“I looked, and behold. There was a pink horse upon the hill. Its name was Death, and Hell followed behind.”
— First Draft of Stuff To Be Revealed by John of Patmos (Note: Title needs work)

On a once-green hill above Ponyville valley, three horsemen waited patiently.

“He should have been here by now,” rumbled the tallest of the three, looming large in his spiked armor hung with an astonishing array of weaponry. Far more pointed, edged, and blunt steel than anybody could plausibly carry dangled from belt and strap, awaiting their deadly use in the grizzled grip of a master. War petted his shaggy horse almost lovingly, but yanked his hand away just the barest fraction of a second before yellowing teeth tried to snap his fingers off.

“Hungry, isn’t he?” Pestilence searched through the multitudinous pockets of his decaying yellow robe, but only unearthing a number of roaches, lice and flies. “I think I have a snack here for him, just let me look around a bit.” The glaring red eyes of the warhorse narrowed at the thought of eating even a tiny bit of what the rotting figure would consider food. Very carefully in order not to look disgusted, War’s horse shuffled a few more feet away from Pestilence’s swaybacked nag just before it gave a wet cough, splattering dark globules of mucus and phlegm across the dust at their hooves.

The clatter of bottles and tins echoed around the hilltop while the third rider dug through his possessions with skeletally thin fingers, finally grabbing a jar that seemed less empty than the rest. After a great deal of attempted twisting and turning and even a toothless bite or two, Famine held the jar weakly out to his companions, trembling as if it weighed as much as an anvil in his skinny arms.

“I think there’s a spot of Marmite or Vegemite in here he could have, if only I could get the blasted lid — Thanks.”

Famine ignored the neatly sliced off lid as it bounced across the bare hilltop, looking down into the empty jar while War sheathed his sword⁽*⁾. Muttering foul maledictions against all the known gods, as well as a few unknown ones, just in case, Famine resumed his eternal rummaging through his collection of containers in search of food even while his chubby horse continued to relentlessly graze. By now the top of the hill had been exhausted of grass, roots, and soil, leaving only gravel for it to chew. Which it did⁽¹⁾.
(*) Also functioned equally well as a beer opener, can opener, garage door opener, and sternum opener.
(1) Giving Famine the only horse able to make sandstone bowel movements.

“I’ve got it, ye daft buggers,” grumbled War, pulling something damp and liver-colored⁽²⁾ out of a bag and lofting it over his horse’s head, only taking momentary pleasure at seeing his horse snap the meal out of mid-air with razor-sharp teeth and wolf it down.
(2) Only appropriate, because it was liver, the owner thereof having gotten to the point of not needing it any more. Said point belonging to War, of course.

“Still think we could make a right go of it without him.” War tried to clean the encrusted blood from under his nails with a battle axe before giving it up as a lost cause. “Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse has a bit of a ring to it, sounds better than Three Horsemen and One Missing Daft Skeleton With a Pink Pony does, you bet your life. Look, there’s a perfectly good village down there in the valley. We could go sweeping down into it, whooping and a hollering, scrub it clean of life and be back up here on the hill before he’d know, what ‘cha say?”

“He’d have to show up to collect the bodies,” coughed Pestilence, hacking and gasping afterwards until he spat out a fist-sized glob of bloody phlegm⁽³⁾. “Besides, there’d be Tartarus to pay if we interrupt him after he’s gotten this far into his story.”
(3) No, we are not going to tell you what Famine’s horse did with it.

“It’s that damned editor again, I’ll bet,” growled War, pulling out a whetstone and running it along the razor-sharp edge of the axe. “If it ain’t the pre-reader, it’s a damned editor. Ought to go out there and chop them all into horsemeat.”

“Oh, don’t do that!” said Famine, looking up from where he had been licking the rust off of a can. “That’s what slowed him down the last time. If you could keep from dismembering and disemboweling his editing team for just one month, he would have been done by now. It takes a lot of work to collect a literate bunch together to edit—” Famine’s voice dropped to a whisper and he looked around the top of the hill to make sure nobody else was around. “—pony fiction.”

War snapped to full alert, glaring around the top of the hill with throwing axe in hand until he was certain nobody else was within miles of the three. “Watch yer language,” he snapped. “If it gets around that I ride with somebody who writes ‘Equestrian Literature,’ I’ll be lucky to find a police action or a border spat. ‘Love and Tolerance,’ HA! I love to see their blood splatter and I tolerate their screams of pain.” After some more fierce glares in the direction of non-existent eavesdroppers, he lowered his voice to a quiet rumble. “He’s still on chapter eighteen, right?”

“Yeah,” gurgled Pestilence while wriggling a loose tooth. “You following it?”

“NO! Never! I just... wanted to know how he’s doing. You know. Because he’s a friend. Colleague! Fellow worker in the field of life insurance collection! I reap ‘em, he collects ‘em! Besides—” muttered War, exchanging the axe for something pointed and barbed “—we promised to wait until he was done.”

Famine stopped trying to lick the last few atoms of pickle juice from the bottom of a large jar and tried to pull his head back out to respond, only to find it stuck. Again.

“And breaking a promise is the fastest way to lose a friend,” sighed Famine, almost inaudible from inside the jar.

“FOREVER!” shouted Pinkie Pie while she popped up out of War’s quiver, scattering arrows and bolts all over the hillside.

War struck instinctively, thrusting the barbed dagger through the exact spot the chubby pink pony was occupying, only to miss by the tiniest fraction of an inch when a bright red cupcake was popped into his open mouth.

“We’ve got red-hot cinnamon for my favorite violent felon, double-chocolate chip for Mister Hungry here, and you’ll never guess what I got for you!” The bright-pink party pony bounced around the three horsemen, dropping three piles of hay with toppings⁽⁴⁾ for their mounts, who promptly set to with gusto even while their riders eyed their sudden pastry presents. Pestilence eyed his most of all, because his cupcakes were eying him back and waving.
(4) Mold, hot sauce, and some red stuff that we don’t like to think about for War’s horse.

“Is that—” began the Horseman of Disease, Infection, Rot, Plague and Taxes⁽⁵⁾ while a smile began to ooze onto his blotchy face.
(5) The Inevitable Aspect of Taxes passed to Pestilence by default. Death already had an Inevitable Aspect, War would have killed it, and Famine would have eaten it.

“Baked Bads!” proclaimed Pinkie with a trumpet fanfare while she began to dump them into his pus-ridden arms. “We got a whole bunch extra since Applejack went kind-of loopy with lack of sleep. They’re even a little stale, with extra worms, just the way you like ‘em.”

“Thank you, Pinkie Pie.” Pestilence seemed to cry, or at least ooze a little more fluids than normal while he gummed his way into a wormy cupcake, even as the worms inside tried to wriggle free, to no avail.

“No problem! I just wanted to do something to make it up to you guys. Deathie is not going to be able to make it to your meeting today, since he’s got a meeting with his editors.”

War had just managed to swallow the smoking cupcake and was lunging forward when that dreaded word made him rumble and clang to a halt.

“Editors and publishers. Pah!” He plucked one of the chocolate-chip cupcakes from Famine’s thin hands and ground it into dust before flinging it on the ground, ignoring the look of anguish from the Horseman of Hunger who was still trapped with his head inside the jar.

“A curse be upon their thrice bedamned houses, may their walls run red with blood and the bones of their ancestors visit them by night with howls and shrieks to the tenth generation!” War grabbed another of Famine’s cupcakes and bit the top off with the enthusiasm he normally only got when drenched in the blood of the innocent.

“Now, none of that!” Pinkie got right up in War’s face and waved a pink hoof. “He’s been working very hard on his story, and his editors are all volunteers. It didn’t help at all when you dismembered the last three and wrote ‘velocius sit aut mori’⁽⁶⁾ all over the inside of their houses in blood! After all, Twilight says that’s not even the right grammar for Ancient Equin.”
(6) ‘Faster or Die,’ or at least that’s what War thought he was writing. His schooling was somewhat lacking, and it is very difficult to write with a severed limb, particularly when it was still twitching.

A sense of intent seemed to flow through the pink pony while she rested her forehooves on the shoulders of War’s armor and stared straight into his dread gaze. “Promise you’ll leave his editors alone, or else.”

He had to ask. “Or else what?”

Intent Pink Pony turned into Deadly Intent Pink Pony. “Or I’ll quit bringing cupcakes.”

The soulless dread gaze which had stared down countless armies over centuries clashed with bright blue eyes filled with promises of sunshine and candy. There was only one way this could end.

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” War gently touched one eye with the last of Famine’s chocolate-chip cupcakes before eating it in one gulp.

“Great!” Pinkie Pie hopped up in the air and kissed War on one grizzled cheek. “Now I gotta get back before the commercial is over. You guys take care!” With a second hop, the pink pony popped back into War’s quiver and vanished.

Famine, who had finally gotten the jar off his head and was poking around in a futile search for crumbs, mumbled, “Well, I guess that’s it for this month. What are you guys planning on doing until next month?”

The last worm-filled cupcake eaten, Pestilence smacked what was left of his lips and sighed. “Think I’ll take a quick trip down to Africa. I hear Ebola is making a comeback tour. And I’ve got a paper to write on antibiotic resistant MSR. It’s going to be one of my best works. How about you?”

“Well, I’ve got this simply brilliant idea for a new diet that my—” Famine hesitated just a fraction of a second for a glance at War, who seemed placated by pastry enough to allow a single mention of the forbidden word “—publisher has been bothering me for weeks about putting into print. So I’m probably going to be writing.”

“You pukes make me sick,” growled War. “Off with ya, then. See ye next month, and maybe old bonehead will be done with his pansy pony writing by then so we can get to work.”

The burly Horseman kept his gruff expression firmly fixed while they went their separate ways, only scoffing with a brief laugh once they were far enough away for him to pull out his phone and punch in a number.

“Bloody writers. Bunch a pansy arsed mother — Hey Murray! How’s my favorite agent? Good. Hey, I’ve got this great idea for another book, rivers of blood, bodies stacked up to the sky. Gonna be another book of the month club winner in there, and I don’t mean Oprah. Yeah, let’s talk terms at dinner tonight, you’re buying. Steak. Yeah, BBQ will work, as long as you buy enough for the horse. Great. See you then.”

Courtesy of Zedew at DeviantArt.com