Equestria Copes

Lucifer carried the other two down the stairs, pointing out various landmarks. There was a river of molten gold flowing between the legs of a statue to Plutus, there were ponies beating each other with whatever they could find to take hold of large bags of... well, something, but Lucifer did not say what, and then there were others throwing coins at anypony who approached. Not giving them coins, but throwing them, as if projectiles.

The stairs didn't go down much longer after that, as they couldn't. A festering, stinking black marsh made everything flat for a time. If the stairs has continued down, they'd be neck-deep in mud within seconds.

"Is this it?" asked Tirek. "Are we at the bottom?"

"Oh, hells, no!" chuckled Lucifer. "This is just a mire we have to cross."

"It smells like shit," grunted Cozy. "Can somepony fan the air in front of my nose?"

"I certainly can," smiled Lucifer, wafting the stench closer to her face. "Better?"

She shook her head, her cheeks puffed out as if she was holding her breath.

"Well, here, how about I skip the wafting entirely?"

Dangling her upside down, he lowered her face to just above the surface of the mire, something which she vehemently objected to, but without words. A tiny splotch ended up on her nose, so ridiculously pungent that she could smell it even without breathing. And she couldn't wipe it off, either, as her hooves were bound. She looked up at Lucifer, pleading with him to stop this, but he wasn't paying attention. He was looking ahead, as was Tirek. Cozy turned her face in the same direction and saw what they were looking at; Another guy with another boat.

"Good afternoon, Phlegyas," waved Lucifer. "I see you've upgraded."

The boatman looked up and nodded. "Skiff was nice, but an unruly passenger sank it about a fortnight ago." He pointed off into the mire, where a barge was half-sunk in the water. "Had to replace it, and I figured I'd go with a catamaran this time."

"Looks nice," nodded Lucifer. "So, we need a ride..."

"Say no more. Hop on."

They climbed aboard and the boat began to move across the mud. Mud was more apt than water, as the churning of the ponies in the mire had kicked up a fair amount of sludge from the bottom of the swamp. Some of them tried to climb up, only to end up whacked with an oar by the ferryman.

Little was said as the boat spent several minutes crossing the Stygian mire until it landed at a brick wall with an iron gate. Once on the other side, the stairs resumed, past a city of ponies hanging upside-down. Many were spouting nonsense, and others were speaking plain Ponish. Most notably, there were figures denying that Twilight could ever become a princess, because she was born a unicorn noble, and nobles cannot grow to be princesses, just as unicorns cannot grow to become alicorns.

As soon as they were out of earshot, they came to yet another river. This one, thankfully, had a bridge, rather than a boat. However, halfway across the bridge, Lucifer stopped.

"Did you forget something?" asked Tirek. "We can go back."

"I've forgotten much of the millennia that I've been active. Who knows if I've just forgotten something because it just wasn't important anymore? But no, that's not why I'm stopping."

"Then why are you stopping?"

Rather than speak his answer, Lucifer just let go of Tirek and shrugged, letting the centaur roll down his arm and over the restraining rail of the bridge. Tirek landed in the boiling red river below, and as he bobbed up to gasp for air, he was shot with a barbed arrow from the shore of the river. A hunting party of other centaurs watched from the riverbank, their bows at the ready for whenever Tirek breached the surface.

"Welcome to the home of the recklessly violent," called Lucifer after him. "It may be a bit difficult to hear me, but since you were so keen on starting a bloodbath in life, you're going to be bathing in this pool of spilled blood for the remainder of your sentence. The guards here will make sure you stay in the bath until you're scrubbed clean, or your probation hearing; whichever comes first!"

As they continued off of the bridge and through a thorny bramble, Cozy finally opened her mouth again, but the stench of the bog still on her nose had made her voice quite hoarse. "Won't leaving him in there rejuvenate him?"

"Yep," nodded Lucifer. "Not the "bathing in the blood of virgins" myth, but the fact that the liquid is so hot that it will scald away his skin, leaving only the freshest of new layers. That is, of course, if he even still has skin after his bath. Such extreme heat is a powerful exfoliant. A bad enough burn will cause your skin to slide right off, and he's going to be in there for awhile. So very dirty..."

Cozy was starting to shake as they entered the desert. It seemed that the further down you went, the worse the punishments were. To be lost in these sands would be agony, but they were still going. She would almost prefer to be up with Chrysalis, being force-fed whatever it was coming from that hose.

After crossing over ten ditches with the ponies contained therein subjected to different forms of torture, ranging from the fourth, where their heads were on backwards and they were made to walk as such, the sixth, where the floor was but thin rails and those upon it clad in leaden robes, to the tenth, where many were afflicted with various diseases. Cozy even saw that one was wrapped in the skin of another, something Lucifer pointed out as being a "stolen identity."

Soon, they came to a stone well, and a giant lowered them down to a frozen lake. "Okay, little one," smiled Lucifer. "Are you ready to receive your punishment?"

Cozy shook her head. "No!"

"Well, too bad. Because here it is."

Lucifer dropped her to the ice, which shattered upon impact. The water below was absolute torture, and as she came back to the surface, the ice reformed around her face, leaving most of her body below, with just her mouth, nose and eyes exposed to the air. Her body began to lock up as the ice grew around her until she was completely immobile.

"Here begins your punishment," noted Lucifer. "For treason against Equestria, this is where you shall remain until your parole. But ah, I promised you a spoon so you could dig your way out, did I not?"

Cozy tried to nod, but could not. "Y-yes," she wheezed, barely able to breathe.

Lucifer pulled out from behind his back a tablespoon and placed it in Cozy's mouth. Within seconds, the handle frosted over, and her tongue stuck to it, as well as her lips. She could no longer speak. What was worse, the plunge into the freezing water had not washed the mud from the river Styx from her nose. She could only smell that for the next thousand years.