Something Sweet To Bite: Candy Mare Goes to Hell

It is a perfect frozen moment.

Total sensory failure.

A white noise of the soul.

There is no sound, no smell, and no touch.

There is nothing to see, nor even to think about.

However, there is a taste just on the cusp of awareness.

The bitter tang of defeat.

But the moment doesn't last.

With the suddenness of a diver breaking the surface of an ice covered lake, the stillness is shattered, and time rushes back in as the pony bursts forth into a world of light and suffering.

Now there is the roar of flames and the dolorous screams of torment, the acrid stench of roasting flesh, and a heat so intense that if feels as if every part of the pony's being is exposed directly to live coals without the blessed relief of the nerve endings frying away to cinders. Sights and sounds flood the mare's mind and overwhelms her every sense, flooding her brain with an overload of new impressions.

However, gone is that bitter taste, that tang of defeat. After all, so long as she was free, there was hope for revenge.

Free! Yes! She was free!

The air may taste of ash and soot, but it also carries that ephemeral flavor of freedom! Inside the mare it awakens an all consuming hunger that grows stronger by the second. In truth, the hunger had never truly faded, but it had been stilled in the sea of nothingness that she was now released from. Now that she was loose once more, the hunger made its presence felt with a vengeance. Oh, but for a few sweet morsels of meat...

It was then that she became aware of others in the smoke choked shadows. Shapes that writhed and cried out, cursing and moaning their despair. The groans of fear and pain were like sweet ambrosia to the newly awakened mare - An aperitif, before the slaughter begins! With glee she savors it, not questioning her sudden change in circumstances, only obeying that one universal constant that drives her very existence...

The Candy Mare... Must... FEED!

Grasping tendrils of liquorice spread through the shadows, snaring the nearest prey. Hundreds of hungry mouths yawn cavernously wide all over the Candy Mare's body as they greedily begin to gulp down gobbits of fresh meat from her struggling quarry. The shrieks of the poor souls intensify as her candy corn smile slices and slashes through their substance, masticating them into mush that sprays and splatters the smoldering rocks on which she stands. The hiss of raw fat spitting on a griddle rises from the steaming stones all around the Candy Mare's hooves, as she makes short work of her gluttonous repast.

It's only after she has taken the edge off of her hunger that the murderous mare notices that something is amiss. Her 'victims' seem not to have any substance to them at all. No delicious gore, no scrumptious blood, or even the satisfying crunch of bone to speak of. The things barely have any taste at all. Tear at her prey though she might, devour them piece by piece or swallow them whole, they simply regenerated anew as though no harm had been done to them. The Candy Mare realized what she had been eating were no more than wraiths. Even that isn't entirely accurate as raw soul stuff should be more than enough to sustain her. Instead the substance of these shades just steadily leaks back out of her, leaving her unfulfilled and perhaps even a little weaker than she was before.

When a cold, curt laugh drifted through the swirling smoke, it stiffened the mad mare's spine. The Candy Mare narrowed her lollipop eyes, the insanity and frenzy of a moment ago replaced by a look of equal parts hatred and surprise. It was as if the ominous chuckle had poured ice water in her veins. The candified cadaver knew that terse little titter. It had been accompaniment to the most horrifying, humiliating, and excruciating moments of her existence. Hearing it again filled the murderous mare with a loathing far deeper than her commonplace hatred for the living. Her rage smoldered all the more darkly because she had thought that she had silenced that snide chortle herself, once and for all, long ago.

Even so, there was no surprise in her expression when he stepped out of the smoke.

Bathed in the rudy light that seemed to suffuse the darkness in the color of old blood, the unicorn strode through the smoke and cinders that swirled around them almost casually. Those infuriating little spectacles of his. That insipid waistcoat and brooch. His boorishly coiffed mane that curled about his unblemished features. The Candy Mare recognized them all, and her stomach lurched as if she was going to be sick. If she thought there was any chance of there being a mistake as to who the other pony was, she need only have looked at that face. At that sharp, even facade, those frigid little eyes like chips of glittering ice, and the sneer that almost unconsciously curled his lips into a sour look of permanent disdain.

There was only one pony to whom all those repugnant characteristics could belong. Lemon Drop.

"Welcome to Hell..." greeted the candy maker and child killer, contemptuously. "Daughter."