The Real Dark Souls Starts Here
In the Age of Ancients the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, Archtrees, and Everlasting Dragons. But then there was Fire and with Fire came Disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, Light and Dark. Then from the Dark, They came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame. Chrysalis, the first of the dead, The Witch of Izalith and his Daughters of Chaos, Celestia, the Lady of Sunlight, and her faithful knights. And the Furtive Pony, so easily forgotten.
With the Strength of Lords, they challenged the Dragons. Celestia's mighty bolts peeled apart their stone scales. The Witches weaved great firestorms. Chrysalis unleashed a miasma of death and disease. And Spike the Scaleless betrayed his own, and the Dragons were no more.
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and ponies see not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed Darksign.
Everything was...hazy... Twilight tried to blink and clear the bleariness from her eyes, but they still felt dry and filmy, even when closed.
Something felt...off.
Slowly she began to realize she had no idea where she was. Just looking around took all of her concentration, and even then, she could barely understand what she was looking at. After what felt like hours however, she was fairly certain she was in some sort of dark cell.
This of course led to the next question, what was she doing slumped against the wall of a dingy prison cell? While being in a prison is of course disconcerting, she was quite a bit more unsettled as she tried to remember the events that lead up to this predicament and found the memories simply didn't exist. Any attempt to reminisce further back from that first blink led to an all encompassing mental oblivion.
This should have terrified her, but for whatever reason, she couldn't latch onto the emotion as she summoned it. The terror simply slipped away from her, much like any other thoughts she attempted to have. Everything was just crumbling away.
Yes, indeed. The Darksign brands the Undead. And in this land, the Undead are corralled and led to the north, where they are locked away, to await the end of the world... This is your fate.
Only, in the ancient legends it is stated, that one day an undead shall be chosen to leave the undead asylum, in pilgrimage, to the land of ancient lords, Equestria.
Just as she was ready to give up and let herself fall back into the haze, a blinding light shot into the room from above, and the haze seemed to burn away in it's presence. Twilight reflexively looked up towards the source, shielding her eyes with a hoof. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, she could see the form of a pony silhouetted in the light. Squinting to get a better look, she could see the pony was wearing finely adorned knight armor and carrying a sword and ornate shield in their magic. The knight gazed at her for awhile, before offering a slight nod, and tossing something down the hole.
With a dry thud, the corpse landed on the floor of Twilight's cell. Twilight looked back up towards the hole but realized the knight was gone. Looking back at the corpse, she could clearly see that the reddish brown pony was desiccated and disfigured, and it's cutie mark took the form of a burning and cracked black circle. One word, "undead", and a strong feeling of resentment rose from the fog in her mind. She was about to return to sitting quietly and giving up hope when a sparkle caught the corner of her eye.
Attached to a crude rope belt around the corpse's barrel was a small key ring. Twilight stared at it for a moment, before rushing forward and reaching for the key, but she stopped short as her own forehoof entered her field of view, clearly illuminated by the hole in the ceiling. Underneath her Tattered Cloth Manchette was not her normally vibrant purple fur, but instead a sickly, grayish purple color, and her skin looked like it was stretched across the bone. With a nervous gulp, Twilight looked back to survey herself, and confirmed her fears. She too looked wrinkled and desiccate, if not as badly as the body before her, and her cutie mark, just barely sticking out from under her Tattered Cloth Robe, looked as if it was dimmer than usual, and the very hints of a dark circle seemed to have formed around it.
"Well that explains some things..." She grumbled to herself. While she still had no memories before the cell, she somehow knew that the undead were to be feared, and sent to the Northern Asylum prison, which must be where she was at the moment. Deciding she could worry about her undeath later, Twilight steeled herself and snatched the key from the corpse before taking it up in her magic and jamming it into the cell door. After a moment of fiddling, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the lock clicked and the cell door swung open with a rusty screech.
The door opened up into a long, dimly hallway, lined by more zombie like undead quietly crying and moaning. Twilight hesitated at first, knowing that truly hollow undead could be rather hostile and dangerous, but after watching them for a moment, she decided these undead seemed fairly harmless, if completely mindless, and began trotting down the hallway. As she progressed, she could hear and feel a rhythmic rumbling off in the adjacent room, but she opted not to peak through the crumbling wall as just the sound sent shivers of fear through her mind. If he was lucky, she'd never have to find out what was causing it.
As she came to the end of the hallway, she found a mildly flooded room with a ladder leading upwards. Seeing no real alternatives, she clambered up the rusty slats and pulled herself up into a circular room leading to a courtyard flooded with muted gray daylight. At the center of the courtyard, just in front of a huge set of double doors, was what looked like a makeshift campfire, built around a rusty old sword. The flames looked like they had long been extinguished, and only white ash sat around the base, but something about it drew Twilight forward, as if she were seeking warmth from an invisible flame. Without really knowing why, she reached out a forehoof towards the sword, and just before she touched it, the fire jumped to life, as if it had been burning strong for hours.
An indescribable feeling of relief and hope blossomed in Twilight's heart alongside the flames, and she felt compelled to take a seat, if for just a moment, in front of the cheery bonfire. With a contented sigh, she stood back up, her eyes locking on the imposing double doors. While the fire was certainly nice, she knew it was time to get the hell out of this awful prison.
With a last glance at the bonfire, she jogged up to the doors and reared up in order to shove the heavy doors open. Once she was through, she found herself in a wide open, cathedral-esque chamber. The roof had fallen in, letting more of the dull sunlight into the room, and the cracked floor was lined sporadically with crumbling earthen jars. Spotting another set of doors on the far side of the room, Twilight began a steady pace towards them, ignoring any further examination of the room. "For being a massive prison, this place sure is light on security." She mused to herself, thoroughly pleased nobody, or no-thing had attempted to bar her progress so far.
Of course, the moment she finished the thought, a massive shape dropped through the hole in the roof and landed with an earth shaking rumble just in front of the doors she had been headed for. Standing back up from a crouch stood a massive, bloated monstrosity. It looked a bit like a bottom heavy bipedal frog, with an almost bat like head and tiny little webbed wings. On top of it's gruesome appearance, it also seemed to be wielding an equally enormous club crudely carved from yellow and brown bone.
"Um....hi?" was all Twilight managed to say before the beast responded with a fearsome roar, reared back with the club, and swung it right down on top of her. In the fraction of a second before the club struck home, Twilight saw her brief trip up from her cell flash before her eyes.
YOU DIED
"Ooof!" After a brief feeling of falling, Twilight opened her eyes to find she was sprawled on the half dead grass of the small courtyard, with the bonfire crackling merrily away next to her. "I guess they really mean it when they say undead," she huffed, pulling herself back up to her hooves. She looked at the double doors again, but decided maybe she should look for an alternate route through the Asylum. Looking around, she spotted a small barred door off the right, but a quick tug of her magic confirmed that it was bolted shut.
"Horsefeathers! I guess there's only one way through." she groaned, trudging back up towards the double doors and already dreading a second encounter with the demon. Just as she was about to open the door however, she noticed a strange orange glow on the ground beneath her. Leaning in closer, she could just barely make out shimmering letters scribbled onto the ground. "Go...left...?" she read aloud, before looking back up at the doors in front of her. "Well that's certainly convenient. Here's hoping it's good advice!"
Again she pressed the doors open, but this time she immediately started jogging towards the left wall of the room. Immediately she noticed a pair of lit torches bracketing an open doorway in the wall, and she decided she could kick herself later for her utter lack of environmental awareness. Just as she was coming up on the doorway, she heard the crash of the demon landing behind her, and her jog turned into a full sprint before she dove for the doorway, tucking into a tight roll as she passed the threshold. As if it was waiting for her, a metal gate collapsed behind her, sealing her off from the demon.
Twilight took a deep breath, sighing with relief as she exhaled. Looking up, she noticed she was now in another hallway that was extremely similar to the one that had led her away from her cell to begin with, except next to her stood another unlit bonfire clustered around an old sword, in the corner sat another mindless undead, and there was more of the glowing orange writing on the ground.
Deciding it had helped her before, she again leaned down to read the ethereal message, ready to absorb whatever wise guidance it might offer her.
Praise the sun!
"What? That's not helpful at all! This room doesn't even have windows!"