Onyx charged through the forests... It seemed to make sense that the creature would be in here. It wanted to stay someplace where it won’t be caught out in the open, and chasing it through the forest sure made it hard to follow. Attempting to fly and weave between the trees wasn’t easy for the dark blue Pegasus, especially considering that she was far from a professional flyer. She knew she was hot on the trail of that monstrosity, she could just feel it!
She stopped in her tracks as she looked over toward Ponyville, outside the forest. A massive spark of magical energy arced over from where Twilight was. Guess this was her signal that she found the thing... Weird, why wasn’t it sticking to the forests? Onyx was sure it’d try to avoid open spaces, unless...
No time to think about it now. She darted between the trees, looking for her leader, eventually finding his silhouette running right across her path. She shouted out at him to slow him down.
“OY! UNDERHOOF! You saw that, right?!”
She charged toward the other Unicorn with the ratty, brown coat as she soared between the trees. He nodded quickly with a grunt of affirmation, focusing up ahead.
“Yeah. Airlift me there, we haven’t a moment to lose.” Onyx just nodded, she knew just as well as Underhoof did what happened when this thing finds some pony by themselves. She grabbed the Unicorn under her shoulders, flapping her wings as quickly as she could to lift him in the air, which she managed surprisingly well. Surveying the landscape for a brief moment, she looked for her new unicorn compatriot and the creature. It didn’t take long for her to spot the two of them charging at each other.
“There they are!” Onyx flapped her wings and leaned forward, trying to gain all the strength she possibly could, though carrying Underhoof did slow her down considerably. Watching the confrontation from above, Twilight appeared to have teleported behind the creature and narrowly avoided each strike it made against her.
Underhoof suddenly grit his teeth and creased his brow. “What is that filly doing?! Why’s she trying to fight that thing head-on?!” Underhoof pointed to the scene below, though before he could get the chance to start ranting, an ear-shattering shriek ripped through the air.
Onyx grunted in intense pain as she dropped Underhoof and was sent crashing down to the earth. With a THUD, she slowly pulled herself back up, disoriented by the sound of the scream. Underhoof was already on the ground and pulled himself up well before Onyx did, grunting as he rotated his neck.
“Ugh... That’s new...”
“Yeah, never heard of it doing that before... Guess ponies just assumed it was the victim screaming when they were... Eaten...” Onyx struggled back to her feet, gritting her teeth and powering her way past the ringing in her ears and the pain of the impact. They landed behind Twilight, who was standing behind a tree with a loose branch.
Underhoof galloped as quickly as he could, seeing her drop the branch on the creature, evidently having crushed it temporarily. The older unicorn grimaced, seeing the creature turn into its more liquid, taffy-like state as it would re-form from beneath the tree branch, tossing it off. It stood above Twilight, its face melting to reveal what looked like a mouth.
Onyx saw it and panicked, flying as quickly as she could to try and stop the creature, but unfortunately, given her disorientation and the fact that she just crashed to the ground, she wasn’t exactly breaking any records. Underhoof kept galloping, seeing Twilight stare straight into the abysmal maw of the Sleepless Dreamer.
"Nightfall! Get the hell away from that thing!" Underhoof shouted at Twilight, though she didn't respond. Her body began to lose balance, wobbling back and forth before falling unconscious.
The Dark Blue Pegasus tried to dive-bomb the creature, though it ducked just before she had to pull back up, the Dreamer going on about its business. Underhoof empowered his horn, trying to lift the branch on the creature to bat it away, though as soon as the branch levitated off of it, the Dreamer leaned its head down and engulfed Twilight in the gelatinous, gray ooze and quickly closed off the “Mouth” it formed after it leaned back, gulping down the Unicorn whole.
Underhoof growled under his breath and roared at Onyx, glaring straight at her.
“No holding back! We’re killing this thing and we’re doing it NOW!”
* * * *
Twilight groaned as she slowly wobbled to her hooves, the area around her still hazy. She rubbed her eyes and heard her name being called, though paid no attention to it. When her vision cleared, she found herself sitting in a ridiculously small desk. A familiar voice called out to her again, echoing through the room.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Towering above her what seemed like several feet, Princess Celestia stared down her student in a brightly colored room, an alphabet and number chart placed on each of the walls with pictures of shapes to her sides. It almost looked like the classroom from Magic Kindergarten.
Oh no.
“Twilight Sparkle, are you paying attention? I asked you to list Starswirl the Bearded’s Temporal Paradoxes.”
Twilight was at a loss for words... Deep down, she knew what the answer was, but only nervous stutters answered the Princess. “I... Uh... Well... Er...”
Celestia shook her head, the entire classroom of foals turning to stare right at her. Her Teacher looked down upon the Unicorn who was clearly far too old to be in this class, releasing a heavy sigh. “What am I going to do with you, Twilight Sparkle...? I’m very disappointed. But don’t fret... You won’t be holding any pony back any longer.”
Suddenly, Celestia cast a holding spell on Twilight’s hooves, spreading them out as she was forced to lay on her back on the desk! Celestia turned to the other schoolchildren and put on her cheeriest voice. “Alright, my little ponies! Today we’re going to have a very special lesson about Unicorn Anatomy!” The entire class screamed an ecstatic “YAY!” all at once. Twilight struggled under the grip of the Holding Spell, but the Alicorn’s magic was far too much to fight against. Celestia produced a scalpel and looked to the children, all of whom had monstrous grins on their little faces.
“Now, Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful Student, has volunteered to be our model for today.” Celestia held the scalpel up with her magic, slowly closing it in on Twilight. The violet unicorn struggled as much as she could in the magical fetters, but couldn’t escape from their grip.
“First, we make an incision here, class...” She then held the knife and pressed it just above the ribcage. When the cold metal made contact with her skin, Twilight howled an agonized shriek as tears streamed down her face.
Suddenly, she shot up in a bed and realized that her surroundings have changed dramatically. No longer in a colorful classroom, she sat in the middle of a very small, dark room, with only walls on each of the four sides, lying on a twin-sized bed, which incidentally was the only notable feature this room had. Twilight used some of her magic to illuminate the room around her. The space she was in wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet, and from what she could tell, this room had no windows or doors. It wasn’t anything beyond four walls and a bed.
“Where... Am I?” she muttered to herself out loud.
“I’ve asked the same thing when I first came here, Twilight Sparkle,” called a stallion’s voice from the other side of the left wall. She flinched, not anticipating the response from, well, any pony.
“Who else could possibly be in this place, wherever this place was? And how did I get here in the first place?” she once again found herself asking these questions out loud, despite intending to think them to herself. The Stallion’s voice spoke once more from the left side of the room.
“Well, all of these are very familiar questions, Miss Sparkle, seeing as I asked them several times when I ended up here the first time.”
Twilight looked to her left, then knocked on the wall... It sounded solid, that is to say, she didn’t hear an echo when her hoof rapped on it. She addressed the voice directly, speaking into the wall. “Who are you... And how do you know my name?”
“As for who I am, you’ll know in a second... How do I know who you are, well, I wish I could tell you. There’s a lot that goes on here that I can hardly begin to explain.”
True to his word, Twilight a name suddenly popped up in her head. She instantly and inexplicably knew who her, for lack of a better term, fellow prisoner was. “You’re Melodious Score, right?”
“That’s me. Told you that you’d know in a second,” the Stallion pointed out, growing silent. For just a moment, Twilight reflected upon the dream she just woke up from. The other voice called out after the image of the scalpel pierced her skin. “Being dissected by your teacher... That’s a new one. Whatever is doing this to us, it’s getting creative...”
“Whatever is doing this to us?” Twilight's head filled up with a chaotic tempest of ideas of what could be doing such a thing. Discord? No, this didn't seem like his style. Another Unicorn? If it was, then who? Twilight couldn't think of any Unicorns off-hand that had the power or the motivation to do this to her, but joining the Starlit probably gave her a whole host of new enemies...
“Well, it took me a while to figure out that there’s another force in this place. See, it-”
Twilight lost track of the conversation, finding herself stuck in the middle of a large, foggy field. She looked down at the grass beneath her hooves, dewy with the fog, then heard the grass being tread upon by other hooves. She saw five other figures in the fog, calling out to them.
“Who’s there?” The Unicorn swiveled her head around, seeing if any of the silhouettes would respond to her.
“Twilight?! TWILIGHT! HEY EVERYPONY, I FOUND TWILIGHT!” The bouncy, excitable voice of Pinkie Pie filled Twilight with an inner warmth, as her other friends began to come out of the fog, becoming clearer.
“Oh, thank Celestia... You’re all here... I thought I’d never see you again!” The ground beneath the six of them suddenly quaked, the earth splitting open beneath them, the rumbling sound accompanied by the release of putrid, sulfuric gases escaping from the crack in front of them.
Twilight desperately stared across the chasm. Rainbow Dash extended her wings, knowing exactly what to do while the earth beneath her rumbled louder.
“Hold on Twilight, I’ll get you across!” Never one to leave a friend behind, Rainbow Dash then shot across the fault, only to be blasted by a surge of erupting, molten rock from the bottom of the fault. When it cleared, Rainbow Dash was gone.
“RAINBOW!” Twilight stood petrified, tears welling up in her eyes and cascading down her face. She blinked for a moment to clear the tears away, finding herself back in that dark room with the bed. She fell on her back, unable to lift herself back up.
After sobbing and sniffing for several seconds, Twilight looked around. “What... What is going on here...?” She turned to the left and started knocking on the left wall desperately, her tears choking her words. “Melodious... What’s happening here...?” He couldn’t have heard her, the only response she got was his own anguished screams from the other side of the wall...
* * * *
WHUMP.
The tree branch that fell on the Sleepless Dreamer earlier slammed against the ground, enveloped in a yellow glow, Underhoof having taken a swing at the creature. Swooping down from above was Onyx, the dark blue pegasus trying to grab the monstrosity. Its viscous, gelatinous body warped and twisted to evade both blows, its head turning quickly for the Everfree Forest.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Onyx landed in front of the creature, flapping her wings as quickly as possible and leaping into a tackle against the Sleepless Dreamer to push it back. The Pegasus Mare slammed straight into the creature’s chest, though its body simply rippled at the impact, standing tall as its faceless head “Stared” down at the dark blue pegasus at its hooves.
The Dreamer hopped over Onyx and galloped into the forest. Underhoof growled to himself as he prepared to charge into the forest. “Onyx! You take to the skies while I catch up to it in the forest! We’ve got to get this thing back into the open and keep it there!” Onyx shot off into the sky, soaring just above the forest and moving just quickly enough to stay ahead of Underhoof, but not too far ahead that she lost him. Her Saddlebags leaned back slightly from the wind, several strings whipping back from the top of them. It was at that point that she realized how big the Everfree forest was.
This was going to be a long chase.
* * * *
Twilight leaned back on the bed, her chest rapidly rising and falling with each labored breath. Each nightmare she suffered left her drained of energy, and it didn’t help that she’d be suddenly thrown into the next one just when she thought she’d get a rest from it all.
“How... How many was that?” Twilight managed to gasp out in between deep gasps for breath.
“I’d say... That was about nine...” Melodious had evidently went through much of the same ordeals that Twilight did... How she knew this, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she caught glimpses of the nightmares the stallion next door was seeing. An audience suddenly being turned into flesh-eating monsters after hearing a song he wrote, being caught in a fire with all of his original songs being destroyed... It was fairly clear that he took his work seriously. While she was curious as to how she even knew that it happened when she wasn’t there (and how Melodious knew she had the nightmare about being dissected by Princess Celestia, for that matter), but there was a bigger concern.
“And how long have we been here?” Twilight groaned as she rolled over to the left wall. It felt like she’d been here for hours, but it was hard to tell. She didn’t have a timepiece with her, the room had no access to the outside world, and the hallucinatory nightmares seemed to constantly change what time they took place in. One of them would be in the early morning, one would be late at night, one would be indoors and it’d be hard to tell what time it was anyway.
“I think I’ve been here for days, how many, I'm, not sure. You've only been here for a few hours, at least as far as I can tell,” Melodious rasped out, each syllable labored and breathy.
“I suppose this is as good a time as any to ask...” Twilight almost followed up with “How did you get here?”, but she suddenly realized that he didn’t have any more of an idea than she did. She deliberated for a few moments, trying to think of a different response. She just intuitively had the feeling that she might have enough time right now to actually get an adequate answer to a few questions.
“...What was the last thing you saw before you got here?”
Melodious fell silent for several seconds after being asked the question. Twilight was getting flashes of a midnight stroll, then seeing a shadow out of the corner of his eye, though the memories were fuzzy and indistinct. The Stallion next door finally answered, “You know, I didn’t think about it all that much until you mentioned it... Now that you did, though, it was this... Thing. It looked like a gray Earth Pony Stallion from a distance... But then I saw him up close and it-"
“Didn’t have a face.”
Melodious stopped for a second, his voice quivering as he tried to resume where Twilight picked up from. “Y-Yeah, it didn’t have a face, then it started... Well... Melting. I saw some of my original sheet music in its mouth, wondered how it got there and the next thing I knew... I blacked out.”
Twilight widened her eyes, gasping to herself as the pieces started fitting together slowly... Still, there were a few missing pieces to the puzzle, but comparing notes was definitely a good start, and so far they haven’t been interrupted by strange nightmare imagery, and she didn’t have a second to waste.
“Same thing happened to me... Saw the thing, its mouth opened and I blacked out... Though it did that after I crushed it under a tree branch.”
“You crushed it under a tree branch?” Melodious asked, his voice snickering as he asked the question. Suddenly, as he laughed, the room itself seemed to ripple and quake, the very walls seeming to groan in response... Twilight just stood stiff and spoke aloud exactly what the two of them were thinking.
“W-What was that...?” Twilight shifted around uncomfortably as the room wheezed, straightening itself out after Melodious’ laughter died down.
“I don’t know... That’s never happened be-” Melodious was quickly cut off, falling completely silent for several minutes. Twilight leaned up against the and rapped against it with her right hoof, her voice quivering as her eyes grew heavier, water gathering on the bottom of her eyes.
“Melodious... Are you okay?” Twilight waited a few moments for a response, cringing when she finally received one in the form of her fellow prisoner’s terrified screams.
* * * *
The Everfree Forest was always an obstacle for virtually anypony, but seldom has it ever really been a problem for the Starlit. Most of the time, they’re able to avoid any creatures that they might encounter in it, scare them away or even, on the odd occasion, kill them to get them out of the way. However, there was a different game being played in this forest, especially for Underhoof, since it wasn’t often that something he chased would actually run INTO the forest.
Then again, he hadn’t chased anything near the forest in a long time.
He charged through the trees, keeping his good eye- and his nose- peeled for the creature. It’s been three hours into this chase, Underhoof’s energy being quickly depleted, though thankfully, he hadn’t run into any trouble besides losing his hoofing over the occasional branch or root. It seems the Sleepless Dreamer’s horrid stench must’ve been keeping away most of the predators in the Everfree Forest. That smell would keep most creatures away for a long time.
”Well... Most sane ones, anyway,” Underhoof mused to himself, allowing himself a moment of levity in this forested pursuit. Weaving in between the trees wasn’t his strong suit, the brown, scarred Unicorn stopping suddenly each time to make sure that he could still follow that rank odor, not that it was hard to track, but getting through the bramble and the underbrush was another story.
The stench grew stronger, Underhoof finally seeing the Sleepless Dreamer galloping through the forest, the creature stopping suddenly.
“Gotcha...” The Stallion began concentrating his magic, preparing one of those signal lights to get Onyx’s attention. Underhoof delivered a little surprise to be placed in her saddlebags to help deal with the Sleepless Dreamer; so surprising, in fact, that she doesn’t even know if it would work. Before he could entertain the thought of his success due to his own cleverness, his thoughts were suddenly overpowered by lupine howls in the forest.
”Timberwolves?! Guess the smell warding them off was too good to be true...” Underhoof crouched down by one of the trees, still keeping an eye on the Sleepless Dreamer, which remained completely motionless. Apparently, the Timberwolves were approaching it, and not Underhoof; they must have been tracking its scent too, and since it was the easiest one to follow, they followed the Dreamer. Closing in on what they thought was their prey, they snarled and barked at the creature, though the Dreamer remained still.
The Timberwolves charged at the creature, though when they leaped at the Dreamer to bring it down, they were suddenly stopped in mid-air. Stretching from the Sleepless Dreamer came three rods of the gelatinous substance, sticking to the Timberwolves and holding them mid-air like spears made of tree sap. The rods wriggled and rapidly slammed into the other oncoming wolves, shattering their component branches into several pieces with their now-captive packmates. After the Dreamer tossed the Timberwolves off of it, they briefly looked at the wooden debris around them, turned tail (or twig) and ran, deciding this thing... Whatever it was... Was far too more trouble than it was worth.
Underhoof stared with his mouth slacking open at the handiwork of the monstrosity he had been pursuing for the past three hours.
“... That’s new,” Underhoof said aloud, the concealing calm in his voice keeping the shock at the fact that this creature was capable of this thinly veiled. Now was the time, and it was clear that he couldn’t get close to this thing himself without getting clobbered or eaten. He empowered his horn, an aura of yellow energy bursting and shooting up into the sky. This was just as good a time as any to get Onyx down here. The Dreamer’s head suddenly turned and saw the flare, then looked behind the tree. It was clear it already knew what was going on.
Underhoof pivoted on his hooves, galloping the other way... He may be the prey at the moment, but he smirked lightly as the creature pursued him and had to weave through the trees and bramble, enjoying his brief, petty revenge on the Dreamer for what he had to go through to find it again. Of course, he didn’t intend for this chase to last nearly as long.
* * * *
Twilight stood inside the middle of a blank, dark room... No bed this time. As her head swiveled back and forth, she didn’t see any walls, or a floor or ceiling for that matter. “Great... This is another nightmare, isn’t it?”
“Oh, you have NO idea,” a mirthful, male voice chuckled behind her. The sound of the voice prompted Twilight to clench her teeth, her voice growling out the name attached to the one speaking to her.
“Discord.” The name left a rancid taste in her mouth, recalling the Draconequus warping reality itself and turning all of Twilight’s friends against each other.
“Guilty as charged, Twilight Sparkle! Oh, but don’t worry, your little pickle of a picadillo has very little to do with me, shockingly enough. But enough about me!” The Draconequus raised his paw, pressing two of the digits together and snapping them, a couch and a framed, glass window appearing hovering three feet above and away from it. Discord hopped on the couch and held up his talons, a black board with buttons along its face suddenly appearing. He pat the right side of the couch with his paw. “Come along, Twilight! I’ve got something interesting to show you!”
Twilight gingerly approached the couch, but didn’t sit down, on account of not trusting Discord, given that just a touch of his could warp her mind in numerous ways. “I think I can see just as well from here.”
Discord shrugged lightly and held up the buttoned-board. “Fair enough. You’d be comfier sitting down.” He pressed a button, the window suddenly springing to life. On it, a vision was being shown of Melodious Score being devoured by Musical notes.
“No, that’s not it...” Discord pressed another button, the display on the window shifting to something else, the image of a Mare whose face was half-rotted away, maggots crawling out of the empty eye-sockets. Discord immediately dismissed it, hitting the button after groaning “Boooring.” Another image, this of some sort of hairless ape sitting in front of another of these glowing windows. “OOOGH! Gag! Unspeakably boring!” He hit another button, then grinned as the new image showed itself. “Aaah, here we go...”
Twilight stared into the window as she saw a familiar scene playing out on it... Princess Celestia had been lecturing her, then bound her to a table and pulled out a scalpel...Twilight's face blanched at the sight, falling flat on her rear as her eyes widened at the sight.
“Oh, I see this looks familiar. Well, let’s see what else is on...” Discord hit the same button again, cycling through a few more images, the next of Rainbow Dash being incinerated by the molten rock, another of Fluttershy being torn open by her own, rabid Angel bunny while Twilight was being sat on by a bear, Applejack being buried alive in Sweet Apple Acres while Twilight was tied and gagged to a tree... Twilight quickly realized that, through some cruel joke, this dream was reviewing the previous ones. With the exception of the first nightmare, each of these featured Twilight being present and incapacitated while her friends were all being killed or otherwise maimed. The Draconequus even stopped on a few and made his own commentary, making light of Twilight’s, and by extension her friends’, suffering. Many of his jokes that he made throughout each of the nightmares usually involved a gruesome pun in relation to the manner of the death.
“You just know all of these kids are going to grow up to be doctors.
“Nice work, Rainbow Ash!
“I think this is the first time Fluttershy’s ever opened up like that... And the last.
“Well, at least Applejack will still be taking care of the trees.
“Huh. Pinkie Pie as a homicidal maniac I saw coming, but suicidal? That’s new.
“How is he able to bend Rarity that way? I- OOOH! Oh my, I suppose that’s why they call him Spike! HOOHOOHAHAHA!” Discord was in hysterics after a particularly obscene nightmare, Twilight’s mouth still hanging open at the disregard Discord had for the horror inherent in the images he was commenting on, and of course, she was still recovering from the fact that she actually had that kind of dream.
“Oh, you’re so quiet, Twilight Sparkle! You really should try and have more fun.”
“This... This is horrible!”
“Doesn’t stop me.”
Twilight grimaced and looked away, the sound of snapping fingers suddenly heralding Discord’s appearance right in front of her as she turned around.
“Perhaps this sort of game isn’t your style, mm? Well, let’s try something else... Why don’t we try and find a pattern to these dreams? Puzzles are always fun!” Discord’s serpentine body wrapped itself around Twilight, his head over her left shoulder as he pat her head, Twilight glowering at the Draconequus as he did so. “This is a simple riddle, one I’m sure even your puny brain can unravel... What do all of these nightmares have in common?”
“They’re all horrible.”
“... Well, you’re not wrong. What else?”
The violet Unicorn clenched her eyes shut, putting the images together and attempting to discern some kind of meaning out of them, but doing so also included having to experience each of the stomach-churning sensations of guilt and terror at each of these nightmares. Guilt...
“... They all have to do with failure,” Twilight said at the end of it. Discord began to applaud her in his usual, demeaning manner, but after he did so, another voice echoed in the distance, this one female and reverberating with each syllable, the S’s getting particular emphasis, with a combination of regal manner and smug arrogance lining each word.
“Right you are, Twilight Sparkle... Failure of your Princess, Failure of your Friends... And no matter what you do, you’re never able to save them. Sound familiar?” From the blackness came a pair of green eyes, a mare-like form with fangs, a black “coat”, a saddle-like carapace and insectoid wings along the sides, the hooves, wings and the crooked horn riddled with holes.
If Discord being present left a bad taste in Twilight’s mouth, then the Changeling Queen’s presence made her feel like she just swallowed whatever rancid object entered her mouth in the first place. The unicorn could barely string words together after the very symbol of her greatest defeat just slammed into her the sense of being a total failure. The Changeling Queen flew to Twilight, leaning into her face and staring straight into her eyes.
“You had better get used to failing your friends, Twilight Sparkle, because that’s going to be happening a lot. You’ll run into problems that will threaten everyone you know and love, and you won’t even be able to warn them about what looms over the horizon, much less actually stop it from happening. After all, you couldn’t stop me, and you didn’t even have an oath that forces you to keep secrets...” She giggled at the young Unicorn, turning away and fading, laughing maniacally at Twilight. The unicorn stared with a petrified glance, her mouth hanging open again, a tear welling up in her eyes.
Discord, in that time, had been standing and tapping his feet as the Changeling Queen disappeared. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “I thought she’d never finish. So boringly fatalist, such a meticulous planner... There’s just so little to like about her.”
Twilight shook her head and wiped the tear from her eye. “Discord... What are you still doing here? This is normally when I wake up.”
“And I should start following rules because...?”
Twilight glowered at the Draconequus, clearly not in the mood for the creature’s game. Her petrification from the Changeling Queen’s declaration seemed to quickly pass, though it was replaced with abject rage at Discord’s continued presence.
“Well, I suppose just to mix things up, I’ll give you a little riddle to consider once you get out of here. So far, you don’t stand a chance in here and frankly, this is going to get very boring very fast.”
“You’re... Helping me?”
“Don’t be so base, Twilight Sparkle. I’m just telling you what you already know in an incredibly clever manner. Now, listen carefully...
Even in their Sleep, the Sleepers Sleep
And the Dreamer Dreams their Dreams
As the Sleepers Dream, the Dreamer Seems
To Grow Stronger with every Scene.
Bound to a tiny chamber, on a tiny bed
After a Nightmare devoured them Whole
In a place that thrives on Terror and Dread
However will they get home?”
Several switches went off in the Unicorn's head, seeming to comprehend at least part of the riddle almost immediately. She repeated it over and over under her breath, attempting to memorize the riddle to the best of her ability... She feared that when she awoke, she may not be able to remember it, so she repeated it to herself over and over again. Before she could ask the final question one last time, Discord interrupted her.
“Well, I suppose now is about time you should wake... Although, just to keep up appearances, you should wake up screaming... Oh! I have the perfect idea!” The Draconequus snapped his paw digits, Twilight feeling the floor beneath her disappear, the unicorn screaming as her legs flailed in the air as she fell down the bottomless abyss as her screams pierced the endless black...
Twilight woke up in the bed again, breathing heavily as she rolled over on her left side. She then recited the riddle Discord gave her, hearing the voice of Melodious in the next cell.
“You were out for a while. It put me through nine again by the time you got back up... Are you alright?”
Twilight barely coughed out a “Yes,” turning the riddle over and over in her head, putting the pieces together. She would figure this out, and she sure as hay wasn’t going to fail this time.
“I think I may have our ticket out of here.”