//------------------------------// // V - Hatred // Story: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite // by Corejo //------------------------------// Hatred Twilight Sparkle stood in the corner of her room, staring at the wall.  Her mother had just left, and she didn’t dare move, in case she was listening outside the door.  She hated the sound of the clock ticking away while unable to do anything but think.  There was far too much to do, and standing in the corner, grounded, only scratched away the valuable time she had.  But, as it always had—and was its intent—the act helped her focus on what she had done.  Or, in this case, had to do. First, she had to stay calm. Panicking would do her no good at a time like this.  Stress would make her mind vulnerable to any more tricks that might be awaiting her.  Her breaths were in rhythm with the ticking of the clock.  She was calm. Second, she had to limit her thinking. Illusions fed off the knowledge of the victim.  That much she knew off hoof.  Feeding it excessive thought would only make breaking it more difficult. Third, she had to escape. No more would she be the pawn of this sadistic pony.  This game was going to be played on her terms from here on in.  If Kite wanted to threaten her with death and torture her with past memories, then she was done playing the nice pony.   Every illusion had a catch.  She just needed to find it.  Where it would be was the hard part.  She had to think back to her days as a filly, before Kite could have had any reason to distort her reality.  Only those memories could she could rely on.  Though the illusion might try and corrupt them, her mind wouldn’t. Sure that her mother was out of earshot and not returning any time soon, Twilight walked to her bookshelf, gazing up at its towering form.  It reminded her of those at the Canterlot library—how Spike used to have to climb up and down the ladder to retrieve countless books for her.  She let her eyes wander the shelves.  They gravitated to specific spots where her mind unconsciously knew her illusion books rested. Now You See It, Now You Don’t.  Illusions for the Absolute Beginner.  Mind Benders and Other Spells.  Illusions, Elementary. She stared at the final book, at the swirling text on its spine.  It was her favorite—and most read—of them all.  It would undoubtedly hold the knowledge she sought.  But a little thought nagged at her in the back of her head: they would lie—every single one of them. They were part of the illusion and could not be trusted.  Oh, how Kite dangled the answers before her.  She took in and released a sigh.  Calm.  Focus.  She dragged her chair to the bookshelf to reach Illusions, Elementary.  She knew the words.  They were all in her head. The book was heavier than she remembered that morning, in her real body.  She set it on the table to stare at its cover. Its title swept and curled across its beaten face.  It used to be Shining Armor’s from his years in middle school.  How excited she had been to unwrap it one Hearth’s Warming day. She again sat by the Hearth’s Warming tree, the fireplace roaring, wrapping paper everywhere.  Shining Armor nudged her out of her wonder and gestured at it. “It’s all yours, Twily,” his voice echoed. She wrapped him in the biggest hug she could.  “You’re the bestest brother in the whole wide world!” “Of course I am!”  His smile at that moment was the biggest she had ever seen him wear.  “Now are you gonna keep strangling me or you gonna read your present?” Twilight giggled.  That was a silly question.  She opened the book and read the first line.  “An illusion is only as strong as the illusee is observant.”   She blinked back to reality and stared at the book’s cover, feeling the memory flood through her, the words that had rolled unconsciously off her tongue.  “Illusions cannot alter past knowledge,” she recited from memory.  “Successful illusions become a new mental reality.  These are the three laws of illusions.  Remember them.” A warm sensation grew in her chest as she recited the opening paragraph.  She had read it countless times in her youth.  Many more as an adult.  She smirked at how she had already applied the second law unconsciously.  How innate they were to her.  She let her mind’s eye wander down the page. The rest is corrupt. The sentences winding through her head ran dry.  She blinked to, her hoof resting atop the book.  She knew the words within, could recite the chapters by heart, but fragments had been learned beyond this moment in time in her real life.  She knew from chapter seven that illusions could cause psychophysiological disabilities, or that chapter ten discussed how time within an illusion is arbitrary and discontinuous with true reality.  But her recollection of them and all other chapters stemmed from a lifetime of reading, not just the first.  She knew all there was to illusions, and that meant she was just as easily wrong, given the chance that Kite’s illusions could have surrounded her all her life. It was a test.  Nothing more.  She took a deep breath.  “Problem one: derive from the first and third laws a proof regarding the nature and weaknesses of illusions.”   Twilight took in the room around her.  Sight.  She could see the books and shelves and bedding.  Sound.  The clock ticked in solitary rhythm; her heart pounded in her head.  Smell.  Ink wafted beneath her nostrils.  Sweat tinged it with a hint of salt and body odor.  Touch.  The floorboards were hard beneath her hooves and creaked with her shifting weight.  But only the ones that she recalled doing so did. They were all a reconstruction of her memories, down to the last detail.  ...As strong as the illusee is observant.  Successful illusions become a new mental reality.  Perception gives way to fact.   If she were to close her eyes, rid herself of the perception and thus the concrete evidence that she was in her room, and step forward, she would feel wood flooring beneath her, simply because she had seen and therefore ‘knew,’ making it ‘real.’  Likewise, if she were to close her eyes and leap out the window, she would still land in the backyard—she knew her real house too well. Mental reality.  The adjective was key.  It meshed it with the first law—a back-and-forth communication.  What the mind believed, with or without perception, would become what she would then perceive, and then so on.  A lack of one could be supplemented by addition of the other.  Did that mean the one weakness of an illusion was complete deprivation of sense and awareness?  Illusions, Elementary never touched on the subject of dispelling illusions, only their characteristics.  If she became irrevocably lost, the illusion might not be able to support itself. Twilight took another breath, retracing her steps.  After a minute, she nodded.  “Alright.  Problem two: prove it.” She looked at the door.  Mom would undoubtedly catch her if she left her room.  The window.  It was her only other option.  She took care not to step on the creaky floorboards on her way to it. As she hoped, the locks were just as she remembered.  A quick check of the door, a rip of her bedsheet, and an unlatch of the window, and she was outside. The lilacs of the garden blanketed the air in a heavenly perfume, and birds chirped in the oak tree that cast its massive shadow over the back half of the yard.  Twilight snagged a clothespin from the laundry line and pinched it to her nose, then wrapped the torn piece of sheet around her ears.  She couldn’t smell a thing, but could still hear the muffled chirping of the birds.  It would have to do. Twilight ran for the gate.  There, she stopped and put her hoof on the latch, a sense of trepidation building in her gut.  She breathed in deeply.  “Okay, Twilight.  Let’s get out of here.”  She shut her eyes, opened the gate, and took off. The only acute sense Twilight had was of her breathing, loud and clear, in her head.  The thought that she had no idea where she was going or what surrounded her fought for superiority in her mind.  What if she got ran over by a carriage? Pain erupted in her muzzle.  She crumpled to the ground, clenching her nose.  The clothespin had fallen off, but what concerned her more was the warm blood running down her face. She put a hoof against what she had run into: smooth plaster.  A wall.  Her mind leapt to the initiative.  A plaster wall meant—no.  Twilight shot to her hooves and ran alongside it.   Think nothing.  Run. Faint noises of rolling carriages and angry ponies met her ears.  She wondered how ridiculous she looked running blind, deaf, and dumb through the streets of Canterlot, what all those ponies were thinking of her at that moment.  It didn’t matter.  They weren’t real.  None of this was. The carriage noises grew more prominent.  She collided with the legs of other ponies, pushed past, unwilling and unable to stop.  She had to keep moving, find a place she couldn’t possibly know.  Only there could she open her eyes. Pain jarred all sense from her mind as she collided with a wall of stone.  Twilight fell to her stomach, clutching the crumpled stub of her nose, blood gushing over her hooves.  She trembled in pain, tears flowing freely, her head swimming as if in a whirlpool. Her legs didn’t want to stand, as if they finally decided she had gone insane.  She gritted her teeth, seething at the pain.  This was no time for weakness. A hoof touched her shoulder.  “Get away from me!” she screamed as she batted it away and dashed away. Ponies shouted above the muffled drum of her hooves on the pavement.  They sounded concerned and must be trying to catch her.  Twilight pushed herself harder.  It was the illusion trying to stop her. The shouts became louder, more urgent.  Twilight thought she could hear hoofsteps behind her.  She leaned into her run, fighting the weightless dizziness in her head.  Blood drained down the back of her throat, choking her as she gasped for breath. “Twilight!” came Mom’s voice.  Twilight shook her head.  Just think of Ponyville.   “Twilight, stop!”—Dad, deeper and angry—”What are you doing?”  Rainbow Dash.  Pinkie Pie.  Applejack.  She only had to think of them. More legs and shouts of anger.  Every bump felt like a crushing weight and every jostle like a buck in the nose.  Rarity.  Fluttershy.  Spike. “Twilight!”  She gasped.  That voice—strong and commanding like Dad’s, yet gentle and friendly, faithful, steadfast.  Shining? A distinct pain accompanied a crunch and creak of wood, and Twilight felt herself tumbling.  Up and down became one and the same in her head, and her legs flailed about like those of a ragdoll as she felt the ground hit every part of her body at once.  Something wooden toppled. All became still. Hoofsteps thundered toward her.  “Twilight!” they all said.  She was being pulled upward and downward.  The sensations were there, but she couldn’t feel a thing.  “Twilight!” Her eyelids were heavy.  She still held them closed, but no longer needed to hold them so.  The voices were getting farther away.  There was something she was supposed to be remembering. Her head was shaking.  Her eye lid was pulled open.  A blurry Shining Armor was there.  But he couldn’t have been.  He was in guard training. His mouth continued to move, but she could no longer hear his voice.  Behind him the sky grew dark.  It seemed to close in around them.  Mom.  Dad.  All had disappeared to leave her alone with Shining Armor. Though he continued to blur, the darkness around them took shape.  Paintings.  A bookshelf.  A desk.  Canvas walls.  And a very peculiarly-dressed pony with grass-green mane whose eyes shone in the candlelight. “Welcome back, Twilight Sparkle.” The words only half registered.  The world was fuzzy as if seen and heard through wax paper.  She gathered the fact that she was standing rather than laying, and that things were much smaller than they were moments ago.  Or they were back to normal.  Or something.  That carriage hit her harder than she thought. Welcome back…  Welcome…  She mouthed the words, trying to make sense of them.  Back.  Her head pounded like a book dropped from a second story balcony. The mare sat up from her chair behind the desk and came around front.  “I didn’t think you’d return so quickly, Twilight Sparkle.”  She strode up to Twilight, face to face.  “But it seems you still aren’t all here yet.” Twilight’s mind came to, sharp as a blade.  “You!”—she cracked Mr. Kite across the jaw, staggering her backward—"You!”  Her body trembled as she tried to find the words for her rage.  There were none.  All she could muster was a violent scream before launching herself at Kite, who grinned back at her. Something flashed in the corner of Twilight’s eye.  A shadow rushed toward her in the blink of an eye and collided with her mid leap.  It slammed her against something hard, and books cascaded down around her.  A pair of lantern-like eyes seethed out at her from beneath a black hood. Claws sharper than steel gripped her about the throat, teasing her skin with their hot-blooded fervor. Instinct called for her to paw at them in hopes of relieving the pain.  It only goaded the beast into clenching tighter, drawing gasps for air.  She felt blood trickling down her hooves, mingling with the warmth of the salamander’s claws. Syllisyth snarled, its snout full of fangs protruding from the shadow of its hood.  Its breath reeked of fresh kill. “Or maybe you are,” Kite said.  She fixed Twilight with a contemptuous stare.  “My dear Syllisyth doesn’t appreciate those who try and hurt me,” Mr. Kite said, testing her jaw with a hoof.  “And neither do I, Twilight Sparkle.” “You.  Foul.  Animal,” Twilight struggled to say through the vice around her neck.  She aimed a kick at the salamander’s face and felt the heavy weight of its jaw against her hoof very satisfying.  It snarled and clenched tighter.  Twilight thought she heard something crunch, and breathing became all but impossible.  Her eyes started rolling back. “Syllisyth,” Kite said. Immediately, Twilight found herself sprawled out on the floor, coughing for precious air.  Mr. Kite’s hooves sounded across the floor toward her.  She looked up through bleary eyes. Mr. Kite towered above, her form almost a silhouette in the candlelight.  She was clearly not smiling. “Give me back my friends,” Twilight spat. Mr. Kite waited to answer.  When she did, there was a tinge of false hurt in her words.  “Already, my dear Twilight Sparkle?  Are you sure you don’t want to see the grand finale of my Circus Royale first?  It is the reason I went through so much work to build that illusion for you.  I needed a bit more time to… line things up.” Twilight coughed, her breathing still raspy.  “I’ve seen everything I need to, Kite.  This whole thing is a lie.”  A cough.  It tasted like iron.  “Every bit of it—even this thing.”  She glared at Syllisyth.   “Hmm?”  Kite raised an eyebrow. Twilight shifted her glare to Kite.  “Reptiles aren’t warm blooded.” A torrent of magic, the same brilliant blaze that reduced the Gui’etzen to a mere memory, channelled to the tip of Twilight’s horn.  She released it with a flash and a grit of her teeth, engulfing the salamander.  One less illusion to deal with. The room fell back into a faint darkness only staved off by the glow of the candle.  And the glowing, lantern-like eyes of Syllisyth. A low, slithering rumble outplayed the whimper that slipped from Twilight’s mouth.  It started low, then built to rasping laughter as the thing struggled to remain standing.  It looked at her with that snarl, that menacing smile it had the first time they met. “My dear, Twilight Sparkle,” Kite said, stepping forward.  I do believe that you are very much mistaken.”  There was a glimmer in her eyes, much like the moment before the world had started melting.  “Of all the curiosities of mine, you will find that my dear Syllisyth is by far the most real.” Twilight pushed herself back against the bookshelf, shaking her head at the beast crouching before her.  “But... there’s no way.”   It snickered at her, placing its foreclaws on the ground.  Its claws flashed white.  The blinding light spread up its body to consume it and the room, and when it faded, revealed an altogether new being.   Chitinous, hollow legs stood in place of scale and claw. Instead of its cloak, diaphanous wings absently hummed on the creature’s back.  Its fangs seemed sharper, slimmer, designed to pierce flesh rather than rend it, and large compound eyes flickered with the million flames of a single candle.  Twilight stared, mouth agape, slowly coming to recognize the creature that stood before her. Mr. Kite sidled up beside it.  They leaned their heads against each other’s while staring down at her, as if exchanging an unspoken message.  “There is quite clearly a way, Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight gathered herself to her hooves, confusion giving pause to her anger.  “There can’t be.  Changelings feed off the love they steal from ponies.”  She hoped for a crack to appear in some façade around her, to spot a chink in some illusion’s armor.  But there was only Mr. Kite’s soft giggle. “Must you say that as if Syllisyth is some sort of thief?  Are all things you don’t understand evil in your eyes, Twilight Sparkle?”  She smiled, the whites of her teeth just visible.  “But I digress.  You wanted your friends back, didn’t you?”   Mr. Kite turned to the changeling and placed a long, slow kiss on its cheek.  “Go be a dear and give her what she wants.” Syllisyth smirked before the light again flashed over its body, changing it yellow, whole, and smooth.  Twilight’s stomach churned as locks of pink mane flowed down around its shoulders and feathered wings folded at its sides.   Fluttershy grinned at her, a menacing spirit dancing in her eyes.  She—it—opened her mouth to speak.  To Twilight’s horror the voice that came belonged to the very pony her eyes claimed to see, but was far from timid.  “It was more fun the first time by the Gui’etzen cage.” “By the...” Twilight felt the warmth leave her skin.  “The Gui’etzen?” The changeling played with its Fluttershy mane and smiled as its eyes briefly flashed sapphire blue.  Its head flashed white, and out sprouted a unicorn's horn, a curling purple mane framing it.  “Oh, and with the giraffes, too,” its Rarity head said in her friend’s distinct tone.  “Right after she told you off?”  It gave a high-pitched laugh.  “That dumb look on your face was priceless—made slipping in a cinch.”  The thing turned for the door, smiling at her over its Fluttershy shoulder.  “But I must get going.  You be good, Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight’s mind had stalled at ‘slipping in.’  The smell.  The Gui’etzen’s breath she had smelled while arguing with Rarity.  She had been taken right out from under her nose. The changeling’s hoofsteps brought her back to the present, and a fire gathered strength within her heart.  “Don’t you dare take another step,” she seethed. It stopped before the exit, turned its gaze toward her, and snorted, its Rarity head melting into yellow and pink.  It pulled back the tent flap, but not before Twilight had lit her horn with a fire that would have boiled oceans. She drew back her head to whirl the gout around like a whip, eyes blazing hotter than the fiery tongues that licked the bookshelf into ash.  It gathered speed and bellowed its fury alongside her as the air itself screamed from the heat.  There was a flash in the corner of her eye, but she had already committed, and followed through with the swing.  She curled her wing at her side like a shield for the incoming blow. Twilight felt herself lifted off her hooves by a blinding red light.  Everything somersaulted over her for what felt like minutes before the floor rose to meet her.  The air left her lungs.  The room lay sideways, and her ears rang.  Laying still was all she could do to lessen what felt like lava seeping through face and wing. A pillar of flame reached for the ceiling from where the changeling had leapt mere moments ago.  Its eyes glowed just beyond the flames, it’s sharp smile wide beneath singed hair.  It shook its head to restore Fluttershy’s mane and strutted for the entrance.  Twilight could only watch, unable to muster the strength to lift her head.  The tent flapped shut, and hoofsteps came closer. The effect of whatever magic Kite had hit her with began to fade, the molten heat subsiding to a leaden weight.  A mixture of magic—to warn, not to maim.  The hungry wolf was playing with its food. “Twilight Sparkle.”  The mirth was gone from Kite’s voice.  She spoke in a hard, shallow tone.  “Do you still not understand?”  Twilight could feel her eyes in the back of her head, the cold, jaggedness of her stare tearing into her soul like a serrated blade.  “Do you still not know why I am here?” The hoofsteps were almost upon her.  She had to focus.  See the room, make her move.  Kite wasn’t the only one who could mix magic. Twilight squinched her eyes and forced everything into her horn, the bookshelf behind Kite at the forefront of her mind.  The world squeezed in around her as she blinked out of and back into reality, her horn already ablaze.  She let it fly as Kite wheeled about.  It washed about her, drowning out her scream in a roar of flame as Twilight drew back her head for another spell.  It propelled from her horn like a howitzer, but blasted apart only the desk as Kite burst into a flock of crows. Twilight tried to follow their erratic escape into a sudden darkness that pressed down from the ceiling.  “Coward!” she cried, drawing magic from her every fiber.  She drove its flame skyward to beat back the darkness.  The clash of magic hurricaned around the tent.  Books and sheets swirled in the madness.  It was a battle of immovable wills as neither light nor dark yielded an inch.  “You are done playing games, Kite.  This is over.” “My dearest apologies, Twilight Sparkle.”  The voice was everywhere, all around, echoed as if off stone.  “But that simply is not true.  I haven’t yet accomplished what I came here for.” Twilight felt the rise in her chest, an anger beyond the deepest of loathings and mere retaliations.  This was still a game to the mare, part of some sadistic plan she still desired even to the point of pain.  It was madness to the extreme—unchecked and unjustified, a parasite of the mind.  “Tell me what you want, Kite,” she growled, “and I’ll make sure you never get it.” She listened for an answer, but heard only the burning around her.  “I know you want to tell me.  That’s the point of it all.  The mastermind needs her work seen by everyone so that they know her genius.  That’s how it works, isn’t it?”  Twilight puffed out her chest and fanned her wings to complement her goading.  “You want me and everypony to know how brilliant you are… unless you’re a fraud—even at that.”  Still no answer, but the darkness began to wilt.  She scowled.   The darkness further wavered as the blaze of her horn reached skyward like a mighty sword.  She scryed the darkness for the crows, strained her ears for the jingling of bangles, sensed the air for her piercing gaze.  She saw and heard nothing, but could feel Kite’s strength waning in the air about her.   But Twilight was implacable.  The tables had turned.  Hers was the power of the princesses, the unending and unerring might of the immortal alicorns.  Behind it surged the tidal wave of friendship for those held captive, and that of raw and willing magic, ready to crash down upon her enemy.  She ground her forelegs further into the earth and redoubled the inferno of her horn.   The sharpness of her words belied their quietness.  “So then… Tell me.” The room was all but reduced to ash as she stood tall, awaiting an answer.  More still the darkness receded, and the magics she overpowered dispersed.  A presence materialized beside her, instantaneous and magnetic.  The voice seethed clearer than crystal within her head.   “Revenge.” Pain, long and sharp as an icicle, ripped through skin and bone like paper.  It pierced her heart, and a chill stole away every last drop of warmth in a breath of frost.  Eyes wide, her magic ceased, and all fell silent. Slowly, she gazed down at her chest, at the silver blade driven in to the hilt.  It sucked from her the very life she lived, the glowing runnels of her being flowing freely about the white hoof that held it fast.  She followed the hoof up to the purple overcoat standing so near, and further still to the midnight-blue eyes gazing into hers, gleaming with the candlelight that had long since blown out.   Mr. Kite smiled, the blade a twisting, jerking harpoon that drew her closer.  Twilight’s heart beat a fury in her chest, unendingly impaling itself upon the stiletto of ice as the smiling mare brought her lips to Twilight’s. Twilight was a statue as the only warmth in existence touched her lips, long and sentimentally, as if pleasured.  A release, and the blade swept away the warmth like a blood drop in a cataract. “You forget yourself, Twilight Sparkle,” she whispered sweetly, like a diner sampling the world’s finest wine.  She drew herself against Twilight in an embrace so as to whisper venom into her ear.  “You are the worm.” Kite ripped away the blade, and with it every ounce of energy, every molecule of air from Twilight’s lungs.  A moment of absolute nothingness passed.   And then Twilight fell. She lay still, the last remnants of herself draining away, pooling luminescent red before her eyes.  She struggled for breath, each unwilling gasp further prying open the wound like little fingers.  It was not a pain she had ever suffered before—not of her physical being, but of her very essence.  Vampiric, all-encompassing, it reached through her veins to every extremity and sucked away an alter lifeforce. A small fraction of her mind free from the wracking pains eked out the one possible nightmare that was the warm liquid ebbing against her lips: Magic.  Fabric shifted in the silence, and Twilight had only the power to look with her eyes.  Kite stood overtop her.  “You are a fool, Twilight Sparkle.  The true genius does not tell her prey what is not yet due, nor let slip her desires without it forwarding her goal.”  She walked toward the smashed remains of her desk to regard it idly, then cast a smiling eye over her shoulder.  “But to humor you… I do not do this for fame or glory.  I desire your suffering.” Twilight only half listened, the pains of her body subsiding to leave her alive and still.  She checked her breathing and let her body reach out with invisible feelers to sense the world around her.  But there was no sixth sense to draw upon, as it was a part of the now dull fluid that bathed her.  And though it left her weary, she wrestled with the voices in her head, waiting for an opportunity to fight or flee.  No matter the situation, the element of surprise was still in her favor. “But… why?” Twilight asked, barely wretching out the words. Kite had paced past her again in her monologue, toward the exit.  “You took everything from me, Twilight Sparkle.  As I now take from you.”  She faced away, her guard down, her back exposed.  It was Twilight’s only chance. With every shred of strength that clung to her, she drew herself to her hooves and was in the air, crying her desperation.  Kite turned full on as Twilight bore her weight upon her.  They tumbled to the ground. Instinct, primal and ferocious, directed movement of hoof and wing.  Twilight gave no thought to the way they rose and fell repeatedly, nor the warm, pounding wetness they elicited.  Kite reached up to shield herself but found neither mercy nor reluctance.  Vaguely the realities of pain and anger called to her as if beyond a thick fog in some other lifetime.  To Twilight, only the air in her lungs and the fire in her muscles reached her brain, a small fragment of the desire to survive. All too suddenly, it abated, and Twilight saw with unglazed eye, hoof raised, ready to assail, the beaten and bloody face of the one who had all too often smiled at her misfortune.  A moment passed as both mares fought for breath. Kite wretched beneath her, her gasps short and hard.  “Does it feel good, Twilight Sparkle?”  She coughed a spray of blood.  “Do you enjoy hurting me?”  She wrapped a hoof over Twilight’s shoulder and drew herself up.  Within her eyes boiled an enmity Twilight had never before seen in her life.  Crazed, absent of thought, it sought only a singular goal.  The words hissed from Kite’s lips were spattered with blood.  “No matter how you try and stop me.  You are still the worm.” A blood-red aura enveloped Kite’s horn.  It washed over her body, made her smoulder and shrivel.  Her clothes sizzled away, every thread a lit fuse, a soft purple shining forth beneath.  Her mane shed its green hue for a color too dark to see clearly.  Wings emerged from her sides like a butterfly from a cocoon, and the last traces of blue drained from her eyes as they flooded purple.   The blood-red glow rushed upon Twilight before she could scream, blasting away her fur like sand in a windstorm.  Her veins boiled beneath her skin, swelled with a liquid fire that flooded every inch of her body.  She jerked and writhed as her bones cracked, shifted, and refused, bulging against a skin that could not hold them.  The air in her lungs refused to move, and her eyes felt liquid as the magic bored upward into her skull. It pounded outward, sought an exit in any direction.  The power mashed her brain against the sides of her skull, the vacuum inside sucking it back in with every pulse.  Only the warm liquid running from her ears registered outside of the deep drumming. A final pulse, and the tent came back into focus.  The sudden stillness rang louder than any bell, and her head lolled in the absence of feeling. Strands of green fell about her eyes in the still air.  She saw herself beneath her, nose bloody and broken, a crazed look in her eye, and recollection of the last few minutes trickled in.   “I will watch you squirm, Twilight Sparkle,” the Twilight beneath her—Kite—said, “until you breathe your last.” The tent about them lifted away in Kite’s aura, and Twilight looked up to see all of Ponyville standing before her.  They gasped, wide eyed, waiting on baited breath.  Some looked on in terror, hooves over their mouths; others, disgust, anger rising to their faces. “Somepony stop her!”  Fluttershy pushed her way out to the front of the crowd, terror in her eyes.  The crowd shifted forward, shouting. Hooves pawed at Twilight’s chest.  She looked down at the false Twilight that cried like a school filly beneath her, staring at her forehoof.  “Please… Please don’t,” it whimpered. Twilight followed its gaze and gasped at the realization that the stiletto had somehow found its way into her hoof.  She staggered away, the dagger falling point first into the earth.  Among the crowd were her friends, their eyes locked upon her in scorn. “No!” she yelled.  “You’ve got it all wrong!  I’m not Kite, she is!”  She pointed at the Twilight curled up on the ground. “Liar!” somepony shouted.   “You foul beast!” Rarity yelled. “How could you do such a thing!?” Fluttershy said as she and Rarity dashed up to the imposter, shielding her from Twilight. A stone struck her across the forehead, drawing blood. “Let me go!” Rainbow Dash shouted, forcibly restrained by Applejack. The crowd marched forward with every backward step she took, their cries growing more violent.  The grins on Fluttershy and Kite’s faces disappeared as the mob enveloped them. Twilight tried lighting her horn with an illusion-breaking spell, but magic no longer flowed through her veins.  Here, powerless, she finally fathomed the depths of Kite’s hatred.   Death was not her intention, but exile—thrown to the fringe, hated forever by those she called friends.  Scowls and snarls marred their faces; their voices rose in anger.  And as they closed in, sticks and stones and other forms of hurt raised high, she knew there was no recourse. Twilight ran. [Author's Note: Big thanks to Belligerent Sock for his review of this chapter.]