//------------------------------//
// "We Have the Same Goals." 
// Story: Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

"White Stockings," said the alleged Prince of Midnight Castle, recognizing me, granting me the right to speak in his presence, to answer how I had mastered Chthony.

As a pony who understood the importance of controlling information to control ponies, I recognized the signs in others who operated the same way.  The centaur asserted claims of being a royal, a prince, and an ambassador to Equestria along with his brother Scorpan.  He claimed that Princess Celestia had falsely imprisoned him during the first decade of her rule and that the "Royal Sisters" had killed his brother.

Since he had mentioned the "Royal Sisters" before anypony had known about Princess Luna, it lent credence to his claims.  However, the existence of Tartarus and its sometimes too-evil-to-live inmates gave lie to his words that Celestia and Luna murdered his brother and co-ambassador.  Nopony in Tartarus had ever heard of his land, not even the earliest of inmates of which he presumably was one of the first.  

The steel ring in his bovine nose made me even more skeptical.  A prince's nose ring ought to have been made of gold, but worse, it seemed like a symbol of enslavement or servitude, not of power.  I'd learned that nose rings had been invented to be tied to a rope; some stupid instinct allowed cows to thusly control their bulls and make them docile.   

Besides steel gauntlets, he wore a triangle medallion hung by one apex on a black bead chain.  It wasn't gold.  It was pitted brass.

I believed the mannered ruffian lied about most things, including why he was imprisoned.  Once or twice he'd boasted his power was more powerful than that of an alicorn, but had never volunteered details.  I'd written everything he said into Denizens verbatim, followed by my negative opinion about its veracity.  I, of course, never showed him the latter section when allowing him to review what I'd written.

As I reviewed what I knew about Lord Tirek, his yellow irises reflected the overcast sky from under his hood, set in obsidian-like sclera as dark as the shadow inside of his cassock and likely his heart.  I may not have liked Celestia for imprisoning me here, but my research left me confident that she condemned nopony that wasn't a danger to Equestria.  Lord Tirek's eyes narrowed and he used the claws at the end of his first forelimbs to lower his hood, revealing a white bearded gray-maned ruddy-skinned bovine head and stubby aurochs upturned horns.  The wrinkled centaur stood about the height of an large mare, which made him, with his upright body extension, even less massive than an average one.  

I wasn't so stupid as to discount power based on stature.  I'd heard Twilight Sparkle had been both a runt as well as a foal when her magic blasted though Canterlot, through reality, and through time as was manifest today.  Twilight Sparkle was the most powerful being in Equestria.  This fellow?  Not so much.

He stiffened the longer I silently evaluated him.  

His voice lowering menacingly, he said, "I asked you a question."

"Yes you did."

"Despite your office, White Stockings, we are both inmates of this infernal land, improperly and wrongly imprisoned.  Strong magic has sundered its defenses.  This is our fleeting opportunity to escape Tartarus.  I wish to return to my home.  You wish to escape pony oppression in Equestria.  We both crave freedom.  I propose an alliance.  I want an answer and I want it now."

He spoke like a well-educated prince, both in his use of vocabulary and in his imperious tone.  I wasn't buying his attempt to elevate himself and I had no interest in sharing the extent or limits of my cutie mark talent.  I smiled.  "I'm a constable without weapons of coercion.  No weapons other than my words.  I listened when my partners taught me to speak convincingly," I said, shuffling one hoof in front of the other and affecting somewhat unconvincingly a blush of recognition for having been able to handle a monster.  

I played the game of masks.

Again, I did not know what magic he had, if any, but…  well, if I could take on Chthony, I might well be made invulnerable by the inevitability of time.  I lifted an eyebrow as he considered my response.  I knew him well enough to understand his body language.  The lowering of his shoulders and his eye-lids signaled skepticism.

"It is a talent," he asserted of me, blandly.

We let the accusation hang in the air about a minute, neither of us speaking.  Insect-like donut-fairies buzz-buzzed in the woods.

Finally, he said, "I will first issue a threat, then offer you a gift, and then propose an alliance.  Listen carefully Chief Constable and former business mogul White Stockings.  If you ever use the means you used to control that imbecilic monster—"

"Chthony?"

"That imbecilic monster.  —on me, I will rip from your soul the one thing a unicorn, indeed any Equestrian pony, holds dear.  By that I don't mean your worthless life.  You will suffer.  Do not test me."

I thought, Don't test me.  Now that I could touch him with my horn by simply lowering my head in a bow, it might well have been the best strategy to use my talent at that very moment.  He wanted to return home; the suggestion would likely work instantly.  

Intuition goaded me to do nothing, though.  I just nodded.

"As for the gift to affirm my sincerity, I give you this."  He reached up with his third set of limbs and touched the ring upon my horn.  He inhaled deeply as he did so.  I sensed an aura condense in his breath like moisture on a frigid day.  The gold of the aura looked familiar.  Not only was it the same color as my magic, it was also the color of Celestia's.  Instead of sparkles, painful streaks of red herded the magic like coursing wolves. 

The ring went ping.  Like cooling metal.

My head cleared instantly, which felt strange because I had not felt fogged.  

He said, "The magic of the ring is one of Celestia's strongest and darkest magicks.  She used it to conquer her native land from and to defeat its rightful queen, and with it to counter the windigoes sent by the Queen's ravaged neighbors to quell the malignant pony threat.  Much research by my mentor and teacher taught me how to disable and disassemble the spell.  I have now temporarily disabled the spell; it feeds on your magic.  At the end of the alliance, I will destroy the diabolical artifact."

I'd pondered the ring many times in a mirror.  At night, the runes on it glowed red like coals in a distant fire—and made a passible albeit dim nightlight.  Despite the obvious magic, I'd thought it worked more by contact than by magic, like when you touched somepony's horn and broke their spell.  Tentatively, I cast Levitation.  

No headache.  I could sense the numbers implied by the spell equations spinning and saw the traces of digits, like flitting neon traces, streak across my field of vision.  I reached out and grabbed some dandelion flowers.

I ripped them free, then lifted them to my mouth.  The milky stems tasted real.  "Thank you," I said, chewing.

"Last, I propose that we work together to escape past Cerberus who guards the gates of Tartarus.  Your knowledge of the ponies that minister to the dog-monster's needs and your ability to sweet-talk the monster may well provide us a method for escape.  I can counter magic if it is strong, as I have with Celestia's ring.  When we escape, I'll remove all the Equestrian magic that makes the ring function."

I would have laughed in Lord Tirek's face if it weren't that I knew that Cerberus was involved with the message I would send back with Sunset Shimmer, and that I trusted that I would not have sent back a message that said Cerberus was going to Ponyville unless he would indeed be going to Ponyville.  I'd lived so long without my magic, I was essentially so dexterous with the frogs of my hooves and my lips that I might as well have been born an earth pony.  I had immense respect now for the pegasus and earth pony tribes, as well as for the sea ponies.  My magic was so wimpy as to be a joke.  I missed my magic, yes.  But not enough to sell my future to swap for the convenience of its return.

The centaur's plan was obvious.  There was every chance it was coincidence that I had thought the same things.  But I was willing to go with fate, destiny, or the hard logic of pretzeled time.

I said, "We have the same goals.  That being true, I warn you—  If you use whatever power you have on me, you will likewise regret the consequences.  Neither of us will know if the other is bluffing.  If you accept my caveat, I will accept yours.  Freedom is our destiny."

"It is."

"I agree then."

"As do I."  He reached out with the knuckles of a fisted claw.  

I recognized the hoof bump and reciprocated.  Still, without the clack of hooves, the gesture seemed hollow.

I wouldn't trust him any further than my magic could toss him.  (I'd never lifted more than a fat cat or an exceptionally big high school history book.  Yeah, I was the doofus who packed my saddlebags piece by piece.)

I jotted down what Lord Tirek had told me after ensuring that Celestia's scroll was not actually ruined, other than oily stains on the outer roll.  I'd long ago copied the content elsewhere.  When I gauged Lord Tirek's patience would soon run out, I started walking.  We continued along the west north road as it crested the pass between the mountain restraint zones that I knew housed about a hundred inmates.  Dual peak mountains bulked ominously on either side of our path.  The overcast became thicker and dark enough that you could see places where the restraint zones faintly lit the billowy clouds.  The sparse forest dominated at the crest, providing cover for any inmates who might have had the temerity to leave incarceration.  I felt watched.  

Lord Tirek did not patter.  Silently, he followed, his white hooves making the faintest clatter on the mostly stone surface.  I could hear his heavy breathing.  I assumed he was completely out of shape, made weak by a millennium of no exercise and hibernation; Tartarus cured all ailments due to age, so it wasn't that he looked older than most inmates.  For all I knew, centaurs all looked wrinkly like him.  His breathing and slowness grated on me.  When I stopped often because he kept falling behind, he did not complain. 

A mist rose as we descended, drifting in clumps from the woods and meadows that became more common.  The air cooled.  The mist was due to the influence of the gate and the air it sucked inside during Tartarus' day.

As the mist thinned near the bottom of the hills, I looked where sky dipped below the cloud cover like a fancy glass roof on the world.  The sky in Equestria is infinite.  Both the Equestrian sky and the Tartarussian sky shared the same cerulean blue, but what I looked at seemed more than a mile away and that couldn't be.  It was how my eyes focused.  I felt it.  Some force gave the normal Tartarussian sky presence and location, but no depth, like the canvas of a painting.  This vista had depth.  It was like being in a train car, looking outside.  And… in the beyond, I could see pegasus-created clouds!  I stopped.

Lord Tirek asked, "What is the matter?"

My heart beat faster as I looked up to the very edge of the sky.  "I was wondering whether what I saw was Celestia's sun in the sky.  I saw the stars this morning, so, thinking about it, probably yes."

"Be sentimental all you desire once we have returned to Equestria."

I huffed.  "The outpost is around this bend, down the switchback."

As if to emphasize my point, I heard a bark echo off the sky and the hills.

"You first, Lord Tirek.  Best that we imply you're my prisoner."

He stepped forward and we navigated the switchbacks cut through most gold stone and red rock.  Soon the outpost slipped into view, consisting of a large ten room adobe and stone building with a red tile roof attended by a dozen small thatched huts.  Beyond that stood an enormous silo capped with a rusted metal conical roof for storing kibble manufactured for Cerberus.

The gate came into view.

Except for today, you could look at the odd tortoise shell structure of the sky, especially at night, and realize you weren't in Equestria.  The blues, the dawn and dusk colors, and dark nights were convincing, but subtly wrong if you stared too long.  And besides that, the Tartarussian moon appeared featureless.

What I looked at went beyond that and felt viscerally wrong, like if I looked at it too long I might become sick to my stomach.  It manifested itself like a horizontal spiral of water slowly, ponderously, flushing down a sink.  It looked impossibly deep.  Dizzying perspective brought the churning tunnel between realities to a point in the distance.   At the upper edge of the circular apparition, a full third of its radius, it impinged upon the sky.  The rest of it grew out of the mountains, which simply ended at a flat wall.  The edge of apparition swirled inward, causing the sky to smear counter-clockwise into the mountain and, along the circumference of the mountain, into the sky.  It was like the earth and sky at this place had become nothing more than watercolors painted on a piece of paper, dripping and mixing as the painter spun the paper.  

Down the center ran a bridge.  Doric columns stuck out in an X-configuration to stabilize the improbable construction.  The ends of the columns, like the sky and the mountain, smeared counter-clockwise.  Indeed, the bridge itself formed a corkscrew ribbon.  I had no doubt standing on it always felt like down no matter how it spiraled relative to level in Tartarus or Equestria.

Somepony had to have built the portal.  Could this really be an example of Princess Celestia's magic, or had she found it already built?  In which case, who had built it?

It made me dizzy.  

I shifted my eyes and spotted a slightly contorted black dog.  He lay with his three heads on his paws, looking with beady black eyes unsettlingly in my direction.  His perked ears rose as I watched above the height on the main building, swiveling toward me.  He had the conformation of all Tartarus life, but his muscular bulk filled in the hole in his inner-tube like abdomen and made him more dog-like—that and his obviously sharp teeth sticking up and down out of his slobbery jowls.  Somepony had displayed a sense of humor by putting a brown collar with steel spikes around his neck.  As always, that dog-pen smell grew strong as I approached.  It made me feel sorry for the ponies tasked with cleaning up after the creature and pulling wagons when he wasn't walked.  

I swallowed hard, though I'd seen Cerberus almost a dozen times.  Three bites.  One in each mouth.  I'd be gone.

Now that ponies had noticed my approach and called Ice Arrow out of his Big House, I gave Lord Tirek a shove and got him trotting down the last incline into the outpost.  For a moment, the buildings and huts obscured the gate and all but the ears of the beast beyond, providing a relief as I calculated what I needed to say to send the staff running to Central.  

A gruff old pegasus with a pale bushy blue fur, a completely white Mohawk mane, and short tail glided toward me.  Ice Arrow looked ready to take on the wintery north and was probably overheated here in Tartarus most days, though it was cooler at the gate than elsewhere in Tartarus (but correspondingly more humid).  His steel-gray eyes complemented his cold demeanor and the icicle encased arrow of his cutie mark.  Like Lavender Lather, he served in Tartarus as Celestia's volunteer.  

"Inspector," I said as he landed with a gentle clop of his hooves.  Inspector might be his title, I had no idea what he inspected.  I held out a hoof in greeting.

He ignored it, eying Lord Tirek suspiciously.  

I said, "The restraint zones stopped working."

"In one instance."

"And the rainbow crows have taken a vacation."

He blinked.  He glanced at his staff of three mares and two stallions who had galloped over and arranged themselves around him in a rainbow from blue to red.   I mentally applauded him for not flaring his wings.  Ice cold nerves.  "I see.  Did the warden send you—"

I interrupted so I would have to lie.  "Yes, to ask ponies if they'd seen the stallion Wolf Run.  Have you?"

"No."

"I've encountered the timberwolf Princess Green Forest and the Chthon—"

Lord Tirek said, "He saved me from its rampage—"

Ice Arrow yelled, "Quiet, inmate!"

I inhaled sharply.  "Well, as you can see, Tartarus' safeguards aren't working."

"So you claim."  He pointed a wing at Cerberus, who still looked at me, then gestured at the twisted spiraling portal beyond.  His underwings were pure white.  "The gate looks unchanged."

"I am Lavender Lather's chief deputy."

He raised an icy white eyebrow.  "And?"

"The rainbow crows—"

"I won't risk my staff to test your preposterous theory."

Okay.  

I looked pointedly at the surrounding rooftops, mountain ledges, and the pine covered slopes to the north.  You learned to ignore the crows, even their occasional caws, but there was always one if you looked.

There were none.  Everypony followed my gaze. 

Might as well go for broke.  I spoke beyond him at the others. "Everypony is clearly in danger.  Seems to me that everypony should gather in Central City where we can mount a mutual defense."

His staff grumbled as he narrowed his eyes, not missing any nuance in my ploy.  One brave stallion, a blue one with a rust-red spiked mane asked, "Are they all free from restraint?"

In an odd synchrony, both Ice Arrow and Lord Tirek shouted, "Enough!"

Ice Arrow reared in anger.  "I have the magic to send you to a restraint zone.  Do not cross me!"  With his right wing, he flipped a  steel medallion hidden in his chest fur, revealing a glowing red sigil.  I knew that Lavender Lather possessed the same amulet, but kept it locked in her office desk in the top right drawer.

Lord Tirek hissed, "Powerful magic..."

"Your ponies aren't safe," I said loudly to drown out my centaur companion, when it occurred to me I could demonstrate that the rainbow crows weren't on patrol.

I reached for a stone with my magic, to the simultaneous gasp of the staff.  That same instant, Lord Tirek jumped toward Ice Arrow, his mouth gaped open, inhaling deeply.

Ice Arrow didn't hesitate.  He yelled the name of the embedded spell as he swatted the amulet: "Incarceratite Maximumus two inmates!"

The world went black and absolutely cold.  Oh, yes, and there was no air and I'd just exhaled.  My lungs struggled painfully.  My heart raced.   I panicked and flailed.  

After less than five seconds, reality returned.  I landed with a whump on the glassy floor of a restriction zone, gasping for air, frost steaming off my legs and muzzle as I lay shaking from an adrenaline rush.  A loud crack echoed through the hills.  The frost smelled like winter.  

Lord Tirek landed on his side, perhaps unbalanced by his ungainly body form, striking his horned head against the glass, jerking then still, stunned but also gasping.  Frost painted his cassock white and thick ribbons of steam rose from the clothing. 

I scrambled up and out of the glass area of the restriction zone, well cognizant as I did that I might find a barrier that had bloodied the noses of various vicious inmates I'd visited that had more hate than sense when they saw a pony approach.

I breezed right through, of course.  

Tartarus was broken.

I looked around and up.  I recognized the dense clouds above, and the angle of the sun through a few distant cloud breaks, and the twin sides of the mountain that made it seem like it had twin horns or perked ears.  I walked to the edge of the flattened mountain top to the steps downward, then went left, trying to see due south.  Straining over the drop, I could see the southern sky and barely the drippy watercolor paint influence on the blue where the Cerberus Gate warped the sky into the silver mountain below.

I looked at Lord Tirek who shook himself and used his clawed forelegs to help himself upright.  I shouted, "What were you doing to Ice Arrow?"  

My voice echoed back accusingly. 

He dusted himself with his claws.

Angry, I pushed.  "Tell me.  Tell me!"

He paused.  I could see his left eyebrow raise.  "Disable his magic," he said in measured words.  He did not like to take commands from ponies.  I knew this.  It colored his tone.

"No."  I said.  "No, you weren't.  You did this inhaling thing."  I made a long gasping sound.  Like he had done with the ring on my horn.

He blinked and slowly approached me.  He stopped when he successfully crossed the glass boundary, possibly fearing my talent.  He tapped the silver stone with his white cloven fore-hoof to assure himself, then said, "I tried to remove his magic."

I felt myself moving my eyes right and left as I thought intensely about that, and it made sense in the context of what he did to the ring (which did feel like it was fighting my magic again, slightly) and what little I had learned about him for Denizens.  If he could remove magic from powerful objects, he'd be able to break wards and magical bonds.  Celestia could have sent him to Tartarus for breaking into places and stealing things, or destroying magical structures.

"Powerful things?" I asserted.

"Yes.  I can only sense powerful things."  In that he held on to the S-sound at the end of his sentence, he emphasized things.  I suspected he'd left out something.  Probably "for now."  No doubt, a millennium of hibernation would have left anypony weakened.  No doubt he would be scary once he regained his full strength.

I did not trust him any further than I could throw him, and you know now how far that is.

I said, "Listen carefully.  If you try that stunt again I will—"

"What?"  He laughed.  "What, White Stockings?"

I felt my face heat up.  No need to remind him.  I knew one thing though.  Until I gave Sunset Shimmer the message, nopony would stand in my way.  Invincible.  Invulnerable.  "You know who I am, right?"

"Chief deputy to the warden."  He crossed his forelimbs over his upper chest.  I paused for an instant, wondering if he had two sets of lungs and two hearts.  Frankly, I though he had no heart, but that was figuratively.  I needed to spend a coin to bind him to my purpose.

"I'm the pony who knows how to get Cerberus to abandon the gate.  I can see how your talent might help me with Ice Arrow, but I won't fail without you.  Don't be stupid again."

He sputtered, then pursed his lips.  Inhaling deeply, he said, "You need me to remove the ring on your horn.  You can feel it recovering, can you not?"

"Can you do anything about a unicorn?"

He said nothing.

"Fine."  I walked to the stairs and stepped on the first narrow one headed down.  "Go it alone—"

"Only if they are powerful." 

Ka-ching.  I looked back.  "If we are fighting, or I direct you, feel free to use your talent.  Otherwise—"

"Not?"

"That's the general idea.  And keep your mouth shut, in all senses of the phrase.  We are about two miles northeast of the gate as the crow flies."

I climbed down the meandering stone stair.  A few moments later I heard his hooves clattering behind me.