//------------------------------//
// Introduction 
// Story: E S C A P E 
// by OfTheIronwilled 
//------------------------------//

Twilight Sparkle wakes up to unbearable pain.

Her entire body rings with a sharp ache. Her head is pounding, swimming with mutated shapes behind her eyelids, and her forehead feels like it's about to burst open. Every time she moves a stabbing pain whips down her chest, up into her head, all the way down to her tail. At first she can't even think. She just wriggles and whines, and desperately tries to kick away from the pure agony.

Then, in a flash, it ebbs away.

She groans and dizzily flops over on her stomach. Wh-What's going on?

She creaks her eyelids open one at a time, but when she does all she can tell is that the room is pitch black. Well, that and the fact that the floor is incredibly hard. From the feel of it, of the craggy bumps that meet with smooth flooring, she's in her crystal castle. And by the way her left side is crawling with dull prickling pain, she either fell from a distance or she's been laying here for a very long time.

Twilight grits her teeth and tries to inch up on her shaky right hoof-- and then a fresh wave of fire whips down her left side. She collapses back to the ground, sucking rasping breaths in through her nose. Okay, maybe she fell and she's been laying here for a while. What in Equestria happened?

"Ughh, Spike?" she groans.

When her forehead aches while she cranes her neck around in the dark, she thinks she must have botched a spell rather badly. She can't remember though... and it's so hard for her to focus on anything when she's this tired and achy-- and this hungry, for that matter! Her stomach, gurgling with a pang, feels like it's shrunk to the size of a raisin.

Still, she needs to try. What happened? Where's Spike?

"Spike, are you here?"

No answer, and Twilight bites her lip. Thankfully since he's a baby dragon, his scales should have protected him from any magical explosions. But she really should get up and assess the damage... and, she thinks as dizziness barrels her over and her head falls into her hooves, get herself treated as soon as possible.

Twilight takes a steady, grounding breath, and then tries to pull her weight up onto her right foreleg. Immediately her body pulsates with horrible flashes of fatigue and agony. Her foreleg trembles and screams in protest, as does the rest of her hooves as she adjusts. As she lifts herself from the floor she feels large chunks, shards of crystal, drop off of her (out of her) and hears them tink to the ground. Her hide sings with a red burning on that side, and the more she lifts herself the harsher her breaths come. By the time she's managed to get herself to her haunches there are spots flashing in her vision, her ears are ringing, and her stomach roars with sick bile.

Eventually, after a series of small movements followed by rests, she's standing. She feels like she's learning to walk for the first time, but she's standing.

Twilight tries to lock her legs as she sways from the sickness in her head. She blinks through the darkness around her as best she can, seeing nothing but fuzzy shadows in a sea of pitch black.

Then her left hind leg buckles.

Twilight whinnies. She throws her wings out as fast as she can, flapping wildly through the stiffness in them-- but her head swims again and she stumbles. A gust of wind billows in behind her, catching the feathers and whipping her mane. It tugs on her right wing hard, and while her body collapses she's thrown backwards and to the right.

Her hoof meets nothing but air. She feels herself start to drop.

Twilight screams and throws herself forward as far as she can. She lands on the floor inside with a bang, her hooves clacking against the crystal so loudly her ears ring. Her body tumbles and falls into a numb heap, and everything goes white for a second as her chest screams in a fiery sting that spreads over her entire body.

When everything is calm again and Twilight can breathe, she can still feel a soft breeze playing at the frog of her hoof. She turns her head slowly, and through the wane light of fireflies buzzing around her home, she sees... the outside.

There's a crater smashed into the castle. One of her hooves is still dangling out of it. She stares out, dizzy and confused, at the trees and bushes below flittering in the wind.

With a shake of her head, Twilight realizes that she couldn't have been more than a few inches to the left of the hole when she first woke up. And from where she had been laying a second ago...

That same wind toying at the trees and her mane stirs the stale air inside the castle-- and Twilight gags. She would have vomited if there was anything in her stomach. A stench wafts around her, something heavy and cloying, like rust and cooked meat mixed with rotten eggs. It churns and bubbles in her stomach, and as Twilight dry-heaves again she has to cover her nose.

Twilight is starting to doubt that this is the result of a spell gone wrong. In fact, now that she's looking outside, up to the sky, she doesn't see any stars. Or the moon, for that matter! Her pulse spikes and her tail flicks. This is bad. What if Nightmare Moon returned somehow? Or if there's some other villain terrorizing Equestria? Maybe what's happening to her is just the side effects of a botched spell or an isolated incident, but something deep in her gut tells her that isn't true.

She whines and rubs at her aching head. If only she could remember anything from the last few days. The last thing she can recall is reading some books about owls in her study, and then it fades to a dull nothingness. There's snatches of memories, wavering visions, floating voices she can't put a face or meaning to, the ghosts of something tickling at her memory as if she was dreaming. All of it is too fuzzy to make out, nothing but afterimages floating behind her eyelids and-- she groans as her stomach clenches and her side twitches-- any time she even gets close to thinking of anything she loses her focus!

Oh Celestia, what is she going to do?


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