The earth always smelled so good just after the rains had passed. The grass felt refreshing against Twilight's hooves as she trotted in the meadow beside Cadence and Shining Armor. She stood just in between them as they walked past the oak tree. The sky was still steely grey, large silvery storm clouds looming down over them. They kept walking in silence, enjoying the cool feeling of the wet grass as it swished against their legs.
It reminded Twilight of the happy days of her foalhood, walking in between her brother and her foalsitter as they walked through Canterlot. Unlike now, Twilight would chat away about the things she had learned or some new book she had read. While a silence had descended over the three as they walked through the rain-drenched grassland Twilight did not feel unhappy. Still, she found herself unable to speak. Not unhappy was the perfect description of her mood.
Shining laid a hoof on her shoulder."Awful quiet, Twily. You okay?"
Twilight smiled up at him. "Getting better all the time."
"Good. Just focus on that."
Twilight nodded. "So, had any fun adventures lately?"
"Nothing particularly exciting. Well, I saw Discord when he was in the castle. He was one scary son-of-a-nag."
Twilight shuddered at her memories of that misshapen demon. "Did he hurt you?"
"He cast a spell over all the guards. It was like walking through fog. We didn't know where we were, who we were. Our minds were completely blank."
Shining closed his eyes and breathed heavily as he recalled walking through a fog without a name, without direction, without purpose. "It's something he likes to do, isn't it? Twist the mind."
"That does seem to be his strategy. The Guards are all about direction and a single, shared purpose. Take that away and you've robbed them of their very being."
Shining grit his teeth at the memories. The demon had laughed, mocked him. Those yellow eyes had haunted his dreams for weeks after that. That hellish laughter had still rang in his ears for a week. Twilight and Cadence shared a quick glance and Twilight placed a hoof on her brother's shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I just..." The frustrating thing about walking through the fog was that nauseating sense of absence, that something important was missing, ripped away. The absence had been a torment. He became aware of his sister rubbing his shoulder and his marefriend giving him a concerned look. "Twilight, Cadence. I'm not going to say I'm fine. Hell, I'll give you the name of my therapist."
Twilight shrugged. "I like Doctor Unsicker."
"Twilight, did you have nightmares afterward?"
She nodded. "Yeah. I was trapped in pitch blackness and I could see his eyes staring down at me, hear this horrible screeching laughter." The shivering came back and Cadence slid a comforting wing across her back.
"I had the nightmares too." He paused and sat down beneath a willow tree. The green branches swayed over his white fur, tickling him. Twilight sat down beside him and Cadence sat down on his other side. "They were the same as yours. Pitch blackness, yellow eyes, demonic laughter. Do you think it's his soul contacting us, still trying to torture us?"
Twilight bit her lip in thought. "No, I don't. I asked the Princess and she said Discord can't contact anyone when he's in stone. I think it's regular post-traumatic stress disorder."
"You don't sound convinced."
"That's because I'm not. I could ask the others if they've had nightmares too. And with me? Let's face it. I've always been just one slip from going over the edge. Probably why it affected me so bad."
Shining wrapped a foreleg around her. "Hey, that's not true."
Twilight snorted. "You've known me my whole life. Have I ever been stable? I have so much power deep inside of me. I struggle to control it, but the truth is I've always felt these dark whispers from...somewhere. There's always been that temptation. With Discord? Discord is chaos, no barriers, no restraints." Her eyes widened. "Do you know how terrifying that idea is for me? He almost got to me. Those barriers were slipping..." She choked up. "I felt such despair, Shining. There was no hope left. And when those barriers nearly slipped I saw what I could be without them. I didn't like what I saw."
Shining wiped a stray tear that had trailed down her cheek. Thunder rolled in the distance. "I hate that part of myself. The ruthless part that desires to increase my power above all else. I have to control it. But my control slipped and...I did something terrible. I violated the minds of others." She rested her face in her hooves. "Oh, God, Shiny, what have I become?"
Shining lifted her head. "You are what you've always been. My little sister that I love."
Twilight couldn't meet his eyes. "I want to believe that. Dark magic taints the soul, though."
Cadence patted her back. "Twilight. One slip up is not going to permanently taint your soul. Some of the greatest minds in magical history experimented with dark magic."
"It's not the same. It's not." Tears welled up in her eyes. "I thought I was getting better. Why is this coming back?"
Thunder rolled through the sky and an arc of azure lightning blazed from the clouds.
Shining activated a shield that kept out the torrents of rain that began pouring down. "It'll take time, Twilight. It'll take time."
The rain fell down hard on the shield. Twilight leaned into her brother. "I want to go back to my room. I need to rest."
"Sure?"
Twilight smiled through her tears. "Yes. But thank you for visiting me. It means a lot. I'm just getting tired. A lot of stuff, y'know? I need to think."
"Okay, Twilight."
The rain continued to tap against the shield as they walked back towards the hospital. The sky darkened and arcs of lightning roared across the sky. The branches of the trees and the grass were knocked around in the wind. Neither rain nor wind could touch them as Shining's shield kept it all away. Shining opened up the door to the hospital and they all slipped inside as Shining let down his shield. They made their way down the twists and turns of the hospital until they got to the psych ward and Twilight's room.
Shining hesitated. "You sure you'll be okay?"
"I'll be fine." She wrapped one hoof around him and another hoof around Cadence. They returned the hug, holding on for a while. "Thank you for everything."
Eventually, they disentangled themselves from the embrace. Twilight walked into her room as Cadence and Shining walked away holding hooves. Twilight smiled at the sight before she closed the door then yawned. She hadn't been lying about needing to rest. She walked over to the bed, fell down on it and went to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow.
...
There was darkness, only darkness. Maybe there had always been darkness, this strange, empty void. Twilight opened her eyes and gazed into the abyss surrounding her. She tried to move, but found that she couldn't. She was being carried by waves of blackness. Emptiness, there was only emptiness, within her and outside her.
She was empty and in her chest she could feel a sharp pain. Something that had been ripped out, something important. She wanted to scream, but nothing came from her throat.
It too her a moment to realize she was the emptiness, that she had been swallowed up by the darkness. A silent scream ripped from her voiceless lips. Perhaps she screamed for seconds, perhaps she screamed for centuries, perhaps for all eternity, perhaps ten-thousand eternities.
The void stretched on forever and forever. She realized she was floating, being carried by the waves of the abyss. Nothing tethered her to herself.
Her throat should have felt raw as the echoes of her soundless screaming rippled throughout the endless abyss.
There was nothingness, eternal nothingness. She could not feel her body, she could not feel her magic, she could not even feel her soul.
Only emptiness, stretching on forever and ever.
She breathed, but there was no air. She cried to scream, but there was no sound. Nothing existed in this abyss. She did not exist, she had been erased from the strands of existence.
All the strands of herself had come unfurled. What was her name? Who was she? She was nothing and she never had been anything.
No!
She had been someone. She had existed as something once.
It was too late. She could feel atoms stretching out in emptiness, fragments of herself. She tried to gather them up, but they receded ever farther from her.
There was another presence in the void. Two yellow, demonic eyes stared down at her. She wanted to pull away, but the waves of the abyss pushed her ever farther towards the demon's eyes.
She fought against it, tried to gather up her erased self.
A whirling nausea swirled inside of her stomach. The demon's face appeared, it's fangs glistening in a horrifying grin.
She continued to scream, then she felt something shaking her.
"Twilight Sparkle! Twilight Sparkle! Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic, Heir to Twilight, Megan's Companion! Hear me! Thy ancestor faced Tirek at Dream Valley at the very dawn of our race! You have faced Nightmare Moon! You have faced Discord, he who is also called Crom Cruach and Satan! You have faced the Father of Lies and you know that this is a lie!"
A dark blue alicorn appeared in the void, standing between her and the demon's eyes.
Twilight...Sparkle...my name is...Twilight Sparkle...
She felt her horn, the magic bequeathed to her race by the Goddess Rhianon at the Dawn of All Things. She felt the magic flowing through her, connecting her to the warrior Twilight who had once fought at Megan's side.
For a moment, a split second, her ancestor rose up in her and she felt her strength, raw, primal strength untempered by civilization.
She was Twilight Sparkle! She was the Element of Magic! She had vanquished the Nightmare! She had gone against the Devil himself and she had triumphed!
Waves of magic shot from her horn and the abyss lit up in a magenta glow. The abyss exploded in a shock wave of magic and a meadow rose up all around them. Twilight looked around at the verdant meadow. The long grass waved in the wind. Ten stone pillars, carved in strange symbols, rose up around them. A statue of a bipedal figure was set on a pedestal in the center.
She recognized it instantly. "This is the Temple of Megan, outside of Canterlot."
Luna rustled her wings. "Yes. Your subconscious has taken you to a sacred place so that...that demon cannot harm you."
"It's Discord, isn't it?"
Luna took a few moments before she answered. "Discord can do naught, trapped in stone as he is. I have spent the last few nights examining your soul, seeking the cause of the damage. It is more of an echo of his power, a spiritual bomb ticking away in your soul. You were the first to activate it."
Twilight nodded. "Then my friends are in danger."
"Yes. Oh yes, you have no idea how much."
Twilight glanced over at her. "You...Nightmare Moon. He did it to you, didn't he?"
Luna was silent. Twilight's hoof trembled as she laid it on Luna's shoulder. "Luna. There's no need to be ashamed."
"It made me feel weak. So weak." Her shoulders sagged. "My sister has always been stronger than me. He...violated my soul in an act very much akin to...akin to..."
"Rape."
The word stood between them. Twilight's jaw clenched. "What he did to you. What he did to me and my friends. It was very much rape."
"Spiritual rape, but yes. He forced himself into your mind, twisted your souls and very selves."
Twilight fought back tears. "Isn't that what I did with the want it-need it spell?"
"If you begin to blame yourself for what you did in your madness it will destroy you. Trust me, I know."
A horrible thought struck Twilight. "If you were being driven to become Nightmare Moon, how could Celestia banish you? It wasn't your fault."
"The Elements did that not my sister. I do not believe a night of that millennium went by without her weeping over my banishment. Tell me, Twilight have you ever had to discipline a foal?"
"Well, Spike."
"Would you endeavor to discipline him by banishing him to a gem mine?"
"No, of course not."
"Exactly. The moon was no punishment for me or, at the very least, it was not a harsh one. It was a place my soul could rest and be restored. It was a time of peace and reflection. Nightmare Moon hated it though."
Twilight nodded. "I need to wake up and I need to sign out of the hospital. Normally, that would take a full psychological evaluation. I don't have time to do that. I need you to come to the hospital and hurry things along."
Luna raised an eyebrow. "You have a plan, Twilight Sparkle?"
"My friends are in danger. Yes, I have a plan. My father is an ex-guard and his specialty is breaking curses or enchantments. Can you contact him? His name is Night Light. This is going to require two powerful unicorns."
A smile spread across Luna's face at the fire in Twilight's voice. "It is good to see thee coming back to thinself."