Dungeon

by CompleteIndifference

Prologue: Life's Sunset

Prologue

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

- Robert Blake, Baretta

“Paranoia is just having the right information.”

-William S. Burroughs

“Hold you there, neither a strange hand nor my own, neither heavy nor light, shall touch my bum.”

-Miguel de Cervantes on ‘punishment’

The sun was setting. This in itself wouldn’t normally be much cause for wonder in the eyes of the graying unicorn, but that day wasn’t, in his humble opinion, “normal.”

A normal day was waking up to his loving wife, eating a quick breakfast, and immediately heading to work. Maybe he would take a walk through Canterlot Gardens during the designated lunch period. Perhaps he'd travel the commercial district, or stop by Donut Joe’s for a bite. Then: home and his bed.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

That day, however, would most likely be his last; that sunset, his final glimpse of the beautiful Equestrian sky he had grown to love in his forty summers of life. As the heavens shifted from blue to burnt yellow and, finally, a deep umber-orange, the stallion sat, staring.

Drinking it in.

Momentarily averting his gaze, he dipped his head and nibbled at the small wooden plate of lettuce at his chain-bound hooves. The wrinkled, green leaves tasted old, stale even, but that small fact wasn’t nearly as bothersome as one would think. The middle-aged stallion liked to think that he kept things in perspective. There were other, more pertinent, priorities to consider, after all. Slowly and deliberately, still chewing on the withered greens he had been given, the unicorn lifted his gaze back to the horizon and the setting sun.

His horn was heavier than before. A thick, bronze ring had been melded to its base, digging painfully into his forehead and perverting its once pristine bone-white swirls. It was a symbol of his sins, and the grizzled stallion had been told that it could never be taken off.

Though… he had always thought that “never” was too strong a word.

A sharp tugging on the shackles around his forelegs prompted him to tear his gaze from the horizon once more. The stallion was met with a pair of hard, glaring blue eyes: the same shade as his own. Apparently his time was up. He stood, turning from his complimentary meal under the quickly dimming sky, and faced the procession.

Before him stood two columns of Celestia’s Pets, a contingent of the Solar Guard handpicked by the Princess herself to travel with her on royal duties, defend the throne room itself… and take care of Equestria’s few criminals. Their golden armor glinted alluringly in the sunlight, the bright red plumes on their helmets standing stiff, despite the slight eastern breeze. Between both columns, the iron ring on the end of the graying stallion’s chain-link leash in his mouth, stood their captain: a snowy colt with a blue mane and eyes of the same cold hue. His dark purple regalia reflected none of the sun’s dying rays. The grizzled unicorn wondered briefly if the absorptive nature of his armor was intentional, but his memory failed him.

His thoughts were becoming… blurred. Odd. There must have been a reason for the coloring—No, he knew there was a reason, but the chained pony couldn’t quite remember.

The ring was getting to him.

“If you feel a slight tingle, well… that means it’s working,” the voice of Princess Celestia’s blind unicorn apothecary tittered faintly in his memory. “Don’t think too hard about using your magic, now, or you’ll lose brain cells.” The old mare’s coat had been a deep orange, and, despite her dead eyes, she always seemed to know in which direction to direct her cruel, throaty giggles.

Orange coat. Red mane.

The shackled unicorn glanced briefly back towards the setting sun. It was almost gone now, half swallowed by the black silhouette of the horizon. Night was coming. It was only a matter of time.

Another sharp tug at the metal cuffs around his forelegs prompted the pensive stallion to take the first steps toward his sentence. It was time to go. The guard captain’s blue tail twitched in a peculiar fashion as he walked ahead, dragging the heavy iron leash along with him. His path led the both of them in between the columns of solar guardsponies.

If anypony had bothered to ask him, the graying unicorn would have told them that such force seemed a bit excessive. It wasn’t like he was struggling, was it? He was in the middle of the Celestia-damned hedge maze. Nopony but the Princesses themselves knew the way in or out. They were the ones who’d brought him here in the first place, along with an entire contingent of their bucking PETS.

No. He wouldn’t fight it. They were going to get rid of him… throw him away like an old toy.

“They can try.” The ghost of a smile found its way onto the shackled unicorn’s face, and a pointed glare from the pony leading him only strengthened it. Guards passed by on either side, some following him with their eyes. “Sloppy.” The grin grew wider.

He was nearing the end of the short tunnel of guardsponies, the chains around his forelegs rattling against the packed, earthen pathway. What looked like a mausoleum of white marble stood near the end of the clearing in maze-center, growing ever closer. The imprisoned unicorn could just make out the shape of a huge metal doorway past the plume of the twitchy guard captain’s helmet.

“So this is it,” the convict mused. “Canterlot Dungeon.” The structure itself was small, but that was because the entire facility was underground. That was what he’d heard, anyway. Ponies in his profession didn’t learn much about the Dungeons. Nopony besides the Princesses’ personal group of guards really knew anything about them, and they were very tight lipped (once again, hearsay on his part).

The door grew closer, and the chained stallion was able to make out the finer details of the massive threshold. Aside from a small central hole near its base, the doorway was seamless, and if his captors weren’t specifically leading him toward it, the stallion would have questioned whether it was really an entrance. Fading sunlight lit the smooth, steel gateway, but produced no visible glare or glint across the dull metal. Standing twice as high as any guard that stood nearby, the flawless metal wall was quite possibly taller than Celestia herself. It was monolithic, and looked to have been made with intimidation in mind.

“Intimidated… hehe. I’m not going to be nervous about a door, or the Dungeon, for that matter,” the convicted pony assured himself. “It’s just a bunch of cells hidden under a hedge maze behind the castle. They probably even feed the prisoners well, those big-hearted, gullible, blind Princesses of ours.” Something deep within himself scolded the middle-aged stallion for speaking ill of the Princesses like that.

It wasn’t their fault.

A wall of dull metal surged into his vision, startling the unicorn from his thoughts. He nearly rammed his face into the doorway, and stumbled back onto his haunches. Sitting alone in front of the massive gate, he looked back over his withers to find the captain standing a few feet behind him, sporting a surprisingly detached air about him. The convict hadn’t even noticed him stop.

“Stick it in,” he grumbled, his voice gruff and dispassionate. What happened to the expression of disdain?

The shackled colt looked back toward the gates, and his eyes were immediately drawn toward the small hole in the center: it was just large enough for a unicorn’s horn. He had seen these before. It was a hornlock, a practically unbreakable security device specifically catered to the more magically inclined of the pony races. One such lock could be found protecting the Royal Vaults.

Looking back to the captain in confusion, the older pony only received another pointed glare as the impatient-looking guard gestured toward the door with his armored hoof.

“Stick it in,” the purple-armored pony grunted. “Now.”

One thing about hornlocks that made them especially discouraging to would-be thieves was the countermeasure for unauthorized horn penetration into the system: several extremely sharp needles that layered the inside, set to extend at the detection of any foreign magic signature. One didn’t have to be a unicorn to know that that would hurt like Tartarus.

So, in this case, his hesitance to comply with his captor’s orders was understandable.

With one final glance back toward the captain and his platoon of guardsponies, the suddenly very nervous convict lowered his head, and, after a brief moment of tentative lining up, he slid the pointed peg in the round hole.

Eyes screwed shut; the doubtful unicorn awaited the blinding pain that would signal the transformation of the second most sensitive part of his body into a pincushion. He was pleasantly surprised: the pain was nowhere near what he’d thought it would be.

A dull pressure began mounting at the base of his horn, and the stallion could have sworn the heavy, brass ring was growing tighter around it. Then the burning started.

Hot, stinging pain erupted from where the metal ring was digging into his scalp, and the increasingly panicked convict could smell his fur burning. He tried to scream, but found that his jaw had locked up, along with the rest of his body. All he could do was twitch in agony and wait for the burning pain to end.

Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long.

The pain stopped almost as quickly as it began, and the silence of the clearing was suddenly punctuated with the sound of metal grinding against stone. The lock surrounding the stallion’s horn parted, and he swiftly scooted backwards, determined to get as far away from the pain-inducing threshold. He made it three feet before he was bodily shoved back towards the source of his anxiety.

“Damn you!” the shaky stallion spat, still trying to back away. “Was that supposed to happen you stupid thug?!”

A dark, chittering laugh from behind made him freeze. He stopped struggling, and spun around, backing toward the doorway and staring at the guard captain. The armored stallion was walking calmly toward him, a cruel smirk playing across his lips, while the columns of guards under his command weren’t even looking in their direction. Instead, they stared straight ahead as if in a collective daze.

“N-No,” the chained colt stammered, eyes wide as he continued to back away. “I killed you. I killed all of you.”

The guardspony kept stalking forward. Stepping up his pace, the frightened convict fled backward. A shadow passed over him, and he immediately assumed that he had been backed into the threshold of Canterlot Dungeons. He was trapped.

“Only one thing to do now.”

He kept backing up, keeping his eyes locked to those of the predator before him, and then IT happened.

His back hoof descended toward the floor… to find that the ground had inexplicably disappeared.

Flailing and skidding wildly, the stallion frantically tried to regain his balance, but inevitably failed. Eyes bulging, mouth open in a silent scream, time slowed to a crawl and he fell backward. The guard captain simply watched, the cruel smile growing ever wider. The falling stallion just barely caught sight of a flash of green magic glinting across the armored pony’s cobalt eyes.

Suddenly, time caught back up to the flapping unicorn, and gravity did its job. The captain disappeared, along with the hedge maze, and the dazed contingent of innocent guards. The blood-red sunlight slowly shrunk as he fell, and the telltale grinding of metal signaled the sealing of his tomb.

Stale wind rushed past, and everything was consumed in darkness.

Comments

[Armalite]

Well now, this was unexpected! I think you got something really cool here, and I can't wait to find out what happens to our troubled individual! Keep it up man, faved and liked!

[Exemter]

Finally a story that really interests me! Continue please!