Something Sweet To Bite: Candy Mare Goes to Hell

It was as if the fires had burned away all artifice, revealing the rot and corruption that existed just beneath the surface.

The forest now teemed with unnatural life and every horrid and disgusting thing you could imagine. Thick mold and fungus flourished in the undergrowth where not quite dead animals writhed, living nests for maggots, centipedes, and beetles as well as all other manner of scavenging vermin. A rank, fetid stench drifted just beneath the smoke as clouds of methane and noxious spores were released by the decaying matter scattered all around. The still burning trees themselves seemed to move and twist, suffering faces taking shape in the blackened bark as cinders dripped from their burnt out heartwood. Long claw like limbs bent and twisted in agony towards the sky, as soft sighs and screams filled the night.

Like the decomposing filth in the undergrowth, the flames no longer seemed to harm the mare. Where they touched her there was the stink of searing flesh and the sweet scent of burning sugar, but no cry of pain escaped from her lips. The fire had already done its work on her, peeling away her false flesh and revealing the rotten marionette beneath, coated in a blinding array of colorful sweets. The world she found herself in seemed to reflect this, her true nature, but she seemed to be almost blind to the horrors all around her.

From the remnants of the wildfire crept creatures from nightmares, some pallid and blind while others were dark and full of eyes. Some seemed to lack skin while others were nothing but bones. Horns, bat wings, and tentacles sprouted in a profusion of combinations, slithering and scratching through the choking smoke. They dogged her step and seemed to leer from behind every tree, but even so, the unnatural earth pony felt no fear of them. In a way, it almost felt right for her to be among them. She was just as terrible, if not more so, than the things that haunted this wasteland. More over, her mind was already occupied with other, nearer things, that were only as far away as the depth of her own skin.

Her skin.

Her hair.

Her eyes.

Her teeth.

Her bones.

She could feel the rot stretching all the way down to her core.

The change was nearly complete now. Soon there would be nothing left of who she had been. Her skin crinkled and gleamed, gooey and soft in places while brittle and hard in others. Her long untamed mane and tail lashed at the ground, wrapping their long black and red tendrils around fallen branches, unconsciously searching for victims. Her eyes swirled with hints of growing madness as they glowed blue and pink, cutting through the smoke as if it were not there. Her teeth gnashed and ground against one another as one by one new mouths popped open all over her body, singing in half remembered voices that belonged to others who were long dead. Already she could feel them vibrating down deep into her bones, resonating with something ugly that dwelt just beneath her sugar-coated surface.

A choir of one was what she was, striding through the burnt forest, her song a soul searing lament that stung the eyes far more than the smoke and ash. Her dirge echoed through the wilderness, overpowering the crackle of flame and the distant roar of the passing firestorm. As the tiny mouths on her body gave voice to their grief and despair, the earth pony cracked her own candy corn grin to join in. Deep, soulful notes that spoke of loss and madness warbled from her throat, unsteadily at first, but growing stronger with every step towards her goal.

At last the wastes peeled away entirely, leaving the unnatural mare in a wide clearing. The ground here was made of fine white sand like crushed bone. Hung in the trees that surrounded the perimeter were the skins of ponies and humans, some fresh while others were old and dried, the hollow spaces that once stretched around eyes and mouths flapped gently in a sepulcher breeze. In the center of the clearing there stood a tall castle that writhed and squirmed like a living thing, surrounded by a moat of glowing green slime that hissed and fizzed, that could only be crossed by a drawbridge of bone. As the former earth pony looked up through tear blinded eyes, she could see that the masonry for the fortress was somewhat unique as well, though not altogether unexpected.

Skinned bodies twisted, distorted, and stretched out of proportions were knotted around one another and stacked one by one to form the towering edifice. Some had once been ponies, while others were all too human, but each were so warped it was impossible to tell the difference anymore. They screamed and wept or cursed at her approach, seeming to struggle all the harder to escape her presence. Sadly their ability to flee had been robbed of them long ago and all the former filly could do was offer a wordless apology as she climbed the weeping steps that led inside, the touch of her hooves seeming to burn the flayed figures as their twisted backs took her weight. Each step cried out beneath her, whimpering and begging wordlessly for relief that she could no longer give.

At last she came to the entrance of the castle, a wide and dark portal wreathed in teeth and bone, that looked equal parts pained and hungry. Blood dripped, warm and salty from above, stoking a hunger within the former mare that twisted her insides with disgust and longing. Wiping the mixture of blood and tears from her face, the unnatural pony hung her head low as she resigned herself to what came next and stepped inside.

Instantly the way behind her shut with a loud crunch, and she was plunged into complete darkness. Beneath her hooves the soft squelch of raw flesh, and the occasional moan of pain and terror, let her know that the interior of the castle was composed of the same materials that the exterior had been. Not that she had expected otherwise, of course. The heady aroma of fresh meat and warm blood were intoxicating.

Fumbling through the dark, she found her eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom, as though the complete absence of light were merely a dull sort of twilight. Not that seeing her surroundings did anything to make her feel any better. What spread before her was nothing less than a scene born from the horrible union between an Escher painting and a slaughterhouse. All around her bodies hung from hooks or were chopped into decorative pieces to pave the floor and ceiling. Others were twisted into charnel approximations of furniture and fixtures that furnished the castle, red muscle stretched, betwixt, bent and bloody bone, held fast by dripping sinew. The walls themselves seemed to contain writhing figures that were laminated together behind a thin membrane of wet, translucent intestines. The rooms, halls, and galleys all trailed and looped through and around one another, up and up into the highest towers and down and around into the dungeons depths.

Like the unfortunate souls that made up this fortress of flesh, the former earth pony was torn. Disoriented by the sights, the smells and the temptation to explore every sloping staircase of muscle and sweeping buttress of bone, she almost lost the focus that had driven her this far. In truth part of her wanted to flee, to forget all this existed, and wrap herself up once more in comforting lies and half truths. Of course she knew that was impossible. There was no going back.

No, she would have to cut her way forward if she wanted out now, though the idea of inflicting even more pain on the souls which she had once used to build this castle made her shudder.

Yes... this was her castle. She'd built it, victim by victim, she was the one that had carefully shaped this place from nothing. This was her home, the castle of her wildest fantasies and her darkest dreams.

Every little girl dreamed of being a princess, even a lowly farm pony from a no name backwater town. A princess needed a castle, a kingdom, and subjects to rule. Her home was one and all at the same time, and each were a part of this horrible place. Everything here was, ultimately, a part of her as well. Its fierce, ugly beauty, a testament to just how truly twisted she had become.

Her momentary bewilderment faded. The unnatural filly knew where she had to go. She knew what awaited her.

Hardening her resolve, she ignored all other paths and the lament of those she had wronged, and headed for the throne room.