Celestia winced as the creature flew through the wall behind it.

She hadn’t intended to send the thing fly so fast as to push it through the wall, only into it hard enough to incapacitate it.

Of course, she thought to herself, knowing this creature, it probably hit the ground in the garden without a scratch on it. For goodness’ sake, it shoved a sword into itself just as I turned the corner.

Celestia shook her head to be rid her of any lingering thoughts. She had a more pressing matter at her hooves.

Said pressing matter let out a small whimper as their eyes locked themselves onto the hole that the creature had made.

Celestia folded her hooves underneath her as she got onto eye level with the panicked pony. In her most motherly voice, she nudged the pony with her muzzle and said, “Don’t worry, my little pony. The creature is gone for the time.”

The guard’s eyes flickered from the hole in the wall to the face of his princess. “W-W-What w-was that thing?”

Celestia closed her eyes and sighed. “I am unsure as to what the creature is. I only know that it is mad; a true monster from an age long since passed.” Celestia looked back down at the pony before her, her face setting in worry. “But do not be concerned about it for now. It did not hurt you, did it?”

The guard started to get up on shaky hooves, their eyes looking over themselves for any sort of injury. “Uh,” they began. “No. I don’t think so, anyway.” Then they rubbed a hoof to their throat. “Gripped my neck a bit tight, but I’m fine otherwise.” Then the pony seemed to remember just who it was that they were talking to. They sharply stood at attention, saluted the princess, and said, “Oh! Uh, sorry, Your Highness!”

Celestia stood as well, glad to see her little pony recovering so quickly after meeting that creature. She knew from experience that the monster could leave quite the impression. “Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “I’m simply happy that you are alright. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, what was the creature doing before I showed up?”

The guard dropped their salute, a troubled look playing across their face. “It was…” The guard shook their head. “When I got there it was fighting off a squad of guardsmen. It was… Savage, the way the thing threw them around.” The guard gestured at some of the crumpled forms of unconscious ponies lying on the ground. The walls just above some of the prostrate forms were dented and cracked as though the beast had thrown the ponies into the walls with such force as to crack solid marble.

The guard pony went on. “When I charged the thing, all it did was knock me down. My sword flew out of my mouth, though, and it picked it up. Then, just when it was about to…” The pony gulped at the thought. “Chop my head off, it just… Stopped.”

Celestia blinked. “Stopped,” she echoed, as though she wasn’t sure she heard right.

The guard nodded. “Yes, Your Highness. It just stopped, and started to shake. Then it started talking to itself.”

Celestia tilted her head in question. “Talking to itself how?”

“As though there was somepony talking to it, Your Highness. It even asked why they were so loud.”

The Sun Princess’ brow furrowed in thought. She had known that the creature she had trapped under the city so many centuries ago had been insane, but never had she seen an indications of it being that far gone.

Perhaps that’s why her efforts to help it before it was imprisoned never seemed to work.

She got back on track, looking back down at the guard. “And that is when it stabbed itself?”

The guard nodded, their face becoming pale as their eyes flicked down to their chest, where a few red spots of the thing’s blood had splattered over their armor. “Yes, Your Highness,” was all the pony had to say.

Celestia nodded. “Go to the infirmary, little pony. I’m sure you’re alright, but it would be better to be safe than sorry.”

The guard tried to argue. “But what about the cre-”

Celestia held up a hoof to silence the pony’s fears. “Do not worry yourself with that for now, my guardsman. For now, simply concern yourself with getting a doctor for yourself and all the others.”

The guard blinked, then looked around the hall at all the laying forms of their fellow guard. They then looked back at their princess, saluted, and said, “Yes, Your Highness.” They pivoted on a hoof, and ran down the hall, taking a left at the hole in the wall.

Celestia watched them go, then looked down at the defeated forms of her guard, and sighed. The creature that had just been let loose onto the city was something, like she had told the guard, from a bygone age. It was a monster of pain and cruelty, and almost seemed to feed off of the havoc and destruction that it wrought. Back before it was imprisoned, it had been a menace. But now, in the new pony age of alleged enlightenment and complacency, the beast would be a true terror.

Celestia had no doubts that there would be a body count by then end of all of this. She could only hope to minimize the casualties.

She shook her head, banishing the morbid thoughts from her mind. Now was not the time to worry about casualties. Now was the time to prevent them.

Determined to see her ponies safe, Celestia turned back down the hell the way she came, and made for her sister’s chambers.

She was going to need all the help she could get.

The Canterlot Gardens flew past us as Krieg carried us in a long-legged sprint. Give the guy credit where it’s due, the big thug can really move when he wants to. Though, he’s usually running straight towards trouble, rather than away from it, but the guy could still move.

It was probably because of Krieg’s near-superhuman (or maybe above superhuman, I’m not really sure) speed, that we were able to make it to the castle gates in time, before they closed it on us..

There were a contingent of guard ponies around the mouth of the gate, a few talking with each other animatedly, while two worked a crank nearby that operated the raising or lowering of the gate and drawbridge.

One of the guards, a pegasus day guard, was saying something to the others near the gate, when they saw us. Instantly, they turned to look at us, raised a hoof in a point, and shouted something to their fellow guard. I could only guess what they were saying, but I felt confident that it was somewhere along the lines of, “Look, there! Get ready!”

All the guards around the pegasus started to get into a formation in front of the gate, blocking my and Krieg’s exit. They drew various weapons to their sides, most of which were swords, and took a defencive position in wait for Krieg and I to meet them. The two ponies operating the crank turned to look at all the commotion, and upon seeing us, redoubled their efforts on the bridge.

Krieg saw all of this happening, and instead of stopping in his tracks so he could evaluate the situation and come up with a safe and efficient solution, he simply increased the speed of his sprint at the ponies.

Krieg, I said to the psycho. What the hell are you doing?

The psycho simply started to cackle in response, and in one smooth motion, ripped the sword that had been in our gut out, reopening the wound that had somehow closed around the blade. As he neared the first pony, he raised the sword over our head, ready to strike the pony down where they stood at the ready.

I fought against Krieg in a battle of willpower. Damn it, Krieg! I shouted at him. We just went over this! No hurting of the guardponies!

Krieg growled in our chest as he closed the remaining distance between us and the guard. Then he suddenly shouted, “TRAINING WHEELS!” at the top of our lungs, and brought our free hand forward in an incredibly painful, but ultimately non lethal, punch straight to the guard’s face.

The guard fell backwards from the force, and Kreig simply bounded over the crumpled form, making a beeline straight for the two guards that were cranking the gate closed.

The other guards in between the two of us and the two of them tried their hardest in an effort to stop us from getting to the crank, but Krieg simply batted them around like they were playthings. Despite them having gotten more than a few strikes in with their swords and spears, our blood welling up from the wounds, Krieg would not be denied egress from the castle to the city at large.

Once we got close enough, Krieg suddenly lunged straight at one of the guards on the crank, who was completely caught off guard, in a full body check. The guard didn’t travel very far, as there was the stone surface of the castle wall behind them. The hit with enough force to crack some of the stones, and for their armor to dent inwards with an odd retching sound. The pony slumped to the ground, too dazed to stand and put up a fight.

The other pony at the crank didn’t seem to like Krieg putting the hurt on his buddy, because he stepped away from the hand of the crank, his head twisting as he drew his sword from his back.

Krieg laughed right at the pony, simply reaching out to grab the blade of the sword (which dug painfully at our palm, though Krieg simply chuckled at the discomfort), hefted the pony up a little, then brought him straight down with as much force as he could muster. There was a cracking sound as the pony’s jaw broke, the grip on his sword being lost in the process, and the pony could only watch in dazed terror as Krieg brought the pommel of the sword that had been in our gut down onto the top of their head, knocking the pony out cold.

Krieg then spun on a heel, and just threw the spare sword in our left hand at the other guards, who were still recovering from the Blitz that is Krieg. They all dodged out of the way of the blade, though doing so caused a few of them to get knocked back onto their ass.

Heh, I thought out loud. Blitzkrieg.

“ROLLING THUNDER!” Krieg shouted in response. When he saw that the ponies were thoroughly distracted enough, Krieg drew an old stick of fucking dynamite from one of our pants pockets.

Woah, woah, woah! Where the fuck did you get that thing?!

Like Krieg often did, he simply laughed manically at me in response. He then practically skipped with anticipation over to the stone wall, and drew the sword in our hand across the surface quickly, drawing forth sparks from the wall. He held the dynamite close to the wall, letting the fuse catch the sparks that he was making until the string suddenly lit, a familiar hissing sound playing through the air as Krieg simply dropped the thing right next to the crank.

Shitshitshit! Go! Out the gate!

Krieg heeded my command and rushed forward, turning sharply as he came to the mouth of the gate. He rushed us past the threshold that separated the city from the castle, and did so just in time for the dynamite to explode the crank that had been holding up the gate.

The iron structure of the gate suddenly fell downward and hit the ground with a deafening crash. Krieg kept running towards the now-open playground that was the city, laughing madly at the shouts of the pony guards behind us.

I, however, was not at all pleased with Krieg at the moment. Because while we may have gotten away, and we may have created a nice barrier between us and the vast majority of the guards that wanted our head, the dynamite that had been used to destroy the crank had been used with two disoriented guards lying in very close proximity to the blast.

Simply put, there was absolutely no way that those two guards that had operated the crank had survived the explosion.

Suffice to say, when there was a moment of peace for me to do so, I’d have to make a point to Krieg that I am not fucking around when it comes to the harming of innocents.

Throughout all the castle, it went without saying that it was best to not wake one of the princesses during their hours of sleep. This especially applied to the Princess of the Night, Luna.

Over the past few years, ever since Luna’s return from her tenure on the moon, many of the staff have had to make more than a few adjustments to the sudden presence of a second celestial princess. Many a servant had to make large adjustments to their personal lives, simply so that they would be awake and at work at the hour that the new Lunar Princess might need them.

Often times in the past, this sudden shift in the paradigm of the work schedule had caused a fair bit of commotion throughout the castle, as servants who were needed were nowhere to be found; chefs that arrived when they were actually due for work in the late hours; a lack-of or overabundance-of guards patrolling the halls.

The minor moments of havoc were noticed by everyone in the small pseudo-community that was the castle’s staff and occupants. For most, this was simply a form of minor inconvenience.

For the Princess of the Night, however, it was a bit more than that.

Nopony ever truly enjoyed talking about the times when the Lunar Princess stormed out of her room, her mane an absolute mess, as she stomped her way towards the offenders who dared to disturb her sleep. Even the most stoic of guards would rather discuss something else, rather than remember the moments when they learned just what it was the ponies of ancient times were thinking when they named something that haunted one’s sleep after the terrible form of Princess Luna.

So, it was an unspoken rule through the entire castle that no one cause enough trouble as to wake the Princess of the Night. It was something that, for everypony’s sake, you simply did not do.

Unless, of course, you are her older sister. Then all she could do was grumble angrily at you.

This is what happened when Celestia had stormed her way into her sister’s darkened room, shouting for her to awaken. Luna had shot up in her bed, her eyes wide with anger, and she was just about to start yelling at the pony with so much gall as to wake her from her much needed sleep, when she actually looked at said gall-filled pony, and grumbled out an annoyed, “Of course it would be you…”

“Luna,” Celestia said, her voice deadly serious. “I need you awake now, sister.”

Luna blinked at the sober tone her sister, and she started to blink the sleep out of her eyes. “What do you require of me?”

Celestia thought about her words for a moment before saying, “Perhaps you do not remember, Luna, but… Do you recall the bipedal creature that caused havoc all throughout Equestria during the…” Celestia, even after all this time, did not enjoy the memory of the prolonged war between her and her sister, who had taken the moniker of Nightmare Moon at the time. So, she simply gulped and tried to change her words so as to bring up as few horrid memories as possible. “Before your banishment?”

Luna simply looked at her sister for a moment, emotions flickering quickly behind her eyes far too fast for even her elder sister to be able to tell what they were. “Indeed,” she said after a second passed, her voice almost ghastly serious. “I remember the beast.”

Celestia nodded. “Perhaps 150 years after you were banished, I was able to finally find the creature and capture it, though not without a great deal of effort and the loss of many lives. I was able to lure it into the caverns beneath the city and chain it there.” She then shook her head as a thought seemed to pass her by. “I had thought that would be the last I would see of the beast, that it would have…” She winced. “That it would have starved down there.”

“But it did not,” Luna observed, her tone oddly neutral.

Celestia shook her head once more. “No, sister, it did not. It… Somehow, it has broken free from the chains. It terrorizes the castle even no-”

There was a sudden, loud explosion that could be heard from outside the walls of Luna’s room.

Both of the sisters listened, then looked at each other with wide eyes. They both made a gallop for the balcony adjacent to the room, Luna scrambling out of bed as she did so, and they both look out and down towards the gate.

They could see the dust plume that the explosion had caused, could see the panicked forms of the guards on the near side of the gate trying to scramble and reorganize themselves.

And on the far side of the gate they saw a figure, growing ever smaller, running from the castle.

“We must find it,” Luna said, her tone seemingly absolute.

Her sister turned to look at the Lunar Princess, scanning her face as she did so. Celestia knew Luna well enough that there was a coloring of undertone to her almost-absolute voice. She simply didn’t know what the emotion her younger sibling was trying to hide was.

“We must organize the guard,” Celestia replied. “Ensure that they are informed as to what it is that they will be facing. We also need to send our fastest messengers out to the city walls and place all of Canterlot on lockdown.”

Luna thought for a moment, before slowly nodding her head. “Indeed,” she agreed. She then looked at her older sister. “You go and prepare the guard en mass. I shall ready myself and then send for the messengers.”

Celestia nodded in agreement, placed a hoof on her sister’s shoulder in a comforting gesture (whether it was for Luna or herself, neither knew), and then made haste for the barracks.

It was a good thing, too. Had Celesia stayed any longer, she would have seen Luna’s hind legs give out from under her, causing her to land heavily on her haunches. As ignoble memories from eons passed assaulted her mind, Celestia also would have seen the tears that Luna refused to let fall from her eyes.

Luna bowed her head in shame.

Author's Note

Screw it, I'm going to keep a body count for this story.

Body Count: 2