Twilight's Descension

by Harmonic Scrible

Chapter Two

Author's Note:

Hoping you are enjoying the story, just a little bit more to go!
Again all rights are reserved to the proper owners!

At the top of the ladder there was a wide opening leading to a narrow tunnel. The tunnel itself was barely big enough for a fully grown pony to maneuver through. As the mare got out her lantern, she started her way into the residing darkness. All seemed calm, for about thirty seconds into this exploration. She crawled up to a T-junction, the dust in the air clouding her vision so she couldn't even see any light coming from the room behind her.

She suddenly felt like something was following her through the tunnel, a growing sense of paranoia and fear bubbling up inside her. She could hear the low growls and other calls of the creature that she thought she left behind slowly coming closer to her. "Please come back…" the eerie voice called out to her. The blood drained from her face, and she began to panic. Frantically, she started crawling as fast as she could through the left side of the T-junction. She came up to another one and chose the left on a whim, leading directly to a dead end. The fear of the pursuing creature was flooding her mind leaving her with only one thought; Escape.

She quickly retraced her steps and went down the tunnel that she didn't go down before. As she got to the end of it there was a 15 foot drop into another hallway. Due to her fear, she disregarded the height and the potential harm it could cause her to fall from that high up. She dropped down, twisting her right fetlock and crumpling into a pile on the floor. Quickly regaining her senses, she started to stand back up wincing at the pain in her fetlock. She could no longer hear the voice of the creature and her paranoia started to fade, the colour returned to her face and the adrenalin started to dissipate. She took in her surroundings; a hallway leading two directions, one rounded at a corner and the other one beheld another gramophone and a wall of debris. Seeing only the two options, she went over to the musical device and cranked it. No sound came forth from the device. She cranked it again, and had the same result. She checked it and noticed there wasn't a wax cylinder, which is used to record and produce the sounds the gramophones make.

Thinking irritably to herself "Well that's pretty useless…" she turned on the gramophone and started hobbling down the hallway to the other path. Around the corner, there was a door to the right of her, a stairway ahead of her and a barricaded door to her right. In addition to the new path to the left, there was a trail of blood leading under the door. The right path blocked she turned to the other door with the bloody trail following.

Reluctantly, she opened the heavy wooden door. Behind it was a room filled with torturous equipment. Two tables lined the left wall covered in various implements of torture and pictures of former… prisoners getting assaulted with various tools of mutilation and desecration. There was a stretcher in the middle of the room and a lit fire pit, with branding irons glowing red with heat at the back of the room. Underneath the stretcher was a pool of dried blood and some smears beside the pool. On the right of the room, at the back was a small table with some candles, and finally another gramophone.

Again with reluctance, the mare cranked the newest gramophone. "Congratulations for making it this far," The voice complimented, "I am so excited for you. I do hope you managed to save our friend Applejack. She's quite honestly is the most reliable pony I have come to know. A friendly foal, and a fairly strong pony, but frail of mind. She puts up an impressive front, but it's all an act, I assure. Please go on, we are only getting started."

After the gramophone stopped producing noise, the mare turned her attention to the rest of the room. Two of the pictures were of the creature that was trying to catch her. The first picture was a full body shot of before the yellow Pegasus was mutilated. She looked very pretty before she was… changed. The second was of the Pegasus getting tortured, at the current time getting her wings chopped off. The mare quickly looked away, but the image was seared into her mind. She wanted nothing more than for the image to go away and never come back to her again. She ran out of the room temporarily ignoring the pain shooting up her foreleg. She almost tripped down the stairs that were across from her unconventional entrance. She got to the bottom of the stairs another heavy wooden door. She tugged at the barrier with all her strength and it flung open. She stepped into the next hallway. The door closed behind her causing a heavy thud. In this new corridor, eight statues of ponies lined both sides. They all looked as if they held their heads in shame, and were cuffed at the front hooves. There were two doors on either side of the hall, in addition there was a door torn off its hinges at the other end of the hall. To the mares left was yet another gramophone.

Giving up on caution with the sound making devices, she cranked the gramophone and more words came forth, "On this next piece you should be looking for some divine inspiration. Time to delve into your spiritual side. What do you see? Is the pony begging for mercy or is she being blessed. Perhaps both! The Princess used to say, there were no right answers. Have the light guide you." The mare was now starting to wonder about things "Is this pony trying to help me? It seems like this message had some kind of hint… and what about this Princess? What does she have to do with this? This is getting very strenuous and I need to take a rest, my hoof is hurting a little. But not now, I need to find a way out or that monster is going to catch up to me."

Limping to the nearest door, she opened it to reveal a practiacally empty, and very dark, storage room. The only useful items she could find in this room were two tinder boxes. She also found a strange looking slide on a higher up shelf. Grabbing it and leaving she crossed the hall to the next room. It looked like a study, one that you'd find in a library. There were book shelves all around the room and across from the door was a desk. On top of the desk was another slide, a note, and an ink well and quill. She grabbed the second slide and started to read the note.

The note spoke of a filly named Twilight, choosing different slides for different moods, it also described that she had trouble using the "Puzzle lock" but not including why she would have trouble. The mare deduced this was because this "Twilight" was a filly when these tests were going on. Finding nothing more of interest in the room, other than two more tinder boxes inside the desk itself, she left to the next room. This next room was larger than the last two rooms, and had two paintings on the left and right walls. Two were portraits of mares, one was a portrait of a colt, and one was of a colt on a stretcher mechanism. There was another device at the back of the room, with a lever and two slots. On a table off to the side there was another note. There were four pages total, they read;

"Twilight, age 8

Today I played with my baby dragon, Spike. We saw a bird pick at a snail. It carried it off and landed on the garden fence. The snail had a shell and it cracked. Spike cried and I comforted him. One of the princesses gardeners scolded Spike and I for playing in the garden, the bird took off into the air.

Today I was the one with open arms."

"Twilight, age 9

Today I played with the slides from Celestia's light box. Above all I like the pony standing to the right. Celestia asked why. I said, he sees things he likes.

Today I was the right one."

"Twilight, age 10

Celestia said I picked the wrong slide yesterday when I made one of her handmaidens cry. She wanted me to pick the one with the sword, while I picked the pony on the right. I never pick the one with the sword.

Today I was the one kneeling."

"Twilight, age 11

Today Celestia came for me in my room. I still couldn't look her in the eyes. She said I shouldn't feel ashamed and that I was only trying to fill the void left when my parents left me in her care. When she wasn't looking I took the star stone from her collection.

Today I was the one with the sword."

The series of notes was labelled "Soul Journal Entries" The mare continued toward the mechanism at the back of the room, above it was a vent leading into the wall. As she approached the vent a pompous female voice came from the darkness of the vent, "Who are you?! Who's there?" The mare already knew that she couldn't respond to this knew voice. She turned around to go in search of the final slide that the Journals entailed. As she was walking away the voice murmured in a very low tone, which carried well because of the vent, "You'll burn for this Twilight Sparkle… You'll burn…" The new voice seemed to be directed towards this Twilight and not her in particular.

The mare went to the final closed door across the hall and opened it to reveal a small library. With some time and patients she found the fourth slide and left. Now she headed through the doorless doorway to see a room with a box in the middle of the room, a boarded door to the left, and to the right a few book shelves. As she was walking up to the box, a loud thumping came from the door to her left. "Oh no! No, no, no, no!" She froze in her tracks and looked towards the door, a thick layer of dust came off the door but the banging stopped. She took a deep breath and continued to walk over to the box. "Looks like this is the light box. Hmm… there's a candle in the middle if I light it, it'll produce light to see what's on these slides, right?"

A few minutes of checking the slides and looking over the journals, she was able to deduce that the slide of the pony facing the right was one of the slides needed for the puzzle lock, but was having trouble figuring out the second one.

"If Twilight liked this one," referring to the pony facing right, "and she didn't like the one of the pony with the sword… that only leaves two other possibilities. She got scolded when she was the one with arms wide open. But she also got scolded for picking the wrong slide. Maybe…" Her thoughts drifted off as she grabbed all the slides and returned to the puzzle lock. The voice from the mare on the other side of the vent rang through "Sick, twisted foal…" Promptly placing the slide of the pony facing the right in the top slot, she picked the third slide, the one of the pony kneeling to the right, and placed it into the bottom slot. Hesitantly, she pulled the lever downwards

*Click* The pretentious voice now showed gratitude and kindness "Wha- what's this? I am free? Whoever you are, Trixie thanks you for helping me. Watch out for Twilight, that demon, she may still be close." After Trixie, as the mare now knew this pony as, finished talking, there was a grinding sound coming from the library. Questioning what the noise was, the mare hurriedly hobbled towards the library. She found one of the bookcases had pivoted out away from one of the walls, leading to another staircase and another gramophone.

The mare just wanted out of whatever hell this was, but she cranked the musical device, sat down and listened. Resting her fetlock for the time being, seemed to be almost as necessary as listening to the gramophone. "I wonder, is the Great and Powerful Trixie upon her death bed? Maybe you helped her there. Don't you worry, I'm sure she didn't have a family; she probably wasn't even all that well-liked. I'm quite surprised someone hadn't killed her already, knowing that she's a showboating bitch. We can't all be saved. Some don't even want to be saved. Yes. That is a comforting thought. Saves us from trying."

The mare sat in front of the gramophone slack-jawed. She was completely dumbfounded and sickened by what Twilight had said. "That's horrible…" the mare thought, referring to twilight. Not sure what to think on the matter, she continued down the staircase to a door. She opened it and stepped into a well-lit cellar. She got to about three yards in when the door slammed behind her and the lights in the room died. Paranoia flooded the mare once again. She immediately ran back to the door and was attempting to open it forcefully, to no avail. The door locked itself behind her and wouldn't budge anymore. Furthermore, she could hear hoofsteps coming into the room, and a tomboyish voice following the sounds. "I know you're in here, I will find you!"

The mare quickly scuffled towards the nearest dark corner in an attempt to hide from the thing coming after her now. The thing that was walking into the room, now clearly visible even in the ever consuming darkness, was a pony. However she was walking on only her two hind legs. Her mane was a faded rainbow colour, her tail was ragged. An iron spiked collar was braced around her throat, and iron chains were threaded through the ponies flesh and hooked into muscles and tissues. She had wings but they were torn, broken, shredded, and cut up. She looked fairly malnourished and also, like the yellow Pegasus creature, was missing her eyes.

"I will kill you, you bitch!" The monster yelled into the darkness, searching for its victim. Walking closer to the mares hiding spot was funneling terror into the mare. She started hyperventilating and became increasingly louder in her breathing pattern, the closer the monster got to her. She started crawling away from the corner when a threatening and very angry voice rose up from behind her, "You won't get away this time you whore! I will rip your head off!"

She turned around just in time to see the monster charging towards her. Giving her the queue to run as fast as her injured leg could carry her away from the monster.

"Get over here!"

She ran through the only corridor, that wasn't the one she came through originally, and rounded a corner tripping over her twisted fetlock and falling into the wall of the bend.

"You thought you could get away, didn't you?"

Regaining her senses she got up and ran away from her pursuer, bolting towards the nearest door she could find. She tried the door in a panic, it was stuck closed and the monster was still coming after her. The monster slowed her pace, her prey now cornered.

"Heh heh heh. You won't get away his time!"

The monster sneered at the mare, making her approach seem all the more sinister. "What do I do?! It's going to kill me!" Thoughts rushed through her mind. She snapped her eyes shut "Go away!" the mare screamed that thought in her mind. The monster made a loud gasp and a loud thud could be heard from the other side of the room. The mare opened her eyes and saw that the monster was now on the other side of the room in a daze. The mare took this opportunity to run for another hallway. She found another door and silently pleaded with the door to be unlocked. She opened the door without so much of a problem and ran into the next corridor, closing the door as she could behind her.

End of Chapter Two