Old Rites

by Non Uberis

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Colgate, Dark, Twinkleshine, Original Character, Moondancer, Comedy, Lemon Hearts, Horror
Length: 7181

What did ponies do before Nightmare Night, anyway?

An innocuous question leads Moondancer to investigating the origins of the yearly celebration of Nightmare Night. As it turns out, it wasn't always about candy and costumes. In fact, her discovery may be a whole lot more than she ever could have expected, and far more than she can handle.

Written for the Monster Mares group second story contest. (Winner of first place!)

Published 2019-10-13 01:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-10-13 01:50:01 UTC

Before

If Minuette hadn’t asked that question, Moondancer thought to herself as she shivered, her legs curled up against her body, anything to reassure herself, this never would have happened.

“What do you think ponies did before Nightmare Night?”

Moondancer peered over the top of the book she had been reading – the complete works of H.P. Hoofcraft – with one bushy eyebrow raised quizzically behind her thick-rimmed glasses. “What do you mean, ‘before’?” she asked, as if the notion was patently absurd, but also with her curiosity dimly piqued.

“You know, before!” the blue mare said, stretching out the emphasis on the syllables as if that changed the meaning at all, and bells jangled as she trotted about the floor of the study. She had donned her Twilight Sparkle costume for the third year in a row, but this time she was dressed as Twilight Sparkle dressed as Starswirl the Bearded, so the purple cardboard wings and straight-maned indigo wig were joined by a wizard’s hat and cloak and a shaggy white beard.

“Hmm…” Moondancer put down the book and began to ponder. It was the kind of thing that a pony would take for granted, something that had been around for as long as she had been alive; what reason was there to think that it ever could have been different? She had studied a great deal of Equestria’s history, but not much when it came to the country’s holidays, Nightmare Night, Hearth’s Warming Eve, Hearts and Hooves Day, etcetera. Perhaps it was because she had been such a shut-in for so long, those had all seemed like unnecessary frivolities when she could be spending time researching the Peloponysian War.

“Well…the holiday is all about Nightmare Moon, right?” she exposited, tapping a hoof against her chin, her eyes screwed up toward the back of her head. “So it stands to reason that there wouldn’t be any reason to have such a holiday before Nightmare Moon even existed, so it must date back to around a thousand years ago. It probably started because superstitious ponies truly believed that she might return if there wasn’t some offering to her every year, but nowadays it’s gotten a whole lot more marketable. Candy companies gotta make bits, you know?”

She leaned back with a satisfied smile as she picked up her book again. For being a topic she didn’t know anything about, she thought she had come up with a reasonable explanation.

“Yeah, but before that!” Minuette repeated that word in the same inquisitive tone.

Moondancer’s head jerked toward her with a cross glare. Her red mane seemed a little more frazzled. “How am I supposed to know?” she scoffed with an aggressive shrug of her shoulders, “It was probably just an ordinary night like any other. Ponies sat around doing what they always did back then, talking, eating, hunting, catching the plague, what have you.”

Minuette’s brow furrowed, seeming disappointed, just for a moment, but then she smiled and giggled again. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she admitted, back to being just as carefree as before, “I just thought there might be something special going on before we were giving each other candy. Oh well, I should probably get going before it’s any later.” She made to start out of the study, but then she stopped and turned back to face Moondancer. “It’s not too late, you know, to join us. We can always through a bed sheet over you and cut some holes in it!”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll be fine waiting on my own until you get back, I’ve got some reading to catch up on,” the pale pony replied, already opening up her book again. The two of them were just about exact opposites of each other when it came to this season. Minuette loved to gallivant about Canterlot in costume just as she did when she was a filly, though she didn’t actually get much candy at all – “Do you know how much damage eating all that sugar at once can do to your teeth?” she would say, a rare occasion for her to display severity. Moondancer, on the other hoof, would much rather stay at home and catch up on reading her horror stories, though not without a bag or two of Milky Neighs at her side to munch on. Either way, Minuette would be reconvening here later, bringing Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine with her too, and they would all get to party the rest of the night away together.

“Alright, if you say so, just don’t go spooking yourself too hard before we get back,” she chuckled back from somewhere behind the pages and hard cover binding of the book held in front of Moondancer’s face, and then her hoofsteps echoed as she trotted away, as if vanishing into the ether.

But even after Minuette was gone, no longer distracting her with her chatter, Moondancer found she still couldn’t concentrate on reading. That lone word continued to ring in her head, over and over again: “Before”. Did ponies do anything before Nightmare Night became a regular tradition? The question tickled at the back of her mind. Maybe it only excited her so specifically because it was currently Nightmare Night, and she was in the mood for the spooky and the macabre.

Or was it possible that, even then, before she had known of its existence, the beast had already sunk its teeth into her?

So she had set out from her house into the gloaming evening, carrying a saddlebag with her book on one side and her candy on the other, just in case she got hungry. There were already myriad ponies going up and down the streets, dressed in their costumes, carrying bags of candy, mostly fillies and colts with their parents escorting them. Some waved at her as she went by, smiling proudly, but the more theatrical would get in-character and act however menacing their disguise necessitated. She did not see any of her friends on her way, although she did see who she thought to be the famous model Fleur de Lis dressed as an evil queen. It all brought a smile to her face, having not experienced anything of this sort in so long; perhaps next year she would have to invest in going out of the house herself finally.

The mare finally arrived at the library, which was decked out festively for the occasion with stringy cobwebs and fake spiders slung across the ceiling, jack-o-lanterns sitting at the main desk, and the occasional fake skeleton standing guard along the rows. In spite of this, though, on this night it was just about empty, everypony too preoccupied with their business either at home or on the streets. The librarian was asleep behind the desk, and Moondancer didn’t feel the need to wake her – she was a regular here, after all, there was no cause for alarm.

She was familiar enough to know where she needed to go along the stacks, past the children’s books, self-help, nonfiction, finally to history. She was not familiar enough, though, to be able to guess at a glance what it was that would yield the answers she was looking for. “The Complete History of Equestria”? “The Evolution of Equine Culture”? “The Conquest of the Sun?” It would be too easy to expect a book titled simply “The Chronology of Every Equestrian Holiday Ever Conceived” but it would have been appreciated. On any other day, Moondancer would have been content enough just with the act of reading, to fetch a big bundle of books and pore over them regardless of what she happened to find in them. On this night, she felt too eager to busy herself with unnecessary details. She was too impatient.

“Good thing Twilight taught me how to use Haycartes’ Method,” she chuckled to herself almost mischievously. There was no better way to search for a particular word or phrase in a thousand-page book than to dig through the paragraphs with one’s own hooves.

If she hadn’t known how to cast that spell, maybe the quest would have stopped here.

She put her hoof to the bookshelf, and her horn glowed brightly with a pale pink light, and then with a pop she vanished. Elsewhere, the librarian woke with a start, looked around the empty main floor, and then went back to sleep.

Moondancer reappeared in a world of white and tan and yellowing paper. Her body felt like it wasn’t entirely there, comprised of simple lines that bent at stiff angles with blank space in between, but it was easier to not think about those sensations. Words surrounded her, walls of dark inky symbols floating in the air, layered over each other, one after the other. Looking down the rows, they seemed to blur together into a tunnel of darkness, but to a trained eye it was easy to discern a single set of them, and to hone in on the words that were desired.

The simulacrum of a mare galloped through the pages, poring over the words at a lightning pace, her mind racing. Luna, under the guise of Nightmare Moon, was banished from Equestria roughly a thousand years ago, in the year 0 RS. It stood to reason that there would not be any reason to search for anything that took place before that point, if she was looking for the date of the first Nightmare Night. As she ran through the contents of the shelves, however, she found not a single mention of the holiday that early on, not within the first decade, nor the second, nor the third. It wouldn’t be until she was nearly halfway through the third century RS, in the midst of political upheaval and war that seemed far more significant, when she happened upon something that seemed somewhat relevant.

“‘The Warding of the Nightmare’?” she said aloud (not that there was anything that could hear her while inside a closed book), though that name was only the translation from old Coltic texts. Next to the wall of text in front of her, there was a diagram of something that appeared to be a jack-o-lantern, but instead of a pumpkin it was carved out of a turnip, and the face was cruder, set in a grimace of agony. Just looking at it made her feel uncomfortable, so she turned her attention back to the text. “‘Ponies would make offerings to Nightmare Moon, known in their tongue as “Saglona, the Black Moon”. These offerings typically consisted of a portion of the new harvest and the slaughter of livestock. It was believed that if this ritual was not carried out, she would descend upon their homes in the night and carry them off to the moon to reside with her forever.’…”

It prompted her to shudder. She would have expected the original customs to be a lot less pleasant, but seeing it for herself, and just imagining it, was enough to make her stomach turn. At least, though, she had sated her curiosity by finding an answer to this question. Minuette might not be too pleased to hear it, although at least this version of the holiday didn’t involve candy at all.

But she had to stop again when she came to the final paragraph on this topic. “‘It is believed that this ritual might have been an offshoot from an earlier tradition in Coltic history which is known as’…” She had to stop herself and stare at the words in confusion. The chill washing over her had grown stronger. “…‘“The Night of Hunger”, in which ponies paid their respects to the goddess Shephalma.’”

Her heart thumped loudly inside her empty facsimile of a chest.

She remained silent as she looked up and down the text again. Then she went over to the next page, and the page after that. “That…that’s it?!” she exclaimed in disbelief, and she reached up and shook the words themselves, heedless of the warnings Twilight Sparkle had given her about how doing so could physically damage the book – the most blasphemous act imaginable to a bookworm. “That can’t be all! What’s the Night of Hunger?! What’s Shephalma?!”

Moondancer ran up and down the rows of text all over again, several times, searching for any further reference of these names, but it was all for naught. “Hunger” only came up in regard to periods of famine and drought, nothing related to occult rituals. The name of the goddess never appeared at all. The lack of information gnawed at her, rumbling at the back of her brain.

The mare finally had to stop as she came back to the page on the Warding of the Nightmare. She panted in her exhaustion in spite of the fact that she didn’t technically need to breathe at present, the response keyed into her subconscious. She was aware that this spell had a limited duration, and tiring herself out would only speed that up further. As she looked up at the paragraphs and that ghoulish picture, she reflected to herself, “I came looking for answers, and the answers only produced yet more questions.” She reached up to touch the effigy carved from a turnip, wondering if she might feel its texture, but in the world of ink and paper everything had the same coarse, pulpy feel.

The picture changed.

“What-?”

Everything went white. A moment later, the next thing Moondancer was aware of was that she was falling. It did not last long, as she then came to crash upon the floor of the library. Her saddlebags and glasses hung askew, and her body ached, but she didn’t show much in the way of alarm, not even crying out. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot.

“…Book,” she muttered in a hoarse whisper, “that book…it was…”

The pale pony rose to her hooves, and she turned about, looking at the bookshelf again. But she was not looking at the books she had been investigating, nor any of the other books, not even anything in the library itself. She was looking outward, beyond, to a point somewhere in the middle distance invisible to everypony but herself. “The royal archives,” she said to nopony, perhaps not even to herself.

In that brief flash, she had seen something different. It had not been an illustration, nor one of those grainy old black-and-white photographs. No, she thought it hadn’t even been a photograph. It had been far too lucid. Too real.

There had been a figure there, but there was little that she could discern about it, its entire form swathed in shadow black as pitch. It might have been equine, sitting on its haunches as it faced directly toward her, but it was difficult to be sure. There were long, curling protrusions from the side of the head that she presumed were horns. The clearest details were its eyes: glowing golden orbs with curious oblong pupils, one on either side of the face and a third on the forehead. The background behind it was yellow tinged with red, smoldering and flickering; even in that split second, she was aware that it was shifting, and she knew that it was fire, lapping at the edges of the dark figure.

And there was one other thing she could see. To its chest, it held a book, strange markings adorning its cover. It was that book that was etched deeply into her mind. That was where she would find her answers.

Moondancer went running out of the library, unconscious of the fact that she was moving along a guided path.

It was darker outside now, dusk having come and gone, the moon and stars twinkling brightly in the sky above, but most of the illumination was provided by the lamps that stood along the streets of Canterlot. She pushed past other ponies, unwilling to slow herself down to the leisurely pace of the colts and fillies who were strolling about on their quest for candy. It wasn’t long before she reached the palace grounds; normally getting in might have required asking questions of the royal guards, but on Nightmare Night the place was largely open to the public, as the Princesses enjoyed hosting their own spooky soiree every year, with the most extravagant decorations of all inside the castle halls. She would not be getting the chance to see any of those this year, though, as she quickly broke off from the beaten path and stole through the spacious hallways.

There was nopony guarding the grand library, and there was nopony inside. Nopony to question her being there, and nopony to assist her either.

The unicorn wandered through the aisles, her hoofsteps the only sound in the vast stillness. She didn’t remember the layout as well as the public library, it having been years since she last came here to study, not to mention it was much larger in its scale. It didn’t make a difference, though, because she knew exactly where she was going. She could practically hear them, the answers calling for her.

“Here,” she thought, resounding, as she came to a stop. The musty smell of old texts was all around her, a heavenly bouquet to one such as her, but that was the least of her concerns right now.

It seemed so inconsequential, the spine of the book next to those around it, a plain mauve leather cover. There was no label on it, no title given. It felt warm against her hoof as she pulled it out. On its front, there was a symbol, the same symbol that she had seen in her vision: an inverted pentagram with inscrutable arcane runes inscribed around its circumference. There was a kind of dull pulsation that she felt against her face, the heat of a beating heart, but she did not take heed of it. Her eyes were as dull and glassy as the lenses over them.

And so she opened the book, and she began to read. All of the pages were written in old Coltic, a language she had never studied before, but that didn’t stop her from reciting them aloud perfectly with a steadily increasing fervor. The sound echoed in the empty halls of the library, booming from one wall to the other, as if there were a dozen other Moondancers scattered among the tall aisles and shelves speaking the same lines. Soon the noise blurred together into a susurrus of indistinct murmuring, and in the midst of that disharmony were new voices that whispered in her ears.

“In the nineteenth year of the reign of King Amaranth V, the peasantry was up in arms.”

“The King had denied them the reparations they were promised after the latest crusade.”

“Starvation seemed imminent, with death swift on its heels.”

“Then She appeared before them, and She gave them an offer.”

“She would provide them with all the sustenance that they required.”

“Their harvest would know no bounds and their hunts would be fruitful.”

“It would only require a small sacrifice on their part, an offering made in Her name.”

“These were old rites, sealed in blood.”

“And they are not forgotten.”

A jolt rocked through Moondancer’s body, as if she had suddenly jerked awake from a bout of drowsiness. Indeed, it almost seemed as if that was exactly the case, her eyes blinking as she looked around herself, only now becoming fully conscious of her surroundings, confused as to what she had been doing. The murmuring voices had faded into the background just as quickly as they had manifested before she could listen to them any further. She was alone in the library.

“What…what happened?” she asked aloud.

She looked down at the book that she was still holding, almost expecting an answer, and the blazing golden eyes on its pages looked back up at her.

With a shriek she threw the vile object away – more like a weak push, her muscles too paralyzed to muster a stronger reaction. The book clattered on the floor, still open to the same pages, but it wasn’t still long before it started to seize and spasm, almost hopping from the ground, like a fish out of water. The whole room was shaking, and the bookshelves around her rattled, some of their contents spilling over onto the floor. Moondancer’s hooves felt as if they were glued in place, unable to budge, as she watched the pages bulge upward, a shape emerging into the open air of the real world.

It was like a bubble at first, or a balloon, rising and expanding, the trio of eyes at the forefront, remaining pointed toward her at all times. As it grew to the size of a pony’s head, it began to form defined features, a muzzle pinching out to differentiate from the cheeks and the brow, and at the top of the forehead it pinched out into the shape of horns, stretching and curling out toward the sides in corkscrews. Additional extremities emerged from the pages, two legs settling on the floor before it, and they pulled and scraped frantically, seeking purchase. “Push it back in,” a dimly rational voice commanded amidst her turmoil of thoughts, but still she couldn’t move.

An acrid smell came into being as the membrane of warped ink and paper began to tear, cracking and popping like eggshell. Coarse black fur spilled from the openings like hordes of spiders, steadily revealing more and more of the body beneath. The membrane tore from around the muzzle, and teeth glinted in the dull light. A snarl rose up in the cramped corridor between the shelves. Hind legs pulled out from the hole that had once been a book, with a thin tail snaking out behind.

And then she was there before Moondancer’s eyes.

Shephalma.

Her coat was black as coal, her curling horns made of gleaming obsidian, her mane a tangle of dark red, like tendrils of congealed blood. Her long legs ended in cloven hooves like those of a goat, and where they stood the floor smoldered, wisps of smoke rising around them. She stood almost unreasonably tall, taller than even the most purebred nobleponies of Canterlot, perhaps even taller than Princesses Celestia or Luna, almost seeming to fill the entire passage from one bookshelf to the other. Her tail curled and swayed behind her, a thin strand ending in a barbed tip, its movements eerily akin to a whip or flail. And her three golden eyes glowed like embers with their curious oblong pupils while she stared down at the petrified pony.

She opened her toothy maw, and a guttural voice like crackling fire came spilling out: “Hello, little pony. You have brought your offering, and we accept it.”

That was the last tiny push over the edge that she needed.

Moondancer screamed out all the air in her lungs as she whirled about, hooves scrabbling before she had enough traction to run. The clopping of her hooves against the ground was thunderous, the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears even louder, but still she could hear the dull thumps behind her as Shephalma began to give chase. There was a desperate plea of “Do something!” amidst her panicked turmoil. There was only one “something” that came to mind in that moment as she escaped from the far end of the passage and began to turn, looking up at the tall structure of the bookshelf which loomed over her. Another, significantly less rational voice, one that almost sounded like Twilight Sparkle, cried out “No, not that, anything but that!” but she was left with no other recourse.

Sparks of white magic rose up around her horn, quickly escalating into a furious aura, which manifested around the tall, ancient wooden structure. It was heavy, so monumentally heavy, just trying to move it made her temples feel about to burst. But then she saw the golden eyes approaching, like the headlights of an oncoming train, and a rush of adrenaline poured into her. Wood creaked and groaned as the whole shelf began to topple over, books falling in a cascade by the time it fell far enough to knock into the next shelf, and the process continued anew, like a row of dominos. Moondancer didn’t wait to see if this would be enough to stop her pursuer – she could scarcely bear to watch the process of the library being destroyed. Back along the stacks of the empty hall, as the crashed continued one after another behind her. She would find a guard, she would find one of the Princesses, she would apologize profoundly for her irresponsible conduct and the damage she would cause, she would alert them to the danger at present, she would-

The monster stood there, barring off the doorway she had entered through, tail whipping at the closed doors. Moondancer nearly fell over herself in her attempt to bring her trajectory to a halt. She found herself unable to help but stare up into that monstrous face, teeth too sharp, jaws too wide. There was a book impaled on one of her horns. “The Merits of Omnivorous Equine Diets” the cover read.

“Smells…delectable,” Shephalma murmured as she leaned down, and a bright red tongue emerged to lick at her lips. Sulfurous breath came wafting over the pony.

She cried now as she turned back around and ran, too terrified even to question how the creature had escaped being crushed. Unlike her first venture into the depths of the complex, though, she was now running blind, and in a fit of horror on top of that, leaving her no option but to run in random directions through the aisles. That is, until she made the mistake of looking back over her shoulder, only to turn back and see a second too late that she was about to hit a wall. Stars flew before her eyes and her snout and horn jammed hard before she fell in a heap, but the worst part was her glasses leaping away and the library came back into focus as a cloudy blur of color.

“No, no…no, no, no…!” she repeated to herself over and over as she scrambled over the floor, hooves probing for the delicate plastic rims. She had to be careful not to break them (a miracle if they weren’t broken already), but the sound of approaching hoofsteps, coupled with great whooshing breaths that sounded like gusts of wind, added to her urgency. Finally she found the glasses and deposited them back upon her sore face, just in time to see a long shadow come creeping along the floor at the other end of the row in front of her. She was almost upon her.

Then she snapped her neck to the side. There was a desk there, an old studying station that looked like it hadn’t been used in months, if not years. There was a hollow underneath where the chair could be tucked in. She didn’t see any superior options, feeling too winded and frightened to continue running. So she crawled in beneath, being sure to pull the chair back in after her to make it look like the desk hadn’t been disturbed.

So Moondancer now found herself curled up in the cramped darkness, doing everything in her power just to stop from producing any detectable noises, trying in vain to control her shivering, her teeth chattering, her breath coming harsh. “This is where I’m going to die,” she thought to herself with grim clarity, “in a library, because I read something I shouldn’t have. Ironic.” And then she mentally added, “If Minuette hadn’t asked that question, I wouldn’t be here. Oh gods, I’d just be back home, reading, waiting for her to return, not being chased by a monster.”

The echoing impacts of hoofsteps continued to approach unimpeded. Moondancer huddled up into an even tighter ball, stifling the whimpers that still fought to escape from her throat. It was sweltering here in the musty dark, squeezed into the corner. She might as well already be in a coffin.

But the hoofsteps proceeded to go on by her, and they began to recede into the distance. The mare was so tense that she couldn’t even feel the relief that began to pour through her aching nerves.

All the better as the whole desk was suddenly seized up into the air and lifted away. She was left to sprawl out on the floor, exposed. Shephalma stood a scant few feet away, glancing back in her direction with a triumphant sneer. There was a scarlet glow around her horns, like the magical aura of a unicorn.

A solid second later there was a series of tumultuous crashes not too far away as the desk that had been flung upward came to land elsewhere in the library, causing yet more damage.

“There…now we shall feast,” she announced, and the aura around her pulsed brighter. Moondancer could feel it manifest around herself with a sudden cloying heat.

The mare was too stunned to put up any kind of resistance. It was already too late. She had read enough horror novels by now to know that a grisly fate was about to befall her. She was going to be dismembered, pulled apart piece by piece and devoured. Or she would be knocked out and brought back to the monster’s infernal lair for torture. Or she would have her mind and sanity destroyed, reducing her to a raving lunatic, or a vegetable, or worse.

She sat there waiting for her death to come, for what felt like forever, heedless of the rustling of the saddlebags she had just about forgotten being opened. The plastic bag of Milky Neighs came out, floating by her, and in that instant she looked on dumbfounded, all of her terror suddenly so far away. A protest of “Hey, you can’t do that!” flashed through her mind, but her better judgment shut down that line of thought immediately. Better that than the alternative.

“Ah, yes…a most delightful choice,” Shephalma commented to the open room as she levitated the bag of candy to herself, and she sat down upon her haunches in a manner that seemed almost comically casual for such a creature but also quite familiar. The bag tore itself open, and then the smaller wrapped candies inside began to float out in bunches one after the other. She did not do the same for the individual pieces themselves, though, and proceeded to eat them whole, plastic wrapping and all, crinkling loudly while the chocolate squelched between her teeth. “Nougat,” she said between bites, grinning wide, “We suspected as such.”

All the while, Moondancer remained seated in place, petrified, but she was now dumbstruck more than terrified. Was this really happening? Had she summoned a monster of fire and brimstone that had once engaged in blood rites, only for her to start munching on candy right in front of her? It took a great deal of effort to get herself to speak again – her jaw had locked agape, the muscles needing to be eased back to calm, and her throat and tongue felt as dry as a desert. There were a great many questions that seemed pertinent to ask: “Who are you?” “Where did you come from?” “Why are you here?”

Instead she asked, remarkably calm, “Are you going to eat me?”

Shephalma stopped eating, and the sudden silence felt just as shocking as an explosion. There was a sharp thwack as her tail whipped against the floor. She looked down upon the prone mare and craned her head lower, just as she had at the library entrance. That noxious breath was now tinged with the sweet smell of cocoa, and Moondancer wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. The predatory smile still sent chills up her spine, but in each of those inequine eyes she discerned a different kind of intent: amusement on the right, mad glee on the left, and in the third, a kind of genuine yet also cruel sincerity.

And then her jaws yawned wide. Wide enough to swallow a pony whole. Wide enough to swallow the world. Moondancer could see straight down her throat, into the abyss, where a hellish red pinprick of light glowed, before a bleating shriek came bellowing out, buffeting her in the face. She wailed as she fell back, crumpling into a heap on the floor, curling up and shivering just as she had under the desk. Thus she didn’t see as Shephalma started to cackle, the rolling laughter echoing in the library.

But she also didn’t see when the monstrous mare reached toward her, not until one cloven hoof prodded insistently at her flank. The touch was hot, but not unpleasantly so. It prompted her to open her eyes again, and she saw the hoof proffered to her, like an olive branch. Hesitantly, she accepted it with her own hoof, and Shephalma lifted her upright with one forceful tug. Her dark fur was rough and coarse, almost oily to the touch.

“There was a contract set in place, many centuries ago,” she murmured whilst going back to eating, speaking through mouthfuls of gummy goo. “The contract states that we are only to consume that which is offered to us. In the old days, ponies would prostrate themselves before our glory, eager to bask in the eternity of our favor. As time went on, there were fewer who were willing to part with their flesh. Ponies have too much to live for in the rule of the two sisters.” She seemed to grimace slightly before stuffing in another bunch of chocolate and plastic.

“But then you ponies began to make these-” She clutched the half-empty bag of Milky Neighs to her chest, and Moondancer thought that she heard a low purring sound. “-these treats, so sweet, and yet so terribly sinful. We would not have thought mortals to be capable of such a devious feat.”

“It’s…it’s just candy,” the pony replied, almost indignant in spite of the mounting surreality of her present circumstances, “there’s nothing ‘sinful’ about it.”

Shephalma laughed again, but this time a slightly more bearable chuckle of condescending gratification, and she shook her head. “So complacent with your snacks, little one, you have not considered the ramifications of their existence,” she said and sneered, “they bring you smiles, but you would not be smiling if you knew the toil that went into their creation. The corporations that create these treats abuse their labor from the harvesting phase up to manufacturing, and then they push their creation upon impressionable foals to get them addicted to unhealthy habits. And the plastic? A truly abominable fixture of your economy. The blood, sweat, and tears that go into these are nearly as delectable as the real thing.” She shook her head again as she took another bite. One piece caught between her teeth and burst from the wrapper, spilling its caramel and nougat guts. “Truly, you ought to be reading more to get your facts straight.”

Moondancer blinked. Her mouth opened and closed, loosely forming syllables, but no sound came forth.

Then the bag was empty, and Shephalma’s magic crumpled it into a ball before she brought the whole thing into her mouth, crunching and then swallowing. “Now, what else do you have for us?” she then asked, peering down with intense, demanding curiosity.

“I don’t-” But the pale pony didn’t get to finish her interjection before her other saddlebag was opened up, and the book inside was levitated out.

Shephalma at first appeared disappointed, then perplexed, squinting as she peered closer at the cover, and then there was a glimmer of mirth in her golden eyes. “Hoofcraft? That’s right. He was the shaky one.” She chuckled again, rumbling deep in her throat. “Not terribly bright, but imaginative. A susceptible combination.” She returned it to the saddlebag, but not without bearing down upon Moondancer once more. “Where shall we find more?”

“I…” In that moment there was a kind of dangerous equilibrium. There was enough danger implicit to suggest that she couldn’t just refuse. But it was also nonchalant enough, after a period of calm discussion, that she was lulled into some sense of security. She was barely even thinking about the consequences when she said, “I’d need to go back home for more.”

“Home, then.” Her smile stretched wider. “We shall go there.” And she put her hoof upon the tip of Moondancer’s horn. A pulsing heat ran deep into her skull. She was starting to gasp when the two of them vanished in a puff of black smoke.

Moments later, guards came storming into the library, having been alerted by the commotion, just too late to stop anything. They discovered to their dismay that several of the book cases had already been knocked over, their contents strewn about, much of it either crushed or fallen to pieces from the jarring impacts, with the remains of a misplaced antique desk bizarrely among the debris. The librarians and scholars would arrive to bemoan the damage to the ancient room and its even more ancient texts later. Princesses Celestia and Luna and especially Twilight Sparkle would lament the destruction of numerous irreplaceable books which had been accrued there over the centuries of Equestria’s existence. It would come to be known as one of the most devastating historical losses the kingdom had ever known.

But that was a wholly separate matter.

= = = = =

“I’m sorry you two didn’t win the costume contest,” Minuette said gently amidst the jangling of bells as they all walked along the Canterlot streets, the crowds having mostly dissipated this late at night.

“I know, right?” Lemon Hearts grumbled, her head hung low, her green cape seeming to mimic her emotions as it drooped limply around her, dragging across the ground as she walked. “And after all the effort we went through to stage the backstabbing scene.”

“Hey, getting second place isn’t so bad at least,” Twinkleshine replied, managing to be just a bit more optimistic, “we still got some extra candy for free!” Indeed, the saddlebags she had slung over her back were heavily weighed down, all the plastic wrappers crackling as they rubbed against each other, with a prop war hammer bobbing against the bags.

“It’s only a good thing because I’m going to need a whole lot of comfort food to get over this,” Lemon Hearts muttered back, rolling her eyes.

“That’s good! Someone had better be able to put it away to pick up my slack!” Minuette laughed. She was the only pony in all of Canterlot who had delighted in the odd house insisting on giving out pretzel sticks or fruit snacks, the healthy alternatives that foals scoffed at.

“Hey…that’s weird.” Twinkleshine stopped suddenly as she made her announcement.

“What?”

The other two stopped as well, and they looked in the same direction as the white mare. They had just begun to approach Moondancer’s house, and the first thing that stuck out was the fact that all of the windows were dark. Minuette’s brow furrowed as she thought of how the lights had been on when she left. Now there was a distinct sense that the building was abandoned and decrepit. She couldn’t say why she felt that, though.

“Do you think she went to bed early?” Lemon Hearts asked suspiciously.

“No…she wouldn’t do that.” Minuette shook her head, firm in spite of her inexplicable doubts. “She was looking forward to spending the night with us too.” A moment later, an idea occurred to her, and a sly smile crept across her face. “Actually, maybe she was looking forward to it even more than we expected.”

“What do you mean?” It was now the yellow pony’s turn to look on in confusion.

“It’s probably a trick,” she explained to them, glancing from one to the other, “she’s got the house all dark so that she can surprise us when we come in. I’m willing to bet she’s actually been working on making a costume and decorations all year and we never even knew about it.”

“Ooh, sneaky!” Twinkleshine commented, giggling eagerly as she bounced on her hooves, the saddlebags of candy rustling like leaves.

“Come on, let’s go see,” Minuette then said, nodding toward the front door. “Try to be at least a little surprised, we don’t want her to feel down about this.”

The three all came trotting the rest of the way, turning up the front path and slowly creeping toward the door. They had to keep themselves from chortling as Minuette rapped her hoof against the wooden surface. There was no immediate response, no sound to be heard on the other side. “Oh, how spooky!” Lemon Hearts snickered under her breath, and then Minuette knocked again.

This time there was movement that could be heard, hooves clomping against hard wooden floor. Then there was a harsh bump followed by a yelp of surprise. The approach resumed after a pause, and then they could hear several locks scraping open before finally the tumblers of the doorknob twisted and it swung inward.

Moondancer was standing on the other side of the door. She was not wearing any kind of costume, only her usual blue sweater and her glasses. Her red mane was even messier than usual, the tie on top undone. Her glasses were slightly askew. But most striking of all were her eyes, filled with a wild, adrenaline-fueled fervor, staring desperately, pleadingly.

Minuette suddenly felt a whole lot less certain of her previous prediction.

“You’re here,” the pale mare said, her voice shaky, “oh thank goodness you’re here. Please, please tell me you brought candy.”

“Well I-”

“Yes!” Twinkleshine didn’t get to finish before Moondancer began to grope for the bags slung over her back. “We need more! Oh, gods, I hope it’s enough!”

“Moondancer! Moondancer, stop!” Minuette stood in the way, separating the two of them. Twinkleshine moved to huddle next to Lemon Hearts, both of them suddenly stricken with an uncertain looming sense of doom. “What on earth is going on?!”

“She already ate it all!” she cried out as she shook.

“What?!”

“She ate all of my candy! She needs more right away!”

“‘She’?! What are you talking about?!”

“Hello, little ponies.”

Minuette continued looking at Moondancer’s startled face for several moments longer before it occurred to her that the voice hadn’t been hers. The other ponies were all stunned and silent as they looked toward the doorway, which she hadn’t heard creaking open further, and she turned to do the same.

It was dark inside the house, so much so that they almost couldn’t see the dark shape walking toward them, fur blending in with the shadows. They could only see the three fiery golden eyes, and, just below them, the gleaming pinpricks of rows of teeth, glistening with saliva as they spread apart.

“You have brought new offerings for us.”