Trixie fell face forward onto an icy surface, bringing her descent to a jarring halt. The fiery pain that she felt across every inch of her body was met by the freezing slab of stone that she had landed on, but did not provide any relief. Trixie lay unmoving, eyes blazing with agony, her mouth open and trying to regain the breath she had lost. Her body heaved as she inhaled the moist air. It rushed back out in a twisted wheeze across the floor, stirring up dust and dirt into her eyes. The unicorn felt as though the fall had shattered every bone in her body, torn every ligament, wrenched every limb from its socket. Everything felt broken.
Pain turned into panic as she felt something brush against her side. Something small, something covered in oily fur and droplets of moisture. Trixie spat out a cry of disgust as the something slithered along her body towards her head, feeling sharp claws needle into her flesh as it scurried over her foreleg. Terrified, the magician called upon her magic to illuminate her horn. Immediately she found herself looking into the bristly face of a rat, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air. The beady black eyes shone like oily marbles in the pale light of her horn. Its orange incisors were exposed in an almost contemptible sneer.
Trixie grimaced miserably, feebly trying to wave a hoof to ward it off. But the little beast was unafraid as her foreleg scraped against the silt-covered stone. The unicorn wanted to smack it right in its hideous face, but couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Thus it remained before her, persistent as ever. Trixie could now see the instinct that lay behind its seemingly thoughtless eyes. It was waiting for her to die, just as a vulture would. A horrific image of herself appeared in Trixie’s pain-ridden mind. She saw a pony’s corpse, palled and damp, staring ahead with lifeless sockets as dozens of rats systematically gnawed their way into its putrefying flesh.
That thought alone was enough to drive the unicorn to scramble upwards. Pain shot through various points of her body as she climbed to her hooves, but she couldn’t tell exactly where. It all seemed to be a jumbled mess now. The physical pain of her injuries, the emotional and psychological pain of the whole experience. They were all part of the dagger being driven again and again in to her heart. The ghost was trying to break her, and it wasn’t going to stop.
The unicorn watched as the rat turned and fled into the darkness ahead, letting out a faint squeak that became muffled as it disappeared into a wall. Trixie tilted unsteadily, her legs feeling limp and useless. She looked around at her surroundings, and found herself standing in a dark corridor made of cold, unfeeling stone held together by damp mortar. Bits of the sealant had fallen along the corners where the wall met the floor, forming two trails of powdery dust that was slowly integrating with the soil that arose from the cracks in stone. Trixie could hear the rats traveling behind the walls in the utter silence. She heard them hissing and squeaking, disturbed by her presence.
The magician started limping down the hall, hearing the vermin draw deeper into the foundation as she passed by. Her hoof beats echoed in the clammy darkness, supplementing the dull roar of blood as it rushed in her ears. Trixie tried not to think about what might lay down in the tomb-like squalor of the manor, but it was inevitable. Thoughts of secret crypts and grisly torture chambers sprouted from the seeds of fear that had been sown in her imagination.
Eventually she came to a heavy oak door on her right. There was a handle in the form of a rusted ring folded against the thick planks, buried in a gauze-like layer of cobwebs. Trixie quietly grasped the handle with her magic. She winced as a big, black spider scurried from the webs as the ring rose up. Its legs beat silently against the door as it fled into a crack in the wood. Trixie ignored it and pulled the door open. The hinges groaned loudly under the weight of the door, moving for the first time in ages. The light from Trixie’s horn reflected off of a damp, cobblestone floor as she poked her head inside, the rocks shining a variety of browns and grays. They helped her illuminate the room in a faint magenta glow. The mare slowly stepped into the room, stumbling as floor dropped unexpectedly.
Warped shelves and cracked barrels cast shadows against the ceiling and walls. There were racks on the shelves holding dark wine bottles, their green-black surfaces filmed and paled by dust. Yellowed, crinkled labels hung half-peeled from them, the ink blurred and no longer readable. Some still held a decayed liquid held in by a cork sealed with moldered wax, but most were dry and filled with webs and debris. As Trixie journeyed into the room, she saw piles of broken glass near the shelves, concentrated around dark patches where the wine had stained the floor.
The magician tenderly stepped around the sharp, knife-like shards as she spotted a door on the other side of the room. She twitched as she was hit with the strong, tart scent of ruined wine, and did her best to get through it. She brushed against an ancient barrel as she painfully stretched a leg over a broken crock, glancing down at its jagged edges fearfully. Once on the other side, she turned to face the door, which looked nearly identical to the one she’d entered the wine cellar through. She breathed a sigh of relief as she noticed the lack of cobwebs surrounding the handle. The unicorn opened the door, which opened with a similar moan as the first one had.
The next room was larger than the last, but not by much. Their was a faint smell of rot in the air, as if something had decayed long ago and only traces remained. Trixie’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she quickly saw the source. The walls were lined with shelves bearing glass jars made opaque by brown filth dried on the inside. Trixie ventured forth into the room, carefully keeping an eye on the floor for glass, but at the same time gazing at the jars. The light showed that the lids had rusted out, allowing bacteria to fester inside and eat away the contents. The bottoms of the jars now only held indistinguishable remains mixed with rust and the droppings of scavenging mice.
There was an opening in wall at the end of the hall-like room, which at first Trixie thought was a cabinet with the door missing. It was only when she trotted up to it that she saw that it wasn’t. It was deeper in the wall, its square edges lined with rusted sheet metal. There was a pulley built into the wooden bottom, with a tattered rope threaded through it. It suddenly dawned on Trixie what it was. Very cautiously she peeked into the cabinet, twisting her head to look upwards. The rope went up a long shaft for a great distance before into darkness. She quickly drew back and looked at it the bottom. It was a dumbwaiter. The magician looked back at the rancid jars and wondered if it had once been used to carry food up to a kitchen.
Her thoughts were broken by a loud slam, followed by a series of rattles and ear-splitting crashes that made her grit her teeth. Trixie turned around to see that the door had slammed shut. The repercussion had made a great many of the countless jars fall from their shelves and smash into bits against the stone floor. The wickedly sharp shards reflected Trixie’s light back at her, making the floor look as though it was covered in stained crystals.
Trixie looked around the room, a dark realization appearing in her eyes. There were no other doors. The ghost had sealed off her only exit, completely trapping her in the cellar. The mare’s head jerked from side to side as she looked about the walls for a door that wasn’t there, her heart racing. There was nothing behind the shelves. Only stone and mortar. No wood, no metal, no opening of any kind. She only noticed she was hyperventilating when she began to cough. Her tired lungs contracted violently inside of her bruised ribcage, unable to process the heavy amounts of mold and dust that hung in the damp air.
Overcome with panic, the mare rushed forward to the door, kicking out the glass beneath her as she ran. Once or twice she felt it nick at her hooves, but the sensation was lost in her fear. Trixie reared up on her hind-legs as she reached the door, slamming her hooves against it. Dirt and mortar rained down on her head as the pounded on the planks, her eyes watering from dust and despair. Her tired, injured muscles didn’t even budge it. The doorway may as well have been sealed up with bricks.
At last the unicorn realized the futility and turned away, letting her body fall against the floor in a defeated heap. Trixie glanced over at the broken glass. There was no doubt it was sharp enough to slit an artery and end her life. But even with no hope left, she bitterly realized she was too much of a coward to kill herself. Fear of death would make her fight to her last, painful breath, and even with its promise of ending the agony she would be terrified of its embrace. What now awaited her was an end so cruel and humiliating that she wondered if the ghost had planned it out. She would starve to death in a cellar. She would die emaciated, ugly, and alone.
As she looked out over what was to become her tomb, Trixie saw something that appealed to her instinct to survive. The dumbwaiter, a little black hole in the wall. The immense misery that was crushing her prevented her from smiling, but there was a spark of joy in her heart. The spark was enough to draw her from the ground and stare at the dumbwaiter. It was ancient. The pulley was rusted and stiff, and the rope had been gnawed on by rats. There was little chance Trixie’s idea would work.
But it was all she had.