For a brief moment Twilight Sparkle did not exist.
In that eternal second there was nothing but nothingness; an empty and infinite expanse of white. Though it was Twilight who had stopped existing, perhaps the rest of the world had disappeared as well.
The second passed. Twilight Sparkle did not exist.
And then she did.
Pain came first—electric and sharp beneath her skin. Her body struggled to process the sudden change in gravity, no longer on her knees but flat on her back across cold tile. Then came sight, blurry and out of focus. Twilight just managed to make out the hallway ceiling before a hazy blob of colour leaned into her field of vision and blocked the rest of the world from view.
Pain. Sight. And finally, sound.
“—the fuck were you thinking?!” Even with her eyesight out of focus Twilight could still feel the panic radiating from Rainbow’s entire being. “Why did you do that?!”
“I—” Twilight tried to respond, but her words tangled in her throat and morphed into a shuddering cough. I don’t know.
“You could have— you almost— we were—” Rainbow straightened up and started to pace in and out of Twilight’s field of view. “Fuck!”
Twilight exhaled slowly. Her mouth tasted like ash. The floor was cold. The floor was shaking. Something was pressing into the small of her back. The ceiling was blurry. She squinted to try and bring the world into focus, then realized that a familiar weight no longer sat on the bridge of her nose. My glasses.
Slowly—painfully—she pushed herself up with her elbows into a half-sitting position to gather her bearings. To her left was the abyss; to her right was Rainbow. The sounds of swearing and pacing blended seamlessly into a grinding rumble as multiple segments of flooring sank back into the darkness below.
It would have reached, Twilight realized as the final and farthest piece disappeared below. Whether me or Rarity, it would have been enough.
Rainbow passed across her vision again, her hands clasped behind her head and elbows framing her face. “Why?” she repeated. She kept moving along the same path as she spoke: back and forth, back and forth.
Twilight swallowed nervously. “Rarity,” she tried.
“Bull shit.” Rainbow stopped in her tracks, squarely between Twilight and the hazy group of colours on the opposite wall that she could only assume were the other four girls. “You didn’t have to jump in there after her. We could have talked her out of it, or found another way, or, or— I don’t know!” She glared down at Twilight and barked, “Explain!”
“Why does it matter?” The floor was still uncomfortably cold, but Twilight didn’t care. She eased herself down onto her back again and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, desperate to avoid the conversation she felt looming over their heads.
“Why?! Are you really gonna— Is this how— Oh, and you still won’t even look at me?” Rainbow’s voice rose. Twilight pressed harder, sparking stars beneath her eyelids.
“I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt,” she said carefully. “That’s it.”
Rainbow made an indignant noise. “But you don’t include yourself as ‘anyone’, right? So it’s okay for you to get hurt instead of us? Because of us?!”
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
“How are we supposed to believe that?!” Her pacing started up again, faster than before. Twilight felt each step reverberate through the ground against her back. “You put yourself in danger before we could even turn around!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t you know how it looks to us?”
“Rainbow—”
“Why would you just throw your life away?” Rainbow’s pacing halted again. “Why?!”
Her question was rhetorical. Of course she knew why. Everyone did. And though it was common courtesy to overlook skeletons in closets, Rainbow was too far past the point of politeness to care.
“Why are you always so fucking desperate to kill yourself?!”
There it was.
Even with her sight obscured Twilight could picture Rainbow clearly in her mind’s eye—clenched fists and flared nostrils and wide, guilty eyes. The perfect portrait of someone who’d leapt before she looked, painted in suffocating silence.
Twilight let out the breath she’d been holding. She said it.
Someone on the other side of the hall made a noise. Pinkie. “Maybe that’s enough—”
“It’s fine,” Twilight interrupted.
“But—”
“It’s fine.” She removed her hands from her eyes and blinked out of darkness into blinding light. Blood rushed to her face as the pressure lifted—the resulting sensation of lightheadedness was almost pleasant.
The silence persisted when Twilight sat up. As she did the object prodding her lower back stuck briefly to her vest, then clattered to the floor beside her. A single glance down revealed her missing glasses—crushed, with one of the arms snapped clean off.
She didn’t bother trying to put them on.
“This isn’t the same as then,” Twilight said. “I swear.” As she spoke she stared up directly at where she assumed Rainbow’s face was supposed to be, confident to do so only because of her shortened sight. “You have every right to think the worst of me, but I have every right to disagree.”
Rainbow’s blurry form hunched slightly. “That’s not what I’m trying to do,” she muttered.
“Then why do you care about my motives?” Twilight tilted her head to the side and forced down the nausea brewing in the pit of her stomach. “Why do you care what happens to me? Now we’re just back where we started—there’s no way for us to cross. At least not at the moment,” she added, remembering how the remaining segments of the floor had disappeared when she left the circle. “If the only way to create the bridge is through a sacrifice, then eventually someone has to...”
She trailed off as she spotted something golden between the haze of tanned skin and black joggers, right at the point Rainbow’s wrist should have been. “You got a word.” It wasn’t phrased as a question—she knew.
“I... yeah.” Rainbow’s voice grew even quieter.
“Without a trial?” Confusion set in over Twilight’s irritation, and curiosity took precedence over them both. She got to her feet and closed the distance between them—Rainbow came into focus about a foot away, and for the first time since she’d fallen to the floor Twilight could make out more than a haze of blended colours.
She should have noticed sooner.
Rainbow looked more ghost than human, chalk-white dust caked through her hair and over the top half of her body. Like ashes, Twilight thought, until the chandelier above caught the residue at the right angle to reflect light back in every direction. Or... stars. She reached out on instinct to examine it, but Rainbow immediately took a step back.
“You don’t wanna touch that stuff,” she warned. “Stings real bad.” She held up her hand to show Twilight the streaks of red slashed across in tiny, narrow rows. “Worse than a papercut, but like, just by a little.”
Twilight withdrew her hand. When she looked closer she could see more cuts beneath the layer of white: microscopic tears in Rainbow’s shirt, pinpricks of red dotted across her face. Her palms and forearms seemed the most injured—Twilight assumed the deepest cuts were from when she’d first tried to brush herself off.
Her eyes trailed to Rainbow’s word again. It was too out-of-focus for her to read. “There was a second trial? And you passed?”
Rainbow hesitated. “...Yeah.”
“What was it?”
Once again she hesitated. Her gaze dropped from Twilight and landed on the ground between their feet. “You,” Rainbow finally answered.
Twilight froze. Me?
The pieces clicked into place—how she had ended up on the ground rather than in the circle, who had been the one to pull her away from certain death. But even as she realized what must have happened Twilight still struggled to believe that it was actually the truth.
Rainbow Dash, save her? She’d sooner freeze hell herself than entertain the thought.
“I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite,” Rainbow muttered. “Yelling at you for risking your life when I went and did the exact same thing.”
Reality felt wrong. Facts no longer made sense. Twilight could only stare at Rainbow, stunned to silence by disbelief. Somehow she managed to find her voice and string together a single word: “Why?”
Rainbow took another step back. The distance between them was still close enough for Twilight to see a more subtle expression hidden behind her eyes. “I... I had to, okay?” She exhaled sharply. A cloud of stardust scattered from her shirt as she did. “Even if someone hates my guts, there’s no way I’d just stand by and let them die for me.”
Twilight tried to swallow. Her mouth felt far too dry. “I don’t hate you,” she whispered. Not anymore.
“I saw you in there, and I— I panicked, okay?” Her voice cracked from emotion, though Twilight couldn’t identify what. “I thought you were trying to... y’know.”
“I wasn’t,” Twilight said quietly. “Not on purpose.”
“And then you started disappearing, and the bridge started coming up, and you were just screaming—”
I was?
“But all I could think about,” Rainbow continued, her voice strained, “was that you were planning to die to get us out of here, and— fuck,” she hissed. She moved to rub her eyes but stopped after remembering the powder coating her skin. “After what the guys—what we—did to you? I don’t think I could live with myself.”
Twilight didn’t know what to say to that.
“Isn’t that selfish of me?” Rainbow let out a quiet, bitter laugh. “I save my own ego, and somehow that’s just as noble as everyone else.”
She held out her arm, and Twilight could finally read the word scrawled upon her skin: Devotion. A word for saving a life despite selfish intent, and a bearer who couldn’t believe she deserved it.
Even though Twilight hated to admit it, she knew she and Rainbow were more similar than she’d thought.
“Give yourself more credit,” she scolded.
Rainbow withdrew her arm and frowned. “For what?”
Twilight pointed to her own still-blank wrist and raised her eyebrows. “It’s not much of a trial to save a friend. Or even an acquaintance. But how many people would bother to save someone that doesn’t like them?” She let her wrist fall back to her side. “I don’t know that I would.”
“I was just thinking about myself.”
Twilight shook her head. “So was I,” she said. “Rarity, you, everyone else—it’s not your fault you were dragged into this. We’re here because of my aunt, trying to save my friend”—she didn’t hesitate to use the f-word that time—“from some sort of... creature that’s...” She resisted the urge to clutch at her heart and took a breath. “From a creature that’s somehow connected to me.”
Rainbow’s protests died out. “...Yeah,” she said lamely.
“I feel responsible, in a way. Isn’t that just as selfish?”
“I... I guess.” Rainbow blinked a few more times to clear her eyes. “But... that’s also pretty brave of you, eg—” She froze. “I mean, Twilight.”
Twilight sighed. Old habits died hard, she supposed. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“No, shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t call you that; it was stupid of me to start up all those nicknames in the first place—”
“Rainbow,” Twilight tried. “It’s fine.”
“You don’t have to lie to spare my feelings—man, I’m such an asshole!” Rainbow threw her hands up above her head in frustration. “If I wasn’t a walking papercut I’d let you get me back with as many punches as you want, but I guess I can’t even have that, huh?!”
“It’s really fine,” Twilight said. For some reason she had to resist the urge to laugh. Or maybe it was to cry? “You’re trying. I... appreciate it.”
“Oh.” Rainbow stopped, then lowered her arms. “Offer’s always open if you want, though.”
“...Sure.”
“And like, there’s no way you’d hurt more than AJ and her ‘bows of steel—yikes!” She ducked to avoid the stetson that whiffed past her head and smacked against the opposite wall.
On the other side of the hall Applejack lowered her arm. “Think that’s my cue,” she said, her tone intentionally light in contrast to the heavy atmosphere still clinging to the walls of the room. “Sorry ‘bout her, Twilight. Says more than she means to, ‘specially when she shouldn’t.”
Don’t we all, Twilight thought, though she didn’t say it out loud. “How’s Rarity?” she asked instead.
“Alive, thanks to you.” Applejack crossed over and retrieved her hat, making a point to glare over her shoulder as she did. Twilight hoped the Rarity-shaped blur on the receiving end of it had the decency to look remorseful. “Glad you’re alright too.”
“Somehow,” Twilight agreed. “But...” She turned to the abyss between them and the final door. The circle of light at the edge still shone bright, somehow seeming colder and harsher than ever. “...we’re still stuck.”
No one could deny that. Despite all the heroics they were back at square one: Rarity with no possessions left to sacrifice, and a circle that wanted one of their lives in exchange for a way to escape. Nothing had changed.
Right?
“We’ll figure something out,” Pinkie said, though it didn’t sound like she believed what she was saying. “We’re all gonna get out of here together. No sacrifices allowed!”
Twilight looked over at her. The girls remaining by the wall were blurry, but the longer she focused the more she could make out—that was Rarity sitting with her head in her hands, wasn’t it? Was that Fluttershy or Pinkie crouched beside her?
“Together,” she echoed. Her fingers twitched, moving on their own to fidget with the hem of her skirt. Right. Either we all make it out, or none of us do. Everyone, or no one. None, or... Her fidgeting stilled.
None or everything.
“Rarity,” Twilight blurted out, not bothering to check if anyone else had been speaking. “Can you read the riddle again for me?”
The Rarity-shaped blur made a sniffling noise. “Why?” she whimpered. “To rub it in my face that it’s my fault we’re stuck here?!”
“That’s not it,” Twilight said quickly. It was definitely Fluttershy beside Rarity, she realized. Even though she hadn’t moved she could make out the paler pink of her hair more clearly, so distinct from Pinkie’s brighter hue. “We might not have solved the riddle—there might still be something we’re missing.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Rarity snarked. She lifted her head from her knees, mascara-laden tear-tracks painted down her cheeks, and hissed, “Something else I got wrong that nearly got you kiiiii...” Her voice slowly died away, and her mouth fell open in a silent ‘o’.
Twilight ignored the strange reaction and took a step forward. “You didn’t get me killed. I’m still here, aren’t I?” Just that single step seemed to clear the haze around her eyes, even though she should have still been much too far away to see.
“Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy tried.
“I think there’s another way out of here. I just need you to confirm it for me, okay?”
But Rarity kept staring back in silence, mouth agape. “Uhh,” she managed. The perfect picture of eloquence and grace. “Haah?”
Twilight squinted. “What?”
“Ohmigosh,” Pinkie blurted out. “Twilight, you’re doing something magic!”
And finally Twilight noticed that the edges of her vision were a little too bright, that her sight was suddenly far clearer than it should have been without her glasses. Whatever had appeared around her eyes was moving—dancing, almost—with a ghostly blue-green light.
“Oh,” she squeaked, and instantly the whatever-it-was disappeared and returned her eyesight to normal. Oh, what the hell?!
“Now how on earth did you do that?” Applejack wondered. She took a step closer to Twilight’s side with her brow furrowed and her arms tightly crossed.
“Do what?!” Twilight yelped. Her voice shook as her panic rose, just barely able to keep her limbs from trembling too. “What happened? What was on my face?!”
“Some, uh, magical flame-y, fire-y stuff.” She waved her hand in front of her eyes to emphasize it. “Just ‘round here. Kinda looked like glasses, if you can believe it.”
“Magic isn’t real,” Twilight responded instinctively. She didn’t know whether to freak out or run away or both. “And even if it were, I don’t want any part of it!”
“Looked pretty cool, though,” Rainbow added, then quickly twisted to the side to dodge Applejack’s elbow. “Hey! You tryna get sliced?!”
“You tryna get jabbed?”
“Oh, be quiet, the both of you.” Rarity waved her hand in their direction—Twilight could at least make that out through the blur—and got to her feet. She too moved closer to Twilight, still a bit disheveled, with a sort of wonder plain across her face. It didn’t take perfect vision to see that.
But in response to her silent wonder Twilight drew a shallow, shuddering breath. “This isn’t good,” she argued. “Your so-called magic means Nightmare, and you saw what it did to me earlier—what I did to Fluttershy.” Though, oddly enough, she hadn’t yet felt its pressure squeeze her heart. “What if that happens again?”
Across the hall Fluttershy shook her head. “It won’t,” she said calmly.
“You don’t know that.”
“But you don’t know that it will,” she replied.
Twilight didn’t have an answer to that.
“Why, perhaps it’s part of your trial,” Rarity suggested. She motioned around the hall at everyone else: Applejack and Rainbow at Twilight’s side, Pinkie and Fluttershy against the wall, herself between them and Twilight. “You’re the last one, after all.” She reached to grasp Twilight’s wrist and lifted it gently, exposing the still-blank skin beneath her sleeve. “I think it’s quite fitting.”
Twilight didn’t try to pull her arm away. “What,” she asked instead, “that I’m last?”
Rarity shook her head. “That you’ll finish this trial,” she corrected. “It’s practically been yours from the start—Rainbow and I just happened to get in the way.”
And Twilight could only stare, her arm still trapped in Rarity’s gentle grip. It was fitting, wasn’t it? To go back and solve the riddle of a trial she hadn’t thought was meant for her.
She hesitantly turned her head to the tile beside the circle of light where the riddle should have been written. It’s my trial, she thought, almost desperately. It’s my trial too.
Something blue ignited at the edges of her vision, and her eyesight sharpened. And when Twilight finally looked down she no longer saw blank stone but four lines of text engraved upon its surface, clear as everything and everyone else she saw.
The others sucked in startled breaths at the sight of the flames, but Twilight tried her best to ignore them. She swallowed down her racing heartbeat and put all her focus on the riddle lying at her feet. “Give everything you can,” she whispered. “Else none shall carry on.”
Rarity’s eyes widened. “You see it too?”
Twilight nodded carefully, then freed her hand from Rarity’s. Just being able to see clearly again helped quell her anxiety—even if the reason why wasn't something she wanted to think about for too long. “I have an idea,” she said slowly, “but again, I’m not one-hundred percent sure.”
She stepped over to the circle, making sure to keep enough of a distance from it so that it wouldn’t look like she intended to cross its threshold. Everyone’s eyes burned against her back, a feeling that once might have made her anxious instead a reassurance that they were at least willing to listen. One deep breath—followed by one slow, calm exhale—was enough to silence the heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Then she turned back to the others and held out her hands.
“Everyone gives everything,” Twilight explained. “That’s how we all make it out.”
Even in spite of Nightmare’s influence on the school, the inside of Celestia’s office appeared the same as ever—a plush red rug in front of her stately antique desk, a set of bookshelves along the right wall filled with books in tidy rows, some filing cabinets on the left side with decorative knick-knacks sitting on top of them, and half of Twilight’s favourite part: an honest-to-goodness suit of armour flanking the left side of the massive window on the back wall.
But the strangest part of the room—ignoring the large glowing circle carved into the centre of the rug—was the leather-bound book atop Celestia’s desk. It shone with a golden light that shook its spine and sent tremors through the wooden surface beneath. Whatever power lay within its pages was just barely contained by mere shackles of paper and ink.
Then the circle flashed brilliant white, and it could no longer be ignored.
Six girls tumbled out of the circle with all the elegance and dignity of someone forcibly ejected across the fabric of reality. A screaming Rainbow Dash slammed into the side of the filing cabinets and crumpled to the ground. Applejack smacked her head against the desk. Rarity hit the bookcase. The books hit Pinkie. Twilight crashed into them both.
Somehow Fluttershy managed to fall neatly in the middle of the carpet, the best for wear out of them all. The circle winked out beneath her as she sat up, its purpose fulfilled after having delivered everyone whole and (relatively) unharmed.
“Oh,” she gasped. “It worked!”
“Great,” Applejack groaned. She let her head fall back against the desk again with a thunk. “Can’t say if that’s the better outcome, though.”
“Oh, goodness. Is everyone—”
Twilight shoved herself off of Rarity’s face and scrambled to her feet. “Where’s the book?” she interrupted. The eyesight-enhancing flames had vanished, returning her to a magic-less and blurry existence. She scanned the room at a frantic speed and immediately spotted the shuddering golden glow above the desk. There!
Then a thought struck her, prompted by the colour of the book’s aura. She’d passed the trial, hadn’t she? She’d figured out the riddle’s true meaning and found a way to save them all—surely that was an ordeal judged as equal to what the others had to face.
She stole a glance down at her wrist.
Nothing.
Her heart sank at the sight. Why? she wondered. All her excitement evaporated, replaced by a confused and gnawing disbelief. What am I doing wrong?
“Hey.” Pinkie spoke up from her position beside Twilight’s feet, quick to sense her sudden shift in mood. She nudged her elbow against her shoe and said, “You figured it out. Doesn’t matter what Nightmare’s dumb trials think. Right?”
Twilight exhaled slowly. She clenched her fist and pulled her sleeve up as high as it would go, perhaps with a bit more force than necessary. “Right. Doesn’t matter.”
The others picked themselves up as Twilight wallowed in her frustration, torn between her desire to fit in and her staunch refusal to think about anything and everything magical. It was a stupid thing to get upset about, she tried to reason. It doesn’t matter.
Lying to herself wasn’t easy, but at that point she’d had plenty of practice.
“Okay,” Twilight said, once everyone stood around the office in various states of disarray. “Step one, we get the book. Step two, we bring it back.” She paused. “I... don’t actually know what happens after that, or how we’re going to even get it to Celestia from here.”
Rarity made a face. “That is a bit of a problem.”
The facade cracked. Twilight’s panic reared its ugly head. She somehow managed to shove it back beneath the surface of her thoughts and kept her eyes locked on the glowing book in an attempt to ground herself. “There must be a way somehow,” she said. The window on the back wall overlooked only darkness, so that wasn’t a promising lead, but perhaps... “Rainbow, can you try the door?”
“Uh.” Rainbow leaned over and cracked open the office door. “Good news: definitely goes back to where we were, but...”
She swung the door open all the way to reveal the same bottomless abyss they’d just managed to cross, except this time from the opposite end.
Twilight’s heart sank even further. “Oh.”
“Circle’s gone, too,” Rainbow added. “Pretty sure we just made a one-way trip.”
No. No no no. They’d come so far—surely they hadn’t made it to their final hour just to fail. Celestia was counting on Twilight, wasn’t she? But if Nightmare had interfered and sent them galavanting around a illusory school while they could have just stayed and helped Celestia the entire time—
“Twilight?”
Pinkie’s concerned voice jerked Twilight out of her thoughts. She blinked back to reality and remembered that she still stood at the centre of everyone’s attention, cornered under their expectant gazes with no idea what else to do.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around her stomach defensively and tried to control her breathing. “I thought— I didn’t realize we wouldn’t— I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” Fluttershy tried, but she was too late for Twilight to hear.
“I don’t know where we are; I don’t know how to get back; I don’t know how to do the one thing that Celestia asked me to do!”
The world spun. Darkness spread through Twilight’s vision, the familiar creeping black of panic—not Nightmare—drowning her within its grasp. She squeezed her stomach harder and backed up until the curve of her spine bumped against the wall. She’d failed. There was nothing left to try. And Celestia or Sunset or both of them and all of us are going to—
“Hey.”
A voice broke through Twilight’s jumbled thoughts. But it wasn’t Applejack’s stern drawl or Fluttershy’s gentle comfort or Pinkie’s matter-of-fact insight or Rarity’s manicured concern.
Slowly, Twilight lifted her head.
“You don’t get to give up like that,” Rainbow snapped. She stood with her shoulders squared and her hands on her hips, glaring with a fire that Twilight could feel from across the room. “Stop beating yourself up when we haven’t even fucking tried to get out of here!”
Twilight could only stare in response. What?
“I mean, if you wanna stand in a corner doing nothing, be my guest. Just means that I get to step up and show you guys what a real plan looks like!”
“Rainbow,” Applejack tried to interrupt. “C’mon now—”
But Rainbow ignored her. She turned to the desk beside her without breaking eye contact with Twilight and raised her index finger. “Step one!” She snatched the glowing book off the desk and held it out triumphantly in front of her. “We get the book.”
Oh. Twilight’s mental lightbulb finally flickered to life amidst the darkness of her panic. That’s what she’s doing.
“Step two,” Rainbow continued, and smiled with all her teeth. “We bring it back.”
And at that the rug beneath Rainbow’s sneakers began to glow with a golden light.
It wasn’t the rug itself shining, Twilight realized, but Rainbow and each of the other girls. Warm light radiated from them like an aura, flashing outward and driving back the darkness of the office until every wall was bright. No shadows could remain in their presence, flimsy and fleeting against the warmth—except for the single, elongated silhouette cast by the only person not granted a light.
Twilight wanted to speak up, wanted to protest, wanted to do anything but stare at what was happening like a hapless and shell-shocked fool. It was beautiful, and it was terrifying, and it hurt. As soon as the warmth brushed her skin something shuddered against her heart and sent a cold terror shooting up her spine. Blue flames immediately burst to life around her eyes. Pressure—Nightmare—slammed into her lungs.
And then a thought she didn’t think echoed throughout her mind: they’re going to leave you behind.
“Wait,” she choked out, but it didn’t seem that anyone could hear. “Please wait.”
They’re the ones who get to play the heroes.
“Stop!”
Five heads finally turned, surprised at her sudden outburst. Twilight saw recognition flash across their faces as they remembered she hadn’t received a word.
But you, Twilight?
She tried to reach out to them; tried to stretch her hand toward the warmth so different from Nightmare’s icy cold. “Don’t go,” she begged. “Please.”
You don’t deserve to even try.
Twin waves of black burst out of the shadow behind Twilight’s back—one on either side, each a sea of shifting tendrils that moved faster than the eye could track. They arced around toward her and snapped back taut, tiny strands of shadow wrapped tight around each of her arms. Two larger shadows reached out of the wall and grabbed her torso from either side, and it was only then that Twilight realized they weren’t tendrils but a hundred pitch-black hands of every size.
“What—” was all she managed to get out before a shadow wrapped around her mouth and her shock morphed to heart-pounding terror.
Then Pinkie screamed, and time unfroze.
Immediately the hands dragged Twilight backward—by instinct she dug in her heels and fought back with all her might, but the shadows didn’t seem to budge at all. Desperation ignited alongside her panic as she struggled, and just before her back hit the wall she threw her whole weight forward against her bonds in one final and frantic attempt at freedom.
And it worked. Her right arm tore away from the darkness, and for a split second Twilight believed she had a chance.
But then the shadows pulled her legs from under her and sent her crashing to the ground. Twilight lost her leverage and her hope in a single instant, both vanishing the moment her shoulder smacked against the floor. All she could do was stare helplessly back at the others as the hands dragged her the remaining distance into the void, yanking her across the floor so harshly that the friction burned against her skin.
Then, three things happened.
First, a voice: “Twilight!”
Second, the sound of feet scrambling across the room.
Third, the feeling of leather and light pressed into her outstretched palm.
“We’ll find you!” Rainbow shouted. She used both her hands to wrap Twilight’s tightly around Celestia’s book and squeezed. “I don’t know what the fuck this thing is supposed to do, but if anyone can use a book to kick Nightmare’s ass, it’s gonna be you!”
With the last of her strength Twilight just managed to clamp her hand around the book’s spine before the shadows dragged her through the wall. Rainbow screamed something after her—a desperate final demand that Twilight made sure to burn into her memory:
“So you better not fucking die before we get there! Promise me!”
Then the darkness pulled her under and everything went black.