Corpse Pony

“Oh… Twilight…? Fluttershy?” Rarity’s eyes fluttered open when she finally realized that the earthquake had subsided. A darkness blacker than night had engulfed the room, but her eyes had adjusted enough to see shadows and outlines, the window high up on the outer wall shed very little light into the room. She sat up and tried to peer through the shadows, but her breath grew heavy when nopony immediately answered. “Twilight? Rainbow Dash? Somepony answer me!”

“Rarity?” Spike’s quaking voice came from nearby. “Is that you?”

“Spike!” Rarity heaved a sigh of relief. “Spike, what in Equestria just happened?”

“I don’t know! There was this earthquake, and then everything just went black!”

“Are we the only ones here?” Rarity tried to focus her magic into her horn, but it faded away as quickly as she could gather it up. “My magic isn’t working, I can’t make light!”

“I think I can still make light, just gimme a second.” There were several long moments of silence as Spike’s claws scratched at the floor. The sound moved across the room towards her. Rarity’s heart began to pump just slightly faster, but it wasn’t too much longer before Spike let out a yelp of triumph. “Found it!” The little dragon took a deep breath, then let out a gust of emerald green flame that lit up the room around them, and left a sickly black candle lit in the center of his palm.

“Oh my…” Rarity’s already pounding heart leapt into her throat as the flickering candle lit the room around them. The dim orange light cast deep shadows across cracked and decaying walls that looked familiar, but so ancient and decrepit that this surely couldn’t have been the room they were in moments before. The furniture looked as if it had been thrown around haphazardly; much of it was lying on its side or smashed entirely while there were many holes gouged into the floor.

“Rarity…?” Spike picked his way through the rubble towards her, with his limbs tucked gingerly into his body. “Wh-what’s going on? Where are we?”

“I don’t know, Spike.” Rarity slipped a comforting hoof around his shoulders to pull him up against her chest. “But it looks like we’re alone here.”

“The others have to be around somewhere, right?” Spike gulped despite his false bravado. “We just have to find them, and then we can figure out how to get out of… wherever this is.”

“Yes of course.” Rarity cleared her throat and her head. Spike would need her to be strong. So she stood up on all four hooves and gestured for Spike to climb onto her back. “Come, Spike, I shall do the walking, and you provide the light.”

Spike nodded and pulled his light body up onto her shoulders. Once he was secure, Rarity began to pick her way carefully through the room, around the many holes on the floor and the destroyed pieces of furniture until she neared the door. As she neared the exit the light from Spike’s candle shone on a piece of paper taped to the wall right beside the door. She paused curiously to let her eyes scan the paper for any clues to where they were.

Notice:

Curfew for servants has been pulled back to seven PM as of February second, SR15. Any ponies found to be violating curfew will be sentenced to death. Any guards allowing curfew to be violated will also be put to death.

“Death? For leaving your room at night?” Spike shuddered. “Who would make a rule like that? That’s completely dumb. And what is SR15 anyway? I’ve never even heard of that.”

“Perhaps some sort of Nightmare Night prank…” Rarity tried to assure the little dragon on her back. “Come, let’s begin our search for the others.” Trying to ignore the growing pangs of unease in her stomach, Rarity pushed the door open with one hoof and stepped out into the hallway.

The hallways were just as cracked and decaying as the room they were just in, to the point where the entire floor had collapsed further down the path to their right. To their left it continued on into the darkness beyond the candle’s light, though in the shadow ahead of them a strange, pale blue light could be seen flickering in the hallway beyond the fire light.

“What is that?” Spike squinted into the darkness.

“Perhaps a Crystal Pony who can tell us where we are!” Rarity turned to trot quickly towards the flickering light. “Excuse me! We could really use your assistance!” They bounded towards the light, but as they neared the light turned to move into an adjacent hallway. “Hey wait! Please don’t go! We just have a few questions we need answered!”

They were quickly nearing where the blue light had been, and the closer they got, the louder they could hear a strangled, whispering voice. It was grunting in pain, barely-formed words that echoed down the crystalline hallways of the palace. It was an incoherent babbling from which Rarity could only pick out a few words.

“Why… won’t it… end…”

The muttering voice was right around the corner, from which Rarity could see the blue light shining against the wall before her. Slowly Rarity rounded the corner, and her blood went completely cold from the sight before her.

The blue light was shimmering like a candleless flame above a broken, nearly unrecognizable pile of flesh and bones on the cold crystal floor. It had clearly been a pony, once, but it had sat on the floor, rotting and decaying so long that the only recognizable part of it was a thick skull that sat upside down alongside the rest of the remains.

Still the voice rambled, coming from the blue flame that flickered above the body. “Why won’t it end… why can’t it end… death is supposed to release you… but there is no release…” The light began to flicker brighter, flecks of orange and red cutting into the blue as it began to burn in the middle of the air, shining crimson streaks across the bloodstained bones. “Why won’t the suffering end!? Why can’t I rest!? LET ME REST!”

“Kyaaaahhhhhhh!” At last Rarity had had enough, and she broke out into a full gallop away from the body. Her hooves pounded across the crystal floors as she ran blindly into the darkness. She heard the candle drop to the floor and saw the light flicker out as she felt Spike’s claws wrap around her neck to keep him from sliding right off of her back.

Her hooves beat down on the floor until suddenly her left forehoof came down into one of the many holes that had been born into the rotten ground, and she flipped end over to end to slide to a stop in the darkness. Her heart was pounding so hard that it hurt, and her acute pony ears turned this way and that, seeking any sign that they were being followed, but all she could hear was her own labored breathing, and the sound of Spike groaning.

“Rarity…” Spike’s break came in a shaky rasp. “What was that? What did we just see?”

“I don’t know, Spike…” Rarity was equally out of breath. She put one hoof over her heart in a vain attempt to calm herself down. “But… I feel like we should definitely seek a way out of this place.”

“Yeah, good call…” Spike replied with a soft sigh. “We lost our candle, though…”

“At least it looks like it’s getting a little bit brighter outside…” Rarity sat up herself. Indeed, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see just a sliver of light beaming in through the windows high up on the ceilings. It lost the war with the darkness overall, but it succeeded just enough to make the palace visible. “Come on… let’s get moving. We won’t find anything or anypony sitting here… and I’d like to put as much distance between us and… that as we can.”

“I’m right behind you!” Spike’s claws scraped across the floor as he moved to join Rarity on her journey further down the hallway. The darkness that engulfed them seemed to lighten up just a little bit as they went, as a friend’s company was known to do.