From the mare she once was, Nyx had morphed into naught more than a beast. She wandered the regions above the ground, no longer able to enter the caves that had been her home for many weeks. She stumbled around, dragging rasping breaths through her decaying jaws, revelling in the stink of her own rotting flesh. But the torn and battered state of her body was nothing to the ruined mind that burnt within her skull; she was insane, all empathy and pleasure smothered beneath layers of pure darkness. Whatever this infection was, it had sapped out every inch of humanity from her and left her as a pure, primal creature of the night, a husk of the most basic life form. She no longer craved love and attention; she craved only death. No longer did she want to seek others out for company; she wanted to seek them out only to do to them what had been done to her.

She was broken, and she would break them too.

She could see two pegasi ahead of her, both so athletic in the air. Not her; she was earthbound. The skies were for those blessed by heaven, and Nyx had been taken by hell. The hidden, once-alive part of her recognised the blue-static-mare from the war council meetings, where they had discussed how to combat the wraith threat. Ha! They know nothing - we cannot be defeated. Let them try and they will be devoured.. She told the other mare to stay back, and the beast released a loud, macabre giggle that turned to a hacking cough, spraying clumps of blood from her mouth. "Don't fear her, silly girl," came the mare's voice. It wasn't the normal, pleasant tones of the steel soldier; it was high-pitched and sing-song, as though liable to break into another spitting guffaw at any moment. She could do nothing but laugh at her condition, to revel in the new powers given to her rotting body at the cost of her sanity. A great strip of flesh peeled from her left side with the force of her convulsing cackles, exposing strips of torn muscle and the gleaming white bones of her ribcage. "Fear me!" Another demonic giggle, her battered frame moving closer to the two airborne mares; her eyes, blacker than hell itself, zoned in on them, and the laughing dead approached.

The part of her that was still her, that was repulsed by what the infection had made her, screamed against the iron walls of her mind. It did not want to hurt these women, but it could not fight back against the force of the demon inside her. She moved at a gallop, each thumping step causing her flaps of skin to waggle and tear. She coughed and sputtered, and a black cloud fled her lips and floated up, up, up towards the flying mares. It sought to trap them in its grasp, transmit to them the infection that had taken Nyx from the outside in. She was stuck to the earth, but her demon's powers were not bound to her ground-dwelling form. Join me, little girls, join me in hell!