Spire of Madness

A light of hope in the bowels of this cursed construct of crystal; the eternal Alicorn's horn. A simple and basic spell; but comfort and a blessing of sight nonetheless; lest the companions are beset by the darkness... And whatever it may contain.

The ground floor laid ridden with unnatural formations of freshly protruding crystal, embedded with more modern inventions such as rebar and other rusted support. The structural union was not a sight any of the flesh-bound group had ever seen before. Otherwise, the floor had been barren and abandoned by life.

Transparent, translucent, reflective; the crystal which this spire had been formed of existed askew. Even the loyal wolf had shown signs of discomfort, although it resisted the urge to whine as if knowing the importance of staying as quiet as possible in this scenario. Still, the wrongness of the place affected all.

"The stairs are leading upwards, but... This is all wrong--" Twilight whispered as she observed the hollow halls while traveling with the group as quietly as they possibly could. "They're not where they're supposed to be. Why are they in the middle and... Hanging?" she made the observation. Indeed, the staircase did not touch the floor; its twisted form went upwards into the unknown blackness. It was clear that no being without flight or unnatural height would be able to reach even the first step.

Steady now; the ponies of the group with wings carried the less fortunate ones onto the steps before taking spots on them as well. Twilight, of course, took point and lit the spiraling path upwards; each step brought the promise of darkness and despair. What would they even find on the upper levels?

Apparently... Nothing. The second level was as barren as the previous one, save for the further cluttering of the fresh crystal protrusions. It was more claustrophobic than one floor down; and the shadows seemed to be choking out the light that Alicorn magic provided, never allowing full clearance on the corners of the place even when up close.

There were no railings, no protection from the fall on these steps to insanity, nor was there a single connection between the stairs and the rest of the spire; leaving one to assume that it hung from the top-most floor on a practically material string of crystal, or worse yet: Something even less trustworthy to hold the weight of them all.

It was not until the third floor that a heart-stopping and reality-questioning realization had struck a member of the group; it was Applejack. Outside she was the one that noticed the odd patterned holes across the structure, and now those same damaged surroundings simply did not exist from within. She didn't alert the others, perhaps it was a trick of the darkness and clutching shadows, but upon another twisting trot 'round the staircase Applejack was sure that at least two of the holes should have been visible from within the spire.

Doubt and dread of the world itself sets in; slowly, gently, without the mind noticing at first until it is too late.

"Twilight--!"

"Not now Applejack! We can't make too much noise."

"No, Twi; ahm serious-- There ain't nothin' about this place that's right."

Twilight shot a questioning look to her orange friend, raising an eyebrow while second-guessing her own sight as she glanced around and looked for whatever had upset her apple-bucking friend.

"The holes, Twi-- The holes ain't there. The whole place 's startin' to feel less and less like th' buildin' ah saw outside." Applejack confirmed.

Everyone took a moment to recollect themselves at those words. They had glanced around their surroundings, especially Twilight, but by now the darkness was swallowing the light; only a few mere feet of the staircase above them remained lit, but the surroundings were pitch black.

Why would a hole-ridden structure with clear access to daylight be in near-complete and invading darkness?

In a jolt caused by a sudden and miniscule brain-shatter, Twilight bumped a little too hard into Applejack from the instinct that had demanded she back away. The stairway was already tight enough as it is, forcing the group to go one by one; and the push from Twilight was enough for Applejack to lose her balance. Her hoof chipped away the slightest of edges from where she had stood and she plummeted. At the very least the rest of the group had a bit of distance between themselves and the two.

"Oh no-" Morningstar exclaimed through a sharp inhale and grit teeth.

"Applejack--!" cried out all her friends, more or less in unison; save for Rarity who had temporarily stopped breathing completely.

Applejack fell... Or, at least she would have if a light blue aura had not enveloped her. The telekinetically suspended mare breathed hard and fast, teeth occasionally chattering at the lack of solid ground beneath her and at the thought of what could have happened.

"A- A- Ah-- T- Thanks Rarity!" the orange mare blurted out after a crawling silence. But... The diseased mare that was in the process of saving her only added to the soundless grip-- In fact, not a single soul responded.

In her panic, the swarthy orange mare did not notice; how could she? When the heart beats faster than the brain can process, life usually flashes before one's eyes too clearly for the victim to notice anything else that is wrong.

But they've all seen as Applejack's hat fell... Upwards; into the darkness, and continued its ascension to Celestia-knows-where.

In fact: The mare's body looked like it had been headed upwards itself, had the Element of Generosity not saved her.

"...What the heck-!?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, altogether forgetting the part about keeping things quiet. However, Twilight had no time to shush her up; rising concerns crept in as the white mare currently holding Applejack using her horn's power was seemingly having even further trouble with keeping up a pulse and breath than usual.

"R- Rarity." Twilight would call out. "I- I can take it from here, please. Don't overexert yourself."

"What... Use..." the masked and veiled mare muttered in a voice that none would have recognized as her own or as the voice of a mare to begin with, had they not already spent so much time with her in this state already.

The more Rarity attempted to pull her friend closer to herself, the further she seemed to be slipping into the darkness up above; and it was becoming more and more apparent that the orange-coated mare was indeed moving.

"S- Sugarcube-- Last ah check't, err... Y'all are supposed to pull me in, right?" Applejack said in a hoarse and nervous voice as she began sweating, feeling herself begin to drift upwards.

"T- Trying..." Rarity choked a whimper out of her, the shadow of a voice. Sweat had begun building upon her brow, not just from mere exertion, but confusion and worry at the fact that her every effort did naught.

Without further words, the blue aura was overpowered with a purple one. For a moment, Twilight turned to Rarity and gave her a sad smile and nod before elegantly turning her head back to Applejack. "Alright. Now let's get you back here-"

Applejack was sent flying upwards with even more a tremendous force and speed than a fall on its own ever could have done.

A collective gasp, followed by unsober action. Twilight spread her mighty wings and soared after her ascending friend at full throttle. Alas, the known laws of gravity did not matter here, and the structure was becoming far too narrow to properly traverse; it is honestly a great surprise that she did not crash sooner! But crash she did and in a last ditch effort to save her companion, she snatched her from the mid-air while in fall, positioning herself so that her more resistant body would cushion the meeting with... Whatever awaited.

It would turn out to be a solid, straight wall. Several bones cracked and fractured in the landing and sent purple feathers flying before they were left stagnating and frozen in the air rather than fluttering to the floor; if there even was a floor anymore.

Twilight's vision was flashing white at the edges of her consciousness and sentience, in sync with the pulsating and throbbing pain that was shooting throughout her equine form. The harm afflicted her gravely, mainly in the direction of self-blaming; however, bigger was her concern for Applejack who laid cradled like a child within her hooves, a noticeable burden on top of her.

"A- Apple... Jack." she whispered out in a death rattle. A dazing and pathetic series of hallucinations had entered her temporarily damaged mind: The sound of a mare choir humming in a vocal downward spiral, accompanied by the soft sound of hollowed crystals being ever so gently touched with metal. Ironically relaxing, yet, it did not stop the gripping sensation from within that life was leaving; like some sort of an invisible claw had grabbed onto her lungs, heart, each and every vein, ceasing the flow of life!

Funny... She had never heard music this hauntingly beautiful in her mind; it sent chills down her spine and throughout her body. In fact, she had never ever had something like this grace her ears... Her mind...

If only Celestia were here.

She felt cold, chilly and alone. The world around her faded to blurry colors she could not name as she, with sluggish movements, snuggled the air and the floor; splayed in a half-writhe and half-embrace, it was a sad sight for a mare held in high regards by her peers and friends to behave like this.

Twilight was not all there anymore, really. Her surroundings had spun as the loop of peacefully damning sounds and music kept going, constantly spiraling downwards in tone.

The lavender mare found herself back up on her hooves as if an external force had brought her up to them. Ignoring the flow of warm, metallic liquid from her lips and nostrils, she started following a light that had just manifested within her mind; not white or angelic in nature but as dark and maddeningly devilish as everything about this place was. Still, she felt serenity as she approached it, completely ignoring the rush of blurred colors around her that her mind could not yet grasp or understand.

The sounds grew louder but still at a volume that could be considered soul-healing. There, in the distance; she saw her brother. Aged and wrecked with years of stress, but still smiling through his inner turmoil upon spotting his dear sister.

"Shining Armor!" she'd call out in a blood-filled gurgle of a voice; the stallion's eyebrows lowered in concern and fear at the condition of his kin.

"Dear Twily..." the ghostly voice of her brother by blood and flesh spoke to her with sorrow and regret; "If you are experiencing this reality then you can know with certainty that I have been lost to the madness of antiquity. I had never wanted to lay this writhing truth upon you in this fashion, but fate has led us here it seems, such as it is."

"You may find much brain-festering information of my misdeeds strewn about this unholy place. I had written for years in olden parchments and crumpled papers, but for convenience, I infused all the knowledge within them into this one." he paused as he procured a very opulent and royal scroll from pure nothingness; "All the facts and details needed to be known will be here, without the steps and procedures that procured the results; in hopes that none may ever make my terrible mistakes ever again and recreate this nightmare of particular hideousness against all ponykind."

Twilight stood in the limbo between consciousness and eternal rest as she looked upon her brother; really not quite understanding half of what he had meant with his words.

"This is my final effort at giving you closure, Twilight. As unbearable as you may find this, it truly is up to you and the others to rid our family of the curse I've most certainly put on us. It is up to you to... Lay this all to rest." Shining spoke bitterly and in a tone that had begun slowing down; "And one last thing."

"I could not allow the thing to arise into the unknowing world, so in my final defiance, I altered the reality of the Empire itself with my undeserving knowledge of the arts as black as night. Be warned that this is temporary and should you not act with sufficient bravery and speed when facing this different... 'World', I am afraid there will be nothing left to fight for anyway." the stallion hung his head in shame.

"Take care, sister. And please... Live."

Twilight did not have enough time to react, nay, she never had the time to begin with. A hacking and coughing fit overtook her as putrid redness spilled onto the floor from her bleeding orifices. Each and every figurative inch of pain came back to her in one singular moment; and every literal inch of her body cried out in defiance, overclocked, overexerted, overly punished by blindness within the moment of serene brainlessness she had just experienced.

Familiar voices had finally broken through her muffled ears, crying out for her name in towering worry that had forgotten all about silence within these curved walls. The colors began making sense again within her blurred vision; Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Morningstar-- They surrounded her and prevented her from keeling over completely.

Acting on instinct, the lavender matriarch's horn glowed purple as she began her own mending; searching wildly and blindly within herself for the most broken and malfunctioning parts of the fleshy machine that was the Alicorn's body. Mended, but never truly healed...

The suffering had settled down; for now. She turned to face her companions with disbelief to her stare, in the greatest wonder of whether what she had experienced had been even real.

"Now what the hay was that all about, Twilight!?" Applejack yelled and demanded to know; "First ya damn-near kill yerself for me-- Then ya jus' strut off like nothin' happened an' ya start talkin' nonsense, WHILE BLEEDING OUT OF YER CELESTIA-DAMNED FACE!"

"Twilight!? Twilight!" Fluttershy called out as she blindly hugged her in a rather affectionate if breath-preventing fashion.

"Are you... Alright, darling?" Rarity, despite her own haunting condition, expressed her own worries.

Rainbow Dash and Morningstar seemed to be just glad she was alive but said nothing of interest, and Pinkie Pie was... Preoccupied.

"H- How did you guys even get here?" Twilight would ask, still in a clear daze; yet, in her daze, she looked to the side to find the staircase just there in the hallway... Sideways, with the top facing the blood-stained wall that she had hit at full force. It was not suspended from anything on this side either. Logically speaking, they were now standing perfectly bound by gravity to what would have been a simple wall; the ceiling-would-be was to their side and the room they were in currently extended into what would otherwise be normal geometry.

This was all messing with her mind a bit too much for her liking and Pinkie Pie's perceptively excited exclamations of nonsense among the lines of "Twisty-turny!" followed by laughter was... Aggravating at best.

"...On second thought, I don't want to know. Look, did any of you see where Shining Armor went?" Twilight asked in a genuine tone.

"...Shinin'... Armor?" Applejack repeated; "Twi, you were talkin' all by your lonesome for a good five minutes!"

What.

"No no no, look! He even gave me this!" the Alicorn presented the imperial scroll that had been gifted to her by her brother. The rest were clearly taken aback.

"That... Huh." Rainbow Dash stopped her sentence in its tracks.

"That IS one of his majesty's scrolls." Morningstar piped in, if for nothing else than to confirm it.

"...Ah'll give ya that-- Ya didn't have that until... Now." Applejack reluctantly finished and went silent.

On the topic of silence, it proceeded to last for a solid half-a-minute as Twilight unsealed the scroll with her magic, pulling out the part of the parchment that the magically-sealed lock on it allowed to leave the casing.

Word for word, the paper contained exactly what she had been told by her brother a few minutes ago.

-Click-

A bit more of the parchment and its contents were allowed to leave the mechanism...

Truly, within this realm of dark and dynamic possibilities, there lies something unbound to the world that traditional beings whether mortal or immortal cannot easily adapt to.

Many paths may converge to one outcome-- Or worse yet, a single decision could spell centuries of disaster! Perhaps in such fashion, it is both a blessing and a curse to be here, to resolve this matter of alien and transcendent form at any cost, for the safety of the outside world so that the common pony may never have to experience it.

One thing rings true, still. One fact remains. There can be no sanity or clear thought here...

...Within the Spire of Madness...