Fortunately, not long afterwards they fell blinking into a half lit corridor.

They had made it back to the base but there was no time to congratulate themselves. Hefting Sunset Shimmer between them, the pair ran down the hall to a large metal blast door. The rumbling behind them grew louder as Twilight fumbled with her access card. Just as the door at last started to open, an avalanche of pink slime sloshed into the hallway, spraying droplets of acrid sludge in every direction. The hall was already starting to flood, and everything the amorphous creature touched began to smoke and melt.

Twilight and Cadance hurried through the narrow opening in the metal door. Just before the first questing tendrils of slime were about to come through, Twilight slammed the button on the other side that sealed the blast door shut again.

For the moment, they were safe, but already a hissing noise could be heard as the corridor on the other side of the metal door continued to fill with pink ooze. As the pair watched in horror, the blast door started to show clear dents from the impact of the creature tentacles.

"This blast door won't hold for long. We have to get to the control room!" Twilight did her best to be heard over the sounds of rapid fire impacts reverberating through the thick metal.

"It will be faster if you go on your own. It's not after you anyways, it's after her," Cadance said, indicating Sunset. "Is there somewhere I can take her where we'll be safe until you can help us?"

Twilight's mind raced. "Cold storage. The monster is liquid based right? If high temperature don't bother it, then maybe low ones will. If you follow this corridor and go down the second flight of stairs, you should be able to find it. Lock yourselves inside. Once I have control of the facility I can redirect the creature away from you and contain it."

"And deactivate the bomb?" Cadance couldn't help asking.

A pained look crossed Twilight's face, "Yes... But also no. If the creatures here then detonating the nuke at point blank range might destroy it. I'll do what I can to minimize the blast to protect the city, but we can't let this opportunity slip through our fingers!"

Cadance was at a loss for words for a moment. "That's your plan? Trap us with that monster and then kill ourselves in the hopes it dies with us!?"

Twilight shook her head, "I have a way for us to get out, but I can't tell you. If it hears what it is then it might try to stop us. Just do what I say for now and you should be safe. Please, just trust me!"

The pleading in Twilight's eyes was enough to convince Cadance, but she still had her doubts. "I'll try Twilight... But I swear, once this is all over you're getting a stern talking to!"

That made Twilight smile, but only a little. "I'll get in touch with you via the intercom once I've made it to the control center. Stay by the com and I'll let you know what to do from there, okay?"

There was no time for good-byes. Twilight hastily passed Cadance her spare access card and the pair split up. Both couldn't help thinking it might be the last time they saw one another.

It was cold when Sunset finally came to again. Starlight had really done a whammy on her. Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry, but it was the shivering that shook her out of unconsciousness.

This was bad. She knew instinctively that being passed out in the cold like this could be a death sentence. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. That was when she came across the first body bag.

There was nothing horrifying about them in and of themselves. They were hung from the ceiling in a very orderly fashion. Sunset only realized what they were when she noticed the sticky black ice that had crusted along the bottom of one or two bags. When she realized the floor she was standing on was slick with a similar shiny black stain she almost threw up.

Okay, freezer. Not a meat locker but maybe a morgue? There were other boxes and things between her and the door. Weren’t deep freezers like this supposed to have some kind of emergency latch you could pull to keep people from accidentally locking themselves inside?

As she made her way carefully towards the door her stiff muscles complained all the way as they rubbed against her frozen, formerly sewer water soaked clothing. Her teeth were starting to chatter and she rubbed herself to try and warm up. Sunset had never done well in the cold.

Sunset tried not to think about the circumstances that had led to her being left in a cold box. She tried not to think about what she would do if the door was locked, or couldn’t be opened from the inside. Sunset tried even harder not to think about who or what might have drug her all the way here. The last thing she remembered was that terrifying conversation between Starlight Glimmer and the Candy Mare.

Or had that been some kind of terrible dream? How had Starlight come to see the Candy Mare as a goddess? Aside from her silly disguise, at what point had the Candy Mare had the opportunity to approach the teen. Had she been hiding just how strong she had become all along?

At last Sunset found the door to the freezer and, sure enough, there was a latch on the inside. As her hand dropped onto the cold metal, another hand dropped on her shoulder.

“Where are you going?” questioned an unfamiliar voice. Sunset jumped, startled. She’d never considered that anyone else was in here with her. She turned, and her eyes immediately grew wide.

The Candy Mare leered at her. Gone was any effort to appear like Sunset or anyone else she knew, and instead she looked right into lollipop eyes swirled with madness and candy corn shaped fangs that only barely hid a thrashing orange and black tongue. She didn’t know how she had managed it, but the Candy Curse had found a way to take physical form while Sunset was still alive!

That could only mean one thing... Sunset was dying! It must have been the cold. They were planning on freezing her to death. Making her die peacefully so she'd be less likely to struggle when the Candy Mare wriggled under her skin.

Well that wasn't going to happen!

Unwilling to go quietly, Sunset threw a right cross, and to her surprise the Candy Mare was sent reeling. Maybe the monster was still weak after all? Maybe there was still a chance of escape!

Without wasting another moment, Sunset went to work on the door, quickly finding the latch that had locked it shut and pushing with all her might against the heavy metal slab. The door groaned but wouldn’t budge!

Was it frozen shut?

“No, don’t open that door!” The Candy Mare called from the dark, only causing Sunset to redouble her efforts. There was a sharp cracking noise, and at last the door gave way. It was still a struggle to open, as if she were pushing the door through molasses, but she didn’t give up!

Warmth! Blessed warmth washed over her tired limbs. As Sunset's eyes beheld freedom there was a moment of confusion.

All she saw was pink.

It was a truly bizarre sight. It looked like she was back in the underground facility, but wall to wall and floor to ceiling was filled with a pink translucent slime. She could see trash, and what looked like bodies, drifting by. It was like she was looking into some kind of weird, derelict aquarium. She stood transfixed, unable to process what she was seeing.

Something just beneath the surface shifted, and suddenly several of the floating bodies turned in her direction. Grinning skulls turned to Sunset, and bony arms reached towards her from every angle as a surge of corpses bobbed into view. Their gnarled hands broke the pink surface just long enough to clamp onto all four of Sunset’s limbs and drag her forward into the slime.

Even as Sunset hit the wobbly wall with a wet slap, she felt another pair of limbs wrap around her waist, trying to pull her back into the freezer. “You can’t have her!” someone screamed, though her voice sounded muffled from within the hazy pink liquid.

All around her Sunset could see the dead, who were not truly dead, gathering to pull her deeper into the ruddy coagulating mass. The slime started to freeze around her as the cold from the ice box seeped out into the air. It allowed whoever had her by her waist to tug her back through the freezing slush and almost to the point of breaking the surface. It didn’t matter... the deeper the dead pulled Sunset the warmer she became. She was starting to burn. It felt like tiny mouths were biting her all over her body, even inside her body, as with a choking gag the bubblegum flavored ooze forced its way through her clenched teeth and up her nose.

Sunset struggled, trying to turn away from those grasping skeletal hands, trying to fight her way back. That was when she got a glance of who was trying to tug her back out.

She still wore the Candy Mare’s face, but Sunset could see now that this was just an illusion. Another hallucination brought on by the curse at a pivotal moment. The visage of the monster laughed at Sunset even as the body it was superimposed over desperately tried to safe her.

This was what the Candy Mare had really wanted all along. Not for Sunset to die in some cold underground place, nor for her to escape so the Candy Mare could run wild. No, she wanted what she had always wanted.

To consume Sunset whole.

The Candy Mare lacked the strength to do it herself, but whatever this slime creature was, it could readily do the job for her.

Cadance held on with all her might, but she could see the slime melting her protective suit, patches of it already smoking where it ate away at the material. They had been so close! The plan would all be for nothing if the jelly monster took Sunset now!

But it was no use.

The creature had already found its way in. Gallons of liquefied corpses and candy began to pour inside Sunset, condensing down to a horrible tasting sludge as it flooded her insides. Her skin grew loose in Cadance’s grasp as muscle and bone were dissolved from within. Sunset thrashed, not to try and escape, but in the throes of agony that no living creature should have to endure as she could feel herself being liquefied.

At last, the sack of skin that had been Sunset Shimmer split and burst. Tattered rags of skin clung to Cadance’s fingers as what was left of the teen was rent and torn asunder. As the monster gurgled happily, Cadance shrieked her horror and impotence as the few shreds of Sunset Shimmer spilled through her fingers to fall damply to the frozen floor.

Pink slime slithered and moaned through the facility.

Liquefied candy bubbled up from cracks and drained from broken pipes in the walls and ceiling. Rivers of half submerged corpses flowed together in the thick syrup deep beneath the earth. The dead bobbed to the surface briefly, only to disappear once more. Something was happening. Something was changing. The corpses were melting and becoming one with the candy slurry that had previously preserved them, dying the translucent jelly a crimson so deep it was almost black.

The lights that had not already been broken in this part of the prison flickered out, leaving only the emergency lighting that strobed intermittently. A flash of light and there was the river, skulls and bones suspended in the foul gel that contained them. Another flash, and the the bones were gone, dissolved to nothing. A Third flash, and the river itself was gone, dried up to a tiny trickling stream that looked like a blood stain against the tiles. A final flash showed where all that liquid had gone, as it flowed slowly into a pool around a pair of pale feet.

As even the emergency lights died, orange and green lightning licked out of the darkness, crackling away in every direction.

In the dark, pink and blue eyes swirled with madness glowed brightly as many voices whispered "Finally..."

The giggle that followed was high and girlish, and quickly joined by the laughter of the dead.