The Changeling Fortress was a lot more dark-skied and scarier than Twilight ever imagined once she was forcibly set down on her hooves. As she was force-walked by the Changeling Grunts, she quickly saw the castle's interior and shuddered in fear.

Most of the castle's interior was spiky and full of cocoons. As they reached each door, the grunts held Twilight down with a powerful combined spell before turning to the door and opening it by pressing their holey legs against the wall. It glowed dark green before rising into the hatch above and then coming back down again once the Grunts and Twilight had walked through it.

When they finally got to the throne room, Twilight saw a grim sight. On the audience bleachers around the throne, there were hundreds upon thousands of Grunts, all looking at Twilight with their horrific eyes. At the throne in the middle of the room, Queen Chrysalis was sitting quite relaxed as she saw Twilight being walked against her will towards the giant Changeling.

"Well, if it isn't Twilight." Chrysalis began after Twilight was thrown by her feet and held down by several more Grunts, "It's been a while since we last met on the field of battle."

"What are you planning to do with Diamond and Silver?!" Twilight said after her mouth was freed from the Grunts' grasp, only momentarily though.

"Don't worry about those two." Chrysalis started as she conjured up some visual aids showing Diamond and Silver locked in a dungeon-like room with scientific equipment all around it, "Soon you should start worrying about all of their kind!"

"As soon as we find a way to unlock their deepest powers, we'll be free to storm Equestria with brute force and ultimate power." Exordaks said as she appeared on a separate video screen conjured up by some Grunts.

"You'll never get anything out of us, Exordaks!" Twilight writhed in agony as the restraining Grunts pushed her tighter towards the other Grunts, who pushed back with the same power, as if trying to sandwich-tactic Twilight, "You'll all be struck down, one way or another!"

"Believe me, Twilight." Chrysalis started, "You and your friends will need a miracle to get out of here. Fat chance of that happening."

Exordaks' video screen quickly vanished, and Chrysalis motioned her grunts to remove Twilight from the audience chamber. She struggled the best she could, but the Grunts stopped her from moving at her own free will altogether and were walking her limbs for her, like a puppet master would walk one of his puppets.

"Oh and by the way." Chrysalis said just before Twilight left her sight, "Congratulations on becoming a princess."

Twilight was then forcibly walked down towards a lower part of the castle, where she saw hundreds upon thousands of cell bars in the many holes and secret alcoves. She quickly assumed this was a prison for ponies who got captured by Changeling forces.

As she was walked past some of the many prisoners, she saw such horrific sights. In a few chambers, the ponies were being whipped in... unpleasant areas, making deafening screams with each painful whip crack going by like a bullet through their skin. But it got worse and worse as she was being walked to her cell.

She saw some ponies having their blood drained dry by Grunts, she saw some being electrocuted to death with high power lightning spells and the worst of all, they were trapping ponies in rings of green fire, in the attempt to burn them alive. Most Grunts haven't mastered prisoner teleportation yet, so they just burn ponies alive instead.

The Grunts stopped once they reached Twilight's cell. They quickly took her by all four of her hooves and hurled her in like a baseball. She slammed on the concrete wall and felt a little dizzy once she touched the ground again.

"So long, Princess Twilight." One of the Grunts taunted as he shut the cell door with his magic, "Too bad you won't live to see the light of day again."

"Oh but don't feel downhearted." A second Grunt said as he quickly walked away from the cell with his other companions, "We've given you some friends. Consider it the one act of kindness you'll ever get from us."

Twilight quickly shook off her concussion and ran to the now closed gate. She tried shaking the gate and yelling for help, but it was futile. She had been captured, and her horn wasn't working anytime soon thanks to the green web around it. She then looked around her cell for anything useful, but nothing. The only thing she would make out in the darkness was two humans she knew too well.

"Diamond! Silver!" She said as she saw the two humans, lying unconscious by a crack in the concrete wall. She quickly galloped over to them and saw a red mark on both of their foreheads, "They must have been trying to break out of here." Twilight said to herself, "Good idea as well, but i think they underestimated the structural integrity of concrete here in Equestria."

Twilight then went over to a science table with beakers and bunsen burners all across the desk. She got to work using the reagents she found in a secret draw (disguised as some more concrete wall) and made a smelling salt and concussion medicine for the two humans.

"Looks like all those alchemy lessons from Zecora are starting to pay off." She said as she was mixing in the final reagents and then heating up her finished concoctions with a bunsen burner.

Once they were at the required temperature to be deemed fit for consumption, Twilight took the greyish smelling salt over to the two humans and wafted the smell around their noses. Sure enough, they came to, rubbing their heads in pain as a result of the concussion they got from trying to bust down the wall.

"Oh, man. It feels like Ciderfest 2013 all over again." Silver said once she started moving her lips again.

"Yeah, Big Mac. I'll take another dozen ciders to go please." Diamond said, feeling a little confused before shaking it off and realizing the wall was still intact.

"Oh, thank the stars you're both alright!" Twilight said once they heard her voice and turned to face her, "I was worried you had both fallen into a deep coma with all the power you were exerting against the wall."

"Twilight!" Silver said as she kneeled down and hugged her tightly, "I thought we'd lost you!"

"Oh what the heck." Diamond came closer and soon the three girls were wrapped in a group hug.

"I noticed you took quite a pounding whilst trying to break the wall." Twilight said as she could still feel the concussions using her own hooves, "Here, drink this. It should take away your headaches."

The two girls took the dark purple liquid and drank equal portions of it, sure enough, their concussions were a thing of the past.

"Ahhh." Silver sighed after finishing off her portion, "That calms the shakes."

"Now that we're back together, i need to ask a question." Diamond began, "What in the world are those things?!"

"I suppose i need to explain a lot of things to you two." Twilight sat down on a bench and started to tell them the truth, "The things that attacked us are called Changelings. They're insectoid creatures that can transform into anypony on Equestria and, with a little training, even become a perfect match of the person their mimicing, voice, hair, the whole 9 yards."

"Well that doesn't sound too bad-" Diamond was cut off at the end.

"There's more, Changelings feed on positive emotions and happiness." Twilight continued, "Love, strong friendships, any event that exhibits positive emotions. They take the form of one of the ponies in that group and capture the real pony. As they blend in with their fake friends, they start to sap away any and all power from the other ponies it affiliates itself with. And the more powerful the positivity is, the more powerful they get by consuming it."

"Imagine if those things find a way to get to Canterlot High." Silver was starting to worry as she envisioned what would be like, "It would be carnage on a cataclysmic scale with a side order of apocalypse and unavoidable doom!"

"Which is why we can't allow the Changelings to gain access to the Human World!" Twilight said, "We need to stop them, but first, getting out of here is the conundrum."

"We tried breaking down the walls with our sheer force." Diamond told her, "But we kinda... blacked out after 7 or 9 hits. Concrete is as strong as ever in this world."

"We made a small crack, but it's not enough to get us out of here." Silver finished explaining, "We're gonna need something silent, but also explosive to break the crack larger."

"If this stupid green web wasn't on my horn, I could blast us out." Twilight said as she tried rubbing her webbed horn with her hoof, "But the more i touch it, the larger it spreads."

"I think this would be a good time to use that emergency bug spray." Silver said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a little aerosol can with a picture of a dying cockroach on it.

"Since when did you get miniature bug spray?" Diamond asked as Silver came closer to Twilight and begun spraying.

"Daddy went on a trip to the forests of Thailand a few months back." She saw the web was disintegrating at a moderate pace, "He and his crew got bombarded by dozens and dozens of insects during their time there, so he got me this bug spray when he got back home, just in case i ever went to someplace crawling with bugs someday."

"Almost there..." Twilight said as her horn was almost cleared from the webbing.

Finally, the last web vanished in the white mist and Twilight's horn was finally glowing again. She quickly dimmed it, in case any guards were nearby. There was none and she kept her voice to a whisper.

"Nice, now we can get out of here!" She said as she turned to face the crack, "Oh and as of now, it would be best to keep your voices down to whisper or silent." She advised.

"Why do you ask?" Silver asked.

"This is the Changeling Fortress, no doubt there'll be patrols in every corridor of this place. It would be best to keep your voices down and stick to the shadows."

Twilight then turned to the crack. She lit up her horn and fired a purple stream of energy at the crack. The crack was about to explode, but Twilight quickly placed a sound barrier over the cell bars, so that no guards could hear the deafening BANG!!! that came from the wall.

Where the crack was, there was now a gaping hole, large enough for all three girls to climb through and escape to freedom.

"Let's get moving." Diamond said as they walked through the crack into a carpeted corridor with dark green wall colour, "This place gives me the creeps just by looking at it."

"We're not out of the fire just yet, you two." Twilight quietly said to them as them moved quickly and quietly through a corridor, "As long as the Changelings have patrols in this castle, we'll need to stay quiet and be as stealthy as we can possibly be."

"Good thing i have my ninja outfits from Drama class." Diamond said as she pulled out a ridiculously folded black fabric which suddenly exploded into a black bodysuit, "An actress never leaves home without her costumes."

Silver quickly reached into her other pocket and pulled out a slightly larger, yet still folded (albeit poorly folded) black fabric which turned into a second black bodysuit. Once the two girls slipped into their black outfits, they moved with Twilight through the darkness once more.

"Hey, Twilight?" Silver quietly asked, "Don't you have a ninja suit?"

"Oh, i don't need a disguise. Not when i have magic on my side." Twilight cast another spell and she became invisible, save for her Cutie Mark, which was still in its' flank-like position, but still visible, so that the two girls didn't lose Twilight as they were escaping.

"Whoa." Both girls said as Twilight almost completely faded from their vision.

"I know, i get that a lot nowadays."

Author's Notes:

End Of Part 8

Prison Break coming in the next chapter, also i decided to make the Changelings seem darker than ever thought possible. I made them seem like brutal kidnappers and torturers here. I needed to see some darker stuff after seeing Canterlot Wedding Part 2. So, Diamond and Silver came prepared in this chapter. But will their escape be successful? Or will the Changelings find them in the darker parts of the fortress? It's still early days and anything could happen. Be ready for it.

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