I sat in my metal cage, gazing out between the cold iron bars at the rock surrounding me. I wish I could say that it was silent, but the curtain of quiet was broken every now and then by whispering winds, teasing me of the freedom I wouldn't be able to have for another thousand years. It didn't even smell pleasant, the potent smell of brimstone constantly assaulting my nostrils. It faded after a while, but it was a poor substitute for the sweet smells of the plains far above.
As I lay there, I heard the telltale sound of hooves against stone coming from in front of me. My ears shifted slightly, but I remained in the unmoving position still. More than likely Celestia had picked some unlucky pony to watch over me and try to be my “friend” just as she did to Discord. Me, Tirek, become friends with a pony?
Nevertheless, what came over the steps in front of me was indeed a pony. She was a drab grey, almost blending in with the stone spears that rose outside of my cage. Her mane was a desaturated purple, flat and straight. Her clothes were also drab, a greyish-blue that was similar to her bland eyes. She looked almost as if Discord had reversed her character, but I doubted this pony had much character to begin with.
She paused for a moment to look at a scroll she produced from under her robe before talking to me directly. “You must be Tirek.” With the amount of emotion in her voice, or rather, lack of it, I almost thought she was talking to the rock next to me.
Hesitantly, as I wasn't sure what a pony such as this would want with me, I replied. “Yes, I am he. What do you want?”
“Princess Celestia wanted me to come and take rock samples from certain prisons and yours is the last one on the list.”
That was certainly a new excuse for meeting me. Usually that daft sun-butted pony sent bubbly ponies that just got on my nerves. Maybe she had learned her lesson after all these years.
The pony moved around my cell and pulled out a hammer and chisel, placing them on the wall to the right of my cage. I turned to look at her, for she at least provided some entertainment in the monotony. As she moved, I saw her cutie mark exposed under her frock: it was a rock. No surprise there.
What was also not a surprise for me was that her chisel failed to make a mark against the stone. She stared at it for a moment before trying again, striking the chisel with greater force and causing a loud ring to echo across the walls of my prison. Again, it made no dent.
I noticed a flicker of emotion in her eyes, the first since I had seen her walk up those steps to my residency. She raised her hammer again, and brought it down with what was surely all of her strength.
The chisel broke.
If I hadn't known that it would have happened, I would have been shocked. As it were, I had a smug grin on my face while the pony stared at the cracked piece of metal, still almost no emotion present on her face or in her body language.
“The Princess sent you down here on an impossible task. The stone cannot be broken by mortal tools, regardless of how well they are made.” I couldn't help but let a bit of satisfaction creep into my voice. No matter how hard this pony would try, she would always fail.
The prison fell back into silence before the pony turned around to look at me. “Have you ever broken it?”Now, she couldn't help but let a little bit of curiosity creep into her voice, making it plain that rocks were what she devoted most of her thought to.
“Do I look like I could break that stone trapped in here?” We both fell silent for a moment, staring at one another. I thought it might have been a slight howl from the windigoes imprisoned below, but I could have sworn I heard a slight exhaling of air from the grey mare.
As I continued staring at her, a thought crossed my mind. I hadn't seen this mare before. She was obviously old enough to have had a cutie mark for a decade, yet I hadn't seen her when I stole the powers of all the ponies in Equestria. “Say, a few years ago, did I come by as a rather large centaur and suck all of your earth pony magic out of you?”
Even at such an off-the-wall question, the mare didn't even bat an eyebrow. “No.”
Despite her not doing so, my eyebrow went up. “What is your name?”
“Maud Pie.”
Pie, Pie, why did that name sound so familiar? I racked my brain for an answer before an image of a jumping pink pony came to mind. I mentally compared her to the one standing in front of me and I didn't see how they could possibly be related. But ponies had done strange things before. “Do you know of a pony called Pinkie Pie?”
“Yes. She's my sister.” At saying that, I thought I could see a flicker as her muscles twinged at the corner of her mouth. I looked at her for a moment longer before fishing around in my prison for something. It didn't take long to find it, as I obviously had so much space to move around in. I picked up the rock and tossed it to Maud. She didn't flinch as it went through the bars of my cage and rolled to a stop at her hooves.
“Have a rock. Just bring back some cake made by your sister.”
I closed my eyes and laid back on the floor of my metal prison, half-wondering at what I had just done. Did I really want the cake? My tongue said yes, as its sweetness would be a welcome break, but there was also something that intrigued me about the mare. She had avoided having her magic sucked away, yet surely Discord had known about her considering her sister. How did that happen? I started to get lost in thought when I heard her voice again.
“Okay.” She picked up the stone and headed back down the stairs, leaving me to lapse back into though as I waited for my time to be over.
***
Though I couldn't tell time very well in Tartarus, it couldn't have been more than a week before I heard the same hoofsteps echo off the long and winding staircase leading to me chamber. Even though I had the slimmest of hopes that they would be there, it was a surprise to see my hopes fulfilled.
I saw the desaturated purple mane first, though it seemed to shine a little bit brighter now against the darkness of my prison. Her eyes held a tiny bit more glimmer and her step might have had a bit more springiness to it than she had before. On her back, perched delicately, was a plate that had two colorful pieces of cake on it.
It was truly a surprise to see her again. When I had given her the rock a few days ago, I didn't think I'd ever see hide or hair of her. She had gotten what she wanted and I was in no position to demand that she uphold her end of the deal, so why would she?
“I brought you cake.”
I laughed a little inside, the sheer obviousness of the statement and the emotion with which she said it seeming funny to me. Her promise of cake was not a lie.
“I see that you have. Why did you?”
Once again, she betrayed no outward emotion at the question. “We had a deal. Besides, this place is quite nice.”
My laughter echoed the cavern, providing it with something that it had no doubt lacked for centuries upon centuries. Just as the idea of laughter here was preposterous, so was the thought of anything finding it to be nice. “Nice? What do you mean this hole is nice?”
Maud removed the plate of cake from her back and set it in front of me. “The rock formations here are unlike anywhere else in Equestria. They form patterns that are uncommon in nature and ones that I have found fascination with every time I see them. While most people think that the flowers that grow here are disgusting, they have the ability to grow in the darkest environments without any sunlight. It is quite impressive.”
My jaw dropped. Not because the speech itself was long, but because the mare in front of me smiled. She actually smiled! She smiled in this dank, dark place that was created to be miserable and punish anything that thought it could defy the order that some alicorn put into place. Even the thought of a smile was to bash everything this place stood for. To have a mare call it nice, and smile when such an action was so unusual to her was nothing short of blasphemy.
“You do know where you are, right?”
“Tartarus. The prison of demons. The father of monsters. It's rather obvious. But that doesn't mean it lacks anything good.”
This pony made no sense. How did she find something good here? No wonder ponies were idiots; they found good in everything.
My mind made the connection and it hit me like Luna with a shovel. Ponies saw good in everything. Including me, a thousand year old prisoner. And that meant that this piece of rock-fascinated pony saw something worthwhile in me and my dungeon. I knew there was something weird about her.
I looked at the cake, then back at her. “Would you like the share a piece of cake?”
“Yes.”
And then there was cake. And the beginnings of what I might call a friendship were started there in the depths of Tartarus.
Why is that blasted, stuck-up, sun-butted pony always right?
Author's Note
Because there were no Maud/Tirek stories on Fimfiction. And because crack-shipping. And 24 hour writing contests that are slightly over 24 hours.
