The Mare of Nightmares

The wasteland was unforgiving. Vast stretches of sand followed by numerous strange oasi. This was the starting point of Discord’s reign of terror. His many abominations still walked this cursed land. A dark shadow startled a flock of slithy toads and flowrats. Above the wastes Celestia flew. If only my ponies were not so ambitious. Had they decided not to make towns here I could glass the place. As soon as she has seen the rainbow tentacle pony she feared the worst. I thought I destroyed their hive five hundred years ago. She flew over the dried bones of several ponies. The unifying feature were the holes in their skulls. As she neared the shadow mountains she saw the aftermath of her previous excursion. Numerous charred places were visible from her height. She remembered five hundred years ago when she had gotten word of one of the small towns being completely consumed by a writhing mass of parasitic worms.

====500 years ago
It was summer. The heat kept everypony indoors or at watering holes on days like today. Celestia sat on her throne bored out of her mind. Her fur was slick with sweat and her normally ethereal mane was a tangled nest of knots. A grey minotaur boy was escorted in by her guards. He looked like a mess. There was blood on his skin and his face was swollen. his muzzle looked broken. Celestia took pity on this boy. She healed him as best she could. that was when he spoke.

“My village is under attack by monsters that control ponies. I was teleported here by my mother while trying to defend her from the creatures. I am too late, though. They attacked in the night. Please help my friends.”

The boy collapsed from exhaustion. She had given orders for the guards to get him medical attention. She had used her sun sight and saw the village on the border of the Chaos Wasteland. It was in ruins and she thought she saw ponies still fighting.

She calculated before teleporting to the village. She looked around and heard a slimy slithering coming up behind her. She incinerated the worm before it attacked her. That was when she caught her first glimpse of what the worms do to ponies.

She saw a peach colored mare get set on by three worms they attached directly to her head and she screamed only to fall over. Celestia went over to her and the mare opened her eyes. Her cold lifeless eyes. Celestia jumped back as the, now feral, pony attacked her. She fired off a bolt causing the pony to burn into ash.

None of the settlers had survived. She burned the village. The zombie like ponies that escaped she followed. She came upon a cave with fleshy vines spilling out of it. She became uncomfortable. The fleshy vines writhed in nauseating patterns. She began her incineration. When she had cleared the mountains of the vines she fired a beam of pure molten sun into the caverns.
===present day

As far as she knew the caverns still smoldered today. She soon found what she was looking for. She came upon the burning mountains. She found the cave easily enough and entered. Two zombie ponies stood guard. Before they noticed her she incinerated them. She walked further in killing any of these so called tentacle ponies she came across. Eventually she was at a wall that was writhing in a nauseating pattern. A vein shot out and attached itself to a nearly dead gryphon.

The gryphoness spoke “You are the one that nearly killed us. You should be happy. We are almost dead. You burned our vines and purged our home. Congratulations Empress Celestia you are now good at genocide. Before we die we have a present for you.”

The gryphoness cried out as the tentacles burrowed into her womb and filled her with seed. She let out another pitiful cry as her stomach swelled then exploded outward coating Celestia in a fine mist of blood. In the gryphon’s place was an egg which quickly hatched as the wall of fleshy tentacles went grey and inert.

Celestia went over to the small gryphon chick. It looked normal if one were to look past the tentacles fused to it’s head. Celestia powered up her horn to incinerate the chick. The chick cowered with tears in it large purple eyes. It looked up at her giant form and whimpered.

Celestia wilted. She knelt down and looked in the chick’s eyes before wrapping her wing around it. she led it outside. It blinked to get the sun out of it’s eyes. It then extended its tiny wings as it felt the wind for the first time. It cooed in joy as the wind lifted it slightly. Celestia smiled as it flapped its wings. She finally lifted it up and placed it on her back. She lifted off before turning and seeing the chick snuggled up asleep in her hair. She closed her eyes and focused a beam of pure fire into the cave. Blowing it up and creating a crater. She then, for safe measure, fired a beam of sunlight purging any trace of tentacle parasite.