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Week 0, Day 1, Afternoon

Puffing and panting from exertion, Celestia pulled down on the thick wooden plank with a foreleg, securing the metal-riveted door against her persistent pursuers. Her alabaster hooves and the pasterns above were bare; her fur, which showed signs of matting, brought attention to the painfully obvious lack of royal regalia which typically adorned her limbs.

She deposited her massive frame onto a creaking bench, which was situated next to the remains of a splintery scrivener’s table. The desk still held the various scribing tools of its original owner, to which Celestia added by taking her weathered saddlebag and upending it upon the uneven surface. A curious collection of trinkets and talismans fell upon the former work-space: a small stone figurine of a grotesque tusked beast from inner-Zebrica, a peculiar star-shaped jade pendant which was covered in a bizarre pattern of crisscrossing lines and inexplicable groupings of dots, a roughly chipped flint arrowhead, the hoof-sized fossil-tooth of some great pelagic fish, several shattered pieces of a pony’s horn, a hoofful of bits, and a bottle of black ink.

No quill…

Her bloodshot eyes glanced around the desk, focusing on sealing wax, parchment, envelopes… but no quills.

An insidious idea wormed its way into her brain and brought her gaze towards her sides.

Her eyes widened at what they saw.

I didn’t realize it was so bad… but there are still some left… and a feather is a feather, after all...

She reached back and affixed her incisors around the bloodied stump of one of her once-glorious wings. Clamping down with all the strength her aching jaw could muster, she pulled forth a single bloodied feather.

Echoing thumps, which Celestia feared might not be mere hoofsteps, approached the door. The loosened latch jostled slightly, and the door bent back into the bar with the loud groan of distressed lumber. There was a long pause, followed by sudden, jarring thud, as an unseen force slammed up against the door.

No! I need more time!

Out of instinct, Celestia tried to light her horn to pick up her impromptu quill—and immediately doubled over as pain blossomed like a fiery flower in her forehead and then snaked to her spine in channels of ice and heat. White spots flashed in her vision like the burning wisps of troubling memories she wished she could forget. The searing sensation of absolute agony was accompanied by an uncontrolled eruption of arcane energy from her horn, which ignited one of the moth-bitten tapestries that still hung from the walls of the room.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! I don’t have time for this!

In panic, she swept a shaking hoof across the table’s rough surface, scattering the various knicknacks she had gathered, as well as the shattered remnants of her horn. She hastily hoofed one of the pieces of parchment to the cracked veneer and grabbed the blood-stained feather in her mouth. Her splintered hooves worked furiously at the slippery cap of the ink vial.

“Here! She’s in here!” The sound of crunching metal, most likely crumpling armor, as well as a pained profanity, punctuated the next crash against the door.

With a curse and a single swift stroke, Celestia smashed her hoof onto the vial, spattering liquid blackness onto her formerly pristine coat and sending it flowing across the table, where it soaked into the thirsty grain of the ancient wood. She dipped the feather into what remained of the shattered inkwell and pressed it to the parchment, writing as legibly as she dared, given how little time she likely had.

The incessant pounding against the door became a steady rhythm—an unholy drumbeat—that pressured her to finish her task before they could stop her.

As Celestia finished penning the final sentence, she heaved a sigh of relief. It was as if a titanic weight had been lifted from her withers. She folded the letter as gracefully as she could with her one clean hoof and slid it carefully into one of the envelopes.

Grabbing the closest of the bitter-tasting blocks of burgundy-colored sealing wax in her teeth, Celestia stumbled towards the flaming tapestry. Ironically, the burning fabric depicted youthful versions of herself and her sister Luna frollicking through a sunlit meadow. She held her face close enough to the blaze to soften the wax, causing her to flinch as the hairs on her nose singed. Soon after, she plunged the mouthed molten stick onto the expectant envelope, leaving a crimson blob that reminded her far too much of fetid flesh. She fumbled for her ancestral signet necklace, and once she had a firm hoof on it, she pressed it into the paraffin, sealing the envelope as surely as she had sealed her own fate.

The sickening sound of splintering wood reached her ears and caused them to twitch. “Almost! Keep hitting it!” came the voices from outside.

Don’t forget!

She flipped the envelope over and set to scrawling the first—indeed the only—name that materialized in her mind: Blueblood. With the task of completing the letter accomplished, she pushed it to the side.

Celestia fumbled her raw muzzle about in her second saddlebag, which hung in precarious proximity to the mangled ruin of her other wing, and heaved the contents onto the now-cleared workspace. Her hoof trembled as she reached for the surprisingly simple combination of metal mechanism, prefixed piping, and worked wood.

It’s amazing how something so small can be so deadly…

There was another sickening crunch, and one of the metal bands popped from the door, creating a rain of rivets and a shower of splinters. “Hang on Princess! We’re almost there!”

She held the object in one unsteady hoof and checked the main tube to make sure that everything was still in place—it was. She brought her other hoof to the back end and pulled down, eliciting a series of metallic clicks…

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Captain Ironback, along with Sergeants Steadfast and Stalwart, all slammed their shoulders into the door once again, putting their names to the test. “Almost there, lads,” the Captain barked. He didn’t care if the wither plates of his armor were completely ruined, he didn’t care if his shoulders were on fire from the pain, and he didn’t care that he was disobeying direct orders. The bloody trail of meat and feathers he’d seen were reason enough to steel his resolve as he continued to throw himself against the barricade again and again. “Don't do anything rash, Princess! You’re not well! Let us help you!”

The impact that rang the door’s death knell came with the sounds of splintering wood and the clangs and twangs of metal bars and rivets falling to the floor like stricken soldiers. The wooden planks split completely down the center, and Ironback, unprepared for the sudden give, stumbled through the bifurcated door—only to behold a sight that would haunt his thoughts for the remaining few moments of his life:

Celestia was gone.

In her place stood a grotesque mockery. Her magnificent horn had shattered, reduced in resplendence to naught but a nub. Her wondrous wings, which once proudly protruded from her sides, were now no more than faintly feathered flaps of hide hung over marrow-marred, broken bones. Her warm and welcoming expression, set upon the features of refined royalty, had been replaced by a rictus of terror on the rent and tenebrous carrion that now served as her muzzle.

Worst was the fate that had befallen her eyes, which used to be so alive with mirth and motherly care. The red-rimmed orbs were now fully bloodshot, and darted around like hungry hummingbirds with nary a flower to fixate upon. The unspeakable darkness that Ironback saw in those eyes caused him to draw his own sword in a bout of bowel-clenching fear, and reduced his continence to the level of a foal’s.

The warmth running down Ironback’s hind legs brought enough clarity to his mind that, at last, he noticed a detail that had barely registered in comparison to the incredible deterioration of his splendorous sovereign: in one blackened hoof, she held a guard-issue flintlock pistol, whose barrel was shoved shakily against her own head.

Celestia’s muzzle adopted an equally terrifying and uncertain grin—or perhaps a wince—as she spoke: “You can’t touch me now!”

Her cracked words rallied what little remained of Ironback’s dwindling resolve. He threw himself across the room as swiftly as he could. “No! Princess! Don’t!”

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“The single, lone stallion stands alone, watching, by himself, in complete and total solitude, as the soldiers swarm the Castle of the Two Sisters, like ants at a picnic.” The pony slowly lifted his sombrero with one hoof so that he could angle his eyes upward, towards the castle.

A gray wing waved in his field of vision. “Uhhh, Cheese, I’m right here.”

“Aww, muffins, Ditzy! You ruined my dramatic monologue!”

“Sorry, Cheese,” Ditzy Doo said. She tried to follow his gaze to the upper floors with her left eye, while her right remained fixed on him. “You can start over if you want.”

Cheese Sandwich’s entire body shivered. “Too late for a retake, Ditzy; my Cheesy-Sense is telling me that we’re about to bear witness to something—”

A single gunshot rang out, shattering more than just the relative silence the two ponies shared in the shadow of the looming edifice.

Cheese’s eyes dilated fully, and he swayed for a moment before collapsing to the ground, claimed by the spectre of unconsciousness.

Ditzy’s eyes inexplicably straightened, her right eye drawn towards where her left was focused. She could swear that she saw something terrible, something even beyond what her mind could consider to be horrible, something… unspeakable. Unnameable. Yet indisputably physical. It chilled the air with its breath, if what It issued could be called breath. Ditzy blinked away bloody tears and she held her head in her hooves as her shattered mind fought for some semblance of coherence about the essence, entity, or presence looming over her.

But then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the dreadful vision of fathomless evil was gone.

Looking down at Cheese’s seizure-ridden, supine form with her left eye, Ditzy’s right eye warily wandered of its own accord towards her right hoof. A letter sat upon the upturned frog of her hoof, its presence as preposterous as the wonders she’d just witnessed. She examined the envelope and, after marveling at the royal-emblem wax-seal, turned the letter over to read the writing on the other side.

An unexpected series of involuntary laughs pushed their way through her clenched teeth.

Cheese’s shivering suddenly stopped. “W… What happened, Ditzy?” His voice was quiet, flat, and devoid of emotion.

Ditzy turned to Cheese and stifled a giggle. “I dunno, but I… I need… to deliver this letter.”

“Of course…” Cheese’s barrel shuddered with sudden laughter. “Yes, yes, my Cheesy-Sense says that you need to get that letter to somepony… Blue.”

Both of them devolved into a chorus of cackling. They laughed until their jaws ached, and their lips pulled back into rictuses of horror. But even as they laughed, they both wept, sending bloody-red streams surging down their muzzles.

Next Chapter: A Mysterious Missive Estimated time remaining: 13 Hours, 35 Minutes