Childish Hope

When Cozy Glow came to, she didn’t actually wake up. She found herself in some kind of dark pit, where no light gave out and her cries were very muffled.

Then, the Tantabus appeared.

“We don’t have long,” it began, “but I’m going to make the most of your time under the anesthesia.”

“What’s going on now?” Cozy Glow asked. Then the words that the Tantabus whispered to her as she slipped into her sleep came back to her.

“I’m gonna guilt trip you, to put it bluntly,” the Tantabus said. “But it’s not for you to do anything, it’s just to ripen you up for us.”

“Who is us?” Cozy Glow asked, confused.

“You aren’t allowed to know yet,” the Tantabus replied. “Their orders. It might make you too scared, and letting fear beyond imagination sink in dampens your flavor.”

Cozy Glow ran. She didn’t know where to run in this dark, dreary and weirdly musty smelling black pit, but she just had to escape the Tantabus until she came to wake up in the real word.

But Cozy Glow didn’t get far at all. The Tantabus yanked her back, transforming a hoof into a long, nightmarish tentacle.

“Running won’t save you. It surely didn’t the night you were caught. Remember?” The Tantabus’s voice hung in the air.

As Cozy Glow was reeled back in, she saw the darkness make way to darkness of night as she saw the night of her capture.

Outside the School of Friendship, Cozy Glow saw herself surrounded by all of the students of the school. They had her trapped, so tried to fly another way to hopefully escape. However, now that magic had returned to Equestria, Celestia, the Chancellor, and Luna appeared quickly to detain her. She changed course and flew into the sky, only to be swarmed by guards.

She was trapped. It was the burning memory of the night she had been defeated and sent to live her life in Tartarus.

“You couldn’t run then, and you know you shouldn’t have. You deserved to spend your life in that musty, old prison cell,” the Tantabus counseled.

Then, the scene shifted to Tartarus. She saw herself in her prison cell, as well as Tirek, who was napping. Cozy Glow was, as always, playing with the litter and rocks around her cage. There was nothing better to do. Then, she vanished, and so did Tirek.

It was the day she was recruited for a war by Grogar and the others.

“You're only here now because the only person who deemed you worthy of being let out of your prison was someone far worse than you ever were,” the Tantabus spoke. “But you know you don’t belong outside of your cell. It’s your deserved resting place. You were meant to die in there, to rot and decay until your nothing but a pile of mold.”

Cozy Glow nearly barfed at the thought, but the scene shifted in time to reveal another moment Cozy Glow frowned upon.

It was the day she kidnapped Spike.

There she was, outside of the castle in Canterlot, having blasted the throne room apart with the help of her allies. When the ruins fell, everyone leapt for cover, just as she hoped—and she made a mad dash to snatch someone, and it just so happened to be Spike.

The villains rolled along with it. They began to make their retreat, claiming to murder him if they followed them home, and to make sure it was painful if there was a siege on them.

All Cozy Glow’s idea as she whispered it into Grogar’s ear.

“Please stop showing me this,” Cozy Glow moaned. “I don’t need to be reminded of this crap.”

“Oh, but you do. You’re not worthy of change, no matter how good your intentions are. Don’t you remember how much you destroyed?” The Tantabus then changed the scene and showed Cozy Glow blasting Ponyville to nothing but ash, leaving behind nothing but ruins. It had already been evacuated, but it didn’t make it any less horrible. A whole town—destroyed by a child in merely a minute.

Like a child playing with fire, only the child was a psychopath.

Cozy Glow’s shed a few tears then. The Tantabus soothed Cozy Glow, but not legitimately.

“Don’t cry, Cozy Glow. It’s in the past. It’s just who you are: an irredeemable and psychotic little girl.”

“I’m not irredeemable,” Cozy Glow said. “I can prove to them that I’ve changed. If you didn’t stop me that night, I could’ve proved I’d changed. You’re the reason I’m still evil.”

The words slipped out of Cozy Glow. She didn’t mean them, but she felt them.

“So you admit you’re not gonna change? That you can’t become better?” The Tantabus was getting a kick out of this now.

“No, I can change! I can change from being evil!” Cozy Glow cried.

Just then, the Tantabus changed the scene to show… Starlight.

“Starlight said the same thing,” the Tantabus droned on. “But she tasted delicious in the end. However, I never finished consuming her soul to allow a friend to come back into being.”

Cozy Glow thought for a moment. “You don’t mean…” her voice trailed off as she realized exactly who she meant.

“The Pony of Shadows needs to possess a body to become physical. It used Stygian for a long time, but after he was rescued, the Pony of Shadows was blasted into space,” the Tantabus explained. “So I allowed him to use Starlight. It’s not like she’s dead, but she’s never coming back after we’re done.”

“You did the same thing to Starlight before the war, and then you let her get possessed to allow the Pony of Shadows to return?” Cozy Glow summarized.

“A+ for you, Cozy Glow,” the Tantabus said, fading into the darkness. “If a grown mare couldn’t defeat me, how could you? Stop lying to yourself and let the guilt weigh in. It adds seriously good flavor.”

Cozy Glow sat down in the void, trying hard not to give in. But in her heart, she knew she felt horribly guilty, and rightfully so in all honesty to herself. The Tantabus didn’t lie.

“What happens now?” Cozy Glow asked.

The Tantabus didn’t respond from the darkness for a long while. Cozy Glow thought they had left, but they returned—and they were sure intimidating.

The Tantabus took the form of a lanky, tall being, with arms longe than their legs and a freaky large head accompanied by a ginormous row of sharp teeth.

“What happens is you wake up and do as told if you know what’s good for you,” they commanded. Their voice had shifted from the dreamy feminine voice to a deep, masculine voice.

Cozy Glow backed away from the huge beast. It was at least as tall as a small house, and looked just like the form the Tantabus took the night it infiltrated her escape, only much bigger.

“What do you want now?” Cozy Glow cried.

“When you wake up, you tell them what they want to know. They’re gonna torture you again,” the Tantabus instructed her.

“They’re gonna do it again? What for?” Cozy Glow yelled.

“The tracker I put in your foot isn’t actually tracker,” the Tantabus explained. “There’s no tracker. But there is capsule filled with Spike and Starlight’s blood.”

Cozy Glow found herself in the same chair where she had her wings tortured. The first thing she noticed knew what the bandage around her thigh. That was where they must’ve put their own tracker. The other thing was the bandage on her right hoof, where the tracker had been—or so she was initially told was a tracker, to allure Cozy Glow into a trap: having the doctors find a nearly unexplainable capsule of the blood from Starlight and Spike combined.

And Cozy Glow had a feeling that they found out whose it was when Twilight walked in with a clear capsule full of, believe it or not, blood.

“You’re awake now, I see,” Twilight spoke. “How are you feeling?”

Cozy Glow took a minute to fully let the anesthesia ware off, and it finally did. “I’m fine,” Cozy Glow said. “What am I doing here?”

“What was this doing in your leg?” Twilight asked, showing Cozy Glow the capsule. The blood bobbed around in it as it edged close to her face.

“I can explain, I swear,” Cozy Glow said drearily.

“We need answers now,” Twilight replied.

“WAKE THE FUCK UP AND START TELLING TWILIGHT HOW MUCH OF A PSYCHOPATH YOU ARE!” The Tantabus abruptly screamed telepathically, snapping Cozy Glow fully alert.

Cozy Glow’s blood pumped like crazy. She was scared out of her wits, and didn’t have to exact answers Twilight wanted. She opened her mouth after remembering being told Starlight’s whereabouts, but the Tantabus broke into her thoughts.

“IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, TELL TWILIGHT YOU KILLED THEM BOTH. AND SAY HOW MUCH YOU ENJOYED IT.”

Cozy Glow started to freak out, and she began to cry. This was certainly a rude awakening, but it was if the nightmare had only continued when she awoke.

“Please, Cozy Glow,” Twilight went on. “Tell me why, of all things, was THIS in your leg.”

“I don’t know why Starlight and Spike’s blood was in my leg, I swear!” She yelled. Then she immediately realized her mistake.

Twilight went pale. “So you know whose blood it is, and I never told you,” Twilight murmured. “Now you can’t lie to me.”

“Wait! I can really explain!” Cozy Glow yelled. Finally, the words burst out of her—the ones that made her sound like a psychopath, but not of the kind the Tantabus wanted.

“The Tantabus put it there to make me look guilty of murdering them! They wanted you to find it, and they made me think it was a tracker! They’ve been manipulating my thoughts for the past few days so that they could eat me!” Cozy Glow ranted like a madman.

Her rambling was only shrugged off to her horror. “I don’t believe your crazy lies,” Twilight grunted. “Only a child as sadistic as you could think up such a crazy thing as that.”

“But it’s the truth!” Cozy Glow cried. Tears dribbled down her face.

Surprisingly, all the Tantabus said was, “You’re nearly ripe. Just a little push and you’ll be ready to harvest. You sound crazy, which adds great flavor.”

“SHUT UP!” Cozy Glow screamed at long last. She’d had enough of the Tantabus, and even if Twilight thought she was crazy, so what? Maybe she was a little crazy, but the Tantabus was even more insane for wanting to eat the soul of a guilt-ridden child.

Cozy Glow sure came off as a schizophrenic child then and there, and the room shifted from hatred to a mix of hatred and pity from Twilight Sparkle. If the Tantabus shared their thoughts on that, they’d probably have said how tasty pity was on ponies’ souls.

The princess left the room then and there, and in came two guards, one wielding a knife. A moment later, she speaker crackled to life.

“Please, my sake Cozy Glow,” Twilight began, “what was that capsule doing in your hoof?”

Cozy Glow had the weirdest feeling then. She’d felt feral, like something evil had slipped into her. As if possessed by a demon who wanted to do nothing but kill. Then, the Tantabus spoke.

“YOU’RE INNER EVIL IS BACK. NOW SHARE THE LIE—YOU MURDERED STARLIGHT AND SPIKE!”

Cozy Glow almost couldn’t control herself. She began to form the words in her throat, and they burst out of her is a rage of unjustified anger for Twilight, her new enemy.

“I KILLED THEM!” She screamed. “THEY’RE BLOOD WAS IN MY HOOF AS PART OF SOME CRAZY RITUAL I DEVISED. I HARVESTED THEIR SOULS, AND STOLE THEIR MAGIC WHEN I STOLE THEIR BLOOD. AND I ENJOYED IT!”

The loud speaker went silent. It crackled off, and it seemed to signal to the guards that it was time to hurt Cozy Glow.

The guard with the knife began to slice into Cozy Glow’s ear, resulting in some tears but not many due to the weird feeling of rage and despise inside her. But deep down, she knew she didn’t truly feel those things. She wasn’t really mad. The Tantabus had injected some kind of horrible emotions into her.

The knife hurt, but the stabbing pain of knowing she couldn’t ever be redeemed now hurt far worse.

It was the coldest midnight Cozy Glow had ever slept through. It had snowed, dropping the temperature in her room severely. Her ears still hurt from them being sliced open, but she was still in stable condition thanks to the pain medication, amongst thirty different pills they made her take.

She was deemed a psychopath and a murderer. Whilst she hadn’t ever killed anyone, she was starting to believe that she was an actual psycho. The taunting from the Tantabus didn’t help, either.

She’d been chained to her bed like they were gonna preform some kind of ritual on her, but it was just precaution so she wouldn’t run around murdering anymore ponies, or so they thought she had done.

The Tantabus broke into her thoughts once again to taunt about how good Cozy Glow’s soul tasted.

“The pity and hatred emanating around you steams your soul like a smoked salmon on an enclosed barbecue. In other words, you’re ripe, but it isn’t time yet. Your ears need a day to heal a bit before we eat you.”

“What are you?” Cozy Glow asked. “I know you’re a figment of Luna’s guilt, but what are you in reality? The devil?”

“It is true I am a figment of Luna’s guilt, and I always have been for as long as I have existed. However, no I’m a figment of multiple ponies guilt: your’s, Starlight’s, and Luna’s. Whilst Luna forgave herself, her guilt never vanished—it only left her. I am now a separate being from her, one that views guilt and hatred as a dish of power alongside the genuine food I find to be souls.”

“You’re a monster,” Cozy Glow declared.

“You’re one two, thanks to my work. And there’s nothing you can do to undo that. I’ll be coming for your soul tomorrow night.”

Cozy Glow didn’t respond and continued to stare at the ceiling. She’d basically accepted her fate by then.

The darkness in the room seemed to beckon to Cozy Glow, as if she were a part of it that had been lost for a while. However, deep down, she felt like turning into the darkness would scramble herself further from her true self.

Cozy Glow decided that she should try to sleep on it all and try to repair her image tomorrow, of course in a non-narcissistic fashion; she wasn’t gonna change her true self so people will be her friend.

Be her friend… it hit Cozy Glow that, for a long time now, she hadn’t had any friends. And without any true friends, she had felt powerful as all mighty hell in her battles.

Friends weren’t power. Suddenly, the night she reformed herself popped into her mind. She remembered how she realized that friends weren’t only means of getting power, how she had felt powerful without them.

It was such a good wake up call… it really opened her eyes to see the bigger image of friendship. It wasn’t just magic, it was a means to feel safe and loved, and to have a good laugh. Right now, she could’ve really used a friend.

Cozy Glow sat up, as much as she could against the chain, and stared at the door. She had this sudden urge, one that felt raw and untouched, to apologize to the guards, and to Twilight. To prove that she was not guilty of murder, that she was changed, and that she wasn’t going to allow the Tantabus to eat her soul.

A horrible thought then popped into her head: what if she killed herself? Cozy Glow really considered it for a moment, but ultimately decided it was foolish. That wasn’t gonna spell out the words sorry. And it’s not like she could even do it, let alone go through with it if she could.

Cozy Glow pondered apologies for another half hour, having returned to her normal state of optimism when she awoke from her surgery.

Then, Twilight entered the room. And the room filled with… more optimism.

“Cozy Glow,” Twilight began. “They’re back.”

Cozy Glow jerked up. “Who is?” She asked.

“The guards we sent out to find the base. They’re back, and they have news,” Twilight explained. “They found the base.”