anything?”
The Skeleton King lurched forward, his fanged jawbones creaking open like the gates of Hades, and he vomited out a stream of pure cosmic energy that had been harvested from five quadrillion souls of dead civilizations long lost, funneling this hypersonic beam of chaos straight into the pink earth pony. The light engulfed Pinkie Pie like an anaconda would engulf a small dog, and her form started to writhe and bubble as her very molecules had become unstable. Her body whirled into an incomprehensible corkscrew of horseflesh, before popping out of existence like a soap bubble queefed out of the vagina of a Vietnamese hooker.
“PINKIE PIE!” Twilight Sparkle screamed, but it was for naught. She let out a piercing war cry, which rattled the bones of the Skeleton King, and she lept into the air, her eyes glowing with the ancient powers of the Wizardcorns. “YOU KILLED HER!”
The Skeleton King let out a raspy laugh. “KILLED HER? PLEASE. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ACT OF MERCY.”
Twilight was floating in the air, surrounded by an aura of long forgotten magic, and she zoomed into the face of her adversary. Her eyes narrowed. “WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?”
“I SENT HER AWAY,” said the Skeleton King. “FAR, FAR AWAY WHERE YOU WILL NEVER SEE HER AGAIN!”
“WHERE?” Twilight Sparkle demanded, zooming in closer still.
The Skeleton King started to laugh a laugh that would drive mortal men insane, that would cause little girls and babies in wheelchairs to start peeing for all eternity in terror. “EVERYWHERE!” he answered, stretching out each syllable as though it were a prisoner on the rack. “EVERYWHERE BUT HERE!”
Twilight Sparkle had enough of this fuckery, and let out a scream that could be heard all the way from Fillydelphia. Her power level had exceeded 900,000,000 as she fired a barrage of mind lasers into the face of the Skeleton King, causing his face to explode. Chunks of bone rained down in a shower of deadly shrapnel, and the rest of the ponies and the Skelepede and the Devil Bats took shelter under the sturdy body of the gem golem. The Skeleton Kings remains fell back and shattered against the stone floor, scattering about into approximately 200 odd pieces, give or take. Twilight didn’t really much care how many bones he had.
She floated back down to the ground, Spike still clinging to her for dear life. As her hooves touched the ground, her friends came out from their shelter.
“What the heck was that?” Rainbow Dash demanded.
“I don’t know!” Twilight Sparkle shouted back, her voice starting to choke. “He teleported Pinkie Pie… somewhere! I don’t know where she is!”
“I’m sure Princess Celestia could help,” Fluttershy said. “If we can find her, maybe she can help us.”
“Of course!” said Applejack, brimming with optimism. “I bet soon as we find her in this here tower, we’ll get everythin’ sorted out, right as rain!”
The Skeleton King’s disembodied laughter echoed in the chamber, causing the ponies to look around the room frantically for the source.
“Hey!” shouted Spike. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“NO MORTAL PONY CAN KILL THE SKELETON KING!” the voice declared. “THIS IS BUT A MINOR INCONVENIENCE.”
“WHERE’S CELESTIA?” Twilight demanded.
“IF YOU WANT TO FIND YOUR PRECIOUS PRINCESS, THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO GO TO THE EDGE OF MY VAST REALM,” the Skeleton King said. “YOU WILL FACE PERILS NOW PONY HAS EVER SURVIVED. AT LEAST, NOT WITHOUT GOING COMPLETELY MAD!”
“This guy’s full of it!” said Rainbow Dash. “Don’t take no guff from him!”
“Yeah!” said Fluttershy. “You should, um, probably give that guff back, because you don’t want it. And ask for the receipt… I guess, so you could, um, exchange it, for something else.” Her voice petered out as she spoke.
“YOU WILL FIND YOUR PRINCESS IN THE DARK LANDS, IN AN IMPENETRABLE FLYING PRISON, GUARDED BY A MILLION PSYCHIC PLAGUE WOLVES UNDER THE COMMAND OF SCARLOC, THE WIZARD OF BLOOD. THE PRISON ITSELF IS INHABITED BY THE SPIDER PEOPLE, WHO REQUIRE PONY BLOOD FOR THEIR SATANIC RITUALS. SHOULD YOU BE SO LUCKY AS TO EVEN MAKE IT THAT FAR, ENTERING THE CHAMBER WHERE YOUR PRINCESS IS IMPRISONED WILL TRIGGER AN ASSAULT BY 3,000,000 TIME NINJAS, WHO ARE SWORN SOLELY TO ERADICATING ALL HOPE LEFT IN THE MULTIVERSES!”
“Oh, my,” said Rarity, raising a hoof to her mouth with concern. “We’ve never faced a challenge like that before.”
“Ha! Piece a’ cake!” Rainbow Dash said.
“OF COURSE!” mocked the Skeleton King. “BUT REMEMBER THAT NO PONY HAD EVER MADE IT THAT FAR INTO MY KINGDOM. YOU WOULD PERISH A THOUSAND TIMES OVER BEFORE YOU COULD EVER REACH THE DARK LANDS!”
“That sounds a lot like a challenge!” said Rainbow Dash.
A deranged cackle reverberated through the air, and the ponies huddled closer together. “YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE LAST OF ME, PONIES. YOU HAVE SEALED YOUR OWN FATES AND WILL FACE YOUR DOOM!” A cyclone of mist arose from the bones of the Skeleton King, and took the form of a screaming skull with leathery wings. As it let out its banshee-like howl, it shot out of the tower to the other side of the fortress, over the black mountains that loomed over the horizon. The ponies galloped to the window, looking down only to see a crowd below them. It was an army of were-mummies, and they were howling in unison to the blood red moon, which was as round and full as the pregnant belly of the Spider Queen.
“What’ll we do, Twilight?” asked Spike. “They’re everywhere!”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “We get to work.”
It was going to be a long evening.
