Something Sweet To Bite: Candy Mare Goes to Hell

The curse spread like wildfire.

It was an apt metaphor as the broken souls of the damned served as the perfect kindling to spread the flames of the Candy Mare's madness all throughout the great pit.

If one were to think of the sinners as vectors for the candy plague, then the legions of hell would have made up the realms pathetic antibodies. Resist though they might, these immortal beings had always been far outnumbered by their mortal victims. It was just now, thanks to their new candy shell bodies, that the shades could finally give their erstwhile tormentors a taste of their own sadistic medicine.

They fell upon them in gleeful slaughter!

Of course, it helped that the demons were just as vulnerable to the candy curse as the damned. Even when stronger devils, dukes and regents of Hell, managed to destroy a few candy clones that swarmed their minions they would invariably end up splattering their sugary remains all over their troops. This would start an inevitable chain reaction of conversion of their own soldiers to the growing horde of candy ghouls. It would spell their own ultimate undoing as their own lackeys and slaves turned, with fear in their eyes as their bodies moved against their will, and devoured their own commanders.

The great and mighty of the citadel of the fly fell screaming as their own loyal servants were forced to rip them to shreds before ingesting their still twitching remains.

As the tidal wave of candy carnage crashed over the capital city of Hell, it subsumed the City of Dis in gingerbread towers and crumbling cookie edifices of sugar and suet. The flames that wreathed the city flashed blue, fed now by the sugar coated flesh of demons rather than the souls of the damned. The sugar dipped devils caramelized slowly in the heart of the fires they themselves had stoked. Where before there had been sounds of warfare and moans of despair there was now bright, mad laughter and snatches of the songs of the demented as the damned gloried in the suffering of their former jailers.

The curse did not stop there however, spreading through the outer-rings of Hell even faster, in a sudden burst of acceleration as it hit the River Styx and the teeming violent souls that had perpetually warred there. Trillions upon trillions were drowned beneath a tsunami of living candy flesh, until the wave of madness smashed against the distant shores that marked the edge of the realm. The vast void that was Limbo stretched beyond the borders of the infernal, spreading out into an infinite darkness devoid of even a glimmer of light. Here at the edge of eternity the Candy Mare, the real Candy Mare who had surfed the riptide of souls to the very brink, stood glaring out into the indifferent cosmos.

It had to be said that she should have been proud of herself. In a short while she had accomplished something that no entity had managed since the days when the Morning Star first fell. By conquering the underworld, down to the very last sinner, the Candy Mare had set herself up as a godlike entity fueled not only by the souls of the damned but also by all the principalities and powers of Hell itself. Oh to be sure, there were likely to be some hellspawn who had hid themselves away or slipped through the cracks between reality to escape her domination, but as she existed now such cowards and weaklings were not worthy of her concern.

Yet, the Candy Mare was disquieted. She had reached the very boundary of the land of the dead and found that there was no more to conquer. No more to punish. No more upon whom she could wreak her revenge. For the first time since her rebirth, she could actually think about the ramifications of her actions and consider the consequences to come. With Pumpkin Patch, her other half, restored to her the Candy Mare was experiencing something dangerously close to rational thought for the first time in hundreds of years.

What did it really matter if she had harnessed the soul of every sinner this revolting dung heap had to offer?

So what if Hell's legions were forced to kneel at her hooves?

None of these beings were truly responsible for what had been done to her, or for her condemnation to this eternal prison. Becoming a dark god or an infernal queen meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Now, far stronger than she had ever been before, all that power was completely useless as long as she remained trapped here.

Whoever had said it was better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven had no idea what they were talking about.

Though the Candy Mare had managed to destroy the 'master' who had tried to control her, she could sense that Lemon Drop had slipped through her claws shortly after Cozy Glow had been consumed. As she spread her senses across the umbral plain she could tell that the sour child-killer was no longer to be found within Hell's dominion. It galled her to think of that smug stallion laughing at having given her the slip, leaving her behind in this literal hellhole. She would have to hunt him down eventually but for now, perhaps, there were bigger fish to fry.

For you see, aside from her unfinished business with her murderer, there were still other enemies to consider. While they had briefly been plotting together, Cozy had let it slip that it was not by chance that the Candy Mare had been spat from Limbo and arrived on Hell's doorstep. Those who had truly set this horror show in motion were one and the same as those who had set in place the cosmic order that had condemned Pumpkin Patch unjustly to this realm in the first place. They who looked down their noses at those cast off here as though they were nothing but chattel, if they thought of them at all, would need a seeing to.

There would be a reckoning.

"Hmm... Just because Cozy is gone, that doesn't mean I can't still use her plan..." mused the Candy Mare to herself. "By hook or by crook, and if that doesn't work, then why not by rook? Heeheehee..."

One by one, the Candy Mare summoned every clone across the entirety of the realm infernal, willing them to her side.

Then she began to build.

A deep sense of harmony engulfs the cosmos. Anger and dread have no place here.

Fluffy clouds tinged with pinks and gold spread as far as the eye can see, each billowing puff threaded with a silver lining. Though numerous and thick, the soothing fluff balls are suffused with light and warmth. The cause for this peaceful and tranquil state of affairs is readily apparent, as above on high floats the source of the holy radiance that suffuses this realm - A city.

In fact, the city.

The first city ever created.

The Silver City hangs serene against the starry expanse of infinite space, countless stars and galaxies wheeling overhead. Each shining celestial body is but dim facsimile of that magnificent paradise, a pale imitation of its luminous glory. Comfort and grace radiated from every shimmering surface of that great and gleaming city. The music of the spheres swelled into a heartbreakingly blissful sound that drowned out all other cosmic background noise. In the proud spires and steeples of that place an air of contemplative solemnity reigned. Hushed reverence and muted euphoria were the primary moods of the populace. The devotion and zeal of the angels, who administered and protected the greatest city of Heaven, shone bright like the Sun as they went about their duties.

Given all of the existential ecstasy, pious platitudes, and harmonious hymns flying about, it should come as no surprise that it took some time for any of the cities residents to notice that there was something amiss. Something dark, rising from below, that stained the clouds with soot and smoke as it rose heaving from the abyss. One by one the singers fell silent. The scholars and poets turned from their contemplation and the great and the good all were torn from their eternal reverie by the sudden grotesquery that rose to rival the Silver City.

It was a tower, clearly, but it was not made like the spires to which they were accustomed, nor was the material from which it was made any that the eyes of the blessed could readily identify. It was only on closer inspection that the celestial astronomers and astromancers, with their stellar telescopes and other star gazing devices, could glimpse the rising obelisk's composition. What they saw startled and revolted them, leading some of the more virtuous and naive to blind themselves in penance for what they had witnessed. As if purging their divine flesh could ever free them from the memory of what they had seen.

Every brick, slab, and stone of the unholy construction was composed of some bent or twisted soul stripped and lashed together to form the dark masonry of that horrifying edifice. What was worse was that they did not scream or weep at their plight, but instead howled with deranged laughter, the madness and cruelty etched on their faces a rebuke to any who might cast the eye of pity upon them. Candy coated demonic flesh composed the battlements of that blasphemous tower, and the souls of the damned made up the mortar. Though the foreboding tower swayed and shook in the solar winds that streamed through the cosmos, still it thrust up defiantly like a profane gesture directed at the powers that be.

Standing atop the ascendant structure was, of course, the Candy Mare herself. She smiled with such self satisfied insanity that even the faithful were struck with fear as they gazed upon her demented visage.

Such an air of depravity hung about the pony and the sinful structure upon which she stood that the entire hoary host of heaven were dispatched at once. Not since the fall of the first one had the legions of angels been mobilized in full and terrible force. They made an awesome sight as they took wing to defend the Silver City, blazing swords in hand. Even so, the Candy Mare did not flinch as the beatific beings descended to meet her. Instead, she simply grinned all the wider, hunger and madness warring in her eyes.

"Sorry fellas, we seem to be lost. I think we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque, cause this clearly isn't Pismo Beach!" quipped the impious pony with girlish glee. The Candy Mare ran her long orange and black striped tongue over her candy corn fangs in anticipation of the slaughter to come. "Maybe you could give us some directions? Or better yet... Something sweet to bite?”