The Sisters Grim

The Sisters Grim had escaped, that much was certain. Eight guards and two civilians dead, and the entirety of the Canterlot gardens burned down in a massive fire, leaving countless millions in damage costs.

The Princesses had not expected this; they never would have with how many years it had been since they had sealed the Sisters away in stone. Now, however, everything had changed, and they needed a way to stop them before they returned to their former actions of destruction.

They wouldn’t send the Elements. For one, Celestia was far too fond of Twilight Sparkle and her friends- especially so after the threat posed by Sombra’s recent return -and she couldn’t bear sending them to almost certain death. Even if she could, their power with the Elements was far too limited compared to her and Luna; they would never succeed.

No, now they needed aid from a source they never thought they’d see again, and wished they never would.

**

(Canterlot Asylum)

Commander Steelhoof trotted nervously alongside Princesses Celestia and Luna. He may have been a high-ranking soldier in Canterlot’s Royal Guard, but there was one place not even the bravest would feel safe; the Canterlot Asylum.

Honestly, he had no idea why they were even there- the place had been decommissioned and abandoned twenty years ago due to various, unspoken legal incident a certain group of doctors had gotten themselves caught in. The institution was closed, the doctors tried and jailed, and the patients moved to the Canterlot Medical Center for proper care and rehabilitations; it was all common knowledge.

So, for the life of him, he could not figure out why the two monarchs had ordered him to accompany them. They only said they were retrieving a necessary- if slightly unwanted -asset to quelling the recent string of criminal activity in the capital. He couldn’t understand who or what could be located in the old, decrepit building that would be anymore use than the battalions of guards they had on standby.

But, being the loyal soldier he was, he followed them inside, though he immediately wished he hadn’t.

The building looked horrible from the outside; peeling paint, cracked walls, shattered windows, and stains of age already marking the once-prestigious building. The inside was a whole nother story.

The halls were filled with trash and litter, ranging from crumpled old paper to discarded medical supplies from the asylum’s glory days. The floors, walls and ceilings were in a state of rotten disrepair- mor stained and broken than the outside, only with the odd busted light and hanging, frayed wiring.

Their hoofsteps echoed off of the silent walls, every step grating more and more on his already strained nerves. There was no light aside from the magi provided by Princess Celestia, and the absolute silence- the resounding clicks of their hooves notwithstanding -was intimidating, eerie hanging overhead and looming down on him.

The Princesses seemed to be feeling it too; they’re quick glances from side-to-side matched his own, and he could see sweat glistening on their fur, just as his own.

He felt himself flinch as a loud drip of water came down from somewhere nearby, it’s sound only enhanced by the otherwise silent structure. The Princesses fared no better, as they all stopped in slight discomfort and surprise, before shaking their ridiculous fears aside to continue onward.

Twenty minutes of walking through the increasingly fear-inducing halls lead them to an old, rusted gate, which held an elevator behind its seemingly ancient doors.

“This is where it will only get worse,” he heard Celestia murmur, “and worse and worse and worse...” She appeared slightly dazed, with a far off, hollow look in her eyes.

He heard Princess Luna sigh, “Let us get this over with. Sister, Steelhoof, please enter the elevator.” She seemed just as putt off as her sister, which only worried Steelhoof even more. He, nonetheless, complied.

The gate gave off a horrible screech as it was forced aside by Luna’s magic, and the old metal of the lift itself creaked and groaned under the stress of their bodies, sending a haunting cry through the empty building, and far down the elevator shaft.

The gate screeched once more as Luna closed it, and her magic operated an old wheel on the floor of the lift, an aged steel cable uncoiling with every slow, grinding rotation. Lethargically the elevator began to descend, and Steelhoof had to wonder; how old was this? Certainly it must be older than the asylum itself. The building was only opened fifty years ago, and this type of lift had been outdated over a century before.

“What you are about to see,” Celestia said suddenly, as if hearing Steelhoof’s thoughts, “is older than even this city; it’s been buried here since Everfree was the capital of Equestria.” She turned her head and stared into his eyes with a harrowed gaze, “This is a very ancient, very dark secret our rule has held for almost three thousand years, and I trust you will not divulge what you are to learn here today.”

It was a statement more than an order or request, one which Steelhoof shakily and readily agreed to.

“O-of course, your highness....” He would have managed a slute, but his nerves had gotten the better of him, and he simply resorted to a respectful incline of the head.

“Good.” The two sisters said with an edge to their voices. He could have sworn Princess Celestia said something else under her breath, but he didn’t catch it, and was not compelled to inquire about what it was.

The ride from there on out was silent, aside from the scraping, grinding whine of the elevator as it descended into the darkness. The stone walls crept by slowly, and there seemed to be no sign of stopping anytime soon. In fact, there were no floors beneath the one they had departed from, a fact which only disturbed Steelhoof the more hundreds of feet they dropped.

Of course, he wished it had stayed that way.

A floor which they had not stopped at- a fact for which Steelhoof would be eternally grateful -held a sight he never expected to see in his lifetime, and never hoped to see again.

The lift’s slow crawl let him see through the glass doors of a floor he had never knew existed, some few hundred feet below the main floor of the asylum. Behind the glass doors was a long, dirtied hall, with large maroon stains across the walls and floor. He suspected what they were stains of, but decide not to dwell on that thought. Instead, his focus was drawn to the floor.

Hundreds of white bags- body bags, for which he recognized after the odd murder case in Canterlot -were strewn across the ground. None of them laid flat, they all had a vaguely pony-shaped lump held within, and each one sat stained maroon as the walls.

“Only half of the patients made it to the medical center,” he heard Celestia mutter in a haunted voice, “the rest never left this place....”

If his nerves hadn’t locked his body completely, he would have vomited then and there.

**

(The Bottom Floor)

Steelhoof struggled to leave the elevator, and the the almost volatile state of their destination floor made no issue with deterring him from stepping off.

There was almost no light save for the dim, mostly shattered bulbs overhead, that only served to illuminate what could be described as a nightmare. Broken equipment, trash and waste, maroon stains on the walls and scattered debris, what could barely be identified as claw marks in the tiled floor. The smell was the worst part.

The horrid stench of rotten... something filled the air- the bones here and there telling Steelhoof full well what had decomposed, even if he denied it in his mind. A lingering fume of waste- urine and feces -filled the air alongside the rotted smell, mixing into a mask of odor that made not just the commander retch, but the Princesses as well.

“It has been... far too long,” Luna mumbled, “but not long enough....”

“Come, Steelhoof,” Celestia started down the hall, her sister in step behind her, “it is only a short walk....”

He swallowed the bile building in the back of his throat and stumbled forward into the seeming abyss of the hallway. The sounds of their hooves were muted here by the caked muck layering a majority of the floor, leaving them all in complete, utter silence as they pushed forward.

Steelhoof swore he could hear whispers in the darkness; strange words being passed between unseen entities that watched them from nowhere. Low, dark tongues muttered amongst what he could not see, and should never be able to hear.

‘Pay them no mind,’ he thought to himself in an attempt to calm his racked nerves, ‘they are just figments of your imagination....’

They never grew louder nor quieter, much to his relief and dismay.

Still they marched on, as the conditions became worse and worse, and Steelhoof saw more of the remains of what he hoped were not ponies strewn amongst the ruined floor. He did not take note of the time spent walking down this hall; he simply wanted to keep his thoughts on anything but the asylum by then.

Finally, however, they reached what he guess was their final stop; a large, steel door, probably almost several feet thick, with a series of locks and bolts lining the surface. There was a series of clicks as blue and gold magic enveloped these locks, and the door groaned to life.

“This,” Celestia said fearfully, “is Death’s door.”