Author's Note

Don't be fooled by how short this chapter is; this is not the end.

Wanna see what Starlight's ultimate punishment will be? Stay tuned...

Sacrifice and Resurrection

Rarity retrieved the dictation device and looked at Phoenix sadly. She held the device in her hooves and offered it to him.

“Thank you for teaching me; you were the friend I needed to get through this,” She sniffled. “but now that you have your tribute, I guess… I guess this is goodbye; for a few decades at least.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” He countered. “if you come with me now, I can bring them back.”

“Wha-what?” She stammered.

“You have delivered to me five souls, five cutie marks, and many other tributes too numerous to count – you even treated me as if I were a guest in your home,” He explained. “give me your soul as well, as a goodwill payment, and I can bring the others back.”

Rarity thought for a moment. She wondered if he was making this offer as a test of character – he was more than familiar with her constant doubting that she deserved the element she was given – but she also considered that he was being serious; that he was truly offering to bring back her friends in exchange for giving up her immortal soul. Rarity realised that, after the way she betrayed them in the Friendship Test, it was the least she could do. Besides, she was gonna end up in Tartarus eventually anyway, why not go now and have done with it?

“I accept,” She smiled. “take my soul in exchange for my friends’.”

Phoenix was impressed by how quickly she made the decision. Then he remembered something.

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot about the pony par excellence,” He mentioned. “technically the Sleipnir you created was the payment for my services, so technically I can bring them back without taking your soul.”

Rarity smiled and shook her head.

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t belong here anymore – I’m a monster and what I’ve done is evil, I have no illusions about that,” She confessed. “the things I’ve done, the ponies I’ve killed; my soul is laden with guilt and my hooves are dripping in blood – there’s no place for me here – Big Mac acted purely out of grief and rage, but I chose to do this.”

Phoenix admired her self-awareness. She clearly knew she was earmarked for Tartarus the second she summoned him, yet here she was, volunteering to go with him now to bring back the friends she had lost. And yet she still thought herself undeserving of the element of generosity.

“It would be a shame to allow a devotee of your talent and dedication to rot in the lower levels where new arrivals go,” Phoenix baited. “perhaps you would like to join me on the top level instead?”

“I would like that very much,” Rarity nodded. “but would it be allowed?”

“Your soul now belongs to me, and as such, you must go wherever I say,” Phoenix clarified, flashing a wide grin at her. “and I could very much use your assistance.”

Rarity smiled at him sincerely and a single tear fell from her eye.

Phoenix lowered his head and touched his horn to hers. His magic flared to life, and as he pulled his horn away, her soul was pulled from her body. Rarity’s ethereal spirit was free from her physical form, which dropped lifelessly to the floor. She was more than shocked, looking down at her body as it was absorbed by a dark crimson cloud along with the dictation device.

“You cannot take that body with you; however, you will be given a new one in Tartarus,” He clarified. “it will be like mine – it will forever connect you to that hellish realm – you may come and go when summoned, but you must always return.”

“A small price to pay to give my friends a second chance at life.” She smiled as more tears fell.

“Come along then, darling, time to go home.” He murmured, scooping her soul up in his magic and placing her on his back.

Rarity wrapped her airy forelegs around his neck, and with a flick of his head, a fiery portal opened. The torturous screams of suffering ponies briefly echoed around the room, and two strolled through it into Tartarus. As the portal closed behind them, a spark of ember drifted through the air and landed on one of the blood-soaked hospital beds, starting a vicious fire that would eventually burn the entire abandoned building down.

“Ahhhh!” Applejack shrieked as she woke up from a horrendous nightmare.

It was violent and bloody and unlike any nightmare she’d ever had before, and it felt so real. She looked around and noticed that she was in a strange cave. It was pretty dark outside the cave, as well as inside, and she could see the stars dancing in the night sky. She saw that there were other ponies in the cave with her, and assumed they were her friends. Applejack stood up and nudged the pony closest to her, Twilight.

“Ahhh!” Twilight screamed, looking around in a panic. “Oh, thank Celestia, it was just a nightmare.”

“You have a bad dream too, sugar cube?” Applejack asked.

“It was awful, we’d been captured and forced to torture each other and-” Twilight glanced around. “why are we in a cave?”

“I’m not sure…” Applejack replied.

Twilight lit up her horn so she could see better. That’s when she noticed something on Applejack’s coat.

“What happened to you??” She gasped, pointing at the scorched burn mark that circled the outside of AJ’s body like a ring.

“I could say the same to you! Look at your cutie mark!” Applejack said.

Twilight looked at her flanks and was horrified to find two horizontal gashes over each of her cutie marks. She saw their other friends laying nearby, and each of them appeared to have some kind of damage – Rainbow Dash’s wing was blatantly broken, Fluttershy had a dried stab wound on her flank, and Pinkie Pie had angry striations around her throat as if she had been choked. Twilight and Applejack blinked and looked at each other nervously. They seemed to have had the same nightmare, and they also seemed to have marks corresponding to that nightmare. It wasn’t long before their three sleeping friends woke up screaming, just as they had.

“What’s going on?” Fluttershy asked, shielding her eyes from the bright light with her wing.

Pinkie Pie opened her mouth to speak, only to cough and choke like she was just getting her breath back after holding it for too long. Rainbow cried out in pain when she tried to raise her wing to comfort Pinkie, and both of them gasped when they saw it hanging by her side.

“What happened to my wing??” Rainbow shrieked. “It looks like somepony… broke… it…”

She slowed down as she too was plagued by the memory of the nightmare she was having before she awoke. She looked at her friends and saw that they all had the same knowing expression. They all had experienced the nightmare of the Friendship Test, from start to finish. Even ponies who didn’t make it to the end, saw what happened after they had been eliminated; it was doubly shocking for Applejack, as she had been the first to die, and thus had missed what the others had to go through. The ponies all looked at each other with sickened expressions on their faces.

“Did that… did that stuff actually happen?” Fluttershy wondered.

The ponies all looked at each other, eyeing up the damage on each mare’s body, and it quickly became obvious that the ‘nightmare’ they all had was in fact the remnants of an actual event. Knowing this, they were struck by the severity of their actions: Fluttershy truly had opted to brand Pinkie over herself, Rainbow really had inadvertently caused Applejack’s death before branding her flank, Twilight and Fluttershy chose beating Rainbow with a metal rod over stabbing the pony to their left. There was a universal air of guilt, and confusion – if the Friendship Test had actually happened, how were they still alive? How were ponies who died earlier in the test able to recall what happened to the ones who survived longer than them? And then there was the even bigger question of:

“Where’s Rarity?” Twilight asked openly.

They exchanged concerned glances as no one could answer the question with any kind of certainty. Suddenly, a dark crimson cloud appeared in the cave with them, and they all backed away from it. Something dropped from it and then the cloud vanished as soon as it had arrived. When Twilight shone her light towards whatever the cloud left behind, they all began to scream – Fluttershy even ran to the cave entrance and vomited. The dark crimson cloud had dropped Rarity’s dead body on the cave floor, covered in blood splatter and with a heart-shaped scar around her right eye.

“But she won!” Rainbow shouted. “What in Tartarus happened to her??”

Twilight shakily approached the body and noticed that there was something clasped Rarity’s front hoof – a bloody dictation device. Not wanting to touch the device herself, Twilight used her light raspberry magic to press the play button. To their horror, they heard Rarity’s voice, graphically describing the removal of somepony’s horn in a scientific manner, followed by the obvious voice of a demon, commenting how he thought this was a sewing exercise…