A light dribble of mineral water ran down the length of a stalactite, then slipped from off the end, doing somersaults midair, tumbling through helplessly before it speared itself the stalagmite below. The drop of water was impaled, and it ceased to exist as it was separated into a fine mist. Twilight couldn’t help but sympathize with how the droplet felt shortly before its demise. She was clutching to what she knew at the moment, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t slip off the end of her sanity. It was dark in the tunnel, and she couldn’t tell where there was real castle floor or hard, uneven stone. She had followed Luna into the bottommost reaches of the castle, hoping that she would be told the answers to her questions. Now the princess was walking ahead of her and Spike, hoping to avoid them.
They’d arrived there but moments ago, and Twilight had more questions than she had feathers on her wings. Luna was making it very obvious that she wasn’t in the mood to be explaining herself, but she didn’t have to. Spike was holding all of the answers in his hands, clutched dearly to his chest, as if to protect it. He wanted to destroy the memory, and it was the utmost important thing that he kept the jewel it was housed in safe. If he didn’t, and Celestia possibly reclaimed it, then Twilight would have to live the same horrific nightmare that Luna had a thousand years ago, shortly before her exile. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if anything bad happened to his caretaker, especially since he’d learned of just how cruel the eldest alicorn could be when it came to inflicting physical damage. To say nothing of how skilled she was in psychological torture. He’d seen just how awful Celestia’s dark side could be, and there was no absence of blood in the memory soaked into the stone he held in his claws. Luna wanted it gone so she could forget, and he wanted it destroyed for the same reasons. Celestia wanted it back because it was leverage against Luna, and would be for Twilight if she saw what it housed.
Spike looked up and Twilight, who was jumping at every noise that reached them from deep inside the bowels of the mountain. He felt like he should tell her something, at least enough to keep her from making the same mistake he had in touching the stone and trusting Celestia’s Id. If she’d gotten ahold of him and made him her servant, then he had no idea what would have befallen him, but it might have been worse than what he’d seen in the stone. That was difficult to say, considering the sheer brutality he’d been forced to bear witness to.
“Twilight,” He said to get her attention. “What I saw in this ruby was terrible, and Celestia wants to cover it up. She did things to Luna, awful things that I don’t even know the right words to describe just how terrible they are. I want to forget what I saw, and Luna wants to forget what she actually had to live. Celestia did those things to make sure Nightmare Moon never came back, and then after that she sent her to the moon. She wants to do the same thing to you, and I don’t want that to happen. So let’s just get this over with. I couldn’t watch you go through anything like what Luna did.”
“But why, though?” Twilight asked, searching her mind for any reasonable explanation. “It isn’t rational to do something like that to your own sister, even when she was okay again. I don’t understand why she would want to do it to me, either. I never did anything wrong.”
Luna turned on a dime, stopping short in front of another four-way hall that had massive holes in the walls, where soil and stone were coming through by hundreds of tons. She looked livid, like she was being asked to cut off her own mane. Her eyes had a light green tint to them, and she took a step towards Twilight, staring her down like she was a viper and her student was a mere mouse.
“I thought that it was punishment.” She snapped, her face inches from Twilight’s. “I believed in my heart that I’d done something wrong, and she made me feel that way. She blinded me using magic, made me a cripple by not letting me move for weeks at a time. My muscles wore away after months of isolation, of not doing anything for myself. I was treated like a mental patient, a crazed madmare that had no place being among to living. I was fed on her terms, if ever. She did things to me, things that I’d rather die than tell anypony else. Spike,” She grated, thrusting an accusing hoof at the young dragon. “He is the only one that I ever plan to let know just what she did to me to break me. She made me dependent on her, in every way. If I didn’t listen to her she… she would brand me, and use whips on my sides. I can still feel one particularly bad lash burning into my ribcage just thinking about it. You don’t need to know any more. I was brainwashed, through years of living like that. Then, when I was completely under her sway, and I finally thought that she would let me be free, and I was going to be able to live on my own again, she sent me to the moon.”
Luna brought her hoof down on a small pebble, crushing it into dust beneath her hoof. “That was my mind. I snapped, totally. I had been taught to be independent my whole life, then made to believe that I was to rely on my sister. Then I had to be independent again, all in the span of a few years. I couldn’t take it. She got her wish, too. I never asked her about it again, but I know well just what would ever happen if Nightmare Moon ever surfaced again. I would go through the same thing, again. And she might even do it to you as well. Now, I’m going to destroy this memory. Then I can delete it from my head, after so many years of letting it haunt my bad dreams. So come along, my sister is bound to be searching everywhere for me and your pet dragon.”
The princess turned again, continuing her brisk pace. Twilight had to stop and recover from what she’d just been told. The way she’d said it made her sound like her mentor had been treated like a slave. Celestia had taken her sister’s unbreaking will to survive and used it against her, twisting her into something that could no longer openly disobey her will. Then, for the nail in the coffin, she sent her to the most isolated place in existence, just to make sure that there were no more seeds of insubordination in her that could grow again. It made Twilight sick to her stomach to think of how awful it must have been, to have her sense of self erased through years of dependency on a pony you hated. To have that same pony be in control of everything you did, no matter how trivial, personal or private, brought her to the edge of vomiting on the stone floor. She could only imagine her former teacher watching her while she slept, while she ate, throughout every waking moment of her day and night. Even while she bathed. Unable to dwell on the subject any longer, she hurried to catch up to Luna, Spike following beside her, somehow keeping pace. Twilight was visibly rattled, her face pale.
“Beneath the castle are a great number of geothermal vents.” Luna explained, seemingly calmed down from her outburst a few minutes ago. “We’re going as deep as we can to find the segments of the Old Castle, which is near the base of the mountain itself. There’s actually open lava vents there, ones that would more than take care of that jewel. And make sure to not lose your footing. Most of the floor here is being enveloped in the soil and stone that breaks through the walls, and I’m not sure if this hall will even be here in a few years’ time. We’re lucky the passages are still open to begin with. I suspected that this one would have caved in months ago.”
“Once we get rid of the memory, then what?” Twilight asked, not seeing how it would keep Celestia at bay. “After that we have nowhere to go but back up to the surface. Then Celestia will catch us, and we’ll have to go through what happened to you all the same.”
“I have a plan for that.” Luna said, appearing to walk even faster in an attempt to escape her student’s questions. “I’ll explain it once we’ve gotten well rid of the jewel. I want to see the light leave its core, then we can discuss what I have in store for our future plans.”
The three walked for a long while, noticing that only a few of the doors lining the hallways were actually on their hinges. A few were bulging in their frames, under pressure from the immense strain. The rooms behind them had collapsed, so it was the only thing holding the tons of soil back. A great number were already splintered and crushed, the walls above and beside them deformed and distorted, on the verge of crashing down at the slightest touch. Twilight walked in the center of the hall six feet from Luna, Spike beside her, holding onto her wing in an attempt to make himself feel better about being miles underground with no way of surviving if the ceiling gave way. He was nervous about being there; underground spaces freaked him out on a scale that was almost as bad as the thought of changelings. Ever since he’d seen one of those things they gave him goosebumps, since they could be anypony they wanted.
Luna looked back at them, as if she was wondering whether to tell them something important. She had somewhat of a green tint to her eyes, and she hardly seemed to be stable.
“So…” She said, beginning as simply as she could manage. “My plan involves doing something that may or may not get us killed. I want to know if you’re with me, so if you don’t envy the idea of risking your life you can step out now.”
Twilight gave her a skeptical look. “I can’t even believe you’re asking me that question. Of course I’m with you. Celestia wants me as much as she wants you and Spike, so it wouldn’t make sense if I just stood by while you guys risked your lives.”
“Well then, we’re going to try and take Celestia’s Id and banish it from her.” Luna explained, like it was a simple project that might take a few minutes of their time. “I was thinking about the last time that she touched the pen of Id, and I also realized that there is a direct correlation to the length of banishment for the Id and how long it has been since it’s written. Celestia’s hasn’t touched the Pen since the one time, which was thousands of years ago. If we managed to get it into her hoof, then we could easily bet on her dark side being banished for a nice two-thousand years or so.”
As nice as that sounded in theory, they couldn’t help but feel as if it was a lost cause. Celestia’s dark side was a paranoid control freak and a megalomaniac; she probably had thousands of spells layered on top of one another to prevent her from ever touching the dark artifact again, not to mention how difficult it would be to get near her. It would be nearly impossible to think that they could just approach her and slap it down into her hoof without some form of magical protection. Twilight herself mulled this over for a while, keeping time with Luna’s footsteps but unable to keep up with her long strides. It would make all the difference in the world if she could just walk through any magical defenses that her former teacher could have ever created. She was thinking as hard as she could when she felt a sudden shift in her head, signaling that Limba was stirring from her slumber. She did her best to contain her, but she seemed to be less hostile this time and a little more docile, wanting only to talk. With a great amount of restraint, so that she couldn’t break her hold, Twilight allowed her to talk.
“I have an idea.” Limba said through Twilight’s mouth, addressing Luna directly. “It’s not me talking, it’s Limba, Twilight’s Id. I’ve been working for the last few weeks now on circumventing the magic that your older sister uses to protect herself. I found out , when Celestia and Twilight brushed just briefly at the prison, that Celestia, the real her, wants out just as much as you all want her to. So, she gave me an amazing hint towards what I could do towards making her darker side’s life harder. Spike is a member of the species of dragon that she almost hunted to extinction thousands of years ago, and part of the reason why she felt threatened by them is that they are immune to almost every type of magic. I used Spike, just briefly, to get that stone. I didn’t ask him to be a fool and grab it, but he did anyways. Seeing that all of us are in danger, I want to help you. Although I don’t like it, it would seem that my restraint towards throwing the runt of the litter down the stairs paid off. He should be able to approach your older sister without a single problem, which is part of the reason I used him to steal from her safe room earlier this week, since it was heavily warded.”
Luna blinked, absorbing the information like a sponge. After a few moments of tumbling the information in her head, refining it, she replied skeptically. “How do we know that it wasn’t just you who used Spike, and that he really doesn’t have any sort of special properties at all? If you’re lying to us, just like you have before on numerous occasion in the last month, then you’re setting us up for failure.”
“I’m not.” Limba hissed, still using Twilight to communicate. “I am doing my best to help. I don’t want to end up a scarred, beaten mare with no will to call her own. Not any more than you do, and I know what she did to you had more of an affect than it did on anypony else that fell victim to her. Because you knew her, and she was your sister. You told Twilight once that you wanted to see the real Celestia again, if we can form an alliance, no matter how briefly, we can probably make it out of this without a single scratch. Do you trust me?”
“Did you just allude to the true Celestia helping you?” Luna asked, her eyes glittering.
“Yes.” Limba said, seeing that she was getting her point across. “I felt her, and me and her melded minds for just a second; just enough to tell me her plan if it ever came down to something like this. Your true sister might be a ditz, and a liability in a courtroom, but she knows how to play a good mind game. That’s a trait that the other side of her had to learn, because it came to her naturally. Now, do we understand each other?”
“Yes. I understand perfectly.” Luna said, nodding. “Keep telling me more as we walk. Twilight, please let her continue to speak, this is imperative. I know it’s uncomfortable, especially after Cadence, but it is necessary if we’re going to make it out of here.”
Luna continued on her way down into the mountain, into the farthest reaches of the castle. Eventually the halls lapsed into caves with polished floors, all traces of the walls being gone. There was only stone labyrinth from that point, and all the while Limba and Luna continued to talk. It irritated Twilight that she hadn’t come up with the idea with Spike herself, since that proved that her Id was actually cleverer than her. It chafed that she hadn’t realized that a long time ago, when she’d been a unicorn and testing her spells on her assistant with little effect. That had been why all of her experiments on him had been inconclusive unless they’d involved potions. Luna was working out how to get Spike within an arm’s length of her older sister, going over the exact details with Spike when she needed to. The whole time she sat there, feeling like she was being overshadowed by her other half.
“Don’t feel so glum.” Limba said out loud, feeling that her other half was discontent. “I’m actually helping you for once. After this we go right back to the old daily grind of me and you pitted against each other. Introvert versus extrovert, carnal urges against intellectual, spiritual ones. Me and you will have to get back to my extremely good ideas against your dull, fortune-cookie-esque morals and philosophies. While we’re on the topic, you’re going to owe me something when things get back to normal. I was thinking something along the lines of a single evening with your body to myself.”
“Absolutely not.” Twilight countered. “You can make a request and I can fulfill it, because there is no way I’m letting you have full control after Cadence. You can ask me something and I’ll see if I can do it as long as it’s within reason.”
Spike was watching with a consternated look on his face, confused as Twilight literally talked to herself. The two were going back and forth with each other, bickering through a shared set of vocal cords. Luna just shook her head and sighed. Twilight had to learn to make treaties with her own demons if she wanted to live as an alicorn. The young dragon knew better than to ask just what was going on, since things had just continued to get weirder ever since he’d come back to Canterlot.
“That’s your problem.” Limba said, rolling her eyes. “Your definition of ‘within reason’ means that there is no risk involved, there can be no fun had, and there can’t even be the remotest chance of you getting in trouble. It’s pathetic that you can’t even think of having an evening with Luna without thinking about how Luna might ask you for something more intimate than a cup of tea and a back rub.”
Twilight turned a bright red, having been made to say that out loud, in front of Spike, who just raised his eyebrows. “That is totally inappropriate!” She said in a hushed tone, not wanting her young assistant to hear any more of her other half’s thoughts on the subject. “You can’t just talk about that in front of him! He’s only thirteen, for Discord’s sake. If he keeps on like this he’ll turn out just as bad as you, always acting like an animal, never listening to reason or bothering to stem his impulses.”
“I don’t think that you’ve did a very good job rearing your little Spikey-Wikey.” Limba retorted loudly, using Spike’s pet name. The young dragon turned a bright red and grabbed his right arm, suddenly feeling quite embarrassed. “After all, he does have the most interesting thoughts about him and a certain filly he knows, on occasion. Her name is Sweetie Belle, and the way he dreams about someday being able to hold her hoof is just so cute. It’s almost adorable how innocent he is right now. Maybe that’ll be gone by the time this is all over, and he’ll want something more mature from her.”
Twilight was unable to respond to that, it was just too insensitive for her to even contemplate. The way she’d said it, clearly illuminating the inside of Spike’s most private thoughts, showed her that she had very little respect for his privacy, and innocence, judging by the last sentence. She couldn’t imagine Spike doing anything like that, ever, and it bothered her on a profound level that she had made a stab at his pride like that. It beckoned a question that shouldn’t be asked until years later, when the dragon was much older than he was. When he was actually mature enough to deal with things, like the rather sensual topic that her Id had alluded to just a few moments ago.
“Another thing is that once, when Spike was still living in your library, he walked into Rarity’s boutique on an errand. One that you sent him to do at about six in the morning.” Limba began, enjoying wounding Spike’s pride. “He walked in and, seeing nopony, he decided that he should check upstairs. When he went up there, he found nopony, only Rarity’s door locked and the sound of her snoring. Like any dragon, he decided that it was best to leave her be, and went downstairs. He decided that he wanted to get what you needed anyways, so he went back down a floor and entered the bathroom. In the shower he sa-”
“That was absolutely not my fault!” Spike protested loudly, the reddest he’d ever been in his life, the blood vessels in his cheeks on fire from the shame of having his worst moments announce like the morning news. “I couldn’t help but not notice the shower was on! It’s a gigantic bathroom, and the door doesn’t let sound through!”
“If it wasn’t your fault, then why did you stand there in the doorway and watch Sweetie Belle for well over five minute before you came to your proverbial senses?” Limba sneered. “You were curious, face it. You might now have seen anything, but something inside you rang a bell when you saw her, drenching wet and singing your favorite song while she washed herself. You couldn’t help but stare until you got a good mental picture you could hang onto.”
Luna jumped in just as Twilight’s dark side got really vicious. “That is enough. I told you we could form an alliance, not that you could antagonize our messenger and most crucial asset. If you don’t control yourself you may as well just go back to being silent in Twilight’s subconscious.”
Limba grumbled, hating the feeling of being told to control herself. She was the opposite of control, the opposite of unbiased, and the polar antithesis of civilized. She wanted to tell them all still about the time that Spike had woken up and tried to drink an aging potion to try and win over Rarity, and the time that he also tried to turn himself into a pony and had to cook the antidote himself after he turned into a horrific half-dragon pony, with one wing, a half a horn, spotty patches of fur and scales and an awful sensation that he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Seeing that memory had been amusing to her, since it involved him being in a great amount of discomfort. Of course there was all the times that he nearly asked Twilight to give him the ‘talk’, then chickened out because she might tell him he was too young, or tell him he didn’t need it because nopony would ever choose to be with a dragon.
As the tension faded, they continued into the depths, beginning to smell something awful.
Soon the smell of sulfur and boiling mineral water filled the air as they reached the base of the mountain. Spike had gotten so tired that he was sitting on Luna’s back, whom didn’t seem to mind the extra weight. He was actually too heavy for Twilight to carry anymore without difficulty, since he’d grown a foot since he’d arrived here, and gained fifteen pounds just as fast. Luna didn’t comment as she made her way farther underground, holding a blue fire in front of her for light. It was almost stiflingly hot now, and all of them were sweating from the excess steam. It was beginning to turn to fog, and Twilight had to keep getting closer to Luna to keep track of her escort in the mist. Then, a thought occurred to Twilight. If this was a tunnel, then why wasn’t Luna worrying about gas buildups with her fire that she’d lit without a second thought?
When she asked, the princess sighed and told her. “This isn’t fire in the normal sense, Twilight.” She said, waving it under her student’s chin to demonstrate. It felt like an ice cube had just slid across her cheek where the tongues of flame had touched her. “This takes energy away from the area around it, it doesn’t add to it. This actually has been keeping up fairly cool for the last few minutes. Without it I’m sure you can imagine how awful this trip would be.”
They began to hear the sound of shifting stone. It was the same ambient noise that Twilight had heard on her descent down into the prison back at the castle. Like the earth’s stomach grinding away at the stone ruins, the parts of the castle it had just swallowed. It was obscene how loud it was becoming, until finally they reached a patch of floor that was completely blackened from the heat beneath it. Luna stopped Twilight from stepping on it by shoving her hoof out, barring her access to the rest of the tunnel.
“This is the spot, Twilight.” She said, picking up a sizable stone from the rubble around her and throwing it onto the blackened floor.
There was a crack as the remaining fragile ashes gave way, revealing a vein of lava underneath their hooves. It was as wide as a large stream, and in the center was a ribbon of solid stone, semi-molten as it was carried downstream. Twilight had to cover her eyes from how bright it was, to say nothing of how hot it had become in there. Luna didn’t waste time, taking the jewel off of Spike with magic and dangling it in front of her as if it was a corpse of some unwanted pest she’d found in her closet.
“This is it, Twilight.” Luna called back to her student. “Once I throw it in, we have to teleport to my tower’s door as fast as possible. Celestia will know we were here the second it’s destroyed. The only thing we can do is run from then on. We will rendezvous in Celestia’s tower, it’s the last place she’ll suspect. After that, I need you to link minds with me so we can draw runes on the floor, as a precaution. We’ll cage her, and then Spike will put the Pen in her hoof. Are we understood?”
“Yes!” Twilight said, nervously chewing her bottom lip.
There was a sudden flash the moment Luna released the gem. They were gone, so nopony saw the memory tumble helplessly down into the vein of lava, settle onto a chunk of semi-molten stone, and slowly melt as it slid into the fiery red liquid. There was the sound of intense screaming, and an ear-piercing ringing cracked the stones around the tunnel, bringing the whole cave to a near collapse. Celestia appeared a moment later, looking down into the flames, her fractured façade, her compromised mask of sanity gone. She looked as she truly did. A long mane of green flames flowed down her neck, and the stone around her glowed red from the unrelenting waves of heat she was pushing out. She took a long look down at the lava, her left eye twitching madly. For a few moments her computer-like mind worked out a solution to her dilemma. She smiled as she came to her conclusion. She was going to kill Luna. She was too relentlessly rebellious to break permanently. Twilight… she would see. If she didn’t bend for her, she’d bury them together in the same shallow grave.