Blood dripped from Twilight’s fingertips as she slid them through the crack in the lid of the coffin she was inside. It didn’t feel like her blood. Her skin didn’t feel like it was her skin. Everything felt familiar and yet alien.

Twilight felt a firm grasp on the outside of the coffin. She wasn’t trapped inside, thank Celestia. She tried to spark some magic from her horn to move the lid, but nothing doing. Was something wrong with her horn? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything, except that she needed to get out. She needed to be free and see the sun again.

Twilight put her hands on the stone lid of the coffin; it was heavy, but nothing she couldn’t manage. And as the lid slid away and crashed onto the ground, Twilight sat up and breathed deeply. It didn’t help much.

Looking up, Twilight couldn’t see the sky, couldn’t see the sun. All she saw were rocks and cliffs. It was starting to come back to her where she was, and what had happened.

She was a Paladin of Celestia, a holy warrior dedicated to defending Equestria from the monsters and demons that stole ponies’ souls and dragged them to the Underworld. Twilight had been leading an expedition into the heart of the Underworld itself in order to learn more about what was causing these attacks to become so much more frequent as of late.

Her party met with disaster, she knew that. But she couldn’t for the life of her remember what had happened to them, or to her. All she knew was that she felt empty somehow, in a way she couldn’t describe.

It was dark and Twilight could barely see an inch in front of her face. She pushed up her glasses out of instinct but it didn’t help any. She slowly crawled out of the coffin, trying her damnedest to be careful and not trip over an exposed rock or tombstone or something.

Turns out she wasn’t being careful enough, because not two steps after leaving the coffin, Twilight’s hoof caught on something she couldn’t see, and it sent her careening toward the ground. She put her hands in front of her face and managed to dull the impact to just a minor headache, but she still didn’t like the idea that her fall could’ve been much, much worse.

She liked it even less when she looked up and saw a sharp protruding stone sticking out of the ground right next to her eye level as she lied on the ground. If she had tripped even one inch further, that spike likely could’ve gone through her head.

Twilight sparked her horn, trying to create a light, but her horn only fizzed and crackled to no avail. She curled up into a ball and really concentrated, trying her hardest to connect with her magic; she had no idea what could’ve happened to her to shut it off, but she needed it to work right now.

To Twilight’s immense relief, her horn began to glow with a soft raspberry light that illuminated the area around her; seeing it for what it was, for all the rocks and graves and spikes littering the ground and the walls of the cliffs, and all the steep slopes, Twilight realized just how lucky she was that her fall only gave her a minor injur—

The light went out.

Just as quickly as it came, it disappeared. Twilight tried to bring it back, but only left herself a wheezing, panting mess for her troubles. The light wasn’t coming back, and neither was Twilight’s magic.

Twilight crawled toward one of the cliff walls, taking extra precaution to make sure she knew exactly where she was going and looked out for spikes as much as possible. It was slow going, but she made it, and she curled up with her back against the wall.

The Underworld didn’t have a sun, but it had light; it wasn’t ordinary for Twilight to not be able to see what was right in front of her, so she would simply have to wait until the light came back.

Alone.

In the dark.

With nothing but her thoughts.

Thoughts that naturally went to the rest of her expedition. Nine ponies entered the Underworld, including herself, and Twilight had no clue what had happened to any of them. Hell, Twilight had no idea what had happened to her.

She woke up in a coffin, all alone, feeling woozy. She hadn't been turned into a monster, she hadn't been killed. It was possible her soul had been taken— in fact it was probable, considering the state of her magic— but in that case, why was she still alive, or at the very least why had she not become a monster?

Too many questions, not enough information. Twilight just had to pray that her comrades were faring at least as well, or hopefully better, than she was.

Twilight sat in the dark for probably a couple of hours. It was basically impossible to keep track of time, but it certainly felt like an eternity. But the light eventually came back, and it wasn’t like the surface world where dawn slowly appeared over the horizon; Twilight blinked and the lights were back on.

Granted, the hollow gray sky that illuminated the Underworld could hardly be considered ‘light’, but it would have to do. At least Twilight could see and step over the hazardous terrain, and she was thankful that she hadn't run into any monsters during her trek through the cliffs.

She was still a Paladin, and even without her magic she would find a way to defend herself, but she was still happy that thus far she didn’t need to.

Twilight soon found herself standing at a cliff’s edge, looking over the massive gray and brown flatland of the Underworld; she knew enough from her research to tell with certainty that this was the First Circle, and that realization provoked a groan from Twilight’s lips.

Her expedition had entered through the Third Circle, and their goal was to delve as deeply as possible to bring back concrete information on the Underworld and its inhabitants, information that was mostly unknown on the surface beyond vague charts and graphs, many of which Twilight had been forced to make herself since even less solid information existed when her research began.

She had been set quite a ways back thanks to whatever disaster befell her expedition. But there was no sense in stewing in it; better to just pick back up and keep moving.

The only landmark on the horizon was what appeared to be a large yet ramshackle village in the distance, surrounded by a great stone wall that stretched seemingly for an eternity. It wasn’t much to go on, but it wasn’t nothing, so Twilight figured she would need to head in that direction.

The closer Twilight got to the flatlands as she slowly made her way down the cliffside, the more uneasy she felt. She could sense the presence of monsters stalking her in the shadows, she could see them flitting about in the corner of her eye, and she could see battles taking place between them far off in the distance.

She took a second to test a theory, and was delighted when it proved to be true; even without her magic, her magical weapons were still available to her with just a thought activating their enchantments and popping them into her hands— a great lance, and a mighty steel tower shield. Not the most elegant of weapons, and without her magic far less effective, but they would still serve her well.

As Twilight inched her way toward the stone wall, which only seemed to get further away the more Twilight walked, she felt a tug in her chest. She looked off into the distance and could see through the clouds of dust and fog the flickering of flames.

Not just any flames; magic was at work here. Normally, Twilight would want to stay clear of such things; monsters fighting each other was as common a sight in the Underworld as one could imagine, and Twilight wanted no part of it, and yet something compelled her to take a closer look, a yearning that only got stronger the closer she got to the battle.

Once Twilight was close enough, she hid behind one of many stone arches that stood in ruins around what looked to be an ancient arena, inside of which there were several monsters doing battle with each other.

Or rather, several monsters doing battle with one single monster.

She was a demon; Twilight could tell as much by the curved horns on her head, by the way her hair flickered like fire, specks of cinder even falling off of it as she effortlessly danced around her enemies’ attacks. But most telling of all was that she was eerily similar in appearance to a normal pony.

Mustard yellow fur and blood red hair that would likely have fallen down her back if it didn’t pool in the hood of her jacket. She was a unicorn— if you could even call her that at this point— and her confident grin would have been enchanting if the bloodlust behind it wasn’t so clear.

She threw blades and missiles of flame around like it was nothing, and her enemies— which outnumbered her six to one— cowered before her. Watching her belittle them and push them into a corner, their desperation and fear becoming increasingly apparent, made Twilight sick.

As the demon threw a pillar of flame at the monsters, Twilight jumped in front of them to defend them, bringing her tower shield to bear and deflecting the demon’s attack, although it took quite a bit of effort on Twilight’s part to resist the searing heat of those flames.

Twilight lowered her shield to look the demon in the eyes, and the demon laughed, apparently transfixed enough by Twilight’s interruption that she didn’t even care as her former prey ran for the hills.

“Hey,” the woman spoke in a slow, dreary voice. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Feeling rested?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” Twilight said with contempt, irritated by the condescending tone in her enemy’s voice, “but I’m a simple woman. I see a demon swinging a sword at unarmed people, I step in to defend them.”

“How noble of you,” the demon rested a blade of solid flame over her shoulder and grinned. “Does your precious Princess know you’re sticking your neck out defending monsters?”

“A Paladin’s mission is to protect the weak,” Twilight said calmly, though she couldn’t help but be rattled by something; how did this mere monster know about Princess Celestia? “Pony or monster, that doesn’t matter to me.”

Admittedly, for most Paladins their code only extended to protecting ponies from monsters, not so much protecting monsters from each other. Most of her colleagues teased Twilight for being too soft, but she couldn’t help it; she didn’t like to see anyone suffer, and even if she knew that monsters had lost their souls and were therefore dangerous and unstable, she still couldn’t help but want to defend them.

“And besides,” Twilight hissed, feeling that familiar tug on her heart getting stronger and stronger the more she looked at this demon, “I think you have something that belongs to me.”

It was the tug of Twilight’s soul. She knew that in her heart, even if she couldn’t explain how or why. It didn’t make sense that her soul had been taken and yet she was still an ordinary pony, but she supposed that if she could get her soul back from this demon, it wouldn’t much matter.

“Well then,” the demon chuckled, and small streams of fire escaped her mouth as she let out a breathy sigh, “come and take it from me if you can.”

ok now that the introductions are over: THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTINGGG

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