"Welcome to Tartarus, Enjoy your Stay..."

The group of colourful ponies followed the prancing figure dressed in his burgundy clothes as he took them on the welcome tour into Tartarus’s hellish landscape. Steam rose from the red rocks underneath their hooves as they trotted next to a pit of bright orange liquid. This was lava. Sweat matted the six ponies’ manes to their heads from the intense heat given off by this place. The pit of molten rock flowed its way down a river and eventually it ended up being thrown over the edge of a cliff, making a spectacularly hot (but deadly) waterfall of lava. Never had the group have seen these wonders, their eyes were in astonishment, but they were also filled with fear.

Asides from the pools of lava floating everywhere and the jagged overpasses of dark brown-red rock land, there was a rock ceiling they could see which covered the sky,  and strangely enough, a combination of brown dust and ash filled the heights with clouds, Tartarus’s own sky.

Steaming, gloomy, and brightly foreboding: these are the best ways the six could describe their initial encounter of the underworld land.

Hades turned his neck backwards to see the ponies looking in awe at his land of ruling, he's gotten used to seeing a pony's first visit enough times to not completely be less modest about showing off... not completely.

“Yep, Tartarus sure is a wonderful place to be in. What’s not to love?” He asked rhetorically, the six ponies drew nervous looks. Hades started to point in various directions, “You got hot boiling lava pools, no glare from Celestia’s sun, nice gloomy places to sulk in when you want to think or write poetry, long endless walks around Tartarus’s wastelands of lung-choking dust, shrieking souls of the convicted echoing through the night… day… well whatever, and of course the giant carnivorous bats.”

Instantly, a large swarm of pony-sized bats rushed through over Hades’ head, the group behind him ducked to the ground to avoid being hit by any of those creatures while Hades himself stood nonchalantly until the swarm flew off.

“Nasty little buggers aren’t they?” he said with a devious smile to them as they raised themselves from the warm embrace of the ground.

“Hades, I don’t mean to be rude, but could we get this going faster? We want to get started soon right away,” Twilight said with a thoughtful smile. Secretly the group didn’t want to spend an extra minute in this place if they didn’t have too.

“Wow!” Hades exclaimed with a loud laugh of vigor. “It has been a long, LONG time since somepony was so eager about entering my domain! This is truly fabulous!” He noticed their manes drenched in sweat and dirt and clapped his hoofs together, “The tour shouldn’t last that long anyways. I’m sure this will help convince all of you to have a more enjoyable stay to see through the end of my little meet-and-greet.”

In a poof of smoke a blue aura surrounded the six ponies, instantly their manes dried and they could find the heat of the air to be the same as around a cool spring afternoon. They all let out a sigh of relief and the blue aura dissipated into each pony’s body.

“Well, now that that’s settled, ON WITH THE TOUR!” Hades began to happily trot back on his path.

Rainbow flew by Twilight’s left side and whispered in her ear, “How did he do magic? He isn’t a unicorn. He looks like an earth pony.”

“I don’t know, maybe we can ask him later--”

Hades turned back again; the two quietly shut their mouths and wondered if he overheard them.

“Oh rude of me! I nearly forgot the most important part of the tour! You already know me as Hades,” he gave a bow. “But I don’t seem to recall asking for your names.”

Twilight stepped up and was about to answer, but suddenly pale-blue hoofs grabbed her belonging to Hades as he closely examined her face.

“You must be…" He examined her face closer, his eye nearly touching hers. "TWILIGHT SPARKLE!”

She was shocked, “How did you know my name!? Unless the Princess told you—”

Hades gently put her down and sighed as he rolled his eyes, “The Princess usually never tells me anything these days. I knew your name, and the ones behind you, in order: Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy—” They too got scared by his knowledge, Fluttershy let out a meep. “—And I know because anypony who enters Tartarus has their name placed inside one of my most important items.”

Hades reached into the large ‘v’ of his suit and pulled out a small black book and opened it slightly, “This book details every single resident or visitor into my realm, as they pass through the gates, their names get recorded.”

True enough a name appeared from small orange embers and turned into ink inside the book. “Since I’m escorting you I think my assistant will likely handle that case, sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It’s all about scheduling.”

Pinkie was about to reach her hoof to touch the book, which was immediately, slammed shut by Hades.

“Alright, that’s enough standing around. Back to the tour! This time I mean it!”

After more endless treks past lava pools, spiky rocks, and stories of the wastelands from Hades, he stopped on a hill and quickly turned back with a crazy look in his eye.

“Now this is always one of my favourite spots to show visitors, cue to big unveil!” He stepped out of the way and held his hoofs out to show the six ponies what was lying in front of them. It was a small little town. From up there, they couldn’t see any details other than that the place looked just as ominous as the landscape around it.

“OOH! Can we get a closer look?” Pinkie jumped up with excitement.

“Of course my charming pink pony! Next on the list, the town of Brimstone! Full of the most positively gloomy atmosphere of civilized ponies you can find in this hellhole of mine!”

Hades once again trotted cheerfully down into the town followed by the group, they still can’t realize why Hades would be such a cheerful and eccentric pony. After all, most viewed him as a tyrant of mad power and fearful will that a ruler of such a terrible place would be.

The buildings they passed looked similar to the ones they seen in Ponyville, except in this case all the rock built for houses came naturally up through the ground (there is a rather large library was made purely by stalagmites and rising rock which Twilight wanted to check out later) and most of these houses looked rather old. The streets were filled with dust and shadows hovered next to walls providing a gloomy feeling to this town. Some ponies caught in the corner of their eye as they walked about, fearful and pale looking ponies poking their head out from behind buildings and quickly darting back into cover.

“Oh don’t mind them; they are a little shy to newcomers. They’ll get used to you, but never really used to you if you know what I mean.” Hades continued on track.

Soon as they neared the centre of the town, they began to hear distant noises. It sounded like shouting.

Hades facehoofed, “Argh, he we go again.”

The rest of the ponies were left looking confuse, yet continued to follow the ruler into the centre of town. There stood a beautifully carved fountain spewing out lava as it laid on decayed grass. Next to the structure was an old pony, white shaggy mane, pale ghost-white skin and with a red cloak draped across it’s body.

“—AND TO HEAR WITHIN, THE MADNESS! THAT IS OF WHICH WHAT YOU CALL YOUR KING!” The pony was shouting up into the sky, speaking to no pony else, he was in fact, crazy. They walked up to him but he continued to spout out words without any care.

“BEHOLD WHAT IS TRUE MIGHT! YOUR SELVES AND CONSCIOUSNESS NEED TO BE PURE TO PASS THROUGH THE GATES OF PURE, OR YOU WILL END UP IN A PRISONER’S TRAP, FOREVER! HADES CANNOT TAKE FROM YOU WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE! BUILD IT UP AND SOON WE CAN PUT OUT IDEALS OUT FOR A GREATER VIEWING THAN WHAT HE COULD DO. TOGETHER WE WILL CUT HIM DOWN OR DIE TRYING! GODS CAN’T DIE, BUT THEY CAN STILL BLEED—”

“—I think that might be enough,” Hades interjected and the crazy prophet stopped and looked at him with an angry gaze. “Enough with your destructive philosophy, Socratos. Go home!” Hades shouted with a wave of his hoof.

“YOU HAVEN’T HEARD THE LAST OF ME HADES! I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!” the pony shouted in a terrifying grunt as he turned and grumbled under his breath as he went away.

“Quite an interesting fellow, I don’t know why he hates me so much. Doesn’t matter! Most ponies do, and I don’t care!”

“That’s not a healthy attitude to being verbally abused by everyone,” Twilight started to say but Hades held a hoof up to commander her silence.

“The fact that I have to deal with this roughly ten times a day with roughly 200-400 newcomers coming in by the hour, translates that this is a lost cause. At least for this eternity.”

“So shall we continue?” He delightfully asked with an eager smile.

“Umm... well… if this is the safest part of Tartarus… them maybe we should stay here--”

“Continue on? EXCELLENT IDEA FLUTTERS!” Clearly, the lord of Tartarus was either partially deaf, or cruel. The second one would make more sense.

As they went into town, buildings began to look more businesslike and foreboding. Past a few sturdy-looking houses they arrived at the front steps towards a large courthouse. This courthouse was large, very large. Each step leading up to it was roughly half a pony big.

“This is our famous judging courthouse. It’s where all the souls who enter Tartarus get processed into the categories of bad and good. The good ones get a nice life and retribution inside Tartarus’s Neighlysium fields, the others…”

The door to the courthouse slams wide open making an audible cracking noise against the wind. A pony is flung through them and sails across the sky over the heads of the watchers below and eventually lands in a series of black buildings.

“That would be Tartarus’s main reason for existing, the holding cells.”

On arrival, the holding cells were truly horrific for the six ponies to witness. Screams and echos of wails exploded from the jails and caused their ears to ring in pain. Every door they passed they see bruised, beaten, and rib-caged ponies, probably from the lack of food they were getting. Each one was crying out in agony, pleading for release from their pit of misery.

“HELP ME!”

“I’M NOT A KILLER!”

“HADES, CURSE YOU, YOU DAMN PONY DEMON!”

"I WILL BURN YOUR HOUSE!"

“LET ME GO!”

"PLEASE, I CAN'T STAY HERE ANY LONGER!"

They screamed and screamed, their shouts bounced off the walls and amplified louder with each shout, each cry. The six ponies who were following behind Hades were nearing their breaking limits and beginning to cry.

“P—Please, Hades… we can’t stay here.”

He noticed how distraught they all looked and carefully moved them away past a soundproof barrier which separated the jails from the outside world of Tartarus. His facial expression didn’t change the whole time he was there, and seeing some of these ponies weeping before him, didn’t faze him at all.

“How--,” Pinkie sniffed. “—how could you not feel how sad they were?”

“Oh, I can feel it. I can feel it every day. Remember that I’ve been doing this job since roughly Celestia started doing hers. Eons and eons… listening to their shouts, their cries, begging for retribution when they clearly won’t get any. Over the years I simply lost interest.”

Ponies like Applejack and Rainbow Dash who managed to keep themselves from breaking down before during the tour of the holding cells, were filled with rage by what the red suited pony said.

“YOU. LOST. INTEREST?” Applejack shouted in a rhetorical burst of anger.

“You’re a MONSTER!” Rainbow shouted at him.

Hades merely shook his head, “Call me what you like, they’re still damned for eternity. Believe me, that was only one jail, you should see the ones who are held in our maximum security, certainly not as loud, but just as crazy. I’ll always have to listen to the musical sound of wailing and screaming one way or another.”

“MUSIC!?” Rarity joined in, her mascara was running down her face. It was just a traumatizing experience for her as it was for everypony else.

“YOU’RE A CRUEL PONY! A FALSE RULER!”

“Oh, is that so?” Hades gave her a raised eyebrow then turned his attention to the rest. “Did you know that all of those ponies in there have committed crimes? In fact we don’t just limit Tartarus to ponies, but generally anything that has caused a crime to nature. Our system examines each and every single pony through a deep process of examining their lives from start to finish. All of ponies that are in there deserved to be locked away. They were murderers.”

They gasped.

This was just too much for Hades to take in as a sinister smile spread across his lips. “I can tell what you’re thinking; how could Equestria, the world’s most ‘lovable and kindest place of friendshipping magic’ could have so much evil tainting her landscape?” Hades shot his hoofs out towards the jails/ “Well, surprise surprise, I wonder where those ponies and creatures have originally come from,” Hades said sarcastically, completely shattering the idea that Equestria really was a haven of sorts for ponies and anything that lived.

“At least those who are convicted stay here and not ruin your ‘precious’ princess’s land,” he said with spite. “A land run only through a population of dead ponies who are mostly criminals and convicts, in a place that was meant to be a bad place to go to for the start. It definitely doesn’t help out any of our tourism.”

Once everypony finished contemplating their thoughts and wiped their tears clean, Hades looked at them with an apologetic smile, “I’m terribly sorry for my behaviour. I just wanted to show you a peek of what running this place for eternity feels like. Maybe when we get to my house, which is the last stop of the tour, I can make you all feel more comfortable.”

They sighed with relief knowing that this tour would end soon and that their original journey would finally begin. Though they will never forget those horrified expressions they’ve seen, and will never forget how those ponies ended up being trapped for eternity,

They walked a short distance back into town. The cobblestone floor clapped beneath their hoofs as they made their way onto a large bridge sturdily placed over lava. Hades’ home had a moat, it was of pure boiling lava. The thought of someone accidently falling in shivered the spines of some of the ponies. As they crossed over they see in front of them a courtyard with green grass and square hedges which ran along the outer edges of the land mass connecting to the lava.

Further past that was a large incredible mansion, grey stone walls, and metallic trims ran along it’s pointy rooftop and past it’s gothic columns.

“You live THERE!?” Rarity shouted in disbelief.

“Of course, it’s my home after all. My home inside the land which I call my home. So it would be the home of my home? Bah, I’ll come up with a word for that later.”

They trotted through the soft feeling of fresh grass beneath their hoofs. Their hoofs felt better standing on something so familiar compared to the amount of rocks and rubble they had to venture across. It was odd to see something alive and growing in this wasteland. Most thought that Tartarus was a place of the dead, it’s ironic to see how much life there is here.

“Tartarus isn’t just all about lava and rocks, though those are some nice qualities.” He raised a hoof and pointed to the flowers and plants that had grew from the ground, “These gardens here are beautifully worked by my dear wife. Never before have I met anypony who could do things like she could. I think you will all like her,” he looked back at them with a wink and continued onwards.

Rarity went next to Twilight and whispered, “He has a wife? I wonder what she’s like.” The two giggled and chatted amongst themselves about the possibilities.

They strode up the ebony steps to the large double-doors of his home. Next to it was an address plaque which read, “666 Drive, House of the Mighty Crown of Hades.”

“I used to wear a crown, but I didn’t really like the whole ‘medieval’ look, I think my snazzy suit is more eye-catching and professional in this day of age, don’t you think?” He wasn’t about to let them answer as he heaved the doors open in a warm red glow with his invisible magic. He casually walked in with the Twilight and the others nervously entering the lair of the ruler of Tartarus.

“Welcome to my home, make your visit comfortable. Food is in the fridge, tea is on the counter, I think my assistant is still outside and it seems my helpful worker isn’t back yet from his collection duties either… hmm…”

The inside was not what they were expecting: there was wonderfully placed home décor, hoof-stitched carpets, modernized furniture, and even a lava-lamp standing on a table to complete the centrepiece of the room. The walls were painted in calming blue and red colours which blended together beautifully to give a relaxed feeling to the viewer.

They settled themselves down onto the pristine white couches (which were adorned with zebra-print pillows) of the living room while Hades stood up lost in thought. The sound of hoofs was heard coming down steps and every pony’s attention shifted towards a large spiral staircase in the middle of the mansion.

A dark-purple unicorn wearing a lighter-blue shawl dress stepped down from the foot of the stairs. Her long red mane glimmered in radiance, she was a pony of beauty and some of the six couldn’t help but just say ‘wow’. She looked at Hades with her seductive azure eyes, their gazes locked and Hades couldn’t help but get a huge smile spread across his face.

“OH HONEY!” He ran up to her and gave her a large hug.

“HADES!” She smiled in return as she embraced her husband.

The ponies in the room could see how strong their connection for one another is. It would even rival the one shared between Cadence and Shining Armor possibly.

Time stood still for them as they looked into each other’s gazes.

“I missed you.”

“So did I…”

She pressed her head into his chest, “I worry everyday that you won’t come back. Tartarus isn’t as safe as it once used to be all those centuries ago…”

“Don’t worry honey, as long as you’re here and continue to be the mare who captured my heart, not even Death could tear us apart. That, plus he owes me after that bet about reaching the bottom of the bottomless pit,” he said with a cheeky smile.

“Oh you,” she said with a cute giggle.

It was getting very tense for the ponies who were casually observing on the couches, things started to get a bit… awkward.

At that moment, those two embraced each other tighter and started making out right in front of them.

Things just got even more awkward. Very awkward. Very. Awkward.

They just went on like that for minutes, moaning and aah’ing as they made out, each satisfied to be in one another's presence. They surely weren’t having any relationship issues. It appears that Hades has a soft spot for his wife. It would seem much more caring that a cruel heartless pony like Hades can find true love, if only it weren’t the amount of prolonged kissing that was blocking this thought from passing through.

“How long do you think they’ll do this for?” Rainbow asked. Everypony shrugged.

“Looks like we’ll have to wait…” Twilight said with a disturbed fake-smile, Rainbow urghed and tried her best to block out this amount of awkwardness from her ears.

They just went on and on, the room was beyond past awkward, if this was what normally happened on a daily basis then the group would never get started on their mission. They might not be enjoying it, but Hades and his wife don’t seem to mind. They were still too… busy.

The awkwardness continued to echo like a broken record disc, and then finally in a lip-smack they parted their mouths for a brief moment.

“This might take a while longer, do you feel uncomfortable?” Hades asked them, his wife giggled.

“YES.”

They didn’t catch their word (or at least pretended not to) and began making out again.

Rarity was right. Hades, is a cruel, cruel, pony…