Twilight Sparkle stared at the alchemical concoction bubbling in the vial in her laboratory. Granted, neither of these two acts were that unheard of. Twilight stared at many things most ponies would find tedious after a cursory glance and she did conjure up potions regularly, sometimes even staring at them for extended periods. The thing that set this instance apart from all those before it was that Twilight didn’t understand why the potion was doing what it was doing.

Now, that was both uncommon and more than a little alarming to the academically trained alchemist.

Twilight Sparkle had to exert a frustrating amount of willpower to force her mouth to close and her mind to stop screaming about how insane what she was seeing was, instead try to explain the situation somehow.

“First, the what; observable effect of what confuses you.” Twilight Sparkle rattled out as she started to pace in front of the impossible concoction. She had to come at this like it was another lesson given by Princess Celestia, another puzzle for her to find the pieces and make them fit into her own whole.

“The alchemical concoction in the vial in front of me is reacting to the outside air as if a reagent had been introduced, when it was made sure no trace of such materials were anywhere near the vial, only the so-called building blocks of it. Any of these materials could not produce the desired effect on their own, or together, not without being processed in ways that could not happen in nature.”

To noponies surprise, this monologue only confused Twilight Sparkle further. Everything that had just happened, right in front of her own eyes, spat in the face of every law of the universe and magic and all around life she knew, but she could not deny what just happened.

“The only logical explanation for what I have seen here is…” Twilight Sparkle had to close her eyes and swallow back the bile in her throat for dismissing scientific protocols to make such an assumption so early in testing, but she had to voice out her fears/hopes, or she would just go crazy and be done with it. She did always like cats, but there was still science to be done!

“I must conclude, with the evidence in front of me, that the formerly ridiculed form of magic consisting of the constructing of transmutation circles and changing the composition of matter through them has become far more potent and applicable to use in everyday life.” Twilight Sparkle stopped pacing and glared at the immaculate, but simple transmutation circle around the vial and the components of the complex reagent in the middle of her basement laboratory.

“The most likely cause for the increased potency of this nearly forgotten branch of magic are the localised magical instabilities recorded all around Equestria. Arcane storms, as they are called by the masses.” Twilight furrowed her brow in concentration as she levitated bubbling vial out of it’s holder, careful not to let a bit of her magic spill onto the still active circle around it. “As expected, the effect of the transmutation circle stays in place, even if the object is removed.” Twilight paused to smudge the transmutation circle with a hoof and could feel the magic humming in it dissipate with an in-audible hiss.

“Disrupting the transmutation circle that produced the effect does not affect the end result in any way. No trace of magical energy can be sensed from the activated compound, so the magic in the circle only rearranges matter in the way the caster wishes, and that the theory transcribed in it is able, it does not affect the components or the produced matter after the act.” Twilight whirled the vial around in fascination. The reaction between the compound and the reagent fizzled out in a minute or so, predictably, but the test had left more questions than answers. “More tests are in order. SPIKE!”

Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia’s prized student, dug into this new discovery about magic with a fervor only seen in academic souls seeking recognition, that is to say, complete and utter, forget to bathe and eat for days, obsession. It was not long until she had an understanding of how the transmutation circles worked and had memorized every way the limited mages before her had learnt to use this rare magic.

She was able to resist pushing those boundaries for a commendable amount of time. Still, the arcane storms making life hard for other ponies, yet making her research that more easier, were growing less frequent and not as potent. She was about lose her chance to discover new heights of magic! She needed to be the brave pony to traverse the unknown, nopony else was going to do it, they didn’t know how!

“Spike, I call this the Soul Transmutation Circle. The supposed effect will be to make a living soul out of the arcane energy gathered within the circle. To create something out of nothing, can you imagine it? Everypony thought it impossible, but it’s all in here, it’s all in the theory if you apply it to one of Starswirl the Bearded’s less than legal experiments during Celestia’s prohibition on hard cider.”

“Wasn’t that the one where he tried to bring his -ahem- dutch wife to life, while under the influence of some home brewed moonshine?” Spike commented from his little desk, where he had just copied the transmutation circle almost perfectly, one line at the edge was not completed to stop the alchemical circle from activating accidentally.

“That is nothing more than a mean-spirited piece of gossip that made its way into the public record out of a clerical error!” Twilight huffed out a breath and gave Spike a mean glare for even bringing up the exaggerated detail about Starswirl the Bearded’s experiment. The so called dutch wife was probably the only doll-like object he had access to at the time and surely had been borrowed from some less significant colleague. Now, Twilight Sparkle had transmuted a doll made out of wood, with working joints and enchantments hard-wired into the wood for it to be able to move, if there was a will. Far more suitable for the purpose, than a borrowed doll.

“This will work, I am sure of it. This is science, after all.” Twilight Sparkle reassured herself and stepped up to the edge of the transmutation circle. Her horn sparked and she felt the circle tug at her magical reservoirs. The circle lit up brighter she thought it would and then there were these weird tentacle things and a huge eye sprouted from the centre of the circle...

Woo, it worked! Oh, uhm… How do I explain this? All you need to know is that there was a black gate, an asshole of a deity and a blank space of your world in turmoil. Said deity let you off the hook, as I actually showed up and now you’re back in your world, as am I. The rest of what happened to you is traumatizing as shit, so I will keep it behind a wall in your noggin. But seriously though, don’t try this shit again.

Twilight’s eyes shot open and she struggled to stand. Her head hurt and everything ached to some degree. It felt like she had been put through a woodchipper and put back together and the glue was still setting. She wondered if Luna had felt like this when the Elements were used against her in that old castle. Actually, those pieces of Nightmare Moon’s armor were still at that castle. It was weird that they were just left there, but even thinking about them brought a chill to her spine. To have all that power and knowledge and then make it something so twisted and dark, it was just wrong. The fact that they were the thing her mind wandered to just after her experiment was definitely not a good sign.

“Twilight, you’re back!” Twilight heard the hurried scamper of clawed feet and then there was a miniature dragon hugging her neck with a grip that nearly cut off her air pipe. For Spike to even have this reaction, then she would have had to have been gone, so what the hell had just happened?

“Spike, tell me what happened. I’m okay, so please help me understand.” Twilight reassured the little dragon with a comforting hoof and set the little guy down gently. She hated herself from being upset at him from smudging up the transmutation circle and decided to swallow back the comment about it, taking the look on the dragon’s face.

“You disappeared, Twilight! One moment you were there and then the black tendrils dragged you into that creepy eye and… I’ve been waiting for - for ten minutes! I think, at least. Felt like a lot longer, just waiting here, not even a body to bury.” Spike’s eyes brimmed with tears at this point, as he finally let himself think these thoughts he had fought down during those long ten minutes Twilight had been gone.

“Spike, are you saying I was gone for a whole of ten minutes?” Twilight asked, placing a reassuring hoof on the dragon’s shoulder. He needed to know she was there, not in wherever she had been spirited away to.

“Yeah, I counted. I stayed here and counted the seconds and then the minutes! I was going to send a letter, but then the eye spat you back and…” Spike’s eyes unfocused as he looked up at Twilight, so Twilight gave him a gentle shake to snap the little dragon out of whatever stupor he was in. He was startled out of it and continued on his tale with a hand at his head, as if he had a headache.

“So, yeah, you were sent back and I rushed to strangle you with affection, that was what happened.” Twilight couldn’t be 100% about it, but she was pretty sure she heard somepony groan closeby right at that moment.

“I don’t remember any of it, Spike.” Twilight said, only to realize that was not quite true. She remembered things. There was a black gate sitting in a place full of energy in turmoil. There was also an absolute ruler of that space there, a god, if you will, being quite unpleasant. Her body had been dismantled into nothing for that whole time? “Also, somehow I feel like I failed a test.”

Spike slapped her, hard. He did a jumping start to it to give it momentum and everything. Twilight stepped back and nursed her stinging cheek, horn at the ready in case her dragon assistant had gone insane.

“Don’t you dare treat this as another test! You were gone, Twilight! This is not failing at some test in magical theory, this was your life! Never put your life in danger like this! Please…” Spike’s passionate little yelling match tapered out at that point and he simply fell into a gentle hug against Twilight’s neck.

“Aww, the widdle guy really does wuw you. This is heartwarming, really, it is.” A male voice commented, very closeby, in the room with them.

“Who are you? Show yourself!” Twilight spun around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice, levitating Spike on her back. She sparked up her horn, ready to defend herself against whoever had forced their way into her laboratory. After finding nothing but her disheveled laboratory, her eyes fell on the wooden doll laying abandoned outside the circle. She glanced down in surprise and suddenly became aware that she was at the centre of the circle. She had transmuted herself!

“Did - Did I create you?” She asked the wooden doll, taking a tentative step towards it. There was no response from the inanimate doll, but she really didn’t want to get close enough for it to reach her. “Do you have a name?”

“Twilight, that’s the doll you made earlier, don’t you remember?” Twilight hushed Spike quickly, giving him half a glance. The doll chose that exact moment to speak.

“Yeah, Twilight, you’re not acting all that sane.” The doll spasmed to life and Twilight could hear joints creaking and wood splintering as a force she had not enchanted into the wood forced the doll’s head to twist 180 degrees. Black ichor oozed from the from the doll’s empty eye sockets and a mouth made out of rows and rows of grinding teeth had replaced the rest of the wooden pony’s face. The doll’s body kept twisting and breaking until it was nothing but a mass of splinters and black goo, rearranging and forming long and spindly legs with wickedly sharp tips that sunk into the floor as the monstrosity struggled to heave its bloated mass toward her.

Twilight couldn’t move, the surprise and horror of the creature’s form had stunned her, but she was certain she would die if she didn’t move. She knew she had to act, she had to run and get away, to lock the basement up and set fire to the library, but she was still just standing there gawking at the impossible monster inching its way closer to her. Far too soon the creature was writhing and shifting its mass to bring its horrible mouth on level with her eyes. The dolls empty eye sockets staring at her driving an ice cold spike of fear in her. The eyes, or lack thereof, drew her attention away from the gnashing mass of teeth and a hungry darkness behind it growing larger and larger, spreading wider like a wound on everything good and sane in the world.

Just as Twilight was sure the monster of her own making was going to start tearing at her with that impossible mouth, a flash of green fire caused it to shriek and its form to spasm wildly in pain. Finally, Twilight was able to move and she took a hurried step back as the creature flailed around blindly, spitting out parts of its mass that had caught fire and filling the basement with an incredibly foul odor.

“Twilight, run! We need to -” Twilight turned her head to Spike just in time for her face to be splattered by scalding hot blood. The monster possessing the doll had stabbed one of its sharp legs at the little dragon and had hit its mark perfectly. She watched in horror as the creature’s claw scraped and dug its way deeper into Spike’s cranial cavity through his eye. There was one final jerk of the claw and Spike’s body went limp on her back.

She finally started running, Spike’s dead weight sliding off of her back as she leapt up the stairs faster than she had ever ran, hearing the creature hiss and click its countless teeth in satisfaction. She sorely hoped she could believe that the crunching she heard just before she slammed the door shut was anything other than Spike being grounded up by those constantly shifting fangs.

Twilight Sparkle stumbled out of her basement doorway at a dead sprint, the door slamming shut behind her so fast her tail was almost caught between it and the doorframe. She slammed into the reading table in the centre room of her library and the ever present carving of a horsehead toppled to the ground with a wooden “thunk!”. She flinched at the sound, but was shaken out of her horror by it enough to levitate everything heavy in front of the door to the basement.

Was that what she had created, a twisted mass of hunger and malice? It might have been true that no scholar had been able to come to terms of the fundamental basis for the soul’s architecture, but that thing… No, there was no way something so vile could be what lay at the base of every living soul.

Yet, a yearning for life, for fulfillment and for the betterment of self is what defines the soul. Would it be so insane to think that if you boil that to its base component, it is nothing but naked hunger? Something that is common to all living things is a hunger for one thing or other. Hunger for recognition, for fame, or a sense of belonging are all but the different faces of the same yearn for more. The face of the soul might just be that hungry, evil thing trapped in the cellar.

“I didn’t want this, any of this… Oh, Spike, I am so sorry!” Twilight wailed as the situation and the inevitable consequences following it crashed onto her psyche. The evil thing in her cellar laboratory had been created by her and was undoubtedly a monster, but if fire could hurt it, then it could be dealt with. Even with the evil she had conceived out of the picture, Spike was still dead because she had dabbled in magic she didn’t fully understand. She would be trialed and probably sentenced to life in imprisonment in magical shackles for practicing dark magic that led to loss of life.

“Aa-nd scene! Great work everypony, I really felt there was real emotion there. Cake and assorted spirits stage right!” The male voice from the cellar called out in a disturbingly chipper tone, in the same room with her, again. “Okay, you are oblivious, that much is clear. I bet sending the Princess a note might be an idea, hmm?”

“What are you? Why did you kill Spike?!” Twilight screeched as her horn light back up with arcane energy. She would burn this thing to ashes if she had to, but nopony else was dying today.

“Spike’s dead? That is horrible, whatever axed him?” Twilight heard a snapping sound and with a sudden bout of dizziness she remembered what she had just ran away from; A still doll and a freaked out baby dragon asking her what was wrong. She remembered running from nothing and Spike falling from her back, but she also remembered the hungry monster of gnashing fangs she thought to be chasing her. Now she knew that the monster had been a fabrication, but the memory still chilled her blood.

“Dear, you didn’t think breaking taboos would come without a price? You wanted to create a soul, but you summoned me instead.” Twilight whirled around as she was finally able to place the voice and saw a strange bipedal creature wearing an immaculate white suit and a white hat with a black hash. The thing flashed a friendly smile and waved at his apparel with one of its dexterous looking hands. “It is common knowledge that the guy wearing a white suit is the bad guy, or at least a douche. I’m sure you think I’m either of the two, so I decided to dress the part.”

“What are you? Why are you doing this?” Twilight asked as she cast layer upon layer of holding magic around the chatty creature. It said he was summoned because of her soul transmutation circle, so was it a spirit of some sort? He chuckled at Twilight with a shake of his head, before casually stepping through every layer of spells meant to keep him in. He then proceeded to do a little dance right on top of the line meant to keep him in to drive the point home.

“My gut reaction is to answer that I am human, but I’m not sure that’s accurate anymore.” Twilight saw the man’s lips curve in a small smile before he made a sharp snapping sound with those delicate fingers.

The first thing she noticed was a writhing motion under his suit’s fabric and then she heard the hissing and clicking again. Black ichor started to ooze out of the bipedal thing’s eyes and his mouth spread impossibly wide in an emotionless smile. She watched in horror as his teeth turned sharp and serrated as more pushed through the fabric of his suit and ground it to a bloody pulp as they gnashed against each other.

“Right now I’m aiming to be your worst nightmare.” The thing gurgled out as the last pieces of immaculate white garment disappeared in a flurry of grinding teeth and clicking claws digging into the wood of the library’s floor. This time the thing’s mouth stopped expanding after it was large enough to fit her whole head and the rest of its mass migrated to form stronger and more stable legs than the fragile claws before. Twilight backed up to stairs to her personal living space, realizing the thing was between her and the door leading outside.

“This is not real, it’s just a fabrication meant to manipulate me!” Twilight screamed to herself, trying to convince herself that the monster writhing towards her was not real. The thing smashed a sturdy claw in the wood between them and hoisted its squirming mass a good pony-length closer to her, falling on what could be considered its face, but never stopping in its steadfast pursuit of her.

Deciding that it didn’t really matter if the mass of teeth inching its way toward her was real or not, Twilight screamed and started running to the only place that could be safe from the monster a few seconds longer, upstairs. This thing had trouble maneuvering on even ground, so hopefully the obstacle of stairs would slow it down enough for Twilight to figure out a way to stop it.

Spike’s magical dragonfire seemed to hurt it earlier, so maybe magic of the same intensity could as well. Twilight stopped running at the top of the stairs and aimed her horn at the monstrosity. She didn’t bother to bring to mind any specific spell to use on the thing, she just threw all the arcane energy she could through her horn and hoped it would destroy the monster.

The purple energy smashed into the the writhing mass of evil and to Twilight’s relief the thing was not only hurt by it, it exploded into thousands of disgusting little pieces. She was only slightly disturbed by the grin spreading on her face at the sight; it was like thing had been shot with a cannon.

Her face fell when these thousands little pieces started moving. It was not a slow flowing motion you would expect from eviscerated remains, it was more like the hussle and bussle of a hive of ants. Thousands of small things moving against and over each other, some unknown logic guiding them toward a common goal. Unfortunately, that common goal still seemed to be eating her and the blanket of small hungry black things swarmed toward her faster than the thing had accomplished as one terrifying thing.

She realized she was screaming in fright and throwing things at the things only when Rainbow Dash crashed through the library doors, ready to pummel anything threatening her. It was an immense relief to have one of her friends there, but Twilight wasn’t sure how much the pegasus could help against whatever she was fighting. From what she saw it was either an entity capable of resisting unicorn magic and shapeshifting, or a thing within her mind, capable of altering her perception and memory. Either way, she didn’t see the brash pegasus doing any better against it either way.

“Twilight, what is it?! What’s wrong?” Rainbow Dash asked as she spun around in the air, eyeing every corner of the library for the thing Twilight was fighting, except the swarm of hungry black things still inching toward her. So, they really were only in her head.

“You can’t hurt me, you are nothing but an illusion.” Twilight stated and took a resolute step towards the swarm of black things. They kept coming towards her for a moment, before stopping and the strange bipedal thing appearing in their place. She blinked and the thing was still standing there, hands in pockets that were stitched on the side of his pants. He still had that white suit and the annoying smile.

“That is very perceptive of you, Twilight Sparkle, but it’s not like I have to.” He leisurely raised a hand and pointed toward the confused Rainbow Dash floating towards her. Twilight Sparkle turned her head toward her friend before she could doubt the thing’s reasons for pointing the pegasus out. As soon as their eyes met there was a another bout of dizziness, along with a sharp pain behind her eyes. She had to blink away the pain and rubbed her eyes with a hoof to get rid of the itchiness.

“Watch out, Rainbow Dash. I think it’s -” She barely had time to take a panicked step back as Rainbow Dash spun in the air to buck her in the throat. She might have avoided her throat from being crushed, but the buck still landed and Twilight was thrown against the wall with her head spinning and her breath forced out of her.

“You monster! How dare you do that to Twilight!” The look in Rainbow Dash’s eyes was a mix of revulsion and anger, so whatever the thing was making her see must have been particularly nasty. Rainbow Dash charged Twilight with a snarl and the unicorn tried to scramble back onto her hooves before the enraged pegasus could pummel her. True to her name, Rainbow Dash was on her before Twilight could even stand up and she could feel something give in her chest as Rainbow Dash gave another hearty buck to her midsection, throwing her across the room and onto her bed.

“Rainbow Dash, wait, it’s not real!” Twilight Sparkle tried to reach her friend as she was charging her again, hooves out in front of her and an aggressive flame in her eyes. Twilight Sparkle was sure that it had indeed been the feeling of a rib breaking before, as the cyan pegasus slammed her front hooves into her again and forced the fragmented bone to grind together. The sudden pain almost buried the feeling of them crashing through the window and pieces of glass burying themselves in her skin. Sadly it could not do much for the pain crashing to the ground caused. Stars flew in and around her as the pain erupted in her body. She was pretty sure she screamed, but things were getting dark now, her consciousness fading from the shock.

“Please, stop…” Twilight wheezed out, as breathing in enough air to properly vocalize was too painful right now and drew her hooves close to shield herself. Rainbow Dash must have been doing something, but she had hard time concentrating on anything, there were distressed voiced all around them now. Why hadn’t Rainbow Dash attacked yet?

“Twilight… no, there was a stallion, with a sword! Where did he go? I… I couldn’t have, right? Did I do this?!” RD sounded scared and confused, not like there was an alien presence affecting her perception. If the thing was not in the spirited weather pony, then where was it now? It had been able to drive the the Element of Loyalty to attack their friend brutally, so there was no saying what else it was capable of.

“It’s my…” Twilight struggled to get her legs to move. True to her character, RD had really spared no time in giving her a thorough beating. Whatever she had been forced to see must have been her appropriate size and dimensions, as every strike felt like they had found their mark splendidly. “fault…”

Time didn’t pass for her, it was as if she was struggling get up on the cobbled street next to her library one moment and then she was suddenly jerking against sheets and wincing at her newly formed bruises. She could feel bandages tied around her torso, so she had been out long enough for Rainbow Dash to find a doctor, or at least someone who knew how to properly administer first aid.

“You’re awake, thank goodness. I did what I could with the glass and cuts, but you shouldn’t try to move, an unicorn doctor is going to have to mend your ribs.” The unmistakable voice of Fluttershy called nearby and a gentle hoof tried to press Twilight down on the bed. Twilight opened her eyes and regretted it almost instantly as the bright day greeted her with headache inducing brilliance. They had carried her back up onto her bed, it seemed, as she could feel the breeze from the broken window.

“Fluttershy, there’s no time for that. There’s something loose in Ponyville, the thing that made Rainbow Dash attack me. We have to find it and stop it, before somepony else is hurt.” She wanted to spring out of the bed and get to tracking down where and who that thing had jumped to after Rainbow Dash, but despite the urgency of the situation she couldn’t muster up the adrenaline to move past the pain of her broken ribs. “But I think have to wait for the doctor before I join the chase. Fluttershy, did you lock eyes with Rainbow Dash while you were tending to me? Did you feel dizzy and hear a voice in your head?”

“I did feel a little dizzy after seeing Rainbow Dash attack you like that, but that could be, well, normal… Do you think that thing is in me? You don’t think it’s going to hurt me, is it? Or make me hurt anypony?” Fluttershy folded her wings and landed on the floor next to the bed. Twilight hadn’t even noticed the pegasus was hovering above it and wondered if Fluttershy made a conscious effort to make her wings quiet, or if there was something affecting her hearing.

Twilight sighed and closed her eyes, letting her body relax. The thing needing eye contact to jump from pony to pony made him pointing out Rainbow Dash before she attacked her make sense. If all was needed was proximity, then he could have jumped into Rainbow Dash without having to point her out, not giving her even the slightest chance to defend herself.

“No, if you hadn’t seen something out of place or heard a voice in your head by now, then it’s not in you. He didn’t strike me as someone who could stay quiet for this long. Did you feel another bout of dizziness after that, or see Rainbow Dash stagger while looking somepony in the eye?” Twilight took a deep breath after talking so long and immediately regretted it as her ribs shifted as a result. She still needed to catch up, to hopefully stop the thing from causing anymore harm.

“Uhmm… yes, I think so. I felt a sudden bout of dizziness when I…” Fluttershy glanced away from Twilight as she tried to recall the situation, but suddenly froze in place in mid-sentence and a blank look came over her face. After a moment Twilight carefully extended a hoof and nudged the timid pegasus, causing her to snap back to reality.

“Rarity, I was with Rarity! We were coming back from our weekly thing at the spa, when you came crashing down and… Oh dear, it’s in Rarity, isn’t it?” Fluttershy turned this way and that, unsure what to do with two of her friends in danger.

“Pill’s here!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed as she dragged a disheveled looking unicorn doctor through the library’s front door. It took the energetic pegasus a few more seconds to drag the disgruntled doctor up the stairs and to where Twilight lay. “Great, she’s awake! Doc, heal her!”

“So, I take it you fell down some stairs, hit your face on several doorknobs and cut yourself shaving?” The unicorn doctor said sarcastically as she gave a poisonous look toward Rainbow Dash. It took Twilight a second to make the connection, but when she did she blushed slightly at the doctor’s misconception.

“Actually, Rainbow Dash attacked me while under the influence of a malicious spirit from what I assume to be a different dimension. I would appreciate it if you could set my ribs, so that we could save another one of our friends from this same spirit.” Twilight explained, waving a hoof in RD’s direction. The doctor would most likely not believe her, but she was far too tired to go with anything but the truth. “I think you should try and avoid eye contact with anyone acting irrationally for now, as well. I believe that is how the spirit jumps from pony to pony.”

“U-huh…” The doctor’s horn was aglow and Twilight felt her bones shifting back to their supposed positions. The healing spell numbed the area it worked in, but the sensation was still far from pleasant. They all knew not to distract a healer at work, so the minutes it took for the doctor to see to her ribs were spent in uncomfortable silence. Twilight knew they had to hurry and catch onto the spirit’s trail as fast as possible, but there was no rushing a healing spell in progress.

“To be frank, if it were anypony else saying what you are saying, I’d refer them to the psychiatric ward, but you and your friends get yourselves, along with our little town, into some weird situations. You also seem to be the ponies who solve those situations, so I’m going to just take your word for it. Watch out for eye-contact, was it?” The doctor wearily stated as the healing spell finished.

“I believe so, yes. The one its jumping from will feel dizzy, so that might be another thing to watch out for.” Twilight explained as she got up to walk out. The doctor clearly wanted to tell her not to, but decided to simply walk next to her as she braved the stairs. The ribs were set and mended magically, but they still ached and every step sent a jolt of pain from her other injuries. Sure, it hurt, but it was not enough to hinder her in any other way than distracting her slightly. They had to get to Rarity as soon as possible.

“I’ll spread the word the best I can, but I still have a shift to finish.” Dr. Pill said after giving his latest patient a quick once over at the bottom of the stairs. “You should still come by for a checkup once you wrap this up.”

“Okay, she’ll do that. Twilight, we need to go!” Rainbow Dash had stayed quiet as the doctor worked, but now that Twilight was more or less healed, her brash nature was showing again. The doctor let himself out without being prompted to and supposedly went to finish his shift at Ponyville general.

“Girls, we have to stick together. We can’t give this thing a chance to possess one of us when we’re alone and hide in us.” Twilight rushed out the door as fast as she could and heard the two pegasi flying next to her, although Rainbow Dash was obviously straining not to rush ahead.

Just as they could see Rarity’s boutique it’s door opened and a white unicorn filly rushed out. As they closed the distance it was obvious that the filly was crying, or was very close to it. Whatever the case, Rainbow Dash had to catch Sweetie Belle, before she barrelled right into Twilight.

“Twilight, there’s something wrong with Rarity! You’re the smartest pony ever, so you can help her, right?” the filly pleaded with a voice strained by emotion when she saw Twilight. Twilight wanted to reassure the filly, but she had to avoid eye-contact. Luckily Rainbow Dash put her hoof over the filly’s eyes as she set down on the ground.

“Sweetie Belle, tell me what happened to Rarity. I know what is causing it and you cannot look us in the eyes because of it. You are going to have to trust me on that. Did Rarity lock eyes with you after she came back from her spa appointment?” The entity had definitely been inside Rarity, but it was still unclear if Sweetie Belle’s trauma was caused by a hallucination the spirit had caused, or if the malicious thing had stayed in Rarity and caused Sweetie Bell’s distress through her apparent insanity.

“She… She rushed in and told me not to look at her, you know, like when Rainbow Dash ruins her mane with a gust of wind, but a lot louder and scarier. She locked herself in the bathroom and she kept screaming things that didn’t make sense. It’s like she doesn’t even hear me.” Twilight felt something twisting her insides when the filly went limp and gave one weak sob. “She stopped screaming a minute ago.”

Fluttershy moved toward the filly to reconcile her, Rainbow Dash didn’t know what to do with the quietly weeping filly and Twilight Sparkle learned what true hatred felt like. She legitimately hated this spirit’s very existence and wished to see it snuffed out. She might hate herself for such thoughts in hindsight, but right now she wanted nothing more than to reduce this living thing tormenting her friends into nothing and spit onto whatever spot it vacates.

“Why are you doing this, you cruel bastard!?” Twilight shouted as she slammed the door to Rarity’s home/boutique open with her magic. She stormed up the stairs and slammed the door to Rarity’s bathroom open. It might have been locked, but no normal lock can hold against an irate unicorn of Twilight’s caliber. “Come out and face us!”

Rarity was lying in the bathtub with the shower running with her back to them. There was no blood, nor did it look like Rarity had hurt herself in any other obvious way. Her mane and fur looked disheveled and an impressive array of cleaning products lay discarded around the bathtub, but nothing sharp or poisonous. Rarity didn’t look as bad as Twilight had thought she would, but it didn’t matter if she didn’t look broken on the outside, it was obvious there was something very wrong.

“Don’t look, please don’t, it was an accident… I didn’t mean it, Sweetie Belle, please… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, so sorry.” Rarity was muttering things in a low whisper, her voice sounding hoarse from the screaming she had been doing earlier. Her shoulder quivered now and again as she quietly cried. Twilight took tentative steps toward the unicorn, knowing the spirit could do whatever it wished with its victims perception. Rarity might not have been the most magically potent unicorn, but she could be dangerously accurate with her telekinesis. Twilight could Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy rushing up the stairs and apparently so did Rarity, as she flinched back and raised her head up suddenly, fixing on Twilight fearfully, like she had threatened to kill her brutally

“Finally! It took you long enough!” The Spirit’s voice rang out after Rarity’s head hit the bathtub’s side. Rarity crawled as far as she could from Twilight, crying in earnest and tiredly trying to hide her face behind her hooves. “I mean, it was fun to stretch my proverbial muscles, but it’s not that amusing to keep beating a dead horse, pardon the pun, as accurate as it might be.”

“Why would you do this?” Twilight asked, shocked from the state Rarity was in, barely registering her friends walking in. She blinked once and then the spirit was sitting on the edge of the tub in his white suit and fiddling with his hat between his long legs. Somehow it didn’t surprise her to see that his hair was slicked back and a little too long to look natural on his simian frame.

“I am pressed for time, as you well know.” The spirit answered and twirled his hat in the air, indicating something above him. It took Twilight a moment to realize he was referring to the arcane storms that had made the transmutation circle possible. Twilight was slightly disturbed to see Fluttershy step through his projected form to try and console Rarity. For him to be concerned about the arcane storms passing meant he had every intention of returning to wherever he came from. As they didn’t know the extent of his power over their mind, or if their assumptions on its limitations were correct, it was difficult to fight him with what he’d shown himself to be capable of doing.

“I assume you want something, then?” The projection of the simian thing smiled and stood up from the edge of the tub and was suddenly pinching her cheeks with his hairless hands. There was no movement in between, the spirit was standing there one moment and a blink later he was kneeling in front of her, pinching her cheeks. She knew lacking an actual physical body was what made it possible, but it still felt jarring for Twilight’s overly analytical mind.

“Who’s a clever pony? You are. Yes, you are!” The thing cooed at her in a way you would give compliments to an over-excited pet while he pinched her cheeks and ruffled her mane. His projected body disappeared when she blinked, but Twilight could hear him letting out a contented sigh. She must have looked beyond strange reacting to something her friends couldn’t see. “Yes, I do have a few demands I would like to see met. If that happens I will tell you how to reverse what I did to Rarity and the rest of you.”

“The rest of us?” Twilight felt the bottom of her stomach fall off at that. There was a chance he was lying, but it was also possible that Rarity was only a demonstration, while what had been done to them was something they wouldn’t even notice themselves.

“Yeah, I couldn’t take the chance of you declining my terms, so I did something similar to you and Rainbow Dash. Do as I say and you’ll never find out exactly what I did.” The spirit sounded annoyed that he even had to explain himself and Twilight really didn’t want him to demonstrate his power again on any more of her friends.

“Girls, please listen. The spirit that did this to Rarity is inside me now. It says what happened to Rarity is reversible, but he has some demands before he tells us how.” Twilight declared, careful to keep her eyes to the ground while she spoke. There was no reason to think their assumption about the need for eye-contact was false, after all.

“Why are we listening to this thing? Let’s just magic it into a jar or something and get Rarity to a hospital. We can’t be trusting this thing, not after all this!” Rainbow Dash suggested, followed by the sound of the pegasi supposedly looking for said jar.

“You could do that, but you don’t stand to lose anything by going along with my terms for now. I need to see Nightmare Moon’s remains, first. You should knockout Rarity before we go, though. Without me in there she might be prone to self-harm.” The spirit said in a tone that only conveyed boredom, rather than any hint of nervousness. Was he so sure they would choose to go along with him?

“Of course I am. Deal with Rarity and we’ll go.” Twilight could hear her teeth grinding at the impossibility of the situation. This was no great evil that she could rally her friends against, no ancient evil out to swallow up Equestria; this was a cruel spirit holding her friends sanity hostage to get what it wanted, she couldn’t fight it without risking all of their sanity in the process.

“I don’t know how we could extract him, or if fighting him is even possible. We’ll have to listen to him and see if we can put an end to this nightmare on our own.” Twilight set her jaw and turned her attention back to the weeping Rarity. She was curled up in a tight ball, muttering apologies between tired sobs. She really did not want to know what the spirit had done for Rarity to be reduced to this.

“Well, that’s too bad. I want to show you.” With those far too chipper words the reality Twilight knew bled away to reveal a skeletal insectoid thing curled into a ball where her friend had been moment ago. The distressed unicorn jerked back from the monstrous thing in front of her, only to nearly stumble on something by her feet. She didn’t want to take her eyes away from the insect-monster and really didn’t want to see what she had stumbled on, but her head moved to check out of pure reflex.

At first she had the irrational thought it was a bowling ball, just an irregularly shaped, off-white bowling ball with red paint splattered on it. All the blood on and around it should have been something that gave away what it was instantly, but Twilight simply didn’t want to believe it, even while staring at Sweetie Belle’s severed head. She really did not want to connect those dots and be forced to wonder if Sweetie Belle had been alive when it happened.

“I would say it’s more gnawed off than severed, but that’s just me. The nightmare I was putting your friend through when you finally showed up is what you see around you. She grew out of her skin over the span of a few days, Sweetie Belle staying there to care for her sister. Rarity became hungry in her new form and Sweetie Belle just happened to be there, in claws reach. Playing on both Rarity’s high standard for herself by devolving her into what you see before you and on her main character trait by forcing her into a situation where she would take what’s never willingly given. It was a fun little experiment.”

Reality snapped back into focus for Twilight and she staggered in place as she was reaching a hoof out toward the whimpering Rarity again. She refused to believe that the spirit was capable of bending time, so it must have been her perception of it. A detailed memory implanted in her mind playing out in a fraction of the perceived time was the most reasonable explanation she could come up with. She didn’t want to rationalize anything the spirit did, or feel any kind of awe at its capabilities, but her rational mind boggled at the amount of information the thing was able to fabricate and control.

“You are correct, Purple Magic Unicorn. That was one of them, she’s lived in the varied hells I created for what she believes to be years. It took me a good while to blur the line between reality and what I showed her, but she really freaked out when I succeeded. I’m pretty sure she thinks you are the hallucinations now.” The spirit explained excitedly, sounding downright proud of what he’d done.

“Now, I am sure your friends can take care of Rarity. Teleport to the old castle in the Everfree real quick and we can get this done. I’ve made the calculations and arcane matter density readings are unconsciously conducted by your horn anyway, so just will it and I will help you with the hard part. The sooner we get this done, the less likely it is that I will have to stay here. I think neither of us wants that. It would be really awkward after all this.” The spirit chuckled and Twilight felt an uncomfortable pressure building in her head as the spirit’s influence grew.

She gasped as all the intricate calculations needed to safely teleport large distances started trickling into her consciousness. The spirit had even taken Everfree’s sporadic magic and the shifting of the earth between Ponyville and the castle into account. More variables were added and old ones were tweaked at a speed Twilight couldn’t comprehend, but the spirit was sure to make her aware of every calculation and where the information came from, no doubt in part to show off, but she still had to know all of that to safely teleport to a place she could not see. Even if she disregarded the speed of the spirit’s calculations, it was a mystery where the spirit knew all the required equations to help her do this, as some of the information she was presented with were things she would have never taken into account herself.

“How -” Was all she was able to get out before a tiny version of the spirit’s projected form appeared on her muzzle, holding up a sign saying “MY DIMENSION = ALTERNATE EQUESTRIA”

“You could have just said it.” Twilight sighed as she charged her horn with the magic needed for teleportation. With the spirit helping her with the calculations such a precise spell cast in such a scale needed, she might even be able to teleport back without tiring herself out completely.

Teleportation was a culmination of the unicorns ability to control the vast energies of the world around them, but most unicorns who were capable of it avoided doing it anymore than necessary, as it was downright uncomfortable to do. Your body was cast out into a cloud of aether tethered together by your will and driven and protected by the matrix of the spell to its intended destination. This whole process only lasted a fraction of a second, but your body was disassembled, moved as pure energy and then reassembled where the spell ended. The process caused every nerve in your body suddenly reassert themselves to your mind, causing an extremely disorienting and uncomfortable feeling of hyper-awareness.

This time, the spell felt different from any other time she had cast it. The energy gathered and fell into the matrix as usual, but her consciousness didn’t cut out as it enveloped her body and her form dissolved onto the aether. She didn’t see, feel, or hear anything, per ce, but she did become aware of things, as if she still did.

She saw a vivid kaleidoscope of what she perceived as colors and shapes that had to be the aether she was moving through and she also saw the form of the spirit piggybacking on her mind. While the space around her was something her mind hurt to even glance at, the spirit was something that unnerved her in a whole other way.

There was no jovial ape-thing in an immaculate suit, there was no clear form to the thing at all, but her disembodied state made her take in far too many details about the things true form. The spirit didn’t feel powerful in any particular way, nor was its perceived form threatening or imposing in any overt manner. There was just a sense of wrong about what she was seeing, like she was watching a broken piece of machinery ticking along uselessly, screeching while it ground and scraped against its distorted parts. The spirit shifted and Twilight saw countless of faces and species and expressions shift and flicker where its face was supposed to be, before the mess steadied into a amalgamation of thousands of different smiles, grimaces, grins and smirks and screams and groans and whimpers and gurgles and whispers and laughter and yelps and pain and joy and screaming…

Twilight crashed onto a cold stone floor and collapsed onto the ground, immediately scrambling to get back on her feet, terrified that something was after her, something and everything and faces and…

She felt her stomach clench and craned her neck to the side, as to not get sick on herself. She had a spartan breakfast that morning, but the mix of bile and fluids that shot out of her smelled that much fouler to compensate for the lack of volume. It stuck to her mouth and the taste made her gag. She crawled away from the small stain of vomit and curled up on the floor, hugging her tail as something in her tried its hardest not to break.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. I hear my form is unsettling to the unguarded mind.” The spirit said after a few minutes of silence. Twilight was surprised to hear something that sounded like concern on the usually mocking voice, but didn’t react to the spirit talking in any other way. She should be getting up and doing something to save her friends, but it felt like her body was miles away from her.

“What you saw was not only seen by your mind, so I cannot simply extract it. I need you to work through the shock of it the hard way. I will help you.” Twilight couldn’t find the energy to respond to the thing.

“It will help if you try and latch onto something purely carnal and constant. Take something concrete your body can feel and start working on rebuilding your reality from there. You’ve numbed yourself to physical sensations from just sitting there and you can’t inflict the amount of pain needed to snap you out of it, so I recommend that you focus on the smell and taste of your bile. Cement its reality into your mind and don’t let go. Embrace any reaction you get from that sensory overload and force yourself to move, to keep moving and try not to even think about stopping.” It took Twilight a few minutes, but ultimately she inhaled deeply through her mouth and focused on the taste of the foul bile in her mouth.

It was a strange thing to feel overjoyed at the act of gagging at something disgusting, but at least it brought forth a spasm of movement to her body. She tried to do as the spirit had instructed and keep moving, but she felt her legs weakening under her as soon as she had been able to force herself to stand up. With only a fraction of the the expected revulsion, she hacked up another glob of bile and then revelled in the violent dry heaving the taste and consistency of the glob caused. She was able to make it another few steps into the cold room with that anchor to reality. She didn’t feel like collapsing the next time she stopped either.

“What in the world happened to you? You look like you’re a matrix for a spell, but… broken?” Twilight weakly croaked out, her throat dry and hoarse from all of that had happened.

“You know, I have the memories and minds of 11 unicorns, or similar magic users, copied in here and I still can’t figure out why you call it a matrix. You never even questioned it, so you’re no help, but it’s obviously a formula, rather than any kind of matrix. Also, look up for a bit.”

Twilight looked up and saw the ghostly images of her friends moving in the room as the spirit reviewed her memories to pinpoint where Nightmare Moon had fallen, after a moment, an oppressively red “X” appeared on the spot on the ground where the Elements of Harmony had stripped Nightmare Moon from Princess Luna. Twilight walked over to the spot and started the scrying spell the spirit had seemingly taught her. She was too tired to wonder if she should trust the spirit or not.

“So, I’m sure you noticed that I dodged your completely valid question just now. I know how you worded it and that you genuinely feel empathy for my existence, but I’m sure the real question you wanted to ask was more along the lines of whether I am a spell given life, or a living thing twisted into a spell.” Twilight shuffled uncomfortably, knowing that it had been the first question that had popped into her head, but she obviously thought it too insensitive to ask. If the spirit was created from nothing and made to live as that wrong thing she saw, then she worried for the mind that conjured such an idea, but if the spirit had actually been the soul of a living thing, then the thought that magic capable of such a thing even existed revolted her.

“Oh, there actually is something here. There’s a trace of a powerful spell right where Nightmare Moon fell. I want you to focus on it and I will show you why I came here.” Twilight focused her magic on the spot with the strange magical residue and she could feel and see the spirit altering her perception so she could see him reconstructing the spell from the miniscule traces still lingering there. She felt her stomach drop when she recognized the core matrix making up the spell as it was reconstructed in front of her. It was very similar to the spirit’s true form and gave her the same feeling of wrongness.

“Yes, this means Nightmare Moon was a thing born from the same kind of magic as I am. It is called Soul Magick where I come from and I’m sure you can piece together what the hell it does from all you’ve seen by now, not to mention the name.” There was a pause as the reconstructed matrix disappeared and Twilight heard a frustrated sigh and a few muttered words she couldn’t make out. “Before you ask, I don’t know why it’s called “Magick” instead of just “Magic” either, might be because Luna invented it and you know how she’s with ye olde speech.”

“Luna did this to you?” Twilight found it hard to believe that the socially awkward princess of the night she’d come to know would be capable of violating another sentient being in such a way. “Is she… I’m sure you mean Nightmare Moon, right?”

“Nah, I mean the princess of the night, Luna. Of course there were circumstances that kind of made it more along the lines of “ill-advised”, rather than “monstrous”. Anyways, I’m talking about the Luna in my world, I am sure your copy is less… happy go lucky with soul-rending.” The spirit was trying to sound carefree, but there was a definite tremor in his voice when he talked about the princess of the night.

“Okay, I don’t think there’s anything else here. You can teleport back now, I’ll be embedded in your mind, so you won’t see me. Sorry about nearly breaking you, by the way.” The spirit had done things that were definitely evil and downright sadistic, but still he could talk to her like he was just some nice colt she met on the street. The really disturbing part was that she had to remind herself she had very valid reasons to hate him.

“How can you do such horrible things to me and my friends and still be so casual about this?” Twilight asked as she let power buildup in her horn, the spirit giving her the formula and doing the extensive calculations needed. A part of her felt tentative about that, but the logical part of her said that it would not help the psychopathic parasite to teleport her into a wall.

“Well, if I were abusive and made sure I was only regarded as a villain, you wouldn’t even consider going along with my demands. As things are now, you think of me as an dangerous spirit with strange powers, rather than something you have to vanquish.” The spirit answered with an audible sneer to his voice. Twilight cast the teleportation spell, choosing not to question why the spirit had to act evil in the first place, if he could have just asked or tricked them.

“Oh come on, how in the blue hell?!” The spirit suddenly shouted as the aether appeared around them again. Startled, Twilight moved her non-corporeal eyes to their destination and saw something jagged, bleeding and full of anger clouding their destination. Seeing it didn’t cause her sanity to run away from her, but she knew instantly that whatever possessed that kind of spirit was dangerous. Not only was this spirit different, it was far larger and oppressing than the one that had terrorized her friends. She really hoped this seeing spirits thing wasn’t something she would have to do again. The time she spent in the aether was nothing more than a split-second, but she could see the sharp thing moving to greet her, enveloping her and pressing into her with jagged malice...

And then that feeling vanished when her body was reconstructed. She looked up and was kind of startled to find herself in the main room of her library. The spell was supposed to take her back where she had teleported from. Did the other spirit pull her here instead? How was that possible?

“Welcome back, Twilight Sparkle.” Spike calmly said, turning to face her and giving a nonchalant wave. Twilight glanced around the room and saw her friends sitting down around her, strangely relaxed and unresponsive, but clearly conscious. Rarity was lying on her side next to Spike, seemingly asleep. Something was very wrong here, but she couldn’t put her hoof on it. She heard someone swearing like a sailor in the distance, but it was not something that she should be focusing on right now. It wasn’t important.

“Spike will come to no permanent harm from my presence within him, but I did need a body to retrieve Smuggler.” Spike calmly stated as he started walking over to Twilight. His sharp blue eyes looking at her with poorly veiled fury boiling underneath. Spike’s eyes are supposed to be green and he’s not that tall. SNAP OUT OF IT!

“No!” Twilight screamed and charged up her horn to teleport away. She wanted to teleport out of the library and hopefully away from whatever this other spirit had done to her friends to make them so compliant, but instead she found herself at the top of the stairs. She was trapped in the room by this thing’s magic and it was possessing Spike. “Release Spike this instant!”

Spike clenched his fists and turned to look at her again. Now that Twilight wasn’t clouded by whatever was affecting her friends she could see that Spike’s body had grown to be very similar to the spirit’s projected form, a human. Other than the obvious transformation of his body, his eyes were now a piercing blue, rather than the emerald green she’d come to know. His snout was longer than the last time he’d had a growth spurt and his overall physique looked more intimidating. Actually, it looked like Spike as growing larger and sharper at the edges as the spirit controlling him seethed.

“I am in no mood for this!” Spike hissed out in a very dragon-like baritone, before hunching down and lunging for Twilight. Twilight could only teleport away in time because the spirit, who was called a smuggler, shoved the formula to the forefront of her mind.

“Fuck, I didn’t think it would be him coming after me. I don’t like dealing with him at…”

“Of course it would be me, you arrogant asshole! Priest had to stay behind to keep Luna alive. Anyone native to that side is unable to come here at all.” Spike’s body did another lunge for her, but Twilight was able to step away from it, according to the spirit’s instructions.

“Damn, he can hear me. Oh, she’ll survive, as if you care! I have every intention of going back, I just need something from over here before I do.” Spike’s body tried to sweep her off her feet with his tail, but the smuggler spirit told her the timing needed to jump away from it.

“You needed to brain-bleach Rarity to get it? I doubt that.” Spike’s body continued the spin from his attempt at trying to sweep her legs from under her and tried to backhand her using the momentum, but Twilight ducked and backed away from him. “Stay still, asshole!”

“Yeah, that’s rich coming from the guy who Jedi-mind-tricked the rest of the equines!” Twilight jerked as her hindquarters hit a wall. The round design of the room really wasn’t idea for fighting an opponent with such a leg up on reach and stamina. She felt her sides burning from both exertion and her barely mended ribs and knew this fight was going to end when she tired out. Luckily the spirit controlling Spike had halted his attack to argue with the smuggler in her head.

“This is not a competition, you douchebag!”

“Easy for you to say, you’re the one winning!”

“Fuck you!” Spike’s body jutted a finger towards a spot above Twilight’s head. Could he somehow see the spirit? Could they both see each other, despite the bodies they were in?

“Eat a dick!” The spirit inside Twilight laughed as Spike lunged again to grab her with his claws. Twilight could smell how the wood Spike touched smoked and sizzled, meaning the spirit inside his body could access Spike’s draconic magic and use it.

“I am not in the mood for this, Smuggler!” Spike tried to pull his hand out of the wall, but the living sap of the tree had boiled and hardened because of the special characteristics of Spike’s magical fire. Spike’s free hand came up to his face and Twilight could both hear and see Spike’s body sighing out a tuft of green flame. “There is not a word for how much I hate you right now.”

“So, are we going to wear our big boy pants and actually talk before you try and ineffectually strangle me again, hmm?” The first spirit cooed out in an absolutely obnoxious tone. The glare Spike gave the spot above her head after that made Twilight sure the spirit had half the mind to force Spike’s hand out of the wall regardless of the possible damage, but decided otherwise.

“Talk.” Spike’s body sighed as he started to scrape at the hardened resin with his free claw.

“My plan was to trick these ponies into calling Luna here by posing as the Nightmare that was purged from her by the elements. I’m sure the rest of the elements would have sent a letter to Luna already, if you hadn’t taken over Spike’s body and mucked that up. I intend to rob the Luna of this world of all she knows of Soul Magick, but actually use it to free both Priest and I from our Luna.” Twilight’s jaw dropped as the spirit confessed what had most likely been its goal the whole time. She knew feeling stupid about falling for a ruse set up by something that had free reign on your perception was a moot point, but she still did feel dumb for falling for it. Who the hell was this Priest character, then? The way the spirit was talking about him or her it was unlikely that they were the one possessing Spike.

“You do know that you could have just asked them, right? You’re smart enough to play the victim convincingly enough.” Spike’s body spoke in a harsh tone that she had not heard from the dragon, ever, she didn’t think there was enough hate in the small dragon for it. Twilight wanted to hide and hope whatever holding Spike’s body captive would just go away, but knew she couldn’t do that.

“Where would be the fun in that? This is my first chance to see what I can do while not shackled to our least favorite magical horse, so excuse me if I want to make it count. There are other reasons, but I’m sure I don’t have to get into them right now.”

“Wh- what have you done to my friends?” Twilight stammered out, feeling like she was interrupting Celestia during one of their lessons. The spirit within Spike had an incredible aura of intimidation about it and some part of her confused it as respect.

“He probably just told them to sit down and shut up. He has a way with making people listen.” Twilight watched as Spike’s hand was yanked out of the tree, with a good chunk of the wall with it. The spirit in Spike gave the spot above Twilight’s head a mean look. “He hasn’t tried it on you again, because I can stop it from affecting you.”

“Why the fuck would I let you get even more powerful, when this is what you do the little power you have now?” The spirit said while Spike’s body smashed the last of the splintered tree and sap from his claws. Spike’s body crossed his hands over his broad chest and leaned onto the wall, waiting for the first spirit’s answer.

“I’ve done nothing that wasn’t paramount to ensuring the success of my mission here. I’m sure you can understand the notion of the end justifying the means. Rarity’s dilemma couldn’t have been a hallucination I induced on anyone else, because I couldn’t risk not having proper leverage, given our limited window in time. I spent the first hour of the time I had with her coming up with a way to make what I did reversible. The rest was only me trying to cement the idea of me being “the Nightmare” to get Luna here. We both know her guilt would have gotten her here alone.”

“Giving you the power to flay souls is one of those things that will never happen, Smuggler.”

“That’s the thing I’m trying to get across to you! I can’t do what Luna did, I can only learn how to better use the Magick I was given, enough to figure out a way to detach myself from Luna permanently. You need a complete and healthy soul to cast Soul Magick to the extent Luna did to create us! I have neither of those things!”

“That is true. This world’s Luna is the only one that knows Soul Magick, I assume?”

“Yes, if we take it away from her, there’s no chance anything like us will ever exist in this world. Everything we screwed up there will be impossible here. If we leave now, it’s more than likely that these ponies will try to come after us. Leaving with what I came here for is the only sure way of stopping them from doing that.” Spike’s body growled low and he pushed off the wall.

“Not to mention giving you a reason not to try shit like this again.” Twilight saw Spike’s eyes start to glow even brighter as he turned to face her fully. “Tell me how I can send a letter to Luna, so we can bring this little misadventure to a close.”

“My studies show that Spike’s ability of breaking down and reconstructing matter with his own fire stems from the circumstances surrounding his hatching, but is still something based on draconic magic. If you are commanding both Spike’s body and magic, as I believe you are, then it should come as naturally to you as it comes to him.” Twilight blinked and took an involuntary step back from Spike’s possessed body.

Why was she telling them this? Why would she give these violent entities access to either of the princesses, or willingly put Spike through more wrongs while he was under their control?

“You’ll put two and two together eventually, Purple Magic Horse.” The first spirit’s projected form appeared next to her and Spike’s head moved to stare at it, rather than the spot above her head. “Hey, Soldier, I suggest you send the letter to Celestia. She’ll be an unknown variable while I extract what we came for from Luna, if she is left alone. She could very well stop us and strand us here if she comes to her sister’s rescue before I’m done.”

“I will not harm Celestia, but I agree she should be preoccupied while you tear what we need from Luna. That said, we are on a tight schedule and she would need incentive to come here without her guard for us to take her out of play.” Spike’s head cocked to the side in a very lizard-like manner as the spirit paused to ponder something. The piercing blue eyes slowly sized Twilight’s body, making her feel extremely vulnerable. “Is the Celestia of this world as capable of a healer as ours is?”

“Far as I can tell from Twilight Sparkle’s memories, yes.” The projection of the spirit inside Twilight crossed his arms and turned to stare at Twilight as well. “If you are going to do what I think you’re going to do, then I suggest an ear, rather than an appendage. Also, you should still write a letter. She might might think it a freak accident on Spike’s part otherwise.”

“Erase her memory of this, do the same for Spike later, if possible.” Spike’s body growled out as the spirit took a step toward her. The harsh light radiating from the eyes of one of her oldest and dearest friends blew away any will to fight she might have had. That light pierced straight through her, skewering her in place with a mixture of pure fear, confused respect and a profound sense of wrong. She wanted to fight this, to run and call for help, or even plead for them to reconsider, but that jagged blue light stripped her of the will to do any of those things.

“Okay, you know what he’s going to do to you and you know that you will be in pain when you regain your short term memory. Now that we’re on the same page, I have to say that he’s only doing this to get us out of your hair faster. I’ll put this traumatic experience behind a wall in your mind. You will have nightmares about it, as you have to deal with the trauma, whether you remember it or not, but it should not affect your waking life to any great degree, assuming Celestia reattaches your ear after all this.”

Twilight turned her head to and fro and noted with some shock that she was sitting at the dining table in her home in Canterlot. Her mother was humming a tune to her right in the kitchen and judging by the smell she was making pancakes.

“You remember this, don’t you? Not the morning of your first day in Celestia’s school, nor is it the day you first brought home a glowing report card, but the morning after the announcement that you would be skipping a grade, for the first time.” Smuggler wasn’t sitting at the table, nor was his projected form anywhere to be seen, but his presence in one of her happiest memories made her feel violated to such an extent she would most likely be sick if she had control of her physical body.

“I find it fascinating that the memory that brings you most comfort is not the most happy one, as I can catalogue dozens of other little moments that have brought you more mirth than this. You were both proud of your achievement and afraid of your parents treating you differently after seeing you were different from your peers.”

“Please… Please don’t do this. Stop, I beg of you.” Twilight forced out, feeling a tightness in her chest that usually preceded tears, but the memory playing out around her didn’t allow her to cry. She wanted to thrash and wail and make sure Smuggler couldn’t take the comfort of this memory away from her, but the memory playing out around her only allowed her to nervously fidget and listen to her mother’s soothing humming.

“You are perplexing and annoying, yet you are the only source of what little amusement I can gleam from this existence.” Her mother’s humming paused and Twilight could hear her mother washing the pan she had fried the pancakes with. Twilight flinched at the sound of the water sizzling into steam in the memory, as at that age she had been convinced that the sudden expansion of water into steam should have resulted in an explosion. Her mother had stopped her from having a panic attack every time they had pancakes or such by lying about using a spell she knew to stop it from happening.

“Blueberry pancakes, for my little smarty-pants.” Her mother affectionately nuzzled her mane as she levitated the plate of blueberry pancakes. Twilight giggled and squirmed away from the tickling show of affection. “Try and leave some for me, sweetie”

Her mother turned her attention to the morning paper and Twilight went to work levitating as many pancakes onto her plate in one casting as she could. It was a playful little way her parents had encouraged both her and her brother to keep practicing their basics, even when their studies moved on. Her brother was excused from the little game after he started tilting the table to slide the plate over to him instead, as moving the plate itself broke the rules.

“I find it interesting that you find solace in normalcy, but it’s understandable, given the unusual mess your life has become. Extra-dimensional spirits freaking you out and all that. There’s a definite appeal in the thought to just be a child again and not be burdened by all of… whatever we’re in the middle of.” The spirit was still nowhere to be seen and Twilight was still stuck playing out her most treasured memory, just waiting for whatever horrible thing Smuggler had planned. Despite all that, she found herself able to communicate with the spirit, through magic she didn’t want to understand.

“Why do this? Why this memory? What could you possibly gain from sullying one of my fondest memories?!” To say Twilight was angry would be an understatement. This entity was something she could never forgive. Toying with the sanity of both her and her friends was something she couldn’t simply let go. The fact the spirit seemed unable to physically hurt them was not something that helped them, as the scope of its mental abilities compensated for that. Even if they could fight the first one, the other spirit was powerful enough to take over the will of a dragon and somehow manipulate her friends into submission.

“We can’t fight you, so why are you doing this? My friends and I are not a threat to you, you’ve proven that. There is no reason to torture us like this!” Twilight shouted at the spirit and felt the memory playing out around her unravel. The reality around her swirled and twisted into a new form and Twilight caught glimpses of Smuggler’s true form all around her. She had actually broken his illusion!

“You do have a point. You may call me Smuggler.” Smuggler’s projected form stepped through a door and sat down across from her on the table. He glanced at the watch strapped onto one of his hands and blew out a breath, before loosening his tie and setting his hat on the table. “Well, I need to distract you for a while longer and you are aching for answers. So, tell me what are we, I know you have ideas.”

The turmoil around them slowed and eventually settled into an image of a dimly lit mainroom of a log cabin. She noted that everything was built for something of Smuggler’s size and that she could only name about half of the items strewn about the room. This had to be a place in the spirit’s original world. It looked far too comfortable and normal to be a place where something like Smuggler could have crawled out of, though.

“I did try to distract you with a pleasant memory of yours, but you took exception to that. So, I hope living through a memory from my side will do, while we take your mind off of whatever is happening to you right now.” Twilight flinched as the door of the small cabin opened and another projection of Smuggler backed up into the room, dragging another creature similar to him inside. The other human was limp and had what looked like a gardening tool lodged in their abdomen. The other Smuggler hurried out of the cabin and Twilight Sparkle decided not to give the first version of Smuggler the satisfaction of seeing her react to this new trick.

“Well, I know that your abilities stem from a variation of the magical formula you showed me. I saw your true form and heard the argument you had with the other one, so I’ll have to assume you are souls given that magic, rather than sentient magical formulas.” She could hear the other Smuggler mutter what she assumed to be curses as he was looking for something in an adjacent room. There was a crash and a particularly loud curse from the other Smuggler before the first one decided to speak.

“Well, all of what you said is true, but your terminology is wrong. We were not given the magic…” Smuggler waved a hand in the air vaguely, before slowly extending it towards her. Twilight heard the other Smuggler kicking his way out of whatever mess he’d made in the other room and saw him enter the cabin a second later with a large red canister. “Hint, Smuggler is not a valid name where I come from.”

“Ah, now it makes sense! The removal of personal identity is what allowed the foreign form and consistency of the spell matrix to exist within the confines of the soul’s own architecture. The removal of the constricting ideas of self was also most likely what allowed your abilities to vary so much.” Twilight felt the pieces locking into place in her mind and the familiar excitement of learning something new sprung out from beneath all the anger and hurt Smuggler had put her through. It lasted but a few seconds, right until her rational mind caught up and she realized she was learning about magic that effectively butchered a soul to use it as fuel. Also, the other version of Smuggler was splashing the contents of the red canister everywhere and the strange smell from the liquid within almost made her gag.

“Relax, you don’t know enough to even tickle your own soul, let alone someone else’s. If the understanding of the mechanics was enough, then I wouldn’t have been forced to do all of this. Luna’s the only one I know to have what I want and Soldier is more than willing to help strip that power from her again.” Smuggler watched the other Smuggler throw the red canister into the room and dig out a small metal box from the limp human’s pocket. The other projection flicked the metal box open with a practiced flick of the wrist and activated a mechanism to produce sparks a few times before any flame came upon the thing. The other Smuggler backed out of the cabin and casually flicked the burning metal box into the room.

“Smuggler.” A painfully forceful voice shredded the illusion around her and she suddenly became aware of all of the kinds of pain she was in. Twilight’s consciousness cut back into reality just as she saw the small metal box bounce from the floor and the flames spread out across the room. The searing pain on the side of her head and the almost overwhelming fatigue she was feeling hinted that she had struggled against Soldier in the real world and lost too much blood in the process. She definitely felt like she had been on the losing side of quite a fight.

“It’s really jarring when you do that, you know. If you’d just waited for a second, I could have seamlessly joined her reality into the fabricated experience I created. Now she’s going to have flashbacks in her waking hours and she’ll most likely flinch every time she sees Spike.” Smuggler explained, not sounding disturbed in the slightest about the damage they had caused her psyche, just annoyed at Soldier for interrupting him.

“We are pressed for time.” Spike’s body answered and threw something purple drenched in blood on the table. Soldier walked over to Spike’s little desk and picked up a quill and parchment, before walking back to her and dipping the quill in the small pool of blood around her head. “What should I write?”

“You know her better than I do, you’re more likely to know a personal trigger that will cause her to forego rational thinking.” Soldier nodded once and walked back over to her bloodied ear, wrote a short message and rolled the parchment around her mangled ear.

“Concentrate on the destination and incinerate, right?”

“The one you’re sending it to, actually. It doesn’t work on destinations that aren’t fixed either by someone’s life-force, or an arcane anchor.” Soldier nodded again and blew out a green tuft of flame that incinerated the parchment and her cut off ear and sent it to the princess.

“Seven… Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… And go time!” She could hear the smirk in the spirit’s voice. They were both enjoying this in some way, callously disregarding the harm they were causing everypony around them.

Celestia didn’t just appear in a blinding flash of light, the space that used to house her table was incinerated as she burned a hole in reality and appeared with her mane wreathed in flame and eyes radiating murder. She paused for a second at seeing Spike with blood on his claws and Soldier didn’t waste the opportunity her hesitation presented. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t surprised that the cruel spirit inside Spike didn’t miss the chance, but she was surprised that he turned towards her, instead of Celestia.

“NO!” Twilight had to squeeze her eyes shut as a mass of blinding light and intense heat seared through everything between Celestia and Spike’s body. She heard the gargantuan mass of energy slam into Spike’s body, along with the spirit inside him and then Spike’s body crashing either through her poor library’s wall, or at least onto it really hard. She hoped it was the former, as she definitely heard something breaking.

“A bit overkill, don’t you think? Well, she’s really not going to like the next part.” Smuggler’s relaxed reaction to having his partner beaten was the only hint she needed to decide on just staying down. Obviously the two spirits had something planned and she was definitely not in any position to stop them.

“Twilight! Stay awake, no matter -” Celestia could only take a single step toward her protegé, before a tendril of blue smoke shot out from somewhere behind the broken unicorn and attached itself to Celestia’s horn. Celestia’s head jerked from the impact, but she immediately flared her horn again to dislodge the tendril of smoke. As soon as the first tendril broke free, Twilight counted three more snaking their way to her mentor, wrapping around the first and not only latching onto Celestia’s horn, but around her neck and around her muzzle. Twilight could see more and more tendrils and masses of iridescent blue making their way through the path of the first and overwhelming the most powerful magic-user she had ever known in a matter of seconds.

The masses of blue light kept piling on Celestia, ultimately covering her whole form, yet there was still more barreling through the space between Spike and Celestia. The metaphysical weight of the blue energy was overpowering, yet she sensed no malice among all that power. It felt like watching a stormy sea, or one of the pegasi storms gone out of control; gargantuan force without direction or sense, simply moving and raging, as that was its sole purpose. There was a final flash of golden light within the amorphous mass of power before the iridescent blue light imploded into Celestia’s body.

“Wow, she actually kept you out for a moment there. How long do you think we have, considering I haven’t seen that happen before?” Smuggler’s projection made an appearance, this time straddling Celestia, like in the images Smuggler was feeding her subconscious mind about horseback riding.

“She’s still fighting me, Smuggler. One hour, at most.” Celestia ruffled her wings aggressively and disrupted Smuggler’s projection, making him reappear leaning on Rainbow Dash’s prone form.

“Can you still keep these guys sedated, if that’s the case? I mean, dealing with all…” Smuggler made a point of pointing at each of her friends in turn, muttering to himself at each of them. “Well, 3 and a half of them, to be honest, but it would still be an unnecessary pain.”

“Compared to Celestia’s will and magic, they are nothing. To keep them as they are only shaves a few minutes from our timetable.” It hurt Twilight to hear Celestia’s voice be so cold, not to mention the unnaturally blue eyes radiating another person’s mind.

“Assuming that using her power shaves more of that time, then you should blow up Luna’s tower, or force her here some other immediate way. I hear Celestia can do long-range forced teleportation, well, ours could, at least.” Smuggler’s projection glanced at Twilight briefly, furrowing his brow slightly at the sight of her. “Okay, you should allocate a few seconds into healing Twilight. Alternate reality or no, I think we don’t want to actually kill any of these guys, right?”

“True.” Soldier slowly turned Celestia’s body towards Twilight and started to carefully walk over to her. “I can’t heal her, but I do not have to. Celestia can heal her student herself, knowing that I can and will suppress her again if she tries to do anything else. She knows what will happen if we let Twilight lose consciousness in her current state, after all.”

Celestia’s hooves stopped right in front of Twilight, but she couldn’t muster the energy to move her head. She felt the warm tingle of magic wash away the pain in her head and an intense itching where her right ear used to be, Celestia must have been regenerating it. Her headache dissipated and the ever-present nausea from seeing and retaining the memory of Smuggler’s true form went with it. The aches and soreness from all of what had happened since Smuggler first appeared were blown away by Celestia’s soothing light and if it weren’t for the intense smell of blood and the leftover bile at the back of her throat she just might have fallen asleep and convinced herself it had all been a bad dream.

“Twilight, this is not your…” Twilight heard Celestia, the real Celestia, say before she saw a flash of blue reflect from the small pool of her own blood in front of her. She moved her head to look up into the cold blue eyes of the spirit torturing her mentor. “Fight, fault, maybe responsiblity? You can debate that later. Tell me the best way to get Luna here, alone.”

“Luna is the sole authority in magic focusing on psychological healing. You could just tell her about what Smuggler has already done and she’d be the only one qualified to help.” Twilight explained before her mind could catch up and stop her. She couldn’t be sure if the spirit called Soldier had even forced her to telling him, or if she was just too tired to fight either of them. She didn’t know why Soldier was even asking her if Smuggler really had access to her mind already.

“Yeah, that could work. Our Luna crossed paths with a sentient magical contagion that causes severe psychotic breaks, with homicidal to suicidal tendencies, kind of like what I did here, actually. She called it Delirius, if her memory serves. Drop that name and this one should hurry over, if this version of Equestria is as similar to ours as I think.”

“Okay, one instant message should do.” Celestia’s horn lit up and an orb of scorching light blasted into existence. For an academically trained unicorn like Twilight it was terrifying to see Celestia’s magic used so crudely, as just a fraction of the power she felt in that orb could incinerate her library, maybe even a good chunk of Ponyville.

“Madness. Ponyville. I cannot fight it much longer. Delirius.” The orb of light imploded and disappeared just as Soldier finished speaking. Twilight begrudgingly admitted that Celestia sounding nothing like her caring self actually played into the lie about a magical contagion being loose and affecting Celestia. Luna would probably assume the detached and short way of speech was from Celestia attempting to fight the infection, rather than because of a possession.

“Sister! Art thou…” Luna appeared in a flash of light not unlike her sister had, but stopped short after seeing the scene in front of her. Celestia standing over a bloodied Twilight Sparkle with radiant blue eyes and the other elements lounging around the room with vacant expressions on their faces. It was a stark enough of a picture to warrant an immediate and brutal reaction, but Twilight saw hesitation and hurt in the moon diarch’s eyes instead. “Sister?”

“A sentimental fool, no matter the reality. Smuggler, go.” Just as Soldier forced Celestia’s body to spit out those words Twilight felt Smuggler’s presence in the back of her head suddenly lift and rip at her mind as it detached whatever revolting anchors it had forced into her. It was an immense relief to feel Smuggler’s absence from her mind, but there was also an overbearing feeling of guilt knowing that the sadistic asshole was forcing himself on Luna instead.

“Oh wow, she really wasn’t looking out for me!” Luna suddenly blurted out in a strange dialect of Equestrian, as Twilight’s world swam and her stomach clung as close to her spine as possible to combat the severe nausea she was experiencing. “I kinda came at her with everything I’ve got and now she’s slightly catatonic without me… Well, our Luna knew how to block me, so it’s her fault, if you really think about it.”

“Do you have what you came for?” Soldier dryly asked in response to Smuggler’s jovial attitude.

“Yeah, downloading right now, for the lack of a better term. You think we could stop by at Sweet Apple acres? Sex as a mare might be an interesting experience, especially with someone coined Big Mac.” Smuggler made Luna’s body jump up and down excitedly, somehow missing the awkwardness Soldier obviously had in controlling a quadruped.

“The less ponies know about us the better. We should move closer to our point of extraction.” Celestia’s body droned out in a cold monotone, the blue of her eyes hurting Twilight’s aching head.

“Dude, I feel a lot more meaty than I have for god knows how long, so maybe I could get a minute to see if I like it? I like being a nigh invulnerable spirit and all, but there might be something I miss about this whole meatbag thing, ya know?” A minute of silence followed, as Twilight tried to focus her eyes on any one place and force down the urge to retch. Smuggler’s detachment had made her feel horribly disoriented and drained, not to mention the exhaustion that came with all higher level healing magic.

“Well?” Celestia droned out, startling Twilight into looking up. A white blob and a dark indigo blob were standing in front of her, moving slightly from side to side. Keeping her head up was starting to feel like an impossibility and her eyes were painfully heavy, but leaving the two spirits to their own devices was not something Twilight could allow. Her spirits tried its hardest to try and stop the two spirits, but her body was having any of it.

“I feel way too squishy and I am aware of far too many things touching other things for my liking. I’m sure this whole physical discomfort thing is something I might have missed or worked past with time, but right now I don’t see the appeal. Download is about complete, so let’s go. To the batcave!”

“You do know how to activate the circle to get us back?” Twilight could hear hooves hitting the floor of her library and the two blobs moved out of her shrinking cone of vision and the sound of her heartbeat started to drone out the voices, ever so slowly.

“I do and Twilight Sparkle doesn’t, literally the first thing I did after crossing over.”

“What about the cure for what you did for Rarity and the others?”

“Oh, that! Luna’s going to be catatonic, now that you mention it, so somepony else up there should know that, right? Just a second.” Twilight heard hooves rushing up the stairs and then saw the dark indigo blob grow to block her view of the world.

“The key to knowing what exactly Luna, or somepony else, should repress or extract is the theme of Ducktales. Twilight, I need you to remember this; Ducktales, woo-hoo! It appears in every false memory in some form or another, so as long as you know that, healing her is easy. Messing with yours or RD’s mind in the same way was really a bluff, so don’t worry.” Twilight felt a hoof tap her head reassuringly a few times before she heard hoofsteps going away from her again.

“What do you think that guy at the gate will take from Luna as his payment?” Luna’s voice asked, as she descended the stairs to Twilight’s basement lab.

“Why should we care?” Celestia’s voice answered in a hostile tone.

“I’m not saying we should, nor that I do. I’m just wondering, as he was trying to take Twilight’s horn before I stepped in.” There was a pause as Twilight heard the shift in the material of the stairs and the basement floor in Luna’s hoofsteps. “Actually, want to make a bet out of it? I’m pretty sure we can linger long enough to see it.”

“Heart.” Celestia’s voice answered, with an uncomfortable excitement in her voice.

“You’re so predictable. I think it’s going to be her wings. Allons-y!” Twilight heard the sound of energy gathering and the ominous sound of the unintentional dimensional portal she had created opening and closing.

“Ducktales, woo-hoo…” Twilight muttered as she finally gave up on trying to stay conscious. She did hear her friends stirring from their spirit-induced catatonia just before a dreamless sleep swallowed her consciousness, so at least the spirit’s were gone.

Author's Notes:

So, I wrote this instead of an epiloque. I plan on adding an epiloque of sorts to Predatory, but I wanted to write this first. I'm also testing with only having one POV in a story and with my ideas about the humans. That means some details in this story might not be canon in my probable future works. This is also the longest short story ever, so I really should start hunting for some kind of editor, I guess... Well, read it, do whatever.

Priest and Soldier to come, I guess, we'll see.