Web's Gambit

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.