//------------------------------// // Sounds in the Dark // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// Screaming. Struggling. Thrashing around. Carried and forced across the black stone floor. Dragged in. Angrily. Screaming. Phantoms. White phantoms. Angry and victorious. One of them large and fearsome, glowing red eyes, cavernous red mouth. Crawling and swarming over each other. Another phantom, beaten down, weak and angry. Chained. Its colors bright blue, but getting weaker. Its colors that of a rainbow, but getting weaker. Dragged by the white phantoms towards the darkness. Dragged across the black stone floor to the gaping maw of darkness. Stairs? Down? The phantoms were all traveling down and down together. Screams of rage erupting all over. Shouts. Promises. Laughter. Mocking, sadistic, cruel, echoing everywhere. Watched. A lone ghostly pony, watching from a distance. What? What? What was going on? Something strange. Something wrong. The phantoms didn’t see her, the phantom with glowing red eyes… familiar. The blue and rainbow phantom… what was it? Why was this happening? Scary. The ghostly pony wanted to run forward and ask what was going on. Wanted to stop the white phantoms. The maw of darkness was about to gobble all of them up. Vanished, taken away, gone forever. She needed to know. She needed to see what was happening. Her hoof stepped forward. A pinprick—drawing her hoof back. The floor had become needles. Poking. Stabbing. Needles that made her head spin. The ceiling and walls came down at her. Darkness closed in. She screamed. Wish woke up in a cold sweat, her lip quivering and her body shaking under the covers of her bed. That nightmare was so much different than the others she had had. She was more lucid during it, and she remembered it better after just waking up now. It was almost like it wasn’t really a nightmare at all but a—memory? Is that why those stairs leading deeper below the castle looked familiar to her? Because she had seen them at some point but forgotten? But how? When? And just what was even happening to begin with? “My head hurts...” Wish said as she sat up in bed and held her head. She sat like that for a while, breathing deeply and waiting for the throbbing pain to go away. It was pitch black all around her, far darker than it normally was when she woke up. The nightmare must’ve caused her to wake up in the middle of the night. A brief bolt of lightning caused some light to come in through the window, briefly silhouetting Wish against the drawn curtains of her bed. She wasn’t going back to sleep. That much was certain. And she didn’t want to just lie around in her bed until morning either. Dotty might not like knowing Wish was up and about and doing all sorts of things in her chambers without her knowledge, but Wish didn’t care. She wiggled out of the covers and pulled open the curtains before hopping to the floor. Not the proper way to get out of bed, but that just made her happy. It was so dark though that she literally couldn’t see anything. Only her memories of where everything was in the room could help her right now. Thunder also rumbled outside her window, but no lightning yet to help her. She could potentially try to light one of the candles in the room but decided against that for now. Wish didn’t even know what she was doing. She just didn’t want to sleep. Her eyes looked up to where the clock on the wall was, wondering what time it would tell her if she could see its face. Midnight? Past midnight? It seemed like it would still be pure darkness for hours more at least. “Stupid dark sky,” Wish mumbled. She didn’t want to just stay in this room for much longer either. It was boring. Even if she wasn’t going to be able to do anything because of the dark she at least wanted to be able to move around more. Wish walked over to the door leading to the boudoir and opened it up, stepping out into the larger room. Still pitch black but at least she could pace around in a circle if she really wanted to now. And she also got an idea. An idea that maybe, just maybe, Dotty wasn’t doing something that Sweet Candy did. Wish walked carefully through the boudoir, remembering to her best where everything was, as she made her way to the front door. She only accidentally bumped into a stool once. When she made it to the closed doors she found her heart was beating faster than normal. “Please, oh please, oh please.” Wish said as she reached her hoof up to the crystal knob. She grasped it and tried to open the door up. But unfortunately it only barely wiggled and didn’t turn at all. Locked—just as always. “Darn it,” Wish groaned and sat down in front of the floor, an annoyed pout on her face. What was she even hoping to do anyways if it was unlocked? There were probably guards out there. She didn’t know where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do. It was all pointless. Did she just want to feel like she wasn’t trapped in here? Was there something she wanted to see and find? It felt like there was something in the back of her mind that she was trying to remember. Something that might have had to do with that nightmare. That nightmare… Wish was beginning to feel like it was more important than she realized. In fact, she couldn’t remember how long she’d been having these nightmares. What triggered them in the first place? Those stairs she saw yesterday, those stairs she saw in her dream, the phantoms all going down them. There was something else about all of this that was gnawing at her mind—she knew she had the answer but for some reason she just couldn’t pull it up from her mind. AHHHHHHHHHHH! The scream went through her head again and Wish grasped her temples in pain. Where was it coming from? How could she hear it? What was it trying to tell her? Wish blinked as the deafening scream subsided and she found herself staring at the dark floor. Her heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. It was always the only sound in the room. But she now knew where that screaming was coming from as she stared at the floor. Below. Down there, in a place she didn’t know existed. No, that was wrong. It was a place she had forgotten about. “I remember...” Wish whispered as she sat up and rested against the door. It was three years ago. On a trip to the capitol with her father and mother, the same trip where she had seen Hoofica Castle for the first (and only until they moved in a few months back) time. It didn’t have anything to do with business, or studying, or nothing. They had just made the trip for fun. A vacation to get out and see a different part of the country from the forests and farms that made up most of the area they lived. Wish had never seen such a city, so many buildings and so many ponies in one place. It was just crazy to her. Hoofica Castle towered over everything else—in an almost frightening way. Even though she knew the King and Queen were good ponies, and Hoofica had been peaceful and prosperous for decades, it was still an intimidating and large structure. She and her parents were staying in a cheap inn in the middle of the capitol city. It was a busy part of the city, very crowded, very loud. Again totally different from the much more quiet countryside she came from. From where their room was, Wish could look out the window and see the towers of the castle rising into the sky. The lowest two however weren’t visible from their location, other buildings in the city cutting off the view a little bit. Her father was standing beside her and pointed at the tallest tower. “Up at the top of that tower is an observatory. Astronomers study and map the stars up there.” “It’s so big...” Wish said as she looked at the towers. Dreamweaver chuckled. “Yes, Hoofica Castle is quite large. A far cry from anything you’d see back home. From the tips of its towers all down to the dungeon in the basement.” Wish blinked at the unfamiliar word and looked up at her father in confusion. “Dungeon? What’s a dungeon?” “Err...” Her father grimaced and seemed a bit uncertain if he should answer that question or not. “Well, Wish, you see...” He sighed and scratched his head. “You know how we have the Hoofica Guard? The ponies who live throughout the country and stop crimes from happening, and imprison bad ponies in the local jails?” “Uh huh,” Wish nodded. “Well a dungeon is… somewhat like a jail. It’s an older term for it, basically. And you only find a dungeon in castles like Hoofica Castle or some of the larger manses in the country. It was where bad ponies or enemies of the royal family were kept in the old days.” “It sounds scary,” Wish frowned and looked down sadly. “I feel bad for those ponies that had to be in there...” “It’s all in the past now though,” Dreamweaver smiled and ruffled her mane. “Those dungeons haven’t been used in ages. Things are far more peaceful in Hoofica than in the old days, we don’t even really have an army anymore after all, there simply isn’t any use for them. If you took a tour of the castle you’re even allowed to go see the dungeons yourself.” “Really?” He chuckled. “Yes, my darling, really. Nothing to worry about anymore. Hoofica Castle is just a place for the royal family to live in. I can understand why you’d be a little apprehensive about it after seeing it for the first time but just think about it like a big house. Just a big house that has a large basement underneath it. The first floor of the basement is all for storage, and then right below that is the old dungeon.” Wish went back to looking out the window and staring up at the tall towers. “Okay...” “One of these days perhaps I can take you to the castle and show you everything myself. I think you’d have a lot of fun on a tour of it,” Dreamweaver smiled. That at least made Wish a bit happier. “The dungeon,” Wish softly said to herself as she sat by the locked door to her chambers. “I forgot about it. That’s what must be down those stairs… that’s where the phantoms in my dreams were going. That’s w-where the screams I’ve been hearing are coming from.” Wish sat in total darkness and wrapped her hooves around her body. The cause of her nightmares had a partial answer now. But still no way for her to stop them. Having such a fun day with her father, she hoped that she wouldn’t have any nightmares for at least one night. Unfortunately she just had to see those stairs which reminded her of everything. She still didn’t fully know what those nightmares and memories meant and when she would’ve seen the stairs leading down to the dungeon in the first place. Somehow it was like she had forgotten a bunch of things but she had no idea how or why. Amnesia? She was pretty sure she had read about that or heard about it before. Everything was just wrong. Everything was so scary and so confusing. She thought all she needed was knowing that her father was here and that he loved her. Knowing that he would be there for her, that they would do things together, that she could see his face every few days. She thought his warmth and love would get her through this strange life and even banish those nightmares. But now she knew they would keep plaguing her until she had an answer for them. So there was only one thing she could do. Wish knew how to find that answer, and discover the source of her nightmares and problems. She had to get down to that dungeon. The thought scared her—terrified her even. So many things about Hoofica Castle made her uncomfortable, from the way ponies acted to the Inquisitors, it worried her. And the dungeon sounded scary enough on its own. Perhaps worst of all was the fact her father wouldn’t want her to do anything like this. There was the dark thought that she didn’t want to think about when it came to how much he knew about what was going on here and how involved he was. But she just felt like she’d never be at peace if she didn’t do this. Of course the big problem was she had absolutely no idea how to accomplish any of this. “I can’t even get out of this dumb room...” Wish lamented. She clicked her tongue and stood up, looking at where the door was and imagining right beyond it. There would be guards right out by the hallways leading to the second and fourth towers. Getting out of here would just end in her being thrown back in. Except… Wish was beginning to think that maybe those guards weren’t actually there anymore. She obviously couldn’t prove it yet, but she was pretty certain they weren’t here to protect her or anything or stop any ponies from getting in. They were there to watch her and make sure she didn’t go anywhere she wasn’t supposed to. That’s really what it seemed like to her after she had walked through the castle with her father yesterday. And now that she was “asleep” and locked away—why would they bother with keeping up their posts? But she couldn’t know that for sure until she got this door opened up. Wish started to walk around in small circles, thinking about what she could do to get out of here and go explore the castle. It probably couldn’t be tonight even if she came up with something, she still didn’t know what the hour was or when Dotty would first get here. She hated having to put things off and go through more nights of nightmares but it was becoming apparent that she’d have to wait at least one more day before she was ready to get out of her chambers. “How do you open a locked door from the inside anyways?” Wish asked nopony in particular. “Can’t even see the stupid thing.” Well that might be the first thing to figure out: getting some light. If she could keep a candle and some matches hidden away she could take them out tomorrow night after Dotty leaves. But the only opportunity she’d even have to do something like that would be really early in the morning before Dotty arrives. The moment Dotty came into her bedchambers, Wish was on constant watch in one way or the other until Dotty put her to bed. “Okay,” Wish furrowed her brow and started walking back to her bedchamber. “Once it gets a little brighter, I can look around for stuff and prepare for tonight.” She nodded to herself. “Yeah, I’m doing this.” Wish wandered through the pitch black chambers, feeling around until she made it to her bedroom and closing the door back up. She didn’t need Dotty knowing she had been wandering around in the middle of the night. And unfortunately she still had to sit in total darkness for a while longer. Bolts of lightning from outside were the only sort of reprieve and the flashes of light they offered simply didn’t last long enough. It was funny. Being in a dark room like this, in this castle, should’ve been a scary enough thing on its own. And yet Wish would take it every single time over going through another nightmare. She leaned against the side of her large four-poster bed and fought against the exhaustion now running through her body. Her eyes wanted to close shut but Wish was worried if she let herself rest too long she’d fall asleep. The night slowly passed along after that, glacially until the darkness ever so lightened up just a bit. It never got “bright” in here but it at least changed to a level where she could start to see things as her eyes adjusted. Like the clock on the wall saying it was four in the morning. So she could look now. Look for something, anything, that could help her get through that door tonight. Candles, paintings, statues, potted plants, all of these things and more were scattered about her room and the boudoir. None of them seemed useful right now. She had to look for something else, maybe inside her cabinets and dressers. Even though most of them had been completely emptied when she moved in. The only other stuff she could really think about being here were her toys and some of the painting supplies Dotty brought and left. “How’s paint supposed to get through a locked door?” Wish snorted. She began pacing around in annoyance once more. She doubted anypony really went through here to make it impossible for her to get out, they probably just thought a locked door and her father’s word would be all that’s needed. Wish just needed to think, or improvise, find a tool or something that could be used as a tool. Her impatient hooves stopped in front of the large dresser in the bedchamber. Formerly used to hold several elegant dresses for guests, those were removed when Wish moved in since none of them would fit her. But now she wondered if… Wish pulled open the doors to the large dresser and looked inside. A clever grin spread across her face. “Got it.” “Did you have fun today, Wish?” Dotty asked her as she pulled up the covers on the bed and started to tuck Wish in. “You bet!” Wish smiled up at her. “Class was a ton of fun, and I really liked painting with you.” “I was surprised that you asked to do a still life with me,” Dotty beamed. “You did a very good job painting the glasses and the fruits in three dimensions. With some practice you’ll get even better.” Wish giggled. “Well, it wasn’t close to as good as yours.” “I just have a few more years of experience. You’ll get there too,” Dotty blushed and happily smiled down at Wish. “Besides, some artists can be very good at drawing one thing but not so good at something else. You know how much I like landscapes, and architecture, and still life, but I’m not very good at painting ponies or capturing things like movement in my paintings. You might be better at that than me, we’ve got plenty of time to practice your art more and figure things out.” The honest and kind words of Dotty genuinely warmed Wish up. “Thank you, Dotty.” Dotty winked at her. “We’ll paint more tomorrow. Whatever you want. Sleep well now, okay?” “I will,” Wish said. Dotty giggled once more before pulling close the curtains on the bed. She left Wish’s bedside and exited the room, closing the door behind her. Wish immediately sat up straight and listened intently, waiting and waiting until she heard the tell-tale click of the door being locked, signifying Dotty would be gone for good for the night. Click And there it was. Wish threw off the covers and let out a sigh of relief. She thought she had done a pretty good job acting like normal and being extra kind to Dotty. Her maid didn’t suspect a thing. Wish then pulled open the curtain on her bed again and jumped down to the carpeted floor, wasting absolutely no time in moving over towards her dresser. It was going to be pitch black soon so she needed something to help her see for the rest of the night. She opened up the bottom drawer and pulled out a candlestick and match that she had stashed there earlier after taking it from a cabinet in the boudoir. With a single strike she lit the match and then the candle, blowing the match out and throwing the remains in one of the potted plants by the dresser. Now came the wardrobe. Carefully placing the candle on the dresser for the moment to give herself a little light, Wish walked over to the wardrobe and opened it up. At the top of it, along the rack, were half a dozen spare wire clothes hangers that she had seen much earlier today. All of the dresses had been taken away, but not all of the hangers. Wish had to use the step-stairs to reach them but she was able to pull one down and get to work. She had gotten the idea from one of the stories she read as a kid, “Rosy’s Riveting Rescue”. It was a popular children’s book about a young earth pony filly named Rosy whose friends were kidnapped and who went off to save them. At one point in the story, Rosy got locked in a basement but managed to escape by picking the lock with a coat hanger that she bent into a wire. And that’s exactly what Wish was going to do. She smirked as she carried the hanger and the candle out into the boudoir and over to the front door. There was a small coffee table right by the door that she put the candlestick on so she could see the doorknob with the keyhole in it perfectly well. She didn’t have any real idea on how to pick a lock, but at least she could try. There was plenty of time to spare anyways, she could fiddle with that keyhole for hours. First off though, she needed to actually bend and straighten out a good portion of the hanger. Which was proving more difficult than she anticipated. “Grr!” Wish growled in frustration as she struggled to bend it the right way with her tiny hooves. She just didn’t have a whole lot of strength in her body, earth pony or not. “Really wish I could’ve been born a unicorn like my mom and dad right now...” Her parents never said anything about her being an earth pony, but it was still something that always hanged at the back of her mind. She knew her father would always be supportive but she couldn’t help but wonder if he wanted—or at the least expected—to have a unicorn for a daughter. And as Wish bit her lip in consternation, the ability to use magic to just bend the darn thing was a very alluring thought. She was lucky that she did in fact have hours to waste. “Ugh!” Wish angrily threw the hanger to the floor, the hook only slightly bent a little bit. She probably didn’t need the whole thing to be straight, only a little bit, and with maybe a curve at the end to reach into things? How did a door lock work anyways? Wish flatly stared down at the hanger. “I don’t know if I planned this out well enough...” The candlelight flickered beside her, the fact that it had barely melted at all told her time was still on her side. Wish brought her hooves up to her head and started to rub her temples. “Okay, okay, okay. I can still do this.” She looked around the room as much as she could with the low light and her eyes zeroed in on one of the cabinets nearby that had the bust of some old pony placed atop it. Wish smirked as an idea popped into her head and she picked up the hanger to take over to it. She slightly opened up one of the cabinet drawers and placed the hook of the hanger in it, then closed the drawer on it and pushed her weight against it. Next with her hooves she grabbed the other end of the hanger and pushed it upwards. The drawer and her body weight did all the real work, the relatively thin wire of the hanger easily bent into a straight line, giving way far before the cabinet drawer ever would. “Perfect!” Wish exclaimed as she took out the now straightened hanger. There was even still a slight curve left to it at the very end. Excitedly, she ran back to the door and got ready to start picking the lock. The candle was giving her enough light to perfectly see what she was doing and all Wish had to do was stand up on her hind legs a little bit to reach in with her improvised tool. One hoof was used to brace herself against the door while she held the hanger with the other and managed to put a confident grin on her face. She slid the small, slightly hooked end, of the wire into the keyhole and started fiddling around with it. Pretty much randomly at first, just trying to get a feel for it or see if it would catch on anything. She had no idea if she was doing it right but she had hours to learn. She could hear and feel it scraping along inside the lock and she tried to push and pull at anything that felt like an obstruction. Rosy didn’t have near as much trouble getting her door open as Wish was. That was fiction for you. Wish kept on stabbing at the thing, not caring if she damaged the lock or made any noticeable marks, she just wanted to get it open and get out of here. “Come on… this has to work!” Wish set her lips into a tight frown as she kept working on her lock-picking skills. Her father and Dotty would be so upset if they could see her right now. Wish actually felt slightly exhilarated at the thought, she never wanted to displease or disobey her father but she couldn’t deny there was something heart-pounding about it all. And after being locked up, perpetually watched, forced to listen to everypony else, and do the same thing every day, it was empowering to do something on her own like this. To break the rules. She wasn’t going to stay as some locked up doll getting treated like a princess for reasons she didn’t understand. Not when she knew there were bad things going on in this castle, and when it came at the cost of others. Wish still hoped it was just the Inquisitors or the King and Queen responsible for it and her father didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe he was protecting her or trying to keep her ignorant of some things for her own sake. But right now she still needed to disobey him. Wish knew her father loved her very much but that love didn’t explain everything going on in this castle or her nightmares. Her eyes narrowed in both concentration and impatience as she worked in the darkness to open the troublesome lock. She was sweating, and hardly from the meager heat of the candle. If this didn’t work out she’d have to hide everything away again and come up with something new tomorrow night. She sincerely hoped it didn’t come to that. Wish still had hours to work with here and she wasn’t going to give up until morning arrived if it came to that. She fidgeted with the wire and felt it catch on something. Twisting it a bit, the lock turned slightly and Wish heard a tell-tale click come from inside it. Her mouth opened slightly and her eyebrows rose into her hair. “Wow, for real? I-I mean—yes! I knew I could do it!” Wish hopped up and down and giggled, happy as a clam that she had actually managed to unlock the door. She calmed herself down after a minute and took out the wire, placing it next to the candlestick on the table. The filly took a deep breath and reached her hoof up to the glass knob. She was trembling as she turned it and started to open up the grand door. “Moment of truth...” Wish licked her lips in anticipation and pushed open the door enough to see outside it and into the hallway. It seemed her hunch was correct. A few torches along the wall were lit (though with much weaker flames than normal) but besides that the entire hall right outsider her chambers was totally empty. As still and quiet as the grave. No guards stood in either direction to watch the stairs or any other doors. Wish quietly realized that if they had been there to begin with they would’ve certainly heard her messing around with the lock anyways. Apparently though, nopony thought there was a reason to keep guarding stuff when she was locked up and supposed to be sleeping. Wish was hoping that held true for the stairs that went down into the dungeon as well. She remembered that there had still been guards outside it when she was at the opera but perhaps even they still went away when she was “sleeping”. She stepped out from her chambers and allowed the door to close shut behind her, the torches casting an orange glow across the black stone. It wasn’t an inviting place to wander through all alone in the middle of the night, but then again, Hoofica Castle wasn’t a very nice place to wander through at all. Wish shook her head and refused to be scared. She briefly looked in the direction of the stairs that would go up to the fourth tower, thinking of potentially seeing her father’s lab, but she quickly put a stop to that idea. He’d most certainly have it locked and she didn’t know if she’d be able to get into it in the first place. Especially without making a big racket. No, as curious as she was about the high tower, she was going to be going down to the dungeon tonight. Her heart was beating hard despite her resolution to not be scared as she walked over to the stairs. It was going to be a long night.