You should probably drink and/or eat something before you collapse. Attempt to go to the kitchen. Spike might be there too.
Twilight brings one of her hooves to her chest and breathes deeply as the dizziness wanes. No matter how confusing this is, she needs to stay calm. She won't be of any use to anypony if she panics-- or if she keeps collapsing from her injuries like this. For now she has to focus on finding Spike and getting her energy back. Which means her first priority is to get something to eat or drink if she can, and to search for her assistant on the way.
She gulps and rubs her aching chest. She only hopes she can get to the kitchen on her own... and that nothing stops her on the way...
Twilight shakes her head and drags herself up off the floor again. It's still a struggle, but the pain is a bit more bearable this time. Then, holding her breath in anticipation, Twilight lights her horn. In a flash the pitch darkness swallowing her castle is chased away. Twilight squints her eyes at the sudden flush of magenta that fills the room and refracts off the walls and floor, but then when she adjusts to the difference--
Her room is a mess! More than a mess! It's been... been...
In the center of the room there's been some kind of explosion. Giant shards of pointed crystal fan off from an ashy-black scorch mark, jutting into the air like ragged teeth. Cracks tear across everything that hasn't splintered: deep valleys, filled with dust and ash, cut through the floor. Scars fling across the crystal and crawl up the walls. Twilight follows them up further with her gaze, near the ceiling.
There are more holes blasted into the castle. Six more of them, circling around the room and leaking cold air. Outside she can see faint movement of the trees.
Twilight whinnies. Whatever happened here, it was bad. Very bad. The explosion in the center has to be magical, and it had to be caused by a kind of dangerous magic that she would only use in dire situations-- and that was assuming she was the one who cast the spell in the first place. And even if magical backlash could explain the explosion, it's harder to imagine her horn backfiring this badly with only her magic alone. Or it somehow causing the moon and stars to disappear.
This doesn't make any sense. Nothing is adding up for her, she just doesn't understand how...
A breeze swirls violently through one of the craters in the wall, causing shards of crystal to clatter around the ground before curling around to Twilight's bookshelf. Or what's left of it.
Her bookshelf, the place where she keeps her personal collection, isn't just empty; it's destroyed. All that's left is a blackened pile of broken wood. Her books are scattered wildly around the room, flopped open with the covers torn and pages ripped and fading.
Twilight lumbers over to the closest book, and with a sigh realizes that is used to be "Slumber 101: All You Wanted to Know About Slumber Parties But Were Afraid to Ask", the same book she read before her very first sleepover with Applejack and Rarity. It had been one of the only books she'd managed to save from the side of her Library home that hadn't burned. Now the book is so battered. The spine has snapped and the back cover is missing. Scorch marks mar the front and sizzle down the pages, leaving nothing but burnt remains behind. She wouldn't be able to read it if she tried.
Twilight feels tears prick at her eyes. If this happened to the books in her room, what in Equestria could have happened to the gift that her friends gave her, the piece of her tree with their memory crystals attached?
Then with a snort she thinks, what in Equestria could have happened to her friends?!
Twilight shakes her head one last time and centers herself. She'll have to mourn her collection and think about these clues later. It should be much easier to think of her next move and put these puzzle pieces together once she's eaten something. Hopefully. She only needs to focus and get downstairs in one piece. After all, all of Equestria might be depending on her!
She limps over to her bedroom door, her left legs screaming in pain. She takes a moment to gather herself and shoves through.
As the door closes behind her, she swears he hears the tinny rattling of something metallic echoing through the castle.
The whole castle is dark. Absolutely pitch black. Normally Twilight would have magical lights running down the halls in the middle of the night so neither she or Spike would trip, but they've gone dim now. She doesn't even hear the familiar buzz of them anymore, which means that the spell must have faded completely somehow. This leaves the whole building enshrouded in a deep, heavy darkness, with fuzzy shadows bleeding away into the nothingness. Anypony who wasn't a unicorn wouldn't be able to see their hoof in front of their face.
Twilight inches forward, her horn's faint light swinging back and forth while she favors her left side. She shakes on aching hooves, limping toward the path she knows leads to the stairs. She wants to go slowly but efficiently to the kitchen. She doesn't want to strain herself while she's still weak... or, now that she thinks about it, to alert anything that might be in here with her. Except for Spike of course. She reasons that she'll need to say something to get him out of hiding and-- aha!
As she rounds a corner to the stairs her magical light swings through the open doorway of a nearby room. Crouching down low, Twilight snuffs her horn to a wane glow and pokes her head through the frame.
"Spike?" she whispers.
There's no movement or sound from inside. She brightens her illumination spell in increments, and watches with twitchy eyes as the darkness unfolds from the room like a lifting fog.
The room is... empty?
Twilight tilts her head. Okay, this is strange. She doesn't remember this room being used for much, but she's certain it was at least furnished. Now the only indication that anything or anypony was here at all is a set of shallow scratches leading out towards the entrance. It's almost as if somepony moved it all. Maybe Spike...?
Twilight doesn't like this. Surely something terrible has happened.
With a shaky hum Twilight files this away for later and continues further, toward the stairs.
Then she immediately stops. There's another clatter of metal, a shrill sound of individual pieces tinging at the crystal. It sounds heavy, but still far away. Before she thought she might have been imagining it, but now the echo of it rings in her ears. Something is in here with her, and that sounded a little too... strange to be Spike.
Twilight's fur stands on end. She needs to find Spike now. Who knows what kinds of danger he's in? Oh, she just hopes he's in the kitchen, or someplace close by.
Twilight speeds up as much as she can, which isn't saying much. By the time she's hobbled down the stairs her hooves are pounding with a stabbing ache, and her chest burns and twinges. Wooziness fills her head, but she doesn't let herself stumble. She can't.
Eventually she sneaks into the main living quarters, and she grins as she spots the doorway to her kitchen. With small steps, careful so that her horseshoes don't clack on the crystal, she practically crawls to the room and ducks her head inside.
Her heart drops.
The kitchen is empty too. And it's been torn apart.
The first thing she notices is that the dining table is completely gone -- there's no trace of it, not even scuff marks on the ground. The sinks are crumpled in on themselves despite being magically enforced, and the faucets are cracked in half. They aren't even spurting water. Or, well, not anymore. As Twilight steps into the room her fetlocks squelch as they meet an old, dirty puddle. The water is brown, almost black, which... doesn't make much sense either. Surely her floors aren't that filthy, and the pipes were clean. What could have been soaking in it to make it so... horrible?
Those thoughts are banished as soon as she sees the cupboards. Doors and drawers are hanging on to their hinges by a thread, and others are smashed in half or have been flung across the room. From where she's looking, it doesn't look like there's any food left at all. Not even crumbs. Even her stove is dented in on one side.
And then there's the scratches. Much like her room there are fissures in the crystal everywhere, but these are decidedly different. Twilight moves her head closer to the nearby wall to inspect one of the gashes, and she quickly realizes that they're not from magic. They can't be. Magical explosions tend to leave soot or some other form of residue behind. Also, unlike these cuts which follow a pattern and are uniform, magic tends to expand more organically. These seem more like they're from...
Twilight breathes in a shaky gasp.
Claws. Incredibly large claws.
Swaying on her hooves, Twilight takes a couple steps back from the wall.
She freezes.
There's the clattering of metal. It's a heavy metallic thud, followed by a series of rattles. Then there's a booming meaty bang that shakes the floor. A huff. A growl.
A giant shadowy figure plods around just outside the reach of Twilight's illumination spell.
Twilight squeaks and snuffs her horn. She stumbles backwards, huffing through her nose, flicking her tail. She backs up as much as she can before she feels the cold chill of crystal grazing her flank.
Another thud. It's closer. Much closer!
Twilight's heart feels like it's beating out of her chest.
Despite your memories being foggy, check to see if you can recall any offensive or defensive spells, Twilight. You're in a whole different world afterall, thus it'd be best to defend yourself if danger comes your way
Twilight quickly does the breathing exercise Cadence taught her, then does her best to gather her thoughts. She's sure that no matter what that creature is she can handle it. She's gotten through situations like this countless times before. Granted, she wasn't exhausted, injured, and hungry those times, but still. She can do this. After all, she has an array of unicorn tricks up her sleeve, and her alicorn magic. If the monster comes in she can easily teleport behind it, levitate it until it's safe to walk by, or shoot some of the beams she's learned.
Everything is going to be fine.
Twilight opens her eyes to the pitch black, and gently, quietly prepares a teleportation spell.
And her horn explodes into a cacophony of pure burning pain. She hears a blasting pop, and her horn blows her head backwards with a lash of horrible energy. It bursts against her forehead in a crackle of static, pulses in a dull ache that drills down into her skull, then fizzles and dies.
Twilight goes faint. She nearly collapses before the pain fades. She immediately hisses and put her hoof to her horn as soon as she's able.
She feels a crack at its tip.
She would be worried, shocked, confused-- but before she can give that a second thought, she hears a throaty grumble echo hollowly against the bare walls of the kitchen. She listens, her throat dry, as the crystal rumbles and rings from the impact of a weighty thud, of a footstep. And then another one.
There's another grumble, low and muted. The huffing sound of a giant animal.
Twilight shivers and tries to inch back further, but she's only met with more wall. Her horn is apparently cracked, and while she might be able to do simple spells, even slightly complicated ones will be impossible. The left side of her body is wracked with pinching pain and her legs are shaky.
Oh no. Everything is definitely not fine!
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