Obscurum Descensus

Obscurum Decensus Chp6

“Uhhhh. Ugh.” Princess Luna groaned as she crawled from the wreckage of the fallen elevator into a dimly lit and cold room. There was a torch shining very lightly in the corner. The floor was littered with rocks and broken debris from the elevator as it had made its very rapid descent into the depths of the castle.

Luna closed her eyes and let out another groan from the pain that shot through her ragged body, rolling onto her side to fetch the other health potion in her saddle bags. She popped the cap off and drank greedily, wanting the pain to go away. She got her wish.

Finally able to get to her hooves, Luna let out a soft sigh and looked over at the elevator. It was lying in a disheveled heap in the elevator shaft with small particles of dust flying here and there. The sound of loose rock crumbling down the shaft was heard and the princess turned her gaze back around to look ahead of her. There was a door left open across the room.

Limping across the room Luna noticed that there was a giant hole in the door as if a rock smashed right through. She stepped through the doorway carefully and looked down the hall to her right. It was relatively dark.

The princess trudged forward, turning her lantern on and bowing her head. She noticed a sign swaying above her gently and stopped to read it over.

Dungeons.

A cold shiver ran down the entire length of Luna’s spine as she bowed her head once more. She pressed on and started to head up a long flight of stairs. A quiet dripping of water could be heard at the top of the stairs along with a lit torch being visible. Reaching the top of the stairs, she saw that there were three different directions she could go: further up, right, or left. Luna chose right.

She walked down a narrow hallway with metal bar doors lining either side, the dark cells giving an eerie feeling as she passed them by with her lantern. Each cell seemed to be empty except for a bench and latrine in the corner with perhaps a bucket or gravel as well. A few loose rock falls could be heard in the cells occasionally.

Finally Luna reached the end of the hall and saw that there was an open cell door. Walking into the cell she could immediately see that there was a key sitting on the bench shoved up into the corner of the room. She picked it up and stored it into her saddle bags. She also noticed that there were two more health potions, two gauze rolls, a blow torch, and a few rags. She put them into her saddle bags as well. Her medical supplies were now fully stocked it seemed.

I hope I don’t have to use them. Luna thought to herself as she exited the cell and looked at the cell door across her. It was not a cell at all she discovered and the metal bar door was actually blocking what looked like a heavy door into another part of the castle. She looked down at the handle of the cell door and noticed there was a heavy padlock locking the door. She tried the key from the cell but it didn’t work so she returned back to the torch at the top of the stairs she previously walked up.

Luna looked up the stairs with a grimace. Her back left leg was still in pain even though she had drank the health potion and climbing more stairs was going to be a difficulty. She decided to leave the stairs alone for the time being and walked down the other hallway. It was similar to the other hallway and was lined on each side by dark cells with nearly nothing in them.

Suddenly Luna heard a scraping sound as if hooves were being dragged across the floor.

“No, please!”

The princess whirled around to face the mare’s voice. There was nothing. All was silent save for the forced shallow breaths coming from the alicorn. She took a step back.

“What was that?” Luna whispered to herself as she slowly turned back around, glancing behind her, and continued down the hallway. She came to a stop at a cell door that was slightly open. Looking to her left and right to make sure the coast was clear, Luna entered the cell.

There was a wooden bed frame lying on its side propped up against the wall and an over turned table with papers and dried ink littered everywhere. There looked to be drag marks in the ink as if somepony was dragged along the floor. Luna went to get a closer look.

From the looks of it, the pony was dragged along the floor towards the cell door. A chill crept down her spine. Shaking her head and looking around the rest of the room, she spotted a note out of the corner of her eye.

They’re coming for me. I’m next in the long line of unfortunate prisoners that Baron Darkwing likes to use as his personal experiments. I have no idea what kind of tortures await me as I start to hear the hoof steps of the two mangled-looking stallion guards march down the hallway. Fear is starting to enter my mind and the only way I can think to subdue it is to write all of my thoughts on this piece of paper. Silly how something so simple can actually work.

I can hear the screams sometimes from the prisoners. Their moans and pleas echo throughout the castle dungeons. They are pulled from their cells, pleading for Celestia’s mercy as their hooves scrape noisily across the floor down the narrow hallway. Sometimes I can even catch glimpses of their expressions. Utter fear is usually worn with tears streaming down their soiled and beaten faces.

Occasionally some resist. I have gotten used to the sounds of hooves colliding with leather and the sickening cracks of somepony’s legs. It’s hard, however, to look at a pony when the legs being dragged are bouncing around in ways that should not be possible.

I can hear the door to my cell unlocking. I don’t have much time. I hope my daughter escaped safely. Please. Please oh please… not my da…

The note stopped as the last few marks where dragged down to the bottom of the page. The dungeon felt colder all of a sudden as Luna put the note into her saddle bags and began shifting her legs around to generate some body heat. I hope I am not headed in that general direction.

She left the cell and continued on down the hall until there was an abrupt stop with the hall splitting off in two different directions. Luna went right and looked up, spotting a sign that read “Kitchens.” She wasn’t sure what she could find there that was useful but it was worth exploring regardless. There could be some instrument or key that would unlock the padlock.

The princess came to a small flight of stairs and flew up them, wanting to not exert more pressure on her back hoof than she had to. She pushed open the door to the kitchens and noticed that the room was already lit with a roaring fire in the pits below the ovens and cauldrons used to cook the food for the prisoners of the castle. She turned the lantern off and shut the door behind her.

As Luna entered further into the room she could hear a faint and terrified squealing coming from what would most likely be some pigs. Was there somepony friendly alive in this castle? She walked to the back of the kitchen towards where she thought the noise was coming from. When she turned the corner she froze and her eyes locked on what was in front of her.

Pigs dangled from chains anchored to their legs and swung very lightly back and forth as if there was a breeze in the room. The squealing stopped as Luna stared at the lifeless pigs in front of her. She turned her head to look at the ovens.

What were these prisoners fed…?

Luna shook her head, trying to remove the mental image from her mind. The princess felt horrified. She let out quiet cough and walked over to the ovens to inspect them for anything she could use. Finally, lying on a shelf next to one of the ovens, Luna found another key and placed it into her saddle bags. Content that her search of the kitchens was complete, she exited to the room and turned on her lantern.

Audible clops from a galloping pony could be heard from the other corridor and Luna froze in place, perking her ears up. The clops stopped.

Dimming her lantern significantly, the princess limped forward to the fork in the hallway and stopped, looking down to where she heard the hoofsteps. Nothing could be seen. Luna carefully turned the corner and crept slowly down the corridor to inspect the source of the noise. The sound of her hoofs clopping on the cobblestone floor ever so slightly was the only noise that could be heard.

She came to a large iron door. It was locked.

Luna pulled the key she found in the cell across from the blocked heavy door and placed it into the key hole. It turned easily. She shoved the door open with a deafening creak.

A sickening scream rippled across the dungeon and Luna’s eyes widened to become as large as saucers. There, in the center of the room, sat a giant guillotine. Dried blood soaked the floor under the contraption and was smeared all the way towards a chute in the wall that was where bodies were undoubtedly tossed down. A ripped tapestry, no a flag, drooped the wall. The insignia on the flag sent a frigid shiver through her entire body.

“The National Socialist Pony Worker’s Party.” Luna whispered aloud as she stared up at the rotated swastika. The princess started to recognize bits of the castle. She knew where she was.

Before Discord had attacked the Eternal Valley there had been an uprising in Equestria from a group of ponies who wanted to break a section of land off from the rest of the nation to call their own. United by a mysterious pony, the ponies declared war on Equestria when denied their request and started attacking villages and cities without warning. They called themselves the National Socialist Pony Worker’s Party, Nazi for short, and had based themselves in a castle in the Tramplevanian Alps.

Luna closed her eyes and shut the door slowly. She turned around.

The stories of what the Nazi Pony Party had done to fellow ponies were mortifying but where speculative at best. Nopony had truly found the castle even after the war was over. Her father and mother knew that the castle was in the Alps because reports frequently came back to them about ponies going missing at the edge of the mountain range. There was no search party they could send, however, as the bulk of their forces was cut thin to deal with the new threat amounting in the Eternal Valley.

The princess walked forward slowly, staying directly in-between the two rows of cells until she came to the lit torch again. She looked up the flight of stairs to her left. Her wings flapped once and launched her to the very top of the stairs in an instant. There was a sign above her.

Center of Operations.

Luna looked forward again and spotted a door at the end of the hallway. She walked towards it and tried to push it open. It was locked.

She fetched the key she had found in the kitchen out of her saddle bags and fit it into the hole, turning the key and then pulling the door open with a quiet creak.

There was a desk in the middle of the room with a large candle lit on the very edge. The wax was dripping along the side with light trickles as the flame from the wick flickered from the change of pressure as the door was opened. There were bookshelves full of books and folders. Lastly, behind the desk, there was a wall full of levers below a square safe built into the wall. On the desk there was a note.

I have stored the key away in the safe that is behind my desk to ensure that nopony will be able to get to it without the secret code. We don’t want another incident like last month when one of the younger prisoners escaped and nearly rescued her mother against Darkwing’s wishes.

Anyways, the code is fairly simple for anypony who has even the slightest bit of mathematical skills. The levers below the safe are labeled one through nine and can either be shifted up or down depending on which way you want the number to be placed. You are to make the fraction one third using the levers along the wall. Pushing a lever down will place the number in the denominator and pushing a number up will place the number in the numerator.

Don’t worry about resetting all of the levers when you place the key back into the safe. Once the door to the safe is closed the levers will reset automatically.

~Warden Scalpel

Luna walked over to the levers and inspected each one. She realized that numbers were not in numerical order and instead were ordered 1, 5, 7, 4, 8, 9, 3, 2, and 6. The princess went back to the desk and flipped the note over so that she may write on the back using the quill and ink that was placed next to the candle.

She scribbled furiously, having to ditch the piece of paper and start writing on the desk when it was full. After getting frustrated, Luna did a short combination calculation and found that there were twenty four thousand three hundred and ten ways to arrange the levers. Luna groaned out in frustration and laid her head on the desk, covering her head with her hooves.

After a moment, the princess got up from the desk and looked at the levers. She pulled the first one down. It was stuck.

“What?” Luna pulled the lever labeled with five down but it rose back up. When she pushed it up, however, the lever was stuck. “Hm…”

Lever seven pushed down, lever four pushed down, lever eight pushed up, lever nine pushed down, levers three and two pushed up, and lever six pushed down. The number was 5832/17496. I reduced down to 1/3. There was a click and the safe swung open, revealing the key. She snorted.

After banging her head against the wall in frustration and whimpering in pain when her horn also made contact with the wall, Luna picked the key up and limped out of the room and down the stairs towards the torch.

Except the torch wasn’t lit anymore. It sat there barren. Luna lit her lantern and looked around her.

There was a maniacal laugh behind her. The princess turned around.

Nothing.

“Let’s play a game, little pony. HeheheHA”

One of the cell doors down the hall to the kitchens smashed open with a loud clang and then fell off of its hinges. A low growl could be heard coming down the hallway. Luna turned and ran down the other hall away from whatever had just crawled out of the cell. She reached the blocked door and quickly took the key out, unlocking the iron bar door, taking the padlock, and then locking the door again once she was through. She could hear something galloping down the hallway.

Not wanting to stick around and find out what that thing was, Luna turned and exited out the huge and heavy metal doors, passing through as quickly as she could and then shutting them behind her.

The princess took in a huge gulp of air and put her ear up to the door. She heard nothing. Content that she was safe for the time being, Luna sat down on her haunches and looked directly in front of her. She was in a rather spacious room with double doors to her right and left. There looked to be some sort of reception desk between the two doors with benches and… cages lining the walls. There was a sign dangling above the reception desk.

Medical Facilities. Well then.

Luna got back to her hooves and limped forward to the reception desk. The desk was a mess of paperwork, writing utensils, stamps, and prescription pills and it was going to take some time if the princess wanted to find anything useful. Instead, Luna walked over to the set of double doors that was on her left and pushed them open. There was a light switch next to her and she switched it on, illuminating the hall.

The hallway she was looking down was very strange. In fact, the reception room was very strange looking too. It was almost as if Luna had walked into a modern hospital of sorts. The walls and floor were tiled white, albeit they were a bit dirty, and had a couple of paintings lining the walls. The paintings were strange themselves as they all depicted one dark gray pony in various poses.

Luna started to walk down the hall as the double doors swung shut behind her. She came to a door that was on her left and tried to open it. It was locked. She tried every door that was down the hallway but they all were either looked or would not budge open. Finally Luna reached the end of the hallway and the final doorway before the stairwell and turned the doorknob. It opened.

She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Luna thought she could hear the faint beeping of a heart monitor but when she turned to look at the contraption that happened to be in the room the sound stopped. She took a step into the room.

Suddenly Luna felt as if somepony had just smashed her head with a cinderblock as a massive amount of pain ripped through her. The princess collapsed onto the floor and covered her head. She could have sworn she felt something wet dribbling down the side of her head before she blacked out.

~~~

The trek to the Tramplevanian Alps was a five day journey by hoof and a three day journey by flight from Canterlot. Being that they were short on time, the Princess of the Night and her two most trusted guards decided to go to the mountain range by flight and take as few rest stops as they could afford. The wedding was only a week and a half away and Luna needed to be present on the night to show off her beautiful night sky for all of Equestria to see.

The three ponies decided to travel during the night so as to keep their expedition secret away from the rest of the nation. No doubt ponies would find it odd that Princess Luna would be flying to the Tramplevanian Alps on such short notice and so close to the Royal Wedding. They didn’t want a huge mob waiting at the city of Tramplevania.

The flight to their first stop, Stalliongrad, was largely uneventful. The skies were clear and cool, excellent conditions for flying. The moon illuminated their way all the way to the first city.

Stalliongrad was a delightful and beautiful city. Luna loved to visit St. Basilhoof’s Cathedral. The building was truly wonderful with its towering spires and the colorful domes dominating the skyline. The cathedral was much taller than any of the skyscrapers surrounding it and rivaled the beauty of Canterlot Castle. Sometimes Luna wondered if she should bring up moving the capital to Stalliongrad if only to live in the cathedral.

They arrived at the city as the sun was just beginning to rise and booked two rooms in one of the luxurious hotels that filled the city. Luna couldn’t sleep that day however and instead stayed awake and stared out her window towards the domes of St. Basil’s that could be seen off in the distance.

“Oh sister, you’re mornings are so beautiful.” Luna commented to herself, watching as the sun was about to clear the highest spire of the cathedral. She sighed. “And so are you. Father would be proud to see you now. You were always his favorite.”

The princess sat down on her haunches and her eyes drifted to the streets below her. Ponies trotted to and fro in all directions going about their daily business. Some wore elegant hats, some carried saddle bags full of groceries and supplies, and some were walking with their foals to the park or a friend’s house. She gave a brief smile before there was a knock on the door.

“You may enter” Luna said without turning around.

The door opened and shut quietly behind her as she heard the soft patter of hoofsteps walk up behind her. All was quiet as Shadow took a seat next to her princess.

“I can see you could not sleep either.” Luna said to Shadow. Shadow simply shook her head and looked off towards the cathedral spires. The two dark ponies sat in silence for a while, staring out of the window of Luna’s room. Finally Shadow spoke.

“Luna…?”

“Yes, my friend?” Luna turned to look at the mare with bat wings next to her.

“Could you… Tell me what your mother was like?”

Luna knew the reason for this question. Shadow had never known her parents. Both of her parents had died in a house fire in their home town of Gallopfrey. The little filly had barely escaped with the help of one of the neighbors who later took her in for adoption and moved to Canterlot.

Luna gave a soft sigh and turned to look back out of the window. “My mother, Queen Galactica, was beautiful beyond comparison of any other pony. Her coat was the color of sweet crème while the color of her hooves bled into a soft orange like the setting sun. Her mane and tail shimmered in the sunlight, swirling and flowing with ripples similar to that of our spiral galaxy. Her eyes were an even softer orange, able to release the tension built inside you or show affection when somepony needs it.

“Mother loved everypony unconditionally. She frequently visited cities and towns of Equestria if only to make an appearance and say hello. She donated to charities often and visited elementary schools to give speeches and play with the foals. Day court was never cancelled and she listened to what everypony had to say no matter how small.

“The most magnificent attribute of Mother, however, was the way she spoke to anypony. It was like waking up after a refreshing sleep or slipping into a hot mountain spring after a long day’s work. You felt safe and comfortable with her. Her words were like music that you could listen to for hours. At rallies and events, everypony was silent to hear her speak.

“My mother loved both of her children and her husband very much. She always took time out of her day to play with Celestia and I. We went to the castle gardens or took a stroll along the streets of Everfree often. We would always stop at this candy store and all get giant lollipops. She even took us to our first amusement park. We spent the whole day there and rode every ride we could.

“My father once told me that when I was born it was the happiest he had ever seen her. The smile on her face was bright and beautiful, bringing light to the hospital room she was staying in. She couldn’t take her eyes off me and would not let the nurses take me away from her to where the infants were kept.”

Luna paused. The smile that had gradually crept onto her face now faded. She looked down at her hooves.

“I loved Mother. I loved her with every ounce of love I could give. I imagined that one day I would grow up to be just like her. I would love like she did, smile like she did, and protect like she did. I wanted to protect her.” A warm tear crept down Luna’s cheek as she continued to stare at the ground.

Shadow looked over at her princess. Luna blamed herself for her mother’s death. The Night Guard scooted up next to her princess and laid her head on Luna’s shoulder.

Thankful for the sudden contact, Princess Luna rested her head on top of Shadow’s head and stared out towards the distant cathedral.

“It’s not your fault, Luna.” Was all Shadow whispered to her princess.

~~~

The light bulb lighting the room flickered while the dark blue alicorn’s eyes fluttered open as she slowly awoke from her previously unconscious state. A roaring headache split through her skull more from the physical pain coming from the side of her head rather than any sort of mental fatigue from the memories that were slowly coming back to her. Luna got up and walked over to the mirror that was hanging over the desk in the corner of the hospital room.

There was a giant gash on the side of her head right behind her ear complete with some tried trickles of blood down along the side of her face. Luna groaned and fetched out one of the gauze rolls, being careful to only use half of the roll to bandage up her head wound.

When the gauze was securely pressed on the wound and wrapped around her ear, Luna turned back around and spotted a fallen piece of pipe that was probably the perpetrator behind her most recent injury. She gave a rather large frown and looked up at the hole in the ceiling where the pipe must have fallen from.

“Well, at least it wasn’t by one of those… ponies this time”

The light bulb above flickered again as Luna made her way over to the door out of the hospital room. She paused for a second, suddenly feeling very wary of going outside of the room. Steeling herself, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

The hall outside of the room was dark but not impossible to see. The tiles lining the walls appeared to be falling off while there were chunks of ceiling missing or littered along the floor. Bits of wire and metal bar poked out of a couple of the holes in the ceiling. A stretcher sat in the middle of the hall abandoned. Luna shivered as she turned on the lantern.

The alicorn princess walked down the hallway back to the double doors. She was curious to see what had happened to the reception room. As she passed by the stretcher she noticed that the sheet covering was soaked with blood, fresh blood, and the straps that held ponies down were torn off or ripped in half.

Luna refocused her attention to ahead of her. When she reached the double doors, however, she noticed that they were locked and decided to turn back around and head down the stairwell at the other end of the hall.

She suddenly stopped after opening the door. Something was watching her. She broke out into a cold sweat as she slowly turned her head to look behind her.

There, at the end of the hallway, with the biggest and whitest smile she had ever seen, was the silhouette of a pony.

“I seeeeeeee you, little pony” it whispered inside of her head.

Luna bolted into the stairwell, shutting the door behind her and running down the flights of stairs to the next level. She quickly came to the next door and opened it, slipping into the next floor.

Shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could, Luna looked ahead of her. Lights flickered mysteriously as if they were about to give out while the state of the hallway before looked a lot like the floor above it. The only difference is that there was a burst pipe and a small trickle of water was flowing across the floor, making it slick to walk on.

Luna tread carefully on the wet floor and came to the first door on her left. She decided to keep her lantern on incase one of the light bulbs went out. The door opened and she started to quickly search the room for anything that could help her with the new pony that was more than likely hunting her.

In her search she found a needle and some tubing that she picked up on some impulse that she may need it later. Finding nothing else in the room, Luna exited back into the hall and glanced over at the stair well door. She saw nothing through the thin window.

Wary that the pony could still come through the door at any moment, Luna quickly ran to the next room to search its contents as well. There was nothing of interest, however, as the room was mostly empty besides a bed and an empty counter next to it.

The princess continued to search each room down along the corridor only to find that most rooms were empty and contained nothing of importance that she could use. Finally reaching the double doors at the end of the hall, Luna pushed them open and walked into what looked like a dimly lit waiting room.

Every light in the waiting room and the hallway flickered off. Luna jumped and ran across the room and then over to the other set of double doors that were attached to the room. She could hear wet hoofsteps.

“Hehehehe, hide and seek oh what a wonderful game.”

She pushed the door open and ran down the hall and opened the first door on her right. She held her breath as the door clicked behind her and ran to sit in the corner of the room. She heard the double doors push open to the hallway she was in. The clops steps sounded off beat, as if it were difficult for the pony to walk.

“Do I frighten you? Oh, I’m so sorry. HehehehahaHA!”

The crazed laugh of the pony sent chills down Luna’s spine and she closed her eyes, hoping for the pony to go away. The clops stopped at the door to the room she was in. There was no way she could escape of the pony suddenly decided it wanted to gain entrance.

There were three short knocks on the door.

“Knock knock. Anypony home? No?”

The clop steps left the door and trotted over to the door across the hall. There were again three short knocks.

“Knocky knock knock. Are you there my pretty pony? I brought some flowers. Hehehe.”

The voice of the delusional pony was nerve-racking. It was shrill in nature with a twisted echo behind it, sending chills down Luna’s spine every time it uttered a word. The amount of fear Luna felt from the creature, it was unparalleled to any kind of fear she felt before. She could practically feel the insanity dripping off of the creature as its hoofsteps started to continue on down the corridor.

Luna got to her hooves and slowly crept over to the door, careful to not make a sound as she began to look through window to hopefully catch a glimpse of the pony that was looking for her. Her eyes met the yellow iris and bloodshot eye of said pony.

“Bonjour!”

Please no.

The pony bucked the door off of its hinges and smashed it into Luna, sending her flying across the room. Dazed for only a second, she got her hooves and managed to dodge a charge from the insane pony. She caught a glimpse of the colt.

There were various screws in the pony’s skin, most likely twisted in with a manual screw driver, that looked to be infected or freshly bleeding. Its coat was blood soaked. The pony’s back left leg was also gored, the skin and muscle looking to have been ripped off of the leg revealing the bone tissue beneath it. The most horrifying thing about the pony, however, was its face. Its mouth looked to have been cut at the ends and then sewn into a permanent smile that horribly fit its current state of mind.

It laughed as it turned to face her.

Luna tried to run from the room but quickly found that her back hoof was in worse shape than she previously thought. Excruciating pain shot through her leg and Luna collapsed halfway out of the door.

“Come here, little pony. I want you. Heheheha.”

Luna started to try to get to her hooves but the insane pony was already on her, smashing its hoof down on top of her damaged one. Luna let out a shriek of pain as the pony started to twist its hoof back and forth with agonizing slowness. Forcing herself to concentrate, Luna kicked back her good hoof into the ponies face, causing it to shriek in pain and giving the princess enough time to get to her hooves.

As she extended her wings to fly down the corridor, the pony suddenly bit down on the radius bone of her wing structure.

SNAP.

Luna let out another shriek of pain as the pony cracked and broke her wing. She pulled free and gave the pony a buck to the face again. Taking the chance to run, while the pony was reeling in pain, the princess took off down the hall and used her intact wing to help propel her forward and keep off of severely injured hoof.

“Hehehe, tag, I’m it!”

Luna looked behind her to see that the pony had recovered and was now galloping towards her down the hall. She reached the stairwell in time and quickly shut the door behind her and barred it with a sturdy pipe through the handle that happened to be lying next to the stairs. There was a loud slam as the pony ran head first into the door.

“Open up, little pony. Come and play with me!”

The princess turned and looked down the stairwell. She saw that this stairwell seemed to go down many flights of stairs and the bottom was not clearly visible from the darkness that over took it. There was another slam as the insane pony was trying to get through the doors.

Think Luna, think! Luna was screaming in her head. If she started down the stairs there was no doubt that the pony could catch up with her in no time once it got through the door. If Luna decided that she should take the faster way and dove down the stairwell then she might come to a painful end if she couldn’t manage to at least use both wings as a parachute.

Perhaps she could defeat the pony in combat if she turned and fought. She had size and a horn on her side after all. She did risk further injury, though. The pony was ruthless and relentless. Injury made no difference in the persistence of the pony wanting Luna dead.

She looked down the stairwell again. Her right wing was severely damaged and needed to be tended to immediately. There was no telling what may happen if Luna used her wings as a parachute to float the last stretch of the stairwell. She could permanently lose all function in that wing even with her sister’s healing magic.

There was another slam and then a crack as the door began to split. Luna made her decision.

“Hehehehehahaha! Smash smash. I can almost see you!”

She closed her eyes and jumped.