“Is everypony alright?" Whooves asked.

There were a few incoherent mumbles. Only a couple sounded like an actual ‘yes’.

"I think so,” Twilight said. “Just a headache. Where are we? Where’s Rarity and Fluttershy?"

She lit her horn and discovered they were all in a cramped closet-like space. The smell of burnt fur and sound of Rarity’s whimpering was clear. The stricken, quivering mare had her ossified arm hanging over her back, a very visible and long crack running from elbow to wrist. Twilight immediately helped her balance it as not to put more strain on the fractured bone. It wasn’t worth asking if she was okay, not just because her lips were shredded.

"I told ya I wasn't full of it! Did you hear that!?" an scrambled voice shouted, apparently from beyond the space. It was very loud, a low vibrating effect so strong they felt vibrations in their very bodies.

Applejack peered through a crack on the edge of a door. There was a short hallway with just a couple other rooms. The walls were fleshy, almost perspiring, and bore several fanged mouths and living orifices whose tongues hung down, idly swiping and curling. A humid heat hung in the air that smelled of alcohol and other sickeningly powerful odors.

"I can't hear anything over your blasted shouting." another voice mumbled.

"Whut 'n tarnation is this place?" Applejack said. She took the doorknob in her teeth to open it, but quickly lost her grip as it corroded and melted at her touch. “Oops...”

“Oh good going, Applejack,” Rainbow annoyedly muttered.

“Sorry, but I think I hear somepony comin’.” Applejack put her eye back to the crack, only to meet a bright red iris returning the stare. It was rimmed in a shattered glasses lens on a white fuzzy face. Eventually it went away, closing the crack as they pushed off.

"I'm not messing with you this time, they're really here! I was right, so hand it over!”

"Not until I see too. Help me up."

They listened to the awkward back and forth ensuing on the other side.

"Alright open up."

"I can't use it like that." the accented voice said.

"Does it go in this way?"

"No, it's upside down."

"Like this?"

"The edge goes on this side of the strings! Do you not see the tooth marks already there?"

"Oh."

There was a squishing sound, the twangs of string and creaking wood. The Doctor felt a sharp pricking at his side and barely made out the offending object in the darkness, a crimson spattered arrow point on a wheel of seven more. Behind that was a small altar brandishing a couple of equine skulls.

“Oh no... Not here, not yet!”

“Doc, what’s the matter?” Applejack asked.

“It’s too soon, you’re not ready-” He silenced at the grunt of one of the outside ponies and the strange sound of their hoofsteps, which seemed to be one normal hoof, but the other metallic, a step clink, step clink. “Just be on your guards and don’t believe anything they say at face value.”

"Are you sure you're not just inebriated again, seeing things?" the outside accented mare mumbled.

"You know I don't know what that means."

"Intoxicated?"

"Uh..."

"Drunk? On another high?"

"Hey I haven't shot anything up for a whole six hours. That's a personal record. Now you look in there and tell me my dreams are fake."

"I will!"

The doorknob jiggled, but the melted other side refused to budge. The others quietly backed from the door and Twilight accidentally stepped on Fluttershy’s face. The iron mare was frozen on the floor, smoking and her face in a snapshot expression of pain and rage. The door and helmet that had been stuck to her were gone and Twilight swore she was... bigger.”

The door wobbled in its hinges at the effort of the outsiders.

“Come on, open! Rrrr!” A string shot through the hardwood, silvery and almost invisibly thin if not for its shimmering reflection of the light. It started cutting around the doorknob with the precision of a surgical knife but the speed as if it were cutting through air until it fell out of place. The door flew open and everyone’s mouth hung agape.

There was a taller, gray mare with only two legs on her left side, but walked bipedally. The other side was nothing but a giant mouth down the length of her body, lined in predatory teeth and gripping a cello whose silver endpin provided the other leg. Her black make was elegantly coiffed and around her neck was a strange tie with a rubylike gem in the center.

The other wore the most smug grin and was covered head to hoof in staff and music note tattoos. An electric-blue mane blazoned like a hedgehog on her head and in her glasses, only a few shards of purple glass remained. Her voice sounded scrambled, as if synthesized from a broken mix table.

“Now what did I tell you! I’m getting the wyrdstone!”

The grey pony shook her head. "Wait! Can't we talk about this?" The unicorn had already run into another room.

"Blast." she grumbled and cast her eyes to the others. "You just ruined my entire day."

A pink blur blasted up and zealously shook her hoof with a smile that looked like it would split her head in half. "Hiya! I'm Pinkie Pie! What's your name and that giant violin is so nifty, where’d you get it?"

"It's a cello!" she stammered and wrestled her hoof back. "My name isn’t important and you all have to leave-"

"YEEEAAAAH!!" The unicorn wailed, clumsily charging from the room. Her nose was smeared with a green powder and her horn crackled with wild magic as her eyes were dead set on her friend.

The gray mare swiped a hoof at her. "No no no Vinyl, not yet— Uugh!"

The unicorn thrust her sparking horn through her chest, making the mare drop her cello with a swath of limp tentacles spilling out after, and the unicorn raised her over her head, cackling with vicious eyes.

"Your soul's mine again!"

Rainbow Dash took a callous step forward. “Hey, what do you think—” Whooves slapped a hoof over her mouth.

“Don’t intervene,”

Shimmering white smoke streamed from the puncture wound and the victim grew pale and limp. Once the process apparently completed, Vinyl craned her head back and threw the mare on her back.

"Come on everypony! Lemme put her down so she can get a better look at you!"

“D-doctor...” Twilight stammered, “What was that? Who are they?”

“Followers of Chaos.” he said warily. “For now, we just follow along, but don’t take anything they offer. Understand everypony?”

They nodded and followed VInyl to where she threw her friend on a chair and rearranged her into a less contorting position. They seemed to be in some kind of apartment, furnished with all manner of archaic and, sometimes living, decorations. Patches of animal hide were nailed across the walls and it just looked like a musician’s shop of horrors.

“Everypony, I want you to meet Octavia.” Vinyl chimed. “Octavia, I want you to meet the fig...ments of my imagination!” Octavia was silent, with little enough energy to raise her head and retract her tentacles, but still couldn’t believe her eyes. Vinyl got up in her face. “Five weeks of nightmares, visions and dreams, you said were for nothing!” The light on her horn concentrated in the tip and departed as a shimmering orb, the size of a large marble. She teasingly wafted it under Octavia’s nose and took pleasure in her tortured, euphoric reaction to the sweet scent. “But look who was right! Mares and gentlecolt, this is what happens when you lose a bet to me!”

Vinyl chomped down on the ball, it's light visible as it traveled down her throat. A loud, static humming grew louder from within her chest. Her shattered sunglasses glasses filled in and her cheeks ripped like fabric, expanding her mouth into a screaming maw. She inhaled deeply and belched the ethereal smoke in Octavia's face.

"Hot damn it feels good to win!" she shouted. Her deep toned noise became somewhat nauseating to everyone else. "You guys have no idea what it’s like to feel this! I owe you a favor!" They backed away slightly when she stepped toward them. “What’s wrong? You guys act like you never seen a mutant before! What about you?” She motioned at Pinkie Pie. “I didn’t get the opportunity to thank you for getting me the gig at the royal wedding!”

Pinkie shrugged sheepishly. "I dunno... Watching somepony take somepony else's life...ball. You don’t seem very nice.”

Vinyl howled in laughter. "You shittin’ me? Look at yourselves. Look at Octavia, me. You think ponies like us survive on sharing and tolerance here? Mare, fuck that! You gotta fight for the right to live. You're gonna be met with the same hatred, the same on-sight death warrant anywhere you go in the world.”

“That can’t be true!” Pinkie Pie spoke up. “There have to be someponies who are nice and wanna make friends.”

Vinyl rolled her eyes behind her shades while setting a dial on the door to the black section and opened the it.

The area on the other side looked like Tartarus itself. All the structures were deformed, twisted, many seemed alive as they heaved and breathed through mouthed doorways. In the distance, massive dark spires reached into a dreadfully dark sky of black clouds. The inhabitants matched the place well, sporting mutations ranging from extra mouths, limbs and weaponized body parts, to hulking spiked armor and brandishing tremendous weapons not meant for mortal hands.

Before Vinyl could close the door, a snapping, gnashing face jumped and got caught in the gap, animalistically snarling and screaming with a blood-spattered mouth and wide centerless eyes.

“Shit!” Vinyl snapped as she tried to hold the door against its face. ”Kick it!” Rainbow did just that, bucking his face so hard, they heard a crunch of bone before the door slammed shut. Vinyl turned the dial to blue and the banging at the door instantly ceased.

"You see what's out there? This place'll eat you alive, literally. Listen, not everypony out there cares to make friends. Almost nopony out there but the nurglites give two fucks about you or anypony else. So what’ll it be? Or do you wanna walk out there on your sorry flanks?”

“I think we’ll need a place to stay,” the Doctor said with a nervous smile.

“Alrighty then. Follow me.” Vinyl set the dial on orange and opened the door. It let out to a small hallway lined by doors with different numbers. Theirs was 569. They followed her to the one next door.

"Pinkie, wait." Octavia whispered weakly before the mare left with the others. "Could you get my cello?”

"Okey-dokey!" Pinkie bounced down the corridor and brought back the hole-riddled instrument. “So how does this work exactly?”

"Just put it in here." Octavia opened her fanged jaws which let out some tendrils as Pinkie Pie brought the cello closer. They wrapped around it, pulled it into her body and the maw crunched down, fitting its teeth into the holes. “Thanks.” The strings plinked out of place and moved like an arm for her.

“Oooo!” Pinkie beamed, “How can you do that?!”

Octavia smirked. “I made a deal with a devil...”

In the hall, Vinyl banged on a chosen door, muttering to herself. "Come on out you snaggletooth bimbo."

"Hwahn meenute! Hwee are khoming!" a girl inside yelled back gleefully.

A while later, the door opened. The occupant appeared to be a young woman, with purple hair, abnormally long, misaligned teeth and clad in black rags, exposing several tattoos of the different chaos marks. Across her back, on hooks pierced in her shoulders hung a large star. She smiled in an excited gasp.

"Oh hai nay-boar!"

"And goodbye." Vinyl said and in an in quick succession, sucked in enough air to fill her chest like a pufferfish and screamed at her at an ear-splitting pitch. A visible distortion of air stripped away the girl’s skin, muscle, and collapsed her ribcage as she was blown clear across the room and landed splayed out in a bloody heap.

"So what do you think of your new place?" Vinyl asked with a smile.

The others were speechless, wide-eyed and Twilight stuttered, “Y-you just... killed her outright!”

“Yeah, so? It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” Vinyl took a slab of torn meat from the body and shoved it in Applejack’s mouth. “So eat, dog!”

Applejack vehemently spat it out while Twilight berated the unicorn. ’Sweet Uncle Apple Buttes, that’s disgustin’! It’s so bloody and gooey and salty... and chewy... and flavorful...’ By now she was just staring at the body.

“...And a complete disregard for the sanctity of life!” Twilight concluded firmly.

Vinyl’s head was hanging back in a bored stupor. “You done? Good. Make yourselves at home. I gotta make a new entrance!”

Vinyl ran back and Twilight turned to the Doctor with an air of concern. “Are we really going to trust her on this?”

“We don’t really have any other options other than walking out around and asking nicely for somepony to abandon their home. Their only response would be an axe to the skull no matter what you say. I was really hoping you could get help from Ghaldri, just a day of fighting training, but after Rarity went off like that, poof, there went any chance we had of experience before this.” He massaged his temple and sighed. “This is the best we can do right now, and you at least kind of know Vinyl, right? You must Pinkie Pie must have introduced you to her after the wedding in Canterlot, I assume.”

Twilight readjusted her position in supporting Rarity into the room and tried to remember. “Oh, yeah! We did meet up after the party. Maybe she is returning a favor.”

“I’ll see if I can get rid of the body...” mumbled Applejack as she unconsciously licked her blistered lips. As everyone explored the room, she dragged the body away in her teeth by the hair, into Vinyl and Octavia’s apartment. The stench of the fresh corpse was playing on her senses. It smelled as bad as cow pies, yet so intoxicating at the same time.

“I know where you can finish that.” Vinyl smirked. She closed the door behind them and set the dial to the sector of a putrid green color. Telekinetically grabbing the body, she snapped the door open and threw it out. She watched as Applejack’s eyes became glassy and even more dull. Her mouth hung slightly ajar before letting out a deep throated moan and shambling after the prize. As she passed, Vinyl quickly shouted, “Room 569 Satin Street Lofts!” and slammed the door shut again, turning back to orange.

“Don’t mind me, Tavi,” she chuckled at the incapacitated mare. “Just making renovations.” In another huff of air and scream, Vinyl blasted a hole in the wall leading into the commandeered room, sending everyone on the other side reeling in shock. "Everypony ready for a day on the town?"

“What was that about?!” Rainbow said with her hooves wiping dust and splinters off.

“Needed to make more room. Mare’s gotta have her space.”

“Well some warning next time you try that would be nice.”

“Meh... party pooper.”

“I’m no party pooper-”

”I gotta go to work and Tavi can’t work the dial, so unless you wanna hoof it to wherever, let’s go!”

Twilight finished helping Rarity get situated in the bed with her broken arm in a comfortable position.She needed to find out some way to treat her injury. Being apparently able to hold vast amounts of energy, she’d have to learn more about it to even begin to find out what to do. This meant diving into chaos magic. "Is there a library or something like it here?" Twilight asked.

"Libraries... No idea, but it’d be where all the tzeentchians in the city are huddled together." After setting the dial to blue, Vinyl opened it for her. “We’re in 569 and 570 Satin Street Lofts unless you wanna get lost.”

“I’ll remember, thanks. and Can you guys take care of Fluttershy? She’s still in the closet and-”

”Hurry before the boring-rays get in!” As Twilight stepped out, Vinyl had one more warning. “And If you see any pink or blue monsters with a giant mouths and four arms that shoot fire, don’t interact with them.”

Twilight hesitated and quirked a brow. “What?”

SLAM

Rainbow Dash looked out the window down onto the streets, letting the address sink into memory. She opened the window and poked her head out, looking into the sky and the looping and winding architecture. “I think I’ll just go this way. Fastest way in or out of here.”

“Remember,” Whooves said, “Be careful out there.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and before jumping from the outside outcropping said, “Hey, Element of Loyalty here! I know to be careful. I’ll even go with Applejack and see the sights together. Speaking of, where is she?”

”She went out first, somewhere safe... I think.” Vinyl mumbled.“Pinkie, you wanna come to the Tome of Corruption with me? Plenty of booze, stallions, and kicking music!"

“Do I!” She sang, and bounced past the unbelieving Doctor who followed close behind her.

“Why?! I just said don’t listen to her! You cannot go... with her...” He stopped when Pinkie looked back her lips in a beguiling grin and her eyes turned a lustful red. “A-actually, go ahead,” he muttered nervously.

“Gee, thanks Doc!” Her long tongue lightly licked just at the tip of his nose.

Vinyl also noticed the stallion was pretty close. “Yo Doc, you coming too?”

He wiped the spit off and said, “No. I have my own business to take care of. I’ll just go out the front door of the building,” he said and hastily withdrew to the commandeered apartment.

"Alright then." Vinyl said "You got Fluttershy covered, Tavi?"

"Unfortunately," she mumbled.

Vinyl spun the dial to pink and the air quickly filled with irritatingly sweet and succulent smells.

Octavia waved the strings in the air. "Don't waste my soul on getting a better drunk buzz again."

"Oh I'd never do that again..." she laughed and slammed the door.

Octavia heard the clatter of metal down the corridor. “Fluttershy? Are you alright?” There was no response, but more metallic slamming, clunking, and the sound of things being broken apart with pained growls. A shadow extended as the sound got closer. The silhouette showed a pony holding one of Vinyl’s decorative speakers, and devouring them one by one. Slowly the pony grew in size.

’It’s absorbing the metal?!’ Octavia readied her strings and kept as quiet as possible as Fluttershy came down the hall. Her iron-plated face was first into view. ‘Slaanesh save me, It’s a juggernaut!’ The bloodshot eye swiveled at her, locking sight for a long time with the unmoving, breathless pony. ’No! Don’t come any closer!’ Fluttershy’s snout sniffed her, pushing her onto the floor like a curious animal. Octavia couldn’t help but get teary eyed at the spikes and burning heat coming off Fluttershy’s body. ’I don’t want to die... Please... A mouth of knife-sized canines idly rumbled as the machine-pony inspected her, then planted her rear on the floor.

“It’s not killing me...” Octavia whispered. She worked up the nerve to look up into her snarling face. “You... You’re not going to kill me?” Fluttershy didn’t flinch from her looming posture and let out a stifling, heated breath in her face. ’Music soothes the savage beast... Just play.’

A dark cloud materialized around her foreleg which contorted it into a bowstring. “You like music, beastie? How about this?” she touched the bow to the strings and started to play.

’Is this even right?’ Applejack thought. The corpse was cradled in her hooves, still frozen with the same big, dumb smile. ’Dog-eat-dog... right?’

She closed her eyes and put her teeth on the neck, then bit and pulled away as quick as she could. The flesh and muscle tore off, dripping with the gir;s bodily fluids. Despite the taste, when she saw the bite area, the sight made her drop it and let the meat fall from her mouth once more.

“No, no. Ah shouldn’t be eat’n people! I’m not...” Her eyelids started to grow heavy, and she let out a yawn. “Some kinda... darn carnivore...” She blinked, and suddenly was a few feet closer to the body. Another blink, and half the body was gone, the rest of it covered in bite marks. She found her mouth clasped over its skull and tearing off strips of its scalp before succumbing to the sleep-deprived feeling.

“Mom... so adorable! ...we keep it?”

Applejack’s vision slowly came back, as well as what was left of her senses, bringing back the taste of meat. There was a human in front of her, a little girl, who was pushing something into her mouth as she absentmindedly chewed on it. The girl was covered in chicken pox and paper-thin skin that exposed parts of her skull in some places. Her bright smile was full of jagged, cavity riddled, green teeth and she patted her head while feeding her with the other hand.

Applejack jumped back with a yelp and the girl gasped and tugged at a woman’s dress. “It’s can still think! Oh please, mommy! I wanna keep the pony!”

“Sorry, sweetie, but we don’t have anywhere to put it.”

They didn’t even acknowledge Applejack’s panic as she grabbed the object that was sticking out of her mouth and pulled out an entire human arm that was shoved down her throat. She wreched at it, coughing up more chyme and meat pulp, and stumbled back over a street curb.

“Aw...” the girl pouted as her mother pulled her along. “Bye pony!”

Applejack found it almost impossible to sit upright as her body felt clogged with... whatever might be there. A man came into view, little of him spared from boils and lacerations, wearing a conically pointed burlap sack over his head and a giant scar like mouth stretching down his torso and helped pick her up.

“Sharp nose. You were amazing in finding those bodies!” he choked. “I watched you drag them out of places I never thought one could be found!” Applejack could only muster a choking breath that resulted in more pulp spilling from her lips. She found her abdomen swollen and crawling with maggots, her neck was equally as distended. She let out another coughing rasp with a confused look.

“I swear you have a gift! You just kept eating and eating, and would have kept going long after your abdomen rips open and dumps everything on the ground. Do you still feel pain?” he quickly drew and thrust a knife into her chest, eliciting no reaction of pain, but surprise. “Incredible! You’re dead! A zombie that can still think!”

The blade had cut through Applejack’s esophagus, enough to let some back-up fall out to free up her windpipe. “Ah ain’t a zombie!” She pushed him back and finally got a good look at where she was. The streets were moss-coated, cracked and ran with thick streams of pus in the storm gutters. A fog of mold spores and decomposing gases brought visibility of the rust and filth caked buildings to near zero. People infected with any number and kind of diseases and disorders meandered as if in perfect health.

“But of course you are!” the man laughed. “Compare yourself to me. You are far more rotted and festering than I could ever hope to be. And I saw you eat through five of the dead in an empty trance.” He put a grimy claw on the back of her neck. “I would actually be most appreciative if you would lead my corpse cart.” He motioned to it, a massive, rickety wagon pulled by several mewling, disease ridden people and ponies who had their harnesses more hooked into them than on them. The unmoving, fly-infested cargo was piled high. Applejack’s eyes widened in horror. “It’s a thing of monstrous beauty, no?”

“No...”

His unseen smile faded, like an artist whose work was insulted. “Oh? What’s wrong with it?”

“All these ponies are miserable!” Applejack exclaimed. “What are ya, blind?”

"Nonsense! Their screams are of joy! Listen."

He pulled out a barbed whip and cracked it at the pullers, catching one of the people's faces and ripping it clean off. They howled in pain, clawing at the exposed muscle underneath. The man took the face off his whip and held it to Applejack.

“Pain is pleasure, death is life. I will need help gathering more.” Applejack stared at the severed face for a while, blinked, and the face was gone from the man’s hand. “I trust that’s a yes? You can sit up on top with me.”

She backed away and shook her head, hardening her posture. “No. No!” And took off as fast as her weighed down body could carry her, regardless that she didn’t know where she was or where she was going.

“Oh wow...”

Twilight gaped in awe at the monolithic structure before her. Sculpted like a dark pantheon, the library rested atop a great hill. Countless knowledge seekers traipsed in and out and Twilight took her first step in.

Bookshelves stretched up into a foggy, shimmering atmosphere, hosting shifting and rearranging staircases that connected the upper floors. Pink and blue creatures Vinyl mentioned constantly scaled the shelves, taking books down, re-shelving and rearranging. Those who lost their grip and fell disintegrated in mid-air, their essence drifting into the shelves.

As Twilight navigated the walls of shelves, she saw those partaking the the books utilizing arcane forms of magic she’d never seen before. Not all of them were that alluring though as some used these spells on one another, turning them into masses of useless, flailing bones and body parts.

She eyed an encyclopedia and book of spells so she could get to know more about this world and just as she began pulling them from their place, Something grasped her neck, holding her head back, and she felt something else, cold and sharp, pressing lower down.

"Hai der nay-boar..." Twilight’s breath stopped and she froze. “Du yoo remembur meh?

She carefully nodded " J-j-just please. We didn't want to take your home. We didn't know Vinyl would-"

"Vut yoo let her jo eet anyhwey. Hwee voth know hao teegs wurk heer. Tayke hwat yoo whant, and keel anywhan who- AYYYEEEEE!"

Twilight flared her horn with light, blinding the girl and bolted when she stumbled back. “Come on wings, lift... off!” She flapped as fast as she could, but had no coordination. She looked up to the sound of rapid bootsteps and the purple-haired girl was sprinting along the top of the shelves. ’How is she so fast?!’

Twilight took a turn, and now the girl had to jump across the shelves’ narrower side, but still she kept up. Twilight barely made it to a moving stair as it took off, leaving the pursuer to find another route up. She was most unsettled by her vicious, dagger-toothed grin.

“Safe for now. Where do I go? Where do I go?!”

The stair connected with the next floor and Twilight cautiously stepped off and went right. GOing down another hall, she kept her eyes alert and looking all around for any angle the psychopath could come from. She passed a mutated mint-green unicorn and-

“Ow! Watch it!” that snapped. Twilight had accidentally stepped on her foot and in the split second she took her sight off the shelves,

“YAAAAAAAHHHH!”

Tackled to the ground, a knife was placed right atop Twilight’s head, ready to be punched down.

“Hey Cultist.” said the green unicorn idly.

“Hai Laira! Nao... Leettle chrikster ali-pony. Yoor head weel luk guud on teh market.”

"I-I'm sorry! Please dont-"

"Are yoo shkared?” She whispered right in her ear.

Twilight nodded, tears beginning to gather in her eyes. “Yes! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The girl squealed in laughter and vaulted backward off of her. "That eez all hwee hwanted to heer!”

“Wh-what?”

“Eet’s enkonveenient ghetting keel’d, even eff teh gods don’t let ush dai.”

Twilight picked herself up, putting a hoof on her aching head. "How did you come back? I... I saw you get...get...."

"Teh jark gawds tell us tey weel need us een tirty-ayt towshand yeerz, so hwee are hwayting and they keep ush alive unteel then!"

Twilight gawked, "Thirty-eight thousand years? How can you wait that long? How old are you?"

"Hwee lost count after hwan toushand shixty!" she shrugged The girl took a seat by the green unicorn. “Come! Ai broat yoor buks!”

“We’re alright now, right?” she hesitated. “Water under the bridge?”

“Yeah mang! Hwee kuul! Heer.” Cultist reached back and took off the encyclopedia that hung by its strap on her star.

Twilight took it in a magic field and opted to sit on the other side of the unicorn. Cultist took notice, bounced over and sat next to her, uncomfortably close. A thought hung off the tip of Twilight’s tongue, just begging to be asked.

“Your name is really generic, uh... Cultist is it?” she said. “Don’t you have another name?”

The girl shook her head. “Nehmes are just laybelz to idenchify indeeveeduals. Hwee are nohwan but hwan uv many who weel turn to the dark gawds.”

The figure opposite was a kaleidoscope of mismatched body parts covered in feathers, fur, and scales with a disproportionate human-like body, and an uneven number of gnarled sausage-fingers and toes.

She tried not to look at her as she read. "Uh...Twilight. Who’s your... friend?"

"Lyra." The deformed unicorn added.

Cultist tugged at Twilight’s wing a little before she snapped it back. "Yoo reemind us of a vludtirster."

"A what?"

"A bloodthirster." Lyra said. "Look in the encyclopedia."

The book itself was filled with moving images of creatures, warriors, and weapons. As Twilight flipped through the pages, she came across the same creatures that were scaling the bookshelves, Horrors. Demon slaves that are originally pink and split into two blue copies when they are killed. She looked around at them as the pink ones tended to the books madly, cackling litanies and praises about Tzeentch, and the blue ones bickered and fought with each other.

"Darn it!" Lyra exclaimed, having split apart the skin, bone, and muscle of her limbs in a failed spell. "What is this?” After another jolt of magic, she managed to fuse them back together into their ‘normal’ shape and caught Twilight glaring in wide eyed astonishment. “What?”

“Wh-what did you just do to your arms?”

Lyra wiggled the nubby little digits, cracking a few of the joints. “Well I was trying to make them more normal. You don’t know how many spells I’ve tried for transfiguration. Look at a human’s hand. The fingers are longer, thinner, and their palms aren’t folded over themselves.”

"You’re trying to become human?”

“Yeah!” Exclaimed Lyra as if it the most obvious thing. “I already worked out the midsection,” She pointed to herself, from the neck down was a clear human shape, strong and ladylike, “I can walk perfectly fine on my feet, but there’s still these smushed up clay balls of hands I’ve got and I haven’t even gotten started on my head! Think about it. Our heads are huge in proportion to our bodies compared to the normal horses of this world.”

It was definitely something Twilight would have to look into. ‘normal’ horses, and perhaps there was a transfiguration spell slowly working on Rarity.

‘Our heads aren’t that big...’ she thought, turning another page. The image was a giant beast with a canine face, huge, bat-like wings, wielding an axe and whip in each hand. It swung and swiped its weapons wildly at a huge army bearing countless decorations of hammers, suns, moons, and twin tail comets. It took up man and pony alike, crushing them in its hand and let their blood drip into its mouth. Her likeness to it was similar; her teeth, horns, and wings.

"Yoo fly like vludtirster Twailait??" Cultist asked.

"No. I can’t fly and... I don't look anything like this." she said hesitantly.

Cultist giggled, “Yesh yoo do!”

“No I don’t.” Intending to ignore anything else Cultist had to say, Twilight flipped across more pages. When she stopped there was a picture of a man in a beige suit with a red bow tie, holding a small metal object glowing green at one end.

Cultist cringed. "Ooh. That eez a vad man. He hortsh kay-oss a lot."

"The Doctor?" Twilight mused, reading the title under the picture. "I know somepony that has the same name."

"Are tey teh saym pherson?"

"I don't think so. The one I know is a pony. This one's human."

She hastily turned the page and found a rampaging rhinoceros of iron and brass. Under it read ‘Juggernaut of Khorne’.

"Is this... this is what he was talking about!” She watched the monster tear through rank of soldiers, impaling many on its bladed horn that stuck straight from its face, and leaving eviscerated corpses in its charging wake. “Oh my gosh... Fluttershy...”

"Your friend’s a juggernaut?” asked Lyra with a voice of concern. “Jeez, as if this city needed more than one tearing everything to shreds.”

Twilight weighed the options, the possibilities. "Well, somepony I know is looking after her. Who knows, she might not still be mad when she wakes up.” ’Octavia has it under control, even immobile! I saw how she cut through... solid... brass...’

“Oh my goodness.”