The moment she sees the corpse, Actrise curses under her breath.
She pulls off her hat, holding it close to her chest as she draws nearer. The three other witches in the room—silent and beautiful Francesca, normally boisterous blonde Gloria, and Elisha from before—part before her as she kneels beside her fallen servant.
Dorothy’s whole body had been shrunk and dehydrated, now resembling a large, weirdly-shaped rotten vegetable more than a human being. Wisps of grayed hair struggle to cling onto what remains of the head. Her mouth gapes wide in a silent scream, her remaining four teeth sticking niggardly inside a mouth dark as forever.
But it’s the limbs that make this sight even more disturbing: how the rotten flesh goes from brownish-green to purple at the broken joints, how it looks like Dorothy has more elbows and knees than she does fingers and toes.
She’d been laid out on the examining table with the utmost respect, but it all still looks so damning. The lights from the candles spit their yellows and reds, coloring Dorothy with a syrupy orange, emphasizing the dark pits of her eyes and mouth. The stench emitted from the corpse could stain one’s teeth.
There’s a silence in the room, clinging to the dreadful atmosphere with claws that gradually dig too deep. Finally, Gloria clears her throat. “We, uh… found her like this in the alley she was patrolling,” she explains. “The other creatures who were supposed to be patrolling along with her were missing also.”
Actrise sighs as she puts her hat back on and stands up without turning to face her subordinates. “Do any of you know how old Dorothy was?” she asks.
The three witches look at each other. “N-Not really,” Elisha squeaks.
“She had reached the age where she’d be dead were she any normal human,” Actrise answers. “The only thing holding her body and youth together was her magic.”
Finally, she turns around, and there’s a menacing glint in her eyes as her pretty lips part into an ugly scowl. “Had she been attacked by a vampire hunter, her corpse would not be this shriveled or ancient-looking.”
Her eyes drift from her living servants to her dead one. She runs a finger along Dorothy’s arm, tracing where the bones are broken. “Nothing attacked her physically, as there are no cuts or open wounds. And we can surmise these ponies don’t have the ability to just steal magic on this scale…”
Another uncomfortable pause slinks into the room as Actrise grips tight to her staff, drumming fingers across its head as she thinks deeply. Her red eyes twitch rapidly, as if she’s reading words only she can see. The silence doesn’t disturb her three servants as much as the idea that Actrise may have no clue how to handle this new threat.
Finally, Gloria coughs. “So, er, what… what are your orders, Mother?”
Actrise’s eyes stop twitching, snapping their attention on Gloria. Slowly now, she drums the top of her staff one last time before taking a deep breath and taking a few steps forward. “Normally,” she explains, “if it’s a threat to us witches, Death would allow me the privilege to handle it… but…”
She stops. “If my servant is a shrunken husk and the other demons missing without a trace, this can only mean that whatever’s doing this is a much larger threat than we think. It is a threat not just to us witches, but to all Dracula’s children…”
Actrise turns. Walks to Francesca. With an almost mischievous whimsy, Actrise claps a hand on Francesca’s shoulder, causing her to jump, her dark curls wobbling as she blinks her equally dark eyes in surprise. “I must congratulate you, Francesca, on your recent promotion,” Actrise chirps.
“…‘P-Promotion’?” Francesca asks shyly. Elisha and Gloria share puzzled looks.
“A promotion, indeed!” Actrise says with a smile. “You must deliver news of this development to Death—and posthaste!”
Sounds stumble from Francesca’s mouth as, with Actrise’s hand at the small of her back, she is whisked to the door. “I’ll expect you back at my quarters telling me you’ve informed Death within the next two hours, good luck, au revoir!” Actrise says quickly as she pushes Francesca out into the hall.
Francesca turns just as her bumbling tongue begins to form a protest—but the slam from the door silences her. Nervously, she sucks on her bottom lip just before she vanishes in a beam of light, as all witches do when they teleport.
Returning her attention to the inside of the room, Actrise takes a deep breath before walking across the room, her black dress waving like a shadow against a moonlit wall. She stops before the table where Dorothy rests. Elisha and Gloria think to open their mouths or ask questions, but are stopped by a deep growl.
The table is flung aside with an awesome and terrifying force. Dorothy takes flight from the table as Actrise’s growl becomes a shout, her ruined limbs flailing helplessly—the way her arm jerks about midair resembles an awkward wave goodbye—and everything she ever was clatters and breaks on the floor. Dorothy becomes a pile as Actrise screams and screams and screams.
“Merde!” she shouts as she throws her hat to the floor. “Merde, merde, merde! Why is all this happening at once?! Twilight Sparkle, Death’s threat, now THIS?!” Her chest heaves as she leans forward, her head drooping as she leans on the nearby wall. Elisha and Gloria exchange concerned glances.
The two hear a quiet knocking, bringing them both back to Actrise, who taps her knuckles on the wall in contemplation. There’s a look of calm on her face: faraway eyes, pursed lips, steeled chin. “Death will be displeased by this news,” she guesses, her voice a murmur. “But since I am busy with my own task, he’ll have to figure out the solution himself…”
“May I ask what are we to do?” Gloria dares to ask.
“This doesn’t concern us,” Actrise says brusquely as she weaves across the room to the door. “We’ll just let Death handle it. In the meantime, until this threat is vanquished, I advise you all to be careful. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other designs to attend to.”
The door closes with a bang. The two witches glance at each other, then to the corpse.
Everything is—or, more exactly, was—as she remembered. The tapestry is torn and ancient. The bricks in the walls are dressed with moss and filth. The air is dusty and cold, the night outside just as ominous as it is these days. The strange altar and its devices sit alone, once beautiful in ages past but left for generations to rot. And the scene that plays out, as Twilight and Sypha appear, is just as she remembers.
The fight against Nightmare Moon is fierce and noisome, but only gets better once Twilight’s friends arrive. Her heart swells as she hears their voices, becoming comforted finally in this strange and familiar place. It crossed her mind occasionally before, but now it sticks to her like a magnet: she misses the simplicity of the way things were before all this.
Sypha watches as Twilight draws a hoof across her face. Something wet twinkles as it rolls off that same hoof. In a strange moment of sympathy, Sypha reaches out a hand and rests it on the back of Twilight’s head. Long after the memory plays out—after Nightmare Moon is vanquished with the awesome power of friendship and leaves a terrified Luna behind, after Princess Celestia appears before them, after everything is said and done—as everything grows silent, these two visitors remain, as if specters lingering in the quiet scene of death.
Finally, Twilight glances at Sypha. “What,” she asks before the dust chokes her voice and she begins again. “What was that… thing?”
Sypha folds her arms, once again forming a curtain of introversion around her body. “You already know what it is, Twilight,” she answers, softly.
They share the silence, letting realization slowly sink its hooked talons into Twilight’s constantly wheeling mind. How harming it only harmed her instead. The pristine, deceptive beauty of the creature’s angelic form. The amorphous, tenebrous shape of its demonic form. Order, as governed by chaos. Beauty, as governed by filth. Courage, as governed by hatred…
“…It’s…” Twilight gulps as tears threaten her eyes again. “…It’s me… isn’t it? What I am on the inside.”
Sypha answers with a smile. “Hey, don’t take that tone!” she says almost cheerfully. “That kind of thing is part of everyone. Hell, you should have seen Charlotte’s!”
“…You keep saying that word,” Twilight notes curiously.
“Which word?”
“Hell. What does it mean? Is it a homo sapien thing?”
The short pause that follows Twilight’s inquisition makes both feel uncomfortable. Sypha sucks at her bottom lip, glancing away momentarily before she formulates an answer. “Hell is…” She sighs. “Hell is a place. In many human religions, Hell is a place where the wicked are sent to be punished eternally. Some say they are drowned in a lake of fire. Others have even less pleasant revelations, such as punishments unique to each sinner.”
Sypha rolls her head back as if to look at the ceiling. “But I don’t believe any of that. You want my snide, cynical opinion? Hell is a place we build. Our mistakes are its cement, our sins its bricks, our selfishness and despair its bars. It’s our own prison.”
She lowers her head slowly, her intense royal blues scrutinizing Twilight invasively. Sypha glances at one of the windows, then back to Twilight. She cocks her head at the window. Twilight stiffens as she reads Sypha’s wordless command, and against her better judgment trots over to the window.
Hesitantly, Twilight looks out the window. She gasps suddenly as her stomach drops like a bomb, the horror before her just as real now as it was when it first happened. Her eyes grow moist, warping the wide, open eyes—and the silently screaming mouths—and the pile of small, innocent bodies—and—and—
…and…
Twilight weeps into her hoof, her back shuddering with each sob. Tears stream around clenched teeth, a small, hissing whimper escaping her.
It’s a good number of minutes before Twilight clears her tears enough to see properly, and as her vision drops back into place, she’s no longer looking into the hospital’s boiler room, she’s inside it. Had she moved of her own accord? Is there something she wants to see? Something this place wants her to see?
She looks around for Sypha, who is suddenly nowhere in sight—and upon closer inspection, the darkness surrounding the bodies and the machines and the cold floor and the crate used as a table and the strange bottles littering it… the darkness swallows everything else but the crowning image of Twilight’s failure.
But over there. A door. Twilight charges for it, slamming it aside with a shove from a wave of magenta magic. Inside this door…
…is the boiler room, intact with the silently screaming pile of bodies. Their sobbing cries grow louder, more intense.
Inside that door, the same. The sobbing is louder still.
Through this door, more. The sobbing has grown into a sound closer to screams. It’s crashing all around her like waves, pulling her legs into a twist that halts her from escaping—not that escape is even an option anymore.
As her breathing becomes a raspy mess, a flicker of light dances from behind Twilight’s eyes and she blinks. Reopening her eyes changes the pile. One is a cyan pegasus, her mane many colors. Another is pink, with a mane and tail like cotton candy. The blonde mane of another foal drapes over an orange body. The pearl-white body underneath them has a mane as violet as fresh grapes. Another foal’s long pink mane forms an ominous pool under her butter-yellow body. This one, a colt, pure heroic white and comforting blue mane and tail. That one, another filly, pink with hair the color of the ocean at sunset.
And they all scream.
They all blame her.
She can’t save them.
Save them.
Help them…
No windows. No escape. A prison.
A prison.
Twilight’s lungs squeeze and unsqueeze, air bursting in and out in rapid bursts, the coldness in the room suffocating her, crushing her. The wide eyes gaze at her accusingly. The open mouths all scream her name, asking her why she did this to them. Why she would neglect them. Why she let this happen.
“It’s—I’m sorry!” she shrieks, her voice a wobbling mewl. “I’m so, so sorry, I… I…!”
But nothing else exits her mouth, her breath instead whistling out of her nostrils as she backs away, falling to her rump to the cold floor. Their screams are silent and deafening, their anger and sorrow things only she can hear. She flops over onto her side, her legs locking up as she assumes a fetal position, helpless against her own Hell.
Years pass. Years and years and years. A millennium. Thousands become nothing. Everything chokes her. Nothing matters anymore.
Then there’s a voice, suddenly. It’s small, afraid. It draws Twilight. She slowly raises her head as a conversation creeps into the room.
“Where… am I? Where’s Momma???”
It’s answered by another voice. Deceptively sweet. Queenly alto. French accent.
“It’s a special place. No need to fear. Simply keep quiet and have some pudding.”
“Where’s Momma? There were monsters… I… I w-want my momma…” Sniffling.
“No need to cry, child. Come, now, dry your tears. It’s going to be all right.”
More sniffling for several seconds. Twilight listens. Is this seriously a memory? But she wasn’t here when the foals were murdered…
“Come now,” continues the alto. “You must be hungry. Eat this pudding. You’ll feel better.”
More sniffling from the other voice, followed by the sounds of eating.
“Th-Thank you. Lady?”
“Yes?”
“Are you an angel? You look like one.”
“Then I suppose I must be one.”
Silence. More eating.
“Lady? Where’s my momma? Is she okay?”
A giggle from the alto. “Your mother is fine. You’ll be joining her shortly.”
The creeping sense of dread that had been building this whole conversation erupts with sudden shrieks and screams. “Momma!” cries the young voice. “Momma, Momma, no! No! No, please! Please, don’t!”
The screams reach nightmarish levels, fluctuating spastically, warbling and becoming throaty. The fear projected is palpable, plucking at Twilight’s spine with demented fingers. The screaming is suddenly silenced, stifled behind a gag of some kind.
“Shh-shh-shh-sh-sh,” hushes the alto. “Shh, little one, shh.”
As the sounds of struggle and smothered screaming continue, the alto suddenly begins to sing. The words are all in French, a language Twilight, perhaps unwisely, never learned to speak very well. But she recognizes a few of the words… the song sounds soft, speaking of puppies running along meadows and birds singing as the sun sets and how everything will be better tomorrow.
The smothered screaming bubbles down, become quieter and quieter, until finally it is silenced by a sound that stands between choking and vomiting. Near the end of the alto’s song, it becomes more gasping and monstrous, gurgling more and more before finally growing silent.
The alto finishes her lullaby. The murky light that illuminates the machines, the crate, the bottles, the bodies—it too grows silenced, the darkness drawing itself over the scene like a curtain. The wide, accusing eyes of the foals grow greyer under the growing shadows. Their mouths hang slack, gradually filling with the inky nothingness.
“Little one? … Little one?
“…Fascinating.”
Upon that last word, dispensed in a chilling whisper, everything goes black completely, as if the scene itself is suddenly unplugged from sight. Twilight, still curled, still sobbing, rocks herself gently, hoping beyond hope this is all a dream, that she’ll wake up in her warm bed, that the Castle isn’t there, that everything is all right…
Five fingers suddenly, slowly draw across her neck, up to her head, where a palm suddenly rests. “Hey,” says Sypha. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s over. Wake up.”
Twilight pries her eyes open reluctantly. The world around her is warped, bulging shapes that gradually wash and melt into the familiar sight of her library. Unfortunately, it’s apparently after Dirt Nap destroyed it: sunlight spills in from the lack of ceiling, piles of debris and destroyed books in the corners, the walls ashen and annihilated.
Kneeling next to her is Sypha, whose face is shadowed by her hood. The only thing Twilight can make out from where she lies on the floor is a set of pink lips, their corners folded down in a concerned, almost maternal pensiveness.
“Was that…?”
“Hell. Yes, that was Hell.” Sypha sighs, her hand gently stroking Twilight. “I really wish you didn’t have to learn that lesson so soon, but it was necessary to break you in.”
Twilight stands up, suddenly feeling this electricity in her spine. “Break me in?!” she shouts. “Break me in?! Excuse me?! My brother was bitten by a bat and got sick because of it! My friends’ livelihoods have been all but destroyed and their families traumatized! My hometown has been reduced to rubble, and my library—my own house—is—is—this! Look around you! Break me in?! I’ve broken in enough! Haven’t I earned any credit for the things I’ve been put through?!”
“You broke down sobbing because you were faced with the memory of your most haunting failure,” Sypha says sharply. “You were reminded that as much magic as you’ve learned, and are capable of learning, you can’t save everyone. You were reminded of the very real danger everyone you treasure is in, and because you couldn’t stand the thought of your loved ones getting hurt, you broke.”
Silence.
“It isn’t a weakness, you know,” Sypha continues, shaking her head. “I fully expected you to react like that. You’re just like I was when I was your age. Just seeing things in black and white, good guys do good and bad guys do bad, and everybody gets what they deserve based on how they act. But it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.”
“...What are you saying, Sypha?” Twilight asks, her ears drooping.
“The Evil in your heart that chased you earlier,” Sypha reminds her. “That will have to be your tool.”
Somehow, the color drains from the pelt on Twilight’s face. “What?”
“I mean, sometimes, to protect the ones you love, you’re going to have to give your enemies a very good reason not to cross you. You’ll have to show those big, bad monsters you’re not afraid of them, and to do that, you have to be something they fear.”
“So… I need to be something worse than they are?”
Sypha sits down on the floor. The way she does so is odd: her legs criss-crossing in front of her as she rests a hand on either knee. She releases a sigh. “Not necessarily. This kind of hideousness resides in the hearts of all living creatures aware of right and wrong. These bastard beasts that hide in our heads and lurk in our hearts aren’t us... merely, they are part of us. You just have to know how and when to be the monster.”
Twilight looks up and meets Sypha’s intense royal blue eyes. “There is no such thing as being pure of heart,” Sypha continues. “If you’re totally absorbed by that thought, the realization that you can become just as evil as the monsters you fight can crush you. You need to be at peace with your evils. You need to accept that the are part of who you are. You need to use them before they start to use you.”
There’s another long silence. Twilight, now casting her eyes away from her new mentor, gulps as she formulates her next sentence. “But I don’t understand. How can the heroes be evil?”
“Quite easily, if they’re careless.”
It’s the sadness in Sypha’s voice that catches Twilight off-guard.
“You’ve made your mistakes in the past, Twilight. I don’t doubt that. And I don’t doubt they’ve damaged your friendships, even if only slightly. But the world you live in now is no longer the world you grew up in. It will never be so, ever again. You must now adapt. You must learn not to make the kinds of mistakes that ruin champions and topple kingdoms. Sometimes, to do the right thing, you have to be the bad guy.”
The two sit in the destroyed Library for a moment or so, silent. Twilight leans against the wall, the tiredness evident in her eyes. Everything inside her aches. “You know,” she says, “I thought all I needed was my friends, maybe some stronger magic. But this is just… I dunno. It’s a lot for me to take in.”
“Trust me on this,” Sypha says, putting her hand over Twilight’s hoof tenderly and giving it a squeeze. “If they’re your friends, and if you’re all as close as you imply, they’ll understand. You have to do what you have to do.”
Twilight looks down at Sypha’s hand. Curiously, it never crossed her mind before, but the idea of a hand, however grotesque, is novel. Like a branch of tiny pony legs with tiny, pillow-soft hooves at the tips. Strange to observe, but altogether inviting to the touch. She looks to Sypha and smiles. “Thanks.”
Sypha nods.
There’s small chatter in the room with them. Spike and Twilight. When did this happen?
Twilight inhales a small gasp and remembers fully this unfolding scene. She hears her own voice snapping at Spike the moment he asks about…
…the moment he asks about what she found in the boiler room.
Unwittingly, Spike had reintroduced her to Hell.
The snapping jolt Twilight had given Spike spiraled into a furious lecture. Slowly, Twilight remembers how Spike curled almost defensively away from her as she grew angrier. The fear in his young eyes that moment…
She hears Spike mumble something—even now not remembering what his rebuttal was—and the shuffling of his little claws, and the silence that follows, and the chanting of the magic words, and the whining sound the Blank Book made as it drew Twilight inside its pages.
Twilight deflates with a sigh. Not one of her proudest achievements.
“Hey, don’t worry about that either,” Sypha warns. “Every mother scolds her children at some point.”
The way Twilight’s face contorts clownishly could amuse even the most stone-faced man. “Wha—! I-I’m not his—he’s not my son!”
Sypha retorts with nothing more than a knowing smile.
“…But… But I still think I should go back to him,” Twilight adds. “I-I’m getting kind of antsy about leaving my friends alone for too long, to tell the truth.”
Sypha nods. “Understandable. I don’t want to overwhelm you in our first session anyways.”
Twilight’s lips pull to one side, unamused. Attacking her outright? Siccing her own inner evils on her? Throwing her into Hell? Yeah, sure, let’s not overwhelm the poor girl on her first lesson. Let’s go easy on her. In either case, Twilight wisely elects not to voice those thoughts. “So,” she says instead, “uh, how do I go home?”
Sypha stands up from where she sits, her knees suddenly popping during this action. She points to a nearby table, upon which lies the Blank Book itself. “You can leave this place the same way you got in here.”
Twilight stares at it, almost stupidly. Something tumbles from her lips, though if it’s a question it dies on the way out. The meta level of this revelation is staggering. Somehow, she shakes herself out of her daze. “A-All right. But I can just jump right back in anytime, right?”
Sypha nods. “Sure. And while you go do what you do best…”
Sypha leans against a wall. She makes a shape with her thumbs and index fingers, shaping them into a pair of o’s before pressing all four fingers together. Pulling them apart reveals a long, brown object that begins as a thin line, then fattens into a cigar the further away from each other her fingers get.
Sypha puts the cigar into her mouth with one hand, and with the other, she snaps her fingers. A flame dances on her thumb as she brings it up to the end of the cigar and begins to puff. As she releases a plume of smoke from her mouth, Sypha smiles at Twilight, her eyebrows rising and lowering at a mischievous pace as she keeps the cigar positioned between her teeth. Even though she stands a good seven feet away, Twilight can smell the “old raisins” scent of the smoke.
“…I’ll just kick back and enjoy the scenery. Maybe I’ll learn something about your world.”
There’s a million things wrong with this picture—indeed, with this entire situation—that Twilight could name, but wisely doesn’t. The exit to this mad wonderland is right there, pointed out to her, and by Celestia, she’s going to take it.
“Be careful with that lightning hammer spell,” Sypha says as Twilight trots over to the Blank Book, another cloud of cigar smoke billowing from her mouth.
The high-pitched sound the Blank Book makes as Twilight opens it and is sucked in, to her, is the sound of freedom.