Not The First

My new prison was quiet.

This I found to disturb me the most. The lack of light I could deal with. The lack of sound...

My ears rang constantly. They tried to hear but there was nothing to hear.

I tried talking out loud. I sang. I clapped my hooves together.

It all was lost to the vast space around me.

Eventually I stopped. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe my inside-my-head voice became my outside voice. Or the other way around?

Oh, ponyfeathers. I hadn't even been in this place long enough to get hungry, and I was already losing it.

After I moved the corpses- (shudder)- I walked away. I walked and I walked and I walked. The ground was strange; it was smooth, like glass, but I never slipped. I could feel nothing from it. No texture, no temperature. Only an unyielding pressure that assured me it was solid.

After a while I noticed the ground slanted up. I imagined I was climbing a gigantic hill, and when I reached the crest, I would look down and see a hellscape that would make Tartarus look like a relaxing vacation.

Instead, after what felt to be an eternity, the slope became too steep to continue. I didn't slip or slide. I simple could not gain the leverage to pull myself further up.

I looked back.

I couldn't see forever. I couldn't see much. In the distance, I could barely make out the hazy spot that was the corpse pile. To my left and right, the wall-slash-ground stretched until it was lost to sight.

I looked up.

The wall kept curving above me. It curved up and back until it was actually above me. My heart sank as I recognized the truth.

I'm inside a giant fishbowl, I realized.

Disheartened, I began my long trek back across the bottom of the sphere.

I was halfway there when my stomach rumbled for the first time.