It's over. We've lost. She had fooled everypony. Me, all of the other students, even Twilight and her friends had fallen for her deception. Now, I was trapped in an inescapable prison, and the only ones who could possibly stop her are so far away they would surely run out of time before they could return.
I hadn’t felt so lost, so... out of place since Twilight had first turned my village against me. Back then, it made me angry. It made me want to get revenge on Twilight and her friends. But now, it filled me with fear and dread. I dreaded what would surely happen to me soon. I feared what would happen after.
I could feel all of the raw power surrounding me. So much. Too much. I knew that if I tried to siphon any of it, the surge of energy that would flow into me would boil every drop of water in my body, cooking me from the inside out. I was completely and utterly helpless.
Any attempt at escape would end in my immediate death, and the only one who could free me was the one who put me here in the first place.
As soon as Twilight was gone, leaving me as acting headmare, I had returned to my office to gather a few things to aid in my temporary role, but not two seconds after I had stepped back out into the hall, something collided with the back of my head and I was unconscious before I even knew what had happened.
When I came to I was lying on the floor of the room I was now stuck in. My forehooves and back hooves were bound together, and without my magic, there was nothing I could do to change that. I tried struggling, but I quickly realized that it was getting me nowhere fast, only serving to tire me out.
"Oh, you're awake?" That voice. It couldn’t be her. There was no way. "You've been out for so long I thought I might have hit you just a little too hard."
My head turned in the direction of the voice, and it confirmed my worst fear. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Twilight’s star student: Cozy Glow.
But then, I noticed what else was near me. No more than three feet away, were the missing artifacts, sitting inside of a glowing circle, each surrounded by a glowing field of magic, with a much larger sphere floating above the ground, with energy flowing into it from the six different artifacts. I could feel the intense power radiating off of it, and it made my skin crawl.
"Cozy? What's going on? What did you do?!" I was getting very nervous.
"Oh don't worry Starlight, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to stick you in that ball of magic over there until it gets sucked into an eternal void of empty nothingness with you inside it," She said in an unsettlingly chipper tone.
Before I had a chance to respond, she had taken a rag and shoved it in my mouth. I tried struggling again, but she just kicked me in the back of the head, in the same spot where she'd delivered the knockout blow earlier. I groaned in pain, no longer trying to bring free, only being able to focus on the dull pain radiating throughout my skull.
Cozy put her head onto my barrel, and pushed me towards the circle. I was still so disoriented from the kick to my head that it took me a few seconds realize what she was doing.
As soon as my head was in the circle I felt another force, this one pulling me in, and Cozy stopped her pushing. I nevertheless continued moving in. I was also being lifted up. I could see blue transparent claws wrapping around me, holding me tight, and pulling me into the magic sphere.
It burned.
When the tip of my horn touched the bubble, it felt like a hot iron was being pressed against it. As more and more of my body was dragged in, it felt like I was being dipped into a pool of molten metal. Even once I was fully inside it, the pain didn’t stop. I eventually just went numb to the heat, but it also felt like there was constantly a strong wind blowing on me from every direction at once, like I’m trapped in the eye of a tornado of fire.
I looked down at Cozy Glow, and she raised her head up to stare at me, an innocent smile plastered on her face. The kind of smile you'd expect to see on a foal who was playing a game with her friends.
There was no kindness behind that smile though. There wasn’t any joy, or fear, or anything else you’d want to see. Behind her eyes was nothing but a malicious desire to have everyone and everything under her control.
She moved her lips like she was trying to say something to me, but I couldn't hear a single sound come from her mouth. I hadn't noticed until now, but as soon as I had passed through the edge of the bubble, the ropes binding my legs, and the cloth that had been place in my mouth were gone. They had been completely vaporized by the energy surrounding me.
I maneuvered myself to the edge of the bubble, banging on it with my hoof, unfortunately, to no avail. When Cozy realized I couldn't hear her, she just laughed. Even though I couldn’t hear it, I could tell that it was not the kind of laugh you would ever want to hear coming from the mouth of a filly.
Then she looked me dead in the eyes. Her facade of innocence gone, replaced with a malevolent smirk that still gives me chills just thinking about.
Then turned around and walked out. That was the last I had of seen her.
Once I gave up on trying to kick my way out, I was pulled back into the center. Everything: all of the magic in the world being stolen away, and the one who was doing it, was right under our noses the whole time. But now, there was nothing I could do to stop it, the dull throbbing in the back of my head making it hard to even think straight.
Assuming Cozy didn’t have a plan for what to tell everyone when they realized I was missing (which was a big assumption), there was no way a message could reach Twilight and the girls in time without magic. Besides, nobody else knew I was down here anyway.
There was no way out. I was trapped, Twilight and the others were too far gone to be any help, and everyone else still thought that Cozy was just another filly.
I was terrified. Nobody, knew I was down here. Nobody, except the very pony who had brought me down here to begin with.
So I cried.
Every dark thought I had repressed came crashing down on me, full force.
I had spent years of my life brainwashing everypony who crossed my path, convincing them to give up their special talents, and join my village, all because I was bitter about being forgotten by my foalhood friend. After Twilight and her friends showed up and I was chased out of the village, I spent another entire year plotting and scheming about how to get revenge on her. When the time finally came for me to exact vengeance, I almost destroyed the entire world.
But now, after all of that, after Twilight convinced me to leave behind my days of villainy, and to find a new path, I was either going to be stuck, floating through “an eternal void of empty nothingness” for the rest of time, or, I was going to die from lack of water after a few days.
Both possibilities meant that I would never see any of my friends, or any of the people I love ever again. Not Twilight, not my father, not Maud, not Trixie. I would never even get to tell Trixie the truth about how I feel.
So yes, I cried. I had wasted most of my life, and now, I was either going to die, or go insane after spending decades alone in silent darkness.
I cried for so long, that I don’t even remember when the tears stopped flowing, or when I passed out.
But when I woke back up, I saw them. I saw them, and they saw me. It gave me the slightest glimmer of hope.
Maybe, just maybe, we hadn’t been defeated yet.