A strange, distorted world lay before her. A deathly-still pond and a leafless, dead tree with jagged, oddly spiraling branches. Beyond that, more trees. A forest of these lifeless, black monoliths acting as monuments to an empty soul. Shining glimmers visible through the gaps in the trees. The farther ones glowing brighter than the nearer.

The colors are wrong.

A bone-white sky and earth. Everything shaded in black and various hues of purple.

Twilight stepped towards the pond with an overwhelming sense of foreboding rising in the back of her mind.

Have I been here before?

She slowly approached the edge of the glassy body of water and leaned forward to look into the mirror-like finish of the tiny lake.

A terrifying construct peered back at her from the surface of the pond. Disconcerting, yet calming and expected. Glowing magenta eyes sunk into a disfigured, white unicorn’s head stared lifelessly into Twilight’s eyes. The monstrosity’s horn spiraled far out of its head—much farther than a normal unicorn’s horn—with alternating stripes of black and white, while a mass of stringy, black hair fell limp around its face and neck.

The unicorn in the pond lifted a spindly, almost mechanical looking foreleg—no, an arm—and waved it lethargically across its face. As it passed Twilight’s field of vision, she could see the arm between her and the water, along with the reflected arm beyond.

She held the white arm in front of her, closely inspecting it. Twilight’s gaze then followed the length of the appendage towards her torso. She looked intently down at herself to find she was standing upright, supported by multiple black, mechanical, spider-like legs attached below her hips.

She stood motionless beneath the burning-white, sunless sky, pondering her appearance for a moment, before leaning over the still pond once again.

It all seems so familiar...

Using her strange legs to propel her forward, Twilight stepped into the water. The liquid effortlessly yielding to her movement, creating small ripples across the once-smooth surface.

If I stay in the shallows...

She slowly and deliberately took several more steps, moving further away from the shore, entering slightly deeper water.

As long as I’m careful...

The water wrapped the strange legs and her lower torso in a freezing blanket of fire. Cold, but hot at the same time.

...not to slip.

Another step. She came to the precipice of a deep, cylindrical void beneath the crystal-clear water. Within the depths she could again see the same shining glimmers that were evident in the forest. An overwhelming urge to run away from this place came over her—something about this lake terrified her, but she continued to gaze lovingly into the cavernous abyss.

I wonder...

...what it all means.

With a loud splash, Twilight’s distorted head and body fell beneath the surface of the pond as her left legs lost their hold.

I wonder...

As her pseudo-mechanical body fell slowly down the abyssal, underwater corridor, she closed her eyes blissfully and allowed gravity to take her further into the seemingly endless depths.

...if this is what I am meant to do?

...or merely something I must do.

Twilight shot upright, waking with a gasp on top of the blankets on her bed, her coat matted down with a cold sweat.

These dreams are getting to be unnerving.

An intense, stinging pain shot through her right thigh, causing her to slowly lower her head in order to find the source of the discomfort. To her horror, everything around her hindquarters shone with the crimson color of fresh blood. Her focus moved to her right hoof, where—held tightly in the crook of her fetlock joint—a scalpel taunted her, stained with her own life-giving liquid. Twilight yelped and jumped up to her hooves as she threw the razor-sharp blade across her bedroom.

Still standing on the bed, she turned her head to assess the damage. Two deeply gouged cuts, oriented diagonally in opposite directions, created a dripping, bloody ‘X’ across the cutie mark. Twilight reached back and gently touched her damaged cutie mark, looking closely at the blood-matted fur and slowly oozing lacerations.

Twilight shakily stepped down from the bed and opened her bedroom door just enough to fit her head through. “Spike? Are you here?”

She waited in silence for a moment before the raspy voice of the adolescent dragon called back. “Yeah, Twi! Hold on just a sec!”

There was a shuffle of feet across the stone-tiled floor, and very suddenly, Spike appeared directly in front of Twilight. He gave her a brief appraising glance, noticing her fast, short breaths along with growing moisture around the edge of her eyes. The dragon’s eyes narrowed and his face scrunched up into a mixed look of concern and confusion. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just need the first-aid box,” Twilight said apprehensively.

“What happened?” Spike took a step closer and leaned to try to get a better look into the mare’s bedroom.

Twilight’s eyes shifted nervously. “I, uh—I cut myself accidentally.”

He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, until the middle of her bed edged into view from behind the door. It looked as though someone had been stabbed to death, the blood now drying to a large, dark-brown smear. “Accidently!? It looks like somepony was murdered in there! Are you sure you’re okay?”

Sighing dejectedly, she shifted her focus to the floor in front of her. “Yes, I’m fine… Please, just get me the first-aid box.”

“Get out here and sit down,” Spike ordered while pointing towards the table in the center of the main room. “I’ll go get the medical stuff.”

As soon as the dragon wandered off to retrieve the supplies, Twilight swung the door fully open and walked out into the room. Each limping step left several crimson droplets on the floor and sent a wave of searing pain through her right leg. She sat down just as Spike returned with the large case of emergency medical supplies.

The box dropped to the floor next to Twilight with a rattling thud as Spike kneeled down and looked over the wound on the unicorn’s leg. “This is bad, Twi… How in the world did you cut yourself like this accidentally?”

“I think I was sleepwalking,” whispered the unicorn, staring at the tabletop while a single tear rolled down her cheek. “I woke up and it was just there.”

Spike opened the medical case and removed a bottle along with a small sponge. “Maybe we should talk to Princess Luna about it,” he suggested while dowsing the sponge with the orangish-red liquid from the bottle.

Twilight’s head jerked around to face the dragon. “No!” She slapped a hoof over her mouth at the realization of her loud outburst. “I-I mean, I’m fine… it was just a dream. Nothing more.”

“This is going to sting a bit.”

A scream echoed through the suite just as Spike touched the antiseptic-soaked sponge to one of the broad incisions. It felt like her thigh had been set ablaze, the burning sensation coursed through her and throbbed at the site of her injury. “Oh goddess, Spike! That really hurts!” Twilight shouted, tears now flowing freely from her eyes.

Spike continued cleaning the wounds for his friend, unfazed by her objections. “You know, Twi, I’m worried about you…”

“Why would you be worried? I told you, I’m alright,” she replied, wincing with a quiet hiss each time the sponge touched her.

“I know what you told me, but look at this mess… Dreams don’t do this.” Spike sighed, adding more antiseptic solution to the sponge before mopping it through the cut again. “And you’ve been… distant, I guess. I’ve hardly seen you lately, and when I do, it’s just enough time for you to give me research assignments or for me to tell you about what’s going on in Section 5.”

“I know, Spike. It’s just that with all my training, research, and other duties, I haven’t had much time for anything.” Twilight crossed her forelegs on the table and cradled her head atop them, looking across the room at a wall while Spike pulled a small bag from the box and placed the sponge in it.

“That’s just it though, Twilight. You don’t have time for anything. You need to relax and kick-back some,” Spike said as he continued searching the medical kit. “You need to take some time for you… All done cleaning it up, it’s all you now.”

“Good start to a great day,” Twilight grumbled apathetically as she turned her head to look at the cuts on her upper leg. The fur around the lacerations had taken an orange tint from the antiseptic, and now that the cuts were scrubbed out, she bled much faster. “I hate these spells, there’s so much that could go wrong when dealing with a pony’s cells.”

A soft violet glow shrouded her cutie mark as the deep cuts slowly began to knit themselves back together, filling the chasms between her flesh. Twenty minutes of silence passed with Twilight using medical magic on herself while Spike watched closely. As the final section of the cuts closed themselves, the aura dissipated, leaving behind two very obvious, large, raised scars.

Twilight ran a hoof over the scars, feeling the rough and jagged lines where her fur would likely never grow again. Turning her head to visually inspect the permanent damage, she sighed deeply. “I suppose that will have to do… Spike, would you please get my court mage cloak for me?”

“Sure thing, Twilight.” The dragon walked to the closet near the front door.

Standing from the chair, Twilight stretched her right hind leg, wincing slightly at the tightness of the scar tissue. “I’ll be right back out, Spike.” The mage limped to her room and shut the door.

The unicorn felt obligated to keep to her scheduled routine as close as possible, even with the revelation of the gaping wounds on her upper leg. If she skipped breakfast she should only be a few minutes behind. Twilight telekinetically grasped her journal from the drawer of a small nightstand next to bed and opened it to the first empty page as the small book landed on top of her desk.

Year 8 of the 2nd Diarchy, 4th day of the Southern Solstice
Personal Journal, entry 13

Ever since my journey through the sigil teleportation twelve days ago, I’ve been having outlandishly strange dreams. At first I thought nothing of it; dreams are nothing more than the visual and audio manifestations of idle thoughts. Last night, however, I seem to have injured myself in a sleep-walking incident during one of these dreams. I guess now is as good a time as any to start wearing my official court mage uniform—even if it is only to cover my the scars on my cutie mark.

It’s odd, because it’s not the cuts that I’m worried about; it’s the dreams themselves. I’ve never had dreams that were so vivid or gave me such a sense of deep foreboding.

It’s always the same dream. Nothing seems right, but it doesn’t seem completely out of place. The white, sunless sky and the white earth feel completely normal in that place. The lake, however—

I don’t know. There’s probably nothing to it; like I said, dreams are simply the machinations of a mind that needs an outlet. Even so, I can’t help but think that these particular dreams are trying to tell me something—warn me, perhaps. But to what end, I’m unsure.

I will be spending most of today in the Section 5 lab, checking up on a couple of relatively unimportant projects that I’ve been overseeing. I also need to ‘liberate’ documentation concerning a few pieces of tech that I secured from the surplus vault. They’re currently inoperative, but I’m confident that I can repair at least one of them with the parts from the other two. I hope that they do not become necessary to use, but they will certainly tip the scale in my favor if a diplomatic solution cannot be obtained when I finally confront Celestia. If only Quillfeather had been a unicorn, I could have used her as a template to engineer an interface between the devices and the biological magic conduits of a pony. At least then, her death would not have been complete waste.

In three day’s time, the ceremony marking my ascension to the position of Royal Equestrian Grand Magus will happen. After I’m officially given my new post, my research will become much easier. Arcana will have no say in my coming and going from the labs as I please, and in the current chain-of-command, I will answer directly to no pony other than the princesses.

All of my friends from Ponyville will be here; Celestia even secured a pass for Rainbow Dash to leave basic training for the duration of the ceremony and party afterwards. I’m hoping to have the protective magic of the three volumes of study 612718 dispelled, so I can show them the truth of Equestria’s ruling class and they can help me in confronting the princesses. With the full power of the Elements on our side, even Celestia wouldn’t dare stand against the will of the ponies of Equestria.

I hope.

Author's Notes:

For those of you not familiar with the Ask Researcher Twilight blog:
This is not magic
Twilight Vision 1
Twilight Vision 2
Twilight Vision 3