The Darkest Path

by Shaslan

Chapter 1

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The bodies of Equestria’s heroes littered the battlefield like so many discarded toys. Limbs splayed in all directions, faces twisted into agonised death-screams, their bodies a rictus of pain. The last echoes of their cries still seemed to linger in the morning mist. The blackened earth was still warm with the fires of their magic.

There lay the honest earth pony, her orange hooves shattered by the mighty blow she had tried to resist. Beside her lay the pale blue form of the rainbow mare, loyal to the last. Her wings rested a full thirty feet from her body, the feathers thickly caked with blood.

The little butter-yellow pegasus had fallen first. The corpses of her animal friends lay scattered around her, and somewhere in the darkness, the magic-drained husk of her draconequus lover still moaned and sobbed, low and strained as the wind around the towers of Canterlot.

The pink pony had been…troublesome. It had taken three hundred changelings to finally fell her, and she lay atop the mountain of their corpses. Cannon after cannon had been pulled from the air, devastating shots firing round after round into the ranks of the black insectoid legion.

Not far away sprawled a once-beautiful white unicorn. Her face was a mess of twisted and scorched tissue, and the smell of burning flesh was still strong. No one would call her beautiful now. Standing over her corpse the Princess had made her last stand, her lavender form shaking with the brute strength of the magic she called forth from worlds unknown, sending blast after blast at her enemies. But it had not been enough, and her shield had fallen at last. The little purple dragon — though not so little as he had been at their last battle — had fought until the end of his strength to defend her. But even dragons fail eventually. Now both lay dead in the dust, just like the others.

And through this desolate wasteland, a small form came tripping lightly over the blasted earth. A lilting tune wafted upwards from her smiling lips. She paused beside the first of the bodies, hopped a changeling or two, and grinned down at the intertwined forms of loyalty and honesty.

“Applejack! Rainbow Dash! Golly gee, fancy meeting you here!” She stooped, offering them an exaggerated hoofshake. “Aw, you still don’t want to be friends?” She pouted. “Oh well. You’ll come around!”

She skipped to the next of the bodies. “Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie! How lovely to see you all again. It’s simply been too long. And,” a gasp, “Princess Twilight Sparkle? I can’t believe you’ve all come to see little old me!” She pressed a hoof to her chest. “Oh, it’s almost too much! I feel overcome with emotion!” She swooned theatrically and recovered herself with an evil little snigger. “If I’d have known there was this sort of release party waiting for me, I think I would have come a lot sooner!”

Cozy Glow looked around at the scattered corpses and rubbed her hooves together. “Right. I’d better get started. Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me.”

She began with the diminutive yellow shape of kindness. She dragged the inert body slowly towards a low hillock, pausing frequently to rest and cursing her own small stature. Fluttershy was too heavy to lift, so Cozy Glow simply gripped the pegasus’ mane in her teeth and bodily heaved her along. The scattered remains of her animal protectors were left behind or ground into the earth by Cozy’s quick little hooves.

Dragging a full grown mare across earth rutted and cracked by the magical forces of the battle was much more difficult than Cozy Glow had anticipated. She was sweating and panting by the time she finally heaved Fluttershy’s inert carcass up to the top of the hillock, her muzzle coated with Fluttershy’s thick and blackening blood.

“Not as light as you look,” she snarled at the still shape before her.

Fluttershy’s matted mane covered her empty eyes, and she made no reply.

Cozy Glow snarled once more and delivered a savage kick to Fluttershy’s jaw. There was a dry snapping sound, like a twig breaking under a hoof, and then Fluttershy’s mouth lolled open. Cozy Glow grimaced again and lifted the mare by one foreleg. With considerable strain, she hauled the pegasus back onto her haunches, and arranged her limbs into some semblance of a sitting position. Unsupported, she would have slumped back to the floor, but Cozy Glow quickly embedded the cracked yellow hooves in the soil, locking the knee joints in place. Fluttershy’s head still flopped to one side, like a broken doll, but it was better than before. Cozy Glow surveyed her handiwork, a satisfied smile on her bloodied face, and then turned and trotted briskly back down the slope.

She selected Rainbow Dash as the next phase of her project. The lithe blue pegasus was much lighter than her muscles suggested; perhaps that was why she had made a good flier. Cozy Glow dragged her by the tail, her little legs straining as she hauled the corpse up the hill. Rainbow Dash’s glorious mane was a muddy tangle of brown and blue by the time they reached the top.

Cozy Glow wasted no time in settling Rainbow Dash beside Fluttershy. She looked at the two of them with a critical eye. Rainbow Dash’s head drooped forward over her chest, her body caked with mud and blood, but that wasn’t the biggest flaw. Something was missing…Cozy Glow tapped her hoof thoughtfully against her mouth. Oh! Of course!

She giggled slightly at how silly she had been, and hurried back down the hill to pick up Rainbow Dash’s dismembered wings.

Carrying the wings was easy enough despite their awkward shape; one limb was much easier than an entire pony. But the real problem lay in reattaching them convincingly. Cozy Glow tried poking the protruding shoulder blades back into the fleshy wounds in Rainbow Dash’s back, but they fell off as soon as she let go. She tried gluing them in with a little changeling slime — wasn’t it supposed to be sticky? — but that didn’t do much good either. Eventually she settled for contorting the wings back into their folded shape and tying them tightly against Rainbow Dash’s barrel with some leather straps she scrounged from the royal guard’s armour. The resulting effect wasn’t perfect; Rainbow Dash habitually carried her wings flared rather than folded — but at least she didn’t look like an earth pony clone of herself any more.

Next up was Applejack. Cozy Glow had expected to be able to drag the earth pony in much the same way as she had the two pegasi, but Applejack was much more solidly built. The muscles beneath her orange coat were as tough as steel, and probably weighed as much too. Cozy Glow looked regretfully at all the dead changelings sprawled around her; a shame that not even one of them had survived to help her with this stage of her plan.

Cozy Glow eventually developed a technique to haul Applejack. The key was to do it little and often. She would pull her just a small way, a few inches at a time, and then rest until she recovered enough of her strength to do it again. When Applejack was finally at the top of the hillock, she left her there, the last black blood oozing from the wreckage of her hooves.

Pinkie Pie was easier, once Cozy managed to scramble up the heap of changeling corpses; Pinkie was not so heavily built as Applejack, and Cozy Glow discovered a stash of balloons in the coils of her tail. Once inflated, they helped the corpse float a little, and Cozy was able to make rapid progress. She reused the balloons for Rarity as well, and once the three of them lay in a pile atop the hummock, she was able to pause and assess the state they were in.

Applejack’s hooves were easily enough hidden by the ground, though the shattered bones in her forelegs meant that Cozy had to accept that Applejack ought to be positioned lying down. Her open-mouthed scream was also a slight issue, but it was quickly fixed by fetching the battered stetson and pushing it forward to hide her expression.

Pinkie Pie looked mostly fine, if one ignored the huge mouthfuls of flesh the changelings had ripped out of her. At least her coat was as pink as her meat was. Cozy Glow had her set up beside Applejack in no time. A couple of balloons tied to her forelock even made her neck stand up straight. She looked almost alive.

Rarity was a little more of a problem pony. Ironic, Cozy Glow mused, that the pony most obsessed with her appearance ended her life looking the worst of everypony. The skin and upper tissue of her face were altogether gone, blasted away by the force of Cozy Glow’s magic after Twilight Sparkle’s shield fell. Cozy Glow attempted brushing Rarity’s mane forward over her wreck of a profile, but there wasn’t honestly much grey-streaked hair left; only burnt ends. No, a more drastic solution was needed.

Another hunt through the strange arsenal concealed in Pinkie Pie’s bulbous mane revealed exactly what Cozy Glow had been hoping for. A small palette of clown makeup, with a powdery cake of white paint. Cozy Glow tore out a clump of Rarity’s tail to use as a sponge and went to work. She hummed as she slathered the powder onto Rarity’s skull, a strange froth of blood and paint staining her hooves a slightly darker pink. Finally, she sat back with a satisfied smile and surveyed her hoofwork. Makeup was plastered thickly atop Rarity’s ruined face. In places, the white powder had mixed with the blood, forming a thick pink paste that dripped off the corpse’s ravaged skull and onto the floor below. Cozy Glow nodded once, and turned to begin her final challenge.

Twilight Sparkle’s inflated form was dozens of times heavier than even Applejack’s. Cozy Glow looked down at the prone alicorn, her lip curled. “What have you been eating? You’ve gotten as big as a house, Princess. You really let yourself go.”

Abandoning that task in disgust, she turned instead to Spike. But the dragon who had been Cozy Glow’s own height when last she saw him had grown into a monster, and was as tall as Twilight Sparkle.

Cozy Glow huffed air out through her nostrils and scowled. There was only one thing for it. Only one possible solution. She turned and stomped away, kicking at any changeling bodies that lay in her path.

She walked for a long time, scrambling up and over the deep scars the battle had made in the earth, some of them more than three times her height. She only flew when absolutely forced, wincing as she did so. A stray bolt of Twilight Sparkle’s magic had clipped her left wing during the fight, and some of her primaries had been altogether burned away. She would need to rest her wing properly and give it time to heal. But not until her work here was complete.

When the changeling bodies became a little thinner on the ground and some shreds of grass began to appear, clinging here and there to the trampled earth, Cozy Glow knew she was in the right place. She shut her eyes and tilted her head, as though listening for something. Her ears twitched, though the battlefield was silent as the grave, and she headed in the direction that the soundless cry had come from.

She scrambled her way over a sudden thickening of the corpses strewn over the floor, and when she came to their summit she paused, perched atop a changeling’s skull, his dorsal fin bent cruelly under her hooves. A grin split her face.

A wide crater spread below her, a raw gaping wound in the soil, almost forty feet deep. Pressure waves rolled out from its centre, proof of the enormous kinetic impact of the object that had landed here.

Heedless now of her injury, Cozy Glow spread her wings and launched herself. She didn’t flap, and simply glided downwards. She banked slightly to get a good angle, and then backwinged to slow herself to a gentle landing. She stood in the epicentre of the crater, where the soil had been blasted into molten rock by the heat of the impact. It had cooled enough to solidify now, but was still warm to the touch. In the very centre of the rock was the silhouette of a body, small with wings outspread. The exact shape of Cozy Glow’s own form.

She hopped the hole where she had landed and headed for the shimmering piece of steely metal cast aside on the ground a few bodylengths away.

She gazed down at it, taking in the shine of the collar, the glitter of the jewelled red alicorn in the centre, now cracked almost beyond all recognition.

Cozy Glow heaved a sigh and gingerly picked it up in her teeth. It let out a few red sparks, and Cozy Glow flinched as they fizzled out on the ground. She turned and trotted back towards the edge of the crater. The edge was steeper than she had anticipated, and she was forced to half-fly up the last part of the incline. But once she was out she was able to canter swiftly back towards the hillock and the waiting bodies of Twilight Sparkle and her pet.

A tinge of red was spreading below the eastern horizon. Cozy Glow’s brows pulled low over her large eyes. Her efforts moving the bearers into position had taken most of the night, and she still wasn’t done. She didn’t know how Tirek and Chrysalis’ own attacks had fared, but if they had lost, Equestrian aid would be arriving soon. Too late to save the fallen heroes, but far too soon for her own aims.

Moving quickly now, she fastened the amulet around her neck, and shut her eyes in expectation of the now-familiar rush of power.

Nothing happened.

Cozy Glow’s eyes moved rapidly beneath their lids. Her mouth worked, an annoyed cast spreading across her features. Her eyes flicked open once more and she frowned down at the amulet. She raised a hoof and hit it. The effect was instantaneous. Red sparks crackled and flew, the gem shone red as a flame, and the cracks in it glowed white. A spectral red horn sputtered into life on Cozy Glow’s forehead, and she grinned.

The glow of her stolen magic enveloped Twilight Sparkle and Spike, and she lifted them effortlessly. She headed as quickly as she could for the hillock where the rest of the ponies waited.

The white cracks in the amulet flared brighter and brighter, and Cozy Glow shook her head hard, as though trying to rid herself of a loud noise. Her transparent horn began to flicker. Cozy Glow cast an anxious glance up at it and broke into a gallop.

As she skidded to a halt at the top of the hill the amulet burst into blinding light. There was a sharp crack, not unlike the sound of splintering glass, and Cozy Glow’s horn winked out. She took a hasty step backwards as the heavy forms of the dragon and alicorn thudded wetly onto the ground where she had been standing.

Cozy Glow unfastened the amulet and examined it for a moment. The cracks caused by her last and greatest spell had spread, fracturing the entire gem beyond the point of repair. Even as she watched, shards of it fell away and sprinkled themselves onto the soil, brighter than the reddest of blood.

She tossed the broken thing carelessly aside. No matter. It had fulfilled its purpose, and she had no further need of it.

With difficulty, she was able to lever Twilight and Spike into position alongside the other mares. She was tingling with anticipation. It was finally time to begin.

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