Magic flickered about Twilight Sparkle like summer lightning, silent but ever present. Her mane swept behind her as though caught in a spring breeze. Where her hooves touched the ground, tiny sparks of lightning ground fell like autumn leaves. Even so, her eyes were filled with a wintery chill as she glared at the monsters who had so horribly abused her friends.

As striking as her appearance was, the Princess of Friendship was merely the herald of a greater force as the sky was suddenly swarming with winged forms descending from on high. Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Griffins, Changelings, and Dragons all teemed together as one massive flight. Meanwhile royal guards, both Earth Pony and Unicorn, aided by heavily armored Yaks and Crystal Ponies, surrounded the cultists on all sides. Celestia, Luna, Queen Novo, Dragon Lord Ember, and Thorax all descended from above while Prince Rutherford, Princess Cadance, Shining Armor, Sunburst, Starswirl, and the rest of the Pillars of Equestria stood tall at the head of more ground based troops as they marched into Ponyville.

“You are woefully outnumbered,” Twilight spoke with the certainty of the grave. “Surrender is your only option. Release the children you have stolen, without a fight, and I can promise you that your time in Tartarus will not be as miserable as it should be.”

“Such a tempting offer Twilight!” Starlight grinned, causing the cult leader's freshly peeled skin to crawl strangely over her bones. “If you want the little rascals, by all means, they’re all yours!”

The children rushed from the sacrificial altar, fleeing to the sides of the soldiers and clung to them, frightened and shivering but clearly thankful to be saved. Twilight passed the still sleeping Flurry Heart to Sunburst, and the scruffy unicorn quickly took the child to her parents side. Princess Cadance gave the cult leader a look of pure hatred while Shining Armor fussed over his sleeping daughter.

“What have you done to her?” the enraged mother asked.

“Nothing that matters anymore,” replied the evil unicorn, with a flare of her horn. The magic around the sleeping Alicorn faded and she awoke with a sob, burying her face in her fathers chest.

“Applejack, Rarity, are you alright?” asked Twilight, not taking her eyes off the manically grinning cult leader.

“She killed Starlight,” Applejack’s voice was dead calm. “Discord, or some version of him, is on their side along with Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. Ah don’t know how many others, but it seems like half the town's been taken over and the other half....”

“They killed so many,” whispered Rarity. “Too many. She has some kind of, I don't know, candy monstrosities at her command. It changes you. Makes you into a monster like them.”

“I know,” was Twilight’s solemn reply. Addressing the cultists once again. “We will not allow you to resurrect the Candy Mare. She will not be reborn into this world. No matter who or what you have corrupted we will not falter, the full might of Equestria stands against you now!”

“I know! Isn’t it fantastic!?" Starlight could barely contain her reply as it spilled forth with a fit of giggling. “You’re all right where we want you! Finally all the guests have arrived and the feast of a million souls can begin!"

As if her words were a trigger, the children that had so recently trembled in fear and terror began to sing. “Nightmare Night, what a fright. Give us something sweet to bite!” Even the babies; Flurry Heart, Pound, and Pumpkin Cake burbled their way along with the eerie sing-song melody. All was silent as the assembled might of Equestria, to a man, stared in dumbfounded disbelief. What was going on?

Then, one by one, the children exploded. Razor sharp shrapnel made from candy and living bone scythed through the gathered soldiers all at once.

Flurry Heart hugged both her parents tight as she burst in a shower of gore that shredded her parents to pieces and maimed Sunburst who had his hind legs ripped off by the blast!

Worse, the bits and pieces of those merely injured in the explosion began to rise, flesh dripping from their ravaged bones as magical candy burst forth from within! In fact, Sunburst himself barely had time to howl his shock and pain to the sky before his cries turned into manic laughter, fresh candy legs growing to replace the ones he had lost. Others around him suffered the same fate as the dead and dying became what could only be described as an army of freshly made candy ghouls!

The chaos on the ground was mirrored in the skies above as suddenly the gathered armies seemed to turn on themselves. Flesh and blood rained down from above as candied Pegasi, Griffins, Hippogryphs, Dragons, and Changelings all shed their meaty disguises at once, revealing just how deeply the candy cult had infiltrated not just one but every race in Equestria!

Flickering orange and green dragon fire erupted in the sky as the candified creatures fell upon their fellows with hungry glee and reckless abandon. Each body that fell with a sickening thud from the sky would, only moments later, rise again to re-enforce the diabolical Candy Cultists. Already the numbers were shifting against Equestria, and that was without counting those cultists still gathered around the sacrificial pit.

“This is worse than I feared. They seem to have infiltrated our ranks completely!” cried Starswirl in despair as he fought alongside his friends to try and stave off the hungry teeth of the very ponies they were meant to protect. “The Candy Mare never did anything like this before!”

“Well of course she didn’t! What did you think? We served your worlds Candy Mare? That poor shriveled up wretch is still sealed in eternal slumber in a statue somewhere!” The laughter from the leader of the Candy Cult was so derisive and intense her new skin began to slide off ehr skull, causing it to flap free for a moment from the corruption underneath. “I’m sorry to say that you had one detail very wrong from the start. This ritual was never meant to bring back the Candy Mare. You see... She's already here!”

With a dramatic hoof raised to the sky, Starlight pointed to what had been concealed by Flurry Heart's barrier spell up until now. With the death of the infant alicorn, the magic bubble had faded away and the sky above was at last visible. Or was it the sky? What had appeared moments before like the clear blue heavens swirled with a spiral of pink clouds suddenly seemed to pull back, lifting away from the tiny world, revealing a truth that caused the hearts of all those still living to shrivel and stop within their chests.

It was as if time had suddenly stopped as the minds of the living tried desperately, hopelessly to process the information that their brains refused to accept.

The vast blue and pink disc was not the sky, but instead a wide and unblinking eye. One enormously massive orb swirled with madness beyond the comprehension of mortals. The huge lollipop eye retreated until it was merely the size of a large planet, hovering in a sky that was suddenly alive with twisting red tendrils of liquorice and colossal mouths filled with gnashing candy corn fangs the size of worlds. A rumbling sound that shook the earth and rattled the Equestrian's bones, rang out from above, only to be echoed from the mouth of every psychotic cultist and candied creature below.

"It's some kind of vortex," shouted Starswirl over the booming laughter of the damned, "An aberration! A wound in the fabric of time and space!”

“Gaze upon the majesty of the one who devours all!" roared the leader of the Candy Cult, her eyes filled with nearly as much madness as her titanic master's. "She who has corrupted civilizations and eaten worlds! She who is a universe unto herself! Behold the Candyverse in all it's riotous, joyous splendor! Rejoice! For the Candy Mare is all and all are one in the Candy Mare! Give praise to-“

The cultists crazed ranting was cut short as a sizzling bolt of pure magic cut through her with enough force to blow her stolen skin from her charred and disfigured hide.

Whatever had been holding her body together seemed to give out as the alternate Starlight crumbled into a pile of blackened bone and spoiled meat. Smoke curled from the tip of Twilight’s horn. Though her eyes were flooded with tears of anguish, at all the horrors she had witness just in the past few moments, still they blazed with righteous fury as she whispered, “Enough. Enough madness. Enough pain. I don’t care how many Equestrias have fallen to you monsters, it ends here!” She rose into the air, her magic sweeping out among the soldiers, vaporizing monstrosities and candy cultists alike as they struggled to flee before the Alicorn’s unleashed wrath.

Emboldened, the armies of the living pressed their advantage. Unicorn magic was added to Twilight's destructive spell, as was dragon fire that swept from above, obliterating the candy ghouls with searing heat. Meanwhile the ground forces literally tore the creatures apart, sending showers of candy gore spurting into the air as the cultists fell beneath hoof and claw, Prince Rutherford and his loyal Yak soldiers leading the charge as the enemy were literally smashed to pieces!

Celestia and Luna combined their power against the candified Discord. At first it seemed the agile serpent would get the better of them, but working together in a harmony they were able to corner the candified creature and slam him with twin beams of radiant solar energy and moonlit power, vaporizing him in one mighty blast!

As the surge of magic faded from Twilight, the tide of battle had turned. The forces of Equestria seemed to have the upper hand. Rarity and Applejack moved to stand by their friends side as Twilight slowly levitated back down to earth, both with worried looks on their faces. With good cause... They had never seen Twilight lash out like this before. But then, they were not all that surprised. What Twilight had done was what had to be done after the cultists cowardly attack that had obliterated so many of their friends.

Twilight turned to perhaps her last two living friends, embracing them even as sobs that wracked her frame exploded from inside. In short order she had lost her brother, her niece, and one of her oldest and dearest friends who had become like a sister to her. Not to mention half of her circle of friends had been seemingly turned into murderous monsters. All around the Twilight and her friends the screams and the laughter of the dead mixed with the terrified wails of the dying. There was only so much one little pony could take, even an Alicorn princess.

“Oh, good job Princess!” croaked the scorched skull of the cult leader.

Even as the girls watch in disbelief, the living corpse slowly pieced itself back together one gangrenous chunk at a time. New eyes festered, quivering inside the hollow sockets of the reforming head, blossoming into existence as the skulls grin widened. In mere seconds, the leader of the Candy Cult was whole again, save for her skinless and obviously rotting appearance.

“But it is one thing to stand before me and my minions, and it is quite another to stand before my master! After all, as above,” the skinless Starlight raised her head to the heavens, before looking pointedly down into the sacrificial pit, “So below.”

The ground suddenly shook more violently than before, rolling like some great beast awakening from a long slumber. Falling to their knees as the tortured earth moaned, the living could only watch in disgust as something vile and stinking of sugar and death vomited up from the depths of the earth.

Some horrible, organic thing slowly rose beyond the precipice of the pit. It was like a mound of offal, covered in the twitching limbs and wailing faces of candified creatures all mangled and mashed up into one huge wad of candy coated insanity. It was like a glimpse into a very special kind of hell, reserved for the gluttonous and the deranged. Liquorice tendrils heaved and twitched as the hideous bulk rose into the air, a pillar of suffering, a twisted bulb covered in teeth and claws crowning the tallest point.

As the tremors subsided, those living dead who had not been crushed or vaporized by the armies of Equestria turned and swayed back and forth, chanting “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite! Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!” As they did, the grotesque bulb in the center of the pillar of suffering candied flesh split, blood weeping from the cracks that suddenly appeared in the delicate membrane. The bulb blossomed, revealing itself to in fact be a single massive corpse flower, that sent forth a horrifying stench and a shower of filth on all below as it opened in the hellish fire light. Amidst the petals of wet steaming flesh, seated on a throne of children’s teeth and bones, a tiny filly reclined. Her smile was so wicked and cruel it filled the hearts of both the living and the dead with dread. Of course, there was only one pony that this could be...

“It’s her,” whispered Starswirl hoarsely.

“Are you the one responsible for all this?” demanded Twilight, fighting hard to maintain her composure.

In a flash, the throne was empty. Twilight swung her head back and forth, trying to see where the filly might have escaped to. Twilight focused her mind, trying to sense any traces of magic that might reveal where the filly had gone. Instead, the grinning child was suddenly standing right in front of Twilight Sparkle, a gleam in her lollipop eyes and a fresh gob of flesh held tight in her teeth.

“My names Candy Mare! Wanna play?” The precocious little pony’s grin only widened as Twilight backed away in surprise and confusion. The monstrous filly gleefully chewed and swallowed the bloody morsel of flesh in her mouth before flashing a fiendish blood stained smile. “Just kidding!”

Twilight’s confusion only grew more pronounced as a wave of pain and dizziness assailed her. She tried to speak, to cry out for someone to help her, but all that escaped her throat was a bubbling wheeze and a splash of fresh blood as it gushed down her chest. Just as fast as that, her throat had been completely gouged out!

Rarity and Applejack were both screaming, but Twilight could only distantly hear them. Why were they so far away? Why did it hurt so much when she coughed? Why did her mouth taste like blood? Why was it getting so dark?

There were so many unanswered questions that the Princess Of Friendship had as she finally fell. She never guessed that the chunk of flesh that the Candy Mare had chewed up and swallowed was, in fact, her own throat.

The filly sized Candy Mare grew as she stalked towards her fallen prey and grinned viciously at every pony present. A crown of seven unicorn horns sprouted upon her head and seven wings spread down the ridge of her expanding spine. By the time anyone had a chance to react, the Candy Mare had grown to the size of a small dragon and leered menacingly down at all nearby. Like a beast with a fresh kill, she crouched over Twilight’s lifeless form and laughed savagely with thousands of tiny mouths that opened and closed along the length of her massive body.

“Play-time's over~♪♫.”

Next Chapter: Cannibal Apocalypse Estimated time remaining: 50 Minutes