Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"Sunset Shimmer? That Can't Be You!"

It was a bright, silent, very confusing realm I leapt into. I felt ready to fall with no sense of up or down. It was like looking into a sink draining psychedelic pink, blue, and yellow fluorescent paint. Worse, the flashing lights' quick spiraling motion made me sick to my stomach.

I quickly shut my eyes. It took a half-minute for the whirling feeling to fade and for me to realize I stood not only on solid ground but also on a slope. The moving colors were an illusion!

To check the idea, I peeked and turned my head; the illusion followed with me. I tapped around with my hoof and found a square space where the edge of the mirror would have been.

An attempt to convince anypony shoved through the mirror that they were headed somewhere hellish? La-ame!

Illusions were something I was good at. Dropped alone on the street so young that I couldn't remember my mother, life had forced me to make up tricks. One was to look bigger than I was. Another was to have an even bigger "friend."

Standing there, eyes closed, I remembered making up Sombre. I taught Brea to talk—as much as I could in those days, probably hoof-waving and making faces more than anything—and to play with me. I hadn't a clue how I'd do that today.

My heart skipped a beat.

I couldn't remember when I'd lost her! How could I have done that? I shuddered. Loneliness settled upon me like an annoying friend you didn't want around too often, but nopony else ever came by to play.

I had always suspected foals were more than just disgusting uncivilized goo and noise emitters—that they were a bit crazy, too. Now I knew they were. I shook off the sadness. It's a skill, right? I'm the master of unwanted things.

I knew the magical shape of an illusion, so I tried to sense it as I had the other spells. What I saw was what I'd seen of the mirror before, but this time with a hugely complex shape almost like a squirming mass of voles. I was at the center of that rodent-storm, and inside lay further layers of other shapes.

No, I wasn't going to cancel a spell while inside it. Might cancel myself out of existence.

It took me a minute to gin up the gibberish illusion spell mnemonics I'd invented before I was three, shape the incantation into a magic shape I could control, and guess at the colors and motion I needed. Maybe because it was one of my first spells, I saw it as what geometry class taught me was a tetrahedron. It took me a lot of pushing and pulling and spinning the squishy thing, and blinking at the outside world, to cast a color-canceling illusion that spun just right. It left me with a dim washed-out view of a square corridor that might act as a chute if I were to fall over and slide.

I trotted downward, feeling confident that I might find the two ahead if their illusion skills weren't as super as mine. During my quarter-mile journey, the right wall became increasingly redder and the left bluer, and steadily moister, showing dewy drops. That was no illusion. I decided it was best not to touch.

I heard voices that I recognized and switched to a canter as I approached a pair of horn lights, a shorter amber one and a taller purple one. The angry chatter, which included Brandywine's "so you just have to go back," halted, replaced by a commanding, "Who goes there!" Clearly Wolf Run.

I just smiled and continued quietly. Neither would order me back!

When I could easily see the colt and the stallion, Brandywine—surprisingly—cried, "Stop!" and shot a menacing bolt of hot amber just ahead of me.

It occurred to me that I had cast an illusion around me and who knew what it looked like from the outside. I cancelled the spell as I skidded to a halt, yelling, "It's me, Sunset Shimmer. Don't shoot!"

The mirror's illusion had faded into a vague colorful shifting mist. At about fifteen pony-lengths, a flickering light illuminated the father and son, and the gold mirror just beyond.

"Sunset Shimmer?" Brandywine asked. "That can't be you!"

I huffed and walked forward. I felt Wolf Run's shield spell push at me—so I simply cancelled it. I might not be able to remember tomorrow how I'd cancelled the runt's shield spell, but today I'd unraveled an alicorn-level spell, so... been there, done that.

Wolf Run stepped in front of his son as Brandywine peeked under him. "You're on fire!"

I flicked my tail as I looked back. It was barely bright at all. "Oh, that. It's some sympathetic magic that I ginned up to reopen the mirror. It's harmless."

"A key?" Brandywine asked, then, "No. No, no, no. Stay back!"

I stopped in shock, but while his son had one idea, Wolf Run had another. His brow furled as he cast Levitation and pushed me left into the blue wall, giving me no time to compensate. As I hit it, I felt the same gut-wrenching stretching phenomenon in my horn that I felt just before Sparkled flared into her magic storm as if time itself had rung like a bell. Fire spread from my mane as my momentum pushed me into what proved to be a rubbery surface that may as well have been bathed in kerosene. In a whoosh, a pulse of fire shot in a spiral to momentarily ignite the walls and the floors, and to splash across the mirror at the end, setting the edges aflame. Almost instantly, it twinned into a pair of red- and blue-tinted golden mirrors, drawing away to the right and the left like a two-headed snake that didn't want to speak with itself. In a heartbeat, the corridor ripped down the center, pulling Wolf Run to the red side and Brandywine to the blue side, with me sliding then tumbling after the colt.

The mirrors opened.

A vacuum drew me screaming into darkness.

Author's Note:

There are a number of chapters I will be releasing soon. However, my pre-reader is recommending I switch to TEEN from EVERYONE. Just giving you, dear reader, the heads up.

Comments

[Skulljack17]

So Sombre was real...or at least as 'real' as such an illusion could be...and was forgotten as Sunset grew up. Like an imaginary friend. How sad...