14 - Scars of a Nightmare
Succession
Chapter 14 - Scars of a Nightmare
The hated alicorn’s magic lanced into her neck, and sweet darkness overcame her, the blinding agony replaced by a dull throbbing in her neck. For an eternity it seemed, she just lay there, at an odd sort of peace with herself as she wondered what awaited her in the life after death. Would her friends be waiting for her? Would Celestia be there? The idea of an afterlife had always seemed implausible to the unicorn, but with death coming for her so suddenly, she found herself wishing she had been wrong.
And yet, although her body was gone and with it the searing pains of her fatal, self-inflicted wounds, she was still burning all over. The pain, the true pain that ate away at everything she was, the pain of watching her friends reduced to nothing but ashes was still there, the remains of her existence smoldering in its burning, vice-like grip.
She had failed. She had failed Celestia and her friends. By giving up, she had doomed Equestria. Without her, ponydom was at the mercy of her enemy. The peace she had found in death turned brittle and shattered, but as it did so, the memories of her friends ceased burning her, serving instead to feed her resolve and bolster her strength. After another eternity had passed, she opened her eyes.
She found herself in a strange void, lying on some sort of metal surface, one which hummed softly when she got to her hooves, as if in response to her movements. She winced as even the slightest of movements triggered the odd, sharp pains in her neck that had been plaguing her since The Great Tragedy, but it was nothing compared to what she had just been put through, to what she was still being put through.
“Wh-where am I?” she asked out loud, hoping for some answer. She had her hooves, all four of them, as if she had never burned them away. The rest of her body was there as well, unblemished by her horrible battle with the alicorn. “Did I... die?” She lit her horn and discovered that she was not standing in an empty void, but in a small square room without doors, each and every surface coated in a strange, violet-tinted alloy.
Had he been so cruel? Had he allowed her not even the mercy of death?
I survived. I think... But how!? I... I’m trapped... No, no! I can’t let him win! I can’t let him get away with killing everyone I love! I can’t let him do the same to Equestria!
A magenta beam of light flew from her horn and into the nearest wall, but instead of cutting through the metal, it vanished into it, pulling at her magical reserves until she ended her spell.
I don’t care if I’m dead or alive! He... is going... to suffer! I don’t care if he’s stronger! I don’t care where I am! If he thinks this cell is going to stop me, he’s dumber than he looks! Another beam shot forth from her horn, this time striking the wall properly as she adapted her spell to the strange metal’s arcane resonance. His walls won’t stop me!
A small fissure opened in the metal, and with a deafening screech, her magic peeled away the coating, revealing a wall of concrete. “Nothing will stop me!” she shouted at the black alicorn as she stepped back to the opposite side of the cell, her horn taking on a bright glow as she charged a third spell. “I’ll kill you!”
“T-Twilight!?” a panicked voice called out from somewhere to her right just as the unicorn unleashed an explosive charge that blew apart the wall before her. She had underestimated the spell’s power, however, and was thrown to the floor by the recoil of the explosion, coughing and hacking as the entire room filled with dust and chunks of concrete. A door, perfectly concealed in the wall to her right, clicked and opened up. Somehow, Spike was there, filling out the entirety of the doorframe as he stood upright and looked at her with worry. “You... you’re awake, right? You’re alright?”
“No...” the unicorn muttered as she struggled to her hooves, half-crawling and half-walking toward the exit, completely oblivious to the fact that Spike was alive. “Not until I find him! I need to find him!”
“S-slow down, Twi!” the dragon begged of her, taking a few steps back and allowing her to leave the ruined cell before barring her way. He crouched down in front of her, trying to look her in the eye, though the unicorn was quick to avert her gaze. “What’s going on?”
Twilight sniffled as the dragon held her, debating whether or not to just push him out of the way. For a moment, however, her fierce determination crumbled and she went limp in his grip “I... I... You’re dead, Spike! He made me kill you! I-I killed you! You’re... you’re dead! You’re dead, Spike!”
“Whoah, whoah, Twi!” Spike exclaimed as she promptly collapsed into tears. “I-I’m not dead! I’m fine! Look!”
“Ponyville’s gone!” Twilight continued, gasping for air as the full force of her emotional trauma returned. “He made me do it! I killed everyone! Apple Bloom, Big Mac, Cheerilee, Lyra, Derpy, Spike, Carrot Top...”
“I’m not dead!” Spike repeated comfortingly, stroking the unicorn’s mane gently. “Ponyville’s fine too. C-calm down.”
“No!” Twilight insisted, her sorrow once more turning into rage and resolve. “He needs to pay for what he’s done! I have to kill him!”
“Kill!? Kill who!?”
“Him! The alicorn!” Twilight shouted, twisting out of her friend’s grip. “You didn’t see him! He’s the one that killed Celestia and Luna! Shining and Cadance! He just killed AJ and Rainbow and Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie! Made me destroy Ponyville!”
“But I just got a letter from Rainbow!” Spike countered, following the unicorn as she left behind the cell. “She’s not dead!” Putting the cell behind them, the pair found themselves in a dimly lit concrete passageway devoid of any windows, the only light illuminating their path coming from small lightbulbs set in the ceiling. The hall stretched on for a hundred feet in each direction before vanishing behind a corner, lining both walls were a series of numbered doors, and immediately to her left, there was a staircase blocked by a solid-looking metal mesh. As the unicorn approached what seemed to be the only exit in the area, she noticed a score of unicorn guards standing with horns at the ready. They all seemed to relax upon seeing Twilight, however, and the glow in their horns was quickly cut off.
“Where are we?” the unicorn demanded impatiently as she came to a halt in front of the iron grating.
“Dungeons of Cristallum,” the dragon muttered uneasily, eyeing the twenty guards in front of Twilight. He leaned down and whispered into her ear. “So you should probably stop shouting and calm down. They might throw you back in that cell.”
At this, Twilight’s gaze only hardened as she looked the guards over. Without warning, her horn erupted with magenta as she grabbed hold of her would-be captives, slamming them against the walls and restraining them with magical chains. As she did so, a concentrated beam of energy shot forth from her horn and cut a hole in the metal mesh. Twilight groaned as the wound in her neck responded to her magical exertions by throbbing even more. “We’re in Manehattan? I just destroyed Ponyville!” she argued, stepping through the hole and past the struggling guards gasping for air as her restraints tightened against their throats. “He just killed them! You can’t know if everyone’s alright!”
“Twilight, the guards..!” the dragon pleaded with her as he struggled to get through the narrow opening the unicorn had cut for herself.
“They won’t stop me!” she screamed back at the dragon as she started up the stairs. “I won’t let anything stand in my way! If it’s the last thing I do, I. Will. Destroy him!” She reached a corner and with a scream, she took out her frustrations on the wall in front of her, firing another explosive charge at the concrete. The recoil surprised her once more, and she was thrown back the way she had come and directly into Spike’s arms.
A claw immediately locked around her horn, blocking her magic before she could teleport, while the dragon’s other arm grabbed hold of her chest and held it so that her flailing hooves couldn’t reach him. “Twilight..! Please!”
“Let me go!” the unicorn only screamed, her horn blazing futilely against the dragon’s fireproof hands. All around her, the guards were released from her magical hold, falling to their knees and gasping for air.
“Twilight, stop!” The sudden seriousness in the dragon’s voice was finally enough to bring the unicorn out of her frenzy, and as the guards got to their hooves, she momentarily ceased her struggles. “You didn’t just get here,” he revealed. “You can’t have destroyed Ponyville because you’ve been in that cell for two months.”
“No!” Twilight insisted shaking her head as best she could in Spike’s grip. “I just...”
“It was just a nightmare.”
“No!” She screamed this time, making one of the guards jump in surprise and the wound in her neck pulse painfully. “It was real!” she gasped. “Don’t you dare tell me that nightmare was... was a nightmare! It was real!”
“Rainbow Dash followed you to Neighbury to make sure you were okay. And that’s where she found you,” the dragon tried, trying to sound as calm as possible. When he unintentionally loosened his grip on Twilight’s horn, however, she was quick to use her magic to break out of his grip.
“You’re not real!” she practically screamed at the dragon before vanishing in a dazzling flash that blackened the concrete she had been standing on.
“He can’t trick me! He didn’t kill me, and he’s going to regret it!” she told herself as she reappeared on the roof of Cristallum, near the runway for flying chariots reserved for emergencies or unusual situations. “You!” she shouted at the two pegasus guards on duty, pointing first at them and then to the vacant chariot they were lounging up against. “Ponyville! Right now!”
“Seven hours!” she muttered to herself as she teleported onto the chariot, groaning with frustration at what had just happened, forcing the crushing thoughts of what she had lost away and focusing instead on the task at hoof: Annihilating the alicorn. “It takes seven hours to fly from here to Ponyville! I’m gonna lose him! He’s going to run away again!”
“Cap‒ err, Twilight..?” one of the pegasi began, giving the unicorn a worried look. “You alright? I heard‒”
“Now!” Twilight ordered impatiently, fitting the harness onto the pegasi and setting the chariot into motion with her magic. “We’re after Celestia’s murderer!”
“Where’s that spatial link!?” she whispered with annoyance. “What did he do to my magic!? It’s back to normal! No, no, no!” Already, she had tired herself out from her simple teleportation, and she slammed a hoof against the chariot angrily. “How am I supposed kill him now!?”
“I thought we were after Nightmare Moon?” one of the guards asked with confusion. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“I don’t know!” Twilight hissed. “Can’t we go any faster? We’re going to lose him!”
“We need to leave the ground first,” the pegasus shot back, obviously irked by the captain’s behavior.
Twilight rolled her eyes and turned around before sitting, watching Cristallum as the chariot took to the air and flew off in a southwesterly direction. “I can’t overpower him,” she muttered to herself again, this time low enough for none of the two pegasi to hear. “I can’t hide from him. That makes surprising him hard. He’s impervious to my destructive spells. He’s impervious to the Elements of Harmony...” Twilight’s breathing quickened. “Oh Celestia, Rainbow Dash! Rarity! Fluttershy and Pinkie and AJ!” Her rapid breathing crossed into hyperventilation and she pressed her hooves against her temples as if to force away the evil, maddening memories. “Focus! Focus! N-no breakdowns! Not again! You can’t allow yourself to let him kill you again! He let you live! Make him regret it! Make him scream just as they did! Whatever I did in Neighbury, I need to do it again! Unlock my true potential! Destroy him! Destroy the one who hurt those I love! That’s... what... matters!”
“Faster!” she cried out at the chariot pullers, the mere fact that Cristallum was still within sight annoying her to no end.
“You can’t expect us to double-time it all the way over to Ponyville!” the pegasus who had spoken before protested, although he and his partner did pick up their pace.
“The alicorn who killed Celestia and Luna is in Ponyville!” Twilight shrieked with frustration. “He just murdered the Elements of Harmony for pony’s sake! Give it all you’ve got, or he’s gonna get away! Is that understood!?”
“They’re dead!?” the other chariot puller exclaimed incredulously, looking back at Twilight before she shot him an icy stare that told him to keep flying. “Are you serious!?”
“Do you think I would joke about that!? No! Just... fly! Shut up and fly! As fast as you can!” She took a deep breath to try to calm herself and turned away from the two pegasi again.
Seven hours. Seven hours. Seven hours to replenish my magic. Seven hours to unlock my potential again. Seven hours to figure out a way to defeat something that’s beaten the princesses and the Elements of Harmony. Argh! Seven hours for him to get away! He’s not gonna be there!
“Twilight!” Having followed her from Cristallum, Spike was now flying toward her, somehow gaining on the chariot until he reached her and landed beside her. “What’s wrong with you!?” he demanded after catching his breath. “You can’t just strangle a score of guards and run off like that!”
“You said they were going to throw me back in that cell!” Twilight defended herself. “They’re fine! I didn’t hurt them!”
“Since when is strangling ponies not the same as hurting them!?” Spike insisted. “Now, lucky for you, they were pretty understanding of your condition, so they’ll keep quiet about what happened.” The dragon sighed and looked at Twilight, expecting an answer. When none came, he continued. “How about a ‘thank you Spike for smoothing things over with the prison guards I assaulted’?”
“You’re not Spike!” Twilight stated defiantly. “Spike’s dead! He was in Ponyville when it got destroyed!”
“Ponyville’s been destroyed too!?” the chariot puller who spoken previously exclaimed again.
“Fly!” Twilight demanded once again. “There’ll be plenty of time for explaining later!”
“Won’t you please just listen to me?” Spike plead. “Ponyville is fine! Just this morning, I got a letter from Rainbow Dash! Who’s in Ponyville!”
“Then it was destroyed after that letter was sent!”
“And according to you, you’re the one that did it?” Spike asked making sure he’d gotten it right.
Twilight sighed heavily. “I... I didn’t mean to...”
“Whatever you think happened didn’t really happen,” Spike tried again. “You’ve been in some sort of coma for two months. Rainbow said it was a lot like something that happened to you when you travelled back in time to The Great Tragedy.”
“Just... shut up, Spike! I mean... not-Spike! Whatever you are! Spike’s dead! All of my friends are dead! He killed them and he killed me!”
“He... killed you?”
Twilight threw him an angry glare. “You’re just one of his... things!” She prodded a hoof at the dragon and confirmed that he wasn’t just an image. “Some kind of weird, solid illusion! The only reason I haven’t destroyed you already is because you look like Spike! So... stop mocking me!”
“I’m not mocking you, Twilight, just trying to talk some sense into you.”
“The real Spike can’t fly!” Twilight exclaimed triumphantly, having found solid proof of her statement. “You just flew! Ergo, you aren’t Spike!”
“Rainbow taught me,” the dragon countered. “During the two months you were sleeping.” He lifted himself up on his legs and spread out his arms demonstratively. “Taught myself to stand upright again too!”
“Yeah? If Rainbow taught you, where is she now?”
“She went back to Ponyville. Three ponies there have gone missing, so she went to check it out. From the looks of that letter she sent me, she not only found those ponies, but Fluttershy too. Said she needed the council’s help rescuing them.”
“Fluttershy had already come back!” Twilight retorted. “But now she’s... she’s...”
“She came back...” Spike said, sounding unconvinced. “In your dream?”
“Nightmare!” Twilight corrected him. “Which was real!”
“I’m not convincing you, am I?” Spike sighed with exasperation, and Twilight shook her head. “Fine. You’re going to Ponyville? I guess you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
Almost eight hours after having left Cristallum, Twilight and Spike were finally within sight of Ponyville. The unicorn, however, was too busy fuming over the lateness of their arrival to feel any kind of relief at the sight of the town being utterly unharmed. Rather, the only thing it seemed to do was make her even angrier at the fact that she’d been somehow tricked by the alicorn.
Speaking of which, the dark stallion was nowhere to be found. Ponyville was idyllic, as it always was, even with the eternal night besetting Equestria. She was certain she had met the alicorn, but with the revelation that at least the final moments of their encounter had been nothing more than a horrible nightmare, Twilight found herself growing more and more stressed trying to piece together and verify the hundreds of things that had happened to her after leaving Dragoncrest. Only adding to her woes was the pain in her magical wound, which had built to the point where it was hammering away at her neck relentlessly.
“Whoah, Twilight!” The unicorn turned her head to see Rainbow Dash pull up next to the flying chariot. The pegasus, just like the town, was perfectly fine. No injuries, no fear or misery or anything else that suggested she’d experienced the things Twilight had. She was even smiling. “Finally woke up, huh?”
“Woke up!?” Twilight snapped, the pegasus’ smile quickly vanishing. “Woke up!? I have not been sleeping!”
“I know it’s hard to believe, Twilight, but look!” Spike gestured first at Rainbow Dash and then at the town. “Rainbow’s alive and Ponyville is fine! What else do I have to do to convince you?”
“I’m ‘alive’?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Am I missing something? And if you weren’t sleeping, then what were you doing?”
Twilight snorted irritably, knowing full well that Spike had managed to prove her wrong. It did not improve her mood. “I’ve had a nightmare,” she growled. “A plain old, regular nightmare!”
“Ooookay?” Rainbow Dash shot Spike a glance, but he only shrugged in response. “Are you alright?” she asked Twilight.
“No! Where’s Fluttershy? Spike said you’d found her, so I’m guessing she’s alive too! Everypony’s alive, apparently! No doubt Celestia’ll come prancing out of her grave and raise the sun any minute now!”
“Uh... whoah.” Rainbow Dash gave her a wide-eyed stare. “What happened?”
“It’s... a long story,” Twilight told her dismissively. “According to Spike here, I’m going crazy!”
“I never said that,” Spike broke in defensively. “I’m just saying you had a nightmare.”
“It was real, alright!?” Twilight exclaimed angrily, then gestured at her friends. “Since you’re all still around, it apparently didn’t happen, but it was real! I-I felt it! For all I know, this isn’t real! Or maybe I’m still having a nightmare! All I know is that it hurts!” Her eyes began to water and she stomped a hoof furiously against the chariot to focus. “Where’s Fluttershy!?”
To her great frustration, Rainbow Dash didn’t immediately answer, continuing to eye her with worry instead. Before Twilight spoke up again, however, she finally complied. “Well, just these past two months, we’ve had three other disappearances here in Ponyville. Orchid Dew, Twinkleshine and Blue Harvest just vanished without a trace. But... a while after I came back, just two days ago, guess what happens? I manage to save Golden Harvest from being carried off by a pack of diamond dogs!”
“Diamond dogs!?” both Spike and Twilight exclaimed in unison, one in surprise, the other in outrage.
The pegasus nodded her head excitedly. “I went back to Fluttershy’s cottage and did an extra thorough sweep, and sure enough, I find one of those holes the diamond dogs always leave behind not far from the house! Really hid it well, too! They musta kidnapped her before the timberwolves came!”
“The diamond dogs took Fluttershy!?” Twilight exclaimed. “They’ve held her for two months!?”
“Uh, four,” Rainbow Dash corrected her, the statement doing nothing to lighten the unicorn’s hostile mood.
“But why would they start kidnapping ponies again?” Spike asked. “Didn’t they learn their lesson last time?”
“Only one way to find out,” Rainbow Dash reasoned, punching her hooves together.
If they’ve hurt her... The very distinct memory of Fluttershy screaming in pain floated into her mind, and Twilight’s eyes twitched.
“Land over there,” Twilight told her chariot pullers as they reached the northern outskirts of Ponyville, pointing toward the large field in which she and her friends had first encountered the diamond dogs. Her tone was no longer as heated as it had been throughout the entire flight from Manehattan to Ponyville, but frosty and detached, both her rage and the pain in her neck growing to the point where they simply numbed her.
And while the chariot pullers complied, Rainbow Dash noticed the sudden change in temper. “Twi? Are you sure you’re up for this right now? You seem really...”
“Angry?” Twilight pressed her, glaring at the cyan pegasus. “Furious!? On the brink of insanity!? Yes! All of those things! Nothing at all makes sense right now, and I don’t have time to figure out what the hay is going on because there’s always something getting in the way!” The unicorn groaned with frustration at... everything. “Not that saving Fluttershy is ‘in the way’, but... ugh, there are so many other things I need to deal with right now!”
Impatient with the slow descent, Twilight teleported off the chariot and onto the ground below. She promptly fell over from the abrupt change in speed and buried her head in one of the many mounds littering the torn up field that hid the lair of the ponynappers. She quickly got to her hooves and spat out a mouthful of dirt, only just quelling the overwhelming desire to blast a crater in the ground. After having flown over the bright lights of Ponyville, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness that dominated the majority of the small town’s countryside. By the time they did so, Twilight was joined by both Rainbow Dash and Spike.
“I don’t get it,” Spike complained, still very much worried. “How can you still be mad after eight whole hours? Why don’t we just, I don’t know, calm down a bit before doing something rash?”
Rainbow Dash, however, disagreed. “No way! If Twilight’s up for this, I say we do it ASAP! Fluttershy’s down there! Every minute she spends with those chumps is a minute they force her to dig up diamonds or something!”
“You aren’t helping...” Spike deadpanned, but Rainbow Dash apparently didn’t care, turning her attention to Twilight instead.
“So how do we do this?” she asked as she followed the unicorn to a partially filled hole near the center of the clearing. “Charge in and buck everyone out of the way, or isolate a dog and interrogate him to find out where everypony is?”
“You two stay up here,” Twilight ordered, the hole before her erupting in a fountain of dirt as she used her magic to excavate the tunnel. “I’ll deal with them!”
“Twilight...” Spike pleaded of her once more. “I don’t think that’s a good idea! Not when you’re... like this!”
“You can’t go alone!” Rainbow Dash protested, blocking the unicorn with an outstretched hoof. “They know I saw them! They’ll be expecting a rescue! What if they capture you?”
Twilight only snorted at the suggestion and vanished in another burst of light.
The glow of her horn blazed brightly as she appeared in the tunnels below, the outraged cries of her pegasus friend soon silenced as she refilled and sealed the entrance once more.
They took her! They enslaved her! Kept her locked underground for two, no, four months! the unicorn told herself, rekindling that terrible ocean of hatred her enemy had given rise to, the pain in her neck escalating and stoking the fires burning in her mind. I thought she was dead! Every day I feared Pinkie would get that nosebleed! I even saw her die! And I am not letting that happen again! I can’t believe those things were even admitted to Celestia’s funeral!
As the magenta glow of her horn transformed into flames, a howl from somewhere ahead of her told her that the diamond dogs had already noticed her presence. Good, Twilight told herself, pressing onwards in the direction of the howl. Those things are no better than the alicorn! And... And it’s time I sent him a message... He needs to know what happens if he ever thinks about hurting my friends again! She soon entered into a large stone cavern with several exits dug into the walls all around her. A large stalactite drooping down from the center of the ceiling carrying a cluster of torches provided a moderate amount of lighting for the scene.
Surrounding the entrance from which she had just come were a horde of diamond dogs, some heavily armored while others were armed with crude spears and maces. Twilight frowned at the savage display of might, but showed no fear, her enemy’s show of power only serving to increase her building rage. I slaughtered a pack of timberwolves in a matter of minutes, I’ve brought down ursas and dragons. These dogs should be cowering! They should be parting before me! They should have left my friends alone!
“Ponies aren’t welcome here!” a voice from among the crowd shouted, the exclamation met by a series of snarls of approval.
“Leave!”
“Nohoho!” a third voice chuckled. “Perhaps you should stay!”
“Where’s Fluttershy?” Twilight growled through clenched teeth, assuming a defensive stance as the magenta flames of her horn brightened another notch.
“Who?” a dog asked mockingly.
“Is that the quiet one?”
The whispered question was met by a hissed “shut up!” before the first dog spoke again.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t lie to me!” Twilight warned the crowd. “Don’t you dare lie to me! I’m here for Fluttershy! Her and any other ponies you have captured!”
“Ponies takes dogs!” a voice to her left cried out.
“Ponies takes diamond!” a dog to her right shouted.
“So diamond dogs takes ponies!” the voice to her left concluded, met by several howling cheers.
The unicorn’s eyes locked on to the final speaker, a diminutive mutt dressed in oversized armor, and a blast of magic knocked him against a wall, temporarily silencing the others. “Consider that a warning shot! Show me where the ponies are, or you’ll regret it!”
“No!” a diamond dog clad in a red vest declared, stepping out in front of the crowd. “You will regret!” He eyed her blazing horn cautiously before continuing. “You leave! If not... diamond dogs hurts ponies!”
She was silent for a while, her gaze hardening, the threat fuelling her anger, not her fear. “Say that again...” Twilight growled, the already rampant sea of rage within her lighting up as an image of Fluttershy screaming in pain filled the unicorn’s mind, the image of all of her friends burning to death soon lost in the red mist of rage that eclipsed her mind. The agony in her neck, plaguing her from when she had first woken up, rose to an excruciating crescendo, somehow adding to the power that was rushing into her horn.
“Pony heard,” the diamond dog repeated, sounding a little less confident this time. “You leave, or... or we hurt friend!”
“No...” the unicorn stated, taking a step forward. “No you will not!” she bellowed, the very force of her voice pushing back the ringleader as her bulging eyes were lost in a white blaze. “You will not hurt her, you will not hurt my friends, you will not hurt a single creature ever again! Do you want to know why!?” The leader, now thrown back against the bulk of the crowd, trembled at the suddenly very intimidating pony before him. “Do you!?”
“Be... be-because we’ll be good?” he offered nervously, doing his best at a placating smile as he tried to crawl backwards, only to be blocked by the dogs behind him.
“No.”
The tunnel from which she had entered was suddenly lit up brightly, a dull roaring growing louder and louder as the pony stepped out into the center of the cave. A roiling wave of flame, one that seemed to be taken directly out of her nightmare, erupted from the opening behind the unicorn, splitting apart instantly and rushing along the walls of the cave where all the diamond dogs stood. As the two waves of fire met before her, Twilight’s enemies cried out in panic and agony, but the unicorn did nothing, the diamond dogs’ words still echoing within her hollow mind and robbing her of any mercy she should have had.
This is wrong.
This is right!
The fires died down and, panting heavily with exhaustion and rage, Twilight set after the few that had evaded her, confident that the survivors would lead her to Fluttershy. She stomped across the charred remains of the creature that had threatened her friends and let loose a thunderbolt that struck down a dog just as he was about to turn a corner.
It’s high time someone did this, the unicorn told herself, a series of howls warning her that reinforcements were on their way. They prey upon ponies when we are at our weakest, when they think we are at our weakest! I’ll show them! her mind hissed vehemently, twisting her neck in a hopeless attempt at dulling the pain as she teleported ahead to the corner where the remaining diamond dogs had disappeared. A spear missed her by an inch, and the unicorn summoned an impenetrable barrier of magenta in front of her. As half a dozen more primitive projectiles bounced off of her defenses, Twilight growled. Her magic grabbed hold of the spears and sharpened rocks that had struck her shield, blindly flinging them into the darkness of the tunnel ahead of her, resulting in a series of pathetic whimpers.
“You should have stayed in your caves!” she roared furiously at those ahead of her, breaking into a gallop at the sound of skittering claws. “But no, you’d much rather die!” A glimmer of metal in the darkness ahead caught her eye, and a bolt of lightning struck a diamond dog in the back of the head. She rushed past three dogs with spears protruding from their chests, blood pooling around what Twilight already considered corpses.
Her tormented pursuit took her down a winding staircase carved from stone, the primal grunts and roars of diamond dogs preparing for war growing ever louder as she descended. Several squads of spear-wielding dogs tried apprehending her as she drew closer to where she sensed Fluttershy was being held. Every enemy that stood in her way, however, was met with much the same fate; as Twilight reached the bottom of the stairs and entered into an enormous cave, she was accompanied by a number of lifeless bodies rolling down the steps alongside her.
The cavern she now found herself in was much better lit than any chamber she had seen during her short, crazed vendetta and was apparently some sort of gathering place for the inhabitants of the underground passages. Enormous stone tables that she suspected had once taken up the majority of the floor space had been shoved back roughly against the walls, and in their place stood an even larger horde of warriors than the one Twilight had initially encountered, the majority of which were armed with much more deadly weaponry. Lining the walls everywhere the unicorn looked were primitively crafted works of precious metal and glittering gems, and at the far end of the cavern was her goal. The four ponies were standing upon a podium carved from the floor, their front hooves shackled to the walls they stood against while an armed diamond dog stood by each of them, snarling at the intruder.
“Now, pony, you will‒” The speaker, holding a crude axe against Fluttershy’s neck, was abruptly silenced as a crackling bolt of magenta took off his head, all four captives screaming in horror as the three remaining hostage takers followed suit.
A wall of magenta rose out of the ground and enveloped the podium, protecting the panicked ponies from further harm as Twilight stepped into the cave fully, eyeing the gathered throng before her with cold hatred. “You don’t seem to get how things work!” she told the diamond dogs, her gaze sweeping over each and every one of them. She was met by expressions of fear, hatred, rage, and shock, none of which touched her. “You don’t get to hurt ponies! You don’t get to loaf around in your caves while others do your work for you!” She spotted a small group of dogs inching toward an exit set in the wall between a pair of overturned tables, and even more magenta walls materialized, blocking every opening in the cavern but the one Twilight had come from. “And you don’t get to run!”
“No running!” a diminutive diamond dog agreed with the unicorn, screaming frustratedly at those around him. “Stabbing and cutting, yes! One pony, sixty diamond dogs! Attack, attack, attack!”
Twilight felt a monumental wave of blood rising out of the whirling sea of anger within her as she quickly conjured a shield that blocked the first volley of projectiles. As her horn was wreathed in blazing flames of magenta, the wave crested, and as the first wave of diamond dogs fell upon her magical barrier, the ocean within her heaved violently as the wave crashed, triggering a final, blinding stab of pain that caused her mind to become consumed by bloodlust.
When she regained her senses, she could see nothing but smoke and, through its veil, the dim glow of the force field that still held the four captive ponies. Shaking her head with confusion, the unicorn teleported to the far end of the cavern, the ache in her neck finally abating. She lowered her barrier and was immediately assaulted by the sound of Orchid Dew and Blue Harvest’s panicked screaming, Twinkleshine only staring at her savior in absolute horror. Fluttershy, suspended against the wall to her right, had already fainted.
“Be quiet...” Twilight muttered at the two screaming mares as her magic reached out to the four prisoners, the exhaustion of whatever she had done to her opponents making even that task difficult. With a final effort, the five ponies vanished in a bright flash, reappearing on the surface far above.
That’s done... she told herself as she once again found herself in the relative brightness of the moonlit night, refusing to simply collapse with exhaustion as she left behind the four ponies and headed for the chariot not far from her position. That’s done... It’s done... Oh, Celestia... What have I done!?
“Twilight!?” Sensing something was very wrong with the unicorn and seeing the screaming ponies she had just left behind, Rainbow Dash rushed to her side. “Wh-what happened!? What happened down there!?”
The unicorn only shook her head lightly, remaining silent as she forced herself not to burst into tears. With shaky hooves, she stepped onto the open chariot and locked the safety railing in place behind her.
“Twilight! Why’s everypony freaking out like that!?” Rainbow Dash demanded, trotting up alongside the chariot, eyeing the unicorn suspiciously. “Why are you freaking out?”
“Go,” Twilight told her chariot pullers in a voice on the verge of breaking and after a moment’s hesitation, they complied, taking to the air and leaving behind the Ponyvillians and Spike.
“H-hang on, Twi!” the dragon called out worriedly, and soon the chariot heaved violently as the large reptile landed beside her, a pair of scaled arms wrapping around the little unicorn as Spike pulled her into a comforting embrace. “What’s wrong?”
Twilight shuddered and sobbed, trying for a few moments to pull free, but as the dragon persisted, she finally relented. “I... I-I-I... I-I’m broken.”
“Huh?”
“I’m broken, Spike... H-he broke me!” The unicorn burst into tears and slipped out of Spike’s grip, falling to the floor of the chariot and burying her head between her hooves.
“Although you have yet to realize it, I have been the undisputed master of this realm ever since the death of the Solar Princess,” she suddenly remembered the alicorn say. “I have told you already; this realm is mine to do with as I please.”
We weren’t in Equestria, she realized, and began visibly shaking as a chill ran both up and down her spine, rooting itself in that strange wound in her neck. He wasn’t talking about Equestria. It was a nightmare, it was all me. He was talking about my mind! He can make me sleep for months! He can make me believe anything he wants! He makes me feel anything he wants!
I can’t trust reality. Not anymore... I can’t trust what I see, I can’t trust my own mind because... because it’s his... It’s been his since The Great Tragedy!
Suddenly, every little inconsistency she had encountered so far became shockingly obvious to the unicorn and she clutched her temples as realization inspired vivid agony.
I went back in time, I went through the palace door, and I saw him! His hoof! Not Nightmare Moon! It was only after that I heard Luna scream! How could I be so stupid!? No! Luna is dead! Dead as Celestia! He killed Luna! That was the scream! He went to Celestia afterwards. He found me. He killed the guard and threw me against the wall...
And he planted... a nightmare... Nightmare Moon was never there! It was all something he made me see! With that one spell, he made me believe Luna was evil! Made me believe it for more than half a year! He destroyed my faith in her! And that’s why I slept for a month in the hospital! Not from shock, not from injury, but because of his spell! In Greengloom and Dragoncrest... He knows where I am because he knows everything I think!
I talked to him in Neighbury, sky was still stained red there, afterwards... the sky was black again. That power surge I felt while fighting him was unrealistic; I would’ve burned myself to a crisp... Teleporting to Canterlot is nearly impossible; it only happened because it was convenient for his little ‘story’! I have no idea how to establish spatial links, I don’t even know if there is such a thing! That whole battle was an illusion. I never fought him... I never stood a chance..! He sent me into a two month coma and I didn’t even realize it!
“He’s broken me!” she repeated to the dragon, her tears forming a small puddle beneath her. “I’m not Twilight Sparkle anymore! I-I’m not Celestia’s student! I... I don’t champion harmony or love anymore!”
“‘Champion’? What are you talking about, Twi?” Spike asked worriedly, but the unicorn could only shake her head in reply.
She now pressed her hooves against her head as hard as she could, hoping against hope that she could physically drive the alicorn from her mind somehow. “Get... out! Get out, get out, get out! Get out of my head!”
“T-Twilight!? You’re starting to scare me! What’s happening? Is there any way I can help?” Try as he might, however, the dragon could do nothing to gain the attention of his friend, and so he decided to simply sit at her side, stroking her mane gently as she sobbed and spluttered, ranting over things that Spike could barely comprehend.
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Chapter 14! Continuation! Explanations to stuff! A greater focus on psychological dark, my favorite flavor! PTSD! This chapter has it all!
Yea those mares are going to have mental scars for years.
That was actually something I didn't expect xD
Good job :)
Yeeeehaw! Here we go! Will read later :D
EDIT: He was in her head all along??? My theory becomes more and more plausible with time. Also... A nightmare? Really? REALLY? ... ... OK, I guess
this just keeps getting better and better
3071935 See what I did there?
With the title? 
3073187's version of Succession:
and... throws herself into a wall and starts hallucinating wildly? 
Twilight blows up the Canterlot palace and kills everyone she loves because... reasons. She just doesn't know what went wrong
Overcome with guilt, her subconscious convinces her that someone else was present during The Great Tragedy and that it's all their fault.
She goes back in time to confirm her suspicions, but suddenly she... kills that guy helping her
She then starts on her solite magic, obviously because her subconscious believes that demolishing one palace isn't enough. She almost would have succeeded with destroying Cristallum too, if it hadn't for that meddling superego of hers and those silly morals...
Next... she starts sleepwalking... so she can freak out that ursa major in Wild Weald and maim all those dragons in Dragoncrest... And of course she has hallucinations about her imaginary culprit while she's awake.
Then she goes to Neighbury, blows it up because her subconscious really likes doing that, and she puts herself in a coma for two months just because.
Am I close?
3076140 you glorious bastard you, yea I see it.
I just hope this doesn't end up breaking the elements of harmony.
3076140 Are you close? ...
No
For the lazy readers, a tl;dr version:
No. Fuck you.
And now the tl;driabiakor,mmhmt
My original headcanon: Twilight blows up the castle. Period.
My extended headcanon: After the bad guy killed Luna and entered Celestia's chamber, he "possessed" Twi and made her explode by giving her additional power. Then he continued making her believe shit like her traveling back in time (The spell CLEARLY states it can only be used once {Unless Helrael explained that in the corresponding chapter, which I don't fully remember because it took fucking forever for him to continue the series [Although he has an excuse]}), making her enter a comma and all that fucked up crap that happened to her. Also, the scar has something to do with all of it... Probably.
Also, Helrael, if you make this whole story a dream of Twilight, who has been comatose since chapter 0 and none of this happened IRL, I swear to god I will go to Copenhagen, find out where you live and murder you so hard that The Doctor will have to come to bring your timeline back to existence.
On a side note, Helrael really likes his emotes :D
3079139 I often do things in excess. That includes the use of emoticons.
Can't have that. 
Hmm, never caught that part about the time travel spell being a one-time only kind of thing.
Ah well, let's just say she found a better version back when she was studying time and/or time spells.
And don't worry, there will be no "It was all a dream" ending. That would be a happy ending.
Story's clearly marked Tragedy and whatnot.
3079363 huh. Didn't your prereaders tell you about the "only once spell" thing?? Weeeeiiiird...
Not a dream is good. A big amount of good. Also, my version and a tragic ending are not incompatible, soooo...
3083953 Fine, I'll add "It was all a dream" as the second alternate ending
3095163 Why would you even do that?? NO!
Was a little upset in the opening scene for a while there... But by the time it was finished, I was not disappointed. Great story so far! Love these last few chapters.
I think you mean captors.
I am going to guess that some those inconsistencies I spotted last chapter were intentional.
yep, probably intentional.