Maybe this was a bad idea, Twilight thought.

The ponies' spirits were deteriorating faster than anypony had anticipated. Even within the safety of the Crystal Empire, ponies feared the unnatural monsters outside. Many outright panicked; it was all too common to see a pony running through the streets while screaming their head off, or cowering in a fetal position in an alley. Many more retreated into themselves as they mourned their less fortunate friends and family. All of this collective negativity was darkening the entire city...and as the crystals lost their luster, the populace fell further and further into panic. Twilight and her friends had tried their best to cheer everypony up, but they didn't even notice the efforts, trapped in the downward spiral of their fear. At this rate, the Crystal Heart would soon be little more than a pretty rock. These ponies needed professional help. They needed...

"Hi! Whatcha doing there, Twilight?" The bloodstained alicorn nearly jumped out of her skin as Pinkie seemed to pop into existence behind her.

"Pinkie, just the pony I needed," Twilight mentioned, smiling with relief. "We need your help to keep all these ponies in high spirits. How's that party of yours coming?"

"Not too well," Pinkie replied. "Ise wrapped up that last chapter early, so I didn't have time to prep for Daniel's Welcome-to-Equestria party. Oh well."

Twilight just stared at the eccentric ball of fluff bouncing next to her, before relaxing and letting the comment slide. It's Pinkie. Just smile and wave.... She tensed up again, however, as she watched her friend's ears violently slap her face. Suddenly, a visibly painful force shot through Pinkie's body, knocking her off her hooves. Finally, she let out a loud sneeze. When the spasm was done, the pink pony bounced upright again like nothing was wrong.

"That looked painful," Twilight told her, concerned.

"Yeah, that happened the other day, too," Pinkie mentioned. "Not sure what that combo means, though. Cupcake rain? A flood of chocolate?" Twilight rolled her eyes and kept walking as Pinkie bounced around her, spouting one ridiculous scenario after another.

As the two approached the Crystal Palace, Twilight stopped to look at the Crystal Heart, the one thing protecting everypony from the abominations outside the empire's walls. She saw her royal relatives standing near the artifact...backing away from a human in a dark purple cloak. She froze, her eyes fixed on the human. Even from the back, she recognized the one who had forced her to hurt Spike...Faris Elfriede.

"Oh, I know what it means now!" Pinkie blurted out, pleased with herself. "'A creepy guy will steal the Crystal Heart.'" She stood tall, proud that she had figured out her combo. When she realized what she had just said, her face twisted, practically breaking. Twilight ran ahead to help her family.

"...I'll just be taking that Heart now," she caught Faris saying. Cadence and Shining Armor readied themselves to protect the Crystal Heart...and Faris just laughed. "Come on, be honest: you really think that chunk of rock's worth anything anymore? Look at this place. Your little city has already grown dark with your people's fear. Trust me, you're screwed whether I take it or not."

"Even so, I can't allow you to take it!" Cadence retorted. "I will not allow these ponies to be robbed of their hope!"

"Hope? You mean these pathetic twigs really believe they can survive all this?" Faris asked, his eyes flashing red as he stifled a laugh. "Well then..." He rushed over to Cadence, and gently pushed the edge of a knife into her neck, not quite hard enough to break the skin. "...why don't we show them just how much their 'hope' amounts to." He was suddenly blown back a few steps, as Shining Armor formed a shield around his wife. Faris rolled his eyes, put a tiny bit of the Alicorn Amulet's power into his knife, and gave the shield a tiny prick. It popped like a bubble, much to the royal couple's horror. A sadistic smile spread across his face as he moved to pick up where he left off.

"Oh no you don't!" Faris stopped in his tracks, and turned to face the new lamb calling for the slaughter. Twilight's horn was glowing brightly, ready to blow her opponent out of the sky. Faris stared at her for a long while before shrugging, his body language telling Twilight he'd take a free hit. She screamed as she put all her magic power into a giant laser, engulfing Faris in purple light. When she finally stopped...he was completely unharmed.

"Feel better?" he mocked, before gleefully drawing a knife chain. "My turn now."

Cadence, Shining Armor, and Pinkie looked on in horror and sorrow. There was nothing they could do. Before they could retaliate, before Shining could raise a shield to protect his sister, Faris was on her. His blades tore her apart, staining the crystal ground red as her shredded chunks went flying. The worst part was that Faris stared her in the eyes as often as possible, making sure what light they had was still there, so that she felt every ounce pf pain as he ripped through her body. When he was done, he wasn't standing over a pony, but hundreds of dull red chunks of flesh floating in a sea of blood. He chucked maniacally to himself, before turning to the royal couple, his gaze outright telling them that they would share Twilight's fate. They backed away, Shining instinctively raising a shield over them. Faris walked deliberately toward them, swiping the Crystal Heart almost as a second though as he passed it.

Suddenly, a dark flash caught his eye, and his cowering victims turned their horrified attention to the source. He turned around to see...an utter defiance of the laws of nature. A shadowy power emerged from Twilight's remains, levitating them into the air in a swirling mass of body parts. As they spun around the center of the magic that held them, the parts fused back together, blood flowing into her veins as they were repaired. Before long, Twilight was once again standing before him, intact and very much alive...sort of.

"Wow. Who was the sick @#$# that experimented on you?" Faris asked, intrigued.

As her body was rebuilding itself, Twilight finally understood what she had become. She was dead, that much was now certain. She had died in those icy mountains, succumbing to the serious injuries Alex left her with. She couldn't die a second time. And the spell that had brought her back made sure of this. Her living corpse of a body was preserved in time, restoring itself and repairing any damage she might take. If only she had lost her ability to feel pain along with her life. What she had just experienced was one of the worst "deaths" a pony could experience, one so painful that a normal pony would have died of the sheer pain long before their injuries would have killed them. As she was, she had been forced to feel every ounce of that pain, denied the sweet release of death.

"You can no longer die, yet you still feel pain," Faris mused, his sadistic grin growing wider. "The perfect plaything." He used the Amulet's power, and waves of red energy ran down the spaces between the massive supports of the Crystal Palace. One wave passed right behind Twilight. She pushed a back hoof into the space where it was, and as she expected, it hit an invisible wall. Faris had turned the space below the palace into an inescapable cage.

She was trapped in there with a psychopath.

In terror, she dove to the side, anticipating another onslaught of torture. She wasn't fast enough; a knife chain tore through the air, ripping the skin on her right side clean off, along with the wing that was attached there. Even as the excruciating pain shot through her body, the dark magic had started the unholy healing process. She shot back a spread of purple bolts as the large flap of skin sewed itself back on her body, only for Faris to sidestep away from the whole spread effortlessly.

"Where are you aiming?" he taunted, before lashing out again with his razor sharp flails.

Again, Twilight tried in vain to dodge. One chain cut her clean in two, while the other split her rear half in two once more. The bloodstained alicorn's pieces flopped helplessly to the ground, her hind legs twitching as they waited to be reunited. The pain was...not as great as before. The continued mutilation was starting to numb her senses to pain. As her hind legs reattached themselves to her body, her fear and agony was replaced with cold anger. Even as the wounds continued to heal, she took to what air was enclosed under the palace, and blasted Faris once more with a beam of purple fury.

"What's this now?" Faris asked nonchalantly as the dust settled, completely unfazed. His eyes flashed red in response to his sick glee. "The princess of friendship, filled with so much hate? Such a pity. You're setting a bad example for your subjects."

"A monster like you doesn't deserve friendship or mercy!"

"Fair enough."

With that, he shot out a knife chain, faster than anything any living creature could possibly react to. It bored right through Twilight's head, right between her eyes, and lodged itself deep within her brain. Faris started to chuckle with sick sadism, but stopped when he looked Twilight in the eyes. Instead of shock or agony, her eyes stayed dark with the same cold, determined hatred she had just shown him. She stared through him, into the void where his soul should have been, as if looking for some trace of one to burn.

"Desensitized already?" Faris asked, disappointed. "That just won't do. I'll just have to find some other way to-"

Right then, Twilight fired a magic bolt at the monster's face. Much like the flail in her own head, the purple bolt was lodged in Faris' cranium, a look of mild surprise covering his face. As he stood there, taking in what had just happened, something came over him. The red jewel of the Alicorn Amulet flashed, and his eyes followed suit. The red flashes in his eyes were slow, and made their way around his irises, permanently replacing their purple color with a sickening blood red. As red shadow began leaking from his body, a broken smile spread across his face. He bent backward and let out a psychotic laugh, gradually getting louder and more insane, until he finally dissolved into dark red petals.

Once they had disappeared from view, the barriers that had been holding Twilight there fell. Immediately, Cadence and Shining Armor ran to Twilight and hugged her, simply overjoyed that she was okay. They barely cared about the horror they had just witnessed, or that they were getting Twilight's blood all over their own coats. The many crystal ponies who had also seen the battle felt very differently, however, and ran as far as they could from the palace. And Twilight herself...she could barely comprehend what she had become. She threw herself into her family's embrace to distract herself...and that's when she noticed something wrong.

"The Crystal Heart!" she realized. "He didn't drop it!"

Cadence's mood turned somber. "Look around you, Twilight," she told her sister-in-law, motioning to the crystal buildings that were now practically devoid of color. "Even if we still had the Heart...it's too late. It wouldn't work anymore." Twilight pushed herself away from her family, and turned terrified eyes to the sickly green sky above. The Crystal Empire had lost its barrier.

Ponykind's safe haven was no more.

Author's Note

Took a little while to write this one. Got bogged down by life and other projects.