A Hint Of Maliceby Shadowmane PX-41
Chapters
Prologue: The Darkness Returns
It was a warm springtime day in Ponyville, birds were chirping, fillies and colts were playing in the sunbeams, and everything seemed fine. But fate likes to play a little game called "UP YOURS PEACE!!!". Her name is Lyra Heartstrings, she's an average unicorn with an unquenchable desire to learn of humans and their hands. She and her friend, Bon Bon work in the local confectionery shop just downtown, Lyra was also there on that fateful day.
"Wow, we've seen lots of customers today, righ Lyra?" Bon Bon said as she was rolling out some liquorice from the nearby roll and handing it to a customer who immediately bore an enourmous grin.
"At this rate, we'll have that vacation in Tailhiti in no time!" Lyra said as she wrapped up some cherry bombs for two young fillies which bore a devious smirk and giggled happily upon running out the door.
Time passed since then, and finally at closing time, it happened. Lyra was closing up shop for the night and went back upstairs to her bathroom, she was brushing her teeth with her hooves for some reason, an effort which turned out to be fruitless. As she eventually got the paste onto her teeth, she received a migraine and almost blacked out completely, if not for hitting her head on the bathtub behind her. As the headache got sharper, green mist started to form around her legs, and an eerie voice along with two others said, "This is not you. Awaken your true potential, and get revenge on all who scorned you and us."
After hearing the voices, Lyra was consumed by the green mist, and her horn was being corrupted by a black aura, this went on for a minute before everything dissipated and her eyes were closed. As soon as they were opened again, her eyes had reverted to sinister-green. It was the wedding day all over again.
"Bon Bon...." She said in a sly grimdark voice, "Come out come out wherever you are..."
"Over here, Lyra. In bed, waiting for you." She said in her double ended bed, one end for her, the other end empty with the covers rolled up, waiting for Lyra to lie down and doze off, "Forgotten where your bed is?"
"Actually, i wanted to play a game with you, a game you've probably never even played before."
"Lyra, this is no time for one of your bedtime games, we've got lots of patrons to serve tomorrow."
"Do you remember what happened at the Royal Wedding?"
"Yes, The Changelings invaded, Celestia was struck down, and eventually the real Cadence and Shining Armour defeated the Changeling Army and got married, happily ever after."
"I meant do you remember what happened to me?" Lyra was getting ever so closer to Bon Bon's side of the bed, with a few dozen knives hidden in her flank pocket.
"You were invited to be one of Fake Cadence's Bridesmaids, until Twilight's friends were elected to do the job."
"Something happened when we were replaced. Something that made our lives a lot more... interesting." She was levitating some knives out of her flank, as if to slaughter the cream coloured earth pony when she stopped.
"Lyra, what are you talking about?"
"Strange voices consumed our minds, and ordered us to kill the princesses in the caves. But we were stopped by some flowers."
"OK, you've definitely been watching too much Equestria Girls. Come on it's time for bed."
"No, it's time for you to go to bed...... permanently." Lyra now revealed her hypnotized state to Bon Bon.
"What are you doing?!" She said as she noticed a dozen knives were levitated around the green unicorn.
"Night-Night. Forever!!!" Lyra's knives started to cut off all of Bon Bon's legs one by one. She screamed at the loss of her legs, both in agony and fear. And to add insult to injury, Lyra now moved the knives in an amazingly complex way, to cut open Bon Bon's stomach in a way that said "Long Live The Evil Bridesmaids.". And to finish it off, Lyra beheaded her friend with one fell swoop of all 12 blades, and then immediately tossed the head and legs into the fireplace nearby. Bon Bon was dead, and Lyra killed her. All that Lyra could say was "It feels so good to be grimdark again!"
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And now we move onto the local Dentistry, where we meet our second of the three murderhorses, Her name is Doctor Colgate, she specializes in keeping teeth clean and studying time travel at the same time, and she too was there in the caves.
"Next!" Said Minuette, Colgate's newest assistant and timekeeper extroadinaire. The dentistry wasn't very busy today, as there were only three ponies waiting on the bench. As the next patient entered the dentist's room, she was asked to take a seat on the chair behind him.
"OK then, Vinyl, let's see what the damage this week is." Colgate said as she pulled up a little mouth and nose mask, flicked on a light and pulled out a little mirror on a stick with her magic and shoved it into the white unicorn's mouth, "Just as i thought, you've been brushing your teeth with your dubstep again, haven't you?"
"I can't help it doc, after all, my Cutie Mark is based around music and dubstep." She said in response after revealing her partially yellow teeth.
"I'm gonna have to drill out some of your teeth and give you fillings. It's a painful procedure that happens to naughty ponies that don't brush properly. Oh well, should have used toothpaste when you had the chance. Stay here while i grab the drill and filling cream. Colgate said as she trotted off to the office behind her and opened a draw with a dentist's drill in it. As she picked it up however, she received the same migraine, dark voices, green mist and dark magic just like Lyra did. With an evil smile on her face, Colgate stepped back into the dentist's room, with her drill in magic aura.
"Please doc, spare me this time, i've got some important songs to sing and/or remix. I promise to brush my teeth with toothpaste from now on, and i'll even cut down on some of the sweets i've been trying. Just have mercy on me!" Vinyl said as she was shaking for life in the chair's straps which were suddenly wrapped tight around her chest and hooves.
"Too late for that, my dear Vinyl Scratch. Now open wide and say aah." She said as the drill now spinning, came ever so closer to Vinyl's muzzle.
She was scared beyond belief but did as she was told, She even shut her eyes and hopefully Colgate would reconsider, but to no avail. And what Vinyl got next would scare anyone who had a dentist appointment. Instead of moving the drill towards her Vinyl's teeth like she usually did, the now possessed Colgate moved the drill towards Vinyl's chest instead, and without hesitating, stabbed her with the chest with the spinning blade, creating a big hole in Vinyl's body. As the white unicorn screamed in utter agony, Colgate ripped out Vinyl's heart and ate it right in front of her terrified eyes. Causing Vinyl Scratch to scream for a few seconds longer before collapsing to the floor as a corpse. After which, Colgate said, "Looks like Bon Bon and Lyra were right, without candy, i'd be out of business."
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And finally, the 3rd and final evil one, Her name is Twinkleshine, an honorary student at Princess Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns, and she was the last other soul in those caves on that dark fateful day.
"And as we can see by this equation, an aging/youthening spell can be chosen to be made permanent or removeable when casting it. It all depends on the caster's concentration, any questions?" Said a teacher in a spellcasting class as he was pointing at a rather complex equation that would have made Twilight Sparkle bounce up and down in giddyness.
"I have one." Said a white unicorn with a pink mane and tail raising her front-right hoof at the desk, "Can an aging/youthening spell be removed by waiting or magic?"
"Well, Twinkleshine, While someponies choose to let time take it's course, some other ponies decide to remove the spell when a certain time period has passed." The teacher responded. "Now class, not many unicorns are able to perform this spell without a little helping hand. A few examples include, getting a bunch of friends to pull off the spell, focusing really Really hard and praying for something to happen, or you could resort to the Alicorn Amulet used by Trixie not long ago. Only certain unicorns are able to perform this spell without aid or dark powers, but those unicorns have long sinced either passed away or been reincarnated as alicorns."
After he stopped, the bell rang, signalling recess. And all the classroom ponies walked out into the corridor, writing down the equation on a notepad on their way out, in an attempt to try it out once they got back to their dorm rooms. Once Twinkleshine made it back to her dorm room 2517, she pulled out the spell on a notepad and wrote it down in a textbook under her bed. However, after she finished writing the spell down on her book, the very same migraine, dark magic, green mist and evil voices consumed her, and before she knew it, she had been corrupted again.
As night fell, and all of the dorms were silent, Twinkleshine walked out into the darkness with a weird black tome in her pocket and headed for the teacher's bedroom. As she entered the room, she saw some if not all of the teachers sleeping cozily in their beds, dreaming happy dreams and trying to memorize curriculum lessons for tomorrow, when Twinkleshine opened the tome and read in whispers, a spell called "Black Hole". As her horn aura glowed in the darkness, a black vortex appeared in the room, getting larger and louder as time went by. The teachers had only woken up the second they realized that they were being pulled into the vortex with no means of escape, even their magic was effortless. Twinkleshine then closed the book and galloped back into her dorm room in silence, and began to use a dark sonar spell to relay a message to the other possessed ponies, "Sisters, it is time for us to rise again. Let all ponykind know of your grimdark wrath, then meet me at Canterlot."
Chapter 1: Genocide
At first, ponykind took the multiple killings as a warning that they should be good instead of bad. But then it escalated into a full-on extinction era. As the corpses started to pile up, the bounty for the sisters of darkness went up as well. Eventually it became everypony for themselves in most of the major towns and villages. Many ponies decided to fight back, in an effort to claim the reward money. Many ponies tried, but all of them were slaughtered by the possessed unicorns, and many ponies that weren't killed by Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine, were themselves possessed. The former bridesmaids were now amassing an army of possessed ponies, but for what purpose?
Monday. November 18, 2014, 10;51 AM
In the city of Canterlot, many of the buildings had been destroyed beyond all repair, and weird green marks were tagged on some of the still stable buildings. In the castle's throne room, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had called forth the Spirits of Harmony after years of fighting back possessed ponies.
"Welcome, girls." Celestia said as they came through the front doors, "I would have called you sooner, but i've been a little preoccupied."
"I understand, Princess Celestia." Twilight said to her ruler, "You've been fighting back against them as well."
"As you are no doubt aware, these possessed ponies only started popping up just recently." Luna explained as she magicked up some visual aids with her horn, "We've done all we can to hold them off, but they just keep coming. We know not who or what caused this to happen, but we do know that these possessed ponies are being commanded by three unknown unicorns."
"It is apparent that these unicorns have been steeped in the darkness before, as their magic is off of the charts. All of my men, even Shining Armour had no luck in taking them down." Celestia's voice turned grim.
"What kind of brutish ponies would want to do such a thing?" Rarity inquired.
"We are just unscrambling the picture now, it will be clear in a few moments." Luna said as the screen showed a vortex of colours, violently and erratically swirling around in the light box. After the colours had stopped moving, the possessed ponies were revealed and Twilight bore a look of horror.
"This is impossible." She said as she gazed into the green eyes in the picture. She knew who they were just by looking, "Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine, Chrysalis's Bridesmaids."
Upon hearing this, Celestia and Luna shared scared glances, "You know them?!" Luna asked.
"I've seen them before." Twilight said with grief on her face, "Do you remember the crystal caves underneath the city?"
"Yes, i sealed them off myself, hoping my subjects wouldn't get consumed by greed and darkness." Celestia said.
"Stuff happened to me after you scorned me on the wedding day, I was warped there, by the queen herself." Twilight spent the next 10-15 minutes talking about the journey to escape the caves with Cadence, she went on and on about everything, even the Bridesmaids at the end, "What i don't get is, how have they been possessed again? Chrysalis was banished and the Changelings scattered.
"Someone must have seen their darker sides and re-opened them. Someone with the power to alter light and darkness on a massive scale." Luna replied. "A being even stronger than anypony on this planet."
"We don't have much time, girls. Who knows, they could be closing in on our position even as we speak-" Celestia was cut off by a deafening explosion in the throne wall, which now had hundred of possessed ponies climbing through it and into the castle.
"Well well well. What do we have here?" One of the followers said as he eyed down the princesses and the Mane 6.
"Survivors? Impossible. Nothing escapes the dark ones!" Said a second voice, "But still, these girls look tough, well except for the pink one and the yellow one, they look tasty."
"They all look like fresh meat to me." Another one said with a low expectation like voice, "What do you think, ladies?"
And soon enough, all of the possessed ponies moved aside to reveal Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine stepping through the crowd towards the Mane 6
"Hello, Twilight." Lyra said as she stopped walking.
"Hello, ladies." Twilight said back to them.
"Are these your friends? Cause i'm not seeing a lot of potential here, unless you have something that will make us reconsider." Colgate asked her.
"Hang on girls, i smell something. Something... powerful, coming from their saddlebags." Twinkleshine said as she immediately teleported next to and opened said saddlebags, "Ah ha! Here we go."
"Are those the-"
"Yes, the fabled Elements Of Harmony." She said as she returned next to her colleagues, "And i suppose you are their chosen bearers?"
Upon hearing this, the possessed ponies could not help but laugh, laughing at the sight of 6 childish mares bearing the trinkets needed to save Equestria from utter destruction.
"How amusing, to see six..... kids! Bearing the greatest weapons ever deivsed by ponykind." Lyra noted.
"Hey, are you saying we're childish?!" Rainbow Dash snapped.
"Dashie, dear, you and your friends ARE childish. I mean you're what? 16?" Colgate asked.
"14 and a half." She responded.
The possessed ponies could not help but laugh even harder than before.
"You're 14, and you're wielding the elements? How funny." They decided to calm down a little before pulling out their weapons of mass death and destruction, "This should be CHILD'S play, oopsie, did it again."
"What business do you have here in the castle anyway?!" Luna demanded.
"Patience, former elder of darkness, all will be revealed in good time. But for your childish defenders, I leave a riddle." Lyra said to the princess of the night and then turned to face the Mane 6, "What is the light, without darkness? and if so, what is the darkness without light? The answers, the truth, the final clash, all awaits in the Everfree Forest."
After she stopped, the possessed followers teleported into nothingness and/or ran/flew off laughing. Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine however, opened a weird vortex of black and green energy and stepped through it before fading away into the shadows completely.
"OK, that was weird, even by my standards." Pinkie Pie said after the portal sealed itself and dissapeared.
"Well we're not gonna get the answers by sittin' here and twiddling our hooves. Those ponies said that the truth awaited in that there Everfree Forest." Applejack said, breaking the silence.
"But, the Everfree Forest is a dangerous place for anypony who dares enter, Remember, If it wasn't for the Tree Of Harmony, we would have all been devoured by the forest's dark essence." Fluttershy reminded them all, "They must be using the forest for another reason altogether, maybe an ambush, or a ritual ground, or something even more dark."
"Even so, if we don't enter the forest, Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine will eventually get bored and start killing again, and god knows what kind of hell those three can pull off now." Celestia told them all, "Twilight, you and the girls need to enter the forest once more and restore those ponies to their rightful states, only then will all this carnage stop."
"You're right, come on ,girls. We're gonna pay the dark bridesmaids a visit." Twilight said as they were strapping on their respective Elements Of Harmony.
As they galloped off to the forest however, a voice in the air said, "Soon i shall be reborn, and all ponykind will burn!!!"
Chapter 2: Twilight..... Come out and play....
As the Mane 6 neared the entrance to the forest, they noticed that a weird black flow of magic was seeping into the woods, as if trying to find something or someone to possess. Once they actually got to the entrance to the forest, Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine teleported in front of them, causing each of the Mane 6 to jump back in surprise and land on their flanks.
"Took you long enough." Lyra said after the Mane 6 got back on their feet, "If you'd have been any longer, i would have had to start murdering again."
"OK, you three. You've got some explaining to do." Twilight said full of vigor, "Why do you want to be dark anyway?"
"You still don't get it, do you?" Colgate answered, "Why do you think we want to be seen, after all the great feats you've done together?"
"I don't follow."
"Did you ever see us? Most of the challenges you've faced, whether it was the Hearth's Warming Eve performance, or the duel with Trixie, Even the time you switched your destinies." Twinkleshine told then, "We were there, hidden in the crowd, watching over you all."
"But did you pay the slightest bit of attention to us?! NO! YOU DIDN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Lyra said as a black aura intensified around her and her eyes turned fire-red, "YOU ALWAYS TURNED YOUR BACK ON US, YOU NEVER THOUGH ABOUT PAYING YOUR DISTANT FRIENDS A VISIT!!!!!"
"So we like to think of this as, how you call it? Oh yeah, REVENGE!!!" Colgate now snapped.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down, you two. Save some bloodlust for the labyrinth." Twinkleshine said to calm the other two down. "You can kill as much as you want once they enter the labyrinth."
And after that, the three background ponies teleported away into darkness, with their individual laughs echoing on the winds. After the laughter died down, the individual entrance turned into 6 different entrances which all looked like a massive maze of shrubs. On each different path of shrubs, the individual cutie marks of Twilight and her friends was marked on the walls, as if to indicate that only ponies with matching cutie marks could enter the different entrances.
"Well, looks like we're splitting up again." Rarity told them as she neared her trail of shrubs.
"Another day, another darkness maze." Rainbow Dash said with a bored look on her face.
"I don't know about this, girls. Something about this maze just doesn't sit right with me." Said a reluctant Pinkie pie as she entered her trail.
"And just what would that something be?" Applejack asked upon entering her trail.
"Just a reeeaaaalllyyy big something that i don't know about yet."
After Twilight entered her trail, all the trail's entrances were sealed with another wall of shrubs, and all the other openings to the forest were blocked off by rapidly growing tree trunks and thick branches. Flying and magic was completely useless for their means of escape.
"Hello, girls? Anypony?" Twilight screamed into the darnkess, but it was futile, the walls had been soundproofed, and the Mane 6 were truly on their own this time.
"Twilight....... Come out and play........" Were the only voices that she could hear in the dark shrubs, "Twilight......... You can't hide forever........"
The voices kept repeating themselves, getting louder and creepier as Twilight walked down the trail and deeper into the forest, "Twilight........ Come out and play........."
"Who are you?! What do you want from me?!?!" Twilight said, now panicking that the voices would not stop until she reached the end of the never-ending trail.
Sure enough, she did make it out of the trail, but was shocked to see that she wasn't out of the forest at all. She had stumbled into a clearing, where she thought she was safe. But truth to be told, she was far from safe.
"Well what do you know, she made it." Said a female voice from the tree branches, "I thought she would have laid down and cried like a foal, what with the creepiness of our synchronized voices."
"But she didn't." Another female said, "And do you know what that means, girls?"
"We get a new victim to play with!" The 3rd voice said, "If she doesn't put up a fight, I call the cutie mark!!!"
Twilight narrowly dodged a knife that was hurled at her from the branches, and then cast a powerful repulsion field spell which removed the branches and shrubs from her area. Surely enough, she revealed the three possessed sisters of darkness, Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine.
After revealing themselves, the three ponies teleported all over the place in an attempt to confuse Twilight, this turned out to be quite successful as Colgate knocked Twilight into a tree with some powerful dark magic. Twilight quickly recovered and started firing magic bolts at the three unicorns. Unfortunately, she only managed a few successful hits, as the the possessed ponies were teleporting again. Eventually, Twilight was locked into a 1-on-3 horn-of-war with Lyra, Colgate and Twinkleshine.
"Impressive, Twilight." Lyra remarked, "I can see why Chrysalis had us try to murder you all those years ago."
"Stop flattering me." Twilight said as she tried to push back all three horns with great diffuculty.
As they broke the clash, Colgate said, "You would make a good dark pony."
The fighting continued for 10-20 minutes, with some crazy dark magic, insane tome reading, and even a storm of knives raining down from all locations. But Twilight still held her own and was able to back the three unicorns into a wall before blasting them with a laser spell that would have carved a hole into a mountain.
"Grrrr, meddlesome little child!" Twinkleshine said in anger as she got up from the laser's stream, "But your efforts were for naught."
"Huh?" Asked Twilight with a worried yet confused look on her face.
"As you were fighting us, we've been sampling your data and magic wavelength." Lyra told her.
"And with the knowledge we've collected, we can create a powerful clone of you, and use it for our own nefarious purposes." Colgate said as the trees behind them opened up to reveal a clear wall-less trail deeper into the forest.
"So long, Twilight, hopefully you won't keep us waiting for too long." Lyra said before she and the others faded into the darkness laughing once more.
"A clone?" Twilight asked herself, "What are those three planning?"
"Well if i know one thing for sure, it's that i'm wasting my time just sitting here and wondering about the dark plot those three are hatching. I need to go deeper into the forest to re-unite with the others, then we can take them down and stop this sinister plan." And with that last bold statement, Twilight was galloping off into darkness once more.
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"Is it almost done?" Lyra asked in a deeper part of the forest.
"Patience, Lyra, a masterpiece like this needs time to be perfected." Colgate said as she and Twinkleshine were using their newfound dark magic to conjure up a possessed clone of Twilight in front of their eyes.
"And now for the finishing touch." Said Twinkleshine said as she pulled off a spell giving the clone green possessed eyes, "There, perfect!"
"Now all we need to do is to extract the data from the other Spirits Of Harmony, and his ressurection will be inevitable!" Lyra said before sharing another laugh with Colgate and Twinkleshine