***
When Twilight awoke she thought she must still be in the middle a nightmare. A pair of translucent turquoise eyes hung above her, reflecting the pale moonlight. All around were curling shadows and cruel claws of rock, which only served to solidify the impression that she was still spiraling through some twisted dream.
To Twilight, ever since she’d made her escape from Canterlot four nights ago, dreams and reality had become horrifically indistinguishable, and each night it seemed like some new horror emerged. The first night it was a pack of timberwolves in the woods, howling outside her camp. That was enough to put her on edge for the second night, where the obscured snapping of twigs completed the chilling picture she’d already had stewing in her brain; of something huge and hungry crashing around through the trees. The third night it had just been the wind howling through the empty mountains, but by then her fragile psyche was already in shambles.
She lay now in the midst of the wastes that clamored up to Equestria’s eastern border, a barren landscape shredded with craggy peaks and dark, yawning gorges too deep for the eye to measure. She felt completely and utterly alone, and every throaty gust of wind that howled through the mountains reminded her of this, and the waking nightmare her life had become. But the nightmares had started long before her journey began.
She had been awoken by a rustling sound, and while it may have been a very pathetic sound, it was enough for her hair-trigger ears to pick up. She looked up, saw the cold, sparkling eyes, and nearly screamed.
The taste of blood hit her tongue as her teeth dug into her lips. Whatever the cold-eyed thing was, she could feel it sitting on her chest. It wasn’t heavy, but it squirmed as if trying to crawl inside her. She dared not move a muscle. She wasn’t yet sure if the creature knew she was alive.
The eyes disappeared. They reappeared within the same moment. Then they blinked again, the lids closing horizontally, leaving two vertical slits for the briefest and most horrifying tick of a semi-heartbeat.
In Twilight’s mind there brewed a furious blizzard of ideas. Should she remain still and hope it didn’t see her? Should she blast it in the face with a spell? Should she attempt to teleport herself away, and pray she didn’t accidentally take any of the beast with her? She narrowed down her options. Teleportation looked like the way to go.
Her horn glowed as she readied the spell. In that moment the purple light of her spell illuminated the grotesque features of the creature’s horrible face:
A honed, black muzzle,
Glistening white fangs,
It was the same in all her nightmares.
There was a thunderous crack and an electrifying bubble of light, then Twilight was sucked through space—right into a cluster of jagged rocks about fifteen feet away. She felt numbness, a warm buzzing sensation, and a tangy copper scent filled her nostrils. She started to jump away, but couldn’t due to the sinister spike of rock that had materialized directly through her leg. That was when she finally let go of her lip and let out a shrill scream into the cold depths of the night.
Sleep-casting had been one of Twilight’s worst habits when she was a filly. She’d gotten over it now that she was grown up and didn’t have five reports to complete for Classical Equestrian History, or six exams to study for the following day. That’s not to say she didn’t have relapses from time to time, if ever her princess duties or fervent study over a new spell kept her up late. And tonight, with a perfect combination of fatigue and nighttime delirium, she managed to do something she never would have done with her wits about her: blind teleportation.
She slowly slid her leg off the stone, reeling as the pain seeped through her nerves and into every crevice of her skull. She screamed as her tendons scraped and tore themselves against the stone. She gritted her teeth, focusing all her will into the singular task of freeing her leg before she passed out.
There was a dreadful sucking sound followed by a pop, then her leg came free. Tears and sweat streamed down her cheeks. She dragged herself and her bleeding leg out of the stones, back beneath the ledge of rock where she’d been sleeping. She collapsed on her bedroll, watching bright throbbing red spots make her vision go blurry.
Two turquoise eyes appeared above her face.
“Please, just end it quickly,” thought Twilight. She shut her eyes tightly, bracing for the flash of fangs and the darkness to follow.
The creature didn’t screech or go right for Twilight’s throat, in fact it did almost precisely opposite of those things. Twilight felt the creature step down from her chest and press its tiny body against her side.
“Mama!” it squeaked, just as it did her nightmares.
Twilight’s breaths came in tight, panicked gasps. Her heart thudded like a sledgehammer against her ribcage. Thick, warm blood spilled from the open gash in her leg, making the air smell foul and salty. She reached down to her leg, doing her best to ignore every scalding, screaming nerve in her body that told her not to. The moment her hoof touched the wound, she recoiled, moaning as fresh waves of agony took their sweet time to subside.
That wasn’t going to work at all. There was only one thing she could do, and she really didn’t want to do it. If she didn’t act soon she would bleed out. She pinched up her face and ground her teeth together, preparing to cast a spell.
She took a deep, shaking breath. The light from her horn wavered, swelled, then burst like a firework. Her entire body erupted with a million jolts of electrified needles. Twilight didn’t know if the tremendous roar she heard was an effect of the regeneration spell or her own eardrums exploding from the blood that suddenly rushed into them. Or her own screaming.
The last thing she heard was the creature against her side, frightened and crying out: “Mama!” Twilight’s fading thoughts echoed into the blackness that consumed her.
“I’m not your mama!”