Came out looking more like a forge than an oven, but oh well.

The old, abandoned kitchens were dusty and broken down. A fine layer of soil had accumulated near one side, where leaf litter had blown in from the empty doorway. It looked like it had been looted at some point, all the metal and pipes stripped out and carried off. As Applejack cautiously picked her way through the rubble of a collapsed section of roof, she could spot the remnants of rotted wood from cabinets and counters.


She stepped over a bit of stone and sharp roofing tile, pausing for a moment in a clearer patch of ground. The floor had a square of old brickwork, stained with soot. Probably the base of an old oven, long torn out.

Applejack stood there for a moment, looking down at the stones under her. She could FEEL the cold of a thousand years of abandonment and ruin slowly soaking into her hooves, drawn out of the old stones. Something about the sturdy structure under her seemed… seemed… ah shoot, she wasn’t sure. She had a real funny feeling about it though. Like if she didn’t get a move on, she’d be stuck here on this nice, sturdy base forever.

She shook her head, trying to clear out the cobwebs that had been creeping in. And then she shivered, her whole body tensing, as something moved in the corner of her eye. A flicker of pale purple, darting out of sight.

Her head whipped around in the direction of the flickering light, and she made to take a step towards it, but…

Couldn’t.

She jerked to a stop, snorting in surprise, as one of her hind hooves refused to move. She looked back, figuring she must have gotten it caught under some bit of rubble, but there wasn’t anything there. What there WAS was that eerie, flickering, ember-like purple glow. A thin little line of it, right where her hoof met the floor.

‘Wh-what in tarnation?” She whispered. She tugged at her hoof, gently at first, and then much harder, grunting with the effort, but it wouldn’t move. And the flickering light seemed to be… rising? It ate at her skin and fur, slowly crawling upward like an ember.

Seemingly without any cause, AJ found herself panting. Taking big, long gulps of air. She felt… strange. Heavy. Her limbs and neck felt stiff, her tail felt weird, and there was a warm, heavy bloating feeling in her stomach. She groaned, lifting a hoof to touch her barrel, and flinched as she felt four sharp, hard points scrape against the rough surface of a belly that was slowly distending.

The glowing purple light had begun to creep up her front hooves too. She lifted a hoof up to her face, watching in confused dread as it began to harden, split, and turn grey. Four sharp, blocky stone talons chiseled themselves out of her limb, stiffening into an imobile claw.

She groaned as she felt the warmth in her chest and belly swell into a rolling heat. It seemed to press out against her body from the inside, a hot, burning thing that baked her flesh into hard stone. Hot air escaped up her throat and emerged from her mouth and nose in smoky puffs. Her stomach swelled out into a huge, round chamber, and her chest felt like it was hollowing out, organs shriveling away and leaving more room for the heat.

Her hardening limbs gave off a series of loud, grinding cracks. They seemed to wrench themselves around and into new, stiff shapes, giving her no choice but to assume the new, upright posture that they forced her into. Her tail pushed itself out, thickening into a wide, hollow tube.

She was grinding her teeth together, wincing at the grate of stone on stone as they swelled in her jaw. But something in the back of her mind warned her to keep her aching mouth shut. Like if she opened it, she would never get it closed again. And if it was open, then the fire growing in her stomach would have a direct path up her long, stiffening neck, to her skull, and out into the world. She… she couldn’t let that happen. That was bad. She didn’t know why… but it was.

The two hollow spaces in her barrel were open to the air now, hot spaces filled with flickering flame, metal oven racks gleaming in their slots. Her back was wrenched up ramrod straight by the creeping tide of stone, and there was something… She could feel something…

She yelped, the sound gargled and deep, as she suddenly felt something attach to her back. A ing, melding feeling, like something was becoming a part of her hardening body, the ghostly presence of two new limbs. Her hat, which had been slowly calcifying this whole time, had connected to her spine and formed a pair of stony dragon wings. The shock of the connection rippled through her, and she realized too late that she had un-clenched her lengthening jaw.

Her open mouth froze, locked into a gaping position. Her tongue began to split, protruding past her stone teeth. And she felt her neck go stiff, one ring of solidifying bricks at a time, as it formed into a tall chimney.

Heat and smoke started to pour up from the burning flame in her gut, the draft being pulled through her body and up her neck. It rushed out of her mouth, great heaving waves of it, as the fire was stoked hotter. She could feel the heat against the back of her throat, the base of her spine, the inside of her skull. So… hot… so… It burned. It burned in a soul-deep, magical way, rooting out the most deeply seated parts of her and crisping them to ash. Her mind baked in the heat. Her memories sizzled and fried away, flakes of personality drifting out of her open mouth like ash… Till there was nothing. Nothing but the fire, and the stone plinth the oven rested on. Where it would rest, forever more.




Nightmare Moon ires the artfully carved head of the dragon-shaped oven as the surge of magic from the curse’s latest victim washes over the old kitchens. The debris on the stone floor vanish as the roofs are repaired. She’ll have to fill it with new crockery and goods, but for now, it will do.

Humming, she turns her head, listening to the distant echoes of the remaining two ponies stumbling about the castle. She thinks the yellow mare is timidly creeping through the halls near the grand ballroom at the moment. Right now, she needs to finish dealing with the intruders. But perhaps later, she will return with some supplies. It HAS been over a thousand years since she last baked, after all. Perhaps she could put a few buns in the oven.

In the same series:
Part 1 (Rainbow Dash): >>3563984
Part 2 (Rarity): >>3570595
Part 3 (Pinkie Pie): >>3592454