She exhaled.
T minus five. T for time. Minus meaning before. Five seconds. Give them just enough to make them think they’ve got a hold on you, to make them think a breakthrough’s coming. That will distract them, even through the stimthought.
Four. Brief intellection. What had those soulless eyes gone through to get an audience with her? Why were they damning their mind to the torment of stimthought? Every kernel of information they got – her face must betray something, even set in its glassy obsidian – would be bought with the agony and oblivion of hyperperception. She wasn’t arrogant enough to believe she was that important. Was she?
Three. Continue to draw out the “I…” You should’ve paused. They won’t let you hold an “I…” for five seconds. They’ll know something, and you can’t afford that. The moment something changes with you, your cell is locked down. That’s why you don’t move. Hold it. Hold it.
Two. Damn these flickering thoughts. Distractions, all of them. Painful reminders of those days before Celestia brought us advancement. Before you sought apotheosis – not for yourself, you said. For your friends. Right?
One. All five of them, staring you back through those soulless eyes. Memories you’d buried under years of careful cerebration. Something tugged at the fragmented remnants of Twilight Sparkle that still lingered in your mind. A memory drifted to the surface. Your eyes, with the lazy focus that was the direct opposite of stimthought, a perceiving-yet-obliviousness you had honed to replace your bright-eyed stares of before. Your eyes were staring back at you. How was that possible? Drown out the thoughts that now roil in your mind. Five four three two one. How much time is left? Everything must be perfectly executed. All that matters is the plan.
Zero. The lights judder a little, then flicker, then blank out. You’re left in total darkness with the other one for a brief moment, then the red emergency lights flash on. A klaxon wails the war whoop of its kind.
T plus one. T for time. Plus meaning after. One meaning the one second it’s taken for you to shatter your restraints, splitting the reinforced, magic-resistant material at the atomic level, use the atoms to fashion a potent neurotoxin, and kill the hapless colt who happened to get in the way. It took years to perfect that second. Carbon and hydrogen from the composite used to bind you. Oxygen from the air around you. Phosphorus from the food they insisted on giving you, secreted away in one of the many modifications you had received. Fluorine from the cryolite you’d discovered hidden in the pool of water you were supposed to use for drinking. C4H10FO2P. Four carbons, ten hydrogens, one fluorine, two oxygens, and a phosphorus. One molecule, Azathoth incarnate.
Two. Leave the rhyolite cell that’s been your sole demesne for uncountable years, and find Celestia. Smash a hole through the wall supposed to be thick enough to contain you, and canter out. Pity, some theatrics may have been appropriate. Oh well. Just keep going.
Three. This isn’t rhyolite, it’s solid reinforced steel with a rhyolite façade. How’d they miss the cryolite? All wrong, all wrong. Stimthought should have picked up the slight difference in refractive index – it only took you a few weeks to find it. Smoke pumped in from the walls. Does the Princess think a suspension of heavier-than-air particles with mild carcinogenic effects will even slow you?
Four. The smoke clears. There’s a slight gust of wind. All wrong. What went wrong? It was all perfect, down to the second. Premises. That must be it. Get ready for the brief bite you’ll feel in the nape of your neck as the railgun projectile impinges on the thinly-armored exoskeleton you’ve replaced your flesh with. It doesn’t bite into you, and the world doesn’t go dark.
Five. You see a corridor, with steel bulkheads. Why didn’t your friends tell you about this? The “thwip” of flechettes whistling past you followed by minuscule impact craters on the bulkheads in front of you mean they’re behind you. The snake hovering at the edge of your vision shudders, then bites.
T plus five point oh one six three seven nine two seconds. The crystal light of infinity welcomes you and draws you in, past the shattered memories you cling to, through sunless streams beyond your perception. Through a valley, golden as the sun. Through a shadowed forest, with dim devil-arbors glowering in grotesqueties frightful to the most hideous of night-gaunts. Past moss-grown stones that once were cornerstones, keystones, or any manner of components of temples more magnificent and splendorous than even Celestia’s citadels.
T plus unperceivable. To an ivied wall, in which a bronze portal lay. Open. This was why, oh soulless eyes. This was why you tried to kill the Princess. The world is not what it once was. Gone are the veldts that you once canvassed for the old acquaintance who taught you subtle and terrible magicks. Gone is your town of so many years. Gone is the place of learning you once called your own. Amazing what a home can mean. A rock, a bulwark to shelter you from the tempests of change and the maelstroms of despair. Just like your friends.
T plus or minus infinity. To oblivion. That’s where you’ll see them – all of them who matter, at least.
No more will Life masquerade as your wonderful Princess. No more will she promise immortality. You have achieved your own apotheosis, Twilight Sparkle.
No more will Life drag you, kicking and screaming, from your mother’s womb to the cold harsh world that it claims for its Elysium. No more will Celestia be a shadow of herself, beset by the strange affliction that would have claimed you, in the end.
Reflexion was the reason they put you there. Musing about what, though? Oblivion is its own apotheosis, Twilight Sparkle. That was why you tried to kill Life – that is what you have done, Twilight Sparkle.
