Chapter Four: A Pale Horse
EverFree Castle: Year 0, Day 1 of Celestia's Reign
“RUN!!!” That word, despite Celestia's long life and intelligence and wisdom, kicked her square in the equine instincts as she wheeled on her hooves back to the stairs, the Doctor close behind. She could see the carefully preserved hooves of friends and relatives long-dead reaching for her as they clambered out of their sarcophagi, a sight which drew icicles down her spine even as her heart pounded in her chest.
Just a few pony-lengths more, and we'll make it! She thundered toward the doors, stumbling once when sweet, kind Auntie Nova tried to take a bite out of her flank. Oh Great Maker buck me in the ear! This is like one of those weird tales out of Zebrica! She kicked her favorite aunt square in the jaw, sending the dead mare sprawling back into her coffin as she resumed her race to the doors, those lovely, exquisite doors...
...which were closing, glowing with that same un-light and the faint hum that heralded magic by horn! She barely skidded to a stop as the doors slammed shut, the Doctor plowing into her flanks, giving her another jolt. She whipped her head around to glare at him as he jumped back with a shouted, “SORRY!” and scrambled around him to run his screwdriver over the door seams.
She turned, planting her hooves and lowering her horn into the classic defensive stance, watching the undead ponies shambling toward them, moving stiffly at first, then more fluidly, each and everypony's eyes glowing with that midnight-violet deadlight, faint hints of sparks like stars glimmering around them. “Doctor...?”
“Wrrrmphing omf it!” he mumbled around the tool as he frantically buzzed it over the door, then spat it into his pocket in disgust. “Augh! Wood! Again with the wood! Celestia, take a letter if you would: If we survive this, modify the sonic screwdriver to deal with WOOD!”
She muttered, “What do I look like, your bloody scribe?” As the staggering remains of her loved ones approached, part of her mind gibbered in panic, but another was strangely quiet... then: “Celesssssstiaaaaaa... Join ussss....”
Oh, buck no, they did NOT just do that! The whispers in her mind were insidious, telling her that she didn't have to be lonely. She didn't have to suffer on her own, she didn't have to shoulder the weight of the world on her back. All she had to do was just stand down, and let them touch her. Let them caress her and hold her as they once did, and they could be a family again... Shaking her head and snorting, she lit her horn, a pink shield sphere popping into being around her and the Doctor.
Celly-Belly, we miss you, said the thing that was once her brother, We just want to be a family again. We can laugh together, we can play, we can do all the things we did before... and when you are with us, we can go forth and feed...
She had a horrible notion as to what was on the menu. As hooves and teeth started to batter against her shield, she felt as if her horn were a straw that magic was sucked through. She was expending power at a far greater rate than usual! She poured more magic into the barrier, her horn's glow acquiring an outer nimbus, then a third layer of arcane glow, sparks and spears of light foretelling of magical burnout. “Doctor, I can't keep this up long!”
Pointing a hoof at the hole in the ceiling, the Doctor shouted, “What's up there? A way out?” Visibly sweating, Celestia nodded. “The old chapel, I think!” Focusing more power into her horn, she said in a strained voice, “Please run for it when you see the boom, Time Lord.”
“...The what?” was all the time the Doctor had for as Celestia's horn erupted in a flare of light that pushed into the shield, detonating it and sending out a shockwave that knocked the lich-ponies rump-over-teakettle. “GO!”she shrieked, running for the hole and clambering up the ramp formed by the collapsed floor above, the Doctor just ahead of her.
As they climbed up, she could already hear the noisome things in the crypt below getting to their hooves, wings stiff with disuse flapping experimentally. She tried to focus her magic, but got only a blinding, stabbing headache in response. “...I can't collapse it!”
“That's quite all right, because I can! Wood trumps sonic, sonic trumps stone, stone trumps zombie ponies!” He aimed his screwdriver at a broken support column and triggered it. A reverberating sound filled the air, making Celestia's brain rattle around in her skull until the column and part of the ceiling above it collapsed into the hole, blocking the undead equines. “Hah! Lovely acoustics in here, my compliments to the architect!” the Doctor exclaimed, “Assuming, of course, you know, he or she's not one of the ponies we just buried under a couple tons of rock.” Giving the princess a manic grin, he started for the hallway. “Come along, Princess! It won't take them long to dig themselves out.”
Shaking her head, more out of bafflement than anything, she couldn't think of anything but to follow. “Doctor, do you always treat immortal, magically-endowed royals like this?”
Grinning at her again as they trotted toward the great hall, he replied, “Remind me to tell you about Good Queen Bess. Lovely monarch, stern but fair, and she lived up to her moniker on our wedding night!”
“Come along, and get those Element things, Celestia. We need to get you inside and isolated from this continuum for a moment.” The chestnut pony trotted to his blue box, fishing a key out of his coat pocket and turning it in the lock. Celestia's magic had recovered enough to let her levitate the Elements of Harmony along behind her as she stared quizzically at him. “Ah, Doctor... there's no way we're both going to fit in th--”
She stopped just inside the threshold and stared, the crystal spheres of the Elements wobbling a bit as she lost focus. This is impossible. This cannot be. This thing cannot, just cannot be bigger on the inside, she thought, That's it. I've gone completely and quietly mad. The Curse of the Immortals has finally gotten me, and I've gone so far 'round the bend I'm just sitting down to have a nice cup of tea with myself and then go watch some of those strapping young farm stallions at work. Maybe we'll meet myself again while we're there.
Shaking from nose to tail, she gingerly stepped inside as the door shut behind her, sinking to her knees. The Doctor was raving about something and poking around a large central console with a crystal column going from it to the ceiling, the console looking like a junk explosion in a glue factory, with various doodads stuck seemingly at random around it. The room itself was bigger than her private quarters, with lights inset into the walls in hexagonal sconces, hilighting the green glow from the console that washed over the oddly soothing curved pillars surrounding it.
Finally, the Time Lord noticed his companion's state of shock and trotted over to her, kneeling down to look her in the eyes. “Celestia, it's all right. We're safe in here. The planet could crack like an egg or turn into molten custard outside, and we would be perfectly fine. Well...” He jerked his head at the console, “She'd be a mite peevish with me for a spell, but she'd get over it, and would never, ever mean us harm.” He paused. “Well... except that one time, but it was all right once I promised to never, ever, ever spill the 'Shiva Hot' curry from New New New Bangalore on the time rotor ever again.”
Swallowing, Celestia looked around and back to the Doctor, her pupils shrunk down to pinpoints. “This place, it's...”
“Bigger on the inside?”
“...yes.”
“...I never get tired of hearing that one. This my ship, Celestia. She's my home, and right now, she's letting us throw off the scent of those things down in the basement.” Helping her to her hooves, he leaped up to the console, one forehoof yanking down on a large lever. With a THOOM
officially had enough. “What in the Pony Hell of the Eternally Filthy Stables could be so aggressive as to turn the corpses of my loved ones into howling abominations bent on eating other ponies?!?”
Carefully pointing her horn away from his throat with a hoof, he murmured, “Atrtronic empathivores.” Seeing her look of consternation, he explained quickly, “What you call magic is actually energy, artron energy. It's all around us, all the time, and it suffuses the whole of time and space. When travelling through the Time Vortex, it's not uncommon to pick up a few here and there. Look,” he said, pacing back and forth as the mare slowly untensed, “Ever have a really good mood that was just terribly infectious, like everyone who crossed your path couldn't help but be as happy as you are? Or a positively awful funk that you couldn't get rid of, and that dragged everyone else down with you? Most of the time, people put it down to peer pressure, or just the general vibe, or even just being a sympathetic sort, and usually it is... but sometimes, sometimes it's the empathivores, lurking where people gather.”
Reaching up to swivel a display monitor around, he punched a few buttons with his hooves, bringing up a scan of the planet. “See, most of the time, they're fairly rare except in heavily populated areas, and they just soak up the emotion, stimulating it in others, spreading what is usually a fairly benign and sometimes beneficial contagion. But this lot – they've become something far, far worse. They're directed. They're focused on negative emotion, and they're very, very hungry. Those things down in your basement weren't your loved ones, Celestia; they were the starving remnants of the things that murdered your people, and tried to eat you...”
“...And now,” he sighed, “they've got your sister... and being immortal, well...”
Celestia's ears flattened as she made the connection. “They could keep her alive and angry for a very long time.”
Nodding, the Doctor tapped the moon on the display. “I'm afraid so... and there are a lot more of them than there should be, here. I suspect it's because of the artron field surrounding this planet. See, artron energy is related to life-force, and to the Time Vortex. The stronger in life a planet is, the stronger the energy field surrounding it and its inhabitants. More artron energy, the more likely it is you're going to get empathivores. I suspect Discord was involved, somehow, but I'm not certain how just yet.
“Point being, Celestia, getting your sister back is going to be more difficult than I thought. We're going to have to be very, very careful about this, because if I'm right, and I sincerely hope I'm not, your entire planet is in danger.”