• Published 11th Jun 2022
  • 1,699 Views, 164 Comments

Left Behind: Sunny Disposition - The Psychopath



Nightmare Moon received an odd omen from the one who destroyed Equestria's past and now must contend with the possibility of her sister's anger coalescing into a true being while Nightmare Moon tries to retake Equestria from the King and Queen.

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More Doors

"I can't see!" Sunny complained. "Where are we?" Doing his best to try and see through the blinding light, he could just barely make out a mountain. "I heard...what is that, clicking?" he wondered aloud. "Can you see anything?" he asked. He received no answer, however. "P-princess? Princess?!" he called out in panic.

"I'm here, stop yelling." Moon puffed. "Looks like they were about to eat you," she mused.

"Wh-who was what?"

"Here."

The light gradually faded to a more tolerable -albeit still bright- level. Letting his eyes adjust, the stallion jumped back when he saw the thousands of black, insect-like equines bordering the platform the portal was situated. More could be seen staring at him from the surface of the mountain and the inside of the castle itself. Sunny gulped nervously and felt his legs give way under the fear.

"There...there were so many already waiting..." Sunny trembled in fear. "I...uh...d-do we have to go there?" he asked nervously.

"Yes," Moon said with annoyance.

Sunny took a deep breath and forced himself up. He thought that he would be used to this sort of thing by now, but every time he went anywhere with the alicorn, weird things that he never expected always ended up occurring. Things that make him terrified. Things that could kill him in seconds if he wasn't vigilant.

"Through...the changelings?"

"Yes!" Moon shouted angrily. "Now stop your whinging and hurry up."

The bugs moved away when Nightmare Moon strut forward, although some still hissed and snapped at her and Sunny. One jumped out from the now-crooked mountain to the duo and bowed their head.

"What do we owe the honor of this visit?" the changeling asked.

"Your queen mentioned something you discovered beneath your hive during my...confrontation with the false alicorn."

The bug pondered a moment then raised their wings in realization. "Oh, of course! That thing..." It cleared its throat and gestured to the ponies to follow it. "Strangest thing I have ever seen, and I have infiltrated minotaur lands far to the east. Obsessed with weaponry, those ones. Kept in check by the griffins. Kinda fun to pit them against each other when we're bored."

Sunny was not doing well at the sight of this massive construct. The doorway had been snapped in several places and held together by a strange, sticky green goop that looked very organic. The interior wasn't faring much better and was filled with webbing and goop all over the place. The only locations he couldn't spot any were on the floor.

"I see you haven't had time to fix any of this," Moon commented.

The changeling heaved a tired sigh. "The damage was quite extensive, Princess. Not to mention that the work put into all of this is beyond any kind of masonry work we know. Techniques were used that have been lost to time."

"No doubt a result of those imbeciles the broken pony was part of," Moon complained.

The young unicorn found himself spinning around as he tried to take in the architecture around him and the few statues left that hadn't been torn apart. "So you made your hive in an old castle?" he asked. "Must be very old if you don't know the architecture."

"It's the castle of your many times great grandmother," Moon explained. She looked at Sunny. "Congratulations. By right this belongs to you and your family. You have your own castle."

"Y-you mean the Solar Tyrant?" Sunny stammered.

The alicorn bobbed her head left and right. "It's fifty-fifty whether it was the Solar Tyrant or my sister." She thought back to the charred diary she recovered from Canterlot's buried remains and frowned. "Although I have a pretty good idea of who had it made." She dragged a hoof across the weakened stone and checked the dust left on her. "It is an old place, but far younger than Canterlot."

"Belongs to him by right?!" the changeling shouted. Their outburst brought the attention of other drones working about the castle ruins. "You can't do that! We found this place first! You can't just st--"

Moon blocked their mouth with a hoof. "Relax. I have no intention of taking your home. I'm only interested in seeing what was buried beneath that you had yet to notice during the...many...long time you were," she muttered.

"O-oh. Okay." The changeling cleared their throat and ruffled their wings. "I see. I'm sorry. We just..."

"It's fine. I don't need your life story." She pointed beyond it. "Just lead me to the 'secret chamber'."

"Right. Let's continue."

Sunny cringed when his ears became filled with loud buzzing all around him. He had been so engrossed in nearly dying and being witness to an old castle he had never seen nor heard about that his brain had completely tuned out the noise.

The trio continued deep into the castle and passed over some debris that changelings were busy clearing out. The unicorn put a hoof to his mouth when he saw them dragging out their own from beneath the debris. The sight was too gruesome for the young pony to handle, so he quickly turned away and followed after the alicorn and changeling. They went through an open doorway to stairs leading down, deep within the castle grounds. The air became more humid, more rank. Everything seemed to become hotter. The ponies soon learned why: Breeding grounds. The walls had been dug out out by the changelings to incorporate many hatching chambers where several hundreds of grubs were waddling about, fighting with each other and being tended to by the larger changelings.

The guide looked over their shoulder. "Stay close to me, ponies. The grubs may look cute, but they're vicious at that age," they warned the two.

The bug stopped, annoying Nightmare Moon. "Why are we stopping?" she asked with her fangs bared.

The bug didn't answer, preferring to simply stare behind her. Moon's angry face quickly disappeared when she saw what had been so 'interesting' to her guide. Sunny became engrossed in one of the chubby grubs waddling about. Its gross body was pockmarked with specks of black and white, and it had very tiny forelegs. Several of the large changelings could be seen watching through an entryway to see what might happen.

"Princess, look! They're adorable! They're cute, small, and squishy!" Sunny said while gently squeezing the one he held. "It likes it!"

The grub he was holding was giggling with every squeeze, making the stallion love it more. He lost any adoration when it bared many rows of sharp teeth at him and hissed loudly. Sunny screamed and threw the grub over his shoulder and started running around in a panic while Moon and the guide watched with bored expressions. The white unicorn used his magic to encase it in a cube prison and hide behind Nightmare Moon.

"Look at that slavering beast!" the unicorn shouted. "It's licking the spell!"

"If you could just remove the spell, then the caretakers can grab it and calm it down," the guide requested patiently.

Sunny glared at him. "Fine," he agreed reluctantly.

The moment he let the spell dissipate, the grub immediately started crawling back at him furiously.

"Oh no, not this time!" the unicorn declared. "This time I'm prepared!"

"Punt," Moon spurted.

She casually kicked the grub away, sending it flying through the air in a fit of terrified squeaks and growls. The caretakers panicked and jumped to grab it. Two accidentally collided in the air, but the third was successful in the endeavor.

"Stop patronizing the infants of our allies, Sunny," Moon sighed.

"Well, at least now he'll know better next time," the Guide added.

The annoyed stallion followed the two deeper into the hatching grounds, and Sunny noticed that there were a few chambers that had caved in from the fight before. Everything had become uneven and misshapen the further in they went. Several teams of changelings were trying to dig out a chamber that had apparently almost folded in on itself at several angles. A few grubs had been saved, but it confused Sunny as to how they managed to survive several months without food or water. He got his answer further in past a chamber made for the caretakers to rest. A few of them were perched atop giant stones and mounds of dirt still attached to the ceiling and...puking a pink liquid into the cracks and crevices leading into what he assumed to be pockets of still-living grubs. They were being aided by some of the caretakers holding up extra bright, luminescent mushrooms they had plucked from the walls to shine directly into the gaps.

There were worker drones discussing with the caretakers on how best to proceed. When one of the drones tried to remove a large stone, several of the ones surrounding it as well as the ceiling started trembling, prompting the others to screech in a panic. Sunny found it fascinating that these insects communicated through screeches and chittering noises. He would have to catalog the changeling language if they allowed him to.

"It's here," the guide announced.

They went into a hatchling cave where eggs and newborn grubs were being evacuated by the caretakers, although a few of the small creatures were still waddling about. Several tried to garner Moon's attention, but when they realized she didn't even acknowledge their existence, they puffed up their faces angrily and moved away towards the next pony they noticed was present. Sunny glared at them, surprising the grubs. They bared their fangs at him, hissed, and quickly turned away.

"Stupid worms..." the pony muttered under his breath.

"What a bizarre creation," Moon noted.

Although it had been slightly bent in the middle from the land shifting, the door was still holding. It was a massive, black door made from what Moon assumed to be steel. Several metal torsion bars and clamps crossed the frame and buried themselves beyond the rock where they couldn't be seen or reached.

The guide made several noises of discomfort and started looking greatly worried. "We have tried to enter it, but after a few attempts we felt there was a toxic miasma exuding from whatever was on the other side," they explained.

Moon dragged her hoof across the door and quickly retracted it when a tiny red spark shocked her. "I don't know this kind of magic," she noted with surprise. "This...doesn't feel like something my..." Moon took an audible gulp to wash away the sickness rising up. "sister would do," she wheezed. "This is something else entirely." She shot a small spark of her own magic at the door and noticed that nothing had occurred. "If I knew what kind of magic this was then I would have an easier time identifying it."

"So...you can't get through?" Sunny asked.

Nightmare laughed. "I said I can't identify it. I didn't say I had no way to get through it." She dragged her hoof across the door once and frowned. "This is an extremely powerful spell. One that seems to have been reinforced many, many times in the past, but it feels like each one was different. A different type of reinforcement, incompatible with whatever magic this is."

Sunny hummed and thought back to his lessons at his university. "The more you reheat a metal to repair it, the frailer it becomes. You can only reheat it so many times before it either becomes useless or you have to melt it," he thought aloud.

"You can only repair something for so long," Moon agreed. "While I can't undo the magic, I can force it apart," she added.

The mare gathered magic in her horn, and it seemed like a corona of darkness pulled in all the light from the surroundings into the alicorn. She pointed her horn at the door and dozens of red marks appeared on its surface. Most were circular in shape with symbols written into the rings they formed. They were sharp and jagged and perplexed even Nightmare Moon. She grunted in pain as she continued to try forcing her way through.

"Princess, maybe you should refrain from pushing," the changeling suggested with genuine worry. "We were about twenty trying to force through it, and we--"

"You weren't an alicorn!" the alicorn grunted through clenched teeth.

Sunny stepped forward, his eyes darting between Moon's horn and the door. "But princess, he's right! If you keep trying you're going to hurt yourself!"

"Grrrrraaaa-I've had worse to deal with!"

"But--"

The two onlookers became silent when they heard the definite sound of metal crying under pressure. a recognizable 'crrrk' noise! The interwoven spells on the door were starting to tremble, and as time went on the symbols started dissipating and cracks grew along the many interweaving half-rings and circles. It took an hour to get through all the decayed magic, and the shattering of the spells caused an explosion that threw everyone and the grubs back against the opposite wall.

"There!" Moon groaned. "It's broken," she strained.

Her horn sputtered with magic and light returned to the chamber. She ignored Sunny and the guide's attempts to get her to rest, but Moon pressed on. She wanted to know what exactly was beyond a door that not only sported such physical strength but also needed magic spells of such a caliber. And unknown magic, on top of that.

With another bit of effort, she drunkenly tore the door out of the wall and stumbled forward into the room to a strange sight resplendent with sickness and magic.