The Most Horrible Hearth's Warming EVER: A Candy Mare Tale

A reflection of the ruined stairs that led up into the castle's tower which Luna had passed earlier awaited her beyond the dark portal. The stairs here spiraled not upwards into the heavens, but instead down into the depths below the earth. The dense mist spilled down the stairs, and almost seemed to sweep Luna along with it's chilly flow. As the princess descend down the spiral, a ghostly green flicker of witch-light rose to greet her, suffusing the fog with an eerie phosphorescence. The alicorn tensed, uncertain what the source of the illumination could be, but she readied herself in case it was the prelude to some sort of attack.

She should not have worried. There was no need. The emerald radiance emanated only from grown up pumpkin seeds!

Jack-o-lantern's sat in alcoves set in the recesses of the stairwell's walls, wide grins glowing merrily as Luna approached them, as if they had been arraigned specifically to greet her. Each step brought a new orange gourd into view, a unique face carved into each that burned with a mysterious heat-less flame. Luna paused to examine this fey-fire, her eyes reflecting it's fitful light as they gazed deeply within. The longer she stared, the more the flames seemed to create rough shapes writhing in the flames. What appeared to be chaos resolved instead into a pony running, fleeing desperately from something without getting anywhere. Then the tiny figure seem to trip and fall, weeping as it had hurt it's hind leg. As Luna drew closer to the pumpkin, the tiny figure within flinched in fright, as though it had taken notice of her as well. Indeed it seemed to look right at Luna as it's weeping turned to quite laughter. A burst of flames shot out of the gourds eyes and mouth, causing Luna herself to jump backwards, startled!

Afterwards the princess was careful not too look too closely or too long at the light within the pumpkin shells, no matter how tempted she was by the bewitching lights.

It wasn't very hard to resist as the further down Luna went the less jovial the expression carved into the swollen rinds became. A smell of putrescence blighted the fog as the pumpkin's appeared to rot and decay, consumed by black and white splotches of mold. With every twist their expressions seemed to be more fearful and pained, the orange rinds more decayed and putrid. The worst part was that these faces were also more detailed, and thus more recognizable. Luna tried to ignore the jack-o-lanterns that bore the appearance of royal guards that had gone missing months before, as well as the images of missing family members that desperate peasants had provided to the princesses to try and find, but the hardest to ignore were the tiniest pumpkins that bore the visage of weeping children -those were the hardest to pass by.

Luna had some inkling as to how these ghastly lanterns had come to be, but it was not until she came across the alcove nearest the bottom of the stairs that she had frozen in her tracks. Unlike the older jack-o-lanterns this last one was so fresh that the carving still had juices spilling from the fat orange shell. The portrait that it bore was entirely unmistakable, though the details were still rough and undefined. Commander Hurricane looked sorrowfully up at Princess Luna, a great split bifurcating his ruined face, and at last she felt her heart lurch in her chest as it was seized by icy talons of terror. It was one thing to gaze at the ruined bodies of the Candy Mare's victims, it was quite another thing to gaze upon their tortured souls...

"She's only trying to scare you. Don't let her!" Luna sternly scolded herself.

The Princess of the Night had walked dreams and nightmares! She had seen things hundreds of times more horrible than this. Yet those had been the fancies conjured by sleeping minds. These supernatural manifestations were something all too real, despite their otherworldly quality.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer," Luna whispered to herself, closing her eyes against the grimacing apparition. "Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

"Does that little mantra help you?" asked the petulant voice of a child from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. "Don't let your fears get the better of you now..."

A blue beam of pure magic exploded from the tip of Luna's horn and scythed through the gloom where the voice had come from. When it struck only flagstones, laughter exploded from the depths, echoing more explosion as the first blast was followed by a burst of several more beams of light fired wildly into the dark. When the dust finally cleared enough for Luna to see, she discovered that her attacks had done little more than shatter several crumbling gargoyles and a few stone sarcophagi. The dusty old skeleton of a unicorn noble flopped out of one such shattered resting place, it's skull glaring almost reproachfully up at the trigger happy alicorn.

"Hahahaha! Nice shooting ‘little moon’!" giggled the voice mockingly from further within the crypt that Luna found waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The mad laughter dwindled as the sound of tiny running hoof steps faded into the distance.

Luna took a moment to steady herself and get her breathing under control. Once she had thus steeled herself, she stepped into the catacombs proper, picking her way between the chunks of masonry that her wild blasts had created. She made a quiet apology to the skeleton she had disturbed before turning her full attention to her new surroundings. There were no pumpkin light here to brighten her path, though that was something of a relief, so Luna instead had to rely on the light from her horn once again to see by.

The stone ceiling here was low and Luna's horn occasionally scraped painfully against it. These tiny corridors were not intended for ponies the height of an alicorn to move through, even a smaller one like Princess Luna. Though this made the glow of her magic cut in and out occasionally, it still managed to light a seemingly endless expanse of arches supported by marble columns that stretched into oblivion. Stone sarcophagi, some with stylized statues set over them and others without, were lined up in regimented rows that spread out all around her. Some of these tombs were old indeed and had long since crumbled away on their own, while others still stood unblemished as if untouched by the passage of time. Thick fog coiled about her hooves and filled the room as far as she could see. The air here was thick with age and dust, and the low ceiling combined to make Luna long for the open air of the night sky.

Every now and then a fresh giggle would drift from one direction or another and Luna would just catch just a glimpse of glowing eyes darting behind a statue. The princess displayed great restraint, resisting the urge to once more fire her magic wildly at the darting form of her prey. Just one errant shot might obliterate a load bearing column and bury Luna under the weight of the castle above. Then the undead Candy Mare would just tunnel her way out, leaving Luna to suffocate even if she survived the initial collapse. Instead, keeping up her guard, the young monarch attempted to draw close enough to ensure that her next shot would not miss even if it meant that she was being drawn further into the crypt in the process.

Past the initial chamber the wide open space narrowed into a series of long tunnels, each lined with stacked alcoves that contained cobweb covered stone slabs, atop which the dusty remains of shroud wrapped bones lay. There were three of these corridors that slanted downwards into the earth. Down one, Luna caught a glimpse of a tiny figure peeking from atop one of the stone slabs. It stuck it's tongue out at her, rolling it's eyes crazily, before it darted out of sight. It was down this passage that Luna proceeded, hoping it was indeed the one the Candy Mare had chosen and that her overtaxed mind wasn't just playing tricks on her.

For a time nothing else of note occurred. The silence of the sepulchral surroundings was deafening compared to the icebound castle above. As Luna went further the ceiling seemed to grow lower and the hall grew more narrow, and rougher. Claustrophobia was not something Luna normally struggled with, but in this confined space where it would be difficult for her to even turn around, the tight spaces were starting to wear on her mind. Long ago the alcoves had gone from being slabs that held individual skeletons to being simply lined with piles of carefully sorted bones.

These were comparatively small cubbyholes filled with femurs, ribs, and meticulously sorted spinal vertebrae, all kept in some esoteric order as if keeping them organized was more imperative than remembering their prior owners. Perhaps these were the bones of ponies that no one could remember? Or maybe those who were not so noble as the ones who had earned their own sarcophagi up front? Were they simply being kept because there was no better place for them? Or maybe in the distant past someone thought it was a good idea to keep an inventory of bones just in case they needed a spare?

The idea made Luna laugh, and the sound of her own mirth so shocked her that she fell instantly into troubled thought. If she was finding humor in these ancient bones, how perilously close was she coming to losing her mind down here? The idea of her wits abandoning her so far underground, surrounded by nothing but stale death and cobwebs, made the blood in her veins turn to ice. It was imperative that she keep her mind in good order, lest she find her own resting place down here among the ancient dead. The dull, morbid monotony of this place was clearly wearing on her, but she needed to keep her thoughts from wandering.

It was almost a relief when the laughter returned. Luna quickened her pace, but as she ran after the echoes of mad mirth, the gleeful giggles turned to a sort of sing song chant that drifted in and out of earshot.

"Nightmare Night..."

It sounded like it was right in front of her one moment, and then behind her the next. Luna had not noticed that as she had gone deeper that the mist, which had started out around her legs, had risen to fill the corridor. The pale fog diffused the light from her horn to the point she could barely see more than a few feet in front of her now. She skidded to a halt as she realized she was running nearly blind at break neck speed.

"...What a Fright..."

Wait, did that come from behind her? Luna whirled, trying to pinpoint the sing-song voice, but no matter which way she went she seemed to come to a dead end. It was as if the corridors had closed up around her, leaving her in something akin to a laberynth. At the end of each walled off corridor she came to she was greeted only by the grinning skulls of the long deceased and some epitaph written in Pone-ish so ancient that she couldn't even begin to make it out.

It was as if the dead themselves were mocking her.

"...Give us Something..."

She couldn't give up now, not when her prey was so close.

However, the further she went, the stranger things became. Now the very walls, the columns, the floor and ceiling - all seemed to be made of bone! It was as if the foundations of the castle had been mortared with the bodies of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of little ponies. The ossified structures were far more artistic than the stone ones Luna had passed above. Here the arches were composed of skulls artfully arced between pillars of twisted spinal columns intricately woven together. Each wall seemed to contain a frieze that spread across it depicting giant winged unicorns made from the inlaid bones of various smaller ponies. These were depicted as wielding enormous calcified scythes or hourglasses more delicately carved than the finest ivory. The tiny cairns of foal skulls that marked the junction where the corridor split were particularly well made, fitting together as though the tiny craniums had been shaped purposefully while they yet lived to fulfill that role postmortem. Perhaps a tiny vice of some sort had been involved?

"Sweet... To... Bite..."

Luna no longer needed the magic of her horn now.

Huge chandeliers of bone that dripped with yellow tallow candles smoldered above her head in the widened space that she suddenly found herself in. It seemed Luna had stumbled blindly into some ancient heathen chapel. Everything, from alters to pews and mock stained glass windows, depicted winged unicorn skeletons descending from on high. These were wrought in the bones of the long forgotten and clothed in the brittle yellowed hides of the ancient dead. Despite the smokey amber glow of the ancient candles that filled this chamber Luna could not see the one that had led her into this waking nightmare. Where was the Candy Mare?

"Enough games! You said to come alone, and I am here!" bellowed Luna, her ire rising despite her fatigue. "If your purpose was to have me lose my mind in this labyrinth of bone, I cannot say that I am overly impressed. This historical excursion does little to unnerve me. I'm afraid if you were hoping that I would simply die of fright, I'm much closer to dying of boredom!"

"Well, so long as you die," cackled the Candy Mare, rising from beneath the alter of skulls and rib-cages. A huge grin was stretched wide across her freakish candy face. Instead of advancing, however, she turned away and glanced back over her shoulder. "But I'm afraid our history lesson isn't quite at an end yet. I promise, just a little further Princess... Unless you're scared?"

Luna spread her wings so fast there was a clap of thunder and, with a mighty downward sweep of her dark plumage, she launched herself like a missile towards the Candy Mare. Her horn was blazing and she was not about to let her enemy slip away again!

Though Luna rocketed past the alter in the blink of an eye, the Candy Mare had effortlessly dived backwards into a wide well that opened in the earth behind it. The princess plummeted after her into the sacrificial pit, the Candy Mare disappearing into the gloom below, her wild laughter echoing all the way down. The bottom of the pit was a long time coming, giving Luna ample time to consider how poor the choice was to follow this insane undead thing even deeper into the earth. Even so, Luna herself was a glorious sight, the brilliance of her horn streaking through the darkness like a star plucked from the heavens which plunged into the tenebrous depths which no light had penetrated before. Hers was the profile of the first fallen angel cast unto the abyss, glorious and terrible in equal measure. The Candy Mare would soon meet her match!

At last the well opened up into a wide antechamber that seemed to itself be part of a large network of caverns. Here the columns were no longer of bone or cut from stone but were instead formed by living rock, each slick with moisture that dripped slowly from above. There were no more dead bodies or tombs, nor any other mortuary fixtures of any kind. These seemed to be a far older, more primordial place of worship, that had not known mortal tread for some time. As Luna alighted on the onyx floor in that place of absolute darkness, she cast a spell that created an orb of light that rose high enough to cast it's radiance over the entirety of the gigantic subterrainean chamber.

The space turned out to be even more temple-like than the one carved from bone above. Indeed, it seemed that this place had served as inspiration for the morbid display found at the nadir of the catacombs, though that had been only a pale imitation. As striking as that had been it was nothing compared to the grandeur of natures mighty work which spread before Luna's eyes. Well, almost. There was at least a part of the cavern that had not been shaped by nature, but rather by the hooves of mortals. A giant mosaic stretched across the entirety of one cavern wall, the massive mural thousands of feet wide and hundreds of feet tall, dwarfed even the most extravagant works of art that Luna had ever seen. As the princess drew closer, she could see that what was depicted was an alicorn that looked very much like her, although it was far more wild and savage in appearance and appeared to be swooping down from the heavens like some great bird of prey.

Seated before it, staring up at it, was the Candy Mare.

At last, it seemed she would run no more.

Instead she spoke as if entranced.

"Once upon a time, they told legends about you. In secret, they worshiped the very idea of you. In the dark, they sacrificed to you. They begged you for blessings for themselves and beseeched you for curses on their enemies. They asked you to guard their dead as they slept eternally," the candy-coated pony seemed so small, so minuscule before the image that loomed above her, yet her voice filled the natural cathedral with ease. "They would harvest the teeth of the condemned, prisoners of war, and their own children to add one at a time to this graven image. An Idol to the ideal that your existence represents. The very best that each race had to offer combined into one supernaturally powerful being that, their faith assured them, must surely exist."

"We... Did not know. So much of our history has been lost. We were young when we lost our parents," whispered Luna, eyeing the massive image as if it might spring to life at any moment.

"So was I," confided the living corpse, for once all the lunacy drained from her voice. "Life can be cruel like that. But not as cruel as the reality that you truly represent. You see, to me an alicorn does not only embody the best of every other pony, but also the worst. All the flaws, imperfections, and weaknesses of our race are bound up inside you. In you is the haughty elitism of the unicorn, the harsh brutality of the pegasus, and the insipid naivete of the earth pony. Even so, you assert your 'royal sovereignty', declaring yourself a 'Princess' and command ponies to do your bidding, even if that means you send them to their deaths. Your very existence forces the tribes to swallow a pretty lie about 'Hearth's Warming Eve' and 'friendship', and about how they're 'all in this together' as they slave away in service of your whims."

"That's not true! Our subjects are not our slaves!" denied Luna, her feathers ruffling. "The power of friendship isn't a lie!"

"Isn't it though?" hissed the the ghoul through candy corn fangs as she tilted her head backwards, bending her spine unnaturally to gaze at Luna with an upside down grin. "You and your sister certainly don't seem to act like it's true ~ The way you argue with each other, posturing for your followers who pick sides between you. Siblings who are supposed to love one another, instead endlessly locked in a passive aggressive struggle for supremacy. Any scrap of recognition that you can get you greedily clutch at, each of you trying to out-do the other, all in hopes of duping all the little ponies into believing in you! Into worshiping you! Into treating you like the deities that they mistake you for."

"We are the protectors and stewards of Equestria!" declared the Princess of the Night, thunder booming in her Royal Canterlot Voice, "We watch over all of pony-kind! We guard them against horrid abominations like you! It's because of creatures like you that they die miserably! The sooner you cease to exist, the sooner they will know peace and prosperity!"

"Will they really?" spat the Candy Mare, twisting her body around at an unnatural angle, popping her dead bones like dry kindling. "Or will you just continue to sacrifice them on the alter of your own personal 'prosperity'? How long before you label other less 'abominable' creatures as impediments to your idea of 'peace'? I see a cold wind blowing through. I see days neither fun nor free. I see a future caused by you. I see a path not meant to be."

"You're wrong! That's not the kind of world we're trying to build!" exclaimed Luna, drawing dangerously close to her accuser. "I would never allow that!"

"Can you say the same for your sister?" The smile drained from the Candy Mare's face and her eyes grew wide as they stared deep into Luna's own. "Can you say the same for the sibling that ignores and mistreats her own kin? Lying to you about things you know to be true. Telling you that you are wrong about all those whispers of discontent and disdain that those little ponies make behind your back? Ponies have always been their own worst enemies. I'm living proof of that... for a given value of 'living' anyways. You think you're both in control, but you know only one of you truly can be. Only one of you will be able to shape the hearts and minds of your subjects. Look at that mural - it isn't two alicorns that the ponies worshiped long ago! It was one! There is only room in their hearts for one to rule them! Everything you fear is true!""

"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about!" A blast of magic erupted from Luna's horn at close range

After the flash, the Candy Mare was gone.

Not even a stain remained.

That was all it took to silence the menace once and for all!

"I did it. I did it! I did what you couldn't do sister! Me! Princess Luna!" she laughed hysterically, a combination of triumph and relief thick in her voice. Though the Candy Mare may have tried to twist her heart with her deceitful words, and break her mind with horrors, in the end she was nothing before the Princess of the Night!

Or so Luna thought.

Too late, she noticed that another's laughter had joined her own.

A freezing trickle of fear ran like ice water down Luna's spine as she whirled to face what was behind her.

In the dark, two glowing blue eyes swirled with pink madness opened wide.

Melting out of the shadows was, of course, the Candy Mare. It wouldn't be so easy to destroy a creature that had devoured so many lives.

"Ah, there it is, just like I said," the mad mare continued with a confident laugh. "The arrogance, the viciousness, and the gullibility! All the vileness of pony-kind concentrated into one deceptively graceful form. I was wondering why your sister wasn’t here with you. You actually wanted to steal all the glory for yourself! Wow! What hubris! What arrogance! I can't wait to hear you scream!"

Behind the gleeful ghoul, glowing eyes in every color of the rainbow suddenly flickered to life, filling the caverns with a chaotic rainbow of glaring horrors!

Skeletons!

Hundreds of them, held together by long dripping strands of multicolored taffy or strings of spun sugar stretched like sparkling tendons over their calcified forms! They clattered, creaked, and moaned as they surged jerkily from the gloom, scrabbling on the floor and crawling over the walls. Their candy filled maws spread wide in razor sharp grins as they surrounded the suddenly imperiled princess. The Candy Mare's mirth only rose in volume as it was joined by the dry, harsh laughter of the ancient dead.

"Hope you don't mind, but I thought it would be kind to let your oldest fans have a 'taste' of your sovereignty. They'll give you the royal treatment you truly deserve!" she giggled as the horde snapped their jaws hungrily. "Let the battle royal begin!"