//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: Throne of the Rot Queen 
// by Mystic Mind 
//------------------------------//

Gilda awoke with a heavy cough, sputtering blood. Somehow, she had survived the fall. There could be no doubt about the reality of her situation now. She could only speculate as to why Luna had mistaken her for a daemon.
Slowly, her muscles aching and her broken ribs stabbing her abdomen, Gilda rolled to her feet. How had she ended up like this? All she wanted was to do the right thing. She wanted to be a better griffon, to lead by example, despite her misgivings. 
But she’d failed. Gwendoline was dead, all because she hadn’t trusted her. She thought she was just another bratty kid, playing pranks on adults thanks to a lack of proper discipline. Now, that same child had paid the price, butchered right in front of her.
Looking around, a tiny trickle of light shone down from above, partially revealing the bodies of the dead that littered the abyssal floor. She shuddered at the sheer disregard for their burial rights. Most were just bones, their flesh long since rotted away.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” the voice inside Gilda’s head remarked. “They found no dignity in death. At least those who lined the hallways were useful to me.”
Sooner or later, Gilda knew she would join them. Her wings were broken, crushed by Princess Luna’s spell, and she had no other means of getting out. Whether through blood loss, disease or starvation, she was finished. She shivered heavily, the abyss’ downdraft carrying all the mountain’s accumulated chill.
But still, she walked. For what reason, she did not know. She just did. If she squinted hard, she could see a vaguely Pegasus-shaped outline – an outline that looked vaguely familiar.
The visage of Princess Twilight Sparkle loomed over Gilda, her expression unreadable. Her lanky build and long, flowing mane resembled Princess Celestia more than the young alicorn Gilda knew. 
She wasn’t alone. 
From under the shade of her wing, a Pegasus stepped out, her distinctive, multi-coloured mane being instantly recognisable to all who knew her.
“Ah, here they are, at last. As I knew they would.”
“R-Rainbow Dash?” she croaked through her ragged, sore throat. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, look who finally decided to show up,” Rainbow Dash snapped. Was she angry? Why would she be angry? “I can’t believe you! I thought you’d changed!”
That last word struck Gilda like a lightning bolt. Through pained wheezing, she asked, “What… what are you talking… about?”
“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know.” Dash flared her wings, dragging her hoof across the ground like she was ready to charge. “I knew you were a jerk, but I never pegged you for a murderer!”
“Well, I for one knew it all along.”
From the corner of her eye, another pony manifested. Gilda hadn’t spoken much with this white unicorn, but she knew it was one of Rainbow Dash’s friends. “Rarity?”
“Keep your filthy name out of my mouth!” Rarity turned her nose up at Gilda in disgust. “I’m glad you never came back to Ponyville. Your kind are the last sort of creature we should deal with.”
“This can’t be happening.” Gilda slumped back to her haunches, a pain far greater than her physical injuries washing over her. “Princess Luna? Twilight? Anyone? Please, I know I’m no saint, but I’m not a killer. You have to believe me!”
“Oh no, you are not beggin’ for help from Princess Twilight,” Applejack said, morphing from the image of Rainbow Dash. The shadow of her stetson obscured part of her face, but Gilda knew what she was feeling from voice alone. “She ain’t gonna be bailin’ out a thing as evil as you. Not this time.”
“I knew you were cruel, but this is too much,” Fluttershy cried, appearing next to Applejack. She looked pale, deathly so, as if she were about to die from fright. “Stay away from me!”
Out of all of Twilight’s friends, there was one Gilda dreaded seeing the most. She had been a massive handful, both in Ponyville and during her first visit to Griffonstone, and that was when she was happy.
Emerging from between Applejack and Fluttershy, a pink earth pony emerged, her once poofy hair now falling flat across her face. Her head was bowed.
“You’ve been naughty, Gilda,” Pinkie Pie said, her voice reverberating as her neck bones creaked with her twisting head. “You’ve been very very naughty.”
“Stay away from me!” Gilda forced herself to move, all but crawling backwards. With each step, magic emanated from Pinkie Pie’s hooves, reconstructing the bones into an army of griffon skeletons.
“You broke a Pinkie Promise,” Pinkie said in a sing-song voice. Slowly, she looked up, revealing her broad, twisted grin as her head continued to spin right around. “Liar, liar, hooves on fire. You know what happens to liars?”
“I didn’t…” Tears streamed down Gilda’s face, soaking her already damp, matted feathers. She would’ve gladly taken death on impact over torture like this. “I didn’t…”
One hoof at time, Twilight and her friends crept forward, their jaws unhinging and their faces twisting in an almost serpentine manner. Two red glowing eyes merged into one across Pinkie Pie’s face, a long, scorpion-like tail with a serrated point bursting from her hindquarters.
“Liar, liar, liar!” they all chanted, flesh slowly melting from their bones. “Break her bones, smash her face! Kill, kill, kill the liar!”
“I’m not a liar…” Gilda said through her gritted beak.
“Liar! Liar! Kill the liar!”
“I am not a liar!” Gilda forced herself to her feet, yelling back louder.
“Liar! Liar! Kill the Liar!”
“I. AM. NOT. A. LIAR!!!” Closing her eyes, Gilda took in a deep breath and bellowed a ferocious roar, one she had not used since tormenting Fluttershy on her first visit to Ponyville. The skeleton army crumbled, with Twilight and her friends recoiling from her thunderous voice.
“Ah, at last.”
Breathing heavily, Gilda opened her eyes. The ponies who bore the Elements of Harmony were no longer hurling accusations at her; they were bowing.
“Now do you understand?” the strange voice said, speaking not with a tone of mockery, but one of comfort – like a mother reassuring their bullied child. “Now you see their true colours. For all their sweet platitudes of friendship being magic, their judgement is absolute.”
“They… hate me,” Gilda said. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but she couldn’t deny it any longer. It was as true as the fact of Gwendoline’s death. “They’ve always hated me.”
“They have, but not I. I merely held up the mirror, revealing those who would stab you in the back. That is what they did to my dreamers.”
“You were trying to help me?”
“Aha, now you understand. They’re not so judgemental now that you refused to bow to their will. See, here? I have a present for you.”
Behind Twilight, a stone stairway had risen, leading to the last thing Gilda expected to see in a graveyard. A throne. A throne made of bones, bound in the decaying, maggot-infested flesh of the recently deceased.
“Here, sit. Take your throne, my new Rot Queen. Accept my power, and show them who's boss. Show the Griffons what they threw away so carelessly.”
Gilda smiled. The time had long since passed for trying to please the unpleasable. Ambling forward as fast as she could manage, she ascended the stairs, taking her place on the throne.
The moment she sat down, six bony arms burst free from their fleshy bindings, digging their talons into her flesh. A green magic aura flared around them, the channelled dark power rotting Gilda from the inside out. 
Now, at last, she saw everything; images flashed in her mind's eye revealing all points in space and time, past, present and future. She saw the rise of Equestria, the fall of Griffonstone. She saw the sealing of magic from the ponykind in the distant future, reviving the hostile prejudices that, in an age long ago, had divided the three pony tribes and summoned the Windigoes.
“Time is a circle. All that is and ever was shall always be, bowing to but one eternal force: that of decay.”
Gilda smiled. The voice was right. It had always been right. She knew this was the end. She didn’t care. Anything was better than subjugating herself to those pompous ponies who thought themselves better. Now, she would no longer feel the pain of loss, nor the guilt imposed by her supposed superiors.
Now, she wouldn’t feel anything at all.
“Yes, that feels better. Just like old times.”