Blood dripped from Sunset’s fingertips onto the dirt as she raised her hand to the sky to try and capture the sun.

It wasn’t there.

And as Sunset lied on her back on the ground, her body covered in blood that didn’t belong to her and staring up at the formless grey mist that masqueraded as a sky to the denizens of the Underworld, she found herself missing the sun more than usual.

Which meant, of course, that it was time to get back on her hooves. Reminiscing didn’t help anyone, and she had work to do. She always had work to do.

The demon groaned as she sat up and surveyed the horizon. Empty, as always. Just dirt and rocks under a miserable grey ‘sky’ as far as the eye could see, at least until you got closer to the mountains in the distance, then you could count a whole lot of graves too.

Sunset tapped her hoof on the dirt and growled under her breath in disapproval. She looked at the blood-soaked battlefield she was leaving behind and clicked her tongue. Monsters in the Underworld didn’t leave corpses, so she couldn’t count just how many enemies she had beaten, but she wasn’t feeling good about the numbers.

She had to exert more magic in that battle than she would’ve liked, and even after absorbing the magic from her dead enemies, she didn’t feel like she plussed at all. Magic was a finite resource down here, and Sunset needed as much of it as she could get her hands on, and if she was only spending it on puny enemies that barely gave back more than she used, she would never have enough.

Oh well. She didn’t have any other options, so it was back to the grind. Again.

And so it went; Sunset roamed the flatlands of the Underworld’s First Circle looking for weaker bands— groups of monsters that worked together to not get picked off, usually six or seven members, though it wasn’t uncommon for two or three bands to group together as well— that she could easily take out on her own. She killed every single member and drained their magic, and then moved on to the next band.

All day.

Every day.

Time meant nothing to Sunset Shimmer anymore, and while it was possible to judge the time based on the shades of grey in the mist above, without the sun what did it matter?

Sunset was ready for it to end, but she had to keep moving forward. Looking into the distance, she could see the great wall that separated the graveyard and the flatlands from the rest of the First Circle, from the Paradise. That’s where she needed to be, and to get through that wall and the monsters that protected it, Sunset would need far more magic than she had.

She just didn’t have the time to feel discouraged.

She didn’t have the time to feel much of anything.

On occasion, Sunset would pick fights in the graveyard. While monsters didn’t leave bodies to be buried, they did leave ashes that were laid to rest and mixed with the dirt and soil of the earth, their magic seeping into the ground itself, which made it a prime spot to harvest magical energy.

Which of course made it a breeding ground for the most powerful bands in the Circle; only the strongest and most powerful monsters could survive in the graveyard, which made farming there risky, too risky for Sunset more often than not, since all of the work she had done to collect magic thus far would be worthless if she died.

But sometimes, some days, she just didn’t care. So she went to the graveyard.

Sometimes it was even worth it. Sometimes Sunset would kneel on the ground after a battle, blood and dirt caked to her fur, and she would breathe deeply of the magic that she harvested from her defeated foes, so much more than any battle in the flatland could give her.

Like today, for instance.

Sunset stood up. Her body was heavy, but she stood up, and she readied to leave the graveyard behind her, but something gave her pause. Her ears perked up. Something wasn’t quite right.

She journeyed deep into the graveyard, past innumerable tombstones and coffins, under the shadow of mountains that only got bigger and more imposing the deeper in she walked. But something was calling out to her, resonating with her, and if it was a source of powerful magic then Sunset couldn’t afford to ignore it.

The call led her deep into the mountains, where she had to skulk about to avoid the roaming bands protecting their territory; she didn’t want to pick a fight and risk having someone else find whatever she was looking for before she could get her hands on it.

Soon enough she found herself in a crevasse buried deep between the mountains; so many graves littered the ground and the mountainsides, but amongst them a large stone coffin stood out to her. Whatever was calling her, it was coming from inside that coffin.

And if Sunset were still on the surface world, still in a world where her life mattered— where anything other than achieving her goals mattered— she may have thought ‘hm, perhaps opening up a creepy stone coffin that almost feels like it’s calling my name isn’t the greatest decision I could make in my life’, but she wasn’t. So it was real creepy coffin hours.

Sunset slid the lid of the coffin open; it was heavier than she expected, so she struggled to lift it and could only be bothered to move it just enough for Sunset to peer inside. And what she found inside caused her to step back, and look a second time to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

But no, it was clear as day. Inside the coffin was a body.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised, but monsters didn’t leave behind bodies.

But after a moment, Sunset could see the woman lying unconscious in the coffin was still breathing, albeit barely. The woman was lying straight as an arrow, hands resting over her heart with a hint of a pensive expression on her face.

But the strangest thing about her was that she was no monster, she was a pony.

A unicorn, to be precise; with lavender fur and indigo hair that fell across her forehead in neat bangs, accentuated by striking purple and pink highlights. She was dressed in a white button-up shirt with a symbol emblazoned on it that was immediately recognizable to Sunset, the symbol of Celestia’s Paladins. Though the design was somewhat different from what Sunset was used to, and it made her wonder how long she had been away from the surface world.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was a pony, which meant she had something that monsters— including a demon like Sunset— lacked. She had a soul.

And nothing was going to stop Sunset from taking it.

Sunset put her hand on the woman’s chest, and she could hear that woman’s soul resonating in her ears like a pounding drum. It was barely anything, almost like a shattered fragment of a soul that had been battered and nearly destroyed, but a soul was a soul, and Sunset needed it.

She dug her claws into the woman’s chest and drew out the soul, a hollow light appearing in her palm. Sunset raised her hand to look at the pale, ghostly lavender light of the woman’s soul as it turned blood red in Sunset’s grasp, Sunset closing her hand around it and making it a part of her now.

This was going to change everything.

A soul, even one as weak and weary as this, was a generator of magic. No more harvesting from the cadaverous masses of the Underworld’s First Circle, Sunset could make her own magic now, and there was no time to waste.

Sunset took the lid of the coffin and slid it back into place before turning around and rushing off to meet her destiny.

But she paused.

She looked back at the coffin, now sealed by Sunset’s hands.

The woman inside likely wasn’t long for this world. Between whatever happened to her to land her in that coffin, the roving bands who would kill her as soon as look at her, and losing her soul, there was no way she was going to last the day, or likely even the hour.

And yet…

Sunset moved the lid of the coffin, just a little. Just enough so that if the woman woke up— and Sunset knew that was a big ‘if’— she wouldn’t be trapped inside.

Okay, Sunset thought with a quiet sigh. Now it was time to get back to what mattered.

Sunset departed the graveyard, leaving the stone coffin behind her. And as she walked back through the crevasses between the mountains, she knew she was being watched. That made her smile. She would get to test out her new powers sooner than she thought.

It wasn’t long before she was surrounded on all sides by several monsters who could no doubt feel the magical energy radiating off of Sunset’s newfound soul. And it took even less time for Sunset to burn them all to ashes and move on with her life, taking their magic for good measure.

She looked at her hands; they were shaking, but there wasn’t a drop of blood on them to be seen.

In the days after acquiring that soul, Sunset swore she had acquired more magic from defeating other monsters than she had in… well, she had long since lost count of how long she had been harvesting magic. And all of that time was nothing compared to the progress she was making now.

It was almost time then, for her to get through the wall— no, to tear the wall down. She had that kind of power now, she was sure of it.

But of course… taking the magic of a few more bands couldn’t hurt, right? Better safe than sorry, right?

…

Right.

So Sunset went back to the harvest, but instead of a struggle it was almost too easy. In almost no time, she had become the most powerful monster on the First Circle. Where bands had previously tried to attack her because they saw her alone and thought she was an easy mark, now they were running from her. It was an exhilarating feeling.

Sunset was in the midst of slaying yet another pitifully weak band with sword and flame, when one of her attacks was suddenly met by impressive resistance. Out of nowhere, a slate gray tower shield appeared and defended the target of Sunset’s attack, allowing the monster to run off as the shield bearer covered them.

What was more surprising though, was the identity of said shield bearer; it was the woman who Sunset had seen in the coffin, the one whose soul Sunset had taken.

“Hey,” Sunset said dryly, her words creaking out of her throat like… a thing that was creaky. She hadn't had occasion to use her voice in eons, was the point here. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Feeling rested?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” the lavender unicorn said, and she held an awful lot of determination in her heart for someone who was so obviously in over their head, “but I’m a simple woman. I see a demon swinging a sword at unarmed people, I step in to defend them.”

“How noble of you,” Sunset hoisted her sword up on top of her shoulder. “Does your precious Princess know you’re sticking your neck out defending monsters?”

“A Paladin’s mission is to protect the weak,” the girl said. “Pony or monster, that doesn’t matter to me. And besides, I think you have something that belongs to me.”

“Well then,” Sunset chuckled and felt a fire in her heart for the first time in a while, “come and take it from me if you can.”

what if sunlight, but it's an evil girls monster au :3

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