//------------------------------//
// Red Velvet Wound: When She Breathes: Pt. I 
// Story: Mind/Body/Light/Sound... 
// by SUPERCHARGER2001 
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‘Sleep away…’ The voice soothingly called out.


‘Huh?’ Twilight signaled back with her own.


Feeling a thick breeze, Twilight arched her legs up to her stomach, the jabbing feel of her kneecap was bearable enough. Gliding her arms forward she wrapped them tightly over legs, absorbing whatever warmth she could muster from her half-beat body.


She attempted to phase out the voice that had been confronting her before hoof; the only thing that matched the powers of this voice was the strong vigor of her odor. It had been a long couple days, and those days were beginning to feel repetitive. The thing that etched out quickly replied with the same hollow monotone voice and her spine tensed up at the cold wind gripping onto her skin. They felt like claws of a carnivore playing with its meal before ripping its prey from limb to limb. She kept her eyes sealed tight, her thoughts trickled around and about, and the smell of her stained scent was beginning to feel permanent with each passing minute. She had to hide, she needed a way out, but how? But above all. Twilight needed a way out of this forest.


‘You will see, the buildup is approaching,’ the voice snickered quietly, but just enough so Twilight could catch on to its rambling’s. 


‘Will you get me out of here?’ Twilight bewildered, her voice scratchy, she manages to sit up and the claws finally release their tight grip on her spine. The wind dissipated, and she softly cracked open and eye before doing the same to the other. Afraid of what was ahead, she couldn’t hold out any longer, however. What she saw shocked her more than anything during her time in the woods, only, that it wasn’t the woods anymore. Where was she? Was she in a dream, was she hallucinating? Was she on drugs? This couldn’t be happening; only that it was? From where she laid, there was no dirt under her. There was no rocks pinching her from all sides and there wasn’t any tethered vines hanging on the century old trees from above. There was nothing? Nothing at all. Just a wooden floor, and a broken bricked house. From her position she was in the far corner of this room that looked like a two story building, because it felt like that it was off the ground. She struggled to her hooves, her stomach cramped up and she jerked back down once her muscles started tensing up. Where was this voice? This thing? She couldn’t see it anywhere; then again, the room looked like no one had lived in this building for decades. The walls were stripped off its old paper walls and peeks of the red bricked surfaced behind it. The wooden floor was a stripped mess, the center of the room was broken through and you could see the room below. She took several deep breaths while thinking up a solution to get out of this place. Why was she here? Who stole her? Some pony had come to murder her, or torture her? Or simply rape her. Probably hired by Celestia, Twilight Sparkle knew that this might’ve happened, after all, she did in fact, murder some pony.


A single drop of water blasted her back into reality when it splat on the tip of her nose before dripping down and onto her chest. She loosened up briefly. Unable to get her head straight, she stood on all four hooves and took another short glance at her surroundings. Candles rotted away on a table-stand, two wooden chairs placed on both sides of the velvet brown table. Traces of what appeared to be blood, or perhaps paint dragged in an irregular line across the room towards down the hall. The door smashed from outside, the hinges were bent back as far as it looked like it could go. Her back faced the windowsill behind her, but it was blocked by pieces of two by four all nailed tightly together.


Twilight began to move, but not before seeing piles of ripped open and closed letters splayed all over another table at the other end of the room. A single light bolted up above barely glimmered and it was what was keeping this room from going pitch black. She felt edged about those letters, blocking them from her train of thought she kept it one hoof at a time, making sure she didn’t fall through as her weight could collapse the floor below. She placed her right hoof outwards a little more and almost fell face first if it had not been for her cunning skills in magic holding onto a well-placed metal gray bar up above her. She exhaled a few deep breaths of relieve before soldering on. Twilight couldn’t give it a clear estimate as too how old this building and more importantly, this flooring was, but just from a quick decisive analysis; she assumed that this must have been at least a century old building. The design of it showed that it must have been built around the last century. So she knew that it could withstand a lot of weight, especially hers, but she didn’t know how much damage had occurred to this torn up building.


After a few more slow movements, Twilight Sparkle made a one swift leap across the door and successfully made it completely unscathed. At least before she heard a pinging loud crash. Behind her, the opposite side of the room’s wooden floor began to cave in unto the floor below. The building itself shifted downwards, and without any hesitation she bolted it across the hallway. Her heart felt like spears wielded by the Royal guards at Canterlot were jabbing it profusely, it felt like her chest was tightening her lungs, and her breathe felt constricted by the pressure of her surroundings. Her knees wobbled irregularly as she trekked through this collapsing hallway, she exhaled deeply and kept on running; old portraits of once-prosperous ponies hung on the crimson coated walls that continued forever, and ever. The light bulbs lined up neatly in a straight line all fizzled out as she ran through in a hurry. The voice was no longer calling her name in a somber tone, wherever it was, at least she had temporary closed it out with her feverish thoughts of despair.


The building twisted to a point that it was almost fracturing completely from the inside. The walls shook and the dusting pieces of art bounced off the wall like a ball and were either dragged along the floor by the beast of this home, or was simply swept under miscellaneous debris. The ceiling made a splitting sound up above her and an antique chandelier marbled with crystals and glass, and precise metal pieces shaped in a upper-middle class fashion swung back and forth by a thick-bronzed chain, the crack of the ceiling divided the priceless antique to choose its maker; crumbling into the abyss or hold onto the remnants of the century old-building. Cracking like fine split wood before being tumbled into a furnace, the ceiling cut right in half, and what appeared to be a one-way ticket down into six-feet under, the building made a final fitting shutter and came to a dead stop. Twilight, who by this point was just as terrified as the chandelier had already kneeled down onto her legs and closed her eyes with one forehoof. Unable to fathom, or comprehend, or even make the slightest remark as to what has happened, or the chain of events that had been happening for a while now. She gritted her teeth and hoped that any move she made wasn’t going to mean the end of her final breath. 


Slowly, but surely, she crept the lower end of her right leg forwards in small, but firm bursts across the hall. Keeping her back lined up perfectly with the wall on the right side of the hall, she lowered the forehoof just enough to crack open her left eye, looking at where her leg was approaching she jerked back with too much force and the hallway made another shift, causing her to scream out of fear, the hallway twisted and turned before coming to another abrupt stop. Biting her wrist, she frantically nibbled it until the rapid chops of her teeth connected with her train of thought. Unable to speak, she eventually stopped and continued on just looking around for what felt like hours, was indeed a mere few minutes. Twilight glanced to the right and noticed the bright gray clouds through the windowsill gleaming ahead of her, and to her amazement and utter shock of both fear and hallucination. She noticed the same bright glow from far away, and it none other than the voice. The thing. The monster. The renegade. The voice of truth, the voice of lies, and the voice of a professional con-artist. But deep down, she knew that this voice, and her were connected more ways than one.


Twilight Sparkle had no help of getting out of here on her own, wherever she was at anyways. Suddenly the anger bubbled beneath her skin, and her temper was about to rage a storm far severe than the lights of what this building could muster. No longer feeling any sense of hope, she used her horn and fetched a three by six portrait that represented a fine stallion in a business suit and swatted it towards the windowsill, practically slamming and downing it. She abrasively continued with more and more pieces of painting, and debris, and whatever else represented any sort of object. All the while screaming very hoarsely at the top of her lungs, “NO MORE!” she spat the words out. Unleashing the spears from her throbbing heart, unleashing the guilt, and using whatever fiber within her body left that hadn’t completely eroded away against the voice that wouldn’t stop answering her own pondering questions. Choosing denial over certainty, she instigated and gave the most horrific yell of her entire existence, “GET. OUT. OF. MY. LIFE!” and bellowed out a huge roar of terror before snatching the chandelier and charging it through the dozens of objects that had already buried the window. Little peaks of the outside appeared, but apart from that, the room was a dark, hollow, empty shell of nothing. Finally breaking down in a sea of crying, weeping and watery sorrow over the loss of her old life, her friends, and her victim.


Barely able to move, she laid there motionless for an eternity of minutes. Dark thoughts slowly relocating their position, and her tangled up thoughts of despair soon retraced its once embedded footsteps. She cycled the world of her old time and time again, refreshing the days of what seemed like an eternity of endless fun and adventure, now felt like some other mare was living her body, eating her favorite food, hanging with her own friends, and living with her personal assistant. In the flash of a naked eye her life drastically changed, and it was all her fault. Twilight Sparkle took a solid look at the other end of the wall when she first escaped, and saw the black hallway staring down at her, waiting to pounce on her but blocked by the last glimpses of the gray sky peeking through the mangled debris. Her eyes were sunken in and she couldn’t decide on what would make her death easier. Facing the private secluded darkness of pitiless regret, or facing millions with a noose hanged around her neck, condemning her as an incompetent traitor to all of Equestria. Capital punishment was never employed after the official assimilation of all parts of Equestria centuries ago, but for a pony that killed one of the elements of harmony, and potential candidate for the heir of throne, and as Princess Celestia’s protégé. Things could change, if need be, and both decisions will destroy Twilight Sparkle forever.


She laid  down on the right side of her hips, hunched up and tried warming up the best she could. Then she released her bowels all over her right leg, it seeped and peeked through every crack and cranny of the torn wooden floor before dripping towards the dark side of the hallway. Then she once more drifted off into her own fictional world, and slept sound fully.