A Hearth's Warming Prelude · 5:34am Apr 23rd, 2022
(The following is the first draft of an upcoming prologue. All text is subject to change.)
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"She's here, your Majesty."
Princess Celestia of Equestria sighed heavily as she slumped deeper into the plush cushion of her throne. "Is it that time of year already?"
"I'm afraid so." Raven Inkwell gave her princess a pitying look before glancing down at her clipboard. "On the plus side, she is your last petitioner of the day."
"She plans it that way. Every year." Celestia shook her head. "She knows that with no one waiting behind her, she can have all the time she wants to plead her case."
Raven cautiously cleared her throat. "I don't mean to step beyond my place, your Majesty..."
"By all means. Step away."
"Why do you allow her to return year after year? She always makes some variation of the same request and you always tell her the same thing. Wouldn't it be better for everypony if you just told her the answer will always be 'no?'"
Celestia considered her aide's question as though she herself hadn't asked herself the same thing time and time again. Then, she said, "It is because I cannot grant her request that I allow her to make it each year. All she has left is hope." She smiled gently. "And what kind of monster would I be if I took that hope away?"
Raven scoffed as she turned towards the door. "You're not a monster."
"No." Celestia nodded stiffly. "The real monsters are out there." She spared a glance at the young mare enshrined forever in the nearby stained glass. Her most faithful student, lost to one of those very monsters. Perhaps the worst of all…
At the sound of approaching hooves, she straightened herself and watched the door swing open. After all these years, she knew the canter of her hooves, the slight hitch in her back left leg. She'd earned that injury dealing with a rabid yeti almost ten years prior. Earned that slight hitch while in her Majesty's service.
It was another reason why she would never stop letting the mare come before her. Every year, on the exact same day, to make the same request.
She was another year older, of course. But she was aging gracefully. She was still far too skinny, but who was somepony like Celestia to judge? Her mane was up in a bun this year. Was this a new style, or something she'd done just for her annual audience?
Her eyes were the same, though. The same cold steel they'd been for the past seven years.
As she always did, she knelt at the bottom of the stairs... and waited.
And like a seasoned actor, Celestia began running her lines. "Rise and state your business, Bon Bon."
The cream colored mare looked up without raising her head. "You're supposed to call me 'your little pony.' Or do I not get the same treatment as the others anymore?"
"I figured you'd like a little variety instead of the usual routine." Celestia gestured with a hoof. "I do need you to rise, though."
Bon Bon stood smoothly and reached for her saddlebag. "Your Majesty, I..."
"I know you went to Tambelon. Even after I told you not to."
Bon Bon froze. "You had me followed."
"No."
"Then how did...?" Her lips twitched, the closest she could manage as a smile these days. "Because I just told you."
"You're slipping as you age, Agent Sweetie Drops." Celestia returned the twitch.
The hardness returned to Bon Bon's eyes at the mention of her old name. "Yes. I went to Tambelon."
"Against my express orders."
"My request was for a full deployment of S.M.I.L.E. agents to join me in a thorough investigation of the ruins and the surrounding area." Bon Bon again reached for her bags. "You said nothing against me going by myself."
"Semantics. And after all that, what did you find? Nothing." Celestia shook her head. "Just as I told you you would. Just as I did when we finally found the ruins. And yet here you are standing before me yet again the week before the anniversary. So tell me; what is your request this year?"
"New information has recently come to light." The former agent began. Her saddlebag birthed several lengths of parchment which she began unrolling on the plush carpet at the foot of the stairs. Each was covered in text, all in markedly different mouth-writing. "Two years ago, three stallions went hiking into the depths of Apple Valley."
Celestia visibly stiffened at the location's name, but literal centuries of practice rendered the flinch virtually invisible. "And? It's a lovely spot, despite the origin."
"I know. I've been there myself many times over the last few years." Bon Bon pointed a hoof at the first scroll. "It's taken me over a year, but I managed to track down all three of them. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary. I had to be sure. I had to corroborate their stories. One had moved back to Germaney, and..."
"I don't see what three stallions hiking has to do with..."
"They were in Apple Valley on Hearth's Warming Eve." Bon Bon looked up sharply. "And they saw... something."
The look in the mare's eyes chilled Celestia to her core even as her mind tried to process this new information. "You can't mean that they...?"
"Yes. They did. And they survived."
"But... but why would he come back?" Celestia's magic lifted the scrolls and brought them closer to her face.
"Because he left something behind in Apple Valley." Bon Bon finally sat. "Several somethings." She waited while Celestia read the testimonies. She could almost recite them herself now with the number of times she'd read them. How the three hikers had breathed the same air as the most powerful force of malignance in all of Equestria and lived to tell the tale. But more than that... about how they'd had a conversation with a mare whose funeral she'd attended almost seven years ago.
Celestia slowly lowered the pages and stared into space. "It... it isn't possible. There... there would be some trace of them. Some magical echo. I've walked those woods more times than I can count."
"But never on Hearth's Warming Eve." Bon Bon produced a number of folders from her bags. "You told me before that his power was beyond even your understanding. Whose to say what is and isn't possible with him?"
Celestia's composure continued to falter at the new information. "Rarity. They were sure it was Rarity?"
Bon Bon nodded as she opened the folders, displaying their contents. "I showed them this selection of photos. They picked the right one, every time."
"Did they...?" Celestia bit her cheek on instinct, but the driving need to know pushed the question past her lips. "Did they see anypony else?"
"They identified several ponies in these folders. They said..." Bon Bon choked slightly, but swallowed hard and continued. "They said there were so many that it kind of became a blur."
Celestia caught the choke, and she knew. "They saw her, didn't they?"
Bon Bon nodded quickly, wiping her eyes just as fast. "Yes. And that's why I'm here. I need..."
"No." Celestia cut her off, her aged wisdom insisting that this needed to be stopped here. That nothing good would come from continuing on this path.
Bon Bon continued like she hadn't heard. "Not many. A small unit. No more than fifteen agents. I've found something that can..."
"No, Bon Bon." Celestia repeated, sterner this time.
"They saw Twilight Sparkle!" Bon Bon exploded. "She's there! Just as trapped as the others!"
"Yes, I'd gathered that." Celestia's face was stone, neutral.
"Then how can you sit there and...?!"
"I cannot in good conscience send agents against an enemy with so many unknown variables." Celestia raised a hoof to block Bon Bon's next accusation. "As dangerous as the monsters are that S.M.I.L.E. deals with, we still know how to deal with them for the most part. Literal decades of research into their strengths and weaknesses for most of them. There's a reason I never sent any of you against Discord."
"Then you come with me!" Bon Bon jumped to her hooves. "Together we can..."
Celestia simply shook her head.
"But why?!" Bon Bon demanded. "We know where he's going to be! I have a plan! I've found a relic that will..."
"Because there's a chance he'll take me." Celestia tried to be calm and commanding in equal measure, but the mare's dogged single-mindedness was wearing on her. "His magic is older and deeper than mine, unfathomably so. It doesn't matter what tools you have, there's always the chance that they won't work."
"You're doing nothing. You have the chance to save Twilight and you're doing..." Bon Bon advanced, placing a single hoof on the bottom step.
"DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!?" Celestia's voice boomed through the chamber, shaking glass in panes and knocking dust from long neglected rafters. "DON'T YOU THINK THAT EVERY CELL OF ME IS SCREAMING, TELLING ME TO FOLLOW YOU?! DON'T YOU KNOW THE PAIN IN MY HEART NOW KNOWING THAT MY MOST FAITHFUL STUDENT IS TRAPPED IN A FROZEN HELL?!"
Bon Bon stepped back, her resolve crumbling beneath the ethereal light that poured from the eyes of the alicorn.
Celestia breathed deep, reigning herself in and re-donning the mask. She slumped in her throne, dull anguish replacing the white glow in her eyes. "But I can't. I can't help you. Because there's a chance he'd take me. No matter the plan. No matter the weapons. There's always the chance. And then? What would happen to Equestria?"
Bon Bon watched her monarch's misery for a moment before she began collecting the three paper testimonies from where they'd fallen, scattered in Celestia's moment of lost control. "Well... you can't stop me from going."
"No. No I can't." Celestia replied dully.
"So I have one final request."
Celestia chuckled darkly. "What? Is it something I can actually give you this time?"
"Yes. Your blessing."
Celestia looked up slowly. "What?"
"No matter the mission, you always sent us out with your blessing. That way, no matter how bad things got, we knew that you were watching us and protecting us." Bon Bon finished packing away the papers and knelt once more. "All I ask is your blessing, and I'll be on my way."
Celestia considered, then raised herself to her full height. "Former Agent Sweetie Drops." She paused. "Bon Bon. Do you understand that great danger lies before you?" She recited.
"I do." Came the automatic reply.
"And do you understand the heavy burden now placed upon your shoulders?"
"I do."
"Do you understand that, should you succeed, your victory will go unrecognized? And, should you fail, that the crown will disavow you and all knowledge of your activities?"
Just as she always had, Bon Bon responded, "I do."
"Then go forth, in the name of the Crown and Throne of Equestria, and show no fear. For you are guarded by my blessing."
Bon Bon stood, and there was something new in her steely eyes; gratitude. "Thank you, your Majesty." She turned and headed back the way she came.
"Bon Bon?" Celestia called. When the mare paused and looked back, the monarch dipped her head in a bow. "Good hunting."
Bon Bon nodded stiffly, turned, and left.
Raven Inkwell poked her head inside an looked around. "Is it safe to come out now?"
Celestia chuckled weakly. "My apologies if I startled you."
"You've had a long day." She tucked her clipboard away and smiled. "Tea?"
"Tea would be lovely."
Raven started for the kitchen, but something out caught her eye. "I'll have to send the repair staff. It looks like you chipped the glass."
Celestia cocked her head in confusion. "These panes are unbreakable. I charmed them myself." Her great wings carried her to her assistant's side in a single flap and she pursed her lips as she saw that it was true; a hairline fracture in the glass. "But how..."
As she and Raven looked on, a single snowflake floated into view, borne aloft on the breeze. It danced closer and closer, finally landing perfectly on the damaged area. Both ponies drew back in shock as the crack increased upward with a horrendous noise. They followed the path of the crack as it continued up the tall stained glass, higher and higher.
Fear gripped Celestia's heart as she watched Twilight Sparkle's face split by the ugly break.
With a tremendous crash, the stained glass exploded inward. Raven screamed and braced for the rain of shards, but Celestia's wings and magic shielded them from the razor sharp projectiles. A sudden tempest followed, filling the throne room with icy air and hurricane force winds.
Raven continued to scream, but her shrieks were drowned out by the wind. Celestia braced herself and stood steady, but was horrified that somehow, despite her strongest shield charms, she could still feel the bitter cold. She could still smell the bitter wind.
And above the howling winds, above Raven's screams...
...she could still hear the ringing of a single bell.
SILENT NIGHT
A Hearth's Warming Horror Story
The Final Chapter Begins
12-1-2022
I reallyyyy wanna see where this goes but I cannot read horror, it gives me nightmares...I'll see how bad it'll be when it's officially released, see if it's too scary
Still, that looks like a great start!
Well this has my interest.
I want this. Need it. I need answers