War Zone-Equestria

Bullseye had to hurry up and get to Celestia. He couldn’t figure out what had happened to Twilight. He knew the princess would be overseeing mission preparation, and knew where to find her. He led the others through the base and found the room he was looking for. He burst inside with Applejack trying to keep up so she didn’t drop Twilight. Celestia was indeed in the room, studying what looked to be a map of Equestria. Fluttershy thought she must have been figuring out a secure track to get to Canterlot. The princess turned around to see them come in but didn’t get a chance to ask what they were doing because Bullseye was speaking already, and Celesta could tell it was serious from how distraught he sounded, and how worried the two girls looked.

“Princess! Something’s wrong with Twilight! She won’t wake up or move. She’s barely breathing! Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Bullseye said gasping for air from the run to her location.

Celestia quickly became worried herself and she ran over to Twilight as the other placed her down. Celestia looked at her and instantly noticed the dried mess of blood around her horn.

“What happened to her?” Celestia asked studying the cut areas on Twilights head.

“I don’t know Princess. I found her like this. I thought maybe you could find out using your magic.”

The princess nodded and studied Twilight further. She was breathing very lightly, and her breath was still notably decreasing. The princess lit up her horn and a blaze of magic surged from the tip of it to Twilight, surrounding her body with yellow glowing energy, and lifting her into the air. She closed her eyes to focus, and started talking as she focused more and more on the site of the injury.

“She wasn’t struck by anything; this injury was cause by magic. The spell wasn’t cast by her though. This is strange, I can’t find the source. It’s powerful... Very powerful. But what is it!” she asked herself aggressively focusing on Twilight’s horn to find the last spell or magic to affect it, but she couldn’t detect it. A bright yellow rope of energy made its way from Celestia’s horn looping itself around the already flowing energy, and surrounding Twilight’s whole head. Celestia focused on it further and discovered that the energy was indeed foreign. But even then she was focussing enough energy on it to detect if it was from their land or not. Instead of trying to pinpoint the source she tried to discover its location from where it was cast. Images flashed through her mind of Equestria, and then Canterlot Castle.

“It’s was cast from Canterlot castle.” The princess told the others.

“Could it have been Luna? She might have sensed her magic and tried to attack her.” Fluttershy said trying to make sense of the situation.

“Impossible. My magic prevents Luna from being able to use her magic to detect anything in this area. She can’t sense life, or magic because of me, so it couldn’t have been her.” Celestia explained.

“Princess there are no unicorns left here. Who else could it have been?” Bullseye asked.

Celestia thought for a short time before realising that it might have been one of the unicorns from Twilight’s own dimension.

“It may have been a unicorn from her dimension. But they would have had to be extremely powerful and focussed to cast a spell through the void that separates them. They obviously didn’t think first though... trying to link yourself with another from a different dimension would require enough power to completely fry the mind of any unicorn. If that’s what happened Twilight’s lucky she’s still alive. I can help her though. Just stand back.” Celestia said breaking her magical connection with Twilight. On the words the others back away to what they presumed was a safe distance. They watched on as Celestia lit up her horn with vibrant lights of energy, but instead of just the usual yellow glow she’d normally emit from her horn, she started to emit auras of red, and blue, and green, which all wrapped together and twisted like a liquorice swirl, connecting itself with Twilight’s horn. Twilight’s breathing started to rapidly increase and so did her heartbeat. Her pulse rode through the magical energy which travelled as a wave of colour into Celestia’s horn.

“It’s not quite powerful enough.” She said as she took in a deep breath and focused further. As the pulsing started to get faster, a bolt of electrical energy sparked from Celestia’s horn and started to grow. The pulse was becoming dangerously fast, but then before it could go out of control, Celestia surged the bolt into Twilight’s chest. The others jumped back in shock, they had no idea what the princess was doing, but it looked dangerous for Twilight. They didn’t dare interrupt though in case something was to go wrong. The princess suddenly broke the connection and the magical energy was all absorbed into Twilight’s body. The room darkened to its early stature lit only by the candles around Celestia’s desk. Twilight was slowly lowered to the ground by magic, but when she met with the ground and the magic faded. She became completely motionless and her breathing ceased. The others stared on, praying for a sign of response. They had no idea what the princess had done, but they all very quickly fell under the impression that it had failed.

The room was silent for several seconds. Princess Celestia didn’t make any movements at all, but stood watching Twilight’s motionless body.

“I... I was sure that... that it would have worked... I don’t... I don’t understand...” Celestia stuttered watching Twilight’s limp body.

Fluttershy walked over and looked at her friend. She put her ear right close to Twilights mouth and nose and tried to listen for breathing, but nothing was happening. She double checked for any vital signs, but still no results. Tears quickly started to well up in her eyes, and pouring out in almost seconds. She collapsed onto Twilight’s lifeless body and started balling out in uncontainable sadness. Applejack felt tears welling up in her own eyes too. She knew instantly that Fluttershy’s reaction could only mean one thing... Twilight was dead.

She walked over to Fluttershy and put her hoof on her shoulder, with tears dripping down her own face as well. She was trying to contain her grief, but she couldn’t, she looked down at Twilight and felt her heart start to throb in pain; how could she contain any sadness when she’d just lost one of her best friends.

“Twi... Twilight...” she started, but collapsed beside Fluttershy before she could finish. She laid her head on Twilights body and started to cry almost as much as Fluttershy, she tried to stutter the rest of her sentence, but had great difficulties in doing so. “Twi... Twilight... Y...ye ca... can’t be g.g... gone... Twilight...” she choked on her words and couldn’t talk anymore; her sadness had completely void her of speech.

Bullseye was struggling to hold his emotion. Twilight had been her teacher once, and been like a mother to him. To lose her once was hard enough, but to see her again, teach her himself, and then lose her again before even getting to talk to her properly... it was a very hard thing for him to deal with.

Princess Celestia wasn’t coping well either. She had so much going through her mind, like the fact that her spell didn’t work. It was a last ditch spell only to be used in extreme situations, but it was foolproof. It was supposed to exercise the vital organs, stop them, and then shock the subject with a surge of electricity that would reactivate them... it had worked every time. What were the other girls going to think when they saw their friend like this? What would her friends in her home dimension think when she never returned? Who was the one who tried to contact her and caused this? These questions and more were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees. She paced the floor left and right wondering what could have gone wrong.

“How do we... how do we tell the others Applejack?” Fluttershy said before bursting into more tears. Applejack couldn’t answer. She was too grief stricken. Suddenly Derpy walked into the room, looking for the princess.

“Princess Celestia. My team is prepped and ready to go. We’re just waiting on Bullseye to make his way down and we’ll depart.” She said when she noticed he was up here. But then she noticed everyone in the room was upset, and that Fluttershy and Applejack were both balling their eye’s out lying down on something in the middle of the room. Something purple.

“Umm what’s going on in here?” she asked curiously moving closer, but as she got closer and saw the horn on the body they were laying on, she suddenly realised that they were lying on Twilight. But she couldn’t tell why they were crying yet. She moved around them to get a closer look.

“Twi...Twilight?” She said before noticing that she wasn’t moving at all, nor breathing. Derpy suddenly became very worried and looked at Celestia.

“Princess? What’s wrong with her? Why isn’t she moving?” Derpy asked very concerned, but she was afraid that she might already know the answer.

“She... She’s gone Derpy. She's.... dead.” The princess said giving up on trying to think of a way to fix the problem. She’d lost all hope in being able to save Twilight; her most failsafe spell didn’t work. She wanted to give away her life force to save her, but that kind of magic was impossible when the subject was in an unstable condition, or beyond the point of being healable.

Derpy’s look descended into pure horror. How could Twilight be dead?!

“Wha... What?! How?! What happened? How can she be dead?!” Derpy stammered desperately confused.

She looked at Twilight and all the dried blood around her horn. She felt tears also start to well in her eyes. She couldn’t figure out how someone who was like Twilight could just die. She didn’t even know her that long yet, but in the short time she had been kind and supportive. And now she couldn’t talk to her ever again. She didn’t know what to say. She just kept trying to stutter out a new sentence but no words could take form. The whole group just stayed where they were; unwilling to move and unable to control their emotion. They forgot about the mission, they blocked out everything and rejected the things that didn’t matter. They just sat and mourned their lost friend.