Escape from Hell

by Bronyxy

1 A Plan Begins to Form

Twilight sat and brooded. She had chosen to lament her position from one of the many platforms linked by a network of walkways to the central area where Cerberus stood guard over the many caged creatures.

There were four shackles on this platform, each locked magically into the solid rock beneath them, and each linked to a sturdy looking enchanted iron ring to which would be attached the chains holding a prisoner unfortunate enough to be sentenced to survive immortality in this wretched place.

The fact that this platform had no current occupant did not detract from the fact that Twilight knew she was also a prisoner too, albeit one with special, if temporary privileges.

When she had first been abandoned here by her former mentor, Princess Celestia, she had cried; cried at the injustice of being incarcerated with those creatures that had committed crimes against Equestria, cried because she now knew what being a prisoner here meant, cried for her family and friends, but above all cried for the sense of betrayal she felt towards the kindly Diarch who had always treated her with such love and attention.

Here, there was no day or night, no weather, in fact nothing to mark the passage of time, just a minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day existence punctuated only by the arrival of Princess Celestia once a week. This visit, she had come to realise, was no invitation to tea and cake such as she had been used to, but instead the jailer coming to extract punishment from the inmates, a frightening and barbaric payment for their crimes.

Twilight dreaded the day when the pure white mare would tire of her usual victims and come to seek her out; Celestia had not denied this fate would await her at some time in the future, before leaving her here to return to the lie of her comfortable existence in Canterlot.

Twilight did not relish the thought of the mare she had come to love like her second mother chasing her and pinning her down while she ate her living heart from her. No, she had a secret weapon; she was a librarian, a fact that Celestia had overlooked. She had read the entire contents of Ponyville library, the library in the Castle of the Two Sisters and Canterlot library, including the restricted section. She knew stuff, stuff that she hoped would enable her to devise an escape plan.

Tears and self-pity began slowly to change into thoughts of plans, each little nugget being the germ of an idea that she developed and modified as she played out likely scenarios in her head.

Firstly, who could she call upon for help? Cerberus was loyal to Celestia, so his support was out of the question. The other creatures, whilst desperate for release, would probably just rush to escape as soon as they could without hanging around, and who could blame them? Further, were they the sort of creatures that should be allowed to escape back into Equestria in the first place?

If she was to take on Celestia, she needed magic, and as she had no magic of her own down here, she needed something that contained magic that she would then be able to channel. The only magical items that she knew worked within Tartarus were Celestia’s crown and livery collar, but taking them would involve getting close, dangerously close to her. Also Celestia would have to be distracted in order to have even the slimmest chance of the plan working. An idea was crystallising, but it wasn’t one that filled her with any particular enthusiasm. However, that said, she didn’t exactly relish the prospect of being stuck in Tartarus for ever either.

For the remainder of the week, she considered carefully her plans and went over every possible scenario until she was sure the possibility for most optimal outcome had been maximised. She also knew that she had only one shot at escape, and if it went wrong, she could expect to spend the rest of eternity in a cage.

She flexed her wings and flew off to another location, not so much because she was bored with the featureless scenery where she was, but because she wanted to go over her plans again from a different perspective. She reviewed what she had already and went over all the details again, knowing that for this plan to work, she would have to be focused, more focused than she had ever been in her entire life and fought to control her fear. There were, as she had come to appreciate, no easy solutions to recover from her current position.

Twilight did little else in the forthcoming days but run through her ideas over and over, introducing increasingly far-fetched variables until she felt she had a plan that would stand whatever happened. She felt scared, truly scared, but knew she had to suppress her fears if she were to have any chance of pulling off the plan and ever seeing friends and family again.

The week since she had been banished was almost at an end, but it was difficult to tell with any certainty. The ambience of immortality within Tartarus had robbed her of her circadian rhythm and left her unable to make any valid judgement on the passage of time. With nothing else to do, she sat on a rocky outcrop overlooking the narrow path that led from the imposing double doors and waited.