Tartarus Infernum

by Sunderbraze


Chapter 1 - Sundering


This story has a background music system intended to enhance the reading experience. Simply open these links in a background tab (middle mouse click):

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Each time you see one of these prompts, close the music that is currently playing, and replace it with the new one. This can provide a more immersive reading experience.

Special thanks to Mindblower for the music system, and for inspiring me to write again!


The following events take place after the end of Season 2, before the start of Season 3.


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Princess Celestia could not think of the proper words to describe her frustration. Flying high above the rolling plains of the Dream Valley, hundreds of miles east of her tempting bed in Canterlot, Equestria’s ruler was tirelessly searching the land below.

Following the traditional phases of the month, her sister, Princess Luna, had darkened the moon, leaving only starlight to dot the midnight skies. This only hindered Celestia’s search.

“Where did you run off to this time?” Celestia thought, scanning the endless fields of grass. She was now many miles southwest of the closest city, Fillydelphia; the bustling metropolis left only a faint glow on the horizon behind her. She had no need to search cities—if what she was looking for was there, she would have been informed by droves of panicked citizens.

Almost twelve hours ago, during an uneventful luncheon in Canterlot, Celestia had failed to make her weekly telepathic contact with Cerberus, the massive three-headed dog tasked with guarding the Gates of Tartarus.

“If he’s just wandered off, why have no sightings been reported?”

Celestia’s thoughts had become more and more worrisome. The last time Cerberus had failed to make contact, he had been found hundreds of miles away, roaming around the small town of Ponyville. A faithful student of Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, had recognized him and promptly returned him to his place of guardianship in front of the Gates.

This time, despite hundreds of lost dog fliers and the National Guard being placed on alert, Equestria has seen neither hide nor hair of the three-headed canine. Hoping to avoid unnecessary panic, Celestia had decided to take matters into her own hooves.

At sunset, Celestia had left guardianship of Canterlot to Princess Luna, quietly departing to search for Cerberus. Being such a large animal, he would be easy to spot in the Dream Valley, which was a long, flat expanse of grasslands between the Gates of Tartarus and Fillydelphia.

“No disturbances of the forests,” the worried princess considered, scanning the distant tree line for signs of wildlife fleeing an oversized three-headed dog. “And not a single paw print anywhere in the valley… it’s like he just vanished!”

Becoming increasingly concerned, Celestia decided to investigate the unguarded Gates of Tartarus. She tilted her wings to the left, banking towards the southwest and flying in that direction for an hour.

Surrounded by dense forests on every side, three mountains stretched into the southern horizon, leaving a small valley in the middle of them. As she neared the Tarus Mountains, details of the valley between them started to take shape. A great wall was first to come into view—it was hundreds of feet tall, and spanned many miles between two of the mountains. It was made of beige stone, and was lined by hundreds of white columns. Carved into the top of each column was a relief sculpture of a bull’s face.

“There it is… Tartarus,” Celestia thought. She gradually lowered her altitude and came to a landing roughly thirty miles away from the great walls, pausing to observe them for a moment. At the very center of the structure, there was a long section without columns.

That section was the Gates themselves. It was a simple mechanism on a massive scale: a cylindrical stone hinge in the center of the section of wall allowed for it to rotate open when presented with a powerful magical force, but it had not been opened this way for many thousands of years.

The mountain prison of Tartarus—known vaguely to historians of Equestria as the Gates of Tartarus—housed many ancient evils that once threatened the kingdom’s harmony.

Celestia sat down in frustration, pondering the situation. Cerberus had faithfully guarded the gates for nearly two thousand years, but it was a common misconception that he was there to keep the imprisoned from escaping. His purpose was the exact opposite: to scare away any curious beings that dared to approach the gates.

“Nothing can frighten him away," Celestia thought, taking a deep breath. "But he is easily distracted..." Her sparkling mane flowed in the warm summer nighttime air, free of the usual restrictions of her crown. In favor of flying faster, she had abandoned her royal adornments back in Canterlot.

Celestia exhaled heavily. Finding a new guardian would be difficult. Cerberus had been a nearly perfect candidate—he was immortal, kind to the few he knew, suspicious of anyone he didn’t recognize, and able to respond with a telepathic woof when Celestia would check in with him. His only downfall was his distractibility. He would chase a ball halfway across Equestria if someone had known how playful he was at heart.

Celestia had fallen so deep in thought that she almost didn’t notice a sudden streak of green light in the sky behind her.

Something was approaching!

She jerked her head upwards, nervously tracking the green projectile with her eyes. Her heart began to pound with anticipation—it was moving too fast to be anything but a ball of magical energy, and it was sailing over her head towards the walls.

Celestia anxiously spread her wings, and her horn began to glow with a magical golden aura. She was preparing a counterspell in an attempt to intercept the attack. Before she could fire it, the green projectile dramatically increased in speed, arcing downwards and guiding itself directly into the stone hinge of the Gates of Tartarus.

“NO!” Celestia screamed, quickly taking flight towards the gates. The projectile disappeared into the hinge, seeming to accomplish nothing. She paused in midair, anxiously assessing what just happened.

“…It’s too coincidental,” Celestia thought, considering the possibility that she was worrying over nothing. Suddenly, chills began to run up her spine, and a peculiar tingling sensation vibrated through her horn.

A low sucking sound became audible, as though air was rapidly being pulled into a small space. There was no wind, though—only the strange tingling sensation in her horn. She realized after a few moments what was happening.

“This… this isn’t possible…”

Magical energies for miles in every direction were being sucked into a single spot. Celestia’s eyes widened as she traced its source—a powerful buildup of energy was condensing itself, right in the center of the hinge!

Celestia frantically conjured a golden sphere of protective magic around herself as the sucking sound amplified greatly. The stone hinge was now glowing pale green, and the ground below was starting to rumble in reaction to the vibrating hinge.

Suddenly, the sucking stopped. For a few seconds, an eerie silence fell over the Dream Valley.

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In a flash of emerald light brighter than the sun, the Gates exploded violently. The resulting shockwave struck Celestia head-on and knocked her into the air, shattering her golden shield. Debris of all shapes and sizes hailed her body as she struggled to flap her wings enough to stabilize herself.

Squinting furiously, the princess resisted the assailing dust storm long enough to notice that the entirety of the Gates had been blasted into pieces, some of the larger ones still raining from above.

"Who? Why? How?!" Celestia’s mind raged with unanswered questions as she tried to avoid the flying chunks of stone. In a desperate bid for her life, she called upon her immense power, trying to create another barrier. Successfully conjuring another shield of golden energy around herself, she hovered in place against the overwhelming storm of debris for a few moments.

Suddenly, a large section of marble bearing a cracked bull relief slammed into her shield from above, causing it to shatter into fragments of energy. It hit the princess in the side of her face, sending a flurry of stars dancing across her vision. Incapable of keeping herself in flight, she was swept away with the dust storm, falling to the ground and striking the back of her head.

Despite Celestia's attempts to hold on, consciousness slipped away from her mighty grasp.