The Headaches Have Been Tripled
“And you’re sure you’ll be alright?” Celestia asked.
Luna nodded even as she double-checked her now-overstuffed saddlebags. “Regardless, my personal safety is not nearly as at risk as that of our little ponies. Something is causing Nightmares to be released.”
Her horn glowed, and her magic settled her luggage on her back. “It is given unto me to find that cause. As soon as that is handled, and Tartarus has gotten back into ‘the groove’ with its new warden, I shall return.”
Celestia looked around at the room: Luna’s observatory. The mirrors, the bell, the spyglass… “I’m going to miss you.”
“And I, you, Sister.” Luna pressed her neck against Celestia’s. “Are you sure you can handle raising the sun and the moon on your own?”
Celestia wrapped her forelegs around Luna’s body with a jolt. The suddenness of the gesture caused the Princess of the Night to gasp. “Celestia—”
“I can handle it,” Celestia whispered. “You don’t need to worry. I can do it. I swear.”
The corners of Luna’s eyes wrinkled. Her mouth closed and formed a thin frown. “Well, I suppose a thousand years is far and away enough practice.”
Celestia gave a final squeeze and released Luna. She nodded quickly, a false smile on her face.
Luna raised an eyebrow. “I suspect it is not me who requires the most reassurance.”
Her sister averted her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that I won’t be long,” Luna said. “I mean that I am coming back. Quickly.”
“Quickly,” Celestia sighed, “but not soon.”
“Well, these things take time.” Luna ran a hoof over her shin. “Pray that the solution to our problems reveals itself soonish.”
“Am I to use ‘soonish’ exactly in my prayers?” Celestia asked, sincerity brightening her smile.
“If you feel like it.” Luna let out a short laugh, followed by a groan. “I must be off. I have a wonderful, blusterous day ahead of me.”
“You mean, ‘blustery?’” Celestia asked. “It has been quite stormy recently.”
“Nay, I used ‘bluster’ for a reason.” Luna started towards the stairway. “Blueblood is to be my companion in Tartarus. Both Bluebloods.”
Celestia tapped a foot on the floor. “Blueblood isn’t all that bad, you know.”
“Verily?” Luna looked over her shoulder. “He doth posses a great means for hiding it.”
“Luna!” Celesta’s head tilted up, her eyebrows lowering. “I don’t want you two to be fighting all this time. Could—” She pursed her lips and chewed the bottom one. “Promise me you’ll make an effort to get along?”
Luna let out a small breath. “It would make you feel better knowing that, I know.”
“It would make your time in Tartarus a bit easier, I know,” Celestia replied. She sat and tilted her head to the left. “Make the effort. Get along. You might both find unsuspected depths in each other.”
Luna walked up to give her sister a nuzzle. “For you, Celestia, I shall make an effort. I cannot promise Blueblood will do the same.”
Celestia returned the affection. “I suspect that you’ll be surprised.”
“Very little surprises a pony a thousand years old.” Luna stood tall, her eyes closed. A suppressed grin grasped the edges of her mouth.
Celestia took a deep gulp of air. “Take care.”
“I shall,” Luna said. “You, as well.”
“Please stop digging your claws in my flanks,” Blueblood said. “It’s getting quite uncomfortable.”
A mountain rose ahead, somewhere between the size of the Smokey Mountain north of Ponyville and the majestic Canter Mountain of Canterlot. Its snow-capped peak reflected the sunlight back, stinging Blueblood’s eyes. He marveled at the difference between the white snow and the dull-gray rock below it. The stone seemed to absorb light, rendering the valley dim and dreary.
“We’re here,” Wishbone Fluorspar grunted. He adjusted his cap and tightened the beaded string that hung under his chin. “Yay, yippy-skip, woo-hoo.”
“So, that’s Tartarus?” Blueblood asked. It was suitably impressive, he supposed. Though if you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen them—
“No,” the captain interrupted Blueblood’s train of thought. “That’s just the entrance. Look behind.”
Blueblood tilted his wings, adjusting his trajectory to slide around the mountain. If he had flow a little lower, his dropping jaw would have scraped the ground.
Behind the mountain was another mountain. A mountain that was missing a peak, but a mountain nonetheless. The diameter of the object was somewhere around twice the square acreage of Sweet Apple Acres in its entirety (and be not mistaken, that was a darned big farm). The sides of the mountain rose like the jagged teeth of a leech, spiky and reaching for the center. Conflicting with the usual nature of mountains, the sides did not meet at the top, but ended halfway up what should have been the mountain’s height. Where the peak should have been was a gaping hole that went down, down, down.
It was a bit like looking into the maw of a great and terrible beast. The insides slid down, worn smooth from centuries of rain and weathering. The bottom of the pit held a pool of stagnate water, no doubt home for numerous disgusting and parasitic creatures. Steam rose up from various pits and pores in the surface of the mountain, which belched forth acrid smoke occasionally.
The base of the first, middling, mountain and the great gape touched, giving the appearance of having been welded together by arcane forces. Blueblood hovered over this connection, forcing himself to breathe as his coat bristled. He swallowed as a nearby hole coughed forth sulfur. He regretted that swallow. “It seems a touch unfriendly.”
“Truth,” Wishbone barked. “Sometimes, need prison just as mean as creatures inside.”
Blueblood rounded the smaller mountain and came to a rest before it. “I don’t doubt that little else could hold the Nightmares.”
A door sat in the side of the mountain. It had the ringed appearance of wood, but a closer look revealed that it was solid stone. Petrified, perhaps. Four chains linked the corners, meeting at the center in a strange, three-keyhole lock. Blueblood pursed his lips; he was never quite sure where the three-key system had come from, nor could he even suppose a reason. Certainly, the existence of Tartarus did not extend into the prehistory before the reign of Celestia and the banishment of Nightmare Moon. It came later.
Perhaps he would ask his aunt the next time he saw her, he mused. Not Luna, Celestia. He didn’t suspect Luna knew. Not that he looked forward to any sort of conversation with her.
Wishbone twiddled his thumbs. “So… we knock?”
Blueblood gazed up at the height of the door. “I don’t suppose anypony will answer.”
“Maybe not anypony.”
“Perhaps anyone, then?”
“Wouldn’t bet on just one.”
“I don’t consider myself a betting stallion regardless.”
“Then knock and remove all doubt.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
“When?”
“Just as soon as my knees stop jiggling.”
“Fair enough.”
Blueblood focused on those knocking knees of his, all four of them, and commanded them to slow in their gyrations. They seemed the petulant sort today. “Darn, seems they won’t cooperate.”
Wishbone nodded. “Too bad. Guess we can’t knock.”
“For sure.”
“For shame.”
“For sure.”
Blueblood sat as a clatter arose in the distance. “One might say it’s fate for us to never enter the foul and fabled halls of the ancient prison.”
Wishbone’s face fell as the noise grew louder. “Might wanna rethink that.”
“Why?”
Captain Fluorspar, without taking his eyes off the middle-distance, pointed a paw behind himself. Blueblood followed the indicated line of sight and pouted. White outlines could be seen against the drab gray, white outlines with teeth, claws, and not a single stomach between them.
“Neverdead,” mumbled the prince.
“Nastiness,” mumbled the captain.
“I should knock.”
“You should.”
“I’ll knock.”
“Okay.”
“Knocking now.”
“Good.”
Blueblood turned to the door and thumped his forehoof on it three times. He waited patiently for a response.
That lasted two seconds. “How close are they?”
“Maybe half a kilometer.”
Three more knocks sounded, followed by a few more. “Come on,” Blueblood said.
“Hmm. Couple manticores.”
The solid knocks came a little quicker.
“Think I see a leopard.”
The knocks came at a steady tattoo.
“Huh. Wonder if cockatrices can turn stuff to stone without eyes.”
Then there was the frenzied bludgeoning of the doorway. Blueblood panted, screamed, pleaded, and begged, but there was no answer. He placed his back against the door and faced the approaching muscle-less mob. Monsters of every shape, size, and species ran onward. A manticore with a cracked nose (three guesses what happened there) flew overhead, and what teeth it wasn’t missing shone razor sharp. A cockatrice slithered with the tip of its tail trailing a few centimeters behind. Vampire fruit bats clattered through the air, their hollow teeth hungering for something a little more protein-filled than apples.
Blueblood screamed. More precisely, he howled.
Something answered that howl.
The pitter-patter of giant paws rumbled across the stony ground. A large, black mass leaped off the mountain above the doorway and sailed over Blueblood. Three heads opened three mouths and projected the single most fear-inducing, heart-stopping, pulse-pounding (not as oxymoronic as one might think), hair-raising noise the prince had ever heard. A bark, thrice multiplied, bellowed from lungs the size of a pony, tinged with warning and anger. A bark with the force of a sonic rainboom. A bark that looked into the eyes of the Royal Canterlot Voice and made it weep tears of inadequacy.
A bark that caused Wishbone to gasp, stiffen, and tumble back with a stupid smile across his face.
The Neverdead creatures skidded to a halt some few meters from Cerberus. The monstrous dog outmonstered the monsters. By a lot. Sinew by sinew, muscle by muscle, Cerberus rose over the fiendish mob and growled. As one, the skeletons about-faced and scampered away; those that had tails tucked them snugly between their legs.
“The mighty Cerberus come to rescue in time of dire needs!” Wishbone bellowed. He had shifted position from lying on his back to prone on his face. “May he ever find treats in dog dish!”
Cerberus’ faces softened and his heads tilted. His middle head bowed down to sniff at the strange little creature paying homage to him.
“Please, Mighty Cerberus,” Wishbone spake, “grant me the grandest of honors! May I…” He held his eyes to the ground in penance for the presumptuousness of his next statement. “May I sniff your butt?”
Cerberus blinked three times. He turned to Blueblood, who was exactly five breaths away from passing out. Three sets of teeth bared themselves as the awesome dog growled. Blueblood shortened the number of breaths by three. He was interrupted in his journey to unconsciousness by the timely intervention of Wishbone Fluorspar’s nose.
One of Cerberus’ heads turned to the diamond dog hovering behind his butt. Wishbone stopped mid-sniff, his eyes growing wide.
One of Cerberus’ eyebrows may have twitched a hair.
Cerberus growled at Fluorspar, and the comparatively smaller diamond dog bowed low. The giant would have proceeded to pounce on Wishbone, and then decide what to do with him, when he was stopped by the timely intervention of Princess Luna’s arrival.
The princess floated down on sparkling wings, her horn smoking lightly from a recent spell. A set of manticore bones fell from the sky behind her and landed in an oxidizing mass of pain. “Cerberus, we like these guests.”
The dryness in Blueblood’s mouth made speaking painful, but not impossible. “We could have used your help a little sooner.”
She frowned at him, the light wrinkles around her mouth and eyes deepening. “I have duties as well, Blueblood. As you must be aware.”
She looked from Captain Wishbone, to Blueblood, and then back again. “Where is your ship?”
“It exploded,” said Wishbone with a longing glance to Cerberus’ butt.
At a confirming nod from Blueblood, Luna sighed a deep, heartfelt sigh. “The kingdom will compensate you for your loss. You’ll have a shipshape ship in no time at all.” She looked to the giant dog edging away from the diamond dog. “In the meanwhile, Cerberus will escort you to the forest. Ponyville is less than a day’s walk from the edge of the Sleeping Mountains.”
Wishbone Fluorspar’s disposition became quite sunny at that point, but Cerberus’ growl darkened those particular skies. The big, black dog walked on ahead, the smaller dog having nothing to do but follow him. The two plodded through the mountain pass, ears perked for any sign of monsters in the crannies.
Blueblood smoothed down his mussed mane. “I hate dogs.”
“Get over thyself, Blueblood,” Luna grumbled. “Lighten up, and thou shall have a better time of it.”
“Oh, really?’ Blueblood said. “And what do I have to feel positive about, eh?”
To his surprise, the princess was taken aback by his words. She recovered quickly and held her snout in the air. “Thy— Your rump is whole and ungobbled, for starters.”
“A clear and present danger around you, I’m sure.” He lifted a hoof and indicated the thrice-locked portal. “So how do we go about opening this?”
By way of answering, she stood before the doorway, spread her wings, and lifted a regal foreleg. “It is I, Princess Luna of the Night! I bid you let me enter!”
The sound of gears churning and chains clanking emitted from the door. The chains came loose as the doors parted, though no key had been inserted into the keyholes. Darkness waited behind the door, a darkness that the midday sun had no way of touching.
Blueblood swallowed what little spit he was able to conjure up.
Luna’s ears drooped. “Here it is, Blueblood. Your birthright.”
“Indeed,” Blueblood said, for what more could he say? A hesitant hoof was placed inside the doorway, followed by another, another, and another.
Though he was loathe to admit it, Blueblood had come home.
Luna stepped inside as well. Blueblood flinched as the door slammed shut behind her, draping them with shadow. The faint glimmer of her star-swirled mane lit the immediate area. Aside from seeing the mountain from a new angle, there wasn’t much to illuminate.
“I love the decor,” Blueblood said with a glance at a cobweb. “Great Grandfather really did a number on this place.”
“He doesn’t have much care for such things, I’ll admit.” Luna strode ahead, her mane and tail lighting the tunnel. “Come.”
Blueblood looked from one solid rock wall to the other. “No, thank you. I’ll just be taking one of the innumerable paths open to me.”
“The road forks further down,” Luna growled. “You needn’t force yourself to become familiar with Tartarus’ layout in the first hour.”
He shrugged. “Very well. I shall follow some more.”
And follow her he did, down long corridors of unfeeling, dead rock. The walls were glossy, as if frozen where it flowed. Pits and holes dotted the tunnels here and there where a bubble had broken through the surface of magma. It was thus for a long ways, but was eventually broken by a carved arch.
Grotesques sat on opposing sides of the archway, monsters carved from the stone of the mountain itself. Their lifeless eyes dared Blueblood to take a step further and pass under the inscription written on the arch between them. He gazed at the words and attempted to decipher them.
“It’s old script, but I can just make it out. Not quite ancient, then?”
“Nay,” Luna answered. “’Tis but four hundred years old. I hear that Shake Spear was quite the calligrapher.”
“Shake Spear was here, hmm?” Blueblood placed a hoof on his chin. “‘Thou rotten beast, restrained for now—Who battles won and heroes cowed—’”
“Don’t!” Luna’s hoof planted itself inside Blueblood’s mouth. “It isn’t time. Not for that.”
Blueblood pried the offending appendage out of his muzzle. He nodded, a frown playing at the corners of his mouth. “The oath in all its glory?”
“Aye.” Luna sighed as she passed under the script. “Written by the hoof of the Bard himself.”
“Seems a bit amateurish, in terms of poetry,” Blueblood muttered. “He didn’t even bother with his usual iambic pentameter.”
“And thou art an expert with such things, now?” Luna eyed him as she turned down one dark path.
“After a rather embarrassing experience”—Blueblood coughed—“I thought it prudent to learn a thing or two.”
Luna hid a tiny smirk in the shadows. “Well, perhaps it will ease your ire to know that the Bard did not create the oath, but merely transcribe it.”
Blueblood tilted his head. “Maybe a bit,” he said.
A silence grew between them, before Blueblood chopped it down with the Machete of Subject Changes. “My father spoke of a curse. Do you know something about it?”
Luna hid her stumble by stomping her hooves for the next five steps. “A curse, you say?”
“Something to do with the whole family,” Blueblood said. “From what I could tell, he didn’t know much, didn’t have the time, or didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Perhaps all three?” Luna asked. She winced as the words escaped her mouth before she could corral them.
“Possible.” Blueblood squinted at the glittery princess before him. “And what do you have to say about it?”
Luna ran a hoof through her mane, no easy task at a fast walk. “That he’s right about there being a curse. It’s only partially magical, though. It’s more… imposed.”
Blueblood’s eyebrows dipped down. “And by that, you mean…”
“By that, I mean that some ponies have a habit of making their own prophecies come true.”
Blueblood caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror-like surface of the igneous walls. He checked his teeth before hurrying up to his aunt. “Ponies within this prison, you mean.”
A moment’s hesitation. “Aye.”
Another reflection caught the corner of his eye, one with a gray coat and a blue-streaked mane. One double-take later, the reflection had reverted to his own white coat and blond mane. He stared at himself for a full half-minute, mentally daring the reflection to shift again.
Luna tapped a hoof as her frown skewed to the side. “Art thou busy? Have thou a fashion emergency? Should We get the shampoo out of Our saddlebags?”
“Nyeh.” Blueblood ground his teeth together a little. “I could have sworn I saw… Never mind.”
As he looked at the diarch, he couldn’t help but notice the lines around her eyes and mouth were even deeper than before. Her shoulders slumped, and her wings dipped down at the edges. She must have noticed his scrutiny, because she straightened her posture a moment later.
“Saw what?” she asked quietly.
Blueblood’s brow furrowed. “I’ll not burden you with the fever dreams of a once-prince, Your Majesty.”
“You are still a prince, Blueblood,” she replied. “Twice-crowned, no less.” Her mane fell over one eye, nearly-but-not-quite hiding the small smile she held. “Perhaps you can be Prince of Tartarus, rather than merely the warden.”
“Wonderful.” Blueblood turned back to his reflection, his eyelids heavy. “How can I possibly accept such an unbelievable honor?”
Luna’s reflection appeared behind his. “How can you not?”
Blueblood craned his neck back until he was nearly looking up Luna’s nostrils. “Point to you, and that makes checkmate.”
“Huzzah. Victory.” She turned back down the pathway, choosing the left fork. “Now we must be off; there’s somepony we need to meet.”
Something welled up within Luna’s chest, but she swallowed it back down. “Just in time to watch him die.”
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Wishbone's reaction to Cerberus nearly had me in hysterics.
4057784
"I have smelled the bum of the Grand High Alpha and lived! In honor of this event, I shall rename myself Wishbone Buttsniff the Wise!"
No dog did sniff a nobler rump.
So beautiful.
4059371 - How utterly destroyed would Wishbone be if he saw Fluttershy playing with Cerebrus like the 'giant puppy' that he is?
4066512
I'm sure it would only take a moment for his brain to deduce: Hay, this pony plays with the Great Mutt as if he was a mere pet... That must mean that she really, really kicks butt.
...
I shall fetch her slippers.
“May I sniff your butt?”
Wow, and he goes through with it, too. Like a Buddhist seeing if Buddha really waits "three times."
Tartarus clearly needs a renovation. Does Equestria have a public or private penal system? This one seems chronically underfunded, so I'm guessing it is privately supported. tsk tsk. Well, BB, time to jazz the place up and give it some panache!
So, if Luna went for the "star-swirled" bit, then...
fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/138/d/9/what_is_this_even_a_celestia_drawing__by_wonder_waffle-d65rpmq.png
Celestia must have gone for the bells!
Which one? And hoof not foot.
Probably not, no.
This exchange. That is all.
What? Wow. *clears throat ans sings to the tune of You're Mean One Mr Grinch* You're a weird one, MyHobby. You really are insaane! You're as crazy as Pinkie Pie with some bedlam in her mane, MyHobby! I got nothing, so I'll stop nooooooow!
Fell the questioning power of my right eyebrow.