Chaos erupted all throughout Canterlot Castle. In the entry hall, a monstrous Princess Luna was busy tearing through any Royal Guard or regular pony who had not gotten away fast enough. Meanwhile, from deeper into the castle the sound of more wild howls and cries came from the unrelenting tide of monsters that had found another way in. The screams from outside carried through open windows and gave a small glimpse into the grim reality that was now descending upon the survivors in the castle.

“We gotta get somewhere safe!” Parade screamed over the chorus of carnage that surrounded them. They hadn’t really stopped moving since Princess Luna had busted through a wall and began tearing through their comrades, but they didn’t have any destination in mind. They were simply running through the halls of the castle in the opposite direction of the turned unicorns.

Their hooves carried them into the dining room, where dozens of ponies were already situated. That included both Lieutenant Golden Star, Bulwark and several of the wounded guards that had been in tents by the barracks. Some of them had weapons and shields, but to say they were wielding them would be an understatement. They were surely holding them, but there wasn’t much intent in the action.

Some healthy and able bodied guards shut the doors behind them and pushed an overturned table up against it. Was it enough to stop the coming horde? No, probably not. It might be enough to slow them down, though.

“Sergeant Rose, Corporal Parade!” Golden’s face, a fresh cut above his left eye that spilled crimson blood down it, lit up a little as he saw them. A long gash was opened across the front of his breastplate, one that had dislodged the red sun that had once adorned it, but there was no sign that it got to the skin underneath. “Thank Celestia you made it in. We need to set up defenses, somewhere ponies can rally to and-”

“Rally? Are you insane?!” Parade scoffed right in the officer’s face. “We need to run! Celestia and Luna have turned! That’s it! Game over!” The upstart corporal marched right by the Lieutenant. “Canterlot has fallen and I’m not going to kill myself trying to hold onto a castle with a dozen cripples! Sorry..” She stopped herself and looked back at Golden. “I’m not going to kill myself, Sir.”

“I’m not asking you to do that, Corporal.” Golden reached out and grabbed Parade’s tail and then pulled her right back. “I’m ordering you to help your fellow ponies to stay safe.”

“What’s the difference…?”

“Parade is right.” Rose finally found her voice again. “H-how many unicorns in the city? Ten thousand? How many of us now? Less than one-hundred…maybe even less than fifty…” She swallowed and let out a shaky breath. “I-it can’t be about anything other than our own survival now, sir…” The look of pure betrayal and hurt that flashed across her commanding officer’s face was enough to make her stomach turn. “I-I think we should hide, not fight. Not now.” That pained Rose to say after all of her internal bravado about what the guard needed to be. What it needed to be in the future and what it was in the present were two different things, though. For there to be any kind of future, they needed to survive the present in any way possible. “I understand you want to save others, sir…but…” the final ‘are they worth it’ hung in the air without being said.

That question would have to be answered sooner rather than later, as blasts of magic perforated the door that Rose and Parade had come from. One of the guards that had shut it caught a beam to the head and he crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

“Sir…” Rose reiterated. She looked into his eyes and found a stallion battling his own code and trying to figure how much his own life was worth. Rose didn’t have time to wait around and find out. Parade was already halfway to the other door and Rose galloped after her.

As they left the dining room they found themselves in the kitchen. It was all but abandoned, but the ovens were still going and piles of dried fruit littered the counters and there were racks of freshly baked bread left unattended.

“Thank Celestia…” Parade muttered and grabbed a sack from the floor that had once held potatoes and began to fill it with the food that was left behind. “C’mon Rose! Get it together! If we’re going to be hiding, we need food unless you want to come out to get it later.”

Rose was still processing everything and her brain was moving like a turtle through particularly thick molasses. She couldn’t accept what was going on around her, not anymore. Something very deep down in her soul rejected the very reality she found herself in. The disconnect between what she wanted to be and what was caused her to move in slow motion. She still complied with Parade’s request, though.

The two mares went around the kitchen, dumping more and more food into potato sacks as fast as they could. They stopped briefly as sounds of violence came from the dining room, but it wasn’t the growling magic of the unicorns. It was preceded by angry shouts between stallions, then the sound of hooves against metal. Then a few moments after Bulwark came into the kitchen with an unconscious Golden Star draped across his back.

“We’re coming with you.” Bulwark stated flatly.

As the door to the dining room swung closed, Rose caught a glimpse of the ponies left in there. Some were missing limbs, some with long painful wounds winding down their bodies, and all of them had the look of a pony condemned. Rose wanted to ask for forgiveness, but the reality was that there was now nopony to even hear her pleas.

If there was no god to see them, did their actions matter anymore?

“Th-the dungeon!” Parade started moving towards the other end of the kitchen and to the door. “It has two big metal doors to get in, right? We shut ourselves down there and stay quiet until there’s an opening to leave.” There was no argument, nor any new ideas. So they all just nodded at the suggestion. “Okay then, cmon!”

As they left the kitchen, they could hear the door in the dining room finally fail. The roars and sounds of flesh being ripped filled the air, but there were no screams. Just resigned silence. Nopony else seemed to hear the silence, but it was deafening to Rose.

The group moved into the back halls of the castle, where the servants usually traveled to avoid getting underhoof of government functionaries. Now they were one of the last clear avenues of travel from the monsters that were no doubt still pouring into the building. They galloped down the halls and followed the maze of little side spaces and rooms until a terminus near the back of the castle.

The beasts still seemed to be preoccupied with sweeping the castle and getting any survivors, so they hadn’t gotten this far back yet. One thing working in their favor was the single entrance into the place most likely causing the mother of all logjams. It had to be the only thing preventing every square inch of the castle from being covered by one of the turned unicorns.

The group of guards came out of the halls back in the bunk room where the castle servants lived. There was nopony back there, just rows of empty bunks and heirlooms left behind. The pictures that were set on the nightstands featured unicorns almost exclusively. These were the ponies the princesses had no doubt deposited in the crystal caverns beneath Canterlot to keep the castle safe.

Turns out, that didn’t really matter.

They were let out into what was called ‘the dusties’ by the Royal Guard. It was an area of the castle that was so disused that it was rarely cleaned, simply because nopony important ever went back here. It included several closets full of supplies, copious amounts of holiday decorations, and the entrance to the castle dungeons.

The big metal door with ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’ stenciled in black stood out amongst the hearth’s warming lights and plastic trees like a sore hoof. A few big boxes were pushed out of the way, a clear sign that somepony had already been around here recently. None of them even thought to comment on it as Parade pulled the door open and ushered the others inside.

The stairs leading down seemed to spiral forever into darkness. After a dozen feet or so the white marble of the castle was replaced with the naturally dark stone of the mountain itself. There were lit torches every go around the central column, but that was the only light provided. Something slammed into the metal door at the top of the stairs, which only sped up their descent.

Eventually after what felt like five straight minutes of walking they reached the door at the bottom. It was of similar composition to the one up top, save for a small opening in the middle with three vertical bars and it was left slightly ajar. A rock was propping it open, one just big enough to keep a space between the door and the frame.

Parade put her shoulder into it and struggled to push the door open. It had to be a couple inches of pure metal with how heavy it was, which made sense. This was a dungeon. If it was flimsy or easy to get into or out of, it wouldn’t be very good at its job. If what little luck they had remained, then this would be enough to stop those things. Once everypony was inside both Rose and Parade shut the door together. It latched shut with a mighty ‘clank’ and for the moment they were safe from the monsters outside.

The dungeon was what you would expect from such a place. It was a giant room, probably about one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, carved from stone. Ten cells lined the walls, five on each side and each of them twenty foot squares. Only two were occupied though, and both of them were at the very far end of the cavernous room.

Bulwark was the first to break off from the group, and he entered the closest cell and tossed Lieutenant Golden onto one of the cots inside. Then the imposing earth pony took his helmet off and tossed it to the floor before sitting on his haunches. His eyes closed and his chest swelled with a deep breath which he held for a few moments before letting it out.

“So we just wait now?” Bulwark asked. “Wait for what exactly?”

“Help.” Parade answered as she took off her own helmet and tossed it to the ground. She shrugged the bag full of purloined food next to her as well. “What that looks like, I don’t even know.” She then joined Bulwark, but outside of the cell. The pegasus laid her head back against the bars and sighed. “Or maybe those things will just leave if they don’t think anypony else is in Canterlot? Then we can walk out of here.”

“And go where?” Bulwark retorted. “Then there’ll be ten thousand of those things out in Equestria, maybe more if it spreads to other cities.”

“Cloudsdale? The unicorns can’t exactly get up there. At least, I don’t think so.”

“What about the LT and I?” Bulwark glared at Parade and flared his nostrils. “Or are you okay with leaving us to die like you were with the ponies in the dining room?”

“Hey!” Parade jumped to her hooves and stormed into the cell and glared down at the stallion. “You left them behind too, you know that right?” She jabbed a hoof into Bulwark’s chest. The stallion, thoroughly unimpressed, rose to his full height and glowered down at the mare. “So don’t get all high and mighty with me about it! I was just offering a solution, something nopony else seems to be willing to do!”

“Hey, anypony want to fill us in down here?” One of the two original occupants of the dungeon hollered from the opposite end of the room. “What’s going on up there?” It was the stallion from last night, the one that asked the guards to throw him in a cell and wait to see if he turned. He was a slate gray with a white mane and a wrinkled face.

In the cell across from him was the pony that had knocked Rose out last night, the supposed spy. She was without her armor, and was sitting on the cot in her cell and studying the group of guards with an intense gaze.

Rose finally felt the events of the last little while catch up to her. She collapsed to the ground and shook violently as sobs choked her airway. Tears streamed down her eyes as the weight on her heart finally tore it in half. She buried her face in one of her legs and just cried.

What remained? Almost everypony she had ever worked with was either dead or turned into one of those things. The castle she had thought a bastion was now a prison. The pony she knew as a divine being joined the ranks of the damned and had almost killed her.

The sky had fallen and flattened Rose Wreath’s entire world beneath its weight.

She thought of Picket, of the ponies that had been locked outside of the castle doors, of the ponies left to die in the dining room. She had done nothing to save them, she hadn’t even tried. In fact, she had condemned some of them to death directly. She knew of her sins, but now it seemed like the sun would never shine favorably on her again no matter how much she wallowed in her shameful actions. The next time she felt the light of the heavens, she knew it would not be the gentle warmth she reveled in. It would be a scorching accusatory flame.

“WHAT?!” The cry made Rose lift her head up from the floor. It was the gray stallion in the cell. Parade was on the other side of the bars from him and nodded. “Nonononono! That shouldn’t be possible! They’re not even unicorns!”

Rose got to her hooves and did her best to compose herself. She looked a mess, but there wasn’t much to do about that right now. Not that it mattered. What use was professionalism now when the institution it stood for was defunct? She found herself down the length of the room and by Parade in short order.

“Yeah wait a minute…” Parade mumbled and looked at the stallion, then turned and looked at the mare in the other cell. “...why aren’t you two monsters? You’re unicorns. You should be one of those things by now.”

“They’ve been down here since last night.” Rose said between sniffles. “Maybe they just haven’t caught it yet?” They had effectively been quarantined. “Princess Celestia-” the name hurt to even think about now, let alone say out loud. “-said they put all of the unicorns in the castle down in the crystal caverns. Maybe they’re not infected either?”

“Maybe.” Parade rubbed her chin with a wing. “I’m not going to check, though. Either they’re not turned and ‘safe’ or they’re all turned and we have an army of monsters above and below us…” There was very little reason to open that particular box, everypony could agree there.

“We should kill them to be safe.” Bulwark appeared next to the mares and with a dagger between his teeth. Both of the unicorns backed away from the doors to their cells. The stallion looked frightened while the mare looked eager for a fight.

“I’d like to see you try…” The fuschia mare growled out.

“No!” Rose raised a hoof towards Bulwark. “We could…we could learn a lot from them, right?” Both of her fellow guards raised an eyebrow at her. She didn’t even know what she was saying, she just knew she couldn’t have any more blood pooling around her hooves. There was a moral deficit now, and she had to try to balance it out someway. “I-if they don’t turn, then we know it’s not airborne right? We would have to be carriers by now.”

“If they do turn?” Bulwark asked.

“They’re in cages already.” Rose tried to reason with the stallion the best she could. “Look at them, they don’t have horns. They won’t be able to blast us if they do.” Her eyes went around the room until they fell on a discarded spear near the wall. “Then we can…do away with them.”

“So what do we do in the meantime? We just sit here and wait for them to turn into murderous monsters?” Parade didn’t sound too excited about the prospect and nopony could blame her.

Waiting was the hardest part.

Author's Note

“We know better than any creature that being good is hard. When your back is against the wall, when you’re starving and scared…is doing the right thing worth it?” - Lord Commander Pharynx

btw, hope you aren't expecting an epic with this story. It's a little side thing after all. I have 14 chapters plus an epilogue planned right now. Probably over 50k words but idk how much over.