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

The Candy Mare snapped awake, shock written across her face.

Her senses flowed back into her body in the throne room, the flakes of gore stained snow drifting gently around her as she rose from a pile of red snow which she had hidden her original body in.

The Candy Mare had known it would be dangerous to take on an alicorn after she had seen what the power of the one known as Celestia had done to her candy ghouls. Because of this, she had wisely taken the precaution of making body doubles out of a few of her victims to lure Luna deep into the catacombs away from her true self. As a bonus, the Candy Mare was able to use these proxies to attack Luna without putting herself at risk. Hiding multiple copies of herself among the comparatively weaker skeleton marionettes she had cultivated from the crypt made it seem like she was attacking lightning fast from multiple different angles at once, which she had hoped would have been enough of an advantage to keep Luna off balance and distracted.

All of that had gone as anticipated, but he Candy Mare had not expected that Luna would lash out with an explosive force that even exceeded the power Celestia had displayed once she had been pushed to the brink of defeat. The sentry that the Candy Mare had interrogated had given the impression that the so-called 'Princess of the Night' was the weaker and more cowardly of the two. Had she been lied to? It was hard to imagine given that the cannibal corpse had tasted Sugar Plum's mind directly when she had chomped into her brains. Perhaps the guard had simply not known the true depths of Luna's power and what she was capable of? That was possible. However, that didn't seem to be all that was at play here.

There was a dark power saturating the catacombs. It had been as much because of that supernatural force as it's shelter from the sun that had driven the Candy Mare to choose the site as her lair. She had thought that it would also make the place perfect to lay a trap for those allies of the forces of light who had hunted her, as she saw them as a mutual enemy to both herself and whatever shadowy presence called those cavernous depths their home. The Candy Mare had thought the shadowy force would empower her and weaken her enemies, but it seemed whatever that gloomy energy truly was it had no interest in dead creatures like herself and had instead sought to corrupt the living.

Perhaps this Luna truly was not like her sister and was herself more a creature of darkness rather than one born of the light? The Candy Mare had felt the shadows reaching out to Luna, almost like an eager hound bounding towards it's would-be master. But it didn't seem like that evil force had truly claimed the princess either. At the last moment, Luna had rejected the presence that had tried to invade her mind and soul and had instead unleashed an even more unspeakably dreadful power from within. Just what kind of creature was she?

What exactly was this 'Nightmare Moon' that had awakened in the dark and burned away centuries of old ghosts and blood-stained sacrificial stone?

"I hate ponies so much sometimes," groaned the Candy Mare, rubbing her temples with her candy coated hooves. There was no real hope that she could sooth away the residual pain from losing a thousand surrogate bodies, not when they had all evaporated at once like that. She'd be feeling the ache of their loss for days. "They do seem to just love to pull new bullshit powers out of nowhere."

As the rotten revenant slowly stretched, she rose from her hiding place and slumped over to King Bullion's ruined throne, across which the tired Candy Mare draped herself. She felt uncharacteristically lethargic, her limbs heavy, like she was moving through pudding instead of air. As she tried to account for the feeling, a strange sound suddenly caught her attention. The Candy Mare turned her head slowly and peeked over the top of the throne, her long licorice hair spilling limply across the gore slick stone. Staring into the darkened hallway that led down into the crypt, she thought she heard the noise a second time. Despite the throbbing in her head, she listened intently, and at last caught the sound of a quiet sniffle.

The soft cadence of gentle weeping drifted from just beyond the shadows...

"Oh...no!" she cried indigently, her hackles rising. "Oh no no no no no! No you don't!"

The Candy Mare turned her back on the noise and settled down in the throne with a pout, crossing her forelegs across her chest as she sulked.

"I know this trick. I practically invented this trick! You make it sound like you're some lost or wounded child crying in the dark, I go to investigate, and then you get the jump on me. This is so insulting! I am actually insulted right now! You think you can trick me with this 'wHaT's tHat NoiSe? I bEtTeR gO cHeCk oN tHeM' nonsense right here and right now!? Nope! Nuh-uh! Not gonna happen! You're not gonna jump my candy coated behind that easily! If you want a piece of me, you can come out here and get it!"

As if accepting the invitation, Nightmare Moon suddenly stood before the candy coated corpse with a vicious grin plastered across her face, her horn wrapped in a nimbus of dark light pointed right between the Candy Mare's eyes. Without uttering so much as a word, a beam of magic shot from her horn and reduced Bullion's throne to a smoldering ruin. The Candy Mare had just barely dodged, assuming a twisted and contorted pose on the floor beside the charred remains of her stolen royal seat. Even so, she looked up at her attacker with her own manic grin, clearly pleased with this turn of events.

"Now that's more like it!" the Candy Mare growled, her sweet sugary exterior melting off of her bones and coating the ground beneath the princess's hooves instead. Mouths with needle sharp teeth erupted from the candified surface, snapping and biting to try and devour the alicorn from below!

Undeterred, Nightmare Moon took wing, rising into the air to escape her enemy's attack and launching a counter of her own as she rained down explosive orbs of magic. She went a step further, carpet bombing the entire room, but the Candy Mare shot up from the firestorm and clung to the ceiling with candy hooks that extended from her limbs. Hanging upside down, her licorice mane whipped out to wrap around the frozen bodies that hung there and, using them for purchase, pulled herself this way and that as she used them to dart away. Bobbing and weaving between the bodies Nightmare Moon gave chase, firing her magic randomly, unconcerned with what her shots did to the already desecrated corpses.

"Someone's a little hot under the collar! Let's see if we can cool you down!" shouted the Candy Mare as she took a firmer grip of two frozen corpses with her licorice tendrils, breaking the icy pair from the rafters at the knee to hurl them both at her pursuer.

Without a moments hesitation Nightmare Moon obliterated the cold cadavers, but as their remains rained down in frosty chunks of gore she had no choice but to halt her advance until the air was cleared. In the split second that the dark princess had dealt with the Candy Mare's frozen left-overs, the alicorn lost sight of her prey. It seemed the attack had just been a distraction to let the spook slip out of sight! Nightmare Moon hovered for a moment, uncertain, as the sounds of mocking child-like laughter echoed in the rafters.

"It will do you no good to hide from me," hissed Nightmare Moon, a forked tongue darting between her fangs. "Not here, not now. You can never escape!"

"Who said I was trying to escape?" came a gentle whisper in her ear as the corpse-cicle that hung right next to her broke it's frosty shell and wrapped it's ice coated limbs around the princess!

All around her the dead were coming to life, cracking loose from the ceiling as they crawled towards her, smothering the alicorn underneath their rotten flesh. Nightmare Moon was lost under the wriggling mass of pale bodies, at least briefly, before an explosion of un-light sent more icy chunks of dead ponies raining down to the floor below.

"You'll need to do better than that!" gloated Nightmare Moon, her eyes blazing with power.

"Oh, I intend to!" cried the Candy Mare gleefully from below. All around her an army of candy ghouls, former soldiers that she had stolen away from their camp in the night, had risen from their hiding places under the drifts of scarlet snow. Each of them was uniquely mutated, brandishing candy versions of the spears they had wielded in life that had now grown from their own bodies. "Soldiers of the Royal Guard, show your princess what you're made of!"

Striking like lightning, the candy ghouls hurled themselves into the air with unnatural speed on candy coated wings, surrounding Nightmare Moon on all sides. Their spears slammed home, impaling their former ruler from every direction, ripping an agonized scream from the alicorn's throat as her blood misted the freezing air. The long sharp blades sawed through meat and bone, flaying flesh and severing arteries, tearing the transfixed princess open. The Candy Mare danced below in delight, joyfully lolling out her long black and orange striped tongue to catch the droplets of her enemies life-blood as they fell like rain, the hot deluge tasting both salty and sweet!

But Nightmare Moon was not so easily felled. With a roar, a burning sphere of darkness enveloped her body, vaporizing the ghoulish guards and the hafts of their candy weapons along with them. Still, the damage had been done, and the broken shafts of candy spears now bristled all over her body, their candy coated blades buried deep inside her body.

"Second unit, rise!" snarled the Candy Mare, blood lust writ all over her face. One by one the piles of blood stained snow exploded as more candy ghouls rose from their cover. While the first wave had been armed with candy spears, these were equipped with candy bows strung with licorice draw stings. Each took careful aim with wickedly barbed peppermint arrows at the target above while, at the same time, sharp spikes of candy rose all over the Candy Mare's body as if she had become a candified porcupine! The spikes ran all along her back from her head down to her tail, leaving her veritably bristling with candy quills as she roared, "Volley!"

All at once, each candy coated soldier fired! Arrows of candy filled the air as the Candy Mare launched her own barbs along with them. It was Nightmare Moon's turn to dodge and weave in the rafters, but try as she might she could not hope to avoid every sugary dart. Under a steady fusillade, the alicorn's movements began to slow - her wings were torn to shreds as her life flowed faster from the many fresh wounds that were rent open all over her bleeding body from the cruelly penetrating shots that pierced every part of her. The thorn-like barbs hooked and tore at her flesh, stripping her hide so that the meat beneath glistened and steamed in the cold air.

At last, Nightmare Moon's strength gave out and she came crashing down to the floor in an ungainly heap.

"Hold your fire!" commanded the Candy Mare, with a triumphant grin. The pony predator stalked her fallen enemy as a big cat might stalk a wounded bird, still wary of any last minute tricks but plainly eager to make the kill, goaded on by the scent of the steaming crimson flow that pumped steadily out of the wounded royal's veins. The spreading pool of blood beneath Nightmare Moon seemed convincing enough to let condescension reign in the candy cannibals words as she said, "So this is how it ends. After all that sound and fury, you come to nothing. Just one more frightened sheep to the slaughter!"

"Is that... What you think I am?" moaned Nightmare Moon through ragged breaths. Despite the pain she was clearly in, she still smiled wickedly as her would be killers approach. "A black sheep?"

In reply the Candy Mare leaned down and lapped at the rapidly cooling blood that spread around the princess. Gulping the viscous viscera, letting the ruby droplets drain luxuriously down her throat, a smile of true satisfaction spread on the monster's gore slick face. She licked her blood stained candy corn teeth clean and sighed, eyes half lidded in contentment.

Tilting her head to one side, the Candy Mare answered "You all taste the same to me," She raised a forelimb, the leg lengthening into the shape of a huge executioners ax, the edge serrated along it's edge with sharp candy corn fangs. "Why, did you think you were something else? Something special?"

"Naturally," wheezed the dying princess, her eyes glazing over, but her grin never leaving her lips as she whispered, "I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Doesn't matter to me," countered the dead mare, cold indifference flooding her voice. "Meat is meat. It all cuts the same beneath the cleaver!"

With that, the curved ax blade fell with a crunch as it bit deep into Nightmare Moon's long, smooth neck.

The Candy Mare snapped awake, shock written across her face.

Her senses flowed back into the throne room, the flakes of gore stained snow drifting gently around her as she sat bolt upright in King Bullion's throne.

What had just happened?

Had she dozed off for a minute there?

There were lapses in her memory she sometimes couldn't account for, when the ceaseless hunger that drove her overrode her sense of self and she became little more than a killing engine, but this felt different. She had been locked in battle with an enemy but moments ago.

So what had happened to her?

That was when Nightmare Moon's head landed in her lap. This on its own would not have been that shocking, but what made the Candy Mare nearly jump out of her seat was when the head turned and looked up at her with it's dead eyes and, in her fathers voice, asked, "Why did you have to go and eat your papa, Pumpkin?"

With a yelp of surprise the Candy Mare flailed at the severed head and sent it flying across the room where it landed with a soft plop on its side, still facing towards her.

The decapitated head melted and morphed - It no longer bore Luna's features, but was instead a face from a lifetime ago that she had last seen in a candy shop in a long gone unicorn town. Cabbage Patch had sadness in his frost covered eyes as he said "I know things were tough on the farm. There were times your ma and I barely had anything to eat ourselves. But what little we had we made sure to give to you, love. So why then did you eat your daddy? Why did you gobble me up? Didn't we feed you enough?"

"Oh you bitch," whispered the Candy Mare under her breath, before continuing more loudly, "Illusion magic!? You're going to use illusions on me now? Do you seriously think that's going to save you? All you're going to do with this nonsense is piss me off, and I have to admit that's going to be quite the feat because I thought I was already about as pissed off as I could get! You keep up this kind of crap, we're going to be hitting levels of pissed off that have hear-to-fore been unachievable by ponykind!"

With that, the Candy Mare jumped off the throne and in midair an appendage morphed out of her back and came down like a hammer on the severed head, smashing it like an overripe watermelon. Grey matter and black blood spraying in every direction, but at least the despondent voice from her past was silenced. The Candy Mare looked around, certain that her enemy was still nearby, wary of any fresh tricks.

As she scanned the room, something else fell from above. At first the candy coated mare thought it was just one of the many corpses from her larder, until this one stood up jerkily without her command. Unlike the flash frozen cadavers, this corpse still had most of the meat on its bones and her long grey hair cascaded down from her head like a waterfall, hiding her features. A low death rattle rose from the dead pony's throat as it pointed a hoof at the Candy Mare, a single accusing eye blazing with hatred peeking out from between her greasy grey locks.

"Great. Just great," snarled the Candy Mare, seething. "Am I to be haunted by a number of spirits until I choose to repent my wicked ways? What is it now? Another ghost from my past come to chide me for being a naughty little foal?"

"You were never a foal," coughed the corpse in a raspy voice that made the Candy Mare narrow her eyes suspiciously. "At least you were no foal of mine. We raised you like you were our own, but the truth is you were the bastard child some unicorn noble fathered on my mother. We never learned who, but then those snooty horn heads were never concerned with the results of the 'liberties' that they liked to take with the help. Before she died in child birth, she made us swear never to tell you about your true parentage, or to let anyone else know you were as much a filthy half breed as the fake 'mama' who raised you."

"That's a lie!" roared the Candy Mare, her hair curling into a nest of angry vipers around her indignant face. If she was angry before, she was incensed now. "None of that is true!"

The grey corpse tottered towards her, then carefully brushed back it's long hair to reveal Strawberry Patch's face frozen in the moment that the heart attack had taken her. Despite the death mask of horror frozen on her face, she still managed a hideous dry laugh.

"Isn't it? Doesn't it line up with everything you feared? Don't you think it's the truth I never had the chance to tell you before you killed me? Part of you suspected that we were sisters, not mother and daughter. That's the reason you were able to come back the way you did - because you were half unicorn and had just that little extra bit of magic inside you that damned you to your current existence. You know, now that I'm dead, I actually do have a little insight into who it was that was responsible for both of us being born the way we were," the death mask turned into a nasty grin full of broken teeth. "Care to make a guess? Or should I just tell you what you already suspect? His name was..."

"No... Don't you say it. Don't you dare say it!" screamed the Candy Mare, gooey black tears forming in the corners of her lollipop eyes. Her licorice tendril hair lashed out, the razor sharp whips dicing the taunting corpse to bits. So what if she resembled her late mother? The real Strawberry Patch would have never spoken to her like this!

But destruction brought no relief from the wights final words.

As the shriveled body fell into pieces, it managed to croak out, "...Lemon Drop."

All was quiet in the throne room, the last echos of the departed illusion fading slowly into the freezing silence. The Candy Mare hung her head low, her eyes closed. The moment seemed to stretch into eternity. A cold wind moaned mournfully as it swept through the chamber.

The Candy Mare opened her eyes and gazed up at a giant cloaked figure that towered above her. The horn that peeked out beneath the hood of it's long robe, which writhed like a living shadow, nearly scraped the ceiling high above. Eyes glowing white peered down upon her as the figure spread massive skeletal wings that were composed of the bones of many smaller ponies, but feathered with plumes that sparkled like diamonds strewn across black velvet, midnight dusted with stars. A broach in the shape of a crescent moon glowed like the real thing at the colossal equine's throat.

"Hello Luna," greeted the Candy Mare in a subdued tone, her face emotionless and voice hauntingly calm. "I... Don't know what I'm going to do to you anymore. I think I've reached a point beyond hatred. Beyond pain. If your intention was to push me past my breaking point, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I was already broken before you started. I'm actually a little bit scared about what I'm about to do to you. I think it might be so awful that even I'm going to end up getting nightmares over it..."

With that, the facade of calm broke and the Candy Mare exploded into a howling tornado of twisted teeth and claws that ripped into the gigantic Alicorn. There were flashes of wings and insectile limbs, shapes like sharks mixed with bear traps and big cats. Great scythes lashed at the ends of licorice ropes and hooks of candy cane strung across taffy barbed wire, stretching and ripping as swarms of tiny wriggling creatures covered in thorns slithered into the titanic pony's every pore. Black and orange striped tongues dripping with acidic slime lapped at enormous wounds as chainsaw blades composed of candy corn fangs and bone bit deep into the giant's flesh.

Yet when the dust cleared, there still stood the towering image of the cloaked princess, unscathed.

The comparatively minuscule form of an exhausted Candy Mare huffed and puffed in frustration beneath her.

"Oh joy. Another illusion," exhaled the ex-pony between breaths that she didn't technically need, exhausted though she was. "I know you're still around here somewhere princess. No matter where you hide, or how far you run, I will find you and I will destroy you!"

"You have already lost," spoke the illusion in a dreamy monotone. "You're army of slaves have been freed, your curse expunged from Equestria, and any threat you once posed long forgotten. You were defeated long ago and you don't even know it. This moment, frozen in the place where you fell, is simply the one you have been forced to repeat over and over again. Each time forgetting where it is you truly are so your fears can haunt you afresh. Each time remembering only too late that it is about to begin all over again. I would pity you, if a creature such as you were worthy of such."

All around Luna, the bodies suspended in the rafters begin to descend. Only they were no longer the half frozen and partially eaten corpses they had been before but instead they were each wearing matching purple waist-coats and tiny round spectacles that did nothing to hide the frigid blue ice chips of eyes that stared coldly down at the shivering Candy Mare. Now each and every one of them had become the same yellow unicorn, sporting immaculately coiffed mane and lips curled in perpetual sneers. As their hooves touched the ground the rocks beneath the Candy Mare's own hooves fell away and she found herself suddenly at the bottom of an all too familiar pit, the skeletal remains of dead fillies and colts all around her.

Before she could reply, the candy peeled off of her body to reveal a bloated, half rotting form beneath. The Candy Mare opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out were ruined black teeth that streamed from her maw along with a steady flow of black, sludgy drool. Everything hurt, and the stench was unbearable, made all the worse because she knew it was coming from her own rotten flesh. The tortured mare turned her crusted eyes upwards to her tormentors and could not suppress a whimper as fear shot through her over-burdened heart. An army of Lemon Drop's stared unblinkingly upon her, their gaze dissecting Pumpkin Patch as if she were a bug trapped beneath a glass.

"Welcome to your nightmare," the haughty unicorn's spoke in one voice, their mouths never moving. "I don't believe you're going to like it. But I think you will find that you will feel right at home."

The Candy Mare snapped awake, shock written across her face.