> Beyond My Grave: Exhumed
>  by AnnEldest
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue: The Beginning
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was only a lake in the middle of the woods. So, why did it hurt so much to look at it? 
For longer than even she knew, she watched her own grave. A grave where others feared to go, for the harm it would bring. Though there was no memory of anypony who was ever hurt there. Then, why her? Was it an enchantment? A curse? Or just plain bad luck? Perhaps it was because of that why it hurt so bad to watch it. Or perhaps, because after so long the lake began to look back.
No. It was her own fault for being there. Her own headstrong ignorance that brought her to that terrible place. Her mother and friends had all told her as much. Now, she paid the price for it all. Her family. Her friends. Her very life. Now, this was her existence. No matter how she tried calling or asking a passerby for help, they never responded. She was trapped. A prisoner of her own undoing.
An early fog rolled across the lake that afternoon, and crept into the trees along its edges. Slowly, the trees were swallowed by the fog, disappearing into the vapors that crawled forth. From the nearby path, the sounds of trotting hooves pattered down its dusty trail. The pony who walked that path sighed as the heat of the afternoon slowly began to fade, and the cool of the evening began to settle in. In time, the sun went down, and the traveler was left to the mercy of the encroaching darkness.
The next step of the traveler was met with a ripple of mist. Looking down, he saw that the ground beneath him was slowly being overtaken by a thick fog. Wherever he was going to, he would not be deterred. He kept going down that path, though the way before him was gradually obscured by the encroaching mists.
A low, unearthly howl came from some distant beyond. One that chilled the bones of the unwary and foolhardy. The traveler stopped and listened for another howl, but heard nothing. Putting his hoof in his pocket, he touched the antiquated coin that he always kept with him on his travels and wished it to grant him the same luck that it had always seemed to in all those harrowing times. When he walked again, a new sound made him freeze in his tracks.
Somepony was crying. And they were nearby.
Knowing it was perfectly foolish to call for somepony in those unearthly places, the stallion left the trail and followed the sounds of the silent sobs. He walked forth and jerked back when he felt his hoof splash into water. Looking out, he saw what must have been a vast expanse of lake, hidden mostly by the fog. The sobbing had grown louder. Whoever was was surely there. But, no matter how far he walked around either side of the shore, he could find nopony.
The traveler hummed pensively to himself and placed his hoof upon the nearest fallen log, whispered a silent prayer to the lost, and returned the way he came, certain that he would find that trail again.
She sat upon the fallen log, weeping to herself as she looked out over the foggy lake. For the first time, she had thought that somepony would take her from that horrible place. That she would leave and be normal again. But, it was as she always thought before. Hopeless.
Directly from where the traveler had left, another shadow appeared in the mists. One much larger than the stallion, which loomed over her as it approached.
“Filly? Why are you crying?” the shadow gently asked.
The filly jumped when she heard the voice and quickly turned around. There, standing before her was another filly just like her, wearing a large coat and a snow hat that left only her face peering through. The only things she could see about the stranger were her sky blue mane and her darker blue coat.
“Wh…What are you doing out here?” the filly asked.
“I asked you first. Why are you crying?” the blue filly said.
The filly looked over the stranger. Even though she was there, she still couldn’t believe it.
“You’re talking to me?” she asked.
“Yes. I asked you the same question twice, but you still haven’t answered,” the blue filly replied.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,” the filly said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “It’s just that…I don’t know what it is, but it seems like nopony can see me.”
“What do you mean?” the blue filly asked.
“Every time I talk to somepony, or walk up to them, they don’t listen to me. Most of them don’t even look at me, even though I’m right there. No matter how much I try, I can’t get somepony to talk to me.”
The blue filly took a small step back when the filly on the log began to cry again. After collecting herself, she cleared her throat to ask another question.
“Are you lost? How long have you been out here?” the blue filly asked.
The filly on the log murmured quietly and hugged her knees. “I don’t know…”
“Why not?” the blue filly asked.
“I don’t know! Okay!? I’ve been here forever, and I don’t know why nopony wants to help me!”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help,” the blue filly said.
The filly on the log slowly stopped crying and turned to face her company. “Help…? You want to help me?”
“Of course. It wouldn’t be very nice to leave a filly alone in the woods. Especially when the sun’s already gone down,” the blue filly said, before turning back toward the path. “Follow me. I’ll get you home.”
“Do you really know the way home?” the filly on the log asked.
“Sure, I do. My sister and I come to these woods all the time. Well, not my sister. She never comes out here at night.”
“Why not?”
“Because, she’s scared of all the ghosts that our mom says live here. But, I’m not scared of ghosts. I’m not scared of anything in these woods,” the blue filly boldly said.
That low, eerie howl sounded off somewhere in the distance, and the blue filly’s ears folded as she crouched low to the ground.
“Well, maybe just the big stuff that lives here,” she said. She turned her back and took her first step forward. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, before your mom starts to worry.”
The filly on the log watched as the blue filly for a moment, the drifted off the log she sat upon, her hooves slowly melding with the mists as she walked. In time, both fillies were swallowed up, not even a shadow left of them.





The blade of fan passed by Princess Luna’s line of sight for what must have been the thousandth time during that hour. She laid on her back on the couch, her hooves folded over her chest as though laid to rest.
“Princess Luna?” a voice asked. One that Luna didn’t even turn her head to address. “I asked: do you still see them?”
It was a question that she herself had wondered for those many long years since that fateful day. If there really was something there, or if it was all in her mind. And in all that time, she never knew how to answer. Not even to herself. But, no matter how she answered, things would not end well. If she said ‘yes,’ she would be deemed crazy. ‘No,’ and she would be disbelieved and still be labeled a lunatic. It was a gamble, but she had to give her answer.
Slowly, she turned her head to face the doctor.
“No. I don’t see them anymore,” Luna finally answered.
The doctor nodded and wrote something down on his notepad. Something much longer than a simple ‘no’ answer.
“You’re sure that you haven’t seen them?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m absolutely positive.”
“Mm-hmmm…” The doctor said, tapping his pencil to his pad. “Do you remember the last time that you saw them?”
“It was maybe two weeks ago. Or a week and a half. I don’t recall the exact day,” Luna said.
Her chest clenched when she remembered what had happened just the night before. Those phantom hooves that walked across her balcony and opened her bedroom doors, revealing nothing beyond them.
“Almost two weeks without incident. That’s a good sign,” the doctor said, writing down another note. “What about your sleeping patterns? Has that improved?”
“Oh, yes. So very much, ever since Tia made me take those pills. Now, I sleep the night through, free of any dreams or nightmares.”
“That’s a very good sign,” the doctor said, smiling.
“I suppose so,” Luna said. “Even though my own sleep has been restful, I don’t like not being able to dream. It keeps me from doing my work as the Princess of the Night.”
“I see,” the doctor nodded. “But, until the nightmares stop completely, the best thing to do would be to keep them suppressed.”
Luna responded with a low groan, making the doctor turn to the first page of his pad.
“Now, Princess. I know this is touching a delicate topic, but have you seen…him?” he asked.
Luna’s eyes widened at the question. ‘Delicate’ didn’t begin to describe it. It was the one thing that she hoped would never come up. Something that she had spent a long time burying deep within herself to leave forgotten. The very thing that had gotten her put on that couch in the first place so long ago.
“No, I haven’t,” Luna bitterly answered.
“He hasn’t come back to, erm, hurt you?”
“You know what he tried to do to me. Don’t insult me by glossing over it.”
“I’m sorry, Princess. I mean no disrespect. But, you need to realize that it’s important to talk about these things, or else I can’t help you,” the doctor said.
“I’ve been talking about these things,” Luna said, her low voice slowly rising. “I’ve talked about them for weeks on end with you. Yet, I feel no better than when we started! With everything I tell you, you make it out like I’m only getting worse!”
“But, you just said that the nightmares have stopped. And that you’re no longer seeing what isn’t there. Isn’t that exactly the progress you’ve been wanting?” the doctor reasoned.
Luna huffed to herself. There was no way for her to argue against what the doctor was saying, because it was the truth. Keeping her eyes unblinking on the passing fan blades, she gave her answer.
“I just want this to end,” she said.
“This session, you mean?” he sighed.
“No,” Luna calmly said, “I want it all to end. Whatever I’ve been seeing. All of my dreams. I just want things to go back to normal.”
The doctor could see it in her face. Hear it in her voice. It was all she truly wanted. For the time being she would be under his care. Until the night came that she was not plagued by the terrors that came with it.
> Chasing Shadows
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hours passed, and the sun was slowly lowering toward the horizon.
Luna stepped out onto her balcony and watched the sun as it gradually disappeared down the horizon. It wouldn’t be long now. She warily eyed the light as it faded, dreading what she was about to do. The low, nauseating terror that antagonized her for so long whenever the sun went down. But, there was nothing for it. If the sun never faded, the night could never come. And the little ponies would all feel as terrible as herself.
The minutes passed, and the sun had gone. Above, the clouds that had gathered lost their pinks, golds and reds as the sunset dimmed to its last. Finally, the first star had come. Luna sighed and illuminated her horn with its brilliant blue magic. Soon, the moon eased its way into the sky, until it hung high overhead.
As easy as everypony thought it was, Luna began to sweat by the time she was finished raising the moon. Tonight the moon seemed particularly obstinate to rise, as if refusing to allow its mistress to subject herself to the terrors that came with its coming. Like a beacon for the dark creatures of the night, heralding the arrival of all the terrible things to come.
From her lofty perch, Luna watched over the landscape. Whatever was out there, she would see it. And she would protect the ponies from it. Most of all, she would make everypony see that it was real. That she was not overburdened or breaking down. In every dark shadow, she swore she could see them. They moved in a way that she almost thought they wanted to be seen, tormenting her with their secret existence.
Luna watched the dark land, feeling her knees shake ever so slightly beneath her. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw it. High above, a dark silhouette moved through the sky, blotting out the stars as it undulated its long, slender figure like a fish through water. She watched it, growing more apprehensive with every passing second, until the shape flew directly over Canterlot Palace.
Without a thought, Luna ran out to the hall beyond her bedroom. And she continued to run down its length into the adjoining halls. She looked out every window that she passed by, hoping to catch a sight of the mysterious night flier. By the time she arrived in the castle foyer, the moon was positioned to shine directly overhead, filling the room with a crossed web of shadows from the massive skylight above.
Luna stopped in the center of the light, entangling herself in the shadowy webs that passed over her. In another moment, she was overtaken by another shadow that drifted over herself, making a sudden chill shiver through her body. Looking up, she saw it again. There was that shadow drifting across the skylight, filling its length with its shadowy form. She stared transfixed on it, unable to identify what any of it could have been. It just continued to drift, as though pulled along by an invisible thread, drawn to some unknown destination.
“Lulu?”
Luna jumped when she heard her sister’s voice and turned to see her standing at the top of the nearby stairs.
“What are you doing down here? The observatory deck must be a better place to stargaze,” Celestia said as she descended the stairs.
“Come here. Quickly!,” Luna bade her sister.
“Luna?”
“Come! Now!” Luna almost yelled, frantically waving Celestia over.
Celestia trotted over and stood by her sister’s side.
“What is this ab–” she asked.
“There! Look!” Luna said, pointing upward.
Celestia did as she was told and looked up.
“Do you see it?” Luna asked.
“Only the skylight and the sky past it.”
“No! That…thing! It’s right there! It’s–” Luna stopped herself from talking when she saw that the phantom shadow she had been chasing was now gone from view. “It was there. I swear, I saw it just now!”
“Lulu, have you taken your pills tonight?” Celestia delicately asked.
“I don’t need my pills! I need to– I need– I need to go for a flight. I’ll be back in time to lower the moon.”
Luna ran off, leaving her sister behind, knowing that she would likely tell the royal shrink about this incident if the chance ever came. In time, she threw open the doors to the back patio and looked up into the sky. At the back of the castle was a thick layer of clouds, which were slowly lowering down to the ground. In a moment, she noticed the dark shape just as it disappeared into the fog.
She always hated fog. Ever since she was a filly, there was something about it that always made the small hairs on the back of her neck quiver. But, she had to know what it was. And so, she flapped her wings and took off after the shadow. Moments later, she was approaching the fog, and she was swallowed up by it.
Thankfully, the fog wasn’t as dense as it looked. She was able to see far enough in front of herself to be able to make out all of the landmarks to know right where she was. To her surprise, she saw the jagged archway of the old Canterlot cemetery pass beneath her. After it, the many stones that marked the resting place of the departed dotted the ground beneath her. Something told her that this was exactly where that thing had gone. And this was where she would find her answer.
Luna landed on the ground, surrounded by headstones. With a quick flare of her magic, she was able to clear the fog before herself, and saw her way to the proper path among the graves.
Her hooves clopped silently along the cobblestones as her eyes swiveled side to side. Whatever it was, wherever it was, she was going to find it. For the most part, the trek through the graveyard was uneventful. Yet, through the fog Luna could see the shapes of the things that plagued her, taking form and slowly whirling back into nothingness. Hollow eyes and crooked fangs leered at her from afar, making themselves known for just a moment, telling her to turn back and never return. But, her resolve would not be broken.
Something caught the hoof of the princess, making her stumble forward slightly. Looking down, she found it only to be the first step on a flight up stairs that went up a hill to the upper levels of the cemetery. Unable to find anything where she was, Luna walked up the steps, a small part of her hoping not to find anything.
At the top of the steps, there was a shadow in the distance. A long, slender shadow that hunched over one of the headstones. To her relief, it was a shadow that she knew very well. Although, she did wonder why he was there. There was nopony she could think of that he knew was buried there. But, she had already followed him so far. It would only be cathartic for her to approach.
She took a breath and walked behind the shadow, which didn’t move even when she was only six feet behind him.
“Discord?” she quietly asked.
The shadow remained still, then sat up straight.
“Funny meeting you here, Princess,” he said.
“You say that as if you were expecting me.”
Without turning to face her, Discord shook his head. “No. But, who else would be out here this late at night? Anyway, what brings you here? It’s not like these sleepers have any dreams to watch over.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Luna replied.
“You could. Except that I asked you first. So, do you want to keep playing ‘inquisition,’ because the moon has to be lowered tonight eventually.”
Even when it was something so small, Luna hated it when Discord was right. She decided simply to tell the truth.
“I saw you flying overhead at the castle. I wasn’t sure what it was at the time, so I followed you here,” she said.
Luna silently waited for Discord’s answer, and grew annoyed when he didn’t say anything for what felt like a minute.
“Curiosity kills more than cats, you know,” Discord said.
“What do you mean?” Luna asked with a touch of apprehension.
“I mean, what if it wasn’t me? It could have been any other freak, or monster, or boogeyman. You do believe in the boogeyman, don’t you?”
A feeling like a static shock crackled in Luna’s brain. Discord’s power knew almost no limits, but even he couldn’t know anything about the terrors that Luna experienced. Or did he know more about them than he was letting on?
“No. Of course you don’t. You’re a big filly. Nightmares like that are your specialty,” Discord provocatively said.
“What about you? I told you why I’m here. What brings you to this place?” Luna demanded.
Discord innocently clasped his mismatched hands behind his back and twiddled his thumbs. “It’s not important. But, I have my reasons. Reasons of my own. Reasons that–”
“We’ll have none of that, Discord. I was perfectly honest and straightforward with you. I would expect the same from you,” Luna said.
“You would?” Discord said, for the first time glancing over his shoulder. “You sound like you’re forgetting the very nature of chaos.”
“Would it not be the nature of chaos to go against its own nature?”
Luna saw the way that Discord’s hands clenched around one another, before he turned his gaze away from her.
“Besides,” Luna continued, “If it’s so unimportant, there would be no harm in telling me.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not important to anypony but me,” Discord said. “You know what? Just forget I said anything. I have to get going now.”
He raised a claw and snapped his fingers. Yet, there he stood. He snapped his fingers again, and still remained there.
“Is this more of your chaos? Perhaps you’ll just walk home? That would be unexpected,” Luna said.
“Me? I thought it was you doing it. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m getting out of here,” Discord said, before walking forth into the mist.
“Discord, wait. It’s nighttime. And it’s dangerous to–,” Luna said.
“Then, I bid you goodnight, dear Princess.”
And Discord continued his way through the fog.
Luna rolled her eyes and tried to light her horn up to clear the fog in front of Discord. Only, her horn didn’t light up with its usual magical glow. Panic began to creep up on her, and she trotted after Discord.
“Wait! You don’t know where you’re–” she called.
The ground suddenly disappeared beneath her frontmost hoof, making Luna lurch forward. There she was, staring down the sheer face of the far end of the cemetery hill. Worse still was that there was no trace of where Discord had landed at the foggy bottom.
Things were looking grim. There was Luna, alone and without her magic. All around her, the night grew darker and the fog grew thicker, pulling her ever more into its terrors.
> Run Like Hell
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fog drifted through the graveyard in waves, leaving small patches of clear ground. As it rolled on, Luna was revealed, sitting on a tombstone. She tapped her hoof against the stone, waiting for Discord to reveal himself. But, after so long, she began to realize that he may have truly gone away. However he did it, she wished that she could have followed him. She had tried using her magic to clear the fog, to fly away, and even to teleport back home. But, nothing worked. For all she could tell, it had simply gone away.
Whatever the case, Luna decided simply to leave without Discord. Whatever he was hiding, she would be able to drag it out of him some other time. Likely in the far future. Putting the frustrations of the night behind herself, Luna started walking back down the path to the cemetery gates. After her first step, she realized something crucial. Discord had stopped before the very headstone that she had been sitting on. She couldn’t think of anypony who he could be mourning. As far as she knew, he had no friends ever. Even the ones he had now seemed to only tolerate his presence.
The gnawing curiosity made her turn around to examine the headstone before she left. The closer she got, she found that the stone was filthy from ages of neglect. As if the caretaker of the cemetery had deliberately passed over that grave, and told all of his successors to do so. Luna knelt down and reached a hoof out to wipe away the ages of grime and dust that had built up, slowly revealing the time-worn inscription on its surface.

Dusty
A friend, sister, mother, and wife
You will be missed and loved always

“Dusty?” Luna whispered to herself.
Whoever she was, Luna could think of no relationship that she ever could have had to somepony like Discord. Unless she too had been like Fluttershy and gotten the naive notion that the god of chaos was only doing what was in his nature, and couldn’t be blamed for treating reality as his plaything. Perhaps it was because of that which made Discord visit that grave. For Luna knew that losing a friend felt like losing a part of yourself. For as few friends that Discord had, it may have been particularly painful.
Luna recalled a time when Fluttershy had told her that Discord had been sleepwalking. In her experiences, sleepwalking was a sign of subconscious anguish or nightmares. She remembered how she thought it was the silliest thing she ever heard. What would scare the god of chaos? Even after exploring his dreams, she was unable to figure that out. For all she could gather after that harrowing experience, all she could think was that there was a small part of him that didn’t want to be Discord. Luna glanced back to the headstone, wondering if this mysterious Dusty was key to that dissimilar part of Discord.
The wind picked up, blowing a thicker layer of fog forth from somewhere beyond. Luna gasped quietly when the headstone was enveloped by the mists and disappeared before her eyes. Reaching out a hoof, she was relieved to find that it truly was still there. And with a quiet sigh, her mind was made up to leave that dreary place.
The walk down the path was just as lonesome as the way to find Discord. Cautiously, Luna stepped around where she remembered the stairs being, and found them without much difficulty. Slowly, she began to descend those steps, before she saw the light.
Through the fog, there came a light that drifted toward her. A small, yet bright light that swished back and forth like a cobra entranced by a charmer’s flute. With the light came the steps of something else. Something that moved with the light. And the closer it came, Luna saw that it was embedded in a darker shadow. A small, familiar shape that trudged toward her on weakened legs. In a moment, the lunar princess was faced with an elderly griffin who wore a long, heavy coat on her back and a lantern around her neck.
The griffin stopped before Luna, silently appraising the princess, before a tiny smile appeared on her beak.
“It’s not often the dead in this corner of the cemetery have visitors. Is there somepony here from long ago that you’ve come to pay your respects to?” the griffin asked in a low, cracking voice.
“No. I…came with a friend who did,” Luna answered.
“I see. Then I wish your friend the best. I always love it when these graves get visitors, but it’s such a terrible thing to have to do.”
“Indeed. I know quite well what that’s like,” Luna said. “You’ll excuse me. I must be going. My friend seems to have gone on without me.”
“What a terrible thing to do. And on a night like this?” the griffin said. She turned around and beckoned Luna after her, “Come along. I’ll take you to the gates.”
Luna hesitated to follow, feeling that there was something off about the old griffin. The sight of the caretaker’s light disappearing into the fog made up her mind for her, and Luna quickly caught her up. Even then when she had somepony to accompany her, Luna felt a twinge of unease. Everywhere she looked, she could still see the things moving in the fog. Things that she had a strong notion that the caretaker had no idea about.
“What is it that you see?” the caretaker asked.
“What? Erm…I don’t see much of anything. Not through this fog, at least,” Luna said, trying not to sound nervous.
“Do the headstones make you uneasy?”
Luna looked around herself, and saw some of the sculptures that had been made on the graves. Mares and stallions who danced hoof in hoof. Winged beasts that loomed over the graves, warding off intruders. Statues of things that were worshiped from longer ago than Luna could remember. Each casting a shadow that distorted itself through the fog.
“No. I don’t fear death,” Luna said.
“Is that so? That wasn’t what I meant, but you must be a very brave mare to not fear such a thing,” the caretaker said.
“I simply can’t fear what will never come.”
The caretaker stopped walking and turned to face Luna, the light of her lantern casting devilish shadows across her face.
“Then, you would know that it’s not death to fear, but the dead,” she said.
Luna tried not to shiver, but the words of the griffin chilled her to her core.
“How– How do you mean?” Luna asked.
“Because sometimes, the dead come back to torment the living.”
Luna shivered again and choked a gasp that tried to escape her throat.
“I don’t mean that the dead crawl from the ground to make us join them. But, the memories that they leave behind. Oftentimes, when a creature dies they leave behind all of the regrets and memories and dreams that they had in life. What was left behind is then taken on by those the dead loved the most, and remains unfulfilled and unresolved.”
The words of the griffin repeated over and over in Luna’s head. There was something in there that she knew she could find, like a lost keepsake beneath a pile of junk. But the pang of worry in her mind kept her from discovering anything.
“Let’s keep going. We can’t let the worries of the dead become yours,” the caretaker said.
Luna silently agreed. And just as she began to continue on her way, she froze mid step when the sounds of a filly crying reached her ears. She looked around for the source of the sound, but saw nothing through the fog.
“Wait here for me. There’s something that I must see to,” Luna hastily said, before trotting off the path.
“Make sure it’s done quickly, or else you might never find your way back,” the griffin called, before she was engulfed by the fog.
Luna wove her way through the headstones, knowing that the sounds of the sobs were coming from that direction.
“Hello!” Luna called out, but heard no answer. “Where are you?”
The sobbing continued, but sounded quieter.
“You don’t have to hide from me. I’m…I’m here to help you. Please. Let me see where you are,” Luna bade the unseen filly.
The sobbing grew fainter, and a sudden foul smell reached her nose. The unmistakable smell of sulfur grew ever more overpowering with each passing second, until it made Luna’s eyes water. She covered her nose and leaned against one of the large headstones with the statue of a hideous winged creature atop it. Coughing loudly, she wiped her eyes, clearing her vision. Before her, she saw something rise in front of her. It was no wisp of fog. It was something denser than the fog. Heavier. And it flowed upward.
Looking down, Luna saw that the ground beneath her hooves was producing those drifting vapors. With them, lights began to appear between the blades of grass, as though millions of hot coals were pushing their way up through the soil. She jumped from the grave, and watched as the lights from the earth grew brighter, and the plumes of smoke became larger until the ground before the grave fell inward into a hole that opened up.
From the glowing hole in the ground, Luna watched as shadows began to dance along its walls, and a viciously cloven hoof rose forth. What followed it was something straight from Luna’s nightmares. It looked like a pony, but it wasn’t a pony. It was far too large, seeming to have outgrown the skin that was pulled hideously back from every extremity. It towered over Luna, baring its overgrown fangs, growling viciously as it fixed its tiny, red eyes on her.
She would have flown away. She would have gone for help. She would have cast that vile thing back into the pit that it crawled from. As she was, Luna was unable to do any of that. Not about to let herself be eaten by the nightmarish thing, she turned and ran from it, just as the grave next to her started smoking.
“Caretaker!” Luna called out, looking desperately for the light of the griffin’s lantern. No matter where she looked, she could find no trace of the light or the griffin who carried it.
The only light that appeared was two red dots. 
Luna allowed herself to trip and fall beneath a swipe of those vicious hooves. She rolled to her side and avoided being stepped on by another one of the demons.
She scrambled to her hooves, realizing then that the fog was filling with the eyes of the demons. The way out was quickly disappearing. Luna turned down the way where the eyes were the fewest and ran as fast as she could.
The sounds of the things behind her thundered across the foggy ground. Whether they were keeping pace or far behind her, Luna didn’t dare to look. She stopped herself from running when she nearly ran into the point of a lance that was held by one of the statues.
A low growl came from her side.
Luna staggered when a cloven hoof sliced through her shoulder. She yelped loudly, and dodged another attack from the demon. Taking the time allowed to her, she pushed the monster backward and heard a sickening sound as the back of its head was pierced by the lance. Still it thrashed, angrily reaching for Luna, unable to escape from its entrapment.
Two more of the demons arrived, quickly closing in on the lunar princess.
Luna backed away from them, and found herself on the steps of a mausoleum.
The first demon pounced upon her.
Luna moved and allowed it to smash face first into the steps with a gut-churning crunch. For good measure, she stomped the back of its head, making the thing bellow in agony.
The second demon had wised up and only tried to slash her with its hooves. Luna took only the edge of one of its hooves across her face and fell onto the banister beside the steps, nudging a marble bust. She grabbed the bust and swung it at the demon’s head, breaking it in two. As the demon recoiled, Luna took the broken head and bludgeoned it until the red light of the beast’s eyes dimmed to nothingness.
A heavy weight crashed onto Luna as one of the demons pinned her to the ground. She tried with all her might to hold off the jaws of the beast as the edged closer to her face. Beyond the jaws, she could see more eyes of the demons closing in. Beyond those, she saw another light. The light of a lantern, waving side to side.
With a newfound vigor, Luna took the broken marble bust that laid next to her head and jammed it into the demon’s mouth, stuffing it in deeply until she heard its jaws crack. Even then, she didn’t stop until the thing was choking on it.
Luna slipped out from under the demon as it tore its own throat apart to relieve itself. And she ran toward the light, into the midst of the other devilish eyes of the fog. She ran, paying no mind to them. She could see the things reaching for her. Trying to get her.
A rush of pain shot through Luna’s body as the jaws of one of the monsters chomped down on her wing. Before it ever had a hold on her, she tore it from the jagged teeth, leaving it only a mouthful of feathers and blood.
Flames began erupting from the graves. With them came that horrid smell and the growls of the demons. But the light of the waving lantern was all Luna cared about. And she was growing ever closer to it.
“Lu-naaaaa!” a low, guttural voice called behind her. And it was joined by many others.
Luna lowered her head to block out the voices that chanted her name. She squinted, and then opened her eyes just enough to see the waving lantern dim into nothingness. As soon as it had, the gates of the cemetery appeared through the fog. It was the most welcome sight in the world. Luna threw herself at the gates, pulled them open and slammed them shut behind her.
The world went silent. Luna dared to look through the bars of the gates, and saw the world as it should have been. The fog had thinned greatly. The demons had gone. The graves were undisturbed. Even the smell of sulfur was gone.
Luna leaned her head against the bars and managed a quiet laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
Luna jumped and turned around, finding Discord there behind her. She saw as his face quickly changed to one she had never seen him wear before.
“Are you okay? What happened to your wing?” he asked.
“You didn’t see?” Luna wheezed.
“See what?”
“Them. What just happened. The…The…I need to get help,” Luna said, realizing then just how much pain she was in.
“Okay! Take it easy there, cowmare. Let’s get you to a hospital, or something. Just try not to overdo it,” Discord said, as he bent down to offer Luna his shoulder.
Luna allowed Discord to carry much of her weight, and the two made their long trek back to Canterlot.
> Refreshing The Mind
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was during the odd hours of the morning, just before sunup that the emergency room of Canterlot General went into an uproar. The patients and as few of the staff as possible were kept in the dark about what was transpiring there. However, some rumors began to circulate anyway that it may be the end of the kingdom as they knew it.
“Is that what they’re saying?” Luna asked as she shifted in her hospital bed
“You heard it here, Princess. News is that Equestria’s about to be one ruler short for another thousand years,” Discord answered.
“The things these ponies come up with,” Luna groaned.
It had only been a couple of hours since she had arrived at the hospital and was rushed to the emergency room. Her cuts were stitched, and her wing was able to be saved. But, even if she had her magic, she wouldn’t have been able to fly. Not for a few weeks, according to the doctors.
“You never did tell me what happened to you,” Discord said.
“I told you already that I was mauled by a timber wolf that somehow got into the cemetery,” Luna answered, leaning back to look at the ceiling.
“The staff might have bought it, but I don’t. If you really believe that ‘honesty’ garbage you’re always spouting, you’ll tell me the truth about what happened.”
“Honesty is for friends, Discord. And besides, it might not have happened if you hadn’t disappeared like you did,” Luna bitterly answered.
“Alright. Let’s pretend we’re friends for just one minute here. And I’ll tell you the whole truth,” Discord said. “I finished up my business in the cemetery, so I walked away. And then…well…I couldn’t see, so I kind of…walked off the cliff that was right there. Thanks for not warning me, by the way. Then, I had to climb my way back up. And you didn’t even offer to help. When I got there, I saw that you ditched me. I figured, ‘that’s three strikes! This mare’s walking home!’ But, you know what? I didn’t want to be a total dick, so I waited for you at the gates, just in case you might come out after me. And you did, looking like you just went through a paper shredder! That’s it. I was honest with you. So, cough it up, sister.”
Discord waited with his arms crossed, petulantly sitting on his own propped up tail. Luna sighed to herself, guessing that he may have been right. Although she still hesitated to say anything. Finally, after much deliberation, she spoke.
“Do you remember seeing anything before I came out?” Luna asked.
“Like what?” Discord wondered.
“Anything! Besides the fog and headstones!” Luna snapped.
“Easy. Don’t bust a tumor, lady,” Discord said, before going silent.
“Well?” Luna impatiently asked.
“Well, I’m guessing you don’t want to hear what I actually saw. Which was fog and headstones, until you came barreling out of there like a bat out of Hell.”
Luna pulled the pillow out from beneath her head, covered her face with it and screamed as loud as she could. She slapped the pillow onto her lap. “What does it take for you to be helpful!?”
“What does it take? What does it take?” Discord pretended to think, “How about seeing a mare in trouble, and hauling her heavy ass miles across the countryside to get to the damn hospital!?”
“My heavy– Are you calling me fat!?” Luna shouted.
“‘Heavy,’ is what I said. But, I’m thinking ‘fat’ pretty loudly.” Discord took Luna’s projectile pillow directly in his snout. “So, come on. Out with it. What happened to you in there?” he said, innocently hugging the pillow that was thrown at him.
“I already told you that I was attacked,” Luna growled.
“And I told you that I don’t buy that. I told you what happened to me. Now, spit it out!” Discord demanded.
“Quid pro quo, Discord,” Luna said.
“Is that some dead language from back in your day?”
“You tell me who Dusty is first.”
The closest thing Luna had ever seen to fear suddenly washed over Discord’s face. And a small part of Luna couldn’t help but be complacent by stepping on one of his nerves.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Discord said.
“No? Then whose headstone was that which you were visiting?” Luna said, smiling smugly.
“It must have been the wrong spot. I mean, it was really foggy out. How was I supposed to read the names on the stones?”
“You seemed to know where you were going the whole time before. What changed when you landed in the cemetery?”
For just a second, Luna thought Discord may start sweating. She watched as he clutched the pillow in his grip, before he abruptly stood up.
“I don’t have to take this, lady! You know what? You just keep telling yourself that it was a timber wolf. Whatever crawled out of your fractured little brain, I hope it does this to you again,” Discord said, slamming the pillow to the ground. To his and Luna’s surprise, the pillow suddenly dropped from the air onto Luna’s face. “Oh, good. My magic’s back. Don’t know and don’t care how, because I’m outta here!”
And with a snap of his fingers Discord was gone.
Now, Luna was alone. She stared in disbelief at what she had just seen and tried using her own magic. Sure enough, her horn lit up with its usual blue, and she lifted the pillow to place it back behind her head, and settled herself in. The call button by her bed blinked its tiny red light, inviting her to summon company, even if it was just from the hospital staff. An impulse that she almost obeyed. But, she lowered her hoof from the button, deciding against it. They would just ask more questions, and pry to the point of bringing in another shrink to interrogate her for another hour of her everlasting life.
With only her thoughts to occupy her, Luna began to think about what had just happened. For what reason was Discord unable to see anything that had happened? Or anypony else, for that matter? What if it truly was all in her head? But, she knew that couldn’t be. Her stitches and her gnarled wing were proof of that. She tried to think of what it could have been. What anomaly had targeted herself, and nopony else?
Her thoughts traveled back to the very first time that she was attacked by something that nopony else saw. It was the worst by a wide margin. Even just the memory of it made her head throb. The fear she felt. The helplessness. Never knowing if it would end. Worst of all was that everypony else acted like it had never happened. Even her own sister.
A gentle knock on the door snapped her from her thoughts, and Luna saw one of the orderlies in her doorway.
“Princess? You have a visitor,” the orderly said.
“Tell them to come in,” Luna sighed.
The orderly stepped aside, allowing in the last pony that Luna expected to see.
“Lulu? How did this happen?” Celestia asked
“What are you doing here?” Luna asked.
“Discord dropped by the castle and told me I should come here. So, I did.”
“That rat!” Luna thought.
“Lulu, what did you do when you left the palace?” Celestia asked.
“I told you that I went for a fly outside.”
“And then what?” Celestia practically demanded her sister to tell her.
“Would you really believe me if I told you?” Luna asked.
Celestia didn’t answer right away, choosing her next words carefully. “I suppose you could tell me, as your sister.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Luna said, getting a startled look from her sister. “But, alright. That thing I told you I saw? It was only Discord.”
“I see. But, even following him shouldn’t have put your wing in traction,” Celestia said, taking her seat next to her sister’s bed.
“That wasn’t all. I followed Discord to the old cemetery, where he was just being his usual irritating self. When we went our separate ways, I was attacked by a timber wolf that must have gotten past the gates. That’s all I can tell you because it’s the truth,” Luna said.
Celestia stared at her sister, saying not a word at first. “I suppose what matters is that you’re here not to talk about it.”
“Indeed,” Luna tersely said.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Better. My wing still hurts, but I’m glad to be able to keep it.”
She knew that Celestia was talking just then, but Luna couldn’t hear the words. There in the doorway, she swore one of the demons from the graveyard casting its shadow on the wall beyond her door, trudging steadily toward her. In another moment, the shadow was gone, replaced by the simple form of just another pony who passed by her room.
“Luna? Are you listening?” Celestia asked.
“Er… Yes. I’m sorry. I must have unfocused for a moment,” Luna said. She waited a moment, watching for smoke and sniffing for any sulfur. To her relief, neither presented itself.
If she had been told long ago what she was getting into, she might have done something different. As things were, she was in too deep to turn back. It was something she would have to see through to the end, however soon that may have been.
> A Visit To Nowhere
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was hardly into the next day that Luna was allowed to be discharged from the hospital and resume her life, albeit with one wing out of commission. As glad as she was to leave, Luna was beyond afraid to face what the world had in store for her. When would those demons strike next? Or would it be some other horror? They rarely seemed to repeat themselves. And when they did, they were worse than the first time they appeared to her. And as always, the worst part was that she had to face it all alone.
The very moment that Luna arrived back home, she walked directly back to her bedroom, guided by her sister.
“Will you be alright?” Celestia asked.
“Of course I will, sister. It’s only my wing, after all,” Luna replied.
That wasn’t entirely true. Luna had always loved to fly. Ever since she was a little filly, she loved the feel of the wind blowing past her face, whipping her mane around like a windmill and diving through the clouds. Now, she was grounded.
“Do you need anything?” Celestia asked.
“I’ll be fine. You don’t need to dote on me,” Luna said, waving her sister off. “Sorry to make you do my job for me last night. These pain pills do make me a little bit drowsy. But, I’ll be sure to take them after I raise the moon tonight.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Celestia said. “The doctor said that you needed to take things easy. That means no flying, and no magic. So for at least the next couple of nights, I’ll be taking over your duties of raising and lowering the moon.”
Luna opened her mouth to speak.
“And I won’t have you arguing about it. You get to bed and rest for as long as you need. I’ll be standing by in case you want anything,” Celestia said, as she made her way back to the door.
“Alright. Fine, I suppose,” Luna conceded, deciding it best not to argue.
“Just remember, I’m a shout away,” Celestia said, before taking her leave, closing the door behind herself.
And so, Luna was alone again. She laid in her bed, trying her best to relax and get the rest that she surely needed. But, she couldn’t bring it about herself to do so. Some small part of herself feared that even though she was awake, she would be plagued by the nightmares and flashbacks once more.
A dull pain prickled through her injured wing that made her whole side throb. She looked at the pain pills that she had been prescribed, and contemplated taking them. There was nothing more she wanted to do than to ease the pain, but she remembered how drowsy they had made her before. How quickly they made her want to sleep. The only thing she could think to do was to take her mind off of it.
Luna eyed the bookshelf at the end of her room. She knew the placement of each title by heart, and knew precisely how each section was organized. It didn’t take her long to spot one of her old favorites on the shelf. Unsure if it would still work, Luna aimed her horn at the shelf and flared her magic. Her horn lit up, and the book levitated its way over to her. At least it still worked. For now.
The hours passed as Luna read the book she had chosen. In that time, the pain had gone all the way into her shoulder, and started creeping up into her neck. She turned a page, feeling as if the simple action had set her nerves on fire. Her hip tightened as the pain spread to her lower body. She could bear it no longer.
Luna flared her magic toward her private bathroom, where she magically turned on the faucet and filled a glass that rested on the counter. She brought it over to herself, opened the bottle of pills and took one of them with the drink she had poured for herself. It felt like only moments for the pain to start subsiding. She sighed to herself, feeling her body go slack as the pain pills worked their black magic on her. It wouldn’t be long now, but she had to fight it.
The book laid on her lap, and Luna picked it back up to keep reading. She read each word as thoroughly as she could, keeping her mind actively engaged on the subtext of the dialogue and the narration between the lines. What small points of the plot had she missed on all of the other times that she had read that story? She tried to notice the small details about the character descriptions.
She went on like that for a time she wasn’t aware of, until she began to slip away. The book slid from her hooves, and Luna’s whole body went limp as she drifted off into sleep.





Thunder rumbled overhead, taking Luna from her deep sleep. She rubbed her head, finding the world around herself had gone dark. She looked at her clock, and saw that it was well past ten o’ clock PM. Just as her sister had promised, she had risen the moon for the night. Not that it could be seen through the heavy storm clouds that dropped rain on the palace roof with a sound like a million marbles falling from the sky.
Her wing was no longer in pain. And the pain that it had spread to the rest of her body had subsided as well. Even though she had forgotten to take the pills that her sister had been forcing her to take, her sleep was uninterrupted by those terrible dreams.
“Thank goodness for small mercies,” Luna said to herself.
The mercies had seemed to reach their end. A loud noise came from her bathroom, and the light turned itself on.
“Who’s in there?” Luna asked.
She waited for an answer, but none came.
“Celestia? That had better not be you. You have your own shampoo you can use.”
There was still no answer.
She knew it was too good to be true. Fearing the worst, Luna stepped out of her bed and cautiously made her way to her bathroom. She cracked the door open and peered inside, finding the entire place in horrible disarray. Her medicine cabinet was emptied of contents. Her makeup shelves were toppled over. Her bath products leaked all over the tub. Towels were strewn all over the floor. And the sounds of the intruder were coming from somewhere in there still.
A quiet scurrying took her attention to the side of the sink. Luna crept along the wall, flaring her magic to keep it at the ready. She reached the end of the sink and quickly peered around it, ready to blow away whatever was there. Instead, she found nothing. But, the sounds of the intruder scurrying around the room still reached her. And they were coming from the door at that time.
Whatever it was, it had gotten past her without her notice. Luna quickly went back to her bedroom and turned on the lights. She found the culprit. And it was far from terrifying. There, crawling across her bedsheets was a tiny, white possum, which started rolling across her messy bed. Luna smiled at the sight of it.
“Tiberius! What did you do to make such a mess of my bathroom?” she said.
Of course her pet didn’t answer. Not that he ever listened to her anyway. He wasn’t even allowed on the bed, even though Luna had tried to break him of the habit so many times. If she didn’t know better, he had deliberately destroyed her bathroom, just so he could break the rules.
Flaring her magic, Luna put her bathroom back in order and stepped back in.
“Alright. I’m wise to your little game now. If you’re not off the bed by the time I get out of the bathroom, I’m going to make you get off. Do we understand each other?” Luna said.
Her answer was Tiberius rubbing his head all over her pillows.
“We’ll see how you feel about that in a moment,” Luna said, before closing the bathroom door.
Even though she had slept for most of it, she felt like it had been a long day. All she wanted to do was wash her face, rinse out her mane, and hopefully be able to finish her book. Except when she turned around, she found a sight that she would never have expected.
It was not her bathroom that she saw, but a kitchen. One that she knew from her foalhood. Everything there was exactly as she remembered it. From the chip in the wooden countertops to the slight warp in the one tile on the floor. Luna walked through the kitchen, knowing she wasn’t really there, but wanting so desperately to believe it. She followed the room down to a doorway that she hadn’t passed in centuries and peered in.
There was a table in that room, where two ponies sat. One, she knew was herself. After so long, Luna had forgotten what she was like as a filly. But, there she was, sitting at the table with a stallion who she had not thought about in a very, very long time. He was an older unicorn, with a white coat and a golden mane that shone brightly in the sunlight. On his flank was the mark of a flaming crescent moon with two stars upon a cloud. Before him was a plate of blueberry pancakes, which he happily took a bite from.
“Mm! Luna, you’ve got to try these pancakes your mother made. They’re probably the best she’s done yet,” the stallion said.
“Celestia made them,” young Luna quietly said.
“Is that right?” the stallion asked. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She always wanted to be like her mother. Here, try a bite.”
Young Luna looked at the plate and shook her head.
“Maybe later. I’m not very hungry now,” she said.
“Okay. More for me,” the stallion said, talking the plate back for himself.
Luna watched her younger self sit silently at the table, before she raised her head to speak to the stallion.
“I think I’m getting the hang of flying,” she said.
“Really? It’s like I told you: practice makes perfect,” the stallion said.
“Maybe, you could come out to the field with me? To help me try to stay in the air for a while?”
From the doorway, Luna watched the scene play out, hoping that somehow it would be different than the last time that she was there. A desperate desire for things to be different than they were. But, the look on the stallion’s face made her know that it couldn’t be.
“Luna,” the stallion said, placing his utensils on his plate. “You know  that I have to go away for a while, don’t you? So, I can’t be there to help you with it this time.”
Young Luna lowered her head again, unable to look at the stallion.
“Of course you can’t. That’s what you always say,” she said.
“You know that I really want to. It’s just–”
“So why don’t you!?” young Luna snapped.
Luna felt her nerves shake at the sound of her own voice. The bitter resentment she had felt in that moment was something that she would carry with her for many years afterward.
“You always do this! You never have time for anything that I want, but you’ll change your whole day just to watch Celestia knit a stupi sock!”
“Luna, please–” the stallion tried to say.
“Forget it!” young Luna said, climbing out of her seat. “You’re never there when I want you to be! Just when you do!”
And with those last words, she left. On her way out, she walked right past her older self, who watched her go until she disappeared out the door at the far end of the room.
Luna looked back to the stallion in the room, and watched him as he slowly pushed away his plate of pancakes. Without a word, he got out of his seat and walked toward the front door.
“No,” Luna whispered to herself as her eyes filled with tears.
The stallion opened the door and walked out into the blinding light beyond. Before left, Luna chased after him.
“Don’t go! Please! Stay here!” she begged him.
It was too late. He had already gone. Luna stared into the blinding abyss, waiting in vain for him to turn around and make everything the way that she wanted. Soon, the light faded away, and there she was facing her own bedroom. She looked around, finding nothing out of the ordinary. There was even Tiberius, still rubbing his face on the pillows as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
As if she were still in a dream, Luna drifted over to her bed and sat on the edge of it. The moment she had, Tiberius hopped onto her lap and began rubbing his sides against her, stopping long enough to allow Luna to pet him.
“Oh, Tiberius. What’s happening to me?” she wondered.
Her answer was a tongue lapping up her hooves, and the quiet rumble of thunder outside.
> The Singing Dead
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morning came, and the storm from last night subsided. The last few drops of rain dribbled down the glass panes of Luna’s balcony doors, blurring the image of the princess in her bed.
Luna had not slept at all that night. She feared to. Neither did she sleep for the rest of that day, or even leave her bed. Not to eat. Not to go to the bathroom. Not even Tiberius clawing at the carpet could get her out to stop him. And whoever came to visit her, she said barely a word to them. Even Celestia, who she didn’t dare tell what she had seen when she entered the bathroom the night before. Still, the visitors came and went, and Luna was alone for many hours.
She remembered being in that kitchen, feeling as if she were still there for some reason that she couldn’t comprehend. That scene was so real, even if she did dream it. And for much of that day, she wished that she would have said something more. If she had tried just a little hard, things might have been different that time, and she would have been a different mare. If only…
Her wing began to throb, and Luna magically fetched another glass of water. She then broke one of her pain pills in half and took that with the water. It had worked. Her pain began to fade within minutes, and even though she felt lightheaded and drowsy, the urge to sleep never came to her. On the tiny tree next to her bed, Tiberius hung from his tail, sound asleep. And that was how things continued, until Celestia rose the moon that night.
Luna was drifting in and out of light naps the whole day through, until she heard a quiet scratching at the balcony door. She gasped, knowing it was some horrible thing that had come to visit her again, trying to get in. Her horn flared up, and she rolled as carefully as she could out of bed. Her eyes scanned the floor at the bottom of the curtains, looking for any trace of the phantom intruder. When she found it, she felt she should have known.
There was Tiberius, clawing at the balcony curtains, trying his very best to get past them to the balcony beyond. The moment that he heard her, he turned his pallid face to Luna, freezing as he knew he had been caught doing something that he knew he shouldn’t have.
“Tiberius. Did we not talk about how to treat mama’s curtains?” Luna scolded the possum.
Tiberius opened his mouth, revealing his pointed teeth as he lapped his tongue over his snout. Once he was done, he let go of the curtains and trotted over to Luna, who picked him up and allowed him to ride on her shoulders.
“Very well. I can see that you’re eager to go out. It’s just as well. You’ll cause less trouble out there than you would in here,” Luna said, opening the curtains and seeing nothing outside but the landscape beyond.
The doors opened, and the cool night wind blew in. Luna’s mane drifted in the breeze as she stepped out onto the balcony. She watched every shadow that she could see from her balcony and on the land below. Just to make sure, she turned her eyes upward, and saw nothing of note there. Not even an owl or a bat out for their evening hunts.
The moment that she reached the balcony railing, Tiberius hopped off of her shoulders and walked along the length of the rails to the ivy that grew on the wall. And with the ease of a natural born climber, he was down the ivy to begin his nightly routine.
Luna didn’t wait to watch him until he was gone. Even when she stepped back into her room, she could hear the rustling of the ivy vines as her possum descended. She closed the doors and the sounds muffled into near nothingness.
“Finally, it seems I’ll have a quiet night to myself,” Luna sighed.
She wished that she hadn’t said that, as a low, droning chant echoed from the hallway beyond the bedroom door. Like a holy stallion praying to his lord, the chant droned on, drowning out any other noise of the night.
Luna watched as light filled the cracks of her bedroom door, and the surface of the door began to press inward. She tried to flare her magic, but found that it was once again inert. Unable to think of what else to do, she slowly started walking toward the door. The chanting continued as she did, making Luna’s knees shake with every step that she approached it.
She reached the door. Luna reached a hoof out to turn the doorknob as it bulged toward her. She drew her hoof back as the door drifted back to its normal shape, and the light beyond it slowly dimmed. Everything went quiet, and Luna raised a shaking hoof to catch the doorknob. She slowly turned it, and opened the door to face the horrors beyond. Another drone of the chant echoed quietly, and Luna threw the door open to do away with the phantom singer.
Nopony was there. But, the sounds of the chant continued its dreary song. Luna looked down the hall, and saw that nopony else had investigated the noise. Unable to accept that, she trotted to her sister’s bedroom door down the hall and knocked loudly.
“Celestia! Sister, wake up!” Luna called.
There was no answer. Not even a sleepy moan or a rustling of sheets. Instead, the chants continued and the hall began to darken.
“Celestia! Come out here now!”
The shadows of the hall crept ever closer, until the entire passage was swallowed by its darkness. With it, the chanting grew louder. They were coming for her.
Luna backed away from the approaching dark, and ran down the hall away from it. She tried her best to use any of her magic, but it was all for naught. Soon, the shadows began to move all on their own. From them, Luna could make out the shape of something tall, upright and swathed in black. There was no face to them. Only the deep, dark shadows of the abyss which leered out at her from some unknowable depth. And the chanting grew louder.
“No…No! This isn’t real! You aren’t here!” Luna yelled.
The shadows droned another chant as they drifted toward Luna. Along the walls and across the floor they came, ready to drag Luna into their darkness.
She ran, not knowing where to. Wherever she would try to go, the shadows would find her. They would creep out from wherever they could to take her away. The sounds of the chant grew fainter, but the darkness did not abate. There was no escape that Luna could find. She was going to disappear.
The sounds of sobbing reached Luna, who quickly looked in the direction that they came from. Right across the hall, Luna saw a door that she hadn’t opened in weeks. One of the castle lounges was being renovated, so there was no reason for anypony to be there. But, that’s where the sobs were coming from. Not sure which she would rather face, the chanting shadows or the phantom weeping, Luna took her chances with what she deemed the lesser of two evils and charged into the lounge.
The door was slammed behind her with an echoing boom. As if the sound had swallowed it up, the chanting stopped. But the sounds of the filly crying were as loud as the chanting had been.
Luna didn’t dare call out to whoever was crying, for fear of calling those devilish shadows to her. When she looked at the room, she saw that it was filled with white sheets that covered everything that could have been in there. She reached out and pulled the sheet from where she knew the couch to be. Nopony was there. 
The sounds of the crying filly were coming from somewhere in that room, so Luna decided to try again. She pulled away a sheet that covered one of the decorative statues, and found only the sculpture of Gusty the Great walking on a cloud. But, there was still no filly to be found. Her attention was drawn to a great, tall sheet that stood at the end of the room. She didn’t know how, but she knew that was where she would find the filly.
Luna crept across the room, careful not to even make a floorboard creak, until she was standing before the towering sheet. She gripped it in her teeth and pulled it down to find that it covered a large mirror. Curiously, she looked at the glass, seeing that it was not the room behind her that was reflected. Instead, she saw a foggy lake where a filly sat on a log all alone in the middle of the night. And she was crying.
Even though it was the first time she had ever seen the filly, Luna felt as if she knew that she was sitting there every night of her life, crying. Hoping that somepony would stop to console her. A hope that was never fulfilled. She was without a friend in the world, unable to free herself from the torment she felt. Just as it was in the phantom kitchen, there was no way that Luna could help the filly. No way to change what could have once been.
“Don’t cry. I’ll help you home,” Luna whispered to the filly in the mirror.
For just a second, she thought that the filly might be turning to look at her, before the image faded into shadows. And the chanting started again.
Luna stepped sharply backward as a darkened hand reached out of the glass. And it kept reaching. Further than what would have been natural. The fingers of the thing wrapped around her neck, filling Luna with their chill embrace. Just then, the sounds of a rooster crowing sounded off somewhere in the distance.
The grip of the hand loosened, and the entire appendage retracted back into the glass of the mirror. Slowly, the image of Luna standing alone in the lounge faded into being, and the sun began to rise on the distant horizon.
“How…?” Luna wondered. She had let Tiberius out to do his nightly rounds not even an hour ago. And now, the sun was rising as if the night had passed its entire course in that whole time.
There had to be an answer to these things. But, Luna had no idea where to begin.
> A Call For Help
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna re-entered her bedroom. After her adventure from the night that ended only minutes ago, she was in no mood to sit down and rest, no matter how badly her wing hurt from all the running she had done. She didn’t even dare to take one of her pain pills. Not even a half of one. 
Nothing made sense anymore. The world as she knew it was ended, replaced with a tumultuous, pendulous reality that swung between the mundane and the terrifying world of her own making. Or, was it truly of her own making? She could barely tell anymore. Ever since the first time that she told Celestia about it, she said she was crazy. At least, not directly. She would always tell her to get help. To see the doctor more often. To take more of her medication. Not that any of that helped for long. It always ended up going back to the same old nightmarish routine that she almost felt she should have gotten used to by that point. But, she didn’t want to be chased by shadows. Or fight off hellish demons. Or be visited night after night by unseen phantoms. She just wanted everything to be normal again.
“What can I do? What can I do?” Luna thought aloud as she paced around her room.
Getting help from anypony else was already far out of the question. They already proved to be no help to her, whether they tried or not. Bringing somepony along might have been the answer. She realized that every time one of her unnatural excursions happened, she always went on them alone.
“No. That wouldn’t work,” Luna said.
Even when she was with anypony during those times, they always ended up disappearing somehow. As if some force were trying to get her alone so that they could come out and get her more easily, any other creature with her was always absent. Just like when Discord went away in the cemetery. Or when Tiberius left for his nightly adventures. And all those other times when her company simply just went away. What was it that she could have done then? Never be alone? Stay with somepony forever and always? That would only confirm to everypony else what they already thought.
She could have simply used her magic to cast them away to whatever forgotten oblivion they had crawled from. But, that would never work, as her own magic always seemed to not go with her to that world of nightmares.
Of all the options that she could think of, the only one that seemed to have any kind of chance to work was to face the phantoms head on. Whatever they were, wherever they came from, whatever they wanted with her, the only thing seemed to be to confront the devils on their own terms. Without her magic. Alone. But, could she do such a thing? Could she in any capacity have the power to face those things?
As she passed by the balcony doors, the rustling of leaves made her ears twitch, and her attention was drawn outside. She stepped out onto the balcony and looked to the side, where she watched the ivy vines shudder and shake as a perfectly expected something made his way up to greet her. In almost a minute, Tiberius revealed himself and scampered his way across the railing into Luna’s waiting hooves.
“Hello, Tiberius. I trust your night was peaceful? Hunting crickets and eating the grapes at the royal winery, no doubt,” Luna greeted him.
Tiberius licked Luna’s face and rested his head on her shoulder, before he climbed up there for his ride indoors.
“Oh, how I wish my nights were as simple as yours. Doing the things that I love and want to do. Staying out to have fun with the other possums. It must be great to be a nocturnal marsupial,” Luna said.
She walked inside with her fluffy passenger, who crawled off to roost on his indoor tree. Even though Luna had set up a proper bed for Tiberius to lie on in that tree, he always preferred to hang from his tail by the underside of the bed to go to sleep, making her wonder if it had been a waste of perfectly good bits to do such a thing. Then again, Tiberius was getting use out of it. Just not in the way that Luna had originally planned. Not unlike a dog who would sleep on top of the doghouse that was bought for it.
Once Tiberius was settled, Luna decided to do something that day to take her mind off of things as she tried to sort out her problems. Except on that day, something would be decided for her.
There was a burst of green embers before herself, and a scroll of paper materialized from them.
“What’s this? A letter from Twilight so early in the day?” Luna wondered aloud.
She unrolled it, wondering what could be so important to try and tell her about so early in the day. 

Dear Princess Luna,

This is Spike. I'm writing this letter to you on the behalf of my friend, Fluttershy. She said she wants to speak to you about something really important. She wouldn't tell me what. But she said it's really important. So if you have time and feel well enough to go, please speak with her. She really wants to talk to you.

Your truly,
Spike

P.S. Get well soon

A call for help from Fluttershy wasn’t an unusual thing. But, when she asked for help directly from one of the ruling princesses, it had to be something truly dire. Or she was just overreacting. Crying timber wolf was a common thing with that mare. It then occurred to Luna that Spike had wished her a ‘get well.’ That meant that Celestia had told Twilight about her stay in the hospital, who in turn told her friends about it.
“How perfectly intrusive,” Luna muttered.
Still, she saw no reason to disregard Fluttershy’s call for help. Taking an inked quill to the page, she wrote her reply in the margins:

Tell her I'm on my way.
Princess Luna





In the skies at the edge of the Everfree Forest, a royal carriage drawn by a team of pegasus guards fluttered down to the ground. Luna stepped off from the back, thanked the guards for their service and excused them until she summoned them later. The guards flew off, ready to wait for their next command, before Luna turned around.
There was Fluttershy’s cottage with its marbled walls and thatched roof. But, not about to keep Fluttershy waiting, Luna trotted across the cobblestone bridge, where a family of otters watched her from the water. A few more steps, and she was at the front door, where she was sure to knock gently so as to not startle Fluttershy.
“Fluttershy? Are you in? It’s Princess Luna,” Luna called.
She waited. Seconds later, she heard the quiet steps of Fluttershy tapping across the wooden floorboards. The door cracked open, and a single eye appeared in the tiny space, before opening to reveal the butter yellow face of the timid pegasus.
“Princess Luna! You came!” Fluttershy said, sounding more surprised than Luna thought she meant to.
“As if there were any doubt,” Luna joked. “Spike told me that you had an important matter you wanted to discuss. I simply couldn’t let it go unattended.”
“Oh. Um…Thank you…”
“May I come in? It would be rather distracting to talk with that family of otters watching me so closely,” Luna asked, glancing over her shoulder at the animals in the river.
“Of course. Please, come inside,” Fluttershy said, allowing Luna in.
The inside of Fluttershy’s house was something that warmed the hearts of all who entered, and Luna was no different. The wood-paneled walls and the wooden floor were something straight out of a fairy tale. And the homes for the animals that were built right into it all made it seem like a menagerie more than anything else. For Luna, it reminded her of a place where she once lived as a filly. All the memories that were made there. And the others that she had preferred to forget.
Luna took a seat on a couch, where she had a clear view of the Everfree Forest out the window. But, she couldn’t take in much of the view as Fluttershy sat on the couch next to her.
“I’m so sorry, but I didn’t have much time to prepare anything to drink for you. I hope that’s alright,” Fluttershy quietly said.
“Perfectly so. I always was a perky riser anyhow. It’s my sister who you don’t want to see this early in the morning,” Luna giggled.
Fluttershy giggled as well, before she noticed Luna’s bandaged wing and scooted away from it.
“Oh. I’m sorry. How’s your wing?” she asked.
“Getting better by the day. I simply have to take it slowly and let it work itself back into shape for now,” Luna answered. “I don’t mean to seem curt, but why precisely did you call me here? I can’t believe that this is purely a social call.”
“I-It isn’t. I wanted you here today because…Mmmm…Princess Luna? Have you ever lost somepony before?” Fluttershy said, fiddling with her mane.
“Of course I have. When you’ve been around as long as me, these sorts of things are inevitable. Why do you ask?”
Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably in her seat and pulled her mane over her mouth.
“It’s just that…somepony has gone away from here,” she said.
Luna could see it in her eyes. Hear it in her voice. Somepony precious to her was lost, never to return.
“Dear, Fluttershy. You must know that life is made of meetings and partings. And that some come sooner than others. But, it’s what we do to remember our loved ones that matter the most,” Luna said.
“It’s not like that…It’s Discord. He hasn’t been home in days!”
Luna’s mind went immediately back to the night in the cemetery. The last time that she had ever seen him was that night in the hospital. When he blinked himself out of her room, then to Celestia’s room. And then? She had no idea.
“I’m sure it’s not as serious as you make it out to be. I just know that any moment now he’s going to appear before us in a burst of– I don’t know– buttered noodles and mention some vacation that he didn't tell you about,” Luna said.
“That’s just the thing. He would have told me if he was going on vacation. He never leaves the house without telling me where he’s going.”
A thought entered Luna’s mind, and she spoke her curiosity. “Did he tell you where he was going the other night?”
“Yes. He said that he wanted to go to Trottingham for some fish and chips. And that he’d be back before morning. But…But, he never did…” Fluttershy said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m…I’m really scared. Because ever since he disappeared, I’ve been…hearing things…”
Luna hoped that she looked more concerned than surprised, but continued to ask her questions anyway. “What things have you been hearing?”
“Somewhere, out in the Everfree, I think I can hear a filly crying. And I…I think that Discord had been hearing it too.”
“What makes you think this?” Luna wondered.
“Because, he’s been saying that he has to check on somepony. He never told me who, but he sounded like he really had to do it. I never thought to ask who it was, or why…Oh…It’s my fault he’s missing, isn’t it?” Fluttershy began to sob.
“No. None of this is your fault. Although, I must ask you why you thought I would be able to solve this for you?” Luna wondered.
“Because, Discord had said you were hearing things that weren’t there for some time. I thought that…maybe you would know something about it.”
Luna’s mind froze. For as much as she wished to say anything, her words weren’t able to come. As a ruling princess, it was her duty to take care of the problems of others. This time, however, she could only tell the truth.
“I’m…afraid that I don’t know anything about these troubles myself,” she replied.
Fluttershy was silent, and all Luna could do was watch her. The view of the Everfree caught her gaze again, the darkness beyond it stretching endlessly through its trees. Whatever was there, Luna hoped that it never came to plague Fluttershy as it had plagued herself.
“Erm, Fluttershy,” Luna began, “I don’t know what to do about these unusual occurrences. But I promise you, as a Princess of Equestria, that I’ll do what I can to make things right.”
“Th…Thank you. It means a lot to me,” Fluttershy said.
“Well, I am familiar with not being taken seriously,” Luna said, before standing up. “I must go now to take care of other duties. But, if anything should happen, have Spike or Twilight send me a notice immediately. I’ll be standing by for any updates to the matter.”
Fluttershy only nodded as Luna took her leave. When Luna was outside, she walked back across the bridge to the forest trail beyond. Once she was there, she looked further down into the Everfree once more, and felt herself being drawn into it like a small boat on the very edge of a raging whirlpool. She shook the feeling from her head, and readied to summon the royal coach.
There was a loud cry suddenly from the Everfree. Not the sorrowful sobbing that she had heard so often, but a wail of pain. Somepony was in trouble.
“Fluttershy!? Fluttershy did you hear that just now!?” Luna called to the cottage.
No answer came. And Luna couldn’t wait for one when another scream echoed from the dark trees. It was then that Luna realized that it was a filly.
With no other thoughts, Luna ran into the forest, preparing herself for the worst.
> The Mist Of The Past
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Everfree forest was a dangerous place for anypony to enter for any reason. Nothing there was natural to be found there, and it always showed. Plants grew on their own. Clouds drifted on the winds. And the multitude of vicious, predatory animals and magical anomalies were enough to make even the bravest heart faint.
Luna galloped through the heavy dark of the Everfree, following the screams of the unseen filly. She knew that it was a foolish thing to do, even for an alicorn. But, there was nothing for it. If she did nothing to rescue the filly, how could she ever call herself a Princess of Equestria? Taking into account any possibility that she could think of, Luna rocketed across the trail toward where the screams were coming from.
She came to a crossroads, and the screaming stopped. Through the canopy overhead, the sky began to gray, and the wind began to whistle through the leaves. Luna looked down every path, hoping for some sign of the filly to reveal itself. But, not even another scream came.
“Filly!? Where are you!? I’m here!” Luna called.
Behind her, a thick, rolling fog began to creep up.
“Answer me! Please! I need to find you!”
There was no answer. Using her best judgment, Luna chose the path directly before herself and galloped in that direction, leaving the fog to follow after her.
No matter where she ran, she could see nothing. Whenever she called out, no answer was given. As far as she could tell, the filly simply disappeared. Or worse, was devoured by one of the creatures that lived there. The idea made Luna’s stomach lurch. But even if the filly was no more, she had to at least confirm it for the sake of her surviving family. It was an unpleasant duty, but she had to be the one to do it.
As the fog grew closer, Luna slowed down to a trot. She could almost hear the trees creaking and moaning as she passed by them, as if to tell her not to continue onward. But, there would be no stopping her from her grim task. Finding the lost filly was going to be done, if it was the last thing she did. And then, she heard it.
Luna gasped sharply when she heard the quiet sobs of a filly from nearby. Behind her, the fog crept forth, reaching the tip of her tail. She walked forward, feeling that she should have called out, but fearing that if she did that the sounds would stop once more. With small, cautious steps, Luna followed the sound, and the fog began to overtake her. In moments, the world became a blur of dark shadows and the shapeless gray beyond it.
Steps were heard over her own. Luna stopped and turned to see a shadow walking toward her. On an instinct, she flared her magic, ready to cast the shadow away. Until she saw that it was nothing but a pony. A stallion, who was wearing a simple coat and hat that looked worn and weathered as the trunk of the oldest tree in the forest. Once he was close enough, she saw that he had just finished placing an antiquated coin in his pocket.
The stallion stopped and looked at Luna, silently appraising her. He said nothing, but it was his silence that made Luna feel all the more anxious as the sobs continued beyond him.
“You hear it too, don’t you?” the stallion asked.
“Is there somepony down there? Does she need help?” Luna wondered.
The stallion looked at Luna, then looked back over his shoulder. After a moment of deliberation, he spoke again.
“Go, if you really want to. But, if you don’t find anything, you should never call for it to show itself. And you should only wish it the best,” he said.
Luna nodded and started to go on her way, before the stallion stopped her.
“One more thing,” he said, “If you do find anything down there, offer help only if it wants to be helped. And, heaven forbid, if you find anything evil, you must never turn your back to it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Luna said, before she tried to continue.
“You must promise that you won’t,” the stallion sternly said, “That’s the easiest way for something evil to attach itself to you. When it does…Let’s just hope you have a strong constitution. Or else you’ll join whatever’s down there sooner than later.” 
With those last words, the stallion continued on his way, leaving Luna alone with the unseen filly. She looked ahead toward the direction that the sobs were coming from and swallowed hard before she walked through the fog.
She found herself at a lake. One that was half hidden by the mists. And on the shore before her was a fallen log with a young filly sitting on it, crying. As quietly as she could, Luna approached the filly.
“Filly?” she began, “Why are you crying?”
The filly stopped her sobbing and turned to face Luna, who watched as the filly’s tear-streaked eyes widened.
“What?” the filly asked.
“I asked you why you were crying? Are you lost?”
“Y…You can see me?” the filly asked.
“Erm… Yes. I’ve been able to see… Ponies like you for quite some time now. But, they haven’t always answered,” Luna said. She remembered the words of the stallion from just before, and tried to think of what she could say next. “Is there something that you want?”
The filly was silent. She looked at her hooves, which Luna then saw were bleeding. Then, the filly started to choke on her own words as she spoke, “I want… I w– want to go home…”
“Where is your home? Do you know the way back?” Luna asked.
“No… I came here to lose my way… I heard that was why all ponies came here… And now… Now I don’t want it!” the filly cried out.
“Oh, filly. Please don’t cry,” Luna bade her as she approached the log next to her. “I’ll help you to find your way home. But first, we should take care of your hooves. Come along. I’ll take you to my friend beyond the forest. She’ll know what to do.”
Before the filly could answer, Luna saw something moving in the corner of her vision. Something on the surface of the lake, which was moving toward her. It looked like the tops of two black twigs, before they rose up to reveal themselves as a pair of horns. A light appeared beneath the water, and the form of the thing rose up from the shore.
Whatever it was, it was worse than anything Luna could have imagined living in the Everfree Forest. It looked like a wolf, but it wasn’t a wolf. It was twice Luna’s own height and covered in shaggy, red fur that blazed like fire. From its fur hung dozens of chains of varying length, each with a wickedly barbed hook at the end. It walked toward the ponies on powerful, muscular legs that ended in something that looked like a mix between a paw and a hoof. And its eyes were solid orange pools of glowing flame that bored into all it stared upon. However, there was no malice in those eyes. They were instead warm and welcoming, like a crackling fire in a cold room. The thing stopped just as it left the water, and opened its mouth, releasing a wisp of smoke.
“You have come to die?” it said in a low, elderly voice.
“N…No. I’ve come to help this filly,” Luna said, trying to sound bold in the face of the monster.
“That can’t be. All who come here come to die,” the beast said.
“Not us. This place is for ponies who have lost their way and…” she hesitated, trying to think of a reason why she had come, “And I’m here to reclaim it.”
The beast loosed a low, quiet hum, and walked from the water’s edge to the log where the ponies sat and stared down on them both. Luna took the filly in her hoof and pulled her closer to herself. She prepared herself to ready her magic to attack the thing at the sign of any sudden movement.
“This is the first time that anypony has said such a thing to me. Tell me, why do you believe that you can take back what can never be found?” the beast wondered.
“Because, I’ve seen it,” Luna said. “Many times, a pony has come to my sister or myself, and we’ve helped them to find their way when it has been lost.”
“Then you have only seen but a speck of what there is,” the beast answered. “In this world, there are an infinite number of destinies. All creatures walk a different path that takes them a way that is unlike any others. But then, there are those who wander aimlessly. They don’t know where they are going, even if they can clearly see the way ahead of them. And others are the ones who never even started. Those are the ones that you never see. Because they often end before you ever cross them. And there’s nothing you could do to help them. But, I can.”
The filly shuddered in Luna’s hooves. Luna held her more tightly and pulled her further from the beast. 
“That’s– What a terrible thing to say! How can you so callously disregard the lives of the ponies who need guidance the most!? Do you think their life was never worthwhile!?” Luna angrily retorted.
The beast blinked its fiery eyes and shook its head slowly. “Everything in life is worthwhile. But, did you not say before that life was made of meetings and partings? That some partings happen sooner than others?”
Luna’s heart froze at those words. Had the thing been at Fluttershy’s house? How long before that? How long afterward? These questions tumbled around in her mind, but the one clear thought she had was to escape that place.
“GO! Go back into whatever depth you crawled from! I’m taking this filly, and I’m leaving!” Luna yelled at the beast.
The beast stared, unfazed by the outburst. And it began to smile.
“Very well,” it said. “You will be leaving. But, the filly is mine.”
The filly began to shudder in Luna’s grip, and tried to sink into her as if she would be saved. It was no good, as the hooks from the beast’s fur lashed out like a striking rattlesnake and dug deep into the filly’s hooves, making her wail in pain. The filly yelled for help as she was dragged across the muddy ground, into the fur of the beast.
Luna tried to flare her magic to save her, but found it again was no good. She could only watch as more creatures appeared, dangling from the hooks that hung from the beast. A symphony of silent screams filled the air around the lake, and the beast turned its back to Luna, before it walked back into the water. The filly looked one last time at the lunar princess, before she disappeared beneath the surface, and the sounds of the screaming ended.
“Princess Luna!?” a quiet, familiar voice called.
The words of the stallion rang to her again, fearing that answering a call from something unseen may be her undoing. In moments, the fog began to thin, and she was greeted by a friendly face.
Fluttershy trotted through the trees toward the lake and stopped in front of the princess.
“Princess Luna, what are you doing out here? It’s dangerous to go into the Everfree without any reason. Especially…here,” she whispered.
“I…I…” Luna stammered. She wanted so badly to tell Fluttershy what she had seen. That the cries of the filly were not just a figment of her imagination. But for fear of frightening her, she decided against it. “I thought I heard somepony calling for help. And, I suppose impulse got the better of me, and I ran off rather foolishly.”
“It’s wonderful that you’re so willing to help. But, you should have asked somepony to come with you.”
The last of the mist faded away. With it came a low moan, as if to mourn its own passing. Fluttershy lowered her head at the noise, and bade Luna to follow her.
“We should go now. We don’t want to stay any longer than we should,” she said.
Luna silently agreed and followed Fluttershy out of that dreadful hollow. The entire time they walked back, neither said anything. Whether out of fear or from something else, neither knew the answer. In time, they were back at Fluttershy’s cottage. Luna summoned her chauffeurs, and she was flown back to Canterlot. Through it all, she felt completely alone, even in the company of others.
> The Dark Side Of The Morning
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the moment that she arrived back in her bedroom, Luna sat silently on her bed. She couldn’t even bring it about herself to fetch one of her books. And when the pain in her wing flared up again, she ignored it. Even as it started spreading through her side again. She locked her door and pretended to be asleep anytime somepony knocked, unable to face them in the state she was in. For as terrible as she felt, Luna wondered if it was truly wise to isolate herself as she was doing. This was always the way terrible things started. Even though Tiberius was still hanging from his bed, fast asleep, she felt as if at any moment that the things would come back to get her. Would it be the beast from the lake this time? Or something even worse? Or was she ever really alone?
The beast had told her something that terrified her. Somehow, it knew what she had said to Fluttershy, even though it was nowhere in sight. What if everywhere that she went, those awful things were always with her? Watching her. Waiting for the right moment to drag her down into their darkness with them. In that room with her right that second?
Luna jumped as she realized that she had been nodding off. Thankfully, the pain in her wing snapped her out of it. She looked around her room, ready to run away from whatever there was that came to face her. There was nothing. And once again the sun was being lowered from the sky. Tiberius was let out early to do his nightly rounds, and Luna watched the sun as it was half hidden by the hills beyond. Her wing started throbbing again as she watched the fiery reds of the sun, which blazed like fire on the horizon. She gasped at the sight and turned her back to it.
The rest of the night was spent waiting for them to come. She kept looking at her clock, watching the hours pass. It would be dawn soon, and it seemed that the night would pass without incident. Sweat beaded up on her forehead, and her heart began to race. It was already there. Somehow, it had followed her from the lake and was ready to attack at any moment. It was too much to bear. She had resolved before that she would face the devils, and was determined to see that through. Unwilling to enter her own bathroom still, she magically retrieved another glass of water and the other half of the pain pill that she had broken. She swallowed both, fighting the horrid taste of the pain pills and waited for them to take effect. The time passed, and she could feel that familiar sense of lightheadedness slowly creeping up on her.
“Well? Show yourself! I’m here! Where are you?” she called out to nopony.
Then, everything went silent. Not even the crickets outside chirped the temperature of the night. Outside, the sky began to lighten with a red-orange light. The night had passed without incident, just as Luna had hoped. But, when she looked at her clock she saw that the time was only five o’ clock. Hardly the time for the sun to rise at that time of year. Luna looked outside at the light, and knew that it was somehow looking at her.
The doors of her balcony opened on their own, and the curtains blew toward her without any breeze. Wisps of red smoke drifted in, flicking like flames as they did. They flowed around Luna’s hooves, accumulating as they bumped into each other, and began flowing up the wall behind her like a waterfall in reverse. Luna walked forth, and saw the light in the sky growing closer to her as she stepped out onto her balcony. One of the red wisps drifted toward her and took the shape of a chain with a hook. She swiped at it with her hoof, making it dissipate into nothing.
“Enough! Why won’t you leave me be!? You and your ilk!?” Luna shouted.
The answer was the light growing closer to her, and it was inviting her forth. To come into its warmth and let everything else go. Luna placed her hooves on the balcony railing, transfixed on the light. She was going to listen to it, and forget about everything. The pain. The long years of loneliness. It was all going to go away.
“Lulu!”
Luna was suddenly pulled back from the balcony and found herself faced with the worried stare of her sister.
“What on Equestria were you thinking!? You shouldn’t try flying with that wing!” Celestia said.
“I wasn’t trying to fly! I was just–” Luna trailed off when she realized that the world had changed back to the one she knew. In the distance, the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon.
“What were you trying to do?” Celestia asked, concerned.
“It was nothing. I– Did you pick my lock!?” Luna said.
“I used the spare key you gave me,” Celestia said, showing the key that Luna had given her. She watched as Luna walked back into her room. “Have you been taking your–”
“I don’t need my medication!!” Luna shouted, before collecting herself. “I… I took one and a half pain pills this time, instead of just one. I suppose it made me lose my head for a moment.”
“Sister, there’s a reason that doctors recommend only a certain dosage,” Celestia said, walking back in and locking the balcony doors behind herself. “Why don’t you come down for breakfast? It’s been a while since you’ve joined me for a meal.”
“I– Yes, please. Anything to get me out of this room,” Luna said.
The whole time there, she made sure to keep close to her sister. And when they got to the dining hall, Luna made sure to linger at breakfast, drawing out her orders to the wait staff, and sending back her orders to be made to her specific liking several times. By the time she was finished with breakfast, the sun had risen well into the morning sky.
Luna walked by herself to the royal library, her injured wing hanging limply by her side. As she perused the shelves, she glanced out the window to the view of the royal gardens. The gardens were always a place that she loved to go. When she was a filly, she pretended that she was a fearless jungle explorer, hacking her way through the plants from around the world. She often got into trouble with the garden staff for that, but she never cared. Even as an adult, she smiled at the memories of running from the enraged gorilla king and rescuing her sister, before she was sacrificed to a tribal god. Then, it was in one particular corner of the garden that she found the remnant of another god.
The pedestal where Discord’s statue once stood rested in its usual place, the rubble from his release still intact. Luna thought back to the first time that he was released, remarking how incredible it was that a simple disagreement was what fueled his escape. Such little things gave such power to allow calamitous things to happen. Like turning your back to an evil thing.
Luna shook her head when she remembered that. Once upon a time, she heard such a thing during her fillyhood. She couldn’t believe that some ponies still believed those old superstitions from so long ago. But, nopony ever told her that she would ever be facing such evil.
She picked a stack of books to read and took her seat by the window with the garden view. When she took her seat, Luna pulled out a book from the middle. She looked at the title and rolled her eyes. Somehow, she had chosen a book that Celestia had once given her when she first arrived back at the palace from her banishment to the moon. It was a book that compiled the history of Equestria. What the average laypony referred to as a ‘legend.’ Things like the return of Nightmare Moon, the pony of shadows, Lord Tirek, and many others. It made Luna think that ponies had to update their history lessons, since so much fact seemed to be relegated as a fairy tale. Simply for the fun of it, she started flipping through the pages.
There it was. All of the things that ponies should take just a little bit more seriously. For if they had, things might have been prevented. Then, she saw a picture that made her quickly flip the pages backward until she found it again. There was an image of a cemetery, where a creature that looked like a large, half-skeletal pony with cloven hooves eating a mare who had come to pay her respects at the grave. All around, there were more of the creatures crawling from hellish, glowing holes in the ground.
She couldn’t believe it. Somewhere, some other time, somepony had experienced such a thing. They must have. How else would such a thing be recorded? Luna carefully examined the page, looking for any detail that might offer her a clue. She could see nothing but the horrors depicted. The very same that she experienced. Quickly, she read the facing page.
There wasn’t much there. It was a story about a pony from long ago who was rich beyond belief. One day, he was accompanied by a bird that was so ugly that nopony could guess its species. Ever since it came to him, he would get whatever he wanted. If he wanted a new cape, it was brought to him. If he wanted the favor of a mare, she would be irresistibly drawn to him. If he wanted land, the owners would simply pass away, leaving him to acquire it. One day, a young colt found out his secret and began to blackmail him for favors. One night later, the horrible bird came for him. But, the colt was prepared. He had made his own dark pact. A way to keep the rich stallion in line. He summoned his own demon to attach itself to him, and torment him for the rest of his days, until he took his own life. But, there was no part that told how or if the summoned demons were sent back to where they came from.
It was no coincidence. Luna flipped back to the front page and scanned the publishing information. There was none. She noted the name of the author, then looked at the library catalog to see if there were any other books that she had written. There were none. Luna then looked at the price sticker on the back of the book and found the name of the seller: ‘Ink Blot’s Best Books.’ It was the best chance that she had.
Without even bothering to put the other books back, Luna hurried out of the library with that one book, made a short stop to collect a saddlebag and stepped out into the morning streets of Canterlot.





A griffin sat behind her desk, reading the magazine that she had bought at the roadside stand where she bought her breakfast. And for the first time that morning, somepony entered her shop. And what a surprise visitor it was.
Luna stepped into the little shop, awed by the sheer number of books that such a small place held. Rows and rows of books lined the sterile shelves, which gleamed from ceiling to floor. And so neatly organized as well. Fiction and nonfiction. Romance and fantasy. Biology and astronomy. All arranged by the author. This was going to be easier than she thought.
“Welcome to Ink Blot’s, Your Highness,” the griffin said.
As if Luna hadn’t heard her, she walked straight to the history section, where she looked for more books by the author of her own.
“Need help finding something?” the griffin asked.
“Hm?” Luna asked, looking sharply over her shoulder. “Oh. Erm, no thank you. This shop is so well organized that I know exactly where to find what I need. Thank you anyway for the offer.”
The griffin nodded and returned to her magazine. Just as she spit out the gum she was chewing and reached for a new stick, Luna came trotting over to her.
“Excuse me, but do you have any other books by this author?” Luna asked, presenting the book she had brought with her.
The griffin looked at the cover and her eyes went wide. She took it in her talons and started flipping through the pages.
“You seriously have this? It’s, like, a hundred years out of print. How’d you get your hooves on it? What am I saying? You probably got ancient books out the wazoo,” the griffin said.
“I would think so. Except that I haven’t been able to find another book by this author? Do you know any?”
“Sorry. But, that’s kind of a tall order. Even in a place like this.” She stopped when she saw a certain page. The one that Luna recognized all too well. “So, that’s where it comes from…”
“What? Where what comes from?” Luna asked, realizing then that she sounded too eager.
“You don’t know? It’s kind of a famous painting. A lot of creatures think it’s cursed,” the griffin said.
“Why would they think that?”
The griffin smiled behind her desk, as if Luna had just said some magic word that brightened her whole day.
“What do you know about Anathema?” she asked.
“I know that it pertains to curses,” Luna shrugged.
“Well, it’s fitting enough, because that was the name of the painter. Like, you can go to a bunch of museums and see copies of her work on display. This one in this book is one of her more obscure works, but you can still find it around,” the griffin said. “Anyway, a lot of ponies were really impressed with her work, because she always painted what she saw. Like, she made a lot of really cool landscapes. And there’s this one of a dragon swooping down on her from the sky. The ponies say that she painted that one in record time, before the dragon ever got her.”
“I’ve never thought painting could be so dangerous,” Luna said.
“Yeah. But, like, she made it that way,” the griffin said. She looked down to the picture in the book. “The story goes that Anathema had a friend. Like, a witch, or something. They wanted to do something together that would make the ultimate painting. And…well, take a guess what happened next.”
Luna looked at the hellish scape that was depicted on the page, then looked at it more closely.
“This picture… It looks familiar. Do you know where this supposedly happened?” she asked, even though she felt she knew the answer.
“Story goes that it was in the old Canterlot cemetery. It’s, like, a half hour flight from here,” the griffin said, before taking a look at Luna’s bandaged wing, “Oh, yeah. Sorry, Princess. It’s more like an hour walk. If you think you’re up for that, you can get started now.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Luna said, trying not to sound frightened. “Is there any more to that story?”
“Story?” the griffin asked. “Oh. Right. Yeah, so they got out of there okay. But, after that everything changed. Everypony in their village started getting sick. Like, real, real sick. High fever. Boils. Swollen glands. All that good crap. Everypony who got it was dead in, like, two weeks.”
“How awful,” Luna said, quietly noting that she would have still been on the moon while this happened.
“Yeah. Word has it that not even Princess Celestia was able to do anything about it. I kinda believe that, because if she could have done anything she probably would’ve.”
“But, what happened to Anathema and her friend?”
“What do you know? They got blamed for the plague and were run out of town. Some sources say that it was somepony else who lived in town, but I don’t really buy that. It just seems like Anathema would have tried to shift the blame from herself, or something,” the griffin said. “In the end, that whole town died. Everypony there was cut off from the rest of the world to keep them from spreading the sickness. All that’s left of it is the cemetery that the town got converted into.”
That cold feeling of dread crept into Luna’s skull. What was once a vibrant, bustling town was now a place that ponies dared not to go. And she had been there on that dreaded night.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know all of this?” Luna asked.
“Huh?” the griffin said, looking back up from her magazine. “My grandma told me. But, that was when I was really, really young.”
“And, who is your grandmother?”
“She’s the caretaker at the old cemetery. At least, she was. Before she died. Her name was Dusty.”
And again, that feeling of evil dread chilled Luna to her core. 
“That’s a very interesting story,” Luna said. “It’s just unfortunate that I won’t be able to learn more of the subject. Alas, I must be going. Pity. I would have liked to read more from this author.”
“I’ll look out for some more stuff you might like. Have a good one,” the griffin said as Luna left.
It was still hours before noon when Luna arrived back at her bedroom. Her mind was whirling with questions about what had happened. She now knew why what happened did. Now, she needed a way to stop it. She needed to know more about Anathema, and what she had done. What more there was to dig up and use to end the torment that plagued her.
There was a loud crash on her balcony that made her jump.
“Tiberius!!” Luna shrieked, expecting that her pet had finally knocked over one of the statues or marble planters.
The simulated tree shook as Tiberius jumped from the branch he was hanging from and landed on the bed with his fur on end.
A low, painful groan sounded from the balcony. Luna looked out the glass door, and was shocked at who she saw lying there.
> An Unexpected Arrival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna hurried out to the balcony and helped the guest who had suddenly appeared on her front step inside. Tiberius had to jump away when the guest was thrown onto the bed with a forceful shove.
“Ow! You wanna take it easy? I feel like I just went through a spin cycle.”
“You’re lucky I don’t turn you into a pair of socks and put you through one myself! Where have you been, Discord?” Luna demanded.
“Was it wrong that I took a vacation without telling anypony?” Discord asked.
A pillow was pulled out from under his head and slammed onto his face. Discord pulled it down just enough to peer out at Luna’s angry glare.
“Give me none of your runaround, you ass! You’ve been gone for days! Fluttershy has been worried sick over your disappearance since you didn’t come home that night you left!” Luna scolded.
“Would you believe that I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and ended up in the wrong place?” Discord innocently asked.
He grunted as Tiberius crawled across him and jumped off the bed. The possum then ran for cover inside one of Luna’s drawers, just as the mattress lit up with Luna’s magic aura.
“Hey! What’re you–”
Discord never got to finish as the mattress folded in half with him inside of it. Then it was twisted and wrung like a rag, squeezed like an accordion and finally cracked like a rug. Discord landed back on the mattress with a pained smile.
“You know, that’s really bad for the springs…” he groaned, holding his aching back.
“You’re bad for everypony! Now, tell me what you were doing this whole time? Or do you have to go home and tell Fluttershy by yourself?”
Discord was silent, thinking about what it would be like if he had to face Fluttershy by himself after what he had just done. Perhaps, for what mercy she had, Luna would go with him and help to fudge the truth of what happened.
“Alright. You better grab a seat, ‘cause this is gonna be a loooong story,” Discord said.
Luna nodded and magically retrieved a chair to sit on. Tiberius, not about to pass up a long sit, scampered out of the drawer he had hidden in and hopped onto Luna’s lap.





“I’m going out,” Discord said, slithering his way to Fluttershy’s front door.
“Alright. But, to where? If it’s okay to ask,” Fluttershy answered.
“I just got me a hankering for some fish and chips. I’ll be back from Trottingham before morning. Toodle-pip!”
And with a click of his heels, Discord was gone. Except that he had not gone very far. Instead of going to some portside eatery filled with dock workers and the smell of fried potatoes, Discord went to the entrance of the Everfree Forest. There was something that had been troubling him for the last few nights. Something that he knew was troubling Fluttershy as well, though she refused to admit it. For the past several nights, they both had heard it. But, whenever it was brought up, Fluttershy denied hearing anything. Now, after so long, Discord was going to put an end to it.
He walked brazenly into the Everfree Forest, completely without heed or caution. Whatever was in there, he would be able to take care of it, no matter what it was. After all, how could even the scariest thing in the Everfree stand up to the god of chaos?
Discord peered out from around one tree, looking for any sign what could have been out there. He retreated, then peered out from behind a completely different tree. There was still nothing that he could find that was the source of the troubles at the cottage. He retreated and peered out from another tree one final time, before stepping back out into the open, pondering how he could possibly track down those unseen voices. A difficult task for him. For the first time, he had to make sense of something, instead of the opposite.
What if there was something that made it happen? Some kind of signal or a trigger that would make the strange things occur? As he floated through the trees, Discord tried to think about all of the different times that he had heard that filly crying from somewhere in the forest. Somehow, every time that he would investigate, the sounds always ended up stopping. As if for some reason they didn’t want to be found by him. Like a bird that stopped chirping whenever it knew a hungry fox was near.
Deeper he went into the forest, hoping more than anything that he would find the answer he sought. The night around him became misty, which Discord marked as unusual because mist was not in the weather forecast. Then again, nothing went according to plan in the Everfree Forest. The mist swirled around Discord’s body as he drifted through the trees. Above him, he could see the eyes of the nighttime animals peering from the unseen canopy, glowing like a hundred tiny beacons to light his way forward. He had seen the same thing at Fluttershy’s house almost every night, but it had never made him so uneasy.
“Imagine me, Discord, afraid of a few birds and rodents!” he said incredulously to himself.
But, it wasn’t if they were birds and rodents that made him anxious. It was if they were anything else. That was when he heard the screaming. A loud, horrifying, painful scream that came from some unseen filly. A scream so loud that it echoed through the trees and washed over Discord like a horrible wave.
“Hey! Who’s doing that!?” he called out.
The trees all became a blur as Discord wove through them, determined to find the phantom filly. The fog started growing thinner, and he became aware of a shape up ahead. One that was too large to dodge around, and too near to stop. With a sound of screeching brakes, Discord dug his four appendages into the ground, finding that it had suddenly become hard and splintered. There was a terrible crash and he saw stars flashing in his vision.
“Aw… What’s the idea putting a wall like this in the forest!? A guy could kill himself like that!” Discord said, as he twisted his head back the right way. “Hey, filly! Little filly! Where are–”
It was then that he noticed he was no longer in the forest. Through no reason or passage that he could think of, he was in a very old, very worn room where everything was made of wood. The wardrobe against the paneled wall. The bed by the window. And even the window itself was boarded up with old wooden planks that looked liable to fall off their nails at any moment.
“This is a new one,” Discord muttered, before calling out, “Okay! We’re all very amused! Trying to beat me at my own game? Well, see how you like this!”
Whatever Discord was expecting to happen when he snapped his fingers never did. He snapped them again and again. He snapped each finger individually, but nothing happened.
“Shit on a shingle… not again,” he said.
This was what he lived for. Even though he wished for nothing of sense, reason or logic to present itself, he felt that a little logos was needed at the moment. That in mind, he climbed over the bed to look through the spaces between the boarded up window. What he saw was a vast expanse of forest, which went on for miles in all directions, until the view terminated with a tall mountain that towered imposingly in the background.
“Okay… If I were (ugh) Twilight, I’d try to recognize where I was from something I read in a book once,” Discord said to himself, before his face fell. “Crap! I wish I bothered to read anything.”
There came a giggle from the door beyond.
“And, what’s so funny about that?” Discord wondered.
The giggling continued, and Discord felt a pang of nerves. Whenever he had his magic, he was always the one in control, getting his daily amusement from the befuddlement of others. Now, he was at the mercy of whoever wanted to take advantage. He walked to the door, opened it and peered out to find the source of the laughter. Nopony was there. He could see five more doors down the hall, with him at the farthest end. He stepped out into the hall, wishing he had some kind of light, instead of the dim light of the evening, which was slowly darkening into night. On the wall next to him, he spotted several pictures. All in grainy sepia with many foals standing in rows, while adults stood to either side.
“So, what? Somepony’s idea of a joke is to drop me in an abandoned boarding school?” he asked aloud.
There was a creak nearby. One that came from the stairs, where a light flickered from the floor below. Discord walked as carefully as he could, hoping that the boards beneath him wouldn’t make any noise. He looked down the flight, and saw only the bare landing. He took each step slowly, gently placing his weight over each step and shifting it at the first sign of a creak. After what felt like many minutes, he was on the ground floor, and the flickering light disappeared, leaving him with only the last few scraps of daylight. Much like the rest of the place, everything there was made of old, broken, rotted wood. Only here, the furniture was charred and warped, as if it had been set ablaze and left unattended. The floor, the tables and even the nearby curtains were burned. Past the billowing curtains was another window.
Discord approached the window as the curtains began to waft and billow, their blackened ends shivering toward him. He peered through the boards on the window, and saw a different view than he did on the other side of the house. It was a village. A small, quaint hamlet that was lined with roads made of pebbles, and buildings that looked centuries old. At the far end of the road, Discord could make out a high gate that looked like it was hundreds of years old. What once looked like gold was now streaked with black smears, and covered in as much grime as the wall around it.
“Vwee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!”
There was that laughter again. Now high, grating and purely malicious. And it was coming from the next room over. Discord ran into the room, ready to catch the unseen chatterbox. What he found instead was a scene from not even his own nightmares. Everything was broken, splintered and covered in blood. Cabinet doors were smashed in with blood smearing the impacted parts. A cleaver was jammed into a wooden countertop, which had some severed digits long decomposed around it. The bricks around an oven were charred, and the door was broken, as if something too large to fit had been jammed in there. And the sink was filled with bones that floated in a pool of blood.
“Hello.”
“HOLY HELL!!” Discord yelled. He turned around, and saw a small pegasus filly with a white coat and a silver mane. On her flank was the image of a shooting star, which was surrounded by swirls and sparkles. “You– Y– Where the hell did you come from!?”
“I’ve always been here,” the foal simply answered.
Discord didn’t dare look back over his shoulder, but he had to know if what he saw was real.
“Did you do this?” he asked, pointing to the kitchen behind himself.
“No. It’s always been that way.”
“How about a little cleanup!? The cops might have some serious questions to ask you if they ever saw this!” Discord said.
“Nopony ever comes here,” the foal answered.
Discord studied the foal’s blank, emotionless face, which seemed more mask-like by the second.
“Who are you? Were you the one that was laughing at me this whole time?” he asked.
“I’m called Silver Blitz. And I wasn’t the one laughing,” she answered.
“Oh. Great. What a load off my mind that is,” Discord sarcastically said, stepping away from that horrible kitchen. “Whatever. You can do what you want, kid. But, I’m hauling my heiney home.”
“You can’t go home. The laughing man won’t let you,” Silver Blitz said.
Outside, the very last of the daylight had gone.
Discord stopped walking suddenly, when his way was blocked. Something hung like a bat from the ceiling, and it stared directly at Discord with bulging, mismatched eyes that looked in every direction. There was no mouth at first, but the eyes shrunk into nothingness as a gigantic, malicious, crooked-toothed smile spread from one side of its head to the next. And it laughed that shrill, maniacal laugh from before.
The room seemed to spin as Discord fell over backwards. He watched as the thing stepped down from the ceiling with impossibly long legs that protruded from a tattered, brown cloak. The arms of the thing reached out from inside the cloak, stretching far across the room with a rubbery, boneless motion.
Discord scrambled out of the way of the thing’s arms, and watched as it seemed to grow taller, until it’s shadowy form reached the ceiling. He reached a paw to Silver Blitz behind him.
“Let’s get the hell outta Dodge, kid!” he said.
“Nopony leaves. They all end up like me.”
Discord looked down and saw that Silver Blitz’s eyes had become hollow, bloody sockets, and that blood cascaded from inside her mouth where her tongue used to be. The skin on her body was partly flayed, and her back leg hung limply on only the last few shreds of flesh that held it to her body. She then dropped dead to the floor. The body of the filly slithered like a slug across the splintered wood, into the waiting hand of the laughing man. The foul creature held up the corpse, and laughed maniacally, showing off its gruesome prize.
The furniture blazed suddenly with flames next to Discord. Beneath his mismatched feet, the floorboards started to break, threatening to impale anything on top of them with their sharp splinters. Discord had to dance his way backwards to avoid the jagged floor. All the while, the laughing man cackled madly, waving its tubular arms like a maestro conducting a horrid orchestra.
Discord was forced back into the kitchen, where he bumped into the countertop. Beside the bloody cleaver was Discord’s own severed head, which was wearing that same, monstrous grin as the laughing man. Something grabbed his tail, and he jerked it away to see the arms of the monster reaching out from the broken cabinets. And they were followed by dozens more, all flailing to reach for Discord.
He took the cleaver in his paw and sliced at the reaching arms. The blade passed right through them all, as if he held nothing. For just a moment, Discord saw his reflection in the blade. But, it wasn’t his own. It was the smile of that thing. He dropped the cleaver from his paw, and to his horror watched as it morphed into a simple, plain hoof.
Sweat poured down Discord’s forehead as he ran from the coiling arms of the monster. Before he exited the kitchen, something grabbed him by the back leg. The bones from the sink had all linked together to form a single, long arm, dripping with the blood they floated in. And they were joined by another that dug their fingers into Discord’s back. He shouted in pain and felt his body force itself to lower. Another skeletal hand grabbed his ear and pulled hard, feeling as if it meant to yank it from his head.
As if he had always meant to do it, Discord raised his back legs and bucked the bony arms, which scattered into the disparate bones onto the floor. Discord rolled forward and hit the nearby wall. He looked back and saw that his entire back had become shorter, bulkier, and with two hoofed legs. At the end, he sported a long, gray tail. It was too much to bear. He ran out of the kitchen, and into some dark hallway.
The walls began to shake as the laughing man’s cackle echoed all up and down the length of the hall. The pictures there began to change, showing the monstrous smile on each of the faces that stared out from their frames. Discord could take no more of the torment. He lowered his head and charged down the hallway, into the dark abyss that awaited him. The smile of the thing surrounded him, until it too was swallowed by the dark.
And so, Discord ran. And he would always be running from his tormentor. With no rest. With no hope of escape. Not until it was all ended.
Suddenly, somewhere in the darkness, he fell.
> A Rude Awakening
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a loud splash, and a mess of bubbles.
Discord opened his eyes and saw a swirl of mud and silt. He tried to gasp, but only got a mouthful of water. In another moment, he raised his head into the air above and coughed loudly, spitting the water from his mouth and nose. He crawled backwards and stopped on his knees, wiping the water from his dripping face.
“AW… Where’s a plumber when you need one!?” he sputtered.
By the time he cleared his vision, he saw two mismatched appendages before his eyes. A paw and a talon both flexing their digits under his will. He looked down, and saw that his body was long and serpentine once more. A touch of his face, and it had returned to its former glory. He sighed, relieved to be his old self again. Then, he noticed the world around himself. The old, wooden house was gone. With it, Silver Blitz and that horrible laughing man. For that much more, Discord was grateful. If nothing else, he never wanted to see any of those again. Instead, he found himself at the shore of a vast lake, which was half hidden by the fog. Beside him was a fallen log.
An eerie feeling came over Discord, as if he wasn’t alone in that place. Like something that he couldn’t see was watching him, even though it was right there in front of him. He squinted his eyes and peered out into the fog on the lake, where shadows drifted and swirled around like the silt beneath the surface of the water. The frogs croaked and the insects buzzed. Beneath it all, there came a new sound. One like the faint clinking of a chain.
Discord jumped back from the water. When his eyes focused again, he could see none of the shadows beyond the fog of the lake. He listened again, and heard only the sounds of the forest. Without another thought, he turned around and ran into the forest, thankful that the fog had not spread from the lake. The moment he was far enough, he looked back and saw that the lake was gone from his view, hidden away by the cover of the trees and the overgrowth of the foliage. He stopped running with his back against a tree and puffed loudly. Completely out of habit, he reached up for a pinecone and slurped it down like it was a glass of water.
A bright light suddenly turned on in Discord’s mind, and he spat out the pinecone like it was a hail of bullets from a gun. He sputtered and coughed, looking at what he had just done. He had to be sure. Discord snapped his fingers, and a flower bloomed high enough to reach Discord’s nose. The flower sniffed his face, then sneezed a sardine and marshmallow taco right onto his nose.
Discord pulled the taco off of his face and cut the flower down with a swish of his tail. He took a bite of the taco, and found it to be as delicious as he didn’t expect it to be. Everything really was back to normal. Except for one thing. He still didn’t find the source of those phantom sobs that had been disturbing him and Fluttershy for so many nights. Instead, he found even more questions that a small part of him hoped he wouldn’t have to answer.
He climbed up the tree by spiraling around the trunk like the stripe of a barber’s pole. At the very top, he sat on the tree, pondering what to do next. From that lofty perch, he was able to see more of the forest. He could see Ponyville only a few miles from where he was. And there was Fluttershy’s cottage less than a mile from there. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t see the lake he was just at, or the mist that covered it. Wherever he looked, however hard he listened, he could see nothing of what he had seen before. No old town. No burned buildings. Not even a golden gate. Discord shrugged, unable to think of how he would be able to go home to tell Fluttershy what he had been up to.
Fluttershy. The one pony who gave him a chance when everypony else had given up on him. Who was tormented by the ghostly wailing of the forest more than himself. And if she ever faced the laughing man, or even knew it existed… Discord took one last look over to Fluttershy’s distant cottage, and his mind was made up. He couldn’t go to the Canterlot library. Even in a disguise, the staff there would recognize his distinct speech and mannerisms. There had to be some other library that was open all hours. A place that was chockfull of ancient knowledge and wisdom of things that happened all around the world. Most importantly, didn’t know enough about him to rat him out to Fluttershy.
Discord’s eyes lit up, he snapped his fingers, and he was gone from that treetop.





The blizzard raged outside the windows of the Crystal Empire Library. At a lonely little desk at the front, a mare took another sip from her steaming cup. Nopony else was around, so she took a silver flask that she had hidden at the back of her work station and poured some into her drink. That would warm her up for sure. She sipped her drink, wondering why the library was even operating at such an hour. Nopony ever came looking for something to read that late at night. Not even the night guard. Still, it was nice to have some time to herself, even if it was at the odd hours of the night with only a window between herself and a blizzard.
The mare almost jumped at the sound of approaching hooves. Just another one of the night guards making his rounds, most likely. Still, she took the precaution of hiding her silver flask and going back to reading her book. The steps grew closer, and the mare sighed to herself as they stopped right in front of her desk. To her surprise, the arrival was no night guard. In fact, he was a complete stranger. A stallion who looked like somepony had made a pony, but without knowing what a pony actually looked like. Everything about him seemed off, but the mare greeted him anyway.
“Good evening. Welcome to–”
“The Crystal Empire Library. I know where I am,” the stranger said, shivering. “Could you turn on the heat in this place? It's colder than Princess Celestia’s huge ass in here.”
“You could always step back out,” the mare suggested.
“Oh! A dreary, smart-alecky librarian. You must be a hit with the stallions.”
The librarian answered by slapping a ‘Closed’ sign on her desk.
“‘Nuff with the small talk, sister,” the stranger said, batting the sign away, “I need help finding a place.”
“What place?” the librarian answered with a groan.
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know what you’re looking for?”
“Alright, how about this? Do you know any places where there were some serious crimes committed? I’m talking murders, arson, cannibalism, high suicide rates, and probably haunted by something that crawled right from the maw of Hell to torment the shit out of everypony for its own jollies?” the stranger asked.
The librarian stared blankly, took another sip of her drink and shrugged. “Newspaper archives are in the back. Feel free to leaf through them.”
“Alright. Sure. I got all night. Thanks for nothing,” the stranger said, as he walked away. He looked over his shoulder and gave his final word. “You know, you’re kind of a downer for somepony hittin’ the sauce so hard. Try a mint sometime!”
The librarian breathed into her hoof and sniffed it. Perhaps she poured too much of her flask into her cup?
In the back room, the stranger found drawers upon drawers of newspapers, all sorted by date, which were printed on the front of each drawer. Judging by the state of the house, the stallion guessed that it wasn’t any recent crime that had happened. From the style of the furniture, the grain of the photographs and the level of wood rot, he guessed that the crime happened some centuries ago. And that was where he started.
Peering over his shoulder, the stallion saw that nopony was nearby. His hoof morphed into a lion’s paw, and he snapped his fingers. The blinds of the room closed, and the door creaked shut. He then morphed back into the shape of Discord, only now with five heads and ten arms.
“Alright, boys. Everypony grab a paper. We’re starting here,” the center head said, pointing to one of the drawers.
The drawer opened on its own, and each pair of arms took a paper to read. Time passed as Discord’s many eyes scanned the pages carefully, finding nothing of note. The hour struck for more times than Discord could think at the moment, and the thousandth paper had been read. It was as if anything that he wanted to know was actively alluding him, always staying just ahead of his grasp.
The center right head suddenly smiled and tapped the paper it held in its arms.
“I think I got something!” it said.
“What? Show us!”
“Yeah! Show us!”
“Sh!” the center head shushed the others, reminding them of the pony in the other room. It took the paper in question into its own pair of hands and read the headline article:
‘Rock-A-Bye Killer Finally Caught’
“Rock-A-Bye Killer?”
“Sounds like a bad rock album.”
“What’s the rest say?”
The other Discord heads all peered at the article to read the news.
Apparently, there was a place far away called Pallin Town. From what the article said, it was a small, sleepy sort of town where nopony would ever have expected the kind of terror that would befall them. After a long string of foals disappearing, the evidence trail eventually led to the home of a stallion named Berry Tarts.
“Mpf! A stallion!? Named Berry Tarts!?” one of Discord’s heads guffawed.
The other heads all stifled a laugh, before they kept reading. The article went on to describe the expected behavior of the perpetrator. He was a quiet stallion who kept mostly to himself. The kind of pony who would only nod hello, then continue walking without a word. Aside from that, he seemed perfectly ordinary. It was what was found in his house that proved otherwise. Discord’s five faces all turned green, thinking they knew what was found in that house. One thing that they hadn’t noticed was something that was described in the article. Writing on the wall in what appeared to be blood, saying that somepony would rise again. In the end, several fillies’ bodies were identified to have been in that house. At least, what was left of the fillies’ bodies. Berry Tarts was arrested, and in custody he confessed to the murder of 213 different fillies. Mostly in other towns. He described in depth his method of murder, involving torture and using pieces of them to decorate his house.
“Oof… I don’t know if that guy’s parents hit him too much, or not enough,” one of Discord’s heads said.
“Hey! This other article’s starting to make sense now,” another head said.
“Which article?” the others all asked at once.
“This one that I was reading just now. It’s dated one week after that one. It says: ‘Pallin Town Falls to More Tragedy.’ Here. Take a look.”
The other heads looked at the next article shown. Apparently, after exactly one week had passed since Berry Tarts was caught, on the exact stroke of midnight, every single mare and filly in town committed suicide. Not a single one was left alive. All dead by their own hooves.
Five jaws hit the floor. The five pairs of arms reached up and pushed all of the extra heads to merge with the center one. After them, the extra arms disappeared altogether.
“That’s some bad reading right there,” Discord said, idly tossing the newspaper back onto the open drawer he retrieved it from, along with all the others he hadn’t bothered to put away.
He had a clue. Best of all, he had a lead. And he was going to follow it.
Discord stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled. A cab screeched to a halt in front of himself in the middle of the newspaper archives, driven by none other than himself. Discord squeezed his way into the backseat and pointed ahead.
“Pallin Town! Step on it!” he said.
The taxi revved up, peeled out and shot through the wall, leaving not a trace of its presence.
> The House The Devil Built
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the first time in a very, very long time, there was a noise coming down a particular street. The loose stones in its entryway rattled as a low, yet loud rumbling grew ever nearer. The golden gates barely held together as it was almost upon them. Finally, a yellow cab pulled up in front of the gates with two Discords seated inside.
“Awright. Last stop! End o’ da line!” the driver Discord said.
“Finally! You said that five ‘last stops’ ago!” Discord said, noting the golden gateway.
“Dat’s yer own damn fault fer not askin’ where Pallin Town was!”
“Is not!” Discord indignantly said.
“Yeah? Well, since I’m you, an’ it’s me sayin’ it’s yer fault, dat means you believes it too! Now, it is my great honor to say, ‘Welcome to Pallin Town, now GET OUTTA MY CAB!!!”
The entire cab retched and convulsed, until it spat Discord out of the backseat like a cat hacking up a hairball. Once he was out, the cab burrowed underground like a mole, and the hole filled itself behind it.
“Glad I’m out of that cab. That guy was starting to make too much sense,” Discord said.
He turned around and he saw the gates before him. What must have once been grand, tall structures made to welcome all who visited them to the happy little hamlet that waited just beyond. Now, they were a dismal, gruesome sight that welcomed only rot and ruin. And he had to walk past them. He reached out to open the hinged gates like a revolving door, or perhaps flap them upward like a pet door. Instead, under none of his own power, the gates fell inward, landing on the ground with a sickening clunk.
With his first step past the gates, the entire atmosphere seemed to change. The air felt harder to breathe in, and the dark sky overhead seemed more like the sickly red of rust, dotted with black clouds that harshly reflected the red light. And for no reason that he could think of, he began to feel a lingering sense of depression. A dark void from which there was no escape. And he was walking right into it.
“Welp. Nothin’ ventured,” Discord said, hiking up an imaginary pair of pants and floating across the ground.
His initial investigation didn’t yield much. He could see no immediate signs of struggle. Nothing to distinguish his destination. All of the buildings had been boarded up, and still smelled of dead meat, even after all that time had passed. Through it all, Discord was ever vigilant for an overgrown smile or a shrill laugh.
There was a creaking echo of thunder from the rusty sky overhead. A dull, earthy smell filled Discord’s nose as the distant rain closed in on him. The hot, humid presence of the rain preceded it before the water ever fell from the sky. Rain pelted the back of Discord, who drifted from one building to the next, fearing each time that he would see some bony hand reaching from between the boards, or see that horrible, crooked smile. One window that he looked through showed the scene of a filly’s bedroom. On her bloodstained bed was a teddy bear, sitting with its head limply to one side, watching the scene with its black, unblinking eyes. Whatever passed for pity in Discord’s mind made him magically turn the bear the other way so that it wouldn’t have to watch such horrors for all eternity.
He backed away from the window, feeling as if the rain were dropping some kind of gradually building weight on his shoulders. With a grunt, he shook his head and drifted away from the window, trying to get the image of that filly’s room out of his mind. He looked up, and dropped to the ground.
There was an enormous building, three stories tall, down the street from him. One that looked so dilapidated that it almost swayed in the breeze. The rain passed by in waves, blinking the windows at the top of the house in and out of sight. The front porch stretched forth like the open maw of some hungry beast, waiting for unwary travelers to disappear into its maw. Worst of all was how the boards of the windows all seemed to spread out into a wide, malicious grin. But, it was too late to do anything now. Discord was already on the front porch.
The very tip of his finger touched the doorknob. He didn’t know if it was his own volition or the house’s, but the door opened with a dull creak that seemed to echo into the darkness beyond its threshold. Discord pulled on his ear, and his eyes lit up like a pair of lamps. Instead, the light was absorbed by the dark, revealing nothing past it. Even though his feet fought him, he walked inside, and the doors closed behind him. It was then that the room revealed itself.
It was exactly as Discord had remembered it from his first nightmarish trip to that place.  From the burnt curtains to the broken furniture. And the smell from the kitchen was creeping out like a million insects. Discord’s mind flashed with brilliance as he looked up to the ceiling, knowing that the laughing man was going to come down and strike. He looked up, and saw nothing there. Nothing but the dust that fell lightly from the rafters. And if he really listened, there was another sound besides the rain that was coming from up above. The sound of small, light hooves might have been happening in tandem with the fallen dust.
There were the stairs, right where he remembered them. Discord hovered across the floor and up the stairs, determined not to be taken by surprise. Any sign of trouble, and he was going to be gone, with or without Silver Blitz. At the top of the stairs, he was greeted by the sight of the row of photographs that he saw the last time. He looked closer at the one directly before him, and saw a familiar face. A pegasus filly with a white mane and silver coat.
The sounds of the tiny steps sounded from down the hall. There were the five doors. And the one at the very end was open. A sliver of light shone through its cracked frame, before a shadow passed over it. And again, and again. Without a sound, Discord floated down the hall to the room at the end. He peered through the crack of the door and saw a filly’s bedroom illuminated by a reddish lamp. In a moment, the room’s occupant stepped into view. It was Silver Blitz, dancing around the room as if she were in a trance. Her movements were slow and graceful, inviting all who watched her to join her. An impulse that Discord felt ready to obey. She was so beautiful for somepony so young. A silver beam of light from a dingy, dirty window. As she danced, Discord imagined himself dancing with her. She was calling out to him. And he was going to answer.
Silver Blitz continued her dance, waving her body in slow, circular motions, until she heard the quiet creak of the door. She jerked to a stop and saw the strangest creature she had ever seen standing in her doorway. A tall, slender, monstrous amalgam of many different creatures, watching her with mismatched eyes. Her entire body ceased to move when she saw it standing in the red light, casting its enormous shadow on the wall. It stepped inside, and the door closed behind it.
“Have you…been here before?” Silver Light asked.
The creature didn’t answer. It drifted across the floor, it’s mismatched limbs never touching the wooden floorboards. The length of its body circled around her. Silver Blitz tried to back away, but was stopped when her back hit the side of the thing. The creature stopped, eying her as a snake would a mouse. There was nowhere to run to when Silver Blitz felt the hands of the thing slide its claws from the top of her head, down her back and all the way to her flank. She watched as a giant, forked tongue slid from the lips of the thing. The tongue waggled toward her, and she winced as it dragged across her cheek and slithered across her lips to the other cheek.
“No…” Silver Blitz whispered.
The thing smiled wickedly at her and tightened the circle it had made around her, forcing her ever closer to its face. She could see a sick, malicious lust in its eyes as its tongue slithered forth again, passing over her tightly shut lips. The filly moaned loudly, trying her best to not open her mouth to scream. The circle tightened more, and she felt her lips against the lips of the monster.
All hesitation left her in that moment. She forcefully pushed away the head of the thing and scrambled over the side of it before she was entrapped in its body. Her hoof hit her end table, knocking the lamp to the floor where its shade fell off, revealing its dirty, reddish light in full. Silver Blitz huddled herself into the nearest corner, trying to find a way to escape the monster as it drifted toward her. There was nowhere she could go. The monster was almost upon her. Her hooves shot out and grasped the fallen lamp. She pressed the bare bulb against the thing’s neck.
The monster yelled loudly, its voice sounding like a mix of several creatures at once. Silver Blitz dropped the lamp and covered her ears as the thing rolled on the floor, holding its burning neck. In moments, the thing slowly stopped rolling and held its neck in one of its hands. It looked around the room, and saw the filly cowering in the corner.
“Silver Blitz?” it asked. “What have I been doing this whole time?”
Silver Blitz watched the creature, and quickly armed herself with the lamp again.
“It’s alright, kid. I think… I think the laughing man got me,” Discord said.
“The laughing man?” Silver Blitz asked.
“I think it did something bad to me. I’m alright now. I promise.”
Silver Blitz looked at him, slowly lowering her weapon. The lamp shook in her hooves as she looked at Discord, appraising every inch of him.
“You were here once before, weren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes. When you told me your name. That’s kind of how I found you,” Discord said, offering his hand to the filly. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Silver Blitz warily eyed his extended paw.
“I promise you that I’d never hurt you in a hundred million years. Not on my own will. Please, trust me and I’ll get you somewhere safe,” Discord gently begged.
The lamp was put back on its table, and Silver Blitz put her hoof in Discord’s paw. With his talons, Discord snapped his fingers. But, nothing happened.
“Oh, shit…!” Discord whispered to himself. He ran to the door, practically pulling Silver Blitz behind himself. “Hurry! We’ve got to get out of here, before the laughing man catches us!”
“But, there is no laughing man,” Silver Blitz said.
They were in the hallway, and Discord stopped dead in his tracks. There was a red light coming from downstairs, and the sound of a heavy step. With the step came the sound of many clinking chains.
“Quick! Back this way!” Silver Blitz said, pulling Discord back into her room.
Once they were inside, she opened the wardrobe and stuffed Discord inside. Even though he barely fit, he was able to twist his body in a way that allowed him inside. The doors were slammed shut, leaving only a crack that Discord could peer through. From his tiny vantage, he was able to see Silver Blitz hastily put the shade back on her lamp before she resumed her dance, as if nothing had happened.
The sounds of the steps grew closer, chains rattling with every one of them.
“Silver Blitz,” a low, elderly voice called out, slowly drawing out every syllable of the filly’s name.
“In here,” Silver Blitz answered, trying to keep her voice steady.
The door opened with a loud creak, and Discord watched as an orange pegasus stallion with a red mane entered the room. On his flank was the mark of a knife slicing through a red berry. In an instant, Discord remembered seeing him in one of the photographs from the hall. He was standing next to Silver Blitz in that picture, smiling like a complete creep. Except that his coat was a much lighter shade in that picture, instead of the deep orange he now sported. He watched as the stranger watched Silver Blitz dance, saying nothing as he did. He just watched her in a way that Discord recognized as an evil kind of lust. A perverse desire for something forbidden. Something that no good-hearted creature would want.
The stranger slowly closed in on Silver Blitz, who stopped dancing. She watched in complete fear as the stallion stroked his hoof against her face.
“Please, no…” Silver Blitz quietly begged.
The stallion lowered himself down to her eye level, and dragged his tongue across his own lips, before inching it closer to Silver Blitz’s.
“Hooves off, foal-fucker!!”
The stranger had no time to register what happened. A sudden weight crashed against the side of his body, and he was sent sprawling across the bed against the wall.
“Hurry!” Discord said, taking Silver Blitz by her hoof and running to the door.
The stallion on the bed watched them go, just as his eyes turned into solid orange pools.
Discord led Silver Blitz down the hall as the sounds of splintering wood rapidly approached behind them. They got to the stairs and felt them rise behind them as they ran. They leapt off of the landing, just as the last step exploded in a shower of splinters. There was the sound of a ferocious roar upstairs. Discord looked directly at the front door, and saw it burst into flames, along with all of the windows. The fire swept across the floor toward the two. Discord took Silver Blitz up and ran down the hall, away from any doors that he knew led to the kitchen.
The hall was dark. Too dark to see even any doors that would have been on either side. Finally, they reached a dead end. They turned to run back, and saw the hallway narrowing, trapping them between its walls. At the far end, there was a red light and the sounds of rattling chains. The light was growing brighter, and the hall began to reveal itself. Something on the wall was bathed in the shadows. A part of the wall was pushing itself outward, and had an odd seam around it, which Silver Blitz ran toward.
“This way!” she said, pushing her hooves against the wall.
Discord did as she said, and started shoving his whole body against the hidden door. The sounds of the chains were growing louder as the seam on the wall started to crack. One last hit, and Discord pushed his way through the door, nearly falling down a flight of stairs when he did. He caught himself partway down.
“Come on!” he called back to Silver Blitz. When he looked back, he gasped.
Silver Blitz had taken the hollow-eyed form that Discord had seen her take the last time, before the laughing man took her.
“No…I can’t…” Silver Blitz fearfully said.
“Hurry! It’s coming!” Discord said.
“I–”
Anything Silver Blitz would have said was cut off when a hook at the end of a chain snagged the inside of her mouth. And it was followed by two more that dug deep into her empty eyes. Then another, which cut her from her stomach all the way down to her crotch, spilling a cascade of blood down the steps Discord stood on.
“Find the gold!” Silver Blitz said, her bloody tears raining on the ground.
The chains went taut, and Silver Blitz was pulled from the doorway. She tried to hold onto the frame, and was dragged out of sight. Then, the door slammed shut.
The entire world went quiet. No sounds were heard beyond the door. Not even the screams of Silver Blitz, or the rattling of the chains. There was nothing more that he could do for the filly, so Discord turned around and descended the stairs. The steps seemed endless, leading down much further than they should have. Finally, Discord’s mismatched feet felt the soft crunch of dirt beneath them. He reached out an arm and felt for the wall next to him. His claw soon found it, and he traced its length as he walked along. The basement seemed empty, for he hadn’t bumped his foot into a single thing along the way. Nor did his extended arm bump anything. The room itself was much like the stairs before it, seeming far larger than it should have been.
There was a tiny flash of light, and several sparks fell from above. Another flash, and a tiny light flickered dimly, barely illuminating the basement. Discord watched it flicker, as if it tried its damndest to stay lit. He then took another step forward, and another light lit above him. Further still, and another light flickered on. His skull tingled and his stomach sank. Somepony was expecting him.
Through the basement Discord went, his way lit by the feeble lights. Finally, he came to a door. One that was made of heavy iron and held together with rusty bolts. The circular handle hung in place, inviting Discord’s hand toward it. He reached out and gripped the handle, pulling hard. The door opened with a creak that sounded like a yawning beast that had just been awoken. Past it, Discord saw an unusual sight.
The room was smaller than the one before, and lit with small torches on the wall. The entire room was hewn from rough stone, and the way forward was covered by a blood red carpet. At the end, there was an altar set before a glowing orange void. On the altar was a brilliant, golden statuette of a phoenix.
He had been told to find the gold, and he had found it. Discord slowly walked forward, feeling a horrible shiver in his spine as he got closer to the altar. Something already knew he was there, and he was ever wary of a malicious grin appearing in the darkness. He was in front of the altar. All he had to do was take the phoenix. Just that, and he would leave. Discord reached his paw out, ready to take the statuette. His finger barely touched it just as he expected a shrill laugh to echo through the room. Nothing happened. He gripped the phoenix and prepared to take it with him. That was when the world went to Hell.
It started as a whooshing sound that came from deep within the glowing void behind the altar. One that grew louder and louder until a hot breeze shot forth that blew Discord backwards. He sat up and watched as two orange lights blinked open above the void, and the void itself rose up and closed like a set of jaws. A red, glowing tongue flicked from the closed mouth of the thing, waggling up and down with a low hiss.
Discord ran back the way he came, hearing the rumbling of the wall of the altar falling apart. He ran back into the dim basement, seeing the stairs directly ahead. He went as fast as his legs would carry him, when all of a sudden a wall of black scales slithered past him. The head of an enormous serpent turned to stare at him, threateningly flicking its tongue. A wave of its body and it slapped Discord across the room.
Discord reached back and bit his own tail, rolling like a wheel until he was able to skid to his feet. He watched as the thing slithered toward him with its glowing mouth wide open. He dodged just as it lunged at him. When Discord tried to run for the stairs, the snake lunged its head past him and destroyed the wooden stairs with its jaws. It turned to look at Discord, seeming to smile as it watched his terrified face.
His back was to the wall with no means to escape as the snake flicked its tongue at him, its endless black body slowly closing in toward him. Discord snapped his fingers, hoping that by some miracle he had regained his power. No such luck. He banged the wall with his fist, and felt something there. He looked and saw a box with a faded lightning bolt painted on it. A quiet tapping sound came from nearby. Looking down the way, Discord saw something that he hadn’t noticed before. A small window was up near the ceiling. And it was low enough for him to reach. He looked back to the snake as it slithered closer to him, its mouth opening ever so slightly to reveal rows of curved, needle sharp fangs. It reared up and swayed back and forth, before it lunged at him.
Discord dove to the side, and the teeth of the monster sank into the wall. There was a horrible flash of light as electricity crackled from the fuse box, and the lights showered the ground with sparks. As the monster thrashed in agony, Discord jumped for the window, finding that it opened upward when he pushed it. He squeezed his body through it, keeping the golden phoenix held firmly in his grip. Finally, he was out into the streets of Pallin Town, and he scrambled as fast as he could away from the devilish house. He looked back, and he saw that he was right in front of the house, staring at the front porch. The window he had crawled through was already closed.
It was a relief like he had never felt before to be out in the rain. Out of the house where evil lived. His heart stopped when he saw a pair of orange eyes glare at him from the window, and he clambered backwards along the ground.
“It can only follow you at night. Leave now,” Silver Blitz’s voice said, before it faded, and the eyes lowered from sight.
Discord watched the window, hoping that the filly would reveal herself. When she didn’t reappear, Discord noticed that the sun was coming up. For now, he was safe. And even though he failed to release Silver Blitz, he had done as she said and found the gold. He looked at the statuette, wondering what could possibly be so important about it.
“I’m gonna need some help on this one,” Discord muttered to himself.
He raised his paw and rubbed his fingers together, hoping for that miracle again. He snapped his fingers, and disappeared from existence.
> The Help For Something Strange
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The morning had been dragging on and on for Spike, as he carted around a trolley full of books through the Ponyville library. He had been at it since before the sun came up, on Twilight’s request that he take care of it while she was out of town on some business doing whatever with a few of her friends, who he couldn’t remember, went along with her.
It had been a dreary day. Looking at book’s numbers, finding the sections that they went to, and arranging them on the shelves by their author. Of all the mind-numbing ways to spend his morning. He hadn’t even been able to get breakfast, because it would have set him back about an hour. What annoyed him the most was that Twilight still treated him like he was a hatchling. After so many years with so many harrowing encounters, he could have held his own on one of those adventures that Twilight and her friends were always going on. Instead, he was relegated to the domestic duties. The kind that came only with the danger of a migraine or a sore shoulder.
During that lonely work, Spike found ways to keep himself entertained. He got a running start and rode the trolley down the length of the aisle, swerving out of the way of the ladders and stools that were placed on either side. He took a book from the trolley and placed it on its spot on the shelf without even stopping. Partway down, Spike pressed the sole of his foot on the nearest wheel, bringing the trolley to a stop. He shook some feeling back into his foot, and collected a stack of books, placing them along the shelves where they belonged.
Spike looked at the load on the trolley, looking for any more that needed to go in that section. Just one more, and he would zoom his way to the next part of the cavernous library to do more of the same. He took the book and pushed it into its place. That was done, so he hopped back onto the trolley to continue his rounds. Until he heard a thud behind himself.
Looking back, Spike saw the book that he had just placed on the shelf lying on the floor. He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t think much else of it as he put it back on the shelf. Just as he was about to turn around to go on his way, the book fell off the shelf again. Spike turned around and looked at the book, then at the shelf. Nothing was wrong with either. No slants. No lubrication. Nothing that would push it back. For all reasons that he could think of, it was just a coincidence that happened twice. He picked the book up again, and placed it on the shelf. The book stayed put. Spike kept his eyes on it for a moment, slowly turned to leave, then quickly turned back around to see the book slide off the shelf all on its own.
“What in the–” Spike started to say, before the book started jumping.
The book flopped around like a fish desperate to find water. Spike hid behind his trolley as the book started to rumble. Then, it started to groan. Finally, the pages opened up and flipped to a picture of a familiar creature. One that reached out of the pages and clawed its way onto the crystalline floor of the library.
“Whew! Home at last!!”
“Discord!” Spike said.
“Hm?” Discord turned to the direction he heard the dragon’s voice, and saw him peering out from behind his trolley of books. “Hey! Spike, right?”
“You know it’s Spike. What the hell are you doing crawling out of books like that!? Twilight’s gonna kill me if you did anything to it!” Spike said, taking the book back and slamming it back onto its shelf.
“Tell the mare to lighten up. It’s just paper and ink,” Discord said, creaking to his feet.
“I’d love to hear you tell Twilight that to her face. In fact, I think I’ll let her know that you’re not missing anymore, just so you can,” Spike said, before getting back on his trolley.
Before he even got an inch away, the wheels turned into cinder blocks, keeping the dragon from going anywhere.
“Let’s not be hasty here! I mean, Twilight doesn’t have to know that I’m back just yet, does she?” Discord said, slithering to the front of the trolley
“Give me one good reason,” Spike demanded, his arms crossed.
“Because, I need help–” Discord reached behind his back, and produced the golden phoenix statuette, “--to find out what this is.”
The moment he laid his eyes on it, Spike felt his dragon-ish desire to take it for himself overwhelming him. He reached out to take it, only for Discord to pull it out of his reach.
“Hey! Let me look at that!” Spike said.
“Oh, no!” Discord said, his palm on Spike’s forehead. “You see what this thing’s doing to you? It’s making you crazy! And I think it’s…” Discord paused to think of how to phrase his next sentence, “I think it’s connected to something else.”
Spike relented his attempt to grab the idol, and realized how he had been acting. He backed away from Discord, keeping his eyes on the phoenix all the while.
“What kinds of things is it connected to?” Spike wondered.
“I don’t really know yet,” Discord lied, “But, I think I have a clue about where to start.”
He waved his talons, and a whole group of bookcases slid over to him. With as much leaderly authority as he could, Discord started walking between the shelves that he summoned. He started throwing books off the shelves into Spike’s waiting claws. “We need to look up everything we can about old stuff like this. Then, we have to find stuff about spooky stuff.”
“Spooky stuff?” Spike wondered, as another book landed on the stack he was holding.
“Yeah. Demons. Ghosts. Curses. Dream. Nightmares. That whole wheelhouse.”
One more book landed on the stack Spike was carrying, making it too heavy for the dragon to carry.
“That’s all great… But–” Spike fell over, burying himself under the stack of books he held, “But, that’s all in a different section. This is all stuff from Twilight’s private collection.”
“Her what?” Discord asked, another book already in his grip.
“Her private collection. The stuff that she thinks I don’t know that she has. The stuff that mares like to call ‘romance novels.’”
Discord looked at the book he held, and saw a picture of a mare and a stallion kissing passionately in front of a bed covered in rose petals. The mare on the cover had her dress nearly slipped off by the muscular hooves of the stallion, almost baring her well-endowed figure to the audience.
“Ooh…Steamy! Maybe I should start reading romance books too,” Discord said, chucking it over his shoulder onto the shelf.
“After we find what you’re looking for,” Spike said, placing the books back on the shelves without any regard to where they went.
“You mean you’ll help?” Discord asked.
“Sure. I at least want to see where you’re going with this. Come on. Paranormal section’s this way.”
Discord was led to where he needed to be, and he and Spike together gathered up as many books on the subject as possible. By the end of it, they had a towering fortress of books built up around themselves in the middle of the reading area where they chose to make their hub.
“Well, this is it. Every book that I can think of that would cover the subjects you want to know about. Where do we start?” Spike asked.
Discord was already searching the upper levels of the fortress walls, reading the titles on the spines of each book. Spike climbed up the steps that were made from more books to help him. He stopped at the top of one of the turrets that they had built, and began reading through the table of contents. There were things about fabled lake monsters in Trotland, alien abductions, and singing stones. But, nothing about what Discord was looking for. He tried another book, which detailed the story of a mare who claimed to have been born an earth pony, before she placed a magic stick on her forehead and became a unicorn. That was complete garbage any way you looked at it, so Spike considered burning that book, figuring it would only make ponies dumber for reading it. But, that was everything that Twilight was against, so he simply threw it onto the top of one of the nearby shelves that he towered over. The next book he grabbed seemed different than the rest.
The only evidence that it had ever been touched was the print of Discord’s paw on the layer of dust. Spike wiped off the dust and saw the image of a symbol that he didn’t recognize. He opened the book, and looked at the table of contents. Each one had a title more foreboding than the last, referring mostly to demons, evil and undeath. Spikes claws flipped through the pages, skimming the words and glancing at the pictures. One chapter he found was titled ‘Dreaming of Demons: The Hell that Follows Into the Waking World.’ Discord had mentioned specifically wanting to learn about dreams and demons, so Spike continued to read.
The picture on the page showed a mare sleeping in bed. But, she wasn’t alone. There was another mare overlooking her from the shadows. A pallid, expressionless thing with solid white eyes. More horrifying still was what laid on her chest. It was a small, hairy, hunchbacked thing with long claws on its fingers and toes, and two impish horns that protruded from its forehead. The picture sent chills down Spikes back, and he covered it up before he read the text.
“Hey! I think I–”
“Find anything!?”
Spike yelped as Discord appeared suddenly over his shoulder, making Spike nearly jump off the turret he was on. Discord caught him before he went tumbling over the side and set him right.
“Thanks,” Spike said, before showing the page he found. “Look at this.”
“What is it?” Discord asked, peering over Spike’s shoulder. “You know, that almost looks as kinky as one of Twilight’s private books.”
“Doesn’t it?” Spike agreed. “But, that’s not the point. Look at this. Apparently, creatures usually dream of demons if it attaches itself to them. They usually stalk a creature in their dreams, before they die in their sleep. And– Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
“Do I?” Discord asked, his color drained into a pool around his feet, leaving himself stark white. He reached down and pulled his color back onto his body as if he were pulling up a pair of dropped pants. “Wha-What else you got there?”
“Well, in some cases,” Spike said, turning back to the page, “The dreams get projected to somepony. Usually by somepony that’s already been killed.”
“But, why?” Discord asked, grabbing Spike by his shoulders.
“I don’t know. Maybe they want help?” Spike suggested.
Discord absentmindedly dropped Spike to the ground and rubbed the back of his head.
“But, what’s that got to do with the phoenix?” he wondered.
Spike picked himself up from the floor, and he saw Discord slowly descending the flight of stairs made from books.
“Weird dreams…Pallin Town…Killer monsters…Silver Blitz…And now this phoenix,” Discord muttered to himself as he walked directly off the steps down to the floor.
“Alright. What’s all this about?” Spike asked, stopping Discord in his tracks. “You come in here with some weird trinket, then you start making me learn about all this demon crap. Pallin Town? Silver Blitz? Dreams? What’s this all got to do with anything? And why are you dragging me into this?”
Discord looked at the statuette, and recalled his promise to himself to not return home until Fluttershy was safe from whatever was out there. He sighed and his shoulders slumped.
“It’s because you’re the only one I trust to not rat me out,” Discord said. “If anypony else found out about this, they’d panic. Or worse, certain someponies would think it was their ‘responsibility’ to tell everypony the truth about what’s going on. Then everypony would panic. But, I know that if I ask you for help, you’ll keep it between us.”
Like most residents of Ponyville, Spike didn’t have the best relationship with Discord. But, a part of him couldn’t help but be touched by his words. Words with which he could sense pure sincerity. Something that he never expected from Discord.
“Alright. But if I’m gonna help you, you’d better tell me everything. And I mean everything,” Spike said.
Discord nodded and did as Spike requested. As the time passed, Spike’s eyes grew wider and wider. He sat in complete silence, asking only the occasional question as Discord conveyed his tale of the weeping filly, the dreams that led him to Pallin Town, the story of Berry Tarts and the massacre that he left in his wake, the laughing man, trying to free Silver Blitz, finding the phoenix, and finally his escape from the jaws of the serpent, before he ended up back in Ponyville.
When Discord finished his story, Spike sat in terrified awe. Every nerve bristled beneath his thick scales, making him regret his promise to help. Still, he was a dragon of his word, and didn’t want to back out of the adventure that he so wanted. Even if it would be the end of him.
“Alright,” Spike gulped. “S-So, what do we do next?”
“I don’t know. Something is supposed to tie back to this,” Discord said, idly tossing the phoenix to himself. “I just wish I could have asked Silver Blitz what to do. All she said was to find it. Now what?”
“Wait!” Spike said, his eyes lighting up, “You said that you first met her in a dream she sent to you, right?”
“Yeah,” Discord affirmed.
“Then, you need to send her one right back. Just like sending a message!” Spike triumphantly said, collecting his book and running through the gateway arch in the fortress of books. “Come on! I’ll show you what I mean!”
Discord followed Spike through the arch, the very tip of his horn just barely brushing the books at the top of the arch. The second he passed, the arch collapsed and the entire fort fell down like a stack of dominoes.
“Heh…Must’ve been a keystone almanac,” Discord sheepishly said.
“Forget about it. Twilight can just use her magic to take care of it when she gets home. She’s an alicorn anyway. It’ll be, like, two seconds for her. Let’s go!” Spike said, before he and Discord hurried off.
> Daydreamer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were hurried steps from beyond Spike’s bedroom door, before it burst open to allow in Spike and Discord. Spike wasted no time making preparations, and he started by cleaning off his bed.
“Hey, fill me in already. What’s your big idea?” Discord asked.
“We gotta put you to sleep,” Spike said, as he pulled a stack of clothes off of his sheets.
“In that thing?” Discord asked, indicating the ornate basket that Spike slept in.
“You’ll fit. You squeezed into a book that was, like, a hundred times smaller than this. Now, get comfortable. I have to get some stuff,” Spike said, before rushing out of the room.
Discord looked at the bed, and thought about how to fit himself inside of it. He stepped in, and started coiling his body around and around inside the basket, until only his head peered out the top like a snake in a basket. In another few moments, Spike came back with his arms loaded.
“I got the stuff,” Spike said, dropping it all on the floor.
“For what?” Discord asked.
“For sending a dream to talk to Silver Blitz. What else?” Spike said, as he flipped through the book he had taken to the library. “Just one thing: are you sure that Silver Blitz herself wasn’t a demon?”
“Yes,” Discord answered.
“You’re sure? Because she could be the one making these things happen to you.”
“I’m…positive that she’s not the one doing this,” Discord said.
“As long as you’re totally sure. Because, it says here that if we try to contact the demon that’s doing this, both of us are gonna be in even bigger trouble.”
Discord didn’t ask how. He didn’t want to know. By his own nature, he was a risk taker. But, if things didn’t go well for him this time, he would lose big. Not just him. Silver Blitz and Spike were on the line as well.
Spike set to work, putting what looked like a brown stick in a bowl and a gravity cradle behind it. Both were placed on top of a small table, which he pushed in front of Discord. Once he did, he blew a flame onto the brown stick, making its tip glow orange and blow out a plume of fragrant smoke.
Discord sniffed the smoke, “Cinnamon?”
“Yeah. The book says it’s for communicating with the dead. The chalk,” Spike said, showing the white chalk he brought along, “Is for making a circle.”
“And the office toy?” Discord said, pointing to the gravity cradle.
“That’s for hypnosis.”
“What the hell’s in that book?” Discord doubtfully asked, looking at the book Spike had laid out on the table.
“I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. I’m just following the instructions that it’s giving me,” Spike said, as he read the page. When he finished, he raised a ball at the end of the gravity cradle and let go of it so that the contraption activated. “You just watch that while I do my work.”
Discord glanced down and saw Spike started drawing a circle around the bed. Figuring it best to not ask what he was doing, he did as he was instructed and watched the gravity cradle. One ball at the end raised up, then fell back down to hit the adjacent ball. The ball at the other end rose up, fell, and the cycle repeated. The gentle click of the swinging orbs repeated over and over, drifting into Discord’s mind. He focused completely on the sound and the motion, which started to slow down before his eyes.
The smell of the cinnamon grew stronger, wafting on its own into Discord’s nostrils. Spike began to say something that Discord couldn’t make out. His voice was droning on in a low hum, as if to lull a child to sleep. Once or twice, he thought that he heard Spike say Silver Blitz’s name. He wanted to ask what Spike was doing, but a dull listlessness had come over him. He could barely raise his head, let alone speak. The world faded to black, and Spike’s voice grew suddenly louder.
There was a loud crack, and a flash of lightning. Discord’s eyes burst open and he saw himself flying through a stormcloud that crackled with electricity. He flew straight through a bolt that made him shiver inside and out. Once the feeling had passed, he could see an opening at the end. There was a house there. And a porch that opened like a beast’s maw.
Discord landed on the ground before the house and shook his head. He looked up, and saw the very house he had seen in Pallin town, only now the sky had become a swirling void of red and black. The light that touched the house created harsh shadows, making the entire building glare intensely down at Discord. Just as he was about to rethink entering the house again, he heard a loud shout from above. Looking up, he saw a funnel of swirling clouds with electricity shooting through it. A dark shape appeared in the eye of the funnel, and out fell Spike, along with the book he was reading from.
“Spike!? What are you doing here!?” Discord said.
Spike stood up and dusted himself off, he looked around, bewildered at where he had ended up.
“This is bad! This is so bad! I… I stood inside the circle!” Spike said.
“What!?” Discord shouted.
“I stood inside the magic circle I made when I cast the spell! That means I cast it on me too!” Spike picked up the book and flipped through the pages. “I was supposed to end the spell on you by breaking the circle! But, that was back in the real world!”
“Swell! Because my powers don’t work here! Chances are you won’t be able to burp any messages to anypony while you’re here either!” Discord said.
“We might still have a chance,” Spike said, flipping through the book. “If we can connect to the real world from here, we might be able to break the spell that way.”
“How?” Discord asked.
“I don’t know yet. I need to read more,” Spike answered.
Reading would have to wait, as the ground in Pallin Town began to melt away. Discord and Spike watched for a moment as the ground before them started to disappear, prompting them to run as fast as they could into the house. The door of the house opened on its own, and slammed shut behind them.
Only the sounds of the wind blowing outside were heard, and the house didn’t succumb to the melting ground. Spike jumped up and peered through a boarded up window, seeing nothing but the swirling void beyond. Trapped with nowhere else to go.
“Somepony’s messing with us,” Spike said.
“And I think I know who,” Discord replied. “Come on. Silver Blitz’s room is this way.”
Spike followed Discord through the house, flipping through the pages of the book and intermittently looking around the house. It was just as Discord had described it. Old and wooden, rotted away from centuries of neglect. The air was harder to breathe in that place, clouding Spike’s concentration as he tried to work on a way to find a spell to let them escape from that place. At the top of the stairs, he followed Discord down the hall. The room at the end awaited them, and for a moment Spike hesitated to follow Discord. But, he had a conviction to see through. If he was ever going to go on an adventure, he was going to have to pull his weight. He caught up and stopped before the door, which was closed tight. Discord reached out and turned the knob, neither knowing what to expect.
The door opened a crack, and Discord and Spike peered in, seeing nothing but the dusty room he saw the first time he ended up in that house.
“Silver Blitz? It’s me. Discord,” Discord whispered.
They waited, and there was no answer.
“Maybe there’s a way to get an answer in here?” Spike said, marking his current page with his thumb and flipping through the others.
“You just focus on a way to get us out of here. I’ll lead the search for Silver Blitz,” Discord said.
There was a high pitched moan from somewhere in the house. Like a filly on the verge of tears. And it was quickly drowned out by a shrill laugh that made Spike and Discord both huddle against the wall.
“Is it the laughing man?” Spike asked.
“Sweet Celestia, I hope not!” Discord said.
The laughter faded, and the house was silent once more. Discord was the first to stand up and start walking toward the opposite end of the hall.
“Wait! Where are you going? That’s where those noises were coming from!” Spike said.
“Exactly. That’s why we have to go there,” Discord replied.
Spike watched him go to the opposite end of the hall, past the doors that housed the bedrooms. He didn't remember Discord saying anything about going down that way. Just to the dorm rooms where Silver Blitz was almost violated, the kitchen where the laughing man nearly killed Discord, and the basement where the serpent guarded the phoenix. Whatever else was in that house could only be evil. Monstrous. Dangerous. But, not as dangerous as being alone in that place. Picking the lesser of two evils, Spike went with Discord down to the other end of the hall.
They walked down the hall, the sounds of the laughter mixed with the moans faintly chorusing as they approached. Spike tried to keep his eyes on the pages, but the sounds were beginning to grow louder. He rapidly turned the pages of his book, looking for any way to escape that horrible place. So far, there was nothing that would allow them to exit a dream. The closest thing that he could find was that demons would sometimes use mirrors as windows into the waking world. But unless any of their friends were looking at a mirror at that exact instance, there was little hope of that working.
“How’s that escape plan coming?” Discord asked, as he slowly continued down the hall.
“S-S-Slow. They don’t actually tell you what to d-do for each spell,” Spike stammered over his racing heart.
Guessing how to escape was even more heart-wrenching for Spike. If nothing was done, he and Discord would be there forever. Trapped for eternity and left to the torment of the demons that haunted them.
At the end of the hall, something moved in the shadows. Something small that drifted through the air like a plastic bag caught in the wind. It floated back and forth, popping one of its sides to the right. It glowed with a silvery light for just a moment, then drifted down the right of the hall.
Discord and Spike both took the hint to follow after it. When they reached the end of the hall that it indicated, it was already gone. Spike began to look through his book for any information about what to do when following ghosts, when he stepped in something thick and wet. He looked down and nearly screamed when he saw the floor was covered in puddles of blood, as if some horrible raincloud had drifted through the hallway. Discord seemed to have noticed too, as he and Spike shuddered and pressed their backs against opposite sides of the hallway’s walls, wiping their feet off on the floor.
“Somepony’s really trying to mess with us!” Discord said.
The point was driven home when that same moan from before wailed through the hallway, along with a gust of wind that blew the pages Spike was reading over one another.
“I don’t think they like that we’re here,” Spike said, clutching his book to his chest.
To the dragon’s surprise, he saw Discord’s face lighten ever so slightly.
“That just means we’re close to something they don’t want us to see,” Discord said. “Nothing to do now but follow the blood.”
Spike kept one eye on the book and another on the floor, keeping sure to not step in any more blood. He looked at the index in the back of the book and flipped to the page that talked about blood magic. His eyes skimmed the page, finding that blood was a dangerous, yet powerful medium for casting spells. It was then that it occurred to Spike: who had written that book? He looked at the front, but found no author. And any title still eluded him. Whatever that book was, he was glad Twilight hadn’t found it before he did. She might have hidden it, thinking that it was too dangerous to even learn about such magic.
The blood on the floor led to one of the doors on the side of the hall, where it disappeared beneath the cracks of the door frame. Discord grabbed the doorknob, not about to let whatever they were about to face have the satisfaction of opening the door by its own power. He threw the door open, and found another grisly sight.
His suspicions about the building once being a schoolhouse were true. Many ancient school desks were set out with broken chairs set on top of them in a vast, decrepit classroom. The walls were smeared with blood, the words ‘It shall rise again’ written from ceiling to floor. The chalkboard at the front was scribbled on over and over with the same message in chalk. And from the ceiling, dozens of hooks hung from chains, each with a piece of what must have been a hundred different fillies still stuck to it.
Spike retched loudly, but managed to keep his bile down. The sight alone nearly made him drop the book he was carrying. After a moment, he was able to collect himself, but he kept his eyes on the pages of the book. Although he could do nothing about the smell of rotting flesh that still lingered there.
“Wait by the desk,” Discord said, indicating the instructor’s desk at the front of the room.
Spike did as he was told and waited there, reading more and more about the nature of demons and the spells associated with them.
Discord followed the trail of blood, which shone fresher against the old, dried blood beneath the hooks. He walked with his head low, afraid to touch any of the hanging hooks. Next to him, a hook with an eye stuck on the end slowly rotated on its own, following Discord’s steps. Discord flinched at the sight, and watched as it stopped moving and hung idle once more. Putting the image out of his mind, he kept following the trail all the way to a cabinet in the back of the classroom.
He looked at the cabinet. This was where whatever was there wanted him to be. Whatever it was up to, there was no point in not playing its game. Discord grabbed the handles of the cabinet, and pulled them open as fast as he could.
Spike ducked in cover beneath his book when Discord’s scream rang through the room. “What is it!?” he shouted.
Discord’s heavy breaths filled the room next, until Spike heard him finally speak, “It’s okay. I just, er… scared myself.”
The reflection of Discord in the mirror behind the cabinet doors breathed in cadence with his heaving. Since all was well, Spike went back to reading his book. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the chalkboard and all of the writing on it. Something was very strange about it. Beneath it all, he could see something else that was written there. He squinted, trying to make out what it was.
At the back, Discord wondered what the idea of keeping a mirror in the cabinet was, but dismissed it when he noticed what else was in there. There was a raised pedestal, and what looked like a bowl of dried blood placed before it. Behind it, there were a dozen candles which were melted all the way down. A closer look, and Discord saw that the candles had a greasy look to them. Touching a finger to one, he found that they were made from fat. And he didn’t expect that it came from frying bacon. The cushion on the pedestal was the most suspect of all. There was a relief of a golden phoenix stitched onto it, with symbols burned into the fabric as if by a match that had been freshly snuffed out. In the middle of the cushion was an indentation that looked big enough to house a small vase. Or a figurine of some sort.
Along with all of that, Discord looked at the rest of the shelves in the cabinet, and found that they were filled with other objects. Things like smithing tongs and a cast that looked like a bird spreading its wings. At the front of the room, Spike was still trying to make sense of the hidden message on the blackboard, when his eyes lit up. He looked at the pages of his book, then back at the blackboard.
“Discord? I think you’d better see this,” Spike said.
Before Discord could answer, another moan shook the entire room, making the chains from the ceiling rattle violently. More violently than they should have, as if to raise an alarm to all the living present. The classroom door slammed shut. And from the hall beyond it, there was the sound of two shuffling steps followed by the clack of wood on wood. Two more steps and one more clack. And they were closer that time.
> Perchance to Wake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

*shff…shff…clack*
The sounds of the steps interlude with the wooden clack came closer to the door. Discord and Spike did everything they could to escape. The door wouldn’t open no matter how they pushed, pulled or threw their bodies against it. Spike even tried to burn it down, but couldn’t even muster an ember. Not even his fiery breath worked. Now, he was even less sure of being able to use a spell to return home, even if he found it. But, he wouldn’t give up. He continued to flip through the pages of the spellbook to find what he needed, while Discord tried to pry the boards from the windows. No matter how he tried to remove the boards, they stayed on the wall. It was then that he saw the hellish void beyond the window, and realized escape from there was impossible.
*shff…shff…clack*
The sound was right outside the door. Discord watched in paralyzed terror as Spike hid behind him.
*shff…shff…*
It walked right through the closed door as if it had no form or shape. It looked like a mare, but it hardly even looked like a pony. Standing upright, dressed head to split hoof in tattered, gray clothes that looked centuries old that matched the look of its equally tattered, gray skin, there was no color or warmth to be seen in its form. There were no eyes on the thing. Not even hollow sockets where the eyes once were. In one of its skeletal hands, it held a wooden stick with a grimy metal handle. And it touched it to the floor with a loud *clack*.
The gray ghost stared at the intruders in the classroom, completely unmoving. Spike and Discord were equally still, petrified by the presence of the creature. The ghost moaned in that despaired filly’s voice and raised its cane over its head. There was almost no time for Discord to pull Spike out of the way as the thing lunged forward and swung its cane downward. The floor where they just were splintered under the blow, and the ghost withdrew its cane to attack again.
“My book!” Spike yelled.
In the moment that he was pulled from danger, Spike had lost his grip on the spellbook he had been carrying. There it laid by the instructor’s desk. And there he was with the gray ghost between the book and himself.
The ghost swung its cane at the desk between itself and its prey, destroying it as it shuffled through the wrecked object. Discord and Spike picked themselves up from the floor and ran as fast as they could from the ghost. Spike tried ramming the wall, but it didn’t even bend under his body. There was another crash of a splintering desk, and the two of them moved to the next corner. Spike dared to look over his shoulder and saw the gray ghost leaping across the room at them. He yelped as he tripped over a filly’s severed leg that was laying on the floor and landed in one of the puddles of fresh blood.
The grey ghost landed just ahead of him, smashing its cane onto another desk where Spike would have been. Spike rolled to dodge another swing of the cane, the blood on the floor splashing all over him when it impacted. He met the non-existent gaze of the ghost, feeling nothing but pure, malicious desire from its presence. An evil kind of despair that made it blame everypony for what it was and what had happened to it. And it was going to make them all pay for it.
Spike crawled backwards from the ghost and watched as a piece of debris thrown by Discord passed through its body. The ghost looked at Spike and shuffled toward him, its split-hoofed feet passing through the broken desks. It was then that Spike saw that its feet were stained red, and it was leaving bloody footprints in its wake. His eyes lit up just as he had to run away from the ghost once more.
Discord tried over and over to draw the ghost away from Spike, but to no avail. He tried to swing at it with a broken desk leg, but it passed right through. The gray ghost moaned again and whirled around to knock Discord away, before swinging back to attack Spike. It was only Spike’s thick scales that saved him from having his shoulder crushed, even by just the glancing blow that landed. He quickly backpedaled from the ghost, and climbed atop a desk just as it was winding up its arm for another attack. The cane passed beneath Spike just as he jumped up to grab one of the hooks from the ceiling and wipe his bloody claws all over it. Trying not to think about the filly’s ear that was snagged on it, he threw the bloodied hook at the gray ghost’s head. As if some switch had been thrown and the reality he knew had changed, Spike saw the hook dig  into the open mouth of the ghost, snagging it like a fish on a hook.
“Discord!! Use the blood!!” Spike called.
He was knocked off the desk by a wild swing of the ghost’s cane and hit the floor. Discord took Spike’s example and started rolling a broken piece of the desk in the fresh blood on the floor. The gray ghost ripped the hook from its mouth, shredding its already ragged face even more. It swung its cane over its shoulder and blocked Discord’s attack. The ghost parried hard, making Discord stumble back. It swung as Discord got his footing.
Discord blocked the blow with his improvised weapon, finding that it was somehow strong enough to hold up under the force of the ghost’s cane. Whether it was the power of the blood or something else, Discord didn’t bother to question it as he swung at the ghost again. His attack struck true, and made it stagger under his attack. Before he could attack again, the ghost had already recovered and swung at him.
Spike was already at the front of the classroom and recovered his book. He frantically flipped through the book, trying to find the page he wanted. He glanced between the pages and Discord’s battle with the ghost, not sure how close he was to losing yet. He watched as Discord tried to throw one of the hanging hooks at the ghost, but forgot to put blood on it, letting it swing dangerously close to the mirror in the cabinet. Spike’s heart almost stopped when he heard the ding of metal on glass, but saw that the mirror was barely scratched. He returned to his book, and found the page he needed. His eyes danced across the page, taking in the information from before. It wasn’t much to go on, but he had to try it. Once he was done, he closed the book and began collecting chalk dust from the blackboard.
Another blow was blocked by Discord, who was pushed over the top of one of the tables. He covered his face with his hands in a futile attempt to shield himself from the debris of the cracking desk. The ghost jumped over the desk, passing through the shaking hooks from the ceiling and coming down with a vicious blow. Discord blocked and still took some of the hit. He was pinned. Kept on the floor by the gray ghost, which raised its cane again.
The ghost shrieked loudly as it swung its cane wildly. Discord was able to slither out from beneath it, as he saw a bloody hook protruding from its chest. Spike jumped through the ghost’s body and helped Discord up. Discord took a second to bloody another hook and jam it into the ghost’s neck.
“Hurry!” Spike said.
He led Discord back to the cabinet, where he started sprinkling the chalk he had collected into a circle on the floor. When he was done, he started smearing blood on the mirror.
“Quick! Get in the circle!” Spike instructed Discord, who stepped into the circle of chalk with him.
The gray ghost ripped the hook out of its neck, and started walking forward, held back by the hook that impaled it from behind. The hook slowly slid out of its back with each step, letting it closer to the two.
“Come on! Come on! Work!” Spike said.
The ghost slowly slid free, and it moaned again.
The image on the mirror was made murky by the blood. But, Spike could see something different on its surface. Something that he thought wasn’t there in the room with them.
The hook in the ghost’s back slid gradually out as it frantically swung its arms. One last pull, and the thing was free of the hook. It moaned angrily at the intruders as it raised its cane to end them once and for all.
Spike swiped his foot through the circle of chalk just as the ghost was upon them.





Discord awoke with a scream and rolled out of Spike’s bed. He quickly looked around and saw that the world was indeed the one that he knew.
Nearby, Spike awoke with a start and looked around himself. He looked at the circle of chalk he had drawn in the bedroom, and saw a part of it had broken. His plan had worked. And he now had to make sure of something else. He clutched the book that had got him so far and stood up.
“Quick! Find every mirror in the castle and cover it!” he said.
Discord didn’t question it. He and Spike went down opposite ends of the hall and set to work covering every mirror that they could find with anything that they could. Even if that meant spraying Twilight’s mane dye over it. By the time that they were done, Spike and Discord reconvened in Spike’s room.
“Did you get them all?” Spike asked.
“I went through every room in the castle. Even the ones you already did,” Discord said.
“Good. We don’t want anything following us here,” Spike said. He waited a moment, until he truly felt as if he and Discord truly were alone. He sighed and walked back over to where the phoenix rested on the nightstand. “I think I know what this is for. It’s mostly conjecture, but I think I found something before that paper shredder mare attacked us.”
“I think I found something too,” Discord said.
“You first.”
“The phoenix? I think it’s some kind of effigy or an idol. Something that’s had sacrifices made to it. If that’s not true, it’s probably something really close to it. How else would you explain all of the butchered foals and the bloody bowl in the closet?” Discord said.
“You’re probably not far off,” Spike said. “There was something on the chalkboard underneath all that other writing. It looked… It looked like instructions.”
“I know I’m gonna regret this, but instructions for what?”
“To steal something from others. To take it away, or contain it, or something! I don’t know what! Whatever it is, I’d bet that phoenix is more powerful than anything in the waking world,” Spike said.
He and Discord looked at it, feeling as if its unblinking bejeweled eyes were watching them. They waited once more, feeling as if they suddenly weren’t alone in that room anymore.
“We have to get to Canterlot. Quick. You keep trying to find more books like the one you’ve got while you’re there,” Discord said.
“What about you?” Spike asked.
“Me? I’ve got to pay a certain princess a visit.”
> Seeking Help
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna’s hoof had almost grown sore as she stroked Tiberius’ fur for the millionth time since Discord had begun his story. In her thousands of years, she had never heard such a wild, fantastical tale. Considering who had told it to her, she was almost inclined to say that he was lying. But, there was also something more in what Discord had told her. Over the course of things, she had heard how Discord was trying to make sense of things, instead of the opposite. How he had willingly put his life in danger for others. And other things that the Discord she knew would never do. Even if he hadn’t behaved as such, his experiences were too similar to her own to dismiss.
“That’s quite a story,” Luna quietly said, as she unconsciously tickled her pet’s ears. “Tell me: you’ve already brought Spike into your confidence. Why me too?”
Discord laid on his back, silently watching the underside of Luna’s canopy bed. His mismatched hands were folded corpse-like over his chest as he breathed in and out. One of his eyes glanced in Luna’s direction, and he released a long, slow breath.
“Because, and feel free to deny this, I think you’ve been seeing the same kind of things,” he said.
Luna had stopped stroking Tiberius, who seemed to sense her dilemma and remained still in her lap. It was all coming back to her. The terror she felt. The isolation. The denial. And through it all, everypony else thought that it was all in her head. After so long, she wondered how she hadn’t broken. Most mares would have killed themselves to end it by that point. Now, she had the closest chance she ever had to a different way out. One that led to dark places that she feared to go.
“Y… Yes. I-I’ve known about them ever since I was a filly. But, everypony thought that I was insane!” she said.
“Feels good to be validated, doesn’t it?” Discord asked.
“Truly, it does,” Luna said, feeling as if she were on the verge of tears.
Discord remained silent, allowing Luna a moment to collect herself.
“Um… If you want, I think me and Spike can take things from here. You’ve already kind of been through a lot, so–” Discord said.
“No,” Luna interjected. “No. I’ve spent so long with this personal Hell. I’m going to see it through to the end.”
Even though she knew how deep she was going, her mind was made up. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, so close, yet so far. She was going to reach it, even if it killed her to get there. Without thinking, she stood up from her seat and realized that the sun had already been lowered, and the moon was well into the sky without her notice. Tiberius skittered over to the door, and pawed at the glass to get out.
Luna obliged and let her pet out, knowing that he would be safer with his other nighttime friends, instead of with herself. Once the sounds of him descending the ivy faded, she turned to Discord on her bed.
“We still have work to do. If you would, please assist Spike in trying to find more information. It seems our dragon friend is becoming a rather adept novice in this unusual magic,” Luna said.
“Anything to fight those things off,” Discord agreed.
“Take this.”
Discord watched as a key materialized out of thin air into his hand, and looked curiously at it.
“It’s the key to my own personal library. The door is over there,” Luna said, indicating the direction. “See if there’s anything that can elucidate you about that idol of yours. And don’t remove anything from there!” After hearing how Discord had rummaged through Twilight’s private collection, she wasn’t going to allow her own to be defiled. It had taken her centuries to accrue that collection, and she wasn’t about to lose a single issue.
“What about you?” Discord asked.
“I have to see a griffin about a ghost.”





A candle flickered weakly, before it was snuffed out by a sharp breath.
In a small book shop, a griffin replaced the glass housing around the candle by the door and turned the ‘open’ sign in the window to its ‘closed’ side. It had been a long day for her. Restocking the shelves, pricing the merchandise, customer after customer treating her establishment like a library. And on top of it all, tomorrow was the day her new shipment of books arrived. If anypony needed a day off, it was her.
She stopped before the last light in the shop that she had to extinguish, and thought that taking the next day off might not be such a bad idea. Take the day to do the things that she had been meaning to do for almost a month? Nopony would miss her for just a day. They could wait that long for a new book.
Her mind was made up. She would not be at work tomorrow, and would resume work the day after.
The bell over her door jingled, and the griffin rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh.
“The sign says ‘closed,’” she called to the intruder.
“I know. But, it’s not reading material that brings me here tonight.”
The griffin’s eyes lit up at the familiar voice behind herself, and she turned around. There in her shop was Princess Luna once again.
“Princess Luna? What are you doing here?” the griffin wondered.
Luna didn’t answer right away. Her request was unusual, and her objective was even more so. She was so close to getting out of it that she could feel it as if it were held in her hooves. Just one simple request, and she was closer to ending it all.
“I need you to tell me more of your grandmother’s story,” she said.
“Oh. Well, you’ll have to come back in a couple of days to hear that. Sorry,” the griffin said.
“I’m afraid that I’d need to hear it now. It’s a matter of some urgency,” Luna replied.
“Um…Princess, I didn’t want to be rude, but I’ve got a day off coming up. So, I kind of don’t want to be caught in anything else.”
“I suppose that I wasn’t clear either,” Luna said, “This is a matter of life and death. If I don’t learn what I need, a lot of ponies, including myself, may be in grave danger.”
The griffin stared in stupefied silence, before she spoke, “What does this have to do with me and my grandma?”
Luna took a moment to prepare herself.
“Do you remember what you told me before?” she began. “The story of the ponies in the graveyard? How they summoned something? I think…I think that it may be coming back.”
“This–Princess, that happened a long time ago.”
“As did the disappearance of King Sombra, and the imprisonment of Discord. Centuries later, Sombra and Discord reappeared, and were dealt with again. Now, the Crystal Empire is a thriving metropolis, and Discord is a close friend of the Bearer of Kindness. History has a way of repeating its most terrible chapters if nothing is done to prevent it. Nothing has happened yet, but we may have a chance to stop this now before it ever has a chance to terrorize everypony once more. That is why I must hear more of your grandmother’s story,” Luna pleaded.
The griffin was silent again. But, it was her silence that said volumes to Luna, who began to realize that a shopkeeper and her grave digging grandmother shouldn’t know so much about such things.
“You…know it’s all true? Don’t you?” Luna gently asked.
The griffin’s beak pursed uncomfortably as she tried to avoid the gaze of Luna.
“It’s alright. I know they’re real too. Ever since I was a filly, I’ve seen things that nopony else could. It hasn’t always been easy,” Luna said.
Tears welled up in the griffin’s eyes, and her throat quivered. With a sharp breath, she managed a tiny smile.
“Everypony said I was crazy…” she nearly whispered. “I told them when I was a chick. And I started having these dreams. They put me on pills!”
“Oh, dear griffin,” Luna said, offering her shoulder to her company.
The griffin had already stopped crying, but breathed heavily into Luna’s shoulder. She took her time, and allowed her nerves to settle. In time, she was able to raise her head to face the princess.
“Thanks. But, I don’t know a whole lot more about it. You’d have to talk to my grandma to learn anything else you want to know,” the griffin said.
“I see,” Luna said. “Tell me, is it true that ghosts respond better to those who they were close with in life?”
“Yeah,” the griffin answered.
“Erm…You’re free to decline, but–”
“No. I’ll do it,” the griffin blurted out. “I’ve always been a little, er–sensitive–to these kinds of situations.”
“Thank you ever so much. I promise that this will be the only favor I ask of you–er–” Luna said, nodding suggestively.
“Misty. My name’s Misty,” the griffin said.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Misty. I’m Luna,” Luna said, purely for formality’s sake.
Misty giggled quietly, but then realized the time. 
“We should go now. It’s a long way to walk there,” she said, noting Luna’s wing.
“Yes. The night is still young, and my sister won’t extend it for any reason this time of the year,” Luna said.
They both left the shop. As Misty locked the front door, she thought that maybe she would take the whole week off instead.
> No Return
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It wasn’t even midnight, and Princess Luna’s personal library had already been thoroughly raided.
“Are you seeing this!? She’s got issue zero of the original run of Power Ponies! Nopony in Equestria’s seen this for almost seventy years!” Spike said, holding up the rare treasure.
“Look at all this other stuff. Neighmesis the Warlock. Colto Maltese. Lone Mare and Foal. Her ass is huge, but she has good taste,” Discord said.
“I’ve never heard of those. Any good?” Spike asked, as he leafed through the comic he held.
“They’d only be appreciated by those of refined taste,” Discord said, holding up a glass of brandy and fixing a monocle he suddenly was wearing.
“I’m gonna have to come back and ask if I can borrow some of these,” Spike said, before putting down the comic and going back to the mountain of reading he had.
Of all the places to look, Princess Luna’s private library was probably going to be the best bet they had so far. Once Luna had returned from her banishment to the moon, her sister tried to fill her in on everything that she had missed out on. With such a repertoire of history at their disposal, they were sure to find something there. Although they had to sift through the huge collection of comics to find them.
Anything that even sounded like it was related to magic, the two of them flipped through it. Any book of particular note was placed in a spot near the middle of the table, while the rest were put aside. So far, that spot in the middle was bare.
“So, what does Princess Luna know about all this?” Spike wondered.
“About as much as we do. That is, after I filled her in. Seems like she was just dealing with this on her own terms all this time,” Discord answered.
“Sounds rough. Why didn’t she tell anypony about it?”
“My guess is that she did. But, who would’ve believed that she was being stalked by things like what we’ve seen?”
Spike thought about what Discord had just said. For as long as he had known Luna, she was always a little bit on edge, and seemed too stiff to be the kind of pony who would enjoy Power Ponies. Maybe, there was a reason she had always seemed so unnerving and standoffish. It would explain a lot. Yet, there was no time to reflect. He had to stay in the moment and find the answers he sought.





The moon seemed frozen in the sky over the rusted gates of the cemetery. Two figures stood before the entrance, gazing at the path beyond. This was their rubicon. And they were about to cross it.
Misty stared wide-eyed at the cemetery beyond the gates, frozen as if she had recalled something terrible that she had forgotten for many, many years.
“Misty?”
“Wh–” Misty jumped when she heard Luna’s voice.
“Are you alright? If you’re feeling anxious, then–”
“No. I’m alright. It’s just this place. I’m getting some really, really strong feelings from it,” Misty said.
“Feelings?” Luna wondered.
“Yeah. There’s a lot of really bad stuff in there. Like, stuff that doesn’t want us in there with it. I think it hates us just for being out here at the gates,” Misty said. She looked back through the gates at the graves beyond. “It’s been forever since I’ve been here. I don’t even know if grandma will like that I’ve been gone so long without visiting her.”
“I wouldn’t worry. I’ve found a great number of families have been happy to see one another after a long time. I’m sure that would be true even in death,” Luna said. She turned slowly back to the gates, “Though, I’ve yet to see such a thing.”
Misty managed a weak smile, as she and Luna reached for the gates. Whether it was the weakness of the hinges or some power not their own, they couldn’t tell as the gates opened seemingly on their own. They both exchanged a wary glance and walked through the gates.
The cemetery was as quiet as the night that Luna had first entered it. The stones were as still as ever. The ground was undisturbed by demons crawling from it. And the air was untainted by the smell of sulfur. Luna tried to remember the way to where she had found Discord. She tried following the path the same as she had done before, but found the cemetery seemed so different without the cover of fog over it. The hill with the stairs wasn’t even visible to her.
Misty seemed equally lost, the way that she was looking at every headstone they passed. All the time, she had the same expression of quiet concentration, as if she were trying to listen to one voice over a hundred others in a crowded room. She encountered a path that crossed the one she was on. Either way that she looked didn’t look like the right way. But, there was something else that drew her toward the right. Something familiar that she remembered from her childhood.
“Princess. It’s this way,” Misty said.
“You’ve remembered the way?” Luna asked.
“No. But, there’s something telling me to go this way. I don’t know what it is. But, I don’t think it wants to hurt us.”
After what she had experienced, Luna didn’t know if she could have trusted anything in that cemetery. But, Misty was the one who could sense such things more clearly than herself. Putting her trust in the griffin, Luna followed her down the path. In time, she found herself back at the stairs that led to the upper level of the cemetery. She placed one hoof on the steps, and noticed the swinging light at the top of it.
It was Misty who climbed the steps first. She quickly ascended the steps, eager to reach the top. Luna watched as she stopped at the last step and looked around. When she joined Misty at the top, she saw nothing. The breeze picked up and Misty gathered her coat closer to her body. She looked in the direction of the breeze, and finally found what they were looking for. There, by its lonely little cliffside was the grave of Dusty.
There was no sign of the old griffin who once looked after the dead. Just what was left of her that laid in the ground. Misty looked all around, nearby and off into the distance beyond the cliffs.
“Is anypony here?” Luna asked.
“No. I can’t feel her. It’s like she just disappeared,” Misty answered.
Luna looked around, feeling suddenly anxious for the disappearance of the one friend who could have helped her in that place. The last time any friends abandoned her, she was hunted by the demons who dwelt there. She looked for any mysterious lights, and turned her nose up to smell for any sulfur.
The feathers on Misty’s wings began to prickle, and a cold chill ran down her back. She turned around, and found that the cliff she was just looking at was now behind her, and the steps were gone. She noticed Luna inching closer to the edge of the cliff as she looked around a sign of trouble.
“Princess! Stop!” Misty yelled.
Luna’s back hoof slipped off the edge of the cliff. She looked over her shoulder and saw an endless void covered with fog. When she caught herself, she rejoined Misty by the grave and looked around herself, finding that they were suddenly on an island in the middle of a sea of fog.
“What is this?!” Misty said.
“I’m so sorry I brought you into this. This has been happening to me all my life,” Luna said.
“What!?”
“It was never this bad before. I’ve always been able to find a way out, but I can’t do anything with this wing!”
Misty tried flapping her own wings, and found that she was unable to get any lift. She ran around the edges of the island, trying to find any way off. It was no use. She and Luna were trapped there, with only the grave for company.
From within the fog, a hellish red light began to shine. Dimly at first, it began to glow as bright as the sun. The ground at the edge of the island fell away into the void, and the bones of at least a hundred dead filed out to arrange themselves into a staircase that reached down into the heart of that evil light. From within, there came another light. One that was smaller, dimmer, and swung back and forth as it came closer to the two on the island.
Luna’s heart quickened. She thought she knew what was coming, and stepped back with Misty, who waited with her breath paralyzed. The light appeared at the top of the stairs, and in moments an elderly griffin with a lantern appeared at the top.
“Dusty,” Luna said.
“I am,” the old griffin answered. “I see you’ve met my granddaughter. Hello, Misty. It’s good to see you again.”
Misty stared in the direction of her grandmother, uttering not a word. She stood frozen to the spot, unable to free her voice.
“Misty? Will you not answer your grandmother?” Luna asked.
“She’s not being rude. She simply can’t see or hear me,” Dusty answered. “She’s always been that way, ever since she was a chick. It was why I shared what I knew about the story of Anathema and Cunning Fire.”
“Cunning Fire?” Luna asked.
“Yes. Her friend who began this whole mess. Or, at least who was once believed to have done so. Even by myself.”
“What really happened that day? When this town died?”
Dusty said nothing, her face becoming a stone mask. She stared blankly for many moments, her lantern flickering as it hung from her harness.
“It’s not my place to say for certain. But, there are others who can. Others who even the dead fear to cross,” she said.
“Who are they? Where can the living find them?” Luna asked.
Dusty looked over her shoulder to the steps behind herself, and her lantern flickered out.
Misty looked in the direction of her grandmother, and her knees began to shake. There was fear all around her, and she could feel something cold and evil that was very nearby.
“There is only one path to take for the answers you seek,” Dusty said.
Luna walked closer to the edge of the steps and looked down. The bones of the dead reached down, deep into the hellish light that laid sunken at the bottom of the foggy abyss. Wherever that was, whatever was down there, it was going to lead to the truth that she so desperately sought. And with it, the way out of her terrible life.
Misty watched, silently shaking her head as Luna looked back at her.
“What’s down there?” Luna asked.
“It’s not for the living to be told. Only to be seen with their own eyes when their time comes. My time has long passed. And I fear that I cannot linger any longer in the world of the living. You’re going to need to rely on one another if you wish to find the truth. Please, Princess, take care of my granddaughter,” Dusty replied.
Luna watched as she began to see Misty through her grandmother’s image. Misty began to walk forth, and reached out to her grandmother. Dusty turned around and smiled sweetly. She could convey no words to Misty. She didn’t need to. Anything that she could have said was nothing compared to what Misty would have felt from her. Dusty raised a withered talon and touched it to Misty’s, making it pass right through hers. Misty tried to walk forward, but walked right through her grandmother, who walked to her own grave and disappeared in a burst of smoke, which was absorbed into the soil.
Misty’s heart pounded up into her throat, and she began to cry.
“Misty? Are you alright?” Luna asked.
“I…I’m fine. It’s just I…I never felt anything like that before. Not from anypony living…”
Luna allowed Misty a moment to collect herself, before the griffin walked to her side to look over the skeletal path before them. They exchanged a worried glance, and Luna was allowed to take the first step down into the unknown.

They descended into the depths, where the hellish light began to fade the further they went, until even the bones beneath them were only gray silhouettes. All else was lost to the mists, taken away from the familiarity of sight and sound. After what felt like forever, they finally touched what felt as close to ground as they could understand it. It was coarse, grainy, and moved loosely beneath the steps of the travelers, who stayed as close to one another as they could.

“Ouch!” Luna yelped when Misty bumped her injured wing.

“Sorry,” Misty said.

“Think nothing of it. But, try to stay close. We don’t know what we’ll find down here.”

The fog began to clear, and they found something that they never would have expected. There was the mouth of a large cave, rocks hanging from its opening like the fangs of a fierce beast. They walked inside, and the depths of the cave illuminated with that hellish light. Before them, there was a gate. A large, red, twisted portal that terminated in sharp skewers that were only turned inward. At the top of the gate was an arch, which read the inscription: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

The gates opened on their own, and the light from the depths flickered ominously. Misty shivered violently when what must have been all the fear and anguish that ever was washed over her. But, there was no turning back. Not for her or for Luna, who could hear the laments of the lost, faltering little by little. Their voices lingering in the evil beyond, waiting for deliverance.

They crossed through the gates, and the way behind them was lost to the mists.
> The Devils of the Plagued City
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The night lingered on, and Spike and Discord had found next to nothing. The only information that they could find that was even close to what they were looking for was shreds of information. Things about how tribal ponies once worshiped idols like the phoenix, but no information about the function of such effigies. There were books about certain rituals that ponies performed by using their own blood, but not what those rituals were for, or how they were performed.
“Argh! This is pointless!” Spike said, dropping the book he was holding. “How are we supposed to find what we’re looking for, when we don’t know what we’re looking for!?”
“I’ve done it a couple of times already. Just stick to it and a miracle may happen,” Discord said, as he orbited nine books around himself and skimmed a page of each one as they passed by his line of vision.
“That’s the dumb thing about miracles. You always have to work for them. And when they happen, it’s usually too little, too late.”
“Uh-oh! Debbie Downer’s come a-knockin’. And she sounds pissed,” Discord said.
“I’m not being ‘Debbie Downer.’ We’ve been at this all night, and we don’t have one solid lead on what we’re looking for. The best we have so far is this,” Spike said, holding up his spellbook.
By complete chance, perfectly in line with the ill-defined laws of chaos, one of the books that passed by Discord revealed something on one of its pages to Spike. Something that tied together everything that he had learned so far, if only loosely.
“Wait! What’s that book!?” Spike shouted as he dove across the table toward Discord.
Discord fell over and the books orbiting him fell to the floor. Spike walked across Discord’s body and jumped over his head, where he collected the book off the floor. Thankfully, the page that caught his attention hadn’t flipped, and he looked at it carefully.
“What’s the hubbub, bub?” Discord asked from the floor.
Spike reached behind Discord’s ear and yanked out the monocle that he had been wearing before.
“So, that’s where that went,” Discord said.
There was no answer from Spike as he hovered the monocle over the page, magnifying the image that he spotted. It was almost beyond belief. The picture was of some runes and glyphs on a wall. Among them was something else that very nearly evaded his notice. A relief on that wall in the same shape as the symbol on his spellbook.
“Where’s this symbol from?” Spike asked.
“What symbol?” Discord asked, finally able to get up from the floor.
“The one on this book! It’s in the picture! Where was this picture taken!?”
Discord looked at the picture and tilted his head. The glyphs were nothing that he had ever seen before. Or maybe he had, and forgotten them. He had been out of the loop for quite awhile.
“Man. What would Twilight do?” Spike asked.
“That’s been coming up a lot lately,” Discord muttered to himself. “Twilight would…Look for clues in the picture to try and figure out what part of the world those goofy letters came from!”
“Yes!” Spike said, as he picked up the monocle once more and started scanning the picture.
It didn’t take long for him to figure out where the glyphs came from. Finally, all those geography lessons Twilight made him take were paying off. With that information, he and Discord were able to narrow their search to only a few books pertaining to that particular culture. Still, they were only able to gather certain scraps and shreds of information about what they were really looking for, but it was more than enough. The deeper they went into the subject, the more uneasy they began to feel. Everything that they had seen in the house in Pallin Town was beginning to make a very eerie kind of sense. One that was all too near to bearing horrific fruit.
Spike gasped and opened his spellbook. He rapidly flipped the pages until he found what he was looking for. He and Discord looked at the nearby clock, and saw they had only a few more hours before sunrise.
“We need to find Princess Luna! Now!” he said.
“Do we know where she went?” Discord asked.
“Dammit!!” Spike said. He packed up his spellbook and rushed out the door. “Let’s look for her!”
“Wait!” Discord said. Luna had said something before. About seeing a griffin about a ghost. Ghost? Where to find a ghost? Where had Luna first let him know she had seen such things? “I think I know where she went!”





The way was long for Luna and Misty. The fog that had once swallowed their trail had overtaken them both, leaving not an inch for them to see. The only way that they were able to know where one another was was by Misty keeping her wing placed on Luna’s back.
There was the sound of a tiny splash, and Luna jumped.
“What is it?” Misty asked.
“Nothing. I only stepped in a puddle,” Luna said, hoping that it was only water.
Misty nodded, and the two of them continued onward. As she walked, Misty began to breathe heavily.
“There’s something ahead of us, Princess. I don’t know if it’s something big, or if there’s just a lot of them. But, it’s there. And it feels really, really ugly,” she said.
“I see,” Luna answered, “Misty? If we do find anything there, you must listen to me when I tell you where to run or where to proceed. And, there are also some rules that you must follow.”
“What rules?” Misty asked.
“We must only help those who ask for our help. If there is something that neither of us can see, we must not call for it to show itself. We must never wish them ill, and only bid them the best regards. And if we ever find something evil here, we must never turn our backs to it, or else they will follow us forever.”
Misty nodded, unsure of why she was supposed to follow such rules, but wasn’t about to question them. She placed her wing a little more firmly on Luna’s back and continued onward with her.
The mist slowly faded away. As if some curtain had been pulled aside, the walls of the cave were gone, and the two travelers found themselves in a dirty, dingy alleyway. The windows on either side were boarded up. The metal stairs were rusted beyond repair. Ropes with ratty clothes hung between the walls, and were drawn to one side, where a creature that Luna couldn’t make out was taking them off. In a few short steps, they emerged into the world beyond that narrow passage.
Every city had their bad neighborhoods. This one looked like the worst that any of them had seen. The streets were cracked. The building walls were covered in black mold. Carriages were nothing more than overturned shambles in the streets. There were few creatures on the streets. But the ones who were present looked like the worst kind of derelict that misfortune had become a personal companion to. Luna could see none of their faces. They were all turned away, buried in their hands, or shrouded by dark veils.
Misty kept close to Luna, following her steps carefully through the city. But her eyes were everywhere at once. She could see nothing, but the feeling of sadness and hopelessness pervaded her from all sides. Ignorance, hate and impotence were the strongest vibe that she got from anywhere she looked. Her steps were suddenly stopped by Luna extending her one good wing in front of her.
“Not that way. Over to the other side of the street,” Luna said.
Misty could see nothing. Nor could she feel anything. And that was perhaps why Luna had told her to do as she did. She followed Luna across the street, where they sheltered beneath the marquee of an abandoned theater.
Luna looked across the street where the black mold grew onto the sidewalk and shivered without a breeze. It was the same as the other horrors that had visited her before. Aware. Alive. And she wasn’t the least bit interested in allowing it near herself or Misty. As for Misty, her eyes were drawn down to the end of the street. Something was there that felt different from all the others. The closest thing to any positive emotion that she could perceive. She tried to follow the direction, but was stopped by Luna. After a moment, she was allowed to walk forth with Luna by her side.
As they walked, Luna urged Misty closer to herself. Misty began to feel something that surrounded them. The need for a savior. The desire for relief.
Luna watched as they were surrounded by more of the creatures who wore veils over their faces. Wherever Misty was leading her, they were all going in the same direction. She could see them more closely now. Their skin was badly pocked with hideous boils, and what she could make out of their faces were disfigured and sallow. Whatever had happened, Luna couldn’t help but pity them.
They rounded a corner into what once looked like a plaza, where the creatures all congregated into one group. Before them all was another creature who appeared twice as tall as any of them. It was dressed in a heavy black robe, and wore a mask that looked like a featureless, white wolf’s face. Behind it was a large furnace that glowed with a dull, red light.
“Come. Come closer. No help can come to those who do not approach,” the masked figure said, as he goaded the veiled figures closer to himself.
“Do you think it’s safe to approach?” Luna asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think they want to hurt us,” Misty answered.
Luna watched the spectacle before herself. One of the veiled creatures shuffled forth to the one in the robes, who examined the arm of the wretch.
“This arm is badly infected,” the robe creature said. “We’ve tried everything we can for this. But, it seems my serums and salves have been for naught. I’m afraid we must…”
The veiled creature pulled its veil more tightly over its eyes as the masked doctor raised an arm, at the end of which was a bloody blade where his hand should have been. And with a sudden motion, the arm of the veiled creature was severed.
Luna winced at the sight, and watched in terrified disgust as the severed limb was thrown into the glowing furnace. Black smoke fumed from the furnace’s vent, and seemed to moan with the creature who had just been amputated.
“What’s going on?” Misty asked.
“Nothing. Just walk away and don’t look,” Luna answered.
“You there?”
Before they had taken three steps, the voice of the doctor called out. And a terrible feeling in the back of Luna’s mind knew that it was addressing her and Misty. She cautiously turned around, and saw the featureless mask of the doctor staring directly at her.
“You approach. And yet you do not seek help? Perhaps you think that there is nothing I can do for you?” the doctor said, brandishing his bladed hand.
“No. I simply don’t need the help,” Luna said, keeping her voice steady.
The moment she spoke, the veiled creatures turned toward her and Misty. Their ragged breaths and pained moans choired together, their hidden eyes locked onto the only two living among them.
“What’s happening?” Misty wondered.
Luna said nothing to her, but placed her hoof on Misty’s foreleg.
The doctor walked through the crowd toward the two, his clawed feet peering out from beneath his robe with every step he took. The blade on his wrist caught what little light there was on that street, creating a harsh glare that blinded Luna for a second. In the time it took for her to clear her vision, the doctor towered before her, the blade of his hand facing her with her own reflection. She looked up, and saw the mask of the doctor tilted down, staring hungrily at her.
“Then? What help is it that you seek?” the doctor asked.
“I…I seek answers,” Luna gasped.
Misty shuddered as the many creatures around her moaned and shuffled closer. Her feathers all stood on end as she leaned closer to Luna. Something brushed against the tip of her tail, making her pull it closer to her body.
“Princess…” Misty said.
“There are many ways to seek answers. I can only provide them in but one,” the doctor said, raising his blade.
Luna trembled as she watched the filthy blade rise higher and higher, and caught her reflection once more, looking up in cowardly helplessness. She tried to use her magic, but it was no good once more. The blade turned, and she saw Misty as if she were on the verge of a breakdown. Luna’s voice suddenly released at the sight.
“It’s the truth that we want. Not wellness,” Luna said.
The doctor’s blade flashed with light as it came down. Luna cowered to the ground, hoping by some miracle that the doctor would miss her. There was not even a draft of wind as she heard the moans of the veiled creatures around herself. She dared to look up and saw the doctor towering over her still, his blade rested at his side.
“So? You seek the truth, do you?” the doctor said, with a hint of humor in his voice. “Then, I would advise you to seek the building with the red door.” The doctor’s whole body turned as he pointed further down the road, where the crowd of veiled creatures all parted. “You will find what you are seeking there. If not, then you may be searching forever.”
“Thank you. And best of luck to your patients,” Luna said, before goading Misty down the road alongside herself.
The two living creatures hurried down the open way, with Luna staying ever sure to keep Misty close to her side.
“What happened just now?” Misty asked.
“I believe we’ve just found our way to what we seek,” Luna said.
“I still don’t know what it is that we’re looking for. How is any of this supposed to help stop whatever’s happening in Equestria?”
“I’m not certain what it is, either. All I know is that whatever we find next, it’s our best chance to make things right,” Luna said.
Behind them, there was the sound of slicing flesh and the howl of another creature.
> Where Shadows Fear to Tread
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The terrible scene with the doctor and his plagued patients was far behind them. However, the stench and sickness of the city was ever present, no matter where they went. The shivering black mold was all over, and the creatures all looked as pained and miserable as ever. Even in the sky above, there was no light. No sun, moon or stars. Not even a cloud that they could see. Just a bleak, dark abyss that seemed to go on forever, much like the street they were on.
For as long as they had been traveling, they had seen no sign of a red door. Plenty of buildings, but the ones that even had doors on them were not the color that they were looking for. Misty’s eyes had been gazing around, seeing nothing that Luna could. She saw only the empty stoops in front of buildings and ragged piles of filth that had accumulated in the streets. Stranger still was that she could feel nothing. No emotions were pervading her mind as they were before. A relief, but at once a concern. Her thoughts on the matter were halted when Luna stopped her from walking.
“Look,” Luna said.
Misty had to squint to see anything through the distant smog of the city. However, she could make out a long rectangle of red light that was embedded in a darker shadow.
“Do you think that’s it?” Misty asked.
“I don’t know. But, we must get closer to see.”
Misty was about to walk forward, until Luna stopped her once more.
“No. You mustn’t walk so heedlessly,” Luna said. “The way forward is more dangerous than you can know.”
“What do you mean?” Misty asked.
“There’s something here that you cannot know about. And your power to feel won’t serve you here. If we’re to get through this, you must do as I say.  I’ll go first. And only step where I do.”
Flying was no good to them with their magic sapped. Misty could only watch as Luna took a large step forth and placed her hoof next to a half broken manhole cover. The rest of her hooves followed, spreading out into awkward positions as she carefully took another step forward.
“Alright. Now, you,” Luna said.
Misty looked at the bare ground before herself, and wondered what kind of unseen horror was there waiting for her to make a wrong move. Trying her best not to think of it, she raised her front talon and placed it in the exact spot that Luna’s hoof just was. The moment she touched her talon down, she felt as if a hundred ants had started crawling beneath her feathers. She clenched her fist, hoping that somehow she hadn’t disturbed some invisible monstrosity from its rest.
Looking ahead, Luna was already moving slowly onward. Misty almost missed it when her next nearest hoof moved from its spot, allowing her to take another small step forward. Misty’s heart began to race as her talon started to tingle uncomfortably. Something was there, but it had no feelings. No reason or remorse for any of its actions. Something lower than an animal was suddenly all around her, and it wanted her.
“Misty?”
The sudden sound of Luna’s voice snapped the griffin from her thoughts.
“Keep looking at me,” Luna said, as she took another slow, deliberate step forth.
Misty nodded and stepped onward, trying not to allow her back leg to shake as it raised. She walked with complete alertness, aware of every grain of gravel beneath her. The more she followed Luna, the brighter the light beyond seemed. A welcoming beacon in the dark city. If only she could reach it.
There was a sudden, unpleasant tingling feeling behind herself. Misty yelped when she felt something crawling up her tail toward her back. She reached around to remove the invisible aggressor, only to trip over a pothole in the road. Misty landed on her side, the sudden feeling of being overwhelmed by millions of insects covered her body. Against her will, her legs began to thrash, and the only sound that escaped her clenched throat was an airless gasp. She wanted to breathe, but no air could reach her lungs.
Above her, the sky and the rooftops of the city seemed to rotate, and she felt the numb pressure of something else on her body. Little by little, she realized that something was rubbing all over herself. In a moment, the worried face of Luna appeared over her, as she desperately patted out the unseen things from Misty’s body. Gradually, Misty was able to take a breath in, then slowly exhaled, before Luna started gently patting the things off of her neck and chest. When Misty tried to get up, Luna stopped her and started digging her hooves between Misty’s feathers and fur, trying to get every last bit of them off, whatever they were. In time, she was helped up and Misty saw that she was far from where she had fallen over. As much as she looked, she could see no trace of anything.
“Is it still there?” Misty asked.
Luna looked at the spot where Misty had fallen, and nodded.
“Let’s keep going. Our destination is only a few doors away,” she said.
The moment they turned around, they were surprised to find themselves staring at a garish, red door that dripped as if it were freshly painted. On the awning over the door, there perched a creature that almost looked like a two-headed dragon. One that was horrifically underfed and viciously mutilated with lipless smiles and unblinking eyes. Each head swiveled from side to side, eyeing the living among them.
“We…We only seek entry,” Luna said to the creature.
“Princess!” Misty said, clutching Luna’s arm, “What did you just do?!”
For a second, Luna thought she knew what Misty was talking about. The thing over the door appeared to smile even more broadly, then craned both necks down to the door, where each set of jaws grasped a black, metallic ring. They pulled, and the doors were opened with a whoosh of dark fog. Once the doors were open, Luna took one step forward.
“Wait!” Misty said. “I don’t think we should go in there. This feels like one of those places that makes you join and never lets you leave.”
“Well, we have those back home, don’t we?” Luna said, trying to sound lighthearted. “After all, many a book club seems desperate to make sure you never leave.”
“Heh…” Misty managed to chuckle, knowing precisely what Luna was talking about.
She joined Luna’s side and walked in with her.
Inside, the first thing that they noticed was how dark it was, even compared to the outside. All around, the place was filled with moving shadows. Ones that were tall, with only vague outlines like a cloak had been wrapped around them. Most horrible of all was the song they sang. That low, droning chant that haunted Luna’s nights in the castle. It shivered the very marrow in her bones as she watched the shadows shuffle about, chanting their mournful song to one another. Trying her best to not look at them, she walked onward, feeling them all around herself.
Misty felt something different. To her, something was desperate to be noticed. Begging to be seen and released. She could only see the shadows, but not the form or shape of them. For her, it was nothing but a storm of sorrows and want. A terrible place that no creature should have to be.
“Princess,” Misty said, pointing to the side.
Luna looked, and froze when she saw a shadow gliding across the floor toward her. She watched as it loomed over her, watching with its shapeless face, its voice silent from the droning of the others.
“Say something,” Misty said.
Luna swallowed and moved her jaw, but only stammered. On her next try, she found her voice. “We–We seek a-answers…”
“...Shredder…”
The voice was one to chill the soul. The shadow drifted onward into the darkness, leaving the living behind.
“I think we should go this way,” Misty said, as she started after the shadow.
Luna followed after, and had to wait for Misty to place her wing on her back before they headed onward into the darkness. In moments, Luna lost sight of their shadowy guide. But Misty had no problem guiding them, as if the way were as brightly lit as the castle halls at dusk. She almost tripped when she felt her hoof bump into something.
“Watch your step. Just follow me up,” Misty said.
There was something there that Luna couldn’t comprehend, but was perfectly evident to the griffin. As if by magic, Misty began ascending upward, as if some unseen staircase were in her way. Luna placed her hoof on where she thought the step would be. Even though she felt nothing beneath her hoof, she was unable to put it on the ground as if it were already set atop something. She followed with her next hoof. And the next, and soon she was climbing upward, just as Misty had done.
The darkness faded, and the ground leveled. Luna found herself by Misty’s side in a dimly lit room, where all manner of antiquities were laid out on stands and pedestals. Some were in cases, while others were out in the open. At the end of the room was an enormous metal bust that was mounted on the wall. Like the thing at the door, it almost looked like a dragon, but at once like a bat, if not for its metal skin, crooked horns, and the hands of the thing that jutted from either side of it, armed with dagger claws that looked like they wanted to reach out and grab all that was in the room.
Misty looked in awe at a sword on a pedestal, marveling at the pictures that had been etched into the blade and the story that it told of the warrior who may have once wielded it. The shape of it too was something to note. Like it was once the fang of an evil beast.
“Do you see anypony in here?” she asked as she moved on to the next treasure.
Luna looked all around the room, seeing only the marvelous, horrible things that were displayed there. But, not anypony who could help them.
“No. Do you sense anything in here?” Luna asked.
“Oh, yeah. I’m feeling something in here. Something big,” Misty gravely said. She looked around the room, wondering why whatever was there hadn’t shown itself. That terrible feeling of being watched by a predator was becoming unbearable. She could barely stand as she looked all around the room, feeling a tightness in her chest that threatened to never let go of her. Suddenly, an urge came over her. Something that she knew would only end badly, but she couldn’t help it. “S…So, come on out. Here we are. Where are you?”
Luna looked gravely at Misty, her eyes wide in horror and disappointment both. In an instant, a wind blew through the room, threatening to blow over the two. With it came a guttural howl that shook the room. Both Luna and Misty took cover on the floor as the different treasures started sliding across the floor against the wind. Misty yelped as the sword she had been looking at earlier slid past her, cutting off just the tips of her feathers as it went. The sword cut its way across the floor, and set itself into the mouth of the vicious bust on the wall in the place of a missing fang.
The mouth of the thing started to move, its jaw cracking from side to side. Where one of the eyes once was, an orb that crackled with red lightning inserted itself into the hollow socket, matching the bloodshot eye on the other side. More of the treasures assembled themselves onto the thing, which slammed its mismatched claws to the floor, digging them deep into the wooden boards.
“Why have you awakened me?” it demanded to know.
“Sh…Sh-Sh-Shredder…?” Luna said.
“I am. Why have you awakened me?”
“I see it…I can see it, Princess…” Misty shuddered, cowering on the floor at the sight of the thing.
“Don’t turn away from it,” Luna whispered. Having broken one rule, she couldn’t risk Misty breaking another. She then stood up as best she could keeping her head as high as it would allow her to raise it. “I’ve…I’ve come for the truth…”
“You and so many others. None of them have been able to face it, and have been driven mad. Many have become shadows of their former selves, unable to move on from what they came to know. What makes you any different from them?” Shredder asked.
“Be–Because I know what I want to know.”
The eyes of the thing glittered curiously as its draconic teeth bared all at once.
“That is different. But, it is not the same as being prepared to hear it. Come closer,” Shredder bade, motioning with one of his enormous claws.
Misty laid on the floor, trembling as a single tear rolled out of her eye. Isolation washed over her as Luna started walking toward the beast on the wall. Now, she was alone with it. She tried to decipher the intention of the beast, but her mind couldn’t focus on the feelings Shredder exuded. Whether it was too powerful, or if it simply felt nothing, she couldn’t tell. She could simply watch as Luna moved between the enormous claws, looking almost like a bird in a cage as she passed between them.
Luna’s mind felt as if it had gone blank, shivering at the sight of Shredder’s monstrous visage. On either side of herself, his claws moved up and down, surrounding her no matter where she tried to look.
“Yes…” Shredder whispered. “There is much anger in you, little pony. And dilemma. But, it is fear that consumes you.”
Luna shuddered, feeling as if she had become suddenly transparent.
“You fear what others think of you constantly. How they will see you, having known what mistakes you have made in the past. Especially if they found out about your gift.”
“G-Gift…?” Luna asked.
“The gift of sight. One that many consider a curse. And drives them to seek a way out.”
The sound of clinking chains rattled from somewhere in the room, and Luna saw the image of a hook in the eyes of Shredder. She gasped, but kept her eyes on the beast. Even as Shredder lowered his face to Luna, staring directly at her.
“Most of all, it is loss that you fear. To be alone. When you are at your most vulnerable. It’s when you feel you have been abandoned. Just as it was back then.”
“Back then…” Luna exhaled.
“Yes…Back then. The first time you noticed. When you saw…”
Luna stared into the maw of Shredder, and the darkness within seemed to spread beyond. Her mind grew hazy, and the room around her began to change into something else. Something familiar and domestic that she knew from before. Long, long ago.
> Dead Memories
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Something plummeted from the sky over the old Canterlot cemetery, screaming all the while as it flailed its limbs in every direction. There was no time for the purple and green comet to comprehend the unnaturally soft landing.
“What took ya?” Discord asked.
“Why didn’t you teleport me?” Spike asked, as he stood up from the mattress that had materialized beneath him.
“Even I can’t predict how this magic’s gonna work. You were just unlucky enough to be catapulted while I blinked into this place.”
A pillow hit Discord directly in his face. Before he could say anything, Spike crawled off the mattress to the ground.
“Where’s Princess Luna,” he asked.
“This way,” Discord said, as he floated down the path.
Spike followed him all the way through the graveyard, until they reached a grimy headstone by an unguarded cliff. Once they were both there, Spike took off his backpack and started unpacking the components that he had brought along.
“Do you have everything?” Discord asked.
“Yeah. Chalk,” Spike said, as he sprinkled a circle. “Something that belongs to Princess Luna,” he said, placing it in the center of the chalk. “Mirror,” he kept that in the pack, “Lavender,” he kept that in his claw. And finally, he took his spellbook out of the pack and started reading. His eyes darted frantically across the page, until he memorized the process. “Okay. Get in the circle.”
Discord and Spike both stepped into the circle, back to back.
“Are you sure this will work?” Discord asked over his shoulder.
“Don’t look at me. You can’t look at any living for this to work,” Spike said.
Discord did as he was told and looked ahead into the distance. Behind him, Spike blew his fire onto the lavender, creating a strong fragrance. Next, he placed one claw into his palm that held the lavender and dug it deep and hard enough to draw blood. The blood mingled with the burning lavender, turning the smoke into a sickening black color and making it churn and billow in thick clouds instead of the white wisps as before.
“Vatta…Laratus…Norom…” Spike said.
Discord saw that nothing had happened. Again, Spike chanted the words. And again, over and over with varying grades of conviction. As the moments carried on, Discord began to doubt the efficacy of the spell. Until he noticed some other scent that mingled with the lavender. A sharp, pungent odor like rotten eggs and gunpowder. With it, the ground where the chalk was sprinkled started to smoke. He wanted to ask if this was what was supposed to happen, but stopped himself from looking. In the distance, something appeared in the sky. A rolling stormcloud that rumbled with red lightning, and low, eerie thunderclaps. Within, some other shape appeared in the clouds.
A massive, horned head reared up, baring its fangs for all to see and shining its orange eyes at Discord. Enormous forelegs seemed to burst from the clouds and meld back in as the storm roared toward him.
Discord closed his eyes, unsure if what he was seeing was real or not. Anything to get the spell to work. The overpowering smell mixed with the sounds of the storm. Weightlessness overtook Discord, as he suddenly couldn’t tell if his eyes were opened or closed. And in another moment, he landed on the ground.
“Spike?” Discord called.
“Right here.”
Discord turned to the direction he heard Spike’s voice, and saw the little dragon there, even though the world around them was completely blacked out.
“Where are we?” Spike wondered.
“I have no damn clue,” Discord muttered.
Spike continued to read his spellbook, looking for some way to guide them. But, Discord saw something else in the darkness. Two white orbs that crackled with red lightning that were growing ever closer.





In a tiny, wooden bed, Luna sat with her sketchbook open. She scribbled across the page, not even in the mood to doodle, much less make a coherent picture. The day had only begun, and it was already looking bleak. Her precious older sister had been hurried out of the house to go to some big, important thing that Luna couldn’t understand. All she knew was it was for somepony who was supposed to do something big and special, to show how big and special that pony was. And that she wasn’t invited to go along.
The sun shone through the round window, onto the bed across from her own. The white sheets seemed to glow brightly under their shine, emphasizing the suns that were printed across the blanket. As for her own dark blanket with the little stars and moons, not a bit of light seemed to reach it. Luna turned back to her sketchbook, trying hard to block out the light that was trying to intrude on her, but it was no good. The glare of gold and white persisted in the corner of her vision, until Luna slammed her book shut and threw her pencil to the floor.
Too many things reminded her of her sister there. Luna rolled off her bed onto the polished wood floor, then walked to the stairs. She made sure to avoid the one stair that squeaked as she descended, then quietly walked to the kitchen door. Making sure she made no noise, she peered in. Nopony was there. Just the chipped countertop that was loaded with the mess from everypony else’s breakfast. Once she was sure nopony else would notice her, she set to work quietly making her breakfast. The first thing that she got was a stool, so that she could reach the countertop.
Luna climbed up to the top of the stool and looked over what mess was left for her. Classic Celestia. Clutter up the counter so that nopony else could use it. It was a sure sign that she was the one who had made breakfast that morning. After some searching she was able to find the pan that she needed, and found it was still slightly greasy from whatever her sister had used it for. Next, she took the bowl of apples from the other side of the counter and picked up the knife she needed to slice them.
“Luna?”
Luna almost jumped when she heard the voice call to her. When she looked over, there was a stallion with a white coat and a golden mane sitting at the dining room table. Set before him was a plate of blueberry pancakes.
“You know your mother and I don’t like you to use the knives by yourself,” he said.
“But, Celestia gets to!” Luna protested.
“Celestia’s old enough to do it on her own. Besides, we already have pancakes made. Come on over and have some.”
Luna had so looked forward to caramelized apples with cinnamon. But since she never got to do what she wanted when her family was around, she sulked over to the table where she climbed into her chair.
“I know. How cruel of me to make you have blueberry pancakes for breakfast,” the stallion said. His joke hadn’t gone over so well, as Luna sat before her empty plate, not even touching the pancakes. The stallion flared up his magic, and levitated a stack of pancakes over to Luna. “Well, don’t wait up. Blueberries don’t stay ripe forever.”
For several seconds, Luna looked at her plate, but didn’t eat a thing.
“Celestia’s gone to her ceremony thing, hasn’t she?” she finally said.
The stallion put down the bite of pancakes that he was about to eat and scooted closer to Luna.
“Sweetie, the thing you need to understand about that is that nopony expected this kind of thing to happen. Not even Starswirl saw this coming. It’s something that’s going to change all of our lives. And, to be completely honest, I don’t know if even I’m going to be able to handle it. I mean, who would have expected Celestia of all ponies to ascend?”
He must have sounded prouder than he meant to, because Luna’s face took a sudden sour turn.
“Why don’t we just eat breakfast?” the stallion said. He scooted back over to his spot at the table and took a bite of his pancakes. “Mm! Luna, you’ve got to try these pancakes your mother made. They’re probably the best she’s done yet.”
“Celestia made them. ”
“Is that right?” the stallion asked. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She always wanted to be like her mother. Here, try a bite.”
Luna shook her head.
“Maybe later. I’m not very hungry now.”
“Okay. More for me,” the stallion said.
The rest of breakfast was spent with that bitter conversation Luna had those many centuries ago. She had always known her parents favored her precious, perfect older sister. Even when she left a mess on the counter, they always turned a blind eye and cleaned it up themselves. Luna? They always scolded her and made her clean it up herself. After Luna left the breakfast table, she holed herself up in her room again, and kept her head beneath her pillow, muffling her tears.
Nopony came to see her at all for the rest of that day. She remained there, still as a stone, thinking about the wonderful things that her parents would have to say about Celestia once she came home. All the new reasons that they would have to compare her to her sister and all the great things she would have to aspire to match.
Very suddenly, Luna noticed the shadows on the wall. Looking out her window, she saw that the sun had gone down almost completely. Her mind went back to that terrible exchange she had at breakfast. Even though she didn’t appreciate the comparisons to her sister, amends could always be made with her parents. Not wanting to hold any grudge, Luna walked back downstairs.
“Poppa?” she called.
There was no answer. Odd for that time of day. With her sister and mother out of the house, there was no way that her father would be gone.
“Poppa, where are you?”
She opened the front door and looked out into the yard. Her father was nowhere to be seen. Around to the back, and he still wasn’t there.
Beyond the backyard, there was a forest. A deep, dark forest that led to who knew where. Oftentimes, she and her father would walk down the forest path, but only to the crossroads. After that, they always turned around and went back the way they came, back to their home. As a rule, Luna was never allowed to go there by herself. But, she knew that was where her father had gone. There was nowhere else for him to have gone. Luna walked toward the treeline, ready to find her father and make things right.
“Poppa?” she called. “Poppa, I’m here!”
Luna walked down the forest path, and the sun slowly disappeared beneath the horizon. She looked all around herself, seeing the curious eyes of a hundred forest creatures watching her from every nook and cranny. By that time, she had stopped calling for her father, fearing that some unknown beast would be drawn to her shouts. Instead, she listened for any sign of him. Movement on the trail ahead of her. The sound of his hooves. But, nothing came. She could only hear the sounds of the things beyond the path, waiting until the sun disappeared to take her away from the light forever.
The bushes on the trail ahead rustled.
“Poppa? Is that you?” Luna whispered.
There was no answer, and the bushes only rustled louder. Luna slowly backpedaled from the bushes, until the horror within it burst forth. It was small, with a pale white face and a mouth filled with sharp fangs. It crawled along a branch, until Luna was able to see it perfectly.
“Oh. Hello, Mr. Possum,” Luna said to the little animal.
The possum looked at Luna curiously, then hung from its tail and looked at her from side to side.
Luna giggled at the sight of it, wondering if maybe her parents would allow her to have one as a pet. If such things were allowed to be kept, that is.
The possum suddenly scampered into the bushes, and the sounds of its movement disappeared entirely. Luna almost peered in after it, until a sudden fog rolled over her. She looked left and right, suddenly unable to tell which direction she had come from. The forest had become all the same to her. Without knowing which way she was going, Luna remembered that she only needed to go back if she reached the crossroads. Since she hadn’t reached them yet, she would be alright no matter which way she went. Trusting her instincts Luna walked on. And it seemed that her trust had paid off.
Somewhere ahead of her, she could see a shadow in the fog. The silhouette of a stallion who was walking away from herself. The moment she saw him, Luna started trotting as fast as she could to catch him up, calling out to him to stop. The stallion kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard her at all, until he disappeared into the mists.
“Poppa! Wait! Don’t go!” Luna called out to him.
She was left alone now. Her own father didn’t want to talk to her. And for just one moment, Luna didn’t want to live anymore.
A sound from somewhere made Luna turn her head. Had her father come back? It seemed he had not, as the sounds of a filly sobbing reached her ears. And it was coming from off the path. It went against every rule she knew to stray from the forest path, but if somepony was hurt, she was the only one who was able to help at that moment.
Luna walked off the trail and followed the sounds, down to a vast lake that she had never known existed before. There, sitting on a fallen log was a filly with a silver mane. As delicately as she could, Luna approached the crying filly.
“Filly?” she began, “Why are you crying?
Everything became a blur after that. Luna spoke to the filly and offered to help her home. They walked together through the woods, the filly always a few steps behind her. And then, she saw it.
There was another shadow through the fog up ahead. Something the exact size of a grown stallion. But, it was all wrong. It was long, thin, and held in the air as if by some thread. Luna walked closer, growing more and more apprehensive at the sight. She stepped in something wet, and looked at her hoof. It was covered in something thick and red. Her heart began to race as she looked up. There the stallion hung from the tree, his white coat and golden mane streaming with red, hanging from a vicious hook that impaled his neck. The wind blew, swinging his body to the side, revealing his wide open eyes. He looked at Luna, calling to her. Begging her to save him.
There was nothing Luna could do but scream.
> How Far?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Spike!?”
It was all very sudden. One moment, Discord was facing the disembodied eyes of some unknown beast. The next, he was alone in some dead, desolate forest that looked like some great inferno had raged through it centuries ago, and it was just now recuperating itself. When Discord placed his foot on a fallen log, the entire thing broke under his weight. Not like wood, but it snapped like a long rod of glass, shattering at the spot where it broke.
“Oof. Petrification. I know how that feels,” Discord muttered.
He stepped carefully over the petrified log and carried on his way. Unknown to Discord, the shards of broken wood were sliding along the ground after him.
“Spike!?” Discord called again.
Not that he expected any answer. He had been wandering around and calling for longer than he wished to think. For all he knew, he was just making himself more lost than he was before. Then again, he didn’t even know how lost he was. All he knew was that he was back in that terrible place where his powers didn’t work and his life was in peril. If there was any sound of a shuffling step and the clack of a cane, or a hiss, or especially a shrill laugh, he was going to run as fast as he could away from it.
For a moment, Discord stepped into the shade of a tree, its ragged leaves just barely sheltering him from the heat of the sun above. He jumped when he heard something break in the branches above, and moved aside just as the branch over his head shattered in a hail of wood and leaves. One of the shards had cut Discord’s arm, making a small drop of blood trail its way towards his talon. As quickly as he could, Discord got out from underneath that tree, as the fallen leaves swirled around and trailed after him.
Discord’s eyes darted around, looking for any sign of any familiar face. But, no. He was alone. It was only him, the trees and the wind. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear a stream running its course. The more he walked, the louder it became. He was almost to the treeline, where he could see a bank rising up to meet him. The trees were growing sparser, but a vast expanse of sickly brown grass was spreading out before him. Just before he left the treeline, something silvery glinted at the top of the bank and in an instant it was gone.
“Hey!” Discord called.
He quickly ran after the silver gleam, unaware that he was being followed.
When he reached it, the bank was surprisingly steep. He struggled to climb up it, having to dig his fingers deep into the sun-baked soil. It was a long trip up, made longer by the anticipation of what he might have been following. The sounds of that flowing river became louder still. But, the closer he came the more Discord thought it sounded wrong. Like it was somehow choking itself, struggling to go along its course. After what felt like miles of upward ascent, Discord’s hand rose over the ridge of the bank and grasped onto level ground. His other hand grabbed onto something else, which he quickly examined and found it to be a stone with many concentric circles on it. After letting it roll down the hill behind him, he pulled himself up over the edge.
Sure enough, there was a river that flowed along. But, there was too much about it that was off. It was thick with mud and clouds of silt. More than a river that flowed so slowly should have. The water itself was churning up in places that Discord knew it shouldn’t be, as though a hundred different somethings of a hundred different sizes were surfacing up beneath it and going back down again. He watched the river flow, hesitant to cross it. Somehow, he knew that it was waiting for him to go across. Daring him to tread its filthy waters and see what new horrors awaited him within.
“Discord?”
A familiar voice called to him from across the stream. When he looked, he saw Silver Blitz standing on the opposite shore.
“Silver Blitz? How’d you get here?” Discord asked, feeling suddenly stupid for even bothering to wonder. Instead of waiting around, he stepped into the river at the very edge. “Stay there. I’m coming over.”
The first step into the river was made with a sickening plunge and a splash that only oozed outward, before it slowly enveloped Discord’s foot again. The second he put his foot in the flowing mire, he saw something else appear across the river. On the rocky shelf just behind Silver Blitz, a shadow appeared. One that was enormous, with powerful legs, wickedly large claws and a horned head that was low to the ground. Strangely, it appeared to be draped in many chains that hung above the ground. The shadow crept along the wall toward Silver Blitz, who watched unaware of the danger behind herself.
“Hey! Look out!” Discord shouted as he charged across the river toward her.
He fell suddenly downward when something wrapped itself around his ankle. Looking back, he saw the water itself had wrapped itself around him and  was pulling him back. Discord swiped his tail at the water, releasing his foot and allowing him to carry onward. But, his aggressor wouldn’t let up.
The water swelled nearly up to his waist and lunged at him.
Discord dove ahead, narrowly avoiding the assault, until he noticed the river gradually getting deeper around him. The water rose quickly upward until it was almost reaching his knees. Shuddering loudly, Discord slogged onward through the water, which lapped up higher and higher onto his body, forcing him to push it back.
He reached a rock that was in the middle of the river as the water started enveloping him from his tail upward. Discord looked across the river and saw the shadow overtaking Silver Blitz, who was still watching unaware. The water rose up and pulled Discord downward. He resisted the water and pulled himself up, where he saw Silver Blitz had taken that horrible, mutilated visage he had seen so many times before. Still, she watched him as the thing approached her from behind.
With a surge of strength, Discord pulled himself up towards the top of the rock, until he saw something drop from above. It looked like it was a stone, but it had fallen from nowhere. When it rose back to the surface, it drifted next to another stone that was set above the water, and Discord saw many concentric rings on its surface. Shards of petrified wood rose up to the surface next and a gust of wind blew a rush of blackened leaves around them. With a little imagination, a face was almost seen. Something horrible that shouldn’t have been. A hellish visage that would never be seen in the world of the living.
“How far would you go?” a voice whispered.
“What?!” Discord said.
“What would you face?”
A swell of water erased the face from existence, and Discord was pulled further back down. Not about to be done in, he clawed his way back upward as the water snaked up to his shoulders.
“No! Silver Blitz…!” he strained to shout.
His claws began sliding down the surface of the rock, leaving deep scratches as he went lower and lower. When he looked around the side of the rock, he could see the leg of some beast rounding the rocky bend. Discord tried to shout, but it was no use. The water had swelled up over his snout and filled his mouth and nostrils, choking him from the inside out. The last of Discord’s strength gave out, and he let go of the rock. There was no time to see how quickly Discord was submerged. One moment, he was there. The next, he was gone.
Down Discord went, carried onward by the living current. He thrashed with all his might, unable to stop the unrelenting pull of the watery force. When he reached for the bottom, it seemed to somehow fall deeper. When he reached for the surface, it rose upward. Nothing could save him as he was plunged deeper in the darkness of those waters, never to return.
All of a sudden, Discord was able to scream as he fell through an endless void of darkness. Nothing was seen. Not even his flailing limbs in front of him as he fell. There was a solid thud, and Discord landed painfully onto solid ground. However long it was before he was able to get up, Discord couldn’t tell. When he lifted his head, he wished that he hadn’t.
He was surrounded by color. Churning, gurgling swirls of deep red and blue, which moved without pattern or purpose. Spiraling upward, stretching across the ground, swallowing one another in an infinite loop, dancing like partners at a grand ball and passing off their forms to one another. Looking further ahead, there was more to that terrible place.
Hanging from the ceiling, but jutting up from the floor as well was a sphere. A huge, technicolor globe of the same red and blue which rotated and remained motionless both at once, commanding the forces of everything around it. A nameless, shapeless, abstraction of everything Discord thought he knew to be true. A terrifying personification of anarchic glee and unchecked mayhem. The unknowable essence of disorder and complete disregard to harmony. It was then that Discord knew that he knew nothing of chaos. This was it. And it was terrifying to behold such pure pandemonium.
Discord froze, unable to accept his own existence in that instant. He was concrete. His own form was identifiable, and his antics, though abstract, had logic behind them all. Whatever he was, it wasn’t chaos. He was a cosmic clown who was given too much power. A jester too big for his own jingling hat. It shouldn’t have been any surprise that he was defeated not once, but twice. The only thing that kept him from being put away forever was the naive notion of one little pony and the equally naive uproar of a hundred thousand voices beyond the wall of the cosmos that said he was only doing his job. None of them knew a thing about him. Not even he knew.
“Discord…Help…”
“Huh?!” Discord said, snapping from his stupor.
“Help…”
It was coming from all around him. The cry for help was from a voice he knew, but couldn’t identify. He could hear the words. He knew what they meant. But, he couldn’t understand them.
From across the surface of the raging sphere drifted Silver Blitz, hung from an iron hook that gutted her through the middle. After her, Spike came into view, a hook jammed through the top of the inside of his mouth. He had no words, but he was calling for help. As was Luna when she rotated into view, a hook stuck through her neck, her eyes wide open and staring.
“Help…”
“Don’t worry! I’m coming!” Discord yelled, his words disappearing and bouncing back as if he said them from a great distance and walked suddenly closer, repeating over and over to his own ears.
The sphere roiled its colors, and a terrible howl filled the room like a great gust of wind. Whatever had just happened, Discord could feel his entire body struck as if he had fallen from a great height. As quickly as it had come, his pain subsided and he was able to keep running toward the sphere.
Whatever kept him running, he couldn’t tell. Nothing had made him feel the way he was before. Any emotion he thought he could feel in that place was completely unfamiliar. Whatever it was, it made him carry on toward that monument of mayhem. The images of the others swirled across the surface, melding into one another in a hideous, painful congealment that made them almost disappear.
There were more sounds from all around. A chattering, rattling whoosh that cut Discord’s entire body into a bloody mess. He staggered on, his eyes never leaving the others in their imprisonment. One of those whooshes dragged across Discord’s arm, flaying the skin from his limb, revealing a mess of blue that dripped with the red of his blood. He fell to his knees and crawled forth, as the skin was pulled off the rest of his body, revealing the mess of blue and red. His blood swirled around his body, blending him into the rest of the world around him. Still he crawled onward, reaching for the terrible sphere.
The image of the others drifted across the surface, nearly to the point that they disappeared around the side of the globe. A rush of blood spewed from Discord’s mouth as he crawled toward the sphere, staining the ground red before it was swallowed up and mixed into a swirl of blue. He looked up and Discord saw the others disappearing around the side.
“No…” he weakly called out.
It was too late. They were gone. The same howl as before bounded through the room, repeating over itself time and time again until the place was a symphony of gasps and screams. Including Discord’s own as he saw his own form start to darken from behind himself. He had seen the truth, and he couldn’t know it. His shadowy form began to drone a terrible chant, echoing his sorrow to all who would find him.
From the surface of the sphere, something reached out for him. An appendage of the same red and blue that grabbed him by his wrist and pulled him through the wall of the thing.





“Discord!! Come on!!”
As if a light had suddenly turned on, Discord saw a pair of green, slit-pupiled eyes before him as he dove forward with a loud scream. He continued screaming as he looked around himself, and saw that he was in a very different place than before. It was somewhere deep and dark with stone walls and only a torch on the wall that lit up a nearby staircase. On the ground before him was Spike, who was clutching his spellbook.
For the first time, Discord felt like he was glad the world was back to complete normalcy. Moreso, he almost thought that he was glad to see that Spike hadn’t been brained by a hook. And if he was okay, then surely the others…
But, he couldn’t think of that at the moment. He had more important things to ask about.
“Spike? Wh…What the living fuck…!?”
“I don’t know. I was looking for you for almost an hour, when I found this dungeon. And then, there you were in the mouth of that…thing!” Spike said.
Discord turned around and saw what Spike was pointing at. Mounted on the wall was the disembodied head of a great, chiropteran monster with metal skin, along with two misshapen hands on either side of it. The mouth of the thing was open wide, as if to swallow up anything that dared to step into its jaws. And the eyes. The horrible, familiar eyes that Discord swore he had seen just before. The sight of it made him shiver, before he turned around.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. Before that thing starts talking, or something,” Discord said.
“Amen to that,” Spike agreed, as he led the way out of the dungeon.
They hadn’t noticed that the thing on the wall disappeared the moment they were up the stairs. Nor had they noticed the light that snuffed out beneath them. Where they were going, light would do them no good.
> The Moment Of Truth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The voices were unbearable. Their chatter, relentless. They knew she could see them. That she could hear their words. And they weren’t going to let up. They surrounded her. They hounded her. They would never let her have a moment’s rest until she gave in and joined them in the neverending misery.
“Go away,” she whispered.
They would not. Her answer to their calls was only a confirmation to them. They were only going to keep making themselves known. Nothing was going to stop them now. 
“I don’t know what to do! Go!” she said aloud.
They knew it was a lie. She knew what to do. She knew all the angles and had been looking at them for centuries. All she had to do was figure things out. First, she had to want to. That was what they wanted. For her to want to. For them. For herself.
“I said LEAVE!!”
Luna jolted up with a shriek that echoed through wherever she was. She looked around herself, and saw only endless hallways between long columns, with only a sconce with a green flame flickering behind her. She was lost. Hopeless. Alone.
“Princess?”
Luna turned and saw Misty laying across from her. She looked no worse for wear, but had a look of bewildered terror on her face.
”Princess, what just happened?” Misty said.
The images of what she had just seen went spinning through her head. The last moments when she saw her father alive were the worst she ever had in her life, and had been kept forgotten. Nothing could have made her want to face it, and then there she had been living it all over again. She wanted to speak. To explain to Misty some plan of action to escape their predicament. Her voice died in her throat, escaping as only a choked sob which quickly turned into a cascade of tears.
“I was…five years old when I first saw…” Luna sobbed. “It was the last time I saw my father alive…I said such terrible things to him…I wanted to find him, but I didn’t know where to look…And then, there was a filly by a lake…I didn’t know then, but she was already dead…”
Misty watched in a mix of sorrow and sympathy. She had experienced completely the trauma of a first encounter, but Luna’s far surpassed her own. In silence, she allowed Luna to continue.
“She was a filly from my school…” Luna said. “I never knew her well…We only saw each other on the playground…I learned a year later that she had died,” Luna choked loudly and lowered her gaze. “That was when I found him…”
“Your father?” Misty asked.
Luna nodded.
“He had already taken his own life…I saw him hanging dead from a tree…I…I…Oh, Misty…What could I have done to make things right?”
Luna broke down completely in a sobbing mess. Nothing had gone right. Not since she was a filly. She had spent her whole life in denial, blocking out what she should have known to be true. She wasn’t even who she thought she was. Just a shadow that had been walking around, pretending to be whole.
She felt an arm embrace around her shoulder, and Luna quickly held onto Misty and pulled her close. Misty, who had been the first creature she ever told any of this to. Not even Celestia knew that she had been the one who found her father. Her mother would never allow her to know. Some part of her told her that Celestia may have already known for a long time, but they had never discussed it. And it was allowed to be pushed further and further back into her mind.
“Princess…I’m so sorry,” Misty said.
“Please, call me Luna,” Luna answered.
Behind them, the green flame started waving in one direction as if a breeze only it could feel was blowing through the halls of that barren place. With that wind came a low, barely audible whistle, like wind through a large gap. A tiny hope sparked into Luna’s mind.
“Misty? Do you see that?” Luna asked, looking at the flame.
“I do. What do you think’s going on?” Misty asked.
“I think that there may be a way out of here.”
“How can you know that? Do you see something I don’t?”
“No. But, the wind must be coming from somewhere,” Luna said, before walking toward the direction the phantom breeze was coming from.
Misty started to follow her, but the flame crackled with silver embers that popped loudly, stopping her from moving.
“Luna, wait,” Misty said.
Luna obliged and noticed the silver embers as well.
“Do you feel something?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s faint, but I feel it,” Misty replied. “It feels like…I don’t know. It’s too small to understand.”
The flame flickered harshly in the same direction it had been, and showered more embers that made Luna and Misty have to step backward. After that, it flickered less and less, and started to burn out. The flame burnt down smaller and smaller, until it snuffed out with a plume of smoke. Once it had, the columns around them were lit up with a candle each, all with the same tiny, red flame. The candlelit columns stretched on and on into the distance, the tiny dots of light seeming to go on for miles.
There was no misinterpreting the feeling that time, even if Misty could barely receive it. She started down the direction the flame was flickering and looked over her shoulder at Luna. Luna swallowed hard and started walking beside her.
The way was just as long as it looked. For what felt like hours, the two of them walked without changing direction and came to no destination. No matter which side they looked, the endless abyss of darkness stretched onward. After so long, it seemed as if the way was growing longer on its own. Then, it seemed to expand outward in all directions, consuming the world that may have been beyond those endless columns.
A voice chanted in the darkness.
Luna gasped sharply and stopped.
“Luna!?” Misty harshly whispered.
Luna looked around herself, half expecting to see disembodied shadows drifting toward her, ready to take her back to Shredder’s treasure room to join them forever. The chant continued, but the shadows remained hidden. The only shadows seen were the ones at the very edge of the candlelight. Always with an eye to the shadows, Luna walked toward the sounds of the chant.
The flames of the candles started vibrating, making the darkness around them dance in a mad frenzy as the chanting grew nearer. Luna tried to understand what was being said, but her ears couldn’t register a single syllable. Instead, it sounded as if two voices were speaking at once, one right after the other. Ahead of them, another light flared up. One that wasn’t like a flame, but like a star that had lost its way from the sky. It shone with an eerie golden light that practically called them forward into it. Luna gazed deeply into the golden light, and watched as it started turning different shades of red and orange.
The chanting grew louder than ever. Her heart began to race, and she felt her hoof suddenly step off the world and into a deep pool of liquid.
“Luna!” Misty said, pulling Luna back from the edge. “Be careful.”
Luna wanted to thank Misty for saving her life yet again, but noticed her hoof first. It was dripping with blood. The light began to dim slowly, and the world before them turned to a vast basin of blood. There was a walkway of stone across the bloody lake, leading to where the light shone somewhere beyond. Luna led the way, always careful to keep her balance on that narrow path. She could hear the steps of Misty behind her and the chanting before her. The light ahead flared up brightly, and then dimmed into almost nothingness, revealing a round platform in the center of the basin. In the middle was an altar where the light set, before it blinked itself out. Standing before the altar, chanting in that low voice was a stallion. In another moment, his chant ended.
“Time is a funny thing,” the stallion said, “It has the power to ruin empires, build mountains, and cover up the brightest of memories in layers of cold, dark years. And yet, it can also push two old friends together from the furthest reaches of the world. Hello, Luna. It’s been far too long. My, how you’ve grown.”
“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s been doing all of this!” Luna said.
“Not all of this. You helped. I couldn’t possibly have amassed such a bounty, had you not been able to let go.”
Misty jerked her talon away from the edge of the walkway, and saw the blood ripple in the basin. The blood felt somehow angry to her. Like it wanted to do terrible things the moment it was touched. She watched it carefully, then turned her eyes forward once more.
Luna tensely watched the stallion, who swayed his neck left, then circled it around to the right two times.
“I remember you so well. When we first met, you were the only filly who entered my classroom without fear. It was to be expected. You didn’t have to live at the school, far away from mommy and daddy,” the stallion said.
He stepped to the left, his hooves dancing about in a slow, hypnotic motion.
“You were so beautiful back then, even when you were so young. Especially when you were young,” the stallion said, his voice a breathy hiss. “I couldn’t deny my feelings. They were nothing new. But what you gave me? It was passion. Fierce, fiery passion! I knew I wanted you. The same as Silver Blitz…”
It was a name that Luna hadn’t heard since Discord mentioned that filly. Only then did she realize how long it had truly been. She recalled that fateful night at the lake shore. As she led the lost filly from the woods, she had asked her name just before she found her dead father. The moment the name was spoken, she had found him and nothing else had mattered at the moment. She had tried to tell the adults about the filly who was with her, but she had already gone. Her whole life had unraveled in those moments, and the one responsible was before her.
As if a curtain was lifted from Luna’s mind, she remembered that face. The one instructor from her early days who made her uneasy every time he looked at her. How uncomfortable he made her feel when he was standing next to her during their class picture. That unsettling aura he exuded whenever he asked her about her personal life.
“Berry Tarts…” Luna whispered.
The stallion’s shoulders trembled, as though some uproarious fit of laughter were being kept down. With a sharp motion, he jumped unnaturally high into the air, spun once and landed on the west edge of the platform.
“Yes. It seems you’re finally coming around,” he said.
The stallion jumped again, landing on the south edge of the platform, just behind Misty who gasped and huddled closely to Luna, nearly hurting her injured wing.
“The day you said you found that filly, I never saw you or your family again. But, oh, I was met with much attention by the guard. Oh, yes. You ruined me, little filly! They all came after me! They cut me apart! The pain! The glorious pain! And your power could never be mine!”
“My power…?” Luna thought, thinking she knew precisely what he meant.
He jumped to the east edge of the platform and landed facing Luna and Misty both. Half of his face was warped grotesquely into a vicious grin.
“My revenge was not final! My revenge is eternal! My demise only sped along what would have taken years more to complete! They all died for me! I was their way! Their light! For my master!”
One last jump, and he was back to the north edge of the platform. The moment he landed, the rest of his body twisted itself into a tortured mess of limbs that didn’t seem to know where one ended and another began. From the look of him, it was hard to tell that he was ever a pony.

“I must thank you, Luna, my love. Though you had ruined me, you set in motion my master’s glorious return. Because you just couldn’t let any of it go. You couldn’t let him go.”

Luna stood upon shaking knees. Her mind flashed once more to that night she found her father hanging from that tree. That hook stuck through his neck like he was a side of beef. His dead eyes staring through her. But, there had been something else. Something she had forgotten, and hoped would be consigned to oblivion of the ages. But it was as Berry Tarts said. Time had a way of bringing things together. She had seen them. Two gigantic, orange eyes that glowered at her through the fog. That smell of sulfur. The clinking of chains. And the stallion who had stood beside it.

“It was always you…” Luna whispered, barely a breath on her voice.

Misty could feel it. The blood all around them was growing more agitated. It began to swell up and ripple like the ocean. And it was calling to her. It didn’t say anything, but it knew who she was. And it knew she could feel it. It wanted Luna. It wanted her. But, it was also frustrated. For whatever reason, it couldn’t have them. Not yet. It was only a matter of time.

“Luna…” Misty said.

She didn’t need to say anything. Luna could see it. The blood in the basin was roiling around, as if some giant fish was circling around the platform. Two orange lights appeared beneath the surface of the blood, and they were growing brighter. A pair of gigantic horns broke the surface, and a massive paw slammed onto the platform beside the altar.

“Run!” Luna yelled.

Luna and Misty both ran down the bloody walkway away from the altar. Misty nearly slipped, but was saved by Luna, who helped her along the rest of the way. Beside the stallion, the altar began to glow under his command once more.

Behind Luna and Misty there was a horrible howl. And the hunt was on.
> The Final Chapter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything had gone to Hell.
Wherever they were, their lives were in constant danger of the things that came after them. In the bowels of those labyrinthine stone hallways, hurried steps skittered in the darkness. Their shadows passed along the wall, and a monstrous roar echoed behind them.
“Come on! Don’t slow down!” Discord shouted as he rounded the corner.
Spike appeared around the hall shortly after, clutching his spellbook. He sprinted as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, but the book under his arm and the backpack on his back were beginning to grow heavy. But the roar behind him spurred him onward, as the shadow of the thing passed over the wall of the corner he and Discord rounded.
Ahead of him, Spike saw Discord round a corner. Just as he was getting nearer, there was a loud crash like something heavy had dropped, and Discord’s voice yelped loudly.
“Discord!” Spike shouted.
Discord came barrelling back around the corner and kept running straight.
“Not that way!” he shouted.
Spike collected himself and only saw an empty hall with a gate slammed down in front of himself. After only a glance, he kept running desperate for any escape from the beast behind them.
The torches on the wall ahead of Discord started flaring up brightly, spewing embers at him as he ran. He had to cover his eyes as he did, blinding himself as he ran forth.
Something sliced across his arm and he spun to the ground. There was no time for Discord to see what had happened. Only enough to see something recede into the wall. Discord held his bleeding arm and quickly stood up far from where the thing had gotten him. He saw Spike rushing toward him from around the corner.
“Look out!” he yelled.
It took only a blink for the blade to come slicing out of the wall toward Spike. The only thing that saved him was his diminutive stature, allowing the blade to harmlessly slice the spines atop his head. Spike staggered against the wall, and raised his arm up to allow a single iron stake to pass beneath it.
“What the hell is this place!?” Spike shouted.
His question couldn’t be answered, as the thing at the end of the hall reared its head back and roared, before it started charging toward him and Discord.
Discord tried to run, but was stopped by a stake that shot up in front of him. He looked down, and saw that the ground was perforated with tiny openings. One was set directly between the toes of his cloven hoof.
There was a glint of metal, and a stake rose between his toes. Discord fell back just before the stake impaled his chin.
“The floor!” Discord said.
Spike dodged left and right as the stakes erupted around him. One rose too near him, and pierced the tip of the corner of his book. He stumbled to the side, and a horrible, cold feeling shot up between his spine and his backpack. Spike rose up into the air, dangling from his backpack.
“Discord!” he shouted, as he tried to pull his arms free of the shoulder straps.
Discord carefully tried to reach Spike as more of the stakes shot up around him. As Spike spun around the metal stake he hung from, he stopped himself when he saw their pursuer growing nearer. With the fangs of a ravenous beast and the muscles of a vicious ape, the thing bounded toward them on its enormous legs. It roared as a stake pierced its arm, and another through its foot. With a jerking motion, it broke the stake that impaled its arm, then used both hands to pull the stake through its foot up. It reared back and threw the broken stake at Spike, who spun around to dodge it. Discord had to wave his body to keep from being gutted, then coil around another stake that nearly gutted him again.
Spike yelled as the thing came closer. Every step it took, it was hindered by another stake impaling it. But even that hardly seemed to bother it. No matter what, it was going to get them for intruding in its home. Its prison. As it broke another stake, Discord was able to start lifting Spike upward. The going was slow, and Spike started frantically flipping through the pages of his spellbook.
The thing bellowed again, baring its fangs up to its gums as a stake from the wall impaled its neck. The stake started to bend as it walked forth, reaching for Spike.
“Find something! Hurry!” Discord strained.
“I’m trying! I’m trying!” Spike said.
He was rising up. The space between his back and his luggage was growing larger as the tapered point of the stake came nearer.
The beast roared and a stake rose up between Discord and Spike, forcing him to let go.
Spike started to drop and let go of his book as he raised his arms upward. The straps of his backpack slipped from his shoulders, allowing him to land on the cold, metal floor. Before him laid his spellbook, which landed with its pages open. He reached to retrieve it, until a stake pierced between the pages on the side. The book was pushed into a wall, nearest to where the beast was stuck.
Without it, Spike was nothing. He knew that from the encounter with the grey ghost when he had lost his book that time. His only weapon that could have saved his scales was nearly at the feet of the beast, which broke through another stake and inched ever nearer. Without thinking, Spike made a dive for it.
A stake from the wall stopped Discord reaching Spike. He only just had time to notice a glint of metal from the floor right in front of the dragon.
“Wait!” Discord yelled
It was too late. The moment the book was in Spike’s claws, the stake rose up on to his stomach. Discord shouted as his diminutive friend was risen into the air by the stake, until he rolled off the tip. Spike laid there, holding his stomach, groaning in pain. He wasn’t bleeding, but the stake had clearly done its damage to him. Spike rolled to the side just as another stake nearly pierced his eye. No time was wasted running to Discord, sliding beneath another stake that threatened to impale him from the side. Without stopping, Spike collected his backpack and clumsily put it on his back as he ran forth with Discord.
The beast behind them roared, shaking the hall with its voice as it watched them run away from it. It powered forward, bending and breaking the stakes that impaled it.
Discord and Spike both struggled to run. Both were injured and on the run, without much hope of the thing behind them letting up. Never before were things so hopeless and bleak for the two, who could only keep running until the beast caught them.
Without either one seeing it, a golden light seeped from the seams of Spike’s backpack.





The golden light at the altar glowed more brightly, and it began to spread further and further out into the endless sea of columns that surrounded it. The light burst forth, overtaking everything in that dismal room. A shadow appeared within it, its horned head lowered and its muscular legs pounding furiously against the stone floor, the chains of its body rattling violently. It opened its enormous mouth, and in an instant it was gone when the light faded.
Two more shadows appeared in the light as it rippled through the room. The second the golden light touched them, Misty yelped and rolled onto her face.
“Misty!” Luna said, as she helped her friend up just as the light passed and the room filled with shadows.
“Luna? Oh my– I could feel it! It was so big! I just couldn’t handle it!” Misty shuddered.
Misty’s talons were shaking violently in Luna’s hooves. Whatever it was she felt, it affected her worse than anything else up to that point. It was then that she realized the biggest mistake that she had made. There was evil in that room, and their backs were turned to it.
“I know where you are…”
Luna heard the voice as if it were speaking directly into her ear. No matter where she looked, she could see no trace of the beast in chains. Only the candles that flicked and waved in their sconces on the columns. She looked for the beast and listened for its steps or its chains. There was no sign of it. As if it had gone away.
The candle next to her snuffed out.
Luna dove aside with Misty in her hooves, just as a monstrous chain wrapped around the column. There was a glint of metal, and Luna ducked to avoid a bloody hook that lashed at her from beside herself.
“What was that?” Misty asked.
“Didn’t you see?”
The look on Misty’s face made it plain. No matter what happened, no matter how greatly she felt it, she didn’t have the gift of sight. Then, over her shoulder, something moved.
Luna pulled Misty from danger, just as a hook dug into the column where her neck would have been. The hook penetrated deep, scratching a groove as it dragged through the stone, then disappeared again. She yelped as a hook sliced her back. Misty caught her before she fell and was pushed out of the way of another swinging hook.
Misty stumbled and her side hit a column.
“Move!” Luna yelled.
Misty moved and a hook barely missed her.
Three hooks lashed out at them from the darkness. Luna stood herself and Misty on their back legs and pressed their fronts together, narrowly avoiding all three attacks.
Misty was pushed back as a hook lunged at her and dug into the stone floor with a sickening crack. She watched as a trickle of red pooled up from the ground where it had broken, and her heart turned to ice.
Luna was just able to see a pair of chains snaking down the columns on either side of Misty, who looked rapidly in every direction.
“Over here!” Luna said.
Misty started running forth, just as the hooks lunged at her. She was able to miss the first one, but it was too late for the second. The hook looped around her neck, only superficially cutting her flesh. But it still dragged her backwards into the darkness, toward a pair of enormous, orange eyes.
She struggled against her unseen restraint, leaving white marks as her talons dragged against the stone floor. 
“Luna, what’s happening!?” Misty panicked as she was pulled back into the shadows.
“Hold on!” Luna called, running to Misty’s aid.
Luna tried to get closer to Misty, and a wall of chains stopped her. She climbed through the gaps between two of the chains and fell when another caught her leg. Pain surged through her body as she landed on her injured wing, nearly keeping her from standing back up. It was only Misty’s cry for help that moved her on. Luna rose to her hooves and stumbled to Misty’s aid. There was a sharp pain in her wing that made her cry out in pain.
She dared not look, but she knew what had happened. A hook had pierced the wing she had injured that fateful night in the cemetery. The chain went taut and nearly made her hooves slip out from beneath her. The hook tore her flesh and ground against her bones. Every moment of struggle was agony.
Misty kept dragging further into the shadows where the beast waited, its eyes shining fiery orange. She grasped the edge of a column, barely able to grip it
Luna inched forward, her wing bleeding profusely. She could see the desperation in Misty’s eyes. Her silent plea for help. A shout escaped Luna’s throat as she stepped forth, the flesh on her wing tearing, staining her feathers red. Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. But she didn’t need to see. She knew where she was needed. Another shout, and she rushed forth, tearing her own wing apart when she broke free.
The way to Misty was painful, each step making her wing tremor harshly.
Misty’s talon slipped around the column. She could feel the thing behind her smiling. It was going to get her.
By the time Luna was at her side, she had to dig one talon into the floor. Luna pulled against the chain, feeling barely any resistance from her effort. She used both her hooves and her teeth, but still felt herself pulled toward the shadows. The eyes of the beast glared out at her. After so long, it was going to have her. And she would never escape.
Luna motioned the chain toward Misty, and felt just the slightest slack on the chain behind where she gripped it.
“Tilt your head back!” Luna grunted through her teeth.
“What!?” Misty said.
“Tilt it back!”
Misty did as she was told, feeling as if her spine were about to crack. She felt something pressing against her throat, choking the breath from her.
“Turn your head!” Luna strained.
Misty did, and felt that same pressure whoosh over her temple and across her beak. By some miracle, the point of the hook had missed her. Luna had to crumple to the floor to dodge the flying hook and landed with her eyes upon those in the darkness. She heard a rough growl from the dark, then the eyes blinked themselves out of existence.
“Luna…What just happened?” Misty whimpered, nearly in tears. “Your wing!”
“It will heal. Right now, I need you to not look away. It’s still there,” Luna said, pointing to the shadows.
“It’s everywhere,” Misty corrected.
Luna moved her gaze from where she last saw the eyes of the beast, expecting to see a thousand orange lights leering at her from the shadows. There was nothing. She couldn’t even hear the clinking of the beast’s chains. But the next time the beast showed itself, she knew her life was going to end.
An angry roar echoed from the darkness. The feeling was clear to Misty. It was after Luna. It was going to kill her. There were no thoughts in Misty’s head. Her whole body moved as if she were in some sort of dream. She only was aware of her talons shoving Luna aside, before she felt a pain greater than any she ever had before.
Luna stared, stunned at the sight of the hooks that dug into Misty’s flesh. Misty, who stood twitching her body, her voice stammering pitifully and her eyes frozen on Luna. Her mouth opened and she managed only one word.
“Run…”
It was the last thing Luna heard her say as she was dragged into the shadows. There was no struggle. There was no time. The candles along her path snuffed themselves out as she passed them, and Misty was swallowed by the darkness. All but two lights that were nothing but dots in the distance remained. And they started moving toward Luna. Heavy steps and the rattling of metal were heard, and Luna turned to run.
There was no more point in not turning her back. The beast was everywhere. It was going to get her.





A wall crumbled, and the beast charged through. Its roar echoed through the tunnels of the dungeon, announcing its arrival. When the echoes quieted, it was greeted with silence. It knew its prey couldn’t have gone far. It would find them. And it would kill them.
It crept through the halls, keeping its eyes turned to the shadows. The intruders were somewhere in its domain. None of the traps or the winding corridors would stop it. They would only serve to kill its quarry, if it didn’t find them first.
The sounds of squeaking, rusted metal caught its ears, and it charged in the direction of the noise. Through the many twists and turns of those devilish halls, two frightened figures tried desperately to escape their entrapment.
“Hurry up! Before it comes back!” Spike groaned.
“You hurry! I’m doing the best I can!” Discord replied.
The way before them both had been shut. Of four paths to choose, all of them closed. Discord had nearly been decapitated by a dropping portcullis, saved only by his quick reflexes. Now, they were trying to lift the heavy, metal gate, barely able to get it an inch off the ground.
Spike’s miniature arms strained to the point of nearly breaking from their sockets when he heard another roar. Whether it was coming from in front of him, from behind, or left or right, he couldn’t tell. All the more reason he felt to double his efforts. But, it was no good. The gate fell again with a loud thud.
It was no use. Between the two of them, their strength wasn’t enough to free themselves. Now, they had alerted their enemy to their location, if they hadn’t already. Spike began pacing impatiently. If he only had his fiery breath, he would be able to slice through the portcullis and make his own doorway. Better yet, if Discord had even a drop of magic, he could have turned it into gingerbread and they’d bust right through. As it was, they had only the spellbook Spike had brought along. And he had already flipped through it to look for a spell to open doors.
Nothing was found. As hard as he had looked, Spike could find no spell to specifically open doors, raise gates, or even blow up walls. The closest that he had ever come was the spell about crossing into other worlds with the use of a mirror.
Unless…
“Come on, Spike. I barely have one good arm here,” Discord said, as he tried lifting the gate again.
Spike ignored him. He kept flipping through his book, looking for that page. It was one that he had passed several times. Though he never paid much mind to it before, it may have held some clue to their escape at that moment. When he found it, he began to read the pages faster than he had read anything before. The wording was vague, but it seemed to be about how two similar elements could be twisted to the user’s purpose. Whatever that meant, there was no instruction about how to perform such a feat. But, with the other knowledge Spike had so far attained, it would be the closest shot he and Discord had.
He took off his backpack and retrieved the small mirror that he had taken from Luna’s room. He checked the handle of it, and found that it was made of solid wood. The rest of the frame was made from porcelain, and the surface was the usual reflective glass. Even though they weren’t the same as the gate, it would surely be close enough.
Somewhere in the distance, the sounds of rapid, heavy steps were approaching.
“Oh, shit! It’s here!” Discord harshly whispered. “We gotta hide somewhere! That thing’s gonna rip through these gates like cotton candy!”
Discord tried in vain to find a place to hide. Without his magic he was unable to reach the ceiling, which was the only conceivable place that he and Spike could have avoided the gaze of the beast. Instead, he saw something very odd. Spike was placing the mirror against the portcullis that they had been trying to open, and began chanting as he stared intensely at the glass.
“Thing of the earth to thing of the earth, I twist you so! Thing of the earth to thing of the earth, I twist you so!” Spike chanted.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Discord said.
Spike’s concentration wouldn’t be broken. He continued to chant as he held onto the mirror, his eyes fixed on the glass and the corridor past it. His slit pupils shrank into nearly invisible threads as the words repeated over and over from his throat.
“I’m gonna twist your neck so, if you don’t start helping to save our hides!” Discord growled.
The portcullis’ beams twitched and bent ever so slightly.
Discord gasped and looked more closely at the metal barrier, and saw it barely moving. Like molasses in a blizzard, as Applejack would have said. It was then that he became aware of the sounds of the steps once more, and saw a gigantic shadow appear in the darkness of the halls behind them. He turned around and saw something just barely visible in the dim torchlight. Its enormous muscles undulating, its sharpened fangs glistening. All prepared to rip and shred whatever it caught.
“Uh, Spike? You might wanna hurry that up!” Discord said.
Spike acted like he hadn’t heard a word that was said to him. He kept repeating his chant, even when he saw the eyes of the beast flash in the mirror. Not even when the metal beams started noticeably widening the spaces between them.
Discord watched as the beast stomped closer and closer to them. The walls around it began to glow, and the hall set itself ablaze as flames erupted from the stones. The beast roared loudly as its limbs flailed. It pounded its fists in vain against the walls, unable to stop the flames.
The thing would not be stopped. Only slowed down by the fiery assault. Discord looked at the walls around him, and saw the many grooves that he hadn’t noticed etched into the floor and the walls. If anything, they only indicated something bad. Down the hall, the beast had become a glowing silhouette within the flames. And it was looking at Discord.
“Gimme that!” Discord said.
“Hey!” Spike said, as the mirror was taken from him.
Discord placed it against the portcullis, chanting the same as Spike had been doing. His voice grew loud and fierce as he saw the flaming beast trudging toward him in the mirror’s reflection. Yet, nothing happened. Except for the sawblade that buzzed out of the wall dangerously close to his face. Discord yelped and jerked away from the blade, nearly toppling over Spike as more of the spinning blades came out of the floor and wall, grinding along the etched grooves.
“You’re doing it wrong!” Spike said, taking his mirror back. He placed it back onto the portcullis and resumed his chant.
Discord watched as the blades spun along their tracks, crossing each other's paths like some diabolical checkerboard. Beyond them, there was a loud crash as the beast grabbed the portcullis it had approached. It glared at Discord through the grates, baring its fangs as it growled. Its flaming arms wrenched and wrung the iron bars, warping them to allow it entry. The stone walls around it began to crack.
Spike continued his chant as the iron bars before him opened up just enough that he could put his head through them. Behind him, the halls shook as the beast started pulling the gate from the stone.
“That’ll do!” Discord quickly said, as he pushed Spike aside.
“What the hell!?” Spike said, as he fumbled to keep from dropping the mirror.
He was never answered, as Discord managed to make his whole body slither through the opening. Spike looked over his shoulder when he heard the terrifying scrape of metal on stone. The beast had nearly ripped its way through. Wasting no time, Spike tried crawling through the opening as well. Only his head managed to go through, as his backpack prevented him from proceeding.
Spike pulled his head back through and took off his backpack, just as the beast stepped over the twisted wreckage of the gate. He pushed his backpack through the hole in the gate, then lodged his head through, forcing his spines to squeeze through to the other side.
The beast stomped toward him.
Spike scrambled through the gate, and was almost all the way through when he was suspended above the ground.
The beast loosed a satisfied growl as it clenched its fist around Spike’s tail, its fangs bared ferociously. It yanked the dragon backwards, nearly pulling him through. Only Spike’s spines lodging in the grate aided his feeble resistance.
“Get this thing away from me!!” Spike shouted.
Discord reached through the gate and grabbed Spike’s tail. No matter how he pulled, he was no match for the strength of the beast.
The burned face of the beast pressed against the portcullis, growling quietly in Discord’s face. Discord tried to pull back, before his arm was grabbed by the beast’s free hand. Try as he did to resist, Discord couldn’t stop his arm slowly being hovered toward a spinning blade in the wall.
Curse after curse rapidly issued from Discord’s mouth as his arm got closer to the blade. Below him, Spike was gradually pulled back through the gate. The spellbook was against the gate beneath him. Even if he reached it, he knew he wouldn’t find a spell in time.
A golden light shone from the floor. Spike looked, and saw it seeping like a mist from his backpack. Not knowing what else to do, he lashed his tongue from his mouth and unpinned the flap on the top. The pack opened on its own, and the golden light burst out, shining on the face of the beast.
A low gasp filled the air as the grip on Spike and Discord was suddenly released. They looked and saw the beast’s face twisted in fear as it was bathed in the golden light, before it shielded its eyes. Spike dove for his pack and removed the source of the light, and pressed it against the gate.
The beast roared in terror and fell backwards when a blade in the floor sliced off its leg. Even as the rest of the blades tore it apart, it tried to retreat from the light. What remained of the beast looked back one last time as the golden light grew brighter. And in a flash, it was gone, only its bloodied bones left to be ground up by the blades.
Spike held the golden phoenix statuette in his shaking claws. If this was the power that it possessed, then Luna was in more danger than either he or Discord had realized.
The wings of the idol flapped, making Spike nearly drop it.
“What the hell did you do!?” Discord said.
“Nothing!” Spike said, as he struggled to put his backpack over the flapping statuette.
Spike jumped from the ground as the phoenix flapped madly inside his pack. He was bounced around against the walls and the gate, and barely managed to grasp his spellbook. Discord grabbed onto Spike’s tail and tried to pull him back to the ground, but was taken off his feet and dragged down the hall.
Try as either did to control the errant statuette, both failed. And their situation worsened as a gigantic arrow came hurtling toward them from the shadows at the end of the hall. Before either attempted to dodge, the arrow dropped to the ground the moment it touched the golden light from Spike’s pack. Along with that, dropping guillotines stopped in their tracks, mechanical rams jammed, acid ejectors sputtered feebly, and every other trap seemed to fail against the light of the phoenix.
There was no telling where they were going. As long as they were with the phoenix, it may have been the safest place for them, or the most danger they had ever been in in their lives.





Another soul has been claimed…

The words echoed through the many corridors, hammering Luna from all sides. In time, the words all melded together, creating a droning hum that faded into a whisper. As she ran, Luna heard the hum grow gradually louder. Ahead, she saw the candles down the corridor snuffing themselves out.
The hum became unbearably loud as the darkness drew nearer. Just before the candles before herself extinguished, Luna ducked behind the column nearest to herself, and the candles down the way she had just been all went dark. She peered out from her hiding spot, and saw the candles next to herself reignite. Along with them, the hum became quieter.
Luna walked into the open, looking for any sign of the beast’s approach. Only the hum of its voice remained a whisper in the distance. But the darkness that preceded it couldn’t be seen. She had to find a way to escape. Unless she was able to find a way to live another day, Misty’s death would have been all for naught.
The humming gradually became louder once more. Luna looked desperately around herself for where it was coming from. In the corner of her eye, she saw the light turn to darkness and dove to her side just as the light where she had been snuffed out. She yelped as her injured wing tremored from the impact.
Luna hastily rose to her hooves as she heard the humming grow louder and almost missed it as the darkness was approaching directly in front of her. She sidestepped the encroaching dark and ducked out of the way of the wall of hooks that came with it. Her hooves pounded the floor as she ran aimlessly between the columns. The humming had grown faint once more, but she knew it was only a matter of time before that terrible darkness charged her again. Luna looked all around herself, expecting to dodge a hook or run from the shadows. What she saw only surprised her more.
A green flame was lit somewhere in the distance, and it was flickering in her direction, then flickering back. She didn’t have Misty’s gift, but Luna felt as if she were being beckoned toward it. By who or what, she couldn’t say. But the sound of the dreaded humming growing steadily louder made up her mind.
She ran. Her wing seemed almost numb to her as she galloped for all she was worth. After that, she could hear nothing. Not even her hooves pounding the floor were heard by her. Her whole world had become that flame. If only she could reach it.
As if it were right behind her, Luna could hear the humming again. There was a chill wind that blew behind her, and she could see the world around herself growing darker, swallowing her up from behind.
The flame grew nearer, its sickly green light beckoning her closer, promising her sanctuary. The sound of the humming was overtaking Luna, coming at her from all sides at that moment. Right beside her, the candles that lit her way were snuffed out, and the sounds of rattling chains rang in her ears.
There was nothing else she could do. She couldn’t face that terrible darkness and the evil within it. Luna’s world went dark when she closed her eyes and leapt forth, feeling the cold, hard impact of stone a moment later. Luna opened her eyes and spun around, hurting her wing in the process. 
The entire world had gone as dark as if she still had her eyes shut. Every single candle had gone out. The only light was the glow of the green flame she now rested beside. She looked left and right, high and low, but couldn’t see any trace of the beast. Even the humming had stopped. But she knew it was out there, waiting for her to make her next move.
A silver spark drifted from above. Luna looked up and saw the sparks emanating from the flame, which motioned as if to beckon her forth once more. Luna obeyed and stood before the flame, which flared up higher and brighter. And again still, showering the area around its sconce with silver embers. Luna had to cover her eyes to keep them from the bright light. In another moment, she lowered her hoof and was shocked at what she saw. There in the flame was an image of the stallion she had known from her foalhood.
Berry Tarts stood in the foggy waters of a lake up to his knees. He looked forlornly out into the distance, unable to see anything ahead of himself. No light. No way forward. No future. Only the blade he held in his teeth offered any light. For many moments, he stood there with his head hung low, until he finally raised his eyes to the sky. He raised his hoof skyward and drove the blade deeply into his wrist. He winced, then dragged the blade through his flesh, spilling his blood in a bitter cascade that went down his arm and onto his shoulder. His bloody hoof rested in the water. And with his other hoof, he took the knife and dragged it across his throat, allowing his blood to pour out into the water.
For just one moment, Luna pitied the stallion in the image as he gasped and sputtered. Where he had gone, there was no turning back. And from the look in his eyes, she thought that he knew it. Even if he had wished to undo his actions, that was it. He was only a victim of himself. Anypony would only blame him for his death, and they would have no remorse for his self-inflicted demise. And it chilled Luna to think that she had only days ago considered such a thing when she saw that beastly light in the sky.
The blood in the water began to trickle further into the foggy depths, and Berry Tarts collapsed to his knees. His bleeding throat saturated the water with its crimson deluge, feeding the flow into the mist. Until the bleeding stopped altogether, and the river of blood disappeared into the murky beyond.
There was the sound of a heavy step and the rattling of chains. Luna looked around herself, terrified that she may see the beast standing right beside herself. There was that sound again, along with the splash of water. Luna turned her eyes back to the image in the flame, and saw a pair of orange lights appear through the fog. Another step, and she could see the darker shadow that the eyes were embedded in. In time, there was the beast that Luna had seen by the lake, towering over Berry Tarts.
It looked at him the same way that it had looked at her, its eyes understanding and fierce. But, there was something different about Berry Tarts that it could sense. A stallion who disregarded all life. Who knew there was nothing waiting for anypony who lived. Only to die at the end, no matter how they fought it. Who wished he could make others understand what he did, so that they might end their own miserable lives. There were no words between stallion or beast that Luna could hear, but that was what they knew. Berry Tarts would be granted a new life as a servant of the taker of lives. The destroyer. Shader.
The flame swirled about, and changed to show Berry tarts at work in his private chamber. The casts and molds that he had built for himself. The spells and formulas that he had concocted on his messily scribble chalkboard. At the end of it all, the heart of a filly that had died by her own hoof placed before a golden statuette of a phoenix, which spread its wings and absorbed the essence of the filly into its being. It couldn’t have just been any filly. They had to be chosen. For their power. For their gifts. Gifts to know things that other ponies simply couldn’t.
Once again, the flame swirled about. There was a silver filly with a white mane sitting on a fallen log by a foggy lake. She had no friends. No hope for a future. She was nopony special, and she knew it. All there was then was her and the rock that she had tied around her neck. There was only one thing else to do. She walked out to the water, dragging her heavy burden along with herself.
By the time that she was in the water that was up to her chest, she looked back at the stone that she had dragged out with herself. That was all there was left for her. Something that would drag her down into a darkness that she would never return from. Taking the rock as best she could, the filly heaved it forth and jumped into the depths with it.
As if the lake had been suddenly replaced, a dark hole seemed to have opened up where she was drifting down. The filly pulled at the roped around her neck as she sank lower and lower into the darkness. All she could do was turn around and face the light up at the surface one last time, before metal hooks rose up all at once, pierced her flesh and pulled her deeper and deeper into the dark. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t struggle or try to save herself. She just allowed herself to be dragged underwater, until she disappeared forever.
The image faded. The green flame sputtered in its sconce, and slowly died down to almost nothing.
Luna stared at the spot where the image once was. For centuries, she had wondered why she was tormented so. Only now, so far into her life, did things start to make sense. They had chosen her for a reason.
“You see now, do you not?”
Luna yelped and stepped back from the sconce as a pair of orange eyes opened up in the darkness beyond it. She hid behind the sconce, hoping in vain that the beast called Shader wouldn’t come looking for her.
“Why me?! Of all the ponies in the world, why did you choose to follow me?!” Luna asked, not even thinking that she would have given herself away if her enemy didn’t already know where she was.
The sound of rattling chains drew closer, and Luna shuffled around the side of the sconce.
“Yours is a power greater than any normal pony,” Shader’s voice rumbled from just a few feet away. “Even before your ascension, there was something special about you. And to think you envied your sister so.”
The tip of a fanged snout appeared from around the sconce, sending Luna running as quietly as she could behind the nearest column that she could reach.
“With you, Luna, I would no longer be confined to the realm of woes and fears. Your world would be mine to freely roam. To make my own.”
“And to convince everypony you see to take their own life?” Luna said from her hiding spot.
She heard a step come from in front of herself and ran off to her side. In the darkness, she could barely see what was in front of herself, hoping that the next column she reached hid her from Shader.
“Did I not say before that everything in life was worthwhile?” Shader’s voice said from somewhere in the darkness. “I take only the life which is offered to me. If one should want to end it, then I will not refuse it. Even if they come to regret their decision later.”
There was an orange light from very nearby, and the form of Shader illuminated in the darkness not fifty feet from Luna. She watched as the beast started walking between the columns, and saw his shaggy fur billowing about as his hooks swung. At the end of those hooks, the ghostly forms of departed ponies appeared once more. Each of their faces was lined with woe and regret. Whatever they had hoped to accomplish, whether to end their own suffering or perhaps to hurt somepony else, it had not gone as planned. Deep in the hairs of the beast, another chain swung in and out of sight. Attached to it was a pony that Luna hadn’t seen in years.
Her own father’s face appeared from within Shader’s form, staring directly at her with those same dead eyes she had hoped to forget. As soon as he had appeared, he was gone. Luna had looked into his eyes and felt his sorrow and loss. Every iota of his regret and crushing despair permeated her being. To bear the burden of rearing up the future ruler of Equestria, and the other daughter who wanted nothing to do with him. To have given his life to his career, but never even knew his youngest daughter’s favorite color. There had been nothing for him in the world of the living. In death, absolution. Or so he had thought.
“It was a terrible thing for him to be your poppa,” Shader said, as he walked between the columns. “He wanted the best for you and your sister. But, he never had what it took to father an alicorn. And he knew it.”
Luna continued to avoid her demonic pursuer, hiding in the darkness behind each of the columns. Some part of her had always wondered why her father would have done something so depressingly selfish. To abdicate any of his burdens would have been a blessing. To do it as he had made Luna choke on the memory of finding him.
“You can see him again,” Shader’s voice rumbled. “Let yourself reconcile with your dear poppa, and your friends will go free.”
The image of Shader flashed between the spaces between the columns from the direction Luna saw him moving. As she started circling around to avoid him, she saw something that halted her steps completely. There was Misty, alive and well hanging from the hooks that draped over Shader. Each of her limbs was restrained by a hook, with one pressed directly over her heart. Her eyes locked with Luna’s, and her beak opened ever so slightly. No sounds came from her throat. Luna didn’t need to hear any to understand the plea for help.
Luna’s father appeared from within Shader’s fur again, his face right next to Misty’s, who recoiled at the sight of the dead stallion beside herself.
“The receiver has come. Make your decision,” Shader said.
With that, he was gone. Luna looked around for the presence of the demon, but saw nothing in the darkness. Then, somewhere in the distance, there was a golden light. And it was growing rapidly closer to her. With it, there came the sounds of two familiar voices shouting as if they were falling from a great height. The candles mounted upon the columns all lit up just as the golden light was upon her. In the light, she saw something that she had never expected. Just as they passed by her, Discord wrapped his serpentine body around a column.
“Luna! Spike, we found her!” he said.
“How–What in the–” Luna stammered, both relieved and frightened for them.
“Luna! The phoenix! It’s alive!” Spike said, clutching his pack as the idol within thrashed about.
“I know!” Luna said. Suddenly, things began to fall into place in Luna’s mind. As if something had suddenly possessed her, she realized the way out. “You must find a way to use the phoenix!”
“What!? Are you out of your gourd!?” Discord said.
“Trust me! It’s the only way!”
Spike tried to answer, but stopped as his spellbook began slipping from his grip. All Luna could do was hurry over to help him restore his hold on it, before Discord’s body slipped from around the column, and the two of them went hurtling onward into the distance.
Luna watched them go into the darkness. Before she could ever decide whether or not to go after them, she felt a presence behind herself. She slowly glanced over her shoulder, and saw Shader standing there. He didn’t hide or obscure himself. He was there, far away down the corridor, staring directly at Luna. And Luna, in turn did the same. There would be no more running away. No more denial or foalish pretending. She would face it. For the sake of her friends, she had to.
With one step after another, she began advancing toward the demon, who did the same in kind.





The phoenix flew through the corridors, carrying its unwilling passengers along with it. After what felt like forever, Discord and Spike finally were dropped to the ground when the phoenix simply fell from the air.
“Just once, I’d like to land on something soft,” Discord groaned as he picked himself up from the stony floor.
Spike’s backpack finally fell from his shoulders, and he scrambled to get a grip on the statuette again, only for it to roll out of his backpack all on its own. He watched as it levitated into the air.
“What the hell is this?” Spike wondered aloud.
He and Discord watched as the phoenix floated downard, its wings spread like some angelic statue. It alighted upon an altar at the far end of the platform they were standing on. Before the platform was a stallion who had his back turned.
“This…This is the beginning of a grand, new age. Where everypony will know what I have always known,” the stallion said, as he looked over his shoulder.
“It’s you! The foal fucker!” Discord said.
“Ah, yes. I believe we’ve met before,” Berry Tarts said, a fiery, forked tongue flickering between his teeth as his skin became sullen and grey.
“Fuck me!!” Spike yelped as he recognized the stallion for what he was.
Berry Tarts glanced at Spike and smirked.
“Such a foul mouth on such a little dragon. Your parents would be disappointed. Especially since you should know better than to take things that don’t belong to you,” he said.
Spike noticed the way that Berry Tarts was looking at his spellbook, and briefly wondered how he never thought about why such a thing was in Twilight’s library. A devilish book filled with devilish spells, penned by a devilish pony who had nothing but contempt for ponykind. He began flipping through the pages, trying to find a spell to use.
“It’s no matter,” Berry Tarts continued, making Spike stop. “Neither you, nor that book can do anything to stop me. Before the greatest power is taken, you will serve as a delightful precourse.”
Discord’s heart sank as he heard shrill, manic laughter coming from Berry Tarts, whose limbs started to morph into grotesquely long, seemingly boneless appendages that reached out into all directions. He stood upright and his head twisted completely around, revealing the visage that Discord hoped he would never gaze upon again. The Laughing Man had come for him.
There was no time to perceive what had hit Discord from the side. Whatever it was, it had sent him rolling nearly off the edge of the platform. His arm draped limply over the side, soaking in the pool of blood. There was a flash of metal, and Discord pulled his arm out of the way as one of those hideously long arms swung a cleaver with the force of a guillotine. The blade cut through the stone, leaving a deep gash where Discord’s arm was.
Discord stumbled to his mismatched feet and found himself surrounded by the writhing limbs of the Laughing Man. More hands than there should have been passed by his gaze, each holding some bloody instrument of pain. Discord had suddenly become a lone survivor in the eye of some terrible storm that wanted him dead. He dodged as an arm with a fistful of nails jabbed at him. And again when another arm with a hatchet nearly sliced off his elbow.
He grabbed the arm with the hatchet and used it to disarm a circular saw blade that was swung at him. Soon, he was fighting off attacks from all sides. The arm with the hatchet extended and wrapped around Discord like a python about to consume its prey. More of the hands reached in from the cyclone of limbs and started pulling at him from all of his extremities, as though they meant to pull him apart.
Discord quietly yelled as his body was pulled beyond its limit. His spine began to crack, and his arms and legs became numb.
Over the sound of his cracking bones, Discord heard another noise. One like a thousand crackling fires that swept through the world’s driest forest. The air grew hotter as hellish red flames billowed through the spaces between the cycling arms. Like a bunch of cockroaches that had just seen a lit room, the arms scattered. Spike stood with the open spellbook in his hands, blowing over the bare pages. Though it was only air, it turned to those infernal flames the moment it left the pages, fanning out and torching every one of the flailing arms.
The arms convulsed and released Discord from their grip.
“Fuckin’ sweet!” Spike said, admiring his own handiwork.
His elation ended very quickly when one of the hands grabbed the other end of the book and hoisted it into the air. Spike kept his grip on the book and was lifted up with it. The other arms reached for him, their weapons in hand.
Discord picked up the saw blade he had disarmed before and threw it at the arm that held the book, severing it.
Spike fell through the air and was caught by another arm. He tried breathing his hellish flames at it, but had to dodge a swinging cleaver. He slipped from the grip of the hand, and landed on the back of another arm, sliding down its length. Spike batted away the other arms that reached for him with the spine of the book, before he managed only a short spurt of his hellish fire from the pages.
The arm he slid down convulsed and threw Spike off, sending him into the moat of blood that surrounded the platform. The blood rose up to meet him, opening up like a pair of fanged jaws. Spike fell between the open maw of the blood, and it snapped around him, pulling him into its sanguine depths.
He didn’t even have time to take a breath. The blood around him came down on his body, crushing his chest from the outside as his lungs begged for air. He couldn’t explain what, but he could feel something else that was in there with him. A thousand other things, filled with a thousand regrets and sorrows that tried to fill him with the same.
His legs paddled frantically, but Spike could barely feel any movement. No matter what, he was unable to rise. He started paddling with his arms, and his spellbook fell from his grip. Spike reached for the book, the tips of his claws barely touching the corners as it drifted in the blood. The book turned around and its pages spread apart. Through the murk of the blood, Spike saw something. The very page that he had turned to in order to bring himself and Discord to help Luna. Perhaps if it could be reverse engineered? It was a longshot, but his hare-brained improvisation hadn’t failed him before.
The book drifted closer to him, and Spike clutched it to his chest. He kept his grip on it as he resumed paddling toward the surface.
His arm was grabbed and he started thrashing about. He wouldn’t go down. Not when he was so close to escape.
Spike rapidly ascended upward, and his lungs filled with air. When the blood dripped from his eyes, he was just able to see Discord dodge another blow from the Laughing Man. Directly after, he swung Spike to deflect a blade.
“Hey! Watch the book!!” Spike shouted, sheltering the book from attack.
He was swung again by his tail, knocking away the volley of attacks that rained down on them.
Discord clubbed one of the arms with a sickening crunch, making the limb writhe in pain. One of the arms lunged at him, making him fall over and drop Spike.
“Cover me!” Spike said, as he collected his backpack.
“For what!? You think fighting this guy’s easy!?” Discord replied.
“I think I can get us out of here!”
Discord didn’t know what was going on. Whatever it was, he decided to trust his friend and defend him from the onslaught of the Laughing Man.
The terrible, grinning face of the Laughing Man appeared between the mass of its own limbs, and its laughter quietly seeped into the ears of Discord. It was now or never. Chaos versus chaos. Insanity against insanity. Discord trembled as he faced down the demon, ready to lose it all.





Luna continued to walk down the corridor toward Shader, watching as the beast grew ever closer to her. There was no fear in her. No hesitation. She could hardly feel anything but her drive to move onward. There was no way for her to explain it. All there was left was herself, walking toward what she knew was meant to be the end of her. Even though she was too far away to see, she knew that Shader was smiling. He knew that there was nothing left for Luna. Nothing but the will to do what it took to save her friends.
It was the simplest thing. Offer up her life, and the others would be able to return to the life they once knew. Most of all, she would see her father again. She would finally know why he had taken himself from her life. Why he would do something so selfish when other ponies faced similarly overwhelming trials in their lives. If he even still loved her.
Shader was growing closer. Luna could hear his chains rattling as the demon gradually began running toward her. Beneath the chains, she could hear the many voices moaning their sorrowful choir. Between Shader’s strides, Luna caught sight of Misty, who was staring ahead, her eyes wide with terror. It was then that Luna became suddenly thoughtful of her choices. If her friends were allowed to return to the lives they knew, what life would they be returning to? It would be the same as it was, but their lives would belong to Shader. And there would be more ponies like Berry Tarts in the world, throwing away the lives that they had to spite and hurt others. And there would be Shader, feeding off of their abandoned lives.
She would not allow it.
Keeping her pace, Luna continued further on down the corridor, the candles on either side of her growing suddenly brighter as if to shout their protests, then suddenly dying down into almost nothingness. Shader’s body illuminated with a dull glow, the silhouettes of his many hooks strobing across his body. Through them, Luna could see the only living form that clung to Shader, her face passing between the shadowy chains like prison bars. Shader began to run, while Luna continued her determined stride.
They were upon one another. In a matter of steps, the demon would have her. All or nothing. Life or death. Luna was prepared to lose it all. No matter what happened to her next, she knew that her friends would find a way. And it would be the biggest mistake that Shader ever made to let them go free after he had her in his grasp.
The entire world ahead of Luna was blotted out by Shader’s enormous form. The orange eyes of the beast flashed brightly, bathing Luna in their otherworldly light. Then, the world became a swath of swinging chains. To bind her. To pull her in and never let go.
Misty’s face appeared between the swinging links.
A sudden weightlessness overcame Luna, and she could feel her body brushing past the chains. She could see the lost souls. Feel everything that they did in their moments before their death. And when her eyes met her father’s, Luna knew why she had been given her gift. If she could ease the sorrows of the departed, they would rest. If she could change the course of a pony’s life from Shader, her gift would not have been wasted.
For the first time in centuries, she saw her father smile. Though it passed quickly, it was a memory that she would hold onto forever as she reached out her hooves and wrapped them around Misty.
The hook by her heart was knocked away. Her limbs were lifted from the other hooks. Misty felt herself rise up, then fall to the ground with Luna on top of her.
Misty wanted to thank Luna, but she felt a sudden terrible tremble in her spine. Luna looked over her shoulder and saw Shader turning sharply around. She clambered to her hooves and grabbed Misty by her talon.
“This way! The others are working on our escape!” Luna said.
Though Misty had no idea who the others were, she didn’t question Luna. She simply did as she was told and followed after her. Back through the darkened corridors. Back to the pool of blood.
As she ran, Misty began to notice something had changed about Luna. She began to feel something growing within her friend. Something that was warm and sheltering. The one thing that was lost in that desolate place. Somehow, she knew that it was what was going to get them out of there.





No matter how Spike tried to sprinkle chalk, it was dusted away. Whenever he tried to burn his lavender, his concentration was broken. Even as Discord was fighting off the many attacks of the Laughing Man, Spike was still in a fight for his own life.
Discord fared no better. Without his own magic, he hardly knew what to do in a fight. Even with a weapon in his hand, he was practically powerless against the onslaught of the demon. Chaos was fighting a losing battle against an enemy who outnumbered you on his own. Not changing the clouds into cotton candy. If only he understood his own power. If only he ever knew what he wasn’t, then he could have known what he was.
The swirling limbs brought the image of the technicolor sphere back to Discord’s mind. The sheer, unknowing force that he could never have hoped to match. The force that he would have faced to rescue everypony. Spike. Luna. Silver Blitz.
Silver Blitz appeared in the mind of Discord. The filly who had awakened something deep within him that even he never thought could have come to light. Somepony who he had almost given his very blood to rescue.
“Blood!” Discord suddenly thought.
He was pushed back when he blocked another attack from the flailing limbs. Back to the edge of the platform, where he saw the Laughing Man’s malicious grin peering through the flailing arms.
Discord dropped to the floor and allowed his hatchet to dip into the blood. Without standing up, he slashed at one of the arms that tried to impale him with an iron stake. The hand was severed from its body, and the bloody stump spewed a sickly grey mist. The shrill cackling of the Laughing Man turned to a shriek of pain, and a sadistic smile spread across Discord’s face. It was he who was laughing now.
“Spike! Use the blood!!” Discord shouted.
Spike had done what Discord had told him and started mixing blood with the chalk in his claw. Why had he not thought of such a thing before? The second the bloodied chalk was put on the perimeter of the platform, it became immovable by the power of the Laughing Man. Whether it was some power beyond either of them, or simply the spite of the many victims whose blood had been spilled by that sadistic demon, he didn’t question it. There was now a way to keep his spell from being ruined. He had his eyes on their salvation, and he wasn’t going to fail.
Discord lopped the limbs of the Laughing Man. No matter how many were cut, more came. But, he was no longer concerned with winning. So long as Spike was safe to finish his magic. A pair of arms lashed out from the bloody pool and reached for Spike. Discord lunged across the platform and sliced them both in one clean blow.
The Laughing Man rose up from beyond his wall of flailing limbs. The storm of arms closed in around the two, and the demon began laughing his cruel laugh.
Discord stood protectively over Spike, who kept about his business. The little dragon wasn’t about to stay and drown in the overwhelming odds, and Discord resolved to do the same.
The sight of one of the severed arms awakened a deliciously evil thought in Discord’s mind. He grabbed the arm by its bloody stump, tossed his bloody hatchet into the air and swung the arm so that it caught the weapon. With a wide swing, he cut an enormous swath through the swirling arms, and the Laughing Man’s shrieks of pain became a sweet tune that Discord could almost dance to as he whipped his improvised butchering tool.
Through one of the gaps he had cut, Discord could see something approaching. Luna was coming. Next to her was a griffin that he didn’t recognize. Behind them, there was an encroaching darkness. Something that he knew could only be evil.
Spike finished the circle of bloodied chalk. He opened his spellbook to the page he had marked, and started reading the spell that had brought himself and Discord to that horrible place. When he did, the phoenix statue began to emit its horrible golden glow. Its eyes shone eerily red, and the ring of bloody chalk began to glow with the same golden light. The glow began at the pedestal by the phoenix, and it slowly spread around like a flame along a trail of oil.
One of the Laughing Man’s limbs rushed Spike, but stopped as if it had hit a wall when it tried to pass through the light. Discord saw the happenstance, and looked out to Luna and her griffin friend. Supposing that they didn’t reach the circle in time? Supposing they were trapped outside while he and Spike went on without them.
The Laughing Man’s eyeless gaze turned to the approaching newcomers, and his smile grew more malicious.
“Keep reading!” Discord instructed Spike as he rushed to the walkway at the end of the platform.
While Spike continued his magic ritual, Discord lopped away the reaching limbs of the demon. Luna and the griffin were so close now. Even with the darkness encroaching behind them and the Laughing Man coming down from above, they couldn’t fail.
Discord swung the severed arm around and sliced away the arms of the Laughing Man that came down on the others. The hand of the arm let go of the bloody hatchet, and Discord swung it toward the others. The gnarled hand grabbed Luna and Misty by their front legs, and Discord yanked them both like he was reeling in the granddaddy of all marlins on a hook.
The light around the circle was nearly closed. It crept closer on either side of the walkway. Closer…Closer…
The two flew into Discord, and the circle was completed. They were trapped now. Luna could see the Laughing Man clawing desperately at the barrier around them, but Shader had disappeared into nothingness.
“The phoenix!!” Luna gasped when she saw the statuette coming alive.
“Everypony look away! You can’t look at anypony living!!” Spike shouted.
They all did as Spike had said. Discord looked to the east. Spike looked to the south. Misty looked to the west. And Luna looked northward, directly into the eyes of the phoenix. Past the phoenix, she saw Shader appear from the darkness beyond. He glared at her, silently telling her that he would never be gone. And she knew it. So long as there was despair, he would be there to take a life. As long as there were ponies, griffins, and whatever have you, there would always be despair. But Luna knew what she would do next. The moment she was home, she was going to do everything she could to weaken the power of the demon. And that would be the sweet revenge that she was going to have for the years of torment she had endured.
Luna took the phoenix in her hooves, and raised it upward.
The haughty grin of the Laughing Man changed to a horrified gasp. Shader’s gentle eyes morphed to fury as the golden light of the phoenix engulfed him and what was now Berry Tarts. A pathetic stallion who dedicated his existence to hurting others was now panicking to cling to it.
Spike ignited the lavender with his hellish fire breath and chanted the magic words over and over, his mind focusing to a fine point. An image appeared in the bloodstained image of the mirror he held in his claws, and with a shout he shattered it at his feet, the shards of silvern glass falling into the pool of blood.
The blood began swirling violently about, until it engulfed everything. For just one more moment, Luna saw her father’s face. Then, she saw nothing.





First, there was the sound of the gentle wind blowing. Then, the sound of a bird chirping.
Luna raised her head and looked around herself. There was grass before her snout, and a tiny flower growing through it. Raising her head, she saw a grubby old headstone with the name Dusty etched into it. She rose to her hooves, and found that her wing was no longer reduced to shreds of flesh. It was now only as wounded as that first night she had spent escaping the cemetery. To her everlasting delight, she saw Discord, Spike and Misty all lying in the grass as well.
“Everypony! Get up! We’re home!!” Luna jubilantly shouted.
Misty’s eyes fluttered open.
“Wha…What the hell happened?” she asked.
“We’re home! It worked!!”
“We’re alive! We’re home!” Misty squealed as she hugged Luna.
Discord jolted awake and scrambled backwards as he found that he was dangerously close to the cliff that he had fallen down only a few short nights ago.
“Mighty crap! Isn’t a guy safe anywhere!?” Discord said.
He yelped when he tripped over Spike, who sat suddenly upright in Discord’s way.
“I did it! I got us out!!” Spike cheered as he triumphantly waved his spellbook around.
Luna and Misty watched as Spike celebrated his victory. They shared a smile between them as they watch the dragon dance around with his book like it was a living partner.
“Should we tell him what actually happened?” Misty asked.
“No. We’ll let him have this,” Luna giggled.
“Oh! Princess Luna,” Spike said as he and Discord trotted over to the others. “I’m sorry, but I had to break your mirror to get us out of there.”
“Worry not, Spike. Mirrors come and go. But friends? Well…you know,” Luna said.
The others all smiled. It was something that they had heard Luna and her sister espouse for years. Only now did they truly appreciate what it had all meant. None more than Luna herself.
“Hold on. There is something of yours that I managed to save. Sorry for taking it, but I had to use something of great value to you to help you,” Spike said as he rummaged through his backpack.
“What is it?” Luna wondered.
Spike produced the item from his backpack and handed it to Luna, who was delighted to find that she was able to use her magic to take ahold of it. When she saw what Spike had given her, her lighthearted smile changed to a furious scowl.
“This–You used my issue #0 Power Ponies to cast your spells!!?” Luna yelled.
“Whoa!! That’s, like, a crime against culture!” Misty said.
“And if there’s a single wrinkle on this, I’ll make it a crime punishable by banishment!!” Luna growled.
“Petrify the bastard! See how he likes having a stiff neck for a thousand years!” Discord said, gesturing shame to Spike.
“Hey! Let’s not be hasty here!” Spike nervously said.
Whatever could have been said next was silenced when the phoenix dropped between them all.
Not one of them dared to go near it. They all looked at it like an explosive that was about to go off at any second. Finally, Misty stepped forth and looked over it.
“I don’t feel anything in there,” she said.
“Nothing?” Luna asked.
“No. No spirits. No power. No thoughts. It’s like it just, I don’t know, stopped working.”
Luna magically picked the idol up and examined it carefully. Such a dangerous thing had no place in the world of the living. Not even the moon was a safe place to keep it. Knowing the danger it posed, but unwilling to destroy it, Luna tucked it into the sling that held her wing.
“This vessel holds not only the evils of two demons. It houses the thousands of restless spirits that the two have collected. Until we are able to put those spirits to rest, I shall keep it,” Luna declared.
“You sure that’s a good idea? All this garbage was started by that trinket,” Discord said.
“I can think of no better thing to do with it. For the sake of everypony who has ever felt their life was never worthwhile, I must do this.”
Discord managed a smile. Among those souls, Silver Blitz was sure to have found a way to put her regrets to rest. And he looked forward to the day that she would happily meet him in his dreams. His eyes fell upon the gravestone with Dusty’s name on it. On that night, that terrible night when he had considered taking his own life, he wondered why he ever considered such dark thoughts. There was always so much to live for, even if he didn’t see it right away.
Luna was about to turn around and urge the others to follow her, when she heard hooves approaching up the steps of the hill. Strangely, she saw an antiquated coin flip up into the air and fall back down. Then again. This time, a stallion in tattered clothes walked up the steps to the cemetery hill. When he caught the coin, he noticed the others.
“Well, isn’t this a pretty picture. Here I thought I was the only one who was going to pay respects to the departed on this fine morning,” the stallion said.
Luna looked at the stallion, who flipped his antique coin once more and caught it in the pocket of his coat.
“Have we met before?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I’d remember meeting a motley band like you guys on my travels,” the stallion said. “Although, maybe you met one of my family. I come from a long line of travelers. Professional sightseers, you might say. Picking up the wisdom of the world throughout the ages. Always with a coin in our pockets and a smile on our faces.”
Luna recalled the coin as one that existed long before she was even born. Perhaps like the phoenix, it held the spirits of those that came before. She hoped that one day, the phoenix would only be a prison for evil it contained. With what she had learned, she knew how to begin. And as a smile bloomed onto her face, Luna bade him goodbye.
“Then, I’ll wish you safe travel,” she said. “And remember, only wish them the best and never turn your back to evil.”
“Oh, don’t I know that. I’m surprised that hasn’t become common sense by now,” the stallion said as he took his hat off before one of the graves.
“Discord. If you will,” Luna said.
“Coming right up,” Discord said, cracking his knuckles.
A snap of his fingers, and they were all gone from the cemetery. Back to their homes. Back in the world they belonged. A world that was waiting for them to make it a place that everypony couldn’t wait to live in.