For a thousand years I’ve waited here for you,
Waiting every night, for I thought you were
The answer to my life.

The stone was gritty beneath Twilight’s coat. Rough-hewn flagstones pressed into her bones and ground against her hooves as they twitched in the last reverie of sleep. The fine coat of dust on which Twilight now lay offered no cushion against the cold marble; she disturbed it as she stirred, forming an angel on the ground.

She took a breath idly: the air was ancient and stale. A draught washed over the floor before her muzzle, exposing the esoteric runes faintly chiselled into its surface. The action raised a cloud of silt before her nostrils, which she swiftly inhaled in her next breath. It flew past her sinuses and coated the tissue of her throat.

Twilight’s mind was lit with a flare of primordial instinct. Coarse wheezing gave way to thick, wet coughs as reason stumbled to the forefront of her consciousness. She sat up blindly, frantically. Her hooves skipped through the dust, kicking up more clouds. The air around her was choked with a great, billowing mass. It would have obscured her surroundings had her eyes not remained clamped shut. As her airways were flooded with dust, Twilight had no choice but to continue coughing vigorously, her breaths heaving through the murk.

Her exertions gave impetus to the yet still air. The first living current in an age propagated outward through the stagnant atmosphere. Motes of dust which had long lain dormant were lifted by the first updraught in centuries. The air rebounded off of unseen walls and circulated back to Twilight. It carried no scent, only the sterile essence of a fossil.

Twilight spent a long while coughing into the ground; far longer, it felt, than was reasonable. Had she only a little glass of water, then maybe she would have had an easier time of it. As it was, a good deal of the little moisture which was present in her body was expelled along with the dust that clung to her sinuses.

She began to notice the aches in her joints and the stiffness of her limbs. Twilight must have passed out during a late night study session, yes, and overslept in a heap on the library floor. Then again, she didn’t think the library floor was nearly this hard. For how long had she been asleep? Not to mention, Spike would never have allowed the library to accumulate this much dirt. Where was Spike? He should have been up by now, ready to bring her some water, and a toothbrush too. There were too many questions at hoof, and Twilight was currently in no position to gather information as long as the air remained flushed with dust.

But eventually, the last squall settled, and the floor was flecked with phlegm-soaked silt, and Twilight opened her eyes.

Her view was immediately filled with thin, faded light, quite the opposite of a sunny morning in the library. The sight before her was certainly not the Golden Oak Library; in fact, it didn’t seem to be any place with which Twilight was at all familiar.

Twilight found herself in a large, circular chamber of pale stone, almost like the penthouse of a castle spire in Canterlot. It was sparsely decorated; there were no windows, and the floor was bare. Any and all comforts had presumably been stripped away long ago, or else had never been present in the first place.

Cold light poured in from the opposite side of the chamber: a large portion of the upper wall and ceiling had crumbled away, revealing a featureless white void beyond. A thin mist filled the room; shafts of light slanted through it to illuminate the central space where Twilight sat. Before her, at the centre of the room, stood only a squat stone pedestal. It seemed to kneel low before the light, its offering absent. Other than that, the room seemed to be empty.

The architecture of the chamber was distinctly classical, Twilight noted; like a temple of antiquity, devoted to a forgotten power. She could imagine an order of ancient priests raising their hooves in supplication in a ring around the chamber, lifting their voices in a sombre hymn. Whether this was the chamber’s true purpose, though, was uncertain.

It was an ethereal sight, all in all. The presence of light suggested to Twilight that she wasn’t deep underground, but large ruins like these on the surface would have been discovered and thoroughly excavated, had they been anywhere near an inhabited town. The light glancing off the suspended dust imparted a sense of serenity to the chamber, preserved peacefully through the ages. The only movement was that of infinitesimal particles swirling in the air, spurred by her slightest breaths.

Twilight scanned over the floor around her. Silt lay in a continuous sheet, bereft of hoofprints. Glancing behind her, she saw a narrow oaken door reinforced with iron bars. This seemed to be the only entrance to the room, but the layer of dust at its base lay undisturbed as well. Twilight seemed to have been deposited from the aether exactly where she sat.

The state of the chamber certainly intrigued Twilight; such well-preserved ruins were unusually rare, and highly prized by the archaeological circles in Canterlot. The lack of valuables seemed to indicate that the site had been deliberately abandoned, but there was still a wealth of architectural knowledge to be gleaned of whatever ancient civilisation had once existed here. The method by which Twilight had warped from the library certainly warranted investigation, too. It wasn’t every day that a pony awoke in a heretofore unknown ruin. The magic that had brought her here must have been quite ingenious, to summon her from Ponyville and bring her an indeterminate distance away, all while she slept obliviously.

Before any of this, though, Twilight needed to get home and refresh herself. Stone slabs don’t make for a very good bed; her legs felt like they hadn’t moved in weeks. Twilight also knew her appetite would wake up soon, several beats behind the rest of her, so breakfast was a necessity. Her mind was still foggy, but some coffee would remedy that soon enough. Yes, it was better that she prepare before a long day of archaeological investigation.

She hopped up, cheerfully trotted to the door as her head filled with new theories on ancient civilisations. She took the knob in her magic, and pulled.

The door didn’t move.

Frustration briefly passed over Twilight’s face, but she quickly broke into an exasperated smile, shook her head, and pushed.

The door didn’t move.

Frustration passed over Twilight’s face once again, and settled in a small frown. She tried turning the knob – although modern Equestrian door knobs don’t turn, sophisticated latching mechanisms had been discovered inside the doors of ancient cities – and tried to open the door again.

Once more, it didn’t move.

Twilight forwent her magic, and used her hooves to grip the knob. It didn’t yield. She searched the door for a lock. There was none, at least on this side of it. She checked for hidden buttons, levers, any weakness at all. None presented itself. No magic spells she tried worked, either. In fact, her magic even felt duller than she was accustomed to. Angered, she even tried to buck the door down, but her hooves rebounded off the iron reinforcements with a clatter.

Thwarted again, Twilight took a moment to ease her aching hooves and scowled at the door. She consigned herself to scour it at length for any possible message or magic sigil. She was an intelligent pony, after all, and needed to use her brain to her advantage. Could there be any possible hint as to an exit?

On closer inspection, there were scratch marks on the wood facing the interior of the room. They ran quite long and deep; obviously created by powerful attacks. It seemed that some other creature had attempted to force its way out of the door, meeting as little success as Twilight had. What worried Twilight slightly was that many of the iron bars were scored as well, gashes cut as deep into the metal as into the wood.

After some minutes – she couldn’t quite tell how many – she relented her search. Nothing she could do at the moment would so much as budge the door. She sat back on her hocks to ponder her situation.

Nopony knew where she was, or what had happened to her. She was trapped in an abandoned ruin, far from any known settlement. Without any food or water, no less. There was no trace of the magic which had brought her there, and her own magic already felt slightly fatigued. This was the worst nightmare of any survivalist pony, and Twilight didn’t feel very perturbed at all.

Despite the seeming gravity of the situation, though, the locked door didn’t seem too great of an obstacle to Twilight. The characters in her books always managed to escape from any predicament; why would she be any different? There must be a way out; she just needed to get her bearings on the situation. To that end, it looked like her archaeological study had been moved up her schedule.

Twilight shook her head and turned to have a better examination of the room. Shadows loomed in great pillars around the room, pressed to the wall in a silent salute as the honour guard to the lone altar in the central pool of light. As she scanned between the legs of these intangible sentries, a lumped shape in the gloom caught her eye.

Nestled within a veil of shadow was a solitary writing desk, small enough to be carried by a single pony. The design was spartan, without any drawers; a single hardwood plank supported on four spindly iron legs. It was shoved against the wall so that its front pointed toward the centre of the chamber without obstruction. And slumped over the desk, facing Twilight, was the form of a pony, cloaked in rough canvas.

Twilight was a mere ten feet away before she knew where she stood. She trod lightly on her hooves, wary of rousing the dormant pony from its slumber. There were some miscellaneous papers pinned under the figure, seemingly blank. Dust laid thickly over the cloak, like snowfall over a tiny range. Twilight hardly considered how a pony could have even been present in the room to begin with, or why it hadn’t made any motion until now.

She made to greet the figure and lowered her head. Off-white flashed from underneath the hood, and Twilight’s words died in her throat. Her stomach dropped in her barrel as she risked a glance past the rumpled shroud to the figure’s face.

Yes, indeed. It was a skeleton.

Have you ever come across the bloated corpse of a fish washed up on the riverside, with its dull eye staring up at you? Or the remains of a squirrel, broken under the wheel of a cart, its half-dry blood kneaded into the packed earth of the street under careless hooves? There’s a certain sense of vertigo that such proximity to death brings out. The really distinct thing is that one never truly comprehends death until it is six feet before them; the sheer palpability of it takes on an entirely different dimension than any description that can be found in a book. Likewise, Twilight, though well-acquainted with accounts of the most gruesome cadavers any horror writer could ever devise, found this static and sterile skeleton to be uniquely repulsive.

The firm shell of psychological coping mechanisms which Twilight had been maintaining gained its first real, indisputable crack. She begrudgingly admitted to herself that she was, quite frankly, disturbed. There had been nothing to save this pony before her. Twilight took a moment to compose herself, closing her eyes and drawing in a deep breath through her nose.

There was no scent of rotting flesh. No marrow remained to release the pungent stink of decay. The bones were totally inert, ash devoid of potential. They were mere relics, no different to a pottery shard or discarded arrowhead. Twilight would be able to view things analytically.

She attempted to lift the cloak covering the skeleton. Curiously, her magic had no apparent effect; not the slightest ripple of cloth was visible, and the aura of the levitation spell was hardly more apparent than a candle flame in sunlight. This didn’t mean that the spell was effortless to maintain. On the contrary, Twilight felt as though she were trying to open the locked door to the chamber all over again. She pushed herself with far more strength than should have been necessary, frustration only further driving her to careless exertion. As before, she relented and went to use her hooves to lift the hood, which yielded itself unexpectedly to physical touch.

The cloth seemed to cling to Twilight’s hooves as though by static electricity, eagerly springing to the caress of a living being. It was already unnaturally distressing to touch, creating a nauseating sensation of vertigo; Twilight practically shook it free of her hooves. As she did, Twilight could nearly hear a faint scratching, imperceptible until then, suddenly cease. The skull underneath the dusty cloth bore no distinguishing marks, other than the narrow horn rising sharply from its forehead toward the vacant altar at the centre of the room. Following its gaze, Twilight could see the toppled form of a large bird cage resting on the floor, obscured from the door by the altar.

Making a mental note, she moved to shift the skeleton off of the writing surface of the desk. The cloak kept its ancient bones bound together well enough to move as one, though fleeting contact of Twilight’s forehoof with the smooth surface of the skull produced an even more intense sensation of unease, almost as if some energy were pressing into Twilight’s brain and forcing her to perceive it. The scratching noise resumed briefly, rapidly grating at her ears for as long as she remained in contact with the skull. It increased in speed until the noises began to coalesce, ever softly, into the barest susurrus of spoken words. It came as a relief when the skeleton finally pitched to its side on the desk, leaving the papers resting below it in silence.

They had appeared blank at first, but closer inspection revealed a looping patchwork of dry gullies and creases, the impressions left by pen strokes on preceding pages in the stack. These preceding pages were now apparently lost, as nothing, not even a pen or inkwell, lay around the desk. Twilight was invigorated at the prospect of reading an ancient manuscript and eagerly moved to the central pool of light to decipher it, leaving the skeleton to leer after her from the shadows.

The pedestal seemed to have held the tall, austere bird cage which now lay overturned on the floor. Its silver bars were narrow but closely spaced; the fall had apparently knocked the door ajar and it rested loosely on its hinges. The cage’s base left a circular area barren of dust on the pedestal, where Twilight now spread the blank pages of the manuscript. She spent a while in the pale light there, leaning her hooves on the pedestal as she worked to decrypt the text.

The language turned out to be a fairly simple variety of Middle Ponish, though not without its fair share of archaic ligatures and abbreviations. Twilight worked at a steady pace, scrawling shorthoof notes in the silt at the edges of the pedestal, and spreading out to the floor when she ran out of space. Interestingly, what appeared to be pressed copies of the text of other pages turned out to be original, as though a dry nib had been roughly drawn across the page. Twilight wondered if there had been a shortage of ink when the pages were first inscribed.

A subtle scratching sound began once again to scrape at the edge of Twilight’s perception. It was unbidden and, like before, nearly undetectable, as if the sound bypassed her ears entirely and resonated directly with her brain. It didn’t seem to propagate through any physical space; rather, it wound through higher dimensions inaudibly, like a stream disappearing beneath a hill only to re-emerge miles away. Twilight felt intuitively that the spring of said stream lay seated at the writing desk. She shifted her orientation around the altar to the opposite side, facing the dreadful thing in its cloak. Its eye sockets were exposed, barren, and silently watching her. She shook her head and tried to regain focus; the only words it could possibly communicate were there on the stonework before her.

It didn’t take long until Twilight had translated as much as she could, the words held tenuously in her head if not marked out by hoof in the dirt. Her senses had been dulled by the static light and still air; there hadn’t been any way to measure the passage of time except by the drying of her eyes. Most of the manuscript consisted of scattered fragments and half-finished thoughts, meaningless without context. Twilight was left with a fairly modest sum of useful text, appearing to be some kind of observational log or report:

The cage has been sealed. It is contained. We are alone, together at last.

It has awoken at this point, and is investigating the cage. The bars are many, but not impregnable. This prison was built to contain great power. It possesses great power, perhaps greater; its escape would spell disaster. It must be contained.

I am bound to my position indefinitely. There is no way for me to reach the outside by my own might; this place has been made into a prison for two.

It can see me, but does not know I am watching. I must hold my tongue.

At this point, there has been no risk of escape. The prison is assuredly strong; I have seen that tested first-hoof. I will continue to watch for signs of potential.

Twilight glanced down at the empty bird cage, tucked halfway into the shadow of the altar. If any creature had been imprisoned within it, it was long-gone now. The latch on the door was broken, though she couldn’t tell if this was due to a fall or a blow from inside the cage. Twilight looked more closely at the interior, searching for remnants of organic life. She found no discarded bits of food, bones, or traces of waste. In fact, there weren’t even basic provisions for water or bedding; the cage was entirely bare. Whatever had been contained within must have been a being of pure magic, extremely rare and exceptionally powerful.

Twilight was at once chilled to think that such a creature had evidently escaped confinement, and glad that she was so far removed from the event. The observation log had been maddeningly vague about what the creature actually was, but there simply wasn’t more information to be found in the room. And fortunately, Twilight thought, if such a creature had broken free of not only the cage, but the chamber, it must have left some hole through which she could exit as well.

She was heartened at this, and turned to the obvious location: the hole left in the ceiling of the room. Cold light poured in a constant stream from the pale void outside, filtering through a slight haze that had begun to form. It was a plain route of egress, she declared out loud, and even if she couldn’t immediately escape, she’d be able to gather some information about the surrounding area.

Twilight leapt to her hooves, stumbling slightly. Her joints felt oddly stiff, as if she’d been sitting in place for hours. For how long had she been sitting? Long enough for subtle changes to diffuse throughout the chamber. The air had gained a degree of moisture, and the silt that filled the room lay more heavily, not easily stirred by clicking hooves or errant breaths. The fine dust that stained Twilight’s coat began to adhere all the more tightly to her skin. The air wasn’t any clearer for the increased humidity; Twilight still found it slightly wearisome to breathe, though long nights in dank library basements had made her lungs resilient enough to musty air not to be perturbed.

Twilight shambled to the base of the wall beneath the hole, trying to loosen her limbs of their fatigue. Curiously, only a small amount of rubble lay inside the chamber beneath the opening; it wasn’t nearly enough to make up the ruined section. A good deal of it must have been expelled outwards, blown through by some great force. Twilight climbed atop several blocks which had fallen down to rest in a sparse arrangement at the base of the wall, directly under the hole. If she could get up high enough to get a look out, then she might be able to find an escape, or perhaps a trail left behind by the mysterious prisoner.

Twilight lacked the wings of a pegasus pony, but was capable of strong enough levitation to lift her own body. On a good day, at least. The activity was not unlike pulling oneself over a bar by one’s own hooves, or a pegasus performing a wing-up. Twilight’s magic was skillful, yes, but she wasn’t known to be the most athletic pony in Ponyville. She filled her lungs with musty air and began the ascent.

The process of lifting herself nearly to the ceiling was exhausting. The first few inches above the ground were steady going, but by the time she neared the top, only the fear of a fall into the broken rubble below her kept her horn from winking out.

Eventually, Twilight made it to the top, hooked her hooves around the edge of the crumbled stonework, and peered out into the expanse of fog. From her vantage, the external walls of the chamber sloped down into a luminous abyss. Veils of grey mist were layered infinitely deep, each fluorescing under some pervasive, invisible energy, reflecting it from a higher reality down to a plane perceptible to Twilight. The only motion in the void was a slow, constant churn of vapour, forever trapped in century-long cycles. It looked for all the world like Twilight had left Equestria entirely.

The constant, matte light would have obscured the celestial bodies had they been present. However, Twilight could feel in her unicorn soul not the faintest connection to the heavens, the sublime fount of her race’s inner spirit. She realised now that this was the cause of her magical weakness; without the celestial bond, a unicorn’s magic could not be replenished. This problem was hardly considered by the vast majority of unicorns, as they typically spent their entire lives directly beneath the sun, moon, or stars. Twilight was in no such position now.

The grim realisation wore on Twilight’s psyche, now fraying dangerously. Although she had been maintaining a hopeful delusion, it was now abundantly clear that her prison was entirely severed from the rest of the known world. Her mind began to spiral with a crush of ideas, a vortex thickened with the opaque whorls of panic as the mist seeped ever deeper into her ears. She had nearly lifted herself onto the outer surface of the chamber, moving her limbs by pure instinct, when a sharp whisper pierced the back of her skull.

Twilight turned with a start to the direction of the sound, unthinking, her muzzle halting at the figure seated on the chamber floor far below. It, too, had its muzzle raised, with its hollow eye sockets fixed directly on hers. The skeleton held itself there, snout raised, posing a silent question. Twilight didn’t have a moment to react before a cold gust of air blew from the outside, casting her tumbling down back into the chamber with a yelp of surprise.

She landed in a heap in the dirt. The mist filling the room had thickened and now laid itself across every surface as a chilly dew. Damp grit continued to cover Twilight’s hooves with indelible stains; it stung her eyes as she futilely rubbed them clear. She got some on her tongue and swallowed it, choking as it slowly passed down. It didn’t occur to her to clean herself by magic.

The peculiar scratching sound in her ears gradually faded. Once the shock of a hard landing had settled out of her mind’s eye, Twilight snapped her head up to look at the skeleton. It remained dormant, head lowered on its desk, staring at the centre of the room as it presumably had for centuries. Twilight’s left eye twitched, clearing away some grime. She disregarded what were clearly paranoid hallucinations and sought refuge in cold empiricism. There must have been some evidence she missed in the papers, surely. There must be some clue to escape, or else there wouldn’t have been any point in keeping a log in the first place.

She approached the central pedestal, warily orienting her body toward the dead thing the whole way. The room was silent, save for the awkward side-shuffle of hooves on stone. Upon reaching the centre, Twilight immediately set upon the scattering of loose pages, ravenously searching for new information. The scholar in Twilight had managed to keep a cool head at the centre of the maelstrom, insisting that she had already gleaned every meaningful scrap from the text like she had so many articles, treatises, and tomes back in school. However, that voice of hers was by this point so quiet that it came as no surprise when the text of the papers showed themselves entirely changed. For one thing, the lines were narrowly inked.

It has remained here with me for some time. There have been several escape attempts; none have shown promise. It possesses enough power to leave, but lacks the wisdom to use it. Nonetheless, it presents a clear danger to my prospects. If left alone, it will eventually learn to break the prison’s bars, and I will be left helpless.

The cage is designed in such a way that a breach of energy will trigger an emergency seal. I can delay it long enough to be caught by the seal, even if it breaches containment on its own. If I am trapped with it, it will be my end.

My plan at present is to use its power to allow myself to escape, leaving it sealed behind me. It will be a difficult feat, but it is the only way for me to survive. It must not learn the truth.

The one to escape must be me.

The last word was inked more heavily than the preceding lines, and the impressed channel in the paper was drawn more deeply. Twilight fixed upon this simple betrayal of emotion and fought back the tide of . Clearly the supposed warden — or guard, perhaps — had been unsuccessful, as he now sat eternally at his post, while the bird cage lay abandoned on the ground. Twilight looked over the lustrous silver bars of the cage, misted over with condensation. The haze was constantly thickening, gathering lazily around Twilight’s horn in concentric swirls and spilling out over her mane in a diffuse mass. It weaved easily between the bars of the cage, unperturbed by whatever charm had long since broken.

Twilight pulled herself to her hooves, keeping her mind floating above the mist as her body slowly drowned. She had gathered plenty of evidence, she reasoned. There was just a simple connection she was missing, waiting for the right ideas to spark together. It would not be brute magical force that would save her, but intellect. She breathed, taking up the fog through her nostrils, opening her sinuses, to where it flooded into her brain. A subtle force impelled her to turn her head toward the chamber door, still tightly shut. Twilight gazed at the door and waited for an epiphany:

If the door remained closed, apparently by the emergency seal, then wouldn’t the dangerous magical creature still be trapped somewhere in the chamber?

Twilight was mumbling this line of reasoning to herself when a pang of brain freeze struck her. She coughed sharply, expelling the cool, damp mist which by now pervaded the entire space. She stared at it in irritation, then puzzlement — since when was this place so damp? — before shuddering with chilly realisation. The magical force was already all around her, and knew exactly where she was. It was as omnipresent as the fog.

She raced to the door while conjuring a sputtering flame on her horn, trying to burn through the mist that now clung to her like a silken gown. The white veil had thickened, making the pale light that filtered down from the ceiling even more diffuse. It took her an unnaturally long time to arrive at the door, immediately searching the crossed iron bars for magical traces thrice as vigorously as her initial investigation. A gale picked up, raking at her coat and trying to pull her back. The air continued to cool, until the damp wind suffocated her horn’s light entirely. To Twilight’s horror, the repeated gusts of wind started to rake against the boards of the door, creating that same terrible scratching which had been haunting her.

She could feel by some deep intuition a hateful presence, one that was hostile to her very being. In her frenzied state of mind, she could almost make out a voice, hissing at her through the storm. She glanced behind her and saw, for a split second, the skeleton looking at her once more, dead eye sockets transfixed upon her figure. Then, an especially thick bank of mist rolled before it, and the corpse had its head laying on the desk once again.

Twilight yanked at the sealed door’s handle in a panic, again to no avail, before trudging back to the middle. Her rapid breaths were difficult to draw against the wind, which had already scattered the papers in a series of currents above her head. A cacophony of scratches and crowds of whispering voices overpowered her senses. As a last resort, Twilight ducked low and gathered scorching magical energy in her horn, channelling her fear as fuel. It wasn’t even close to the maximum extent of her ability, but a wide-area heat spell would give her temporary respite at the very least.

She released the pent-up energy with a crack, and a spherical shell of radiant gold raced outward from its epicentre at the tip of her horn. It washed over the room, burning through the mist and overwhelming the wind with a single, massive updraught. The edges of the manuscript papers smoked and charred as they fluttered down to the floor. The whole room was filled with the scent of a warm hearth, and no trace of the hostile presence was left.

Twilight had gained a brief measure of safety, and she intended to capitalise on it. She quickly gathered the papers in her magic to review them, and saw that the text had changed once more:

It has figured out that it is not alone. It knows I am here. I have made a miscalculation in revealing too much information. It will only be a matter of time before it breaks its bonds and dooms me.

There is still hope for escape. Subtlety is necessary; the only thing it can know is that the lock lies in the cage’s door itself. It must comply. It must do as I say. I need to get out. I

I will leave no more written records.

The ink was heavy, impassioned, desperate. The warden pony’s records were obtuse as always, but this newest message seemed to imply that something had gone awry with his plans. The creature had gained some insight that threatened him, putting him one step closer to death. He had to withdraw, somehow. And unfortunately, she doubted she’d be receiving more clues, as this was apparently the last record. She was pondering the situation when, suddenly, the truth of the situation became clear to Twilight.

The facts were laid bare to her, in that revelatory moment. The creature had broken free of the cage, whether alone or by some scheme of the warden’s. In either case, he had failed to control it and was forced to trap both of them inside. He had met his demise, and the mysterious force was left to prowl the ruins of the chamber, where it now threatened her. But, as the message said, not all hope was lost. The discarded cage held some kind of key, the path out of this place. The room was sealed when the cage was broken, so the seal may be released if the integrity of the cage were restored.

Twilight lifted the cage from its resting place on the ground and righted it on the pedestal with the little magic she retained. If her theory were correct, then restoring the lock should release the emergency seal on the door and allow Twilight passage out. Then, she could use a spell of her own to seal the monster in behind her. It was effectively a similar plan to the warden’s, but didn’t rely on the hubris that such a powerful creature could be outsmarted. She needed to move quickly, though; the heat spell was fading fast, and the fog would spill back into the chamber shortly. She doubted she had enough magic to cast another spell like it again.

But it should be easy enough, right? Just re-seal the cage door, and open the real one. She shakily grasped the thin metal frame in a magical aura, and swung it shut. The clasp was broken and wouldn’t close, so she quickly mended it. Twilight waited for some signal that she had done it correctly, maybe a chime or burst of energy, but none came. She paused for a while, and then ambled to the chamber door, dreading the worst.

Twilight almost didn’t pull the door handle; she knew it wouldn’t open. A half-hearted tug confirmed her suspicions. But she just didn’t know what else she could do. The chamber was nearly empty; every artifact was totally inanimate. She stumbled back to the cage and sat before it despondently.

Looking up, the cage was lit from behind by the window into the void. A lattice of black bars was interposed between Twilight and the light. It cast down upon her face, tracing over her body, running onto the floor to surround her. She stared up unblinkingly, perceiving the full form of the bars of her cage and raising no counter. What else was there to do?

She glanced down, once again, at the papers, hopeful for some new scrap of information. They remained identical, unchanged. Vapour poured down from the ceiling, washing through the bars of the cage. They were never going to contain it; how could they? The cage was nothing more than inert silver. A low whisper pierced the veil; she could feel it watching from a higher dimension. She whirled upon the skeleton seated at the edge of the room, the silent, uncaring observer.

“This is all your fault! You let it out! It killed you and now it’s gonna kill me!”

“I’m stuck, and you won’t tell me the way out!”

Twilight didn’t relent her stream of verbal abuse until her throat was hoarse, unleashing all the psychological tension and impotent frustration that had been piling on her back. Even after her lips were dry and tongue was sore, Twilight continued producing animalistic shrieks, channelling savage power through her body. It coalesced in her horn, where she flung a crackling magic bolt freely at the object of her vexation. She hardly comprehended the sight of the violet bolt of energy arcing through the air until it hit its mark. The skeleton burst apart into a shower of smouldering bones and glowing sparks of canvas.

The flash shocked Twilight back into some measure of lucidity, and she suddenly became aware of her own panting. The room had quieted and the air had cleared, save for a few quivering wisps of smoke; the mist was content to stalk its prey, at least for the time being. Twilight felt the trembling in her hooves and winced at how exhausting the use of magic had become. She stared at the remains of the pony who had been in exactly her position, whose remains she had just desecrated. Whose records had been trying to help her find a way out, until then. She turned and looked at the mess of papers at the centre of the room.

They were all totally blank. Twilight moaned and collapsed to the floor.

Twilight was tired. She felt as though weeks had passed, yet her surroundings remained frozen in a languid stasis. Yet there was no rest. A fundamental instinct kept some nerve hot, a charged line humming with chemical energy behind her ears, conveying an ancient sound only audible to that most primordial vestige of ancestral equinity. It was a kindred sensation to that of an ancestral pony gazing out of her cave to where the firelight couldn’t strain to reach. She didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, but the slightest odour of a lion’s breath wafted unceasingly from the dark. There was some presence in the air that kept Twilight awake, kept her mind pinned to the edge above the abyss of slumber. She wanted so desperately to cast herself over, tumbling into the dark.

What was the secret? What was the key? She dragged herself over to the skeleton’s desk and sat in front of it like a schoolfilly hoping for answers. The cage’s door squeaked behind her, but she gave it no notice. The mist whirled around her, but Twilight remained steadfast before the little pile of charred bones. She murmured an apology, and a prayer for the old pony to reveal one last insight. Just one little hint, and she could get the answer right, pass the test, and return home to her friends. She never meant to disrespect anypony. She lowered her ears, bowed her head, and waited.

The wind seemed to grow more frustrated with her, lashing its icy tendrils over her coat until a stiff layer of rime developed. It whipped around the room, pounding the door with a din of scratches. The murmur of an otherworldly voice hummed in her brain with a coarse vibrato, coaxing Twilight to succumb to it, that presence which had already claimed the life of its warden.

Twilight had long since lost the strength to erect a magical shield, but she still resolutely covered her face with her forehooves in defiance of the force animating the air. Eventually, the wind did slowly still, leaving infinitesimal ice crystals hanging in static, glittering clouds. A final gust dispelled some ash in the bone heap, revealing a torn corner of paper. It was roughly written, shredded with angry strokes that let thick blotches of ink bleed through the scrap.

IN THE CAGE

Whether the newfound piece of wisdom was simply a desperate hallucination, Twilight couldn’t tell. It was nevertheless one more possible lead in a situation nearly devoid of hope. The wind pushed at her back and the air cleared before her as she slowly shambled, for the final time, to the central pedestal and the cage resting atop it.

Her last grasp at reason was as follows: the seal was put in place when the power contained within the cage was released. It wasn’t enough to close the cage; the energy within needed to be replaced. Twilight wasn’t capable of forcing the malevolent being back into its prison. No, the only energy she had any more control over was her own magic.

This wasn’t as simple as channelling her magic into the cage, which she lacked the strength for regardless. She would need to shift the very kernel of her magic out of herself entirely, and place it in the cage. To essentially remove a piece of a unicorn’s soul was highly dangerous; what few written accounts existed were kept under lock and key, deep in the royal archives. But now, there were no other options.

The wind swung open the cage door before Twilight, and the whispers exhorted her to continue. Mist blew in a cyclone around Twilight, leaving her isolated in a calm eye at the centre. She had no distractions, nothing preventing her from carrying out the spell. She closed her eyes and started chanting the forbidden rite as the walls of the eye cycled faster and faster. Deep magic broke its intrinsic bonds and shifted within Twilight’s body. The external presence bore down heavily on Twilight, narrowing her focus. A piercing violet light broke through a point in her coat, growing in exponential intensity.

A shimmering, incandescent star passed out of Twilight’s chest and floated shakily toward the cage’s open door. A narrow thread of violet plasma trailed out of her, keeling her body connected by an umbilical cord to the star. Twilight’s knees buckled, but she remained standing, encouraged by the chorus of whispers in the air. Straining her eyes against the wind, she tracked the magical essence’s progress towards the cage. As soon as it crossed the threshold, the wind slammed the door shut, and the clasp latched securely. The cord connecting her to it was severed, and the aura around Twilight’s horn immediately winked out.

Almost at once, the wind relented. The air warmed and cleared once again, and every droplet of fog suddenly crystallised into stone, falling to the ground in a uniform sheet of dust. Twilight allowed herself to fall similarly in exhaustion. Her spirit was incredibly weak, but she was confident that the door should be open this time. What’s more, the dangerous magical presence had retreated, allowing her time for safe passage. Except, even with her magical perception greatly diminished, Twilight could still feel the presence of another being in the chamber with her.

On the far side of the room, at the edge of her vision, Twilight saw the debris of bone shards and burnt shreds of cloth slowly animate itself, taking form as the skeleton reassembled itself. Bones fused together, scars healed, and ash formed threads which wove themselves together into cloth. What was more, the desk collapsed into the same dust which coated the room. Dust swirled around the figure, accumulating over it as fresh layers of bone and fabric. The corpse shuddered in all its macabre glory, standing tall for the first time in centuries, before swinging its head around in Twilight’s direction. The vertebrae in its neck ground against each other, producing a whispering, scratching noise.

It took a trembling, scraping step towards her, then another. It was excruciatingly slow, but Twilight had not enough energy to even move her hooves in protest. Time seemed to warp, drawing out and rippling together as the skeleton progressed unsteadily. Finally, it halted with Twilight just before its hooves. It didn’t so much as look at her, but simply raised a hoof. Twilight trembled in anticipation, but no blow came. Rather, the corpse extended its hoof over her head, reaching out towards the glimmering cage that now contained her spirit.

Twilight couldn’t see it directly from her position on the ground, but saw the vivacious purple light reflecting off of every gleaming bone of the monster above her. The cage left a network of dark shadows against violet, until suddenly, the shadows vanished. At the first brush of bony hoof against silver, the cage collapsed into dust as the desk did before. This dust whirled and merged with the skeleton, leaving only a vibrant purple light. Twilight cringed as the monster took her essence in its hoof and drew it close to its muzzle.

Twilight’s throat was too dry to voice protest; she had no choice but to watch as the corpse turned and shuffled toward the exit of the chamber. It held the star in its hoof, growing further and fainter with every grating motion. As it reached the door of iron and wood, it extended a hoof again, at which point the entire assembly disintegrated into powder.

It revealed another, far more ornate door beneath it. This door was made of the same stonework as the rest of the chamber, inscribed with ancient runes and channels that emanated magical energy. It was like a vault door, with an empty star carved at its centre. The skeleton raised Twilight’s magic in its hoof and allowed its power to flow into the lock. Magical light flowed through every crevice in the vault, and it slowly slid open, revealing a passage beyond that quickly vanished into blackness.

The skeleton ambled slowly out of the chamber, not sparing even a glance backward at Twilight. The stone door slid shut once again, as the brief vision of freedom vanished from Twilight’s sight. The last glimpse she caught past the vault was of a deep purple glow, obscured by the figure’s dusty cloak.

Twilight lay defeated in the dirt, without even the energy for despair. She heard, at the edge of her consciousness, a faint alarm. It must have been the emergency seal activating at a breach in the prison, which she now realised encompassed the entire chamber. The bricks in the wall above the stone door loosened in their seats, before crumbling down to block the door in a heap. The runes which defined the door’s opening mechanism were shattered, sealing the chamber permanently.

The light from outside the roof gradually dimmed until the entire expanse was blacker than a starless night. The ambient temperature would likely begin to drop; Twilight already felt so cold. She was left sealed away, in deep, inky silence.

Author's Note

The idea for this fic came to me a couple months ago. I wrote the first third and lost the spark, procrastinating until I picked it up again this week (as of time of writing).

Inspired by Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" and a dream I had about Elden Ring. The opening lines are quoted from the song "Luna (Lucid Mode)" by Circuitfry and Cats Millionaire.