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...
First Steps - The Taste of Reality
A light of hope in the bowels of this cursed construct of crystal; the eternal Alicorn's horn. A simple and basic spell; but comfort and a blessing of sight nonetheless; lest the companions are beset by the darkness... And whatever it may contain.
The ground floor laid ridden with unnatural formations of freshly protruding crystal, embedded with more modern inventions such as rebar and other rusted support. The structural union was not a sight any of the flesh-bound group had ever seen before. Otherwise, the floor had been barren and abandoned by life.
Transparent, translucent, reflective; the crystal which this spire had been formed of existed askew. Even the loyal wolf had shown signs of discomfort, although it resisted the urge to whine as if knowing the importance of staying as quiet as possible in this scenario. Still, the wrongness of the place affected all.
"The stairs are leading upwards, but... This is all wrong--" Twilight whispered as she observed the hollow halls while traveling with the group as quietly as they possibly could. "They're not where they're supposed to be. Why are they in the middle and... Hanging?" she made the observation. Indeed, the staircase did not touch the floor; its twisted form went upwards into the unknown blackness. It was clear that no being without flight or unnatural height would be able to reach even the first step.
Steady now; the ponies of the group with wings carried the less fortunate ones onto the steps before taking spots on them as well. Twilight, of course, took point and lit the spiraling path upwards; each step brought the promise of darkness and despair. What would they even find on the upper levels?
Apparently... Nothing. The second level was as barren as the previous one, save for the further cluttering of the fresh crystal protrusions. It was more claustrophobic than one floor down; and the shadows seemed to be choking out the light that Alicorn magic provided, never allowing full clearance on the corners of the place even when up close.
There were no railings, no protection from the fall on these steps to insanity, nor was there a single connection between the stairs and the rest of the spire; leaving one to assume that it hung from the top-most floor on a practically material string of crystal, or worse yet: Something even less trustworthy to hold the weight of them all.
It was not until the third floor that a heart-stopping and reality-questioning realization had struck a member of the group; it was Applejack. Outside she was the one that noticed the odd patterned holes across the structure, and now those same damaged surroundings simply did not exist from within. She didn't alert the others, perhaps it was a trick of the darkness and clutching shadows, but upon another twisting trot 'round the staircase Applejack was sure that at least two of the holes should have been visible from within the spire.
Doubt and dread of the world itself sets in; slowly, gently, without the mind noticing at first until it is too late.
"Twilight--!"
"Not now Applejack! We can't make too much noise."
"No, Twi; ahm serious-- There ain't nothin' about this place that's right."
Twilight shot a questioning look to her orange friend, raising an eyebrow while second-guessing her own sight as she glanced around and looked for whatever had upset her apple-bucking friend.
"The holes, Twi-- The holes ain't there. The whole place 's startin' to feel less and less like th' buildin' ah saw outside." Applejack confirmed.
Everyone took a moment to recollect themselves at those words. They had glanced around their surroundings, especially Twilight, but by now the darkness was swallowing the light; only a few mere feet of the staircase above them remained lit, but the surroundings were pitch black.
Why would a hole-ridden structure with clear access to daylight be in near-complete and invading darkness?
In a jolt caused by a sudden and miniscule brain-shatter, Twilight bumped a little too hard into Applejack from the instinct that had demanded she back away. The stairway was already tight enough as it is, forcing the group to go one by one; and the push from Twilight was enough for Applejack to lose her balance. Her hoof chipped away the slightest of edges from where she had stood and she plummeted. At the very least the rest of the group had a bit of distance between themselves and the two.
"Oh no-" Morningstar exclaimed through a sharp inhale and grit teeth.
"Applejack--!" cried out all her friends, more or less in unison; save for Rarity who had temporarily stopped breathing completely.
Applejack fell... Or, at least she would have if a light blue aura had not enveloped her. The telekinetically suspended mare breathed hard and fast, teeth occasionally chattering at the lack of solid ground beneath her and at the thought of what could have happened.
"A- A- Ah-- T- Thanks Rarity!" the orange mare blurted out after a crawling silence. But... The diseased mare that was in the process of saving her only added to the soundless grip-- In fact, not a single soul responded.
In her panic, the swarthy orange mare did not notice; how could she? When the heart beats faster than the brain can process, life usually flashes before one's eyes too clearly for the victim to notice anything else that is wrong.
But they've all seen as Applejack's hat fell... Upwards; into the darkness, and continued its ascension to Celestia-knows-where.
In fact: The mare's body looked like it had been headed upwards itself, had the Element of Generosity not saved her.
"...What the heck-!?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, altogether forgetting the part about keeping things quiet. However, Twilight had no time to shush her up; rising concerns crept in as the white mare currently holding Applejack using her horn's power was seemingly having even further trouble with keeping up a pulse and breath than usual.
"R- Rarity." Twilight would call out. "I- I can take it from here, please. Don't overexert yourself."
"What... Use..." the masked and veiled mare muttered in a voice that none would have recognized as her own or as the voice of a mare to begin with, had they not already spent so much time with her in this state already.
The more Rarity attempted to pull her friend closer to herself, the further she seemed to be slipping into the darkness up above; and it was becoming more and more apparent that the orange-coated mare was indeed moving.
"S- Sugarcube-- Last ah check't, err... Y'all are supposed to pull me in, right?" Applejack said in a hoarse and nervous voice as she began sweating, feeling herself begin to drift upwards.
"T- Trying..." Rarity choked a whimper out of her, the shadow of a voice. Sweat had begun building upon her brow, not just from mere exertion, but confusion and worry at the fact that her every effort did naught.
Without further words, the blue aura was overpowered with a purple one. For a moment, Twilight turned to Rarity and gave her a sad smile and nod before elegantly turning her head back to Applejack. "Alright. Now let's get you back here-"
Applejack was sent flying upwards with even more a tremendous force and speed than a fall on its own ever could have done.
A collective gasp, followed by unsober action. Twilight spread her mighty wings and soared after her ascending friend at full throttle. Alas, the known laws of gravity did not matter here, and the structure was becoming far too narrow to properly traverse; it is honestly a great surprise that she did not crash sooner! But crash she did and in a last ditch effort to save her companion, she snatched her from the mid-air while in fall, positioning herself so that her more resistant body would cushion the meeting with... Whatever awaited.
It would turn out to be a solid, straight wall. Several bones cracked and fractured in the landing and sent purple feathers flying before they were left stagnating and frozen in the air rather than fluttering to the floor; if there even was a floor anymore.
Twilight's vision was flashing white at the edges of her consciousness and sentience, in sync with the pulsating and throbbing pain that was shooting throughout her equine form. The harm afflicted her gravely, mainly in the direction of self-blaming; however, bigger was her concern for Applejack who laid cradled like a child within her hooves, a noticeable burden on top of her.
"A- Apple... Jack." she whispered out in a death rattle. A dazing and pathetic series of hallucinations had entered her temporarily damaged mind: The sound of a mare choir humming in a vocal downward spiral, accompanied by the soft sound of hollowed crystals being ever so gently touched with metal. Ironically relaxing, yet, it did not stop the gripping sensation from within that life was leaving; like some sort of an invisible claw had grabbed onto her lungs, heart, each and every vein, ceasing the flow of life!
Funny... She had never heard music this hauntingly beautiful in her mind; it sent chills down her spine and throughout her body. In fact, she had never ever had something like this grace her ears... Her mind...
If only Celestia were here.
She felt cold, chilly and alone. The world around her faded to blurry colors she could not name as she, with sluggish movements, snuggled the air and the floor; splayed in a half-writhe and half-embrace, it was a sad sight for a mare held in high regards by her peers and friends to behave like this.
Twilight was not all there anymore, really. Her surroundings had spun as the loop of peacefully damning sounds and music kept going, constantly spiraling downwards in tone.
The lavender mare found herself back up on her hooves as if an external force had brought her up to them. Ignoring the flow of warm, metallic liquid from her lips and nostrils, she started following a light that had just manifested within her mind; not white or angelic in nature but as dark and maddeningly devilish as everything about this place was. Still, she felt serenity as she approached it, completely ignoring the rush of blurred colors around her that her mind could not yet grasp or understand.
The sounds grew louder but still at a volume that could be considered soul-healing. There, in the distance; she saw her brother. Aged and wrecked with years of stress, but still smiling through his inner turmoil upon spotting his dear sister.
"Shining Armor!" she'd call out in a blood-filled gurgle of a voice; the stallion's eyebrows lowered in concern and fear at the condition of his kin.
"Dear Twily..." the ghostly voice of her brother by blood and flesh spoke to her with sorrow and regret; "If you are experiencing this reality then you can know with certainty that I have been lost to the madness of antiquity. I had never wanted to lay this writhing truth upon you in this fashion, but fate has led us here it seems, such as it is."
"You may find much brain-festering information of my misdeeds strewn about this unholy place. I had written for years in olden parchments and crumpled papers, but for convenience, I infused all the knowledge within them into this one." he paused as he procured a very opulent and royal scroll from pure nothingness; "All the facts and details needed to be known will be here, without the steps and procedures that procured the results; in hopes that none may ever make my terrible mistakes ever again and recreate this nightmare of particular hideousness against all ponykind."
Twilight stood in the limbo between consciousness and eternal rest as she looked upon her brother; really not quite understanding half of what he had meant with his words.
"This is my final effort at giving you closure, Twilight. As unbearable as you may find this, it truly is up to you and the others to rid our family of the curse I've most certainly put on us. It is up to you to... Lay this all to rest." Shining spoke bitterly and in a tone that had begun slowing down; "And one last thing."
"I could not allow the thing to arise into the unknowing world, so in my final defiance, I altered the reality of the Empire itself with my undeserving knowledge of the arts as black as night. Be warned that this is temporary and should you not act with sufficient bravery and speed when facing this different... 'World', I am afraid there will be nothing left to fight for anyway." the stallion hung his head in shame.
"Take care, sister. And please... Live."
Twilight did not have enough time to react, nay, she never had the time to begin with. A hacking and coughing fit overtook her as putrid redness spilled onto the floor from her bleeding orifices. Each and every figurative inch of pain came back to her in one singular moment; and every literal inch of her body cried out in defiance, overclocked, overexerted, overly punished by blindness within the moment of serene brainlessness she had just experienced.
Familiar voices had finally broken through her muffled ears, crying out for her name in towering worry that had forgotten all about silence within these curved walls. The colors began making sense again within her blurred vision; Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Morningstar-- They surrounded her and prevented her from keeling over completely.
Acting on instinct, the lavender matriarch's horn glowed purple as she began her own mending; searching wildly and blindly within herself for the most broken and malfunctioning parts of the fleshy machine that was the Alicorn's body. Mended, but never truly healed...
The suffering had settled down; for now. She turned to face her companions with disbelief to her stare, in the greatest wonder of whether what she had experienced had been even real.
"Now what the hay was that all about, Twilight!?" Applejack yelled and demanded to know; "First ya damn-near kill yerself for me-- Then ya jus' strut off like nothin' happened an' ya start talkin' nonsense, WHILE BLEEDING OUT OF YER CELESTIA-DAMNED FACE!"
"Twilight!? Twilight!" Fluttershy called out as she blindly hugged her in a rather affectionate if breath-preventing fashion.
"Are you... Alright, darling?" Rarity, despite her own haunting condition, expressed her own worries.
Rainbow Dash and Morningstar seemed to be just glad she was alive but said nothing of interest, and Pinkie Pie was... Preoccupied.
"H- How did you guys even get here?" Twilight would ask, still in a clear daze; yet, in her daze, she looked to the side to find the staircase just there in the hallway... Sideways, with the top facing the blood-stained wall that she had hit at full force. It was not suspended from anything on this side either. Logically speaking, they were now standing perfectly bound by gravity to what would have been a simple wall; the ceiling-would-be was to their side and the room they were in currently extended into what would otherwise be normal geometry.
This was all messing with her mind a bit too much for her liking and Pinkie Pie's perceptively excited exclamations of nonsense among the lines of "Twisty-turny!" followed by laughter was... Aggravating at best.
"...On second thought, I don't want to know. Look, did any of you see where Shining Armor went?" Twilight asked in a genuine tone.
"...Shinin'... Armor?" Applejack repeated; "Twi, you were talkin' all by your lonesome for a good five minutes!"
What.
"No no no, look! He even gave me this!" the Alicorn presented the imperial scroll that had been gifted to her by her brother. The rest were clearly taken aback.
"That... Huh." Rainbow Dash stopped her sentence in its tracks.
"That IS one of his majesty's scrolls." Morningstar piped in, if for nothing else than to confirm it.
"...Ah'll give ya that-- Ya didn't have that until... Now." Applejack reluctantly finished and went silent.
On the topic of silence, it proceeded to last for a solid half-a-minute as Twilight unsealed the scroll with her magic, pulling out the part of the parchment that the magically-sealed lock on it allowed to leave the casing.
Word for word, the paper contained exactly what she had been told by her brother a few minutes ago.
-Click-
A bit more of the parchment and its contents were allowed to leave the mechanism...
Truly, within this realm of dark and dynamic possibilities, there lies something unbound to the world that traditional beings whether mortal or immortal cannot easily adapt to.
Many paths may converge to one outcome-- Or worse yet, a single decision could spell centuries of disaster! Perhaps in such fashion, it is both a blessing and a curse to be here, to resolve this matter of alien and transcendent form at any cost, for the safety of the outside world so that the common pony may never have to experience it.
One thing rings true, still. One fact remains. There can be no sanity or clear thought here...
...Within the Spire of Madness...
Introduction - The Arrival
You will arrive along the olden rails. They wind with a troubling serpent-like suggestion through the snow-stricken wasteland; leading only, I fear, to evermore tenebrous places. There lay few troubles and threats along the way save for the endless winter. Press this advantage and spend your final moments of peace and tranquility among your companions before you step into the capital of monstrous decadence where you will face vicious violence, and perhaps other damnably transcendent terrors.
So steel yourself! And remember, there can be no bravery without madness. The old tracks will take you to hell but in that gaping abyss...
We will find our redemption.
Twilight Sparkle had read through the entire letter several times over in the process of coming here, specifically this second part that was seemingly instructions and forewarnings. The Immortal Matriarch had, in her panic, gathered up her friends and rushed to aid her dear brother. But now she wondered if she had done the right thing; leaving the entire land of Equestria behind in her sole pupil's hooves, was it sane?
Accompanying her inside the wagon were her closest friends and cohorts. The raw strength of youth may be spent, but their eyes hold the secrets of a hundred clashes.
Applejack; the swarthiest of the six. Once responsible for healthy food and honest work, this simple workhorse brings a hardy back to lean on in hard times.
Fluttershy; the gentlest and most caring of the group. Struck with blindness in an unfortunate and scarring accident, she had turned to her bestiary for sight and trifling companionship. Kindness tends to get one nowhere.
Pinkie Pie; the most maddening and maddened of them all. It has been several years since her entire family had been presumed dead after a mysterious event on their Rock Farm, the event which eternally damned the pink mare's mind. She will be laughing still at the end, yet she may as well be the one closest to knowing things as they truly are.
Rarity; the eternally generous, even while the same generosity leads her into the spiral of agony and doom. Not too long ago she had been cursed with a lingering illness, an unknown and self-contained disease of which none know how it truly feels enduring; contacted from a deep and forgotten creature for the sake of protecting an individual irrelevant in the bigger picture. This mare understands that adversity and existence are one and the same.
Rainbow Dash; loyalty and ego in one fleshy package. She knows what her actions led to, an experience and a failure to remind her of imperfections and faults forevermore. In secret, only she mourns and hides the truth from one faithful day when lives extinguished. She puts up a brave front; a pretense of her old self for the sake of all dear to her.
And of course, Twilight Sparkle herself; a worthy, if mildly afflicted leader and a sister in battle. Victories and defeats have taught this mare well. The Alicorn knows what self-sacrifice means for the good of the other; a mother and friend to her ponies.
For a while, there was a silence; save for the obvious sounds of the moving train and the eternally deep and troubled breathing coming from the bandage-covered and uncomfortably masked mare of generosity. Soon, the door to the wagon of the six opened and a dark gray crystal Pegasus walked in, clad in royal armor and bandages for the various wounds across his virile body; holding his helmet in one of his forelegs. The herald of the Crystal King.
He immediately faced the Alicorn, looking upon her with golden-colored eyes.
"Your Majesty, we are arriving at the Crystal Throne soon. I assume that you are prepared?" the stallion spoke in a quivering voice, touched with reluctance and fear of the unknown he had faced once before within the crystal halls. "I am yet unsure if the... 'Thing' had spread throughout all of the Empire. I pray, as terrible as it might be, that only the capital has been infected." the servant finished, putting his helmet back on his head.
The lavender Princess let out a sigh, the venerable paper she had been levitating; the doom-say of her brother, she put it away into one of the many bags they had packed. "Let me clarify this, you said that Shining himself wrote this? This hardly looks like the writing style or wording of my brother." she skeptically remarked while completely ignoring his previous speech, still not quite assured of this new bitter reality.
"I have not seen his majesty write it personally, but I can with complete adamancy assure you that he has... Changed over time. At first, he was rather laconic in his speech-- Of course, this is all AFTER the... Disappearances." the guard cringed a little at the word, although everyone was already aware of the reality that only one precious Alicorn remained and she was right there before him.
"Then, after he had begun digging for this 'power' his majesty had learned of, his speech patterns became very... Olden and mayhaps even verbose. It seemed like a disease, honestly. Everypony around him had started adapting some parts of it. Even I as I stand here have picked up on it."
Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath, meanwhile the blind mare sitting next to her with quite a pack of animal friends with her laid a single, yellow hoof on her friend's shoulder. "Twilight...?" Fluttershy inquired, but never followed up on it.
"So... There is a creature or creatures loose inside the castle-- Or possibly even outside. Creatures we know nothing about other than they have the ability to temporarily blind ponies, or living beings in general. You've experienced this, you said?"
"Y- Yes your majesty, I have. My sight had turned red with blood-- It was not quite complete blindness as much as it was an attempt at forcing my eyes shut due to the unstoppable stinging. One clear look at the thing was enough, and I am afraid to say that it has disappeared from my mind; as if every mental picture of it I could think of was burned away. I did, however, notice that once I had retreated the blood flow stopped and it was as if nothing had ever happened." the guard paused and hung his head lightly.
"If the evidence of the dried blood on my face was not there, I would have thought it was a forced imagination. It is clearly powerful magic; but even being the mere guardspony that I am, I know for a fact that it was not conventional; I am most apologetic in my failings as the guard of his majesty, but none of us have trained to battle something without sight."
Twilight let out yet another sigh, but before she could speak up again or reassure the royal servant, the train began screeching to a halt. No horn, no warning of arrival. There was no point to alerting whatever hostile beings there were in the city. The train had made enough noise as is, despite the blizzard outside.
Twilight and her group had unboarded the train, pushing into the loud and swirling whiteness before them. The city was all but obscured within the blizzard, some resemblance of shapes were observable in the distance; most notably the spire that reached tall into the sky. With cloth bags and bare essentials, the seven ponies made their way forward accompanied by one of Fluttershy's animal companions which was a black and feral-looking dire wolf. It easily over-shot all of the ponies in the group when it came to height, even Twilight who had grown quite a bit in her later years although it was not as noticeable unless she was standing up completely straight.
The collective of equines and a tamed wild-beast proceeded to inch closer and closer to the exceedingly damned capital throughout the blinding snow which now gathered upon their features. It was of course not their first trek into this once-great land, but they were wary and on edge, lest some featureless abomination strike at them in stealth that the loud winds would provide easily.
The Crystal Spire, once a sign of love amongst the crystal ponies, now glowed magically and unsettlingly in the distance. It provided a red fog across the city that clashed greatly with the white snow. As if a filly had tainted a father's painstaking painting by spilling color upon the masterpiece; it was unnatural, skewered, ruined. Yet, worst of all... Familiar.
In a surprising revelation, the party had arrived into the actual city proper without any hardships and the blizzard appeared to die down within the borders. The grip of silence among the fellowship, however, still remained. It appeared as though the reddened mist was rather easy to see through, although it left blurry and smudged encasings within the visions of the ponies. "Wait- Hold up-" Rainbow Dash whispered out and broke the hold of silence as she blinked rapidly and in rather panicked fashion attempted to figure out what was wrong with her eyes. She would soon notice the rest of the group had similar reactions.
"This... Was not here before." the Pegasus guard accompanying them informed with clear concern and pure confusion.
"I can't notice anything magical within this mist... Fog... Thing-- I don't think it's physically in our eyes either-" the Princess spoke as she looked fairly concentrated, moving her eyes about slowly while trying to figure out just what was going on and, well, doing her best to stay calm.
"Sweet-Ce-Lestia..." it was Applejack's voice. It seemed while the others struggled to adapt to this new feature, she had moved on towards the actual spire and what she saw was the extent of its destruction. Large chunks of the building had been missing in almost perfect circular shapes, giving it the appearance of some sort of insect hive. Yet, despite so many obvious holes, some in places that would ruin its structural integrity; the spire still stood tall as ever, beckoning, taunting, seething without intellect or sentience.
"Applejack--" the lavender Alicorn hissed out as she hastily pulled back her middle-aged friend back into the group using her horn and its magic. "What do you think you're doing!?" Twilight demanded in a hushed yet clearly upset voice.
"Ah- Ah jus' figured if nopony ain't checkin' the place out ah might--"
"You can't just-" Twilight's voice almost rose to a growl but she collected herself at the last second. "We can't just split up, none of us know what could be around here. Not even..." Twilight turned to the Pegasus guard and trailed off, catching herself in the fact that she had never even bothered to hear out or ask for an introduction of the Pegasus that had brought her brother's writings.
"Morningstar, Princess. My name is Morningstar." he informed plainly.
"...Not even Morningstar knows what's up with this place-- And he was here when it happened." the Alicorn finished her words as she finally released Applejack from her magic.
"I... Really don't like this." came a soft whimper from Fluttershy, at which Pinkie giggled and just as quickly returned to her grinning silence.
"Well... What's the big idea then Twi?" Rainbow Dash piped in her usual tomboyish tone.
The big idea... Right. Twilight's eyes shuddered left to right for a few moments, looking just about all over the place and only avoiding making contact with Rainbow herself.
"We... Go in." Twilight finally said in an uncertain but soft tone, giving the spire a good, long stare. "...I don't believe we have much time to waste. We might as well start with the castle. I don't see anything or anyone around-- Whatever it was might still be just within the building. Oh, Celestia, I hope we're not late."
"Well, ah s'pose it's a good place as any to begin." Applejack added with a shrug.
With a few odd glances among each other, some expressions of concern and minor nods, the group headed off inside, their shadows blending into the complete darkness of the interior...
...Within the Spire of Madness...
