Every Night is a Night of Nightmares

Every Night is a Night of Nightmares

by the parasprite

Chapter 2: Sometimes, life hurts

Proofreading credz go to Kaidan and Skeeter the Lurker.

This chapter was more like 14,000 words, but I don't want to get into the habit of posting massive chapters like that all the time, so I'm just going to post the other half in a couple of days. The other half is the sexy tiem erotic drama and angst part.

“Why do they hate me?” Twilight shuddered as she stumbled along beside the much larger mare.

She’d remained pressed up against Nightmare’s side since they came back into the castle proper, terrified of what might happen if she left the alicorn’s safety. The enormous black wing was still draped over her like a feathery shield against the hatred that had been directed at her. Everything else—the halls, the guards, the sack-masked goons—seemed to blur together, as her mind had tuned them out.

“You’ve done something terrible, Twilight. And when you do terrible things, the world punishes you,” replied Nightmare calmly. “But don’t be afraid... They won’t hurt you, so long as you have my protection.”

“B-but I s-still don’t unders-stand what it is I d-did...”

Nightmare slowed to a stop and turned to look at the unicorn under her wing. “...You will in time, Twilight. You’ve had a terribly traumatizing experience, and I think it would be best for you not to think about it for now. It’ll only cause you more pain if you think about it. That isn’t something you want, is it? You don’t like to hurt yourself, do you?”

“N-no,” Twilight said, fidgeting nervously. “I-I just w-want to understand why... Y-you said my brother was a murderer... you said I was a bad pony... I’m j-just very c-confused... I don’t understand any of this... I didn’t d-do anything wrong...”

“I’ll tell you when you’re ready to know,” Nightmare promised her. She began moving again, and Twilight nearly tripped over herself keeping up.

“But—”

“But nothing. You are safe, and you are alive; be grateful for those things.”

Cringing, Twilight nodded and affixed her eyes to the floor for the rest of the walk, keeping her questions to herself.

They halted briefly in front of the doors to Princess Celestia’s—No, Twilight thought, Nightmare Moon’s—throne room, which opened without a word from the night goddess herself. Nightmare, regal as ever, trotted inside, with the disheveled lavender mare blundering along in her wake. Twilight still hid behind Nightmare’s wing, not wanting to face the malevolent stares of the gargoyles.

Two ponies wearing sacks for masks were waiting for them on either side of the throne. One was clearly Trixie, as evidenced by the powder-blue tail and the magic wand cutie mark. The other was an ivory unicorn mare with a bright pink mane and tail and three blue stars on each flank. The latter wore a uniform that reminded Twilight of Shining Armor’s, except that it was black and had a far more utilitarian aura. It was made of some shiny black material she had never seen before, but which looked organic and smelled bad even from where she was standing.*

“Unfortunately, I have important things to attend to,” said Nightmare. “As the ruler of Equestria, I am very busy and you have already wasted quite a bit of valuable time... You will, however, join me for dinner this evening. We shall speak then.”

“O-okay,” Twilight agreed, swallowing nervously. “W-what time?”

“When I am through holding court, I shall summon you.”

Nightmare glanced at the two masked unicorn mares. “These are Trixabelle—who you’ve met, of course... and and Twinkleshine, who I believe you’ve also met. They will take you to your new quarters in my royal apartments.”

Twilight’s eyes widened a little. She did indeed recognize the second name, and now the three blue stars on the uniformed mare’s ivory flank. It was jarring and strange to see somepony she knew at all—much less somepony she sat next to every day in class—working for Princess Celestia’s sworn enemy. Twinkleshine was staring at the wall to Twilight’s right, horn glowing faintly, as Twilight was reasonably certain it had been since she came into the throne room.

“Take her up to the Lunar chambers,” Nightmare said to the two. “Give her a decently sized room. Make sure she’s reasonably comfortable for the time being.”

Turning back to Twilight, the black alicorn said, “I expect you to be appropriately grateful toward me for this kindness, and to treat it as a gift and a treasure, not a chance to carry out a half-baked rebellion that will accomplish nothing but your own death.”

Feeling oddly like a schoolfilly being lectured by a teacher, Twilight just nodded dumbly. She was thankful that Nightmare Moon hadn’t had her killed; it showed that there was some good in the alicorn after all, however deeply buried. Maybe, if she stayed, she could help Nightmare understand why Princess Celestia needed to come back—Did Twilight want Princess Celestia back? She didn’t even know anymore—and to let go of the anger and jealousy that made her act this way.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I believe you’re a bit lacking in your enthusiasm, little nopony.”

Twilight sighed a weary sigh inside. “Thank you... Your Majesty.”

“And what are you thankful for?”

“Sparing me... from being k-killed... Your Majesty...” Twilight said in a tiny voice. Seeing that Nightmare was not yet satisfied, she stammered out, “A-and for... pardoning me... after my... my most heinous t-transgressions... against yourself... and the ponies of Equestria...?”

She wasn’t even sure where she was headed when she began speaking, or where she ended up when she finished, but it put an unpleasantly wide smile on Nightmare Moon’s face. It was the kind of smile a spider would wear while inviting a fly to come sit in its web.

“Very good, Twilight... Now, go to your room and wash up,” she said. “You’re filthy and revolting to look at, and I can stand the disgusting stench of your body no longer.”

Cringing and looking away in shame, Twilight nodded. “Yes... Your Majesty...”

“Go.”

Twilight turned the rest of her body awkwardly and allowed herself to be guided out of the throne room by the other two unicorns. Both of the others also remained silent, simply marching along beside her. Eyes fixed on the floor, Twilight didn’t look up until the carpet had ended and the gigantic doors were swinging shut behind them. They stopped here, ignored by the bat-pony guards.

“Twinkleshine?” asked Twilight softly, finally looking up at the other unicorn. She could now see the pins on her uniform: most had no meaning to her, but she recognized one as Nightmare’s cutie mark, and another as a pair of crossed crescent moons. “Why a-are y-you here...?”

“I’m part of the Saddle Assembly** now,” Twinkleshine replied. She still wasn’t looking at Twilight, and her horn still had a weak light glowing at the end of it. “Please hold still. We’re going to blindfold you.”

 “Why d-do you have to b-blindfold me? I know the c-castle like the back of my hoof...”

“It’s what we’re supposed to do. I have a job now, Twilight. I have to do my job. I’m a responsible pony now. I need to be responsible now.”

A strip of cloth slipped over Twilight’s face, blocking her vision. She slumped miserably and allowed either Twinkleshine or Trixie—she didn’t know which—to tie it behind her mane without further protest. Then she felt a pleasant vibrating sensation across several points on her body, which she guessed was one of them casting a healing spell to fix the damage done by the crowd outside.

“...not in school anymore,” murmured Twinkleshine, speaking as though she were continuing some unspoken thought from within her own mind. “Not playing games or anything... Doesn’t matter whose party anypony goes to anymore... not anymore. Just matters which ponies you cared about first. They follow you anywhere. They could get hurt... sometimes they get hurt by you. Sometimes life hurts.”

Twilight shied away from her former classmate’s rambling as much as she could, disturbed by it. This wasn’t the Twinkleshine she remembered—the Twinkleshine who wanted to do nothing but talk about colts and paint spirals on her horn with her friends; the empty-headed Twinkleshine who probably didn’t even know how to spell ‘responsibility’. This Twinkleshine was distant and nervous, but also paradoxically sounded more focused than Twilight had ever heard her.

The abrupt replacement of the vibrations with a somewhat familiar constriction around her neck signaled both the end of the healing spell and that one of the pair had leashed her with the spell from earlier. The lavender mare was tugged very hard to her left. She stumbled and almost fell at first, not expecting them to walk so quickly.

“...life hurts a lot, Twilight,” Twinkleshine finished.

“W-what are you t-talking about? What’s th-the matter w-with you, Twinkleshine?” whispered the lavender mare. She bumped into a wall and was violently jerked away from it.

“Nothing’s the matter with me. It’s you.”

“M-me?” Twilight stumbled over the first step of a staircase and was nearly dragged up it by Trixie. “What’s that m-mean?”

“It’s all you... always was. I know what you and Celestia did, Twilight. Everypony does. I know what you did. Were we not good enough for you? Is that why you never talked to us? We just wanted to be friends with you. Were we that far beneath you?”

“N-no, I just—I didn’t ha—I didn’t—I didn’t have t—”

Twilight was abruptly shoved face-first against something solid. She thought it was a wall until it gave way, and then realized it was actually a set of doors that one or both of the other unicorns had used her to push open. Her hooves were clomping irregularly against muffling dust now—she must have been in some old part of the castle that hadn’t been properly cleaned in years. Already, her allergies were starting to bother her: she sneezed, and would have wiped at her nose if she could have taken a moment.

They eventually halted after some time in this dusty region. Twilight heard keys clinking together, then one going into a lock and turning, and finally a door creaking open. She was led through the opening by Trixie, at which point the dusty floor became ordinary, unblemished wood and her hooves clopped normally again. The blindfold was untied and levitated away, letting light flood into Twilight’s world again. She blinked rapidly, adjusting to it, and then looked around.

The room they had entered was much smaller than the one Twilight had slept in as Princess Celestia’s personal student. There was only room for a bed, a chest of drawers, a table beside the bed, and a little shelf. One door led out into the hall—the one they had come through—and another, to the right, led to what she assumed was a bathroom, although it was closed. Each era’s additions to the castle had its own unique architectural style. This room, unfortunately—and probably the entire wing—was one that Twilight had never been in before, as she recognized neither the room itself nor the designs. It was a simple place; like a servant’s quarters, though a bit bigger; made from wood and filled with equally simple furniture.

Trixie was by the bed, looking inside a cloth bag on it, while Twinkleshine was sitting on her haunches near the door. Twinkleshine had removed her mask at some point during their journey, giving Twilight a much better look at her eyes—and revealing the cause of her vacant, unfocused gaze, which was still not aimed at anything. Her eyes, shot with reddish markings which gave them a rather disgusting appearance, clearly couldn’t see anything at all. It wasn’t hard to deduce that the still present glow from her horn was an imaging spell to magically scan her surroundings, since she could no longer see.

“Sh-she blinded you?” said Twilight, horrified. She glanced at the ever-silent Trixie, remembering the older unicorn’s writing spell and how she had said she knew firsthoof that it wasn’t a good idea to lie to Nightmare Moon.

“I gave up my sight,” Twinkleshine replied. In contrast to Twilight, she sounded calm and peaceful. “I gave it to Moondancer when she lost hers.”

“What? Why? How—”

“I gave it to her because she needed it. Friends do that kind of thing for one another, Twilight. She lost so much more than I did... I had to give her something! I know you remember the school’s ranking charts, because you cared whether you were better than everypony else at everything—”

“I-I-I d-didn’t—” Twilight backed up as Twinkleshine, staring eerily through her head with her unseeing eyes, approached her.

“—so maybe you remember I was always better at biologically based magic than most ponies who weren’t you. I can cast echolocation magic in my sleep now, and it wasn’t hard to learn. But poor Moondancer lost her horn to those awful rockets... lost half her beautiful coat... She was on fire, and it wouldn’t go out no matter what we cast on her! She was screaming for us to help her... it was so bright that it blinded her and she couldn’t see, and she was trying to find... water... and I couldn’t help her...

“She’s my friend... my friend...” the ivory unicorn said. Up close, Twilight could see the tears on her face. “We grew up together... We were going to go to... to... to Prance together and see the Neighffel tower, and get married to brothers so we could be sisters-in-law, and do amazing things together... And that’s why I gave her my sight. I gave her my sight so she could see Prance when we go there. Because Moondancer and I are friends. And friends do anything for each other... just to see each other smile again.”

Twinkleshine began backing away from Twilight; toward the door.

“...and that’s also why you should be afraid right now, Twilight,” she concluded, her tone growing very dark. “Because you don’t have any friends. You were too busy, or too arrogant, or too stupid to make any when you had the chance... chance after chance... and now you’re all alone. I... I’ll probably see you around—But I doubt we’ll ever be friends.”

She turned and opened the door smoothly, then slipped out, with only four parting words: “Have a nice night.”

Moments later, Trixie followed her. Trixie also stopped and turned to face Twilight, but didn’t write anything. All she did was regard the lavender unicorn with a pair of eyes which, despite the face they were set in being hidden, radiated a mixture of contempt, condescension, and superiority.

Then she, too, was gone, leaving the still filthy Twilight to stare at the locked door in shock.

After some time, Twilight found the presence of mind to think to distract herself from her own thoughts. It wasn’t something she was used to doing, but she wasn’t used to being dangled over rioting crowds and being lectured by mares she’d considered empty-headed ditzes, either. She quickly found a distraction in the form of the bag Trixie had been examining on the bed.

The bag, it turned out, contained a box with toiletry items—Twilight wondered vaguely if Nightmare had access to something similar to Spike’s dragonfire to have things sent places so fast, as they hadn’t stopped on the way up, but didn’t give it too much thought. There was also a plastic package with a note pinned to the front. Taking the note in her hooves, Twilight moved her eyes back and forth over it. It read:

I expect you to dress appropriately when you come to dinner. You will wear these, regardless of what you think of them, or there will be consequences.

-N

Confused, the unicorn opened the package on her teeth and slid its contents out onto the bed. What she found made her blush faintly: a black, lacy, gaudy saddle; the kind used to accentuate certain features; a pair of forehoof socks of the same colour, and a pair of fishnet stockings for the hind legs. It certainly wasn’t the sort of clothing one would ever call ‘appropriate’ for anything cultured at all. She put the clothing down, repulsed, and carefully slid the box of hygiene things onto her back so she could carry it into the bathroom.

She put the box on the floor next to the tub, then shut the door and removed her horseshoes, one by one; stacking them neatly near it. Then she headed for the toilet, because she’d had to pee rather badly for some time. Before she actually sat down, she sat and stared at the toilet for a while, remembering those horrible images that had been shown to her in Nightmare’s throne room and shuddering, suddenly paranoid that there was somepony watching her through a secret hole in the wall or with a magical camera.

She ended up spending a few minutes searching the bathroom for just those kinds of things: hidden peepholes, cameras, and even hollow spots in the walls where ponies might be able to hide and listen to her. Only when she was satisfied that she was completely alone did she sit down and relieve herself—and even then, she hunched forward as much as possible and crossed her forelegs over her front to hide the activity, worried against all reason that she was being watched.

There was a mirror in the bathroom, and in it Twilight got a good look at her appearance for the first time in weeks. Both her mane and tail were indeed filthy and matted, shining with grease and full of dirt, the hairs stuck together in stringy clumps in some places and sticking out at random in others. Her bloodshot eyes had huge bags under them, and her cheeks were caked with dirt except where her tears had created streaks. The rest of her body was no better; half-healed cuts and bruises marked where she’d been beaten by the bat-pony golems.

Carefully, the unicorn searched through the box until she found some soaps and shampoos. The soaps made her feel safe when she inhaled their scents; they smelled like warmth, and life, and happiness, and joy. They all had a recurring scent that was strangely familiar to her, but she couldn’t place exactly where it was she’d smelled it before.

The bathtub had a pegasus cloud up top that was connected to a dial on the wall—the best of both pegasus and unicorn technology, it seemed. After carefully laying out a white towel to avoid getting the floor wet, Twilight turned on the water and stepped in to let the heavenly hot water wash the filth from her body. After weeks without washing herself, the feeling was easily one of the best she’d ever known.

Cleaning the grime off her horn with unicorn soap was embarrassingly enjoyable—unicorn horns were extremely sensitive, so by the time she was done scrubbing it with her hooves, there was a distinct and rather powerful tingling sensation atop her head that she was usually careful to avoid. There was also the fact that because she was an extremely powerful unicorn, hers was more sensitive than most. She gave her horn a few excess rubs with her hooves before coming to her senses and moving on to her mane and tail.

The shampoo Nightmare had instructed her to use was very strong and very sweet-smelling, and it had something in it that reminded her of bananas, for some reason. Twilight was sure she’d smelled it before, but she didn’t know where. In any case, rubbing it into her scalp was so enjoyable that she actually let out a small sigh of delight. There were actually several things in the box whose purposes Twilight didn’t know, but she was able to find conditioner as well. Twilight got herself a brush and began to scrub the dirt and filth off her body, groaning in appreciation as she did.

She was not a particularly attractive unicorn, even after all the dirt was scrubbed away. The weeks in the dungeon hadn’t really done much for her body—she was actually small-framed, physically, but taking every course her school offered had left her little time to maintain a trim figure like most of her peers. Twilight wasn’t fat, by any means (she didn’t want to embarrass Princess Celestia by being unsightly), but she could have stood to lose a few pounds. Her belly was just a tiny bit more padded than the average unicorn’s; hardly noticeable to anypony but her, but still noticeable if one looked closely nonetheless. Twilight could only see her ribs if she sucked her stomach—she knew this because she had experimented with it in front of the mirror before.

Worst of all were her thighs, which were actually not too much bigger than most ponies’, but which felt huge to her. Like all mares, she had two nipples in about the same colour as her coat just below her stomach, and below these in turn was a small patch of softer lavender hair covering the outer lips of her vagina. Twilight spent a little too much time washing here as well, to her shame. She wasn’t a very sexual pony; not like some of her classmates; but she had just as many pleasure receptors in her marehood as any pony else.

Finally turning off the shower, she allowed herself to soak in the bath for a minute or two before getting out. When she passed by the mirror now, Twilight was a sopping pile of wet mane, coat, and tail with a horn poking out of the top. Since she’d scrubbed herself raw in the relatively short time she’d been in the shower, she no longer had any of the filth from before covering her, and finally felt clean again.

Twilight wrapped white towels around her mane and tail—ones for that specific purpose, of course—and torso, and trotted over to the box to get the toothbrush. For some reason, picking it up and looking at it made her feel like she had been bucked right in the stomach. It was a foal’s toothbrush; the kind made for unicorns too young to hold their brushes with magic; the kind that stuck to your hoof; the kind she hadn’t had to use since she was seven years old. The toothbrush had all kinds of silly designs of suns and smiley faces all over it, too—just like hers had when she was that age.

That she had to do things like an earth pony now was bad enough, but Nightmare had probably deliberately told whoever selected it to get her a foal’s brush because it was embarrassing and would make her feel insignificant. Still, it was a toothbrush, and Twilight’s mouth tasted disgusting after weeks of neglect—she wasn’t about to be picky over what kind of brush it was, in the end. She ran water on it, then opened the tube of toothpaste (which also had foalish, silly pictures all over it) and squeezed some of the mint-scented blue-white paste onto it.

At first, she was so preoccupied with ridding herself of the disgusting residue stuck to the inside of her mouth that she practically assaulted her teeth with the brush, not paying any attention to how it felt. Once she’d gone through several rounds of cleaning off the toothbrush and putting more toothpaste on it, though, she slowed down a bit to simply enjoy the feeling of being able to brush her teeth at all; something she was certain her filly self would have been horrified at the thought of. The gentle feeling of the bristles rubbing on her teeth was another marvelous feeling Twilight had taken for granted until her time away in the dungeon.

Soon, she had quite a lot of foam dribbling down her chin, so obsessively engrossed in cleaning her neglected teeth that she didn’t even bother to avoid making a mess. Only after several minutes did the unicorn finally notice the coating of foam on her face when she happened to glance in the mirror. Embarrassed, Twilight wiped some of the white stuff away and flicked it off her hoof into the sink. Then she leaned over and spat a large, gooey glob of used toothpaste into the sink; the result of her excessive application of the stuff in the beginning. Turning on the tap, the unicorn turned her head a bit and let a small stream of water drizzle into her mouth, so she could rinse it out and spit again a few more times.

She clipped her hooves and trimmed her fetlocks over the toilet. The scissors were the kind whose ends were blunted to prevent injury; the kind she’d used to cut construction paper in magic kindergarten—quietly, in the back of the room, with nopony looking at her if she could help it. Even the hoof clippers were made for earth ponies, not unicorns, although Twilight was aware that this was a necessity given the fact that she had a limiter.

Of all the things Nightmare had given her, it seemed she had randomly decided to provide an adult earth pony’s clippers instead of a unicorn foal’s. Twilight wondered if it was because there weren’t any available, or because she just wanted to insert some kind of irregularity into the pattern. Either way, the irrationality of it bugged her from the time she picked them up until the moment she put them down again.

Last of all, Twilight held up a silver horn file, blushing slightly as she looked over it. It was also one of the hoof-sticking ones for unicorn foals, and consequently it was a bit smaller than a normal file. Being given particular item was doubly embarrassing because of the extra insinuation it carried about her horn size—for many unicorns, especially Canterlot unicorns, the size of one’s horn was a very important issue indeed.

The lavender unicorn rubbed the last fog off the mirror over the sink and looked closely at her recently cleaned horn. The tip had grown out further than it should have been, and was starting to twist almost imperceptibly to obstruct the little groove where the spells came out of her horn, which would have prevented her from using magic even if she didn’t have the ring on.

Twilight ran the file gently over her horn, cringing as she did so—it was like learning to file it for the first time all over again, and with a file that was too small for her. She tried to distract herself from the discomfort by looking around the room, and eventually settled on reading the back of the plastic packaging the horn file had come in. It had a list of tips for fillies and colts about horn care in painfully bright marshmallow letters.

-ALWAYS remember to file your horn at least once a week!

-BE CAREFUL with your horn! Filing can be fun, but don’t over-do it!

-ALWAYS remember to get your parents’ permi

The rest of it was unreadable, as the package had crumpled up, but Twilight guessed it was probably something about asking before using magic, since using magic with an overgrown horn was dangerous.

At last, she looked down at the horn shavings in the sink, and turned on the tap to wash them away. Her horn was terribly sore, but she’d managed to reduce it to a crude approximation of its normal length and shape with the miniaturized file. The (likely inflamed) root within throbbed painfully each time her heart beat.

She removed the towel from her mane, which was now half-dry, and reached for the manebrush. To her utter annoyance, this, unlike everything else, was completely ordinary and did not stick to her hooves.

Irritated and frustrated by the inconsistency, Twilight struggled to pick the brush up in her two forehooves, and then she struggled even more to run it through her mane without dropping it. The awkward angle at which she had to turn her forelegs quickly became tiresome to maintain, so she had to take breaks every few strokes.

Her tail was much easier, as it was in a more reachable position, and as a result received more attention once she got to it. Brushing or simply smoothing out her tail was often a comforting activity to Twilight. Now, in particular, she put an excessive amount of time into it, sitting on the floor with her eyes closed and simply enjoying the sensation of the brush running through the hairs.

By the time Twilight actually came out of the bathroom, she was almost completely dried, though her hooves left damp prints behind her as she trotted. She stared at the saddle and hosiery on the bed, frowning, trying to decide what to do about it. They were certainly inappropriate for a mare with any modicum of self-respect to wear; that much was clear.

Had she been given a completely voluntary choice, the unicorn would have thrown them in the trash, where they belonged. But the note was right beside it; the underlined word consequences sticking out twice as visibly as all the others before it. Twilight shuddered as she wondered what, exactly, those consequences might be. Her imagination then began to run wild, until she put a stop to it, realizing that if she was going to stay alive, she was going to have to sacrifice her own dignity a bit.

She flipped the saddle over her back. It was quite heavy for such a lacy, decorative thing, but somehow it fit her perfectly, as if Nightmare had known her saddle size—which couldn’t have even been possible, as Twilight had never even been fitted for one. The surcingle*** was made of the same kind of material that Twinkleshine’s uniform had been made from: shiny, black, and unusually organic in feel, almost like hardened skin. It made her shiver a little from combined discomfort and the thrill of wearing something so risque. In another situation, such a thing would have made Twilight horny. Here and now, though, it just felt gaudy and indecent.

Because she didn’t have any magic, Twilight had to use her hooves to fasten around her middle, and this took quite some time and effort as she had hardly done anything dexterous with them since she was a foal and was even less coordinated here than she was when filing her horn and brushing her mane.

The foreleg socks were actually quite comfortable. They were made of a very soft material—Twilight hadn’t the faintest idea what, as she was practically fashion-blind—and went up to her elbows. Inside, there was elastic or something else stretchy, so they fit perfectly except for a short length at the top where it was just cloth and was a little too large. Twilight tried running her sock-clad hooves over her chest, and found she actually rather liked the sensation.

Last, she put on the stockings, which were the part of the outfit she liked the least. Never in a million years would Twilight have even thought about wearing anything like them of her own accord; except, maybe, on a very special night in the bedroom with her special somepony. They were fishnet stockings, which she’d seen once in a while on the legs of particularly unsavory-looking mares in Canterlot. Putting them on made Twilight feel filthy in a way that, under the circumstances, she didn’t like at all.

Her inability to use magic drew out the process of fastening the garters to an obscene length of time. After nearly ten minutes of trying to learn to use her hooves for something other than walking again, Twilight finally got them on. It made her feel a sense of triumph, which was quickly and brutally crushed when she connected it to the fact that she was rejoicing over having successfully dressed herself up like a streetwalker.

The unicorn went back into the bathroom to use the mirror again. She stepped back and leaned against the wall, sitting up to get as complete a look at her body as she could. The saddle and socks made actually didn’t look too bad on her, and it almost made her feel sexy. The contrast between the solid black on her upper body and the mesh pattern of the fishnets on her hind legs and plot, however, ruined that completely by making her look skimpy and half-naked; like she was missing some covering that should have been there on her lower body. Twilight felt exposed in these clothes, even though she was wearing more than she normally did—it seemed as if her tail had already been pulled up despite it being between her legs at the moment.

This was exactly kind of outfit her mother would have called a ‘skank suit’.

The unicorn backed out of the bathroom again and curled up on the bed. She was tired, and hungry, and felt ill, but didn’t know what to do about it. Escape was only just beginning to enter her mind again: she’d all but given up on getting out of the dungeon without help after so long in her cell, and it was taking some time for the hope of freedom to catch up to her again.

Twilight’s thoughts dwelt instead on everything that had happened—she was still avoiding thinking about the horror of the crowd outside the castle; of how they’d hurt her and how they’d condemned her when she’d done nothing. It intruded; assaulted her mind with the memories. Before she knew it, she was hugging her pillow and crying silently.

Make some friends, Twilight.

If Princess Celestia had just listened to her, Nightmare Moon wouldn’t have been able to take over so easily. She probably would have been stopped before she could even leave Ponyville, and everything would have stayed normal. As much as she hated the idea that the Princess was spying on her, Twilight soon realized that she was far angrier at her for having allowed everything to change so much. It was foalish and immature, but she would rather have continued on; oblivious, never knowing about any of Princess Celestia’s plans; than to cope with the pain of having it all revealed to her by the queen of a world she neither understood nor seemed to fit into.

Everything was different. It was like she’d walked into her cell and come out into an entirely different universe—one where ponies were evil on the inside instead of good. That Twinkleshine was working for Nightmare Moon still shocked her, as did the fact that the seemingly brainless party-instead-of-study unicorn was lecturing her about friendship and responsibility... Twinkleshine had clearly lost her mind, giving up her eyesight just so Moondancer could see Prance. It seemed like everypony, no matter how insane or unintelligent, was in the loop—except for her, and that was something she wasn’t used to at all. It bothered her greatly.

She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t notice the midnight-blue mist seeping under the door until it had flooded one side of the room and materialized into a likeness of Nightmare Moon’s face. When she saw the ethereal Nightmare gazing at her with its empty phantasmic eyes, Twilight started with a little scream.

“Good evening, Twilight,” said Nightmare curtly.

A long silence went by before Twilight realized that it wasn’t just a prerecorded message, and that it was waiting for her to respond.

“Good evening, Y-Your Majesty,” she recited.

“Come, Twilight... it’s time for dinner."

“O-okay... I mean, yes, Your Majesty.”

Nightmare’s eyes swept over Twilight’s body, and the latter mare felt like she was being x-rayed. Unconsciously, her tail moved to cover her flank, causing Nightmare to frown a little. “The room is four doors to your right and on the opposite side of the hall. I shall unlock your door for you. Don’t squander the good fortune you’ve come by thus far by making a pointless attempt to escape—All the other doors in my chambers are locked, and only I can open them if I want them to stay shut... which, at the moment, I do.”

The lock clicked open again, even as Twilight said, wearily, “Yes... Your Majesty... I won't try to get away,” and the door swung open on its own. The midnight mist dissolved and retreated through the opening, leaving Twilight to venture out into the hall on her own.

The corridor outside was cold and dark, lit only by a few torches on the walls. Twilight ventured a guess that the cold was due to the sun’s weakened state, and that the dark was simply because Nightmare wanted the hallway to look as eerie as possible. She hadn’t actually noticed the general drop in temperature until that point, having assumed that the rooms she was in were just colder than average, but it seemed that Equestria was starting to become quite cool because of the lost sunlight.

She trotted nervously down the large, wide hall, counting doors. There was nopony else with her in the wing except for Nightmare, which in itself was slightly disturbing; Twilight was so used to the castle being full of life and bustling with activity that to see even an unfamiliar part of it without those things felt unnatural.

Four rooms down was a set of ornate double doors, mostly in shadow and outlined in black. They swung open on their own when she turned to face them. Gulping anxiously, Twilight stepped through into the near-blackness within.