Cozy's Inferno: a Journey through the Darkest Void

Cozy Glow

Geryon took us down the abyss into an absolute darkness not even the eyes of Minos could illuminate. For it was not simply darkness, but emptiness. At that point Geryon left us to our own devices, calling us fools one final time before leaving. According to Helel we had entered the final region of Hell, Tartarus, the namesake of the prison in Equestria where I spent many months. In order to reach the 8th circle we needed to navigate this darkness. The only thing visible in the void were flickers of light that vaguely resembled eyes. At first there were only a few, but more and more appeared as they noticed our presence, the flickers of light came closer and closer until one brushed up against me, I felt drowsy and soon lost consciousness.

I screamed and suddenly, I opened my eyes and found myself in a luxurious satin bed. Thank Celestia it was only a dream. I tried to remember where I was, and more importantly, who I was. The room around me was just as luxurious as the bed, with wardrobes made of exotic wooden materials and portraits of myself at different points of my life adorning the walls, many of which wore ornate crowns depicting a star that resembled Twilight’s cutie mark. Then everything came back to me, after I trapped Twilight and her friends in Tartarus and drained magic from the lands, ponies had turned to me in this time of crisis and Celestia elected me the next ruler.

The only form of magic that had survived was the magic of friendship, all flowing from the bonds I had made with the people. Making me, the Empress of Friendship, the sole source of magic in the lands. Ever since that day I had been the beloved monarch of Equestria, ruling and eternal paradise where everypony and creature looked up to me. The magic that flowed through me allowed me to raise the sun and moon, and to provide the magic necessary to control the weather and make plants grow. Of course, I could choose to withhold that magic to any creature I desired, if they had done something that especially displeased me, but it was an uncommon occurrence, the people adored their Empress, as of yet no one had bothered looking into the disappearance of the former Princess of Friendship, not even Celestia. Which was lucky, as I dreaded what would happen if my scheme were to be uncovered, perhaps I would even lose the love of the people. Some days I even regretted ascending to power through nefarious means, but that’s regret was easily drowned out by the cheers of the masses. As I had since proven myself to be the best ruler Equestria ever had, I was even more popular than Celestia or Twilight ever was.

Soon Aurora rushed through the doors of my bedroom, Aurora had died when we both were young, but since I ascended to my position as the Empress of Friendship, I had used my magic to bring her back to me. And since she was brought back, she had ever been my loyal retainer. Aurora told me she had heard me scream and wondered if I was feeling alright, asking if I had any nightmares. I told her about my strange dream, navigating through a nightmarish underworld. Aurora’s face went white as I told her about my nightmare.

“That strange, I had a similar nightmare, being transformed into a tree and trapped in this abominable underworld, but you saved me. Yet there is something about it that seemed familiar, like a long-forgotten memory rather than just a dream.”

I asked her if perhaps it was a memory from the time, she was dead, but she told me she still didn’t remember anything from the time, but that it was possible that this horrible place in our dreams was the afterlife she was confined to. Not that she could understand why, she had never done anything in her life worthy of such an awful punishment.

The situation with the nightmares was strange enough for me to inquire if any among my court have had similar dreams. But most of them had slept rather well lately with minimal, if any, nightmares. With one exception, my loyal advisor Sunset Shimmer. Who recalled strange dreams matching mine exactly, the events of the dream aligned perfectly with eachother. That was a fact that I considered quite disturbing. What were the odds of us having the exact same dream at the exact same time? Yet, I tried my best to forget the nightmares and keep on living my life as Equestria’s ruler. Yet despite this existence being everything I ever wanted, it felt empty, hollow, somehow. And I could not put my finger on why. My thoughts came back to the strange dreams, preventing me from fully embracing my reality, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was fake somehow. Maybe this was the dream I needed to wake up from. Yet I kept ignoring these instincts that told me this felt wrong and continued to bask in the adoration of my subjects.

Today, the people threw a parade in my honor, ponies marching down the streets of Canterlot praising my name. The high point being them unveiling a massive statue of myself in the center of town, depicting me as a fully grown mare, an alicorn wearing my crown, the Element of Magic and looking all majestic and regal. Yet when I laid my eyes upon the statue I got this ineffable sense of dread, which couldn’t quite explain. Despite its massive size, the statue almost appeared too lifelife, like a pony trapped in stone rather than a stone construct. I had a vague memory of spending time as a statue, being trapped in a stone prison, alone with your own thoughts. Yet I knew that this didn’t happen. I couldn’t quite understand my contradictory memories. I did my best to hide my dread and thank the people for the statue, after all, they had the best of intentions, and I couldn’t quite explain my sense of unease.

I confided in Aurora and Sunset about my general sense of wrongness about my current existence. Aurora told me that perhaps I was suspicious because things were going so well, and this wasn’t something I was used to. After all, I had suffered the trauma of losing a close friend as a young filly, which had spurned me to try to reach these great heights of power in the first place, but that there was one part of myself that questioned whenever I was even worthy of all this adoration. I wonder if Aurora suspected the truth, that I had gained this power by nefarious means. Sunset on the other hoof agreed with me that something felt off about her current existence. Sunset had been one of Celestia’s students and the heiress to the noble Blaze family, blood relatives to Celestia herself. She had this position together with her sister in anything but blood, Twilight Sparkle, who Celestia had favored as an heir because of her moral character and capacity for magic. But with the disappearance of Twilight Sparkle, Celestia was forced to look for a successor elsewhere. Sunset would’ve almost definitely been chosen to be her heir if not for Celestia discovering yours truly, who had established herself as the headmare of the School of Friendship and the most beloved filly in the land. If Sunset had any resentment towards me as a result, she didn’t show it. She had served me so well that she was in the run of being elevated to alicorn status to rule alongside me, and she knew it. She did tell me that she agreed that it felt like things were too good to be true.

Eventually, Aurora relented and told me:

“You’re right, this is too good to be true, I can’t think of a single thing wrong with my life. Except for a fact I can’t shake the nightmares. The truth is that it scares me, while this reality does seem like a dream, if the other possibility is true, then my true reality is a nightmare beyond recognition. No, if my reality is to be a nightmare, I prefer a pleasant dream.”

Some part of me agreed with her, some part of me wanted to keep living in this reality forever, despite my doubts about its authenticity. I didn’t know why it felt like a dream, but it did, perhaps because things work really going too well to be believable.

It was at that point a blinding light appeared before me, a divine figure surrounded by a multitude of Pegasi-like wings and its body covered with glowing eyes. Beholding this figure should’ve been a nightmare, yet there was an ethereal beauty to it, like part of me considered this featureless monstrosity of light the height of unearthly beauty. The figure seemed familiar somehow, I recognized it from the nightmare, then the figure spoke with a soft voice that yet radiated authority.

“Wake up, the Abyss is seeking to trap you in your heart’s desire to prevent our escape. If you don’t reject it, you will be trapped here forever until your soul is devoured by malicious spirits.”

I recognized this voice, Helel, though, more powerful and more complete than I had ever known them. Was this Lucifer the Morningstar, Promethius or whatever other names this figure had in their full splendor? I recognized they spoke the truth and I did my best to reject my current reality and return to the nightmare in which I was trapped. This dream was everything I ever wanted and I had a tear in my eye when I truly embraced that it wasn’t real, Aurora and Sunset were also crying. We cried on each-others shoulders as the dream surrounding us faded away and we were back in the endless void.

Helel

I remembered the Second War in Heaven where brother fought brother, a conflict that had followed the Titanomachy where Zeus and the Olympians had established themselves as the de facto rulers of the universe. This order would be all thrown out with the second war. I remember the day when my sibling, Epimetheus led a rebellion against Zeus in the name of their own version of justice and order, feeling that the Olympians had acted immorally with impunity for far too long. It was hard to deny that Epimethius didn’t have a point in that regard, but Epimethius had became an even worse tyrant than Zeus ever was. Their tyranny only stopped by an alliance of Cthonian deities, led by yours truly, Hades, Thanatos and Lamia. Also known as Pluto, Samael and Lilith.

The result of this grueling conflict had been the elevation of myself, the one called Prometheus, Lucifer and Ahriman, to the position of supreme being, though I prefer to go by my original name, Helel. With the couples Hades and Persephone and Thanatos and Lamia ruling the Underworld. My brother forever locked in the Dark Heart of Tartarus together with the Titans who sided with Kronus. Yet I could not summon much sympathy for my tyrannical sibling, I needed to do what I needed to do to keep them, and their co-conspirators trapped, including Ares and Athena, who went by Michael and Uriel during the war. The only problem being that if they ever got out, the heart of the abyss would have twisted them into unholy abominations, much more twisted than they ever were before. A possibility I had to block from my mind as even thinking about it inspired a sense of panic.

Unlike my brother I saw a little point in enforcing undue order. Under my rule, mortals and Malakhim alike would be free to do as they wish with little to no consequences. Some, like Epimetheus’ would consider such a lax rule a miscarriage of justice. After all, murderers and rapists would get off scot-free, at least as far as the afterlife were concerned, all souls getting to spend time in either Hades’s paradise of Elysium or by my side on Mount Olympus. But I preferred to leave mortal justice in the hands of mortals, let them punish their own criminals. The main problem being that bad actors among my own, like Asmodeus were hard to keep under control. Part of me felt that if I started to enforce punishments for breaking the few rules I had, I would be no better than my brother. No, whatever consequences their actions would have on mortals, it would be fleeting, all sorrows swept away in the afterlife. How did it matter if someone significant ever got murdered if they were to be reunited in the afterlife? Mortal existence was so brief, so fleeting, it hardly mattered at all.

Yet despite everything I was starting to have doubts. Half remembered truths started to come to me, memories of myself being trapped in the Heart of Darkness in Tartarus and having every ounce of hope drained from your soul. But this could also be true, could it? My side had achieved victory in the war, for the consequences of losing were too dire to even imagine. Epimethius would have sought to remove free will from the universe in order to shape into their perfect idea of order, anyone seen as less than perfect condemned to a fate worse than death. With time, I started to encounter others who had memories of this other reality, the reality where we lost the war. One being a daughter of Samael and Lilith, Jezebel, who lived in the realm of the Lilim in the Underworld, a carnal paradise that catered to all earthly desires. Jezebel told me she also remembered the Underworld warped in the twisted image of Yaldabaoth. Another being the pair of Orpheus and Euridice, a son of Apollo and a nymph. When his beloved died, Orpheus had successfully brought Euridice back from the underworld, to live a long and fulfilling life together before being brought to Elysium in death. Orpheus said he remembered a different version of their story, where he had failed to save Euridice and was trapped in a far darker version of the underworld. This was what really got me thinking. It seemed I wasn’t alone in remembering things differently.

I tried to think back on these different, contradictory memories. What was the last thing I remembered? Yes, we had just entered Tartarus and the void populated by the… That was it…Djinn… Beings with the power to trap others in a reality where all their wishes came true while they feasted on their souls. While it pained me greatly, this reality wasn’t what it seems to be, the war was yet to be won and I had to return to reality to fight it. I remember the people who had helped me on this journey, other than Orpheus, Euridice and Jezebel. What were the names again? Yes, Cozy Glow and Sunset Shimmer, residents of a realm called Equestria. Not to forget Aurora, a friend of Cozy she had rescued from eternal torment. I had to tell them the truth of their current predicament and snap them out of the illusion.