Chapter 13: Oblivion
Chapter 13
Oblivion
“The reason children are told to believe the small lies, like the tooth fairy or Santa, is to prepare them to believe the big ones. Justice. Friendship. Love. Happiness. In the end, there is only death. Only the harvest.”
- Domitian the Necromancer, King of the Minotaurs
Twilight nodded and bowed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pinkamena. I must say, that’s a bit of an unusual name for a pony.”
“I have an unusual family,” Pinkamena answered. Her smile was genuine, but Twilight could see that her eyes were still red. “Also, you can call me Pinkie Pie, for short.”
“Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said, testing the words in her mouth. “Easier to say than Pinkamena, that’s for sure.”
Pinkie giggled. “I trust you enjoyed the festival?”
Twilight nodded eagerly. “Yeah, it was great. I especially liked the acrobatics. Shame about the dragon.”
“Oh,” Pinkie said, cheerfully dismissing the undead with a wave of her hoof, “that sort of thing happens all the time. All the noise attracts the monsters. I do not mind, it just means I get to use the unused ideas for the next festival! I am very happy you liked it by the way, I have been planning for your arrival for a very long time.” She started to smile, but her eyes fell on Starswirl. “Is… is your sister alright?”
Twilight turned around. Starswirl was as still as if she had been hit by the skeletal dragon’s frost breath. Twilight felt a strange temptation to prod her and see if she fell over. “Starswirl?”
There was no response. She tried again. “Starswirl?”
Still nothing. Pressing her lips together tightly, Twilight leaned in close to Starswirl’s ear and whispered, “Twilight Sparkle!”
Starswirl jolted out of her catatonia. “Wha- huh?” She looked around wildly.
Twilight looked at her with a concerned expression. “Are you ok?”
Starswirl’s eyes flickered back towards Pinkie Pie. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine.”
Pinkie and Void were looking at her with worried curiosity. “Well, it’s getting late,” Void said. “We best be going, Pinkie.”
“Very well, Void,” Pinkie answered, and waved at the two unicorns. “Goodbye!”
“Good night!” Twilight said. Starswirl didn’t reply. The two unicorns returned to the house.
“Null, a word, if you please,” Void said as they started walking away. Null walked over, and his brother pulled him in close. “Look, you’re living alone with two beautiful young mares. Don’t spend the whole time in the training room. Loosen up a little. Make some conversation. Have a little fun, understand?”
“Void is right,” Pinkie added. She looked up and down Null’s body. “You know we only want the best for you, Null.”
Null looked away. “Thank you for your concern, brother, Hostess. I shall endeavor to do as you say.”
“Goodbye.” Void walked off. Pinkie looked torn for a moment, then grabbed Null in a bear hug too quick for the pegasus to respond.
“Good night!” she called as she descended the ramp.
Null watched the two ponies walk away. After they had vanished from sight, he turned and trotted down towards the town.
Back in the house, Twilight was starting to feel a little woozy. Entropus come, what was in that wine? I only had one glass! She collapsed into the chair closest to the door and rubbed her head.
Starswirl sat down in the seat across from her, taking absolutely no notice of the other unicorn as she stared at the floor. Finally the silence became too much for Twilight.
“What was that all about?”
Starswirl looked up, her gaze still distant. “Hmm?”
“Don’t ‘hmm?’ me. Why did you freeze up like that?”
“Oh,” Starswirl said, her eyes finally focusing on Twilight. “That… that was Pinkie Pie.”
“Yes, that was her name.” If it was possible to nod sarcastically, Twilight was doing it.
“No, you don’t understand!” Starswirl squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before continuing. “Remember my friends that I told you about?”
“Yeah,” Twilight said, nodding. Then the light of realization sparkled in her eyes. “Oh! That Pinkie Pie!” She rubbed her chin. “She didn’t really seem like the Element of Laughter to me.”
“I know, that’s why…” Starswirl’s voice trailed off. She shook her head. “She’s completely different! You, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are all pretty much the way you should be, but Pinkie…”
Anger roiled in Twilight’s chest at the words should be. “Well,” she said carefully, leaning back in her chair, “you can’t expect everypony to stay the same when the timeline’s changed so much.”
“I guess…” Starswirl was staring at the floor again. “It’s Tartarus. It’s all Tartarus. She can’t be herself here. It’s like the rock farm back in my world. All lifeless and unhappy. She didn’t become who she truly was until she saw the sonic rainboom.” She looked up. “That was how I got my cutie mark. That was how we all got our cutie marks.”
Twilight leaned back in her chair even more. “I’ve never seen a sonic rainboom,” she said wistfully. She somewhat regretted missing the opportunity at Solarium; there had been two sonic rainboom then, but she had been underground when the first one happened and thrown off a building for the second. “I think Solarium’s been trying to capture that pegasus for years. Oh, what I’d do to get my hooves on her. Just imagine how powerful a weaponized version could be!”
“That pegasus is one of my best friends!” Starswirl snarled. She snorted, shaking her head. “Why does everything always have to be weapons with you? Is killing ponies more effectively all you think about?”
Twilight growled. “Well, sorry if I can’t be all sunshine and rainbows in golden meadows. Some of us have to deal with reality.”
Starswirl shook her head. “This is reality! What’s real is that you don’t have to kill each other to solve your problems! If you’re all good ponies, then you can just all sit down and talk your problems out and come up with a solution together! There’s nothing we can’t do if we work together!”
“You try working together with ponies that are trying to kill you so they can steal your technology.”
“Well, why don’t you just share your technology?”
“Because even if we did, we’re still competing for the same resources! And there’s not enough to go around! I already explained this all to you, Starswirl, only some of us can live in the end and I’d rather it be us than them!”
Starswirl shook her head in disgust. “You’ll never make the Elements of Harmony work thinking like that. They’re channeled by love and friendship. By this,” she said, tapping her heart, “not this.” She touched her head.
Twilight scoffed. “Tick Tock made the Elements work just fine using a machine. He didn’t need love. He didn’t even need to put them on his head. The Element Bearers helped fend Discord off, but they weren’t necessary in the end.”
“Well, that was the Elements of Chaos,” Starswirl said pointedly. “And besides, that didn’t work out so well for the world.”
“Don’t you dare!” Twilight snapped. She was half off her chair now, front hooves on the ground. “You can’t judge him! You can’t even imagine how bad things were back then! Just look around you!” She waved a hoof in the general direction of Elysium. “How desperate do you think these ponies had to be to prefer Tartarus to Discord! You heard Null, they die by the hundreds in here, the city’s filled with orphans and widows and widowers! And that’s still better than Discord!”
Starswirl paused. “I’ve met Discord. I’ve fought him. I’ve beat him. And I can say from personal experience that you don’t need to destroy huge parts of the planet to stop him. Not when you’re using the magic of friendship.” She looked down. “Even Discord learned about friendship, in the end. All he needed was to be shown a little kindness.”
Twilight stared. “... What?”
Starswirl looked up and smiled awkwardly. “We… after we imprisoned Discord in stone, Princess Celestia told us to try and reform him. So we set him free again.” Twilight’s eyes bulged. “I… I didn’t think he could be reformed. But Fluttershy… my world’s Fluttershy, she did. And she took him into her home, and showed him kindness, and became his friend. And… it worked. Discord realized how important her friendship was to him, and said he’d use his power for good from then on.” She paused. “Well, I mean, I still don’t trust him, but Fluttershy does, and I trust Fluttershy. We still keep the Elements close by though, just in case.”
Twilight just… stared. “I… I don’t believe it.”
Starswirl nodded sadly. “It’s true.”
“No. It can’t be.” Twilight’s head turned from side to side. “That’s… you’re lying. There’s no way that can be true. You… you really expect me to believe something like that?”
“I’m telling the truth!”
“No!” Twilight was up on all fours now, screaming. “It can’t be! Discord was pure evil! He was pure, undiluted evil that murdered and tortured ponies for fun and ruined the world and is responsible for all our suffering and he had no redeeming qualities whatsoever!”
Twilight slowly slumped back into her chair. Neither of them spoke or even looked at each other for a long time. Finally, Starswirl broke the silence.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. You don’t have to believe me. But ask yourself, ‘Would I lie to myself like this?’”
Twilight glared. “You are not me.” It was as much pleading as it was forceful statement.
They sat in silence again. When Starswirl spoke once more, it was in a whisper. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know that when you asked me to teach spells to you that you want to turn them into weapons. That’s not something I want to help with, and I don’t have to.”
“Yes you do.”
Starswirl looked up and jumped a little at the ferocity of Twilight’s gaze.
“I brought you to this world. My machine. My spell. My magic. Without my data, you can’t hope to understand the vortex that brought you here and make another one. So you can choose to help me, or you can choose to never go home. To never see your precious friends again.”
Starswirl stared, wide-eyed, blinking. Tears collected in the corners of her eyes. She shrank back. “I… I… I never thought I could be so cruel.”
Like a key, the word unlocked the floodgates behind Twilight’s rage. “CRUEL?! DON’T YOU TRY AND TELL ME WHAT’S CRUEL!” she screamed, jumping off the chair and slamming onto the floor between them. “You think you’re so much better than me?! You don’t know what it’s like! Everything good about you was given to you on a silver platter by an alicorn princess! Without her you wouldn’t be any good at magic or have any friends! If it weren’t for her you wouldn’t even be able to control your magic! You’ve never had to struggle! She gave you everything!”
Her horn began to spark uncontrollably. Furniture began to rise up into the air. Twilight knew it was happening. She couldn’t stop it. She never could. Unlike some other unicorns, magic always came to her so easily, forever within easy reach, but that didn’t mean it was easy to interpret, to control, and if magic always came so easily whenever she wanted it, it meant that it also came even if she didn’t. Magic always has a mind of its own.
“You want to know how I got my cutie mark? I was taking the entrance exam for the Canterlot Unicorn Academy! When the store across the street exploded in a terrorist attack! And that set me off, made my magic surge uncontrollably! I brought down the building. I killed the test proctor. AND THEN I SPENT THE NEXT THREE YEARS IN A SOLARIUM LAB AS THEY STUDIED ME TO FIND OUT WHY I HAD SO MUCH MAGIC!”
Chairs and tables squeaked and groaned as magic tore at their joints. Starswirl curled up in her seat, trembling. Twilight was right in front of her now, jabbing her hoof into her chest. Starswirl knew that Twilight Sparkle would never hurt her, but what was before her wasn’t just Twilight Sparkle.
Magenta lightning began to arc around the room. She tried to stop. She tried. But it was too late. She was no longer in control. The dam was broken, and it would not stop until it was empty.
“So don’t you dare to try and judge me! You have a Princess that teaches you everything she knows and gives you everything you need! You have a brother that doesn’t have to run off to war and then every second he’s gone you worry if he’s going to come back! You have a dad who’s still alive! You have friends that love and care about you…”
The furniture imploded into balls of crushed wood and stone. Twilight took her hoof off Starswirl’s chest and tried to wipe away her own tears. “I- it’s n- not fair… You d- don’t deserve it… I could have b- been you… I should be you… T- the only reason I’m not… the o- only reason you’re so much better than me… is luck.”
She sat down on the floor. The crumpled balls of furniture fell to the ground. The lake of her emotions had finally emptied, and what flowed now were the tears, coming in great rivers, and despite her best efforts she could no more stem them than she had her feelings.
Starswirl shook her head, her face despondent. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never thought… I never realized I was making you feel that way…”
She reached out a hoof. Twilight slapped it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
She ran outside.
----------
When Null came back up hefting two large buckets of water dangling from a bar on his shoulders, Twilight was sitting on the edge of the escarpment, her puffy red eyes fixated on the city below. He placed the buckets down and stood there for a few moments. “Are you ok?”
Twilight nodded slowly, not looking away from the city. “Did you hear me shouting?”
Null opened his mouth, then closed it. Then, deciding honesty was the better virtue, he said, “Yes. I was concerned you might wake the dead.”
Twilight looked at him. If anyone else had said that, she would have automatically assumed they were kidding. But Null looked utterly serious, and this was Tartarus, so…
“Was that a joke?”
The pegasus pulled up next to her and also looked out towards the city. “Yes. The dead are not so easily woken.”
They sat in silence for a while. “Is there anything I can offer you?”
Twilight shook her head. “Not unless you have some magic that can take back words already said.”
“Perhaps a shoulder to cry on, then.”
She smiled weakly. Suddenly, the long drop below no longer seemed so inviting.
“I’m… I’ll be… I’ll be fine,” she said.
Null may have only been slightly more adept at reading emotions than the buckets he was carrying, but even he had a dim sense that the best thing he could do right now was to make this pony feel useful. “I had been purposed to ask you a question,” he said, “but perhaps the time is not now.”
Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. She was willing to talk about anything, as long as it took her mind off what had just happened. “Sure, why not?”
“When our ancestors fled into Tartarus, they did not think Discord would ever be defeated. How did it happen?”
Twilight looked out at the tree. Her tone was hushed. “It began in the north. The Crystal Empire was the last free city in Equestria. King Sombra had ruled it since before Discord, unaging and immortal. With the power of the Crystal Heart, he kept Discord out of the Empire. But he wasn’t content with just that. He wanted to liberate the rest of Equestria, and he knew the Crystal Heart was the key. But it took hundreds of years for there to be born a pony capable of unlocking its power.”
She took a deep breath and smiled. “That was pony was Tick Tock. Using the Crystal Heart as his inspiration, he built the first rune engine. With its power, the Crystal Empire began its slow liberation of Equestria. Its armies marched from city to city, and with the power of Tick Tock’s rune engines behind them, could meet Discord’s forces face to face But it wasn’t enough. They could beat Discord’s minions, but Discord himself was still far too powerful. True, he couldn’t be everywhere at once, but where he went, he was unstoppable. Only the Crystal Heart itself could keep him away. And then Sombra learned about the Elements of Chaos. He heard they were a corruption of a powerful magic from before Discord’s reign. They were even more powerful than him. So he tasked a team of six ponies, some of them Crystal ponies and others refugees from other parts of Equestria, to steal them. Their names were Emeralda, Paradise, Ricochet, Twister Blitz, Ragtime, and Orion Down. They were the six Element Bearers. They snuck into Discord’s palace, the Palatium Entropus, stole the Elements, and brought them back to the Empire.”
Her smile faded. “It was a trap. With the Elements inside the Empire, Discord could manifest himself through them. He turned the Crystal Empire into rubble and killed everypony that lived there. King Sombra died fighting to the end.”
She closed her eyes. “But Discord didn’t kill everypony. Tick Tock and the Element Bearers escaped the destruction of the Empire. They wandered Equestria for years, trying to gather the resources they needed, starting rebellions everywhere they went, inspiring Equestrians to stand up against Discord. And then finally, when they were ready, they returned to the Empire and laid a trap for Discord. They lured him to the Empire and activated the Chaos Engine, killing them all.”
She looked down at her hooves. “Those seven gave their lives to save the world. I wish I could do half as much.”
Silence again. Null abruptly became aware of a presence behind them. He turned and saw Starswirl standing by the house’s door, levitating a sheet of paper in front of her, watching the two.
“Yes?” he asked.
Twilight turned her head, saw Starswirl, then bitterly turned back towards the tree. Starswirl just looked down.
“I… um… maybe now’s not the best time.”
Null stood up. “What is it?”
Starswirl pawed at the ground. “Um… I went to go translate some of your sketches, to take my mind off… certain things. And, um, I found something… interesting.”
Twilight shook her head as she stared at the tree. Null walked up to Starswirl, who showed him the page she was holding.
“The inscription refers to the ‘the original hall of Tartarus, most ancient of temples, where lay the tale of the Lord of Storms’, and gives a location. I can’t make heads or tails of where it is, but maybe you can?”
Null scanned the page. “Yes, I know of where it speaks, though I do not think anypony has ever been that deep into Erebus.”
“Well,” Twilight continued, “I think if it’s really the original hall, then it might give us a clue to Tartarus’s nature, and maybe give us a clue to why the tree is sick. It might even tell us how to heal it!”
The pegasus’s eyes ran up and down the lines of text. “Yes, I agree. It should only be a day’s journey there and back. We will go tomorrow. I will inform the Princeps. You two, sleep well.”
He flew off. Starswirl looked out at Twilight’s back, then went into the house. After a long while, Twilight did as well.
----------
“You’re going past the Abyssal Dark?” Void asked.
“Yes,” Null answered.
Pinkie had a worried expression on her face. “Shouldn’t somepony else go with you?”
Void shook his head. “Out that far, they risk the attention of the Requiems. Any more than three is no longer safe.”
Pinkie shook her head. “I don’t like this, Null. It is too dangerous.”
“We will be fine, Hostess. I shall not let harm come to them.”
“It is not them I am worried about,” Pinkie muttered under her breath.
Null turned across the street to the other members of his party near the outer gate of Elysium. Twilight and Starswirl were talking with Zero and Light Unseen, the latter of whom were giving the former advice about how to behave beyond the borders of Elysium. The two unicorns were standing noticeably far apart, and didn’t seem to want to meet each other’s eyes. “Are all ready to depart?” he asked.
All four ponies looked at him. “I think so,” Starswirl said. Twilight merely nodded.
“Good luck, and safe journeys,” Light Unseen said.
“We are trusting you with their safety, Null,” Zero added. “The darkness guard thee.”
“Be safe!” Pinkie called, waving her hoof wildly. Void simply smiled at his brother.
Butter Pie, the half-pony half-chariot, was waiting outside the gates. The unicorns piled in, edging as far away from each other as possible, and within moments they were flying out over the floor of Tartarus, soaring betwixt the mountain-like stalactites. Despite its size, Tartarus was still only half an hour from end to end as the pegasus flies, and in no time at all the ponies had landed on the rooftop of a large square building studded with nasty-looking metal stakes.
“This is as far as I can go,” Butter Pie said as the unicorns hopped off.
Twilight looked around. Before them was a long chasm spanned by a thin stone bridge. The light of the tree seemed strangely faint and distant, despite them being no further away than when they were in Elysium. The darkness here hung like a heavy fog, closing in around them like some kind of predator. She shivered. Was this the Abyssal Dark they had been talking about?
She cast a light spell. It didn’t help. She turned to Null. “What’s going on?”
“It is merely darkness,” the pegasus explained, striding towards the bridge. “Do not worry, it will not harm you unless you stay here. But it would be wise to stay close to me.”
The two unicorns nervously brushed up on either side of him. Twilight peered out over the edge of the bridge. The chasm below seemed to extend all the way down to the Tartarian floor, and was filled with the ruined hulks of strange metal contraptions, in the middle of which was a massive metallic pyramid on which was inscribed alien, unreadable letterings.
The bridge was too narrow to cross except one pony at a time, so Twilight and Starswirl trailed behind Null. Twilight mildly resented being in such close proximity to the other unicorn, but nervousness was outweighing all other feelings now. She felt tempted to clamp onto Null’s tail with her mouth just to make sure they didn’t get separated.
Then, as they approached the center of the bridge, the tip of the pyramid opened up. A beam of light enveloped the three ponies, and the writing on the pyramid’s surface shifted, transforming into the standard Equestrian script.
PERFECT MACHINE
PERFECT JUSTICE
A slow murmur began to develop, a low ominous chant to which she could not make out the words. “What’s going on?”
“Do not worry, it is harmless,” Null said.
“You seem to say that about everything,” Twilight muttered. But they made it across the bridge without incident, and the light shut off.
Before them was a massive citadel-like structure of stone battlements and turrets ringed with iron. Null walked up to the doors and, with some effort, pushed them open. The doors creaked aside, revealing a large entrance hall with several doorways that ran off to the sides, and a central staircase that branched off both right and left. In the middle of the staircase was a colossal statue of… something. It was vaguely amoeba-like in form, like the sculptor had wanted to convey a sluggish liquid, but there were jagged, crystal-like protrusions coming out of it, and the walls behind it depicted a red tidal wave consuming a city. As they came closer, a plaque at the base of the statue said, Cruor Mors, the River of Death.
“D- did that plaque just talk?” Starswirl asked.
“Umm, Null?” Twilight asked nervously.
“It is of no danger,” Null said.
The two unicorns shook their heads, exchanged glances, then quickly looked away from each other.
They went past the statue and up the stairs into a maze of labyrinthine corridors and staircases that spanned black abysses. Twilight and Starswirl clung closely to Null, knowing full well that if they got seperated there was no hope of finding their way back. The pegasus proceeded through the maze with determined focus, always moving purposefully forward, never once stopping to doubt their path. In the silence, the echoes of their footsteps could be heard a dozen times before fading.
“Have you been here before?” Twilight asked.
Null nodded. “Yes. Void, I, and the Hostess used to explore here in our teenage years.”
“I thought I recognized some of these places from your sketches,” Starswirl murmured.
They closed in on a particularly evil-looking building partially embedded in the cavern wall, composed entirely of metal twisted into terrible spires that looked perfect for impaling ponies on. “This is a shortcut,” Null said as he knocked at the door. The two unicorns looked warily at the metal thorns as the barbed gates swung open.
They walked into an enormous hallway made of the same twisting metal as the outside, wide enough to drive several trains down side-by-side, with a roof that arched several stories overhead. The doors shut behind them, causing Twilight to jump. The hall should have been completely dark, but there was an eerie light that illuminated the steel contortions, tinting the silvery metals the color of blood.
And then spirits began to rise from the floor, ghostly red images of ponies and griffons and minotaurs. They lined the edges of the hall, thousands of them, all staring at the ponies as they walked by. Spectral flame burned at their feet.
They began to sing, a long, haunting chorus in a language Twilight did not understand.
“This is it, isn’t it?” Starswirl whispered. “The place from the sketches. Domitian's prison.”
Null nodded.
“What are they singing about?” Twilight asked.
Starswirl shrugged. “I don’t know.” She looked at Null.
The pegasus was silent for a while. Then he began in a low murmur.
“Pain and heartbreak, the tears of sin.
The judging scythe glows shining silver.
The flower of love blooms and sinks into the pit.
Cut by the scythe that glows filthy silver.
The tears of sin change into its voice.
Judging my love, the abyss takes all.
The scythe of my hand glows bloody silver.”
He paused, and added, “would be a rough translation.”
The hallway opened up into a large circular chamber, at the center of which was a raised dais with a massive throne that looked to be made entirely of broken weapons: swords and spears, maces and hammers, axes and staves. Seated on the throne was a gargantuan figure, clad all in steel armor and a helmet that shrouded the face in darkness. Twilight took one look at those hands and shivered; the enormous gauntlet could have crushed her head in its grip like an orange.
“That must be Domitian!” Starswirl whispered.
Whatever he was, someone had very evidently not wanted him to escape. Every inch of the metal figure was wrapped in chains that extended out in every direction, shackling it to the walls, floor and ceiling via almost a hundred different points. Twilight had to keep jumping and ducking to avoid the chains, taking great care not to touch a single one. She didn’t know what might happen if she did, but she had the distinct feeling the face underneath the helmet was watching them. They made it to the other side of the room without incident. Null pressed a spot on the wall, and a door opened up into another hallway, with more hallways branching off of it. “Past here I am not familiar with the path, so tread lightly and stay alert.”
And as he turned to face them, Twilight noticed that the bell around his neck had the exact same patterns of ornamentation as the metal figure…
The paths here were darker. They were deep within the rock now, and the light of the white tree no longer reached. Twilight and Starswirl both cast light spells and made the darkness retreat, at least a little bit.
They came to a place where the path forked into three identical black tunnels. Null paused at the split, squinting down the leftmost hall. “Would one of you kindly shine your light this way?”
Starswirl trotted over and pointed her horn down the path. Twilight scanned the other two. There was something about the one on the right…
“Does anypony else hear that?” she asked.
Null and Starswirl looked around. “Yeah,” Starswirl said. “Like a dripping sound.”
Twilight peered down the rightmost hall, but that wasn’t where the sound was coming from. She followed the echoes of the slow drips to a small black puddle on the ground right by the entrance. She looked up; liquid was leaking through a crack in the ceiling, falling in the occasional small drop. She held out a hoof to catch one of the drops, then brought it close to her eyes.
“Is that… blood?”
A stone wall suddenly slammed down from the ceiling with a sound like the crack of thunder. Twilight jumped and rolled forward as the wall came down, sealing off the hall and the other two ponies behind her. She heard Starswirl screaming on the other side, and scrambled against the wall, beating on the stone with her hoof.
“Starswirl? Null?”
“Twilight!” Starswirl shouted. Her voice was barely audible through the barrier. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine! Are you?”
“We’re ok!”
“What is happening to you?” Null asked. It was probably the loudest Twilight had ever heard him speak.
Twilight looked around, the light from her horn scanning the hallway like a searchlight. There was nothing, just darkness and rocks. “I don’t know! I can’t see anything!”
“Have you been blinded?”
Twilight paused. “No! I can see, it’s just an empty hallway!”
“We will come! Wait there, but don’t hesitate to run if you believe you are in dang—”
The voice was cut off. Silence fell. Twilight pounded at the wall. “Null? Starswirl?” She paused. “Twilight?”
The only answer was from her echoes. Twilight turned around to face the hallway again… and noticed that there were now two hallways. An opening on her right had appeared where that had only been stone, leading into another identical hallway.
She sat down on the ground and took deep breaths. “Alright,” she whispered to herself, taking comfort in her own voice, “it’s fine. It’s going to be fine. They’re going to come get me, and there’s nothing to worry ab—”
Thump-thump.
A sound like the drumming of a tremendous heartbeat echoed from the right.
Thump-thump.
It was getting closer.
Twilight stood up, looked down that hallway for a moment, then bolted down the other one.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump…
The heartbeats gradually faded away behind her. She kept running until she came into a large chamber where the path forked into three. Oh no, not again…
She inspected the three paths. The one on the left went up, and she could see some sort of eerie green light at the end. The one on the right went downwards into complete darkness and smelled of rotting flesh. The one in the middle was straight, and seemed to be filled with tree roots. She took a few steps into that hall and poked one of the roots. Nothing happened. She went back, looked between the left and central paths, then went down the latter.
The heartbeats now gone, she trotted along at a stately place. The roots gradually grew thicker and denser, climbing out of cracks in the walls. But what kind of trees could possibly be growing here in the rocks? And why only this hallway? It soon became hard to keep going due to the number and size of the roots strewn along the path.
Something brushed her leg. Twilight jumped, then turned around, shining her light all around her. There was nothing, only the roots.
Then she noticed that some of the roots were moving…
Twilight yelped and ran back the way she came, galloping as fast as she could without tripping over the roots. A dead end met her, a solid wall of stone in the middle of the path.
“What?!” she shouted at the wall. “I just came this way!”
The wall refused to answer. Twilight turned around and galloped down the hall for a third time. Now the movement of the roots was unmistakable, wriggling and writhing like tentacles. She tried very hard to ignore the fact that they were beginning to act more and more like snakes.
A root raised itself off the ground, causing her to stumble and fall. It coiled around her leg. “No!” Twilight cried, kicking herself free. But more roots were extending towards her, snaking around her legs and tail, pulling her down…
“Stay back!” She cast a spell that threw up a brilliant magenta bubble that expanded out from her horn, pushing back the roots as it surrounded her. She started to breathe a sigh of relief, then noticed the roots were now crawling over the surface of her shield, piling onwards in ever-thicker layers.
She tried to move the shield. She couldn’t. The roots had completely covered her bubble and were still trying to squeeze their way in. She was trapped. Twilight sat down on the ground and looked around nervously. They better get here soon…
She felt it before she heard it. A crack in the bubble. A sound like breaking glass. She looked behind her in horror to see the roots beginning to force themselves through her shield.
Twilight screamed. The bubble shattered, and like water through a broken dam the roots came rushing through, wrapping around her body like snakes, dragging her down onto the floor. She tried to blast her way through, but for every root she destroyed, ten took its place, and soon she was pinned to the ground, unable to move, the roots crushing the life from her body, the last part of her still visible just one hoof, reaching up towards the ceiling. Then that too was pulled into the darkness.
----------
“We’ve been searching for hours,” Starswirl complained. “Do you think she’s alright?”
Null looked up the chasm they were in at the long bridges spanning the distance. “Do you desire reassurance, or honesty?”
“Um. Honesty?”
Null tilted his head. “She’s probably already dead.”
Starswirl stared. “W- why do you think that?”
The pegasus looked down. “That wall did not come down out of coincidence. There was a will behind that, one filled with malice. It chose to separate Twilight from us. That is why it cut off our sound.”
Starswirl blinked. “Why?”
“I do not know. I believe it may have sensed she was the most vulnerable of us.”
The unicorn closed her eyes tilted her head downwards. “Then it’s my fault…”
Null looked at her strangely.
“I… I shouldn’t have been so judgemental… it’s so silly of me to be judgemental… after all, if I were in her place, I would have made the same mistakes…”
Null had no idea what she was talking about and wasn’t intrusive enough to ask. The conflict between the two was none of his business. All he knew was that if there was even the slightest chance Twilight Sparkle was still alive, they had to keep searching.
Of course, there were worse things than death lurking in the bowels in Tartarus.
----------
Twilight woke up.
The first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on stone that felt like rough ice. As she opened her eyes and stood up, she looked first at her body. It seemed alright. What just happened? Hadn’t she just been attacked by roots mere moments ago?
She was in the middle of a stone… floor, for a lack of a better word. The stones extended out for a dozen meters in each direction and then simply turned into darkness. It wasn’t the thick, suffocating darkness she had encountered when Butter Pie had dropped them off, but the simple darkness of emptiness. Beyond the stones it was completely black, and it was impossible to tell if there was anything there or it was just empty space.
The floor was dimly lit by a single candle sitting in the middle. Beyond it was a wall. Like the floor, it extended up and sideways for several meters before abruptly vanishing into darkness. Unlike the floor, it was covered in scratches that looked like they had been made by a hoof.
At the bottom of the wall was the skeleton of an Earth pony, posture held stiff by the desiccated remnants of its tendons, its head and front legs still stretched out towards the wall in desperation.
Twilight backed away. “Oh,” she said, her voice unnaturally high-pitched. “How cliche.”
But an effective cliche, a little voice in her head said.
She turned around. Hovering in the darkness were a series of platforms, maybe fifty of them, that made a path up to a small wooden door. They were too high and too far apart to jump across.
At last, she smiled. Finally, some luck. The Earth pony must not have been able to make it up to the platforms, but Twilight Sparkle was not an Earth pony. She teleported up to the first platform, looked around in satisfaction, then teleported to the next one, and the next.
It was about six more teleports before she realized something was wrong. The floor and the wall were getting further away, but the door wasn’t getting any closer. She squinted, and counted the number of platforms between her and the door. There were thirty-two. She teleported five times, then counted again.
There were still thirty-two.
Twilight growled. Of course, there’s no way it can be that easy. She teleported back down the platforms to the floor. At least this time the numbers made sense. She paced around the candle for a few minutes, trying to figure something out, before she noticed the skeleton again.
I could have sworn it was over there a few minutes ago…
She turned around, closed her eyes, and counted to ten. Then she looked at the skeleton again. It hadn’t budged.
Sighing, she resolved to try walking out into the darkness. She trotted up to the edge of the stone area, then carefully reached a hoof out into the black area. It met a solid surface. She bent down to examine it. There was a floor there, completely black and therefore invisible, but it was there. She cautiously walked out onto it and turned around. It seemed alright. She jumped up and down. As sturdy as the stone was. She tried walking out further, but as the stone area grew smaller and smaller behind her, she still couldn’t see anything but darkness. Eventually, afraid that she might get lost forever, she walked back.
There was no mistaking it this time. The skeleton had moved again, and it was staring right at her.
A small whimper escaped her lips. She froze for several seconds, then carefully stepped sideways. The empty sockets seemed to follow her. She sidestepped some more, until she was out of what should have been the skeleton’s line of sight. It didn’t move.
She blasted it with a magenta bolt, sending bones flying into the darkness. She turned around, closed her eyes, then looked back at where it had been. The bones were still strewn everywhere.
Twilight sighed, backed up, and bumped into something.
“AH!”
She turned around to see a giant stone gargoyle looming over her, a grotesque demon-thing with horns and claws and razor-sharp teeth and tentacles with more mouths and razor-sharp teeth. She fell on her back and screamed at the top of her lungs before realizing it was just a statue.
She stood back up and walked around it. Where had it come from? She tentatively poked it with a hoof. Just… stone. She turned around again, and froze.
The skeleton pony was right behind her, frozen mid-stride, empty sockets glaring at her, mouth open, and for the first time she saw its teeth. They weren’t the vegetarian molars ponies were supposed to have, they were fangs…
Something bit her hooves. She tried to jump out of pure reflex, but couldn’t. The stone floor had turned into mouths, thousands of them, each ringed with little teeth that were clamping down on her legs, tearing out rings of flesh... The statue swung into motion, mouthed tentacles whipping down and coiling around her body, ripping long strips from her chest, spilling her blood out all over the floor to the delight of the thousand clamoring mouths, then blue lights flared in the depths of the skeleton’s sockets and it lurched forward, grabbing her head with its hooves to tear it straight off her neck…
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The skeleton closed its jaws on her throat. She fell. There was pain.
Then nothing.
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Wow, um... mega creepy.... poor alternate Twi
Not only did alternate Twi lose it with Twi, but now she's in the bowels of hell.
Why? Oh why did I read this at 3 in the morning? Can't sleep, floor will eat me... Can't sleep, floor will eat me...
3212506 Pfft! that's nothing! You should see what goes through my mind on a regular basis.
You see? This is why you don't make one supernatural prison in a place that's difficult to maintain and put every ancient and malevolent horror your species is capable of caging into it. Don't ask me what you should do with them cause heck if I know. I just know that the tartarus prison design is clearly inadequate. But anyways, once the floor starts trying to eat you...well..that's kind of nightmare fuel man.
3213418
Two things. Maybe it was adequate, and perhaps it was powered on Harmony somehow and the coming of/conflict it Discord broke it? Perhaps the ponies fleeing into Tartarus was part of the problem too?
3215302
It's perfectly adequate. It's designed to keep the monsters in. What they do when they're in there is a whole different matter
3215360
Well, Null visited in the past. This suggests that something has changed since then. So I would argue that whatever the exact magics were, they are definitely failing.
3216903
You are correct though, in saying that not all the sub-prisons in Tartarus have withstood the test of time, but that's why monsters are banished there in the first place: Even if the little individual prisons in Erebus fail, nothing gets out of Tartarus itself.
EDIT: Spoilers redacted
I didn't catch anything about that first part... Not sure what you mean.
3227801
Ah, damn! I forgot I haven't published that chapter yet. Forget you read anything!
3227814
I see.
Too late for that.
Princess primary weapon : ROD FROM GOD
Battle commander : Battlefield 4 commander mode
Leviathan : deadly sea creature on land
City shields : They see me tanking... They hating
Tartarus : THE CITY OF UNKNOWN HORRORS.... And that tree over there
You know... I can't help but side with alt Twilight here. Maneverse Twilight can be a damned arrogant nag on occasion. As odd as this might sound, I really do hope there's some balance between the two when it comes to the end of this. Not sure how else to explain it. I just don't want it all alt Twilight's fault and her apologizing and 'I was wrong'. Because she's not fully or mostly wrong.