00 - Lurking Shadows

Prologue

Lurking Shadows

The darkness clung to the air, resisting all efforts of the sparse lamps scattered about the entrance to fight it back. A doorway stood, apparently embedded in nothing, made of a stone that seemed to absorb any light that touched it. The doors themselves seemed to flux and change, one moment made of a dark red wood carved in patterns of flames licking up and around the bodies of screaming ponies, the next a deep azure-blue metal engraved with lightning bolts scouring the earth and the ponies scattered about in poses of death and agony. So many other images morphed across so many surfaces, all visions of death, destruction and pain, it churned the stomach to look at for longer than a glance.

Two ponies huddled beside each other, eyes glancing around almost frantically in the void surrounding them, unable to see anything but each other. For a time, their breathing and their heartbeats were the only sounds filling their ears, but then a sigh echoed around the dark space and a pair of eyes opened, one as red as the heart of Tartarus, the other a dark blue, glowing with menace and hatred. They were eyes that commanded instant and unquestioning obedience, and could chill a pony to the core with just a glance. They were the eyes of a cold and calculating mind and spoke of age the likes of which none but the Princesses might know.

A slick, vile voice rang out in the darkness. “Your incompetence may prove to be something of a nuisance, however I’ve waited too long already and cannot spare the time to find suitable replacements. No matter how many cards we have up our sleeve, we still must put up with the ones we are dealt until the time of reveal is right.” The last it seemed to address to itself, before chuckling, a sound like breaking glass, grating gravel and screaming ponies.

Icy shivers ran up the spines of the two ponies, who had not spoken or moved, other than to drop into a deep bow that almost put their faces on the ground. They knew better than to say anything, or do anything but grovel and obey. Their minds were still fresh from the memories of charred skin and burnt fur, the broken bones and gouged eyes they had been forced to feel, but not physically experience, not a few hours previously. Their eyes still watered and their bodies shook from the pain.

“The fact that this age couldn’t produce ponies any more resourceful than you simpletons continues to astound me” the voice mused, seemingly to itself again, before once more focusing on the pair, who had sunk even lower to the ground. “I will let your second failure in Ponyville pass, for no reason other than I have so few resources available to me at present and I still have need of you two.” There was a vile emphasis on the word ‘second’ that would have frozen dragonfire.

A large book floated towards the two pathetic forms from out of the darkness and they flinched. It was a thick tome, bounded in what repulsively appeared to be leather. The cover held no title, no words or images of any kind bar a single gothic symbol depicting a unicorn’s head with the horn aglow with magic.

The voice spoke again. “This book is enchanted. The pages contain no words, but the message will be transmitted directly to your tiny brains. As with whenever you leave this room, you will remember nothing, but think that everything you learned was of your own design.” A measure of chagrin entered the tone alongside the hatred and menace. “It galls me to allow you two to believe yourselves possessive of such ingenuity, however for the sake of security and my need to keep hidden for the time being, it is a necessity I must bear.”

It did not need to be said what message the book contained. The pair would read it, even if they knew it would sear their eyes from their skulls, because they knew the price of failure or refusal made such a fate sound pleasant.

“You may go. Do not fail me a third time.” The dismissal was accompanied by the disappearance of those soul-shackling eyes into the darkness and the two ponies sagged and let out the breath it felt they had been holding since they entered the room.
The doors shuddered with a loud rumble, and then opened, letting in a slit of harsh daylight that did nothing to illuminate the darkness, which seemed to absorb the light, swallowing it whole. A stallion entered the room to escort them out, and he made the two shiver almost as much as the horrific eyes and vile voice in the shadows. The stallion had no mane, no tail, and his wings were tattered and broken, though it appeared he didn’t notice, or even feel them. It was his eyes that were the most disconcerting though. Those eyes held no light, no brightness of life. They were dull, grey as the husk the pony himself had become. He never said a word, never made any expressive gestures, never showed any emotion at all. The reason scared the brothers more than any threat of physical punishment ever could.

The pony had no soul.

They had seen it. Non-unicorn ponies would enter the room they were currently occupying, and come out empty and soulless, the pegasi always with their wings broken and disfigured, so they would never fly again. Unicorns that entered, however, always came back out shaking, often crying, but always with their horns and souls intact. Unicorns were more useful with their souls still inside them. Besides, they could hardly raise a unicorn Empire if they stripped the souls from every unicorn who opposed them.
The two unicorns ignored the soulless pony as best they could, and attempted to rush out the door, which was currently some form of blood-red liquid held in shape by an invisible force, without showing even the slightest sliver of haste. The outside light blinded them for a moment as they exited, as everything that had happened inside the room was burned from their minds.

They blinked. What had they been doing? One turned to the other, stroking his moustache. “I say brother, were you saying something?”

The other turned to face his brother, his own bare upper lip pursed in thought, a curious look in his eye. “I don’t think so, why, did you ask something?” The pair sat and removed their matching straw hats so they could scratch their heads as the flaps of the tent they had exited into flowed sinuously from the breeze outside. Eventually, one noticed the book the other had gripped in his magic’s embrace.

“Brother, what’s that you’re carrying?” Startled that he had been carrying anything at all, the aura of green magic disappeared from the strange tome, letting it fall to the ground. They gathered around it, slightly revulsed by the thought that the thing’s cover was made of leather! “Should we read it brother?”

The question was somewhat rhetorical. They both knew that it had to be read, though neither could say how or why, but they both knew grievous punishment awaited if they didn’t. Picking it back up in his magic, the moustachioed brother trotted over to the desk only a few pony-lengths away. The canvas of the tent rippled the other way as the wind changed direction and the two ponies sat behind the desk with the book between them. They opened a page.

It was blank. So was the next one, and the one after that. Every single page in the putrid book was completely blank from the first to the last. Why would they be given a blank book?

Then images began to flash in their minds, images of machines, more complex than their cider-making contraption and weapons more powerful than any they had ever seen. Blueprints began to form in their heads, describing intricate designs for technomagic instruments powerful enough to bring down even the mighty Princesses.

“I-I say brother, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I believe I am brother. I’m thinking we’ve got work to do.”

As one, they jumped to their hooves with matching flourishes of their forelegs and all but galloped out of the tent, the book now turning to ashes on their desk completely forgotten.

Outside, the grassy hill that the tent was pitched on rolled down into a valley that wove between several other hills around the landscape. Sparse trees dotted the rises accompanied by shrubs and other manner of flora that would soon be trampled into oblivion when the city was built. Thick, ominous clouds overhead seemed stuck by the decision of whether or not to unload their water while the last of the birds and other animals took cover from the inevitable storm.

A large hole, which occupied the side of the hill opposite the one possessing the tent, disappeared down into the depths of the ground where ponies were working day and night to excavate the cavernous ruins of some lost civilisation. They had already found several confusing technomagic gadgets, almost too corroded to be recognisable as the powerful weapons they were.

The origin of the buried city was unclear, or exactly how old it was, but all of the ancient murals and statues they had uncovered had all depicted unicorns to the point of exclusion of all the other races. It seemed fitting, and not odd at all, because in the brothers’ eyes, Unicorns were the superior race. How they had stumbled upon the ruins was another thing neither of them thought to question. They had suddenly had the idea to travel with an archeological crew to this specific location and start digging. It was an area rich with history, though neither unicorn knew much of any of it. They were inventors, technomagical geniuses, pioneers of the future, they had no time for the past.

The pair ran down the hill at a gallop. They had things to do, places to be, they couldn’t spare any time idling about admiring the scenery. The labs would need to be set up immediately, before the city’s construction was completed, for work needed to begin as soon as possible. The two crews would simply have to work around each other.

More and more images, ideas and blueprints flashed through their minds, enough to fill an entire book, each burning itself into their memories, along with the almost limitless possibilities they all presented. Plans also began to form. Strange and devious schemes that they would have laughed and scoffed at the ridiculousness of them had they not come from their own minds.

Several were so dangerous, so questionable, that they began to doubt themselves, but they felt an insatiable urge to bring these plans to fruition. They had to, there was no question. Besides, they were schemes they had thought of themselves, what could possibly go wrong?

The most troublesome of these plans, the most dangerous, still gave them pause in their stride and required the most preparation. The city would likely be fully constructed before they could execute it, for many of the implements flashing through their heads would need to be created and perfected first.

The plan in question was dangerous; it was highly illegal and unquestionably amoral, but it had to be done. It had to be. Neither brother could say why, exactly, it had to be done, but it involved a certain troublesome purple unicorn they had met briefly during their most recent debacle in Ponyville, not to mention their first failed expedition. She was the reason they had failed to seize the beginnings of their control over Ponyville by taking over the Apple farm in that original disaster, and it was one of her friends who created the second. Their methods would not be so friendly the third time.

The brothers smiled. Revenge would be sweet, but not as sweet as control over Equestria.

The Age of the Unicorn would rise, and all else would fall beneath magic, might and technology.

01 - Just Fine

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Chapter One

Just Fine

Twilight smiled sleepily as the soft morning sunlight awakened her from one of the best night’s sleep she had had since… well, since the previous morning when she had the exact same train of thought. After months and months of struggling to get to sleep with her wings always finding the most uncomfortable places to sit when she was trying to sleep, or springing open of their own accord, or simply not doing what she told them to, she had finally swallowed her pride and asked Fluttershy for help.

The solution was so incredibly simple, so mind-blowingly obvious that she was ashamed she had not thought of it herself sooner. All she had to do was…

A loud crash from downstairs interrupted her train of thought and sent her eyes flying open, along with her wings, which propelled her out of bed and onto the floor in a moaning heap of feathers and blankets.

Alright, she admitted to herself. Maybe the whole ‘sleeping with wings’ thing still isn’t all that easy. Disentangling herself from the bedsheets, Twilight ruffled her wings and quickly preened her feathers before moving over to her mirror to brush her mane. Another smile crossed her lips, this one slightly sad, as she took in all the changes she was undergoing.

She was taller, and growing slightly every day. She was almost a whole hoof taller than her friends now, and though the girls all assured her they were happy for her and proud of the Princess she had become, her paranoid side couldn’t help but feel them measuring her newfound height next to their own. Luckily, she had gotten very good at ignoring that side of herself since her ascension and the coronation.

She ran the brush through her mane, which was taking on a slightly starry appearance and had the habit of moving on its own from time to time, becoming more and more like the manes of Celestia and Luna, flowing and ethereal, however hard she tried to force it back to the style she knew and loved.

As usual, whenever she used her magic, she could feel the overwhelming strength that she possessed. There had even been some amusing and somewhat embarrassing incidents involving her forgetting her powers, underestimating her strength, and sending several household objects careening through the walls of the treehouse library and across Ponyville. That had been before she had ended up with the magic of all four Alicorns though. Now, keeping her power under wraps was a piece of cake.

She continued with her brushing, managing to get her mane into some semblance of normality before heading downstairs. Spike would likely need help with whatever he had broken, and if not, the idea of breakfast sounded wonderful.

As it turned out, the two were one and the same. After a sheepish apology, Spike revealed that he had been attempting to balance two plates of scrambled eggs and toast on his arms and head while pouring juice into two glasses. The end result was a mess of broken plates and glass and a growing pool of orange juice spreading across the floor, intermingling with bits and pieces of egg.

Spike set about mopping up the pool of juice while Twilight used her magic to gather all the solid pieces of plate, egg and toast, and put them in the bin. Thank Celestia Rarity wasn’t around, else she’d have a fit about how they were messing up the new castle.

The fashionista was relishing in her newfound fame as a “Lady of Friendship” as some of the ponies around Ponyville had started calling her friends. They sat with her on the thrones and held audiences with ponies seeking advice, or well-wishes, or even non-friendship-related things like personal issues. These, they directed mostly at Twilight, and often she was the only pony in attendance, but her friends were still becoming quite well-known.

Rarity had even taken to staying some nights in the castle - there were accommodations for all her friends, not just herself, though Twilight was the only one residing there permanently - but had been increasingly busy with her dressmaking and more and more customers came to shop from her, thanks to her sudden jump in status, so she hadn’t slept there in a while. The rest of her friends preferred their respective homes more, though even they stayed at the castle occasionally.

Ponies had started to come from across Equestria to see them, though most came because of Twilight. It seemed word had spread of her epic battle with Tirek - the landscaping changes of the entire area surrounding Ponyville were testament to that - however rumour tended to leave out the fact that her friends had had as integral a part in the villain's defeat as Twilight had herself. Instead, tales tended to include her friends in a more superficial matter, often just the fact that they were there and involved somehow.

That disappointed Twilight, and she tried to rectify it by preaching to all who would listen that her friends deserved just as much, if not more, credit as she did. Nopony seemed to want to listen, however. They usually just laughed and shrugged it off, as if Twilight were simply being modest and nice to her friends.

Her friends themselves didn’t seem to mind though. Fluttershy in particular was more than happy to let somepony else take the credit, and therefore the spotlight, of her achievements. Rainbow Dash and Rarity claimed they were happy with just the slight increase in attention they got. Pinkie Pie was… well, Pinkie Pie, and she didn’t appear upset, so that set Twilight’s mind at ease somewhat.

Their audiences in the throne room, which they had been holding every second day, had been going well, with ponies coming to discuss matters of friendship, to ask for advice, to settle disputes between neighbours and all manner of other things, within the bounds of social acceptability.

For example, aside from requests for friendship advice, one of Applejack’s neighbours had a chicken go missing, and he was accusing his other neighbour, a stallion who was in the business of making strawberry jam, of stealing it. The dispute had been hot, the two ponies almost forgetting themselves and coming to blows, before Twilight stepped in and calmed the situation down. She was certainly getting good at keeping her head cool, and once she had learned all the details, a quick search had shown that the chicken had wandered into Applejack’s farm.

Twilight almost lost her serenity when the farmer then began to throw accusations at Applejack, but she soon diffused that situation as well, before sending the chicken farmer on his way with bruised pride and the suggestion to investigate the matter properly himself before jumping to conclusions next time. It had been a completely ridiculous scenario and an utter waste of time. That being said, she had heard some of the issues brought before Celestia herself and they sounded just as silly, so maybe it was just something a Princess had to put up with.

There were also some cases that warmed Twilight’s heart and brought tears to her eyes, such as when a newlywed couple had come to her asking for Twilight and her friend’s blessings for their unborn child. It had put them all completely on the spot, but they each managed a fairly stock-standard blessing, with the exception of Rarity, who had made a grand proclamation of health and strength, which had lit up the couple’s eyes and they all but danced out of the hall in celebration.

Twilight gave a slightly amused sigh as she stirred the new batch of scrambled eggs while Spike poured two fresh glasses of juice as some more bread cooked in the toaster. She was adjusting to being a princess, no doubt. It was difficult, but she’d manage.

~~~~~~~~~~

The eggs were delicious, cooked just right with diced hay-bacon and bits of basil. It was a simple breakfast, a little poorly presented due to the duo’s lack of culinary expertise and would likely make the nobility faint at just the idea of a Princess eating it, but it tasted good, and that’s all that really mattered to Twilight.

Once the last morsels had been cleaned off the plates, the washing up was, as usual, left to Spike, Twilight left the palace to go for a walk. It was one of those very rare days in which there was nothing important or pressing to do at all. It was between Court days and, while she had three meetings with various representatives from foreign nations tomorrow after Court, no important conferences today.

Normally, a day off like this would be spent cooped up inside with a good book, but after all the busyness of everyday life as a Princess, not to mention the fact that it was such a beautiful day, Twilight wanted to spend at least part of it outside. There were only a few clouds in the sky, the gentle spring sun glistening down on the ponies going about their morning business as birds flitted throughout town.

As she was nearing the end of the road, which linked onto another street that lead to town square, she heard somepony calling out.

“Fluffy! Come on Fluffy, come down!” the shout was punctuated by an indignant hiss, and as Twilight came closer, she saw a beige earth pony with a deep brown mane standing at the base of a tree. Up in the top-most branches of the tree, a ruffled-looking cat sat hissing down at the mare below.

“Is everything okay here?” Twilight asked as she approached.

“Well…” the pony turned and, surprised upon seeing that it was Twilight, dropped to the ground in a low bow. “Your majesty. It’s nothing to be concerned about, my cat ran up this tree running away from a dog from around town. Don’t worry, I’ll get her down eventually.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and sparked up her magic. Ponies had never hesitated to request her assistance with things like this before, but now she was a Princess, they all saw it as ‘beneath her’ or something silly like that. Levitating Fluffy down from the tree, Twilight passed the cat to the bewildered mare. “Here you go. Watch out for more stray dogs.” With a smile, Twilight trotted back off along her original path as the pony nearly dropped the cat in an attempt to mash her face into the ground in an incredibly low bow as she spluttered thanks, as well as apologies for ‘wasting her time’.

Yes, the groveling thing was tiresome, but Twilight still liked to help the ponies around Ponyville with their everyday concerns, the nobility’s perceptions of her be damned.

She was just rounding the corner onto the main street of Ponyville when, with a muffled whump Twilight suddenly ran into something rather solid and heading quickly in the other direction, forcing the breath out of her lungs and knocking her to the ground. A clatter of small boxes rained down around their heads as the other pony muttered a curse from his own position on the ground.

“I say, watch where you’re going you-” he immediately cut off when he saw just who he had bumped into and dropped into a bow. “Oh goodness, my sincerest apologies Princess Twilight, I was careless and must have missed my step, please forgive me.” He accompanied this with a grand sweep of his foreleg and another, far more showpony-like bow.

Twilight brushed herself off and took a good look at him. He was a light, almost yellow-coated unicorn stallion, and while the hooded cloak he was wearing obscured most of him, the ends of his red and white striped mane could be seen poking out of the hood around his head.

“That’s fine,” she eventually replied when she noticed he was waiting for a reply. “We both weren’t really watching where we were going.” Lighting up her magic again, Twilight began gathering up all the boxes that had been dropped upon their collision. They were surprisingly light, considering they were seemingly made out of some kind of metal, but before she could examine them at all, the unicorn was hastily gathering them off the ground himself and taking them out of her magic.

Before Twilight knew it, the stranger had collected all the boxes and with a swift bow coupled with another apology, took off at almost a full gallop down the street she had just exited.

She had definitely seen stranger things. Pinkie was weirder than that on a daily basis. He had seemed very familiar though, those colours, that voice, the grand, showpony attitude. Something was still missing though, and Twilight couldn’t quite put her hoof on it.

With a shrug she dismissed her curiosity and, turning back down the road yet again, made her way across town. She figured she may as well stop in on Rarity, whose shop was near the town center anyway. Half the ponies she passed in the streets still bowed to her, despite her even going so far as to call a town meeting to assure them that while yes, she was a Princess now, she didn’t want them groveling to her whenever she so much as walked by.

She ignored it as best she could, right up to Rarity’s front door, which showed a sign declaring the shop was ‘Closed for Business’. This was one of Rarity’s known ‘days off’, so Twilight thought it a perfect time to stop by while she wasn’t busy with clients and shoppers.

“Who is it?” came the sing-song reply when Twilight knocked on the deep purple door.

“It’s me!” Twilight replied.

The door opened to reveal Rarity, her mane perfectly styled and coat immaculately groomed as always. “Why, hello Twilight darling, whatever brings you here today?” After a quick hug, the unicorn held up a hoof of invitation.

“Well,” Twilight began as she stepped inside. “I had a day off from court and meetings and everything, so I thought I’d spend my time off with my friends.”

This produced a wide smile and a joyous squeal from Rarity as she clapper her hooves together. “Oh darling, I’m so glad. You’ve been so busy lately, we never have any chances to spend time with you, other than our audiences in the castle, but those times are hardly catch-up times. I was actually just about to head to the spa for my weekly meeting with Fluttershy, if you’d like to come along.”

Twilight almost moaned with pleasure at the prospect of a nice, relaxing trip to a spa. She loved her paperwork, admittedly significantly more than your regular pony, but spending most of the day almost every day hunched over a desk reading report after report for several months on end takes its toll, even on a pony like Twilight.

Rarity giggled. “I’ll take that as a yes then? I’ll just get a few things ready and we’ll be off.” She turned to head into the back room of her shop, but gasped before she had taken more than a few steps. “My gosh darling, I’ve just had the most brilliant idea! I’ll invite the whole group! Fluttershy is already coming, and I’m sure Pinkie Pie won’t miss a chance to have fun with us. Applejack might take some convincing, but I’m sure we can get her to take some time off for you. Rainbow Dash is all but a lost cause, but surely she’ll at least come for the sauna and the mud bath.” Dashing around making all the necessary preparations for leaving her store, Rarity continued rambling about how much fun they were all going to have. “We can even make a whole day out of it! If you’ve got nothing else planned, that is. Oh, it’s been so long since we’ve been together as a group.”

Twilight didn’t have to wait long before Rarity threw on a large hat and trotted out the door. They went first to Sugarcube Corner where Pinkie would undoubtedly be. The hyperactive mare spent most of her free time there, as well as the shifts she worked.

Sure enough, when they walked in the door to the sweet shop, she was sitting at a table near the corner noisily devouring a milkshake, conveniently in a conversation with Rainbow Dash. Probably talking about pranks they had done, or were yet to pull off, judging by the raucous laughter they suddenly erupted in.

Pinkie noticed Rarity and Twilight once her laughing died down a little, and a huge smile split her face. “Twilight! Rarity! Hi! What brings you around here? Not that I’m not super-duper happy you stopped by, I’m just curious, but considering the fact that Twilight is out and about, she must have a day off! Also Rarity, you’ve got a spa meeting with Fluttershy today, so I’m guessing that you’re going together, but then you’re here and not there, so you’ve gotta be here to invite us all over so we can have a super fun trip to the spa as a whole group!”

Twilight could only shake her head at Pinkie’s incredible deductive skills. That said, putting two and two together in this instance was nothing compared to last time she had made a wild ‘lucky guess’ and spouted a summarised version of the exact events that had transpired in the other world where Twilight had gone to retrieve her crown from Sunset Shimmer.

“Why yes indeed Pinkie Pie darling, that’s exactly why we’re here” Rarity confirmed, grimacing a little when Rainbow Dash let out a loud groan.

“Ugh, the spa?” the pegasus huffed. “Come on Rarity, can’t we do something cool as a group for once? Like go to a Wonderbolts performance or something?”

Rarity rolled her eyes and placed a hoof on Dash’s withers. “Rainbow darling, are there any Wonderbolts performances on in the next thirty minutes that we can get tickets to and attend?”

Dash paused for a moment, then hung her head. It was all the answer Rarity needed.

“Fabulous! I promise Rainbow darling, nopony will touch your hooves, Aloe and Lotus learned that much the last time you were there. I promise, you’ll have an absolutely wondrous time, and it’s a chance to spend time with Twilight. Plus, Fluttershy will be there, how can you say no to that?”

It was Rainbow’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh fine, whatever. I’ll come along, but only because I want to chill with Twi.” With that, she gave Twilight a pat on the back and bolted out the door.

In her classic style, Pinkie bolted out the door after her, stopped just outside and pulled out a huge megaphone from somewhere. She got as far as “DON’T-” which rattled all the windows in the vicinity before Twilight yanked it away with a tug of her magic.

“What?” the pink mare exclaimed with an innocently confused look. “I was just gonna tell her not to forget the time.” Twilight was about to reply when a startled voice sounded from behind her.

“What in the hay is happenin’ here?”

Turning, Twilight saw Applejack standing near the entrance to Sugarcube Corner, the megaphone that had just been confiscated from Pinkie embedded in the wall just in front of her face. Blushing furiously, Twilight hurried over and pulled the now smashed amplifier out of the wall.

“I am so sorry Applejack, I thought I was getting better at not doing that, but I mustn’t have as much control over my magic as I thought. You’re not hurt are you?”

The farmer laughed and flicked the tip of Twilight’s wing which was scouring the other mare for any damage. “Don’t you worry about it none sugarcube, I’m fine. Can’t say the same about this here wall though.”

As if on cue, a large chunk of wall fell to the ground with a crunch, making Twilight wince. With a flash of her magic, the rubble knitted itself back together and the wall was flawless once more.

Applejack stared at the newly fixed wall for a few seconds before turning back to Twilight. “So uh, pardon me for repeatin’ mahself, but what exactly is goin’ on here?”

Rarity took a step forward and explained the situation and soon they had Applejack on board as they turned tail and headed for the spa. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash would presumably meet them there and Twilight was feeling free and light as a feather.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight let out a sigh as she sank into the spacious hot tub, surrounded by her friends and feeling more relaxed than she had since before this whole Princess thing started. All her friends lay back around her, enjoying the warmth and fragrance of the bath after a day of pampering and preening.

They had started with a mud bath infused with minerals to ‘replenish and rejuvenate’ as Rarity explained, in which they soaked for a solid hour while Twilight talked her friends through her new duties as Princess.

Everypony was sympathetic about the stress and the workload, though Rarity was completely in awe about all the foreign dignitaries Twilight got to meet, but overall everypony was saddened a little because the time they got to spend together was so limited.

Eventually, they moved from the mud bath to the sauna where they caught up with what everypony else had been up to since the coronation. For the most part, not much had changed in her friend’s lives. Applejack’s farm was expanding to the point that they had to hire some help in the form of one of her relatives, but this meant that she was making significantly more money.

Pinkie Pie was still just working at Sugarcube Corner and throwing parties for every occasion imaginable, every single one of which Twilight missed because of royal duties. Pinkie was adamant that it was fine, Twilight’s new role came first, but that didn’t stop the new Princess from apologising profusely anyway. The pink party pony had increased business for the sweet shop tenfold, just by her association with Twilight coupled with some surprisingly clever advertising.

Rainbow Dash had been promoted to captain of the weather team in Ponyville, which was probably a gross mistake on her superior’s part seeing as how lazy the mare was. There didn’t seem to be any problems with the weather though, so Twilight supposed she couldn’t argue with her friend’s results. She was still in the Wonderbolts reserve, though she hadn’t been called upon to fill in yet. She had received a private word from Spitfire saying she was at the top of the list and would be the first they called upon. Seeing as how she was the greatest flier in Equestria outside the primary Wonderbolts team, it was no wonder.

Fluttershy hadn’t changed her routine much, at least after the whole Rainbow Dash issue was resolved. The two were spending more and more time together, and even though nothing huge had happened yet, Twilight figured it wasn’t going to be long before they started living together. How that was going to work though, Twilight had no idea. Fluttershy was still Ponyville’s animal caretaker and couldn’t exactly move anywhere anytime soon, but Rainbow Dash was set and ready to join the Wonderbolts. As complicated as it was though, Twilight was sure they could work it out.

In contrast, Rarity’s life had skyrocketed out of control. Her business was finally gaining the recognition it deserved and almost every dress shop in Canterlot was featuring her designs, if not dresses made directly by her. She just didn’t have enough time to make every dress herself, so she began selling her designs as raw templates, which then made her own hoof-work all the more valuable. Despite this, she was still sure that she wasn’t yet ready to move her business to Canterlot, but Twilight suspected she just wanted to stay with her friends. Her position in the castle along with her association with Twilight probably had something to do with it too.

The rest of the spa was heavenly, with hoof-soaks and hooficures followed by a massage. Even Rainbow Dash had managed to enjoy herself, accepting all the luxuries with the grace and humility of a brick, with the exception of the hooficure, during which she lay in a corner reading a magazine.

That had raised some eyebrows, Twilight’s included, because while Dash was known to enjoy the Daring Do fiction novels, she avoided any other literature like the plague. Nopony was about to comment though, seeing as they had all attempted to get Dash to read something other than Daring Do at one point or another.

Glancing over, Twilight saw Dash gently nuzzling Fluttershy, who was leaning against her in the steaming water. She chuckled, happy to see her friends all in the one place again. It had been so long since they’d been together as a group, but she had long known that the times of spending every day with her friends was not going to last forever. She just hoped that the ease at which they all felt around each other would never change and that they could still enjoy times like these, as rare as they were.

It was getting late though, and Aloe and Lotus were hovering as if they wanted to announce closing time. They would, of course, keep the spa open all night if Twilight asked it of them and it was a fact that made Twilight sigh.

Seeing as she was not about to ask the twins to stay up all night just for her, Twilight stretched lazily, before letting out a yawn and climbing out of the water. Her friends followed suit and as soon as the bill was paid, they walked outside into the late afternoon light.

Twilight had insisted on paying the entirety of the bill herself and while her friends argued and said that wasn’t necessary, Twilight didn’t budge. They had dropped what they were doing and spent all day with her at the spa, and on such short notice, the least she could do was pay for their pampering. With her new status as Princess came a significant amount of money, most coming from wealthy nobles wanting to get on her good side. She hadn’t wanted to take any of it, but Celestia said they would get offended if she didn’t take every single bit, and smile gratefully to boot.

Everypony had wanted to walk her home too, but Twilight had put her hoof down on that subject as well. She’d already made them miss so much of their day, and it had been wonderful, but they had their own responsibilities to get to and she would have felt bad if she had taken any more of their time.

So Twilight walked home alone through the fading light of the late-Spring afternoon. It was a beautiful evening, with the first of the stars just beginning to glimmer in the sky as the sun created a blaze of pink and purple across the sparse cloud cover. The temperature was cool and Twilight felt deliciously relaxed, so much so she thought she could fall onto her pillow and straight into her dreams, wings or no.

The number of ponies out and about dwindled as she lazily crossed town and the sun dropped further and further out of sight on the horizon. It was almost completely dark by the time the door to the castle came into sight as Twilight turned the last corner leading towards her home.

Light shone out of the windows about halfway up the trunk, expected since spike was home and probably cleaning up whatever mess he had made during the day, as well as the lights on the bottom floor, which were rarely ever turned off.

As she approached, Twilight could almost hear her bed calling to her as the day of relaxation and pampering filled her with tiredness and yearning for her soft pillow and comfy covers. Despite the business and stress that would be awaiting her tomorrow, Twilight felt that for now, everything would be just f-

“Hey! Wha-whoa!” came a shout from Spike’s from inside the castle, but it was cut off by a loud crash that included the dread-inducing crack of dragon skull hitting something hard.

All relief and relaxation was washed away by a surge of worried energy as Twilight sprinted the remaining distance to the castle, shouting out Spike’s name before she even had the door open. Her voice died in her throat for a moment as the door opened and she took in the scene beyond.

Two ponies stood, facing away from her, their dark cloaks covering their cutie marks and coats, though their hoods were down to show red and white-striped hair that split around their horns. Twilight barely had time to process that one of them was the stallion she had run into that morning before her gaze drifted to the object of their attention and all thought was stripped from her mind.

Spike lay at the base of the stairs surrounded by the debris of what might have been a chest full of writing equipment. He wasn’t moving.

“Spike!” wasting no time, Twilight sprinted over, shoving the two unicorns out of the way in her hurry. Skidding to a halt at his side, she resisted the urge to pick him up and hold him tightly. He might be hurt and she had to be careful, so instead she enveloped him in her magic. The spell, learned from a journal about medical magic, informed her that he had taken a blow to the head, but his skull was intact and there was no damage to his spine or brain.

“What happened?” she demanded, not even looking at the ponies she was questioning.

“He… fell down the stairs.” came the short reply.

Something in the pony’s tone, as well as the way he had hesitated, didn’t quite sit right. Twilight started to turn around to inquire further when she felt something slip over her horn.

“What are you-” a painful shock stopped her question short, like needles thrusting into her skull at the base of her horn. The world began to spin and she stumbled as she turned around fully to find the two stallions standing next to each other, grinning menacingly.

The ground suddenly filled half of her vision. Did she fall over? What was going on? Lighting up her horn, Twilight cast a clarity spell that did wonders for headaches and headspins. At least, she tried to.

Instead, a blinding pain filled her brain and she felt herself writhing about on the library floor. Laughter filled her ears as her vision began to fade. Her last thoughts before unconsciousness took her were of Spike, hoping he was okay.

02 - Enchained

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Chapter Two

Enchained

Twilight’s pillow felt oddly rough as she slowly drifted awake. She moaned and, without opening her eyes, tried to push it into a more comfortable shape. It was very odd. The pillow seemed to be falling apart, as if it was made of straw, and the bed felt suspiciously like a slab of concrete. A dull headache throbbed behind her ears and, reaching up, she felt something hard and metallic, like a thick band around the base of her horn.

It took only a split second for everything to come rushing back. Spike had hurt himself and she had been knocked out by some strange device from a pair of disturbingly familiar ponies. Twilight’s concern for the baby dragon overrode all other worries and she was shouting his name as she jumped to her hooves.

Or at least, she tried to. She was stopped brutally short and thrown back to the ground in a fit of coughing and gagging, leaving her gasping for breath. There was a steel collar around her neck attached to a chain that was pinning her to the ground. The chain was long enough that she might be able to sit up if she pushed herself up against the wall.

Once she could breathe again, Twilight took stock of her surroundings. She was in a tight cell, maybe three pony-lengths to a side, three of the walls made of stone bricks, one of which had a small grilled window up near the ceiling which let in sparse rays of light. The fourth wall was made of bright, reflective metal bars through which Twilight could see only a narrow corridor and another stone wall. There didn’t seem to be a door. The collar around her neck, as well as the chain attached to it, were seemingly made of the same material. Underneath her was a crude sleeping mat with the pile of straw she had been using as a pillow piled to one end.

She was a prisoner.

A haze of panic attempted to settle over her, but Twilight knew she couldn’t afford to lose her cool. She practiced several breathing exercises the other Princesses had taught her to control her fear and anxiety and soon she was completely calm once more. Or as close to it as she would get, she thought.

Twilight winced as she came to the most important diagnostic of all. Reaching up once more, she probed around her head, feeling the metal band encasing the lower part of her horn. It was molded perfectly to fit, going so far as to encase part of her forehead. Without magic it was difficult to get specifics, but if she had to guess, she’d say it was made of the same metal as the bars and her collar.

She tried recalling the exact events from the library. She had heard a crash, ran inside and found Spike unconscious. Two ponies had been there and they said he had fallen, but then they’d slipped this thing over her horn and she had passed out. There was something else too, something important.

Her magic. When she had tried to cast a spell after they’d put it on, she hadn’t been able to. Memories of the blinding pain she had felt flashed through her head and made her grimace, but there was only one way to know for sure.

Lighting up her horn, Twilight tried to undo the collar around her neck.

Blazing agony shot through her head, dropping her to the ground as quickly as a buck to the head as a scream tore along her throat and out, echoing around her cell. It seemed hours before she could move again, though it could only have been minutes. Pushing herself up to a slouched sitting position which pulled the chain taut, Twilight massaged her temples and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

The device on her horn must be a magic suppressor, preventing her from using any magic. It was a strange one though, like nothing she’d ever seen before. Celestia had shown her some of the suppressors they had used over the years to quiet dangerous unicorns, but they had all been thick metal with heavy enchantments, usually taking the shape of a thick tube bent around so its ends touched. She couldn’t feel any magic emanating from the device on her head, and it was thin, form-fitted for her forehead and horn. Whoever had made this thing had made it specifically for her.

The bang of a door opening, accompanied by the heavy clopping of a large pony walking down the corridor stopped her train of thought. She dropped to the ground and pretended to be asleep, keeping one eye open just enough to watch the bars of her cell.

The hoofsteps got louder and true enough, a very large unicorn stallion wearing an ornate set of armor appeared. He walked a little ways into her vision before stopping and peering into her cell.

“You may as well drop the act Twilight Sparkle, we could hear you screaming from outside. I’m guessing you tried to use your magic.”

Twilight opened her eyes fully and glared at the stallion. He was big for a unicorn, quite muscular with a steel-grey coat and black mane, though the colours were a little too uniform to be natural. She tried to muster herself into the proudest, most dignified position she could despite the chain keeping her slouched a little.

She fixed the guard with a stare that she hoped would make him more cooperative. “Where is Spike?” she growled.

The guard chuckled. “Your little dragon friend? He’s fine, for now and in a much better state than can be said for you.”

“You realise who I am don’t you? I am a Princess of Equestria and what you are doing here is a grave…” She trailed off as the guard began laughing. Fixing him with the hardest stare she could, she waited until his laughter subsided.

Wiping a mirthful tear from his eye, he shook his head. “Sorry ‘Princess’, but you may be royalty out there” he gestured down the hallway in the direction of the door. “But in here, you’re just another prisoner. Now, you’ll wait here like a good little filly. The Masters want to talk to you.” He punctuated this by knocking the bars of her cell with a hoof, causing a loud clang to resound throughout her cell as he walked away, laughing once more.

Twilight’s eye twitched.

Just another prisoner? A good little filly?! Who does that stallion think he-” Twilight cut the thought short. She had to keep her cool and figure things out if she ever hoped to escape. More breathing exercises helped keep her temper in check as she re-assessed her situation.

She was a prisoner, unable to use magic, chained to the floor and awaiting a visit from the ‘Masters’, whoever they were. She didn’t know their intentions and had no idea where she even was.

It wasn’t precisely a good predicament.

She had no choice but to wait, so wait she did. She was tempted to rattle her chain and hammer on the walls with her hooves, just because the guard had told her to wait ‘like a good little filly’, but that would have accomplished nothing but make her look like a foal. She would sit calmly and be the picture of royal serenity when these ‘Masters’ made their appearance. At least, as calm and serene as she could look when her mane was dishevelled and her fur was matted with sweat and dirt.

She didn’t have to wait long.

The sound of the door opening and two sets of hooves trotting slowly towards her cell gave her plenty of warning before two more unicorns appeared outside the bars.

They were the same unicorns that had been in the library, the ones who had pony-napped her. She almost lost her cool and only just managed to keep her face calm and the snarl that wanted to rip out of her throat concealed. She knew them, and she finally remembered why.

“Oh look brother,” one exclaimed, turning to his partner and stroking his moustache. “Looks like she finally recognises us.”

“That she does brother,” the other replied, a grin spreading on his face. “That she does.”

“Flim and Flam.” Twilight spat the names as though they left a sour taste in her mouth. “What are you two doing here, where is Spike?”

The two brothers erupted with laughter, louder and more annoying than the guard’s earlier. “Oh Princess, please, your little assistant is fine. He is elsewhere being treated with the finest of respect. Needless to say we will show you to him in good time, but be patient.” Flam, for it was he who spoke, let out another chuckle. “As for what we are doing here, we run this place. We’re the ‘Masters’.”

Twilight’s skepticism must have shown because Flim shook his head. “Brother, she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t seem to realise the power we now wield.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Flam agreed. “Let’s show her then, shall we?”

They shared another grin before both of their horns lit up and several of the bars slid down into the floor, creating an opening for her to walk through. Their magic then moved to the collar around her neck which opened with a loud click.

The idea that she could use this opportunity to escape died as quickly as it formed. She couldn’t use magic, so they would likely catch her if she ran. It was also quite unlikely that she would be able to overpower them, so she did the first thing that came to her head.

She stretched. Using her newfound freedom from the confines of her short chain, Twilight stretched her back and forelegs, eliciting several pops from stiff joints she hadn’t been able to work until now. She also threw in a yawn for dramatic effect before slowly trotting over to the new doorway where her captors waited.

They both had amused smirks on their faces, but Twilight refused to give them the satisfaction of showing her frustration. They had the upper hoof and they knew it, but that didn’t mean Twilight had to let them know that she knew it too.

Once she was out of the cell, the bars raised back into a wall again and Flim and Flam led the way down the corridor they had come from. The hall was very short and Twilight’s cell seemed to be the only one there. At the end was a wooden door, banded with the same strange metal as the bars and the chain.

Flim gave a grandiose bow with a flourish of his foreleg as he opened the door, as if Twilight wasn’t a prisoner at all, but a prestigious house guest. She held her head high and walked through as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

This illusion ended abruptly as Twilight soon found out that the door led almost directly to a sheer cliff dropped away hundreds of pony-lengths below.

“Oh yes Princess,” the aggravating unicorn announced from behind her. “Be careful of the ledge, we had to build your prison on a cliff, simply because we had no space left in the city.” With this, he gestured again, drawing Twilight’s attention to the valley into which the cliff led.

An enormous settlement wove between the hills of the landscape, each rise cut into tiers on which houses and factories and shops had been built. It was almost large enough to rival Manehattan or Fillydelphia, spread out as it was, though it lacked any of the tall, multi-storey buildings of the other metropolises.

What really struck Twilight as impressive, however, was that a large portion of the local flora had been maintained. Most of the buildings and streets were built to accommodate the trees and large bushes that dotted the hills, creating a very peaceful atmosphere to the town. If she wasn’t currently being held prisoner, Twilight would have considered congratulating the designers of the city for their planning.

The fact remained, however, that Twilight was a prisoner, a fact that Flim reminded her of by giving her a rough shove off to the side of the doorway onto a narrow ledge that ran along the face of the cliff. Her cell had literally been built into the side of a mountain. The ledge was well-maintained and ran along to a plateau that contained a sheltered contraption sitting on a set of rails that ran straight down the mountain to the city below. There didn’t appear to be any other cells or entrances into the mountain that Twilight could see. Was she the only pony locked up in here?

As they approached what Twilight could only assume was a magic-powered lift that would take them down the mountain, she expected the brothers to light up their horns to power the pulleys, but they simply led her into the cabin and shut the door behind them.

The interior of the cart was simple: blue-tinted metal walls lined on all sides by padded benches, leaving a gap for the door, with windows giving a full view of the outside. It wasn’t luxurious, but after the hard bed in her cell, the thin padding on the seats was soothing.

Suddenly, the lift was moving. There weren’t any jerks or bumps like a horse drawn cart, the cabin just started slowly moving down the mountainside. The descent was slow and Flim and Flam said nothing, so Twilight had ample time to gaze out the windows at the city below.

It had been meticulously planned, each street linked together to create a spider’s web of roads and buildings emanating from each hill. Each web joined almost flawlessly into the web centered around the next hill. As the city got closer, Twilight began to discern the different districts where trends formed in the buildings. On one hill there seemed to be only residential houses, with what looked like grocery shops interspersed at regular intervals. The hill directly next to it was completely full of stores selling everything from gardening tools and plants, to furniture and office supplies, judging from the huge signs above each building, which could only be the market district. Further along from that was the warehouse district, where enormous storehouses lined equally large streets. Bordering that was the industrial district where huge factories dominated the hillside and even from such a distance, ponies could be seen scurrying about at their tasks.

Further out in the distance, outside the city where the hills subsided down into flatlands, were the patchwork fields of farms where dark specks could be seen toiling away at their crops or tending livestock. The pastures were large and plentiful enough to probably supply the entire city. The whole settlement seemed completely self-sustained, it was no wonder Twilight had never heard anything about it before.

“Behold.” Flim said suddenly, trotting over to the window and gesturing grandly with one forehoof. “The city of Unicornia.”

This immediately made Twilight puzzled. Unicornia? she thought. That’s the name of the land that the unicorn Princess Platinum tried to create before the joining of the three pony tribes, but why would they…?

The descent continued in silence as Twilight contemplated the city, its name, as well as what her own captivity meant. What did they want with her? They seemed hospitable enough, if she ignored the blinding pain she felt whenever she tried to use her magic, as well as the decrepit cell and chain she had been confined to.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t that hospitable at all. They themselves had been nice enough to her though. If you discounted…

Her thoughts continued around and around in a circle until Flam tapped her on the shoulder. The lift had been so smooth and she had been so caught up in her thoughts, that she hadn’t noticed it stopping.

Looking out the window, Twilight saw they were in a large building at the base of the mountain, three walls made up of brick and metal, with the fourth was the almost vertical slab of stone that was the cliffside. There were two guardsponies standing at attention outside the elevator, the same coat and mane, as well as armour, as the pony who had come to see her earlier.

There was little else in the room, though there were several doors and windows lining the sides that showed ponies going about some work in other parts of the building. There were also a few ponies crossing the room containing the elevator, but they immediately stopped as soon as they noticed Twilight. As Flim and Flam led her out of the building, their gazes followed, all the way up until they were out of sight.

Flim and Flam said nothing as they exited the building, which led out onto a street that seemed too wide for the number of ponies occupying it at this hour. The sun was approaching the top of the sky, when ponies should be bustling about the streets till nopony could move without dodging around everypony else, but there was enough space for all the traffic to walk abreast and have plenty of room to spare.

The road did bottleneck down at two places, where two pairs of enormous pony statues stood, one at each end of the building they had just left and the other pair down the other end of the street. Both pairs were set facing in towards each other. They were seemingly made of metal, with overlapping plates making up the majority of their body and limbs. They wore stern expressions and their poses were at military attention while the two large red orbs that were their eyes gave them a sinister appearance. In place of manes, they had a solid ridge running from the back of their necks to the crown of their heads at the base of their horns. They certainly were a curiosity, and one that Twilight was intent on unraveling.

The district that they had descended into seemed to be adjacent to the warehouse and industrial districts, but Twilight hadn’t seen any of these statues anywhere else in the city. They were large enough that she would have spotted them from the lift, being as big as multi-storey houses as they were. Did they hold some religious significance? They weren’t Alicorns, so she doubted it.

Twilight noticed Flim gently waving her over, clearly expecting blind obedience. In a streak of rebellion, she decided to ignore him, instead continuing her examination of the unicorn statues.

Suddenly, a blinding pain shot through her head, much like the agony earlier when she had tried to use her magic, causing her to cry out and drop to her haunches. When her vision cleared and her brain began processing information again, she looked over to see Flim’s horn glowing with magic. He gave another small gesture, clearly a summons and Twilight begrudgingly complied.

Flim’s grin was as wide as ever as Twilight made her approach, a dull ache still throbbing in her head. “Marvelous creation, that device on your head,” he exclaimed. “Designed and created by the Flim Flam Brothers, as brilliant as you please.” The unicorn gave a flourish and a bow, in clear tribute to his own intelligence.

Twilight just scowled. Part of her mind admitted that, yes, the infernal device was incredible: blocking her magic completely, with no magical residue, as well as containing the capability to shock the victim. It was ingenious. Completely insane and unethical, but ingenious.

Flim continued on, ever the showpony. “It’s actually more clever than you think. Most magic suppressors simply prevent magical energy from leaving the horn, but obviously given enough power, these can be broken and rendered useless.”

Twilight found herself nodding along, and quickly stiffened her neck to stop. This pony had captured her and imprisoned her in a dingy little cell, but Twilight’s studious side couldn’t help but enjoy a good lecture, particularly about such a forbidden aspect of magic.

“That suppressor, however,” Flim talked on. “That suppressor is special. The design was made specifically for Alicorns, but that specimen was built to fit you. What it does, is actually sends probes into the ley lines at the base of the horn. These probes can then manage the flow of magic heading through your body to your horn, meaning we can let you use a little bit of magic, or cut off your magic flow completely. It also lets us send feedback back down the ley lines of your skull, which is the marvelous sensation you just experienced.”

A normal pony might have balked at such a flow of sudden and technical information, but Twilight was adept at understanding and memorising this kind of thing. Which is why she immediately knew that she really was in far more trouble than she had thought.

“So why doesn’t it have any magical residue?” her mouth asked before she could stop it. She silently cursed her studious side for betraying her.

Flim’s grin only widened, impossible as it seemed. “It has no magic in it, of course. It is a feat of technology, nothing more. Magic may have gone into the crafting of it, but it does not actually contain any magic itself, it is simply a conduit that we can control with our own magic.” With one last infuriating chuckle, Flim turned and headed for his brother, who had continued lazily down the street, effectively ending the conversation.

Twilight ground her teeth. She knew she couldn’t just run away. The suppressor saw to that. She knew she was trapped following them, and she knew that they knew it too. All she could do was follow and seethe.

The brothers led her through the warehouse district, keeping to the main, too-wide streets as they showed her around. Traffic in that district was sparse, limited to mainly ponies piloting strange self-powered carriages that had large, flat platforms for transporting goods. Many of them they saw were piled with crates or boxes or even strange pieces of machinery. Hoof traffic was limited to those ponies assisting those driving the carts, and Twilight and her entourage themselves.

They never had to dodge out of the way of oncoming traffic, nor did they even have to swerve or deviate from their path at all. The drivers would simply move their vehicles out of the way, or stop completely when that wasn’t an option. Either they knew who Twilight was and she was finally getting some of the respect she deserved or, more likely, they knew Flim and Flam and knew to move out of the way.

Something struck her as they left the towering warehouses behind and entered the market district, where the hoof traffic increased so that the streets were near to being packed. Not a single pony, other than the ones in the lift shed, seemed perturbed by her presence, or even acknowledged that she was there. They didn’t bat an eye at the iron band around her horn and they didn’t even glance at her wings. Did they not know who she was? Or was it that they knew and just didn’t care?

Her concerns went unnoticed by her escorts, who stopped at a stall selling fruit. Flim trotted up and took three apples from the pallet. He didn’t pay for them, didn’t even acknowledge the mare standing on the other side, nor did she seem affected at all that he had just taken some of her produce without payment. Even Celestia insisted on paying for food she ate outside the palace.

Flim then held one of the apples up under Twilight’s nose. “Are you hungry, Princess?” he asked, suddenly so polite that she had to do a double-take.

Lifting up a hoof, she took the apple and looked at it askance. Had he done something to it while she wasn’t looking? She sniffed it and it smelled just like a normal, juicy apple. It didn’t have the distinct, mouth-watering fragrance of a Sweet Apple Acres apple, but it looked ripe and juicy. She was still a little apprehensive.

Flam gave her a deadpan look. “Princess, really? Must you be so suspicious? Had we wanted to kill you, we would have done it whilst you were asleep.” Flim nodded his head and took a large bite out of his own apple.

It was only then that Twilight noticed that her stomach was growling angrily, reminding her that she hadn’t had any dinner the night she had been taken. In fact, it made her realise that she didn’t know how long she had been out. She might have gone days without a single meal. She bit into the apple hungrily, devouring the entire thing in a matter of seconds, not wasting a single drop of juice.

They threw her a few more apples as a master would throw a bone for a dog, but Twilight was suddenly too hungry to care. She ate them as quickly as the first, but after the third, when she looked back to Flam to take another apple, he simply motioned his head down along the street and again, without looking back to see if she was following, continued the tour of the city, leaving Twilight hungry and disappointed.

It was slowly getting through the afternoon as they left the market district, Twilight feeling slightly less hungry than before with some carrots and an orange accompanying the apples in her stomach, that Flim had thrown her in much the same manner. They entered the residential district where the traffic dropped off somewhat, leaving the streets feeling comparatively empty, though there was still a number of ponies walking about for some business or another.

The streets here were lined with brown-walled brick houses with tightly thatched roofs, each looking large enough to house three of four ponies comfortably. Each and every house was completely identical, down to the shade of the thatch and the contents of the window gardens. It was eery, sending shivers down Twilight’s spine. Thankfully, they didn’t stop.

After a quick loop around the block, Twilight was led back out of the rows of look-alike houses and back through the markets. Twilight tried not to show her disappointment when they didn’t offer her any more food, though her stomach seemed intent on giving her away as the smells of fruit and baked goods made her mouth water.

The sun was approaching the horizon by the time they trotted into the Industrial District, which Flim and Flam had pointedly avoided before. The air had the faint scent of smoke, giving Twilight no doubt that in a few years, there would be an almost permanent smog in this part of the city. It was the only place where there was no natural plant life, all the space being taken up by giant factories or huge slabs of concreted ground. The hill had also been almost completely leveled, Twilight noticed as the slope they were walking up suddenly leveled out before they were even near to the center of the district.

She could see, even from behind, the smiles Flim and Flam were wearing growing larger and more smug by the minute as they walked. Their big reveal, the purpose to this whole tour, must be coming up. Twilight prepared herself for the worst. Hopefully once it was over, she would get to see Spike and make sure he was okay.

Most of the factories and manufacturing grounds were empty due to the late hour, Twilight presumed, but some that she passed had lines of hundreds of ponies in what looked like military uniforms doing parade drills or marching back and forth. The frequency that these appeared increased as they got closer to what looked like the main building at the centre of the district. At least, it was the largest building in the area: Twilight approximated that it was just off-centre to where the top of the hill would have once been.

Smaller groups of ponies began appearing, wearing white coats and fussing over some form of machinery or another, though they never slowed enough to give Twilight a good look at what they were working on. She did get a lucky look at one of the groups as they stepped away from a large machine just moments before her horn started to tingle with magical feedback and the device let out a muffled bang and a blast of intense light. Her vision cleared just in time for her to see the enormous scorched line leading up to what was once a huge block of concrete, now just a pile of dust and small rubble.

She barely had time to marvel and wonder why in Equestria these ponies would be developing something like that before it was out of sight behind another factory building. They passed more and more of these groups, each working on a different device, some just as destructive as the first, others that seemingly had no result at all. It all began to add up in Twilight’s mind, and she began to come to a horrifying realisation.

Lines of parade troops in military uniform, testing of dangerous technology combined with magic in ways that would make Celestia weep for the destructiveness of it all. An isolated city that nopony would have even heard of. Flim and Flam were watching her with matching grins of wicked satisfaction and she couldn’t stop her face from going slack.

They were building an army, well trained and equipped with technology like this… they could invade Equestria without much resistance, the Equestrian military having grown used to the extended reign of peace.

“You finally understand now, don’t you princess?” Flim said, walking slowly up to her and throwing a hoof around her withers his grin only growing larger.

Flam copied him on the other side, sharing his brother’s expression. “Do you know why we called this city Unicornia, Twilight?”

The sudden question snapped Twilight out of the stupor she was in and she found herself unable to answer. “I…” An image flashed through her mind. A unicorn levitating a sheaf of papers behind a glass window at the base of her mountain prison.

More images quickly followed. The giant unicorn statues on the street, workponies levitating crates onto the back of transport vehicles, marketponies using magic to organise their wares, a tradespony levitating up a sign that had fallen down off its post at one of the shop buildings. A unicorn mare using magic to lock up her house, rows and rows of military unicorns doing parade drills, led by a pony using magic as the marching queue. Unicorns… they were all unicorns. Every single pony she had seen was a unicorn!

Flim shook his head and laughed. “I may never get tired of seeing that look on her face brother.”

“Indeed brother,” Flam replied. “That look of hopeless realisation when she knows something is true and she can’t do a thing about it. Come Princess, we have one last thing to show you.”

Twilight couldn’t imagine what more they could show her. They clearly wanted to unsettle her and she couldn’t deny that it was working. A city full of unicorns… that was racism on such an extreme level she could barely comprehend it. A small, hopeful voice in the back of her head suggested that maybe there were pegasi and earth ponies around and she simply hadn’t seen them, but Flim and Flam were looking far too smug for that to be true.

The large building they were approaching dominated the landscape, overshadowing everything else and looming above like a sleeping giant. There were two more of the giant unicorn statues seemingly standing guard on either side of a massive set of doors leading into the building that, up close, seemed to be a warehouse of some kind.

The walls were solid metal with a slightly sloped roof sitting on top. The only windows were small and shuttered, lining the top of the building all the way around. Everything else about the structure was completely uniform, down to the corrugation in the steel of the walls.

They approached in an eerie silence and Twilight couldn’t help but feel a little curiosity through all the apprehension and fear. The statues glinted in the late afternoon light as the sliding metal doors loomed overhead, taller than a large house and just as wide.

Flim and Flam made no move that Twilight saw, nor did they use any magic, but the doors began to open, sliding sideways without a sound, well-greased runners spinning smoothly. Inside, there was darkness, not a single light or lamp to illuminate whatever it was that the brothers were so gleeful about. Flim and Flam led Twilight inside.

A hum began to sound from somewhere off to the side, reverberating through the very ground beneath their hooves. With a loud clack! huge floodlights switched on overhead, illuminating the entire space instantly. What she saw made Twilight jaw, and mind, go completely slack.

The warehouse was completely filled with the pony statues. All of them made out of the same metal as the ones outside, all the exact same shape and size, lined up in rigid rows, every one perfectly spaced to the ones in front, behind and beside. There were hundreds of them!

Twilight could barely form words as she trotted up to the closest statue for a closer look. She struggled to form coherent thoughts. Why do they need so many of these? What purpose do they serve? How did they make this many of them?

She inspected the statue closely. It seemed to be made out of overlapping sheets of formed metal, much like the old plate-mail armor the royal guards in Canterlot sometimes wore on parades or special ceremonies. Circling it, she saw that it was the same all over, the knee joints even looked like they might be able to bend, though why a statue would need to bend its knees, she had no idea.

Stretching her neck, Twilight looked the thing in one of its big red lens-like eyes. It sent shivers down her spine, lacking a proper mane as it did. They did seem to have tails, though they were long, thin and didn’t look like any kind of pony tail Twilight had seen before. They also, upon closer inspection, seemed to be sharpened at the end. Why would a statue have a sharpened tail?

Suddenly, a loud hum filled the room, emanating from everywhere and echoing around the enclosed space so that it became a deafening roar that almost drowned out the thoughts in Twilight’s head.

She looked back up at the head of the pony statue.

The statue tilted its neck and looked back.

Twilight leapt backwards with a shriek, tripping over her hooves and landing on her back as the remainder of her breath left her lungs in a whoosh. She didn’t even notice her inability to breathe. She probably wouldn’t have been breathing anyway.

She could hear the laughter from her captors dimly in the background, but she didn’t care.

What are these things? Why are they here? What do they do? How did Flim and Flam get them? What in Equestria are they?!

Her thoughts grew more and more frantic, circling around and around, tunneling her vision to the point that she only just noticed the ‘statue’ in front of her take a step forward, forcing her to desperately scramble out of the way or be crushed as it walked, just like a regular pony, over the space she had just occupied.

The others followed, hundreds and hundreds of them filing in perfect synchronisation out of the giant warehouse and into the city, on their way to an unknown destination. The ground shook as they walked, their hoofsteps landing all at the same time. Each one was a marvel of technological genius, but Twilight couldn’t form thoughts coherent enough to process the sheer techno-magical implications of these things.

Army… The thought sparked something in Twilight’s mind, immediately filling her with dread. She rounded on Flim and Flam.

“Where are they going?” She demanded, for a moment forgetting that she was a captive, completely under the control of these ponies, becoming a Princess again. “Where are you sending them?”

Flam took a step forward. “Wonderful, aren’t they? Our mechanical, metal unicorns. We call these ones ‘MAC Drones’, or ‘Mechanical Armoured Combat Drones’. They have pilots, but for all intents and purposes, they’re just drones. There are others, commander units, but you don’t need to worry yourself with those yet.”

Twilight could only stare at them in amazement, Flam’s words washing over her but not really sinking in. “Why call them drones if they have pilots?” she heard herself ask.

“Oh, the name is to keep them in line, keep all imagination out of their heads, all sense of singularity. They do what we tell them to do, exactly how we tell them, exactly when we tell them. Really, the equine bodies are just there as a power source. The units themselves are made completely out of a type of synthetic metal we developed, forged into overlapping plates. The entire exoskeleton is magic resistant, reflecting small spells and dispersing all but the most powerful.”

On cue, Flim lit up his horn and sent a blast of magic directly at the chest-plate of the nearest monolith, and it dissipated smoothly against the shiny metal.

“They are powered entirely by the magic energy of the pilots, who are contained inside the head. They are completely sealed in the cockpit, fed information through a neural uplink with the gemstone eyes.”

Twilight shakily looked up into the eyes of the passing monsters and realised that each and every one of them was staring straight at her as they thundered past. It was unnerving, to say the least.

“They use a method similar to your own imprisonment device, in that the ley lines are directly tapped, then linked up with a magic enhancement unit, which uses an array of gemstones, crystals and lenses to amplify the magic potential of a unicorn by a hundredfold or more. Obviously operating one of these takes a huge amount of energy, so not many unicorns can keep it up for long.”

Twilight could barely speak. “H-how? How did you even begin to create something like this? This is beyond anything Equestria has ever seen before.”

This only fuelled the brothers’ ego, but Twilight was beyond noticing or caring at this point. The ramifications of this force of war machines was swiftly sinking back in, and she once again rounded on the two unicorns, for once feeling her Princesshood take control again, finally noticing that, despite the two being tall stallions, she stood taller than them still.

“Where are they going? What do you mean to do with these monstrosities? And where is Spike?”

Her sense of superiority lasted only for a moment, as Flim lit up his horn and a painful jolt shocked through Twilight’s brain, almost dropping her to the ground as the goliath metal ponies continued to file past.

Flam simply grinned as she shook her head and struggled to her hooves, the pain lingering in the base of her horn. “Spike is fine, Princess, no need to get demanding. You need to learn your place here, that much is obvious. As for these beautiful works of technomagical ingenuity, they’re going to Equestria, and the rest of the world! All will fall under our purview.”

Twilight bit back a harsh response. All she would get was another shock. Her glare must have said enough though, as another jolt pulsed into her mind, less powerful this time, but a headache began to form in the center of her forehead.

Again, it was Flam who responded, this time to her unspoken question. “You’re wondering why, Twilight Sparkle? Why are we developing an army of giant mechanical ponies, why are we designing magic-enhancing super-weapons, why are we even bothering with any of this? Well the answer is simple: to bring about the glorious revolution, of course!” Another shock drove Twilight to her knees, though she hadn’t said anything, or even looked at either pony, but the look in Flim’s eye said he was enjoying seeing her squirm.

Pushing herself back to her hooves, Twilight attempted to hold her head high. “Wh… what revolution?” Her voice was failing her, breaths coming in pants and wheezes as yet another painful jolt dropped her to the floor completely.

Looking up, she saw both of her captors standing over her, grinning widely, taking perverse pleasure in her torment. “The unicorn revolution, Twilight Sparkle. We can’t ensure the mastery of the unicorns without first doing away with your pathetic little nation and their freedom rights for the inferior races, so we have created an army capable of crushing all who would stand in our way. Not even your precious Princesses will be able to stand before our might!”

Twilight could no longer muster the strength to speak, or even lift her head as one last bolt of pain shot through her horn and her vision began to fade. Her last conscious thought was of the two brothers laughing to the backdrop of enormous hooves pounding their way to her home and everything she loved and held dear.

03 - Dark Motives

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Chapter Three

Dark Motives

Twilight was under no sleepy delusions as to her situation when she woke. This was partially due to her sleep being plagued with pain and nightmares of being crushed beneath giant metal pony hooves.

It was also likely due to her complete inability to move.

Opening her eyes, she blinked against the sudden light. A bright lamp was positioned just above her. She tried to struggle, but soon realised that it was hopeless.

She was bound by iron bands to a large slab of concrete, her rear legs pinned together below her body, her front legs stretched out to the sides and secured. Her wings were pinned to her body with a tight strap around her midsection and her horn was still encased in the magic limiter.

Her vision cleared as she blinked and she saw that her slab was positioned in the middle of a small and almost perfectly square room. Her head was bound by a strap across her forehead, preventing her from looking anywhere but directly up, so the rest of the room was hidden beneath the range of her sight.

Obviously, her situation had worsened as she slept again. It seemed every time she fell asleep - or was knocked out cold by the painful shocks those Celestia-damned unicorns kept sending through her horn - she woke up in a significantly less advantageous position. It was a pattern that Twilight hoped wouldn’t continue because she couldn’t see any way that her current situation could get worse.

She immediately wished she could take that thought back as an off-yellow head appeared in her sight.

“Oh good, you’re finally awake.” Flam grinned, setting Twilight’s nerves on edge and igniting a spark of hopeless anger.

She just glared at him, not saying a word.

He had the upper hoof though, and he knew it, so the daggers she was trying to shoot at him with her eyes did nothing but widen his smile.

“You can glare all you like, Princess, but I can assure you, whatever you think your situation is at the moment, you’re wrong.” Twilight blinked at him. How could she be wrong about the direness of being strapped to a concrete slab in the middle of a crazy unicorn-only city?

Flam’s grin grew menacing and he disappeared out of her sight. “Whatever you think your situation is,” he heard him say from off to her right. “It’s actually much, much worse.” He punctuated this by returning to her vision holding a scalpel that glinted in the light from the overhead lamp.

Twilight’s eyes widened.

“Yes Princess, you might want to slow down with these shocked realisation. We don’t want your heart giving way before the rest of you does.” The way he was emphasising the word ‘Princess’ made it blatantly obvious that she was no Princess here. He flippantly spun the blade around his hoof again. “You know, our… questioners, prefer to use magic when forcefully interrogating a pony. Even if just to hold the knife.” Another flourish. “I, however, think that I’d prefer to do it by hoof, to get a more personal feel for the subject.” He spun it around his hoof again, this time following with a small toss into the air. He leaned forward.

Twilight tried to protest and began shouting wordlessly, trying to move away as he brought the scalpel up to her right foreleg, but her bindings made her efforts useless.

The blade felt ice-cold as Flam lightly touched it to her skin, and Twilight’s breath caught in her throat, eyes widening in horror.

He wouldn’t actually cut me would he? She thought desperately. He’s not that twisted, right? She was glad she wasn’t speaking, because even her thoughts were sounding desperate. Despite her immobilised head, she could still see Flam’s face and he seemed to hesitate, a look of uncertainty crossing his features.

The look quickly disappeared however, replaced by an expression of grim determination. The coldness grew deeper as she felt the pressure on her skin increase. The chill suddenly changed to a spot of hot fire as the blade pierced her flesh, quickly turned into a line of pain as he drew the instrument across her leg.

She only just managed to stifle her scream into a pained whimper. The cut was short, barely the width of her leg, but it released a long stream of blood down her limb and onto the slab. She could feel it slowly pooling against her side. Apparently he was that twisted.

“Why?” she managed to ask, almost keeping her voice steady while trying to force the tears away from her eyes. “What do you want from me?”

Flam just chuckled, spinning the scalpel around on his hoof. “What do I want? Well Twilight, I don’t actually want anything from you. This is just all part of the procedure. As to why, well…” he trailed off for a moment, his eyebrows narrowing in puzzlement.

He shook his head, as if to clear it, and glared down at her. “The why doesn’t matter to you right now, Princess.”

Twilight filed his reaction away for later study. It was odd that he would suddenly lose his train of thought like that. There was some significance to it, she was sure.

Her own thought train was interrupted by another line of fire, right next to the first as Flam made another cut on her leg. This one was deeper, the heat more intense and the blood spill faster.

She didn’t manage to contain her cry of pain this time, unexpected as it was, and her tormentor grinned, his composure restored. He made several more cuts in quick succession, each one directly beside the last and Twilight had to clamp her teeth together to stop herself from screaming. Tears streamed down her face and her foreleg seemed to be ablaze while her side slicked up with blood that was pooling on the bench.

Flam dropped out of her sight and she heard some rustling, along with some clangs and bangs. When he returned, he was holding an opaque white bottle with a nozzle on the end, designed to squirt liquid in a small jet when the bottle was squeezed. He rolled it around in his hooves for a few moments, looking thoughtful, before bending over her bloodied leg.

The pain suddenly increased tenfold and she screamed, her limbs involuntarily spasming, trying to escape as her throat ripped itself raw and tears streamed down her face.

Flam laughed, somewhat shakily, though Twilight could barely hear as her breath ran out and she lay panting, trying desperately but weakly to be free from her bonds and curl into a sobbing ball, nursing her throbbing leg.

“Don’t worry Twilight,” Flam chuckled. “That was just some disinfectant, to stop these going septic. It has a few extra ingredients, of course, to give it a little more zest.”

Twilight wished she could glare up at this maniacal unicorn with a gaze that promised severe repercussions, but all she could do was squeeze her eyes shut and clench her teeth against the pain.

For the moment, Flam seemed content to watch her squirm weakly against her bonds, smiling as tears streamed down her face from the blinding agony in her leg. It was almost unbearable, still throbbing as if a red-hot poker had been drawn across her skin.

Every instinct she had demanded that she begged, pitifully, for the pain to stop. She wasn’t used to this kind of treatment, this kind of pain. The worst she’d felt was when she’d hit her horn during a visit with Fluttershy and spent the next week or so in bed recovering from severe headaches and magical feedback. This was so many magnitudes worse, but she managed to force the urge to plea pathetically for her life down, using her anger at this stallion and the situation he had put her in as an aide.

She needed all the anger she could get, she found out, as her world became one containing nothing but pain and the cold slab she was strapped to, with glimpses of the feel of the bonds and the warm blood running down her skin and fur.

Flam worked quickly, moving his way along both her forelegs and her rear legs, making several cuts in quick succession, then moving on to another area. Once he had made a small patch of cuts on each of her limbs, he put down his scalpel and picked up the disinfectant bottle again.

Twilight would whimper and stifle her cries throughout the cutting, then scream her lungs out as he squirted the acidic-feeling liquid onto her still-bleeding wounds. He would then give her a reprieve and let the burning feeling settle in before starting again, making another series of cuts on each of her limbs.

The disinfectant seemed to help with the bleeding a little, but it wasn’t long before Twilight was feeling light-headed from blood loss. It was at this point when he had just made his fourth round on her limbs that Flam stopped and, after a moment, unstrapped her head, which immediately lolled off to the side, lacking the strength to hold it up as she was.

Dimly, she saw the rest of the room with blurry eyes and spinning head. The walls were lined with polished steel benches, each one a flat tabletop with sets of tools laid out in neat arrays, from small scalpels and knives to long saws and cleavers, all impeccably clean. Each bench had cupboards above and below, none of which were open, but the upper ones had glass fronts and Twilight could see bottles, jars, cans and boxes. They were all labelled but Twilight could read none of them, distant and hazy as they were.

Her limbs throbbed, each pulse drawing more tears from her eyes. She had long since given up trying not to cry, her tears coming as freely as her cries of pain did. Dimly, she was aware of the thought that this was a monstrous thing to do to a pony, strapping them to a table and slicing them up as if they were a slab of meat, but her mind was too foggy with blood loss and pain to pay much heed to the thought.

Flam seemed content to let her simmer for a time while he meticulously cleaned his scalpel and wiped off most of the blood that has gotten on his hooves. He didn’t give her long, however, as once he was done washing his hooves, he returned with the bottle again and gave her another thorough dousing with the evil stuff. Her mind was close to shutting down from the torment, but just as she was about to black out, a bizarre smell hit her nose and lurched her fully back into the waking world.

Flam was holding a small pot under her snout which was emitting a scent that was sickly sweet but seemed to be spicy, tangy and bitter all at the same time. The vile unicorn had a grin on his face.

“Magically enhanced smelling salts,” he explained. “You can be blacked out completely, but after one whiff of this you’ll be fully awake in no time. We can’t have you passing out on us and missing the fun, can we?”

Twilight tried to shoot him a glare, but she could barely move her head, let alone adjust her expression or emit any semblance of willpower or defiance. She barely had the energy left to scream.

It seemed Flam was done, however, as he soon returned with a hose and gave the bench - and Twilight - a freezing cold high-pressure shower, washing away all the blood. She couldn’t even struggle, her energy drained, the slashes across her legs burned, throbbing in unison with her throat. The smelling salt was the only thing keeping her awake.

Seemingly without a signal, a door opened somewhere out of her field of view. She couldn’t move her head enough to see who it was, but she found that she didn’t care. She became vaguely aware that the straps holding her limbs in place were being undone before she was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. Dimly, part of Twilight’s mind cursed Flam, and hoped that Celestia would send him to Tartarus for all of eternity, but all she could focus on was the pain.

The cuts were all strategically positioned that they either grated on her own fur, or on the floor whenever she was sitting or lying down. It wasn’t as bad as the disinfectant, but it was enough to make her want to cry out at the stab of pain the cuts sent up her limbs as the new pony hoisted her up onto his shoulders, her hooves dragging on the floor, and carried her out the door.

She was still conscious when they arrived at her cell. She was lucid enough to realise that the torture chamber must be in her prison, high up on the side of the mountain. The thought would do her little good, and gave her no comfort.

After the bars slid down, the pony carrying her moved inside and dumped her on the ground at the back of the cell, right at the spot where the collar and chain attached to the floor. WIth a burst of green magic and a snap, the collar fastened itself around her neck.

Twilight couldn’t muster the energy to struggle. She only just managed to curl herself into a ball and hug her tail, matted and dirty as it was, and cry. In the last moments before the smelling salts wore off, while her vision was fading to black, she heard Flam chuckle as the bars clanged, returning to block the entrance.

~~~~~~~~~~

When she awoke, Twilight’s world was pain. Her limbs burned from the cuts and her throat was raw from screaming. Every move was painful as her wounds rubbed up against one another, and every breath or gulp felt like she was swallowing razor blades.

She sat up anyway, careful of the short chain attaching her to the ground, clenching her teeth so that her cry of pain came out as a whimper instead. She was right where they had left her, up against the wall of her cell. Her sleep had been plagued with nightmares again, old ones and new. They faded as she sat there, resisting the urge to shake her head, but the memories of the pain of burned flesh, broken limbs and gouged eyes remained.

She heard a chuckle by the cell bars and, looking over, she saw a guard standing there with a smug expression on his face. It was, she realised, the same pony who had been there when she had first awoken in her dingy little cell with it cursed collar and rough straw. Inwardly, she was pouting a little, much like Rarity at the indecency of it all, but outwardly she tried to keep her calm, superior facade.

Considering she couldn’t sit up straight, and her coat was mangy and unwashed, covered with dirt while her mane hung in knotted clumps over her face, she didn’t think she came across as very superior.

The guard smirked at her and opened the bars just enough to slide through a bowl containing some sort of mushy meal over to Twilight’s hunched form, half of which spilled onto the floor before it reached her. He said nothing as he lowered the bars again and walked away.

Twilight pointedly ignored the food until the sound of the door slamming shut echoed down the hall. As soon as the guard was outside, however, she dropped to the floor and stuffed her face into the bowl. Her stomach growled even then, and she was careful not to spill any more onto the ground. It was some sort of oatmeal porridge, mushy and tasteless, but not a scrap was left in the bowl when Twilight was done. She even eyed the lumps that had fallen onto the ground, but they were already laced with dirt and she wasn’t that hungry.

Another painful growl of her stomach told her that she was close to being that hungry, but she refused to dive to such depths just yet. She still had some of her dignity left, though her appetite was screaming at her to throw it away completely.

Twilight waited for the guard, or Flim and Flam, or anyone really, to come for her that day, but nopony did. She shuffled around at the extent of the chain’s length, moving from one position to the next, trying to get comfortable and she heard not a peep from the outside world.

Her cuts were still hurting: the pain had dulled little throughout the day. It wasn’t until the light coming in through the small window was the deep orange of sunset and her stomach was once again growling and aching with hunger, that she heard the prison door open.

She immediately assumed a posture that she had been practicing, sitting with her head held as high as she could with her back as straight as the chain would allow. She adopted an empirically bored expression that a Princess might wear if her patience were being tried, and waited.

She did not have to wait long: soon enough Flim and Flam appeared at the bars to her cell. They both wore their ever-present vests, straw hats and matching smiles, and Twilight was struck with just how much she hated these ponies. It was a new feeling for her.

True, she had had unpleasant feelings about ponies in the past, like Prince Blueblood or Trixie, before her reformation, but she had never really hated anyone before. But now, here she was looking at these two flashy, show-off demons and she knew that she detested them both down to pits of her soul.

How dare they do this to her, a Princess of Equestria, an ex-student of Princess Celestia herself, and a fellow pony. How dare they chain her to the ground, how dare they cut her off from her magic, how dare they torture her, cutting her flesh until she was sobbing. How dare they-

Her mental tirade was struck short as Flim sparked up his horn and shot a lance of white hot pain through Twilight’s skull. This only made her hate him more, and her expression must have showed it because another bolt of pain followed closely after that nearly dropped her to the floor.

She sat, front legs crouched, panting while she stared at the ground, trying to get her emotions under control. It would do her no good to suffer more of this pain than she had to. She almost lost her hard-won cool when the brothers chuckled. Looking up, she saw them sharing a slightly wicked grin with each other.

“We’re making progress,” Flim said to Flam.

“Indeed we are,” Flam replied.

“Making progress on what?” Twilight demanded, her voice shakier and not quite as strong as she would have liked, but the only reply she received was another shot of fire through her head, again almost dropping her to the floor.

She barely had time to clear her head and blink her vision clear of the red haze when she was being forcefully hauled to her hooves and dragged out of her cell. She tried to see where they were going, to at least give her a sense of direction, but her vision was still blurred and her mind fuzzy, and before she knew it she was being strapped back onto the icy concrete slab, belly down this time. Her hooved were tied in much the same manner as before, her forelegs out to the side, and her rear legs strapped together, directly down. Her head was tied with her chin flat to the slab.

She heard her captors conversing for a time, in quiet tones that she couldn’t hear, then one of them departed and the door slammed. Flim then appeared in her view, restricted as it was, with a devilish grin on his face. Then, he levitated a very large, very sharp-looking knife in front of her face, and his grin only grew as her eyes widened and she gasped.

“Oh, don’t worry Twilight Sparkle,” he crooned. “This knife is not for your flesh.”

This brought her some comfort, but sparked the question as to what the knife was for. Her stress only grew as Flim moved back out of her view and she heard his hoofsteps echoing from behind her. Her frantic brain was just running over the horrifying possibilities of what he could be planning when his steps stopped. Heart beating fast, mind spinning with terrible ideas, Twilight waited.

Suddenly, Flim seized her tail, either by magic or his hoof, Twilight couldn’t tell, and used the knife to shear it off, right at her flank.

Her heart froze, her breathing stopped and she felt her soul shatter. She could almost sense the strands of hair falling to the ground, despite the fact that she couldn’t even see them. She barely even felt the pain of the nerve endings in the base of her tail being cut.

The distant, analytical part of her mind quietly reminded her that a pony’s tail can grow back, as luscious as ever, if cut over two or three hoof-lengths from the base, but if the nerves that allow a pony quite dexterous control over their tail were cut, as hers now were, the tail never grew back the same, if it grew back at all.

She slumped. Her will, her determination, her fire for resistance, drained completely from her body. In that moment, she didn’t care what else they did to her. The pain from her cuts faded, the agony her body was feeling from the severed nerves in her tail remained unnoticed by her mind. Everything faded from existence for her.

Even as Flim trotted up, the tattered remains of her beautiful tail held in his sickly green magical grasp, all she could see, all she could feel were memories, visions from the past. Her brother leaving for the military, she spent the first few nights of his absence hugging her tail, worrying about him.

Her application for Celestia’s School of Gifted Unicorns was due, and she spent the night before rocking back and forth on her bed, tail wrapped in her hooves, seeking, and finding, some comfort in the soft waves of hair.

Her father had gone to hospital, some operation he needed for something reasonably minor, but that had not stopped Twilight worrying so much she had spent the whole day and night of her father’s treatment hugging her tail and her mother for comfort.

More and more and more memories came, each and every one bringing more and more pain, her heart breaking into smaller pieces for every vision that flew by.

Huddled on a Ponyville park bench, stressing about her soon-to-be overdue friendship report to Princess Celestia, so much so that she was arguing with her reflection in a puddle, all that was stopping her from tipping over the edge was her smooth tail being held in her hooves.

Her tail had been an integral part of her continued sanity and comfort, being her friend to cuddle and cry into when her family was busy and she had no pony friends to speak of.

And now it was gone.

She didn’t even feel the pain of the lash being brought down on her back, over and over as Flim began her torture session, opening large wounds across her flanks and up her spine. She barely noticed as he doused the gashes in the acidic liquid that had made her scream and wail with agony just the day before.

After the whipping, he took that same knife to her mane, shearing it off near her scalp, letting the blue and pink strands fall to the ground, joining her tail in a growing pool of Twilight’s misery. The mane would, of course, grow back just as lustrous as ever, not containing any of the critical nerve endings that a tail had.

She didn’t feel, nor care when a guard came to haul her back to her cell, dumping her unceremoniously on her flayed back and chaining her neck to the wall once more. The derisive laugh the Unicorn gave her barely even registered.

Her tail was gone. There’s nothing more they can do to me, she thought.

She had never in her life been so wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~

The days passed in a blur: time had no meaning. Every so often, as the sunlight coming in her window began to turn a deep orange or red, denoting the fading of the day, either Flim or Flam would come for her, alternating which pony came each day. They would grin and laugh, sometimes spit at her or on her, and drag her off to the windowless room with all its tools of horror and pain.

Then they would ply them to her, cutting her skin with knives or flaying her with whips and lashes. They bruised her with clubs, hammers, or even their own hooves, sometimes breaking bones that would mysteriously heal overnight. They sprayed her cuts with antiseptic, each application feeling like acid burning into her skin.

And she would scream. She would scream and wail until her throat was raw and bleeding, then she would scream even more. She pleaded to them, begged them to stop, to give her a reprieve, but her desperation fell on deaf ears. Her will swiftly broke and she swore she’d tell them everything she knew, but the only response she got was that they wanted nothing from her. Eventually, she began pleading for death, that sweet, final release from the everlasting agony her life had become, and they even denied her that.

And every night, the nightmares would come. Dreams of her flesh melting from her bones, or her skin being peeled off strip by strip. Visions of her bones being snapped, slowly and thoroughly until she was nothing but a twisted pile of refuse, still alive, lying on the floor. Dreams of all other manner of horrific experiences that left a lingering agony with her when she awoke. The part of her mind that believed that dreams couldn’t hurt her had long since died, but all the pain just made the void inside her grow.

She became empty. She became hollow. There was nothing for her in life but misery and pain. Eventually, memories of the time before the pain began to fade. She knew she had friends. What were their names? She thought there used to be four of them. Or was it five? Had she been friends with the sun and the moon? That was what her fragmented memories were trying to tell her, but how could that be? All the sun and moon seemed to do was torment her further with brief light shining in her tiny window, promising a freedom that never came.

There had also been a companion. A phoenix? No, that didn’t sound right. A dragon? Yes, that sounded better. Her mind clung to that thought with a fierceness that surprised her. Why was this dragon so important to her? A voice inside her head was shouting, screaming at her that she was forgetting something, so very important that it should never have slipped her mind. The sound was almost lost in the overwhelming agony that occupied and dominated her mind., but still the thought remained, a small twitter of life in the roar of pain and desire for death. Why was a small dragon so important?

“She’s been losing herself, brother.”

Voices. Those same, cursed voices that had visited her every day for the last eternity. They brought the pain, they were avatars for the god of agony and torment that had seen fit to visit its wrath upon her.

“Who cares? She’s just another pitiful experiment, a meaningless pastime to occupy a casual afternoon.”

The voices signified another session of meaningless, mindless pain. It was odd for her to hear them both at the same time though. Usually, they visited her one at a time, each having their share of her torment, before the next day, when the other took over.

The variance sparked a little of the life she had forgotten she possessed and she lifted her head, still bare of a mane and bearing a precise set of scars, matching the entire host that decorated the rest of her body. She studied the two and noticed a distinct, and previously absent, difference in them.

Whilst before, they had been almost identical in manner, holding themselves in mirrored, cock-sure posture with matching grins and flourishes, something had changed. Flam was far more subdued, a hollow, sunken look in his eyes and his posture was not at all the arrogant performer who had kidnapped her , all that time ago. Something had been eating away at his conscience and it was beginning to show. The analytical part of her mind that, up until this point, had been quiet, put forth the recollection that Flam had hesitated during his first session with her. That part of her mind was also convinced that that event and the pony’s change in stature were related, but Twilight couldn’t bring herself to care.

Flim, on the other hoof, seemed to be more flamboyant than ever but, upon closer inspection, his demeanour had changed slightly too. His posture was stiff, as if every muscle was tensed at every moment and his grin was too wide, seeming to stretch his face, but not reach his eyes. Something had snapped in his head, and part of him had disappeared. She did vaguely remember her sessions with him being far more unpleasant. She also remembered his laughter, crazed as he sliced her flesh or flayed it from her back, or any of the other inequanities he had forced upon her.

“She’s important!” Flam protested. “We still need her, for so many things. We cannot afford to lose her.”

Flim rolled his eyes at the emphasis, but nodded. “Fine, brother. I still don’t see why it matters. Let’s get to work.” He said this last with menace enough to send a fearful shiver down Twilight’s spine.

They lowered the bars and roughly dragged her to her hooves, removing the collar in the process. They weren’t gentle, not caring how many of her cuts and bruises they agitated.

“We’ve got a surprise for you today, Princess,” Flim jeered, clearly taking obscene pleasure in the thought of what they were going to do to her next. It was something outside the normal routine, she was sure, though her mind hadn’t cleared much and her thoughts were still slow.

She was slung over their shoulders as they dragged her out of her cell and down the hall. They reached the exit, slung it open, and before she could protest, they threw her off the edge.

She was too sore and tired to scream and her thoughts were so foggy, she barely had time to register alarm before she slammed into something hard and metallic. She was definitely bruised, but the fall wasn’t far, so she didn’t think anything was broken. The pain was a dull throb through her chest and withers, but it barely registered in her conscious mind. It was nothing compared to the pain they had put her through up until that point.

They appeared in twin flashes of green magic as she was unenthusiastically dragging herself to her hooves. They finished the job quickly and roughly before dragging her inside the archway that led out to the ledge, which was just a slab of metal jutting out from the cliffside.

Inside the cave - for it was a cave, naturally eroded, not manually excavated - was a huge open expanse of empty space. The only contents were were a barrier of steel bars spanning the entire length of the cavern, and the sleeping baby dragon they detained.

Twilight was in action immediately, sprinting for the bars before her mind could catch up. She suddenly saw nothing but dirt, and a blinding pain in her right foreleg drew her eyes, and she saw it was twisted at a sickening angle. She must have landed on it after the fall, breaking it just below her knee joint. She wasn’t ready for the sudden flare of pain it brought her newly re-awakened mind and she screamed, waking the small drake on the other side of the cavern.

“Whuh, what was that? Twilight?”

Twilight watched as he rolled over and looked around blearily, a look of alarm hidden behind layers of sleepiness, and her heart broke. He looked beaten and bruised, a black eye swelling up his face. She began crawling, her broken bone grinding with the effort.

Spike’s eyes finally focused and, upon seeing Twilight, he leapt up with a wordless shout and ran over to the bars. “Twilight! What… how… what’s going on?” He took in Twilight in all her broken entirety, soaking in the gruesome scene of her tattered mane and tail, the countless cuts and gashes, the bruises and, finally, her broken leg. He immediately had tears gushing down his face but, ever the strong little dragon, he didn’t break down.

“T-Twilight, w-what happened to you?” He took in scene of Flim and Flam standing behind her, both crazed in their own way, and recognised them immediately. “Did these two do this to you?”

Twilight crawled, lacking the energy to speak, until she was finally up at the bars. She weakly held out her hoof and Spike grabbed it immediately, careful to avoid irritating the still-open wounds on her leg.

“Spike,” Twilight finally managed to croak. “Spike, are you okay?”

Spike nodded, slightly too quickly, and puffed his chest out in an exaggerated boast of strength and well-being. The image was ruined by the tears that were still running down his face harder than ever. “Of course Twilight, I’m fine. Strong as a dragon, but what about you? What have they done to you?”

Twilight smiled weakly. The expression felt odd on her face, being the first time she had smiled in what felt like years. “That’s good.” She could tell that Spike was putting on a brave face. They had obviously treated him very roughly, but he was being strong for her. She closed her eyes and lay her head on the ground, and for a moment, she was back in the past.

She was lying on the floor in her old tree-house library, back before this whole Princess business started. She was resting her eyes for a moment after a long few hours of reading and Spike sat beside her, reading a book of his own, idly resting a friendly claw on her hoof. She could have stayed in that moment forever.

A shout from Spike and the feeling of his claw pulling away from her hoof snapped her out of her reverie, and upon opening her eyes, she saw several of the Unicornia guardsponies pulling him to the center of the cell. They then chained him there by his wrists, though the manacles were made from a dark material that seemed to glow slightly with green light and the chains were strangely long, as if made for a much larger dragon. A pony wearing a white lab coat walked in through a door in the side of the cell, levitating with him a small, open case containing a single syringe.

Twilight’s heart was already sinking rapidly, but plummeted instantly when she suddenly heard Flim’s menacing voice whisper into her ear: “time to wake up Princess.”

Spike was shouting wordlessly, struggling against his bonds which didn’t seem to budge at all, all the while shooting Twilight pleading looks. All she could do was watch as the lab pony took the syringe out of the case and, without a pause, jabbed it into Spike’s neck, quickly injecting the contents into the small drake.

Twilight jumped to her hooves, wincing at her broken leg, and rounded on Flim and Flam, who were standing behind her grinning as they always were.

“What are you doing to him? Don’t you dare hurt him!”

Flam grimaced, almost apologetically, and opened his mouth to speak, but a glare from his brother cut him off. It was Flim then, who replied instead.

“Dearest Twilight, what we are doing to him is progress. We’ve been theoretically testing a rapid growth serum for dragons that makes them more, well, obedient, and we are at the stage where we want to try it on a live specimen.” He stared at her unblinkingly, his left eye twitching slightly, daring her to speak out again.

Twilight was about to do just that and to tartarus with the ramifications, but a heart-splitting scream from Spike instantly drew her attention back to the cell.

He was hunched over on the ground, arms wrapped around himself as he shook and screamed. Twilight’s first instinct was to reach for her magic, and so she tried, but received only a bolt of white-hot fire through her head that dropped her to the floor for her efforts.

From the ground she watched her lifelong friend, as much a brother to her as Shining Armour had ever been, writhe around in agony, screaming as hard as Twilight must have during her ‘sessions’ on the concrete bench. It was from this vantage point that she saw the true effects of Flim and Flam’s vile concoction take effect.

It started slowly at first, but grew more rapid as the seconds ticked by, but Spike began to grow. It wasn’t the instant change from baby to giant that had happened when Twilight had first hatched him, nor was it similar to the crazy growth spurts he had experienced on his birthday. It was distorted, with one limb shooting out at a time, muscles bulging and claws extending. His muzzle lengthened and his teeth sharpened, while his blunt, ridged spines hardened and extended, becoming razor-sharp points all along his back and tail. His torso extended and his forearms angled forward, so that his natural standing posture would be on all fours.

Weakly, Twilight tried again to reach for her magic, only to encounter more blinding pain, but she desperately needed to help Spike. Tears streamed down her face as her head filled with molten lava as she tried yet again.

But still Spike grew. With the rapid expansion of his limbs and body, his size quickly doubled, then tripled, and soon it was difficult for Twilight’s ever-present analytical side to estimate his size. Two spots on his back bulged, before splitting open in a spray of blood as two wings erupted from the holes.

One of the last things to change was his voice and for a moment she was presented with the oddity of a baby dragon’s scream coming from a teenage-looking dragon’s mouth.

Then, Spike’s screams turned into one final plea as he desperately looked to his sister with eyes that were still his own. “Twi-li…” His scream deepened and devolved into a wordless, guttural roar as his eyes finally changed, his irises becoming slitted like that of the full-grown, greed-driven dragons. It was at that point that Twilight’s heart shattered completely and she tried to find her magic yet again, ignoring the screaming of her own mind and mouth, ignoring the tears and blood that were now streaming out of her eyes and nose. She ignored the agony of her broken leg as she dragged herself to her hooves and pounded on the bars of the cell as she once again reached for her pool of magic.

She could vaguely hear Flam screaming behind her: “you fool, she’ll kill herself, remove the block!”

All other thought left Twilight’s mind as, finally, blessedly, magic streamed through her horn once again, easing but not erasing the burning sun that had formed inside her skull as she drew as deeply on it as she could. They only gave her a trickle, but it had to be enough.

She threw a blast at the bars, strong enough to completely disintegrate a normal gateway completely, but the magic simply slid off the strange, magic-repelling metal. She tried again and again, throwing blast after blast with the same result. Her consciousness was fading, but she was lucid enough to tell her tactics weren’t working, so she tried grasping the bars in her magic instead.

Again, her magic slid off, her aura not able to get a grip on the metal. Her vision tunneled, and she barely noticed the green aura that enveloped the cell gate. All she cared was that the barrier blocking her from Spike was lowering into the ground.

Stumbling forward, barely noticing the agony of her leg, Twilight approached the dragon in the middle of the room. He had stopped roaring at this point, and simply lay there breathing heavily, staring at her with one very large, very draconian eye.

There was nothing left there of the kind, caring Spike who baked cupcakes and wore pink aprons with hearts on the front. Gone from those eyes was the brother who she had grown up with, who had become her number one assistant, who had helped her study or slept beside her as she read. Gone was the baby dragon who blushed at compliments and had crazy crushes on beautiful ponies named Rarity.

Her fears were confirmed when the dragon let out a roar and lunged for her, teeth bared, mouth open, ready to swallow a broken, dirty, run-down pony whole. The sweet embrace of death evaded Twilight once again as the chains snapped taut, bringing the creature that used to be Spike to a sudden stop inches from her face.

He roared again and, rearing back onto his back legs, raising his head to the roof, let out a torrent of brilliant green fire that completely filled the expanse of the cave. The fire almost blended into the sickly green of the magical shield that had been cast around her moments before. Spike’s roar wavered, and so did his fire as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell backwards onto the ground. Passed out or dead, Twilight didn’t know.

From one side of her, Flim or Flam, Twilight couldn’t tell which, tsked. “Well, that was an entire science team wasted. Though I suppose we predicted that this might happen.”

“Indeed brother. This is rather promising,” came the reply from her other side.

It was then that Twilight wanted to lose her grip on the world and slide into the warm embrace of sleep and the blackness that lurked beyond, but even that was denied her as a familiar, sickly-sweet scent filled her nose and reawakened her senses.

“No sleep for you just yet, Twilight Sparkle,” Flam said, putting the stopper back in his jar of accursed smelling salts. “Sleeping for you now would likely mean death, and we can’t afford to lose you.”

Despite the enchantment in the salt keeping her awake, Twilight’s sense of the world became blurred and she barely noticed being hauled onto the back of an armoured pony and carted back to her cell. She was unceremoniously thrown to the floor again, the keen pain in her broken leg causing her mind to sharpen once more and she screamed out, but the cry fell on deaf ears as the two ponies left her cell and slid the bars back down again.

04 - Broken Spirits

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Chapter Four

Broken Spirits

Twilight hadn’t slept. She didn’t know how long it had been, but every so often, ponies would come and wave the enchanted salts under her nose to keep her awake. Several white-coated ponies had come and tended to her wounds, who she had tried to scramble away from, but her body wouldn’t respond to her commands properly and all she managed to do was shuffle weakly on the floor.

They had straightened her leg and splinted it, causing her to scream in agony some more, but when she would normally have blacked out, the salts kept her awake. When those ponies left, some more walked in, and wrapped her head in various magical auras, presumably fixing the damage she had done to her brain. Surprisingly, this brought the first relief she had felt in what seemed like an eternity as the excruciating pain faded from her head.

So Twilight lay in her cell, not even chained or collared, as nopony had bothered putting the metal band back around her neck. She felt more trapped than ever. She was trapped in a space somewhere between super-real and surreal. Everything she had just seen seemed so unreal, as if from a movie, but everything she was feeling made her painfully aware of just how real it all was. She felt her cuts more keenly, her muscles and bones ached with the constant tearing and breaking, pains she never knew she was feeling made themselves apparent in the most agonising way possible.

Tears streamed in a constant flow down her face, but she lacked the energy to wipe them away. She could barely muster the willpower to shuffle her hoof a little.

How could they do that to Spike? He was her friend, her brother, she had grown up with him by her side, helping her, comforting her, keeping her sane. Thinking of him had been all that had kept her going throughout the torment she had experienced on that concrete bench.

Her vision finally began to fade as the salts slowly wore off and her mind spun itself into exhaustion. They must have been finished with her for now, as nopony had come to keep her awake. She felt the ravenous maw of sleep open below her, and gladly let herself fall into it.

For once, sleep was quiet and sound, compared to what had become the normal pattern of her nightmares. She only dreamt about the torture and possible death of her best, lifelong friend, and re-lived some of the horrifying moments as Flim or Flam brandished a new scalpel or knife or another instrument of pain and torture in front of her face.

There was no pain. No physical pain, anyway. Her heart screamed out in torment as she watched, over and over, Spike’s form distort and mutate into the fierce, mindless beast he had become.

The dreams seemed short-lived, however, as after what felt like both a few minutes and several eternities, the clanging of the door and the loud hoofsteps of an armoured pony tried to pull her from her slumber. She stayed in a state of partial awareness until somepony stepped heavily on her broken leg.

Her scream lasted only half as long as she thought it would, as the pain faded behind the wall of sorrow and anger that was mixing in her mind. The guard didn’t say a word, just hauled her onto his back and dragged her out of the cell and down the familiar path back to the concrete table of pain and despair.

The panic at going back to that room brought her some energy, and Twilight managed to struggle a little, but only enough to make the guard shrug his shoulders so that his burden was sitting evenly once more.

Before she knew it, she was once again shackled down to the slab, on her back this time with her head free, so she could see Flim, who was turned away from her facing one of the tables that lined the walls. He was shaking his head about something and muttering under his breath, but Twilight could make no words out.

When the unicorn turned around, his face held a wry, but still somehow manic grin that did nothing to alleviate, indeed it even accentuated, the lack of sanity in his eyes. He held a thick cleaver in his magic, glinting silver tinged with sickly green from his aura.

Twilight didn’t even flinch at the sight. They had brought worse in front of her before, and she had faced it all without balking. Until it was plied to her skin, that was.

Flim got to work swiftly, running her through a routine that she vaguely recognised as similar to her very first visit, though a cleaver was significantly less precise than a scalpel. Twilight managed to only scream a little as he made swift cuts along all four of her legs, deep enough to be painful, but shallow enough that she wasn’t going to bleed to death. After each set of cuts, he would spray her with disinfectant, which drew out more shrieking, but it was a pain she was used to and she was able to grit her teeth through most of it.

After doing two revolutions around her limbs, Flim stood back to survey his hoofwork. Her cuts were raw, though they were clotting swiftly, so the bleeding had already stopped completely on the first slashes he had made. He squirted her one more time with that horrid concoction, but Twilight managed to keep her teeth shut, so her scream came out muffled.

He glared at her, anger and contempt almost palpable in his eyes, as if she had ruined some great fun of his. The look made him seem even less sane than before, if it were possible. It took almost all of her pitiful reserves of willpower to stop her flinching away from him.

“You know Princess, I’ve enjoyed having you as my plaything,” he said, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the weather, making Twilight’s stomach churn. “Crushing you under my hoof time and time again, it is a thrill like no other. Twilight Sparkle, the one responsible for the fall of so many great villains, saviour of Equestria so many times, and here you are, helpless before me.” He breathed in deeply, eyes closed, savouring the moment.

Twilight could only stare, completely speechless in the face of such insanity. This was no pony. A pony could never be so pleased to do something so horrific. No, Flim had become a monster, more than they could ever make Spike.

He suddenly dropped his head, letting out a sigh. “This is your last visit here, if all things go to plan.”

Twilight’s breath caught and she coughed to stop herself from choking. Her last visit? She was immediately skeptical and she couldn’t catch herself before she asked: “Why?”

“Because…” Flim trailed off and a look of confusion passed across his face. It was an expression Twilight had seen on Flam very occasionally over the course of her imprisonment, as if he wasn’t sure why he did what he did. She pressed his disorientation, despite her logical side telling her it was a bad idea.

“Why Flam, why aren’t I coming back?”

The extra pressure showed on the ex-showpony’s face as anger grew alongside the confusion. “Because that’s part of the plan!” he burst out. “Because it’s… because I…”

“What’s the plan, why aren’t I coming back?” Twilight pushed, knowing that the bounds of her luck were stretching, but suddenly finding herself unable to care. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know!” Flim shouted, the last fibre of his restraint snapping as he began waving the cleaver about erratically. “I don’t know! I have all these ideas and plans in my head and I don’t know where they came from!” The blade nicked Twilight’s cheek, sending a small spray of blood across the room. Flim didn’t even seem to notice.

“I know that I have to do this, for the glory of the unicorn race! I know I have to do it, but I don’t know why!” Another errant flick, another slice, this time across Twilight’s chest.

“I have memories, of the skin being torn or melted from my body, of my eyes being pulled slowly from their sockets, or stabbed out in a flurry of knives. I have these memories, but I still have my skin, my eyes, none of my bones are broken like my memories tell me they should be.”

A sense of dread came over Twilight. She had figured that Flim and Flam had been behind her dreams, but if this manic unicorn was having them too… She winced as yet another wayward flick of the cleaver sliced another cut into her flesh, deeply along her left foreleg.

Flim was getting more and more erratic, growing angrier and more frustrated as what was quite a large store of bottled up emotions rushed out all at once.

“I just don’t know, Twilight Sparkle!” he was spitting as he talked now, the saliva flicking over Twilight’s face. “I have this insatiable urge for progress, this unignorable force pushing me to further and further improve my capability to destroy my fellow ponies.” Again, he flung the thick blade around, completely ignorant of where it was going or what it was doing, and it sliced into Twilight’s right foreleg again, almost to the bone this time.

Twilight screamed, feeling the blood pour out of the hideously deep wound as she grew immediately light-headed. She vaguely noticed a banging on the door, which was bolted from the inside. She recognised the voice of Flam, demanding that his brother open the door. Flim continued, noticing none of this.

“I have this urge to create these horrible designs that have suddenly appeared in my mind, and I just don’t know where it all came from! I have no idea! My brother thinks I’m weak, thinks that I’m incompetent or dull-witted. He never says anything, but I know what he’s thinking! I’ll show him. I’ll show them all!” He spun to face her, eyes terrifying in their now total lack of anything that made him sane. The cleaver spun with him, moving swiftly and directly down towards Twilight’s shackled form.

Thunk.

Twilight stared, trying to process what had just happened. For once during her stay in this hellhole of a place, her analytical mind had total and complete control over her thoughts for a moment, and it was stumped. Flim, his tirade interrupted, simply stared as well.

Where her right-side withers had once continued down her foreleg and to her hoof, there was now a cleaver embedded solidly in the concrete table right at her shoulder.

Her whole right leg was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

It hadn’t hurt as much as Twilight thought it would have, so when she screamed, eyes wide, mouth gaping at the stump of her shoulder, it was at the shock of it all.

At some point immediately after the incident, Flam had torn down the door with his magic and, upon seeing Flim staring at Twilight’s now-severed leg, with Twilight shrieking her lungs raw, had taken action immediately.

He threw Flim out of the way, hurling him across the room with a burst of magic, while at the same time picking up the bottle of disinfectant and spraying the stump with it. It had burned, dear Celestia had it burned, but Twilight’s mind could only register so much pain, so it went largely unnoticed.

Flam had then knitted the wound together with some kind of spell that seemed to draw the skin from her shoulder and pull it over the profusely bleeding stub. Twilight just went on screaming as the unicorn swiftly bandaged the wound anyway.

He had then personally dragged her to her cell and carefully laid her on the pitiful excuse for a bed. He didn’t chain her back to the wall, but he did slide the bars of the cell back up. It wasn’t as if she was going anywhere any time soon.

Flam could be heard shouting at Flim, even through the layers of rock and steel, though Twilight couldn’t make out any words. Her head was spinning. She had lost a lot of blood. Even now it had broken through the thin layer of skin Flam had pulled over it and was seeping through the bandage and onto the cold stone floor that had already seen so much of it.

Her vision was narrowing as she stared blankly at the wall, the stump of her leg just visible in the corner of her eye and she knew that if she drifted off now, that would be it. She would fall into the warm embrace of sleep, then slip into the icy maws of death.

And why not? She reasoned with herself. Death was a release she had been begging for for so long now, why wouldn’t she finally accept it now that it was offered.

Her eyes fully closed, Twilight faced the abyss, preparing to take that one final step into oblivion.

She hesitated as she stared into the eternal blackness, seeing a light from behind her. Turning around she saw, stretched out into the distance, ranks upon ranks of ponies all looking to her.

Foremost were her closest friends, who had been with her through so much. Pinkie Pie had her customary grin on her face, though it was somewhat forced and her mane was losing its puffiness. Applejack had her usual southern style look going strong, through her hat looked a little worse for wear and she wore an expression of such compassion that it brought tears to Twilight’s eyes, the first tears of joy she had felt in such a long time.

Rarity stood beside Applejack, imperceptibly leaning into the solid farmer and though her hair was impeccable at first glance, split ends could be seen with closer inspection. She looked worried, which was normal, but for her to let split ends exist in her mane was almost unheard of. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash stood, wings around each other in a comforting embrace. Fluttershy was crying, though Dash was cooing to calm her down.

Behind those friends were Celestia, Luna and Cadence, all three visibly distraught, though it would be so only to Twilight’s trained eyes. She had been around the Princesses long enough to know the difference between actual serenity when they were at peace and the calm facade to put up for their subjects when they were worried or upset. They were still well-presented, however, their manes perfect in their flowing, ethereal brilliance - with the exception of Cadence, whose mane sat perfectly in its curls - and their coats groomed and gleaming.

Behind the Princesses were scores of other ponies, from Vinyl the blue-haired DJ to Bon Bon, the mare who owned the candy shop, to Lyra, the strange pony who was seen sitting oddly around town at times. Even Trixie was there, though Twilight supposed she should have expected that, given their recent encounter seeing them as unlikely friends.

Behind all the ponies, from whom Twilight was getting an almost euphoric sense of hope and happiness, was a bright white light. It wasn’t harsh, though its light was so bright, it outshone even that of the sun and with it came a feeling of companionship. It made her feel warm inside and Twilight felt herself becoming absorbed in it. It flooded through her in a soft torrent and took all the pain in her body with it. Gone was the burning of hundreds of cuts and slashes, gone was the blunt ache of scores of bruises. Gone was the fire of the stump of her leg and gone even, was the sense of hopelessness and despair that had invaded her mind.

Die? Why would she want to die? She was Twilight Sparkle, newest Alicorn Princess of Equestria and the graduated student of Celestia. She had family at home, waiting for her to get back; she had friends, countless friends that would be utterly heartbroken if she were to leave them behind.

She felt a tugging force behind her and, turning, she saw that the darkness she had so blithely turned her back on was pulling her back to it. It had grabbed her with its dark and demented arms and was dragging her into its now-terrifying depths. Twilight faced it with the strength of her friends and family at her back and it withdrew, forced away by the power of the friendships she carried with her.

Twilight’s eyes flew open and she lurched into a sitting position. The customary pain and agony she usually experienced whenever she moved was gone completely and some of her cuts and scrapes had crusted over with healing scabs. She stood up, a brief flare of pain from the stump of her leg making her wince, but the calming white light she had seen in her ‘dream’ was still there in the back of her mind and washed the pain away.

She heard hoofsteps in the hallway and turned to see the silver bars sliding up into the ceiling. She had the unadulterated joy of seeing the absolutely bewildered expression on Flam’s face at seeing her standing up, missing leg and all and facing him with a defiant expression.

It was the first time she had stood on her own since the first day she had awoken in this Celestia-cursed place.

“Come on Princess,” he said after shaking his head and overcoming the shock. “It’s time.” He walked forward and went to sling her over his shoulder, but she shrugged him off.

“Time for what?” she demanded, but received no reply. Flam just shrugged and walked out of the cell, motioning her to follow. She had no choice but to limp after him into the hallway.

He took her down into the city and, instead of the long, circuitous route he had taken her last time, he led her directly to the huge warehouse where the giant metal ponies had been.

The building was empty this time, and had an eerie silence to it that made Twilight shiver. Flam seemed unaffected as he walked across the space to another, much smaller room that was built off the far wall.

As she stepped inside, Twilight’s mind, and heart, stopped for a moment. The room was still large, by Ponyville standards, and was devoid of decoration. There were several ponies standing along the walls, their coats all faded to grey. They made Twilight shiver. On closer inspection, she noticed with horror that some were pegasi, and their wings were mutilated, broken and deformed beyond any magic that may be able to heal them. It was their eyes that were the most unsettling though. Their eyes were all dull, colourless and lifeless, as if they were no longer ponies in their minds and hearts. They stared blankly forward, not even noticing the entrance of the two intruders.

Set into the back wall was a large and ancient set of doors, made out of a dark red wood that seemed to shift and change every time she blinked. Carved into its face were horrible scenes of death and destruction. It seemed vaguely familiar, but it churned Twilight’s stomach and she had to look away, certain she would go mad if she looked for too long.

Flam trotted over to the one side wall not occupied by the grey ponies, sat on his haunches and motioned for Twilight to join him. When she hesitated, she felt a twinge of pain in her head as the impatient unicorn motioned again and she had no choice but to join him sitting against the wall.

Flam was clearly waiting for something, though Twilight didn’t have long to wonder about what it was. The doors creaked open with a sound not dissimilar to countless ponies screaming out in pain, and out stepped a visibly shaken Flim.

The normally impeccable and well-presented showpony looked worse than ever, his mane a tangled mess and his coat grimy and slicked with sweat. His eyes were sunken into his head with dark shadows lining his face and he twitched almost uncontrollably. For a moment he stood there, just on Twilight’s side of the door, staring blankly into space. A visible change suddenly overcame him and he straightened his posture and looked around seeming somewhat confused. When he saw Twilight and Flam, he shot both of them a glare and stormed loudly out of the room.

Flam was ignoring his brother’s behaviour somewhat too completely as he stood up and motioned to the door, that was now standing open. “In,” he demanded.

Twilight hesitated as she looked through the doors to the nothing that was beyond. The doorway seemed to lead to complete and utter darkness, a void deprived of all forms of light or matter.

The twang of pain in her head forced her to trot up to the solid wall of blackness that loomed before her. She could see nothing beyond it, not even a floor, but she knew that if she didn’t step through, Flam would just increase the pain each time he shocked her.

She stepped through, surprisingly onto solid ground, and was startled as the doors shrieked closed behind her.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was no light. Twilight thought herself asleep, or disembodied. She couldn’t even see her remaining front hoof, let alone the ground beneath her. She felt an intense sense of being absolutely alone.

Suddenly, a sigh rang out in the empty space, startling her, long and weary, much like the sighs that Twilight had heard from Celestia after a long meeting with a particularly stubborn subject. The difference was that this sigh sounded like slick tar and sent fearful shivers running down her spine. Then a voice followed, horrible and terrifying, causing Twilight an irrational urge to cower and grovel in fear and worship.

A pair of eyes appeared in the darkness, two flames of brilliant, horrifying light scything through the void that Twilight had found herself in. They were different colours, she noticed distantly. One red, one blue and they filled her with fear, sending shards of ice down her spine.

“You have no idea how much trouble I have to put up with from those two,” the voice called out, deep and menacing. It was not a voice that demanded compliance. It was a voice that assumed dominance and authority, one whose owner had no doubt that his every command would be followed to the letter, without question or hesitation.

“It has been the pinnacle of my day, every day since you arrived, to have you here with me again, to actually have some intelligent conversation for a change.”

Twilight was immediately suspicious. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’ve never been here before.”

The voice laughed. “Oh my dear Twilight Sparkle, you may not remember it, but you’ve been here almost every night since you arrived in Unicornia. It is a property of this space, this dimension if you will, that all who leave here forget about me, forget about this place, but not forget the commands I give or the feelings they feel.”

The ramifications of the idea of a separate dimension - let alone one with the properties this mysterious entity was suggesting - made Twilight’s head spin. She was about to deny his claims, rebuking them as ridiculous and outlandish, but glimmers of memory began flashing before her eyes. Memories of night after night of agonising, tortuous dreams, experiencing pain such as she had never known, even on the table of Flim and Flam, when she had been taught from the time she was a filly that dreams couldn’t hurt her. It all made a perverse kind of sense.

The voice chuckled again, obviously seeing the blank expression of sudden realisation that must be adorning Twilight’s face.

She found she couldn’t stand anymore, her legs turned to jelly and she collapsed into a sitting position, he shoulders slouched, head pointed at the floor. “What… what do you want from me?” she asked shakily.

The reply was long in coming, as if whoever this was was formulating the right answer, or holding Twilight in suspense to flay her nerves a little more. The latter seemed more likely.

“What I want, Twilight Sparkle, is you. I do not want information from you, for I know everything you do and so, so much more. I want you, your power, your skill with magic, your staggering intelligence that rivals even my own. I want you to stand with me, and bring about the glorious unicorn revolution!”

Twilight gaped, almost unable to believe what she was hearing. “You want me to join you? How could you think I’d do that? You had me kidnapped, had me tortured! And Spike…” She trailed off, overcome with the hurt and loss of her beloved assistant.

Another laugh rang out through the empty space, completely devoid of sympathy. “Oh Twilight Sparkle, you’re speaking as if you have a choice.” With these words an aura of magic, somehow more black than the light-devoid space around her, emanated from the darkness and enveloped Twilight’s head.

She was powerless, unable to counter with her own magic, sealed by the ring around her horn as it was. She felt the magic invade her mind and an explosion of pain wracked her brain, ripping a scream from her lungs.

Suddenly, it was over and she slumped to the ground, unable even to muster the strength to lift her head. She could feel something, a presence in her mind that squirmed about in a nauseating journey through her grey matter before settling down and disappearing.

“What have you done to me?” she demanded weakly. Her breath came out panting and ragged and she fought with unconsciousness. She tried to diagnose herself from an objective viewpoint. She still found the idea of joining this mad creature horrific and ludicrous, so he couldn’t have altered her loyalties at all, nor her sense of judgement.

So what had he done?

The mysterious voice only laughed again. Those haunting, frosty eyes disappeared, and the sense of impending doom that Twilight only just realised was forcing her breath into shallow gasps vanished.

On cue, the door behind her swung open, letting in a harsh shaft of light that did nothing to illuminate the blackness. Two ponies trotted in, eyes hollow as those outside, though she felt she didn’t recognise them from earlier.

They wordlessly escorted her back to the door and out into the room beyond.

05 - New Additions

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Chapter Five

New Additions

Twilight wasn’t sure what had happened, but something drastic must have changed. She had without warning been woken up and escorted to one of the houses in the city, distinct only by the fact that it was set slightly apart from the rest. She had received no more visits from Flim or Flam, nor had any other ponies bothered her, except to bring meals three times a day. This in and of itself was odd as until then her meals had been sporadic and inconsistent. Not to mention nowhere near as appetising.

She sat staring at her breakfast, which consisted of a lovely looking daffodil sandwich with a healthy side of hay and a glass of orange juice in utter bewilderment.

She had been in her cell like any other evening when Flam had arrived and escorted her to… where exactly? She found she couldn’t remember. Some vague recollections about some blissfully painless nightmares floated around in her head, but she had awoken to them dragging her here.

A light. Yes, she remembered a bright white, soothing light that had washed away the pain. She sought it out now and found it, sitting in the back of her mind like an idle guardian, waiting for its need to spring into action to arise.

Twilight glanced down to her stub of a leg with a wince, both of pain and of sadness. Another wince followed when she turned further around and looked at the mangy tuft that was all that remained of her beautiful, comforting tail. Her eyes began to water and tears threatened to fall, but the light pulsed in the back of her mind and she felt the sorrow lessen.

Was this Celestia’s light, somehow sent across all the distance from Canterlot? Twilight couldn’t see any other explanation, though if she was capable of sending this calming radiance, why hadn’t Celestia come to rescue her yet?

None of it seemed to add up, so Twilight concentrated on picking slowly at her breakfast, suddenly bored with all the nothing going on around her.

It wasn’t until mid afternoon that day, over a week since she’d been moved out of the prison cell, that somepony came for her. Flam himself, knocking on her door as if she was anything other than a prisoner, with him as her captor. She couldn’t keep the blank stare off her face as he stood on the doorstep, clearly waiting for an invitation to enter. The scene was so absurd that she would have burst out laughing had she not forgotten how.

Flam seemed confused himself, even moreso when he said: “If you’ll come with me Princess, I’ve got something to give you”. WIth that, he turned around and walked a little distance from the house before turning around, no longer just assuming that she was following.

Twilight was very tempted to not follow, just to see what the vile unicorn would do, but her better sense of judgement overruled the urge and she limped out the door. Walking with three legs was possible, but it wasn’t easy, or quick.

It was a long walk through the city that Flam took her on, but a peaceful one. It felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted off her withers, like she had been granted a great freedom. She stopped several times to look at the scenery or at market stalls, not able to suppress a worried glance to her companion for permission. He was not throwing her food like a dog, either and she picked and ate a few pieces of fruit by herself.

Eventually, they arrived at a large building somewhere inside the industrial district, just after noon. The term ‘large’ did not do the colossal structure justice, however. It stood taller than any of the surrounding buildings, consisting of many stories, roofed with curved domes. The entire exterior was spotless white with the exception of the windows, which were all black-tinted and opaque.

Flam barely gave a glance to the wonder of architecture before him, simply striding in through two tall glass doors that opened autonomously before him.

The room they entered was just as clean and white as the exterior, with a high ceiling featuring a bright light suspended from a long cable. A tall reception desk awaited just inside, at which sat a mare who was busy writing some sort of letter.

She did not look up as the pair entered, though it wasn’t long before she signed the sheet with a flourish, folded it in half and slid it into an envelope, which she then teleported away with her magic. Only then did she look up and, upon seeing Flam, gave a courteous nod of her head.

Flam trotted up to the desk and asked in a polite tone: “Is he ready?”

At the mare’s nod, Flam made a delighted noise before heading off through a door on the side wall. This turned into several windowless corridors and very soon Twilight had completely lost her sense of direction. She couldn’t tell if that was the intention behind making the path to wherever they were going so convoluted, or if it was simply a result of the layout of the building.

They came to a halt in front of an unassuming door, as white as the walls with no other blemishes or markings. It slid open silently, simply moving sideways into the wall and the pair walked in.

Inside stood Flim and Twilight flinched and couldn’t stop herself from cowering a little behind her escort, the somewhat nicer of the evil twins. The object of her terror merely rolled his eyes, turned his back and started arranging some tools on a shiny steel bench.

It was then that Twilight took stock of the room she had just entered and just then, almost ran straight back out screaming, as she would have had Flam not moved to block the doorway.

The room was lined with benches, all of them lined with tools and knives and jars. From the walls hung saws and scalpels and scissors and directly in the center, near where Flim was arranging a set of tiny screw drivers and pliers, was an angled table with four manacles designed to hold a pony in place.

It was exactly like her torture room up the mountain, if a bit more sterile. Heart pounding, vision narrowing, Twilight almost blacked out with fear and residual pain, but a brief flash from the light in her mind swept it all aside.

Suddenly calm, she took a closer look at the contents of the room. There was none of the cruder instruments of the mountaintop torture chamber, like the clubs and hammers. The saws were less toothy and more precise and there were no knives or cleavers or any of those more savage cutting implements. This led Twilight to the conclusion that this was a surgery, rather than a room of torture, but what could they be doing with her in here?

Flam was gazing admiringly at the table next to the manacled bench, or rather, at what was on it. A pristine white cloth covered something long and thin, and when Flim pulled the cover off, Twilight couldn’t make sense of what was beneath.

The first thing she noticed was that it was entirely made out of metal. precisely cut overlapping plates formed in a vaguely cylindrical shape, jointed in two places. At one end, there was a vicious-looking claw-like thing and from the other protruded a huge multitude of needle-thin wires.

All in all, it looked like a clawed leg.

Oh…

Flim and Flam only smiled, at each other and at her, before manoeuvring her onto the bench and strapping her in. She was too dazed to even try and resist. Flim approached with the leg held in his magic and slotted it neatly onto Twilight’s stump.

Then the real torture began.

~~~~~~~~~~

She had screamed. Celestia help her she had screamed. It had been more painful than any of the other tortures. Worse than the cuts, worse than the broken bones or the burns or the tartarus-damned spray they used on new wounds. Not even the newfound light in her mind had been able to do much to dull the agony.

What was probably only several hours had seemed like an eternity as they took each of the hundreds of tiny wires and, using magic finer and more precise than anything Twilight had ever seen before, they had attached them all individually, one by one, to what remained of her leg.

“We’re attaching these wires to your nerve endings!” one of the brothers had shouted during the operation. Twilight’s mind, even nearly blinded by pain as it was, still saved that information away for later analysis.

She had struggled and writhed about on the bench, but the shackles held her firmly so she could barely move, let alone get free. Her mind had nearly shut down from the agony several times, but always just as she was about to achieve blessed unconsciousness, that sickly sweet smell would pervade her senses and drag her unceremoniously back to the pain.

It had been three days since that nightmare, many multitudes worse than any mountaintop torture session and still she lay in a daze on the bed in the house they had dumped her in. They took care of her. Many ponies came and went, fed her and bathed her, gave her water. One had explained that they couldn’t give her anything for the pain because that would dull the nerve endings in her leg, which could undo all the work that had been done.

The white light was a constant presence in her mind, always shining to take only the absolute worst of the pain away. Only the worst, because even it knew that if the nerves didn’t take to the wires they had inserted, they would have to do the operation all over again.

It was an uncomfortable compromise, uncomfortable being the understatement of the century, but Twilight endured. She endured because of her friends and family that were waiting for her at home. She gritted her teeth and bore the pain, even managing to walk around a little. If she exerted herself too much, blood would start welling out of the join between her flesh and the metal, at which point her caretakers would politely but firmly escort her back to bed.

Every night, Twilight would lie awake, grasping for her tail that was no longer there, unable to sleep with the terrible fear that would grip her mind every time she felt herself drowsing off. She wasn’t afraid of dying in her sleep, as she almost had after she lost her leg. Instead, she feared the nightmares, the pain and torment she had experienced almost every night of her imprisonment so far.

She also feared that she would wake up back on the torture table with a scalpel or bludgeon or cleaver poised above her ready to strike, that her days in the city had been a dream and her return to daily torture and pain the reality. Eventually exhaustion would overcome her and she would succumb to sleep’s embrace, empty dreams of dark rooms and faceless ponies with multicoloured eyes playing through her mind to be forgotten on waking the next day.

Every now and then Flim or Flam would stop by to check on her, make sure she had everything she needed and to inspect their work, to make sure that the new leg was taking to her body. They encouraged her to get more bed rest, though never threatening to chain her to a wall as Twilight thought they would. The brothers were civil and well-mannered, even quite respectful and all it served was to confuse her even more.

One thing she found hard to get used to was her ‘claw’. It had four long talons protruding out the front, with one shorter but thicker out the back and to the side for balance. It was designed to clench and grip things, similar to Spike’s claws or the front appendages of a griffin. She was forced to limp around, almost as bad as when she only had three legs. Her new limb was obviously made for walking on, if only she could get the claw to cooperate. All it seemed to want to do was clench into a ball and Twilight was only just starting to get the hang of moving her talons, or ‘fingers’ as she had heard Spike sometimes refer to his as.

One other thing that plagued Twilight’s nightmares was Spike. Her poor little baby Spike, turned into a monster for a twisted experiment. Was he even still alive? If it weren’t for the magic inhibitor the brothers had left on her horn, she would long have blasted her way out of this tartarus-cursed house to search for him.

As a test, she once attempted to give a brief spark of her magic, just to see if the block was still in place, but had found herself completely paralysed with fear. Her limbs locked up and her mind went blank, all spells forgotten in a haze of panic. She had lain on the floor shivering and shaking with sobs until one of her caretakers had carried her back to bed. She never even thought about trying again.

It was only a few more days before the bleeding stopped, her veins sealed up by some magic the brothers had concocted. She could finally walk around on her own indefinitely without needing to lie down every now and then. It was a few days after that when Flim and Flam both appeared outside the house early one morning, Flam slightly respectfully, but Flim was obviously wanting to be elsewhere.

“Come with us Princess,” Flam said, not quite a command, but not something that could be ignored.

Without a word, Twilight followed, not sure what to expect. She was quite surprised when the twins led her out of the city, into the surrounding area. Twilight heard their destination, long before she saw it. Shouted commands echoed around the countryside as, upon rounding a corner of the city wall, Twilight beheld an enormous flat area, bordered on one side by the wall, another by the mountain face.

Ranks upon ranks of ponies were there, wearing identical mottled camouflage vests, formed up in regimental lines being put through their paces of on-the-spot exercises by several ponies wearing slightly different vests, who were somehow shouting commands in perfect synchronisation despite being hundreds of pony-lengths apart. Every pony there was a unicorn and not a single one so much as batted an eye as Twilight was hoofed a vest and led to a gap already waiting for her in the front row.

“You will train, Princess.” Flim stated monotonically before striding off with his brother without another word spoken. Twilight hesitated a moment, before her vest was seized in a creamy coloured aura and forced over her head.

“Are you hard of hearing recruit!?” Demanded a burly unicorn wearing a commander’s vest who seemed completely indifferent to the fact that he was addressing an Alicorn.

Twilight blinked. “Um, no?”

The same aura wrapped itself around a large chunk of her mane, which had only just started to regrow, and forced her head to the ground with a jerk. “Then listen to the sergeants and push up!”

Twilight forced her head back up and was about to make an indignant reply, but she felt a twinge behind her horn at the cold glare of the sergeant and her blood ran cold.

Doing as she was told, Twilight followed the example of the fellow trainees around her did push-ups to the timing given by the shouting ponies. Several minutes later, Twilight was experiencing the odd sensation of having one leg completely exhausted, while the other continued on, endless in its mechanical endurance.

Next, it was on to jogging. The sergeants gathered everypony up into loose formation and they all ran steady circles around the enormous area. It was tough going as Twilight’s years of reading books and avoiding physical exercise began to show. Even with the earth pony’s endurance granted her by her Alicorn nature she was panting hard before too long.

After an hour or so of jogging laps, Twilight was relieved when a halt was called, but no rest was waiting for them. They were back on the ground doing sit-ups before Twilight could even stop hacking and wheezing for breath.

After sit-ups it was on to what Twilight equated as crouching for an extended period of time before standing back up again and repeating the process, like she had seen Rainbow Dash doing on occasion. Dash had called them ‘squats’.

After a very short length of time, after several other core body exercises and cardio-fitness training, Twilight was hurting all over, but every time she so much as slowed down, one of the sergeants would glare at her and a twinge of pain would blossom behind her horn, jarring her into picking up the pace again.

Very soon, Twilight lost all feeling in her muscles, retaining just enough control to complete the monotony of exercises that continued on throughout the entire day.

And the day after that. And every day for the entire week, with every third day a half day of training, with the other half as a brief respite to rest her tired muscles. Every day Twilight would be escorted from her townhouse to the training field, every day she spent either drilling dull physical fitness or running through gruelling obstacle courses with the scores of other ponies, not once ever speaking to a single one of them. She managed to keep track of the days, being exposed to the sun, but Twilight soon lost herself in the crowd, another grunt in the mob, another brick in the wall.

When Flim and Flam gave a speech about a month later, she found herself cheering along with the other unicorns at the declarations of assured victory, how the ‘soft Equestrian Princesses’ couldn’t hope to match the might of the united unicorn race.

Part of her, buried by the weight of torture and training, screamed and thrashed, denying the words coming out of her own mouth with a vehemence that would have surprised her had she been aware of it.

Eventually, after what seemed like months, they stopped all the meaningless drills, as she could maintain the push-ups and sit-ups and anything else they threw at her for as long as they wanted her to. It was at that point that, every day after a quick hour-long warm up jog, they would do live fire training exercises, crawling through mud under barbed wire whilst dozens of unicorns sent hundreds of energy blasts over their heads. Some ponies died, losing their nerve and sometimes bladders in the middle of the field, jumping to their hooves and getting blasted. On more than one occasion it was the pony nearest to Twilight who leapt up, only to cover her with their blood and misery as they died.

The first time, she was shocked, unable to move for several minutes after a grey-coated, brown-maned unicorn had begun screaming in horror before leaping up and taking a bolt of pure magical force to the head. She lay there staring at the corpse that was missing the crown of its skull as the light died from his eyes, until she felt the familiar twinge in her horn and she knew, somewhere, somepony wanted her to keep moving. She had wept for the stallion as she crawled, her tears swallowed by the combination of dirt, water and blood she was crawling through.

After the twelfth pony lost their life nearby, she stopped grieving. After the fortieth, she almost couldn’t bring herself to care. They were all faceless to her, without voice or personality, without independent thought or emotion. Just as she was starting to become.

The only time she felt like herself was back in her house where she still couldn’t sleep on the bed. She lay curled up in a ball against the wall in the far corner every night, as far away from the door as she could get, clutching at the ragged ends of the tail she no longer had and trying desperately not to fall asleep. She would cry, sob and shudder until the early hours of the morning when sleep would finally claim her, dragging her into a world full of faceless ponies occupying distant memories that she could no longer fully recall or claim as her own.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight couldn’t have said how much time had passed - days, months, years even, she didn’t know - when, during their normal morning walk to what Twilight assumed would be another day of drills and training, Flam deviated from their usual path immediately out of the front door. The change was jarring, shocking her into an unusual sense of awareness that she normally lost by the time she left the house. She turned to Flam to ask:

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see Princess, you’ll see” was the only reply she received.

They were walking for several minutes before Twilight started to realise what route they were taking. She said nothing as they continued and before long, they arrived at a familiar building.

The large concrete front with small, high windows lining all sides dominated the sky as they approached the warehouse. In her mind’s eye, Twilight could almost see the lines upon lines of huge metal ponies walking out of the massive sliding doors that now confronted her.

She suppressed a shudder at the image as Flam led the way inside.

The lights clacked on in a confusing ruckus and Twilight was expecting to see more of the metal monstrosities. She was right.

But not in the way she expected.

Instead of hundreds, there was only one, different from the others she had seen. It was bigger, standing almost half again as tall as the others. The first thing Twilight noticed was that it was designed to look like her. It had a mane and tail that were shaped just like hers used to be, even displaying the highlights in slightly darker shades of silver metal.

The resemblance was unnerving and uncanny, even down to the intricately detailed wings that were folded along the pony’s flanks. Twilight realised with a start, that she had barely thought of her wings since, well… she couldn’t remember. She stretched them experimentally and winced at how still they were with disuse.

Flam stood quietly, almost reverently, as she stared. The first questions she wanted to ask all involved why: why did they have a huge metal version of her sitting in their warehouse? Why did they choose now to show it to her? Why show it to her at all? And why did the shining light in her mind suddenly feel a great deal stronger?

Instead, all she did was stare wordlessly as the stallion grew more and more uncomfortable. Eventually, this seemed to grow too unbearable for him and he broke the silence.

“This one is yours Princess. Your very own MAC Commander unit.”

It took a few moments for this to sink in.

“Mine?”

“Yes. This machine is the pinnacle of Unicornia engineering and magical might. Her shell is made of overlapping plates of unicorn steel, crafted and aligned to allow for fluid, perfect movement. The inner workings, however, are a combination of mechanics, magic and bio-organics. Your own flesh and blood was used to grow these parts.

Twilight found herself confused. Not at the technical aspects, part of her mind was listening and understanding with rapt attention and fascination. The part she was confused about was another ‘why’ question.

Why give this to her?

It was clearly staggeringly powerful, a mighty weapon that could change the face of any war. Twilight had studied many of Equestria’s ancient wars and even just one of these could have won any one of them in a day or two, when many of them had lasted years.

Surely the brothers did not think that she would fight on their side. Looking back, everything they had done to her had been torture. From the eternity she had spent on the concrete slab to her sudden confinement in her house. The new leg, while convenient, had been torture too. Even her training, for a time, had been arduous and exhausting. Surely they couldn’t think that they could make a turncoat out of her, especially after all they had done.

“Why me Flam?” he gave her a puzzled look.

“Why Princess, who else?” A proud fire began to grow in his eyes as he spoke. “You are the only being who is even capable of powering up this beautiful piece of technomagical genius. With this at our head, even the fabled Diarchy of Equestria will be unable to stop us.”

Twilight gaped. “You’re mad! I would never do that!” was her automatic response. At least, that’s what she wanted it to be. Instead, she found herself saying: “of course, none will be able to oppose us.”

An odd sensation began crawling its way through Twilight’s mind. It felt like a bug or a worm was crawling through her head, between the folds of her consciousness. She suddenly started feeling like the idea of leading an army against Equestria was a perfectly reasonable and appealing one. Part of her rallied against this idea, driven by the light that was still growing in her mind as well, creating a war between ideas and presences inside her head.

Flam was completely oblivious as he ushered her over to a lift that sped them up towards a platform situated behind the pony’s head. As they arrived, a hatch opened in the back of its skull, revealing a small, completely empty space. The cavity was shaped vaguely like the inside of a pony’s skull, but had a perfectly flat floor. The room wasn’t very tall, only about half again as tall as Twilight was and about twice as long. Flam motioned for her to enter.

The doorway was thick, four to five hoof-lengths of steel that explained the cramped space. Twilight’s body was on autopilot as she stepped inside as Flam slammed the hatch behind her.

Instantly, the internal war in her mind ceased – as did all other activity – as a brilliant, icy consciousness washed over her, completely overshadowing her own. A feeling then began to grow, a feeling that was not her own: contentment. A feeling of satisfaction, growing as the new consciousness pulsed in time with the light in her mind, until they merged and Twilight realised they had been one and the same all along.

Finally

The thought echoed through Twilight’s entire being. It was distinctly feminine and contained a mixture of her own youthful energy and Celestia’s timeless wisdom and compassion.

Hello there, little one.

Twilight glanced around her. “Um, hello? Who are you? Where are you?”

I am all around you, and part of you, as you are now a part of me.

Twilight’s mind was blank for a few moments, before suddenly becoming engorged with questions, but she was good at dealing with that and quickly had her mind ordered into a list sorted by priority.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

I have no name, the voice replied. None but you even know that I exist.

“No name?” Twilight mused. “How can you not have a name? Everypony has a name.”

Nopony has deemed to grant me a title, little one. Though perhaps a suitable name such as Skylia would be appropriate.

Twilight recalled her lessons at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, as well as her later personal study into ancient Equestria. Skylia meant ‘Sky Guardian’ or sometimes ‘Light Guardian’ or ‘Guardian of Light’ in Ancient Equine.

“Appropriate indeed,” she conceded. “Well Skylia, it’s nice to meet you. How do you even know ancient equi-“ Twilight was interrupted as a stab of pain shot its way through her mind, sending her reeling, stumbling into the wall near the door.

“Princess!” Flam called from outside. “Princess, can you hear me?”

“Y-yes!” she shouted back. “I can hear you.”

“Good! I’m going to start the power up sequence!”

Twilight was in the middle of wondering what this meant when a whine began from below, faint at first, but grew and soon it shook her from her teeth to her hooves.

Suddenly, the whine stopped and the inside of the cockpit came alive with action. The walls began to glow with a magic violet light as some kind of gleaming silver apparatus started to rise out of the floor. Several equish words flashed in amongst the light, too quick to read or follow, before all simultaneously changing to a perfect representation of the inside of the warehouse, down to the tiny Flam standing over by one wall near the door.

“W-what is this Flam?” she stuttered, unable to properly formulate any coherent thoughts.

Flam sighed. “That is your control cockpit Princess, now if you’ll step over into the harness, we can get started.”

Twilight warily approached the “harness” that had risen out of the floor. It was a slightly raised oval dais with four shallow depressions where a pony could stand, surrounded by a ring of thin, round pillars as tall as her flank. There was a small gap at the back to allow entrance, so she gingerly stepped in.

The hoof-grooves were perfectly sized to fit her hooves, she saw as she entered the ring, down to the front-left being claw-shaped to fit her prosthetic limb. She clenched her teeth and her claw at the memory before stepping into them.

The effect was instantaneous as thin tendrils of magic energy erupted from the pillars, several from each one, with two noticeably larger threads reaching from the two poles at the front. They snaked around her for a moment, seemingly searching for something, before converging on her in a flash of blinding light, then everything went dark.

06 - Dreaming of Home

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Chapter 6

Dreaming of Home

A deafening crash resonated out of the warehouse on the hill. The residents of Unicornia knew better than to question any strange occurrences when it involved the brother lords, particularly on their lunch break, but the grinding, smashing ruckus had been going on and off all morning.

Inside, Twilight was beginning to get frustrated.

She floated a few hooves above the floor of the cockpit inside the head of her silver metal doppelganger, suspended by scores of tendrils that reached out from every joint, muscle or ligament in her body, with two larger threads attached to the silver ring at the base of her horn.

She grimaced as she picked herself and, by proxy, her giant metal self, up off the floor for what felt like the hundredth time. Another crash sounded as she tried to take another step, putting one hoof forward in front of the others, just as she had been doing since she was a foal, only now she was suspended inside her cockpit.

The machine responded directly to her physical movements, the strings translating her actions into identical mechanical ones outside, from her legs, neck, head, even her wings and newfound claw. It was not as easy as Flam had made it out to be when he was trying to instruct her that morning.

She had heard little from Skylia, as if she could not talk when Flam was paying direct attention, but several strong emotions were being glowed in her direction. Compassion and encouragement, mostly, with tones of frustration and anger. These were not directed at her incompetence, she somehow knew, but at Flam and the situation he was putting her in.

Twilight could only move a few, slow steps before falling on her face, even with assistance balancing from her wings, once she remembered she had them, but she was increasing her limit one step at a time every few falls. Flam kept up a stream of dry encouragement, as if he thought he had better things to be doing than trying to teach her how to walk.

As the sun reached its zenith in the sky, she was managing to walk slow steps around the room, which did not seem anywhere near as enormous from Twilight’s current perspective.

“Alright Princess!” Flam called as she came to a stop after three successful consecutive laps. “That should be enough for the morning. You must be tired and even your magic reserves are not limitless. We’ll take a break.”

Twilight took a breath and looked inside herself to her magic pool, something every Unicorn learned at a very young age, and almost had a small, painful pang of amusement at Flam’s lack of knowledge and understanding of Alicorn magicology. Her reserves were barely affected, not even a bucket of water from a swimming pool..

But she navigated the machine over to where it was standing when she had arrived, positioned beside the lift so that Flam could ascend. Once she was in position, she saw Flam wave his horn and instantly, the cockpit went dark. It only lasted a moment, as the hatch door swung open, letting in the light from overhead and revealing Flam standing on the lift platform.

Twilight approached the doorway, only to see him look straight into her eyes and light up his horn. She screamed and dropped to the floor, expecting her mind to come alive with fire and agony.

Flam chuckled. “Princess, you need not fear me or my brother any longer. As long as you do as we instruct, I promise, we will not harm you in any intentional way.”

Twilight, still shaking, stood up. Flam lit up his horn again and surrounded her in a film of sickly green magic. Nothing else seemed to be happening, so when Flam gave a nod, she went to move outside.

As her head passed through the doorway, the consciousness she had grown accustomed to over the course of the morning retreated, pulled painfully from her body and mind like a layer of skin. The further out she moved, the harder it became until she was struggling to move at all. She got all but her rear flanks out when it all snapped, sending her flying into Flam with the sudden lack of pressure holding her back

With a pained groan, she opened her eyes to find herself face to face with Flam, who was quite stunned himself, not to mention blushing slightly.

Blushing? Why was he blushing? Twilight tried to get up, but her limbs were unresponsive. She felt cold and hollow, empty without her newest friend swimming through her thoughts.

She said nothing as Flam helped her to her hooves and let her outside where she blinked in the harsh midday sun. They slowly trotted down to the market district where they had lunch and once she had eaten, Twilight could fully move all her muscles again without them turning to jelly.

Then it was back to the warehouse where, by the end of the day, she could work up an indefinite but slow trot. The thunderous sounds of her hoofsteps shook the ground around the building. The whole city was built for that though, as Flam explained to her when she asked him about it on the way back to her house.

“Their supports are held in the ground with a magically-enhanced concrete that flexes as the ground shakes, but is still sturdy enough to hold the building in place.” Twilight nodded along, paying rapt attention for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. He left her at the front step, waiting until she closed the door with an odd expression on his face. Part possessive, part admiration, with so many other expressions thrown in, she couldn't decipher exactly what it meant.

The next few days progressed much the same, until the huge space inside the warehouse became too small. Twilight then had to walk her MAC outside the city to a large, open field similar to her old training ground, where a watchtower and another enormous storage building stood.

Here over the next few weeks, she began galloping, jumping, even coming to sliding stops when a sudden halt was needed. She became as proficient at moving in her MAC unit as she was her real body. Flam seemed happy with her progress and she got nothing but encouragement from Skylia’s voice in her head, though they hadn’t had much of a chance to talk since their first meeting. She felt attached, connected at a very deep level with this other consciousness she now shared most of her waking hours with. The emptiness she felt when it was gone was just one more thing to bring the tears at night.

Things got more interesting one day when, after setting Twilight up and instructing her to do some basic warm-ups, he came walking out of the building several minutes later in his own mechanical facsimile.

This one was a commander unit too, like hers, only smaller. The gems in its eyes were green and it didn’t have wings, but it was styled just like Flam, down to the slicked back mane and an exaggeratedly long horn. It even had a moustache, likely so the brothers could tell their units apart when they were next to each other.

From then on, they sparred, fighting hoof-to-hoof combat in a complex dance that always ended up with Twilight slamming into the ground with impact after jarring impact. Flam was good. He had obviously been piloting his unit for a long time, running, dodging and sliding in a way few non-pegasus ponies could do with their natural bodies. Despite her larger size, Twilight couldn’t pin him down. He always slid under her reach or dodged to the side, always slightly quicker, always one step ahead.

Until, while blocking a kick to her torso, she stopped the attack with the open claw on her left leg. Seizing the opportunity, she used the claw to grip his hoof, her sharp talons leaving deep scratches in the metal of his MAC unit. She reared up and brought her right hoof around in a vicious kick, which she followed through with a bodyslam, driving Flam’s unit into the ground. She was left standing with her hooves pinning the other unit in the dirt, panting slightly inside her metal shell at the adrenaline rush.

She suddenly felt sick, drawing back in horror. She had hit him, hit Flam. A hundred scenarios of what he would do to her ran their way through her mind, from strapping her back to the bench to sending shock after shock of blinding pain through her head. What had she done?

“Princess, are you alright?”

She was brought back to the present, moreso from the tone, rather than the words themselves. He sounded genuinely worried about her. She said nothing, she didn’t even move.

“Twilight?”

Twilight?

It had been so long since she’d heard her name. It sounded odd, particularly coming from Flam, who had caused her so much pain. Particularly since it was said with an uncharacteristic amount of concern.

“I-I’m fine, Flam. Thank you.”

“That will be enough for today, Princess. You should go home and get some rest, we’ll start on spells tomorrow.”

The formality was mostly back in his voice, but Twilight was sure she could still hear undertones of compassion. What possible reason could this deranged pony have to show compassion to her?

She shook her head and made her way back to the storage warehouse on the edge of the field where Flam helped her out of her MAC. He even held up a helping hoof for her to hold when she was struggling to escape the force holding her inside the doorway. She still struggled with it, but she no longer fell flank over horn when it finally let go.

They slowly trotted back to Twilight’s house without another word spoken. Flam was walking uncomfortably close beside her, their sides almost touching as they walked.

As she was heading inside, something made her stop and turn around. Flam was looking at her almost expectantly, his hoof held forward as if he intended to hold the door open. He seemed almost bashful, nervous about something, like he was trying to make some big decision in his mind.

“Princess…” he opened and closed his mouth a few times, clearly struggling to find the right words. Twilight said nothing. She simply stood on the front step, waiting for whatever it was Flam was going to say.

Instead of saying anything, he ducked forward and kissed her.

It was a short kiss, straight on the lips, quick but passionate.

He pulled away. “Try to get some rest Princess.” Before she could say anything, or react in any way, he turned and left, almost running off down the street. He was well out of sight before Twilight’s mind finished processing what had just happened.

She turned and stumbled inside, legs suddenly weak. He kissed her. The thought churned her stomach and she rushed to the bathroom just in time to thrust her head over the sink and empty her stomach down the drain.

She retched until her stomach ached and her eyes felt like they would pop out of her skull, then she retched some more until she didn’t have the strength to do anything but slide down onto the bathroom floor, completely spent.

It wasn’t the fact that he had kissed her that made her feel sick. It wasn’t the fact that he was partly responsible for all the scars that decorated her body and the stringy remains of her mane and tail. It wasn’t the fact that he had tortured her to within a hoof-length of her life and kept her there for Celestia-knew how long.

The fact that made her sick was that she had kissed him back.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the middle of the night, Twilight awoke to find herself in the discomfort of the bed they had given her. It was soft, far too much so after her months spent sleeping on a thin layer of hay on a hard concrete floor. She rolled off the bed, hitting the ground with a hard thud. She barely felt the impact.

There she lay, curled up on the floor, pondering her dreams until the serving ponies came with breakfast.

Her sleep had been unusual, as she had dreamed of home. Dreamed of her friends, their faces blurry, as if she almost couldn’t remember what they looked like. She had dreamed of her younger years, lessons with Princess Celestia or play time with Cadence, or even playing royal guard with her brother. She dreamed of her parents and their loving faces, only slightly marred by the fading of her memory. There she stayed, lost in her thoughts until the sun was starting to filter in through her window and a knock sounded at the door.

She was hesitant to open it, worried about what had happened between her and Flam the day before. The face that greeted her when she eventually cracked the door open sent her reeling back in terror.

“Good morning Princess,” Flim said, an expression of thinly veiled contempt on his face.

“F-Flim.” Twilight stuttered. “W-what are you doing here, where’s Flam?”

Flim sighed with a grimace. “My dear brother is unwell this morning, so I will be filling in in his stead.” He glanced at her prosthetic leg. “I hope there are no hard feelings from our last little… altercation?” The look on his face said he would tolerate exactly no hard feelings at all.

“O-of course not,” she managed to force out from between her teeth. “No hard feelings at all.”

“Excellent! Then we shall proceed.” He turned and trotted off, leaving Twilight standing in the doorway, stomach grumbling from the lack of breakfast until a shot of pain lanced through her head. Flim’s horn was lit, though he hadn’t even slowed down or turned around. Twilight had no choice but to follow.

Their walk through the city was silent, leaving Twilight to ponder what had happened to Flam. They passed the southern gate to the city, still as silent as the two monolithic MAC sentinels standing either side of the opening. Twilight knew from experience that they could see everything around them without the need to turn their heads. It wasn’t until they were approaching the open field, which was covered in holes and furrows from the days she had already spent out there with Flam, when Flim finally spoke up.

“We will do some warm-up sparring exercises, Princess, then we will begin with MAC spellwork. Be warned though, I will not be as lenient on you as my brother. I won’t hold back.”

Twilight said nothing, and Flam did not seem to be expecting a reply as they entered the warehouse. He did not ascend the lift to her unit with her, instead, walking straight over to his own MAC unit, which he must have had moved there sometime after she left the day before.

She glanced at the closed hatch in the back of her own unit’s head, unsure of what to do. Flam had always opened it for her and neither brother had revealed to her the trick behind it, as it had no handles or rungs or anything to grip, nor could she use her magic to pull it open.

She was beginning to panic in fear of what Flim would do if she could not even enter her unit when a soothing pulse of light washed away all her tension. A boom sounded and the hatch opened up by itself, so she quickly dashed inside.

She no longer grimaced from the shock of ice flooding into her brain. It was a feeling she relished, almost addictively euphoric. All her worries and fears were gone, all the pains and aches from her injuries disappeared, cleansed in the cold burn of the consciousness rushing in to join with her own.

She also no longer flinched away from the convergence of the wiry tendrils that emanated from the harness poles. Once complete, the connection heightened all her senses: she could see everything, down to the grains in the smoothed concrete floor and the grimace on Flim’s face as he glanced over on his way up the lift to his own MAC unit.

She could hear everything in minute detail, even Flim muttering under his breath about missing out on punishing her for not knowing how to enter her cockpit. She heard the sounds of the city just outside the warehouse and the commotion of unicorns going about their daily lives.

She could even feel the ground underneath the hooves and claw of her unit. It also meant that she felt the impacts when her unit was hit, or when she slammed into the ground, but after everything she had been through, she barely felt the pain.

Once outside the building, Flim gave her no time to prepare, immediately launching his unit at her before she had even turned to face him, sending her crashing to the ground. She rolled with the hit, using her momentum to propel her back onto her hooves in time to block the next attack, which came in the form of a wide left hook.

The kick turned into a grapple as Flim grabbed the leg she used to block and twisted her around, trying to force her to the ground. Twilight resisted, using her superior size to force the stallion’s weight off of her. Flam immediately spun, lashing his rear leg around into Twilight’s own, knocking her off her hooves and onto the ground. The impact knocked her breath away and as she lay gasping, Flim backed off with a laugh.

Twilight struggled to her hooves as her breath returned, but Flam gave her no more time to recover. He lashed at her with a series of fast and erratic attacks that kept her constantly on the defensive. His form was wild and unpredictable, turning most of his attacks into feints with brutal follow up blows that caused stabs of pain wherever he hit.

Eventually, Twilight began to notice a pattern in her opponent’s attacks. His bluffs and feints were all completely random, however he always moved in for a real blow in the same way, every time. He would recover from a feint or a blocked attack with a crouched approach that brought him under her guard, where he would use a shorter attack to strike at her chest, legs or head.

She used her right leg to block one more attack which Flim backed out of before ducking low and moving in close. Seeing her chance, Twilight shoved herself forward, slamming into him before he could attack, knocking him off balance. She then went on the offensive, striking with several guarded blows which he desperately blocked.

One more attack, this time with her clawed leg which she used to grab hold of Flim’s hoof when he blocked, allowed her to pull him into a crushing kick from her front right hoof directly to his stomach. She grinned as he was knocked off his hooves to crash to the ground himself, several score normal pony-lengths away, or two to three of their supermassive pony-lengths.

She heard him grunt in frustration, his mecha turning the sound into a guttural growl. He tried to climb to his hooves, but stumbled, and when Twilight stepped forward to help out of instinct, a beam of harsh, green light spat from his horn and collided with her chest, sending her flying across the now muddy field to crash down in a heap of metal limbs and pain.

As she herself struggled to her hooves, Flim was suddenly looming over her. He put a hoof to her shoulder and pushed her back down into the mud.

“You are dirt.” He said, almost calmly, but Twilight could hear the slight crack of barely restrained anger in his voice. “You are slime, nothing! I could crush you in a heartbeat.” He pressed down, squashing her further into the ground. “I could have killed you a hundred times a hundred times by now, so you will know your place when in my presence, am I clear?”

Twilight grimaced, but nodded.

“Good.” Flim released the pressure and Twilight breathed a gasp of relief. Flam gave her no time, however.

“Spellwork! Get to your hooves and show me a shield.”

Twilight winced as she stood up, several new aches adding themselves to the chorus already screaming through her body.

Flam’s horn was beginning to glow. “Shield, now!” He repeated.

Twilight blanched. He hadn’t shown her how to cast a shield, or any magic for that matter. Any magic she had tried to use up until that point had led to indescribable pain. She began to panic, until a soft pulse of light in her mind calmed her and showed her an image. It was of her MAC unit, and highlighted on it were several glowing lines reaching from the tethers on her horn, all the way up, through a series of what had to be focus crystals, to the tip of the horn on her MAC’s head.

Use me. Skylia’s voice echoed through her mind. Use me and no harm will come to you, I promise little one.

Taking heart in the words, Twilight calmed herself with a breath, and directed her magic up through her MAC unit, using it to cast a regular shield spell directly in front of her. The drain on her magic was significant, but the shield came up just in time to block a powerful blast from Flim, who was left somewhat surprised when the haze cleared to reveal her still standing, a shimmering purple wall separating them.

He scowled, and launched another blast that was dissipated harmlessly by her shield. Several more blasts and her shield was cracking, but Flim was shooting at her with such frequency that she didn’t have time to recast it.

Finally, when her shield could take no more, just as Flim was launching what he knew to be the last attack, she dove to the side and launched her own energy blast. His shot hit her shield and shattered it, sending fragments of solidified magic energy raining down on the both of them. Her shot came at him from the side, impacting against his shoulder and again sending him flying to the ground.

Twilight rolled with her dive, coming to her hooves just in time to fall from them with a scream as a searing pain burned its way through her head.

“No!” He screamed, leaping out of the smoke and dust, landing on top of her and pinning her to the ground, one hoof on her neck. He used his other hoof to kick a series of blows into her side that she almost didn’t feel through the pain in her mind.

He kept on kicking as the fire in her head grew more and more intense and her skull felt like it would melt from the inside out.

“Sky!” She screamed, desperately hoping her new friend could come to her aid before Flim’s outburst killed her.

Little one! I can block the pain completely, but only for a moment. Any longer could permanently damage your central magic system, so you have to act quickly. Finish him off if you can.

Abruptly, the pain vanished. Blissfully gone, replaced by a familiar blazing light.

She wasted no time. Pushing out with her rear hoof, she spun herself around, throwing Flim off balance, causing his next blow to miss. Grabbing his leg that he was using to pin her neck to the ground with her claw, she twisted, throwing him to the ground beside her. Pushing herself to her hooves with her remaining legs, she formed a blade out of her claw and thrust it straight through Flim’s unit’s neck, nearly severing its head.

He is still trying to immobilise you little one, you must finish him quickly! Skylia urged.

Twilight looked down at the hole she had created in the MAC unit’s neck and saw Flim, almost red with fury and spitting words she could not hear over the pounding of her pulse in her ears, climbing from the cockpit. He was glaring death at her and his horn was ablaze with light.

Now, little one!

Twilight raised her claw above the tiny speck of a unicorn and mustered her courage. He had been responsible for a huge amount of her pain. He had cut off her leg and painfully attached this grotesque metal replacement. He was the pony who had taken her from her friends and family and stripped her of everything she loved.

She brought the claw crashing down, but flinched at the last moment, smashing the chest of the giant metal pony instead. She dimly saw Flim get thrown from the debris in the impact, clear of all the destruction. He fell to the ground and lay, unmoving, as Skylia sighed with relief.

The pressure is gone now, little one, but he still may be alive. You should finish him off so he cannot hurt you again.

“I can’t!” Twilight shouted. “I won’t just end a pony’s life! I… I’ve never killed someone before…” There was a slight pause as she stood there trying to regain her breath.

Very well, Skylia conceded. But we must hurry from this place before he wakes up.

Twilight turned to face away from the city thinking briefly of home, of all her friends and family and all the things she would have been missing. She thought of how good it was going to be to see everypony again and how her life could go back to normal. She thought all of this, then turned around and galloped back towards the gate leading into the city.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight sprinted through the streets of the city, heading for somewhere central and elevated. The MAC guards at the gate had not been expecting her and she took them by surprise, using her claw to cut the head off one of the drones and blasting the other in the chest with magic. She was certain the two pilots survived, though their units were now completely inoperable.

Twilight, where are you going? Skylia asked. We must leave, return to your home-

Twilight cut her off. “I’m not leaving without Spike.”

Spike? The drake? Isn’t he no longer the small infant you grew up with?

“I don’t care how he looks, he’s still my little Spike. I know he’s alive and I won’t leave him behind.” She stopped running at around the middle of the market district, vaguely noticing the frightened mob of unicorns scattering in her wake. “Spike!” she screamed, using her magic and Skylia’s crystals to amplify her voice and send it echoing out through the city.

She waited a few moments, oblivious to the screams of all the citizens around her, unaware of even the few blasts of magical energy that were dissipating off her armour, shot by the few military unicorns that happened to be in the area.

She shouted again, louder this time, and waited.

She was beginning to get desperate as two more drones rounded the corner a few blocks away and sent beams of powerful magic at her, which she deflected with a quick shield. She was about to give up waiting and search the whole city, even if she had to raze it to the ground, when she heard a roar.

“Spike!” It was coming from the mountain on the far side of the city. She resumed her sprint, crashing straight through the two drones who were still trying to blast her, hopelessly crippling the leg of one and snapping the horn off the other. She did not stop.

Soon, her warpath led her to the base of the mountain, where she could hear Spike’s pained, desperate roars. She spread her wings.

Little one, I cannot fly. Skylia cautioned. Nor can I climb this sheer cliff. We have no way of ascending to your friend.

Twilight screamed in frustration, using her open wings to rear up and slam the cliff face with her closed claw, smashing the smooth stone and sending a small avalanche of rubble down around her hooves.

Reared up, she was almost halfway up to where Spike could be heard. She was so close, but she couldn’t do anything.

Even if we could get up there, little Twilight, the ledge is too small, we would not be able to keep ourselves up.

Twilight punched the wall with her claw again, trying to vent some frustration. She pulled her claw back for another strike, when she noticed that the limb was almost undamaged. Two powerful strikes into solid stone and the claws were barely scratched and still completely functional. An idea began to bloom in her head.

“Skylia, could we manage a teleport?”

A teleport?

Twilight could practically hear her companion’s thought processes buzzing away as she contemplated the possibility.

I suppose we could. The normal theories of teleportation hold. It would take a huge amount of magic power though.

She could see the heads of several more MAC drones making their way through the city to their location, so she acted quickly. Bending her knees and spreading her wings, she powered up her magic.

She released it all at once, jumping and using a flap of her wings to propel herself up into a short teleport, pouring all the magic she could into the spell.

With a flash and a crack that resounded out through the city and surrounding hills, she, along with her entire MAC unit, appeared up in the air, the vertical momentum from her leap still propelling her upwards a short way. She plunged her claw into the rock of the mountain and clenched, gripping the stone and flapping her wings to keep her from falling down.

The claw held and she was left hanging off the side of the cliff, right outside the almost-invisible doorway that led to the mountain’s interior. She could still hear Spike’s screams sounding out of that hole.

She lined her horn up with the sound and released a massive blast of energy that ripped through the rock like butter, hoping to Celestia that Spike’s armoured hide would save him from the attack.

Once the smoke and dust cleared, she peered into the enlarged hole she had made and saw Spike standing in the middle of the debris, seemingly completely unharmed, but holding a limp pony in his jaws.

“Spike!” she yelled again and the fearsome drake snapped his attention to her. The pony fell from his mouth as something glinted in his eyes. Spreading his wings, he shot forward and out of the hole, barely giving Twilight time to move to avoid having him slam into her head.

Several blasts of magic emanated from below and Twilight glanced down to see at least five MAC drones taking shots up at her. She closed her wings and loosened her claw’s grip, causing her to slide down the cliff, leaving a deep furrow in the otherwise smooth face.

Go right! She heard Skylia shout, just before she hit the ground. She gave a flap of her wings and threw herself at the drone closest to the cliff on her right, knocking him to the ground where she crushed the unit’s neck with a hoof. Immediately she was running, pulling up desperate shield spells behind her to ward off the magic attacks being thrown from the remaining pursuing drones.

She was faster than they were, and soon she outpaced them, their spells falling wider and wider to either side, or falling short completely. She was out, she was going to escape!

Twilight, watch out! Skylia suddenly cried.

Her warning proved too late, however, as Flam, in his own MAC unit, leapt up from behind a building right in front of her, his horn already charged and ready to release a full-force blast at point blank range. There was no time to shield, there was no room to dodge. Time seemed to slow as the green light from his horn reached its climax.

She almost felt she could see him, through the shiny metal exterior. She felt she could see the pain written on his face, see the regret from the action already forming in his heart. Why was he so attached to her? She watched the shot slowly coil out of the horn, spiralling along the contours and out into the air. It closed the gap swiftly, aimed straight for her head…

And flew straight over her shoulder to blaze a trail of destruction through a dozen buildings before exploding into the mountainside in a bright flash of fire and rubble.

He didn’t even try to move out of the way as she careened into him, knocking him to the ground as she charged through. She stumbled, but managed to keep her balance as she galloped away through the dust that was raining down over the city. She glanced behind her for a moment, and saw him lying on the ground, ruby eyes bright and staring at her, making no attempt to pursue, or even to get up.

She ran away, out of the gate, past the two drones she had destroyed earlier and off into the countryside, following Skylia’s directions and trusting her to get them home.

The Flames of Harmony

by True Blood

00 - Lurking Shadows

01 - Just Fine

02 - Enchained

03 - Dark Motives

04 - Broken Spirits

05 - New Additions

06 - Dreaming of Home