As Twilight slept her dreams took on the form of strange images, the likes of which chilled Twilight’s blood. The images appeared before her like macabre works of art, so grisly and ghoulish that, had Twilight never stepped hoof into Sleipnir, would’ve offended her paradigm. The images passed in before Twilight, each one carving itself into her mind, demanding that she would not forget them.

The first image was that of Pinkie Pie. Not the Pinkie Pie who was imprisoned in the cell next to Twilight's, but the Pinkie Pie Twilight had known in Ponyville. The image showed Pinkie Pie crucified on an obelisk. Pinkie must’ve been dead for a long time, for her flesh was rotten and great, black birds had begun to peck at it. The crows each had six eyes that glowed a pale yellow. One of the birds had apparently tried to pluck out Pinkie’s left eye but stopped so that hung down on her face.

As Twilight looked at the image, the decaying cadaver of Pinkie Pie opened its right eye and looked at Twilight. The corpse smiled warmly, her lips splitting as she did so. A second later her cheeks began to swell up as though Pinkie were holding her breath. Soon holes began to form on the rotten cheeks and a swarm of insects exploded from the corpse’s mouth. The insects flew in the direction where Twilight was standing. The bugs quickly surrounded Twilight and began to bite at her flesh. And then the image changed.

The change did not happen instantly, first the image began to blur, and then it seemed to blow away, like dust in the wind. The colors that made up the first image swirled around Twilight, mixing and changing almost randomly. In the colors Twilight could see the twisted shapes of a thousand nameless ponies, their pained expressions standing out in the chaos. Twilight tried to look away but she could not escape the gaze of the ponies. Their eyeless stares bore into Twilight, and the figures screamed silent pleas for help. As the chaos began to settle down, the figures themselves became a part of the second image, their bodies molding to fit together. As the second image took form, the figures seemed to scream in agony before they disappeared entirely.

The second image was that of Spike, a baby dragon that Twilight had been given to take care of when she was just a filly, but this Spike was not as Twilight remembered. This Spike was taller than the Spike Twilight was accustomed to. In the image, Spike was sitting on a bed, his eyes where bloodshot and the color in his scales had faded so that he looked almost grey. Twilight noticed that this Spike had some sort of cord coming out of his back that ended in a forked piece of metal.

The dragon began to stir, lifting his left claw to scratch his right. As he did so, the scales on his body began to fall away, his flesh not long after. What remained was not bone, but metal. Upon closer examination, Twilight saw that Spike’s eyes were not bloodshot at all, they were simply red. When the dragon was finished peeling away at his organic body, the now fully mechanical dragon stood up and lunged at Twilight. The mechanical dragon clawed at Twilight; tearing her wings clean off. Twilight tried to fight it off, but found that all her strength had left her as the robot attacked. Just as it was about to land a fatal blow the metal dragon began to melt, its colors rolling off Twilight like water off of a duck.

The colors quickly began to bubble and change. It wasn’t long before the colors began take shape once more. The colors twisted upward like snakes, tangling and untangling randomly as the third image was formed. As the image formed, it sunk into the ground at Twilight’s feet.

The third image was that of Applejack, an orange earth pony that Twilight had known back in Ponyville. Applejack laid within a small square hole, her body twisted so that she would fit. Applejack’s eyes stared upward at Twilight, who had to look down at the image. The image of Applejack began to glare at Twilight, although as she did so her eyes began to tear up. Applejack opened her mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was a mechanical buzzing sound.

Unlike the first two images, the third image that Twilight saw in her dreams made no attempt to harm her. Instead, it continued to stare at the alicorn until it began to fade. As the third image faded, it left behind something that haunted Twilight more than anything else she had seen.

The fourth image was not of a pony that Twilight had known, or a pony at all for that matter. Still, Twilight felt herself begging her body to wake up upon seeing the fourth image. The fourth image was too much for Twilight to take, and she hated it. She did not want to acknowledge the fourth image, she wanted to run away from the fourth image. The fourth image was a question, one that Twilight had no answer for, try as she might to come up with one. The fourth image was brilliantly simple, so simple that Twilight wanted to shriek at the pony who had come up with it. The fourth image was a single word.

Why?