Twilight woke to feel Luna shifting, rolling over to the edge of the bed. She had carefully separated herself, making sure that she didn’t jostle her bedmate. As careful as she’d been, Twilight had felt the exchange of weight through the firm mattress. Luna stood and stretched, arching her back like a cat, standing on the tips of her hooves to extend her tendons. She looked reminiscent to a lioness, yawning heavily as she extended her lithe body as far as her sleek limbs would allow. She then resumed a normal stance, blinking sleep away. She looked back over to see Twilight feigning sleep. Deciding it wasn’t worth waking her, the princess drew the curtain to the bed shut, shielding her from the harsh sunset currently blazing through the windows. Twilight moved over to the edge of the bed, figuring that it wasn’t worth pretending to sleep anymore. She pulled the curtain back to see Luna walking over to her desk and pushing off the empty bottles, which clattered noisily into the wastebin. She watched patiently as she strode over to the window and looked out towards the countryside, a yearning look in her eyes.
The princess closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the last rays of the sun fall across the land. Then, on cue, her horn flashed, and the moon crept up over the horizon where the sun had once been. She looked at the celestial body with pain, like she could still see herself looking back at earth from the dusty, airless planes of her exile. The moment passed swiftly, and she drew the curtains shut with another flash of her horn. She turned to see Twilight looking at her from the edge of the bed, observing her evening routine with piqued interest.
“This is what I do, every day.” Luna said, gesturing with her hoof towards the window. “Every day for eternity. It’s the charge for living forever. I’m still deciding if the monotony is worth it.”
“It doesn’t seem that bad, I mean, you have the rest of eternity to do whatever you want.” Twilight shrugged. “One single thing you have to do isn’t so bad.”
“I suppose.” The princess sighed, looking over at her chalkboard with slight reluctance. It was covered with her schedule, and it was packed with two day’s worth of duties she had to make up. “I wish that I could throw off my routine, but it’s set in stone. Things would fall apart if I didn’t supervise the Gardens and guard the castle at night. But… gosh is it a pain.”
“Why don’t you take a vacation?” Twilight asked, standing beside the bed, wincing as she extended her stiff wings. “I’m sure that the guards would understand.”
“True... but then I’d never hear the end of it from Celestia about how she raised both the sun and moon for a thousand years, and never took a day off between then and now. I can just hear her condescending voice now. Best I just make my rounds quickly so that I can get back here to watch you. Spike can stay with you this one last night, and then I’ll be in full charge. Then it’s just you and me, since Celestia’s taking Spike. I’ll be excused from my duties to watch you, and we can have a week or so in relative peace.”
Luna’s expression grew more at ease as she said that, like there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give to be able to have a nice, peaceful day with Twilight. They could just laze around, maybe read a book or sit down together and make a few potions for no reason. Walk down to the palace’s spa and relaxation center for a soak in the mineral water together. I nice, placid day where she could relax without the worry of a breach in security or a Discord escaping and reaping havoc on Canterlot. Such a day would be a slice of pure heaven for her.
“But alas,” She said to herself. “Such a day will have to wait until tomorrow.”
Luna turned and saw that Twilight was walking towards the stairs, hurrying to make sure that Spike hadn’t wandered off during the day. The princess tilted her head to the side as she observed her charge, how she constantly felt the need to make sure that Spike wasn’t making a mess somewhere by doing something he didn’t know was wrong.
‘Maybe what she needs is to let him have his own adventure.’ She thought as Twilight trotted quickly down the steps. ‘He needs to learn to be independent.’
Luna shrugged her shoulders. It wasn’t any of her business how Twilight was raising Spike, so she pushed that to the back of her head and walked over to her dresser. She looked at her usual amulet and horseshoes and grimaced. Today wasn’t the day for the typical royal attire. It was the last day she’d be on the job before she went to watching Twilight. So, she shrugged, tossing the outfit into the wastebin with the rest of the empty sleeping draughts. She decided that she’d go bare-hooved today, and she’d wear a bright blue dress that trailed down to her knees. She felt girlish, and so she was going to act like it. She hadn’t worn the dress for two-thousand years, though. So she didn’t know if it would fit. She pulled off her nightgown and threw it in a hamper by the dresser, admiring how she looked without her blue mane twinkling with starlight or her horseshoes gleaming. She looked… natural. It felt good to be natural, when, as an alicorn, you were anything but natural. You were supernatural.
Ignoring that last thought, she pulled the dress over her head and stepped into the sleeves, using magic to pull it the rest of the way down to her waist. When she looked in the mirror she winced at how young she looked. She hadn’t appeared so full of life in… she couldn’t even remember a time. It was nearly impossible to imagine a time she wasn’t in those old horseshoes and amulet. It stunned her how she looked almost like a young filly again, having just obtained her wings as an alicorn. She could remember the feeling of being so full of faith, so trusting that there was a bright future. Now she had the same dress on again and she couldn’t help feeling the same way. There was a bright future ahead of her, one that involved Twilight, her new best friend. Things were looking up on all fronts.
She smiled and did a curtsy, feeling just ten years old again. Today was going to be a great day.
Twilight arrived downstairs to see Spike walking up the stairs across the room from her, carrying a letter sealed in the customary sun stamp. It was from Celestia, judging by the massive cursive signature on the parallel side. Spike saw her and smiled, seemingly well-rested and ready for the day.
“Hey, this was slipped under the door when I was on my way to the kitchen for breakfast. It’s for you.” He said, looking at her as she took it from him and tore it open. “Is it something that I should be worried about?”
Twilight pulled the letter from the envelope, unfolding it and reading it aloud so that she could answer Spike’s question.
“Dear Twilight, I would like you to be at the southeast corner of the castle, by the cliffs and dungeon, at exactly two in the morning. I expect you to be well rested, and ready to help me with my yearly chore of scrubbing down the prisoner’s cells and cleaning out the guard’s chambers. Bring Spike if you feel so inclined, as I have a task I shall assign him upon arrival. If you do not arrive I will have you scrub out the main sewer duct leading out of the castle to the underground waste chamber. It will be extremely nauseating for you, as well as hot from the steam given off from the pressurized water. So I recommend you arrive for the former function, as the latter is quite unpleasant. Of course, though, I have dutifully given you a choice in the matter. Love, Celestia.”
Twilight threw the letter over her shoulder, catching it on fire as she did. It landed in a heap of ashes on the writing desk. She had been so happy that she got to spend her last day with Spike freely, and here Celestia was ruining it by offering her an extremely shoddy ultimatum. Cadence had been right; Celestia was good at butting in and ruining a pony’s good day. Especially if it meant putting them in an even more uncomfortable situation if they didn’t comply. She looked at Spike who looked just as irked as she did. He shook his head, telling her that it wasn’t worth it. Twilight sighed and nodded, signaling that if they didn’t do it now, she’d be saddled with an even less appealing job. The young dragon groaned and trudged off down the stairs, seeing how it was almost midnight. It would probably take them two hours just to find the right place.
Twilight arrived at the prison wing of the castle to find that there were no guards, and not a single soul in sight. It looked abandoned, but in good condition. There was a yard with a massive cliff on one side, and three walls barring escape from the other sides. The alicorn could see that most, if not all, of the prisoners had been allocated for the winter. It was starting to snow, and there was no trace of any sort of ventilation so far. She could feel a cold breeze pushing its way down the hall as she walked with Spike, making her shiver. No wonder they had relocated the prisoners; it was only late autumn and she felt like a normal, mortal pony could easily freeze to death.
The bars to the cells gleamed as she passed them, heading into what she took to be a maintenance or acceptance area. It led out into the yard, where she saw that Celestia was standing, looking out onto the endless waves of trees, whose leaves were being lost to the cold and becoming barren, blackened claws reaching towards the heavens fruitlessly. She seemed to be smiling to herself. It was like a place of so much misery appealed to her, it made her giddy in a disturbed, sickening way. The way she was grimacing made Twilight’s skin crawl, like she was drinking in the sight of decay like it was her morning eggs and milk. Her demeanor seemed… cracked, fractured.
As Twilight walked out into the courtyard she saw the princess turn and regard her amusedly. She smiled and held out her hoof for a shake, but her former student was too busy fluffing her wings against the sub-arctic wind to return the gesture. It seemed to be even more intense outside, as it whipped against the bare cliff face like it was trying to rip them all off it and towards the jagged wooden talons that waited to impale them below. Shrugging, Celestia turned towards the wall on the left side of the prison, gesturing towards the door at the very center.
“I see that you were smart and showed up punctually, I commend you for that. I’d like you to go and check the underground isolation cells. Just make sure nothing nasty is living down there, check for contraband, then make your way back up here to that I can make sure you did your job.”
The whole task seemed far too straightforward to Twilight. Celestia was a manipulative, conniving mare and the whole job seemed to be too… easy to her. Nothing was ever simple with her, so an almost stupidly linear task like that immediately raised a red flag. She looked at the eldest alicorn, wondering if there was some sort of catch. She simply nodded in the direction of the isolation cells, smiling. Twilight knew instantly that this was set up. A sort of twisted test of her mettle. She summoned a single flashlight, powered by her own magical energy. She looked at Celestia one last time and then trotted off in the direction of the cells. Celestia turned to Spike and lead him over to the acceptance area, saying something about backed up paperwork for him to do.
Twilight opened the gate to the block to find it likewise abandoned, with only a small desk space over to the right of the doors. She reached over and flicked on the light, which then illuminated the sterile white insides of the building with harsh incandescent bulbs hung from the ceiling. She already felt wrong, just being there. It looked inhospitable, and she was only at the front door. There was no hint of color anywhere, just white and the peppered floor tiles. It hurt her eyes if she looked at the walls for more than a few seconds at a time. She walked further it to find that there was only on long hallway with a solid iron door at the end. She saw the light flickering at the end of the hall and swallowed the lump in her throat. A very simple task was starting to look like a terrible descent into a psychological game of cat and mouse between her and her worst fears.
She passed another door that led into an office halfway down the hall but it was locked when she tried to open it. She sighed, steadying her nerves. She was doing her best, and she had to prove herself to Celestia. It was just this one thing, then she was off the hook for good and the eldest alicorn couldn’t bother her again. She strode up to the door and seized ahold of the hard iron door handle, cold as ice to the touch. She threw it open and walked through, not stopping to let herself be scared. She immediately regretted it. The door slammed behind her, and she stared down into a staircase that led into pitch black. There was no space between the railing and the other staircase, so there was no way she could see how long it descended. A single light illuminated the first flight, and that there was a large, almost obnoxious black ‘1’ painted onto the first landing.
After that, the stairs faded into an inky quagmire. She couldn’t even see the ‘2’ painted onto the second landing down to her right. There were no lights on further downwards. She looked for a light switch, but there was none. She blinked and stared downwards again, biting her bottom lip. Another thing that bothered her was that there was no color. White, and the black numbers on the walls. The railing was a stale gray, and nothing in between. The monotone bothered her more than the darkness, on a level that was pricking at her very base instinct to run away. This wasn’t something she could fight off. It was what seemed to be an endless staircase that led straight to the gates of some hell. A place she would give anything to not have to visit. Swallowing her terror, she walked down the first flight of stairs.
She flicked on her flashlight and brandished it in front of her, the comforting beam illuminating the black two painted on the second landing. She descended the next flight. Then another, and another. And then another. And another… until eventually a crumbling ‘42’ appeared to her in her flashlight’s beam of light that didn’t seem quite so comforting anymore. She shined her flashlight down another flight of stairs, her legs beginning to ache at the sheer amount of physical exercise. She had begun to think to herself, to think about Luna, and her, and how Luna had changed her to be like this. To live her life as an immortal creature. She had very few options left, seeing as how she was just walking down steps. So she thought to herself.
‘Maybe… maybe Luna did intend for me to like her.’ She thought, clearing the forty-eighth landing. ‘Maybe she was just taking advantage of me, being in the state I was and swooping in to be a hero. Maybe she knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist her… and that was why she did it in the first place.’
‘Exactly.’ She reasoned with herself. ‘She did it to manipulate you. To make sure that you would be hers once you were done with your little episode. She made you dependent on her, that way if you wandered off too far she could come and find you and bring you back to her, so you can be together. Forever, as alicorns. She wanted you to be the pony that she got to have trapped inside her tower. That way she could slowly begin to turn you into her own version of a servant.’
‘But… she wouldn’t do that.’ Twilight thought. ‘She seemed to be holding back quite a bit whenever she was in bed with me. Like she was afraid of herself and what she might do to me if she were to just let her emotions control her. I think that she had no intention of ever being with me, but that’s how thing happened. And I think that she is doing her best to let me have things at my own pace.’
‘WELL I THINK YOU’RE AN INSIPID TRAMP WHO WANTS NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE USED BY A MARE THOUSANDS OF TIMES HER AGE!’ The voice roared in her head. ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE USED SPIKE IF YOU WANTED TO LET OUT YOUR PETTY STRESS IN SUCH A RIDICULOUS, DEMEANING DISPLAY!’
Twilight winced as it dawned on her. She hadn’t just been talking to herself, her own subconscious had been talking back to her. And it wasn’t just her subconscious, it was her Id that was now screaming at her. She closed her eyes, stopping on the sixty-second landing as the truth of the situation washed over her. She was a mile beneath the earth, with nopony to keep her company but the voices in her head, and nothing she could do but move forward. She began to shake, horror starting to scratch at the loose ends of her mind. She was alone. Brutally vulnerable and trapped not just physically, but mentally in a war against the panic that was already beginning to drive her to sit down and give up. Her eyes washed with tears, but adrenaline and terror kept her walking down the stairs. The act felt as natural as breathing to her now, and she did it without thinking anymore. Now she ran.
She could hear the walls breathing, as if the whole stairwell was had been fit down into the bowels of the earth and she could hear it take its deep inhale and exhale. The walls murmured things, groaning and making terrible, agonizing creaks as it strained under the pressure. She began to feel her ears pop after the seventy-seventh floor. Then she lost track. There were no more numbers, just infinite staircase that she kept running down in an attempt to get away from the voices in her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks as the voices kept jeering at her, voicing their opinions on her choice to defend Luna all too clearly. ‘Harlot’ and ‘Tramp’ were common words they used but ‘Slave’ and other more demeaning vocabulary seemed to be echoing off the walls, growing infinitely louder and more forceful as new waves of tears followed the last. She was going deaf by how loud they were, piercing her eardrums like rusty sowing needles. They were agonizing, her entire head felt like it might simply crack in two from the volume of hate exploding at the seams of her mind.
After what seemed like an eternity and a second, she tripped and skinned her knees on yet another landing. She dropped her flashlight, which went out immediately. She hugged her knees, begging the voices to stop. She cried pitifully, clutching her face to her legs, curled into a singularity of pure misery. She couldn’t imagine it ever stopping. They just kept talking, stabbing at her weakest, most fragile insecurities. The walls were closing in on her, crushing her head like she was something the earth had ingested and was now trying to purge itself of. She would have been grateful if she’d have been spared the pain and sent back home, to her library without her wings. This wasn’t worth being an alicorn. Not with the monsters in her head hounding her.
After what she thought was years of crouching there, her flashlight flicked back on. When she opened her eyes she was astounded that the cell, the single cell that she had been searching for, was right in front of her. She picked up her flashlight, shoving all the mental clutter to the back of her head with a renewed burst of confidence. She could just check the cell, and teleport out. It was that simple. She stood up, her knees still shaking from her darker side roaring at her, now contained in the far end of her consciousness. She reached out and opened iron cell door, which only had a single slot in it for feeding. When she did, she noticed that the cell wasn’t even a cell at all.
Inside the iron door was a bedroom. It was fully illuminated, with warm yellow light being shined down from a single lamp hung in the center of the ceiling. Twilight struggled to understand. This wasn’t right. Had she finally lost her mind? There was a single massive bed and even a door on the right side of the room leading to a bathroom. There was a huge dresser with a full-body mirror beside it. It was downright… homey. She blinked once, twice. This was just a hallucination. She’d cracked, and she needed to get out of here. But… curiosity drove her on. What was this doing here? And why was it so far down? She stepped inside.
The door slammed shut, and there, holding the door, which locked itself with a grating of rusted steel, was herself. It was the same version of her she’d let take over back at the library. The same sleepless eyes, the same hungry, ravenous glint in her mauve gaze. She stared at Twilight, like she was some sort of delicious entrée to a full course meal.
“We have a lot to talk about.” She said, her voice like decayed flesh coated in honey.