Some Love

Twilight grunted as she strained her wings, flapping them harder than she could ever remember flapping them before. The sounds of screams and roars from below rang in her ears, shooting up past her and piercing the clouds beside her.

She flew upward, upward, higher and higher, until it became difficult for her to breathe. She only then looked down, through the hole in the clouds that had been made by her sudden acceleration.

And there was only smoke. There was only smoke that stretched out before her eyes, pouring up from the hole in the pure white fluff that lay in the sky. The rich, dark clouds were wafting up to her, washing over her... her eyes stung and she could taste the burning brick in her mouth.

Twilight strained her already fatigued wings as she flew to the left, trying to find a way to evade the burning, darkening sky. She gazed down on Canterlot, the places where the smoke had not reached, and saw tiny little figures rushing away from the center of the town. Their screams rose up above the crackling of flame.

Her horn sparked, but Princess Twilight Sparkle knew not what for. She had no idea how to combat this, how to fight this how to... do anything here.

“The elements,” she whispered. “I need to reach the elements.”

Twilight flared her wings, and dropped down into a dive. Just as she felt the rush of air against her face, she heard a voice call out—

“NOT THIS TIME!”

—And there was nothing but bright light. Twilight felt the force of a mountain slam into her, and she flew back upward, not even able to grunt as she felt as though her skeleton were being pushed from her backside.

The burning came next. Flame, hot white, poured into her vision, and up into her head, filling her skull and snaking down her spine like a long, conflagrant snake. Twilight opened her mouth, and her tongue was engulfed in ash and fire, silencing her.

Twilight felt herself begin to fall, slowly at first, as if the hot air were still pushing her up. She quickly began to fall faster, down, down down, spiraling towards a ground that she could not see.

She hit it with a hard CRUNCH, and felt nothing more.

She slowly opened her eyes, looking around groggily. The wall next to her smoked slowly, the thin trails rising off of it, lazily wafting into the air. She trained her gaze upward, and watched as the sun and moon hung together in the golden sky.

There was nothing. She did not know for how long she lay there, but she knew that nothing there moved. She tried to spark her horn, but was merely met with a dull throbbing in her head.

There was nothing.

Time could not pass. There was no way she could tell if time passed. Twilight turned her head to the side, the biggest movement she had made in an indescribable amount of time, and she set her gaze on the wall.

She opened her mouth, dry tongue grazing against teeth she was surprised she even still had, and dragged herself to the wall, bringing her hoof against the rock, scraping a mark in it with each word.

“One... two... three... four... five...”