I can't move.
I can't speak.
I can't do anything really, save for summon up the strength to eat a meal every once in a while. Even then its always the same thing. Some soup and a little bread. I can't seem to keep down anything else, and even this I barely stop myself from vomiting up.
Everyday I do the same thing.
I sit in my cell, but I'm not alone. In here with me are Celestia, Cadence, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and countless others who I don't recognize, yet understand what fate brought them here.
I killed them. I killed every last one of them. I killed them all without even a second thought, without hesitation, and without remorse. I had cut, burned, crushed and impaled them, all with the same care and effort that one gives to crushing an insect. I had likened some of my best friends in the world, with whom I had shared numerous stories and adventures, to insects to be squashed.
What sort of monster was I?
"Hello? Hello Hello Hellooooo? Is this thing on? Anypony there?"
"I'm certain she can hear you loud and clear darling."
I could hear their voices. Voices I recognized, and had once silenced.
"Twilight... Why?"
"C'mon sugarcube. Talk to us. Why did ya do whatcha did?"
"You're wasting your time. She hasn't opened her mouth for like, two weeks now. She's probably just ignoring us."
"I dunno how she can ignore us! I mean I've been talking nonstop for almost three days straight! I could always try to go for four days? How about that? Four days sound good to everypony?"
"Please Twilight. You were my student once. Can you write a letter perhaps? If you won't speak, perhaps writing things down would be easier."
I tried to cover my ears with my hooves to keep out their voices, but to no avail. They rattled around in my head, burying themselves deep into my brain and digging up horrid, bloody images of what I had done. Rainbow Dash slumped in a pool of blood. Rarity with a metal pole stuck through her torso. Pinkie Pie's battered and broken face, still trying to smile defiantly at me.
She had been one of my best friends, and I beat her with my bare hooves until I could scarcely recognize her face.
"Please talk to us Twi. I'm your sister in law for crying out loud! You're not going to feel any better if you don't talk about it."
"C'mon just talk already!"
"I'm here to listen i-if you need me."
"Please Twi? We're just askin' for an answer here."
"I'm gonna keep on talking until you do Twilight!"
Celestia's corpse, fresh and pocked with shards of glass flashed through my vision, followed swiftly by my blade descending and severing Cadence's head. Fluttershy and Applejack lay in a heap of charred, blackened flesh. My nostrils could still smell that room. The faint metallic odor of dried blood, the overwhelming stench of decay, and undertones of smoke and burnt hair practically choked me as I grit my teeth, trying to fight back the urge to vomit.
More sounds, other than the clamor of voices soon assailed my ears. I could hear screams, both of the ponies I knew and those I didn't. I could hear the ghastly popping and bubbling of flesh set ablaze, as well as the soft burst that accompanied the explosion of their eyes. I heard the cracking and splintering sounds of bones snapping. I could hear the tearing of flesh and the gurgling of blood in the throat. I could hear the coughs and gasps of dying ponies, struggling to fill their lungs to no avail.
I heard my own words echoed back to me.
"You are nothing to me. You never were."
"You're trying to kill me. You're no friend of mine, traitor."
"Why are you smiling?"
"I am magic!"
I closed my eyes tight, but visions of the blood I had split still haunted me. Ponies crushed beneath rubble, ponies choking to death on smoke, and ponies wailing over the death of their loved ones flashed endlessly through my eyes. I tucked my head low, trying in vain to avoid the memories, yet they persisted nonetheless. I saw the sun and moon whipping through the heavens on courses I had sent them upon. I saw myself, eyes ablaze and wings extended, silhouetted against the bright corona of the sun. Something deep within me knew that I was... wrong somehow. Something deep within my gut instinctively feared what I saw, despite it being my past self. I began to sweat, to thrash, to scream, all in vain as the vision of myself overtook me.
I was beautiful, yet terrible.
I was an abomination. A freak of nature. A disgusting blight on a reality that could scarcely contain me. It was terrifying to look at, and my body began to quake with fear. I wasn't a goddess. I was an atrocity.
Harmony had forced my eyes to see myself as I really was, a loathesome, terrifying being who had brought nothing but pain, death and misery upon the world she sought to reform. In the same way, it forced me to relive my actions, over and over again day in and day out, the sensation feeling as though I was right there in the moment once more.
It made me sick.
I fell to my knees, retching up the contents of my stomach onto the floor of my cell.
And I knew tomorrow and for every day that followed, I'd do this same thing.