The Devil You Know

They ran as fast as they could towards the ruined keep, past the once proud spires which lay in piles all about. Their hoofbeats echoed sharply off the keep’s walls of black stone, their crumbling facades mere shadows of their former might. Twilight jumped, nearly tripping over the exposed roots of trees which sprouted from within, having fought their way through centuries of thick undergrowth.

Behind them, a lone Umbra snapped at their tails, spittle flying from its mouth as it eagerly pursued its fleeing prey. Periodically, it would shriek into the night, its call echoing through the ruined halls and courtyards. To Twilight’s horror, she could hear other calls answering back from the night in every direction.

Twilight’s lungs burned as she ran ahead, her horn lighting their way as they wove through the maze of collapsed rock and undergrowth.

“Which way?” she called.

“Next right!” Rainbow replied.

A sharp corner came into view, and Twilight had to slow down to avoid crashing into the stone wall of a slender watchtower. She looked back to see Rainbow skid, letting out a pained cry as she slammed into the wall.

Twilight stopped. “Rainbow!”

“Argh, damn it,” Rainbow grimaced, only to let out a panicked whinny, scrambling to the side as an Umbra lunged at her, missing by mere inches. It slammed right through the wall, collapsing the ancient structure onto itself.

“Keep going! Don’t stop for anything!” Rainbow yelled, clambering to her hooves.

Twilight hesitated, only to see the Umbra rising from the ruin, unfazed by the collision, its eyes hungrily searching for them.

Rainbow trotted up to her, pointing with her wing, “Go!”

“Right!”

Ahead, their destination loomed.

A black ziggurat that looked to have been cannibalized from the castle’s masonry stood, silently awaiting them. It seemed oddly plain on the outside, no adornments or carvings of any kind, just featureless black stone.

They ran headlong towards it, though Twilight had no idea what they would do when they got there. The Umbra knew where they were, now, and it was only a matter of time before they caught up with them.

As they neared the ziggurat, Twilight felt something graze across her senses, like she had passed through a veil. Her pace slowed as she felt the sensation growing stronger, like a pressure in her mind.

“What are you doing?” Rainbow asked. “We can’t stop here!”

“I don’t know, it—” Twilight’s voice cut off as she caught something in the corner of her eye behind them.

The Umbra was standing there, barely a few canters away. Drool ran freely from its hideous hook-fanged mouth, its five oddly positioned eyes staring right at them.

Rainbow gasped and spun to meet it, but the Umbra made no attempt to attack. It just hissed at them, scraping the ground with its clawed feet, its back rippling like an angry cat.

They both stared in silence as it paced back and forth along an invisible line. Soon, it was joined by two more, which were equally unwilling to venture any closer.

“There’s something here, something that’s affecting them,” Twilight commented.

One of them reached towards her, only to jerk its foreleg back with a shriek like it had been scalded, a thin trail of steam rising from it.

Rainbow frowned. “Great, let's get out of here before they figure out a way through it.”

“That’s just it. I don’t think they can,” Twilight said.

One of the Umbra hissed, its back rippling menacingly. Suddenly, needle-like shards shot out from its hide, flying straight at them. As they crossed the invisible threshold, the needles evaporated in an instant, dissolving into nothing.

After flinching hard, a wide grin spread across Rainbow’s face. She sauntered back towards the Umbra, stopping just short of where the shards had vanished. She wagged her tongue, shaking her head back and forth, mockingly. “Not so tough now, are ya?”

The nearest Umbra lunged with a swipe that would have taken Rainbow’s head clean off, only to find its foreleg destroyed, melting swiftly away and its black blood spurting out the wound. The Umbra howled in pain and retreated behind its brethren.

“Yeah. We’re good,” Rainbow said, turning back to Twilight. “Now what?”

Twilight stared at the pegasus for a moment before closing her mouth. “Right.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Twilight said with a shake of her head. She turned towards the ziggurat. “Let's go, it’s this way.”

There was no staircase leading up to the top of the ziggurat, but from Starswirl’s books, Twilight knew where the entrance was hidden. At the base, they found a simple inlaid stone doorway, etched with arcane runes.

“Can you get it open?” Rainbow asked, but Twilight ignored her.

Pulling one of Starswirl’s books from her saddlebags, she quickly got to work. It was a relatively complex arcane puzzle lock, but it relied on numbered sequences rather than word play this time. Even this was no match for Outreach School for Fillies’ maths decathlon champion—three years running.

As the last rune was connected, a soft thunk came from within, and the doorway slid upwards into the ceiling. Inside was almost pitch black, a thick musty smell of decay wafting out from within.

“Nice work, egghead,” Rainbow said with a grin, only for it to drop at Twilight’s sour expression. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was angry, and I tend to say stupid stuff when I’m angry.”

“I was the one that asked, Rainbow,” Twilight replied.

“Well yeah, but—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just get this thing over with,” Twilight said flatly, lighting her horn and trotting inside. “The sooner this is over the better.”

Her thoughts barely lingered on what she was about to do. Frankly, she had stopped caring about it; she was cold, tired, hungry, and wanted go home.

Home.

What was that at this point? Was everything she found comfort in just a lie her brother had made for her? She had been in a terrible place after flunking Celestia’s school's aptitude tests, caught in a spiral of shame and guilt. Had Shining just been trying to hide away his failure of a sister?

She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking of such things.

The passageway was wide and tall, easily able to fit four ponies abreast comfortably. Leering effigies of bat-winged ponies loomed out of the darkness, bowing their heads to the crescent moon that was prevalent everywhere they went.

“What are those?” Rainbow asked, looking at their wings with keen interest. “They look awesome!”

“Oh, now you’re interested,” Twilight grumbled.

“Come on, look at these guys! Bat wings! How awesome is that!” Rainbow said, opening her own wings. “So much cooler than these things.”

Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen the pegasus fly much. Most pegasi found it hard to stay on the ground in the best of times, but Rainbow seemed to prefer the ground. She felt the question on her lips but held it in. They were barely on speaking terms without prying into her personal affairs more than she already had.

“So who were they? Were they pegasi?”

“I’m not sure, servants of Luna, it would seem,” she mused. “None of my books even mention them.”

The age before Celestia was a literary desert compared to what came after. She always thought that most records had simply been lost to war and the chaos prior to her reign. Now, things were beginning to take on a sinister edge.

“Who’s Luna?”

Twilight paused. She wondered just how much Rainbow and the others had been told about the one they had come here to resurrect.

“That was her name before she became the Nightmare. She’s Celestia’s sister.”

Rainbow gasped. “Her sister?! How come I’ve never heard about this?”

Twilight placed a hoof to her chin. “A good question. Maybe Celestia didn’t want her sister's name tarnished, or maybe she just swept her dirty little secret under the rug of time.”

Twilight shuddered; this line of thinking was hitting a little too close to home. Rainbow must have felt it too because she went quiet, her expression a heavy frown.

Soon, the passage widened into a huge burial chamber right in the heart of the ziggurat. Their hoofsteps echoed inside the massive space as they entered.

Blue fire suddenly burst from sconces in the walls, casting the tomb in an eerie light.

“Did you do that?”

“No?”

“You don’t think there are any traps here, do you?” Rainbow gulped.

“If there were, we’d have triggered one by now,” Twilight replied, grimly, gazing up into the vast space in awe.

Murals and mosaics covered the walls, depicting the ancient battle between the Sisters and the Umbra. Two alicorns, one white and one blue, did battle with the many-formed foe.

Four massive armour-clad alicorn statues held the ceiling up with their spread wings, their heads bowed towards the centre of the room.

There, the sarcophagus lay, silently awaiting them.

It was jet black, carved from a stone that Twilight didn’t recognise and inlaid with silver patterns. A winged crescent moon adorned its sides while a serene sleeping mare had been carved onto its lid.

The care that had been put into its crafting was amazing. All the details, from individual feathers on her wings to the fluting in her horn, had been painstakingly carved into the stone. As Twilight gazed over it, however, she began to see patterns built into the lid. Runes had been etched into its surface in strategic places around the mare.

“So, are we going to pop this thing or not?” Rainbow asked, hovering above her.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Twilight said, blowing away the accumulated dust. “This place was built to be more than just a tomb.”

The more she looked, the more she saw an obvious pattern in everything around her. The arrangement of the sarcophagus, the decorative patterns laid on the floor, even the position of the mare’s head on the lid, they were all pieces of the puzzle.

It all matched the spell diagrams she had found in Starswirl’s books. She trotted around, comparing them, making slight adjustments where she was able.

Yet there was still a missing piece.

She wasn’t sure how long she searched for. Within the flickering light, time seemed to stand still. It didn’t make sense! Everything was here. What was she missing?

“Hey egghead, a question,” Rainbow said, from her perch atop the sarcophagus

“Not now, Rainbow.”

“It’s a quick one. Why do you think there’s so much luminite in this place? Kind of weird for a place that never gets any light, don’t you think?”

Twilight’s eyes widened, “Wait, what did you say?”

“Luminite.” She gestured to one of the lines etched into the floor. “This place is full of it, but there’s no natural light in here for it to react to.”

Twilight stared at her.

“What? We use it all the time in the guard. Saves on signal torches.” Rainbow shrugged.

Twilight gasped and looked up towards the tomb’s ceiling. In the flickering light, she could make out a stone circle at the centre where the pinions of the alicorn’s wings met.

Rainbow watched, dumbfounded, as Twilight let out a giddy laugh. “Rainbow, you’re a genius!”

“I am?”

“Quick, look for a lever,” Twilight yelled. “There must be a lever around here somewhere that controls the ceiling.”

“You mean this one?” Rainbow said, gesturing over to a simple stone lever built into the far wall.

Twilight frowned. “Has that always been there?”

“I’ve been itching to pull it since we got here,” Rainbow said, hovering beside it, her hooves primed to give it a tug.

“Then pull it! Let’s just hope it still works.”

With a grin, Rainbow pressed down and was rewarded with a deep rumble that ran up the walls. Dust trickled down from above as the stone circle slid open, allowing the red moonlight to stream in.

The whole room was lit up in a bright light as the luminite reacted, the runes connecting to each other by thin strands of white light. The runes grew brighter with each connection, racing to complete a spell that had waited millennia to be finished. Twilight stepped back, shielding her eyes as the entire tomb disappeared in blinding light, and yet the light grew brighter still. Twilight and Rainbow Dash were huddled on the ground when a rush of wind plunged them into darkness.

It was then that the sound of rock scraping against rock reverberated through the room as the cover of the sarcophagus began to shift.