Twilight felt as though she were floating. Floating... upside-down. She had absolutely no sense of direction in this senseless abandon, nor could she feel the ground beneath her hooves. However, her head felt extremely flushed as if gravity was taking hold, which led her to believe she was upside down. She could feel herself gliding forward, pulled by some unknown force, and she trembled from the unbearable cold that enveloped her body entirely.
True to her scientific mind, her thoughts were a jumbled mess of possible explanations and questions as she struggled to remember the nightmare she had just woken from...
Furthermore, she couldn't remember having ever fallen to sleep at all...
That's when the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. She hadn't fallen to sleep. With that fact established there was another question yet to be answered; where exactly was she?
She remembered the crimson-red sky, dotted with clouds of black smoke that billowed out from somewhere. She remembered her friends, her brother... Cadance... with a terrifying grin, a shadowy figure approached... then, there was fighting, though she could scarcely recall the details, and... Rainbow Dash...
Twilight swore she could feel her heart stop beating. Suddenly everything made so much sense, including the disorientation she'd been feeling.
She was in the Crystal Empire. Her loss of consciousness had been caused by extreme stress on her magic reserves. She prayed her friends had escaped. They had escaped... right? She had sacrificed herself, letting them escape and staying behind alone with...
Sombra...
A sinister voice invaded her mind, creeping into the most private recesses of her thoughts and taking hold like sick tendrils. It filled her head with the cruel laughter of her captor. She could only describe it as the voice of darkness itself, and it chilled her heart.
"Oh my, did somepony have a bad dream?" the darkness mocked. It felt so wrong for it to be speaking directly to her mind like this. "Well, I'm afraid it wasn't a dream, my dear. Open your eyes."
She refused to comply. Her studious mind was already reeling with so many more unanswered questions. She struggled to find the answers to them, including the identity of this vile voice. It sounded eerily familiar... Hoping to feign unconsciousness, she still refused to open her eyes and face this voice head on.
"Don't bother playing dead with me. So long as you are under the effects of my magic, I can read your every thought. Now, open your eyes."
Despair flooded her bosom, causing an intense wave of nausea. She knew the spell. She'd used it once on her own friends. She was helplessly motionless, trapped in the magical grasp of some...thing. Had she been captured?
"I said... open. Your. Eyes," the voice growled.
She felt herself stop moving forward, and a chill went up her spine as some immaterial force gripped her eyelids.
"You will obey me, or I will make sure you can never close them again." The darkness was growing ever more impatient with her, and she dared not call its bluff.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Rather than the blinding light she had expected, she was met with a dimly lit corridor of grey crystals that had long since lost their shine, giving them the appearance of common stone. Blood-red flames poured out of black sconces on the walls, providing an eerie light.
Possibly before the room itself, she noticed the aura around her, a hardly-visible black and red stream. Just seeing it caused a foreboding chill to course through her veins.
"Good. Now look at me." The stern voice was no longer in her head; it was right next to her right ear.
Twilight felt every muscle in her body tense up. Under normal circumstances, she recognized the voice all too well. She didn't want to believe he was there. She wanted to believe she was still dreaming, or that it was all some cruel joke... She could deny it all she wanted, but the lord of darkness would still come.
She struggled against the iron grip of the magic which surrounded her. She aimed to turn her head away from the voice; she aimed to be defiant.
Her struggle was in vain.
An involuntary gasp of horror escaped her lips as she came face to face with the stallion of her nightmares, the stallion which took all her might head on and still came out on top. There was the face of King Sombra, so close she could feel his breath wash over her muzzle. Her field of vision was nearly filled completely by those captivating eyes. How menacing they were, red irises set upon green sclera and pupils that held no reflection. Instead, they seemed they could trap the soul of any whom gazed into their darkness.
She let out a piercing scream, shutting tight her eyes to avoid Sombra's gaze. In a terrified frenzy, she attempted to shoot a burst of magic at her captor, but it had hardly left her horn before it was met with the dark aura enveloping her form and came back at her in full force. At such a close range, she had released enough concentrated magic to possibly kill smaller animals. As her world went black, her heart was once more gripped by despair.
_____________________________________
Just as before, Twilight returned to the living world within a disorienting darkness. The only difference she could ascertain from this experience and the last was that she no longer felt the ominous sensation of floating, held in mid air by Sombra's dark magic. However, it was apparent she was still upside-down. Her head throbbed with the stinging pain that accompanied several hours of being held with her head closest to the ground. The sensation was nigh unbearable.
Still shutting her eyes to the terrible reality of her situation, she felt herself being held to some cold, hard object she dared not guess the identity of by her rear legs. At least that explained why she was still upside-down.
She waited. With the throbbing of her head ticking the time away like a silent metronome, she awaited the cruel laughter of the dark lord. She anticipated his sickly hot breath upon her muzzle. All that greeted her was a dead silence that terrified her far more than anything else.
After what she assumed to be several minutes, Twilight declared she was alone and it was safe to open her eyes. Tentatively, she did just that.
I'm awfully close to the ceiling... oh, right. Upside-down, she thought. Apparently the blood rushing to her head for so long had muddled her thought process.
Twilight took note that she was in the back-left corner of some sort of cell. There was a window near the ceiling to her right. Her position in the opposite corner, gave her a view of the still-crimson sky, but she had to strain to see it. She assumed night hadn't fallen yet... or that she had already slept the night away. The wall opposite her had a metal door with a slat cut out. It had metal bars there to protect any viewers and prevent her escape. She found the entire thing to be a bit redundant considering the rest of the cell wall was composed completely of said bars.
Celestia had always taught her not to panic in such situations. She'd warned Twilight that it took a level head to get out unscathed, and so she took a deep breath, letting it out shakily. She would have to work on the whole "not panicking" thing. Still, one by one she began to recall the events leading up to her current predicament and put them in the proper order. To any normal pony, this would be considered a timeline of sorts, but this was no ordinary pony. This was Twilight Sparkle, and Twilight Sparkle had extraordinary anxiety issues. No, to Twilight this was no timeline. This was a checklist of events which needed to occur to create the exact situation she found herself in. That was much better. It was organization, and nothing calmed her down like organization.
Okay, Sombra cornered us... she thought.
I told Rainbow and Fluttershy to fly the others to safety...
Shining and I fought him...
Shining was... injured... She involuntarily gulped as she recalled the details of such injury and what it had taken just to stabilize the wound. Shaking her head, she moved on to the next event.
I was exhausted... got low on magic...
Uh... what happened next? Oh! I used the rest of my magic on Sombra... She shuddered. I never want to be that angry again....
But he got back up... again. Twilight's exasperation was clear, even in her thoughts.
Everyone else was over the wall except me and Shiny...
I tossed him at Rainbow Dash...
Then... I was... in a hallway? I must have blacked out, because I can't remember anything else in between...
But then... that voice...
I can't remember anything after that except...
Sombra's face.
Relinquished from Sombra's dark magic, the cold aura that had once enveloped her was long gone, but that didn't keep a chill from travelling down (or up) her spine at the mere thought of that vile creature's face.
Her only companion was still the maddening silence that permeated the air like a thick fog. There was no way she could calm down as she was. She needed to hear something. With the blood rushing to her brain, it took three head throbs to remember that she too could make noise. Had she the energy, she would have smacked herself for not thinking of it sooner. She began to think out loud, talking to herself.
"I'm a prisoner here... in the Crystal Empire. Oh Celestia, I'm so sorry... I failed..." Twilight whimpered. "The others got out. My friends are all okay, but how many others could have died from my failure? Why couldn't I just let Spike take the Crystal Heart? I may have failed your test, but at least these lives could have been spared! Now Sombra controls everything here... Maybe he's already enslaved the Crystal Ponies again...
Maybe some of them will fight back?" she asked, mostly to herself. "The festival almost made them normal again..." Twilight tried to hold on to that last glimmer of hope, but it was shattered when she remembered the Heart.
Sombra had full control of the Crystal Heart and, by extension, the Crystal Ponies. She remembered how the Heart had turned jet black, a crack forming down the middle with a murky green light leaking out.
With the last of her hope extinguished, Twilight gave in to the feeling of despair she'd become so accustomed to. With hope out of the question and having already assessed the room, as well as categorize the day's events, Twilight was at a loss for what to do next to pass the time and distract her from the terrible silence which once more threatened to take hold. Having refused to do so before, she decided to look at her rear legs and the apparatus which held them, but she had to strain and bend her midsection to get a clear look. She let out a low growl and held in her breath, clearly struggling to hold her body in that position.
Her hooves were being held in place to the crystal wall by metal clamps, but as far as Twilight could tell, there was no release mechanism to speak of. In fact, she wondered how Sombra had managed to apply the clamps in the first place. They were clearly fixated to the wall. Her frustration from being perplexed by such a device allowed her to ignore the pain they caused as they bit into the flesh of her fetlocks. They were fighting against gravity to hold her suspended in place.
With an irritated huff, Twilight allowed herself to flop down into position, but her head spun as all the blood came rushing to her head once more. "Great," she grumbled, "Now this is really going to bother me. How in Celestia's name did he get me in clamps that can't open?"
Twilight began to think of alternative means to escape captivity. It was now apparent there were no locks to pick, not that she knew how to pick a lock anyway. She'd read a book on it once, but many times over her friends had reminded her that without hooves-on practice, knowledge of such things had no real practical use.
Magic was out of the question as well. The heightened blood pressure in her head made casting spells of any sort dangerous, most likely the reason she was still upside-down at all. Even a juvenile spell could cause a burst blood vessel, an aneurism, or even a minor stroke. A spell like teleportation could do much, much worse.
She once read an article on an incident surrounding an unfortunate Unicorn submariner. His one-pony submersible had undergone a complication, and the hull was breached, forcing him to swim to the surface. He didn't think he would make it, so he attempted to cast a water-breathing spell. The immense water pressure, which should have killed him anyway, combined with the struggle of casting the spell, caused his horn to explode.
Surprisingly, the stallion survived, even receiving a timely horn transplant. Interestingly enough, there are quite a few donations of horns each year, either from the elderly or young adults who discover they're "Earth ponies in Unicorn bodies." To this day, the submariner lives his life with a horn of a different color than his coat.
Twilight tried to imagine herself walking around with an orange horn, or maybe a blue one before deciding this juvenile train of thought was produced by the increased cranial pressure she was experiencing. This was a serious situation, and so she shook her head in an attempt to dismiss the thought all together. It wasn't a well thought out plan, and thus it was one she immediately regretted. Her stomach rolled over in a fit of nausea as the room spun around her.
When the world was finally still once more, she raised her front legs to rub her horn. She was met with a jingling sound.
Only now did she realize that her front legs were bound together by a primitive iron cuff, which had a chain leading off of it and into the wall directly to the left of her. The cuff itself only had one opening, occupied by her own hooves. The other end was closed off, preventing her from even seeing her hooves.
Twilight heaved out a defeated sigh. There was no way she was getting out of here.
"I can only hope the others don't forget me h- AHH!"
One of the clamps on her rear legs suddenly released with a shhhink, causing her head to nearly touch the ground as she dangled uncomfortably. She quickly moved her forelegs toward her torso. The last thing she wanted was to land on her back with them underneath.
When the second clamp released, her forelegs did little to slow her down. She hit the stone head first with nothing to cushion the impact of her skull on the hard floor, as if it didn't hurt enough already. Fortunately, the first fall to her head did help cushion the impact when her back inevitably hit the floor.
Though the pressure in her head was at long last released, the pain from the fall was much worse. She ascertained that she'd hit her horn first and feared a fracture. The room spun even more than it had before as she lay motionless on the ground. Even in freedom, she was helpless to escape.
When she finally felt like she could move without vomiting, she rose shakily to her hooves before sitting awkwardly on her haunches in the corner of her cell. She had prevented her forelegs from being trapped beneath her, but she didn't quite think it was in her to keep them from buckling under her weight, especially with her front hooves bound together. She wasn't a gambling mare, so she decided she'd quit while she was ahead. At least she'd answered the riddle of the cuffs. They slid in and out of the wall, most likely controlled remotely.
The pain in her skull and horn was sharp, and it caused her to take in a sharp breath as the reality set in. A quick magical scan showed nothing but a tiny scratch on the surface of the bone, but the warm feeling slowly running down her forehead told her otherwise. The damage was still serious. No matter how minor, cuts above the eyes bled profusely. In fact, she had to close her right eye as the blood trickled over it on its way down her muzzle and to the floor.
Twilight tensed. Her respirations grew rapid as a foreboding feeling shot ice through her veins. She could feel a presence approaching from the hall. Something was very wrong, and her supposed savior may not have been all that it seemed.
True to the feeling, a black mist flowed into the hall outside her cell. Passing through the bars with ease, it slinked across the floor, growing more opaque the closer it became until it came to a stop in the center of her cell. Following a sinister Cheshire grin, two glowing green eyes formed from the mist, indigo flames flowing from the outer edges with an ethereal force.
The name barely escaped Twilight's dry lips. "S-Sombra..."
_____________________________________
Train to Canterlot
Nopony dared say a word as the Friendship Express raced down the tracks toward Canterlot. The only sound to break the uncomfortable silence was the chugging of the engine and grinding of metal wheels upon the tracks. The air between the group hung heavy with the guilt and hopelessness they all felt at having to leave the fate of their friend in the hooves of such a monster as the Dark King Sombra.
They could all feel some small amount of solice in the fact that their adventure in the Crystal Empire wasn't all for naught. They had managed to stall Sombra long enough for a small group of Crystal Ponies to escape before the obelisks of obsidian jutted from the ground like a great, jagged wall around the entirety of the empire.
Among them were even some Pegasi whom had managed to fly over the wall just after it had risen; however, it had been near seconds after that they all came hurtling to the ground, each of them finding their wings completely inoperable. Some of the weaker of the group found difficulty even lifting a feather from their sides. No matter how hard the Pegasi tried, the magic fought harder against them. Everypony thought it safe to assume that this was some sort of curse cast upon them by Sombra, and the same affliction had prevented the majority of ponies from escaping his reign.
In fact, it was bittersweet at best just how few managed to escape. Spreading out amongst themselves as they each felt comfortable, the entire group of refugees hardly filled the two train cars they occupied.
Meanwhile, Twilight's friends sat in their very own car at the back of the train, thinking it best to segregate themselves from the Crystal ponies in such a time of mourning for the group. They wished not to sully the freedom the others surely reveled in as they stewed in their dismal silence.
Cadance had long since passed out from exhaustion, and had curled up with Shining Armor. The latter had recently stirred awake. His wife had been quick to find a capable doctor aboard one of the train cars, and despite her frantic cries, what had once been serious, life-threatening wounds were quickly patched up to perfection. Still, the pain was clear on his face as he stroked his tired wife's mane. Rarity could hardly blame Cadance for passing out under such circumstances; after all, it was she who had solely powered the barrier which had kept Sombra's dark magic at bay for as long as it had! Still, as she stared absently across the booth at the couple, she couldn't help but harbor feelings of frustration that Cadance could look so peaceful in her sleep after such a situation while the rest of them suffered endlessly for the mistakes made. Where Rarity saw a peaceful sleeper, Shining Armor saw his exhausted wife up close. He could see this for what it was. Her gaunt, emaciated features were all too apparent to him upon her typically youthful appearance.
Thoughts of those poor souls they were forced to leave behind, Twilight included, weighed heavily upon the minds of the others as well, and they each expressed their sorrowful concern in their own ways. Pinkie's rather buoyant hair had lost its volume and luster, and it sat flat upon her head as she stared wide-eyed and whimpering out the back window as if she'd just seen the end of existence itself. Meanwhile, Fluttershy and Applejack had huddled close to Rarity, holding each other for support as Rarity clung to Spike with a foreleg. With the exception of Rarity, they all had shut their eyes tight, as if refusing to see the reality around them; however sleep eluded each of them. Whilst Rarity could hardly decipher a word or name every so often, Spike was muttering incessantly under his breath; she decided that was a huge improvement over his tormented screams from earlier, though just as unsettling. From her other side, she could hear whimpering, and though it was hard to tell which mare it spawned from, she assumed it was Fluttershy crying, but only faintly audible.
Surprisingly enough, it seemed Rainbow Dash was taking this the hardest of all of them. None in attendance had seen her so thoroughly distraught before. She sat across from her friends, on the opposite end of the booth from Shining and Cadance (because there were way too many ponies on that booth to fit). With her head in her hooves, Dash stared straight to the floorboards of the train car, going over the past events in her head, over and over. This went on for some time before she raised her head just enough to stare longingly out the window. She watched as the Crystal Empire, Twilight's prison camp, slowly faded out of sight until even her Pegasus magic wouldn't allow her to see those looming towers of black any longer. Soon, even the peak of the castle, the last bit of purity in the sea of corruption, was obscured.
Worse still, the skies above them were still a crimson red.
The silence lasted for what seemed to the passengers to be an eternity, though the clock overhead informed anyone with the will to glance at it only about thirty minutes had passed. It was broken by a light sob. Silence once more until two more sobs broke out, growing louder than before. Two more lonely sobs broke out, growing into a crescendo before the crying was steady and violently despondent.
Expecting to find the yellow mare the culprit, everypony looked to Fluttershy in order to confirm their suspicions. They were all surprised to see that her tears had dried long ago, and she too was caught off guard by these sobs.
As they glanced around, each of them came to the same, shocking conclusion: it was Rainbow Dash. Sitting there in her own solitary corner of the booth, Rainbow was sobbing uncontrollably. After the initial shock, Fluttershy gently pried herself away from Applejack and half crawled her way to Rainbow's side. She held out her hooves, and Rainbow greedily accepted the embrace, her cries muffled as she soaked Fluttershy's shoulder.
Concerned for her typically stoic friend as well, Applejack was the next to come to Rainbow's aid. She gently rubbed Rainbow's cyan shoulders with a caring hoof as she attempted to console her friend. "There, there, Sugarcube. It's alright now, y'hear? It's all gonna' be alright. We'll tell the Princess' what happened, and they'll come with us ta' put that nasty ol' Sombra back in the dirt where he belongs," she explained. Seeing her words had little to no effect, she frowned harder, her brow furrowing as she attempted to think up more reassuring things to say.
Rarity interjected before she could put any to use. Taking a shaky breath, she asked, "Whatever is the matter, Darling. I mean, don't get me wrong; we're all distraught over this, but none of us are reacting quite like... well, this."
Rainbow sniffled, her breath hitched several times as she tried slowing her sobs enough to get a sentence out in reply. After a moment, she managed to breathe out, "T...Twilight... I-I-I couldn't help her..." Her sobs continued on, seemingly unaffected by their brief interruption.
The others frowned hard and looked away as they understood just what Rainbow was so beat up over. Rainbow had been there. She had the option to save Twilight, to ignore the Unicorn's pleas to flee. Instead, she had flown away, racing off with Shining Armor on her back and leaving her friend behind to face evil alone. Of course Rainbow Dash would feel the blame rested exclusively upon her shoulders.
Even though they all understood why, Rainbow Dash never cried like this. If somepony so strong could be reduced to tears like this, how could they hope to hold on? Had they any chance of retrieving their friend, much less liberating an entire country from a mad king? Though they had each jumped to the same conclusion about what Rainbow had meant by her words, not one of them could have denied that they felt there was more than could be perceived at the surface.
None of them had any idea how much Rainbow had lost to Sombra, because none of them could have had any idea at the time how Rainbow truly felt about Twilight.