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

All the ponies that were gathered in Trottingham town square wore mirrored expressions of shock.

There were some that still had the dried remains of vomit around their mouths and staining their festive holiday cloths, brown sludgy stains from regurgitated gingerbread and hot cocoa that they had spewed up at the more grotesque parts of truly horrible story. Some of the adults in the crowd held their hooves pressed against the ears of the fillies and colts nearby in vain, as it was sadly clear from their traumatized expressions that the children had heard everything. The color had drained from their little faces, and the tracks of tear led from their huge wobbly eyes. The attempt to shield them from the deranged tale the snow pony had weaved had been a fruitless effort.

"And that was the story of the Most Horrible Hearth's Warming EVER! Wasn't that a hoot kids!?" the Snow Mare demanded to know with a wild look in her swirling lollipop eyes. "Especially that part where the so called 'heroes' dismembered the Candy Mare and ripped out her heart! Shoving all those twitching and squirming pieces of her body into a burlap sack to carry back with them was pretty funny too, huh!? And lets not forget the part where Luna basically locked her inside a living hell inside of her own mind! What a merry tale, right!?"

"I don't get it,” answered the tiny filly from way back in the prologue. You know the one, the cute little kid bundled up under so many layers of winter apparel that it was hard to tell if there was actually a filly under there at all. ”Why does the Candy Mawe want to kill evewy pony so badly? What does she have to gain, orw to lose? And the machinations of Pwincess Luna's cwafting a sleeping spell that worwks on the undead but not using it to defeat the Candy Mawe immediately completely ewudes me!"

The Snow Mare gradually tilted her head further and further to the side until, with an audible snap, it was perpendicular with the ground and just on eye level with the curious little filly. The snow pony then then leaned towards the precocious little tot and took a massive bite out of her head! The hole that was left showed that there was indeed a brain in there, although now the entire front portion of it had been completely removed in that single chomp. Despite this, the filly still stood fully conscious and very much alive - It's amazing, but the equine body can still live without the frontal lobe, ya know?

"And that was the story of the Most Horrible Hearth's Warming EVER!" the Snow Mare began again, though her mouth was filled with the filly's grey matter. She chewed and swallowed without missing a beat, then continued, "But the Legends of Equestria were wrong! The Candy Mare was not defeated that day. She lived on!"

"Uhh - In the heawts and minds of us all?" burbled the little brain damaged filly, drool seeping from the corner of her mouth, her face and cloths now stained red with the steady flow of blood from her impromptu lobotomy.

"No! Inside a bunch of stupid statues scattered all over Equestria, gathering power!" howled the frosty pony, blood flecking her candy corn teeth as she cackled insanely. "That's why I've had to spend my time traveling from town to town! They thought that sacrificing treats to those ugly images of Nightmare Moon would keep the candy curse at bay, but all they did was ensure the Candy Mare would have to track them down to retrieve her body parts. In truth, they just guaranteed her eventual return! MY RETURN!"

As she said this, the monstrous mare tossed aside all pretense, shaking the frosting of snow off of her chaotic candy coated body, before the eyes of the now panicked crowd. The Candy Mare suddenly began to grow various candy limbs made of a myriad of different confections from her flesh, each and every one clearly designed to elicit the maximum amount of pain and fear from her victims before she would snuff the life out of them. As she did this, she eyed all that were gathered before her with malice and hunger in her eyes.

There were gasps and shudders from the audience, but they were all too stunned by what was happening to even think to run away, instead rooted in place by terror all they could do was shiver where they stood. Held captive as they were by, a festival of slaughter and gore ensued as the Candy Mare wordlessly launched herself into the crowed. Sweeping barbed tendrils and jagged claws through the pony's soft yielding flesh, their body parts rose into the air as dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly, blood spraying in every direction as a deluge of limbs and heads fell to the ground. Those that died quickly in that first onslaught were the lucky ones, as the Candy Mare grew more creative with her kills as time went along, bored with simply slaughtering the gathered sheep.

Holiday decorations were twisted around the throats of an entire choir, silencing them as their gasping faces struggled to draw in a last breath that would never come. Stallions dressed like reindeer were hoisted into the air and ripped in half, their still twitching meat hung like sides of venison from candy cane hooks or roasted over the fires of the now burning shops. The fillies and colts were plucked from the arms of their shrieking families and smashed through the frozen surface of the shallow pool of water in the town square's fountain, their little hooves kicking and thrashing about as the tendrils of the Candy Mare's mane forcibly held their heads under water until they were still. Those that tried to flee soon found themselves dragged back into the blood soaked town square, where they were slowly sliced into pieces, their body parts stuffed inside of stockings and the boxes that formerly contained gifts that would now never be given to their friends who lay dead or dying in the snow. The Candy Mare threw these down the chimney's of the houses of ponies that had been home this whole time, flushing them out into the streets to take their part in the madness and death that wassailed through their streets!

After each and everypony nearby had been slain, in manners both elaborate and profane, the Candy Mare once more began to sing.

'♪♫Hearth's Warming Eve is filled with presents♪♫'
'Some take you by surprise'
'A story shared by a stranger'
'That makes sure your township dies'

'Sometimes you let go of the past'
'Enjoy the present while it lasts'
'And really it's not that much to ask'
'With dead friends by your side~'

'Now it's time to celebrate!'

'♪♫Hearths Warming Eve is here once again!♪♫' gasped the choir that had been strangled to death, their bodies still dangling from the garlands wrapped around their throats.

'♪♫All together, feeling great!♪♫' the Candy Mare roared with laughter as the dead started to rise and hunt down the living.

'♪♫Hearths Warming Eve is here once again!♪♫' bubbled the drowned children from the fountain.

'♪♫Can hardly wait!♪♫' the Candy Mare exulted, joyfully and triumphantly, 'We'll party 'til late! This world will share your fate!'

Then all the dead and dismembered ponies sang out as one!

'♪♫Hearth's Warming Eve is here once a—♪♫'
'Happy, happy Hearth's Warming Eve'
'Happy, happy Hearth's Warming Eve'
'Hearth's Warming Eve will end once again!'

The familiar and jolly carol now forever twisted rang out over the dark and bloodstained rubble of the once quaint little hamlet. What cheer there had been here is now dark and perverse, the severed limbs of ponies roasting over open fires and eyeballs floating in the cider, there is no comfort left that can stave off the chill of the grave. The tinsel and fairy lights hang in filthy broken tatters, the former burning while the latter spark and pop, looking like the decorations that would be put out for an older and much darker feast from primordial times held in honor of wicked gods of anguish and despair. A few survivors scamper from store to burning store, trying to run and hide from the candy ghouls that joyfully give chase. They totter through the streets, but their chances of making it through the night are slim at best, their life expectancy as fleeting as that of a single snowflake drifting serenely through the night sky that now flashes to steam over the burning rooftops of the dying town.

The little lobotomized filly, still alive though now incapable of feeling the horror of her surroundings, perhaps says it best as she says in a dull monotone, "Hearth's Warming Eve is wuined forever."

"A Horrible Hearth's Warming to all!" snarled the Candy Mare, dancing about the no longer frozen fountain that instead flows with the blood of her victims, their bodies dead still bobbing on the surface. "And to all a good Fright!"