They had come for her around dawn, she seemed to remember – though which dawn, how long ago, she had no idea. Her memory was made unreliable, somehow, with huge chunks missing or rearranged. She was disconnected from time, floating free in the present, and the sensation was disorientating and vertiginous. Some things she could remember, though, whether she wanted to or not.

She remembered it hadn’t always been like this. She’d been happy, had ponies who loved her, looked forward to the future. Not anymore.

She remembered the bag over her head, darkness, kicking out viciously and one of her captors crying out in pain, and some strange words which sent her limp. The rest was even more vague: pictures and details and sensations, without context, like a dream. She’d been bound, surrounded by trees and sinister cloaked ponies, chanted over. Foul liquids had been pushed to her lips and she’d eventually been forced to swallow, spluttering, or risk choking. They’d tied her to a rope, hooves and wings still bound, and she’d been lowered into pool, a cold pool that smelled of… of blood. Unable to swim, she’d sunk into the blackness, struggling and panicked, until desperation had turned to despair and she had gone limp, the last of her breath escaping between her teeth.

It was then, when she was quiet, that she had heard it.

At first she’d thought it was her own heartbeat but no, there was hers; faint, and fading. From the outside, from the blood, she heard the other. Booming, she realised it was, deafening; the very world seemed to throb to its beat, and each thud-thump was like hammer-blows at her body. Everything dimmed as she weakened, until even her own heartbeat disappeared. But that impossible pulse remained, the last thing she could remember.

She awoke slowly, unwillingly, not able to face what waited for her outside of dreams. When she did finally open her eyes, she realised with relief that she was back in her old bedroom, lying comfortably in the pony-shaped dent in her springy wool mattress, snuggled warmly under the covers. She stared gratefully at the familiar blue-painted walls as warm candlelight bounced and flickered across them, swimming around languidly in half-consciousness, not having the energy to get up.

The door opened. She jolted up in apprehension but it was only her mother, who closed the door behind her. The winged pony came in and sat by her on the bed, not saying anything. She looked sad.

“Mother?” said the young mare, “what’s the matter?”

The other pony looked at her with sorrow for a while before speaking.

“What’s your name, my little pony?”

She drew back, shocked. Why would her mother ask that?

“It’s… Antumbra, mother,” she said uncertainly, “but why-”

“I’m very sorry this is happening to you, Antumbra,” said the older mare quietly, “and I wish I could take this burden from you.” She shook her head. “All I can tell you is that it’s for the best.”

Antumbra looked at her visitor again, and a creeping dread began to climb her spine. This was not her mother, after all. The wings were all wrong, and the face, and even the colour. She felt like screaming, but even as she drew breath, there was a knock at the bedroom door; sharp, business-like. They both looked at it, startled, and the strange mare turned quickly back to Antumbra.

“I must go,” she said, “they cannot know I visited you.”

Suddenly Antumbra did not feel so afraid of her. “Stay,” she said, “please.”

The mysterious pony smiled sadly. “I will see you again. Be strong. And make it easy on yourself.”

Another sharp rap at the door, louder, caused Antumbra to glance at it fearfully. When she looked back, she was alone. The knocking intensified, sounding as if it came from another place, and the room started to fade…

She woke up, for real this time, head spinning and fuzzy. Instead of the reassuring blue walls of her spacious bedroom, Antumbra could only see the inside of a small cube of flecked grey granite. The reason she could see anything at all, she realised, was a small lamp nearby on the stone floor – a lamp which was just a small clay oil container with a wick in the spout. She lay on a simple wooden cot with a bracken mattress and scratchy woollen blanket. Not her bed. Not her room. Not her mother. She felt like crying.

The knocking had turned slow, loud, constant, and she realised there was a door cut into the wall opposite her cot; a door made of the same heavy stone as the rest of her… cell, she realised. She sat up with effort and the knocking ceased abruptly. A pinprick of light appeared in the door at eye level and she realised she’d been under observation. A wooden tray in the base of the door suddenly slid forward and she smelled food. Her stomach growled, roared like an angry manticore, and she stood on shaky hooves and stumbled across the cell, completely enslaved by her nose. The tray contained only simple food – flatbread, raw mushrooms and greens, a clear vegetable broth with unfamiliar herbs – but it was there in abundance, which was all she cared about right now. Just as she was about to plunge her muzzle into the tray, a horrible thought stopped her. What if the food was poisoned?

“Hello?” she called, uncertain if she really wanted a response. Regardless, none came. She examined the food, subjecting herself to the torture of sniffing it carefully without eating it. It seemed, she reasoned, a very elaborate setup just to poison somepony. If they were drugging her, probably better to find out now rather than when she was weakened by a long and fruitless hunger strike. She shrugged and dove in. She’d never been so hungry in her life. She drank some water from the jug and used the rest to wash the fur of her coat.

Afterwards she took the little oil lamp and, careful not to spill any, examined her cell in more detail. There were no joins, no mortar, and the rough-textured walls had clearly been hewn out of the raw rock. She sniffed the air and nodded – the mildness and humidity definitely suggested underground. A very brief inspection assured her without doubt that breaking out was not an option. Apart from the solid stone around, above and below her, only two features defined her boundaries: the heavy stone door, quite immovable and hinged on the other side, and a small recess set high in a wall, with a granite hatch secured across it. With effort, she flapped her wings and flew up to examine it, discovering only that it, too, was immovable and that she was absolutely exhausted. She lay back in the cot and thought. Antumbra. At least she could remember her name now, and could populate the memory of her old bedroom with her mother as well as her father. She felt less foggy-headed than earlier, more herself, whoever that was, though even more fatigued after her meal. Questions kept prodding her attention away from her memories: who were her captors? Why had they taken her, what did they have planned for her? And why treat her like she was dangerous? This cell was total overkill, surely. Then again, her memory was pretty much gone, even if it seemed to be getting better. Maybe they were right: maybe she was dangerous. Antumbra flexed her legs and remembered the kick she’d given one of the captors. She was pretty sure somepony’s bones had broken, there. She smiled grimly and vowed that when they – whoever they were – finally opened that door, they would wish they hadn’t. Her spirits having lifted somewhat, she thought she might be able to sleep again. She needed to keep her strength up.