The Trottingham Terror was dying. Not to spoil the surprise, but as all creatures did, he knew that his life would come to an end one day. It was just the circle of life, round and round till the wheels fell off. And this was the bit where his wheels fell off and he collapsed into a heap of splinters.
Life and death had a funny way of getting the jump on you. He had taught this lesson to the upper classes when a rich banker had decided that the treatment for a rather aggressive prion infection simply wasn’t worth giving him a loan for. So he’d cut the fat bastard’s throat, and then he’d cut the throat of several upper class cunts to show them that death wasn’t just for the poor.
He was not a good pony. It could be argued that he was a truly terrible pony, but even with the path that life had led him down and the fact that he was currently in a lot of pain, given the choice, he would have done it all again. His daughter had needed money to go off chasing her dreams, she was smart and once he was gone she was likely going to become a fancy lawyer or doctor, and the money he had stolen off those rich upper crust idiots was what was going to fund it all.
And that was it. Those three paragraphs pretty much summed up the entirety of the Trottingham Terror. He’d been a poor daft twat that had killed rich daft twats for money to buy himself more time, but when he’d finally worked up the guts to get it done, it was too late to get treatment and he had instead given the money to his daughter.
Time. The most precious thing in the world. Rich and poor, ponies rarely realized just how precious it was until they were lying in a broken heap with only minutes of it left. No matter how hard the poor worked, the greatest deciding factor for life expectancy was wealth.
A painful, wheezing, phlegm filled cough rattled from his lungs. He was glad that he wasn’t writing any of this down, ponies might get the wrong idea and start to think he was a communist. Nope, just a monster with a grudge against the world.
Soon, he wouldn’t even be that. Soon he’d just be another corpse from the Canterlot slums. His left hip had been shattered, sending bone through his skin. Few cracked ribs. It was bad, but he’d bandaged it up, and if he hadn’t been forced to escape through the sewer it might have even been survivable.
One last job. One last roll of the dice, and those dice had come up snake eyes and this was where he’d landed. Infection. His blood had turned to poison in his veins and was currently sending every single one of his organs into shock.
He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be scared, he’d promised that this was okay, this was what he deserved. But he was scared. His eyes scanned around the small tin and rivet railroad shack that he was going to die in, and he was scared.
The Trottingham Terror had hidden a mattress in here ages back for situations just like this, but it was designed for storing equipment and small parts for trains in case they broke down halfway up the hill to Canterlot.
Hatter was going to die surrounded by broken train parts that had yet to be scrapped. Old tools and parts that weren’t valuable enough to worry about being stolen. His blood had soaked out into the mattress, making it a sticky mess beneath him.
He wasn’t the Trottingham Terror anymore, just Hatter. That’d been his name once, and if he had a tombstone (which he wasn’t going to get) then that was the name that would be carved into it.
It was strange the things you reflect on when the life is bleeding out of you, but he missed the rain. He wanted to go home to Trottingham, climb up to the top of one of those tall skyscrapers and feel the light hazy rain on his face just one last time.
As the world began to spin, that was where he took his mind. Stood upon high, looking down on everything below.
Those had been good days. He’d had to move when the police started catching up, and in the end that was what had killed him. The guards here were a lot tougher then anywhere else.
Now, his thoughts were starting to break down into a jumbled mess of not really thoughts and almost thoughts. He was reverting back to a primal, animalistic state. Still, his body wasn’t giving up without a fight.
Then, his ears flicked at the slightest sound of a hoofstep behind him. Focus came back, his heart blazed in his chest, and before him stood death herself. Or, maybe she was just a mare?
“Are… You the reaper?” His voice drawled. He felt disconnected from it, but at the same time those words had drained almost every ounce of strength that he had right from out of him. He felt weak and helpless like a kitten, but if this mare was death, then she was the most beautiful mare he had seen in a while.
The mare seemed amused by his words. A dainty little muzzle suddenly split to show a smile full of viscous fangs that made his heart flutter and feel like it was about to give out.
“I might as well be,” She cooed, a set of leathery bat wings spreading out behind her.
Fear clawed at the edge of his mind for just a moment. The guards that had taken him out had been bats, and she was here to finish the job? Another wheezing, painful laughed rolled from his lips.
“Here to finish… The job then? Finish…” He needed to take a moment, brushing open his jacket in dramatic fashion, “The Great and Terrible… Trottingham Terror?”
“That is the single worst nickname I have ever heard in my life. You’re just another dumb leatherback parading around and pretending to be a killer. You got sloppy and you died for it… But watching you parade around and then get beaten to death was amusing, so I am here to offer you a choice at a new life.”
Hatter’s emerald green eyes scanned down to the bloodstained mattress beneath him. “Doesn’t seem like… Much of a choice to me… I… Can’t really say no.”
“I believe you can. It is going to hurt a lot and isn’t certain, you will lose everything you are and ever have been. And then you will be reborn, if all goes well.”
Now she was stood right next to him. Her amber eyes hard, like a cat watching a dying mouse writhe around on the floor, and her gray fur so soft it reminded Hatter of his mother. Had his mother had gray fur? He didn’t quite remember in that moment, but he had gray fur, and it was nowhere near as soft as that of this mare.
In that moment he did think. Truth was, it really wasn’t an offer he could turn down. Anything was better at dying on a blood stained mattress, cold and alone. Even if he did die, at least it was with a pretty mare by his side.
“Can… I have your name, before I decide?” It was getting harder to talk. Each breath took more effort than the last.
The mare leaned in close, whispering her name seductively in his ear like it was some kind of forbidden secret. Web Weaver. With her cutiemark being that of a black spider, it made sense.
And here, he had fallen right into her web. A little fly dancing about before a spider.
“Web… I have just one thing left to ask, then I’ll decide.”
The mare was intrigued by the strange unicorn stallion in the battered red coat, he amused her greatly. With his mind still spiraling from sepsis and the encroaching feeling of doom that came with it, Web Weaver, despite being a terror of the night, was a rock in the middle of the ocean that he managed to cling to.
What the dying stallion made as his last request isn’t known to anything but the grave. The stallion died that night with the pretty mare that had somehow managed to track him down, and Web Weaver kept her promise to take his request to the grave with her, however much time away that might have been.
Some say his request was one guided by his carnal urges, one last chance at laying with a pretty mare. Some say it was simply for her to hold his hoof. Others might say that they made a terrible pact.
But what can be said for certain, is that the stallion didn’t stay dead for long.
Web Weaver was a master of several dangerous arts, from poisons and toxicology all the way to the use of a dagger. But by far the most dangerous thing that she happened to be a master of was secrets. At heart, she was a mare that thrived in the dark, and ponies always kept their secrets in the darkest corners they could find.
But Web herself had more secrets then even most ponies. Some might even say the mare had more secrets then she did things that were overtly known about her. With the terrible work that she carried out for Princess Luna, that was just how she liked it. There were a great many things required in running a kingdom, and one of the more unfortunate things that was needed was the carrying out of terrible deeds without anyone ever finding out about them.
Sometimes to stop something terrible, something terrible had to be done. Of course, the gray mare didn’t do it all for the kingdom, sometimes she did terrible things simply because she could, because she was curious.
And the half dead stallion writhing about on her table had certainly piqued her curiosity. They were in her lab, if such a grim place could be called a lab. There was a medical table that the stallion was currently strapped down to and a great many jars and other items scattered around in wooden shelves and cabinets.
Papers covered in neat, looping writing were haphazardly shoved wherever they would fit, and the candles that flickered away in their holders didn’t provide nearly enough for a day pony to see in. Thankfully, Web wasn’t a day pony and in the cold, cobble floored lab deep beneath the castle, she was hard at work making a number of precisely carved cuts with a scalpel.
The stallion hadn’t been given any painkillers, something he didn’t seem to appreciate, but the blood thickening agent she had given him didn’t react well with most painkillers. She also liked the way he squirmed about.
He wasn’t terrified. She hadn’t had a subject like this in a long, long time. He had accepted his demise into his heart a long time ago and was simply waiting out the hours, minutes and days until it finally arrived. His heart was still fluttering away in his chest, but she could do anything she wished and he wouldn’t beg.
Well, she could make him beg if she really wanted, but at the moment Web needed the stallion as strong as she could get him. His mane had been shaven off, he was currently biting down on a strip of tough leather, yet his emerald green eyes still blazed with hatred at the world.
“In your prime, you must have been quite the sight ehehe!” Web said battily as she swapped the medical blade into her hoof. Some would argue that you can’t say something battily, but with the high pitched laugh and the glee that she seemed to be drawing from his suffering, Web managed that along with affirming why bat ponies got such a bad reputation.
The former Terror of Trottingham didn’t respond. His body was currently covered in no less than seventy six different runes and marks, with many more to go before the spell was ready. Some patients expired from this process alone, but so far he was hanging on.
Glancing over to a bloodstained and dog eared journal. It was her journal, it had her notes on the previous attempts at this terrible process, and the things that she had done to try and fix it. In silence she cut and carved every single symbol to a precise death and size using nothing but her keen amber eyes, her wings spread about behind her like the reaper’s cloak as the stallion could do nothing but lie there and take it.
Once the final symbol was carved, Web’s jaw felt like it was cramping up, and the stallion’s struggles had slowed slightly from the pain, but he finally collapsed back against the table realizing it was over. Web stepped away and sipped gingerly at a glass of water, before looking at the mess of a stallion on the table.
He was all hers. Nobody would notice he was missing, she could do whatever she wanted without worrying about the law sticking its nose in. Without worrying about the weaselly morgue attendant.
A gentle smile creeped across her face as she removed the leather strip from the stallion’s mouth and allowed him to sit up. He drank greedily from the glass while she gave him a smile like a proud mother. Once he was done downing the entire glass of water however, she placed the leather strip back into his mouth, something that he looked very concerned about, then began to lower the table back down.
“That was step one, now it’s time for step two through three, ehehehe!” Her laugh this time was even colder and cruel then before, but she set to work, and the stallion set to screaming until his voice gave out.
The terrible things that took place late into the morning (Because bat ponies sleep at night) can’t easily be scribed onto paper. I will not bother turning your stomach with how it was that the Trottingham Terror finally died, but by the late morning, the stallion was dead, bug eyed with a terrified expression on his face.
Web Weaver was exhausted, by this point she had spent much of the night carving symbols into his organs, replacing limbs and vital fluids with her own mixes, and she had been so close to completing the ritual when he had finally expired.
Still, even he hadn’t been strong enough to take it. Even his heart had eventually given out. The last part of the operation had been replacing his blood with a thick black mixture that activated the runes and prevented his body from burning up due to the intense magic involved, but he’d given out before the clear tubes in his limbs could even start emptying the fluid into him.
Web was holding up much better then the stallion on the medical table, but that was mostly due to the fact that he was dead. She had spent at least twelve hours working, just for it to fail. It felt like a lead weight had been attached to her heart.
Should she have been more careful? She’d made sure he had plenty of oxygen rich blood, and then he’d just up and fucking died?
Now, the sadness she felt was replaced with anger. He couldn’t just up and die like that, she wasn’t finished! Stomping a hoof angrily onto the bellows, she started up the pumping device while giving the stallion the most intense glare she could muster.
“Stupid. Stupid.” She smacked both of her hooves firmly down onto his chest, feeling ribs flex and something break beneath her hooves, but by some accursed miracle it worked, the stallion suddenly gasping back to life, bug eyed and clearly still in a lot of pain.
And how did he thank Web for clawing him back from the grave? He started screaming again. Her ears were very sensitive she she forcefully wedged the leather strip back into his mouth.
“Bite down, stupid day pony, always ruining my fun. You’re not allowed to die until I say you can! And that’s not until the task is done.”
The moment the black fluid reached his veins, the stallion started to go into convulsions as the runes that littered his patchwork form began to glow. Black Agnosia, a rare toxin, was a small part of the mixture, so this was to be expected.
What wasn’t expected was when blood started leaking out of his nose. There were other clear tubes taking his blood away to a large series of medical buckets she had laid carefully out on the floor, and now he was trying to make a mess of her lab.
When he started crying blood it was slightly off-putting, even to someone like Web, so she smacked him firmly around the side of the head with a hoof.
“Stop that, stop bleeding like that. You’ll ruin everything!”
Unfortunately the stallion seemed too busy going into shock once again, trying to ruin her science project. She hissed in an annoyed fashion to herself and then dashed over to try and find something that would be able to stave off the shock.
The only thing within snatching distance that she could use to try and shake off the shock was a dainty china cup half filled with cold tea she had been sipping at before the operation had become intense enough to distract her from finishing it.
Sweeping it into her hoof with a leathery bat wing, she tossed the fluid into the stallion’s face, dousing his sweat soaked face in black tea dampened down his fur so that it clung tightly to every one of the muscles beneath, which were currently tensed from the pain, but it didn’t seem to do much to stop him from dying.
And now, he was also starting to cry out the black fluid that she was trying to work into his body. Another hiss rolled from her lips. Always such a bother. She angrily pumped the bellows to ensure the machine kept working before she dashed about her lab to try and find something that might work among the many pickling jars and other items crowded into her lab.
Unfortunately, she failed to pay attention to where she was going and ran straight into the minefield of blood buckets. Firstly, she had forgotten to change over the buckets around the time they got half full, and secondly, the rubber tube was still emptying out the blood from the stallion.
So, she kicked over half a bucket of blood that instantly drenched the cobbles and made it look like a murder scene as it avoided the stone gutter leading to a drain in the floor, getting into all the cracks between the cobbles and going anywhere but the gutter. This was mildly annoying, but nothing she wasn’t used to.
But then the clear plastic tube, freed from the bucket, began to kick around like a snake in time with the rapid beat of the stallion’s heart, spraying spurts of blood all over her paperwork and the shelves of her lab.
Right, that was what the point of the medical rock had been. She wrestled the tube into the next bucket and tried to weight it down while ignoring the blood that splattered onto her coat. Eventually she managed to weigh it down just enough with the medical rock that it didn’t dance around, but leaving enough of the tube clear so that the rock didn’t just block it up.
Of course, in retrieving the medical rock, she had gotten her hooves soaked in blood from the first bucket, her chest fur was damp with it, everything stank of copper and she was still trying to stop the stallion going into shock, although now he was going into cardiac arrest.
It was such a pain. Science was never easy and he had black fluid pouring out his mouth and streaming down his cheeks. Strange whispers filled the air and his body was beginning to contort in ways that most would consider unnatural.
Thankfully, she did soon find what she was looking for, a small vial of red fluid that she drew into a large syringe with a thick tip. Then she drove it straight through the stallion’s breast plate and into his heart.
The stallion tensed like he was going through an exorcism, and then-
Vomited black fluid violently from his mouth, something that she narrowly avoided. Then the old bastard dramatically fell limp against the table, every sign of life suddenly leaving his body. Dead, dead as a coffin nail, expired like a bottle of milk left in the sun.
Her lab was a mess, her science experiment had failed, and all her dreams lay in broken and shattered pieces.
A long sigh rolled from Web’s lips, before she giggled softly to herself. It started off as a light giggle, then turned into full on manic laughter that sounded like it belonged to a fully grown stallion rather than a small, slender mare like Web. She wasn’t the kind of mare to let something like this stop her. She’d just have to try again.
Another failure, another attempt gone wrong. Her laughter was just starting to die down when the strangest thing happened.
The corpse started to laugh with her.
