Clip-clip, clip-clop, clip-clop... the sound echoed as Twilight paced in the Cutie Map room . Every now and then she would steal worried glances at the eponymous map, but she wouldn’t dare look for too long.

This is bad, she thought to herself. This is really, really bad!

She had known instinctively that the Crystal Mirror breaking had been an extremely bad omen, but after staying up all night reading she was now certain that circumstances were far more dire than she had first imagined. After making sure there were no other magical anomalies within the castle that might explain the mirrors destruction, her worst fears were realized. It was faint, but she could detect a strange energy that clung to the now magicaless shards of glass as well as the entire room that had housed it. The energy was wild and destructive, and it took much of Twilight’s evening jus to contain it.

Twilight had then tried to send a message to Sunset to see if the destruction had carried over to her side of the portal as well, but as she feared there had been no response. Twilight couldn’t stave off the wave of guilt as she though, Just like Sunset hadn't received any response from mein Celestia knows how long!

It hadn't really been Twilight's fault that she missed Sunset's messages. If she wasn't solving friendship problems, defending the realm with her friends, or shaping young minds as Headmare of the School of Friendship, then chances were she was caught up in one of her friends many misadventures or off doing some sort of good will or charity work as the Princess of Friendship. Even so, Twilight couldn't shake a deep sense of guilt at having ignored the journal that she had once used to communicate with Sunset for so long. It seemed the unicorn turned teenager had been dealing with some truly dire problems, and if the state of the Crystal Mirror was any indication then things might have turned out very badly indeed...

And Twilight hadn’t been there to help her.

Clip-clop, clip-clip, clip-clop...

Her pacing increased as Twilight thought of Sunset having to face some forgotten Equestrian monster all on her own. Some bizarre creature that had been banished who knew how long ago. Sure, Sunset had the human world version of her friends to back her up, but what if they hadn't been enough? What if Sunset had really needed her and Twilight just... wasn't there? The thought shook her to her core, but that wasn't the worst of it. The last message in the journal hadn't been from Sunset, but rather Twilight's own assistant Spike!

Spike had pulled some reference materials for Sunset at her request and sent her a fairly detailed transcript. It hadn’t taken Twilight long to realize the information could be found in the other book she had found in the remains of the Crystal Mirror. What she had read in the journal was so unbelievable, so horrible, that she had double checked the ancient and crumbling text just to make sure Spike hadn’t made some kind of terrible mistake. What her eyes had confirmed for themselves only served to make her blood run cold.

'Ye Olde Tricks and Treats'

Never had Twilight found herself more disturbed by the written word than when she had cracked open that tomes creaking spine and beheld the contents within. The ink was so faded it almost had the appearance of dried blood, but still she was able to read most of the text. Some of the folklore and legends were familiar, but also very different, older versions of campfire tales and superstitions that many a fillyhood sleepover might be populated with but twisted almost beyond recognition. They were unsettlingly darker, and far more violent than their modern day counterparts, and very few of them had anything that remotely resembled a happy ending. Even relatively innocent stories like the tale of the Horrible Headless-Horse, which even Twilight had once told on a rainy night when Applejack and Rarity had slept over at the Golden Oaks Library years ago, was something that made Twilight's stomach churn and her knees shake.

It didn't help that the book was written as if it were recounting factual occurrences, going into detail about the ponies whom had encountered the boogie-mares and horrible hauntings and gotten away... And more than a few who had not been so fortunate. Not only that but it gave details about where and when one could expect to encounter such horrors. It also went into graphic detail about what one could expect to endure if they were so unfortunate as to meet these creatures themselves, complete with some rather grisley woodcuts. If Twilight had noticed she had been reading right through breakfast and into lunch it would not have mattered, as those images proved sufficient to make her lose any appetite she might have otherwise had.

Of course those were only the stories she recognized. There were other tales, far older, that the princess of friendship had never heard of. Ancient cautionary tales that had to do with creatures and beings she had never heard of; The Mares of Diomedes, The Star in Yellow, and the Colour from Beyond the Sky. But there was one story in particular that made Twilight's breathing quicken and her mouth go dry... The one which Spike had quoted from - ‘The Tale of the Candy Mare’.

Twilight's eyes raced across the words as adrenaline pumped through her veins, darting faster and faster as she flipped the pages with her horn. As she came to the end of the story and turned to the next page, all she found was a list of ingredients... Recipes for candy that could only be described as 'cursed'. She flipped back to the start of the story, reading slower now, trying to see if there was some detail she had missed. Some clue or nugget of information that Twilight had overlooked.

As Twilight paced next to the Cutie Map now, she couldn’t stop herself from experiencing some of the panic she had felt then afresh. It made Twilight pause in mid-stride and once again glance nervously at the Cutie Map. She chewed on her lower lip so hard that she actually drew a tiny bead of blood. That fillyhood song of “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite,” seemed to echo in the cavernous room. Twilight couldn't help but dwell on a nightmare that Sunset Shimmer had written about. She had described an encounter with a terrifying little girl, maliciously cruel and clearly dead, that all too hauntingly fit the description of what one might think of as a human version of the Candy Mare herself.

Nightmare Night... How could something previously so innocent suddenly have such sinister connotations? Spike's message to her had been about the folklore surrounding the Candy Mare. If there had been any more replies from Sunset after that, then the books magic hadn’t transmitted it. Was it possible? Could a creature like the Candy Mare, or someone afflicted with her curse, have crossed over to the human world? Twilight knew that Equestria was full of deadly creatures, but she thought she would have noticed if somepony like that had used the Crystal Mirror. But then... Maybe a monster like the Candy Mare wouldn’t need to use the Crystal Mirror, using some supernatural power to cross between realms? Maybe there was just something that was very much like her in the human world... Something just as deadly. Twilight shook her head, as the line of thinking was too ridiculous. Nothing so horrible as the Candy Mare could come to exist in the human world.

There's no way that there could be any truth to such a horrible story, in this world or theirs. Could there?

It didn't make sense. Surely if something like that had happened everypony in Equestria would know about it. A legend like that couldn't just fade away, could it? But the more Twilight thought of it, the more she knew it must have been true. She remembered how, when Luna returned from her exile on the moon, there were few ponies that had remembered the legend of her return. At the time, even Twilight herself had only recently read the tale of the 'Mare in the Moon' a mere day before her return. Of course, that wasn't all. She had never heard of Ponehenge, of the Pillars of Harmony, or of the ‘Pony of Shadows’ until Sunburst had discovered stories of their exploits in an old book he'd just happened to buy from an antique shop. There was much and more that had been lost to the annals of history than Twilight had ever dreamed of.

There were many stories that had faded and others, Twilight suspected, that had been buried intentionally. Whether it was merely because such tales stretched the limits of credulity and had been dismissed as tall-tales or if it was some misguided effort to protect ponies by eliminating the knowledge of such horrors from history, Twilight couldn't say.

There was a pony who might know, however.

Twilight had been avoiding contacting Starswirl the Bearded, as he had the other Pillars of Harmony were carefully monitoring changes in the Everfree Forest since the sudden destruction of the Tree of Harmony. Even so, he was nearby, and the ancient sorcerer was a font of knowledge from ages past. If there was any pony living today who might have insight into the veracity of legends like those in 'Ye Olde Tricks and Treats', then it stood to reason that it would be a living legend like Starswirl.

Twilight had contacted the old unicorn some time ago. As she had prepared the message, she had set down the pair of books on the cutie map so she could focus on writing the letter herself. Spike was out running errands in preparation for the night's festivities, so she’d have to send the message magically herself.

She was just setting quill to parchment when it had happened. The entire surface, the projection of Equestria the Cutie Map maintained, just blipped out of existence. In place of the Equestria Twilight knew and loved a new landscape slowly began to rise. She could only describe this new landscape as alien, yet somehow tantalizingly familiar. The shape and contours of Equestria were still there, underneath, if you knew what to look for. She had still been able to pick out Mount Aris and Ghastly Gorge. Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and even parts Of Canterlot were all still present, though the royal palace seemed to have been knocked from its perch and slid down the mountain. But everything else had ever so subtly warped and changed. The grass was red, the rivers and lakes a glowing green, and every last surface glistened wetly in a riot of shapes and colors. It took Twilight more than a few moments for her mind to register exactly what she was seeing.

It was Equestria, but an Equestria Twilight had never seen before... One completely made of candy!

The forests were a riot of of bare peppermint limbs all twisted and grasping for the sky. Each mountain was dusted with sparkling sugar. Every city seemed to be a lifeless candy coated husk. Even the badlands and desert wastes had a look more of dessert than desert to Twilight's slowly widening eyes. The horror of what she was seeing had finally dawned on her. The map had done this once before, when it had come in contact with Starswirl's time traveling spell. Twilight was seeing an alternate Equestria that had been conquered... no, completely obliterated by the Candy Mare! If such a creature had found its way into the human world then there was no exaggerating the danger Sunset and her friends had been in! Were in? Sweet Celestia, there was no way to know!

Twilight had wasted no time in quickly teleporting her urgent summons to the part of the Everfree Forest where Starswirl had set up camp and prayed that the unicorn would read her letter and respond to her request for aid with haste. Briefly, Twilight had wondered if this was how Celestia had felt all those times she had called Twilight and her friends to the palace in Canterlot, but she didn't have much room in her head to dwell on such thoughts for long. She was too busy worrying about what all of this could mean, not just for her and her friends but for all of Equestria as well!

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop!

So she had begun to pace.

Her thoughts ran wild as she almost galloped back and forth across the room again and again. Twilight had so many questions. Too many questions. What should she do? What could she do?

That was why, when Starswirl suddenly appeared in the room with a flash of light and magic, Twilight didn't bother greeting him but immediately whirled on him and began to bombard him with questions!

"Is there a way to fix the Crystal Mirror if it has been shattered? Do you know if alternate Equestria's shown by the Cutie Map show alternate dimensions or possible futures? How many legends are true and how many of them were just made up to scare fillies and colts into obeying their parents? How important is offering candy to statues of Nightmare Moon?" At some point Twilight had seized Starswirl with both hooves and was shaking him with enough force that it made the bells on his wizarding hat jingle madly. Twilight coughed nervously and let the fabric of the sorcerers cloak go, but it was obvious she had yet to regain her composure despite the faux pas she had committed by grabbing the unicorn she idolized.

"Whoa, whoa my child, slow down," was Starswirl's gentle reply when he finally had a chance to respond to the fearsomely inquisitive and slightly panicky princess. "I know not if ponies have mastered the art of conveying information instantaneously without the need of having a conversation in this era, but it was not a skill mastered in my day and age. Please, take a deep breath and start again."

Twilight visibly shook herself, took a deep breath as Starswirl suggested, and exhaled. "What can you tell me about the Candy Mare?"

The older unicorn visibly paled. "The Candy Mare? That is a name I have not heard in a very long time. Indeed, it is one I had hoped to never hear again in this or any other lifetime.” His features grew concerned as he realized that Twilight’s interest might not be purely academic. “Why do you ask?"

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