Mirror mirror, on the wall… how can you be so cruel to me?
After all the attention I’ve languished on you over the years? After all the hours I’ve spent staring into your depths?
Father always said I was the prettiest mare in all of Equestria. He said that my beauty outshone even Princess Celestia herself. I knew he was exaggerating, of course, but it still made me feel good.
Besides, it didn’t hurt being the second best looking mare in Equestria if the only one ahead of me was a goddess.
Mirror, how could you be so cruel?
I thought nothing could rival my beauty. I was always the most beautiful… even when I was pregnant with her.
Her. That… that thief who calls herself my daughter. It all changed when she came along. It was slow, but I saw it. My radiance began to fade, and as she grew it began to show up on her. She’s no longer a child, but a blossoming young mare. She still might spend all of her free time with her friends, but I can see the young stallions in town starting to notice it.
Put some make-up on her, stick her into one of my custom gowns, and Photo Finish would be tripping over her equipment to photograph her.
Why, mirror, why? What crime did I commit against you?
You sit there, so silent and smug! You’re… you’re mocking me aren’t you? You’re mocking me by showing me that my radiance is slowly being robbed from me! DAMN YOU! I WON’T TAKE IT! I’LL DESTROY YOU!
…Pain. It brings many things, but it has brought something else to me.
Clarity.
I see now, just as I see the mirror shards on the floor and the blood running from my hoof.
She’s not my daughter.
She’s a… parasite that has infected me and is stealing my beauty! She stole some of my flesh and used my body to grow into her own form, a permanent reminder of my school transgression; a never-ending reminder of my mistake. And to add even more insult to that, she’s slowly taking my magnificence!
I can’t allow this. Thank you, mirror. Even in your destruction you have provided me with an answer.
I must destroy her.
She is slowly ripping my beauty from me. I have to rip… it… back.
I will be the loveliest again.
Yes, that’s all she is. A mistake…
And mistakes must be corrected.
//////////////////////////////////////////////
“Mom!” Sweetie Belle called, pushing the door open and dropping her saddlebag on the floor. “Are you home?”
No answer.
Sweetie Belle shrugged and headed into the kitchen for a snack. A pile of fresh apples sat on the table. Seeing a chance to practice her magic, she lit her horn and lifted the shiny red fruit on top into her waiting mouth. She took a bite and chewed with satisfaction at her success. She couldn’t wait to show Twilight how well her powers were advancing. Holding the apple aloft with her magic, she headed up the stairs towards her room.
The door was standing open.
She cocked her head in confusion. Hadn’t she closed that door on her way out? Normally her mother respected her privacy. Maybe she had been cleaning before she’d headed out…
She inched her way to the door and nudged it open. The lights were on and a familiar form sat on her bed, her back turned to the door. Sweetie Belle relaxed and held the apple in her mouth aloft with her magic. “Mom! Look what I can do now.”
No reply.
Apprehension again began to creep up Sweetie Belle’s spine. “Mom? Are you okay?”
Silence.
Nervously, Sweetie Belle took a step into the room. The floor creaked and the shape on the bed shifted at the noise.
“Mom…?”
Slowly, the form on the bed turned to face the young mare. The sitting white unicorn’s eyes blazed with an insane rage as she revealed the pair of sewing scissors held high by her magic. With a savage cry she leapt from the bed at her stunned daughter. “GIVE MY BEAUTY BACK TO ME!”
The apple fell onto the floor as Sweetie stopped concentrating and tried to scream. The scream was cut off by a wet gurgle… and the apple’s red skin was soon coated in a far darker shade of crimson.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
“Rarity? Sweetie Belle? Anypony home?”
No answer came.
After deliberating for a moment on whether to come inside or just leave a note, Twilight Sparkle made her decision and entered the boutique. Sweetie Belle’s saddlebag lay on the floor indicating that her young pupil had indeed arrived home from school… so where was she?
Twilight headed for the stairs that lead to the mother and daughter’s living spaces and wondered if it just would’ve been easier to send Spike over to collect Sweetie Belle for the day’s training. She reminded herself that, in the past, Spike would often take several hours to return from Rarity’s.
She really was going to have to get to the bottom of that one day.
As she ascended the stairs, she heard the sewing machine going in Rarity’s workshop. ‘Well that’s one mystery solved.’ She thought, heading down the hall towards Sweetie Belle’s room.
Something stopped her. Something… wasn’t right. Something in the air. She sniffed. “What’s that smell?” She asked no one. It was something she’d only smelled once or twice before, this strange coppery smell, when her nose had been…
She saw the blood on the floor leaking from Sweetie Belle’s room and she knew.
She bolted to the door and looked inside… and beheld an abattoir.
Blood coated every surface of the room. It ran and dripped into small pools that joined bigger pools and became a river that flowed all the way out of the room and sweet Celestia there was so much of it how could Sweetie Belle have possibly survived…?
Her eyes fell on the bed and she groaned in horror.
There was a pony there, or rather what had been a pony. Now it was a bleeding mass of limbs, exposed muscle, and organs. The eyes still peered from the scarlet skull, wide in horror and shock.
A unicorn’s horn jutted gracefully from the forehead.
Doing her best not to vomit, Twilight inched her way backwards out of the room. She turned to run screaming into the streets… but the sound of the sewing machine stopped her.
Rarity.
Did Rarity know? Was Rarity alive?
Was the killer still in the house?
Twilight had read something once in her mystery novels. Something about how the killer would lurk at the scene of the crime…
Twilight hurried towards Rarity’s work room and burst in. “Rarity, are you…?”
The sight before her broke Twilight’s mind completely.
Rarity was hunched over her sewing table, hard at work on something she couldn’t see. Her normally spotless white coat was splashed with dark red blood. Her mane was in tatters and it flew this way and that as the fashionista threw herself into her work.
Twilight started to come forward and stepped on a blood-stained pair of scissors. The snap they made was shocking, like a branch snapping in a storm.
The noise drew Rarity’s attention and she swung around to reveal a glistening smile. Blood painted her face like tribal art-work. “Twilight! How wonderful of you to visit! How are you?”
“Rarity… what are you doing?”
“Hmm?” Rarity noted the table behind her. “Oh, you were wondering about this? It’s just a little project I’m working on. Nowhere near finished, of course, but if you’d like to see what I’ve done so far…” Her horn lit and lifted an object from the table and brought it into Twilight’s view. “Usually masks aren’t my style, but what do you think? Do you think I’ll make a splash with the upper crust?”
Twilight’s mouth opened and she finally began to scream.
Rarity turned the mask made from the skin of what had once been her daughter’s face back around so she could inspect it closer. “I knew I’d get my beauty back from that little thief. I knew I’d be beautiful again. Now I’ll be beautiful forever and evER and EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND…!”
She began to laugh as she pulled the mask over her face. Her laughter joined with Twilight’s screams and soon the two sounds were indistinguishable from each other.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
“NOOOOOOOOOO!” Rarity screamed out, sitting bolt upright in her bed. She could still feel the material of the mask over her eyes and she screamed as she ripped it from her face.
Looking back at her was her silk sleep mask.
She tried to slow her breathing and calm herself. A dream? Of course it had been a dream. But it had been so realistic… but that was ridiculous. How could she ever do something like that…?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise from down the hall.
The fear rushed back into Rarity’s heart and she raced towards Sweetie Belle’s bedroom as fast as her hooves could carry her. “SWEETIE BELLE!” She cried, bursting into the room, bracing herself for the worst…
Her teenage daughter stared at her in shock from her bed. “Um… Mom? Are you okay?”
Rarity crossed the room in the blink of an eye and clutched her little girl as tightly as she could, sobbing softly.
“Mom, what’s wrong? What happened?” Sweetie Belle hugged the unicorn back, utterly bewildered and a little scared. The alabaster unicorn was soaked in sweat and shivering.
“It was a nightmare! The worst nightmare I’ve ever had! Oh Sweetie Belle, it was awful! I would never do that to you. Never!”
“Do what to me?”
Rarity couldn’t answer. She just cried a while longer, never once letting go of the teenager. She calmed down enough after a while to talk but refused to tell Sweetie Belle the details of her horrible dream.
“Trust me; it wasn’t anything you need concern yourself with. Just a bad dream.”
“About me? Did something bad happen to me? “Because that might concern me.”
“…Yes. But you needn’t worry, my dear. I would never… I would never let anypony harm you. You know that.”
Sweetie Belle nodded.
“Good. Well, back to bed for me, I suppose. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine. Try and get some rest, okay?”
Rarity smiled and rubbed the girl’s head through her mane. “I love you, Sweetie Belle.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
Rarity kissed her forehead, just above her horn, and left the room. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She spared one final glance back, and then shut the door behind her.
Sweetie Belle relaxed and collapsed back onto her bed. “That was close.”
“You’re telling me.”
Sweetie Belle turned to the closet where the voice had come from. The lanky white Pegasus hiding within stepped out carefully and rejoined her on the bed, shaking off the debris that had landed on him when he’d hastily dived inside.
“So what was that about?” Featherweight asked, nuzzling his mare-friend.
“I have no idea. But whatever that dream was about, it really scared her. And that… that kinda scares me.”
The pair sat in silence for a while until Featherweight made to leave. “Do you want me to…?”
“No. Just stay. Can you stay until I fall asleep?”
Featherweight smiled and lay back down. “Anything for you, sugar bee.”
She snuggled closer to him and tried to sleep.
She prayed she would have no nightmares.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The entity watched with reptilian eyes as the young unicorn drifted off to sleep. “No, my dear Ssssssweetie Belle. No nightmaresssss for you. Not tonight anyway.” The teenager was not one of those his master had selected for observation.
He’d already found his second target, his most anticipated target, in the Bearer of Generosity’s nightmare.
He waved one scaly, clawed hand over the dimensional rip and watched as it refocused on a purple unicorn fast asleep in her library home.
“You’ve ssssslept long enough, I think.” He hissed, forcing his powers, his innermost self, into her mind. He went to work gathering the information he needed; her fears, her wants, her needs, her desires...
“Sin.”
The cold, powerful voice of his master shook his frail body to the core. His concentration broke, the nightmare in progress faded to nothingness, and the creature called Sin looked back into the darkness. “Massssssster?”
The powerful jet black stallion emerged into the ambient light of Sin’s dream pool. His eyes, flickering with an inner fire, looked down at the sleeping figure. “I have seen enough. The further nightmares will no longer be necessary.”
“But…” Sin was beside himself. This was his most treasured past-time. “But ssssssssire, why?”
“Was that a question, Sin?”
Sin’s snake-like mouth shut before his tongue had a chance to recoil fully. His eyes watered from the pain but he still bent his head in subservience. “Never, my lord of the wasssssssteland.”
The stallion touched a hoof to the back of his servant’s head. “Good. For a moment, it sounded as though you had questioned my wisdom.”
“Never.” Sin repeated, doing his best to ignore the icy cold of his master’s touch.
“I have decided to advance our plans ahead of schedule. It is time to put these ‘Bearers of Harmony’ to the test.”
“Of courssssssse, my liege. When shall we sssssssstrike?”
“Tomorrow night, so gather your strength.” The stallion grinned and reached out to pet the image of Twilight Sparkle. “It is time for these little ponies to show me if their world is worth my leaving it alone. It is time to see if they can tell what is truth… and what is a lie.”
TO BE CONTINUED IN 'THE KING OF LIES'
