Author's Note

I should probably note, this is not purely a revenge fic. There will be consquences to actions but it's not just a mindless bloodfest. I've seen some comments that seem to think this is the case. Either way, sorry for the slightly late upload, hope you all enjoy!

Interlude II: Searching for a Certain Sunset

Rainbow Dash

My name is Rainbow Dash, and I am officially the worst friend in the world.

Part of me wishes that Twilight had just finished the job when she hit me with that Lord Vader spell. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that my friends and I drove one of our other friends to… yeah… I can’t even think about it.

The stores and street signs pass quickly as I lean against the window of Fluttershy’s van. All of us had piled in it, while the Principal and Vice-Principal following behind us in their car. It's dead quiet. Normally we’d all be talking about… I dunno… something. But none of us can really work through what we just saw.

Plus, I'm not gonna lie, Twilight is furious. Not that I blame her. I just feel sick.

Sick to death about what we did and how we acted. Sick at the fact that the girl I’ve thought of as a little sister for years went behind my back to destroy the reputation of me and my friends and like, half the stupid school. Not to mention they drove Sunset to…

I clench my eyes shut. I still can’t think about it.

“You’ll have to face it eventually.” Twilight’s voice breaks through the silence and I look up. She’s looking at all of us, not just me, from the front passenger seat. “However this ends up going, I hope you’ll have to face Sunset at the end, you know?”

I nod. “Yeah,” my voice is still raspy and bruised. “Me too, whatever that means… at least it’ll mean she’ll have the chance to tear into us.”

Into me.

Rarity lets out a soft sob next to me and I put an arm around her. She leans into me and takes a shuddering breath. “I can only pray, darling, that we have the opportunity to tell her how sorry we are.”

“Ah ain’t even sure we deserve t'do that,” Applejack says darkly from the back. “If’n we'd just given'er a fair shake in the first place, this all coulda been avoided. But we let our own fool tempers get the better of us.”

“We don’t deserve it,” Pinkie agrees dejectedly. “We took away her smile.”

The falling rain neatly mirrors the light drumming of Twilight’s fingers against the arm of the passenger side door. After a moment she turns back to us, and some of the rage has bled out of her. She doesn’t look like she’s ready to kill us anymore, at least, which I guess is an improvement. I’ve still lost two friends today, though, and it’s no one's fault but my own.

“Can I ask you all… why did you just give up on her?” Twilight says finally, her voice isn’t angry. If anything, she just sounds hurt and confused.

None of us want to voice the answer to that. Especially not given what happened. Surprisingly, the one that finally does is Fluttershy.

“Because we didn’t trust her,” Fluttershy answers quietly from the driver’s seat. She sounds calm but I’ve known her all my life. I can see how her knuckles are white where they’re gripping the old steering wheel.

Twilight just nods. “Well, clearly. I mean, that part is obvious.”

“And… and I don’t think we ever really forgave her, either,” Fluttershy continues dourly. “I, uhm, I know it’s no excuse, Twilight, but you don’t understand just how bad she used to be. She made my life—all of our lives—miserable for almost three years, that doesn’t just go away.”

I watch the look on Twilight’s face change, going from recrimination and irritation to sadness, then crossing briefly into grief before she hardens her expression.

“Yeah.” I actually surprise myself as I agree, even though it feels like swallowing poison to be bad-mouthing Sunset given what happened. “I mean, like… I know she’s changed. Right? Like, I do… but… I didn’t, I dunno, feel it? Does that make sense?”

“I didn’t throw a party for months because of her,” Pinkie says softly, still flat-toned. “Those were some of the worst years of my whole life. I… I wanted to believe her, I really, super-duper did but… it just… it was really hard, y’know?”

“I admit,” Rarity began, still leaning against my shoulder. “As much as I preach allowing bygones to be bygones, a part of me always wondered if we were just being taken for another ride, as it were.” Lifting herself up a bit, Rarity looks Twilight square in the eyes for the first time since the Princess arrived. “Sunset is terribly intelligent, Twilight, and I mean no offense when I say this but she is also offensively devious. We all underestimated her once and, in return, she neatly sectioned off the school into easily manipulated fiefdoms organized by grudge and clique, all in under a year.”

Applejack leans forward from where she’d been reclining in the back with her stetson pulled down. “Eeyep, and she made it look dang easy too. Made a fool outta all’o us... students, teachers, everyone. Like Rainbow said, we… Ah… know she changed. Ah know she changed but… Fluttershy’s right, that feelin’… it don’t just go away.”

“Not that it matters,” I say, drawing a look from everyone. Even Fluttershy has her eyes on me through the rearview mirror. “We promised to look after her. We promised to give Sunset a chance. To be her friend. It was… it was rough, those first couple months, I really didn’t want to. I still hated her for all the crap she put us through.”

“Rainbow,” Rarity says from my shoulder, “may I remind you that you’re the one who started really spending time outside of school with her? Darling, you inspired the rest of us to do the same, that’s admirable.”

Letting out a breath, I rub at my eyes with the heels of my palms like I'm trying push away my memories of Sunset.

“Yeah! Because she just… just took it!” I shout. “She took all my crap! She turned herself into the whipping girl for pretty much the whole school. The only reason I started really hanging with her is because I saw her take it to the jaw in the hall and on the field every day without a single complaint. She took it like a champ and I… whatever grudge I was holding… it was still, I dunno, pretty cool.”

“What do you mean, ‘whipping girl’?” Twilight asks, narrowing her eyes.

I grimace. “Ugh, yeah, the rest of the school sorta spent the month after you left reminding her of her shit. Y’know how kids are. Graffiti on her locker, spitballs in class and in the hallway. It was… pretty rough.”

“W-Why?!” Twilight stammers before finally finding her voice. “Why would they do that?! Seriously what is even the point of that? Why are humans so… so awful?” None of us have an answer to that, but eventually Twilight lets out a sigh. “You know, I probably should’ve been more attentive… I knew that Humans were fundamentally different from Ponies. I've read enough of your history. You’ve basically been at war with each other somewhere on this stupid planet for your race’s entire existence.”

“Yeah… we kinda suck at the whole peace’n love thing,” Applejack drawls. “But it ain’t like it’s much better anywhere else.”

“That’s very ethnocentric, Applejack,” Twilight retorts angrily. “The last war that ponies actually started was the Nightmare Rebellions. That was over a thousand years ago. Our last actual war was the Griffon Incursions about three centuries back, and it was a defensive war that ended in a treaty and armistice that has lasted to this day.”

Turning back to me, Twilight sighs. “Anyway, that’s all academic. So, what happened that made you start treating her like a friend, Rainbow?”

I shrug. “I dunno, it wasn’t just one thing I guess. It was just… watching her weather the whole mess and like, keep pushing through, y’know? I kept thinking to myself: ‘I don’t think I’d be able to do that’. Like, I’d watch her scrub off her locker day after day without complaint. She'd get hit with a spitball and just wipe it off. But I guess… there was sorta one thing.”

All of the girls have their eyes on me at this point and I lean back and sigh. “It was… I was in the girls' locker room. I was gonna go home but I forgot some stuff so I went back. The shower was running when I got in which was weird because all the clubs were out. That's when I… I heard crying.”

Rarity puts a hand to her lips while Pinkie makes a soft strangled sound, and Fluttershy grips the steering wheel harder while Applejack just goes tense.

Sighing, Twilight nods. “I assume it was—?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I, uh, I went to check it out and I saw Sunset, just sitting under a running shower, crying her eyes out. She had, uh, these bruises on her arms, and these… these wicked scars on her back. Turns out that, back at the Fall Formal, when those wings and tail ripped out of her they uh, they literally ripped out of her.”

Everyone in the car turns away, looking ill, apparently even Twilight hadn’t realised that part, and the van shudders as Fluttershy struggles to keep her composure.

“I… I see,” Twilight finally says, her breath hitching. “That’s… I should’ve thought of that since it was dark magic that changed her form. It’s not exactly elegant.”

“So,” I continue, “we started talking, and it turns out she didn’t even think we wanted to be her friends, like… she figured we were just humoring her and, uh, and you, Twilight. So she didn’t try and do anything with us because she didn’t feel like she deserved to. She took whatever the other students dished out because felt like… like she deserved it.”

Twilight buried her face in her hands. “Written’s Quill, I’m such an idiot.”

I cough into my hand, clearing my throat. “A-Anyway, I pretty much felt like garbage after that. I helped her out, we went to grab some food, and uh, yeah. After that, I pretty much spent most of my time outside of school with her.”

For the first time in a while, I smile, remembering the days I spent when it was just Sunset and me. “Turns out, under all that ‘bitch’ we got used seeing to during Freshman and Sophomore year, Sunset was kinda crazy cool. Like, smart, sarcastic, stupid-pretty, and like, super sassy.” I laugh a little at the memories. “Seriously, we’d hang out all day most Saturdays, just chilling and walking around the mall and crap, and she’d snark on people in the lines and it'd be so funny I’d be snorting my soda out of my nose. It was… it was awesome. She was awesome…”

That’s when the tears start. I try and push them back but I can’t, all I manage is a choking sound in the back of my throat before they start falling. I sob and pull my legs up, curling against them and burying my face on my knees. I hate crying, I’m gross when I cry; I’m all raspy, with cracking sobs and snot. I sound stupid. Rarity wraps her arms around me and even Twilight puts a hand on my shoulder. Pinkie just leans on me from the other side and Applejack rubs my back.

“It’s… It's okay,” Twilight says finally. “For my part, I’m sorry too. I should’ve thought of—and acknowledged—how much pain Sunset caused the five of you and the school. I treated you all like ponies which isn’t fair. And even then, Sunset had a lot to make up for, so expecting you guys to just accept her was probably unfair too, even by pony standards.”

“I miss her, Twi’,” I choke out through my tears. “I miss her so much. I love all you girls, but… but Sunset? She and I were like, the same. No one, not even AJ, could keep up with me on the field like her, or when we’d be jamming in the band room… did you girls know Sunset’s like, stupid-good with a guitar? She even helped me learn Algebra! I’m an idiot, girls, and she still managed to teach me Algebra! I’d spend all day with her and then spend, like, the rest of the night looking forward to spending the next whole stupid day with her!”

“Then why did you leave her alone?” Twilight asks and I swear my heart breaks in half.

“Because…” I sob over the rest of my words. “Because it was like everything was falling apart all over again. Like the old Sunset was suddenly right there in front of me! I was so scared of her turning bad again, or… or having been bad all this time and I just didn’t see it. I just… I just ran like a fucking coward okay!?”

I scream the last words out, causing everyone else to flinch. It was dead silent in the car for several long minutes and eventually, the vehicle came to a stop.

“We’re here,” Fluttershy says softly, her voice barely piercing the quiet.

For a moment no one moves, but eventually Pinkie and Rarity file out, followed by Applejack and Fluttershy. I stay where I am, curled into a ball on the seat in the middle of the van with Twilight looking on sadly. As the doors close I feel Twilight move to the seat beside me and start to stroke the top of my head softly.

“Rainbow, I don’t mean to pry, but the way you talk about her…” Twilight says, her voice almost painfully gentle. “Were… were you in love with Sunset?”

I wipe my tears on my jersey and let out another wordless sob.

“I see,” Twilight says quietly. “Then that’s why you were so adamant about her being Anon-A-Miss when I came to the Corner. Because if she wasn’t then…”

“I killed her,” I say in a muffled voice. “I miss her so much, Twi, and it’s all my fault.”

“Sunset isn’t dead. She was taken, remember?” Twilight insists. “And besides, all of us made this mistake, not just you.” She’s still stroking my hair and as much as I hate to admit it, it helps. “I was party to this whole thing too. By negligence if nothing else.”

I lift my head up and stare at her with tear-stained eyes. “I’m supposed to be Loyalty though, remember? How can that be true if I can’t even be loyal to my… to the girl I…”

“You’re young, we all are,” Twilight says, her eyes firmly meeting mine. “We all made mistakes here. So now it’s time to go out there,” she points to the night-stained silhouette of CHS, “and try and make up for them, okay?”

CHS is way different in the dark. Like, spooky different. There’s almost no sound, and the whole place has this weird, haunted, vibe to it.

“Come on, girls,” Twilight says, stepping out of the van behind me. “Right up at the front steps, right? That’s what Snips and Snails said.”

Principal Celestia and VP Luna park right alongside the curb and get out to follow us, and Luna moves quickly to point out where Sunset fell while I follow behind. I can still see the red stain on the ground in the back of my head. If Sunset had actually been there, dead on the ground, when I came out of the doors, I don’t think I’d have made it. I really think seeing that would’ve killed me.

If it hadn’t, then finding out we fucked her over for literally no reason definitely would’ve done it.

“I saw her fall from there,” Luna says, pointing up at the roof of the school. “She’d been out in the snow avoiding other students. I voiced my own opinion on the matter because I... I also thought she was guilty and..." Luna shudders, "I said some awful things that, hearing them back in my mind, I can't believe they came out of my mouth, and to a student no less.”

“You were trying to protect you and your sister’s school, Luna,” Twilight says as we approach the steps. “I won’t pretend you owed her anything, but hopefully this teaches you that giving someone the benefit of the doubt isn’t a bad default.”

“The issue is that we did, at first," Celestia adds as she joins her sister and Twilight. "With her sterling grades, perfect attendance, and wonderful attitude, the few complaints from students which had no obvious basis or evidence were brushed aside. It was only much, much later that we realised that was Sunset testing the waters. Seeing just how far she could push.”

Twilight groaned. “Sunset really did a number on this place didn’t she?”

“I wasn’t joking when I called her devious, darling,” Rarity interjects with a grim expression. “It’s not terribly flattering but the shoe certainly fit at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say as I step between all of them. “Here’s what matters: Sunset changed, she tried to make up for the crap she did and we threw her under the bus. We fucked up about as hard as we could, okay?”

“Does that make the scales even, Sugarcube?” Applejack asks, and I scowl.

“No!” I snarl, advancing on her and jabbing a finger into the farmgirl’s chest and backing her up. “No it doesn’t! It leaves the scales way uneven because, so far as I know, even at her worst, Sunset Shimmer never drove anyone to throw themselves off the roof! She might've been a huge bitch but she had rules she followed. She never went this far. So no, Applejack, the scales are way out of order, and we’re the ones in the red!”

Applejack does her best impression of a goldfish for a moment, try to find some kind of retort, but finally closes her mouth and nods.

Twilight walks up to the stained cement and grimaces at the ugly mark. Bringing her left hand up, violet light fills the air around her and coalesces into a ring that surrounds both herself and the stain. After a moment, she scowls, and the light redoubles in intensity. Then her brow furrows further and the light grows blinding in the darkness of the late evening. A moment later, the light fades out and she lets out a breath.

“Well, that’s not good,” Twilight says finally.

I run to her side. “What? What’s not good? What happened to Sunset?”

Twilight just shakes her head. “I honestly don’t know, exactly. She was definitely taken, I can confirm that much. This stain is the remains of a dimensional rift, but it wasn’t conjured. As far as I can tell there was no spell involved at all. It’s more like… like a crack in reality or something.”

“What does that mean?” Pinkie asks, teary-eyed. “Can we not get her back?”

Twilight looks pensive for a moment and shuffles her feet. She stares back down at the stain and waves her hand again, and light reignites around the rings on her fingers. The light drips down like liquid embers onto the cement and traces around the stain, once the tracing finishes it begins climbing up the air in strange patterns and Twilight backs away, carefully maintaining the flow of light from her spell. It takes several minutes but eventually we see what it’s creating. A split in the air, a mass of coiling darkness outlined in lavender light clawing its way out of the scar in reality with claws like spider legs and scorpion tails. All of them reaching upward towards…

“Sunset.” The name spills past my lips as I make out the tracery outline of our missing friend. “What the fuck is that?”

“I have no idea,” Twilight says grimly. “It’s more than a daemon, though. if I had to guess I’d say it’s some kind of demigod or at least something on that order of existence.”

I feel a cold stone drop into my gut. “H-How are we supposed to deal with something like that?!”

“That does sound like a mighty tall order, there,” Applejack says, “but Ah’m willin’ to knock the teeth outta some kinda demon-god if it means gettin’ mah friend back and payin’ mah dues.”

“I agree,” Fluttershy steps up beside Applejack. Pinkie joins them a moment later, her hair regaining a measure of its poof.

I clench my eyes shut and then nod. “Yeah, demigod, demon, whatever. We’ll get our friend back, for sure.”

Sighing, Twilight waves her hand towards the image of the creature. “As near as I can tell that… thing... is closely tied to forces that are antithetical to Interpersonal Bond Magic—that is, Magic of Friendship. It’s a creature of despair, violence, and death.” Twilight begins pacing around the light-made construct, scowling at it. “The thing is, the more powerful a magical entity is the more rules it has to follow. Think about it, if it could burst out right here in front of a smorgasbord of food, why did it wait until right now? And why just one person? Why not open its maw right as school got out and swallow up a whole swathe of teenagers?”

We look between one another, no one daring a guess, but for once something actually clicks in my head: “It couldn’t, right? It could only take someone specific?”

Twilight smiles darkly. “Right, someone who met its criteria. Someone riding the ragged edge of death or despair. Sound like anyone we know?”

I feel my heart twist. “Yeah, okay so how do we get her back?”

Letting out a slow breath, Twilight shakes her head despairingly. “I’m not really sure we can. Now that she’s in its realm she’s within its grasp. Even if we were in Equestria I’m not sure I could output enough power all at once to rip someone out of a place like that.” Then she looks up with a determined gleam in her eye. “But I might be able to get her a message.”

We all look up at that. For the first time in a while, I feel a flicker of hope. Real hope that Sunset isn’t lost to us completely.

“Keep an eye on me,” Twilight says as she approaches the twisting black rift. “I have no idea if this thing will detect my intrusion. It might be so alien that it won't even notice something as insignificant as me, or… or it might be exceptionally territorial. In which case, if something goes wrong you need to disrupt my concentration and immediately wake me up.”

Each of us nod. “We’ll be here for ya, Sugarcube.” Applejack swears, and all of us stand beside her, determined to see the matter through.

“Alright,” Twilight rubs her hands together and I see a glimpse of the sorceress and scientist in the glint of her eyes. “Let’s see if this works.”

Taking a deep breath, Twilight steps into the circle, disrupting the image. The stain on the ground burns with an unpleasant light that makes me want to hurl if I look at it too long. I can’t even imagine stepping into it on purpose.

Twilight does, though. She raises her hands up, palms out, and I can feel the power and magic gathering around her. Arcs of what looks like lightning spits and shoots from the bracelet and rings on her left hand as she starts chanting in a soft, stirring language. The chant goes on for a few minutes and when it reaches its peak we all hear and see it.

A thunderclap, and a swirl of fog.

Princess Twilight

The world is dark.

Until now I couldn’t have fathomed a place so bereft of any kind of warmth or hope. This place is so deeply against what I stand for as a person, a pony, and a sovereign princess of Equestria, that I want to leave immediately.

I can’t though, of course. My friend is trapped in this Tartarus and I plan to do my best to free them.

I… ‘stand’? I’m not a hundred percent sure where my body is in relation to myself. My proprioception is completely off for some reason.

Actually… I concentrate, imagining each part of my body in turn from my extremities inward. Fingers and toes, wiggle them, feel them… there they are… arms and legs, flex them and swing them… found those too… now…

“BREATH!” The word rushes out of me as I take a long, dragging breath. I look around, I’m hanging in the darkness, but it’s nice to know I was right.

I’m astral projected. Before, I’d just been a floating mote of consciousness, but now that I’ve resolved my shape I start to scan the darkness, looking for anything out of place, but it’s all just a meaningless void lacking in any distinguishing marks.

“Fine,” I mutter, scowling as I bring my hand up. “If that’s how you want it, I’ll light my own way.” Stretching out my senses, I take a grip on my magic and will it outward. “Finder’s Effulgence,” I whisper, and the air around me is suffused with the ambient light of the spell. “Find me Sunset Shimmer.”

The formless cloud of light that I conjure suddenly orients, stretching out in a specific direction, and I grin. Directing my mind in that direction, I drift along the path of light my spell is carving through the dark.

I don’t know how long I’m moving. Distance and time feel strange here. Eventually, though, I see something: a flickering red light that pulses irregularly. Narrowing my eyes, I accelerate towards it. Now that I have a landmark I’m not too worried about missing anything. I angle my approach and feel a sudden wave of revulsion as I realise what it is I’m seeing.

It’s like a spider's web, only instead of strands of silk, it’s stretched tendon, gobbets of flesh, and shards of bone. Gristle and fat cling to the strands like moss or mold. It’s a vile, horrific thing, and in the dead center of it is…

“Sunset!” I call out to the jacketed girl standing in the center of the web. She’s standing with her back to me, moving her hands like she’s directing an orchestra, and as she does the web beyond her is slowly lighting up in strange patterns. “Sunset can you—?!”

“I hear you, Sparkle,” Sunset says evenly without breaking her pattern of motion or even turning to face me. “I should’ve figured I’d see you here eventually. If anyone was going to figure out how to pierce the Fog it would be you.”

“S-Sunset?” As much as dislike the idea of touching any part of the web, I touch down near her. “Where are we? Where are you?”

Sunset doesn't answer. Instead, she jerks her hand back to point towards me. “I’d move if I were you, I’m about to feed that set of nodes to the Old Stain so he doesn’t chew up something I actually want.”

I turn around and scramble closer to Sunset just as she twitches her finger. A section past us lights up and almost instantly the section of webbing I was standing on jerks as something in the darkness lances out and bites into it, blackening and withering the strands, and it's followed by a sick, crunching, chewing sound that makes my gorge rise.

“What… What is that?” I turn back to her. Sunset still hasn’t moved, her concentration hasn’t wavered even once.

She twitches her fingers a few more times before answering. “The Entity. That’s what they call it anyway, I call it 'Old Stain'. S’far as I know it doesn’t have a name though, and I’ve never read about it either. Honestly, it’s pretty unobtrusive as far as all-consuming forces of planar entropy go. It sucks up a person here or there, bleeds out its hope as a form of sustenance from them over a long period of time, then rinse and repeat. Pretty efficient hunter, actually.”

“That’s… that’s vile,” I say, horrified at the implications that something like this just freely exists. “How have we never encountered it before?”

A hope-eater? It sounds like the Changelings but catastrophically more powerful.

“Pretty sure it’s because Ponies aren’t worthwhile prey,” Sunset responds, still guiding her red strands of light. I watch the ‘Entity’ chew up more nodes behind us as she does so. “My theory is that it's attracted to a cocktail of desperation and fear, or something like that. But it’s a creature of despair so that’s how it tracks its prey. Find something consumed by despair, give it hope, feed on hope, etcetera…”

I round on Sunset, scowling. “You sound strangely ‘okay’ with all this.”

“Yeah, well, I kinda am,” Sunset answers. “It’s pretty nice actually. Very straightforward. It tosses me into one of its Trials along with some other schmucks and a psychotic horror-beast called a ‘Killer’, and we try to survive. Either the Killer catches us and hangs us from a butcher hook to be drained, or we make it out. Then we end up back at our Campfire, where my physical body is right now, to rest up and prepare. Then we do it again.”

I stare for a moment, dumbfounded at the utter lack of… of anything remotely concerned in her voice. “Sunset… that sounds horrifying.”

“It was at first,” Sunset says. “After a couple of weeks of the same thing though, you get used to it. I’ve even started to enjoy it a little. The chase, I mean.”

“Wait… weeks?” I exclaim. “Sunset you’ve only been gone for half a day!”

“Time’s a little janky here,” Sunset replies stonily. Suddenly, she stops moving her arms and tenses up. “Brace yourself, we’re about to cycle webs.”

“What’s tha—AAAAAAHH!”

With no warning except Sunset’s cryptic words, the web we’ve been standing on collapses and falls away and we fall with it, and I shriek as we drop through the empty void. It’s as if my bodiless form suddenly has a weight of its own even though I know that’s impossible.

Sunset was prepared and her feet were angled down to accelerate her fall. Something seems off about her for the brief moment I have my wits about me while falling which, in fairness, isn’t very long. Sunset hits the web that coalesces underneath us first with an ease that suggests long practice.

I don’t hit it at all.

I let out a raw, croak as Sunset whips around hard and seizes me by the throat before I can land, setting my feet flailing in the air just above the grotesque webbing as I finally get my first real look at Sunset.

It’s horrifying. The sclera and pupils of her eyes are an empty, emotionless black that neatly mirrors the void around us, while her irises are burning iridescent blue embers.

“Let’s not get anything twisted, Sparkle,” Sunset says evenly. “I don’t want to leave, and I sure as Tartarus don’t want you to rescue me. I’ve had enough of your hypocritical homilies about love and tolerance and friendship. And who knows? Maybe it works out for other people, but it’s never panned out for me.”

There’s something wrong with the space around me, even my magic is sluggish and it feels like her hands are made of iron. I struggle but every movement feels like it drains something out of me.

“I don’t have a home, Twi’,” Sunset continued. “I was cast out by Celestia and exiled for my ambition, then I was cast out by my so-called ‘friends’ because no one believed in me enough to give me a real second chance, so thanks, but I’m not gonna risk a third strike. For once I’m gonna learn a real lesson: how to be content with where I am in life.”

Finally, she lets me go, dropping me to my knees onto the web to choke and gasp for air. I don’t even really have a physical body, this shouldn’t have been affecting me at all, right? Unless… I look out into the darkness and instantly I feel it. The thing that Sunset called ‘The Entity’. It’s looking at me and it’s hungry.

It’s trying to draw me in fully and I can’t let it.

“Sunset, please.” I turn to my friend. “I want to help you! I’m sorry I failed you before! I gave those girls a responsibility that they weren’t ready for, but it doesn’t mean you have to stay in this… this horrible place!”

Sunset cocks her head with clear amusement as she looks down at me.

“Did you miss what I said, Sparks? I’m fine here.” She gestures around to the void with a wry grin. “I don’t need your friendship or your sympathy. I sure as Tartarus don’t need your pity.”

She holds up her hand and there’s a faint reddish tinge to her flesh as she coils her fingers into a claw, and a hard pressure closes around my body. “Nobody cares if I come back, not really. There’s no love out there for Sunset Shimmer. I’m just the bad memory everyone wishes would go away. At least the Entity loves me if only for how I taste, and I’ll take what I can get. Now, get out of my Bloodweb, Sparkle, and don’t you dare come back.”

I open my mouth to try and protest. To beg her to listen. But my lungs choke on something and I feel myself being bodily lifted from the web.

“Take her away from me, Old Stain,” Sunset says softly, looking over my shoulder. “She doesn’t belong here anyway, you know that.”

Another clap of thunder echoes around me and I feel hooks and claws dig into my pseudo-flesh. “I’m coming back for you, Sunset!” I scream as it drags me away from her, Sunset just looks on impassively. “We do love you! We will get you out of here! Just hang on! I swear we will!”

She vanishes into the darkness as I’m ripped further from her, and a moment later I’m ejected from whatever horrible dimension that thing lords over. I’m sent rocketing painfully and inexorably back to my physical body.

Rainbow

One minute, Twilight is standing in the center of the circle, her eyes glowing white and her lips moving silently, and the next she arches her back like she’s being electrocuted and lets out a jarring scream. The illusions of the claws suddenly twitch to life and spear inward toward Twilight.

I move without thinking. Diving forward, I collide with Twilight and together we go sprawling out of the lit circle just as the claws snap closed with a vicious crack. The limbs are spasming and twitching, looking for a target, and I know it’s stupid but it’s almost like they’re angry.

Scowling, I pick myself up and pull Twilight to her feet. She looks like she just got done running a marathon wearing leg-weights. Her hair is hanging raggedly and her clothes are soaked through with sweat.

And there’s a look in her eyes, too… a look I don’t like one bit.

“Twilight,” I say as she stands up. “Did… did you find her?”

The displaced Princess nods silently at first, taking in deep breaths and shaking her head. “Sorry, astral projection isn’t easy. But yeah, I, uh, I found her.”

“Well don’t keep us in suspense, darling,” Rarity said stepping forward. “How is she?”

“Uh, that’s a complicated question, unfortunately,” Twilight says despondently. “Physically, she's okay, I guess? But mentally? Honestly, the short answer to that parasprite nest is: ‘no, not at all’.”

I don’t know what else I was really expecting but it still makes me sick to hear the words said out loud.

Twilight starts to pace as she continues. “It’s bad, really bad. She’s… regressing. When I talked to her she sounded empty, and when I tried to reach her Sunset told me that she wanted to be left where she was because… because no one loved her and she had nowhere else to go.”

Tears are streaming down Twilight’s face now, and she’s not the only one tearing up. This is my fault. I could’ve done something—anything—different, and I could have saved her from this, except I was too stupid and too cowardly and too scared. I was too full of myself, and because of that, I let Sunset go.

“So…” Twilight says softly, “I’m not sure what to do. I can’t get back in because she’ll just reject me. She says that at least the thing that wants to eat her… at least it wants her.”

Strangled sobs come from Pinkie and Fluttershy, and Rarity is doing her best to keep a semblance of what she calls a stiff upper lip but even I can tell she’s falling apart. Applejack just has her stetson pulled over her face. Not that it matters. She only does that when she crying or sleeping, we all know that.

After a moment, I stand up.

No way am I letting it end like this. This is too cruel. I refuse. I turn and put both hands on Twilight’s shoulders, looking her dead in the eyes.

“Tell us everything she said and everything you saw. Don’t leave anything out. I don’t give a damn if she wants to be left in that hellhole, she thinks no one loves her? Too bad. We’re getting Sunset back whether she wants it or not and then we’re gonna prove her wrong.”