Guards stood at the palace gates, each about as stoic as the statues in the gardens. They had been trained as such, and would not show emotion on the job. However, one does not simply ignore a pony fully encloaked in heavy armor. The two guards standing on either side of the gate widened their stances as a figure emerged from the dark, stepping into the dim torchlight. The guard on the left side of the gate hollered, "Halt!"

"Who goes there?" Darq mocked, chuckling. "I have official business with the royals."

The guard on the right turned to the wall behind him, where a bulletin board had been hung. His eyes searched the assortment of notes, names, and sketches that littered the corkboard. Upon finding the note that verified the stranger's business, the guard turned back and called in return, "You're clear, Darq. Welcome to Canterlot Palace."

The armored unicorn trudged onwards into the palace. A pair of grand oaken doors nearly ten meters tall stood before him on well oiled brass hinges. They stood as firm as the stone walls they were hinged to, each block of wood in the door reinforced by iron braces. He stopped at the foot of the door, wondering how two ponies could pull the wooden monstrosity open. But despite Darq's logic, the doors slowly swung open as two guards on the inside pulled it open.

He stepped into the spacious entryway of the palace, the red daylight carpet that normally led into the various parts of the castle having been magically dyed blue for the night. Luna stood upon the stairway but a hundred meters before Darq, her eyes cast upon his armor. She giggled, shaking her head.

"Again with the armor?" she called across the hall. She stepped down from the landing, gradually closing the distance between them. "Eh, Captain?"

"Part of the job," Darq replied with a chuckle. "When do I begin?"

"Immediately," she answered.

"Paperwork?" he inquired.

"Stacks as tall as my sister," Luna teased. "Mostly recruit papers, and bureaucracy manuals. Good news is you get to cut the red tape that's been building up in the last thousand years." Her words dripped in sarcasm. Darq could just about taste the salty sarcasm as though it were a tasty squirrel.

"Politics," Darq cursed.

"Politics," Luna hissed. "Allow me to show you thy new office."

Politics, Sunburst added quietly.

"Aww... A desk job?" Darq whined humorously. He followed as Luna walked off to the right down a hallway that seemed to stretch for miles.

Ah... This amuses me to no end, Sunburst interjected, laughing uncontrollably within Darq's head. You got a desk job!

Oh, shut up, Darq mentally growled dismissively.

"Seventy percent of the Captain's job is paperwork," Luna sighed. "Meanwhile, my job is about ninety percent paperwork. You're the lucky one."

The pair stopped at a Celestia-sized wooden door. Upon the wood, the Lunar Guard emblem was emblazoned in fine silver. The emblem had collected a significant layer of dust, and a particularly large cobweb hung on the top right corner of the door from the lack of use. The brass hinges were heavily tarnished, the copper in the alloy already heavily oxidized, leaving several splotches of the chalky green rust on them. Out of the corner of Darq's eyes, he could have sworn he saw a black widow flee beneath the door. And if the door was any indication, there would likely be several of them behind said door.

Darq opened the door with his magic, earning a nearly ear-splitting creak from the well-over-one-thousand-years-old thing. Dust billowed forth from the dark room, the inky blackness within seeming to seep out like sunlight through a curtain. Luna sneezed and unfolded her wings to flap the dust away. Darq sniffed the air, exhaling as though he'd taken a deep breath. "Ah... Smells like insanity."

"That's the tip of the iceberg," she sighed exhasperatedly. "You want to smell insanity? Head to Ponyville on Nightmare Night. The pink one reeks of it."

Darq chuckled as his dry joke was returned. He activated a spell, a parasprite-sized beacon of light forming at the tip of his horn.

The room was by no means excessively large, though that judgement may have been inaccurate due to the several stacks of paper that reached Darq's chin in height. Papers of all kinds littered the floor, making a thin film over the carpet as though to protect it from the dust. About three meters in, there was what Darq assumed to be a desk made of some kind of dark wood. Atop it was a pile of papers and dust so great in size that Darq wondered at how the old desk hadn't been crushed by the weight. On the right wall, an old corkboard hung upon the wall, the cork already significantly molded away. In fact, only the pieces closest to the edges of the board had not completely molded away. To the left was another door, which since it was not as well preserved at the door that led into the hallway, was as rotten and molded as the corkboard on the opposite wall. The tiny bit that remained hung limply from the rusted brass hinges, the wall to which it was hinged beginning to rot away as well.

Darq shuddered. He thought for a moment before responding to the sight, "Quaint."

Luna nearly burst out laughing. She had not experienced such dry humor in ages, and his response to such a horrific sight struck her as extremely amusing. But the Lunar Princess held back the outburst, allowing a single snort of amusement to pass from her. "I'll see if there's anypony around that can fix the place up. We may have been gone for a millennium, but that does not excuse this lack of upkeep."

"Given the supplies, I can repair this old place in a few hours," Darq offered.

"Nay. Your job is Guard Captain," Luna said, "not Maintenance Pony. I'll go find somepony. If you feel like doing anything, all of that paperwork is over a thousand years old. Feel free to send it to the Archive section of the library."

Darq sighed, his horn glowing as he summoned the energy for a levitation spell.

"Oh, before we forget," Luna blurted at random. "Most ponies that send in application forms like yours get blown off as jokes. Congratulations on not only being taken seriously, but on landing the Captain position as well. Such an achievement is unprecedented."

Author's Note

There we go. That felt good. Lots of fun descriptions and crap. And a pinch of dry humor, too. :3

<3 DarqFox

Oh. And that picture was drawn by me. I didn't quite know how to describe it with words, so I drew it. Hope you guys like. :P