The Mare of Shadows had been napping, but she woke now as something played at her mind. She concentrated on the thought for a moment and then let herself slide off the top of the casket with an tired groan.

Couldn't she just get some rest? She didn't feel like dealing with this right now, but unfortunately it was something else she could not leave without attention. There was a silent alarm that was going off from the vaults, and though whatever intruder dared go into them was certainly going to be soon dead, if not already, she still needed to find out where this intruder had come from and whether the intruder had disturbed anything.

She got to her hooves and walked down several different passageways through the labyrinth of the Sanctuary Tomb. She had designed this place to be needlessly complicated in design, with paths that went off to dead ends everywhere, and no straight path to any of the few notable places within the tomb. There weren't actually that many places to go in the tomb to tell the truth, even though it stretched hundreds of furlongs in all directions, including deep in the ground, with multiple levels stacked on top of one another. There was the central tomb chamber, which she spent most of her time, and the place that she made most difficult to reach, and held her most precious thing. There were the quarters for her diamond dogs, which she never bothered to go to herself. There were the pens, where they kept prisoners for her later pleasure. And finally there were the vaults, the second most difficult part of the complex to reach, with the second most important contents.

The Mare kept walking for many minutes, snaking her way through the many seemingly identical passageways. Grey stone walls all around, all poorly lit by only an occasional light crystal trying to cover too much area, and the entire place smelled like what it was-a tomb. Eventually she came to the vault doors. The doors were of extremely heavy unadorned stone, in black rather than the grey that everything else was made, and exceptionally thick. They were currently ajar, which was a pretty impressive feat for whoever the intruder had been. It took a lot of strength to get those doors to open. She did a quick check for magical residue and found none, indicating it had indeed been brute force used to open them.

As she stepped into the vault itself, with little actual concern, she took a brief glance around the massive chamber. Here was contained the remains of every pony she had ever personally killed. It had to be ponies that she had killed by hoof, not ones killed by her undead or minions, not ones who died as a side effect of something else she had done, just the ones she had personally murdered. They held special importance to her, and it was not simply some sick trophy case. These ponies she had access to the souls of, and contained those souls separately in the most secure place of all, herself. The bodies had their value beyond the souls, they held very precious information that she would one day need, once she had her final reward. In this room were aisle after aisle of small grey stone tombs for those bodies, stacked high on top of one another, making a its own little labyrinth into itself. Each of sarcophagi had a simple pony design etched on them indicating tribe, sex, and cutie mark of its content. All carefully etched by herself to identify who laid within. Even those victims who had no cutie marks were given entombment here. She was not a complete monster, she believed in giving her personal victims this final dignity.

The necromancer kept walking through the vault looking for any signs of anything having been disturbed. Only those who resided in the Sanctuary Tomb should even know of this place's existence. It was one of her most closely guarded secrets. Any intruder was likely just some spy from one of the other acolytes trying to gather information on her doings that had somehow wandered the Tomb long enough to find their way into here. Even if they reported it her fellow acolytes might just think it some monument to her perversion. The Elder Gods' corruption made them all sadists.

Perhaps she should put additional ways of hiding this place in some way. Normally there would have been some of her dogs patrolling the halls outside, but she had to kill so many in the last day to make her creations. Her living dogs were likely all hiding in some corner of the complex until they were sure she didn't need any more blood, she couldn't fault their desire for self preservation she supposed. They would come out and serve again when their fear subsided. They had little other choice but to do so or starve.

She allowed herself to brush her body up against the containers as she walked by, envisioning when she would eventually make use of these. It brought a smile to her face to think about it. This would all be worth it in the end, when she finally completed her contract of the extermination of Ponykind, and then dealt with each and every one of her fellow acolytes. This wasn't her final goal, just a final gift of love and final show of spite. This was the guardian of the tomb's project, but one she was eager to see through to the end.

That day was a long way off still, unfortunately. At least until some of the her acolytes stepped up and completed their respective contracts and inadvertently made their bells vulnerable. She wondered how many of her fellow acolytes actually understood the full mechanics of the bells, the masters didn't just give out that information. She had only learned of it by her dealings with the tomb's guardian. They almost certainly knew that the bells had ways of being destroyed, but she expected they didn't know what made them so they could be destroyed.

Grogar likely knew, he was much more knowledgeable about all things Elder God related, but she had her doubts about the others. Lavan and Araius were fools who desired only power and dominance, as if such things had any real value. Hydia was just incompetent, as was Ahuizotl. Bray was another incompetent idiot who Grogar now had the possession of the bell of, figuring out how to get his contract completed would be a challenge for her. Goldcap was one she could never get a good read on, nor did she have any clue to his final goal or contract. Zelroth was yet another mystery to her. Pinkie Pie was of course already dead and not a competitor for the final reward.

So many monsters, other than herself, left for her to kill. That troll Hydia would be the next to fall, even if if she had to complete Hydia's contract herself to make the hag vulnerable. Lavan would come next, and then she would determine who was next after that. There would only be one final reward given out by their masters, and it would be hers.

Nothing seemed to be disturbed anywhere within the vault on first glance. Whoever the intruder had been likely had been on the run as soon as he or she got into the vault. The guardian here was very protective of the place, this place held the guardian's hopes and desires even more than it held the Mare's. The intruder was almost certainly already dead, it was just a matter of finding the corpse.

She kept wandering aimlessly through the rows. Now she was coming upon the section that held the alicorn tombs. There were a few here that were recently opened, but that was because she had to have something powerful to work with for creating her hunters. She took a quick curious glance to see which alicorns they had brought her as looking at mere bones before didn't really tell her anything. It didn't really matter of course, but it was a passing interest. Looking at the tombs she could see the bodies of Somnambula, Rarity, and Luna had been chosen. Not the most interesting selections, with the possible exception of Luna's, but again it really didn't matter. Whenever her abominations were finally destroyed she would have their bones regathered and brought back here. She had tombs already waiting for Sunset Shimmer and Water Shadow that just needed to be filled. Unfortunately Flurry Heart had cheated her out of getting a full set of alicorns by committing suicide, such a selfish alicorn. There were some alicorns still bound in Tartarus as well that she would eventually need to add to her collection, but they really didn't feel like they counted, though she did already have a few of those here as well. Tarturus was a huge place and tracking them down wasn't a priority, they weren't going anywhere.

She finally found the body of her intruder right after she passed the open containers. A hippogriff buck had been the source of the alarm, his dead body was giving her a very happy smile. The fact that it was a hippogriff indicated this was a spy from Hydia most likely, though she supposed Grogar could have subverted one as well to try to mislead her into thinking so. She would have to ask the guardian if there had been anything gleaned from his mind before he died. There was no mark on him indicating how he died, but that was to be expected. Ghosts didn't kill you with anything that left wounds.

"Your puppies didn't do a good job of guarding the entrance," came an accusing voice from beside me.

"I apologize, I had to put a fair number of them down to work a strong spell. I am pretty sure the rest are hiding right now. I will see to it that they are back to guarding soon enough. Did you get any information out of him before you painted that smile on his face?" Mera asked the phantom beside her.

"Just a spy from Hydia, just looking around the complex for any information he could find at all. I think she has some sort of personal grudge with you or something. You two should sit down and have a party together and make friends," the voice answered her in a bored tone that picked up in pitch on the last sentence.

"You make the most absurd suggestions sometimes, do you know that? Over a thousand years dead and you still can't help thinking about laughing and parties. If I didn't have greater insight I would wonder how you could have ever been an acolyte, Pinkie," the Mare said as she turned an looked at the spectral pink pony.

The ghost shrugged her shoulders back at her. Pinkie Pie looked much as she had in life, except you could see through her now. She even still wore her collar, minus the long destroyed bell. Pinkie hadn't known her bell would become vulnerable after the Great Tree fell, and it had taken her by quite a bit of surprise to have the container of her soul crushed. It had been also been a shock to the Alicorn of Laughter to learn that she wasn't done with service just because her bell, and therefore soul, was gone now. The Elder Gods didn't let go with their tools so easily, and she was still collared even in death. There was irony in that the pony that loved surprises had died to one. How she still had a ghostly essence without being in possession of her soul was something that even the Mare wasn't entirely sure of the mechanics of how it worked.

It was a situation that worked out for the necromancer though. Pinkie Pie had given her plenty of information in the past, and was an unlikely ally. Their final goals did coincide with one another's nicely too. Though she was mildly jealous that Pinkie Pie had managed to avoid the majority of the Elder Gods' corruption by going and dying. Pinkie was completely free of the effects of bliss as a ghost. Of course you couldn't actually call Pinkie Pie a good pony by any means. This was the pony who orchestrated the fall of the Twilight Realm after all, and had done many a monstrous thing in pursuit of that goal. She might be able to pull the excuse that Grogar forced her to do the stuff up till the Tree, but everything between about seven years before the fall and her death was completely on Pinkie. The Mare to this day could not bring herself to think of this bitch as being technically her both mother-in-law and grandmare. She understood the pink alicorn's reasons and manipulations, but it earned her no love from the Mare. Pinkie deserved to suffer in death, but there was no way to accomplish that. The Mare of Shadows' lust to make Pinkie suffer for what she had done might never be satisfied. For now all there was left to do was see their combined work be brought to fruition eventually. There would be many others who she would see suffer for what they had done to her anyway, and many more who had already suffered. She would have retribution for what had happened.

"Do you think he was able to give any information back to the old troll?" she asked the ghost.

"He neither learned anything, nor did he get any information out. We played tag around the vault for a bit. He looks so happy now don't you think?" Pinkie Pie replied, pointing at the smiling face. The Mare hated seeing those smiles, they creeped her out, and Pinkie Pie was the primary reason for that. Something just felt unclean about dying that way to her, strange as that might sound. It felt cleaner simply mutilating them, mutilating caused suffering, their suffering was food and bliss for her at least. This dying of laughter seemed a perversion far worse than what she did, there was nothing to be gained from having something die this way. Pinkie was her own special blend of evil.

"I will get those guards back in place soon enough. Just keep the vaults safe in the meantime," she told the specter.

"I definitely will silly! We can't let anything interfere with our final surprises," the pink pony laughed.

Cotton Tail wondered if he was dead or if he was drugged and having some sort of psychedelic vision. If it was a psychedelic vision it definitely wasn't what he imagined one would be like. He was sitting on the edge of what he assumed to be the edge of a cliff, though he doubted it was actually anything so mundane. Behind him was what looked sort of like a house, but it was all wrong too. What lay before him was nothing of this world.

He gazed out at the area beyond. The air couldn't seem to make up it's mind what its color was, shifting constantly and drastically between colors, combinations of colors, and other times looking like it just became discolored water. He could breathe despite the constant changes, though it seemed it shouldn't work that way. Nothing made sense here.

From time to time he would see something out in the distance. Those things made no sense either. He saw a filly wearing some strange hat with a propeller on top, completely unaware of her surroundings, with her rump held high and the propeller on her hat spinning. He had tried to get her to take notice of him, but she seemed to be aware of nothing. He saw another pony who was wearing a strange uniform of some sort and a saddle bag was floating out there helplessly as well and had taken notice of him when he had shouted to the pony. His response wasn't very helpful before he had floated out of sight.

"I seem to have made a wrong turn somewhere. The mail service is going to fire me for sure for this," the pony had called back. He quickly drifted out of sight and sound after that. This place did seem to be about as wrong a turn as you could make.

He saw other things on and off in the aether. He had seen a giant eye with wings flying about, what looked like a train that zipped through from nothing and back into nothing. Dancing cows, pink rain clouds the poured some sort of liquid that definitely wasn't water, rabbits pulling lions from hats, cats playing pianos, the list of insane things just went on and on. He had debated trying to fly away from this cliff, but there didn't seem to be anywhere to go.

How had things come to him being stuck in this bizarre afterlife? Life hadn't been perfect for him, but his life had been better than most. He never knew growing up how bad it was for other ponies, but when he had been chosen as an acolyte he had been exposed to the reports. He had learned how truly terrible Ocid was when he had to start reporting the daily news to Water Shadow. She had to comfort him many a time as he had broken down reading her some of those reports, and he could tell his mistress grieved as well. Was this existence better than what Ocid had been for all the dead ponies over the years? If this was every pony's final fate it felt like a cheat, they deserved better.

He sighed and turned back towards the building behind him, not that it made any more sense. There was a couch in it at least that was comfortable and he could take a nap. The inside of the house had floating furniture, stairs on the ceiling, doors that went nowhere, and fish that occasionally would swim through the air. He had panicked when he first found himself here, but at this point he had calmed down and really had no idea what to do with himself here. He had long since given up trying to make any sense of it. He just accepted the afterlife just made no bloody sense.

He found the couch floating in the same stationary place in the air it had been. He half expected each time he came into this house that everything would be different, on account of how everything on the outside was constantly changing, but things remained more or less the same each time. Occasionally it was fish swimming through the air, sometimes it was singing tea bags ranging through the air, but everything was more or less the same. It was what counted as order in this place.

Cotton Tail flew up to the couch and made himself comfortable. He hoped the tea bags wouldn't come through anytime soon, they were loud and annoying. He just wanted to sleep so he didn't have to deal with this place for a little while again. He wasn't really tired, but dreams were easier to make sense of. It seemed strange that even when dead you could still dream.

As he lay there he thought about his mother. Was she dead? If she was dead then why wasn't she here with him in this weird afterlife? Perhaps every pony had their own personal weird afterlife. He wondered if hers was like this, or if it was something completely different. Maybe other ponies earned different final afterlives, based on their lives, and his could have been much worse than this. At least nothing was hurting him here. He would like to think his mother enjoyed something more blissful though.

Maybe she had somehow survived and only he had died. He didn't remember dying, but that was the best explanation for anything he had found.

Closing his eyes he considered whether he should try flying out into the weirdness and search for other ponies. There had to be other places out there somewhere. Perhaps one of them had his mother. At the very least he could hopefully find some other pony to actually spend time with. The ponies he saw floating in the weirdness must have come from somewhere. He had been too timid to try to fly out into it up to this point, but there didn't seem to be much else to do. He wished he had tried to fly out to the one pony that had answered him, but the pony moved too quickly through the aether for him to have accomplished it.

"Are you just going to be a lazy freeloader in my home, Rabbit Butt?"

Cotton Tail's eyes shot open and he fell off the couch in his startled state. He quickly got back up and looked at the source of the voice. Standing right before him was Moon Fury.

"Seriously, I bring you here and all you can manage to do is mope about and sleep," Moon Fury fussed at him.

"Moon Fury?" Cotton Tail asked in disbelief, was Moon Fury dead too, or was this more of the insanity of this place?

"We'll go with that name for now. And no thank you for saving you from certain death in that mine? A freeloader and ungrateful as well," Moon Fury said. He then grabbed one of the singing tea bags that had just entered into the room again and tossed it in a kettle, which promptly started boiling. The tea bag kept singing within. Did the little thing feel pain? Cotton Tail hoped not, the little tea bags were annoying, but there was no need for torture.

"I'm not dead? Where are we?" Was all Cotton Tail could think to say.

"Still no thank you, even when put on the spot. Your mother would be so disappointed in you, do you know that?" Moon Fury accused. Cotton Tail's mind immediately found something to focus clearly on after the remark about his mother.

"Where is my mother? Why didn't you bring her here too?" He demanded. If Moon Fury had saved him then why hadn't he saved his mother? She had clearly been in more dire need. Why not just save every pony for that matter?

"I couldn't just grab her when every pony was watching. But fear not, I will see to her rescue soon enough. I only saved you because it would break her heart if you had been killed. I am sure that when she finds out you nearly got yourself killed she will have a lot more to say about how stupid you are than I could come up with," Moon Fury answered. He then grabbed the kettle with one wing and grabbed a pink teacup from somewhere, and proceeded to pour himself a glass of singing tea. When he took a drink from it he somehow drank the teacup, leaving the singing tea sitting suspended in the air. He then shrugged, and produced a tiny bag from somewhere and put the tea in it, which promptly transformed itself back into a teabag and went happily singing away. This place made no sense. Maybe Cotton Tail was just having a really extended, really strange, dream.

"Where are we if we aren't dead?" Cotton Tail asked, gesturing around the room.

"This is a little pocket dimension. It has been my home for longer than any living pony has been around. I have been having fun with you ponies since before either of your alicorns were even conceived in their mothers' wombs. You little ponies even turned me to stone, twice actually. I have to tell you being a statue is really very boring. I am very disappointed in Sunset Shimmer that she didn't recognize me. The blue one you serve, Wet Shave, Tooth Paste, or whatever her name is gets a pass on that since she never really dealt with me. But I am personally hurt about Bacon Hair not recognizing me. I thought we were better friends than that," Moon Fury lamented.

"What are you?" Cotton Tail said shakily. It was clear to him now that Moon Fury wasn't just some other pony, nor was this place employing any form of pony magic.

"Oh, I thought you would never ask," Moon Fury said with a sly smile. There was a quick flash of light that made Cotton Tail have to shield his eyes.

When he looked again in the direction of Moon Fury no pony stood before him. Instead was something completely alien. It had the head of a pony or perhaps a goat. It had two mismatched horns of unknown types. One foreleg had a paw at the end, but the other had a claw. His hind legs were also mismatched, as well as his wings. He had a long serpentine body, and a single fang poking out of his mouth. His eyes were yellow where they should be white, and his irises were red. An unkempt thin beard hung from the creature's chin.

"I am Discord, Lord and Spirit of Chaos, and I have grown so bored lately. I am ready to play some games. Do you want to help me have some fun?" The strange creature grinned and rubbed his claw and paw together in expectation.

What was Cotton Tail in league with?

This place was different from most the areas she had to transverse. There was plant-life here, not much of it, but there was some. That was an interesting thing to see. First Word found herself just staring at the few trees in fascination. She also noticed grass growing as well in a few areas. Life clung to this little stretch of land near the coast, and it fascinated her.

First Word could feel with her magic the plants struggling to pull nutrients from the ground. She could feel the seeds making small roots to do the same. One day those seeds would grow into full plants, if they didn't die first. They had no wants and their goal was simply to exist. They seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever. What purpose was there in just existing? There was none in it that she could imagine. These things didn't deserve their life if they had no purpose. She had purpose, so she had value. There was no point wasting time focusing on those things that had none.

She looked around the area and found a large stone that seemed to be out of place with the rest of the landscape. There was writing on the stone. She knew how to read, though she didn't know when she had learned how to do so. Her mother must have granted her this knowledge, which indicated that she wanted First Word to read. She wanted to do as her mother wished, so she read the inscription. Something about a beloved daughter named Sea Star, and something about failing her. How did a mother fail her daughter? Was it not the daughter who was obligated not to fail the mother? This seemed to have been carved by the mother, and Sea Star had apparently been very important to her.

She had believed she only existed to serve her mother's will. Was she of any deeper importance to her own mother, beyond her purpose? Did her mother have any sort of obligation to her as well? What purpose did her mother serve? If her mother had no purpose then what did that mean for her own purpose? She needed to learn the purpose for her mother to answer that. Perhaps this Sea Star had no purpose either, but somehow had value. She would have to consider these questions at greater length later, she had obligations to complete now.

She had been sure that the alicorn magic had originated from near this spot, now that she was here she could find residue of the more alicorn magic here, but she saw no alicorns. They had to be close, the sense of the magic was fresh, and had to have occurred soon after the first large flash of magic she had felt from afar. Perhaps she should fly along the coast some more and see if the alicorn was nearby. The sun would be rising in a few minutes, and she would be able to easily spot anything moving about then.

She looked at the large stone again. The stone felt strongly of the magic. Why did it feel so strongly? This seemed like an important question to ask. She needed to understand what the alicorn had done here. She stretched out her magical senses into the area around the stone and her eyes widened. There was a place under the stone, not simply ground. This was no mere stone, it was a door. She smiled with pride that asking questions had led her to this discovery. Her mother would be proud of her, and she realized she wanted her mother's pride; she hungered for that pride. She wanted her mother to call her beloved as this Sea Star's mother called her.

Pulling the massive stone free from the ground she found a passage leading into the ground below. It reminded her much of the one she had emerged from when leaving the place of her creation. She was confident that the alicorn and the pegasus were down in there somewhere. There was no where else of note to go around this region, there were few other ruins and not much for cover.

Following the orders given by her mother she sent out a signal to say where the alicorn was to be found. It was her duty now to subdue, but not kill, Sunset Shimmer and the pegasus filly. This was her purpose at the moment. She would make her mother proud. She would be beloved too.

The predawn light was just peaking out over the horizon as she descended into the womb of the ground, ready to fulfill her purpose.

Author's Notes:

If you are really interested in what Pinkie did you can read more details here. Be warned it might cause some spoilers.