Will Our favorite purple unicorn fall into madness? Or was she already there to begin with?
Alone and in the dark. When a certain purple unicorn wakes up in a strange place, how will she find her way out without going absolutely insane. How will she deal with learning the truth? What happened to make her forget everything that was important to her? All rights to My Little Pony: FiM and Amnesia go to their respective owners. Rated T for violence and language.
She awoke in the near darkness. Still feeling groggy from her rest, she looked around and took note of where she was laying. She was on a hay stuffed mattress, locked in a ten by ten foot room there was a rope attached to a padlock on the door leading up to a lantern, hanging from the ceiling. The rope led from the lantern to a gramophone. Finally there was a set of saddlebags lying next to the bed she was on. She tried talking out loud seeing if anyone was outside of her door, nothing but a sharp pain and a harsh whimper escaped her mouth. She looked down inspecting herself, she appeared to be a light purple coated pony, with no wings. She did however have a horn and a currently unkempt mane which if straitened would be the same length around her forehead just covering her horn and above her eye line. Her mane was purple, highlights of violet and pink in it. There was however no visible injuries on her.
She thought to herself "Where am I… and for that matter, who am I?" She tried reaching for the lantern with her hoof, but it was just out of her reach. Giving up on that idea, she turned to the gramophone. There was a crank on it that looked fairly dusty. She started turning it, and a female voice rang out from the musical device before her. The voice was very intellectual sounding, and it oddly sounded very familiar to her, but she couldn't place the voice to anypony she knew. Now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember anything before waking up in this room.
The voice was saying, "Welcome! You are now listening to the sound of my dis-embodied voice. It will serve no purpose to look for me, for this is a voice from the past. I bid you welcome to my Cabinet of Perturbation. It is my study of the Equestrian psyche, specifically yours. A set of recordings have been prepared to chaperone you in the chambers ahead. There are a few parts to this study, and it is up to you, not only to pass, but figure out which elements are important. Please go on, move into the next chamber. Just remember, they can all be saved. There is always a way." And with that, the voice cut off and the musical device abruptly stopped producing sound.
The padlock containing the door and the lantern snapped and with a loud bang crashed to the floor. And the lantern calmly fell to the floor still attached to the ceiling and gramophone. She was very confused at what she was just listening to. "Equestrian psyche? And what did she mean by 'Cabinet of Perturbation' ? Was she insinuating that she…" She cut herself off trying not to think of anything too horrifying. She leaned down to pick up the lantern in her mouth, put the saddlebags on and turned to the now unlocked door. "Well… here goes nothing" she silently said to herself, walking through the door to the dark recesses of the deathly silent corridors.
She made her way through the collapsed hallways of what she had started calling "The Dungeon" she passed by a broken ladder and some cylindrical boxes labelled "Tinder Box" she also realized that her lantern ran on oil and it was less than half full when she picked it up. Tinder boxes were very useful for lighting torches that were hanging along the wall. All the torches were locked into place by some mechanism that her hoofs couldn't unlock on their own. She put any remaining tinderboxes into her bag.
She had spent the last twenty minutes wandering the empty halls, since leaving her now unlocked room. When she finally found a door that wasn't blocked by any kind of rubble or debris she became ecstatic and started galloping towards it with new enthusiasm. She slowed to a trot and finally stopped dead in her tracks as she started hearing sounds form on the other side of the door. It sounded like a female crying, but it also sounded… wrong… She couldn't place why the crying pony sounded wrong, or why she sounded familiar. Less so than the voice on the gramophone, but still very familiar to her. She turned off her lantern and crept up to the door, which had a small bared window in it.
What she saw at first was a yellow coated pony with a pink mane and tail facing away from her. Her vision started to narrow as her eyes adjusted to that of the will lit room beyond the door and what she then saw terrified her and set her heart racing, The pony was yellow with a pink mane and tail but three of her legs were covered in spiked chains, cutting deep into her left foreleg and both hind legs. There was fresh cuts and scrapes all along the body, most of which were bleeding profusely. The place where her cutie mark should be was cut open and had scars all along it making what once was a cutie mark, now unrecognisable. The mane and tail were ragged, with patches missing off of each of them. It looked like at one point the pony had wings, but they were now torn off at the joints leaving bloodied stumps in their place. Finally, the pony had a metal brace tightly strapped around her throat which was also heavily bleeding.
The pony was the embodiment of all things horrible, sad, and scared. Seeing the wounded pony like this caused the mare with the lantern to jump back and know some rubble aside causing a small noise. The pony in the room stopped sobbing and began to turn around. What the mare saw now was that the injured pony had no eyes in her eye sockets! Just empty holes in her head where her eyes should have been. The mare now let out a small screech and the injured pony immediately started walking towards the door but now she was talking in an eerie and yet soft tone.
"Is that you, my love?" It gasped, "You came for me!"
She was now shaking and starting to lose her footing as she was shakily backing away from the door.
"Please wait… Come back…"
By this point the lantern wielding mare was galloping back into the darkness to hide from this… creature that now was coming for her. From behind her she heard this thing smashing at the door the mare was just at and finally opening the wooden barrier while simultaneously breaking any lock that may have once been on the door. The mare hid in the darkest corner she could find and just sat there, shaking in terror hoping that the thing would not find her.
"Oh… Why did this happen…" it stopped and seemingly gazed off in the direction of the first room the mare had come from, "Is that you, I hear? Wait! Come back!" the mare turned her head slightly in time to see the creature sprint off towards the first room. The mare waited till the creature was out of sight and then ran back to the newly smashed door in an attempt to escape this terrible dungeon.
When she entered the room, she looked for the closest thing she could find to a barricade which happened to be a table she over flipped and pushed against the door. When she felt she was safe enough to start looking for a way out. A few doors leading into about four prison cells and a trapdoor on the ceiling were visible. There was also a metal grate covering a large portion of this room on the floor. Underneath was a pool of water with a few pipes that were dribbling some water into the pool of water. One of the cells was locked and had a bared window large enough to see all the way into the room. Inside, an orange pony was tied to a stone pedestal a canvas bag was covering its head. When the mare saw this she let out a gasp, the pony in the room seemed to perk up a little and a deeply accented, yet feminine voice arose into a level just above a whisper
"Ah' don' hear any more cryin'… 'Scuse me but can y'all help me out here? Ah' appear to be in a mighty bind righ' now…"
The mare was startled by the this new pony. It didn't sound as frightening as the previous creature's voice. She tried to respond, but found again that her voice was now replaced by a coarse and demented version of what it used to be. When she tried speaking, it was still extremely painful for the mare. Instead the mare gave the door a gentle tap, loud enough to be heard but quite enough that it wouldn't bring back the twisted creature in the hallway, in response to the pony.
"Well now partner, Ah'm not sure if y'all 're like the rest o' them but if y' aren't it'd be a mighty fine thing if y' could free me."
The mare looked around outside of the locked room for any sign of a way of getting in. She noticed two things in particular around the room that may be of use; one, being a lever situated a few yards to the right of the door to the new thick accented voice. And two, a hole in the wall above the door just out the mares reach. She tried getting to the hole entering the room but quickly gave up and walked over to the lever. Seeing no other option currently available to her and the room being devoid of objects she could stand on, besides the table which was currently blocking the door the creature ran out of in search of the mare, she walked up to the lever eyeing it carefully. She slowly reached for the lever with her fore hooves and pulled down on it.
*Click* The sound of turning cogs filled the room and there was a now much louder shout coming from the room.
"WOAH, WOAH! Stahp righ' there sugar cube!" the voice practically screamed, "Y'all really don't wanna do that, calm down and let's talk 'bout this, alrigh'?" the thick accented voice was pleading now with light sobs coming from behind the door. The mare quickly backed away from the lever and now knew to leave it be, lest it hurts the pony behind the door.
She tried to apologise to the pony behind the door, but again her voice came out as ragged sounds that made no actual sound resembling speech. Inside her head she was screaming "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you!"she was silently asking forgiveness when the voice called to her.
"All righ' there sugar cube," sharp intakes of breath coming from the pony "I can see y'all didn't know what was going to happen when you did that, otherwise you'd prolly' have done it again. Look, there's a separate mechanism above th' door to this room. If y'all can get that, I can get out 'a here mah self. All y'all have ta' do is get up there an' we can get out 'a this together."
The mare nodded, mostly to herself, in understanding. "Think! Where is something that can get me up that high?" She gathered every memory she had that may hold relevance to getting her high enough to activate this mechanism. "That's it! The ladder from earli-" she cut herself off remembering where it was. It was in the hallway with that creature. That meant that she would have to go back out in order to save this pony. "No! Maybe I can use the table to reach it!" she tried to reason with herself.
The mare trotted back over to the table this time dragging it back to the door with the orange pony. She slowly and carefully started climbing onto the table. Reaching up and looking into the hole above the door she found the mechanism the orange pony was talking about. She started reaching towards it when she heard two noises, one below her, one behind her.
The noise behind her was a voice, one she was hoping to not ever have to hear again. "NO STAY! Don't leave again…" the ghastly voice yelled at her.
The voice rang through her mind setting off a fear like that of no other. The second sound was the table, snapping as the creature smashed it with her chained fore hoof. As the table came down, and the mare on top of it with it, it created a large amount of dust, making the already fairly hard to see in room, even harder to see in.
The creature was slowly approaching the mare now whispering in that calming yet grim voice of hers "Hush now. It's alright."
Falling dazed the mare only temporarily but she quickly recovered her senses and bolted out of the room back into the hallways hoping the dust would give her enough cover to get out unnoticed. She got a few dozen yards away from the room with the creature and quickly thought to herself
"I have to find that ladder quickly and try to avoid that monster! It didn't seem to notice me when I was hiding in the dark. Maybe I can hide around one of these piles of debris if it comes after Me." thoughts ran through her head a mile a minute, and by the time she found broken ladder she could hear the hoof steps behind her keeping to her pace. She picked up the ladder and placed it on her back while she hid behind some rocks. The steps got closer, and closer until she could hear the creature calling out to her.
"Where are you? Come back…" The voice kept calling out, ever relentless in finding the mare that was running from her. The mare chanced a glance at the monster which was pursuing her, when she spotted it her heart skipped a beat and her vision started to blur and a darkening sense of paranoia and terror flooded into her very being. Just as quickly as she looked at the creature, she looked away and covered her head, shaking the entire time. Eventually the sounds emitting from the creature faded off into the distance. Relieved of her pursuer temporarily, she took the time to make sure it was gone and not about to show up out of nowhere to attack her. Only then did she start creeping back to where the other… sane… pony lay. She pulled out her lantern in order to see where she was going.
She arrived back at the prison keep, and used the ladder to climb up to the hole above the door. She reached in, pulled the lever and climbed back down.
… *Click* she heard a soft sigh coming from the cell the orange pony was in.
"Thanks partner… Ah don't think ah could have stayed like that much longer."
*click click click* … *SNAP* the sounds were now coming from above the mare as the trapdoor flung open and started swinging as another ladder dropped from the newly made breach the trapdoor made while opening. The orange pony no longer had the cover over her head and was now facing the purple mare. Her eyes were unfocused and were a grayish colour.
"Ah'm a might glad y'all didn't pull that lever a secon' time or ah'd be like an apple crushed under an anvil by now… Ah need t' rest a bit though, so ah'll catch up with y'all later. Be careful sugar cube. An' don't let them monsters get a hold of ye'."
The purple mare nodded and began climbing up the now descended ladder.
At the top of the ladder there was a wide opening leading to a narrow tunnel. The tunnel itself was barely big enough for a fully grown pony to maneuver through. As the mare got out her lantern, she started her way into the residing darkness. All seemed calm, for about thirty seconds into this exploration. She crawled up to a T-junction, the dust in the air clouding her vision so she couldn't even see any light coming from the room behind her.
She suddenly felt like something was following her through the tunnel, a growing sense of paranoia and fear bubbling up inside her. She could hear the low growls and other calls of the creature that she thought she left behind slowly coming closer to her. "Please come back…" the eerie voice called out to her. The blood drained from her face, and she began to panic. Frantically, she started crawling as fast as she could through the left side of the T-junction. She came up to another one and chose the left on a whim, leading directly to a dead end. The fear of the pursuing creature was flooding her mind leaving her with only one thought; Escape.
She quickly retraced her steps and went down the tunnel that she didn't go down before. As she got to the end of it there was a 15 foot drop into another hallway. Due to her fear, she disregarded the height and the potential harm it could cause her to fall from that high up. She dropped down, twisting her right fetlock and crumpling into a pile on the floor. Quickly regaining her senses, she started to stand back up wincing at the pain in her fetlock. She could no longer hear the voice of the creature and her paranoia started to fade, the colour returned to her face and the adrenalin started to dissipate. She took in her surroundings; a hallway leading two directions, one rounded at a corner and the other one beheld another gramophone and a wall of debris. Seeing only the two options, she went over to the musical device and cranked it. No sound came forth from the device. She cranked it again, and had the same result. She checked it and noticed there wasn't a wax cylinder, which is used to record and produce the sounds the gramophones make.
Thinking irritably to herself "Well that's pretty useless…" she turned on the gramophone and started hobbling down the hallway to the other path. Around the corner, there was a door to the right of her, a stairway ahead of her and a barricaded door to her right. In addition to the new path to the left, there was a trail of blood leading under the door. The right path blocked she turned to the other door with the bloody trail following.
Reluctantly, she opened the heavy wooden door. Behind it was a room filled with torturous equipment. Two tables lined the left wall covered in various implements of torture and pictures of former… prisoners getting assaulted with various tools of mutilation and desecration. There was a stretcher in the middle of the room and a lit fire pit, with branding irons glowing red with heat at the back of the room. Underneath the stretcher was a pool of dried blood and some smears beside the pool. On the right of the room, at the back was a small table with some candles, and finally another gramophone.
Again with reluctance, the mare cranked the newest gramophone. "Congratulations for making it this far," The voice complimented, "I am so excited for you. I do hope you managed to save our friend Applejack. She's quite honestly is the most reliable pony I have come to know. A friendly foal, and a fairly strong pony, but frail of mind. She puts up an impressive front, but it's all an act, I assure. Please go on, we are only getting started."
After the gramophone stopped producing noise, the mare turned her attention to the rest of the room. Two of the pictures were of the creature that was trying to catch her. The first picture was a full body shot of before the yellow Pegasus was mutilated. She looked very pretty before she was… changed. The second was of the Pegasus getting tortured, at the current time getting her wings chopped off. The mare quickly looked away, but the image was seared into her mind. She wanted nothing more than for the image to go away and never come back to her again. She ran out of the room temporarily ignoring the pain shooting up her foreleg. She almost tripped down the stairs that were across from her unconventional entrance. She got to the bottom of the stairs another heavy wooden door. She tugged at the barrier with all her strength and it flung open. She stepped into the next hallway. The door closed behind her causing a heavy thud. In this new corridor, eight statues of ponies lined both sides. They all looked as if they held their heads in shame, and were cuffed at the front hooves. There were two doors on either side of the hall, in addition there was a door torn off its hinges at the other end of the hall. To the mares left was yet another gramophone.
Giving up on caution with the sound making devices, she cranked the gramophone and more words came forth, "On this next piece you should be looking for some divine inspiration. Time to delve into your spiritual side. What do you see? Is the pony begging for mercy or is she being blessed. Perhaps both! The Princess used to say, there were no right answers. Have the light guide you." The mare was now starting to wonder about things "Is this pony trying to help me? It seems like this message had some kind of hint… and what about this Princess? What does she have to do with this? This is getting very strenuous and I need to take a rest, my hoof is hurting a little. But not now, I need to find a way out or that monster is going to catch up to me."
Limping to the nearest door, she opened it to reveal a practiacally empty, and very dark, storage room. The only useful items she could find in this room were two tinder boxes. She also found a strange looking slide on a higher up shelf. Grabbing it and leaving she crossed the hall to the next room. It looked like a study, one that you'd find in a library. There were book shelves all around the room and across from the door was a desk. On top of the desk was another slide, a note, and an ink well and quill. She grabbed the second slide and started to read the note.
The note spoke of a filly named Twilight, choosing different slides for different moods, it also described that she had trouble using the "Puzzle lock" but not including why she would have trouble. The mare deduced this was because this "Twilight" was a filly when these tests were going on. Finding nothing more of interest in the room, other than two more tinder boxes inside the desk itself, she left to the next room. This next room was larger than the last two rooms, and had two paintings on the left and right walls. Two were portraits of mares, one was a portrait of a colt, and one was of a colt on a stretcher mechanism. There was another device at the back of the room, with a lever and two slots. On a table off to the side there was another note. There were four pages total, they read;
"Twilight, age 8
Today I played with my baby dragon, Spike. We saw a bird pick at a snail. It carried it off and landed on the garden fence. The snail had a shell and it cracked. Spike cried and I comforted him. One of the princesses gardeners scolded Spike and I for playing in the garden, the bird took off into the air.
Today I was the one with open arms."
"Twilight, age 9
Today I played with the slides from Celestia's light box. Above all I like the pony standing to the right. Celestia asked why. I said, he sees things he likes.
Today I was the right one."
"Twilight, age 10
Celestia said I picked the wrong slide yesterday when I made one of her handmaidens cry. She wanted me to pick the one with the sword, while I picked the pony on the right. I never pick the one with the sword.
Today I was the one kneeling."
"Twilight, age 11
Today Celestia came for me in my room. I still couldn't look her in the eyes. She said I shouldn't feel ashamed and that I was only trying to fill the void left when my parents left me in her care. When she wasn't looking I took the star stone from her collection.
Today I was the one with the sword."
The series of notes was labelled "Soul Journal Entries" The mare continued toward the mechanism at the back of the room, above it was a vent leading into the wall. As she approached the vent a pompous female voice came from the darkness of the vent, "Who are you?! Who's there?" The mare already knew that she couldn't respond to this knew voice. She turned around to go in search of the final slide that the Journals entailed. As she was walking away the voice murmured in a very low tone, which carried well because of the vent, "You'll burn for this Twilight Sparkle… You'll burn…" The new voice seemed to be directed towards this Twilight and not her in particular.
The mare went to the final closed door across the hall and opened it to reveal a small library. With some time and patients she found the fourth slide and left. Now she headed through the doorless doorway to see a room with a box in the middle of the room, a boarded door to the left, and to the right a few book shelves. As she was walking up to the box, a loud thumping came from the door to her left. "Oh no! No, no, no, no!" She froze in her tracks and looked towards the door, a thick layer of dust came off the door but the banging stopped. She took a deep breath and continued to walk over to the box. "Looks like this is the light box. Hmm… there's a candle in the middle if I light it, it'll produce light to see what's on these slides, right?"
A few minutes of checking the slides and looking over the journals, she was able to deduce that the slide of the pony facing the right was one of the slides needed for the puzzle lock, but was having trouble figuring out the second one.
"If Twilight liked this one," referring to the pony facing right, "and she didn't like the one of the pony with the sword… that only leaves two other possibilities. She got scolded when she was the one with arms wide open. But she also got scolded for picking the wrong slide. Maybe…" Her thoughts drifted off as she grabbed all the slides and returned to the puzzle lock. The voice from the mare on the other side of the vent rang through "Sick, twisted foal…" Promptly placing the slide of the pony facing the right in the top slot, she picked the third slide, the one of the pony kneeling to the right, and placed it into the bottom slot. Hesitantly, she pulled the lever downwards
*Click* The pretentious voice now showed gratitude and kindness "Wha- what's this? I am free? Whoever you are, Trixie thanks you for helping me. Watch out for Twilight, that demon, she may still be close." After Trixie, as the mare now knew this pony as, finished talking, there was a grinding sound coming from the library. Questioning what the noise was, the mare hurriedly hobbled towards the library. She found one of the bookcases had pivoted out away from one of the walls, leading to another staircase and another gramophone.
The mare just wanted out of whatever hell this was, but she cranked the musical device, sat down and listened. Resting her fetlock for the time being, seemed to be almost as necessary as listening to the gramophone. "I wonder, is the Great and Powerful Trixie upon her death bed? Maybe you helped her there. Don't you worry, I'm sure she didn't have a family; she probably wasn't even all that well-liked. I'm quite surprised someone hadn't killed her already, knowing that she's a showboating bitch. We can't all be saved. Some don't even want to be saved. Yes. That is a comforting thought. Saves us from trying."
The mare sat in front of the gramophone slack-jawed. She was completely dumbfounded and sickened by what Twilight had said. "That's horrible…" the mare thought, referring to twilight. Not sure what to think on the matter, she continued down the staircase to a door. She opened it and stepped into a well-lit cellar. She got to about three yards in when the door slammed behind her and the lights in the room died. Paranoia flooded the mare once again. She immediately ran back to the door and was attempting to open it forcefully, to no avail. The door locked itself behind her and wouldn't budge anymore. Furthermore, she could hear hoofsteps coming into the room, and a tomboyish voice following the sounds. "I know you're in here, I will find you!"
The mare quickly scuffled towards the nearest dark corner in an attempt to hide from the thing coming after her now. The thing that was walking into the room, now clearly visible even in the ever consuming darkness, was a pony. However she was walking on only her two hind legs. Her mane was a faded rainbow colour, her tail was ragged. An iron spiked collar was braced around her throat, and iron chains were threaded through the ponies flesh and hooked into muscles and tissues. She had wings but they were torn, broken, shredded, and cut up. She looked fairly malnourished and also, like the yellow Pegasus creature, was missing her eyes.
"I will kill you, you bitch!" The monster yelled into the darkness, searching for its victim. Walking closer to the mares hiding spot was funneling terror into the mare. She started hyperventilating and became increasingly louder in her breathing pattern, the closer the monster got to her. She started crawling away from the corner when a threatening and very angry voice rose up from behind her, "You won't get away this time you whore! I will rip your head off!"
She turned around just in time to see the monster charging towards her. Giving her the queue to run as fast as her injured leg could carry her away from the monster.
"Get over here!"
She ran through the only corridor, that wasn't the one she came through originally, and rounded a corner tripping over her twisted fetlock and falling into the wall of the bend.
"You thought you could get away, didn't you?"
Regaining her senses she got up and ran away from her pursuer, bolting towards the nearest door she could find. She tried the door in a panic, it was stuck closed and the monster was still coming after her. The monster slowed her pace, her prey now cornered.
"Heh heh heh. You won't get away his time!"
The monster sneered at the mare, making her approach seem all the more sinister. "What do I do?! It's going to kill me!" Thoughts rushed through her mind. She snapped her eyes shut "Go away!" the mare screamed that thought in her mind. The monster made a loud gasp and a loud thud could be heard from the other side of the room. The mare opened her eyes and saw that the monster was now on the other side of the room in a daze. The mare took this opportunity to run for another hallway. She found another door and silently pleaded with the door to be unlocked. She opened the door without so much of a problem and ran into the next corridor, closing the door as she could behind her.
The monster behind her was showing no signs of pursuit. Most likely caused by whatever force had helped the mare in the previous room. She was now in a brilliantly lit, although short, hallway. Candles lined the walls, a good portion of them had their wick ablaze. The hallway itself was only about five feet across, and fifteen feet length wise, with a door at the end. Yet another gramophone sat beside the newest door waiting to be cranked. The mare limped over to the gramophone. The pain was pulsing up her foreleg in succession to her heart beat.
Aversely, she turned the crank, "I'm sure you've figured out how it all works by now." Twilight speculated, "Are you enjoying my quips? I think they are quite clever. Not that I ever was much of a conversationalist, studying magic has always been my forte. But I digress. You should press on; it will all be over soon. Also, there is a very good friend of mine I would like you to see. She's the generous type. And has a way with finding the good in things. Maybe she'll find some good in her dungeon cell." The recording cut off, and the mare turned to the door. The door was slightly ajar allowing one to peer into the next hallway. In said hallway, was a set of five stairs leading downwards. Water filled the lower half of the room, and darkness bathed the stairway. Another door sat at the bottom of the stairs, half of it underwater.
The mare forced open the halfway submerged door, pushing the water around in doing so. This next room was fairly dark, excluding some holes in the ceiling allowing just enough light in to see the complex machines around the room. Many of the machines had pipes, which the mare assumed water would flow through under normal circumstances, leading up into the ceiling itself and deep into the contours of the walls. Chains loosely hung from the roof providing no obvious purpose at the moment. There were two large works in the middle of the room separated by about five feet, each of which read, "Water Storage, Pump" Neither appeared to be in working order. Crates littered the room and floated around in the water uselessly. A wooden door was fixed on both the left and right side of the room, and a large metal wall was directly across from the door the mare entered though. A slot for a lever was beside the metal wall, except it was missing the arm.
Sloshing through the water and examining the room had only taken a few moments. She quickly decided she wanted out of the water as soon as possible. Heading towards the door to the left, a hallway lined on the right side with lit candles and another door at the end greeted her. She tried to move the door only to find it had been locked. Shuffling her way back through the water to the opposite door, she entered to find a mirror of the hallway on the other side of the machine room. With reluctance, she tried the new door. It opened to reveal a small rectangular room. Two shelves lined the right side of the room, another shelve had been pushed over and now resided underneath the water beside the door. A table was at the back of the room covered in boxes and finally what looked like an open closet. She hurried through the room searching every shelf on the two remaining standing shelves. Using a rather dense crate to stand on, she searched the top shelves for anything of use. A note, directed towards Rarity was hiding underneath a small box. It read;
"Dear Rarity;
I really hope you can make it. I know how much you love social gatherings and I prepared this one just for you with Pinkie! It's really just for thanks for the dresses you made for us for the Gala this year. I'm sure everypony will be happy with them. Hope to see you soon.
Sincerely,
Twilight Sparkle."
A thought clicked in the mares mind, "Wait, why is this here? And it mentions a second name…" She put the note into her saddlebags and went into the closet. A stack of crates was placed along the left side of the closet, an opened and broken crate rested on the top of the pile. Carefully the mare climbed to the open crate inside she found packaging material and a wooden handle. "The metal wall and the slot… this could be the lever for that wall." The mare put the lever into her saddlebags and exited the room. Slowly making her way back into the main pump room, she heard an echo of a door opening nearby. She slowed down and crouched behind the door to the pump room, enough to listen to the sounds around her. "Hahahahaa!" The giggle rang out around the room. The mare would have thought it came from a filly. That is if she hadn't seen a pink mare walk from the other side of the room. It was no less horrifying than the last two monsters the mare had seen.
Devoid of eyes, like the others the mare had seen. It's mane and tail were slightly more shaded than the coat, both were torn and uneven. Like the others, it had an iron collar that seemed to be tightly wrought around its throat. It had chains wrapping around and going through the flesh of its hind right leg, and left foreleg. Blood, both dried and fresh, was strewn across the things face as if it were bleeding from the nose and mouth. Some flesh hung from the things chest, although it was mostly underwater due to the high level of water. In a singsong, yet foreboding, voice the creature sang "Hide and seek! Hide and seek!" The creature was now ahead and in front of her started bounding around the rooms' perimeter. The mare started to lose her vision and felt extremely light headed. The more she examined the creature the worse she got. The mare closed her eyes and went back into hiding.
"I think she… it knows I'm here somewhere. It's only matter of time before it finds me too. Where did it come from though? It's not the same as the rainbow maned creature. And it's definitely not as angry as her either… It almost seems happy." The mare almost crawled over to the door. The mare was stopped when she heard the creature say, "Come out, you'll like what I have planned!" The voice was rather ominous, and it sounded as if something terrible would come of leaving her hiding place. Silently the mare sat and gathered her courage to go out with the lever handle and leave this new horror behind.
The mare peaked around the corner of the wall she hid behind, the creature was heading towards the hallway on the other side of the room. Taking this chance to bolt for the door, she quickly pulled out the lever and placed it in the empty slot. She pushed the lever in the up direction, the door lurched upwards, "Hahahaaa, I see youuu!" the mare went numb and turned to see the creature running directly at her. The mare crossed through the now open wall and searched for a method to close the wall. Another lever, parallel to the one the mare had placed, protruded from the wall and the mare pulled down with all the might she could muster. Smoothly the wall returned to the place it was originally resided. She turned to face the new room, a platform rose from the water in the center. Cages hung from the ceiling from chains, some had snapped off their chains and fallen into the water below. All the cages looked empty at a glance. At each of the four corners a pillar shot from the submerged ground to the ceiling. Very little light came into the room, but enough that another metal wall was across from the first and two additional doors on either side of the room could be made out.
"Hehehahahaa! Come here!" The eerie voice called out. The mare turned to the wall, and quickly noted it was not made entirely of metal, it was mostly made of wood. She noted that wood can be shattered easier than metal, almost made the mare fly into a panic. The creature began banging on the door, splinters flying off on the first hit. The mare turned to the new room and ran for the lever across the room. She flipped it up but nothing seemed to have been happening, "I had to go right last time. That might be a pattern." She thought in a rush to escape. She sloshed through the water to the door on the right. Opening it she found a hallway almost identical to both the other hallways she'd gone into, complete with another door at the end of the hallway.
Opening the door she found a work room, meant for making or repairing objects. Inside was a panel on the wall which wielded tools for repairs on machinery, underneath that was a work bench with a kog on it. Around the room more shelves lined the walls. Thinking the cog may be important, she grabbed it in an attempt to put it in her bag. However it was much too large and fairly heavy. Dragging it behind her to the larger room, the sounds of banging got increasingly louder and more violent. The mare dragged the cog into the opposite hallway which again looked very much like the previous hallways. In the room off of the hallway on the left looked like a room with controls to the previous machinery of the pump room. A cog was missing from the one of the controls "This must be the control to the wall lever. If I can get this on here I should be able to leave!" Time was of the essence but machinery took time to fix, carefully the mare placed the cog on the wall in an attempt to fix the mechanism. The cog fit almost perfectly as it slid into pace alongside the other gears. The banging could now clearly be heard from the platform room.
Quickly the mare ran back through the water infested hall back to the room in the centre. Pulling the lever upwards the wall shot upwards. The metal laced wall behind her shattered as the creature stepped into the room "Bonjour!" The happily eerie voice esclaimed, in greeting, to the mare. It started to run at her. The mare dashed around to the other side of the door and pulled a lever, which was again parallel to the one she originally used, down with all of her might. The door slid back into position, just as the creature reached it. Almost immediately the banging resumed and the voice rang out "I grow tired of my own flesh…" It gasped, "Let me wear yours!"
The new room looked much like a prison, to the right and left there were three cells on each wall. The middle cell on the right wall was open, a White coated pony with a purple tail, and a set of three diamonds set on its flank was chained to the wall with a burlap sack covering its face. Gave out a small whimper at the sound of sloshing water. "Who's there?" A regal, yet broken voice came from the white pony that was chained to the wall "Listen darling, if you help me out, I can get us out of this horrendous place. If… whatever that thing is, doesn't catch us I can get us out of here." The banging from the door grew ever louder and the mare could hear it splitting "Oh no, this is absolutely terrible. It's coming… Listen to me darling, close my cell. I'll get free and catch up to you soon. And please don't let that ruffian catch you… Now, away with you!"
The mare nodded her head once in compliance, not that she could be seen but she also couldn't be heard. Turning the wheel as fast as she could the door began sliding downwards "Good luck darling." Was the last thing she heard from the white mare as the door reached the floor and sealed her in protection. She now ran for the door across from the creature, another wheel met her. She began turning it as the door from behind her was shattered into pieces. The giggling came forth as the creature made its way into the room. The mare had opened the door just enough for her to crawl underneath. The creature was running at her, and not seeing the door crashed into it. The mare chanced a look back. The feelings she had last time she gazed at the creature returned. She lost her footing and tripped over some boxes and chairs which she didn't see in the darkness.
As the pain shot through her leg again she tried regaining her footing and getting away from the creature as soon as possible. "Hehehee. Come here!" the mare heard just before the door was smashed into bits. The mare ran down the dark walkway a small stairway no more than five steps led out of the water. More boxes blocked her way; she scrambled over them as quickly as she could and turned right into the next stretch. *Smash* she turned left, more crates. Quickly she scrambled over them *Smash* The creature was nearly at her tail and quickly closing the space between them. Another left, more crates blocking her way and more climbing. Once over she started to run again. *Smash* That was the final blockade between her and the creature. Another right turn led to stairs and to a sturdy looking door. Getting to the door she flung it open with such force it slammed itself against the wall and closed up behind her on its own.
She had run into a small corridor with another gramophone and ran by it to the next door, still fleeing for her life from the creature. The door however was locked and showed no sign of opening at the present. The mare turned around to face whatever evil now wanted her. Nothing was following her. Nothing was banging at the door from whence she came and no sounds of horrific laughter could be heard from behind the door. "Wh-where is it?! It should be following me! It should be breaking down that door right at this very moment, why isn't it?!" These ecstatic thoughts and similar thoughts ran through her mind trying to comprehend the situation she was left in. She could not come up with an explanation, however thinking silently to herself had given her some time to calm her heart rate and start thinking more clearly. "Alright, whatever that was is no longer following me… right? I should check the door to make sure. I guess I also should listen to the message from the phonograph too…" She cringed at the thought of either task she had given herself.
The first thing she did was try to peek out the door, to her luck the door was jammed and would not budge. "Task one, complete, the door won't open. So on to task two." The pain was returning to her leg with the loss of adrenaline. She limped over to the gramophone and cranked it. "Dear Rarity, are you still with us? I'm looking forward to see if you managed to save her or not. She has such a caring family, what would Sweetiebelle do if Rarity had died? Poor, poor, little sister. But she falls on her own horn, so to speak. Even though I share the most kinship with her, it would be very interesting to see what happens to her family if she wasn't there. As she would agree, the aristocracy doesn't need to know right from wrong. We are always right." The message cut out and an audible click could be heard from the door. The mare hoped with all her soul that this was a way out and not another twisted game that Twilight had set up for her. She fumbled her way towards the door pushing it open with her good forehoof. This next room was very large, very dark, and its ground was made of dirt. "Something isn't right about this room. The air about it is all… stale. And it smells like…" Realization clued her in as within a few steps of entering the room she spotted a tombstone. The name had been scratched off and was illegible. Around the room she could make out similar shapes to the one in front of her, there were also holes half dug up all around the room. In the dark she only could count three of them but there may have been more she couldn't see properly due to the lighting.
Following along the right wall, avoiding any graves along the way, she came to an alcove. At the back of the alcove a winged unicorn "Alicorn" she almost immediately and completely accidentally corrected herself, "Wait… how do I know that?" now confused over her knowledge she didn't know beforehoof. The "Alicorn" in front of her seemed familiar, but not well enough so that she knew its name. Turning to leave and think more on the matter later, she noticed a feint light coming from across the room. Curiosity grabbed a hold of her mind and she limped her way to the other side of the room. A filled grave and another statue greeted her. She reached her hoof out and touched the headstone and statue. A memory of somepony else shot though her mind. "You did it… You killed her… why Twilight, why?" this new voice rang through her head like a steam powered train.
She retracted her hoof like she had just burned a part of her body. Her mind was ablaze with foreign memories. She ran from the alcove, desperate to get away from the torturous voices and memories. She ran away from both the alcoves and into another small room with yet another gramophone. The room had drawings, paintings, and sketches strewn across the walls. Finally a door was just behind the gramophone. She slowly walked towards the musical device and cranked it. "Well done. You have triumphed – conquered my cabinet." The mares ears perked up at hearing those words, now she was filling with hope and joy. "I wish I could tell you how you did, but alas this is a recording. You'll have to figure it out all by yourself. Did anypony survive? Applejack? Trixie? Or perhaps Rarity. Who was allowed to live? Why? You should really reflect on these past events, and consider what they meant to you, what you have learned about your true nature." The mare started to think back to the ponies she had saved, "Celestia never knew me. She thought she did, but then she was frightened and nothing was ever the same again. I can still see her, lying there on the floor of her castle, she looked so surprised…" a few moments of silence past by before twilight continued talking, "The star-shaped soapstone lay shattered by her body, still in shock I could do so much at such a young age. Blame me not for I was but a filly, with careful ambition I dared a smile. Rest in peace, Princess"
The gramophone shut itself off. And the mare sat in front of the device. Emotion was devoid of her face, she was not even taking time to think about what Twilight had said. Almost automatically, as if her body was on autopilot, the mare got up and walked around the device and towards the door opening it with ease. A long dark corridor with scribbles along the wall greeted her. Snapping back into reality she glanced around and started to read the first scribble "We must hurry it's not too late" glancing at the next "It will be the end of everything" the mare was losing focus of the world around her the further she walked and the more she read
"Stay alive"
"Suffer the trial"
By this point the mare had started to note something off about these notes. A headache started to form itself in the mares mind.
"The pipers will call for us to dance"
"The tattered yellow king shall dethrone"
"Through the gates"
The notes were not written in ink, and the mare had started crying. The mares heart rate sped up significantly
"Oh Celestia"
"From beyond it comes"
"They who burrow waits beneath"
The notes were written in blood. The mare could feel her brain following her heartbeat and causing pain all throughout her head.
"The skinless ones are walking"
"Death shall move across the floor"
"Liar! Fluttershy is a kind pony"
The further the mare traveled, the more sadistic the notes got. She had had enough of Twilights sick jokes. She was bawling her eyes outand each note brought her closer and closer to the brink of insanity. She had started to lose her vision.
"The beautiful pain"
"Entertain me"
"Gluttony"
"The inside"
"It pleases me"
"Lonely"
"My darlings"
"Playful"
"I am emerging"
The last few notes written in blood on the walls had become illegible. But the final note was written in chalk. "Plummet through the ancient city" A door had manifested itself in the mares' vision radius with no other visible way to leave the hall behind. Opening it as quickly as she could, she threw herself into the newest room.
"And so it comes to an end." The voice took the mare by surprise, she looked around trying to find the source. "Now that you have seen what you truly are, you are able to go on and face eternity without fear – without doubt." Looking up the mare saw the body of a pony hanging from the ceiling a gramophone protruding from where the ponies mouth should be. The body looked female. A grinding sound started up as soon as Twilight stopped talking gears opposite from where the mares stood were clearly visible and turning. The mare glanced around looking for what the gears actually did. It took the mare about five seconds to register that the walls were closing in on her. Adrenaline filled her and she flew into a panic, completely unsure of what to do. The walls seeped closer together. The mare grabbed some debris lying around and tried to get the cogs to stop. The mechanisms were spinning too fast and launched the debris away from the mare. Closer the walls crept. The walls were all of ten feet away from each other, and still closing. The mare was losing the grip on her mind, she fell over and feinted when she thought for sure nothing could save her. Darkness clouded her vision before she would be crushed between the the sounds around her stopped at once, leaving only silence in its wake.
The machines started up again, the spell over the mare now had been broken and she regained consciousness. Memories, all of her own, flooded back into her mind. The friends she had made over the years, the terrible; and yet somehow wonderful, things she had done. The memories of the Princess, with all her glory came back to the mare. Innately using the magic she had learned over the years, she mended her throat so that she may speak aloud. "This…" She explained to herself "this was the best one yet. So elaborate, it's just… too much." The walls were retreating back into their original positions. "Enough of this. Get up Twilight" The mare got herself up, a wicked smile crossed her face with the new triumph. She turned to the door she came in here from, no knocks came from the door. No shouts for help, or cries of anger. Nothing came from the door. "Just as I thought, nothing but figments of my imagination… well a mare can dream I suppose. I guess that means that everypony is upstairs waiting for me to return." Twilight turned away from the door, heading towards another newly revealed door. Behind it was a small hallway, and a long staircase upwards. She started climbing the steps and got a quarter of the way before a familiar voice came from the top of the stairs. "Hey, Twilight. Are you down there? Is everything all right?" Spike asked with strain in his voice
"Of course Spike, I'm quite alright. Is everything ready for tonight?" she asked the purple dragon companion of hers.
"Yeah. the foods almost done, it'll be ready any minute now. Your friends should be arriving anytime within the hour. I still don't understand why you invited that show boat, Trixie, though…" Spike sounded very upset at the notion.
"Oh silly Spike, you've got to learn how to forgive people for their mistakes" twilight gave a silent giggle at her assistant.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say Twilight. I've gotta get back to the food." And with that spike ran back off to the kitchen and Twilight reached the top of the stairs and walked into her library. A brand new day awaited her tomorrow, and a brand new scenario for her to throw herself into using the illusionary magic she had learned recently.