The oldest living mortal in Equestria curled into a ball on the floor of her stone cell, and wished for death to come and claim her. It did not.
Radiant Zenith found the events leading to her incarceration here fuzzy, but the details she did remember manifested without fail in the nightmares she suffered each and every night, slowly chipping away at her psyche just as the hulking brutes that had captured her spent their days chipping away at other parts of her. She remembered teeth and claws, presumably belonging to the Diamond Dogs, and fire. She remembered fear, and a face she had thought dead for four hundred years. Most of all, though, she remembered pain, pain that had not ceased since that fateful night. She remembered that pain every time she raised a hoof to the splintered and blackened horn on her head.
Rhythmic taps made their way down the corridor, and without delay, Radiant Zenith roused herself, teetering on the two unbroken legs she had, and scrambled away from the door. She had only needed to learn that lesson once. Finding a corner, she curled up once more, hoping that the steps would continue by. A hot tear escaped unbidden from the corner of one eye, and she hid it quickly. To show weakness to her captors would only invite further pain.
The steps grew near, stopped. There was the jangle of keys, and a turning in her cell door’s lock. She shuddered, holding her breath. There was a pause, and then the door swung open smoothly on well-oiled hinges. Though she did not know it, the doors in the cells were inspected daily for signs of wear.
Hoofbeats rattled off of the walls as her captor entered the cell, flanked by two bipedal creatures, each covered in reeking fur that was matted and stained with something dark. Radiant Zenith didn’t want to know what it was, but suspected she knew from the coppery tang that lingered on them. Short, brutish muzzles thrust forth from their faces, over which stared two eyes, which glowed faintly amber. They each gripped spears, simple lengths of wood upon which were spearheads of black stone, lashed tightly into place. Radiant Zenith was wary of those spears. They looked crude, but were every bit as sharp as steel.
“Leave us,” the unicorn said. The beasts growled, uneasy and unwilling to obey. The unicorn’s eyes, normally bright and laughing as if at some private joke, flashed dangerously. “I said leave,” he ordered again, his voice hard and cold as flint. The dogs’ ears lay flat, and they slunk from the cell with faint whines. The cell door swung shut behind them, leaving Radiant Zenith and the unicorn in blackness.
A simple gesture of will, and the cell was lit once more by a ball of pale rosy light. Radiant uncurled slowly, examining the pony looking down upon her. Though the white of his coat was tinted by the reddish hue of his magic, the color was faint enough that she could distinguish the bright red in his mane, the green of his eyes, and the white of his coat with little trouble. She shuddered, tried to turn away, only to find her chin held in place by his magic.
“And how are we feeling?” he asked, ignoring her attempts to break his magical grip. He knew she no longer posed a threat to him.
Radiant Zenith attempted to form words and could not, her mouth swollen shut from lack of water. The words that would have normally tumbled forth resolved themselves instead into a pained mumble, forced through shattered teeth and chapped, torn lips. Fearfully, she swallowed, though what she was swallowing she was not sure.
“Ah,” said the unicorn. “I see. Feeling a bit parched, are we? I can fix that.”
The horn on his head flashed once again, and the door opened, a bucket and ladle floating through to layby his side. He carefully filled the ladle, trying not to spill any.
“Open your mouth,” he ordered gently. “I know it’ll be difficult, but try to drink slowly, you don’t want to choke.”
The water tasted of salt and was warm, but to Radiant Zenith in that moment, it was the most wonderful thing she had ever tasted. She would have gulped it down greedily, if she had the strength remaining to tilt her head far forward enough. As it was, she had to content herself with the trickle being fed to her from the ladle.
She emptied the bucket in this way, her throat loosening as the unicorn waited patiently for her to finish each ladle, ensuring she did not drink too much at once or lose out on water still in the basin. Finally, the bucket drained, she slumped to the floor, exhausted.
“Feeling better?” the unicorn asked kindly.
Radiant Zenith nodded once before curling up again, fearful of what fresh new torment awaited her.
“I’ve been ordered to look you over,” the unicorn said again, tossing the red hair of his mane out of one eye as he reached for a satchel on his back. “You’ve been through a lot. We don’t want you dead.”
“Could have fooled me,” Radiant Zenith rasped.
The unicorn laughed, a sound made all the more unnerving by its normality. It was pleasant to listen to, warm and full of good cheer. “I suppose you could see it that way,” he said. “But I assure you, I’m not here to hurt you.”
Radiant Zenith looked at him mistrustfully. “Who are you?” she asked. “I have seen your face before, nearly four hundred years ago. But you are dead now.”
“Tell me,” the unicorn said, unslinging his satchel and laying the contents out on the ground, among them splits, ointments, and bandages, “Have you heard the tale of the Billy Goats Gruff? My tribe used to tell it around our fires, long ago. Uncurl, please.”
Radiant Zenith hesitated for a moment, before lying flat on her side. Disobedience would do her no good. “I have,” she said. “It was an old story long before even I was born. It was about three goats, each bigger and stronger than the last, and a troll.”
The unicorn nodded as he set to work, spreading a foul-smelling paste over her burns and brands that stung like seawater. “Good to know there’s at least one who knows the old stories. Hold still, this might hurt.”
Radiant Zenith screamed, a loud and long wail as the broken bones in her two broken legs knitted themselves back together with a sickening grinding sound. Briefly, she was insensate, her world nothing but red-tinged blackness and pain. But the pain passed, and with it the dark, and she regained her senses to find that her newly-healed legs had been splinted and bound with linen ties. The unicorn had begun applying bandages to other parts of her body as well, along the more serious cuts and abrasions.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” the unicorn asked, his green eyes meeting her own as his horn dimmed. “Anyway, we’re almost done, and then you and I can leave this place.”
“Leave?” Radiant Zenith croaked, tasting copper, her head aching. “To where?”
“The main temple. The one I serve wishes to meet you.”
Radiant Zenith felt certain that this was no mere congenial visit. “Why?” she asked, fear rippling through her voice like a snake through hot sand, “Why does she want to meet me?”
The unicorn tilted his head. “Now, how did you know who I was talking about?” he asked curiously, applying the last of the bandages.
Radiant Zenith frowned. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” she asked. “You’re one of Celestia’s pawns, just like the one who came before you.”
If his first laugh was amused, the stallion’s second laugh was absolutely hysterical, loud and barking off of the stone walls of her cell.
“You think I am in service to Celestia?” he asked, when at last he caught his breath. “Oh, dear. Oh, goodness, I haven’t laughed that well in a long while. No, my dear, I am most assuredly not in service to Celestia. We serve an altogether different master.”
“We?” Radiant Zenith asked. “You and I?”
The stallion chuckled good-naturedly. “No,” he said. “My brothers and I. You asked about who I was? Well, then, let me introduce myself properly. I am the eldest brother of seven, though only six remain. You may call me Primus.”
The night air was stifling over the main island, warm and heavy and bereft of the breeze that had promised to take away some of the oppressive heat that remained here even in the middle of winter. A heavy and short rain had come earlier, and the moonlight reflected off of rivulets of water which still ran down through the rubbery green leaves of the forest canopy, falling below into the rich loam of the earth.
The land here was good for farming, if the marshes surrounding the predominant settlement could be properly drained and the vines kept clear, gestures that met with limited success. The ground here was often wetted with liquid of an entirely different sort, anyway, gathered by the island’s inhabitants from near the bottom of the massive tiered stone pyramid which rose to the sky like a jagged fang, looming oppressively as a symbol of bloodthirsty power over the entire population.
From the pyramid, sprawling out in a jumble of alleyways, towers, stone and wood houses, canals, and other assorted attempts at architecture, stretched a city, confusing and difficult to navigate from below, but appearing geometric from higher vantage points. A few other, smaller pyramids rose from the ground, dedicated to minor deities or prominent nobility, but they paled in significance to the black-stone monstrosity that was the clear master here. It had been constructed first, before even the most rudimentary huts, so its central location was not surprising in the least, and from further out and other islands, it could have been mistaken for a smallish mountain.
It was not far from this pyramid that Radiant Zenith and Primus, accompanied by several guards and priests, emerged, blinking in the starlight, nearly blinded even with a new moon in the sky. Primus had not needed much to prepare him for the trip save a mantle of feathers, subdued in color, but Radiant Zenith had been transformed.
The Dogs, hulking creatures though they were, had somehow managed to come up with a reasonable approximation of clothing for her to wear. A dress of bright red fabric hung off of her skinny frame, though she had been well-fed before leaving the caves, fruit and bread and a heady wine which sent her senses whirling even after half a glass. From her neck dripped stones of such brilliance and size that their sale could have bought a small township, sapphires and diamonds and rubies and many, many black opals. She had been washed and scrubbed, firmly but not to the point of pain. The Dogs had even paid heed to Primus’s admonishments that they not exacerbate her injuries. The last step had been to mark her with some sort of makeup, red dye applied under her eyes and in a straight line from the shattered remnants of her horn to the hollow of her neck.
“We don’t have far to walk,” Primus said gently. “We can take it slowly.”
Radiant Zenith opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it, noticing that their path was lined with Diamond Dogs, from young pups to bitches and their mates, though she noticed there were no elderly among their ranks. There was something different about these Dogs than the ones she was familiar with, scrawny cave-dwellers.
They were large, the Dogs in the gathering crowd, larger than their Equestrian counterparts. Standing erect, they could match Minotaurs for height, and if her memory served, they could, loping on all fours, run down a pony, if they weren’t particularly swift. Radiant Zenith remembered that Dogs’ ferocity and tenacity was outshined only by the proud Gryphons, and while they were not particularly gifted in the ways of magic from birth, something about the arrogance with which certain robed individuals among them carried themselves told her that may no longer be the case. Their homes, ramshackle huts of wood and reeds, and their roads, of carefully-hewn stone, stank with matted fur and perfumes and dyes as well as the ever-present stench of blood, coppery and almost overbearing, making her gag, almost retching up the rich meal she had just had.
As they walked, Radiant Zenith noticed a susurrus of whispers among them in a harsh, guttural tongue, almost like a quiet chant or benediction. She looked behind her to see a tower, curiously engraved with depictions of strange creatures, beings with too many eyes or limbs and giant, gaping maws filled with pointed teeth. Each and every one of them was painted, sometimes partially in red or blue, but always mostly black.
“Come,” said Primus. “They’re waiting near the top of the pyramid.”
Radiant Zenith followed meekly, her sense of unease growing with every step.
The procession wound its way through the streets, the buildings becoming larger and better-made the closer they were to the pyramid. Occasionally, they would cross over a canal via a small bridge or under a walkway connecting two towers, from which were suspended strange mobiles and fetishes of gems and bones and reeds, twisted into likenesses of Dogs and ponies and other things she could not identify. Their way was lit by torches, and soon they approached a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by a vast wall, part enclosure and part fortress. Priests and warriors alike manned the walls, their eyes fixed on her, and one robed Dog raised a conch horn to his lips and blew a long, wavering note as they passed through the gate.
The courtyard was redolent with the reek of fresh gore, and Radiant Zenith saw that the warriors and priests were spattered with blood. An animal cry from above drew her attention, and she saw the limp body of what appeared to be a goat tumble limply down the pyramid steps, landing in a heap below before being dragged away to some forsaken charnel house. Her steps faltered and she came to a halt as a drum began beating steadily, low basso beats that rumbled through the air and the earth and her chest, feeling like a massive heart tolling, circulating the lifeblood of a terrible beast.
“Relax,” said Primus. “The knife is not for you. They do it to honor your coming.”
“I am a prisoner,” Radiant Zenith whispered fearfully, barely audible over the murmuring of the Dogs around them. In all her years of life, she had never seen barbarism ritualized quite like this. “What value do I have to these Dogs?”
“You are a savior to these Dogs,” Primus replied as they reached the base of the pyramid. Together, they ascended the first step, and the murmuring began to grow in volume, becoming a true chant.
As they climbed, leaving the guards behind, Radiant Zenith’s head began to clear, though she had to walk carefully. Blood slicked the steps beneath them, and they were very steep and narrow. The chanting, though louder now, seemed much further away. As they climbed above the city, Radiant Zenith stifled a gasp. She hadn’t realized how massive this place truly was. The city dominated much of an island, one she was reasonably sure was part of an archipelago. Torches burned in the streets, stretching out into the dim distance, where the jungle once more began to hold sway, and in the distance were still more settlements and towns. Ocean, black beneath a dark sky, rippled in every direction she could see past that, interrupted only by the low silhouettes of either clouds or more islands. Before she could see much more, however, they had reached the top, where three priests, bent with age, waited.
One bent to meet her, placing a mantle of brightly colored feathers about her neck. Radiant Zenith tried to focus on him instead of the pit in which blazed a fire that appeared to be fueled primarily by goat hearts. He examined her as he straightened up, nodding to himself as he did.
“She is ready?” the second priest asked, his voice cracked with age.
“As ready as she will ever be,” Primus replied smoothly. “Is the time right?”
“Almost,” the priest replied. “Almost.”
Radiant Zenith looked past him, to what appeared to be some sort of large shrine, a boxlike structure bounded by gold and heavy stones, painted in black with a single door and no windows. It was the size of a modest house, and no larger, though it dominated the top of this pyramid handily enough.
“What…what is in there?” she asked.
“The one I serve, and they worship,” Primus replied. “When the time is right, you will enter alone and meet her.”
“Her?” Radiant Zenith asked.
“Cehualli,” the third priest said, yellowed and rotting fangs exposed in a smile, “Cehualli. You go. Cehualli calls. Go.”
The door in the front of the temple shuddered and opened on its own, and for the briefest moment, Radiant Zenith considered throwing herself from the top of the temple steps and bashing her skull open on the cobblestones below. But some strange combination of fear, curiosity, and…was it excitement? A force compelled her to walk forward, taking tentative steps. Soon enough she was three steps from the threshold, then two, then one, and then, without realizing it, she was inside the shrine, and the door had shut behind her with a rather final-sounding click.
At first, she was completely blind, and she stayed absolutely still, not daring to move. Then, gradually, a light appeared, seeming to emanate from everywhere and nowhere all at once, a pale and shimmering blue light that brightened into shimmering grayness which threw uncertain shadows on the walls, completely unordained. At the far end of the shrine there was a simple throne, chiseled from a single massive block of obsidian, and atop the throne rested the disheveled corpse of what appeared to be a Diamond Dog bitch. At least, it appeared so, until it sat up and opened its eyes, twin orbs of deep and terrifying black.
“Yyyyoooouuuuu…” it hissed. “Ponyyyyy…”
“Who…”Radiant Zenith stammered, her voice quaking as much as her legs, “What are you?”
“Hhhhhate…” it rasped, its words getting shorter and easier to understand. “Death.” It raised a single decrepit claw and pointed to itself. “I…Shhhadowwww…”
Radiant Zenith felt her blood run cold as it stood up from the throne, the finger turned to point at her. “Yyyouuuu…hossssttt…”
And suddenly, the corpse dropped to the floor, a true corpse, as shadow-stuff flowed from it like water, spilling out and up the walls and towards Radiant Zenith, enveloping her scream so it stopped just short of a yelp.
It surrounded her, a terrible feeling of darkness so complete and final that she could scarcely comprehend it, and suddenly it was no longer without her, but within as well, spiraling into her through every opening it could find, even through the shattered remains of her horn, and it was part of her, in her lungs and veins and eyes and mind and…and…and…
The thing that had once been Radiant Zenith sighed and straightened, opening its eyes, no longer soft and caring but twin orbs of deepest black, in which glinted only a hint of dragonlike slitted pupils, soon to fade away. As she walked to the door, ready to hear the admiration of her subjects once more, the Shadow noticed that somewhere, deep within her, the wood-witch was screaming, begging for death to come and take her.
It wouldn’t.