Mitternacht

Twilight opened her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was her vision being distorted, like she was underwater, and as she started to move forward she realized she felt like she was walking at the bottom of the sea, yet she could easily breathe and her body remained dry.
As she looked around she noticed the light was coming from a series of white spheres suspended above her in two parallel lines at the sides of what looked like a road, being a flattened path of a lighter shade of bluish grey than the rest of the terrain, devoid of the bush like things that were scattered across the rest of the place and that she now realized were packs of algae anchored to the ground.

She decided to follow the road and see where it led, and as she did so she noticed what looked like the walls of a city in the distance, so she headed towards them. While getting closer to the city she started to hear voices speaking in a language she couldn't understand, and along the way she noticed they were coming from a group of ponies who were going in the same direction as her. She tried to call them but they didn't seem to hear her, so she teleported closer to them, but once she got closer and tried to talk to them again they just kept walking, and after various attempts at getting their attention she arrived at the conclusion that they couldn't hear or see her.

Wondering what was causing their inability to interact with each other, Twilight kept walking alongside them towards the city. Once she arrived at the entrance she realized that the walls were much taller than she had thought seeing them from the distance. They were a dark shade of blue, almost black, and their surface had no visible interruption, like they were made from a single block, and they stretched out on both sides beyond her ability to see. She entered the city through a large and tall arch, the outline decorated with a seashells pattern, and noticed how the walls were various times the size of a pony. On the other side of the gallery she saw a pair of opened gates, decorated with a similar pattern to that of the outline of the arch, and after crossing them she finally had a good look at the city.

Twilight couldn't help but gape at what she saw.

It was the most grand and impressive city she had ever seen, surpassing both Canterlot and the Crystal Empire.
She was at the side of a large circular square, the ground paved with exagonal tiles of a light blue color. It had a fountain at its center, and a series of smaller fountains were placed at regular intervals from the central one, connected to each other by long rectangular shaped tiles of white color forming an intricate geometrical shape on the ground. The houses surrounding the place were all looked like they had been carved out of single blocks of stone. They were a light shade of blue, large and three storeys high, with half columns at the sides of the entrance and a statue above it, each having a different one, all representing animals Twilight had never seen, and maybe only heard of in books. Three major roads departed from the square, one in front of Twilight and the other two at the side, and four minor ones, two for each side, one running alongside the wall and the other between the major one of that side and the central one.

Beyond the houses there were four huge towers made from the same material as the walls, each taller than any building twilight had ever seen, to which the smaller streets seemed to lead. In between the towers, where the two lateral major roads led, there were two gigantic statues, too big to see them in their entirety while close to them,shaped like what looked to be dragons, except for the fact that they had six limbs, a scorpion like tail and a series of tentacles attached between the end of their necks and their heads. They both were a deep shade of purple, their eyes emerald green, and one held a black scepter while the other a green sword. Between the two central towers, directly in front of Twilight, was a giant palace, taller than the statues, with a white staircase circling the base up to the middle of it, where another large square was located in front of the palace entrance. Twilight turned around to see the ponies that were with her while she came in and noticed that the entirety of the inner side of the walls was decorated with an intricate series of statues.

Still shocked by what she saw, she saw where the ones she had been following were going and went after them towards the palace in the distance. While crossing the square she stopped to observe the fountains decorating it, and noticed they spilled a metallic looking grey liquid. Some were shaped like columns with strange inscriptions on them, other were in the shape of animals, and she seemed to notice a pattern in their distribution. The central one caught her attention, and she observed how it was different from the others. It depicted an alicorn atop a rose shaped pedestal, a series of other ponies bowing before it around the pedestal. The alicorn had a crown, and Twilight couldn't help but feel like she recognized who it was, but before she had time to think about it she realized she was falling behind and ran towards the other side of the place.

While moving towards the palace, Twilight noticed a series of curved roads connecting the other ones, with obeliscs at the center of every crossroad. Along the way she started to meet more and more ponies, all headed towards the palace, and observedhow all the houses looked like the ones she had seen before. Finally, they reached the base of the staircase and started to climb it, and as they ascended Twilight noticed how the roads connecting each other looked like a series of waves originating from the main square, while the three major ones looked like rays departing from the sun.

Finally, they reached the top of the staircase and entered the palace's front square, which was now completly filled with ponies. The palace was completly white, with a vast decorated entrance flanked by columns with stone snakes coiled around them, statues similar to the two giant ones placed above the roof and a balcony at the center of the front side, a large golden window behind it.

Suddenly the window opened and everypony looked up to it as an alicorn came out of it onto the balcony. The alicorn started to speak, and Twilight noticed it was female. She was too far for Twilight to properly see her, but ther was something about her voice and aspect that seemed familiar to Twilight, like she knew her. While talking, the alicorn pointed her horn towards the center of the main square, and as she did many turned around to look at it, including Twilight. Then, for the first time, she finally saw the pattern the fountains traced on the ground. It looked like a six pointed star, the braces streched out, with two intersecting diamond like shapes in the middle.

Suddenly the fountains started to glow of a sick green, and Twilight turned around to see that this was due to the alicorn's magic. She looked back and saw that the green light had started to flow along the pattern, and the whole city was now filled by the same green glow. The ground started to shake, quietly at first, then stronger and stronger as time went on. As the vibration reached the intensity of an earthquake the ponies around Twilight started to chant, and she heard monstrous roars coming from the statues, strong enough to blind her. She opened her eyes again, and wished she hadn't.

In front of her, inside the city, something was manifesting itself. It wasn't completly there, like a vision of smoke flickering in and out of existance, but what was visible was enough to terrify Twilight. It looked similar to the creatures represented by the statues, but it was far more complex and twisted, and taller than they were. It had two heads like those of a dragon, green flames erupting from them like blood from an open wound, eyes twitching with madness. Its limbs seemed to move freely along the surface of its body, sometime plunging back into it to resurface somewhere else, giving it the aspect of a storm. It had a scorpion like tail, longer than the rest of his body, bending and twisting around its body at unnatural angles. As the chanting grew louder, more of it became visible, and Twilight noticed dozens and dozens of tentacle departing from its body to stretch all over the city, filling the streets and surrounding all of them.

Then, Twilight heard the alicorn's voice rising above the others, proud and sure of herself, and a magical ring appeared around the creature, starting to imprison it.
But the creature broke the circle and came closer to the palace.
Again and again the alicorn tried to stop it, and again and again she failed, and as she did her voice became filled with more and more fear, and finally turned to screams as the creature came fully into this world.
Twilight could barely keep herself from passing out at the sight.

The creature was horrendous, even bigger than it had seemed before, thousands of appendages sprouting at completly wrong angles from its body, a pulsating mass of living darkness, its eyes pits to hellish landscapes in dimensions unknown, its skin a carpet of rotting bodies screaming in pain, its roar the scream of hundreds of souls forever trapped in agony.

The beast inched closer to the palace, and there was nothing Twilight could do but join the screams with her own, her body frozen in place by fear, all the ones around her trapped just like her.