The sun had set over a half-hour ago, and the cold night air bit at Twilight as she sat facing a magic-powered lantern while huddling against Daniel for warmth. They both leaned close as Pinkie Pie and Spike told tales of their adventures in Point Lookout.

With the lantern as a stand-in for a campfire, Twilight could try and imagine the horrors being told were just ghost stories. She could try, but of course she wouldn’t succeed. Her friends had been to hell and back.

“And then the whole mansion exploded!” Pinkie Pie shouted in time with her flailing arms. The sudden outburst of noise pulled Twilight out of her funk as she jerked in surprise.

“Yeah!” Spike said with a laugh as he lifted his shirt. Dozens of scars covered his chest. “I was thrown back like twenty hooves or something, and when I opened my eyes, Pinkie Pie was pulling a stimpak out of my chest. We both had enough splinters coming out of us to look like porcupines.”

Twilight winced at the sight of all the scars on Spike’s chest. They mirrored her own almost too well. At least Spike hadn’t needed any digits reattached, but that was a small saving grace. Point Lookout had been so fraught with danger that Pinkie Pie and Spike had had to escape situations that should have killed them many times over.

At least the two could rely on each other to have the other’s back. Based on their stories, they had pulled each other’s tails out of the fire more than once.

“Oh, Twilight, before I forget,” Spike said, once again drawing her attention out of her thoughts while reaching into his backpack. “Hang on, let me find it… AHA!”

Spike yanked out a worn leather-bound journal whose paper had turned yellow with age. “I grabbed this thing in the cave before the portal blew up. I managed to keep a hold of it when Pinkie Pie grabbed me, but um, a couple of pages fell out.”

There was no way it could be the rest of the soldier’s journal. Could it? It had felt like forever ago when she found a crumpled up piece of glowing paper in the satchel of one raider from Springvale. With everything that had been going on, she had honestly put finding the rest of the journal pages at the back of her mind. With any luck, there wouldn’t be any more missing pages to find, and she’d be able to read the whole story of America’s first expedition to Equestria.

But that would be for later. Spike and Pinkie Pie had been talking for well over an hour, and they all needed to head to bed soon.

“Thank you, Spike,” Twilight said with a smile. She gently collected the book with her telekinesis, before placing it into her backpack, swapping it out for her jar of medicated horn gel. “I’m going to read it later, but first, I need some medicine.”

“How long are you going to need to take that stuff?” Daniel asked, gesturing to her prescriptions. Twilight smiled. He was such a doctor, and it was absolutely adorable.

“Well,” Twilight said, elbowing Daniel playfully. Pinkie Pie’s bubbly mood had infected her as effectively as the common cold. It was a nice change of pace, and Daniel’s smile let her know he was feeling the laughter in the air as well. “I’m supposed to put it on before doing any strenuous magic that might cause any flare ups, or when I’m going to bed so it can soak into my horn overnight. As for how long, I use it until the jar runs out.”

Pinkie Pie bounced up and down without moving her legs… somehow… it was Pinkie so questioning it was out of the… question. Twilight needed a better turn of phrase when it came to quantifying Pinkie. She waved her hand back and forth.

“I have a question and I hope it isn’t offensive,” Pinkie Pie said with a smile. “But what spells can you still do, Twilight? Your horn’s been regrowing on its own for like, what, two weeks before you got booted to Equestria? Can you do any of the major stuff like teleporting? It’d save us a lot of walking if we just blink back to somewhere you two have been before.”

Twilight chewed her lip in thought. The biggest hurdle to her magic had been the pain from using it with a broken horn. Now that she had her gel, maybe she could still perform feats of magic that had been second nature to her. She had become so good at teleportation, there was a likely chance that in the event she ever lost all her limbs but her head and torso, life still wouldn’t be a hassle.

In a grim, roundabout way, it would just be less mass to teleport around. The energy needed to teleport something was directly proportional to the distance someone intended to send it, as well as the overall mass of the objects being teleported. Fewer limbs equaled less mass.

“Twilight?” Daniel asked, waving his hand in front of her face.

“Gah!” Twilight yelped, ripped out of her thinking. “Sorry, I overfocus on something and shut the world out sometimes.”

“Eeyup,” Spike and Pinkie Pie both said with nods.

“Oh come on, I’m not that bad… am I?” Twilight asked. She had just admitted to shutting out the world while thinking and her friends had agreed, right after she had just sent herself on an unnecessary mental tangent about the efficiency of limbless teleportation. There were two facts revealed about the situation.

Twilight was indeed that bad, and that she really needed sleep.

“I could eat popcorn watching those facial expressions,” Spike quipped.

“Hardy har,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “Pinkie Pie did bring up a good point. Teleportation would help us get around, and it could save us if I need to teleport us out of danger.” Twilight put her knee brace back on before standing. “Let me see if I can teleport myself to the top of that boulder.”

Twilight pointed to a nearby boulder, twenty hooves away at most. To keep the test as accurate as she could, Twilight levitated over her armor pieces out of the tent.

“You’re just going up to the rock, right?” Daniel asked. His eyes widened from watching the floating armor assemble itself over Twilight. “Okay, that’s impressive.”

“That’s the plan,” Twilight said with a shrug as buckles and straps clicked and tightened into place. So she could handle a lot of objects at once, with enough manipulation to buckle straps at the very least. “But testing to see if I can teleport while almost naked isn’t the same as teleporting with all of my gear. If this test goes smoothly, then the next test is to teleport myself and one of you with me with all of our gear.”

Spike was the first to volunteer as her plus-one for the next test.

With that settled, and all her equipment ready for a controlled test run, it was time to see if she could pull off a spell that was often easier than walking for her.

“Alright, three… two… one—”

<>~<>~<>

Something had gone wrong.

Black smoke stung at Twilight’s eyes like an entire swarm of hornets, sending her into a coughing fit as the noxious smoke clawed its way up her nose. The smell of burning carrion joined the aftertaste of copper and bile to let her know one thing.

There was dark magic nearby, stronger and more intense than anything she had ever felt before. Not even King Sombra’s magic had made Twilight feel like every nerve in her body was being pressed against ice cubes. The only conclusion she could leap to was that she was somehow teleported inside the Dunwich building.

A flap of her wings pushed the smoke away. She wiped her stinging, tear-filled eyes with the back of her hands and her vision cleared. She faced a bare cinder block wall with no doors or windows. Spinning around revealed another windowless wall, and another, until she finally turned to a wall made of metal bars with a similarly constructed door.

She was in a prison cell.

The realization hit her like a speeding wagon. She needed to escape. Rushing towards the bars, Twilight’s horn flared as she prepared to teleport through them to the other side and to freedom.

The cell filled with smoke again as she appeared back in the center.

The mutter of scolding words cut through her second coughing fit.

“That won’t work,” Electrum deadpanned.

“Electrum,” Twilight growled, spinning around to face where the voice had come from as she flared out her wings, venting the smoke from the cage once more. The gold-coated, silver-haired mare with the copper eyes sat in the corner of the cell on a mattress laying on the floor.

Whatever had snatched Twilight had stolen Electrum as well.

“Hold on before you go blaming me,” Electrum sneered as she rose from the mattress and dusted off her tan greatcoat. She then held up two fingers and counted down by one and pointed to the floor. “First, those aren’t my work.”

Twilight looked down. Runes encircled her, and despite her growing panic at what she saw, Twilight had enough wits to address that they were the maddened scratchings of runes bent towards dark magic.

Twilight could break the runes, but it would mean tapping into her own dark magic prowess. With how saturated the air of Dunwich was with dark magic, she could even draw on the power in the air.

No… that was dangerous, since it would leave her open to outside influence and corruption. Twilight quickly stepped out of the runic circle and fixed Electrum with a questioning gaze. The SOCOM agent could be trying to manipulate her into a vulnerable position.

“Secondly,” Electrum extended her second finger back up. “I ended up here after trying to teleport away from your camp. Why would I be in the cage with you if I did this?”

Very valid points, but Electrum was with SOCOM, and it wouldn’t be the first time Electrum had lied straight to Twilight’s face.

“Why should I believe someone who is waging war against my people? This could be some elaborate setup to trick me into trusting you,” Twilight took a step towards the other mare.

“Please,” Electrum scoffed and rolled her eyes. “If I really wanted to trick you, I’d have given you a sob story about my tragic past and a heartfelt apology begging you to let me change my ways… no, we’re going to escape and go back to being enemies when this is over with.”

Straightforward and far too honest. Electrum was planning something. However, Twilight had to admit that if any villain wanted to get close to her, asking forgiveness was… valid. Turning rivals and villains into friends was what she was supposed to do as the Princess of Friendship.

Twilight slumped her shoulders, tension leaving her body. There would be no fighting Electrum. At least as long as Electrum didn’t try any funny business.

“So, if the runes aren't yours, then who carved them?” Twilight asked as she nodded towards the floor without looking directly at the runes. She had a hunch, and it was not pleasant. She wanted any other option to be the truth. “Someone else from SOCOM? Or are you interested in the black books as well?”

If SOCOM had listened in to the call between Applejack and her, or overheard Pinkie Pie’s broadcast…

“Listen to me,” Electrum’s voice became dagger-sharp as she steepled her fingers. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, her body tensing like she was struggling to say whatever she wanted to say. After a moment, the words finally came. “I get it, you have absolutely no reason to trust a word coming out of my mouth, but if you take everything else I say as a lie, just believe me on this. I don’t fuck with dark magic, okay? It’s that ex-brotherhood guy, Glenn.”

That confirmed it. Scribe Glenn was in Dunwich. Twilight was less shocked than she thought she would be. With all the dark magic acting as ambience, there was reason to believe he would be involved. He owned his own black book.

Maybe camping a mile away from the tower had been a bad call. At least her friends weren’t too far.

Electrum dropped her hands away from her face, fixing Twilight with a glare as potent at Fluttershy’s stare. Electrum had the same determined fire in her eyes as Colonel Autumn.

“If you need any more proof, I’ll let this one slip,” Electrum growled. Twilight considered that Electrum may have been offended by Twilight’s lack of response as she took time to process the information she had been given, but Twilight wasn’t going to say anything. Electrum was spilling a secret. “I was in Canterlot when King Sombra went on his mind control rampage. I’ll take being waterboarded any day of the week over that, and I’ll fuck over anyone who wants that kind of power.”

So, Electrum had stayed in Equestria for a long time if she was able to buy a book from her over a year ago, and then still be around for Sombra’s attack on Equestria less than three months ago.

She must have had an easy way back and forth between the realms. Twilight wanted to grill Electrum for answers, but that would have to wait. Scribe Glenn was in Dunwich, and while the mare from SOCOM wasn’t on her side, they had the same enemy at the moment.

It was something at the very least. Twilight could work with that. Tempest Shadow had been rough around the edges before they became friends, so maybe there was a chance with Electrum.

Twilight simply nodded, processing everything Electrum had offered her on a platter. The Enclave, or at least SOCOM, had had access to Equestria for well over a year, and access to two-century old records. The question was what were they planning.

Twilight frowned. Her thoughts were stalling her again. She turned around to study the cell bars. She knew turning her back on Electrum would be a risk, but keeping her eyes on Electrum wouldn’t lead to their escape. Questions could come afterwards.

Focusing her attention on the cell bars, Twilight noticed the bars weren’t made of any anti-magic alloy, or reinforced against magic with runes.

Outside of the book purchase, Twilight had taught Electrum self defense spells, and Electrum had been a very diligent student. Electrum could have melted the door or the lock with a magic blast.

“Why haven’t you melted this lock off?” Twilight asked. If Electrum was in a sharing mood, might as well use it.

“Because my bullets didn’t do shit to the guard dog,” Electrum sneered. “Glenn has some sort of metal timberwolf.”

Twilight’s blood turned to ice.

Of course he did… because a child-raping dark magician needed something like a fucking timberwolf made out of steel.

“Ughhhh,” Twilight groaned as she telekinetically brought out her lockpicks from her backpack. It would be a lot quieter than blasting the door open. “I am suddenly overjoyed by the fact that Pinkie Pie used to build pipe bombs as a filly.”

Twilight knew right where she wanted to shove one of Pinkie Pie’s grenades, but she would have to link up with her friend first. Daniel and the others would be coming. With her disappearing, there was only one clear place to search.

Even Daniel could feel the dark magic all the way to camp. Twilight trusted her friends to jump to the conclusion that Dunwich had been involved, but that didn’t mean she had to wait inside the cell for rescue. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her friends could use her help for once. She knew dark magic.

If she wanted to make it in time to help, she needed to hurry before Glenn or his metal timberwolf paid either her or her friends a visit. She grabbed her levitating lockpick set in her hands and opened it. She only needed two tools, a torsion wrench and a slightly hooked pick. She prayed that the door would be nowhere near the nightmare that the door to Rockland was as she fished out the needed tools with her fingers.

She still didn’t trust her magic to handle very fine manipulation. Yanking a strap tight or clicking a buckle closed was one thing, fine-tuning the position of her tools was another.

“Any idea where Glenn took your things?” Twilight asked as she screwed her face up in concentration. There was no keyhole in the cell-facing side of the door, so Twilight had to blindly reach around the bars to find her target.

Electrum was an untrustworthy snake, but until Twilight reunited with Daniel and the others, there was no other choice but to take the risk of Electrum having her weapons back.

“No,” Electrum said with no hint of falsehood in her voice.

“We’ll find them,” Twilight said as the tumbler to the cell door offered up a satisfyingly crunchy click as it rotated into the unlocked position.

It was time to make their escape.

<>~<>~<>

The room beyond the one they had arrived in was filled with more empty cells. However, this room was lit with a sole lightbulb hanging from the water-damaged cork-tile ceiling. Twilight’s light spell added to the illumination, revealing a large office desk surrounded by a ring of a half-dozen more.

A unicorn Twilight didn’t know was splayed open atop the central desk. Twilight, to her credit, only stared rather than vomiting despite the fact she was looking at a lifeless and butchered body.

They were male, though Glenn hadn’t left much to identify. The desks bordering the autopsy table held trays full of tools ranging from ones used in surgery, to home repair, to some that could only belong in the deepest sadistic fantasies of a deranged mind. All were covered in blood.

Glass jars filled with either green or amber fluid dominated one table. Each jar held a different body part taken from the corpse. Heart, lungs, eyes, brain, horn.

Twilight shuddered at the sight of the jar full of fingernails which floated like the flakes of a snowglobe.

Turning away from the sight, her eyes met with Electrum’s.

“So which one of us is killing Glenn first?” Twilight asked. She drew her pistol and made sure there was one in the chamber.

In another part of the building, Twilight heard the chunk-boom of Pinkie Pie’s grenade launching party cannon blowing apart screaming feral ghouls.

“I don’t know,” Electrum said. “Doesn’t matter as long as he’s dead.”

Author's Note

Alright, so I need to bring up something personal and address something majorly wrong with the story. Content warning to anyone sensitive about real life non-consent/rape.

You’ve probably noticed I’ve had rape be used as a threat to Fluttershy and Twilight. I don’t mean to use it lightly, or fetishise it. Sexual assault is something I've had some personal experience with, and is huge fear of mine even though I’m a cis-gendered male.

While nothing physical ever happened, when I was 11 or 12, somewhere around that age, I started to be targeted by a step-uncle of mine. I barely knew him, but he started trying to convince me to come over to his house every time we crossed paths. He said things along the lines of ‘I need a strong young man to help me with some chores’. I’ve forgotten the actual phrasing over the years, I remember the emphasis he put on certain words that just sent alarm bells going off in me, as well as the creepy looks. I still get shakes when I remember how he just made me feel like I was a piece of meat being looked at by a vulture.

Nothing physical came of it, and I avoided him like the plague after the first two or three times we crossed paths. My mother and step-father helped keep me away from him, though we couldn’t do anything legally since nothing ever happened besides all of us having a gut feeling about him.

Thankfully, he eventually caught charges when his wife found a stash of child porn photographs. We don't know if he was the one who took the photos or if he bought them, but it still confirmed our suspicions. It actually made me more scared of him because I now knew he wasn't just being accidentally weird, I was being targeted.

I added Glenn into the story as a reaction to Roe v. Wade being overturned in the US, because I knew shit like very-underage pregnancies could happen. People target kids.

Unfortunately I made Glenn way too edgy to actually appropriately address reality, and the scarred up older man was a projection of my own fears. Because of that, he hits a bit too close to home for me and never really fit what I had in mind for this story.

I don’t think it would be right to glorify that kind of monster with a fight scene. If I don’t kill him offscreen, it’s going to be a very short one-sided fight in favor of our protagonists, so apologies for building up a villain I can’t offer any satisfying payoff for. I wanted to vicariously kill some of my past demons, but that meant setting them up for a fitting payoff, which meant letting the memory of that time linger and reopen old trauma.