Something Sweet To Bite: Candy Mare Goes to Hell

It is a perfect, frozen moment, of total sensory failure.

There is no sense of sight, sound or even motion.

There is nothing to see, nor hear, nor feel.

It is an almost perfect void.

However, there is a sensation that slowly creeps up her spine. A coldness that goes beyond numbing to a perverse kind of burning sensation, as if every single one of her nerve endings were suddenly aflame. With it comes that ever present hunger, sharper and more keenly felt than ever, like a knife to her gut.

The feeling is so familiar that it is almost comforting.

It doesn't last.

Like a diver leaping off the edge of a cliff and plunging into the ocean's surface, the frozen moment is shattered, and the Candy Mare is suddenly aware of the rush of wind whistling through her mane as she plummets through the darkness. There is a chilly glow coming from below, and as she continues to rapidly descend the pit widens around her stretching off limitlessly into the distance. Beneath her, and from her perspective rising fast, lies a vast frozen lake that is the source of the frigid luminescence. The strange corpse light suffuses the underground sea, offering just enough illumination for her to see figures floating beneath the translucent surface.

She had reached it then... The deepest level of Hell.

The Candy Mare slammed hard into the frozen surface, sending up a cloud of frost and cracking the otherwise perfectly smooth ice for miles around in every direction. For a moment she did not move, to all appearances dead to the world. Then the candified corpses suddenly sat up. Slowly crawling to her hooves, she opened her eyes and swept them over her surroundings. Here, in this darkest of pits, they glowed a vivid blue laced with swirls of pink, casting beams of light across the arctic waste.

Though she long ago lost the need to breathe, the temperature here is well beyond freezing, causing steam to drift from her nose and mouth as the heat is leeched from inside her body. Already rime began to form on the surface of the monstrous mare's body, and she had to keep constantly in motion to keep from becoming encased in a shell of her own freezing vapor. It's obvious that this was the fate the poor sinners, who had long since sunk beneath the ice, had suffered. Those who had succumbed to the unique order of this place soon became one with the enormous frozen sea. If the Candy Mare didn't want this to likewise become her eternal resting place then she would need to accomplish what she came here to do and leave swiftly.

Fortunately, she still possessed the ability to change her shape, bending and twisting her body into a more helpful form. She started by growing in size, becoming larger and larger, and then she began extending her liquorice mane and tail in every direction, like long wires crisscrossing overhead. As she did this, her body also sprouted new spider-like appendages that each ended in a twitching eye stalk that themselves sprouted spidery limbs of their own, over and over, until her form resembled a swirling fractal of skittering stalks full of maddened eyes. Now instead of just two beams of blue and pink light there were thousands, perhaps millions, sweeping over the surface of the winter-locked reservoir of souls. It was as if as massive U.F.O. had suddenly appeared in the depths, shining down lights that caused strange shadows to dance across the ice.

The bizarre candy fractal-thing began to slither and slide over the ice, twisting back and forth overhead like a manic hurricane. Here and there a maw or jagged claw would sprout and stretch down to gnaw or chip at the ice to clear away a patch to better view a figure suspended below. Each time the light of an eye-stalk would sweep over the figure and move on. It wasn't that she was entirely disinterested, but there was no time to closely examine each and ever sinner.

As the Candy Mare's search dragged on, her movements became more frantic, more desperate. One by one, the delicate eyes were freezing solid. One or two broke off from the rest of her body, falling to smash into lifeless pieces on the surface of the glacier below. The storm of limbs was losing pieces faster than she could replace them as bit by bit she lost whole chunks of herself to the freezing grip of the unnaturally cold environment. Rather than slow, as one might when subjected to such extreme hardship, the candy creature instead only worked faster. Her limbs clicked and whirred as they stabbed into the glassy surface searching for...

For what exactly? Or maybe a better question would be who?

At last one eye beam swept over a lone, tiny form, suspended deep beneath the frosty surface. All eyes converged at once and the Candy Mare briefly retook her pony form as she shrank back down to a more reasonable size. She didn't remain in her usual form for long, however, as her limbs twisted into living chainsaws, each blade tipped with diamond hard candy corn teeth. With a motion almost like a dancer, the Candy Mare slid across the ice carving into the frozen surface, creating a huge circular hole. She was making swift work at first, but the deeper she got the harder the permafrost grew. Before long the chainsaws had all combined into a single powerful drill, as her main and tail twisted around her limbs and spiraled down into the rigid rime. With a grimace on her face her drill chewed through the surface of the lake as quickly as it could, but already hoarfrost was forming at the edges of the hole she had made, the ice threatening to close in over her. It was as if the Candy Mare was merely a pebble, briefly distorting the underground sea, and soon the surface would heal and she would be swallowed up like all the other sinners who had come before.

As the freezing walls closed in all around her, there was a very real risk of her becoming just as trapped as every other mortal soul imprisoned here at the nadir of existence. Still, the Candy Mare showed no fear, her predicament only lending more frenzy to her efforts.

With one last grinding crunch she was through!

With a cackle of delight, the living tendrils of the Candy Mare's mane wrapped around her cryogenically preserved prize. The very air rippled as the Candy Mare exploded from below, sending up a shower of sleet and snowy crystals all around as she burst back onto the surface.

Now that she had gotten what she had come for, there was only one thing left to do.

Escape!

Only, now that she had turned her attention to her egress did the Candy Mare realize that there was no readily apparent means to get out. The sea of ice stretched forever in every direction, and the entrance of the pit that she had descended from was lost in the darkness of the ceiling high, high above. Her eyes brightened until they shone almost like headlights on a car, but no matter how they swept the frosty clouds above she couldn't find even the suggestion of the vault, let alone the cavern walls. There were just thick snow clouds that rumbled with an occasional growl of thunder. Even if she grew wings to brave the frigid storm, she knew that ice would build up quickly on her body and she would be sent tumbling back down to the lake below. This time she might not be able to rise again.

Panting with the exertion of carrying her parcel and with something akin to panic settling in, the Candy Mare at last came to a stark conclusion - There was nowhere to go.

Paralyzed by this realization, rime and frost quickly engulfed the Candy Mare's form, quick freezing her in place. She tried to move, to struggle, to shift her shape and wiggle free! Sadly there was only so much she could do while still holding on to the prize she had come all this way to collect.

All seemed lost, until another thought struck her. If there was no way out, maybe what the Candy Mare needed instead was to find a way in!

Shedding size like a snowman in spring time, the Candy Mare turned into a writhing serpentine creature. Without hesitation, she slithered deep inside the soul she had so recently harvested from the ice.

Then the freezing talons of the ninth layer of Hell gripped them both, and pulled them back beneath the arctic surface.