//------------------------------//
// Part I - Ch. VII - To Flee From Things That Hurt 
// Story: Records of Equestria: Elements of Power 
// by Gearcrow 
//------------------------------//





“Something is wrong, it's plain to see
This isn't how it's meant to be
And you can’t see it like I do
It’s not the life that’s meant for you”

– Twilight Sparkle






“Curious. You smell like one of them, but you’re not, are you?”
Winter shook his head wildly and stumbled backwards, unsure of where he was. He felt frightened, the bubbling preamble to panic bouncing about in his gut. He looked around, trying to understand, trying to remember what was happening.
Though everything was dark, there was a familiarity to this place. It felt like something… like the calm that settled on him whenever he was doing his breathing exercises or the stillness that came to him when he focused in that particular way Langet had taught him. The well, she’d called it. Except, the well was a state of mind, and this was a place, a twisted rotten place that filled him with discomfort. For just a moment, he thought he heard the sound of a train horn and distant singing, but when he tried to listen closer, the sound was gone.
“Why do you smell like her? Hmmm, no. Why do you smell like one sixth of her? The worst part too. Disgusting!”
“Show yourself!” Winter called, mustering all the command and courage he could, trying to sound like he did when drilling soldiers. It mattered little. The words were absorbed into the silent void as soon as they left his lips.
“You’re some kind of… horse? I’ve noticed most of you are. Strange. Or maybe not, maybe just vanity on her part.” The voice chuckled in the dark.
Winter didn’t respond but stood his ground. Moving seemed risky, and he had to assume that whatever it was, it could see him. Though he was terrified–unnaturally so, he thought–he wasn’t about to give it the satisfaction of backing down.
“My name is Orphic,” the thing said. Its voice sounded awful, like scraping half-settled asphalt off industrial tin-sheets, and it made Winter’s skin crawl. “You should know that even if you survive this, it’ll mean very little. He’s given me a command, and I won’t disobey him. But afterwards…” Orphic laughed a loud unhinged laughter, and Winter was sure he’d never heard anything quite as mad in his whole life. 
He was about to try yelling at the thing again when a snarling beast came lunging out of the dark. It threw itself into the air and closed its jaws around an inky dark figure hovering a little bit in front of Winter. The beast was an amalgamation of creatures, wild horns and fangs everywhere, and more limbs and eyes than seemed right. It shook its head back and forth like a timberwolf trying to snap the neck of its prey. 
The inky figure cried out with Orphic’s voice, though the pitiful noise sounded more shocked than pained. Winter stood stunned, uncertain whether he should run or try to aid the newly arrived creature, though he wasn’t at all convinced it needed any help. 
The choice was taken from him when a chitinous claw grabbed hold of his right foreleg and yanked him up and out of the darkness that he’d been sharing with Orphic. His head broke through something thick and viscous, and when his sight returned to him, he saw that he was floundering in a lake made of black sticky slime.
“Grab his other leg, damn you! He’s fighting me, I need your help.”
It was Cercus voice. He was the one who had grabbed Winter and was dragging him out of the muck up onto a stony shore. Linden too was standing on the stones, and when Winter broke the surface, she reached out to help Cercus pull their sputtering and confused captain to safety.
Once securely on land, Winter tried to thank the two only for his stomach to empty a significant amount of the black watery slop onto the ground. He lay there, convulsing and vomiting as Cercus caught his breath and Linden prodded him with healing magic, likely ensuring nothing was broken. 
When Winter no longer felt he was dying and the poison in his belly had been expelled, he gently pushed Linden away and sat up as straight as he could. They were on some kind of beach, but instead of sand there was only flat obsidian as far as he could see. The dark lake in front of them stretched well beyond sight in every direction, so very possibly, it was an ocean, and not a lake. There were no trees or plants, and the sky was as gray and gloomy as he’d ever seen, except that on the horizon there seemed to be a dark red and yellowish sort of faint glow.
“Are you certain you feel well?” Linden asked.
Winter nodded. “Well enough,” he croaked. “What in Celestia’s name is going on? I… I can’t remember how we got here.” His lieutenants remained silent, and from the looks on their faces, he could tell the same was true for them.
“Linden and I found ourselves wandering this wasteland,” Cercus finally said, “and as far as either of us can tell, we’re on some kind of blighted obsidian plain. I’m pretty sure we’ve been walking for hours, and the only sign of life we’ve spotted was you falling into the… uhm… water here.”
Linden stuck a hoof in the water, but when she pulled it out, the black liquid clung to her hoof briefly before falling off. She shuddered and scrapped her hoof against the stone to make sure none of it remained.
“I don’t think this is water…”
Winter shook his head, which turned out to be a mistake. It was only with great effort that he was able to fight off the dizziness and remain upright.
“It certainly isn’t. You say you saw me fall in? And I assume you rushed over to pull me out as quickly as you could?” The two of them nodded, and Winter sighed. He explained to them about his encounter with the Orphic being and about the creature that attacked it. “I didn’t feel like I was underwater at all, and the encounter certainly lasted much longer than it seems I was submerged.”
“We’ve been enchanted then,” said Linden. “Or cursed, perhaps.”
Cercus nodded at that. “Yes, that seems likely. And likely too that wherever we are it’s nowhere in Equestria.”
Winter laughed grimly then cast a quick spell to dry himself off. “Well, nothing to do but start walking, I guess. Why don’t you pick a direction, Linden? I’d like to get as far from this spot–and Orphic–as possible.”
Linden sighed but nodded. “I think…”
Whatever it was she thought, Winter would never know. Before she could say another word, the surface of the black lake erupted as the monstrous creature that had attacked Orphic was flung into the air. It crashed into the rock, barely missing Cercus but sending all three of them to their stomachs as black slime and obsidian shards rained down on top of them.
Before they could recover, something else followed from the water, slowly rising into the air, and Winter knew beyond doubt that the thing was Orphic. It had a pony’s face, but it was long and chiseled, the head of a statue come alive. 
It had a long straight horn that shone against the darkened sky, and its eyes were brilliant rainbow pools against a marble-white coat. Its lashes and mane were the color of polished gold, and if not for the rest of its body, Winter would have called it beautiful, but in the way a painting was beautiful. There was nothing warm or living in that face, nothing welcoming at all. 
The rest of it was a nightmare. Its torso was emaciated and played host to too many limbs, some of which ended in hooves and others which ended in claws or grotesquely twisted hands. In addition, it had no legs, but its spine extended down into the dark water from the bottom of its open ribcage, dripping dark sludge and quivering constantly.
Linden was first to her hooves and was helping Cercus stand. Winter, already weak from his dip in the water, was struggling. The overwhelming sense of fear that had gripped him certainly didn’t help. The monster on the beach stood up and roared at Orphic so loudly, and with so much rage, that Winter almost fell back down. Between the two creatures, he felt certain today was the day he would die.  


-


Twilight didn’t hate any individual words as such. To hate a word was a silly affectation of silly ponies. A word was just a word. It meant what it meant, and one could either wield it with great effect or deploy it with casual forethought. All of that said, there was a certain word–one that kept returning unbidden to her mind and had done so for many years now–that she was beginning to develop an aversion towards: composure. 
A princess needed to maintain composure. For the sake of her subjects, a princess with all of Twilight’s particular neuroses especially needed to maintain composure. A princess with all of Twilight’s particular neuroses who was also more than a hundred years old and possessed the powers of an alicorn absolutely unequivocally had to maintain composure.
She felt her legs wobble beneath her and laughed nervously, thanking the stars above that none but her closest friends were there to see. The fact that all of their eyes widened in shock was a testament to how rare such outward displays of uncertainty from her had become and how unaccustomed even her friends were to seeing Twilight like this. She laughed again–a quiet frightened sound–and took an involuntary step backwards.  
Her shadow sneered at her, contempt dripping from its voice. “Focus on what matters, you child! You have guards to save.”
She knew that. She knew her trapped guards were the priority, but the weight of Rainbow and Discord’s question hung over her head like an executioner’s blade. What happened? She had to lie. That was the only way out. To lie. Or to ignore the question. To run away from it. 
Fluttershy took a step towards her, head cautiously held forward and low as if she was approaching a wounded animal, and Twilight felt the budding panic that was building inside of her swell and expand. Please don’t ask. Not you. Please!
“Twilight…” she said.
Please don’t…
Fluttershy’s voice was so demure, so filled with genuine concern. Twilight closed her eyes and tried to block out the words she knew would follow, tried to slow her own rapid breathing and by so doing slow down time as well.
“…are you alright?” 
The words, spoken so softly, like a gentle breeze on a spring morning, crashed into Twilight like a mountain slide. They crushed her and ground her up and spat her back out, and there was nothing she could do to stop their onslaught. She opened her eyes again, tears staining her cheeks, and stared at the small broken pegasus who now seemed so alien to her. Ten years of silence shattered by a question that might as well have been a dagger in her heart. Tension reigned, hanging over all of them for what felt like an eternity.
She turned suddenly, and on shaky legs she flung herself towards the pulsing chaos orb. For a brief moment, she heard her friends yell out for her to stop while Discord let out a string of expletives, but then all was still and quiet. Her shadow laughed.
“Why not?” it asked, mocking Twilight as she fell through darkness. “Surely, there’s nothing more frightening in here than your own friends.” Then it continued to laugh, and though Twilight was in shock, her face covered in tears, she had the surprisingly lucid thought that she really hated her own voice. 


-


Twilight Sparkle, unicorn and student to Princess Celestia, had no idea where she was. She stood up on shaky legs that seemed much too long and shook her wings to settle any out of place feathers. Feathers… Wings? With a startled yell, she leapt forward, but sure enough, the strange wings remained attached to her large and unwieldy body.
She took a deep breath and looked around at the desolate landscape. The ground was made of uneven slabs of obsidian, and the sky was gray, covered in washed out clouds. More concerningly, there was something incredibly wrong with her body, and she needed to see precisely what it was. 
She tried to cast a mirror spell, one she’d never really been able to pull off correctly during any of her lessons with the Princess, but when she tapped into her magical reservoirs a flood of power stronger and more intoxicating than anything she’d ever felt before poured forth to manifest in a mirror a league tall that stretched east and west as far as they eye could see. With another frightened yelp, she let go of the spell, mirror fading back into obscurity.
The strange callous looking alicorn she’d briefly glimpsed in the mirror certainly couldn’t have been her. She’d been so tall and regal looking… and she’d been beautiful. Very carefully, pulling on the least amount of magic she could, she summoned another mirror. This one was much smaller, no larger than the stand mirror in her parents’ hallway. For a moment, all she could do was stare. 
“This isn’t right,” she whispered. Her reflection’s lips thinned in a disapproving scowl. 
“This is right,” it responded, and the words were spoken with a confidence and power that seemed entirely unattainable to the young and uncertain unicorn trapped in the alicorn’s body. “I am Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Element of Magic, Ruler of One Fourth of all Equestria, Guardian of Harmony, and the First Star of Six. Who are you?”
Twilight stumbled back from the reflection, but in this strange place, she shouldn’t have been surprised that it had come alive. Spells could be unpredictable in even the most controlled environments, and this was certainly not the most controlled environment.
“I’m… uhm, I’m just Twilight. I’m Princess Celestia’s student.”
The stern expression on her reflection’s face softened a little, replaced by a look of understanding. 
“I see.” The reflection seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then continued. “And what is that like, just Twilight? Are you happy?”
“I guess,” Twilight said, unsure of how to respond to this bizarre simulacrum. She felt compelled to say more though. 
“The Princess is very kind to me, and I have free access to the royal library. I get to see my parents twice a week, and Shining Armor comes to visit me sometimes during his lunch breaks. Cadance too, though she’s often busy.” 
Her reflection smiled, though the smile seemed somber somehow. “Tell me about Shining Armor.” 
Twilight didn’t like the question. It scared her. “Don’t you know him? You’re me… aren’t you?” 
The reflection laughed bitterly. “In some ways, I guess I am. Tell me about him anyway, please.”
Twilight nodded. “Sure… He’s very kind. Too kind, probably. He’s always looking out for me, but he looks out for everypony, so that’s nothing special. I think sometimes he forgets that he needs to look out for himself too. He’s not dumb, exactly, but he doesn’t always think about things as much as he should. He just kind of rushes headfirst into situations without considering the consequences. He really likes Cadance, but she likes him too, so that’s fine. I know mom and dad are very proud of him.”
Her reflection nodded. “So was I.”
Twilight’s chest began to hurt, and she quickly recoiled from the mirror, releasing the magic holding it in place. She would have had to be a fool and an idiot not to realize something was very wrong. 
“So was I…” she repeated, testing the words in her mouth. They seemed familiar, or rather something about the resigned and distant pain she felt when she spoke them seemed familiar. Yes, as her reflection had said, this was indeed right. Slowly, her life and memories began to return to her, and with the memories came a wry chuckle. “First star of six,” she muttered, “what a joke.” Whatever spell this place had placed on her mind, it could not last. When it shattered, a hundred years of victories, mistakes, and consequences came flooding back to her. A hundred years of loss. 
She growled and shook her head, disgusted with herself. To stumble headfirst into a memory trap without recognizing it or taking precautions was embarrassing and a testament to her frazzled and overwhelmed state of mind. Her growl turned into a choke as the horror of her flight washed over her again. She shut her eyes tight, frantically fighting against the coming tears. Her memories were returning piecemeal and out of order, forcing her to relieve them as they came to her.
“No!” she shouted at the ground, “Please, no!” Fluttershy’s face lingered in her mind like a haunting specter. She heard her distant sobs and Starlight’s wailing cries, begging Twilight to stop, to relent. She saw her own face, contorted in rage and disgust, her eyes burning cyan pools of fire and hate, and the gentle pegasus cowering before her next to Trixie’s withered and twitching body. 
Twilight reared up on her hindlegs and smashed her hooves to the ground with enough force to shatter the obsidian a hundred paces in each direction. The crack rang out like a sonic boom, echoing into the vastness of the strange and empty landscape in a desperate effort to banish her memories.
“Please,” she whispered to no one. “I can’t. Not this.” 
But of course, no temper tantrum ever made a memory go away, and as for guilt… Guilt was a small word used for petty crimes. Twilight was no petty criminal. Others forgave, others understood, others spoke of growth and the healing effect of time, but Twilight knew better. She knew herself to be what others claimed she wasn’t. Guilt was a small word.
She tried to breathe, to ease the tension in her muscles. She needed to figure out where she was. She needed to lock away her own weak feelings and focus on what mattered. Her subjects, her guards. They were in danger, but Twilight was too busy crying and being a pathetic mess to do what she should. Take care of those who need you! Stop being such a child!
“Stop being such a child…” she gritted her teeth and shook her head. A few deep breaths, a moment to gather herself, a whispered admonition and a call for poise. She stood up straight, held her head high, tears wicked away by magic and force of will. She was fine. She was always–and would always–be fine. You weren’t fine when you ran away from your friends like a coward. She snorted at her shadow, but otherwise tried to ignore it. She’d deal with her friends later. First, her guards.
Since the landscape was more or less uniform, and she couldn’t see anything notable except for a faint red glow on the horizon, she began to walk without concern for direction. Her neck was feeling even tighter than before, and the headache she’d feared after her attempt at banishing the chaos orb was beginning to take root at the base of her skull and behind her eyes. She grimaced and briefly wished she’d had the foresight to at least wait for Kerning to return with her medicine before deciding to have a total meltdown.
Possessing no other way to find Winter and the others, she decided to tentatively pull on the magic lines she’d cast back during the anniversary night celebrations. With any luck, they’d have solidified by now, and though the spell’s primary purpose wasn’t necessarily tracking, it was a useful side effect. Though it hurt her head to do so, she tried to focus on the spell and visualized tugging on the invisible threads that extended out from her horn.
To her delight, not just one but three separate threads sprang into existence before her and extended out to her left. She adjusted course and began to follow them. She couldn’t remember if Discord had said how many guards were actually in here, but now she at least knew that three of them, including Winter, had been selected by her spell. Finding them would serve two purposes then. Rescue and identification. After that, she’d only need to find two more.
Ignoring the headache, she began to run. Then, remembering her wings, she launched herself into the air. Twilight wasn’t the fastest flyer. Certainly, she was slower than Rainbow Dash–everypony was slower than Rainbow Dash–and she’d never beaten any of the other four princesses in a race either. But she was still an Alicorn and almost always that was enough. 
From her vantage in the air, she could see a large more polished expanse of black in the distance that stretched out forever like a wave less ocean. She hurled herself towards its shore, and as she drew closer, a nightmarish scene revealed itself to her.
Two creatures were entangled with each other above the dark waters. One was clearly an offshoot of Discord’s power come together as a monster to fight the other thing, and it was the other thing that gave her pause. Its marble-white face, rainbow eyes, and golden mane shone with power and called to mind the old and tattered wall hangings she’d seen in Celestia’s secret library depicting venerated unicorn saints and prophets. The hangings were from a time even before Celestia had been born, and yet, the creature before her seemed older still.
She didn’t need to see the way its torso dripped with dark ooze, or how its many limbs grabbed and twisted greedily in the air for something to strike and tear, to know that this thing was the enemy. She felt it deep in her bones and, travelling up from her stomach like so much bile, its name tumbled from her lips in a frightened whisper.
“Orphic.”
She’d never heard the name before, and she had no idea how she knew it, but as soon as she said it, Orphic turned his head to stare right at her, ignoring the chaos beast chewing on one of its arms. On the shore, beneath the two fighting creatures, she could see Linden and Cercus trying to help a staggering Captain Winter move to safety behind a large block of obsidian jutting straight up in the air.
Orphic, face still and lifeless like a statue, snapped the chaos beast’s neck and tossed it aside, though Twilight very much doubted that would be enough to kill it, since it wasn’t really alive to begin with. Discord would have to reabsorb it, or it would need to be dispelled. The fact that Orphic either hadn’t tried or just hadn’t been able to dispel it was good to know. 
Curiosity burned in her, but she knew she couldn’t waste time on questions. Her guards were in danger, and she needed to put Orphic in the ground quick and figure out how to get them all out of there as soon as possible. She fought the tugging sensation inside her chest–the one she felt when she dreamt her prophetic dreams or interacted with the orbuculum–and instead, head screaming in pain, aimed a massive magic blast straight at the nightmare creature.
Kill it quick, then flee.
The harried thought belonged to a young and frightened librarian, but Twilight Sparkle, Empress of Equestria, obeyed and imbued the magic blast with a word of power and command.
Cease.
The world around them grew still. For a second, nothing that was, had been, or would be, dared to move. Then, her spell, as bright as the sun, tore through the sky with a deafening roar.  
Orphic raised his hand, and though Twilight didn’t sense any magic from it, the air seemed to flicker for just a moment. Her magic struck the hand and most of Orphic’s arm, ripping it out of existence in an instance, but somehow, he’d altered the blast’s trajectory so that it veered off and missed the rest of him. It hit the surface of the lake behind him in a great explosion of water and light, surrounding them all in searingly hot steam, but if Orphic was troubled by the loss of one of his arms, he showed no signs of it.
He opened his stiff jaws, and it seemed a great effort for him to do so.
“Har… mn… y,” it wheezed, pointing at her. And then it laughed and shook its head. “No, diff… rnt… Weak!” A spear of gold materialized in front of Orphic’s gaping mouth and shot towards Twilight with such speed that she barely saw it move. The sonic boom that followed cleared away the steam and stunned her almost as much as the pain of the spear ripping a hole through the base of her left wing. 
Before she could even process what had happened, she’d crashed into the stony shore just a few paces from the rock behind which her guards had taken refuge. She could hear Orphic hack and cough, but the blow to her shoulder and the fact she’d hit her head when she fell left her dazed and confused. She wasn’t sure which direction was up, let alone where Orphic was standing. She tried to flee into the well but felt a sharp sense of tension that kept her in place, and then her cutie mark burned hot for a brief second. 
Dammit!
Despite the pain, she forced her trembling body to stand and to find its bearings. Luckily for her, Orphic seemed completely uninterested in the guards now that she was here. Doubly fortunate, he seemed in no hurry to attack her again. Perhaps the damage he’d dealt was enough for him. Twilight was in no state to put up a serious fight either way. Her magic felt screwy and useless, and she was pretty sure she was concussed. 
“You feel wrong,” he said, and she could hear his voice grow steadier and more beautiful with each word. “I thought you might be incomplete, but it’s something more.” He smiled at her, and then his body began to warp and heal.
His appendages shifted, and his skin grew out until all his bones were covered and the black ooze had disappeared, and before long, a unicorn stood before her. He was taller than her, probably even a little bit taller than Celestia, and the rest of him now mirrored the artificial and antique beauty of his face. 
He really did look just like a marble statue come to life. Everything about him was chiseled and perfect, and if Twilight hadn’t been preoccupied with not bleeding out, remaining standing, and hopefully not dying, she was sure he would have stolen her breath away. But he also felt dangerous and oppressive. It was a feeling she recognized… a feeling of power and dominion.
“Twilight… Sparkle,” he said, slowly, as if testing out each syllable. Then he laughed, and what a deep and joyful laughter it was. “You’re a little bit like me now, aren’t you? Well, isn’t that unexpected.” He shook his head and chuckled as if he’d said something silly or funny, just two old friends catching up after a long time apart.
Twilight risked casting a magical bandage on her wing to stop the bleeding. She wasn’t surprised he knew her name. She’d known his, and anyway, she was the princess. Everypony knew her name.
“Let us go?” she asked, seeing how far she could push her luck. Orphic seemed terribly relaxed for someone intent on murder, but then again, he might just be mad or different enough to make the distinction pointless. Magical entities of unknown origin often were. 
“I was planning to kill you. Not now, but soon. I hadn’t planned on you being here, actually. I hadn’t planned on me being here either, but I somehow got caught up in this inconvenient chaos bubble, and here we are.”
“Implying you’ve changed your mind,” she said through gritted teeth. She really was very dizzy, and she couldn’t figure out why her magic felt wrong. Her reservoirs were plenty full still, but that strange tension was there, keeping her in place, making the magic feel slippery and traitorous. When she tried to tighten the bandage, it resisted her, staying loose around the bleeding. Her shadow remained unusually still and silent, and that seemed concerning as well.
“Not really,” Orphic said. “But I will have to wait. The Speaker won’t mind. He didn’t want me killing you now anyways unless you agreed to let me.” He seemed less than pleased with that stipulation, but nonsensical as it was, Twilight was grateful for it. “But now I don’t want to. You’ve changed. What once was just sugar has begun to ferment, and if I’m to eat you as was promised, you must be again as you once were. Not this twisted half thing with a hoof on each side.” He waved at her with an expression of disgust, but then he grinned.
“Although, this proves I was right all along. She really was the worst hypocrite I ever knew. I wish I could go back and show her this. How much you’re just like me.” 
With a final flick of his horn, he folded in on himself like a water vortex until none of him was left. With a great sigh, Twilight collapsed to the ground, feeling weaker than she had since she’d made the orbuculum. She heard a great tearing sound as the chaos bubble gave out and dissolved around them, and she found herself lying on her parade grounds once more, bleeding all over the well-tended grass.
“Shit,” she mumbled, trying to stand up again. “Some help please.” 
Before she’d finished asking, Linden was by her side, but instead of helping her stand, she firmly pushed her back down to the ground.
“Please, Starchild, stay down. It will make treating your wounds easier. Besides, I suspect you have a concussion. You shouldn’t be standing or walking.”
Perhaps it was the concussion, or perhaps it was the strange tension still clinging to her magic, but before she could stop herself, she sneered at Linden.
“Don’t tell your princess what to do!”  
Linden raised an eyebrow at her and shook her head. “I will ascribe your irritability to the fact that you’re losing an unnatural amount of blood and to the fact that you’ve been poisoned.”
Twilight’s vision wavered, but she blinked to clear it. “Poisoned?” 
“Unless your blood normally looks like that, I’d say Linden is probably right.” 
It was Applejack who spoke. Twilight hadn’t noticed her walk up, but she was standing next to Winter Shield who was leaning against Cercus for support but otherwise looked okay.
Fluttershy flew up next to Linden and began to painfully prod Twilight’s wing, which caused Twilight to hiss and try to pull away. It was only then she noticed what Applejack had meant. Her blood had turned gold, and it was pouring out of her wound with alarming speed.
“Oh,” she slurred, “that’s not right.”
Fluttershy, though not saying anything, had a strange expression on her face that Twilight thought she recognized. The pegasus shot Applejack a meaningful look, and once Discord, Rainbow, Starlight, and Kerning all joined them, the farm pony cleared her throat and asked,
“What happened?”
Twilight saw Kerning hand the pills she’d requested to Fluttershy, but she shook her head and whispered something to Kerning that Twilight couldn’t hear.
“Uhm,” Twilight said, but found she was having a hard time stringing thoughts together. She’d taken much worse beatings in the past and been in significantly better condition. Whatever Orphic had done to her blood, it was really throwing her for a loop. Like a drunk pony, she found herself babbling.
“I did something,” she mumbled. “I’ve never done it before. It changed my magic… I think?” She had done something, hadn’t she? Maybe it wasn’t the transmutation of her blood that had caused her magic to behave so strangely. She tried to remember what she’d done. Something about a word of power? 
“Uh, maybe we should give the Saint and Linden space to work?” Winter said. “The princess doesn’t seem to be in the best of states to talk. We’d be more than happy to fill you in on what happened.” 
Twilight assumed he was talking to Applejack, but her head was swimming so much at this point she could hardly tell where she was.
“I spoke to him.” Her voice sounded distant and weak, as if someone else was speaking to her from the other side of a wall. “I commanded him to cease being. I didn’t even give him a chance to explain. I just wanted him to die… A word of power…”
And this time it was Discord who hissed. She felt his paw on her shoulder, shaking her more roughly than was probably safe. “What?! What did you just say? Twilight!” 
She could hear the panic in his words even through the brain fog, but Fluttershy was on him in a heartbeat and pushed him back, scolding him for treating her patient as he had. And that was the last thing Twilight saw before the darkness took her, Fluttershy admonishing her husband on Twilight’s behalf.