It’s been a few hours. Granny Smith found us huddled together at the base of Apple Bloom’s bed, crying in each other’s embrace. She let us cry it all out then took us downstairs and kept us company for awhile, gave us some warm cider to drink, did her best to comfort us any way she could. We left some time later. Scootaloo hovered over me like a shadow as I walked back home. I never asked her if she had somewhere to be. I never said a word. I walked into my house, crawled into my bed, and buried myself in a mountain of pillows. She's still here with me, curled up next to me in a sympathetic embrace.

My mind races with facts I’ve kept buried as deep as I could for four years. There’s no such thing as a redeemed demon. Hell was molded for us, hell is where we’ll go. You can not argue with death. You can not argue with God.

I break into tears again. Scootaloo holds me tight, her stomach against my back, with the covers of my bed wrapped around us like a protective shell. She holds me close and strokes my mane as I whimper into the mattress.

I feel so alone. My whole world has eroded beneath me. It took one final crash from the sea to drag me down from my painted castle, and now I can’t find the surface.

I wipe a tear from my eye and ask in a raspy voice. "Scootaloo... is it pointless for me to pretend? Should I just give up on the illusion of hope so I don’t get hurt anymore?"

Her hooves tense, her voice stutters like a child learning to speak. “I… I-I don’t know. I have no idea what you should do. It never occurred to me that you’d… be dealing with something like this, even if you are a demon.”

“It is the curse of my species. We are the eternal enemies of God, no one ever came to save us. We are doomed to perdition the moment we're born. If we're lucky we may be able to escape our fate for brief interludes, but our presence here will always cause chaos, be it our intention or not. We will never be free from our fates completely. For us, it is an endless cycle of death and damnation.”

I sigh until I feel pain in my lungs. “I guess I’m gonna have to come to terms with that. Lies can only hold for so long, even when you’re trying to believe them.”

There’s a mournful hum from a spinning fan above us. Curtains dance half-heartedly to its tune. Scootaloo squeezes my shoulder and whispers in my ear. “Sweetie, how do you know that all demons go to hell?”

“It’s common knowledge. Every demon I’ve ever met, friend and foe alike, all knew that there’s no such thing as a redeemed demon. Never once in the history of creation has a demon died and not gone to hell.”

Scootaloo’s breath burns my neck, the tip of her mane brushes my cheek as she shakes her head. “I just can’t believe that. If you’re good you go to heaven, if you’re bad you go to hell. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

“Yeah, well I guess no one thought to apply that to demons.”

She’s silent for a moment. Her hooves wrap tighter around me and she rests her head against the back of mine. My ear twitches as she whimpers against it. I look over my shoulder and see tears leaking through the tightened corners of her eyes.

“Scootaloo.”

“It’s not right. You should be able to go heaven just like anyone else,” she sobs. “Sweetie, if you can’t go to heaven then I don’t want to go there either.”

I swerve around, nearly tearing the sheets in half, and stand over her with inflamed eyes. “Scootaloo, don’t you ever say something like that again! I would sacrifice everything I have a thousand times over to have a chance of salvation, and if you throw yours away I will never forgive you!”

Her tear stained face reels away from my own. I see her tremble and shrivel up beneath me and instantly reign in my anger. “Don’t burden yourself with a curse you weren’t born with Scootaloo, there’s no point. The thought of what I’m going to face is hard enough to bare without knowing my best friend will suffer the same thing. If you want to make me feel better than I need you to do two things.”

“What? Anything!” she responds.

“One, never do anything that’ll jeopardize your way into heaven. I couldn’t bear that.”

“And the second?”

I clench my eyes shut, and lower my head to her chest. “Keep being my friend; as long as you still live, keep being my friend.”

I degrade into sobbing again. She takes my hoof in hers and squeezes it tight. “I promise you, no matter what happens I’ll always be your friend. Even if we have heaven and hell to separate us I will always be your friend.”

It’s like an arrow was pushed in and pulled out of my chest at the same time. I hold her close and pray that all time would stop here. This is all I have now. No, all I ever had. Friends who pass away, lies that provided fragile comfort, and a life that inches ever closer to the precipice of damnation. Everything around me will burn to ash in the flames of time and I will stand as a rock in the center; being scorched but never destroyed. I can only drink myself away on this life, so I can forget about the next.

Scootaloo strokes my back softly, sending a warm feeling down my spine. I sniff in my snotty nose and rub my face against her fur. I can feel her heart beat against my cheek. We lay like this for a moment, then I push myself up onto my hooves and stare down into her eyes. She barely blinks, and her mouth is slightly open like she’s wondering what to say. I press my lips to hers.

She goes stiff as sandpaper and her eyes fly open in shock. My hooves shake, my tongue circles the border of her mouth, and there’s a stormy ocean in my stomach. The kiss lasts for several moments and the whole time I have but one thought screaming in my brain: What the fuck am I doing?!

My lips peel away from hers like a scab. I clutch my trembling hooves to my chest, roll off the side of the bed, and hit the floor like a trampled half-dead rodent. It’s like my skin is made of ants, I want to tear it from my body.

Scootaloo pokes her head over the edge. "Sweetie, what's wrong?"

I meet her worried gaze in shame. “I need to be alone.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I just need to go.” I run for the open bedroom window bleeding fresh tears and dive head first outside. I land on my hooves and start running, letting the accompanying sonic boom block out Scootaloo’s concerned cry.

I run through the night like a howling wind. I run fast enough to smear the tears across my face and tear up the road beneath my hooves. I can’t run fast enough to escape my guilt.

Is this what I’ve become; so empty and desperate that I’d actually hurt the only friend I have left for a little titillation? What the hell is wrong with me?

I stop several miles outside of ponyville, surrounded by dark forests on the road to Fillydelphia. I kneel in the loose dirt and gravel and sob loudly like a cub separated from its mother.

I’m tempted to leave, maybe I should leave after what I almost did. Scootaloo is the only close friend I have left now, the last shard of truth in my house of lies. If I myself am becoming dangerous to her then maybe it's best that I leave and preserve whatever good she still thinks of me.

I contemplate it for several minutes. Rain clouds roll in during the time I think. I’m soon coated in a layer of sleet. Strands of my mane wilt and blow across my face, scooping up tears to mix with the rain water. My sensitive ears pick slushing moist hoofsteps and an all too familiar chuckle. I clench my teeth as I turn to meet Alda’s smug grin.

“Wonderful night, isn’t it?” She holds out her hoof to catch the rain. “I’ve always loved this kind of weather. It takes me back to my days as a filly when I’d fly through the air and chase others with those rain clouds.”

I say nothing. I stare death at her through the freezing rain and say nothing.

“What? No sarcastic quip, no grotesque threat of violence, not even a simple hello? Come now, Sweetie, I thought you were more civilized than that.”

I blink for the first time since seeing her and say with a prick in my gut, “Hello, dead mare.”

“So much better. Now to begin I’d first like to apologize to you.”

“For what you did last night?”

“For misunderstanding your situation,” she says. “I bumped into you outside of town and just assumed you’d join my master with a skip in your step. Never once did I consider what it was like to live in hiding of the Order, at least not like how you were. I can keep myself safe pretty simply, so long as I’m not seen in the presence of demonic creatures or leave anything incriminating out in the open, but you had to work much harder at it. Suppressing your power, keeping your hunger in check. You even went as far as to isolate yourself from other demons. I have to admire the sheer effort you went through to keep yourself hidden.”

The bullshit couldn’t be any more blatant if it came packaged as fertilizer. “I’m flattered, truly.”

“I know you might still feel uncomfortable being so openly opposed to the Order, but you don’t have to be, not anymore. Asmodeus recently made a rather devastating blow to them, and now just needs a little extra leverage to finish them off.”

I don’t respond, only stare at her.

“Right, well I’ll just skip to the point. You know that young dragon boy who lives in the library? I want to blackmail him, and I need you to help me with the scheme.”

I still don’t say anything.

Alda rolls her eyes and groans. “Look, it’ll be very simple. Just use your hypnosis to trick him into sleeping with you. Once he wakes up, act in a way that’ll make him think he raped you. Then I’ll come in and take the situation from there. You barely have to do any work and there’s little to no risk involv-”

“You remember I promised to kill you?” I interrupt. “Right after Apple Bloom’s ritual? I made it very clear that I’d kill you the next time we met.”

Alda looks at me like I’m an alien from another planet. It takes her a good few seconds of observation before she’s sure that I’m serious, and then she gets cocky. “Sweetie please, you know I still have my shadow demons nearby. Even if you do somehow manage to get by them and hurt me, they’ll just run off immediately and set fire to that little town of yours. Now can we focus on the matter hoof? I’m offering you a blank check as far as rewards go. Just fuck the boy, cry a bit afterward, then I’ll give you anything you want."

I stare at her in silence for another moment, then I close my eyes. I stay still, breath deep, and empty my thoughts. I don’t think of killing her for a few seconds, I don’t think Apple Bloom for a few seconds. I don’t think of Ponyville, the Order, Scootaloo, the freezing rain, or even the sheer utter insanity of what I’m about to do. Then behind the screen of my closed eyes I receive a vision. I see Alda, standing in front of me all smug and superior looking, along with thirteen black gelatinous creatures with many variations of claws, teeth, eyes, tentacles, and other such lovely extremities. My clairvoyance allows me to see her demons, where they are, what they look like, what they’re doing, and how to fight them.

A faint smile curves the corner of my lip. I open my eyes and charge straight at Alda. I’m a few feet away from her, then I duck my head and jab my front hoof up. My hoof connects, there’s a wonderful squelch, and a gush of warm blood down my arms. The demon screeches in pain. I move while they’re all still in shock, and dive towards Alda. My jaws clamp down on the bone of her wing. There’s a crunch in my teeth like I just bit through an unlicked lollipop.

Alda screams like a mare in labor, her agony echoes through the night sky. I yank my head back, ripping flesh and feathers away from the body, and drag her severed wing a safe distance away.

Alda falls to the ground screaming. She writhes like an ant under the lense of a sadistic foal. She rolls on her side, her voice in a wreck, and carefully lifts a shaking hoof to the stump of her wing. She flinches in pain at its touch and screams once more. She looks at me with tears in her eyes, just in time to see me scarf down the last remainder of her wing.

I spit up one bloody feather and use the stem to pick my teeth. “So this thing where you want to blackmail Spike. What exactly do you intend to get out of it?”

“How? How did you do that? There’s no possible way-”

“Oh, I had something to deal with your demons from the moment we met. I just never got a chance to use it until now.” That, and because using clairvoyance in combat is really fucking risky. I knew there was no way her demons would be able to hide from that ability; they may be invisible but they can’t change the fabric of reality. However, using clairvoyance requires a little time and a lot of concentration, the two things that mean the difference between life and death.

“Back on topic,” I say. “Could you elaborate on what you plan to do when you blackmail Spike? While you’re at it why don’t you just spill everything you’ve been sent here to do. That’s literally the only thing keeping you alive.”

I think for a moment. “Well, maybe not keeping you alive per say, more like stopping me from nailing you to a burning slab of iron and peeling your skin off with a rusty shaving razor over the course of several hours. If you’re cooperative then I might just settle for gouging your eyes out and forcing you to perform cunnilingus on me before I snap your pretty little head off.”

Fear surfaces above her hate filled eyes. She clamps her teeth together and she snarls, “Don’t be stupid. I can still have my demons attack this town and lead the Order straight to you. You make one more move against me and you’re dea-”

I leap forward and slice off the head of another demon. Blood sprays across Alda’s face. She shrieks and backs away from me.

“I am far past the point of caring anymore Alda. I don’t give a fuck if I’m running from the Order for the rest of my life. There’s only two things I want: you in as much pain and agony that is within my capability of giving, and Asmodeus back in hell. Help me complete the later of those two, and we can negotiate the former.”

Her weak attempt to maintain composure falls flat. She is trembling. She takes her panicking eyes off me and looks around her, “What are you idiots doing? Kill her! Kill her now!”

Here we go. I jump back as far away from her as I can, then clear my mind and do my best to focus. It takes a second but I eventually see visions of the demons. Alda wasn’t exaggerating about their shapeshifting abilities. There’s a little less than a dozen charging at me, all black shadowy skin with furious red eyes, but no two have the same form. One has six sets of claws that reach out toward me, another slithers along the ground like some hybrid of snake and lightning, and another falls from the sky as nothing but a fleshy ball of jaws and teeth. They’re all closing in on me, and I don’t have enough time to attack.

I jump from the road and up into the trees. I’m gonna have to put more distance between me and them to make this work. I climb high and far until I’m just a few feet below the canopy of leaves. I close my eyes and empty my thoughts. Rain water freezes my skin and it feels like I’m breathing stone. Every second is a pinprick. Finally, I get a vision. Black shadowy skin, long slender limbs, nails like knife points, and a face like a mad hound. It’s quickly ascending the tree next to me.

Without hesitating I leap from the tree branch and shoot down like a diving pegasus. Raindrops form a cone around my face and wind shrieks in my ear. I point my head towards the neighboring tree, scream out, and thrust my hoof forward. The feeling of my elbow inside someone else’s chest cavity has never felt so glorious. Blood splashes across my body and I laugh victoriously. This could fucking work!

I land on the ground and speed off through the trees. The earth shakes seconds after I move. I look behind me and see crater where the spot I landed once was, and big stone shattering hoof steps coming towards me. Taking this as a sign that says ‘don’t get cocky’, I speed up and put a massive distance between me and the demon. I rest with my back against the trunk of a tree and immediately clear my mind. I only need to wait a few seconds before a vision comes to me.

“You just made a huge mistake, I hope you know that!” Alda shouts.

God dammit, she’s gonna ruin my concentration! I snarl in frustration and run while I have the chance. The tree behind me explodes into splinters seconds after I take off.

“You could’ve been on good terms with Asmodeus. You would’ve had anything you wanted! Now you’ll die like an unwanted child!”

“Oh, what does it matter,” I yell as I run. “It feels like no matter what I do I’ll end up getting fucked by someone. If it’s not you then it’s the Order, if it’s not the Order then it’s Asmodeus. If all else fails God himself will come down and fuck me. It’s just the way the universe works!”

I leap high and cling to the side of a fat oak. I shut my eyes and swallow my anger like a block of lead. I force out all thoughts long enough to see a vision. Two demons, one with wings, the other leaping between trees like a frog between lily pads. I rocket off the tree, punch through the face of the winged demon, but get tackled by the leaping one. I feel teeth rip into my shoulder and claws tear across my stomach. I scream through clamped teeth and punch at the spot over my shoulder. Blood spurts from a cracked skull, the demon releases me, I spin around and slice its chest in half. I land on the forest floor, and limp away as fast as I can with my still healing wounds.

“Asmodeus would have shielded you, would have given you protection. If you had just taken his offer you could’ve destroyed everyone who attempted to harm you, not even the forces of heaven could stop us.”

I try to concentrate and see the demons again, but end up laughing instead. “You actually believe that?”

Something rams me in the chest. I’m flung back several feet and slam into the trunk of a tree, which I remain splattered against as it topples to the ground.

“If the gates of Hell itself couldn’t stop Asmodeus than what makes you think anything in this world can? The guardians of Hell were all destroyed by Asmodeus’s power, the guardians placed there by God himself to keep you demons in.”

I push myself up when another demon crashes down on my stomach. I spit up blood. Two boney hands slam into both sides of my head and try to rip it off. I stab my hooves through both unseen hands, but as soon as they’re off something wraps around my neck and strangles me. Spears are driven through the bottoms of my hooves, a knife into my abdomen, and the flesh around my ribs is slowly peeled away from the bone. I’m in too much pain to scream.

“To think you thought you could stand against that power when you can’t even stand against me. I almost regret having to kill you here tonight. I want to see the look on your face when Asmodeus burns this pathetic world to the ground and then marches his army to the gates of Heaven itself.”

I feel the flesh being stripped off my back. I can’t even feel the pain anymore, my vision darkens, and my legs are getting weak. I bite my lip and summon up every last bit of demonic energy I can. Fire envelops my body. Demons shriek but their grip still holds. My wounds scream through my exhausted body. I can’t keep going for much long, but I don’t stop. I keep gathering up more demonic energy, storing it in my chest like steam in a pipe. Then I release it all at once in a devastating explosion.

Everything around me is blown away. Trees are uprooted, rocks shatter to pieces, and demons screech as they sail through the air. I stand alone in the crater, panting like I just pushed a whale off my chest. Tears trail down my cheek. No, I don’t have time to be crying. I’m still trembling, but it looks like there was no damage done that can’t be quickly healed. I look through the settling dust to Alda sitting stunned and immobile on the ground several yards away.

My eyes flare. “You know, for someone who says to never trust demons you sure do trust them.”

I take a moment to use clairvoyance again. Two demons were killed in the blast. Six survivors scrape off their wounds and start charging again.

“I don’t know what Asmodeus hopes to accomplish with this little invasion of his, but he sure as hell isn’t trying to reignite the war with Heaven!”

I slam my hooves into the ground, cracking the earth and causing a tremor. Most of the demons are knocked off balance. I run forward, clasp my hooves over my head, and dive straight through the chest of one of the eight armed monstrosities. I pop out the other side, blood streaming all over my face, and then continue running before the rest have a chance to do anything.

“That whole ordeal is universally recognized as the single stupidest thing my race has ever done. Honestly, how can you fight an enemy that knows every move you will ever make and can successfully counter every problem He has by sticking it between His ass cheeks and clenching? We didn’t wage war, we tried to headbutt a hurricane!”

I jump over a fallen oak and buck it with my hind legs. It goes flying behind me and breaks in half against an invisible demon’s face. It’s not harmed, but slowed down enough so I can use clairvoyance. Several pairs of teeth stretch towards me on elongated shadowy necks, all protruding from a single black blob of slippery flesh. I charge through an opening in the middle of the horde of teeth and bury my hoof deep into the body. There’s a brief howl before I rip out an organ and the demon goes limp. I jump a fair distance to safety and keep running.

“If Asmodeus really was trying to restart that catastrophe then no demon in the world of the living or the damned would support him. Hell, there’d be demons rising up against him. If that’s what Asmodeus has been telling you then I’m sorry to say that you’ve been fed more bullshit than a minotaur with a scat fetish.”

“You’re the one spouting bullshit!” Alda screams. “You demons threw yourselves into the fires of hell just to fight God, and you haven’t stopped fighting Him since. Countless centuries after the battle of Armageddon and you still torment His creations, make their lives miserable, and try to steer them away from their precious God. You demons will keep fighting heaven any way you can, consequences be damned.”

“You think we’re fighting,” I yell back at her. “We thought we were fighting once, that lasted about the same time it took to be struck down from paradise. Ever since then our history has been one long slog of looking for a reason to exist without hope. That is what we are Alda, a species that is damned from the outset. The only choice we have is whether to accept it and find someway to cope, or to grasp at air for some delusional way to change it.”

I see another demon through clairvoyance. Seven mad eyes with a mouth wider than an alligator’s come towards me, gliding on two massive wings that shake the trees as they flap. I springboard off a branch and ricochet off the trunk of a tree to tackle the demon in mid-air and stab my hoof through its jaw. It wriggles and snarls as we crash to the ground, but I keep stabbing it until the mess of blood and bone stops moving. I continue to run.

“Oh, and I also love how you equate harming creation to harming God. Do you think He’s any less powerful when mortals drop into hell? Does fighting Him become any less impossible when we ruin their lives or butcher their children? Even if He does supposedly care about you, He loses nothing regardless of how much you suffer. Don’t you get it? There’s no way to harm Him!”

I run behind another tree and use clairvoyance. I see more fearsome black shapes with teeth and claws, except none of them are coming towards me. None of them are even near me. I open my eyes and peek around the bend of the trunk. My chest is clenched up like a fist. I half expect to get my face gnawed off any second.

“He really screwed you over, hasn’t He?”

Alda’s voice is soft but shaky. I walk through the line of trees until I have her in my line of sight. I use clairvoyance again. There’s only three demons left now, but they all stick by her side. What’s going on? “Doesn’t that mean you have nothing to lose by fighting Him? Your situation can’t possibly get any worse.”

“I can lose my life, and then face hell early.”

“So could I, but here I am fighting a battle you’re too chickenshit to fight yourself. You see I actually sympathize with you concerning God and your inevitable damnation, truly I do. Unlike you, however, I’m willing to fight the God who unjustly damns you to Hell, even if it means risking damnation myself.”

“Are you insane? You can’t win! You know you can’t win!”

“Yeah, but at least I’ll burn in hell with a clear conscience.”

My body tenses up. I can’t even feel the cold rain water pelting my head. Her words. How can anyone be that stupid? How can anyone be that blind? Does she not realize the gravity of the situation she’s in? No, she just doesn’t care. She doesn’t give a damn in the slightest. I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her.

“I’m going to fucking murder you!”

I sprint forward, creating a shock wave behind me that blasts rainwater everywhere. I close the distance between me and her in seconds. I roar. She grins. Realization hits me at the last moment, by then I’ve already jump straight into the jaws of her shadow demon.

A hundred jagged teeth dig into my chest. My lungs are pierced, my ribs break, and I can’t feel anything below my waist. With the last ounce of strength, I punch upward through the roof of the demon's mouth. It must have done the trick because the demon keels over and I slump out of its jaws.

I lay still on the ground. Breathing is painful. Streams of blood pour from my chest and form a pool by my side, and a small trickle leaks out my mouth. I try to stand but my hind legs don’t respond, and there’s an ungodly pain in my back. I roll on my belly and crawl with my front hooves. Alda walks up a few inches in front of me, looking down with an arrogant smile on her face. I bare my teeth and snarl at her.

“I guess you’re gonna be damned to hell early anyway,” she says. “Tear her in half.”

I’m pulled up by my back legs and hang upside down in the air. My legs are violently yanked in opposite direction. Feeling returns to my lower body, and fucking hell I wish I didn’t. I scream at the top of my lungs and thrash about trying to break free, to punch a demon, anything to make the pain stop.

I’m ready to resign myself to death when one of the demons screeches out horribly and lets me go. The other demon loses its balance from the sudden release and we both fall to the ground. I look over and see thick clouds of steam rising from an invisible source; a source that thrashes around howling in agony and clawing at the dirt, until it slowly dies.

For a moment I stare confused, stupidly wondering if God struck down my attacker. Then I see her. Scootaloo skidding to a stop on her scooter, an empty glass vial in her hoof.

“Sweetie are you okay?”

My back has healed enough so I can stand up, though not without an immense amount of pain. I try to respond to her when I see a tree uprooted from the ground behind her, and swung at her like a club.

My heart stops. “No!”

I lunge forward, and by some miracle, my hit connects and slices through the demon’s skull, but I’m two seconds too late. The trunk slams into Scootaloo’s side and she’s flung through the woods. She ricochets off the ground several times like a stone skipping across water until she comes to a sudden halt.

Everything goes cold. I’m frozen with fear for a solid second, then I rush toward her. I slide through the dirt as I stop and kneel down before her. There’s a bone sticking out of her front left hoof and a trail of blood trickling down her forehead. There’s no movement.

“Scootaloo. Scootaloo, say something. Say something! Please tell me you’re okay!”

There’s no response. I plead several more times with my face bowed to the ground like I’m kneeling before the altar of God. My hooves shamble towards her, but they don’t come far before I feel the burning of holy water. It protects her still, even as she lays there, even as she’s unconscious, even when she’s not breathing.

I’m knocked back on my haunches and stare at her body with damp broken eyes. My head shakes unconsciously. Tears mix with raindrops as the wall in my chest burst open. My augmented hearing picks up the faint patter of hooves moving far away. I tilt my head and see Alda slowly backing away from the forest.

I look at her. I stare at her. I know hate. I know what it feels like, to desire harm and death upon another living creature. What I feel right now is so far beyond that.

Alda keeps backing away. Her mouth moves, probably in some attempt to reason or beg for her life, but I don’t hear it, not a damn word she says. I stand up and begin walking towards her. She backs up further and starts speaking faster with her hoof stretched out. I charge, cross the distance between us in a second, and punch her right on that big dumb grin of hers.

Teeth shoot from her mouth like bloody kernels and the mandible hangs by the skin. She reels back and hits the ground moaning. Her shaking hoof comes up to her mouth and she instantly recoils in pain. I watch her writhe and cry with the sternest face.

Her remaining wing is extended out in front of me, I grab it by the bone. Alda looks over her shoulder. Tears stream from her eyes. The loose flap of her jaw swings as she shakes her head. My teeth clench. I slowly tighten my grip on her wing. She fidgets, then cries, then screams, and then the bone cracks. The wing bends at an unnatural angle, to where the feather are draped over her back.

Her broken jaw makes the saliva run to the back of her throat, producing a wet scream like she’s drowning in a lake. I hold the loose part of her wing in one hoof and put my other on her side, then slowly push them apart. Alda screams louder. The skin rips first, then come the muscle fibers one by one like strands in a rope. The wing comes off with a moist tearing sound. The stump twitches and squirts blood for several moments. Alda hits her forehead against the ground and weeps.

I grab her by the hind leg and turn over onto her back. I touch the bloody end of her severed wing to her chest, and trace it down past her stomach, below her waist, and rest it on her clitoris. She looks at me, broken and terrified. She urinates on the severed limb and then slumps her head back sobbing in a gargled fit.

I hold the wing tip firmly and twist it like a screwdriver. I hate this mare. No words in the mortal or angelic language can articulate how much I hate this mare. I’ve wanted to end her since our first confrontation, yet here it is and I find myself a victim to the age-old plight of all revenge seekers. Her suffering brings me nothing, not even the satisfaction of payback.

Even if I couldn’t live peacefully in Ponyville, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo deserved to. So why did they die, and why am I still alive? Those questions boil beneath my skull until my brain burns with anger. Rage consumes me like a wildfire and I take it out on the only thing I still have control over.

I drive the bone through Alda’s cunt so hard it spears through her stomach. I ram it in and out several times puncturing a new hole with each thrust. When the bone snaps off in her ribs I jam the feathered remains down her throat. When it won’t go in any farther I beat my hooves against her face until her skull shatters into a thousand tiny shards. I keep hitting her long after that. I keep punching until her flesh has dissolved into a red smear, her bones have been broken up into dust, and all that’s left is a slippery saturated patch of dirt which I pound on like a wailing infant. After a while, my arm gets tired.

I pant out several more furious grunts and hit my head against the ground. Tears break through my steely eyes, my barred teeth burst open like a dam and my sobbing floods the air. I cry with my face in the moist red dirt, wishing for the sun to implode and the universe to end.

Why did it have to end like this? Why couldn’t I have died there with my legs ripped apart, and she have been allowed to live? If I were under any illusion that death would end my pain I’d slit my throat and watch the life drain out of me. But I won’t. What I want is complete oblivion, and death will not grant me that.

I curl up in a ball like a cowering insect and sob loudly. I hold the cold red dirt to my chest like a blanket to wrap around myself and pray that I’m washed away in the fury of the rain.

My body goes numb, all I can feel is anguish. I can’t even hear the rain or feel it against my skin. Nothing but cold crushing despair.

“Sweetie…”

The voice is shakey, quiet, and wheezing, but I recognize it as Scootaloo’s. I roll over slowly and wipe tears from my blurry vision. She’s awake, dragging herself through the dirt with one hoof, pulling herself slowly towards me.

For a moment I don’t even believe it. I write it off as some grief-induced hallucination or another spirit rising from hell and possessing her body. The more I look however the more my skepticism fades. She stops, heaves another wheezing gasp and calls my name again, “Sweetie Belle... ”

My disbelief shatters. She’s still alive.

“Scootaloo!”

My body shakes and prickles as I stand. I’m so drained I can only limp at first, but as blood returns to my dead limbs and elation sings in my soul I begin to run. Tears roll down my cheeks and emotion overwhelms my heart. I almost dive for her, but control myself before I tackle a wounded foal. I slide along the ground throwing my face down in front of her. “Scootaloo, seven names of Satan, Scootaloo! I thought you were dead, I thought I had lost you!”

She manages a weak smile, one with blood stained lips.

I'm wiping tears of joy from my eyes, barely keeping it together. “Hold on, just hold on. I’m gonna get you back to Ponyville. You’re gonna be okay.”

I stand up and take her undamaged hoof in my own, and get a searing burn and a sick feeling in my stomach. Scootaloo apologizes and rubs off the holy water, and then I can help her. I sling her good hoof over my shoulder and hoist her onto my back. I blast off towards Ponyville at supersonic speeds.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” Scootaloo says with every step.

I slow down to a regular sprint and the pain becomes slightly more bearable. We walk through the rain, she breaths heavily against my neck, then she moans out, “Is… is she dead?”

My face beams with pride. “Yeah, I killed her.”

“Thank Celestia,” she says as though she pushed a humpback whale off her face.

We walk a short distance and then she asks, “How did you do it? I thought you said there was no way without getting a knock on your door by the Order.”

“That’s what I thought too. But as Alda kept operating in Ponyville I discovered something about her I didn’t see at first.”

“And that is?”

“She was a coward.”

Scootaloo doesn’t speak for a moment. “The demon worshipping, homicidal, psychopath was a coward. If you say so, Sweetie Belle.”

“I know it’s far-fetched but it’s true. She pretended to be all calm and cool no matter the situation, but deep down she would’ve murdered her own mother to save her own life. It’s why she surrounded herself with so many powerful demons in the first place.”

“How did you find that out about her?”

“I tasted her blood,” I respond. “During that ritual last night Alda cut herself with a knife and gave it to Apple Bloom. I only managed to get a small taste, but it was enough to taste the sins in her blood. I tasted all the sin she had committed throughout her life; the violence, the lies, the betrayal, and most importantly her cowardice.”

“You can do that?”

“If I concentrate I can. Hell, just a few days ago me and a friend had a lavish party in which I tasted all kinds of sin.”

I breathe in a content sigh at the memory. My stomach dances with a lustful spark. I’m quick to shake the thoughts out of my head and return to the present. “Once I found out about her cowardice everything became simple. All I had to do was wait until the right moment, and then bluff. I made her think that even if she did follow through on her threat I’d still kill her, at which point she put all of her resources into protecting herself. Easy as that.”

There’s a subtle chuckle above my shoulder. “And here I thought you were gonna use some doomsday ritual or summon something out of hell.”

“Nah, the demons themselves I could’ve dealt with from the beginning.”

“They still gave you a lot of trouble, though, during the fight.”

“Admittedly I didn’t go in as prepared as I wanted to be, but it still worked out fine, in the end, thanks to you. Why did you come find me anyway?”

“My best friend goes running out of Ponyville in tears after tonguing me, again, and you think I’m not going to be worried?”

My eyes slam shut and I wince in pain at the reminder. “Yeeeaaah, Scootaloo, about that...”

“Forget about it,” she says. “I’d rather pretend that never happened, and judging from the way you acted I can tell you certainly do as well.”

She leans her head over so she can look me in the eye. “We can still be friends if you want.”

I laugh uncomfortably along with her. She laughs until she starts coughing violently, whipping blood from her head. Things go silent for a moment as we walk in the rain. Scootaloo lays like a rag doll on top of me for the most part, but she occasionally looks over at my face, like she wants to ask something. Eventually she does.

“Hey Sweetie Belle, I know you’re doing a lot to protect Ponyville and keep everyone safe and all, but now that I know about… you going to Hell, I’ve started to wonder. Is it a good idea for you to keep risking your life when you know what’ll happen if you lose it?”

I stop walking without realizing it. We stand drenched in the rain for a few seconds before I can respond. “This life is all I have Scootaloo. I’ve been trying to be as cautious as I can for the most part, but it’s gotten difficult recently.”

“Yeah, but if things are getting more dangerous wouldn’t it make sense to just run. Doesn’t it make sense to go find someplace safe to bog down in until this all blows over?”

“And leave you and all of Ponyville at the mercy of Asmodeus?”

Scootaloo’s head bends down low, and her words come almost as a mumble. “I’ll be honest, I’d rather me and the rest of Ponyville die than you spend eternity in Hell.”

I stare blankly, not sure whether to be touched or concerned. I look away from her and stare ahead. “It is tempting, and it would be a hell of a lot easier, but no. I’m going to stay and protect Ponyville. You mean too much to me.”

“But, but why? Sweetie… hell, damnation, on and on, forever and ever. Why would you risk that, even for me?”

I stare blinking ahead of me. My legs feel as though they’re rooted to the ground like tree trunks. I labor to lift one of these firmly planted limbs up to Scootaloo’s hoof, wrapped around my neck for support. I feel her weight against my back. I feel her breath. I feel the body that just a short while ago I lusted after and almost violated beyond repair. It feels heavier as dwell on that thought until it weighs six hundred pounds.

I clench my eyes and lower my head in shame. Then I lift my head up to the sky, letting a volley of raindrops assault my face. The sky is so dark, blotted out by a million angry storm clouds, swarming and marching above the world. Off in the distance, I can hear thunder, long before the shockwave rattles through our bones.

I think back to Scootaloo’s question and then mumble, “Because I’m still childish.”

“Wha… what does that mean?”

I look over my shoulder and see her heavy brow, her sunken face, and her glazed eyes. I turn back to the road, just now realizing we’ve stopped. “Never mind, we still need to get you to the hospital.”

I start off at a brisk pace again. Scootaloo tries to restart the conversation but I deflect every question with some anxious worry or determined remark. After many failed attempts she drops the matter and just hangs loosely on my back, huffing and wheezing gently. Ponyville is almost in sight, but before I even see it I can tell something is wrong.

Off in the distance, I hear voices, people yelling and screaming in a frantic fearful manner. I can feel constant vibrations in the ground, a million ponies rushing all over the place. The most worrying sign, however, is the increasingly sharp scent of smoke.

When the town comes into view the first thing we see is a massive column of smoke and ash rising into the sky, emanating from an incandescent orange.

Scootaloo’s heart races against my back. “What happened? What the hell happened? Sweetie please tell me this is a coincidence.”

It’s wishful hope on Scootaloo’s part, but inevitably in vain. I can sense it, even all the way out here. Demonic energy radiates from the town. But how? I killed all of Alda’s demons, I made sure of it. She called up every demon she had in order to defend herself, there was nothing more, nothing I could’ve mi…

My eyes shoot open like arrow wounds. My glass heart shatters at the realization. “Alda didn’t bring her snake with her.”

That fucking serpent. The one she hauled around in that tiny cage wherever she went. The one I knew was demonic.

My chest tightens up like a rubber band, and my teeth clamp together like a nutcracker. “Scootaloo, hold tight, we’re going in fast.”

I rush off at mach two speeds, praying all the way that I can somehow salvage the situation. Deep down, however, I know the damage has already been done. There’s no way the Order won’t notice this.