Part 3
The dark shape’s dank breath rustled the Doctor’s mane as the Time Lord tried to resist the creature's hypnotic power. Vilhelm shuddered, repeating the words, “No. No. NO!” Shaking off the creature’s spell he exclaimed,
When a monster wants to munch
You have to punch!
Vilhelm slammed it with a vicious uppercut, causing it to sit back on its haunches, shaking its head in confusion.
Free of the mind control, Shining took one look and cast his best spell in panic. A lavender shield erupted from the unicorn’s horn, throwing the monster back into a stone wall.
“Running’s good. I like running. We should do it more often.” The Doctor grabbed Lethe by the her withers, and shouldered Vilhelm into motion. Shining stood there, sweating as he tried to hold the creature against the wall with his shield.
The Doctor tossed Lethe over to Vilhelm, and yelled back to Shining, “Come on!”
“I...” the shield broke, and Shining took off with the creature fast behind. Unfortunately, in a different direction than the rest had run.
“No, no, no, no...” the Doctor started to run after Shining as well, when Lethe called out, “This way!”
The filly jumped out of Vilhelm’s arms and pointed down another alley. “They’re heading towards home, but this way is faster!”
The village flashed by as Lethe’s directions and short cuts allowed them to get ahead of Shining and the creature. She ran up to a large warehouse, pushing open the door. “We’re all in here.”
“All of you?” questioned the Doctor before a cry reverberated down the street, cutting him off. “Vilhelm, get in there with her, and get ready to close the door.” The Doctor backed up and hid behind a barrel, just as Shining came around the corner with the monster almost on top of him.
Hoping he has his timing right, the Doctor tackled Shining through the door, and the monster screeched past. Vilhelm slammed the door shut, and the group found themselves surrounded. The room was dark, a few dim candles providing minimal light. Draconic eyes of various colours looked at the intruders, variations of dark grey, blue and purple manes and coats blending into the shadows. Some with sharp horns shimmering with magic, while on others leathery wings rustled, but all had various antique but effective weapons that glinted menacingly.
“You know, prisons should have better locks.”
“I’ll add that to my recommendations for the Warden.”
Deep into the castle, in a filing room, Plus-Four and Derpy rummaged through boxes and mounds of ledgers and scrolls. “Good record-keeping, though,” said Derpy sighing as she pulled more papers off the shelves.
“A little too good, perhaps.” Plus-Four, flipped through a series of scrolls, before putting them down to rub his face with a hoof. “I’m being overwhelmed by sheer volume. Have you found anything interesting?”
“No.” Derpy swung around, and upset a pile of records which then collapsed upon another pile, and then another pile after that. A brief flurry covered the entire room in an even layer of paper. “Sorry.”
“No matter. “ Plus-Four idly swirled some papers around. “I don’t think we’ll find what we need here. Maybe we’re approaching this all wrong. Instead of trying to find something that’s here...”
“Try to find something that’s not here? How does that work?”
Plus-Four shrugged. “What should be here, and isn’t?”
“I don’t know.” Derpy pulled one page out of the mess. “They’ve got records on all the prisoners.” She pulled another. “They’ve got records on all the guards and staff.” A third. “They’ve got records on food and supplies coming in.” And a fourth. “They’ve even got records of stuff going out.”
Looking up at the ceiling, Plus-Four tapped a hoof against this chin. “How up-to-date are these records on the guards and staff?”
“Uhmmmm. This one’s got an entry from yesterday.”
“So where are the records for the three dead in the morgue?” Plus-Four started digging around in the papers again. “The most recent was called ‘Poll Axe’ if I remember correctly.”
“Here’s a guard roster from last week. No Poll Axe.” Derpy looked more confused than normal. “Why wouldn’t he be on the roster?”
“He wasn’t a guard.” Plus-Four slammed a hoof down in frustration. “They were substitutes, brought temporarily up from the village, so no real guards were lost. They weren’t torn apart because they didn’t want the useful, reusable equipment damaged.” He growled as he headed towards the door. “This is all a disinformation tactic. Do you know what happened in the last month that triggered this?”
“They received the announcement of the inspection. A letter that told them I was coming. Those poor souls are in the morgue to convince me that the prison is under attack.”
“Monster. Out there. Not you,” gasped the Doctor, leaning heavily against a desk.
The door was ripped off its hinges as the Sdu looked at each other. They rushed to barricade the opening, shield spells and furniture blocking the creature as it clawed and screeched at the defenders. Javelins sang past overhead to sink into the beast. Swords flashed as the Sdu rapidly raised and lowered mystical shields as the weapons flew by. Badly injured, the monster retreated, leaving a collection of ponies and one minotaur to collapse from the adrenaline rush.
“What was that?” asked the Doctor still panting.
Shining shook his head. “That... that was more gryphon than pony.”
“It wasn’t what we saw the first time.” Vilhelm shuddered slightly, Lethe holding on to him with concern.
The Doctor chuckled, “No I don’t mean the beastie. I mean, rhyming? Do you get that much zebra poetry here?”
“Oh... uhm.” Vilhelm blushed.
With a grin, Shining took the chance to needle the barely younger minotaur. “It was the tie. Must have been.”
With a laugh, the Doctor slapped Vilhelm on the shoulder. “You resisted the spell better than either of us. They should call you Will Power, instead.” He then looked around at the strange ponies that fought off the monster. “I’ve been looking for you lot.”
A worn Sdu stallion in dusty shades of grey, the same stallion the Doctor had encountered in the basement of the castle, stepped forward. “We are the Sdukʷalbixʷ.”
He gestured to include all the Sdu, which the Doctor could now see included more than two score of adults, elderly, and young. The Sdu translated, “We are the Children of the Moon.”
“Shouldn’t we be avoiding guards more?” Derpy flipped through some scrolls she had brought along, as she hovered down the corridor.
Plus-Four frowned as he trotted ahead. “Yes, I was wondering that myself. There should be at least a score of guards on duty, and over two hundred prisoners from Equestria and the surrounding lands. This prison is supposed to be near capacity, yet this entire wing is empty. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen more than a half-dozen guards and the Warden the entire time I’ve been here.” He stopped to examine an abandoned cell. “Look here, this had a unicorn in it recently.” Plus-Four tapped the square stone on the door. “The spell-ward is still here, and powered up.”
Derpy narrowed her eyes as she looked over Plus-Four’s shoulder. “That’s like the seals we found down in the basement, locking up the little vaults. So the Doctor was right, they block magic.”
“Suppress it and block it.” Plus-Four turned to look at Derpy, cocking his head to one side. “Why are you looking through those papers again? You’re leaving a bit of a trail behind us.”
“The oldest records sound like fairy tales I’d read to a foal.” Derpy showed him a few samples. “Look at these: The Demon Goat, The Mare in the Moon, Three Witches and a Hungry Pudding.”
Shrugging at the paper, Plus-Four continued on down the passage. “I hadn’t realized how old this prison was.”
Derpy shook her head. “I’m not sure it is, they’re not talking about prisoners at all in them, but the things that were taken from them. More like scavenger hunt lists: Three bells, one sack, something called a flashstone... The first thing that looks like an actual prisoner record is a lot more recent, about two hundred years ago, I think.”
Plus-Four continued to search, looking for any signs of the population that should be here. “So this castle wasn’t originally a prison, it was a warehouse?”
“For storing magical artefacts too dangerous to let roam free in Equestria,” interrupted Iron Helm, flanked by two guards. “And if you had just let me confine the Sdu, you would be able to roam free back to Equestria as well.”
The Doctor and his companions rested on pillows facing Cereus, the Sdu leader. Faint candles flickered in their faces. Cereus conjured images of various ponies in ancient clothes with his glowing horn. “In ages far gone, we few looked upon the Night with joy. Unlike the rest of Equestria, we travelled from all corners of the world to devote ourselves to the Starry Sky. Unicorn, Pegasus, and Earth Pony. She looked down upon our meagre group from Her resting place, and She smiled upon us. Blessed with Her dark light so we may see Her works when others refused. We served Her willingly, and without question.”
The ponies shifted, coats fading into camouflaging greys, pale blues, and dark purples. As the individuals changed into Sdu, their clothes were replaced with livery of the Crescent Moon. “Most ponies shunned the dark glory of Night, and they shunned us for our mistress’ blessing made us ugly in their eyes. It was in our loneliness that a seed was planted in our hearts. It grew and grew, fuelled by greed, fear, and jealousy. In some, it reached full bloom and demanded true darkness. It sang of not simply of Night, but of Eternal Night, darkness never ending.” An image flashed by of an Sdu unicorn clad in full armour, horn glowing crimson, standing proudly over a series of regular ponies draped with chains. “Those who succumbed to their taint did such evil that the Mistress herself would join with Her sister Day and take action against them.” Two elegant forms, one shining white and one dusky blue, each with three shining stars spinning around them, radiated beams of colour that blasted the armoured unicorn into smoke.
“In one such battle, She was caught in the reflection of Her own dark light, and Her heart was lost to the flower of jealousy. “ Something large and fearsome and as dark as coal towered over all the Sdu, showing only white fangs, and hate-filled Sdu eyes. “Yet still our oaths bound us to Her, and we took up arms in truth beneath the banner of Eternal Night. War consumed the land.”
Heavily armoured earth Sdu smashed through villages in slow formation, unicorn Sdu seared the crops with green fire, pegasi Sdu used shining wing-blades to cut down all who stand against them. A light intruded, sourced in a single white, winged unicorn, now surrounded by five faint stars. All the Sdu, both real and not shielded their eyes, as the image was washed away. “We lost.”
Cereus stood and turned away from the group. “Our mistress was taken from us, exiled where we could not follow. There was no shelter for us in Equestria. We fled and found our way here, where the minotaurs took us in as refugees. We keep our traditions, train ourselves in the old ways, but we dwindle as we await the return of the Moon. And we hope that in that return, she has healing for our souls after both of our exiles.”
The Doctor frowned. “The war of the Sun and Moon? That’s a thousand years ago, give or take. You’ve been hiding here for that long?”
“Time is not the same in Tartaurus as in Equestria, but it has been a very long time even for here.”
Cereus motioned around at his kin. “As you can see, the dark taint is still with us. We know what we are capable of, and we do not wish to succumb to it. When we heard that the minotaurs were attacked, we gathered here, and waited for the change to take one of us, to reveal the monster in our midst. There are so few of us now, but we will take care of our own.”
Vilhelm spoke up from where he lay, slamming a fist into the floor. “You can’t be convinced that you’re doing this. That thing didn’t come from you. It’s not your fault!”
The Doctor glanced over at the young minotaur. “Perhaps they have a reason to be frightened of themselves. They were obviously alarming to the ponies in Equestria.”
Shining grimaced and clambered to his hooves. “Look, maybe a thousand years ago they were scary and threatening to other ponies. But I’ve met gryphons, and even a giraffe once. These guys aren’t really that much different.”
The Doctor’s face went dark as did his voice, “No, they’re much less different than gryphons. No matter what’s been done to them, they’re still ponies. They’ve been stashed away, forgotten until they die off. All because their ancestors many generations past were on the wrong side of a war nobody remembers anymore. That’s not acceptable.”
Shining nodded, turning to face Cereus. “Funny eyes don’t make them bad ponies.”
The Doctor smiled, and was about to remark when Lethe interjected, “I like you. You’re cute!” She gave Shining an impromptu hug, before slipping off to stand conspiratorially with the other young Sdu. They all giggled at each other as Lethe glanced over her shoulder at the young soldier, grinned and then turned back to her clique.
“I... what?” Shining stared at her, confused.
“Hah!” Vilhelm laughed, and elbowed Shining in the side. “Lady-killer.”
“What??”
The Doctor looked out the demolished door to the castle overlooking the village. “We need to get back. Whatever is going on, it’s happening up there. Derpy and Plus-Four are in more trouble than they realize.”
Derpy and Plus-Four were in separate cages kept distant from each other, along with several other ponies, plus two donkeys, a goat, and a zebra, all arranged in a pattern around the outside of a large circular room, the ceiling arched high above. Iron Helm, dressed in voluminous robes fussed over a podium in the centre, a black shapeless bag sitting on it. The sack pulsed with a rhythm like a beating heart.
“That’s not good, is it?” whispered Derpy.
The zebra in the cage beside her whispered back,
I doubt it bodes well,
for that sack is quite fell.
Derpy surreptitiously pointed to the minotaurs spaced around the room. “What’s with the guards? They’re all dopy and swaying.”
The zebra shook her head, unable to move further in the small cage.
They have been increasingly lost,
their bodies and mind now exhaust,
as it seems enforced obedience has a cost.
From somewhere in the vaulted ceiling, the leathery winged beast that had attacked Doctor and company swooped down. Blood dripped from its mouth as it screeched at Iron Helm before collapsing. Dark shimmers covered the body, as it slowly resolved into a dead gryphon. The shimmers gathered up and streamed into the bag.
“Unfortunately, I have not yet mastered this artefact,” Iron Helm snarled. “It only seems to work occasionally, and the subject does not survive long. But I will master it soon.”
She lifted up the sack, and hung it around her neck. Opening it, she screamed, “By the power of Darkness!” Swirling inky light streamed from the bag. The zebra screamed as the power enveloped her, fire erupting from her eyes. Flesh ripped apart and reformed, bat-like wings and glowing fangs dripped venom as she burst free from the cage.
One step, two steps, and she screamed again, as the dark energy ripped her apart once more, leaving a steaming corpse behind. Again, the energy rose up and flowed back to its source.
“Blast it! If I had the Sdu...” Iron Helm’s face had grown red, her voice dropping slightly into a deeper register. “They have to have been through this before, to look the way they do!”
“I will master it soon!” She glared madly at Derpy. “I will! With the Dark Rainbow at my command, you will all serve me! For the Eternal Night!”
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With the season 4 finale.....this feels all the more canon. EXCELLENT! !