Where was it? Where was it?! The now 14 year old rifled through her sister's supply chest. In recent months Rarity had needed Sweetie Bell's help around the boutique. So the sight of the young unicorn touching her sister's things was a common one. Despite initial worries it actually worked out quite well. Sweetie didn't have a natural talent for it like her sister but was still able to be helpful enough to where it felt strange when she wasn't working in the workshop with Rarity. But right now, she was looking for a very specific spool of ribbon that Rarity kept in an old supply chest in a storage closet.
"Sweetie?"
A voice called from downstairs. Sweetie Bell sighed and hastened her search.
"O-One moment Rarity, I'm still looking!"
Fabric, a package of sequins, pre-made bows, ribbon! Wait,no it's unspooled.
"Sweetie, come downstairs please."
With a sigh of defeat, she closed the chest and walked downstairs. Rarity was standing by a mannequin wearing an unfinished dress, her back facing Sweetie Bell. The young girl merely stood at the base of the stairs. Staring at her older sister's beautiful indigo curls. Indigo curls that had streaks of grey in them. Sensing her presence Rarity turned around to face Sweetie Bell. Sweetie was careful to stare only at her necklace.
"I'm sorry about that Sweetie, turns out the ribbon was just out of my view."
Rarity gestured over to a small table just to her right. The ribbon itself was rather unassuming. Sweetie wouldn't have been able to notice it if she tried. Pushing away the sick feeling she got from thinking about how bad her sister's vision had become, she giggled.
"Oh great, I was starting to worry that I missed it in the sea of old ribbons you have up there."
Rarity laughed, and her necklace moved with her laughter. It was soon followed by a series of coughs, and her necklace moved with those too. After clearing her throat she spoke.
"Well no need to worry."
Sweetie Bell held her breath when she felt her sister's cold hand tilt up her face, so she could look her in the eyes. Her green eyes met a cloudy dark blue.
"Worry's bad for the skin."
She smiled a stiff smile all while the stitches around her mouth ripped slightly.
Sweetie Bell was restless in her room that night. She lay over the covers looking up at the ceiling of her bedroom. She thought she had gotten used to Rarity's "condition". It's been five years since the incident. Rarity and her friends had been in a fight against an old unicorn who was trying to consume the life-force of other ponies. They managed to beat her as usual but not before she cast a spell on them. Twilight, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie and Rarity had been more or less cursed to age rapidly. At first it was terrifying. Pinkie started to lose her memory, Rainbow started to get pains in her joints, Twilight and Fluttershy started to lose hair and Applejack’s liver even began to shut down. With some careful work from Twilight it was discovered that the spell would only activate if you think of it. The more you pre-occupy your mind about it, the worse it became. It was as if the curse had been lifted, although the damage had been done. While it was easier for the others to just forget about the spell and move on with their lives, Rarity began to spiral. She got a few grey hairs and began to stress, then the stress got worse when wrinkles appeared on her face. Even with Twilight saying that she just had to forget about it it didn’t help. It only got worse and worse. To the point where she looked like she would wither away. Rarity hardly left her home after that. Then she did something. Something that seemed to ease her worries and dissipate the spell. Something that her friends completely shut her out for. Sweetie Bell still doesn’t know exactly what she did. But now she can’t even stand to look at her. So she doesn’t. She doesn't mention it. She doesn't acknowledge it. Although as the girl lay there in her room she wondered if she was doing the right thing. Rarity seemed happy enough. She moved to sit on the side of her bed staring forlornly at her feet. She seemed happy but is she… okay? Her physical health had been declining rapidly. Her mental health was…
"I'm thirsty."
She lied to herself. Something to get her mind off of these swirling thoughts surrounding her sister. She made her way downstairs, using her magic to light her way. Glancing over at Opal's cat bed expecting to see the fluffy outline of the cat. But it was empty.
“Opal?"
Where was she? Just as Sweetie Bell was about to shrug off the absence of the cat she heard footsteps. Judging by the click clack of high heels, it was her sister.
"Rotten little vermin!" she spat.
Sweetie Bell was confused. Nervous even. What was going on? She extinguished the light of her magic. Using the darkness as cover she crept towards the light of the kitchen. She saw Rarity, back towards the door scrubbing violently at a spot on the floor, a gallon of bleach beside her. Resisting the urge to call out to her sister she watched quietly. Rarity stood up and paused suddenly and turned to the doorway. Sweetie Bell quickly ducked behind the entrance, hoping that she didn’t see her.
She didn’t move until she heard her sister give an exasperated sigh and walk away. The young teen peeked into the kitchen. Rarity had left the rag she was using and the bleach on the floor. The kitchen smelled of bleach and something else that she couldn’t quite place. She walked closer to get a better look at the place on the floor where Rarity had been scrubbing. Once she got a better look at it she let out an involuntary gasp. Despite her best efforts it was clear that the normally spotless marble flooring had been stained with blood. It was on the rag as well. Sweetie Bell hoped it wasn’t blood. Maybe it was dye for one of her fabrics. But unfortunately that theory was squashed by the smell. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. So she carefully stepped around the mess looked to where her sister had gone. The basement door was normally locked whenever Sweetie had tried to open it, her curiosity gnawing at her whenever she was told it was “just storage”. If it was just storage then her sister shouldn’t have cared so much to keep it locked. But now all curiosity she had held for the basement had fled her, replaced with fear. The door lay open. Normally she would have called it quits here. But the absence of their beloved cat clawed at her. If she stopped here she had a feeling she wouldn’t ever get an answer as to where the pampered feline had gone to. Steeling herself she walked towards the stairs, it’s dark abyss swallowing her. Step by step.
Deciding to forgo her mage light she crept downstairs almost immediately being hit by a rusty smell. She recognized it as blood. It was overpowering. There must have been an accident. That was all she could think of to rationalize the smell, the bloody floor, Rarity’s urgency. But when she finally got to the bottom of the stairs all theories and explanations left her head. It looked like the inside of a butcher’s shop. A bloody tool bench, mannequins draped in the skins of some animal. An industrial sink stained in even more blood, next to a floor length mirror. Turning her head in horror she saw more animal skin hanging out to dry in a way that someone would hang clothes. More tubs of a clear white liquid that the smell could only tell her was bleach. The girl was frozen in fear, shock even. Paralyzed she could only stand still as tears leaked from her eyes. What is this? What’s going on? Her spiraling thoughts only broken by the pained cry of an animal. Her head snapped to where it was coming from seeing a small shape on the tool bench. She walked closer, covering her mouth in shock to muffle her impending sobs. It was Opal. The poor creature was barely clinging to life. Almost unrecognizable as the once beautiful white fur had been stripped from her body alongside her skin. Leaving her to shake and twitch violently as even the stagnant air burned her now exposed flesh.
“O-opal..” Sweetie Bell stumbled backwards onto the floor scooting herself away from the sight of her flayed pet. Sobs wracking her small body as she mourned for the agony of her cat.
“I knew I heard something.”
Eyes full of tears she turned to look at her sister who had just come through a door that she had missed. Her blurry vision thankfully obscuring her sisters face. Full of despair she spoke.
“R-rarity, Opal she-” She could barely get the words out. Rarity turned to the workbench and tsked.
“Oh dear, I thought it was dead before I started.” She said while walking over to the animal. Sweetie froze. Before she…started?
Rarity unceremoniously grabbed Opal by her head and twisted it violently. The sound of bones cracking marking the end of the cats suffering.
“Rarity! What did you do?!”
Sweetie Bell knew exactly what just happened. The sorrow of knowing her cat’s death was an agonizing one scrambling her brain.
Rarity turned to Sweetie Bell. She rubbed her head as if this entire thing was a mild annoyance.
“I was going to tell you that Opal ran away. But there’s no sense in keeping this from you now. She scratched my face! In my rage I hit her and…,” She looked at the corpse of her pet. “Well, I thought she was dead. She hit the counter so hard and then the blood. It’s going to be such a pain to get that out of the floor. Ahem. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Sweetie bell just stared at her sister. Surely she didn’t think that was the only thing she needed to explain. But when Rarity didn’t continue she took a deep breath and spoke up.
“W-what is this place? Why is there-” she felt sick and brought her hand to her mouth, unable to continue. Rarity sighed and picked up a weird looking knife from the workbench. She stared at it as she talked.
“Five years ago me and the girls met an old unicorn. She called herself ‘The Lady of Decay’ she was siphoning the lifeforce of other people to try and reclaim her youth. At the time I found her whole M.O kind of silly. Aging is a natural part of life. The worst thing you can do it try to fight it. I knew that when I got older I would want to approach it with grace and style” she flourished her sentence with a twirl.
“Unfortunately she had other plans for us. It all happened so fast. I couldn’t stand it. Looking like an old hag at 26! It was humiliating. The more I withered the more I understood that unicorn.” She walked over to one of the hanging animal skins and stroked it. “I came up with my own solution. If I couldn’t appreciate my own beauty anymore, I’ll appreciate others.”
Sweetie Bell finally realized she was still on the floor and stood up with weak legs. Her sisters words swirling in her mind.
“Others..?”
Rarity looked at her and smiled.
“Yes. Others. It really is such a miracle that I already had such pale skin. All I had to do was clean and bleach.”
Sweetie Bell looked at the skins that weren’t pale like her sister. She saw colors that she hadn’t seen in a while, but were eerily familiar to her.
Her breathing picked up. She looked over at her sister on the verge of panic. Those weren’t animal skins. They were other people. She had human skins on her. She was using human skins “fix” her body. Her sister didn’t seem to notice her epiphany and continued to talk.
“I’d say the biggest trouble was making this wig. You see my hair fell out a while ago and I couldn’t bare to part with my curls. So I gathered up the pieces of my hair and voila!”
“B-But why Opal…why would you-”
Rarity looked at herself in the mirror and messed with a feature of her face. Prodding at her stitches.
“I wouldn’t have gotten so angry if she hadn’t ruined my skin! This is new for crying out loud!”
Sweetie backed up. New. Rarity had killed someone recently. When Rarity turned around she finally noticed Sweetie bell’s aversion to her. Stepping closer she asked;
“Sweetie? What’s wrong?”
Sweetie started crying in earnest again.
“Rarity, y-you’ve killed people!”
Rarity’s voice softened. She reached out to Sweetie.
“Oh come now darling, it’s not that bad.”
Sweetie smacked her hand away.
“Stay away from me!”
Rarity shook her head.
“I was going to wait to tell you. I had a feeling you wouldn’t take it well.”
Sweetie Bell looked at the knife that was still in her hand. Deciding that she needed to get out of there. She bolted for the stairs.
“Sweetie Bell! Come back!”
She could hear her sister behind her. Sweetie Bell had a slight advantage speed-wise as she was still in her nightgown and had bare feet as apposed to Rarity’s fashionable skirt and heels. She made it all the way to the front door. Scrambling to get it open she had just been hit with the cool night air when she felt her entire body hit the floor. Rarity had tackled her. She began to struggle and shout.
“Let me go! Stop!”
Rarity had pinned her wrists to either side of her and was glaring at Sweetie Bell who now had no choice but to stare back at her sister’s mangled face. Her eye sockets were sunken in with pink flesh hanging off of them.The stitches around her left eye having been torn open by their cat leaving exposed flesh in it’s wake, bisecting her eyebrows.The skin around her mouth was torn at the seams, barely held together by purple thread which streached the skin from her cheeks, leaving muscle behind. The purple stitches keeping Rarity’s skin on her body was all across her. A particularly loose bit on her left arm. All of Rarity’s disgusting beauty was highlighted by the moonlight.
“Sweetie Bell! This is wholly uncalled for! I just wanted to share something with you!”
Her sister was scolding her. Scolding her?
“You’re a monster!”
Sweetie snapped. Eyes filled with tears of rage and anguish.
“You’ve killed people! You’ve killed Opal! You’re a monster! A hideous monster!”
Rarity looked shocked. Surprised even.
“You’re probably going to kill me to!”
Sweetie Bell sobbed openly, tears cascading down her face. Glaring as angrily as she could at her sister. All her fear, all her worry and all her sadness consuming her as she had held it all back for years.
Rarity just stared like she had been wounded. She loosened her grip on Sweetie Bell’s arms. Taking this as her only chance she grabbed at the loose bit of skin on Rarity’s left arm and tore. It ripped clean off spraying blood on both of them, leaving only bone and meat on that arm.
The woman screamed out in pain as she let go of Sweetie to grab at her exposed bone. Sweetie didn’t hesitate and ran. She ran as far as her legs would take her. Tears burning her cheeks and lungs as she took off into the night.
Rarity could only watch as Sweetie escaped. Emotions flooding her almost immediately.
“Oh, Sweetie Bell. I could never hurt you.”
She turned her face away from the light of the moon and cried. As a shadow stood over her.
Author's Note
This is a human AU, the word Unicorn is synonymous with the word spellcaster. They were supposed to have horns but I forgot to draw the horn in my art so they don't have horns.
Here's a clear look at Rarity
