Caramel winced at the bitter cold as he leaned against the prison bars.

He shifted in place until his fur became acquainted with the sensation, then continued shouting down the long hallway.

“I don’t think that’ll do you much good,” a soft voice said from the opposite corner of the room as he paused to breathe.

Caramel turned to face his cellmate, who had previously been sleeping on the bottom cot. “No one asked you.”

“I didn’t mean you can’t shout. I’m just saying it won’t help.”

“Yeah?” Caramel took a step forwards, away from the cold bars. Hot air flashed to anger in his lungs. It warmed his blood, shot through his eyes, leaked out his mouth, seeped through his pores. His skin hardened like scorched sand, setting his face in an obstinate mask. “You’d be wise to keep your opinions to yourself.” Forget the guards and their weapons. Boldness was his shank, experience his shield. He took a step closer to his cellmate.

“I’m not here to fight,” his cellmate replied, still just as cool as before. “I won’t be here long. I just thought I’d give you some advice.”

“Don’t need it.” Caramel scoffed. “I’ve been to jail before. I’ve escaped before. I’ve outrun armies.”

His cellmate laughed, exposing rows of towering, perfectly white teeth. “This isn’t jail. This is purgatory.”

Something in the way he said it sent Caramel into a hot fury. He felt the cool cell bars wrap around his heart and squeeze. Something inside that voice was diseased.

He rushed across the cell to the window, also barred, also cold. “Help me!” he screamed. “Somepony help me!”

He wrenched his cheek away from the bars and turned to face the door. Hoofsteps echoed down the dark, rocky corridor beyond their cell, but they stopped too soon to be headed his way. A minute passed. Still nothing.

“Told ya. You should listen before you shout yourself into a flu.”

“Ahh--we have to get fed. They have to feed us.” The air caught in Caramel’s throat. “When does the feeder come around?”

His cellmate pointed at a slot on the side wall. “Pulley-based delivery system.”

“No feeder, okay.” Blood rushed to his face. The sick tightness of claustrophobia rose from the bottom of his guts and twisted up his lungs. “They gotta be around sometime, to give us books, or to yell at us. Something.”

Caramel’s cellmate swept his hoof towards the door. “You’re in the deserters’ wing. It’s sensible that our punishment is to be deserted.”

Finally--his old ways caught up to him in one ecstatic jolt of panic. The single link between all his past escapes, the only unchanging variable that he could reliably exploit, was the pony element. The guards themselves. Walls could not be tricked. Metal bars could not be incapacitated. Sheer drops could not be killed and dragged into storage closets. Bad guys needed good guys. Some genius had figured out his formula and found the only way to foil it. Twilight, maybe--if she was still alive.

Was Twilight even alive? The last Caramel had seen of her, the liquid fire pouring from her neck had just ignited the fur on her shoulder, and then somepony hit him over the head and shut the door to Twilight’s carriage.

Caramel slid down the wall and crumpled. A deep sigh escaped his lips. The fervor would pass in time, as would his anger and eventually his fear. Maybe he could be institutionalized. Maybe they could make something out of him. “I can’t breathe,” he muttered.

Caramel’s cellmate laughed. “This place will be like home to you, eventually. Just let it happen.” When Caramel didn’t respond he stood up from the bed and extended his hoof. “I’m McTough.”

“Stop, stop it, I don’t want to shake your hoof, “Caramel shushed him. “I don’t care, I don’t want to know you’re name, I don’t want to care about where you came from, I don’t care. Do you understand me? I don’t care. Stop staring at me, can’t you hear? I don’t care.”

“Then you’re in the perfect place. You don’t care about anyone? That’s fine.” McTough took his time settling back into his bed. “No one cares about you either.”

Caramel bit his lip and resumed pacing around the cell. If he focused hard enough on his own hooves, the world would keep on spinning even after he stopped.

McTough chuckled at the antics. “Don’t worry, I won’t judge you for pacing. I’m only in here for a week or so. I can’t even imagine what you must be going through.”

Caramel looked up, then down again. He wished the guards in Ponyville would have just killed him. “Just a week?”

“I broke the law, same as you. Difference is I made Equestria better because of it. You’re just a coward.”

“You’re just a murderer,” Caramel shot back. He leveraged his hooves against the floor and pressed himself into the corner as hard as he could. The wall was another barrier to get through. The wall spoke to him. Burn, it whispered.

And how Caramel wanted to burn! Burn with fire, burn with life. Burn himself into the scared sacred psyche of every force of authority who challenged him. Prisons deprived him of oxygen. Was this what happened to a pony when you stripped him of his outlets?

“There has to be a way out,” Caramel muttered.

“There is no way out,” McTough repeated. “You can keep looking, just do it quietly.”

Caramel pointed his hoof at his cellmate, half-expecting his head to explode. “There is always a way out.”

Air rushed into the cell as a hot spear of purple magic shattered the space between dimensions. A purple flicker of light in the center of the cell threw shadows across the wall. Burnt aether scorched Caramel’s lungs, filled him with life. For about five seconds a flat beam of light shot between dimensions. Caramel saw a whitewashed sun, an armor-clad leg, and the bowed banged silhouette of Twilight Sparkle surrendering to her mistakes.

Out of the rift dropped a smoking black file.

He and his cellmate stared agape as the anomaly convulsed and collapsed on itself with a quiet wail of vibrating metal.

A moment of silence passed. The burnt dust and shadows settled into the cell once more.

From down the hall, a guard called, “Two weeks in solitary for the next guy who throws a spell.”

Caramel scrambled to his hooves.

“Don’t touch that,” his cellmate said.

Caramel ignored him and grabbed it. Threw it to the ground, clutching his burnt hoof. Stomped on it a bit. Picked it up. Bolted to the window.

“We don’t know what that could be--it could be anything.”

“It’s a file,” Caramel grunted as he started sawing at the window bars.

“Throw it into the hallway. They’ll extend my sentence if you do something stupid. I’m an accomplice now.”

“Watch me--”

“Throw it into the hallway. Escaping is twenty years.”

Caramel ripped the first bar out of the wall and threw it outside without pausing to watch it fall. “What’re you gonna do?” he asked over his shoulder. “Murder is fifty.”

“Damn it, would you stop?”

The second bar came out.

McTough backed into the cell door and shivered at the cold. “Guards!” he shouted in a hoarse voice. “Guards!”

Out came the third bar. The cut wasn’t clean. The file was wearing down and Caramel could see the outside, the colors of the sun as it set, the air--he could breathe! Without the bars, air rushed in. The file felt dangerous in his hooves. He felt dangerous. The sunset called to him. Burn, it whispered. Burn.

“Stop it, right now.” Caramel turned around and marveled--his cellmate wasn’t smiling anymore. “What was it you said? There’s always a way to run? I’m sure they’ll commute you eventually.”

Caramel strode across the cell in two big steps, raised his hoof, and slashed McTough’s throat.

By the time he hit the floor Caramel had already stuffed himself partially through the opening. He quickly discovered he hadn’t cut the middle bar enough when his hoof caught between it and the closest remaining bar. Jagged metal bit into his leg.

He looked down. The moon hung above him, its light a towering beam for him to descend. Cold winds burned the skin on his face with the chill of the lower atmosphere. Down was freedom. Down was four broken legs for sure. Down was life. Down went the sun. Chase it, he thought, chase the fire, sink--burn. He struggled harder and prepared himself for a drop.

The guards at the end of the hallway saw McTough’s hoof stretched over the bars. One guard took a few steps closer before noticing the pool of blood beneath it. He shouted to his partner and charged down the hall.

Caramel roared and shook himself. Each movement impaled his leg a little more on the uneven edge of the third bar. He was almost completely free now. Only his one leg remained trapped between the bars. Blood--his own blood--trickled down the outside of the wall as he tried to free it.

He looked up just in time to see the first guard stop at his cell door. Their eyes met, furious and wild and fire.

“Break-out! Break-out!” The guard, a unicorn, screamed.

The cell filled with burnt ozone as the guard lit up his horn. Caramel gave one final tug at his leg as a sticky fireball roared across the cell and exploded across his face.

His center tipped. Blood rushed to his head as he turned upside down. He flailed and writhed and clutched at his burning face, but his leg would not budge. The flames clawed deeper into his face. His wails were eaten alive by the atmosphere. Jagged metal touched bone. He convulsed in agony, beating against the wall with his other leg, hooves peeling, face on fire, torso freezing, leg bleeding--

And then he fell.

The wall passed on endlessly. Slanted moonlight framed his fall. Behind him, the sun flickered on the horizon like the fires of a distant and endless war.