Tartarus was surprisingly still in order for an absent Grim Reaper. No other cultures’ underworld was interfering, for once, and it all seemed calm. Too calm. Something must have happened because for one, no souls were about. At all. I blame my vacation. Maybe there was a reason I didn’t take a vacation for a millenia. But, I couldn’t dwell on those thoughts. I had to see my boss … if he was still around.

The rocky barren landscape I floated by seemed eerie. A lot more, actually, without any souls moving about. Just me and my thoughts along with the River Styx and a big cloaked guy standing at the edge of it. Wait. What was that last bit? I backtracked and circled around him. He was cloaked, he had dark smoke streaming out from the bottom of it, the cloak encircled him … and he had his head bowed.

“Hello?” I asked, waving a hand. He didn’t respond. Well, I’m assuming he’s a he. There wasn’t any noticeable bulge in the chest area and that cloak looked big enough to cover anything. I tried saying hello again. He simply stood there. Well if Broody McBrooderson wanted to brood, let him. I didn’t have time for this anyway. I went to move away but his arm suddenly shot out, nearly cleaving my head from my neck it was so sudden.

“Stay,” the man said in a gravelly voice.

“Um, no. I kinda need to see my boss so if you don’t mind …” I said with a short laugh and ducked under his arm. When he made no move, I kept on going. I looked over my shoulder after a bit and saw that his arm had returned to a resting position. I knew I was going to get reprimanded for this but come on! You can’t say ‘stay’ and then do nothing to stop the person you want to stay from going!

“You came back,” the man didn’t sound surprised.

“Tell me one thing. No, two things. First, who are you?” I asked him. My hands were placed on my hip bones over my cloak, giving the impression I was kinda mad. I wasn’t. I just needed this bozo to think that.

“My name is Anubis. What you have obviously seen, is a lack of souls,” Anubis replied, refusing to turn his cloaked head to look at me from his brooding over the River Styx.

“Yeah, obviously. I was going to ask Hades about that,” I said exasperatedly. But now that he mentioned, there was no one around besides us two. “Um … is Hades even here?”

“No. And neither are Izanami or Yama,” Anubis shook his great head slowly. If I stood next to him, he’d tower over me by a good two feet so I resorted to floating at what I supposed was his eye level. Okay. So three of the major death gods are gone … somehow, and Anubis is still here. Why? This is all so confusing! And all because I wanted a vacation! Maybe I should’ve stayed. Izanami, or Izanami-no-Mikoto, the Japanese goddess of creation, is gone. Yama, the death god for the Hindu. Gone. Hades himself! Gone. Anubis? Still here.

“Why?” I asked. My voice was thick with shock and confusion. Mainly because such a thing had never been heard of!

“The Apocalypse is coming. You’ve already met two of the apocalyptic heralders,” Anubis sighed deeply.

“Wait, no. No, this isn’t happening. There’s no way the bloody Apocalypse is happening!” I told him angrily. I even had my scythe appear and threaten him with it. When my blade touched his cloak, the hood fell off, revealing a massive jackal head all in black, the Pharaoh garb clearly worn below his ears.

“Don’t threaten me, Reaper,” Anubis threatened.

“I’ll keep threatening until you tell me what the bloody hell is going on around here!” I shouted at him. His head finally turned and sapphire blue eyes regarded me. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to threaten a god after all.

“You want answers? Look down there,” Anubis then returned to where he was looking and I followed his gaze. A swirling vortex was in the middle of the otherwise everflowing river. It was dark as night, and an image eventually appeared.

“What am I meant to be seeing?” I asked cautiously. He didn’t answer, simply stood there like a statue. Well if he wasn’t going to be helpful … I returned my scythe to its pocket dimension, floated to the bank and crouched to take a look. I saw Twilight sitting on a train, but, it was like those scales and draconic features were never there.

~TWILIGHT SPARKLE’S POV~

For the umpteenth time on the train ride to Canterlot, I focused on the piece of paper before me and carefully, very carefully, charged my horn up. When the power reached the tip, I gritted my teeth and braced myself as my magical aura slowly encircled the paper. When the matrix was complete, the paper lifted up a couple inches before my horn decided to take a vacation and blast me with pain on its way out.

“Augh, this is stupid!” I berated myself, keeping my eyes closed as my hooves rubbed the base of my cracked horn. Who knew performing would be this difficult without an intact vessel? Go figure. Okay, let’s try again. But before I could begin, I felt a hoof on mine. I looked at the yellow fur then followed the arm all the way up to Fluttershy.

“You need to stop trying,” Fluttershy told me calmly. I couldn’t. How could I? Magic is - was - everything to me. I felt myself tear up at the thought of not being able to perform even the most basic of spells.

“Why? All I can do is try. That stupid Kar’Voth took what made me, me, away and now I need to get it back!” I told her determinedly. Fluttershy withdrew her hoof and went back to simply looking at me worriedly. I rolled my eyes before letting out a breath and going back to my concentration. “Sorry, Fluttershy.”

“It’s okay,” Fluttershy murmured. I could tell that she was not at all okay but I lacked the wisdom to do anything about it.

~SKYE’S POV~

I interrupted the vision by waving my hand through the whirlpool and looking behind me to see a hulking figure. He didn’t make any noise but the mere presence drew my attention as well as Anubis’. Another horsemen? Maybe? Who knows with these guys. I stood and slowly glided towards him, cautious in case he tried something funny.

“Hey, what are you doing here? Only permitted beings and souls may come through here,” I said, trying to exercise my authority as the Grim Reaper. Even if that wasn’t doing much for the moment.

“I’m here to see how my … Displacee was going but I appear to be in the wrong universe,” a weedy voice spoke out. The figure was literally made of shadows so it was hard to tell where the ground and he parted. I was a bit taken aback by this. The Executioner finally showed up? It took him long enough but that’s only if he is what I think he is.

“Uh huh. Tell me, what does this ‘Displacee’, or whatever, look like?” I asked him. The shadows parted wide, most likely signifying he had arms of some kind. No cloak, no body, no nothing. It looked like he was there and he wasn’t at the same time.

“Black hair? No … no, I stripped that. I stripped the skin and organs too now that I’m thinking of it. Oh yes, and I killed her too,” the weedy voice replied, his arms still wide. I shivered in place. He just seemed so wrong.

“Killed her by execution?” I inquired in a small voice. I couldn’t tell how, but I knew he smiled and it rubbed me in all the wrong ways.

“Indeed, Miss Rip,” the shadows replied. He sounded gleeful. I don’t like it. I don’t like him.

“So … why now? Why here? Why after a thousand years?” I asked evenly. It didn’t make sense for this guy or thing to suddenly show up after all this time.

“It’s been fun watching you play the part of the reaper,” the shadows chuckled. “But now I need you to do something serious.” Excuse me? I’ve been doing this as seriously as possible! Sure, Granny Smith is a hiccup, but she’s Granny Smith! She may as well be immortal!

“Like what?” I clenched my jaw, the harsh grating sound of my bones moving against each other echoing in the silent Tartarus.

“Well, stopping the Apocalypse for one,” the shadow seemed to shrug. It was moving, it was writhing, so it was incredibly hard to tell.

“In case you don’t remember, I’m a skeleton. I can’t stop the fucking Apocalypse on my own!” I shouted, throwing my arms up in the air and stomped away from the darkness. “And how is that me getting serious!? I’ve been serious ever since you dumped me here when I’m clearly meant to be dead in a staged execution gone wrong!”

“Okay, how about some help?” my Displacer asked. He clearly didn’t answer my question. I turned and stared at him blankly. What other emotion could I friggin’ use!? He’s the one that made me this way! I crossed my arms over my ribcage and tapped my foot against the floor.

“No, I want an answer about why you think I’m getting serious now,” I grumbled, desperately trying to keep my anger in check.

“I’m saying for you to get serious now because it’s been relatively mundane to be honest. The Grim Reaper? Sure, you’ve been doing the same job over and over for the last millenia, but when has that ever been fun?” the mass of shadows managed to laugh and I inwardly grimaced at it. This Displacer was seriously getting on my non-existent nerves.

“Miss Rip, I think you should look in the whirlpool once more,” Anubis called over his shoulder. I turned and saw that he hadn’t moved from his statue-like position. Flicking between the shadow creature, which was no longer there, and Anubis, I glided back. I was perpendicular to the River Styx this time, doing my best to look as close as I could without touching the Styx itself.

~HOLLY’S POV~
EARTH - MOMENTS AFTER SKYE’S EXECUTION

There was a hushed silence over the crowd as Skye’s usually bubbly face went slack and rolled off the stage in a burst of blood. I was too shocked to do anything except sit there. She may have been a newcomer to the group, but she definitely was a joy to be around with. My hands were clenched inside my sleeves (mom must have put my too large jacket out again) and were shaking rather badly. There was a deluge of tears rolling down my face, not that I couldn’t care less for the moment, ruining what little makeup I had bothered to put on that morning.

The sound of the double headed axe lifting out of splintered wood brought me out of my sinking thoughts and I snapped my attention to the blood dripping off of it. Her blood. Skye’s blood. It was too real to not be faked and Skye didn’t look like she was getting up anytime soon. In fact, between one frenetic blink and the next, her body wasn’t there at all, with the only evidence being the blood staining the stage.

An uproar sounded out around me and I heard one of my friends, Josh, most likely, call out for me but it sounded far away. I felt myself get pulled and I don’t know how, but I grabbed Skye’s bag along the way. By the time the three of us had made it away from the howling crowd, I was still shell shocked but was at least able to function. It took a while but when I finally felt some sort of touch against me, I jolted and ran to the nearest toilet, vomiting my brains out. It wasn’t pleasant, and neither was the fact that one of my best friends was executed, no, murdered right in front of me.

When I got out, I expected to see my friends but what I got was a whirling mass of shadows that engulfed me, and the two bags I hadn’t let go of. It was silent, much like how I felt mere moments prior, but the silence was heavy, and black. The only thing I could concentrate on were the bags I was holding and the clothes I was wearing. Everything else was fair game. There was pinprick of light directly in front of me no matter where I moved my head. It rushed towards before I had a chance to think and I found myself slamming against a dirty old mattress.

“Oh, god,” I coughed, and held my hand in front of my face, trying to get rid of the smell. What was that? Actually, I’d rather not think about it. I rolled off of it and onto the floor, realising that it was just a mattress and nothing else. Where the heck am I? I squinted at the dull globe and put my hand in front of my face, trying to block the light out as much as possible and that was when I noticed something. There was a heavy feeling on both my forearms. Looking down and holding them out so I can see them more clearly, I found machine parts strapped to both of them, with a couple pieces of thick grey cloth in between the part and my actual skin. There were brown bracers underneath the cloth, providing another layer of protection.

“This isn’t normal,” I muttered and found that my entire wardrobe had changed. I was now wearing a tribal outfit. The parts of burnt gold cloth that had been ripped to allow for free movement had a blue and orange pattern around the edges. I found myself wearing a sleeveless tunic with leather leggings and boots. No more than two sets of bead necklaces hung around my neck along with a light green scarf.

Eventually, my eyesight got used to the dimness and I slowly stood, looking around. It was a room, decaying floorboards, and a quick glance out the window told me that sticky green ooze was covering the buildings and what little road I could see.

“Definitely not normal,” I repeated. I held my head in my hands, and breathed. Okay, Skye is dead, that much was clear. I seem to have been transported, teleported, or something to someplace that obviously wasn’t the renaissance fair. Maybe it was an experimental facility? That has to be it. Let’s go with that. I found a couple of bags on the floor around me, their contents strewn over the floor. Most of it were pages of different creatures so that means one of the bags was Skye’s.

I quickly moved and placed the drawings and information back in one of the bags and looked at the rest of the contents. There was a bottle filled with an orange liquid that had a giant plus on it, a few various arrows and a giant quiver. Beside the bag was a machine with white metal and wood making the arch, with the string having a few beads on either end. Most likely for stability.

“Okay … maybe I should … yeah, just leave it,” I nodded to myself and picked up the other bag, rooting through it. There were a lot more arrows inside plus, another plus bottle. “Guess I don’t have a choice,” I grumbled and placing both bags side by side, emptied the bag full of arrows into the other. I breathed, sniffed, grabbed the odd bow and rubbed my eyes, trying not to cry anymore. I did enough of that while I was spewing my insides out.

“Right. Now, we go out,” I said to myself. I hoisted the single bag over my shoulder, and grunted at the increased weight, before walking out.

~SKYE’S POV~

“Holly!?” I shouted in surprise, looking up at Anubis only to see him slowly lumbering away. “Well, some god of death he is,” I grumbled. I was about to leave myself and try to figure out where Hades and the other death gods went to before I heard the whirlpool start up again. “Okay, whirlpool, what are you going to show me this time?” I asked out loud, and decided to sit cross legged on the edge of the Styx and gazed into it. It showed Twilight this time, and it looked like she was talking to a pony that looked very much like her.

~TWILIGHT’S POV~

“Mum, what are you saying?” I asked confusedly. After hopping off the train and passing through a magical shield my brother had put up, I was ushered to the side by my mother. I said a quick hello before she explained something that was … odd. And scary.

“I’m not who I say I am, Twilight,” Mum answered urgently through gritted teeth. All this was accomplishing was driving me into further confusion.

“Give me a straight answer, mum. Please,” I replied briskly, knowing that if mom sounded urgent, then it must be bad.

“My name isn’t Twilight Velvet. It’s Queen Chrysalis. I told you this a few seconds ago,” Mum pleaded. Why did it sound like she was trying to get me to believe her quickly?

“I never heard of a ‘Queen Chrysalis’, and you’re not her. You’re Twilight Velvet. My mum. Shiney’s mum,” I told her, sounding much like my father for the moment. I honestly had no idea what to believe but I definitely know mum wasn’t this ‘Chrysalis’ or whoever she called herself. I heard Fluttershy call me over and I looked back to mum.

“We can talk about this later. I need to help my friends out with the wedding preparations,” I said with my hoof raised. Her mouth closed and she actually seemed desperate to get me to believe. I was about to head off to Fluttershy when mum pulled me further away from the group and into a hidden alcove behind a fountain. “Mum, what are you doing? I said we can talk later.”

“Since you obviously don’t believe me, I have to show you,” Mum said condescendingly. I backed up a bit when I noticed mum’s eyes flash and stay permanently green. My back hit the wall when her fur began falling off to reveal blackened skin with what could only be described as an exoskeleton growing over the top. A bright green wave exuded out from her now jagged horn and over her body, sealing it in place with membranous wings growing and peeking out of her back chitin.

I was horrified at the transformation to say the least. My heart pounded in fear and, to say the least, I was scared of this … thing. Before I could move, she seemed to smile toothily, showing off fangs. This froze me in place, against a wall of the alcove.

“You’re scared,” I assume this was what Chrysalis actually looked like.

“You’re not mum,” I said, doing my utmost to keep my voice from trembling. I looked out the alcove and through the water to see Fluttershy patiently waiting with Shiney and a few guard members. I turned back to ‘mum’ and found myself scrutinising her armor. ‘What is it made of? Can ponies make use of this?’ I thought, much to my own horror. This thing most likely abducted my mother and my scientific mind was slowly winning me over. ‘Could this creature be nice? It seems like it.’

“I just made it harder to make you believe me,” I heard her sigh. “I did not abduct Twilight Velvet. By the time I became your mother, she was already dead. Long before you were born, actually.”

“What?” I asked in a small voice. No. No way. There’s no way.

“You heard me. Night Light, your father, wanted someone to help him watch over Shining. He happened to catch me changing form in an alley because I was too tired from dealing with my ex husband. It was surprising to see a pony actually ask me to pose as a dead wife but after explaining that it was for his son to have a mother, at least, I couldn’t say no. Especially after Princess Celestia let my foal board at her school,” Chrysalis explained further. And now I have another sibling. This … what!? I’m being bombarded with information and I’m trying my best to get through it all. Mum is still mum. Okay. Mum had an ex and had another foal. News, but still okay. Dad letting Chrysalis be his dead wife for Shiney to have a mother? Sweet, but sure.

“What is your other foal’s name?” I asked her directly, maybe hoping that the straight answer would get me back into an analytical mood.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Chrysalis said firmly with a sudden harsh glint to her eyes. I felt that sense of fear fill me again but I wasn’t going to let it stop me this time.

“Why? Because they’re dead?” I questioned with narrowed eyes.

“No, missing. They went missing through some mirror and I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet,” Chrysalis said harshly. Obviously a very sore subject. “If you want to know the gender of your sibling and what they look like … I suppose I can give you that.”

“Fine, tell me.”

“Mare. Eight years older than you. Amber coat. Yellow and red mane and tail. Teal eyes. Sunset Rose for a cutie mark,” Chrysalis replied in a clipped tone. So she’s willing to divulge appearance but not name. That’s not frustrating at all. I sighed and within a blink of an eye, she had changed into the mother I’ve always seen but no longer knew. Grey coat, light purple mane and tail with white stripes, a group of three stars for a cutie mark. Within another blink and a splash of water, mum had left the alcove.

I was stuck staring at the stone wall in contemplation until Fluttershy called for me again. I shook my head and filed the information away for later, jumping out of the alcove. After shaking the water off myself, I finally joined Fluttershy and walked with her to where the rest of my friends had gathered.

The shield that was covering Canterlot, provided by my brother, was being pounded upon by black creatures. It seemed they were insistent on getting something. But what? I heard the pounding and looked out the window, and then up. It had to happen when the wedding was happening, didn’t it? I gathered my friends and we all ran to the throne room, hoping that Princess Celestia knew what to do, only to find that a large black insect creature was speaking with her.

“Excuse me, Queen Chrysalis,” we heard Princess Celestia say, politely moving towards us. I quickly glanced at the creature and found her looking at us worriedly. Why was she so familiar? “Bearers, I want you to find Cadence. According to this monarch, she is key to getting rid of the changelings.”

“Um, Princess?” I asked nervously as my friends ran to their rooms.

“Yes, Twilight?” Princess Celestia asked gently, looking at me with a kind demeanour.

“Why is she helping? These creatures are, I assume, a part of her race,” I whispered.

“Because she doesn’t want them. I know it’s not the answer you’re looking for, but she and I will explain if we get out of this. Now go and find Cadence,” Princess Celestia answered just as quietly, leaving me to look at Chrysalis before I ran to find my friends. I found them waiting for me at the throne room entrance and after a quick debrief, we figured to leave the explaining till afterwards. A city was in danger after all.

We heard a crash on our way through the courtyard and looked up just in time to see green flamed comets come crashing down and pulverizing the cobblestone. They soon made a circle around us and we went back to back for the optimal fighting position. The creatures, wearing black chitin, with fanged mouths, with forked tongues, and holey hooves, snarled at us.

“They look a ‘mite frightenin’,” Applejack admitted when they began to stalk towards us.

“I’ll say,” Rarity agreed. One of the changelings let out a wail like a dying cat and everyone in the group turned to Rainbow. Her wing blades glittered among her feathers if you knew where to look.

“What? Less yapping, more fighting,” Rainbow declared. And ignoring our stares, jumped into the fray. I blinked and saw the others take part as best they could. While my friends fought, I sat in the middle of the cleared, feeling rather useless actually. I couldn’t perform anymore magic to save my life and now one was pouncing at me. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and tried not to scream at the pain flaring through my horn.

I let loose the spell and my vision filled with white. When it had disappeared, I rapidly blinked and saw that almost the entire courtyard was filled with charred corpses but none of them seemed to be my friends.

“Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked timidly. I turned my head and found them all cowering behind Fluttershy’s giant shield.

“Yes, Fluttershy?” I asked in return, not entirely sure why they were cowering. There was nothing to fight, right?

“Why don’t you look in a mirror, dear?” Rarity asked and Pinkie took a hoof mirror out of her mane, showing it to me by holding with the tip of her mane. I looked at my reflection out of curiosity, and what stared back was not me. The reflection had scales on her muzzle and face, gold sclera, and was, for all essence and purpose, a dragoness. Other than the addition of a broken horn. I raised a hoof in front of the mirror and leaped back when the reflection did the same.

“That’s not me,” I shook my head. “I’m not that, am I?”

“I’m afraid so,” a familiar said from behind me. “Thanks to your distraction, we were able to get Cadence to get rid of the rest of my hive with her fiancee’s help.”

“Distraction?” I asked, glaring at the reflection of Chrysalis. “What distraction? Did you know this would happen?”

“To be fair, I didn’t know what would happen. This changeling princess deal has never happened before,” Chrysalis admitted.

~SKYE’S POV~

This is when I stopped watching. Okay, that explains Twilight looking how she does. Chrysalis being her mother. She must have mated with one of the descendants from the castle, or the most likely one? Clover is her however-many-greats grandmother. Jeez. Can’t I get a break? Please? The universe must have really hated me because I heard a far off trumpet sound before a booming voice shook Tartarus to its core.

“A MEASURE OF WHEAT FOR A BIT, THREE MEASURES OF BARLEY FOR A BIT, LEAVE THE OIL AND WINE!”

Crap. Famine’s here.