9:05 – Enigma still wasn’t in bed. Ordinarily his routine was more accurate than the clock; and even a one minute delay would have been unthinkable. He began pacing a perfect circle in the middle of his cell, silent save for his hoof steps; and Twilight sat on his bed, singing a lullaby she’d learned from Fluttershy.
9:30 – Enigma was still walking in circles, changing from clockwise to counterclockwise every seven laps, whimpering quietly. Twilight read to him from three books Brace Wits had recommended on deep sea marine life, astrophysics and pottery, but none of it made Enigma slow down or change course enough to miss even a single hoof beat.
10:30 – Enigma began hitting himself. They began as small slaps from his fore hooves to his face which became harder and more frequent until his muzzle began to bleed. Each hit was accompanied by a small yelp of pain, but rather than coming right after he hit himself, they came before, as if hitting himself was a response to the pain or maybe to distract himself from it.
Twilight tried to use magic to shield him from his blows, but his own magic countered hers. She tried to physically hold his hooves down, but whenever she got close he would teleport a few steps away, and kept tracing the circle on the ground. Twilight took the glass she’d brought and began smashing them one by one on the ground, but he ignored it.
11:00 – Enigma teleported to one corner of the room and walked in a perfect spiral towards the center of the room; glass crunching heedlessly underneath his hooves. When he reached the middle he teleported to another corner and did it all again… and again. When he finished spiraling in from the last corner he didn’t move; instead he just stood there, stone still, and Twilight hoped that whatever ritual he’d been performing was complete.
Then he began to cry.
It began as a low moan, gradually building to a pained wail, and as the first tear struck the floor, the room began heating up. Twilight sat directly in front of him, controlling her breathing body language to restrict any kind of fear. She inched closer to him, and then opened the photo album she had about them and their family.
“It’s OK to cry Enigma.” She said softly, “Maybe this is the first time you’ve ever felt emotion; maybe you’ve been feeling emotion all your life but denied it until now, either one is OK. For the longest time I shut myself off from the world because I was more interested in knowing magic than another person; but sooner or later I needed to join the rest of the world. Maybe you haven’t reached that point yet, but if this is you trying to understand what it’s like to feel sorrow, I want you to know, I’m here for you.”
The room kept getting hotter, and Twilight activated her heat shield, beginning at quarter strength. “It’s normal to feel upset when family members die, but that doesn’t make it OK to destroy yourself or other people. Cognastruct and Brace Wits love you, but when you heat the room up they can’t stay in here without getting hurt, and I won’t be able to stay very long. Driving other people away so you can hurt yourself won’t help you way to deal with loss, it only makes it worse.”
Outside Twilight’s rising heat shield, the water in the toilet was boiling; Enigma was shaking, and his guttural gasps becoming more frequent that Twilight had to raise her voice to even hear herself. “Our mom and dad always focused more on work than relationships; I know that, most of the time they weren’t for me either, but that doesn’t mean we have to become like them.”
Enigma’s bed burst into flames, a stray ember flying out and touching the photo album which burnt in seconds. The smoke rose, mixing with the steam in the air and contorting into a dark cloud that covered the roof of Enigma’s world. “It’s OK to show emotion, but for that you need to let others get near you. If you stop heating up the room I’ll stay here with you, but if you don’t then I’m going to have to leave. Please let me stay, let me help you.”
Twilight inched forwards a little more, drove her heat shield to maximum and placed her hoof on his cheek; and he combusted, launching into full scale mana-burn as his mane and tail turned to white hot flame and he collapsed, into Twilight’s waiting arms.
Even through a shield designed to withstand magma, he was scolding; but Twilight held on tightly. Enigma convulsed, he cried, he screamed, but he didn’t try to free himself from Twilight; who surged power into staying alive and cherishing the one moment in so many years when her brother had let another person hold him.
The light was blinding, but Twilight didn’t care; she held one hoof over her eyes while the other she ran through the blazing ball of fire that surrounded Enigma’s head. Her magic was running out, but she wasn’t ready to leave just yet; she may never get this chance again, she brushed his mane away, revealing his face and kissed him on the forehead.
When she pulled back, her magic was three quarters gone, the fringes of her mane were charring and pieces of glass she’d swept to one side of the room were melting, spreading over the room in a thin film of molten red glass.
She hadn’t even made it to midnight.
Twilight gave Enigma a final squeeze, possibly the last one he would ever let anyone give him and then she laid her brother, screaming in pain, on the floor and tried to walk away; when Enigma reached out and grabbed her mane. Twilight turned, she expected the resistance to be from his telekinesis, but it wasn’t, he was actually holding her, physically trying to pull her towards him, wanting her to stay. Her heart leapt, her mane singed, and her eyes gave off tiny rivets of steam; “I’m sorry… I love you.”
Her shield and will both wavering, Twilight felt dizzy for a moment, then gently released his grip turned and galloped to the inner door; kicking through the puddle of molten glass which froze and shattered under her hooves. The key slid home; there was a small rush as the hot air rushed into the tunnel, but by then Twilight was in, locking herself in the narrow tunnel.
Behind her, Enigma yelled in pain. Inside her, Twilight wrestled with guilt and hope. Her brother had shown the desire for company for the first time in his life and it had been denied him, but there was still tomorrow:
As her heat shield was put to the test, Twilight became aware of its flaws, the fire of Enigma’s mana burn was different from magma; she was expending vast amounts of energy on some spell lines she didn’t need, while feeding too little into others. Twilight could work on it today, and custom tailor her heat shield to withstand Enigma’s unique mana-burn; and tomorrow she might be able to last twice as long, and maybe get to the source of helping Enimga deal with his pain.
What if there was no tomorrow?
What if Enigma burnt himself out tonight and holding onto her was his way of saying goodbye?
Twilight locked that thought out of her mind. Either Cognastruct or Brace Wits had left her a flask of water on the ground, and it was well appreciated; Twilight drank thirstily as she waited for her conscience’s permission to leave:
So long as she stayed in the entry way of Enigma’s cell it didn’t feel like she was abandoning him. She was still here… but she wasn’t there for him. Listening at the door was so you could come in if someone needed you; he needed her and she wasn’t going to him. Listening was selfish.
Twilight downed the last of the water, and moved down the hallway to the outer door, which led to the foyer between Enigma’s cell and his parent’s living space. There was the soft click as the key fit into the door which then blasted open under the weight of burning plasma. The remnants of Twilight’s heat shield activated and shattered, holding just long enough for Twilight to generate a new one. In front of her, Enigma was withering on the ground in the center of his cell, burning like a miniature sun.
Twilight slammed the door.
Was that possible had she been so delirious she’d spun around without even noticing it? Twilight turned, and galloped twenty paces behind her; pushed the door open and stepped into Enigma’s omnipresent cell. The moment she was inside, the door slammed shut behind her, and when Twilight opened it, just seconds later, there was no hallway, there was a blank wall; forged from pure, magic impervious, tylithium.
“Enigma… how are you doing this?”
The room burned, Enimga yelled and Twilight shook. If she had to, she could use the calcium from her horn to fuel her magic, giving herself a final reserve that could preserve her life a little bit longer, maybe twenty minutes, but then that would be it; and even if she did survive, her magic would take weeks to recover, meaning she couldn’t stay with Enigma again for some time.
She had no choice.
Channeling her core energy into her heat shield, Twilight went to Enimga and shook him, trying to make sure he’d focus on her. “Enigma, I know you’re hurting, but if you keep me here, I will die! You have to let me go, or else turn off the flames.”
No response.
“Please, I’m begging you; turn off the flames!”
Enigma stopped yelling; like a switch. One moment he was deafening, and the next he was as quiet as he had almost always been.
The flames got hotter.
Enigma began convulsing uncontrollably on the ground; twisting into the vague figure of a fetal position. Twilight stood back; if she stayed there was a slight chance she could save him. If she ran, there was a slight chance that she could save herself. She was critical to the Manehatten Project, millions of lives depended on it. What if Enigma’s shift in behavior was him re-opening the door for her, but he couldn’t hold it for long?
Hating herself, Twilight galloped for the door and threw it open, hoping for a hallway; but only a blank wall confronted her, as impervious as ever. Twilight pounded on the wall, vainly hoping that it was only and illusion, but her hooves reflected off the metal without leaving a dent.
Now she was angry at Enigma; angry. She’d dropped the most important project of her life, and come here to try and help him, and now he was going to kill her because he either didn’t realize or didn’t care that heat killed things. If she killed him then maybe she could - no she couldn’t think like that, she was going to die, and without the Manehatten Project, so would Equestria in eight years.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?"
Enimga stopped shaking for a moment, and drew one massive breath; and the smoke that covered the ceiling began to shake and then gave way as the middle of the ceiling was pulled down. Metal groaned, as a great whirlpool of Tylithium, half an inch thick, lurched as if pulled by the wait of Enigma’s mind. For a moment, Twilight thought that the spike would impale him, but as it touched the tip of his horn it split open, pulling at least a yard wide. The cement roof that had covered the tylithium topside exploded upwards and outwards; and the full moon, hanging directly above, shone on Enigma in its deathly radiance.
Heat rushed from the room and up the funnel Enigma had created, dropping the temperature rapidly, but not enough to let Twilight live, only prolong her death; and Twilight didn’t have the energy left to teleport up the tunnel and onto the roof of the asylum.
One hope.
Twilight’s saddlebags were withered and cracked from the heat; she snapped off the flaps and inside was a pad of paper and a quill. The paper was fragile at best, and the ink was dry; so Twilight had to suck on the quill every few letters to make it moist enough to write, she was tired, and running out of time; she skipped details, she skipped words, but she wrote what was important.
Dragons had an inherent knack for telefire, needing only a fraction of the energy to send a package that it would take a skilled unicorn, but Twilight still had enough magic left to send one letter and Shining Armor always carried a homing crystal on him, to be used to contact him in emergencies. He also had a port-gem that led to Alkzum and, Luna would also be with him. Between Shining Armor and Luna, they had more than enough power to rescue Twilight.
She tore the unnecessary parchment away from the text to make it easier to send; cast what little magic she could spare into a protection spell over the desperate note and watched it disappear into smoke. If it didn’t reach Shining Armor as more than charred ashes; charred ashes is what Cognastruct and Brace Wits would find in the morning when they opened Enigma’s cell.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Response.
Twilight snatched the heavily protected piece of paper from the air the moment it arrived. It was long but for now, Twilight’s eyes fixated on the first nine words:
Twily
Luna’s been in a coma for three days