The small group of would-be heroes tumbled out the other side of the mirror. After much groaning, lamenting, and more than a bit of swearing, they untangled themselves and got to their hooves. It took a moment of dusting off and checking for injuries before any of them realized that the moaning and lamenting (and a good bit of the swearing) was still going on, and it wasn't them. They looked around in confusion, only to realize they were surrounded on all sides by what appeared to be prison cells. "Where the heck are we?" Applebloom said. Echoing sounds and cries, many of them decidedly not pony, came from the darkened cells.

"To Tartarus if AH know," Applejack said. "Pinkamena?"

"Tartarus," the dull pink pony said, looking around with half lidded eyes. "Or at least the Mirror World's version of it."

The others looked around in confusion."Don't look like no picture of Tartarus I never saw," Big Macintosh said, subtly pulling his sisters and Fluttershy closer. He was right; there was no sign of the jagged peaks separated by bottomless chasms, or the staggered stairways leading up and down to the foxfire-lit prisons atop, with Cerberus endlessly patrolling back and forth to guard Celestia and Luna's prisoners.  What they saw instead  looked like Escher's work on a bender. They gawped at the towering, impossibly angled walls, the barred doors, the torchlit, cockeyed hallways that zigzagged into the distance. It was a madpony's rendition of a dungeon, with walls and barred windows and doors and ceilings and floors that jutted off in every angle in existence, and a few more that would have sent Euclid back to the drawing board. Fluttershy hugged Fluffyshy and Angel Bunny to her, trying to draw some comfort.

"It's just a name," Pinkamena said, shrugging. " It has a lot of 'em. The Pit, the Dungeon, the Dumpster, the Craphole, the Shame of Humanity. They coulda called it 'Bunny Foo Foo land' for all it matters, really. It's where we put the stuff we capture... the worst of the worst. Things that are a disgrace to their Makers, just by existing. There's stuff down here that's so rotten and awful that it made backsplashes into the Watcher's world when it was created."

"Backsplashes? whut's a backsplash?" Applebloom demanded to know.

Pinkamena gave the filly an evil smirk. "You know how when you're sitting on the toilet, and you're pinching a loaf, and it hits the water so hard it splashes back u--"

"Nyeeeeeewwwww!!!" Applebloom squealed, covering her ears with her forelegs and shaking her head.

Two enormous red hooves placed themselves firmly over the filly's ears as well. Macintosh glared at Pinkamena. Pinkamena's only response was another shrug.

"Hey, just spelling it out," she said. "No point in telling lies down here, and that was the mildest way I could explain it.

"Look, it's an incredible, wonderful cosmotronic universe out there," she went on. "But it's fully of some really awful things, too. You remember the Troll Fic. That was pretty bad... but there are worse things. The Troll was doing those horrible things because he thought it was cool. Or Funny.

"But then there are worse. Like... the Arseburgers." Pinkamena made a face like a bulldog licking a thistle.

"The, uhh...." Fluttershy said. She couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

Pinkamena held up a hoof. "Now there's others called Aspergers. Aspergers is not the same thing. Those have problems they can't quite help. Different thing, totally.

"But Arseburgers--- " Pinkamena squinted and pantomimed poking something in her ear. "It's like they reached in their ear with a, a soldering iron and burned out the part of their brain that told them how act like a higher vertebrate.  They let anything pour into their head, and right back out their mouths--- and they've got absolutely NO FILTERS in their brain-to-mouth connection. They're like a wormy dog taking a crap on a Saddle Arabian carpet... they ruined something,  and they just can't understand what they did wrong. Talk to an Arseburger about right and wrong and proper behavior and it's like talking to a tree in Klingon. Heck, they get MAD at you for bothering you with your weird common-sensey word talk noise." She snorted, blowing a lock of hair out of her face.

The others nodded vaguely. They were getting the gist... they thought... but every other phrase didn't quite make sense by itself. It was kind of like talking to the real Pinkie Pie that way.

"And this place..." Pinkamena went on, indicating the mazelike realm around them, "this place is where their hand-crafted abortions end up. Stuff so nasty that the collective mind shoves it away, buries it, tries to pretend it doesn't exist.  There's stuff down here that can burn out pieces of your soul if you look at it too long.

"Which reminds me..." she stepped over to a cubbyhole in a nearby wall/ceiling/floor. A cabinet painted in industrial yellow and black stripes and covered with red "reminder" notices stood there. She unlocked it and pulled out several odd looking helmets. She put one on herself and tossed the rest to the others.

The others rolled the helmets over in their hooves. They were bright industrial yellow, and looked like someone had bolted together a football helmet, a gas mask, an enormous pair of earphones, and an optometrist's eye-testing tool. "Put these on," she said, donning one herself. "You don't want to go through here without some protection. I made the mistake of doing that once. Spent months drooling on myself and laughing at the color puce." The others quickly and nervously donned the strange helmets. There was even a rabbit-sized one for Angel Bunny, and another for Fluffyshy.

"What are these?" Fluttershy asked, staring in every direction through the mechanical goggles.

"Remember those filters I told you about that Arseburgers don't have? These are it."

"Whut're they made of?" Applejack said.

"Oh, common decency, basic manners, morals, ethics, good taste, personal hygiene..." Pinkamena droned as she fiddled with the knobs and dials on her own helmet. "Oh, and rudimentary grammar filters on the earphones. Otherwise you'd burn out your language centers trying to understand how some of 'em talk."

"Burn out your brain?" Applejack scoffed. "On words?"

"Here, let me give you an example. Flip up your earphones for a sec." Applejack obliged. Pinkamena looked her in the eye and said one word.

"THEIYR'RE."

When Applejack came to, the others were physically restraining her as she tried to bang her head against the floor to clear her brain out. Fortunately the filter helmet was sturdily made, and well padded on the inside. "Told ya," Pinkamena said, flipping Applejack's ear protection back down. It didn't muffle her hearing any, Applejack noticed. In fact it seemed to make everything clearer.

"Whut in the seventeen Sam Hills was that?" Applejack demanded to know as she wobbled to her hooves.

"All agents learn at least a few words of crapfic-speak, as a weapon of last resort," Pinkamena explained. "One sentence from 'Eye of Argon' is enough to kill a Grammar Nazi at twenty paces. Two from 'Cupcakes' can give a theater full of people nosebleeds. Using an entire paragraph of 'My Immortal' is considered a war crime." She looked around. "Okay, we'd better get a move-on. Follow me, single file, Fluttershy and Applebloom in the middle, and remember, do not cross the black and yellow lines..."

It was..unsettling. Even with the helmets blocking out most of the sights and sounds, the trip across the makeshift netherworld was full of bizarre horrors. Things moaned profanities from behind cell doors, or reached... appendages... between the bars or through the window slits. Here and there throughout the place were creatures Pinkamena only described as "Security;" tall, bipedal creatures with blank gray masks where their faces should have been, who stood watch at various corners or loped silently along on their rounds. They seemed to recognize Pinkamena, though, and gave her a respectful nod as they passed.

Navigation was tricky, with several short detours and double-backs. At several points they would walk the length of a hallway, turn back, and take a doorway that simply hadn't been there before. At least twice half the group found itself walking on the ceiling.

Sometimes they had to halt because of some kerfluffle up ahead with one of the inmates. At one point the shutters on their helmets slammed shut and they all had to stand stone still, all but blind and deaf, as some indescribable blasphemy of literature was moved from one cell to another. The only clue they had to the identity was a guttural howl of "HODOR!" as it shuffled past.  There was a clang, and the helmets opened up. Everypony breathed a sigh of relief. "I can't stop myself from askin'..." Applejack said. "Whut was that?"

"Game of Thrones guro slash porn fanfics." Pinkamena shrugged. She paused, thinking it over. "Either that or the original book series itself... it's hard to tell the difference, really. I think the fanfics have slightly fewer gore-porn murders."

"Why'd they have to move it?" Applebloom asked.

"The Amazon dot com dinosaur erotica(1) were complaining about the smell," Pinkamena said.

Just then a ball of what looked like a dozen entangled wooden chairs went tumbling past. The snarled bits of furniture were beating on each other violently with their wooden arms and legs, sending the whole mass tottering back and forth across the hallway. One of the many faceless jailors passed in pursuit, flailing and jabbing at the rolling carpentry donnybrook with a ten-foot pole.

"Huh," PInkamena said. "You don't see many of those down on these levels..."

"Aaaaand that was--?" Applebloom asked, pointing a hoof after the departing clattertrap.

"That, kiddo, is what happens when a horny thirteen-year-old tries to write a sex scene," Pinkamena said. A moment later two more faceless security guards ran past carrying an enormous open crate labeled "Ikea" between them. The joke was got. Big Mac looked chagrined, while Fluttershy tittered, red as a beet and Applejack hooted with laughter.

Applebloom stuck out her tongue. "Gag. Why is so much stuff down here about SEX?"

Pinkamena sighed and put a comforting hoof on the filly's shoulder. "Because sex and love and all that boy and girl stuff is a wonderful, beautiful, special thing," she said. Her eyebrows tabled behind her goggles. "And there is nothing so wonderful, or beautiful, or special that somepony somewhere won't take a flying run at taking a shit in it."

While Pinkamena was talking, Big Mac glanced idly over a nearby rail into a pit. His head tilted in confusion, and he reached up and tipped back his helmet to get a better look at whatever was below.

"Hey, hey hey! Big guy-- this ain't no scenic tour!" Pinkamena shouted in warning. She left Applebloom's side and hustled over. "Whaddya tryin' to do, pop your eyeballs like zits?"

"Ah don't think that's likely," he said, pointing down in the open pit.  The others gathered around and looked in... though they kept their helmets firmly in place.

The pit went down about forty feet, and bottomed out with a hundred foot diameter concrete floor. Two stone pillars stood in the center; chained between them by its wrists was something that looked like a bipedal caribou. It had small, undersized antlers, and was rangy and scrawny as if it had wandered into the beginnings of puberty and failed to cross the intervening distance.  Its only article of clothing was a loincloth that hung loose on its skinny hips.

It was doing nothing at the moment but standing there with its head hanging down. Then, it glanced up and saw them-- and exploded into a torrent of screaming profanity that would have boiled lead. "Filthy ####ing ponies! Sluts! Whores! I'll get you all! You too, Fag! You Faggy whore and your #### whore mares and your little ### ### slut-trained filly! I'll make you choke on your own @@@ and @@@#### you with my@ @@@@####!!"

They all jerked back from the rail. The filters on Applebloom's helmet had all but closed off, and there was a red LED blinking on the side. The others had gotten varying amounts of the torrent of filth; it was enough to make even Applejack gasp like she was Fluttershy.

The worst thing about it was that he wasn't screaming in rage. No. He seemed to be taking glee in making his obscene, vile threats, shouting them with a hideous grin on his face.

Big Mac, on the other hand, was not smiling He just stood there at the rail glowering down at the foul mouthed caribou, his muscles clenching. "Who, or what, was that?" he said in the calm voice of someone plotting out how exactly to break someone's neck.

Pinkamena's lip curled. "Our star attraction in this corner of the Craphole," she said. "We normally use this pit for the Pedofoal sleaze, but this guy demands special treatment. Fall of Equestria. Cute little fella, ain't he? Some crusty little tosspot out Beyond decided to cope with his lack of actual manhood, squeeze out all his dysfunctions into one creative abortion, and made a fanfic where Equestria is invaded by rapist caribou.

"Ra-rapist...??" Fluttershy stammered.

"Who, of course, conquer it without even trying and proceed to screw everything with a pulse."

"An' they take over Equestria, just like that?" Thanks to the helmet, most of the conversation was flying right over Applebloom's head, but she caught that much. "HOW? How're they supposed to beat Celestia, and Luna, an' Cadence, an' Twilight, an' the Elements o' Harmony, an all the soldiers in the army an---"

"By the power of Mary Sue magic and epic level shitty writing," Pinkamena said, curling her lip. "Basically a bunch of these boonga boonga tribal moose understudies cast a spell that makes all unicorn magic useless. Then they cast another magic Mary Sue spell that turns all the stallions into 'enlightened' rape-happy cockslappers like this twerp.... and another one that turns all the mares into submissive, subserviant sluts." She gagged and spit. "Even the little fillies."

The rest of them gagged in horror. "Yeah, THAT was a fun weekend," Pinkamena said sarcastically. "The sick freak who made him started a whole movement among other sick freaks.... art work, side stories.. I figure it's about another month or two in the Outer World before him and his fellow tallywhackers end up in the news under the headline 'kiddie porn ring busted."

"Anyway, damage was massive.  F.O.E. started spreading like a tumor. Every few weeks we have to take a purge team and clear out another entire alt line with flamethrowers." She hitched an elbow over the rail and looked down at the jeering prisoner. "Till we got smart. Then things got a lot harder for ya, didn't they, Fowey?"

The caribou's leer turned into a sneer of hate. "### you, you pink $#$%$#$$!"

"Wuv you too, dinky binky," Pinkamena said. "Yeah, with a sexual deviant Marty Stu writer so far out on the fringe, we didn't have to look hard to find alt lines where the whole dang universe didn't revolve around fulfilling the desires of Fowey's dick. We just let him march into a few alts where Celestia and Luna DIDN'T fold like wet toast just because the Elk King came marching into the room. Just to rub in how pathetic and impotent he is." She cackled. "The teeniest, tiniest drop of Canon Verisimiltude and his God Mode Sue tribe and their "the author is compensating for something" leader, the Elk Lord Diddles-Little-Foals, gets the bitchslapping of his life. Every. Single. Time.

Pinkamena smirked evilly. "That first run in with Competentlestia the Caribou ended up castrated, and their mighty leader beheaded. And it gets uglier each and every time. His pedo elk warriors get pimpslapped into the dirt and curbstomped, his "tribal shamans" run up against Equestria's canon magitek society and get squished, his mighty warrior-king Gonad the Barbarian gets his spine ripped out through his mouth....

"Just for variety, we've started letting him loose in alts with Tyrantlestia, or Nightmare Sun, or even Molestia.... when we got him back from that one we had to dunk him in a vat of penicillin for three days, and he didn't stop sobbing the whole time..."

"@$%@ YOU, WHORE!"

"Awww, he's listening. Last time we dropped him on his head in an alt line for the Conversion Bureau." She pointed over her shoulder at the other pit. As if on cue a gout of magical flame shot up out of the pit and a stentorian voice shouted:

"Release us! We must stop the Human Plague! They are vile! They are evil! Their world must be exterminated and they must be transformed to ascend them out of their evil---"

A trapdoor above the pit opened and a solid torrent of water fell down into the pit. Boiling clouds of steam rose. The godlike voice shouted "Whaaaaarrgarrrble" and fell silent, save for some weak, wet coughing.

"Aaaaand that was Conversionlestia, ladies and gents," Pinkamena said with a theatrical wave of the hoof. "Before you ask--- Evil plot to destroy the Human world with a wave of human-killing magic, and enslave the human race by turning them into retarded ponies."

"???" None of them even needed to SAY the word.

"You heard me. By turning them. Into. Retarded ponies," Pinkamena repeated.  "An alt line so fricking stupid that it practically self-destructed. Sometimes we open the divider between their pits and let nature take its course."

"YOU BETTER NOT LET THAT SUN SLUT IN HERE, WHORE!"

"Aww, Come on, Fowey," Pinkamena said. "Don't be like that. She let you keep ONE testicle last time..." She gave a huff. "Too bad he reboots whenever nopony is watching. He's practically fricking immortal."

"That don't seem fair," Applejack said.

"It isn't. You ever heard that saying 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever?' " Pinkamena asked. Applejack shook her head. "Well, A thing of Suck and Awful has an even longer shelf life than that," Pinkamena said in disgust.

"The good ponies do is oft interred with their bones," Big MacIntosh murmured.

Pinkamena gave him an odd look. "Rrright."

"Hey SLUTS!"

Already seething, they turned around to stare down at F.O.E. "Yeah, that's right," the archetype sneered at them. "You know what you are. Go ahead and laugh it up now. I'll get out of here sooner or later.

"Yeah, and when I do I'm gonna spread my shit on every alt I touch. Oh yeah," he said. "Yours too, you tasty piece of ass." This directed at Fluttershy. Mac bridled and seemed to swell up with rage. The F.O.E. laughed, honking and braying in his cracked voice. "Oh like you can do anything! I get to your world, there'll be nothing you can do! I'm gonna rape your girl, an' her friends-- and BOTH your sisters!" In a surprising display of agility, he reached up with one cloven foot and tore off his loincloth. He began hip-thrusting at the onlookers. "Gonna rape you all, bitches!"

They all gaped in utter shock.

The silence was finally broken by Applebloom. None of them had noticed that her helmet hadn't locked down. "With what?" she snorted.

Everyone froze--- including the F.O.E. The air was then cut by a shriek. Of laughter. From Fluttershy. She was pointing at "Fowey" and laughing. "It's so TEENY!"

She and Applebloom were right. It seemed that the mighty avatar of the sex-crazed caribou wasn't nearly as mighty where it counted. Applejack snorted, and Pinkamena and Big Mac sputtered. "It looks lahk he's giving us a thumbs up," Applejack snarked.

That did it. The group collapsed on the floor, hooting and howling. Even Pinkamena was cracking up. "Dunno why I'm surprised," she sniggered. "He's an archetype of his maker after all..."

"Lemme guess," Big Mac chuckled. "He takes after his Daddy?"

"More'n likely---"

That seemed to do it for the F.O.E. too. The pubescent leer vanished from his face like it had been erased, and he began howling and railing and thrashing back and forth in his chains. His profanities degenerated into incoherent tourettes-like arghlebargle as foam flew from his lips.

"Oookayyy, that's enough out of you." Pinkamena stepped over to a control panel bolted to the rail and mashed a big red button. "I think he's earned a little punitive measure."

"Puni--" Applebloom started. Pinkamena interrupted her by fastening the apple filly's helmet down properly.

"Punishment." She snugged the chin strap and poked a couple of buttons. "Keeps him under control, more or less. A different punishment every time, so he doesn't acclimate. Last time it unleashed a pack of rabid Social Justice Warriors in the pit with him." She shuddered. "The fangs and the claws and the little horn rimmed glasses and the shrieking, dear gods, the shrieking.... we were wiping blood and cheap neon hair dye off the roof afterwards."

Wincing, the others looked over the rail. A huge steel door that they hadn't seen before boomed open, and out came... a tiny little caribou granny in a hairbun and apron? "Oh there you are, Fowey dear," she said, smiling in Fowey's direction. "Time for your changing and feeding..."

"Fowey" looked on in horror. "GET AWAY FROM ME YOU OLD SKANK--"

"Oh now don't be like that, Fowey," she chided, tottering forward. Out came an enormous diaper bag. "You get so fussy when your diadee get full of boom boom..." out of the doorway behind her came one, two, then half a dozen more cooing, baby-talking grannies of various species, all carrying diaper bags and wielding nappies, pacifiers, baby thermometers....

"AUGH, NO--" He howled and swore and struggled futilely as he was forcibly put in an oversize nappy, dressed in a bib, had a ruffled baby bonnet forced down over his ears. The last they saw as the grannies closed in was him wailing in snot-nosed shame as they proceeded to spoon feed him...

Pinkamena backed away from the rail. "Yeah, that oughta give him an attitude adjustment," she said. "At least for another hour or so. Come on, this shortcut is getting less short by the minute." She snugged her helmet's chin strap and trotted off. The others followed quickly enough.

There were other horrors to get past (generally at a hasty trot. Adventures were a lot easier when the obstacle causing monsters were behind bars.) They had to pass by something called "Fifty Shades of Grey," which oddly enough looked like a bright red talking parrot in a brass cage. It was reciting something aloud, but fortunately the helmets blocked it out.

The Grue wing was... well, that was the thing: to call it "especially horrifying" was misleading. It was more that it went up to horrifying and blew completely out the other side. "Basically it's the result of Zero Skills trying to write horror," Pinkamena shouted over the noise, wielding the umbrella she'd picked up at the front entrance like a shield. The others were decked out in ponchos and rain slickers and poleaxed expressions as sprays of crimson gouted from every direction at them. "They don't know what makes a GOOD horror story so they throw more and more blood and gore till-- uh yeah, this."

All around them were cages, pits and prison cells with barred doors. From inside of each came... what MIGHT have been screams of agony and horror, but were almost impossible to distinguish from the sound of shrieking high-power tools.  You couldn't see what was happening inside because of the near constant spray of blood coming from within. (Though in one you caught occasional glimpses of a wooden puppet, and heard screams of "I WANT TO PLAY A GAME...") There were plexiglass shields set up on either side of the walkway, but they did little good; the blood sprayed up and over the glass guards, and a pink mist seemed to fill the air. Every now and then something chunky would hit the plexiglass panels with a splat.

"Hey, at least the splash guards catch most of the entrails and fingers and stuff," Pinkamena continued. She was rather preoccupied; she and Angel Bunny were having to push the stunned ponies forward to keep them moving. The windshield wipers on their goggles were going full blast. "come on, we're almost to the showers..."

They finally staggered into an airlock-style chamber. Jets of clean, mercifully purifying water came down. They shucked their "rain" gear into a nearby bin and stood thankfully under the cleansing mist. "That was..." Fluttershy started to say.

"I know," Big MacIntosh said, putting a comforting hoof on her shoulder. Pinkamena did the same, face full of pity.

"...Ridiculous," Fluttershy finished. "Ludicrous even." Pinkamena blinked.

"Ah know. Good grief," Big MacIntosh snorted. "Whoever makes these things are just... SAD."

"Ah know, raht?" Applejack said. Applebloom nodded.

"But BLECH, what a mess," the filly said dismissively. "Whoever made that stuff was a bigger grossout dork than Snips and Snails."

Pinkamena gawked at them. "Oh come on, Pinkamena," Applejack said as she rinsed out her mane. "We're FARMERS. We may not get as gory as them Gryphon farmers, what with their butcherin' season, but we get up to our hocks in it from time to time anyhow."

"I'm a veterinarian," Fluttershy said simply to Pinkamena's wordless stare. "I've had to... give mercy to more than one animal friend. And then butcher the body to give to my other animal friends, like the foxes and wolves and such..." she fluttered her wings under the shower, flicking water off her wingtips.

"We've all seen the real thing," Big MacIntosh said. "All that back there?"

"Over the top," Applebloom said.

"Oh, it was disgusting, and horrible, and awful," Fluttershy said. "And the ponies that made it should be ashamed--- but if they wanted to horrify us, well, they should feel embarrassed for themselves."

PInkamena went from a gawk to a smirk. "Buncha tough nuts, huh?" She said. "Be thankful I didn't take you through the OTHER route. That one has stuff like the Human Centipede in it."

"....Other route?" Applejack was smart enough to guess she didn't want to know any more about how "human" and "centipede" intersected.

"Yeah, Route Number Two.  Instead of blood and gore you get--" A freshly-scrubbed hoof corked her mouth.

"And that's more than we needed to know," Fluttershy said firmly.

"Wight. Fowwy."

Big Macintosh lay on the floor in a foetal position, pawing at his goggles, trying to get at his eyes to scrape them raw with his hooves.

"I TOLD you not to look in that viewing slit! I warned you it had extreme sexual content---" Pinkamena said, pointing at the pink "Mr. Yuck" emblem on the door.

"THAT WASN'T SEX!" Big Macintosh bellowed, rocking back and forth.

Curious, Pinkamena lowered her helmet's goggles to "nuclear" and squinted through the narrow observation slit. "Uh, yeah," she said. "Kinda. There's orifices involved, anyway--"

"THINGS WERE TURNING INSIDE OUT!"

"Well in some parts of Japan--"

"AND EXPLODING!"

"All right, calm down, there should be some brain bleach in the next first aid kit..."

"Okay, this is the last stretch," Pinkamena said. "Gimme a sec, gotta check and make sure we take the right route.." She began reading an enormous floor directory standing in one corner of the room.

The others sighed in hesitant relief. Hesitant, because this area seemed the least likely place to relax. Here the dark walls loomed high, massive and cyclopean, stained with ancient mold and decay. Enormous doors rumbled open and shut in the distance like ominous thunder. Stygian shadows swallowed the distant ceiling and the far ends of every passageway, dim watery lights lining the halls the only source of illumination. Despite the vaulty spaces, the atmosphere was... oppressive. Damp, and chilly, like a vault, like a tomb---

"Okay, I'll say it," Applejack said, tired. "And where is THIS, Pinkamena?"

"Lovecraft Quarter," Pinkamena said. "Probably where your toxic little Goth wannabee is gonna end up when we bust him. This is the place where we stuff all the 'angst, woe, we are meaningless specks' turkeys. Not a lot of them, but when they pop up, man, the mess they cause..."

"Lovecraft, huh," Applejack said.

"Yeah. It's named after one of the biggest losers in the genre. Real tosspot. He created a whole Mythos by himself, and of course a bunch of his fanboys jumped on board to add to it after he croaked....

"He had fans?" Applebloom said.

"Don't be surprised. There are axe murderers with fanclubs," Pinkamena said. "Anyway, where was I? Well, he made a whole Mythos. And it sucks.

"It's-- surprise-- full of racism and sexism and xenophobia, and is all about how we're meaningless specks in a horrible mad universe and the gods will smush us like bugs without even knowing we're there, oh look, it's a fish person, arg arg arg...."

"Sounds awfully depressing," Fluttershy said.

"You don't know the half of it."

Unbeknownst to her, as she was talking a huge steel door in the floor behind them was sliding silently open.

Big Macintosh heard or maybe felt the faint rumble in his hooves and turned to see what was causing it. What he saw froze him in terror. From an enormous pit in the floor, limned from below by watery blue-green light, a horrifying titan was rising. He had an enormous bald head, dripping with moss and algae.  and where his mouth should have been was a face full of writhing tentacles, framed on either side by glowing yellow eyes the size of wagon wheels. Wet, batlike wings arched over the shoulders, flexing and spreading, as its face tentacles slithered endlessly over its ponderous, rancid green belly. It stretched its massive arms out, flexing and clenching its webbed fingers as if it were clutching at the air.

Big Macintosh didn't speak. He didn't move. It was a miracle he even breathed. He was scared beyond spitless.

Pinkamena, completely oblivious, continued on. "Yeah, the Lovecraft Mythos isn't just for losers, it's for pretentious losers."

YOU DON'T SAY.

The voice, loud as thunder and yet utterly silent, echoed in the head of every intelligent being. Applebloom turned around to face the source, looked up and pulled in to Macintosh's side so forcefully it was like she was magnetized to him.

Pinkamena snorted as she continued scanning the enormous directory in front of her. "Yeah, they hail this xenophobic lunatic as a great literary treasure even as his overly verbose, sucktacular mythos sucks the joy out of life for millions of people. But you know what the worst part is?"

NO, WHAT?

"Was gonna ask that myself--" Applejack said with a grin, turning to see what the others were looking at. And nearly popped the hat off her  head when she saw what was behind them.

"The worst part was his whole 'we are specks of nothing' routine," Pinkamena went on. "How anyone who looked on the Old Gods, or whatever other monster or being or cosmic horror of the week he stuck into his writing, would go bat-poo crazy because they saw 'the true nature of the Universe.' She snorted again. "What hogwash. Like seeing a guy with a squid for a head was going to send someone to cloud cuckooland. That was all HIM."

IT WAS, NOW WAS IT.

Fluttershy turned to see what was wrong with Big Mac, squeaked once, and then froze just like him. Angel and Fluffyshy, riding on her back, froze as well. Angel's ears were sticking out straight in opposite directions, and Fluffyshy's fur was standing so high on end she looked like a sea urchin.

"Yeah, it was all him. He was a phobic. He was scared of crowds, of strangers, temperatures below freezing, fat people, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray— of SEAFOOD for crying out loud.(2) He was a weak puss. Forget Old Gods, looking too long at a painting of dogs playing poker would have been too much for him.

"He thought everyone was as weak as him. He thought we were insignificant specks in a mad cosmos because he was lost in his own head. He thought looking into the true nature of the Universe would drive people insane--- scientists and mathematicians do that on the backs of envelopes--- because he personally couldn't "get" the Theory of Relativity, and it weirded him out.

"So Captain Crazypants creates this Mythos... saddest load of crap you ever saw. Big ol wadded up ball of neuroses, phobias, bigotries and various bits off a seafood platter wrapped around a chewy nougat center of humanity-loathing and cosmic despair... and inflicts it on the Universe.

"And of course, it spread like a cancer." She gave a grunt of annoyance; an overworked janitor tsk-ing at the mess left behind for them to mop up.

"Most ponies wanna hope. They wanna believe. They're what keeps the world going 'round.

But there's always that one group that wallows in it, that gets their rocks off on wallowing around in loathing and hate and hopelessness. Those guys? They gobbled up his Mythos like a chocolate eclair. Next thing you know he's everybody's favorite racist Grandpa. Every horror and suspense writer is copying him and spreading the cancer, and elitist snob horror fans are walking around with their nose in the air and a stick up their plots about what a genius he was..."

The brobnidagean horror had a hand on one hip at this point and was drumming the webbed fingers of his other hand on the rim of his prison pit.

DO TELL.

"Yeah, the hysterical thing is that all his 'icons of cosmic horror' are frickin' ludicrous. I mean, look at his trademark monster Cthulhu. Calimari for a head, bat wings, body like a cross between Buddha and the Fabulous Frogman. To think that anypony would be afraid of..." At long last she noticed that everypony else was facing the other direction. She turned around and looked up. "Aww MAN, who let HIM out?" she yelped.

"Ach! Muckle damned Squidhead. Whar ye namblie be keepin' me wee men??"

The shout startled everyone out of their rictus of horror. Everyone-- Cthulhu included-- looked in the direction of the voice. Out of the tunnels in a bowlegged run came a bipedal figure. It was a human, one of considerable age to judge by his leathery face and skinny frame. His gray hair was put up in a spiky faux-hawk, and his equally spiky beard stuck out in all directions. He was dressed in a t-shirt, a floral print hawaiian shirt open at the front, and khaki shorts, and was clumping along in heavy wellingtons. Despite the darkness he was wearing aviator shades. He was carrying a torch in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and inexplicably had a stuffed parrot strapped to one shoulder.

The appearance of this bizarre apparition had an extraordinary effect on Cthulhu. The cyclopean horror let out a deafening squeal like baby seal who'd clapped his eyes on his very first baseball bat and dove back down into his oubliette. There was a deafening scratching and scraping from within as the Terror from Beyond the Stars desperately struggled to drag the sliding door on its prison closed.

"AAAAAhhhh dinnae ye be tryin AT, ye scunner!" The human yelled, he raced up and began banging away at the rusty iron door with the butt of his shotgun. "I knows ye bin a-hoardin' me wee men in yer overgrun fish-tank! I'm the warden 'ere! I knows stuff, I does!"

The ponies stared. Angel Bunny stared. Fluffyshy stared. "Everyone, say hello to Old Man Henderson, the warden for the Lovecraft Quarter," Pinkamena said.

Old Man Henderson stopped banging on the iron door at his feet and stood up. "Eh? What was that, Rupert?" he said to the parrot on his shoulder. He looked around, till his eyes fell on Pinkamena. "Ahhh! The pink horse hallunicashun agin! Funny, I don' remember drinkin' any Sterno today... Good tae see ye, lass. What brings ye by?" He looked at the others, face wrinkles deepening as he squinted suspiciously. "New inmates?"

"No, no, we're just taking a shortcut through," Pinkamena reassured him. She took on the air of a rather demanding supervisor. "What's going on, Henderson? Why was Cthulhu's cell open?"

Henderson huffed. "Tis mae wee men! I heard scuttlebutt among the staff an' inmates that they'd moved the hoard tae ol' Squid-face's quarters, an' I were about tae go in an' do an inspection for 'em!" He scowled. "Too late now. By the time I go back an' unlock the blorkin' control panel and re-open the door, them squishy lowlifes will have handed 'em all off agin'!" He shook a clenched fist at the sky. "Bloody cultists!"

Before any of the confused ponies could ask, Pinkamena clarified. "His antique lawn gnome collection," she said. "He thinks cultists stole them and we can't convince him otherwise."

"Ah KNOO whut happened...!"

"Henderson, you got bombed out of your gourd, donated them to a charity auction, and forgot about it when you sobered up," Pinkamena said. To go by her expression she had repeated this information hundreds of times before.

"Bah! What das a pink horse hallunicashun know aboot cultists?" Henderson snorted. "Never you mind her, Rupert-- we know the truth."

Pinkamena shook her head. "Henderson, I... forget it. Look, we're trying to get to gate seventeen..."

Henderson brightened. "Well, why dint ye say so?" He loped off in his bowlegged stride, pulling out an enormous jangling key ring. "Jest take the freight elevator to the fourth floor and hang a right. Follow me..."

They trotted along behind the odd being. "Um, he's not wearing a helmet," Fluttershy noted.

Pinkamena shrugged. "He doesn't need one. His brain is.... really off kilter. Some of the things down here need to wear one when they're around HIM, in fact."

"He's the warden down here?" Fluttershy whispered to Pinkamena. "That little old human, all by himself?"

"Well, him and a few guards," Pinkamena said. "He does a good job; we haven't had a single breakout since he started. They've been too afraid of him ever since he blew up Hastur."

"B-blew up...?"

"Yup. Hastur tried to invade his world, so he summoned him early and turned him into a cloud of crispy kibble. Scratch one Elder God." Pinkamena made a "kerboom" noise, miming the result. "Hey Henderson, how's Slenderman fitting in down here?"

"Tha' skinny bastid wi' no tan ye captured in a class four sugarbowl?" Henderson said over his shoulder. He hawked and spat at the wall. "Skinny wuss. Tried ta intimidate me by screamin' in me brain." He snorted in disdain at the idea of being subjected to the faceless horror's brain-melting psychic attack. There was only so much destruction one could do to bombed-out territory, after all.  " Gave 'im a couple a' solid kicks in the goolies and 'e knocked that off right away. Now 'e spends all his time tryin' to be Nyarlahothep's new best friend so thet gang o' fish-heads from Innsmouth will stop stealin' his lunch in the cafeteria." he looked at the stuffed parrot. "Too right, Rupert. Wankers, the lot of 'em."

He stopped in front of a sealed pair of double doors and selected a key. They opened with a well-oiled click, sliding aside to reveal a spacious freight elevator. "Ere ye goo. Now take care o' yeself oot there... cultists everywhere, you know."

"Will do," Pinkamena said as the others piled aboard. Old Man Henderson stood there smiling and waving till the doors closed.

The elevator ride was blissfully quiet and smooth. When the elevator stopped and deposited them,  Pinkamena confiscated the helmets from them. "Won't need these anymore," she said, locking them in a cabinet next to the elevator door. "We're here."

Across from the wall of elevators stood an enormous arch. It was most satisfyingly eldritch, with ornate carvings in gold and brass and glowing with faint purple light. Rainbow colored light and swirls of midnight stars filled the interior. "Yup, gate seventeen," Pinkamena said in satisfaction.... which was fairly obvious, with the enormous "17" engraved in brass over the archway. "Glad it's up. They had fits installing this after negotiating with Princess Luna.

"Come on, time's a-wastin.' Without a further word she trotted into the swirling lights and vanished.

The others, VERY determined not to be left behind in the Mirror Realm dungeon, hastily galloped after. When they emerged, they found themselves standing on a hill, overlooking a rolling plain of soft grass under a gorgeous sky. One could only say it was gorgeous, because it was neither night nor twilight nor day. The Moon and the Sun were both up, and two skies, one of piercing cerulean blue and one of deep midnight dusted with stars, were swirled together like ripples through ice cream. A sweet breeze blew and the grassy plain rolled, not merely in waves of green, but the rolling hills themselves shifted, slowly, like the waves of the sea.

A path wound down the hill and across the gently rolling plain, to end at the doors of an enormous palace made of blocks of sea-blue crystal and starlight that stretched to the sky.  

The wondrous sight was somewhat diminished by a figure hanging over the battlements, head down over the moat. It was a familiar figure of midnight black with a starry flowing mane, who even at this distance could be seen was in the midst of making an offering to Poseidon.

Nightmare Moon clung to the edge of the battlement for dear life. "Hyurhglph," she said.

"Welcome," Pinkamena said to the others, facehoofing, "to the Realm of Dreams."

1)THIS IS A REAL THING. Weep, oh ye poor damned souls, weep....

2)No, again we are not making this up. He was a clinical psychiatrist's wet dream.