The Taste Of Blood

by Shrink Laureate

1. The statue garden

The gardens of Canterlot Castle were cool and calm at night. The distant trickle of a running stream mingled with a susurrus of birds and insects and the rustle of leaves nudged by the breeze.

Twilight found their familiarity comforting as she walked through them. She'd spent many hours in these gardens, day and night, reading, writing, thinking or simply talking with the Princess. She remembered every cracked tile in the paths, every offset stone in the short walls, every curve of the ivy clinging to the trellises, every sprig of moss growing on the statues. They each held special memories for her.

The moonlight shone bright and sharp, lighting up the whole gardens in calming cool white. The mare in the moon was clearly visible. She'd missed that, in a way, when she moved to Ponyville. She idly wondered why she could see it again now.

Ducking through an archway, she saw that the garden on the far side of the hedge was in daylight. Some afternoon tea was being served to her and Celestia on a round wooden table. It was a pleasant scene that she was sure to come back to again and again, but not right now

She hurried through a secluded grove packed with snow and bathed in a golden late afternoon into a much more pleasant patch of autumn evening: the statue garden. To her left stood a statue of Meadowbrook, quill in hoof. To her right, General Firefly, wings ready to launch her into the air. It struck her, as she ambled through them, how serious all of the statues here looked. So many of them were defiant, resolute or furious. She didn't see any that were cheerful.

She stopped in front of a different statue. It wasn't a pony, or even a gryphon or any other ordinary creature, but a baffling ensemble of disparate parts thrown together into one shape. She’d seen this statue before, and wondered what had possessed the sculptor to create it.

Something was strange though. She thought she remembered the statue's pose being a little different – wasn't it laughing before? Now it was recoiling. Its long body was contorted into a writhing shudder.

She stepped closer to get a better look, and as she did a faint sound caught her ear. A rustling, tapping, scraping? She leant around the statue to see if there was anything behind it, perhaps a tame animal or bird, but didn't see anything. Curious, she walked right around the statue and still saw no culprit.

Returning to the statue’s front, she heard it again and realised the sound was coming from the statue itself. Was there a crack in it, perhaps water dripping down inside? If so, Celestia's gardeners should be told so they could repair it.

She leaned in to listen but heard nothing. She leaned closer, head lowered near the creature's feet, to press her ear against the cold white stone.

“Twilight?”

A voice! She fell back in surprise. It had been distant and muffled, as if heard through a wall or from the bottom of a well.

She brought her head closer again. “Hello?”

“Is that Twilight Sparkle?”

“Who is that? Is somepony in trouble?”

“You don't … no, of course you don't remember me. I mean, who would?”

Twilight scoured her memory. “Are you somepony I should know?”

“I suppose not,” replied the voice, “I mean, you only met me once. You only broke through my enchantment - which was supposed to be impossible, by the way - rescued your friends, foiled my plan to rule Equestria, and imprisoned me here for what I assume is going be another thousand years or so. Probably all in a day's work for you, really.”

“You're trapped inside the statue?”

“Oh, yes,” the voice said patronisingly. “Or rather, you could say, if you wished to be entirely precise about the matter, pedantic even, that I am in fact trapped inside a statue again.” It loaded the last word with sarcastic vitriol.

Twilight looked the statue up and down for some key, some clue. “How would I even get you out? I mean, if I broke the statue, would that free you or would it hurt you?” A thought occurred to her, and she took a step back. This statue was in Celestia's garden. Celestia must know it was here, she knew everything. So … “How do I know you're not supposed to be in there?” she cautiously asked.

The voice dropped into a sneer. “You're going to leave me here, aren't you? Leave me trapped in this shape for centuries, just like she did. At least you'd better hope it's centuries.”

“Why?” asked Twilight anxiously.

“Because when I get out of here I'm going to KILL YOU!” the voice yelled in frustrated rage.

Twilight yelped, jumping back.

She cowered at the base of another podium, keeping her eyes on the statue ahead of her. She half expected it to jump down off its podium and lunge at her with those strange mismatched limbs, but it didn't move. It didn't even flinch, and she couldn't hear the voice any more.

Not wanting to get any closer, she strained to listen, hearing nothing but the sprinting pound of her heart and the rasp of her panicked breath. She held a hoof to her barrel, willing herself to calm down. She closed her eyes, focusing on her breath.

As the sound of her own frantic heartbeat faded from her ears, the noises of the garden came back: the rustling, scraping, shuffling of myriad tiny creatures in the night.

And behind her, faint as could be, the sound of a pony sobbing.

Twilight turned her head, looking back and up. Behind her, rearing overhead, was the statue of Chancellor Puddinghead. It was expertly made, but she'd never understood why the sculptor chose to give the chancellor such a shocked expression, or such anachronistic clothing. When asked about it Princess Celestia had explained that artists often used contemporary styles when depicting classical subjects in order to make the work more accessible to their audience, but Twilight hadn't really understood.

She also didn't understand why the statue would be crying.

She was hesitant about taking to another statue, after the last one was so unfriendly. She couldn't keep the trepidation out of her voice as she called out softly, “He- Hello? Is … somepony there?”

A mare replied, as if from the bottom of a well, “Hello? You … you can hear me?”

“I can,” confirmed Twilight. She looked up at the familiar statue of the Chancellor, and asked it, “Are you … Puddinghead?”

“What? That's a horrible thing to call me!” whined the statue.

“Oh. Then you're not the Chancellor of the Earth Pony tribe?”

The statue paused. “You mean from the old Hearth’s Warming story? Why would you even think that?”

Twilight indicated the plinth on which the statue stood. “You're kind of … labelled.”

“I'm just a gardener!” replied the statue. “My name's Blossomful, I work here at the palace, and I need to get to the Moondial Garden, quickly, but I'm trapped. Can you help me out? Please?”

Twilight was confused. Nothing this mare said made sense. She'd heard there once used to be a Moondial Garden, long ago, where the guard post now stood. There was a reason they built over the top of it. “Didn't I hear that the Moondial Garden was ruined or something?”

“It's not that bad!” insisted Blossomful. “I just got the potash levels a bit mixed up, but I can fix it, I swear. I just hope I can get to it before the princess notices, or she's going to be so angry.”

“How did you even make a mistake like that?”

The mare sniffed. “I left my apprentice Turncart doing the measurements. He gets confused by big numbers sometimes.”

Twilight thought she knew a pony called Turncart. He'd been an elderly gardener when she was just a filly.

Before she could confirm that though, they were interrupted by another voice asking, “Is anypony out there? Who is that?”

Twilight inspected the podium of the next statue over, a pegasus stallion crouched low with spread wings. “Lieutenant Thatch Weave?”

“What? No, my name's Wainscot. Can you help me out? I'm going to be late for my first day of work at the palace.”

Another voice joined them, “Can somepony get me out of here? I seem to be trapped.”

And another. “Can anypony hear me? Anypony at all?”

“You can't keep me here!”

“Hello? I need to get back to my foal, he's waiting for me!”

“Let me out, please, I'm sorry!”

“I'll pay for it, somehow, I'll pay!”

“Just you wait till I tell my father about this, you can't do this to me!”

“I was going to tell her soon, I swear it!”

“Please, Princess, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!”

Twilight buried her head under her hooves to block out the growing cacophony of statues. Though they couldn't move, still they seemed to surround her. Everywhere she looked she saw another statue, another pony trapped in agony, begging for their freedom.

She glared at the mismatched creature in the middle of the garden, and though it hadn't moved a hair she couldn't help feeling it had a malicious glint in its eyes. “See, little one?” it shouted over the din, “See what your beloved mentor does with all the ponies that displease her? But you really shouldn't be surprised. After all, you've already taken your first step in her hoofsteps, haven't you?”