Part 1
Up on the ramparts of the massive grey castle, irritation flashed across the guard’s face as the little filly galloped by giggling, and a fellow minotaur growled and lumbered after her theatrically. This young minotaur was impressively muscled, even for one of his race, but moved as if he was not yet sure of his own size and strength. The filly’s dark blue and grey coloration and bat-like wings marked her as one of the pony outcasts that had infested the homeland since time immemorial. Bad enough that their kind are even here, thought the guard, but for one to corrupt a young minotaur? That’s a step too far.
“Oi, you! Get back here!” the guard called, wincing as his movement triggered his headache again. He made a mental note to talk to the quartermaster, as he was sure his armour shouldn’t be this tight. Just because this is my first day on the job, doesn’t mean it should be painful, should it?
The youth turned around his eyes downcast, which somehow made it all worse. Is he truly shy? The rot runs deep in the youth of today.
“Yes, sir?”
“You should not be playing here!” the guard yelled as he adjusted his ill-fitting helm. “How did you get up here, without anyone stopping you?”
Vilhelm, son of Iron Helm, latest in a long line of fierce warrior minotaurs, bowed his head and murmured, “Sorry, sir.”
“Sorry? Sorry!” The guard cast his eyes around the battlements of the massive stone castle, hoping to find something in his surroundings to explain this bizarre occurrence. This apparent complete and utter lack of minotaur sensibilities in Vilhelm. Lacking anything else, even another guard, he fell back on the default reaction bred deep in every minotaur. He shouted. “What kind of minotaur are you?”
The filly Lethe, oblivious to her playmate’s predicament, ran up and yelled, “You’ll not get me, evil zombie thing!” Her wings were not yet strong enough to truly fly, but she fluttered them excitedly as she spun and double-barrel bucked the young minotaur.
Vilhelm collapsed to his knees, eyes bugged out, gasping in pain.
Just in time.
A dark, cold wind streamed over his head, hitting the guard fully in the chest. Vilhelm glimpsed only a black shape half again his own size with a curved razor horn and leathery wings envelope the guard. There was a moment of confused shock, but when the screaming started his own pain was forgotten. Vilhelm did the only thing he could think of: he jumped back to his hooves, scooped Lethe into his arms, and ran. Behind him, the creature’s head turned to watch the retreating pair with yellow, cat-like eyes.
Just like ones staring back in fear from Vilhelm’s arms. Eyes just like Lethe’s.
A brown earth pony’s head, complete with spiky mane popped out from behind the blue door, wide-eyed. He glanced around at the grey stone corridor, lit with torches, and frowned. “Hmmm.”
He pulled back into the blue box, and trotted around the hexagonal control panel in a space far too big for the small box it seemed to be inside. He flipped switches and adjusted controls, looking at the monitor that showed a forest with a distinct lack of stone corridors.
“Well? Where are we, Doctor?” A pretty grey pegasus with a blonde mane and oddly fascinating eyes watched her travelling companion. “You’re usually out that door like a shot when we land.”
“Something’s wrong. We’re not where I expected.” He pounded on controls, but the forest image stayed stubbornly idyllic. Sound wavered into existence, resolving into gentle birdsong.
Sarcasm dripped from the reply. “Really?”
“Yes, yes, I know. However, the scanner is not showing what’s outside, Derpy.” The Doctor nodded at the monitor. “That’s new, and I don’t like that.”
Derpy’s curiosity replaced sarcasm in her voice. “Really?” She cantered past the Doctor and slipped through the doors. “Wow! It’s an old castle, from, like, the Knights of Dream Valley stories!”
Following behind, the Doctor scraped at one wall with his hoof and peered closely at the resulting grit. “Yes, given the use of torches, the type of stone, and general upkeep, I’d say you’re not far off in your guess. This might even be as far back as the end of the Discordian era.” He stamped his hoof to clean it off. “But the TARDIS is insisting that we’re no more than ten years before we left Ponyville, and sitting in an undeveloped forest at that.”
The Doctor carefully locked the TARDIS doors before turning and waving Derpy down one of the passageways leaving their landing zone. “Given the torches are lit, there have to be ponies around here somewhere. Shall we go find them?”
“Sir, I think this is the wrong train.”
“Hrmmm? What would make you think that, newly minted Lieutenant Armour?” The heavy-set and somewhat elderly red roan unicorn was dressed in a sensible-but-stylish travelling frock coat, his white mane shining in bright contrast. He looked up from his newspaper and peered over his reading glasses at the much younger pony. “Crack of dawn departures are a bit early for me, I’m afraid, but I am fairly certain I have gotten us onto the correct train despite myself.”
Lieutenant Shining Armour, a well-built white unicorn with a multi-shaded blue mane, seemed uncomfortable in his undecorated regimental dress uniform. His horn glowed blue as he twitched the curtains aside with magic, quickly glancing out the window of their private compartment while attempting to confirm his suspicions. “We seem to be travelling west, towards Tall Tale, sir. Hollow Shades is between Canterlot and Manehattan. Isn’t that in the other direction?”
Eyebrow raised, High Commissioner Tweedy Plus-Four looked puzzled, as he carefully folded the newspaper and put it aside. “Did they tell you we were going to Hollow Shades?”
“Well, no, sir.” Shining frowned, wondering if this was some form of test. “The briefing just said ‘the Shades,’ and since we don’t need a train to reach that section of Old Canterlot, the only other place I could think of was Hollow Shades. Sir.”
Shaking his head slowly, Plus-Four chuckled, “No, no, Armour. Our official destination is a little mountain hamlet called Snowshades. I understand the name is a bit of a mangle from some old language or another, with nothing to do with Snow or Shade, but according to reports it lives up to its name, especially at this time of year. Perhaps less than a hundred or so citizens live there.”
This confused Shining even more. Shifting nervously in his seat he replied, “That small, but they have a royal facility for you to inspect?”
“Ah, they were very close-muzzled when they briefed you, weren’t they?” Plus-Four used his magic to adjust his glasses. “There is a difference between our official destination and our actual one. Snowshades is the default location we always say we’re going when we want to keep our movements circumspect. Everypony always assumes we mandarins are taking a publically funded skiing vacation, and look no further.”
With unexpected agility, Plus-Four heaved his considerable bulk off the train’s comfortable bench. “In fact, now that you have drawn my attention to it, we should be arriving at our first waypoint shortly. Let’s retrieve our bags and startle the conductor with your military precision, hmm?”
Sauntering down the corridor, Derpy and the Doctor entered another large chamber lined with small iron doors. Derpy peered closely at one door. A square stone carved with runes was affixed to it, faintly glowing green.
“This is like the third room of these, but nothing else. What are these things?” A spark jumped to her nose, causing her to cry out and jump backward into the air, her wings sculling in her retreat. Moving too fast for agility, she slammed into the door opposite, knocking its stone off. With a creak the door swung open, its lock perished from age and lack of maintenance.
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the green stone, triggering a buzz. He glanced at the readings and translated, “A psionic dampener.” He looked over at Derpy as she blushed and picked herself up from the floor. “You’d call it a magic ward. I’d say these are security safes or something like, with the wards to prevent any magic from operating in the vault. I suppose so that a unicorn thief can’t teleport the contents out. Almost out of power, though, and not very secure anymore.”
Derpy looked into the vault she had broken open. “Empty,” she said, although there was a small circle of rust in the centre, as if something made of iron that had been sitting there for a long time had been recently removed.
Another corridor continued past the chamber. The pair followed it, climbing a long set of stairs and passing through a pair of heavy doors that were already open. The Doctor examined the rough mortar around the frame of the doors and the pile of stones, picks, and crowbars nearby. “Alright, Derpy. Here’s another test for you. What do you see?”
Derpy’s golden eyes slid back and forth. “The stones that were removed are different from the regular wall. That means this door had been sealed up deliberately. It’s been broken down, but not carefully or completely. That means the goal was just to break through, not a renovation.”
“And there’s been no effort to clean up the tools or anything. They’ve just been shoved out of the way.” Derpy frowned. “So they got what they wanted, and didn’t care about anything else.”
The Doctor replied in a cheery tone, “Or what they found on the other side was too much for them, and whatever it was shoved everything out of the way to get out.”
Several passages later, branching paths chosen at random, they finally chanced upon a window. The sky outside the castle was striated red and orange, the land rocky with scrub bushes. In the distance, a quaint wood and stone village spread out beneath them. “Pretty,” whispered Derpy with a small smile on her face.
“Not so much, I’m afraid.” The Doctor had found an iron bound door further down with a hatch at eye level. Peering through that hatch, he saw a corridor lined with thick bars and shuffling shapes behind them. “This isn’t just a castle.”
“Sorry sir, but I’m still very confused.” Shining pulled at his blue mane in frustration, a habit that officer training had not managed to break. “There’s no station or town here. I’m not really sure there’s a here here. Other than trees, that is.”
The pair of unicorns were alone, having left the train tracks far behind. Beyond a brief stint in survivor training at the West Hoof Academy, Shining was a city pony, and he was finding the wilderness disturbing. Concentrating on levitating all of the luggage, as well as maintaining a watchful and suspicious eye on the surroundings as per his former drill sergeant’s instructions, was getting to be a bit of drain.
“It may be difficult for you during your time as my assigned escort and guard.” Plus-Four looked sadly at the young lieutenant as he meandered through the forest. “But I want you to know that the reason why you are here is that you were thought very highly of by your superiors, a pony of discretion with prospects. What the pegasi call a potential ‘high flyer’.”
“I think I understand, sir. Muzzle closed, sir.”
“Good colt. I swear to you that this will make sense eventually. If all goes well, there will come a time when you will be able to speak freely of what you see and hear while in my service. That’s what my job really is, you see. Determining when a secret shouldn’t be a secret anymore.”
The path opened up into a clearing and Plus-Four inhaled deeply. “Ah, good. I was starting to join you in thinking I had gotten us lost.”
Shining’s eyes widened as he entered the clearing. A massive hound with three heads growled menacingly. Iron chains secured it to equally massive pillars on either side. However, the creature was dwarfed by a giant stone arch filled with a swirling red light. Plus-Four showed a small folder of papers to the two large minotaurs in full armour flanking the portal, each significantly out-massing the unicorn despite his own size. The minotaur on the left nodded, and Plus-Four trotted into the red light, disappearing from sight.
The minotaur on the right grinned toothily at the young stallion. “Welcome to Tartaurus,” he said. “Mind the gap.”
“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Derpy pursued the Doctor as he trotted down the passage.
“We need to get back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor muttered. “I need to know for sure that we can leave.”
He paused for a moment at a crossing corridor before selecting one direction thanks to a familiar guttering torch.
“This is a prison. Prisons in a place like Equestria tend to have special rules. Rules that will trap creatures that can teleport. Rules that may not understand the difference between teleportation and dematerialization.”
Caught up in the Doctor’s grim mood, Derpy pulled him into a side room as she heard the sound of marching hooves approaching. Peeking through the gap in the door, she spies a pair of guards in full armour stomping past. “Minotaurs,” she whispers to the Doctor.
The Doctor sagged, rubbing his forehead with a hoof. “The Bull Men of Tartaurus, the Men o’ Taurus. Well, we know where we are now. This isn’t just a prison. It’s the Prison. Tartaurus itself. All part of the Shadow World, a parasite dimension sitting just off of Equestria.”
Cautiously, the Doctor and Derpy tiphoofed out and bustled down the corridor again once the minotaurs were long past. “That explains what the scanner was showing. I’ve been in one of these before, a long time ago. Even more reason to get back to the TARDIS. The last time it was a full-on trap, it took me ages to find a way out.”
“But can’t the TARDIS can go anywhere?” Derpy queried.
“There are ways to stop it, and if it’s already confused as to where it is stopping it becomes a lot easier. Mind you, just like this one, that dimension wasn’t empty. Others had been trapped there as well.” The Doctor nodded in recognition as they passed through the safe room. “There was a dark castle there too, and the most horrible monsters. The most deadly menaces from the dawn of Time Lord history, sworn enemies of all life.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, “Vampires!”
“Really?” Derpy gives the Doctor a look of derision. “Vampires?”
“Yes... well... I mean, there was only one. And it was a quarter mile from wingtip to wingtip, but technically...”
Just as they rounded a corner, directly in front of the TARDIS, a dusty grey unicorn with a luxurious yet greying mane, a curved glowing horn, and cat-like green eyes span to face them. He reared at the two travellers, eyes wide and fanged mouth hissing menacingly at them.
The Doctor and Derpy wheeled, calling in unison: “Run!”
A big, scarred minotaur strode around her office waving her arms angrily as she blustered. “Do I need to put you in one of the cells? Maybe some time as a prisoner here will help!”
Vilhelm shrank before the onslaught. “But mom, we saw...”
Iron Helm forced herself to calm down. “You! You saw! And you saw nothing! You were caught hanging around with an outcast yet again, and you’ve come up with this new story as a way to get out of punishment.”
She resumed pacing the office, glaring at her son. “We keep the most dangerous, most evil villains in all the lands as prisoners. We do! Not the gryphons, not the wolves, not the ponies. We’re the toughest there is, and I plan on making us even tougher. But everyone sees my own son playing with ponies! At your age! You need to grow up!”
There was a knocking at the door. Iron Helm turned away, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “As soon as our ‘guests’ have left, we will deal with this once and for all.” She straightened herself up and boomed, “Come!”
The door opened and Plus-Four ambled in, followed at a crisp march by Shining. “Ah, my dear. I hope we’re not intruding on official business?”
Iron Helm tried not to snarl. “No, just family affairs. Nothing for you to be concerned about, Commissioner.”
“Good, good.” Plus-Four nodded happily, gesturing towards his companion. “Iron Helm, this is my escort, Lieutenant Shining Armour. Armour, this is the Warden of Tartaurus Prison, Iron Helm.”
“Ma’am.” Shining saluted. Iron Helm frowned, ignoring the courtesy.
Plus-Four looked pointedly at Vilhelm, and coughed. Iron Helm narrowed her eyes, and waved dismissively. “My son, Vilhelm. Who is going to his quarters and staying there. Right now.”
“Yes, mom.”
“Doctor? Why did the evil vampire unicorn have a mop and bucket?”
Both the Doctor and Derpy breathed heavily, the Doctor leaning up against a cold wall. “What?”
“I think...” Derpy looked off in the distance, as if her unfocused eyes would help focus her mind. “I think it was washing the TARDIS, and we interrupted.”
The Doctor looked at her, perplexed for a moment, before he chuckled and then burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear Derpy. Those eyes of yours really do see more than most, don’t they?”
Derpy cocked her head to the side. “So it was, like, a vampire... janitor? That just sounds wrong.”
“Yes, it does.” Derpy and the Doctor grinned at each other as they headed through an archway and found themselves on top of one of the fortress’ walls. Now thoroughly lost, they strolled across the wall, looking for another staircase down into the lower levels. “Which tells me that I worked us up into a panic over nothing. He wasn’t a vampire, just an odd looking pony that we surprised as much as he surprised us. If it really was a vampire meaning us harm, it would be on top of us right now.” His tone dropped into a deeper register. “Soon we would be merely corpses, sucked dry of blood.”
The doctor waved his hooves in front of his face moaning, “OOOoooooh!”
“Like that?” Derpy’s face had gone several shades paler as she stared at the dead minotaur on the ramparts.
“Oh... Yes.” The Doctor frowned and deflated. “Quite a bit like that, in fact.”
There was a whisper of spears falling into readiness, pointed at the two travellers as guards stepped from behind cover to surround them.
“Yes,” sighed the Doctor. “Now, this is unfortunately familiar.”
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This sounded like what an american's idea of what British people sound like to me. Basically a little too British. But that's all I really had a problem with in this story. Well that, and the vampires. Vampires are way over used. I was hoping for something more original. Maybe a space cat... or a telephone... A SPACE TELEPHONE!
Anyway good show, I'll be reading on forward now so have a good day.
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I can understand that. I'm Canadian, actually, but all my family are British (Lake District, mostly), so I used their speech patterns as a model. I may have overdone it.
The vampire reference was meant to be a callback to 'State of Decay', and was more to reinforce the similarity between Tartaurus and E-space. [For anyone who knows the classic series, I'm talking about season 18.] And of course, nothing is really as it first appears.