Prologue
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
“Paranoia is just having the right information.”
-William S. Burroughs
“Hold you there, neither a strange hand nor my own, neither heavy nor light, shall touch my bum.”
-Miguel de Cervantes on ‘punishment’
The sun was setting. This in itself wouldn’t normally be much cause for wonder in the eyes of the graying unicorn, but that day wasn’t, in his humble opinion, “normal.”
A normal day was waking up to his loving wife, eating a quick breakfast, and immediately heading to work. Maybe he would take a walk through Canterlot Gardens during the designated lunch period. Perhaps he'd travel the commercial district, or stop by Donut Joe’s for a bite. Then: home and his bed.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
That day, however, would most likely be his last; that sunset, his final glimpse of the beautiful Equestrian sky he had grown to love in his forty summers of life. As the heavens shifted from blue to burnt yellow and, finally, a deep umber-orange, the stallion sat, staring.
Drinking it in.
Momentarily averting his gaze, he dipped his head and nibbled at the small wooden plate of lettuce at his chain-bound hooves. The wrinkled, green leaves tasted old, stale even, but that small fact wasn’t nearly as bothersome as one would think. The middle-aged stallion liked to think that he kept things in perspective. There were other, more pertinent, priorities to consider, after all. Slowly and deliberately, still chewing on the withered greens he had been given, the unicorn lifted his gaze back to the horizon and the setting sun.
His horn was heavier than before. A thick, bronze ring had been melded to its base, digging painfully into his forehead and perverting its once pristine bone-white swirls. It was a symbol of his sins, and the grizzled stallion had been told that it could never be taken off.
Though… he had always thought that “never” was too strong a word.
A sharp tugging on the shackles around his forelegs prompted him to tear his gaze from the horizon once more. The stallion was met with a pair of hard, glaring blue eyes: the same shade as his own. Apparently his time was up. He stood, turning from his complimentary meal under the quickly dimming sky, and faced the procession.
Before him stood two columns of Celestia’s Pets, a contingent of the Solar Guard handpicked by the Princess herself to travel with her on royal duties, defend the throne room itself… and take care of Equestria’s few criminals. Their golden armor glinted alluringly in the sunlight, the bright red plumes on their helmets standing stiff, despite the slight eastern breeze. Between both columns, the iron ring on the end of the graying stallion’s chain-link leash in his mouth, stood their captain: a snowy colt with a blue mane and eyes of the same cold hue. His dark purple regalia reflected none of the sun’s dying rays. The grizzled unicorn wondered briefly if the absorptive nature of his armor was intentional, but his memory failed him.
His thoughts were becoming… blurred. Odd. There must have been a reason for the coloring—No, he knew there was a reason, but the chained pony couldn’t quite remember.
The ring was getting to him.
“If you feel a slight tingle, well… that means it’s working,” the voice of Princess Celestia’s blind unicorn apothecary tittered faintly in his memory. “Don’t think too hard about using your magic, now, or you’ll lose brain cells.” The old mare’s coat had been a deep orange, and, despite her dead eyes, she always seemed to know in which direction to direct her cruel, throaty giggles.
Orange coat. Red mane.
The shackled unicorn glanced briefly back towards the setting sun. It was almost gone now, half swallowed by the black silhouette of the horizon. Night was coming. It was only a matter of time.
Another sharp tug at the metal cuffs around his forelegs prompted the pensive stallion to take the first steps toward his sentence. It was time to go. The guard captain’s blue tail twitched in a peculiar fashion as he walked ahead, dragging the heavy iron leash along with him. His path led the both of them in between the columns of solar guardsponies.
If anypony had bothered to ask him, the graying unicorn would have told them that such force seemed a bit excessive. It wasn’t like he was struggling, was it? He was in the middle of the Celestia-damned hedge maze. Nopony but the Princesses themselves knew the way in or out. They were the ones who’d brought him here in the first place, along with an entire contingent of their bucking PETS.
No. He wouldn’t fight it. They were going to get rid of him… throw him away like an old toy.
“They can try.” The ghost of a smile found its way onto the shackled unicorn’s face, and a pointed glare from the pony leading him only strengthened it. Guards passed by on either side, some following him with their eyes. “Sloppy.” The grin grew wider.
He was nearing the end of the short tunnel of guardsponies, the chains around his forelegs rattling against the packed, earthen pathway. What looked like a mausoleum of white marble stood near the end of the clearing in maze-center, growing ever closer. The imprisoned unicorn could just make out the shape of a huge metal doorway past the plume of the twitchy guard captain’s helmet.
“So this is it,” the convict mused. “Canterlot Dungeon.” The structure itself was small, but that was because the entire facility was underground. That was what he’d heard, anyway. Ponies in his profession didn’t learn much about the Dungeons. Nopony besides the Princesses’ personal group of guards really knew anything about them, and they were very tight lipped (once again, hearsay on his part).
The door grew closer, and the chained stallion was able to make out the finer details of the massive threshold. Aside from a small central hole near its base, the doorway was seamless, and if his captors weren’t specifically leading him toward it, the stallion would have questioned whether it was really an entrance. Fading sunlight lit the smooth, steel gateway, but produced no visible glare or glint across the dull metal. Standing twice as high as any guard that stood nearby, the flawless metal wall was quite possibly taller than Celestia herself. It was monolithic, and looked to have been made with intimidation in mind.
“Intimidated… hehe. I’m not going to be nervous about a door, or the Dungeon, for that matter,” the convicted pony assured himself. “It’s just a bunch of cells hidden under a hedge maze behind the castle. They probably even feed the prisoners well, those big-hearted, gullible, blind Princesses of ours.” Something deep within himself scolded the middle-aged stallion for speaking ill of the Princesses like that.
It wasn’t their fault.
A wall of dull metal surged into his vision, startling the unicorn from his thoughts. He nearly rammed his face into the doorway, and stumbled back onto his haunches. Sitting alone in front of the massive gate, he looked back over his withers to find the captain standing a few feet behind him, sporting a surprisingly detached air about him. The convict hadn’t even noticed him stop.
“Stick it in,” he grumbled, his voice gruff and dispassionate. What happened to the expression of disdain?
The shackled colt looked back toward the gates, and his eyes were immediately drawn toward the small hole in the center: it was just large enough for a unicorn’s horn. He had seen these before. It was a hornlock, a practically unbreakable security device specifically catered to the more magically inclined of the pony races. One such lock could be found protecting the Royal Vaults.
Looking back to the captain in confusion, the older pony only received another pointed glare as the impatient-looking guard gestured toward the door with his armored hoof.
“Stick it in,” the purple-armored pony grunted. “Now.”
One thing about hornlocks that made them especially discouraging to would-be thieves was the countermeasure for unauthorized horn penetration into the system: several extremely sharp needles that layered the inside, set to extend at the detection of any foreign magic signature. One didn’t have to be a unicorn to know that that would hurt like Tartarus.
So, in this case, his hesitance to comply with his captor’s orders was understandable.
With one final glance back toward the captain and his platoon of guardsponies, the suddenly very nervous convict lowered his head, and, after a brief moment of tentative lining up, he slid the pointed peg in the round hole.
Eyes screwed shut; the doubtful unicorn awaited the blinding pain that would signal the transformation of the second most sensitive part of his body into a pincushion. He was pleasantly surprised: the pain was nowhere near what he’d thought it would be.
A dull pressure began mounting at the base of his horn, and the stallion could have sworn the heavy, brass ring was growing tighter around it. Then the burning started.
Hot, stinging pain erupted from where the metal ring was digging into his scalp, and the increasingly panicked convict could smell his fur burning. He tried to scream, but found that his jaw had locked up, along with the rest of his body. All he could do was twitch in agony and wait for the burning pain to end.
Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long.
The pain stopped almost as quickly as it began, and the silence of the clearing was suddenly punctuated with the sound of metal grinding against stone. The lock surrounding the stallion’s horn parted, and he swiftly scooted backwards, determined to get as far away from the pain-inducing threshold. He made it three feet before he was bodily shoved back towards the source of his anxiety.
“Damn you!” the shaky stallion spat, still trying to back away. “Was that supposed to happen you stupid thug?!”
A dark, chittering laugh from behind made him freeze. He stopped struggling, and spun around, backing toward the doorway and staring at the guard captain. The armored stallion was walking calmly toward him, a cruel smirk playing across his lips, while the columns of guards under his command weren’t even looking in their direction. Instead, they stared straight ahead as if in a collective daze.
“N-No,” the chained colt stammered, eyes wide as he continued to back away. “I killed you. I killed all of you.”
The guardspony kept stalking forward. Stepping up his pace, the frightened convict fled backward. A shadow passed over him, and he immediately assumed that he had been backed into the threshold of Canterlot Dungeons. He was trapped.
“Only one thing to do now.”
He kept backing up, keeping his eyes locked to those of the predator before him, and then IT happened.
His back hoof descended toward the floor… to find that the ground had inexplicably disappeared.
Flailing and skidding wildly, the stallion frantically tried to regain his balance, but inevitably failed. Eyes bulging, mouth open in a silent scream, time slowed to a crawl and he fell backward. The guard captain simply watched, the cruel smile growing ever wider. The falling stallion just barely caught sight of a flash of green magic glinting across the armored pony’s cobalt eyes.
Suddenly, time caught back up to the flapping unicorn, and gravity did its job. The captain disappeared, along with the hedge maze, and the dazed contingent of innocent guards. The blood-red sunlight slowly shrunk as he fell, and the telltale grinding of metal signaled the sealing of his tomb.
Stale wind rushed past, and everything was consumed in darkness.
Chapter One
Fact: She loved me.
Supporting Fact: I loved her back.
Fact Based on Opinion: We were perfect for each other in every way.
Fact: We believed that, with Princesses’ blessing, we would always be together.
Fact Supported by Observable Evidence: There are no real Gods or Goddesses.
Evidence Behind the Above Statement: The facts I was once so sure of in my life, those little things that I believed I could control and that would be true forever, ceased to be present truths. There is no control. There is no omnipotence. The self-proclaimed Goddesses of this fair world could not preserve fact, for they were deceived.
Facts became something spoken of in the past tense.
Now she’s gone, taken away from me in secret, and I’m forever cold inside.
I’m so cold…
“There is a fate worse than death,” a sultry sweet voice whispered in the dark: fragile, barely remembered words in an endless sea of black. He had awoken, shivering and damp, to the sounds of eternity when the voice returned to him. The tintinnabulation of eons chilled him to the bone, but he wasn’t quite sure why. “Do you accept it?”
The sound of falling water, a noise as old as time itself, was everywhere. The graying stallion didn’t even bother to open his eyes. He had been in this twisted place long enough now to know there was nothing to see.
Light was a distant memory now: something to yearn for.
Endless dripping. Everything… dripping away. His mortality remained intact, but his life was melting away before him. Each drop of water spilt was the death of one hope for his future… splashing against the hard stone like so many tears.
Can mountains cry?
It was in his coat: the water. It was cold, and it hurt! How long? How long had he been there?
“Th-Three…” Days? Months? Years? Millennia?! Time meant nothing in the dank, deep places of the earth. It was all mildew, stone, and stagnant air. And dripping. Dripping, dripping, dripping! Time meant nothing. He had no place to go, nowhere to be.
“Why bother with time, right? It’s not like I can just read a sundial, anyway,” traitorous thoughts within the exhausted stallion whispered. Hopelessness was knocking on the gateway to his psyche, and that was something the shivering stallion could not afford.
A fat droplet of water, laced with the gritty sediment of the mountains above, landed messily on his closed eyelid.
“Augh! That is it!” screamed the blind stallion. With a pained grunt, he lunged to his hooves, stumbling only slightly as he gained his footing on the uneven stone ground of Equestria’s harshest punishment.
Moving hurt. Hurt so much. He hadn’t moved in eons. Days? It didn’t matter. Never matter… he just had to do it. One hoof in front of the other. A muscle spasm wracked his rear legs and the grizzled unicorn nearly collapsed, back to the damp stone floor below.
He had thought there would be cells… and perhaps living company. They called it a dungeon, but in reality, this place was a grave. There was no food and way too much water. So much water: dripping. It was maddening!
Briefly, the stallion tried to recall how he’d gotten there. He remembered falling, chains, and a shrinking sliver of red-orange light. The chains had fallen from his forelegs, and were sitting in a pile next to where he’d lain before. The only reason he remembered that they were there was because of the betraying sound of water on metal. As he dredged through his memories, a headache began to form at the base of his horn, hindering further progress.
Why was it so hard to think? Goddesses, the pain! The ring! In-Inhibitor. That’s what they called it. They? Who were—
*Splash!*
Hoof on water. He’d stepped in a puddle. The stallion in the dark knew it was water, not by sight, taste, or touch, but by smell. It smelt of time without end. He didn’t need to open his eyes to double check. They would never taste the light again. He would never feel the touch of wind, nor savor the taste of grass.
There was that hopelessness again, knocking on his skull and demanding entrance into his vulnerable mind.
Trying to ignore the probing feelings of despair, the stallion slowly knelt down, careful of his twitching muscles, and took a drink. The water was dirty, but the icy liquid did much to calm his nerves and soothe his parched throat. The beaten colt lifted his head from the puddle. He knew he had to do something. There was a reason, but his head… it was so fuzzy. The memories were jumbled and it was the thing. The… the INHIBITOR on his horn. They put it on him. He had to get it off. He…
“They.” Memories came rushing back: only a trickle of information, but it was enough.
He remembered a tribunal: old mares and stallions glaring with malicious hatred… at him. Then guards, beating and laughing. Golden horseshoes and armor. How they shone in the fading sunlight of the clearing, on the way to the door.
An entrance to the deep places.
The guard who threw him in had had a blue mane and eyes of the same hue: a unicorn like him, wearing the regalia of one with the utmost authority. There had been no mercy in those laughing eyes as they flashed with sinister, green magic: the magic of a creature that has much to hide.
He had to get out of there.
Forward. Moving forward. That’s the ticket. The blind stallion shuffled around the puddle, tentatively feeling ahead with his horn. There had to be some way to get the metal ring off of him: to help him think more clearly. Sudden bursts of magic didn’t work, as the pain nearly knocked him unconscious, and just pulling on it with his hooves was next to impossible. It was ingrained in the fibers of his horn, and it made everything so hazy.
Why did they do it? He kept asking himself this question. Why take away his magic: his only real chance of survival? A light in the ever-present twilight of his clouded mind?
“So the darkness will be complete,” the voice, a dim memory, responded.
Over and over it mocked him: always the same.
“So the darkness will be complete.”
“…darkness…”
“…complete.”
“I’m insane,” the stallion croaked as the horrid dripping continued around him. His voice echoed back, twisted and warped, a testament to the vastness of the caverns he now called home. “YoU’re INsaNe…”
The stallion kept walking. An image of him screaming and falling to his untimely death at the bottom of a hidden pratfall soon gave him pause in his journey, however, and he readjusted his technique. Lowering his head, the tired unicorn carefully moved forward once more, his horn tapping irregularly at the stone before him as he went.
“Just like the blind ponies in Manehatten,” he mused. A dip in the floor caught his horn and his head jerked painfully. “Okay… maybe not JUST like them…”
Several more droplets of cold liquid rained down upon his already soaking fur, prompting the stallion to let loose a quiet snort and shiver spastically. Ignoring the dripping was impossible, so the stallion instead wondered when he’d encounter his first skeletons. It was inevitable, really. He couldn’t be the only pony in history to be punished this way, could he? He expected his horn to strike clattering bone at any time: any second now.
Seconds turned to hours turned to days upon days upon days. He was still walking, the ceiling was still dripping, it was still darker than the inside of a changeling’s heart, and the lone stallion was fuming. Fuming at them. It felt good to be angry again, but if he didn’t find food soon, he would no longer have the energy to feel rage.
A low gurgling sounded from the chilly unicorn’s stomach, dampening his anger.
Thoughts of daisy sandwiches, hay fries, and even garden salad, a dish he rarely touched let alone daydreamed about, danced in his head. How long had it been since his “last meal” up above? Fuzzily, he remembered that it had been in the courtyard, under the wavering light of the moon. The meal had been meager, a feast for a rabbit or a tortoise, but not nearly enough for a grown stallion sentenced to life in the dungeons.
If he’d known then what he knew now, he would have attempted to smuggle the paltry dish in with him. Honestly, a little context would have made a huge difference. LIFE in the dungeons takes on a whole different meaning when the “dungeon” happens to be a sunless, barren cavern.
“Heh... ‘life’,” the seething colt mumbled, tripping slightly as he skirted around a small spire in the stone, a stalagmite, perhaps. His throbbing horn had bumped into the ancient tower of minerals while he daydreamed, saving him a knock to the head. “Won’t be living very long down here, now will I? Not when it’s darker than Luna’s royal asshole in this Goddess-forsaken place!” The stumbling colt’s voice rose in pitch as his rant continued, burning his throat and cracking his voice, and his screaming echoes mocked him ceaselessly as he rode the euphoria of his anger back down... down to solemn defeat.
In the beginning, when his strength had been plentiful, he had howled: yelled and screamed and spat at the place high above where the door should’ve been. He’d cursed them: all of them. The Princesses, the tribunal, and the guards, but him especially. That blue-maned unicorn: the pretender who’d thrown him to his eventual demise. The wrathful convict had sworn an oath on that day. He would rise up from this place. He would see the sun again, and feel the touch of soft, green grass upon his hooves. He would find that pony, and when he did…
The magic impaired colt ground to a halt, one ear pricked up. Something was different. All thought ceased as he finally opened his eyes, straining to see something, ANYTHING new. He might as well have kept them closed. It took several moments to process what he was hearing, but when he finally realized what it was, the lone unicorn allowed himself a weary grin.
Running water amongst the incessant dripping.
Hurrying toward the sound, the eager stallion almost tripped on a small crevasse in the slick Canterhorn stone, but he didn’t care. When water ran, it went somewhere, and that somewhere often supported life. Life meant food. Food meant survival. Survival…
Well, survival meant vengeance.
