They Go To A Lake Of Fire And Fry
Sweetie Belle’s fall was not a pleasant one. After falling free for a few moments, she bounced against the hard wall, feeling as though her head were going to split open. the ride didn’t end there— far from it. She tumbled and slid down the sharp volcanic rock, grunting in pain every single bounce of the way down.
Finally, she bounced hard enough to escape from the slope, and fell with a crunch next to a pit of bubbling lava. The hot rocks singed her poor rump, and Sweetie Belle jumped to her hooves, running around in circles, under the odd impression that that would put the flame out.
Coming to the eventual realization that we all come to eventually when our own butts are on fire, Sweetie stuck her backside into the nearest pool of liquid. She sighed in contentment as the fire was doused, but her eyes widened in horror when she realized that it was in fact a pool of lava she dumped her rump into.
Pulling out the charred plot, she took a look back, bracing for the worst. Her flanks had gone from the light grey they had once been to a rustic charcoal brown. Her tail was nothing more than a twisted burnt remnant of its former glory. Sitting down and wincing in pain, she began to cry, not only for her butthurt, but also for her hopeless and eternal situation, with no way to escape or possibly learn from her actions.
“Gah! Don’t cry on me, I’m made of clay!” came a small, nerve-grating voice. Sweetie Belle wiped her eyes, and looked around to see where the annoying sound was coming from. Looking down at the cracked brimstone beneath her, she saw an odd bright-red bipedal figurine. True to how it had spoken, it was made of clay, in addition to harboring small wings on its back and small horn on its head. It carried a pitchfork, and wore a small loincloth over its privates.
“Seriously! It’s hard enough not to melt when the temperature is high enough to boil lead, I don’t need you crying on me!” the little figure squeaked.
“W-what are you?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“It would have been more polite to ask who I am, but...” the clay being sighed. “I am Squibb, an imp. And you are?”
“I’m Sweetie Belle, a unicorn,” Sweetie Belle said, the heat having evaporated her tears.
“Wait,” said Squibb, narrowing his eyes. “Aren’t unicorns pure and holy and all that nonsense? I was certain you types go to heaven!”
“I stole a candy bar,” Sweetie Belle explained.
Squibb nodded. “Ah, a class four infraction. Which would explain why you’re here, in the Fourth Circle of Hell!” Squibb gleefully exclaimed, spinning around in a circle. Sweetie Belle gave him an odd look.
“Here, I’ll give you the tour.” Squibb hoped up onto the unicorn’s head, and moved her head to the side by grasping her horn and turning her in the way the little imp wanted her to move. Soon, he was piloting her around lava pits and moaning bodies of all species.
“Right now, you’re at an entry zone,” Squibb explain, jerking up on Sweetie’s horn so she hoped over the half-burned body of a man in a suit, clutching a fistful of what looked like green paper. “Since our gate, Avernus, is a charred volcanic wasteland of rubble, it leaks out onto the places it connects on each level. However, Level Four (named Phlegethos for those keeping score at home) in general is a fiery wasteland as well, which is convenient because it saves me the trouble of explaining different environments to you!” The two reached a cliff, and Sweetie’s mouth dropped open. Before them lay a huge wasteland, almost as big as how she imagined Equestria looked from a high vantage point, except for that it was covered in volcanos, and harbored a distinct lack of green things. Sweetie Belle was also fairly sure that Equestria in general wasn’t filled with the pained moans of the wretched.
“Level Four is for greedy souls like you, who thought it would be a good idea to steal, or screw over their friends for personal gain,” Squibb told Sweetie Belle.
“But Scootaloo is the one who told me to do all this! She pressured me into taking the candy bar,” Sweetie Belle grumbled in despair.
“Ah yes, treachery. She’s going to the endless pits of Nessus for that Level Nine infraction there,” Squibb said thoughtfully. “Anyway, it’s time for you to serve out your eternity with useless punishments. I think I’ll set you to work pushing a giant candy bar up a volcano, and come back in a two or three million years to see how you’re doing.”
Sweetie Belle began to sweat, and not just because her mane had caught fire from having the imp sitting on it for so long. “Wait! Isn’t there a way I can do something less ironic?”
“Absolutely not,” the imp said with a sense of finality. “Now, get down there!”
Squibb attempted to pilot Sweetie Belle towards the cliff and have her fall down into the great expanse of Phlegethos in order for her to serve out her meaningless punishment, but the filly had other plans. Shaking her head violently from side to side, she didn’t stop until Squibb was dislodged. The cursing imp fell down the very cliff Sweetie was forcing him towards.
Sweetie Belle began to run back to the area where she came, but all of the cavern walls looked the same! She could even swear that the moaning bodies all looked alike. Stopping to catch her breath by an odd extrusion from the nearest cave wall, she screamed when it began to speak to her.
“Sweetie Belle? Is that you?” the wall asked. Sweetie Belle examined it further. It appeared to be the frozen and torn body of an earth pony stallion.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked, frightful.
“Hehe, when one’s in hell for all eternity, you learn to dwell on every moment of your once fantastic mortal life...”
Sweetie Belle stared at him, waiting for her question to be answered. The stallion caught on, cleared his throat, and continued. “Right, anyway, I’m your friend Apple Bloom’s father! I died when she was just a newborn, as I’m sure she told you. Really wish I’d be able to see her grow up... I was good friends with your parents though, so I remember how you looked when you were young as well.”
“Wait, why are you here in Hell then?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Let’s just say I may have touched my older son and daughter in places they shouldn’t have been touched,” the stallion said regretfully.
“Wait, that’s lust!” said Squibb, who had rejoined the fleeing unicorn. “You should be on level two, Dis!”
“I threw you down the cliff!” Sweetie Belle pointed out, annoyed. “How’d you get back here?”
Squibb pointed towards his wings, a flat look on his face. Turning back to the earth pony shackled to the wall, he demanded, “Why aren’t you in your proper place?”
“Sometimes I come down here to thaw out a bit,” the pedophilic stallion admitted. “The eternal winds above the City of Dis get rather chilly, you know.”
“Well, you’re going to have to go back there now!” yelled Squibb, smashing a part of the wall with his tiny fist. The cave ceiling above his crumbled away, and a howling wind followed. Sweetie Belle could see a huge, steel grey sky covered in turbulent clouds through the gaping hole. The incestuous earth pony was whisked away, and the hole closed once more.
Squibb turned to Sweetie. “Come on! That chocolate isn’t going to reach the top of a volcano for no good reason at all by itself, you know!”
They Don't Go To Heaven Where The Angels Fly
“Just do it, don’t be such a wimp!”
“I’m not sure if I can, though!”
Scootaloo facehoofed. “Look. Don’t you really want it? It’s not like you have enough bits to get it yourself. Just run in there, grab the goods, and run out.”
Sweetie Belle was wringing her hooves. “But I don’t want to be a crook! I can’t steal anything, even if it’s only a candy bar.”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Look, Sweetie, you’re not gonna get caught. Besides, it’s just one little candy bar, no harm to it. Bon Bon won’t even miss it.”
Sweetie Belle gave her pegasus friend a reproachful look. Scootaloo slid up to her, and whispered in the unicorn’s ear, “Who’s the chicken now, huh?”
Sweetie Belle gave her friend a bit of an angry look, and slowly entered Bon Bon’s Candy Emporium. Walking in, she took a look around at all the hard candies and chocolates that were on display, before her young eyes fell on the candy she desired so much: a chocolate bar.
But this was no ordinary chocolate bar! This was, in fact, a bar of chocolate, completely ordinary and made of 100% chocolate. Yet, that was what made it so extraordinary! Most chocolates were around 78% chocolate, with the other 22% comprising of a mixture of earwig wax and bean paste.
Sweetie Belle could already feel herself salivating in anticipation just by looking at the delicious chocolate. Slowly walking over, she made sure that Bon Bon was busy before she carried out the heist. Seeing that the candy maker’s back was indeed turned, Sweetie Belle slid in and went to her prize. The chocolate bar sat there, like some sort of inanimate object. This was good; it wouldn’t try and make a break for it.
Grabbing it in her mouth, Sweetie Belle skedaddled her little rump out of the shop as fast as she could, chocolate bar in mouth. Scootaloo, who was waiting on the other side of the street, cheered her on as she shot out of the candy shop with the stollen goods. Her orange friend continued to cheer her on, until Sweetie Belle was hit by a runaway carriage that was careening down the road, where at that point the cheer turned to gasps of terror.
Sweetie Belle was catapulted off the ground, achieving sick air that Scootaloo would never get with her shrimpy, deformed wings. The unicorn flew gracefully for a ful four seconds before smashing into a very hard wall.
Scootaloo scampered to Sweetie’s side. “Are you okay?” she asked frantically at the pile of rubble.
There was a groan, and Sweetie slowly emerged, the bar of chocolate somehow unharmed. Scootaloo’s face broke out into a smile. “Oh, thank Celestia you’re okay! For a second there, I thought you were a goner for sure!”
Sweetie rubbed her pounding head. “Yeah, I think I’m okay... and look! My chocolate’s fine too!”
As the two friends celebrated, neither of them noticed that Sweetie’s impact had knocked a rather large brick loose from the wall. By rather large, I mean rather large. This thing was almost as big as Sweetie Belle’s body. So it was only to be expected when it slid loose, fell gracefully through the air, and crushed Sweetie Belle’s head, pulverizing it completely.
The brick did a good job of the pulverization, too. It clonked the poor unicorn right in the back of her noggin, forcing her face to the floor. From there, the weight and velocity of the brick crushed her head open like an overripe melon, causing blood, bits of gore, and chunks of brain to fly out in several direction from the force of impact. Scootaloo herself was covered in the splatter.
“IT GOT IN MY MOUTH!” Scootaloo screamed in horror. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH— hey, this tastes kinda good!” Scootaloo chewed on the bit of brain that had ended up on her tongue. It tasted a bit irony (most likely from the blood), but it was chewy and somewhat sweet, like taffy. She scooped up a bit more of the brain/gore mixture and chewed some more, a content smile on her face.
Looking down, she came to her senses and resumed freaking out about her friend’s death. “Oh gosh, oh gosh, what do I do...” she stuttered in panic, stopping to take another bite of the brain. Quickly dropping it, she spit out the bits in her mouth and started rubbing her tongue against the dirt to get any more remnants out.
She couldn’t stay away for long though, and was soon eating up the pieces she had spit out. After carefully gathering as much of the gore as she could, she began to think about what needed to happen next.
“Okay... how I do I explain this... how do I explain this...” the little pegasus fretted, trotting back and forth, occasionally stopping to nibble on some brain. “Who do I go to? Rarity? Twilight? The mayor? The hospital? Oh, I just don’t—” she took another bite of brain, enjoying the savory taste. “Oh wow. That’s good.”
Scootaloo well beside her headless friend. “Oh, crap... I’m sorry, Sweetie. If I had never pressured you into stealing this candy bar, this would have never happened!” In her remorse, she almost stopped eating the brain pieces.
“Then again...” Scootaloo pondered for a moment. “If you hadn’t died, I would have never discovered this tasty treat!” She gobbled up another piece, and licked some of the blood from her hooves. Eyes widening in disgust and sorrow, she began to sob.
“I’m so sorry, Sweetie! Your brain is just so delicious I can’t help myself...” Slumping over the brick that had done her in, she let loose a little whimper. “At least you're in a better place...”
“WHAT IS THIS NIGHTMARISH PLACE‽” Sweetie screamed in fear, looking around at her new surroundings. She was in a large system of caverns, with dull black-red rocks comprising of the walls, ceilings, and ground. A smell of brimstone and sulfur pervaded the air, and Slayer’s Greatest Songs To Fall Asleep To played jovially in the background.
“You’re in hell, my little filly!” came a evil, high pitched voice. Sweetie Belle turned around to see a unicorn made of lava and obsidian walking towards her. Shrinking back in fear, Sweetie Belle fell to the cave floor and curled up in a ball. “Or rather, you ponies call it Tartarus. Not that it matters, you’re in a bad place all the same.”
Sweetie shot looks all around her, still shaking in fear. “W-why am I here?”
The lavacorn laughed a hideous laugh, sounding of steam and rocks being crushed together. “Why, because you died of course! And you’ve ben a bad little filly, so they shipped you off straight to hell! They being the eternal judges of life and death, of course.”
Sweetie Belle was now even more confused. “Eternal judges of life and death? What?”
“Right, they blanked your memory after that, but once you die, you’re sent to a courtroom to be judged. If you were sinful, you get sent to hell, or ‘Tartarus’. Since you sinned, you’re here!” the obsidian pony recounted in hellish glee.
“But I’ve always been as good as I could be! I’ve never sinned, at least, not that I can... oh, was it the time we were trying to be Cutie Mark Crusader Bible Burners?”
The lavacorn shook his head. “No, but you were pushing the envelope with that one. What really set you over was... stealing that bar of chocolate!”
Sweetie Belle’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
The hell guardian nodded. “Yes indeed. Doesn’t matter if you steal a candy bar or murder your way through a class of first graders, a sin’s a sin.” Trotting over to a nearby rock leaning against the wall, he shoved it out of the way. A blast of hot air washed over the two of them, and the screams of the tortured soon followed. Sweetie recoiled in fear once more.
“I’m Mephistopheles, by the way,” the lavacorn extended a hoof to Sweetie Belle, who shook it. It was very warm, but not burning.
“I’m Sweetie Belle.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Mephistopheles said, before picking her up and chucking her into the gateway. “Enjoy your eternity in hell!"
