Twilight Sparkle seethes as she hovers above the seemingly endless pit. Frustration builds with every flap of her wings, the very thought that a being capable of wrenching around the forces of magic like a flipping foal’s toy would use such a blindingly obvious password? There’s no cleverness there! No duel of minds between rivals, two geniuses (granting that Sombra was, at some point, a genius) feeling each other out and testing the other’s deductive capabilities.
No!
Instead, the literal first combination of numbers that you could try! It is infuriating!
Twilight’s limbs shake; she can barely contain her anger. Considering she isn’t blasting chunks out of the wall, or deafening everypony with her screams in the Royal Canterlot, it’s actually going pretty well. Now, the headache that’s building, that’s another story. Actually, forget building; it’s pretty much made her head its new summer home.
Is Queen Chrysalis that brilliant? That she deduced the mad King’s genius: how his corrupted mind had peered into her own soul and plucked out the combination that would have frustrated her the most? The solution that she would have tried only as a last ditch effort, after giving up on figuring out what the real one was and accepting defeat? And even then she still might not have tried the brute force method, and not just because every failed answer hurt. She wouldn’t have accepted that as a valid path to victory.
And Chrysalis figured that out almost instantly, as soon as she heard the problem. That she knows the mind of a malevolent force like King Sombra is scary enough, but for her to have such a good read on herself as well?
Twilight shudders, her limbs no longer shaking, her rage subsided. Her gaze travels around the room, looking for a book or something to toss down this endless pit. Maybe that would somehow bring her some catharsis. Unfortunately for her, but fortunate for whatever she might have found, nothing jumps out. Maybe she could break off a fragment from the throne, or rip up the carpets, or tear a piece of cloth from the curtains. Ugh, normally it’s Spike that keeps these things on his person.
Wait, where is Spike? Twilight manages to keep her expression from showing the terror she feels at her Best Assistant going missing. Or is he hiding?
Queen Chrysalis, bemused expression on her face, smirks at Twilight. “Looking for something?”
Have to find a practical excuse. Can’t just, go around tossing books down holes because you’re mad. “I want to find out how deep that staircase is.”
Queen Chrysalis nods, glancing around the room as well. Seeing nothing, her eyes bug out slightly as she makes a coughing noise. Twilight watches, a little confused, and definitely not turned on, as Chrysalis retches up a paste of green goop.
“There you go,” the changeling says. The goop quivers back and forth like pudding. The kind that a foal would toss onto the ceiling where it would then stick, only to fall down when it is least convenient.
“There’s no way I’m touching that,” Twilight Sparkle says, feeling a bit queasy herself.
“It’s perfectly harmless,” Chrysalis says smoothly. “Go on, try it.”
“Oh.” Twilight lands, prodding the sticky pile with a hoof. As expected, it sticks to her hoof, stretching a bit when she tugs away. Then it snaps, and she stumbles back a little, careful not to set that hoof on the ground. She stares at the clingy substance. “How do you get it off?”
Queen Chrysalis’ horn lights, and the goop slips off her hoof like oil. She should probably remember that spell, but can’t seem to get her mind to focus. Her horn lights, the blob now shining a bright raspberry red and levitating over the pit.
The two walk up to the edge, watching it drop. And drop. And drop. The light gets smaller and smaller as it falls, and marginally less bright. Until it spreads out at what she can only presume is the bottom hundreds of feet below.
Okay, so this isn’t a feature cut into the throne room, but instead a portal leading to some other location. There definitely isn’t space in the Crystal Castle for this monstrosity. Good thing she didn’t try blasting out the sides of the pit in order to bypass the puzzle. Still, she knows there exist artifacts that can create a similar effect. Could Sombra have made this himself, or did he twist existing magic to his own nefarious ends?
Getting out could be a problem, though, depending on how long the effect lasts. She has done precious little waypoint teleporting in her time as a unicorn, preferring the more reliable line of sight version. Still, she can set up a marker here, just in case the portal closes. Her dark magic spell on the crystal won’t last forever, and who knows what will happen to the portal, or anypony trapped inside, when that does happen.
“After you,” motions Queen Chrysalis to the spiral stairs cut into the circular wall of the pit.
Twilight considers briefly, then takes to the air. It’s wide enough that her wings shouldn’t clip into the sides, and hovering while descending really isn’t that much different than hovering while remaining stationary. It’s all about countering the force of gravity, and keeping your velocity mostly constant.
“How did you know Sombra’s password?” Twilight asks as she descends, about the same rate as if she was galloping down the stairs. After about fifty feet down the light from the throne room is no longer visible, instead only the lights of their horns guiding the way.
“What do you mean?” Queen Chrysalis retorts. “He’s an idiot.”
Twilight rolls her eyes, quicker than normal so she can keep a steady bead on her destination, the glowing goop on the floor. “Oh, come on. It can’t have been that easy.”
Queen Chrysalis doesn’t reply, which Twilight takes to mean she just shrugged or something. There’s no way he chose that because he couldn’t retain a seven digit password, and had to go with the simplest option! Not when everything about King Sombra seems purposefully designed to be as maddening as possible!
Whatever. Twilight feels her anger slip out of her again, replaced by a dull apathy. Maybe if she gets a chance to interrogate the unicorn, she’ll ask.
Twilight feels her mind perk up again. There are so many different things she could learn from him, too! Not just dark magic and how to subjugate his people, but forms of magic. How many ponies could just turn into a cloud, for Celestia’s sake!? Luna? And perhaps Celestia, though it isn’t quite her motif.
The two finally come to the bottom, an odd scraping sound echoing from above. She really hopes it isn’t the portal at the top closing, but it’s pitch black up there. They’d have to cancel all three light spells in order to have a chance of seeing the faint reflected light, and she really doesn’t want that to happen. Instead, she looks around. Just the stairs, spiraling up and up. And a door. A heavy wooden one, banded by straps of metal. Huh.
Twilight walks up to the door, but it slides away from her. Strange, but not unexpected. If Sombra can warp space to get them into this place, no reason he can’t move around the exit like it’s a magnet on the other side of a table. Ooh, that’s a trick she can one-up Trixie with!
Yet the satisfaction of coming up with a way to finally trick her herdmate is short lived, especially as the door keeps shifting around. Even a dimensional anchor, the kind that keeps ponies from teleporting, fails to hinder its movement. She tries corralling it with Chrysalis’ help, but it just disappears into the wall, reappearing on the other side. Grasping the knocker with her magic serves no better, and galloping after it only serves to tire herself out.
“Well, that’s just annoying,” Chrysalis says, huffing.
“You’re telling me,” Twilight replies, gritting her teeth. She feels overcome by a wave of anger - at Sombra, at Chrysalis, at everything! Her horn flares, turning the entire area into shadows as a bolt of dark magic blasts forth and strikes the door!
It stops moving after that, and Twilight has a harder time shaking the effects of using dark magic. It takes evoking a memory of meeting her Friends in Ponyville, but even the euphoric feelings there are short lived. Twilight steps away from Chrysalis to approach the door, both of them inspecting it.
And then the door opens, revealing everything she ever wanted.
“Mine!” Queen Chrysalis shouts, knocking Twilight out of the way in her haste.
Twilight rubs her rump, wincing at the pain, but what’s confusing is that Chrysalis didn’t actually go through the door. Instead, she’s standing there, her bright green eyes completely filled by a garish neon green. They remain transfixed on the door while she mumbles something to herself. The door shines white, no longer showing Twilight anything in particular. She inches closer, barely able to hear Chrysalis’ narration.
“No! That is impossible! Traitors!” Chrysalis pauses, her ears twitching as her eyes narrow. “No! You cannot abandon me! I am the one who brought you this far!” She stamps a hoof, fuming. “You follow my commands! Not hers!”
Then Chrysalis gapes, her eyes focusing on nothing. “No! Stop! I command you to stop!” Then she holds up a hoof, as if to block something from her eyes, chancing a peek above. “Noo!” Then she pulls her hoof away, inspecting the same dark gray chitin she’s always had. “Aagh! Get it off!” She scraps at her foreleg with the other, recoiling at some unseen sight taking place on both her legs. She screams as if her carapace was on fire, “No! NO! NOOOOO!!”
Chrysalis breaks down, sobbing into her hooves, the open door still in front of her and shining the same white it was before.
Twilight creeps forward, hooves grasping the despondent changeling queen. With the help of her horn she drags the writhing creature away from the door, breathing heavily. What had she seen to reduce her to a quivering, mewling foal? She slowly, tentatively, wraps her forelegs around the changeling. What starts as a light hold gets stronger as Chrysalis moans, ending up gripping her in a tight hug, rocking her back and forth.
That scratching sound from above becomes audible as Chrysalis’ cries gradually lessen. She calms down, finally opening her bright green eyes to stare into the lavender chest. A grunt of surprise mixed with a dash of annoyance escapes her throat, pulling her head back slightly to gaze into Twilight’s eyes. They remain there for several long seconds, Chrysalis no longer disguising that she is drinking in every one of Twilight’s emotions.
“Better?” Twilight whispers.
“Much,” returns the changeling. Her eyes flick to the open door. “Go through there, and tell me what you see.”
“Okay,” says Twilight without a moment's hesitation, getting up and walking to the door.
On the other side, she finds herself in a hospital room, laying on a normal hospital bed. Ponyville General, if she has any guess, but there aren’t any windows. One door. Doug is by her side, holding onto her hoof, a worried expression on his face.
“Hey,” Twilight says with a reassuring smile, “it’ll be okay.”
Doug grimaces, saying nothing.
Twilight frowns, then glances up as the door opens. Nurse Redheart steps in: slowly, reluctantly, a certain look of disguised dread on her face. Doctor Horse follows behind, and even the normally unflappable snark has a somber expression.
“What is it, Doc?” she asks, her voice catching in her throat.
“It’s your foal,” Nurse Redheart replies, the clipboard shaking in her hoof. “It, um, she…”
“She didn’t make it,” Doctor Horse says in that damnably neutral voice of his. “We don’t know why.”
Twilight’s world shatters. Her hoof goes to her belly, rubbing at the spot she should be growing. The feelings come flooding back, the ones she got when it happened the hour before. She had known she was dead, but came to the doctors anyway, in the vain hope that there might have been a chance…
“Oh,” is all Doug says, giving a disgruntled snort. He pulls his hand away from her hoof, standing up and leaving her side. He walks to the door, turning to barely regard her out of the corner of his eye. “So you failed. Again.”
Tears well in Twilight’s eyes as she crumples to the bed. She hears her mentor tut-tutting from somewhere in the room. She glances around, just to see the long, slow shakes of the white alicorn’s head as she looks upon her student with less than pity. More like disgust.
“Please don’t send me back to Canterlot,” Twilight begs, the rest of her Friends appearing around Celestia and looking at her with just as much disdain.
“Well, if you can’t even be a broodmare, then what use are you?” Doug flicks his head, the rest of her herd walking out the door, not even sparing her a second glance. Celestia gets up, her pregnant belly swaying mockingly.
“I don’t know what you think is waiting for you in Canterlot, and there is certainly nothing waiting for you in Ponyville.” Celestia’s scornful gaze bores into Twilight, the lavender alicorn barely able to meet her. “I would say I was disappointed, but that would mean I ever expected anything from you.” Then she turns, silently walking out the door, it closing behind and leaving Twilight alone.
Very, very alone.
Twilight mourns for long seconds, her weeping staining her forelegs. Until a comforting hoof sliding along her back briefly breaks the alicorn from her despondency, her tear filled eyes opening just a sliver.
“Shh,” whispers Chrysalis, stroking Twilight’s mane out of her eyes as she shuts the door. The alicorn can’t help but peer into the swirling depths of bright green, promising compassion and relief. “I can make the pain go away, if you let me.”
Twilight believes, baring her soul.