This chapter was written by KrazyTheFox
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Twilight paced around the room, carefully stepping around the pooled blood. “Oh, this is not good. No, no, no, this is not good at all.”
Pinkie looked up from frantically running her hooves over her tongue. “You’re right, Twilight. I still can’t get the taste of the syrup off of my tongue. Blegh.”
“Ugh. Of all the ponies.” Massaging her temples, Twilight sat down. “Pinkie, you said Rainbow left from one of the windows, right?”
Pinkie nodded.
“Did you see which way she went?”
“Of course, silly. She went up! Waaay up over us.”
“I meant which direction!” growled Twilight.
“Oh, that. I don’t know. She just went up! Uppity up, up, up!”
Trotting up to Pinkie, Twilight stuck her hoof in her mouth. “Can you please try to remember?” She pointed towards the pool of blood with her free hoof. “She could be really hurt, Pinkie, and we need to go find her.”
Pinkie stared rather blankly at her friend.
Twilight started toward the entrance of the castle, extracting her hoof from Pinkie’s mouth. “Now, will you shut up and help me look for where she might have gone?”
“Mhmm!”
As Twilight neared the gate, a loud crack echoed throughout the room, and the portcullis fell, crashing into the ground. “Augh!” She backpedaled a few steps. “What in the name of Celestia was that!?”
“It looks like the gate closed, Twilight,” Pinkie deadpanned.
“You know what? I can’t take this anymore! And we need to find Rainbow Dash.” Twilight scrunched up her face in concentration. “—what?” she gasped.
Pinkie tilted her head, once again attempting to scrape the taste off her tongue. “Wath wrong Thwilight?”
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong is I can’t seem to teleport us out of here!” She focused again and attempted a light spell, her horn not even beginning to light up. “It looks like I can’t do any magic here and now we’re locked in.”
“Well that’s not very good.”
“No, it’s not.”
A deafening, low rumble shook the castle under the pair’s hooves, causing rafters to creak and a cloud of dust to descend upon the room, covering its occupants.
Twilight backed up and pressed herself against Pinkie. “A—And then there’s… whatever did whatever it did to Rainbow.”
“Hmmm… If I were Rainbow…” Following suit, Pinkie leaned on Twilight. “That’s it! A window!”
“A… window?”
“Yeah, Twilight. Remember?”
Twilight scanned the room, looking for any alternatives. “Pinkie, the nearest window is probably at least two stories up.” She motioned towards the spiral stairs at the back of the room. “And seeing as I can’t seem to do any magic, I don’t know how you think we’re supposed to get out from that high.”
“Uhhh.”
“I thought so.”
The castle trembled as another loud groan echoed throughout the halls.
Twilight took a step towards the stairs. “M—maybe we should look for something upstairs.”
“Waaaay ahead of you!” Pinkie darted ahead and donned her inspector and bubble pipe, scouring the floor with a magnifying glass.
“Wait!” Twilight yelled, running after her friend. “We don’t know what could be in here! We should be careful.”
Pinkie stopped at the base of the stairs, her eyes widening. “Oh, look! More syrup!”
Just as Pinkie stuck out her tongue, Twilight pulled her head back and stood in the way. “Pinkie, for the last time, that is not syrup.” She paced around the newly discovered pool of blood on the bottom step, then started to follow what seemed to be a trail smeared up the rest of the steps, winding up into the darkness. “This is not good.”
“You’re telling me! All I wanted was some syrup but nooooo.”
Twilight clamped her hooves around Pinkie Pie’s mouth and whispered harshly, “Quiet!” She released her grip once Pinkie nodded. “This is blood, Pinkie. Blood! Somepony, probably Rainbow Dash, could be seriously hurt. And that means whatever hurt her is probably in this castle. A castle that we are currently stuck in, need I remind you?”
Pinkie blew a volley of bubbles from her pipe.
“That means we need to be quiet and very careful while we look for a way out. Now come on, let’s figure out where this trail leads us.” Twilight took a few cautious steps up, avoiding touching any of the blood.
Darkness descended upon the two ponies and they made their way up what looked increasingly like a tower. Thankfully, nothing happened on the way up, but that did little to ease Twilight’s tensions. Ever present was the thick, dank smell of mold and freshly disturbed dust.
Upon rounding the last few steps into the top of the tower, the darkness finally gave way to pale moonlight streaming in through a single window, illuminating just enough of the room to see where another small pool of blood had collected.
“Hm, I don’t see anything here that can help us.” Twilight trotted to the window and peered out. “Wow, that’s a long way down. This must be where Rainbow left from, but I don’t see how we’re going to get out from here.”
Pinkie followed Twilight into the room and sat down on an aging bed tucked away in a corner. “What about the curtains?”
“What about the curtains?”
“We could tie them together and climb out.”
“We’d need at least three hundred hooves of curtain to get down. There’s, at most, fifty, and I don’t even know if it’ll be strong enough. Celestia knows how long those have been rotting away here.”
Just as Twilight was about to conduct another search, the tower shuddered and shook violently, almost causing her to lose her footing. A rumble reverberated up the stairs and… didn’t stop.
“Twilight? What was that?” asked Pinkie, her voice quivering.
The noise sounded as if it were… No, it couldn’t be. Twilight swallowed a lump in her throat and a chill ran up her spine. “Pinkie?”
“Y—yeah, Twilight?”
“I—” Twilight backed up against the wall, her voice dropping to a soft whisper. “I think it’s getting closer.”