Spire of Madness

Shining Armor could still recall the presence of his wedded sweetheart and their offspring within the cold walls of the Crystal Keep. Like damned phantoms forever cursed to roam this plagued land the loss kept haunting him, chewing and devouring the back of his mind on a daily basis. As if still here, he could swear he'd hear their voices echoing throughout the empty void of his chambers. Alas... Despite it all, Shining's greatest ails remained with what he had just lived through, and he contemplated whether he should continue doing so.

Indeed, the Royal Guardsponies did share skeptical and worried stares among themselves and at him once their King had come running in tattered clothing and tainted with liquids of various colors, some of which may not have even been identifiable. The edges of his eyes were crusted with dried blood and he had a generally lost look upon his face. To experience such unspeakable madness at his own leisure, out of his own doing and at orders that directly left his lips; Now that was a predicament worthy of a hysteric chuckle from the dark. Shame, though, that he did not consider closing the gate to blasphemy and terror.

With a wide eye, an uneven breath, and a sweaty brow; Shining Armor sat upon his desk and began frantic writings upon a parchment unused for a questionable amount of time. Ridden by old age with hideous brownness and littered liberally with stains of various, darkened origins. In his madness, the stallion's scribbles conjoined into words and sentences. A cry for help, a scream of terror, a decade-delayed whimper for the only family he had left.

Not long has it passed since then. The earth-quaking movements of the voluptuous, putrid nonsense given physical form shook the King's spire. The entire Crystal Empire could feel it; The bitter end. Sounds that no ordinary ears could identify as a language or any natural sound triumphantly spread throughout the entire structure, shaking anything that heard them down to the very core.

"MY EYES! MY EYEEEES! SWEET CELESTIA!" a series of distant screams came muffled from the hall. The messengers of the coming doom. The warm, trickling blood of ponykind came from underneath the door leading into the King's quarters in amounts that no sanity would dictate to be normal. Soon after, one poor soul barged in.

A welcomed herald, such as he is.

The Pegasus Guard limped into the quarters. With not a moment of respite, the scroll containing the King's scribbles was presented to him. "Carry this to Princess Twilight, find her in Canterlot. May Celestia guide you." a final order from the king, and so it shall be done. Finding new use within the chair he had spent years sitting in, Shining Armor smashed the window overlooking his declining Empire into shardy bits. The Pegasus flew out after but a moment of reluctance... And the King was left alone with the eternal damnation once again.

Looking out through the shattered window, the white stallion could practically feel the steaming pile of the ungraspable weighing in behind him with misshapen appendages and coiling tendrils, mere moments away from the inevitable.

A final act of defiance, the Crystal King lept through the window, falling... Falling... Falling... It almost seemed serene, as if time itself gave unto his weight and slowed down. He thought back to his letter, smiling bitterly.

Ruin has come to our family.

You remember the Crystal Empire, silent and subservient, resting proudly on its rightful place up in the North? I spent all my young years leading and protecting that ancient, curse-ridden land. Yet, I got tired of lone leadership and piles of endless paperwork. In my blind search of relief from the eternal monotony and grief, I had stumbled upon secret pockets around the castle, containing countless diaries from the previous leaders of the Empire; including King Sombra.

Specific and unsettling pages suggested the castle itself was a gateway to some magnificent and unfathomable power. With my mind in an unsober state, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long-buried secrets, exhausting what remained of my resources and treasury on swarthy work ponies and sturdy mining tools.

At last in the forgotten crystal-infused tunnels beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable prison of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient seals within the mines... Soon we were in a realm of death and madness. In the end, I alone fled laughing and wailing through those blackened walls of antiquity until I reached the castle's safety.

You remember the Crystal Empire, silent and subservient.

It is a festering abomination!

I beg you, return home; claim your birthright and deliver our family from the sickening shame that I have brought upon us...

-CRACK-

...Within the Spire of Madness...