//------------------------------//
// Reverie 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

Sunburst hesitated, but Twilight kept her gaze on him. After a moment, he slowly nodded too, and began to walk away until he reached a door farther down the corridor, then entered and closed it behind himself. Twilight let herself relax at that. "Come on, now," she said. "I have to assume you didn't want him to see my reaction either, given you could have just shown yourself to me alone. That, or maybe you were afraid I'd tell him what you were saying. I wouldn't have, but I can't blame you for wanting to make sure. He will need to come back, but whatever you want to talk about, I'm here now."
Stella did not answer in a way Twilight could understand. She'd gone back to fully hiding herself from everyone and everything. But she did react to what had happened, and quite intensely too. Stella laughed. She laughed and her laughter grew into a rough cackling and ended in violent coughing that would have made a different kind of creature spit out blood. It hurt, but she didn't care about the pain, she barely even noticed. She began to push herself forward, holding her legs upright with her magic, slowly taking a step after the other towards Twilight.
Twilight, who was still standing there, looking towards her with an odd expression on her face. Twilight, who'd already lost at least twice to her, who'd cheated and run away over and over, and who still at the end had been stupid enough to let her win. Twilight, who wouldn't notice anything was wrong as Stella wrapped her hooves around her neck and choked the life out of her. Clearly, she had no idea how powerful Stella's coil truly was. Her loss.
Then it would all be over. Stella would use her powers to sneak around, trick Sunburst into thinking everything was okay, trick Celestia into healing her, and finally take care of them all. There wasn't a single one there who could stand against her. She could have even killed Twilight while Sunburst was still there, she could have appeared to them as someone else and demanded healing first, but no. She wanted Twilight dead first, and she wanted it to be a private moment. She deserved that intimacy. After all, Sunburst was forcing her to do it with her bare hooves.
The walk was slow, and the hallway quiet. The distance wasn't much, but Stella's pace in her state stretched things out. Twilight did not call out, did not move, but her expression did shift a little. Maybe it was sadness. It wouldn't matter soon. She was close. Stella took just another step. Just a few seconds more, and everything would be over.
The ground clicked around her hooves. Stella did not even have the time to turn towards the wall, before being hit in full by the blast from the trap she'd triggered. She fell to the ground on her side, losing control of her own coil.