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// Twilight -- Nightmare 
// Story: Projected Nightmares 
// by bearcat 
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 Twilight Sparkle readied a puncture spell -- like a push spell but more focused; it would 'push' a hole through the flesh of her attacker.

If he showed himself again.

Her readied spell caused a faint purple glow that barely reached the white bricks. Partly because even in this narrow back-alley of the palace all the bricks were covered in dried blood. Thicker at the bottom, coating everything but still refusing to show the alabaster or concrete or whatever stone these were, until well above Twilight's head. Even then the spatter marks continued until nearly at the ceiling three meters above.

Twilight slipped as she took a step backwards. This time on fresh blood: her own. She hadn't seen the sun, nor her mentor, nor indeed any pony, or even a door, anywhere in days. But there had been some cackling shadow wielding a sickle, and it had managed to cut half her tail off and gouged deep into the meat of the leg itself.

Turning her head, she saw the endless hallway behind her. She had roamed this palace for years in her fillyhood and never had the walls been changed, but this time the servants' entrance had been replaced with a curving, unlit passage a scant 2 meters across.

Twilight didn't even remember why she had come here; all her memories started with the fresh blood dripping down the empty throne.

She tried again to back up, and despite the lack of feeling in her leg was able to hobble without reopening the wound. All the places she expected to find medical supplies of some sort, she found only fresh flames and long forgotten blood; mute testimony to however many years she must have lost looking for this palace.

The crackling flames were the only sound she would hear outside her own breathing. Clearly the shadowy figure was toying with her. Again she heard a distant scraping, as that wicked blade was ground against stone walls. Twilight focused, but could not tell which were echoes, and which the original. There was a very quiet giggle behind her, and Twilight whirled on her good leg to unleash her spell.

As it cracked a brick in half, the thaumaturgical flare showed several things: dried blood, flying away from the now-clean, broken brick which had symbolically traded one form of corruption for another, and also there was an unmistakable view of an empty hallway stretching more then five meters before the light faded.

Sweat was dripping off the mare, but her blood was running cold. Her hoof falls as she straightened sounded like drum beats of an orchestral production to her straining ears. Again, the giggle. Breathless, high pitched and fast, it was the laugh of a witch who saw her vengeance unfolding before her.

Twilight was getting tired, and might almost feel hungry if she weren't so terrified. She concentrated on a brief light spell, but it needed to be extinguished quickly. Every time she had tried it before, in this windowless prison that was once her home, the attacker had homed in within seconds like a teleporting moth.

She stilled her breath, mouth agape so as not to even disturb the velocity of her air. No sound. She flared her horn; three hundred milliseconds at full illumination was all she'd dared.

What it showed, was that accursed sickle curving down fast. Too fast, and it caught in her throat. Her chest was suddenly cold, and as the light faded, she heard one last cackle as the shadowy figure tore her chest open. Then Twilight was no more.