There had been a bright flash, though Twilight found it vaguely difficult to recall just what it had been. In an instant she found herself collapsed on the ground, sprawled in a heap. Was it a spell gone amiss? Perhaps it was some dark foe she had been battling. Despite all her attempts, Twilight found it harder and harder to so much as call forth a single hint as to the events leading to her current position. And just where was she? She struggled to bring herself to a standing position, but her hooves had gone quite numb and her entire body seemed to throb with a dull pain she couldn't quite come to figure out. All about her the world seemed vaguely vivid in appearance, so much more defined, but as quickly as it seemed definite it blurred back into obscurity.
Everything seemed so colorless. Around her there seemed to be a rush of sounds, and in her immobile state, she found herself deeply enticed to try taking them all in at once. Faint buzzing and humming, rumbling and shuffling brought her attention to activity all around, but yet from her position on the ground she couldn't make much out besides what appeared to be a brick wall. The ground on which she laid was clearly some jagged conglomerate of rock, pleasing her to no end that she at least maintained some faculties of deduction. For a brief moment, the sights and sounds of the world about her came to some instantaneous convergence, and Twilight's hearing became altogether extra-sensitive. Each individual sound seemed to be competing to drown out the next.
In a brief moment of clarity, Twilight realized she seemed to have lost all sense of time or place, and suddenly became aware that she hadn't been breathing until this point, a fact which left her wondering if time had slowed down, if she had simply forgotten or, worrisome as it seemed, if she had lost the ability to do so. There was a brief moment of pause as Twilight closed her eyes and gently attempted to inhale.
The air which came to her was shockingly filled with tastes and odors of the foulest qualities, seemingly stained with sharp and unpleasant particulates much as one would expect to take in from a ripened pile of trash. The air wasn't clean, plain and simple, and the rush of fumes in that otherwise all-to-necessary breath of air went straight to her already fogged-over head.
Twilight suddenly found herself coughing uncontrollably, sending spasms down her spine and scraping her side and flank against the jagged ground. Amid the general discomfort, she became aware of acute pains in her legs and chest and furthermore realized she was now resting her head in an acrid-smelling puddle she had presumably just coughed up.
The mix of sounds and smells and tastes were now competing with one another, each coming from its own unique point in space around her, now huddled tightly and painfully in some dark corner of some unknown place, Twilight's head began to pound incessantly, unable to block out the sensory overload.
And yet it all seemed so dull, so unclean. Everything was so well defined that nothing was defined.
Before she could even attempt to make heads or tails of it all, a sudden sharp pain in her side sent her writhing in pain again, this time leaving her coughing up greater quantities of whatever it was she was sitting in.
It smelled awful, and Twilight couldn't bear to think that such foul stuff had come from inside her.
Twilight's strength had left her, and the only thing keeping her awake was the vague awareness of a certain shuffling and scraping which seemed to be getting nearer. There were muffled shouts and exclamations, the origins of which she couldn't quite place and the meanings of which she couldn't quite make out. Everything seemed to be getting dimmer and more dulled than before, and for the first time Twilight became aware of dancing lights before her eyes. They moved in such strange patterns, never truly defined but never truly random either. It almost reminded her of magic.
Again, her focus was brought back into some degree of clarity as she became aware of a number of arms and hands gathering around her (not being entirely unfamiliar with hands, having previously encountered creatures back home who possessed them) and was further aware that she was no longer on the ground. The sudden shift of position made Twilight aware just how heavy she seemed to feel, her legs dangling beneath her. She was no longer quite certain of just which way was up and which way was down, and despite the weight of her limbs, she herself suddenly felt weightless, as if at any moment she would simply float away. The lights were brighter now and everything else seemed to be spinning.
The sounds in the background grew further muffled, as if the whole world had suddenly put itself behind layers upon layers of fabric and was trying its hardest to struggle each individual sound to her ears.
By now, Twilight was vaguely aware that her vision was entirely dominated by those lights which danced around her ever so gently. She felt that somewhere something or someone was calling out to her. Was it someone she knew? There was definitely a voice, it was warm and familiar and it seemed to be calling her name. Oh how she wished she could reply, but just couldn't seem to muster the strength to form anything coherent. The voice was indistinct though, and just as she thought she could hear it well enough to recognize it it had been drowned out by a myriad of other voices. There was a general murmur of excitement and a buzzing chatter filled her ears.
Her first new sensation was that of extreme cold and hardness, as if she had been laid onto a block of ice. The dancing lights were subsiding into the distance, but seemed to be struggling as they faded into the void of darkness.
Everything was black, and despite her inability to move, Twilight was suddenly aware that she had been laid neatly on her side. She still couldn't move her legs and each breath felt as if it took all of her strength to draw in. Thank goodness the air here felt much fresher than before, but still it carried with it a number of distinct smells and tastes quite unlike the ones before. Not as sickening and disgusting to the palette, but still bringing the faint hint of chemicals and fabrics. She was reminded at once of a friend of hers, but the name evaded her as she tried to recall, but she could distinctly remember smells of fabrics and cleaning chemicals.
There was a muffled thud somewhere in the distance and a blinding light pierced through the darkness, instantly illuminating an enclosed space full of indistinct moving shapes, stained an immaculate white. As the lines and contours of her new environment slowly shifted back into focus, Twilight was suddenly aware of a certain angled hardness of everything about her. Nothing seemed quite smooth and everything had the strange appearance of being quite jagged. Some of the shapes outlined against the background she was now subjected to were moving about hurriedly and as the bright light shifted into some new, out of view position, Twilight realized that the moving shapes were creatures of some sort, and none quite like any she'd ever seen before.
As her senses slowly returned, Twilight was at once aware of a number of strange devices placed across her body, some of which seemed to clearly be intended for her restraint.
The muffled jumble of sounds that buzzed in her ear also began to sort themselves out, and besides what seemed to be indecipherable speech, there was also a sourceless buzzing which drove itself like many needles into Twilight's brain. On top of everything there were rhythmic beeps and blips of varying pitch and frequency, forming an oddly musical beat which she couldn't seem to be capable of blocking out. She would give nothing more for just a moment's silence or the calm breeze through the trees, or the warm light of the sun and fresh spring air, but instead she found herself in a totally alien surrounding with creatures of some unknown origin buzzing around her, muttering in what was clearly the same language she had come to understand from her days as a filly, but markedly dotted with words she had never heard before.
As time progressed and as the unstoppable clockwork of noises wormed their way deeper into her mind Twilight slowly began to unravel bits and pieces of the muffled conversations coming and going around her. The creatures, which she had decided were not quite unlike minotaurs with flattened snouts, seemed to be perplexed about why she was there and, more importantly, how she was still alive. There were talks about examinations and studies, which in her fevered state of mind troubled her to no end, but there was further still discussion over how to best deal with “the inevitable”.
Twilight was cold, alone, and trapped in a small space, unable to move, unable to be comfortable and unable to be certain of anything. She was gripped with some unsettling fear and a pain deep inside her was still throbbing away. She retreated to the deeper recesses of her mind, places she only went to hide from the outside world when she was frightened, a place she hadn't gone as of late but still remembered the way to. She wanted to surround herself with the magic she had been comforted by her whole life, which had kept her to closely bound to her friends and family, who at this time felt too far away to even exist. Deep in the folds of the border between her conscious and subconscious mind, Twilight let herself sink into the place she was most comfortable and welcomed the warm embrace of the magic that filled her.
And yet there was nothing. A darker void than the one she had been thrown into, that safe place deep inside her was empty. It had never been empty before, even when all hope seemed to be lost there was always a little spark of hope, but yet she found it this time to be gone entirely, as if nothing was ever there to begin with.
So she fled from her own inner self and returned to the somehow less frightening fantasy-reality she now forcefully inhabited. She couldn't move, she was in pain, her friends were gone, and now even the magic on which she had so long been acquainted to had left her.
The pain inside was getting worse still and as she returned at last from the pits of her inner-mind the rhythmic beeps and blips were getting louder, faster, and somehow angrier, as if her foolish attempt at fleeing from them were to be punished.
The strange creatures were now worked into some insatiable frenzy, darting back and forth, stopping at various intervals to check something or to make some insane exclamation.
They shouted at one another, angry and stressed, questioning how she had even come to be and what they were going to do. Again there were talks of strange procedures and among the suggestions Twilight picked up on, each one elicited a feeling of dread more painful than the previous.
At long last, one such creature, in his hurried shuffle past her, snagged his coat (as it clearly was some sort of coat) on a device of sorts and dragged it past her field of view. In its highly polished surface, Twilight could barely make out her blurred reflection, and she strained her eyes to make it our more clearly. The face that stared back was hardly recognizable. Besides being weathered and sickly, it bore a monstrous and angular contour unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was hardly the face she was accustomed to seeing in the mirror and far removed from anything she had remotely seen before. Even her horn seemed to be viciously pointed as if formed into some hateful needle point.
Twilight wanted nothing more than to go home, and struggled at the restraints despite the growing pain in her side and increasing tempo of those incessant beeps and blips, which now were chiming louder and angrier than before. The creatures had noticed this and had moved to tighten the restraints granting her the briefest moment of freedom to thrash about. A wild kick caught one of the creatures behind her that she couldn't see, and another thrash caused the restraints on her other hind leg to snap entirely. The surface on which she had been affixed to shuddered briefly and finally began to tip under her weight. With one final thrash, Twilight fell in a heap once more on another cold, smooth surface, this time pressed against various bits and pieces of broken instruments which had been destroyed in the attempt at escape.
Despite her best efforts, Twilight was still somehow bound to whatever had just collapsed at her side and her new position was far from better than before. Again the pain began to take hold, and she shuddered bodily before a series of spasms overtook her entirely. She was once more aware of that foul liquid coming from her mouth, pooling beneath her head, and on top of it all, the chorus of beeps and blips had reached their penultimate climax, screaming out at some terrible crime she had just committed in foolishly attempting some unplanned escape, but what was to be expected from her? What did they want? She had no magic and she had even less of an idea of where she was.
All the sounds and smells slowly crowded out her other senses and once more her vision began to dim, clouded over by those dancing lights. She wanted to go home, and the warmth and gentleness of the lights reminded her ever so vaguely of what she remembered of home.
The shouts and screams and even the chorus of beeps and blips began to fade blissfully back behind that muffling curtain of fabric, and as Twilight closed her eyes, the lights grew more and more dense around her.
At last, the lights grew so densely packed around her vision that she found herself once again weightlessly drifting. The sounds were gone now and so were the awful smells and that cold, sterile space she had been enchained to.
The lights drowned everything out, and from far off she heard familiar voices calling her name.
Twilight Sparkle
Yes, that was her, she was sure of it.
Please, Twilight, please come home
Home, it was all she wanted.
She'll be alright, I just know it. Welcome home, Twilight
She felt a warm pair of hooves wrap around her in a tight embrace.
Home
She thought
Thank God I'm home