Chapter Six:
Let It All Burn

Disclaimer: I don't own My Little Pony. Like, at all. It and all its respectable characters are © to Hasbro. However, all writing contents and semi-plots and original characters here are © to me; unless it is stated otherwise. All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them.

Summary: It began with two bodies, and then suddenly many more came to follow. I was there to witness the beginning of the end, where the dead won't rest, driven by the urge to devour the living. But we can't give up because the truth is all that matters. I am begging you…rise up before it's too late.

Notes: Somehow, I managed to dictate this chapter almost in one entire go with nothing but a quill and inkwell and pad of paper. My hands are stained with India ink, and I find it hilarious. Is it cheesy to admit I like writing with a quill?

Well I don't think how you could save this
It didn't come as a surprise
You hide in shadows like you're famous
But you made your bed and now its time to lie

And I, I'm gonna make it hurt
When I, when I take my turn
Gonna let it all burn
Until there's nothing left

Let it all burn
Until the bitter end
Let it all burn

You've past the point of no return
As ashes fall on tortured earth
Don't look back there's nowhere left to turn

You crossed the line, wrote your curse
The match has struck your sentence served
And no white flag will change my final word
I'm gonna let it all burn
- "Let It All Burn" by Graffiti Ghosts

I have never considered myself the kind of mare who would cry "Timber Wolf" just for the sake of it. Most of Ponyville knew this to be a fact, especially those who have had to arrange last rites with me for their passed-on loved ones.

I don't much care for pranks. Even the pink party pony from Sugarcube Corner, who had a fondness for pranks, seemed to gloss over my existence. For whatever reasons they were, I was certainly grateful that I wasn't included in them. Messing with the creepy pony who plays with dead things seemed to give me exclusion rights that I massively enjoyed.

But at this moment in time?

I truly, whole-heartedly pined for this—all of this—to be some kind of elaborate practical joke, with myself and the Sheriff as the unwitting victims. I would gladly accept being the butt of a joke if it meant all of this could end.

I would take anything over this nightmare. I would have given anything to get the images I've seen so far out of my head. I would have given anything to have Deputies Far Fetch and Frizzy Pop back. Even I had my limits, despite the kinds of carnage I've seen in the past due to my work.

But my reputation nor my exclusion rights to pranks being overridden could not be the saving grace, not today.

An entire block of homes and businesses.

That's how much was on fire, by the time Sheriff Dust Cloud and I could get a scope of the damage. An entire block's worth of properties that could comfortably fit within Manehatten with room to spare was up in flames. Ponyville wasn't exactly the tiny hamlet it used to be, but it wasn't exactly that large. This was a major loss for far too many ponies.

By the time we met within the center of activity, I was instantly struck with how Discord was probably crowing with delight at the unfettered chaos this was producing.

I saw families desperately fleeing their burning businesses and homes—or both. Much like myself, many Ponyville residents had their businesses and their homes self-contained in a single building. They lived above, and worked below.

I saw ponies, swathed in rippling cloaks of pure flame and plumes of smoke lurching, lunging, stumbling about clumsily, erratically. Some were screaming for their lives and for the pain to end, but I couldn't quite tell which were still alive, or if they were the walking dead. A living body and a fresh corpse both subjected to a pyre burned and smelled the same.

It was like traipsing through hell itself, if such a place existed beyond the grave. I hoped not. Seeing a pale imitation up close and personal…I shudder to think of something even worse than this.

All I could hear was the rage of the fire all around me at first. Rapidly, that changed and now, now, I could hear the shrill screams of the living—the ones not on fire—as they fled in terror. What's worse is that I could also hear the slack-jawed moans of the undead, drawing ever closer. I almost stopped in my tracks when three of the dead, all of them aflame, converged on a terrified stallion who had broken away from the crowd. Sheriff Dust Cloud rammed his shoulder into me, urging me onwards and I turned away too late.

They had begun eating, and those screams…they were entirely too short, cut off by a bloody maw tearing the stallion's throat out as the flames began to catch on his fur, mane, and tail. I don't know if I'll ever get those horrible screams out of my head for as long as I live, for however long I get live.

The air itself was absolutely choked with smoke and free-flying embers and sparks, no matter how far we fled. I struggled to draw breath, my chest seizing from the encompassing heat. Everything felt like it had been turned topsy-turvy and upside down. I struggled to make heads or tails of where, exactly, we all were. A burning stall, completely engulfed by an inferno, it's brightly glowing wood spilling across the dirt road and in a shower of embers.

The Sheriff was just ahead of me when the mess blockaded us. He reared up instantly, pivoting on his heels toward another direction. He shouted at the other pony folk, urging them to follow him. I followed close on his heels, panic clawing at my insides like a rabid critter trying to tear its way to freedom.

I saw the maw full of blood-coated teeth lunging for the Sheriff before he did.

I reacted out of pure instinct, twisting my body around mid-sprint so that I could kick out my hind hooves at the glassy-eyed assailant. My hooves crashed into their jaw, and I could feel the jarring crack as the jaw dislocated from my strike. I peered over my shoulder long enough to see the craned neck, broken jaw—and the bites.

Whoever this pony was, they were covered in bites, and they were oozing that thick, black slurry that had once been blood. So many chunks had been torn from their body—mare or stallion or undecided, I couldn't honestly tell what they once might have been, only what they were now. I could see the taut snapping of untouched muscle fibers; the pearly glimmer of bone; stringy, torn shreds of what used to be muscle and nerves and skin, wagging freely where they ought not be. Bloody spittle flew in an arc as that head snapped back into place with a sickening crunch, their focus now on me.

Those glassy, clouded eyes turned and locked onto me, staring sightlessly and yet…

Even now, I could feel the tiptoeing of my curiousity rising at the clumsy lurch in my direction.

If the ocular organs no longer functioned, then how—HOW—could they track their prey…us? This inquiry was but a drop in the proverbial bucket, one question out of dozens, hundreds, thousands—

Sheriff Dust Cloud drove his shoulder square into me, and he began to bellow.

"EVERYONE, HEAD TO THE SCHOOL! MOVE IT, PONIES, MOVE IT! DON'T LET THEM BITE YOU! RUN! RUN LIKE HELL!"

My chest burned with exertion. Already, I could feel my energy wavering, the adrenaline that had been coursing through me moments ago waning. I galloped after the Sheriff, suddenly within a throng of several ponies, panic-stricken and desperate for the same thing: safety.

It was then that I recognized where I was. We were right in the heart of Ponyville's market. And it was also at the same time that I realized just how fucked we were.

The fire…it was all around us now, all encompassing. It had leapt from building to building faster than we could outrun the flames.

If I didn't know any better—and I hoped that I was right in doubting it—I would have fallen for the age-old excuse that this had been by design, by Discord himself.

I held no lost love for the chaotic trickster. He had defiled the dead when he first escaped his stone prison, turned them into grotesque playthings no better than puppets on imaginary strings. In some ancient pony cultures, such disrespect toward those who have passed on, to defile their eternal rest, one would become a pariah in their community. They held no titles, no dignities, they were no longer figures to be acknowledged or respected. To sully the dead was the gravest offense in these ancient societies. For someone who did not wield the same magics and wiles as Discord, such an exile would have been torturous to them.

However, the rational part of my mind countered the idea that this fire was not of Discord's making. No. He wanted to create chaos that could entertain him, like cotton-candy clouds that rained chocolate milk or checkered roads made of linoleum and covered in suds of soap one could skate on like on ice.

Dousing all of Ponyville in flames did not seem to fit his M.O. Besides, all I had to do was look at the materials that most buildings in Ponyville were made of.

Wood.

Oh yes, there were structures of stone and glass in Ponyville as well, even with the whimsy of straw and mortar here and there.

But wood? Oh, it was a favourite meal for fire. And even the smallest flame could catch, if the conditions were right. Wood snapped and crackled and smelled so pleasant while the fire ate at its fibrous flesh.

And right now? Right now, we were hemmed in by homes and shops, most of which were consisted of wood. Fire could burn down almost anything. Even stone and glass could bend and melt to its voracious appetite, if it got hot enough.

Yes. Just about anything could burn.

That's what I was thinking when I saw our only escape route, the one that the Sheriff had been leading us towards, collapsed quite literally right before our very eyes. Sheriff Dust Cloud reared up as another shower of sparks danced into the air, rising above the titanic wooden beams from collapsed buildings spilling over one another. Right where we had been gunning for, hoping to pass through into safety.

The press of bodies jostled around me. Some ponies were crying, others shouting out in pain as the sparks landed on their coats of fur and the coals burned right through to their sensitive skin beneath. The clop-clop-clopping of their hooves danced on the road in a thunderous cacophony that competed with the fire's roaring. The panic was near-instantaneous in its transmission. Even I felt it threatening to consume me. Fear was one hell of a stimulant, and even I wasn't above admitting as such.

I was in an uncontrollable environment outside my morgue. I couldn't just call it a day, slide a drawer back into place, and choose to pick up where I left off at a time of my choosing.

The real world was full of unknown variables. Sometimes, there was only chaos that not even Discord could replicate that occurred so organically in everyday life.

It's no damned wonder I rarely ventured out from Death Dealer's.

The epiphany and understanding of it in that moment left an especially sour taste in my mouth. I actively avoided the draconequus as much as I could, and if he ever found out about my enlightenment on the matter, I doubt I'd ever live it down. Especially after all the fuss I had made about his first impressions upon my morgue the day he broke out from his stone prison. It was incredibly safe to say I was not a fan on him, and I never will be.

But at this moment, I'm not sure what was scarier: that he's completely forgotten about me and my outrage from years ago, or that I was unequivocally on his radar and that he was only biding his time with me. I'm also not sure which I would have preferred. I did know one thing, however: as meddlesome as he was, Discord's dancing dead hadn't tried to devour the living.

The screams of the ponies around me brought me back to the harrowing present. It could have been any number of things that set them off. The fire, the impending and painful death, the encroaching living dead shuffling ever closer to us.

The Sheriff was already trying to rally the gathered crowd, clomping in a snug circle around us, like he was herding sheep and not other ponies. But I understood what he was doing all too well. He was trying to rally their courage, and to keep them from bolting like mindless lemmings heading for cliffsides.

"Form a circle, everyone! Get tight, get together, no gaps! HERE THEY COME! GET READY TO FIGHT! BUCK 'EM, KICK 'EM, HIT 'EM 'TIL THEY DON'T GET UP! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIVES!"

The press of bodies squeezed around me and I squirmed in discomfort as flanks and shoulders jostled me about. It was worse when they slammed into my saddlebags, causing them to dig even deeper into my sides. I didn't like being within this tide of bodies, but I liked the idea of being devoured while I was still alive even less.

I managed to wriggle my way out to the perimeter and saw the horrifying silhouettes of burning bodies lurching in the fires themselves. The awful reek of blistering flesh, bubbling fat, and burnt fur and manes and tails soon overpowered the more pleasing scent of burning wood. I wanted to gag, to puke.

It was rare that such a putrid stench could turn my stomach like this, but…maybe it wasn't that, not entirely. No, I think it was the knowing of what will come to pass if we failed, if we fell to these creatures and became part of their legion that made me sick.

The horror of it all came crashing down on me as I gazed at the charred and blackened coats that clung to the walking corpses, having replaced their fur and scorched away their features. In some instances, I could see the bones in their skulls through the seared mess. Most of them had their eyes running down from their gaping eye sockets, like runny eggs. The viscous fluid that had once been part of their ocular structure sizzled in the heat. If they made a sound, any at all anymore, I could not hear it over the panic-stricken crowd I was trapped in.

If I lost my footing, and if I went down, I doubted anyone would lend me a helping hoof back up and would instead trample over me until I was either dead, or until the walking dead got ahold of me and devoured me alive, all while smelling vaguely of woodsmoke and cooking flesh.

My chest constricted at the thought. I know my pulse was quickening, my cleared mind coming to an end. The air was suffocating. It wasn't just the decaying perfume of burning bodies, no. It was also the thick smoke from the blazing, raging conflagration that trapped us so.

That was another thing about fire: it didn't need just food to thrive. It needed heat, and above all, it needed air. It needed the same air that we, as ponies (and by proxy most other species that lived above water) breathed to live.

It was almost funny, how a destructive force of nature was just as reliant upon the same bare necessities as us pony folk, even if only in paralleled concept rather than in identical practice.

Almost.

It wasn't funny now, where I and many others were penned in like we were, suffocating and trapped inside a literal cage, its bars made of wreathed flames and cinders. I was already slick with sweat.

Hot. It was so hot. It felt like I was burning—I was burning—!

Hot embers had landed along my backside, eating away at the blanket that sat beneath my saddlebags, and burned through the ridge of fur that traced my spine. I couldn't move to buck, to roll around to try and dislodge the painful nuggets of white-hot material. It was scraping under my fur, eating away at the exposed and raw skin beneath, one torturous layer at a time. As if that weren't enough, a skull-splitting pain, sharp and piercing, began to engulf my skull, right at the base of my horn. It was a wonder I was still upright on my hooves. It had struck me so hard and so fast. My entire body seized up. I didn't collapse, if only thanks to the crowd that I was surrounded by. It did little assuage the dread that continued growing inside me like a cancer. I was gritting my teeth so tightly, my jaw locked tight with tension, I thought I would break it from the sheer force.

Panic continued to run its course—wails, cries, screams—ponies' voices overlapping one another like a constant death knell—

Too. Fucking. HOT—I'm burning, I'm burning up—can't any pony help me?!

I could hear the Sheriff, like he was roaring just to be heard, and the desperation in his voice, begging for us to stand together to try and fight against the tide of the living dead bearing down on us—

The press of bodies unexpectedly no longer concerned me. An abrupt yet welcome sense of calm consumed me. The heat under my skin dissipated, a soothing balm sliding into its place. My head was not a beacon of agony as it had been moments ago. A pulse of magic that couldn't be my own began to tickle along my spine, across my withers and flanks. It wasn't something that could be traced by ears or eyes, but I could feel the threads coiling around me, almost reverently as the tightness in my body relaxed into its embrace. The damning heat of the inferno was but a fanciful tickle now. The foul encroachment of the undead that was bearing down on us—on me—was negligible at best. The conflagration that had kept us prisoners was suddenly bearing down on them, holding them at bay. No corpse could pass the line of fire.

Those that had already done so, the thoroughly burnt ones that were closing in on us…it was strange, like they were being pulled backwards, pulled away from the tightly packed circle of living bodies, dragged so unceremoniously away as they snapped their jaws uselessly, empty sockets seemingly locked on their prey.

Our impending last stand was no longer necessary. Not if our enemy was being restrained. No longer concerned or focused on a fight, the only thought that passed through my mind as the serenity overtook me was, 'clear the way'. The hungry lapping tongues of flames that had previously obstructed our escape route unexpectedly parted, creating an arched chasm in which we could safely pass through.

The ponies around me paid no thought to the abrupt miracle. They didn't question it. As soon as they saw the way was clear, they booked it, racing to freedom and to safety, crowing all the way in triumph and relief. The seconds ticked by as the others fled. A heaviness grew in the pit of my chest. The magic thread that held me fast was beginning to falter, and with it, my will to stay upright. I swayed unsteadily, my vision growing fuzzy and black along the edges.

Sheriff Dust Cloud was urging everyone to run, to head for the school. When it seemed they had all passed through the fiery arch, he turned to me—

—and the pain returned, tenfold. It was as though a giant boulder had dropped upon my skull, right between my eyes. It seared, white stars dancing across my vision and I gasped, driven to my knees. I almost retched right then and there. The Sheriff was at my side, forcing me back to my hooves, guiding me as best he could. I gagged as the noxious stench of burnt dead flesh invaded my nostrils. We passed through the arch, and we were engulfed in the inferno's belly.

"C'mon, Red! Almost there, don't bail on me now!"

I did as I was bid, for as long as I possibly could—until I simply couldn't. The blaze around us began to collapse, the last pinpricks of magic snapping completely. I gasped at the startling severance, mourning the security it had brought me. A moan rose in my throat, a piteous sound that I, at any other time, would have felt immense embarrassment at having uttered.

My vision continued to diminish, and the sound of the Sheriff's voice was all too distant now. Even the press of his body against mine was barely noticeable. I should have been gravely mortified at the pitiful state I was in. I should have been trying harder. I should have done a lot of things different.

That was the fleeting last thought I had before the darkness took me and my legs gave out beneath me.