Perception

Fires lit up the prison, forcing Starlight and Twilight to shield their eyes with their front hooves momentarily. The two cracked their eyes open, despite the blinding light, to gaze at the shady figure before them.

"Nightmare Moon? You were here all this while?" Twilight uttered, shock written all over her face. The darkness that surrounded the two of them made them believe that they were speaking privately, though in actuality, it merely gave them a false sense of security against any potential eavesdropping.

"Yes, and I must say your little conversation was so cute, with all your emotional talk," Nightmare Moon retorted, helping herself to a slight giggle before cutting it short abruptly. "But I don't care about that. What I do care about is how are you two able to travel through time? No pony in this realm should have the ability to control time but ME! With the ability to alter time, I will ensure that the Elements of Harmony will never be recovered, so my reign will last indefinitely and exist every possible universe!"

After that incredulous remark, Twilight and Starlight instantaneously turned to face each other from adjacent prison cells simultaneously, communicating wordlessly through threatening flickers in their eyes. After a brief moment of gazing into each other, the two nodded their heads in unison subtly, having understood the identical message that they would like to broadcast to the other.

Nightmare Moon observed every single detail of their silent actions with growing interest. From what she could deduce from their conversation earlier, they were enemies, but they were somehow united through common understanding to become friends to get out of her world. She could not help but chuckle, wondering how pitifully fragile this alliance would be. She placed her front hoof onto her chin, thinking deeply.

"What do you know about time travel?" Nightmare Moon commanded the two, her voice echoing throughout the four robust walls of the prison. "Speak!"

"Why would we?" Starlight shot back swiftly, her steely character jumping back into life. "What are you giving us in exchange for this valuable information? Nothing!"

"FINE!" Nightmare Moon relented, fires raging in both her eyes. "If you help me, I will let you two be freed from this cell. But do not ever THINK about going back to your own world! The amount of magical aptitude you two displayed was exceptional; after all, I could do with a few highly proficient commanders in my army. And there is no way I will let talent slip away just like that!"

"Well, now that you mentioned it...being a leader in your army sounds good...reminds me of my good old days commanding my village until a certain pony stepped in to interfere with my plans," Starlight mused, turning towards Twilight.

"WHAT! Starlight, what are you doing?" Twilight shot back in a beat, rolling her eyes at the sudden betrayal of her eternal 'friend' that she made minutes ago. "What about our agreement?"

Starlight's mouth widened to accept the terms stated by Nightmare Moon, but she felt that there was an eye peering into the depths of her soul, freezing her dry lips in place. Turning around uncomfortably, cold sweat seemed to drip off the sides of her brow, as her eyes met the sturdy glare from Twilight at the other corner of the prison. The two locked eyes for several long moments, both desperately trying to read each other's true intentions.

Twilight was trying hard to decipher Starlight's body language, but she could not help but ponder, did Starlight really mean what she said just then? It sounded terribly heartbreaking to Twilight, especially after all they have went through together. Or was it...

"Twilight, we have no choice," Starlight explained, trying to defend her decision. "I have to take responsibility for what I did. At least we can start out anew with a clean slate here to work on and live out the rest of our lives."

"No!" Twilight vehemently disagreed, shaking her head profusely at Starlight's offer of assistance. "If you help Nightmare Moon, imagine what will happen to everypony else...and us? And I thought we agreed to let bygones be bygones!"

"No, Twilight, you don't understand. We can't do nothing!" Starlight responded hurriedly. "We can't just stay here! If Nightmare Moon allows us to be free, at least in this world, even under her charge, I would do it!"

"HAHA!" Nightmare Moon crackled in laughter at the exchange, with her eyes tightly closed shut. Deducing that the duo's relationship was fractured from the start, she believed that she managed to skillfully turn the two against each other by offering them a chance to give them their freedom. Now, she would be able to rule over them by the classic strategy of divide and conquer, which would be so much simpler than otherwise.

However, unbeknownst to Nightmare Moon, having been distracted by her constant laughter, failed to notice the otherwise clearly visible wink that Starlight gave. Realising what was up, Twilight's formerly strained face that had the anger of Starlight's betrayal written all over it suddenly evaporated.

"Well, you know what? Fine," Twilight relented weakly, interrupting Nightmare Moon's laughter.

Twilight's disheartened face met the floor, her head bowing down to signal apparent resignation, as she did not want to watch the proceedings anymore.

Raising an eyebrow, Nightmare Moon wondered how Starlight could have convinced Twilight so easily despite their previously strained relationship. Based on everything they had discussed prior, this was not supposed to happen.

"Could this be a ploy for them to escape together, out of my clutches?" Nightmare Moon silently thought to herself, her sixth sense raising a big red flag in her mind. "I must be alert, in case they are up to playing tricks on me to escape. But for now, if I can still extract the knowledge I require, they are...expendable."

"Excellent...now tell me, how do you travel through time?" Nightmare Moon interrogated after a short pause, trotting forward towards Starlight Glimmer's solitary confinement cell, prompting her to begin her lecture on the topic. "And if you dare lie to me...I will have you two executed on the spot. Do you understand me?"

To that, Starlight could only solemnly nod her head in resigned acceptance.

Before a perturbed Starlight could open her shaking mouth to speak, Nightmare Moon turned back to call for her royal scribe who rushed out from the entrance, her mouth gripping tightly onto a fine quilt. She then gestured Starlight to continue with a wave of her hoof. As a nervous Starlight spoke, the scribe began noting down every word uttered by her in excruciating detail, her quilt dancing around frantically onto the high quality paper.

"So...the scroll was destroyed," Nightmare Moon spoke with waning interest. Understanding that the lack of the scroll would render her knowledge of time travel virtually useless, her mind clicked into high gear to ponder about how to obtain another copy of this scroll.

"Yes," Starlight concurred with Nightmare Moon's observation, before placing her hoof on her chin. "But actually..."

"But what?" Nightmare Moon interjected swiftly, cutting off Starlight's statement. She gazed at the annoyed Starlight whose chain of thought was unceremoniously shattered by Nightmare Moon's impatience. Frowning deeply in concentration, Starlight was thinking silently in the corner of her jail cell. In the long bout of silence, Nightmare Moon waited in anticipation for any response from her prisoner. She trotted around constantly around the perimeter of her cell, the clopping of her hooves obstructing the chain of thought in Starlight's head, prolonging the conclusion that she surely wanted to hear.

"But...since that scroll was written far into the past, even before the time we two have travelled to prior, I have reason to believe that another copy of this unmodified scroll exists in this world!" Starlight spoke excitedly, as she had a sudden light bulb moment when her initially scattered thoughts were linked up in a moment.

"Really?" Nightmare Moon exclaimed with joy, her eyes lighting up with reinvigorated hope and interest. "And you will modify the spell for me to travel through other timelines to conceal the Elements of Harmony so that they will never be found! The night will last...FOREVER!"

The sudden outburst from Nightmare Moon jerked Twilight from her trance into nothingness to shuddering into understandable fear of the implications of Starlight's actions, if not executed properly. Deep in Twilight's heart, she was praying, hoping that whatever Starlight was doing would lead them out of this mess and preferably back to their world intact.

"If you want...I can bring you to the library to show you the location of the scroll," Starlight innocently replied, trying her hardest to make total eye contact with Nightmare Moon.

"Nice try," Nightmare Moon responded without any hesitation whatsoever, with the slightest slither of a smile emerging from her face. "I knew this was a ploy to trick me into letting you out of your cell to attempt an escape, is it not?"

"Of course not!" Starlight proclaimed loudly as her eyes blinked, betraying the words she spoke at that very instant. She could feel her heart racing at an accelerating rate as sweat dripped down to moisten her mane.

Observing from her cell, Twilight had to fight her instinctive urge to bring her hoof up to the surface of her forehead. She sighed as softly as she could, ensuring to keep her reaction to the turn of events a secret to Nightmare Moon, whilst they were still having their conversation. She could not believe that Starlight thought that the supreme ruler of this world would fall for such an amateur trick in the book. Surely, Starlight had a better plan than that?

"Good," Nightmare Moon said, nodding slightly, with a smirk on her face. "Now tell me the location of the scroll in the library now!"

After swallowing her saliva that was stuck in her throat, Starlight began to describe to Nightmare Moon the location of the scroll in the library archives, including the appropriate colour code that she memorised by heart.

"I see...now, with this knowledge I must leave with haste to extract the scroll I desire," Nightmare Moon spoke immediately after Starlight stopped. "Now stay put! I will bring the scroll to you for your necessary modifications."

Pushing open the reinforced door with her hooves, Nightmare Moon trotted out of the prison with her scribe, who gripped onto the notes she wrote between her teeth. As the heavy door slammed back down into place, the fires that illuminated the prison were suddenly smothered, plunging the prison back into complete darkness.

"Starlight, what were you doing?" Twilight exclaimed, as she questioned whether Starlight was capable enough to allow them to slip out to escape from their cells by dangling the chance of time travel to Nightmare Moon. "You just gave away virtually all of our bargaining chips for our survival! And you actually thought that Nightmare Moon would fall for that?"

"Don't worry, Twilight," Starlight responded confidently, though she could feel a lump developing in her throat. "I have not reveal-"

"Shh!" Twilight silenced Starlight, her voice slicing through the moist air in the prison, to bring Starlight's speech to a halt. Turning her head around carefully, her ears were on high alert to pick up any slight noise from their surroundings. Twilight prayed that no pony was out there in the darkness listening into their private conversation. After all, Starlight's big mouth could potentially cost them their freedom, forever.

A feeble groan of acknowledgement was all a stunned Starlight could muster from her vocal cords, bringing the serenity of absolute silence back into the prison, much to Twilight's relief.

Time passed. Being blind, disorientated and famished, the two laid low onto the ground to wait for the impending action that they knew would come. However, in the emptiness of black, the two prisoners had no true grasp of the length of time that has passed. Having been trapped for an infinite amount of time, does time have any meaning beyond a mere construct of their perception?

Yet, only time will tell.