//------------------------------// // Leading // Story: White Sun // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// It was hard to breathe in the tunnel as the undead continued to dig through and remove the collapsed sections that had rested there for who knew how long. Thanks to the fact that the undead needed no rest, they could work forever without rest, and Twilight made great use of that. Often she would ask them if they wanted to rest because they had been working so much and for so long, but the undead never answered. Instead, they continued to take what had been excavated back to the city and leave the detritus there. It had been two or three days since the excavations began, and the tunnel had become bigger than Twilight initially thought. Whoever had built these built them with something like an adult dragon in mind. Spike's immense strength and speed helped accelerate the process of digging to Canterlot significantly, but the mare started to worry that they would be able to dig underneath the castle, and then...Then she would have to go through the city itself. Twilight gulped and started shaking. The memories were starting to resurface, but she did her best to suppress them, even if it hurt her and made her sweat profusely in the process. On occasion she would have to direct the undead into digging in a specific direction, and when she finally reached the end of the tunnel, she brought in her 'inspiration' to do the heavy stone demolition and clear the way further. The mare wondered how much longer it would take to reach Canterlot, and without her spells opening passages to the outside world, she would have joined the ranks of her patients. Soon, though, she would be able to get underneath Canterlot, free her former teacher's body, and bring her back right away. It hurt her back, but her overstuffed saddlebags were chock full of the immense amount of things necessary to bring the princess back. She looked behind her to see the twelve undead also carrying overstuffed saddlebags, though five of them carried large metal containers that exuded a freezing cold. If they were living, they would have been frozen dead in mere moments from contact. The mare paced about nervously, taking out her maps to calculate and recalculate multiple times in just a few minutes. Her stomach was tightening painfully from the stress she was feeling. There were so many things to think about that Twilight felt like she was about to implode. After what she assumed to be a few more days of work, and sleeping in little nooks the undead would dig out for her, they finally happened upon what Twilight assumed to be just beneath Canterlot castle. To her relief, the rock and soil was thick and sturdy enough for her work and she at least recognized the composition of said soil from a school project during what felt like so long ago. "It's time..." she said reluctantly to herself. The ponies above certainly heard and felt the tremors beneath them, meaning they would be on high alert. However, they wouldn't know where the source is coming from or if anything was going to happen despite it. Twilight could wait now and go later, when everything would have calmed down, or she could go now while the castle is still confused and hurry over as quickly as possible, destroy the first floor of the castle, dive underneath and grab Celestia, then leave with her undead and collapse the tunnel behind them every few feet they went. She didn't care about the 'inspiration' however. That was just a spur of the moment. A tool needed for her work. She would rather it be put to rest once all was said and done than let it wander the city to suffer. She couldn't wait. The Royal Guards, now the Equestrian Troops, were scampering around the castle grounds. Several of the older ones got stuck in what used to be the garden that now held a large, two-story building meant to house and tend to any political guests. The statues had been hidden in a storage room off-site. The more affluent in history did not want to lose such artifacts of their past, but they were too tainted with the memory of the princess. They would be brought back soon enough, but likely not in the lifetime of the current council. The guards that grumbled with that thought were reminded of what they were doing with the castle on high alert and hurried, with spear, halberd, or sword in hoof to the walls and the watch towers built into them. The policing forces and the civilians ran about Canterlot City, doing their best to pick up broken items that had fallen on the ground and pull out anypony still in the vicinity of damaged houses and buildings. A few of them had already partially collapsed, prompting a great panic from those that had never experienced what everypony assumed to be an earthquake. Sure, a tremor would occur every now and then, but it was always just a little bit of shaking. "What's going on with the city?" one of the soldiers atop the wall asked. Their armor had still retained the golden coloration and the white fur enchantment of the past. The council had been obligated to bring them back out after the Changeling War and awaited their armories to be restored, but it mattered little to the every day ponies as long as they didn't see them. Several cannons had been brought up the wall with the help of some pulleys and loaded up by the suspicious soldiers. It cost them very dearly the last time they didn't trust their instincts, and they were not about to repeat that same mistake. So they waited, kept a watchful eye, and reported back to each other, ready to flood the city at a moment's notice if anything life-threatening risked happening to the ponies of Canterlot. Unfortunately, they were right. A little over an hour after the greater tremors had started, a gigantic mace burst out of the ground just downhill from the castle's gate. The mace head itself looked as big as a house, and the blood of every witness froze in place when it moved forward and slammed into the ground, revealing a tremendous, meaty gray-blue hand hanging on to the handle of the weapon. The owner pulled itself out of the hole, revealing itself to a be an immense bipedal creature with a bloated stomach, rotted skin, immense legs, and a vestigial right arm that curled against its side. The limb oozed with a nasty, scarlet fluid that sizzled when it touched the ground. It had its back turned to the castle, prevented the stunned soldiers from seeing the creature's face. "What is that thing?" one of the soldiers gasped. "It's...enormous." A sergeant yelled as loud as she could to get everypony's attention. "Don't just stand there gawking like idiots! Start firing the cannons! Take it down!" Lighting the matches of each cannon, the weapons unleashed an uneven cacophony of noise and light that struck the giant in the back and the legs, inciting a minor grunt of annoyance as its rotted skin sloughed off and revealed the purple muscle fiber and tissue beneath covered in corpse wax and melting grease. As it turned around, the soldiers got to see its face: Two, almost fully brown eyes save for some white splotches. It had no nose, only a sown patch on its face that crumpled its skin unevenly. Its rotting brown and green teeth were of varying sizes and going in varying directions because of the shoddy patchwork done. No hair grew from anywhere on its face, and only its left ear remained hanging on, but just barely. It grumbled, looked down, and started kicking the ground slowly, but the strength this tremendous beast with legs half the width of a house possessed made these simple 'punts' into the ground dangerous. Dirt and rocks were jettisoned toward the castle and its walls, denting the brickwork and destroying what windows the debris touched. "Return fire!" the sergeant ordered. "Stop gawking at it just because it kicked the ground a bit!" "But m'am! Its feet!" one of the soldiers shouted. "What about them?!" The mare leaned over the wall and paled. Only one word came to her mind. "Why?" Undead flooded out from the hole, slowly followed by an undead dragon and a lavender unicorn. "There! A necromancer!" a soldier declared. "Then take her out! We don't have time to worry about the hows and whys!" "No!" Twilight complained. "I was off! We're at the foot of the hill..." She looked at her horde pouring out of the tunnels and starting to gather. "Quickly, everypony! I need you to get into Canterlot Castle up the hill and help me find Princess Celestia!" she shouted. "Don't worry about getting hurt. I'll get you out of there and back to the city as quickly as I can!" She looked up at her 'inspiration' and grimaced. "Tomb Guardian, act as cover for them and tear down the walls! Just try not to kill anypony, please!" The towering giant groaned and moved forward, taking the brunt of cannon fire that could do nothing to slow its seemingly slothful advance. Every step made the ground tremble as it moved forward inexorably, gradually terrifying the soldiers watching it. It easily outpaced the smaller, groaning hordes getting peppered with cannon fire and spells that would almost instantaneously disappear in a flash of light. Twilight watched in both horror and joy at her ponies going to help the princess come back to life and bring light back into the lives of ponykind. They needed it! She needed it. The soldiers on the wall were swiped away by the gigantic mace of the tomb guardian that also destroyed the cannons, throwing them down toward the horde and crushing a few of them. There were hundreds of undead that would not relent in their advance, and it always seemed like more were coming even if they were starting to thin out in number. Seeing that a large number of its kin were bonking themselves against the walls or clawing at them, the giant swiped them all away with its feet and raised its disheveled hand to its mouth. Using it to focus the flow of air, the abomination exhaled a horrific smog of scarlet and deep purple onto the bricks, melting them gradually as the fetid air consumed the stonework. It left a significant breach in the defenses, letting the undead flood into the castle grounds. Twilight, Spike, and the loaded undead entered after most of the horde had done so already and torn down the doors leading into the entrance of the castle. The white marble floors and the oak stairs covered in blue-green were still the same, but all the portraits and statues had been removed. Ponies ran screaming from the undead, leaving behind vast swathes of documents that Twilight didn't care about. The mare pulled out her strand of Celestia's mane and realized it was glowing closest to the ground. This was the place. She called to the tomb guardian with her magic, and it squeezed through the breech it had made in the wall to stop toward the castle entrance and blow it down with its mace, producing a significant amount of dust and debris. The mare pointed to the ground, making the giant raise its mace with the head pointing down and start pounding at the marble aggressively. Spike protected Twilight with its body, but she had already raised a magic shield to protect her and her cargo. With this moment of 'peace', barring the fighting going on in the courtyard, Twilight turned around to see Canterlot City. She was so engrossed in her goals that she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings. She trembled when looking at it and her shield started to falter. Spike's presence calmed her and helped her stabilize the spell, but now a furious rage burned within her. She wanted to destroy Canterlot so badly, but Celestia wouldn't approve. The alicorn was already going to yell at her student when she got back after what Twilight did to her castle, but that was okay. It was easy to rebuild a castle? It wasn't at all easy to rebuild lives. From the hole the giant had created, Twilight could also spot her old observatory on the left. Its glass dome and giant telescope were dead giveaways of what she once had and what she wanted again. After they ruined everything! It was right there! So close yet out of reach. The mare grit her teeth and breathed erratically several times in an attempt to hold back her tears. She needed to focus. If she lost her composure now, then everything would be lost. The entryway was completely destroyed by the time the giant had finished its work. The stairs were now just a bunch of shards of timber and the walls looked like they had been gnawed through by thousands of stone-eating insects. There was now a large hole in the ground that led to a spiral staircase a few feet lower that could have been reached if Twilight had found the door leading there. Using her magic, the lavender unicorn formed the debris into a makeshift stairway that led down the dark spiral where nothing could be perceived. It was time to go down there. She would have the Tomb Guardian keep watch for her and prevent anypony from following until she was done. The undead would block most of the soldiers and Spike would keep her and her ritual ingredients safe. Everything was going to go right. Everything had to. Twilight hadn't spent all those years studying and experimenting for everything to fail now, even if this was a resurrection spell that was far more extreme than anything she had ever done before.