Nothingness surrounded Twilight. No color, nor smell, nor sound. Twilight was in a void of complete emptiness. She felt like she was falling but also like she was standing still. Her eardrums pounded as if she was in the middle of a great tumult, but all was silent. Breathing was difficult; it was like the air was made of water. Or maybe it was water, and Twilight was slowly drowning. She kicked and struggled but got nothing for her efforts. As time passed the laughing mare would occasionally cackle at Twilight’s expense, mocking her for helplessness no doubt. Twilight wanted to scream at her tormentor, to find her make her pay for putting her into this hell. But Twilight couldn’t scream, all that came out was a weak whimper. All Twilight could do was wait for the darkness to finally strangle her, and send her to her death. She even entertained the idea of meeting up with Pinkamena’s Rainbow Dash.

Hours seemed to pass. Twilight shifted between quiet acceptance and violent denial of fate. One minute she would close her eyes hoping that she would lose all thought; and the next Twilight shook and wrestled with the nothingness. But these mood swings quickly became tiring, and Twilight instead took to contemplating the nothingness. Almost immediately, Twilight hit her head on something hard and she was thrown into a daze. As Twilight’s mind went out of focus, the laughing mare cackled gleefully.

When she came to, Twilight found herself in some sort of forest, though it was unlike any forest Twilight had ever seen before. All the trees in this forest were as black as obsidian. They were crooked and barren of any leaf or fruit, but still seemed to be alive. None of the trees casted a shadow, and when Twilight looked up she saw a sky that was grey instead of blue. Twilight then noticed that there was no underbrush in this forest, only a flat stretch of white sand.

By the time Twilight got around to questioning where she was, a small green light sparked between the trees several feet from her. Twilight instinctively stepped towards this light and found that walking in this forest was difficult. With every step the ground shifted beneath Twilight’s hooves and she nearly fell over several times. But still the light hung in front of her, calling her. Something about this light reminded Twilight of the book of Newt, and she was eager to get a closer look.

As Twilight kept walking, she began to get used to the uneven nature of the forest floor. Eventually it was almost like walking on normal ground. But as she kept walking, the farther the green light seemed to be. It was almost as if Twilight wasn’t moving at all, and the forest was just tormenting her.

After what felt like an hour of walking, the green light finally started to seem a little closer. Excited, Twilight sprinted toward the light until she was almost next to it. The light had stopped above what Twilight guessed was some kind of trail or road. It was paved with a metallic substance that had been hammered smooth against the white sand. When Twilight got within ten feet of the green light, she heard the laughing mare giggle and it began to slowly travel down the road.

Twilight leapt onto the road, and was shocked to find that, unlike the sand, it was stable to stand on. It took Twilight half a moment to reorient herself to the ground before she took off. Fortunately, the green light had yet to travel far. Once Twilight was used to standing on solid ground again, she ran off to chase the green light.

Whatever the green light was, it did not want Twilight to catch it. It seemed like hours had passed since she started chasing it. Anytime Twilight got close to it, it sped up so that she was no closer to it than when she started. Several times, Twilight had to stop and catch her breath. During these periodic breaks, the green light hovered in mid air about thirty feet from Twilight, motionless.

It wasn’t until Twilight started approaching the light again that it moved. This time it accelerated slightly faster than Twilight, so that when she was running top speed she still was fell behind. Several times Twilight considered giving up on the green light, but every time she heard the laughter of the mad mare, egging her on.

Finally, after what must’ve been another hour of running, the green light stopped several yards ahead of Twilight. This time, as Twilight approached it, it did not move.

As Twilight got closer to the now motionless ball of light, she noticed that it had stopped at a fork in the road. Twilight hadn’t noticed any splits in the road before, nor could she see any reason why it should here. There wasn’t a sign to give travelers any directions, and the woods seemed to go on for many miles.

When Twilight reached the spot where the path split, the green light fell to ground and began to emit a moss green vapor. As the light smoldered on the ground the laughter of the insane mare echoed throughout the forest, louder than Twilight had ever heard it before. As the laugh traveled through the forest, the smoke coming from the light began to twist and coil in midair. As Twilight watched this anomaly the mad mare’s laughter shifted, as if its source was coming closer. As the smoke was beginning to take a definite shape, the light ceased its smoldering and iron bars sprouted from the ground and encased it, forming some kind of lantern.

The smoke had formed into what looked to Twilight like a robed figure, though it was taller and thinner than any creature Twilight had seen before. It stood nearly twice as tall as Celestia herself, but there was no way that it could be a dragon, no tail, at least not one that Twilight could see. Twilight tried to look under its hood to see if she could identify it that way, but all she found was darkness.

Twilight took a step back away from the robbed figure, contemplating running away. The figure seemed to notice this as it began to laugh in that same voice that had haunted Twilight since her fist day at Sleipnir.

The idea that this thing might’ve been watching her like some kind of tv show was enough to get Twilight to put on a brave face, and hopefully get some answers.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked, puffing out her chest in what she hoped what an intimidating gesture. “What business do you have with me?”

Two limbs sprouted from the hooded figure’s body from where Twilight guessed its shoulders would be. It one of these new limbs over its midsection and bent its body over in what Twilight guess was something akin to a bow. The figure’s hood bent upward as if meant to make eye contact with Twilight, but instead gave Twilight better look at the all consuming darkness that was in it.

When the creature spoke to Twilight, its voice chilled Twilight’s heart. It was not like the laugh that Twilight was accustomed to. That laugh had belonged to a young mare who seemed to be enjoying a twisted joke of her own design. It was never a pleasant laugh nor was it a laugh that could’ve belonged to any pony trustworthy. But at least the laugh seemed to have an illusion of good spirits. That was not the case of the figure’s speaking voice. When the figure spoke, it was with the voice of an old stallion who had long since tired of life. It spoke with barely more than a whisper, but every word was like sand paper rubbing against Twilight’s skull, mixed with serpent’s hiss. The rhythm of each word came out almost sounded like it was singing, contrasting with its accent.

As the figure spoke, the forest began to shift around Twilight. The trees shriveled into tiny seeds which in turn turned to dust. The sand rippled and began to sprout grass and flowers. The sky exploded into a multitude of colors before settling on a clear blue, at its center hung a sun brighter than Twilight had ever seen.

For the first time since waking up in that Celestia forsaken cell, Twilight felt the warmth of natural sunlight on her. She had forgotten how it felt to be under the naked sun. Twilight felt the a flutter of joy most ponies get from being in the sun. Most ponies were so used to this feeling that they didn’t notice it, but Twilight had been looked up for Luna knows how long.

Her joy didn’t lat however. Less than two minutes after the forest changed into a meadow it shifted again. The grass rotted and turned into red dirt. The sky turned a sickly green, and then brown. The sun still burned, but now it had turned a dark orange. Before Twilight had time to fully process what had happened, black obelisks erupted from the ground, marking the places where the trees had been. Then, without warning, they drew back into the ground.

Behind the green figure, between the two paths, a single obelisk rose up until it dwarfed even the figure itself. On this obelisk was a single figure, crucified. Once more Twilight looked up at the decaying body of Pinkie Pie. She looked mostly the same as the last time Twilight saw her, but this time she had a small tree growing out of the socket where her eye used to be.

The figure spoke a final time;

Author's Notes:

Journal: http://fav.me/d89li5d

(Just a quick update; test logs and journals are going to be a much more important part of the story from now on. While you will be able to understand what's going on without them, they will clear up some of the more confusing parts that I have planned.