The Flames of Harmony

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.