In the years she’d lived there, the loft had never seemed particularly foreboding or ominous. It had its quirks and charm and odd things about it, but they had grown familiar and were far from threatening to Sunset Shimmer. Yet as she found herself opening her eyes, staring at the ceiling from her sofa, everything about the loft seemed wrong somehow, enough that her hide rippled and her ears pinned to her skull.

Shaking her mane out, Sunset rolled off the couch, realizing when her center of balance was wrong for a bipedal stance that she was a unicorn again, despite this being her very human living space. The amber coated unicorn dropped to all fours, pawing a hoof at the thick area rug and snorting irritably, vaguely wondering what had happened. Her eyes searched the walls and windows, watching eerie shadows crawl across the surfaces, making the space seem both smaller and off center, as if the angles of the walls were skewed. At the same time, a faint breathy rushing sound existed at the edge of her hearing, as if a multitude of people were whispering just quiet enough that she couldn’t make out what any of them were saying.

She blew more air out her nostrils, fighting the instinct to rear as one of the shadows crept across the floor and almost touched her front hooves. She backstepped, tail flicking and ears pinned even more forcefully, arching her neck to point her horn at the creepy darkness. Sunset reached inside to summon magic to her horn, ready to blast anything that came at her with more substance than the darkness—except nothing happened. The magic she expected never came and panic stole her breath as she realized she couldn’t even feel the reservoir of power that should exist inside her.

The whispering noise grew louder, mocking, gleeful, even as the shadows closed in around her. Sunset did rear then, lashing out with fore-hooves and horn, fear fighting with the much more familiar fury for supremacy. For the moment, fury won, and her primal scream of challenge made the shadows draw back around her. “That’s right, you greasy leftovers from Grogar’s dung! I’m not afraid of you! I’ll take you all to Tartarus with me!”

The darkness retreated when she lunged, horn brandished like a spear, and she kicked her haunches into overdrive. Charging the front window, she twisted at the last moment and shifted all her weight to her front legs, allowing the unicorn to lift her hindquarters up and buck the glass as hard as she could. The sound of glass shattered reverberated with the same sense of wrongness, the sound far too soft and liquid. Foul scented air, full of sulfur and rot and burning plastic, burned her nostrils and coated her tongue, but out there was away from the hungering void that wanted her, and so Sunset spun with a horn waving flourish to leap out the window.

Her hooves slammed into concrete and she bolted, leaping right into a canter that took her away from her loft. She needed to find her friends-the magic could fix this, she knew. The Power of the Elements, of the mythical Rainbow would push back the darkness and set things right. All around her the world was a twisted mockery of what it should be, with familiar buildings that rose from the ground like crooked tombstones, walls at angles that never should have let them stay standing. Street lights fought a pervasive gloom and an overcast sky and failed, the bright pools of light only serving to cast darker shadows. Cars stood abandoned in the street, empty of human life, and Sunset had to jump over a fallen bicycle on the sidewalk. The world around her felt devoid of any living thing besides herself.

Her gait slowed after a few blocks to a fast trot—she needed the time to navigate obstacles in her way without risking tripping herself up. Scattered on the sidewalk and half in the roadway were various objects, discarded abruptly when their owners were seemingly whisked away. She shook her mane out as she jigged sideways to avoid a familiar looking scooter that had its handlebars pretzeled up just outside the Starlight House, and gave a little hop over a broken cane that resembled the one Mister Asiago from the pizza parlor used when he walked his dog. To see such personal possessions abandoned like broken toys, liquid darkness oozing over them, added to the sense of disquiet and unease making her guts churn.

It felt like there was a spotlight on her as she turned down the road that would take her to CHS, the shadows pulling away from her as she moved forward, only to close in after she passed. Sunset tossed her head again, feeling the anxious sweat that was dampening her neck, caused by the way the world was utterly silent but for the faint whispering and the strange sensation of damp, rough, cold concrete under her hooves. The unicorn decided very quickly that human concrete was perhaps the most unpleasant surface she’d ever trod on, worse than fine scree or silty mud.

Snorting, she grimaced and increased her pace as much as she dared, vaulting over an overturned shopping cart. She had to get to the school. It was the meeting place for her and her friends—in an emergency like this, happening when they were all separated, that would be their first instinct too, she was sure of it. Once they were together they would fix this, all of them, together.

The amber unicorn could see the Wondercolt statue up ahead and threw caution to the wind. In three strides she was galloping full out, a part of her rejoicing at the way it felt to have that brief moment where it felt like she was flying before her hooves came back down in a pounding, distinctive four-beat gait that echoed in her ears; it was a far cry from the awkward run of a human body, where even at a run her body was almost always in contact with the ground. The distance between her and the statue closed quickly, and hope began to rise that the nightmarish world around her would soon be set to rights—

A dozen feet from the statue, with that persistent sense of wrongness thrumming through her in time with her heart, Sunset’s leading hoof came down on something soft that slid away from the point of contact, sending her tumbling at an angle onto the grass and effectively halting her run. The unicorn went down in a tangle of limbs and it took a minute to sort herself out and figure out which way was up.

Turning her head towards what had tripped her, Sunset’s mouth went dry. There, torn now and half crushed from being stepped on by a pony, was AJ’s beloved hat. The hat she knew AJ was never without, that even Rainbow Dash didn’t ever try to swipe. Everyone knew that touching the hat meant anger from the farmer. Fear and nausea rose in the back of her throat, blue green eyes finding other items nearby she recognized.

Rarity’s purse draped against the statue’s base.

Rainbow’s soccer ball, sitting forlornly on the grass a ways away from her.

A broken plate of cupcakes that left frosting smeared across the front walk of the school.

And right next to her hoof, Fluttershy’s favorite butterfly barrette.

Stomach clenching and twisting into a knot, Sunset bowed her head, her horn brushing the grass. No magic and her friends were gone...

And what was more, the wrongness was stronger here, the shadows darker and more ominous, no longer afraid of her. She could feel them begin to close in, feel the way her nerves froze and her blood turned to ice so cold it burned as the hungry void crept over the splayed limbs.

“Are you really that pathetic, Sunset Shimmer?” a mocking voice asked her. “Surrendering the moment you encounter a hurdle you weren’t expecting?”

Her head snapped up, blue-green eyes focusing on the source of that voice, ears swiveling forward in response...yet her own voice failed her as horror constricted around her barrel like a vice.

Standing casually on the school’s front walkway was a monster she’d thought she’d finally freed herself from. Gleaming blue-green irises set in pools of inky black gazed out from under a red skinned brow, one side of which had quirked upwards, and a fanged mouth was set in a smirk. Where Sunset’s mane of hair tumbled down in untamed curls, the demonic shape in front of her had a mane of living fire that flickered and moved like the real thing.

Unlike previous encounters, though, the demon from the formal was not wearing the Element of magic—instead, a mockery of Sunset’s horn rose from her forehead, curved upward and coming to a sharp point, and two ragged pony ears stuck up from the fiery hair. Gone was the barely there dress, replaced by one of Sunset’s own tops and a pair of tight, ragged jeans, the whole look capped off by the tattered leather jacket that now hung neatly in the back of a wardrobe.

Red arms crossed under her ample chest, she tapped a black talon against an elbow. “What’s wrong? Abyssinian got your tongue? Don’t just lay there gaping like an idiot—get up!”

Rage boiled in her veins, so violent and sudden that it turned the edges of her vision red. In an instant she lashed out at the creeping void, seeing it break apart into smoke where it touched her, sending what was left behind scuttling back from her once more. Sunset surged to her hooves an instant later, rearing back as she did and coming down with her front hooves in a furious stomp. “You?! You did this?” came the snarl from her, ears pinning back in warning. “Bring them back, all of them, right now! You have no right to do this!”

That smirk twisted into annoyance. “You think I did this? I’m not sure if I’m flattered or insulted.” Her demonic self paused, before meeting her eyes. “You know better,” the dark being chastised.

“What?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Her demon broke eye contact to stare out at the world around them for a long time, silent and rather pensive. When it spoke again, there was something in its tone that made Sunset lift her head and prick her ears forward to focus on the creature. “Take a look around, and then look inside yourself. You know very well this is none of my doing.” A red fist clenched, flames licking along the fingers without burning.

Dragging her gaze away from the hellspawn that had once been a reflection of the sorry state of her soul, Sunset did look around. She saw the darkened skies, the eerie landscape, the shadows that clung to and sought to cover everything but the two of them. She saw an empty landscape devoid of all life. Devoid of the very thing she had desired most when she’d been this twisted up inside: adoration. “You’re right,” she acknowledged. “This isn’t our style, isn’t what I wanted when I was you. So if it wasn’t you...then what did this?”

“Have you truly been stuck as a human so long that you can’t feel it?” the demon demanded in a biting tone.

Annoyance made her temper flare again. “Feel what?!” Sunset snapped at it, whipping her head back in its direction. As she did, her eyes fell on the marble base of the Wondercolt statue, and the rest of her breath stuck in her lungs.

How she had missed the epicenter of all that was skewed about the world, she did not know, but as she stared at the statue, she could see it. It was as if the very fabric of reality had warped back in on itself in a way that just trying to understand gave her a headache, until the very fiber of the universe threatened to rupture and tear. Space and time bulged obscenely in an erratic pulse that birthed fragments of shadows that wriggled and merged into the nauseating darkness that wanted to devour her.

Sulfur made her gag and the sickly sweet smell of rot made her snort to clear her nostrils. “What happened to the portal to Equestria?” Sunset demanded of her demon.

“You were warned before, Sunset Shimmer. We can never escape Hell...”

Tearing her eyes from the thing that had replaced the portal, she glowered at the demonic figure. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Then maybe you aren’t asking the right questions, horn-head.” Darkened eyes locked with hers, “Like, in all of this mess, where’s Sparky?”

Sunset went rigid, her head whipping back and forth wildly to scan the discarded objects, hunting for anything that might belong to her Twilight. There was nothing. “Where is she?” she bit out, once more wrestling for control over mixed emotions.

“I don’t have that answer,” the creature once born from her inner darkness responded, for the first time sounding distressed. “…all I can tell you is what you already know—not here.”

“I have to find her.” Everything crystallized into a familiar sensation—Sunset needed to know her girlfriend was safe, was okay. She had to get to her now, and she found herself rearing up to whirl around in the direction of the Sparkle house, ignoring the monster standing nearby. Hooves launched her into a full blown gallop this time, kicking off the ground to leap past obstacles, the rapid beats of those hooves impacting concrete matching the racing of her heart.

The houses she passed were little more than distorted blurs, and never in the months she’d known Twilight had the distance to her house seemed so far. By the time she slowed her pace in the driveway, her flanks were lathered with sweat and she was blowing hard through her nostrils to get enough air into her lungs—not that it seemed to be helping, what with fear and agitation constricting her airways and making each breath torturous. Even still, she raised her voice as best she could to call out. “Twi…Twilight!”

The house’s front door hung half open, and the shadows that so far had moved with the sinuous, slithery speed of a serpent seemed almost frenzied as they crawled along the walls of the house and in and out of the gaping windows. Sunset forced the pain in her body and the light-headedness of being unable to breathe properly down, lunging up the front steps and body checking the door open. “Sparky!” she panted desperately, swinging her head to and fro to try and find any hint of her girlfriend—or even members of the household. She saw nothing—not the emptiness of the house, but nothing at all, as darkness had consumed everything but the small area around her. Operating by memory alone, she searched, finding nothing on the main floor, and picked her way to the stairs to check the upper floors. Sunset kept calling, hearing the darkness echo her cries back at her with hissing mockery, as if the devouring blackness found some sick humor in her desperation.

Twilight’s bedroom door was shut, and the knob refused to turn, but her ears picked up a faint murmur in a familiar voice. “Sparky!” she yelled again, before twisting around and taking her powerful hindlegs to the wood, striking again and again until she could hear the frame and the door begin to splinter. Baring her teeth, Sunset let out another defiant scream at the shadows around her and threw everything she had into bucking the door, feeling wood give way and fall into pieces, ignoring the stinging pain of splinters lodge in the frog of one rear hoof.

Resisting the urge to limp, the amber colored mare shouldered her way through the broken doorway, finally finding the object of her search. Twilight stood at her window, looking into the black abyss that covered the panes, her back to Sunset. “Sparky?” Sunset called, ears straining to make out what the dark haired teen was murmuring to no avail. She picked her way closer, feeling her sweat dampened coat prickle with a sudden chill. “Twilight? C’mon…look at me.”

As she edged closer, her vision blurred…or Twilight did, and her voice whimpered out, “…S-sunny?” She sounded terrified.

“Yeah, it’s me, Sparky. I’m here.” Sunset stepped over a book on the floor.

The only warning was that murmur growing into a sick, malicious sounding laugh, too throaty, too deep for her girlfriend, and Sunset collapsed with a cry of pain, fire and ice searing her with equal intensity, reality wavering and losing all meaning as the overload to her pain receptors made her senses shut down. She knew this feeling, had felt it before. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could only suffer as her body felt like it was being peeled apart, layer by layer, turned inside out and restructured at the whim of an angry god. Her bones ground painfully, her innards squelched, and every muscle and nerve felt scrubbed with sandpaper. It hurt, and she knew that if she could hear, she would have been deafened by her own screaming.

She lay, sobbing, as her senses came back to her, her throat feeling raw and shredded, tears and snot on her face and the taste of bile and blood on her tongue. Only stubborn determination let her move, her arms and legs protesting as she pushed her body to hands and knees. Blinking back the blackness that edged at the corners of her vision, she saw that Twilight had turned around and was staring down at her, smirking.

…Except this was not a Twilight she knew.

Lavender skin had deepened to a darker purple hue, and the dark hair she enjoyed running her fingers through defied gravity, wispy and insubstantial and the color of the sky just before it edged into the black of night, shot through with pink and purple like false-color nebulae in the deepest regions of space. Her clothes had been replaced by clinging shadows that accentuated feminine curves that seemed disproportionately wrong on Twilight Sparkle, and coupling that with the way the inky darkness moved, it repelled Sunset in a way being around Twilight never had. The familiar purple eyes were gone, replaced by the void of nothingness that nevertheless managed to radiate smug arrogance and disdain. Her glasses were missing, and from her forehead rose a cracked, twisted parody of a unicorn’s horn, glowing dimly with a sickly light.

She sauntered forward, in a way that told Sunset this was definitely not her Twilight, or any Twilight really, turning something over in her hands, studying it with casual disinterest before she squatted down to put taloned fingers under Sunset’s chin and tilt her head up to meet those horrifying eyes. “Disappointing,” she purred, her voice throaty and husky in a way that made the redhead’s skin crawl. Sunset tried to scramble away, but talons bit into her flesh, sending more ice into her veins and holding her still. “Ah-ah,” she tutted, waving the object in her hand like a chastising finger. “I didn’t say you could move yet.”

Sunset glared. “Where’s Twilight?” she hissed, jerking her head to try and escape the grasping hand. “What have you done to her?”

Not-Twilight threw back her head and laughed, the solitary horn on her forehead wavering a moment and seeming like two before Sunset’s vision cleared. “Done? What’s the matter, Sunny?” she taunted. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“You’re not my Twilight. Let her go, or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” The dark figure hauled her up to her knees by her throat, and Sunset dug her fingers into the arm cutting off her air. “You’re weak and pathetic, and the girl belongs to me, now.” Bringing her face close to Sunset’s, she sneered. “…I was expecting more, but you’re borderline useless.”

The arm casually shoved her away, and the former unicorn brought a hand up to rub her throat, coughing. Anger seethed in her, edging out the black spots before her eyes with the threat of an even more dangerous red haze. She snarled something unintelligible, a noise that was more rage than any attempt at speech.

Her enemy flickered like a badly recorded video file, and she could see Twilight there again, her Twilight, purple eyes wide with terror. “Sunny…” she whimpered. “…help…” Almost before the sound died in the air, there was another flicker and she was looking at the parody of her girlfriend again.

Fury and violence exploded in her like a supernova, and she was on her feet in an instant, the shadows around her reeling back in seeming fear of their own. “Give. Her. BACK!” she demanded in a sharp yell, flinging herself at the shadow covered being, intending to tear the shadows apart with her bare hands if need be. The weight of her body combined with the ferocity of her lunge staggered the figure for a moment, long enough for Sunset to feel a sense of hope, of victory.

Then agony seared her chest and she staggered back, her legs crumpling under her. She couldn’t breathe right, and she coughed, bloody froth hitting the floor and dribbling down her chin. As she sagged to the floor, she realized that the thing-that-was-not-Twilight had impaled her with the object she had been holding. A shaking hand grasped it and pulled it free with another stab of pain, and as soon as she held it up, she recognized what she was holding: her own horn, its base a broken and jagged stump.

Once more talons dug into her chin, forcing her to look up into the void. “You can’t stop this.” Then they withdrew, the unnatural figure turning its back on her and returning to its place by the window. Sunset’s body slumped as the horn fell from nerveless fingers, and the shadows closed in on her, flooding her eyes and nose and mouth, filling her with darkness, pain, and despair, devouring her from the inside out…

Twilight opened her eyes to darkness, a shiver going through her. Her stomach felt like it was knotted up around a boulder, and she had an inexplicable sensation of being watched. More than that, she felt...alone. The warm body that should have been against hers, the arms that should have been holding her were strangely absent.

She sat up slowly, hugging herself as a chill made her arms prickle with goosebumps. The streetlights outside gave just enough illumination that she could make out the shape of her girlfriend on the other side of the bed—Twilight knew instantly that something was wrong. Sunset slept sprawled on her side or stomach, but always stretched out, especially after they had started dating. At the present moment, though, the amber skinned girl was curled up into a trembling ball in the most uncomfortable looking position imaginable, halfway between on her side and on her stomach. Her legs were bunched up, one half under her twisted torso, and her arms were curled up tight against her, hands fisted. A low whimpering moan escaped her, and one wrist twitched.

“Sunset?” she called, shifting on the mattress to get closer to the other girl. Sunset made another sound, her whole body shuddering. “Sunny?” Twilight tried again, this time reaching out to touch her shoulder, a tactic that had worked before when Sunset had nightmares early in their friendship.

It worked this time too...though not in the way Twilight had anticipated. The redhead bolted upright by way of her arms and fisted hands, leaving her on knuckles and knees, her eyes wide and staring. Her breathing was harsh as her legs crumpled, leaving her in a hunched sitting posture. Her head snapped towards Twilight, then away, unseeing...

Just as Twilight reached out and touched her shoulder again with a soft whisper, Sunset jerked, bringing her arms up around her own body in an erratic, uncoordinated fashion...and started to scream, clawing at something and thrashing so violently that it nearly sent Twilight off the bed. The dark haired girl flailed for purchase, sending the lamp on her nightstand crashing to the floor, shattering into a million pieces.

The heavy weight in her stomach transformed into the gut churning and twisting sensation of anxiety, quickly threatening to overwhelm her when even the noise of the lamp breaking didn't wake Sunset. Instead, it only elicited another agonized whimper between screams as she curled forward, more tortured sounds filling the air, overflowing with anguish. Twilight wavered, half paralyzed, caught between wanting to help Sunset and terror that she would somehow make it worse. Her heart won out, and she sought to call Sunset back from whatever horrific nightmare had hooked its claws into her. “Sunny, please, wake up! It’s just a nightmare!” Her fingers brushed the thrashing girl’s shoulder and almost got a fist to her nose for the trouble, making her fall back on her butt with a yelp. “Sunny!” she tried again--she had to keep trying. “...Sunny! It’s just me, it’s Sparky, your Sparky....please, wake up!”

Sunset screamed again, and it stole the rest of Twilight’s breath away. The other screams had been awful enough, but this one made fear constrict its claws around her throat and her vision swim with tears. It wasn’t a cry of fear or hurt...it was barely even human, the agony of an animal in mortal pain, projecting its final moments of suffering in a keening wail.

Twilight lost her battle, bursting into tears. She could hear Spike barking and howling, as if the dog was trying to show Sunset some form of solidarity, his little paws scrabbling ineffectively at the side of the bed, not quite able to jump up with all the wild thrashing. It was too much, the noise and the fear and hurt, and she cried out herself, calling for those who instinct told her could fix this. “....Mom...Dad...Cady...Shining...please....!”

*Wicked cackling and ominous background music.*

I feel its appropriate that these chapters drop in October, hehehe.

...Poor Sunset. Can't catch much of a break, can she?