Resident Canterlot

“Twilight Sparkle, I am going to be brutally honest with you and you must understand that everything I am about to say to you is true,” Luna stated, the tears in her eyes completely dried by that point. Twilight nodded in consent as the Princess took in a deep breath and prepared to tell her small tale of what happened.

***

The guards stood fast at the gate of Canterlot palace, using their own bodies on top of the barriers and boards that held the doors together at that point. Despite their best efforts, the boards cracked underneath the force of the creatures standing outside of the gate. The guards standing atop the wall and the pegasi flying above were firing down into the large rush of creatures that were attacking the palace doors.

“They’re thrusting against the gates!” Captain Sterling Blade, the current head of the Royal Canterlot Guard, shouted down at the ponies leaning against the gate. He jumped down from the wall, a slight clattering sound echoed forth from him as his armored body hit the ground and joined his fellow soldiers against the gates. “Hold the line, we can’t let them breach the walls!” he shouted to his fellow guards as the sound of explosions and screaming filled the streets and walls just outside of the gates. All at once, there came the screaming sound of a guard located far down the wall to his right as a zombie pony climbed up to the crenellation and began devouring the guard. Within a matter of mere moments, what was one zombie became two and soon there were nearly four scores of the wretched and rotting creatures crawling over the wall and filling the palace grounds. Captain Sterling Blade, a veteran of many great campaigns, who never once ran from the sight of an enemy, for quite possibly the first time in his life found his body from hoof to head filled with fear. He turned to his colts, the look clear upon his face as the near thirty guards, overwhelmed both at the gate and the walls, retreated to the inside of the palace.

Luna, who had been watching from her tower high above the palace, watched in awed horror as the gates burst forth and nearly a hundred fowl rotting zombies rushed forward. The slower guards, those trying to desperately gather their weapons were descended upon almost immediately, though she could not their screaming. The noise, the moaning, the incessant hunger of the horde overpowered any cry for help that may have been emitted in their last dying moments. Luna looked outward over her city, her sister’s city, a city she had not seen for over a thousand years, and beheld the horror of young fillies and colts being devoured. With her telescope she bore witness to the teeth sinking into the myriad of colored flesh and tore away large chunks, blood spurting forth from the opens wounds, sometimes in small flows and others gushing out. The bodies fell to the ground and twitched while organs and muscle were ripped clean from bone and blood.

Luna began to cry slowly as she watched the horror unfolding before her eyes, and though at any moment, during any horrible act of mutilation, she could have looked away, she did not. She found herself unable to look away as though something compelled her to watch the suffering of her citizens, and in the end she understood that there was nothing she could do. No magic spell, no universal cure for any great problem existed for this situation. She turned away, cursing the city and the plague of foul undead that besieged the palace before throwing her telescope down into the horde below. She descended from her tower into the foyer and watched as the guards barricaded the doors even further, piling up the barriers and tearing wood from the walls to reinforce the entrance.

Captain Sterling Blade, who was still overseeing the operation, gave Luna a brief salute before returning to his duties, a look of shame ever present on his face. From there Luna entered the hallway that led to the Grand Ballroom to check on things there, watching as guards looked out through the stained glass windows, waiting for the moment when anything would pounce through or try to attack the palace. She saw several of the guards tending to the wounded, nursing various scrapes and other cuts, though some looked worse, much worse. She passed one soldier, a pegasus with his right wing wrapped up but the bandage on it oozed with a reddish yellow puss and his eyes looked vacant, an almost dulled grey with dark circles under his eyes. She passed right by him and walked right into the grand ballroom entrance when she heard a loud bang come from behind her and looking back saw the sickly pegasus laying on the floor with a hole through his skull. The responsible soldier, a new recruit with a dark blue coat and light brown colored mane who had joined the guard only the week before all of this had happened, looked towards the princess and mouthed the words 'I had to' before dragging the body away down one of the adjoining corridors. Despite what she had just seen, Luna kept on moving and walked into the ballroom where dozens of ponies sat around, waiting out the disaster while others did their best to aid in the soldiers’ efforts to better improve the security of the room. The sun was setting on the second day of the terror of Canterlot as Luna watched over her citizens, the children playing and their parents passing around simple smiles as they tried to keep their fear hidden from their children. Luna saw one guard in particular, Lieutenant Thunderlane, motioning for the Princess to come with him to the Radio Center. Luna entered the slightly darkened room, maps of Canterlot hung about the walls and were placed on tables, while dozens of military grade radios decorated the remainder of the open tables.

“What is it?” Luna asked, a puzzled look upon her face as Thunderlane picked up a radio and began to tune the equipment to the proper frequency, delicately turning the tuning knob until speaking.

“Come in Canterlot Radio Center, this is Palace Military Headquarters, do you read, over?” Thunderlane spoke as Luna stood next to him, waiting for something to happen. Within seconds, sound burst forward, albeit broken with loud banging sounds and the ever constant moaning of the undead. “Commander Aberdeen, are you there?” Lieutenant Thunderlane asked and waited for the response from the other end of the communication link.

“I donʼ t know who Aberdeen is, but I can tell you now, he’s more than likely a zombie,” a rather familiar female voice replied through radio as the sounds of more dying zombies filled the air.

“Who is this?” Thunderlane demanded as Luna moved in closer to speaker as though intrigued by what she was hearing.

“This is Vinyl Scratch,” she began, “you know, DJ Pon-3, organizer for all of your radio programs and Music Monday’s host… Gah it does not matter! Weʼve been overrun over here and weʼre trying to make our way out of the radio station.” “Whoʼ s we, are there still military personnel remaining?” Thunderlane asked, the static becoming more severe with each passing second.

“It’s just me and some big red pony that’s been helping us out quite a bit, haven’t you big guy,” she began as a barely audible ʻEeyup,ʼ could be heard behind her through the static followed by another loud bang noise, “But we aren’t sure how much longer we can...” and at that point, the static burst through the radio and there was nothing but silence from the Radio Center. Lieutenant Thunderlane just put down the radio and stared at the floor, as though waiting for something more to happen, but found all efforts to be in vain. Luna, with no words, returned to the ballroom and looked over the ponies, trying to think of some encouraging words she could give them in this time of need but found herself to be utterly at a loss for them.

Speeches were not her forte per say, she was more comfortable working with the political side of ruling Equestria, working from behind the scenes and helping where she could without being seen. After all, speaking to large crowds with kind and reassuring words was more of her sister’s game. It was at that point when she realized that she should go to her sister for advice on what to do. Princess Luna turned down the hallway towards her sister’s throne room, which was lined with sandbags and various guards standing watch at the windows. She approached the intricately carved door when there came a sudden screaming sound from within, prompting her to rush the door and break it down. Inside, several guards towered over the recently re-deaded corpse of a zombie while Celestia cowered near her elevated throne, as though waiting for something more to happen. With the sight before her embedded into her eyes, Luna ran up to her sister as quickly as she could.

“Are you all right, my sister?” Princess Luna asked Celestia, who resumed sitting naturally in her throne, though her left wing was folded down over her back left leg and she still seemed to possess a tinge of fear.

“Yes, it just came through the window without warning, but the guards were able to subdue it rather quickly,” Princess Celestia replied as more guards rushed in and upon seeing the broken windows began to board them up to the best of their ability with the available materials and equipment. “Do you have any more news about the city?”
Celestia asked sincerely. Luna hung her head low for a few moments before finally speaking.

“Weʼve lost the Radio Center and the Arena has been sealed off from the
exterior,” Luna began before letting out a heavy sigh and looked at her sister with the utmost sincerity and fear. “And the horde breeched the palace grounds just a few minutes ago and are currently surrounding the palace.”

“Do not despair my dear sister,” Celestia stated as she jumped down from her throne and placed her head next to her sister’s. “There is always hope that things will get better and that tomorrow holds the salvation of today.”

“I understand, Celestia, I understand,” Luna replied as tears began to well up in
her eyes, her tears ran down her face as the sound of hammering filled the room, and then there was the sound of a soldier clearing his throat. The sisters broke apart as a grey-coated earth pony with a scar over his right eye and a silver mane stood in the doorway.

“What is it, Captain Sterling Blade?” Celestia asked, dismissing Luna who walked
out of the room in order to leave her sister to her business, but not before hearing the two discuss how a second horde was spotted near the business district. With nothing else she could possibly do, Luna proceeded back through the ballroom and watched as many of the ponies now began to drift off into sleep as the royal guards stood watch at the windows. Luna retired to her bedroom where she attempted to get some sleep amid the overwhelming moaning of the horde below and the sound of far off explosions coming from the direction of the Radio Center.

The following morning, Luna awoke to a relatively calm and quiet palace with even the horde below dispersed greatly about the ground below her tower window. She walked down the stairs into the foyer of the palace, the guards removing some of the boards as she walked by due to the overall lack of the living dead being outside prompting them to do so. From there she proceeded into the ballroom, the sun streaming through the haphazardly boarded windows. If Luna squinted she could just barely make out the outline of Canterlot General Hospital in the distance. Smoke continued to rise from the building in the distance, but that was expected due to the vast number of fires inside of it due to the military’s constant attacks on what the maps and everyone made out to be Ground Zero. She yawned and looked over the crowd of still sleeping ponies before looking back at the windows, and what she saw then made her hope that her eyes were betraying her. Four creatures were crawling up the windows and examining the places where the boards were placed across.

“Everypony!” she screamed as loud as she could in the royal Canterlot voice,
waking many of the not yet awakened civilians, “evacu…” she never got to finish her sentence however as the four creatures, which bore strong resemblance to ponies but had exposed brain tissue and longer tongues burst through the glass. Almost immediately, the four creatures began to devour several of the ponies in the ballroom and before the guards could respond, the horde began to crawl up and over the broken shards of glass into the ballroom. Luna turned and ran as quickly as she could towards her sister’s throne room as the guards rushed passed her to combat the horde. Upon arriving at her sister’s room however, she saw her beloved sister Celestia tied down to a medical gurney screaming as several doctors stood over her, all wearing gas masks and medical coats.

“Get her into the medical treatment center, now!” one pony shouted as Celestia sat upright and saw her sister.

“Run, Luna, run!” Celestia shouted as she fell back down onto gurney. With the sight of her sister being taken by the medical squad burned in her vision, Luna froze in place. She could not move, she did not want to move. Every part of her mind was flooded with conflicting thoughts and emotions about what to do, and time seemed to slow to a crawl for her as she began to contemplate all of them. More than anything she wanted to stay with her sister, and every ounce of her being told her that she had to. Celestia was her dearest sister and she could not just leave her like this, especially not now. However, she also knew that there was nothing she could do for her that the doctor’s could not. As skilled as she was with magic, even she did not know how to heal or fix what was happening. At the moment though that did not matter to her, as even being there with her sister would have been enough. However, one more thought plagued her mind as well, and that thought was of what her sister would have wanted from her. She had known her sister Celestia a long time, far longer than any other pony, and she knew what Celestia would have wanted from her in a situation such as this. More than anything, she would have wanted her to be safe above all else. It took all of her willpower to do so, and she did not want to, but nevertheless she knew that both she and her sister knew that this was best for both of them. She ran.

Luna turned away from the room and ran as fast as she could, rushing past guards and ponies alike while trying to avoid the zombies that now filled the room, tears fell from her eyes the entire way. Luna ran all the way to her room and gathered a couple of bags with incidentals and paused when she found a picture of her and her sister. The two sisters were sitting on the Ferris Wheel, a new attraction acquired for last year’s Gala/Carnival event and hugged each other, wide smiles stretched across each other’s faces. The tears in Luna’s eyes fell as she stuffed the photograph into her bag and ran down the stairs, her two bags held closely to her sides by her magic. She reached the foyer and heard the guards shouting various commands to each other along with details of the incoming horde. Some stated that it was coming from the area around the hospital as she stopped for a second only once to just look back at the palace behind her and heard the screams of her ponies, her beloved subjects when suddenly there came the explosion. The explosion deafened the sound throughout the palace and shook the entire building, knocking Luna to the ground and before she could recover, there was a smaller cracking sound. A large column in the foyer came down on top if her wing, pinning her to the ground and as she let out a scream she saw more guards rush past her, shouting ʻhold them backʼ and ʻwe can’t let the palace fall.ʼ Eventually the pain overcame Luna as she just quietly accepted her fate to die alone in the palace foyer and tried to remain still as she heard the undead near and mill about the palace around her. She played dead, pretending to not exist, waiting and hoping that at last there would come the sweet release of death and the nightmare would at last be over, but on the fourth day, she heard the sound of her sister’s star pupil enter the palace.

***

Twilight, unable to cope with the Princess’s words, threw up in a waste paper basket in the room. While this sort of behavior would have normally been considered out of character for her under normal circumstances, she couldn’t help herself now, especially after hearing something so horrifying. Upon finishing, she looked back at the princess. Luna recognized the anger in her sister’s prized pupil’s eyes and watched her as she wiped the remaining spittle from her lips and walked slowly back over to the injured Luna.

“Do you doubt my story, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked as Twilight got as close as ponily possible without touching the Princess, whom seemed unnerved by the lavender unicorn’s closeness. Twilight raised a hoof as if to strike the Princess where she sat but found herself unable to commit to the act and lowered her hoof and just stared at the ground. On any ordinary day the mere thought of hitting one of the rulers of Equestria would not have been entertained in her mind even for a millisecond, but today was not any ordinary day. “It is not in my nature to lie, Miss Sparkle,” Luna said, “and even if I was lying, I would not have been so elaborately specific nor would I have used zombies.” Twilight Sparkle understood this to be the truth but still, zombies seemed so medically and logically impossible that everything Luna stated should have been a lie. Twilight looked back at the Princess who just sat there on the bed as though none of her story was the least bit shocking.

“Not that I doubt it, itʼ s just that it...” Twilight replied before she turned around to face away from the Princess “it doesnʼt make sense,” Twilight continued with her back turned towards the Princess, thinking about what to say next with careful precision and forethought. “It’s just that you expect me to believe that in a matter of three days, the entire city of Canterlot,” she began and turned to face Luna again, who tilted her head and listened intently, “went from a bustling metropolis and the greatest city in all of Equestria to war zone filled with the living dead.” Twilight asked Luna who simply sighed and looked at her sister’s star pupil with sincerity once again. “I donʼ t expect you to believe anything, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna replied and attempted to stand once again, but found the pain to be too unbearable to move at the moment. “I expect you to see the truth, and the truth of the matter is that Canterlot is under siege by the living dead. If it were any other threat, we could have handled it but for every one of our soldiers or citizens they killed, their ranks grew in number and strength.”

“Then ... in a sense, if we take this seriously, it spreads like any fictional plague of zombies from films or books,” Twilight added, still believing the entire scenario to be overly ridiculous and impractical but entertained the idea of the story in hope of luring out the truth. “but that would have to mean that there exists a pseudo Patient Zero, the first infected that spread the virus throughout the city of Canterlot, assuming that it is a virus.”

“Our top doctors and scientists theorized that perhaps it was a transmittable disease of some sort, but never really clarified if it ever was a virus,” Luna said as she watched Twilight pace back and forth across the floor, her eyes darting back and forth several times every other second. “All they ever specified was that zombification is transferred via the saliva, but there is a problem concerning the existence of a single Patient Zero.” Luna folded her front legs across themselves and inhaled rather loudly before letting out a sigh. “At the time of the outbreak, we possessed several dozen maps outlining the positions of the undead and the points at which the highest number of encounters took place. All leads pointed, at the time, towards there being a significantly higher number of the infected ponies first appearing at Canterlot General Hospital. Within a few hours of the first reports, there appeared a series of spikes in reports of the events throughout Canterlot and then ... the fall began.”

***

A young stallion waited for his marefriend on the street corner just under the newly installed streetlamp, a toothpick situated between his lips that he motioned back and forth from one side to the other. Occasionally, he flicked his mane back and forth to ensure that he kept up an appearance for the pony he waited for. He waited and watched as other ponies passed him by, some tipping their hats and saying ‘hello’ whilst others just walked passed him and kept moving about. He craned his neck to glance at the clock tower three streets over to see the time as eight fifteen in the evening. He continued to look up and down the street, the sounds of the carnival coming from the district nearest the palace. She promised to meet him twenty minutes ago at this exact spot just as they did the night before and at the same time as before. He thought to himself about the possibilities of why she may be late, glancing over the obvious ones of caught in traffic since most of the taxi carriages were not even running due to the Gala Carnival. Then again, how in Tartarus could one possibly get caught in traffic if she was walking from her home to meet him there to go to the Carnival. He glanced up at the clock tower again to see that the time was eight twenty-three and when he looked back at the street, he saw her walking towards him. He gave a slight sigh of relief and rushed over to her but slowed down when he watched her walk down the street. There was a slight, how would he put it, wrongness to the manner in which she walked as though something afflicted her and within a few seconds, something nagged at the back of his mind.

‘What was wrong with her?’ he found himself thinking as he once again resumed his approach towards her when he saw the five or six other ponies behind her, moving in a similar fashion. Suddenly, the ponies behind her attacked the closest ponies to them, biting and tearing away at their flesh as their victims screamed in terror for help. Blood poured forth from their open wounds as he ran up to his marefriend and placed a hoof on her, which drew little to no reaction from her.

“Hey, we need to get out of here, right now,” he said as she turned herself to face him, which was when he saw her face for the first time that evening. There persisted the rumors of some kind of cannibalistic illness that sprung up earlier that day, as though from nowhere, but he dismissed them as just hearsay since most of the time, rumors came about during the Gala about various things. He looked into her grey eyes and examined her closely, though he found little to nothing unusual about her appearance except for one thing, just that one thing that he wished he saw sooner in the next five seconds.

One second, her head tilted up towards his and watched as his pupils slowly shrank into dots of fear, ringed with color and tears.

Two seconds, his hoof gripped tighter as though part of some unconscious reflex when she leaned forward towards the young colt’s body, a glassy look to her eye.

Three seconds, her mouth opened wide exposing her whitish-red teeth, the stench of death and freshly killed pony hanging about her breath, as she got ever closer to him.

Four seconds, he felt the teeth slowly pressing down onto his coat all while the scream slowly began to rise from his throat as he began to fall backwards.

Five seconds, there, on the streets of Canterlot, he found his throat pierced while he screamed out in pain and the blood exploded forth from his veins, a sort of reddish mist delicately dancing about the cold night air, painting the scene with carnage.

There at the base of her neck, bleeding and ringed with yellowish puss, existed a significant bite mark at the base of her neck and then the second and third marks on her legs. By the time the clock rang out the nine o’clock chime of nine bells, the street corner where the colt stood but forty minutes earlier teemed with the living dead, moaning into the night. The ponies that remained in the area barricaded themselves in the various businesses and small buildings about the street, boarding doors and windows to the best of their abilities with what they possessed. The newly formed horde of zombies milled about until they heard the sounds of the Carnival coming from several blocks over and saw the bright lights shining above the rooftops. The ponies in the buildings made sure to let the guards know, to the best of their ability that they possessed at the moment, but the messages were nevertheless delayed in making it to the guards.

The horde turned down the street into a crowd of onlookers, who at the time believed the zombies to be nothing more than overly enthusiastic participants in the Carnival, did not flee from the oncoming cannibals. Within mere seconds, the horde of perhaps twenty or more zombies nearly doubled in size and it took ten minutes before the crowds in all of their partying drunken splendor to realize the reality. With each passing minute, the horde grew as the citizens and guests of the Royal City of Canterlot fell into the ranks of the living dead as they marched slowly up the streets, ever looking for flesh and blood to consume. Within two hours, the palace was quarantined within a safe perimeter and a state of emergency for all of Canterlot was declared by Princess Celestia. Soon, the entire Carnival scene reduced into a nothingness of abandoned rides, food stalls, overturned tables, and splotches of blood sprayed in a myriad of patterns and sizes throughout. To look upon the city in this state, there was but one word to describe, one horrible word that none wished to use for the connotations and immediate theories that drew from it: Chaos.

Within the next half hour, the Princesses gathered up the leaders of the various military divisions and formulated some strategy to set up safe zones throughout the city, beginning with the hospital. Celestia, under much duress and heavy questioning immediately confined the rumors to be false that this was in any way, shape and or conceivable form related to Discord. After all, jokester that he was, there was no debatable streak of murder in his bones. The horde of the undead ponies remained ever present outside of the two newly set up safe zones, the Arena and the Palace, each within eye shot of each other, but there was something wrong with the whole set up, something out of place. Luna took notice of it first, with it being that the undead for whatever reason migrated to the Arena more so than the outer walls of the palace and called it to the attention of the others. The leaders theorized about the concentration of soldiers when the scientists, those that could be brought there in time without incident proposed a better theory to the situation.

“The lights of the Arena are attracting the creatures to the Arena,” a grey haired Pegasus began as he pointed out the window towards the illuminated area. “And judging from the reports from the survivors that we gathered thus far, it appears that this is what drew them to the Carnival grounds to begin with, the lights and noise,” he finished waving a bunch of papers around before being called away by a soldier in the next room. Celestia and Luna walked away from the room, Celestia's head hung low as she walked to the newly set up Command Center. A map of the city of Canterlot stretched out before them across one the of tables as soldiers read reports and applied pushpins to the locations indicated by said reports.

“What do we do now, sister?” Luna asked while Celestia stared at the ever¬-growing map of pushpins before her with a look of concern and puzzlement. “We can’t just turn off the lights right away,” she said, stepping around to the other side of the table, “they need the lights on in order to perform the operation as it is needed. Without the lights, the soldiers are literally fighting in the dark.”

“I know, Luna, but we still cannot have the zombies heading towards the Arena,”
Celestia said as a soldier placed even more pins on the map before them as she let out a sigh. “We have no other option but to turn off the lights otherwise the Arena will become a slaughterhouse and we cannot afford to lose any more lives than we already have.” Celestia walked out into the ballroom from the newly formed communications room to look out over the nearly two hundred and growing ponies that gathered in at the palace for safety following the outbreak at the Carnival. The ponies had gathered in various groups and subgroups, mainly by association, and it was at that point when Celestia bore witness to one thing, in all of her over one thousand years of life, that would haunt her: the missing pony posters. Most were makeshift at that point with just names that were nailed to a wall in the ballroom with several of the foals placing trinkets at the base of the wall, hoping for an answer to the madness that reigned supreme outside. “Perhaps there is a solution to our problem after all, sister,” Celestia stated, turning down to the main hallway that led to the foyer of the grand palace. “Many of the soldiers stationed at the Arena are unicorns so they could just use their magic to illuminate the areas as are necessary thus rendering the stadium lights useless.”

“But they will grow tired within the hour, sister,” Luna said entering the foyer
behind her sister, “and either way, they will still end up fighting in the dark against the threat.” Luna paused for a moment as she found Celestia to be in deep thought, watching the soldiers pile sandbags between the large columns and setting up strategic watch posts in case something went wrong. “There is another way, a simpler way that you are overlooking dear sister,” Luna said garnering the attention of Celestia who looked at her as if to state ‘go on’. “If they placed motion sensor lights at the main entrances and at important locations…”

“They could still see and would easily be able to tell when there was a threat that
needs to be addressed without drawing the horde to them,” Celestia finished, to which Luna simply nodded in agreement to the newly formed plan. Celestia immediately ran off as Luna stood in the foyer for a few seconds to watch as the guards set up for the forthcoming events. Luna decided to retire to her room for the evening to watch the city from her tower feeling that she would be safer their and besides, Celestia could manage the affairs of the military well enough without her present.

***

Twilight once again found herself without words as the Princess finished her story and just stared at her when a second thought occurred to her. A thought concerning the city and how the two came to enter it with such ease.

“Princess,” Twilight began, “if the city was crawling with so many of those things by the first day, then how come Fluttershy and I were able to pass through most of the city so easily.”

“You mean that you two didn’t encounter any of the creatures when coming her to
the palace?” Luna asked to which Twilight only nodded a solemn reply, unsure of what to make of the whole situation or even if the Princess was not suffering from stress at this point. Sure, there was evidence of a massive attack, the barriers, and those bizarre metal cartridges on the ground at every turn, and of course there was the blood, but other than that there was nothing else. Where the creatures were at this point simply baffled both of the ponies. Twilight prepared to speak on the matter when both of them heard the sound of what could only be screams coming from down the hallway in the direction where Fluttershy had gone. Twilight immediately ran out into the hallway and looked intently down the hallway where the screams and the sound of louder sounding hoof steps came from. Within seconds, Fluttershy rounded the corner down towards the Clinic and Twilight, as much as she was relieved to see her friend, she found herself to share the same panic as Shy. No sooner had Shy turned the corner did Twilight’s smile immediately faded into confusion as four creatures follow her in turning the corner, keeping up with her but slightly slower nonetheless. Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl as she watched the rotting bodies raise their hooves up and lower them to the floor with minor splatters of blood from the various wounds about their bodies. Twilight simply refused to believe what she saw, for it defined all possibilities and all natural rules in Equestria, but there they were, four zombie ponies each moaning horrible sounds into the hallway.

“Twilight, get inside!” Fluttershy screamed, snapping her friend from her state of scared wonderment of the zombies that were but mere feet away. She turned to run into the room as they were within inches of her and just as one lunged for her, she slammed the door shut behind her. Shy shoved a small table against the door and Luna used her magic to levitate one of the larger and heavier cabinets to the same place. Twilight just sat there in awe while Fluttershy paced near the door. “I was looking for supplies when I came upon them,” she stated in panic while looking rapidly around the room before looking at Twilight with much intent. Twilight sat there, processing the sight she just bore witness to, the zombie ponies trotting down the hallway, those cold grey eyes and that awful stench that preceded them with each step. They moved slow enough but still possessed some speed when necessary, perfect predatory creatures it seemed but it still presented a scientific impossibility.

Zombies, by all medical accounts, and all historical accounts of Equestria, should not exist at all but that was not to say that they did not exist in literature. Many a times over, Twilight had read science-fiction novels wherein the aforementioned creatures roamed freely and terrorized the countryside, of which the most prolific of these books being the masterfully written work by Manewell something, she could not recall his last name at the moment. The book detailed, with disturbing accuracy the total takeover of Equestria by zombies and the campaigns undertaken to liberate the world from the undead hordes. However, that was entirely fiction, and this was the reality wherein zombies existed without the defense of a paper page to protect one from their vile infection and cannibalistic nature. She snapped out her fantasy stupor and resumed her normal state within the room and placed a medical cart on its side against the barrier.

“Hopefully that will hold them,” Twi said shaking slightly where she stood and nearly jumped when Fluttershy placed a hoof on her shoulder to calm her down.

“Are you all right?” Shy asked as a concerned look grew across her face but eventually wore off when Twilight shook her away.

“I’m fine,” Twilight said to the unconvinced Fluttershy, “no really I am perfectly okay, honest,” she added but then suddenly broke away into a long pause as though
something plagued her mind. “It’s just that, well... These things should not exist!” she yelled pointing a hoof at the door before slamming it down on the ground rather loudly. “They violate every law of nature set forth in Equestria and…and…and...” she broke into a sob with thick tears falling to the tile floor with nearly audible ‘plink’ and cried for several minutes. “It terrifies me,” she finally said. For what must have been the first time in her life, after all she had gone through, all the adventures she and her friends had, and all the atrocities they had faced, she was truly terrified.

She did not have long to grieve however as the sounds of the creatures throwing themselves against the barricaded door began to fill the room. The sound grew louder with each passing second until finally, Twilight approached the door and noticed that towards the middle appeared a fine crack that steadily grew in size. Within seconds, the wood started splintering and the crack spider webbed, an act that prompted the already scared Pegasus to shrink back in fear and sob a little bit.

“Princess, we have to do something,” Twilight said as Luna picked herself up from the bed and, after limping significantly to the door, placed her horn against the cracking wood. Within an instant, her horn glowed a vibrant royal blue, as there persisted a loud cracking sound, not from the door but from the walls around the door. In a matter of seconds, a large portion of the wall exploded forward into the hallway at the precise position of the zombie ponies, crushing them under the weight of the stone and metal debris that once made up the walls.

Without hesitation, Luna staggered forth into the hallway as Twilight followed suite, providing a living crutch for the Princess to lean upon when necessary while Fluttershy followed closely behind, checking quite frequently to see if there was anything following them. Luna led them down the hallway as neither Twilight nor Fluttershy dared not question the Princess, for it seemed as though she knew where she was going.

“We have to leave this place immediately before any more of those things come after us,” Luna said, wincing with each step until they reached the foyer of the palace and shut the doors behind them. With seconds, the trio reached the center of the foyer and suddenly, upon looking towards the hallway that led away into the grand ballroom, they saw the horde approaching. The trio turned away to flee out of the palace but saw even more of the creature pouring into the palace from the grounds, which presented the one truth in that moment: there was nowhere to run. With no other option, Twilight and Luna began fighting back and shot out short energy bursts from their horns to knock back the living dead but for each one that fell, three more climbed over the body until it too resumed its place amongst its comrades in death. Fluttershy cried as she hid behind the alicorn and unicorn for there was nothing that she, as pegasus, could do to make the situation any better or worse. The hordes continued to press forward on all sides without stopping, their collective moans echoing throughout the foyer walls and the surrounding hallways that fed into it.

“Where in Equestria could so many of the things have come from?” Twilight asked as one was within two feet of them when she knocked it back.

“They must have heard Fluttershy screaming,” Luna began, “they are attracted to noises, light and movement, like feral creatures on the hunt for prey.” She knocked
back another one as Shy continued to cry even louder and wailed that it was all her fault for the zombies attacking them and that she wished she died in the hallway, she wished and wished and wished.

“I want to die!” Fluttershy screamed aloud, her wailing sobs nearly drowning out the moans as the dozens, perhaps even hundreds of zombies crawled forth to their location in the foyer.

“Donʼ t say such things, Fluttershy!” Twilight replied as she knocked back another
zombie when from behind it, another leapt forth to attack. She saw its cold eyes shine with murder as its bloodied maw opened wide to take fleshy sustenance from prey, the horrid stench of death coming forth from its mouth as it came forward. Twilight closed her eyes, nearly prepared to meet her fate when she felt the tingle of magic pulsate around them and upon opening her eyes, the trio was encompassed by a blue shield, radiating with fading power.

“Twilight, can you teleport into the courtyard behind the horde?” Luna asked, her face filled with the strain of trying to keep the shield raised against the mounting horde on all sides.

“Yes, but I can only take one other pony with…” she stopped and at that moment, tears filled her eyes for she understood what the implications of the princess’s words meant and that there existed no other option. “I can’t do that, Luna... I just... I can’t do that,” she sobbed as Luna placed a hoof on her shoulder and embraced her tightly, the moans of the horde growing louder and louder with each second. The shield started cracking, the sound of splintering magic filled the air as Luna let go of her sister’s most beloved of all students. Luna took off her crown and threw to the ground, causing it to shatter, leaving but a silver key amongst the shattered remains.

“This key will grant you access to all of Canterlot, so guard it well, Twilight
Sparkle,” Luna said, her eyes lined with tears as she gave it to Twilight and then turned away from her. “Do not look back, Twilight Sparkle,” she said, “keep moving forward and away from this place, this Tartarus on Equestria.” With no other options left and nothing else that she knew that she could do, Twilight Sparkle concentrated on the courtyard, placed her right fore hoof around Fluttershy, and within seconds, the two of them vanished from the shield and reappeared outside in the courtyard behind the mounting horde of zombies. The two turned from the palace and ran towards the gate, a few straggling zombies taking slight notice in the new prey that entered their field of vision.

Inside the palace, Luna kept the shield going for a few more moments until she was certain that Twilight and Fluttershy had gone. From the direction of the grand ballroom, behind the horde, her eyes caught the glimpse of a pony much larger than all the others, a pony whose size and proportions were held by only one pony in all of Equestria, the one pony she hoped she would never see, not like this. At the sight of that, Luna dropped the shield and recalled a forbidden spell, one that her old masters, back when she learned the art of magic casting, told her to never use unless she faced the most dire of situations and bitter of ends. Luna concentrated the spell as the zombies attacked her

“I will not become like you!” She screamed as she faced down the horde in the direction of the grand ballroom. The larger zombie following them seemed to shake the earth with each step it took. Just as the first zombie prepared to take her flesh into its gaping maw, she activated the forbidden spell, but not without first letting a broad smile stretch across her teary face.

Twilight Sparkle stopped running for just a moment and turned back to look at the palace and witnessed a bright glow emanating from the foyer that she once stood in just seconds ago. Instantly, a bright flash filled the air with light and seconds later, an explosion shook the ground and sent thousands of pounds of stone, steel, and manner of materials into the air along with the bodies of hundreds of zombies. The blast knocked both Twilight and Fluttershy back as she watched the fireball reach into the cloudy sky above, the compounds of the blast mixing into a bloody rain of triumph and tragedy before her eyes. Dust filled the air and Twilight, along with Shy, continued to run out of the palace gates until she turned back once more, only to see that once where the grand foyer of the Royal Palace of Canterlot stood, there existed nothing but bloody rubble and a pit.

Princess Luna, royal sister and raiser of the moon, gave her life to save that of Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy in the hope that they may save Canterlot from Tartarus on earth.