Please work, please work...
Hello? Any... th--there? Is anypony listening?
Okay, okay, it seems to be working... the transmission spell's in place now. I don't know how much time I have before the connection is lost.
This might be my only chance to get a message to the outside world. The only chance that anypony will ever know where I am or what it's like. I have no scroll, no parchment, no quill, only the raw power of my magic and focus of thought to mentally dictate just where I am and what I'm experiencing. An iridescent water-like barrier prevents my physical escape to the upper tunnels I cannot reach—I am unsure how long it will stay. Maybe forever.
I never gave much thought to how I would die. For pony's sake, the question on whether I'm actually dead or not has an unclear answer.
There is only one question I feel I can ask myself in this moment: Why didn't I listen? Why did I let my body and mind become so weak, so susceptible to coercion from outside forces? It was done with my friends, with my enemies... now this.
I don't have anypony I can truly ask 'Why?' now. At least, not anypony who would respectfully answer me. Snarl at me with jagged teeth, perhaps. Maybe fail to hear me over their screams echoing through the caverns. Possibly try to tear me apart down to the marrow of my bones. Nothing that would offer me any comfort. I doubt that if any being here owns a dictionary, the word "comfort" would be in their personal lexicon, or at least it would be defined as something worthless.
Then again, what can I expect? After all... I'm not exactly in Ponyville anymore. Or anywhere that's considered by the common pony to be in Equestria, for that matter. Heck, I'm not anywhere in the world that any living pony should be able to go. Most don't even know where it is—and believe me, that's for the best.
I'm trapped in the lower pits of Hell. Or, as we call it formally, Tartarus.
W-Wait! Don't dismiss my message just yet as being the work of a demonic pony who was awful in life—please, hear me out, please! If you can recieve this, I hope you at least know my name—Twilight Sparkle. Maybe that's familiar to you? I hope so, it might give me some chance, I don't know how much time has passed out there...
Ever had one of those moments where you feel that time has become a blur? A period in which the hours, minutes, and seconds appear to be out of whack, sometimes agonizingly slow and others passing in a single moment? That uncertainty has become my reality.
How long have I been here? It feels like forever. I can't be certain, however—in all my time here thus far, I haven't been able to catch a glimpse of the outside world, nor has anyone given me a hint as to how time passes in this place. I can only make a conjecture based on my perceptions of the normal passage of time. In that regard, I suppose it's not so much a question of how much time has passed for me, but rather how much has passed for everypony else. For the world I was forced to leave behind.
Please, anypony I knew... Are you even alive out there? How long have I been trapped in this prison?
The darkness is tightening its hold around me. The burning ice, that surrounds the place, impossibly freezing and scorching at the same time, chills my coat and singes my hooves.
I've kept far enough away from the monsters imprisoned here, the demons—at least I think they're demons—attempting to invade my mind and break my spirit, and the specters of those of the past who've tried to tempt my actions and thoughts into their evil ways. They can't reach me here.
But the physical shadows and opposing extremes of ice and fire are ever-present and relentless, sniffing my presence out like bloodhounds and tightening their coils around my body. They fill my mind with terrible sensations, visions of those I used to know suffering, screaming, breaking apart. I have to convince myself it's not real, none of it is real... but for all I know, it could be.
The apparitions of my family, friends, and rivals are as broken physically as I'm starting to become mentally. My thoughts circle around and around in my head, locked in a taunting, eternal dance of guilt and misery. If you aren't already broken when you enter here, the pits of Tartarus tear you, body and soul, until your fragile psyche eventually cracks into a fragmented shell of what it once was until any attempt at escape seems futile.
I gaze down at my reflection in the pool of water, at this moment smooth on the surface but boiling to the touch. I hesitantly lean down and take a few sips of the liquid, which I quickly learn at that moment to be scorching hot—it burns my throat and fills my mouth with the sensation of hot coals, before shifting to a subzero chill that threatens to freeze up my organs. My body is wracked with spasms from the pain, yet I force myself to swallow the water that appears to be of the opposing temperature extremes. Unlike the others I've seen here, I still feel alive. I need to drink, at least I think I do. The living need water, after all, and I still feel alive. If I die here, there's next to no way I'll ever get back to the normal parts of Equestria. Awaiting rescue isn't an option, even if you can hear me and know the Gate's location; I have to try to escape on my own power. If I just wait, you might come down here and be as trapped as I am.
But it's been difficult. I've tried, attempted to find a way to rush out and scream for help, or teleport up through the tunnels from whence I came. But my cries only mingle with those of the other souls trapped here and the monsters contained within. What I believe to be the exit, or at least the way to the Upper Tier, is still cut off for me; my lone chance of escape closed away. Even if I could reach the main holding cells in the Upper Tier, I'd still likely have obstacles to get through. If any guards come down here on behalf of Cerberus to check for any accidental living stragglers, none have come around to tell me so.
As I think of more escape attempts, all I have left now is my thoughts, the mental musings that are constantly brought about by the workings of neural synapses in my mind, occasionally appearing to manifest as creatures outside of myself. They could be just taunting me though. Inwardly laughing at my plight. Sensing my mental processes, making sure that every negative thought rises to the top of my brain. The thoughts of regret and shame for coming here.
I shouldn't of stepped too close to the Gates.
It's one of the many stories told to ponies from the time they are foals. Always a warning for those who misbehaved, especially for those with a mean streak. I didn't need to hear the others in Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns talk about it, since my own parents told me and Shining Armor the stories, the warnings. Always the same thing, when they suspected we were inclined to disobey them in a way that might spiral out of control later.
"Bad things only escalate," the saying goes, almost always accompanied by an adult's disapproving expression, "and if you let them pile up and increase, and if the severity is too great with no remorse, you shall be sent to Tartarus after you die. Crime in life calls for punishment in death."
Regardless of the tales and sayings that were so often spread, I always tried to be a good little filly, threats of imprisonment in the afterlife aside. I was diligent in my studies, polite to my parents, and never got into a fight with my brother. Surely those were the kind of ponies who went to the Heaven of Elysium after they died?
What did I do to deserve this? Why was I forever sealed in this place of torment and fire and chilling darkness? Why?
My mind seems to scream the word over and over to me, but in my heart I know why. I know what happened that led me to this fate. It wasn't through the fault of an extensive series of misdemeanors and intentional disobedience, or of a deranged slip into insanity where I hurt other ponies to the point of their deaths for the sake of personal gain. Nor was it a mass genocide in death camps which terrible ponies of the past had performed and gained infamy throughout the world for their crimes against life itself.
Those are the kinds of ponies and creatures that would be considered by many to deserve being in Tartarus. Not me, never me—Celestia knows I would never perform such cruel acts as long as I had my normal, sane mind... right? Regardless, I promise I didn't get here through awful actions in my life outside this place.
Unlike Elysium, only able to be reached when a pony dies, the living can find their way into Tartarus if they know where to look, or they wander there through accident. But with me, neither was the case. I went to the Gates twice. The first time I went to this place's entrance was to perform a certain errand, a retrieval mission. The second, the trek that caused me to venture too close, it was the Pull that drew me back.
What is "the Pull"? It's hard to describe, but being of an inquiring mind, I will attempt to do so to the best of my ability. A living pony may stumble upon the Gates for any number of reasons, and briefly look at what is in view. Cerberus, guarding the cavernous passage that marks the entryway. The Gates themselves—their physical structure, that is—appear to be made of stone, yet if one looks closely they're surrounded by an unusual spectrum of magical energy. Glowing faintly as if they were an illusion, a long-forgotten mirage. Maybe I just imagined their appearance, and they were nothing more than spires of stone after all.
But inside there is a darkness, a deep, penetrating darkness that seeps into a pony's mind and attempts to forcibly draw them in. Sometimes a shadow-like figure—a demon, presumably—will briefly appear to manifest, but it's a sort of "blink and you miss it" scenario. A vision that blurs the line between real and imaginary.
Those effects of the Pull lured me, but it started on that day several months ago... what I think was several months ago. The day when I had to return Cerberus back to the Gates. I pray this thought spell can transfer memory images too, as one of Trixie Lulamoon's spells had done at one point...
"I'll be back as soon as I return him to the Gates of Tartarus. Once he's back at home, there'll be no disaster!"
With that quick farewell, I charged in the direction of Ponyville's outskirts, levitating the large rubber ball up into the air for Cerberus to follow.
How is Fluttershy able to tame a creature like this so easily? I wondered to myself, keeping the ball at a steady distance from Cerberus so that all three heads would be focused on it.
I knew that, of course, I couldn't run forever—my body wasn't necessarily the most athletic of ponies, and my teleportation was limited. In all likelihood, I wouldn't be able to reach Ponyville again until the next morning. It was quite a long way from here to the gates of Tartarus. But when I really looked into it, I'd almost prefer if I wouldn't have had to travel there at all, if the Gates didn't exist on our mortal plane. At least then nopony could wander in by accident.
I wonder why such a place even exists in the mortal world? I questioned. Only evil monsters and the malevolent deceased are meant to enter it. Not normal ponies like us. Perhaps it's from the energy there that the power we call "dark magic" comes from. It certainly wasn't a hypothesis I wanted to test, however. Not only was I uncertain of how to conduct such a test in the first place, I wasn't about to dive into Tartarus itself and invite parts of my magic to be overtaken by the evil forces that reside there.
Time passed. The soft grass under my hooves eventually gave way to scorching sand and ragged rocks, the sun sinking low in the sky. Only a few stars were visible in the vast heavens, though with the distortion of perception that I could feel coming over me, I was unsure if it was a result of cloud cover, viewpoint, or a created illusion. Some ethereal presence was causing my mind to become hazy.
As I cantered through the foreboding landscape I knew would eventually lead me to my destination, with Cerberus pursuing the still-levitating ball, I began to mentally bring up everything I had heard and read about Tartarus.
I never had put that much thought into the afterlife. With all the dangers that I had faced throughout my lifetime—the threat of eternal night, a spirit of chaos, a shadowy king who enslaved other ponies—my mind was always so caught up in the heat of the moment that the consideration was replaced by a desire to meet the challenge that was set in front of me, for I knew that if I let myself succumb to a fear of death, I might never be able to go on. It hadn't occurred to me much during my leisure, either, after the lessons; nothing happened that authentically inclined me to consider the potential afterlife cycle of a pony.
It certainly wasn't something I'd think about on a normal day. And yet here I was, approaching the domain of the worst part of a pony afterlife.
The rocks around us grew into large monoliths, concealing gorges and spires, winding like an impossible maze as I noticed the ground caked with a mixture of mud and soot. Perhaps the soot was from the very edges of the Gates? Now that I was there, it was unnerving to think about.
The area grew darker the farther I went, though part of me wasn't sure if it was the sun setting or the very nature of the place. I hurried past spire after spire, descending down the long pathway, keeping the ball a few feet ahead as I went. I tried not to let any fear creep into my senses, just in case there were any sinister creatures around that could prey on it, much like a Windogo does on hate.
Finally, after trekking through darkness, soot, and who-knows-what-else, I saw that the darkness seemed to be deeper somehow, a circular hole, extending into cave-like depths. Twin spires towered on either side.
I knew I had to be looking at the Gates of Tartarus.
I tried to focus my gaze away as I realized I could hear voices. It wasn't entirely sure how long my gaze had met the entrance, or if I had wandered too close. I shoved the voices out of my mind, they had to be just my imagination.
I levitated the ball so that in rest in front of the cavern, causing Cerberus to leap in front of the Gate and chew the ball happily, each head taking a turn.
"Well, I see that's taken care of," I said, glancing once more at the cavern. I knew there was something there, something just beyond the reach of my hoofsteps. Part of me wanted to investigate, to know... but the other part of me wanted to flee as quick as I could.
I picked the latter option, hoping that the whispers that tickled at the back of my mind wouldn't follow me.
I know now that I shouldn't have dismissed the whispers. I shouldn't have just tried to return to my life of normalcy, pretending that nothing was wrong.
But the dreams manifested and kept their hold on me. The Pull calling me back. And that one fatal night, it kept me under its spell long enough to make me unable to escape...