Twilight hummed quietly to herself, gathering a few new torture devices into her laboratory. Cleaning some of them off, dusty with disuse, the unicorn brought a few containers over to her. These didn't contain mechanical constructs - in these containment chambers, there were living beings. Animals that she'd be able to introduce her next subject to. Fluttershy did love animals, after all - why not do her a kindness and introduce her to some new friends? It would be a nice thing to do before the pegasus met her death, just like the others.

This was going to be interesting... and fun...

... Wasn't it?

Rather than straight away returning to her desk where the Elements were housed in their containment chambers, Twilight Sparkle trotted over to the bodies of Sweetie Belle and Rarity, blood still pouring from the wounds and surrounding the spot on the floor where Sweetie Belle's head still lay. She had a few things to do before she resumed her Element research.

First, she scrutinized Rarity's broken appearance, the blood flow from the designer's face and chest having considerably lessened due to the extreme blood loss. She gingerly unhooked the bonds restricting the dead unicorn's limbs, torso, and forehead, the blood-caked corpse practically falling onto her before she used her magic to levitate Rarity's body into the air.

"You never had the strongest of connections to your Element," the scientist scolded. "You let greed overcome you sometimes - I guess that's why your's was easier to take than the others."

With the blood from Rarity's body no longer threatening to spill heavily onto the laboratory's floor, Twilight gently laid Rarity's corpse to rest on a dry area of the metal paneling, the aura of her magic levitating a scalpel nearby.

She glanced over at her bookshelf, where the large books that held the remains of her friends rested comfortably in their proper places. With Rainbow, Pinkie, and Applejack properly preserved in the form of the books, the scientist levitated one of the remaining empty bindings, the book with a faint sketch of Rarity's cutie mark on its surface.

Now, time for the real thing, Twilight thought to herself as she used the scalpel to slice away the mark on one of Rarity's flanks. As always, she was meticulous, careful, making sure to form the cut into a good enough shape for the large book cover. The skin and fur were steadily torn away, leaving Rarity's flank raw and red as the muscle underneath was exposed. After performing the same process for the other cutie mark, she used a cleansing cloth, water, and alcohol to clean the blood and stray strips of flesh from the cover, attaching the flaps of skin.

"You always did have beautiful fur, Rarity," Twilight said, admiring her handiwork with a smile.

She then glanced at the rest of Rarity's body. It was time for the goriest part of the preservation job. Preparing her tools and spells to properly get the organs cleansed and laminated, the scientific mare cut a straight line steadily from Rarity's neck, traveling all the way down so that her organs were all visible to Twilight.

It was painstaking and bloody work, removing the organs and squeezing any forms of residue that remained. It all had to be perfect, preserved, and she needed to work fast so that no time was wasted. She had to gather the essence of the Elements of course - that was the most important thing for her goal - but she couldn't forget her friends. This way they'd be preserved too, even though the work was disgusting. But as messy as the job was, it felt strangely satisfying, preserving her friends like this.

Once all organs, including the brain, were sterilized and laminated, Twilight set to work on separating the skin, bone, and muscle from each other. As was prone to happening, Rarity's skin tore at some places, but no matter - she'd sew it up again later just like the others.

But it was while performing this process that she dimly heard a voice. It was faint, but there. A familiar voice.

Her own voice.

"You have to stop doing this!"

Twilight's head jerked up, her attention drawn away from her work as she looked for the source of the voice. Seeing nothing, she continued her work. "Not now, conscience!" she muttered angrily, looking around. "Why and how are you here?"

After a few hurried glances around, she could see a dim version of herself reflected on the metal of one of her machines. As in the mirror, her conscience-self looked desperate, yet now it was to a greater degree. But her eyes were determined, determined to snap some clarity back into the pony she had become. "I'm here to try to bring you back to your senses! You know - I know - that this isn't right!" She looked as if she wanted to confront physical-Twilight about it directly, but was unable to move from the surface she appeared on.

Twilight turned away from the ethereal vision. "I'm doing what has to be done!" She turned her gaze back to the other. "You know as well as I do that chaos has been in existence for far too long! It needs to be cleansed, and true harmony needs to reign!" An angry glare was present on the scientist's face. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you! You shouldn't even be here! I must be imagining you - I'm frantic, I'm tired, and you don't exist!"

After a pause, conscience-Twilight's eyebrows furrowed in an equally stern expression. "I do exist. I'm the part of you that knows that doing this is wrong!" She looked as if she were on the verge of stepping out of the machine's flat surface and into the physical world, willing to do anything to stop the frightening chain of events.

Twilight didn't back down. "I know what I'm doing. I can't have things be properly found if I don't know exactly what to look for." She slammed one hoof on the ground in frustration, violet eyes narrowing as if to will this hallucination to vanish in the blink of an eye. "You can't change my mind, conscience. You can't. This is what's best for the Elements' preservation, and what's best for ponykind. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure that chaos is repelled and harmony will reign as it should."

Silence greeted the unicorn. For a fraction of a second the wraith-like form appeared to be a little more solid, less reflective, as if making a final attempt to bring Twilight out of the shadows of madness. But the shade faded away, leaving the machine its ordinary silver color once again.

Twilight huffed, tearing off more of Rarity's muscle to expose the white skeleton underneath. "Good riddance."

After separating more of the skin and muscle from the skeleton, the mare's gaze then looked to Sweetie Belle. To the halves of the severed head that lay on the floor, the styled mane drenched in blood on the sides that touched the floor.

A strange emotion overcame the mare - that is, strange in comparison to how she had felt lately. She felt almost... saddened. Regretful. The feeling was greater than before, those fleeting moments where she had felt small pangs of sympathy and regret. The ache of this feeling lingered, and she didn't like it. Perhaps it was her conscience's words getting to her.

Arching her brow, Twilight sat down near one half of the severed head of Sweetie Belle, just far enough out of reach of the blood pool so that she didn't step in even more of the sticky fluid. She dully stared into the remaining lifeless eye.

"You were so young... you could have been so valuable for my plan, my purpose. You might have had Harmony after all." A sigh, a slight mourning for the loss of the filly's life. "It didn't have to turn out like this."

Her words echoed in her laboratory, the low drone of machinery her only response.

"You didn't have to die like that..."

She turned, now, to the stuffed body of her assistant nearby. "...and Spike... neither of you were part of my experimental group for this plan." Her gaze lingered on Spike. "If you hadn't gotten in the way, you both would still be alive."

A small frown appeared on Twilight's face. Her eyes narrowed, the feeling of remorse visibly dissipating. It seemed her conscience-self had been getting to her.

"But I had to do it. The circumstances settled my choice." Her gaze grew stern, stomping her hoof as she closed her eyes, a brief flash of white light appearing just before her eyelids closed. "I only did what had to be done for Harmony. To make everything unified as it should be. To make sure chaos no longer taints the world. I can't be concerned about unnecessary deaths!"

As if the words had struck a chord in her mind, Twilight then glanced down at her front hooves, noting their blood-drenched appearance. The fluid steadily traveling down and covering her lavender coat with its dark color.

As she stared numbly at the blood from her latest killings, a shudder of cold passed through the unicorn's body, followed by a quick, feverish surge of heat. She cringed at the discomforting sensation, the sudden perception of chilled air followed by a furnace-like burning. "Ugh, why am I feeling this way?..." She placed a hoof to her head, too preoccupied with the surges of temperature to pay attention to the blood now traveling down her face. "I thought it had stopped a while ago..."

She hadn't gotten sensations like this since the early days, about a month before she began work on her friends.

With that in her thoughts, Twilight then felt her mind traveling back... back to when she had ambushed those other ponies... as preparation for the larger steps in her plan...

---

She was there in the Everfree Forest, hidden within the dark cloaking of Luna's night. Waiting. Watching. She knew that some ponies traveled within the forest's depths sometimes, and not always ones from Ponyville. Travelers, perhaps.

No pony from around here would miss them.

The inquisitive unicorn crept silently in the trees, observing the two ponies she saw. She had used a spell that would conceal the sound of her hoofsteps on the forest floor, so the pair had no idea she was watching.

Excellent.

"I dunno," whispered one of the ponies, a white-coated earth pony with a red mane, "I've heard there's all kinds of creatures here in this forest, and not a lot of them are friendly."

"Relaaax," chided her companion, a pale blue stallion who didn't seem to be bothered by the dark surroundings. He playfully nudged her with a hoof. "Whatever it is that tries to come at us, you and me can scare'em off!"

Of course, the two of them weren't expecting a pony to be silently stalking them. Yet that's precisely what Twilight was doing, her trusty saddlebag on her back with a sleeping needle tucked away inside.

The lavender unicorn attempted not to make any noise as a violent cold shiver went down her back, followed by a quick flash of heat. These extremes... why did they plague her? She had checked at her underground lab, there was nothing physically wrong with her. Perhaps her body just was getting used to spending so much time underground at night.

But pondering that would come later. She had live subjects to gather.

She carefully stepped through the trees of the Everfree Forest, taking care not to step on any small leaves or sticks that could alert these other ponies to her presence.

Another hot flash caused her to briefly close her eyes... and accidentally impact a small stick with her hoof, its crack echoing in the dark forest.

The blue stallion froze and looked in her direction, and Twilight attempted to keep absolutely still. In the cover of the undergrowth, the pair didn't see her, but they had heard her.

"What was that?" the blue stallion whispered.

"I don't know..." murmured his companion. Her blue eyes narrowed as she raised her voice, head held high. "Who are you? Show yourself!"

Twilight stepped closer.

"I said-"

The two ponies were stunned into silence as a magenta aura surrounded them, with Twilight Sparkle leaping into their view. The two were just about to cry out for help, but the pony quickly jammed the needle into the skin of the two ponies before they could get so much as a few cries for help out.

If anypony else had heard, they might of assumed it was a Timberwolf attack. And that worked to Twilight's advantage. As fast as she could, she hurried back to her lab with the pair of traveling ponies intent to experiment on them alive.

No need for grave-robbing like she had for the dead ones.

---

Twilight forced herself out of the memory. She remembered having implied to Rainbow Dash that she had gotten the cadavers of dead ponies from a place where they were donated to science. But she hadn't told her friend the truth - she had traveled to a nearby graveyard and removed the corpses of dead ponies from their resting places.

It had been risky work, but at the same time, like all of this, there was a certain thrill to it. And it was all part of her plan.

Her wonderful, harmonious plan...

With these thoughts in her mind, Twilight swiftly began to work on cleaning the area of corpses and blood. She had her research to get back to.

Back in the dark emptiness where the dead ponies watched, things weren't going well. Pinkie's eyes were wide, her body trembling slightly, mane on the verge of going straight again. What Twilight had done to Sweetie Belle had hit her hard. It had been terrible enough with Spike, but to mutilate anypony like that, especially a filly who was never meant to harbor a connection to the research at all... it was beyond awful. Sweetie Belle hadn't been like a threat to finding the laboratory - she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and paid for it with her life.

And yet Twilight seemed to feel some sympathy for that. She appeared to be mentally struggling, at least, talking to the unseen part of her that still had some trace of her old manner. It was as if Twilight had seen her conscience in a physical form, right there, but none of their group could see it. But all things considered, the fact that she appeared to even show a slight sense of remorse, as good as it seemed in theory, could potentially be disastrous for her mental state. Especially with whatever strange sensations she was getting now and apparently speaking to her conscience.

Rainbow Dash paced back and forth, rose eyes blazing as she watched from the thin veil that separated their empty realm from the laboratory where Twilight worked. Every so often she'd stop, snarl, and roughly tear out part of her own skin, chewing it roughly as if in thought as she fought back the temporary pain. It didn't take her long, however, to get over the initial agony and resume her pacing and glares at the only view of the outside world.

The others in the void watched her, confused. There was a silence among them, the only sound being Rainbow Dash's frustrated snarling and hoofsteps.

"W-What're y'all doin' that for?" Applejack inquired after a moment, breaking the tense silence between them.

An answer to Applejack's question came not from Rainbow Dash, but from the newest member of their group, Rarity. Apart from her mane having grown back by a very small amount, as had happened to the others before their manes had grown back, she looked roughly the same as when she had died. She spoke in a dull, emotionless drone, which was occasionally accompanied by a rough clinking due to her misplaced jaw, the strips of blood and muscle having now dried around it, as had also been true with the wound on her chest. "She's being a nutcase."

Rainbow Dash shot a glare in Rarity's direction at the remark. "You know that's not true."

Applejack visibly flinched at the last word, closing her eyes in an instinctive bracing for pain, a reflex that had been drilled into her altered memories from Twilight's torture.

Rainbow Dash looked at the farming pony, having noticed her instinctive fear of getting shocked whenever truth and lies were concerned. "You're pathetic," she muttered. A taunting, ghost of a smile appeared on her face. "And I'm telling the truth about that. I'm not lying."

Applejack flinched at each word that mentioned truth or lying, much as Rainbow Dash had expected. "Just stop tryin' to taunt me like that, okay?"

"Like I said, pathetic," the pegasus snorted before continuing her back-and-forth pacing in front of the thin veil. "I honestly think I have more sense than any of the rest of you." She looked from Pinkie, to Applejack, to Rarity in turn. "You can only communicate in gestures, you can barely talk in anything that's not a question or demand, and you are an emotionless shell."

"And you're a self-cannibal," Rarity said matter-of-factly, her tilted jaw clattering with each rough word.

"Ugh!" Rainbow groaned and returned to her pacing, licking some remnants of blood off of her mouth. "It just doesn't make sense - I mean, she's analyzing those Element things, and with us being in this stupid purgatory place-"

The cyan pegasus was interrupted by a light tap on her back, which made her whirl around to see Pinkie doing more of her gesture-talk. There was still grief and horror in the earth pony's eyes from seeing what had been done to Sweetie Belle and Rarity, but accompanying that was a flicker of stunned confusion.

"I just thought of something! If we're really in purgatory," Pinkie inquired, shaking a little in her gestures, "then why are we the only ponies here?"

The moment after translating, Rainbow stared hard at the pink earth pony, gaze quizzical as she paused in thought. Applejack and Rarity seemed to have silent curiosity as well, though the former's gaze was directed at the ground and the latter's showed no emotion. It was clear that the thought hadn't really occurred to any of them before. They were dead, and they didn't appear to be in heaven or hell, so where else could they possibly be? Purgatory seemed to be the only logical solution.

"I mean," Pinkie went on, with Rainbow Dash further translating, "there's probably some ponies who had to redeem themselves before going to heaven, right?"

A curt nod. Despite believing herself to have stayed away from most of ponykind, even Rainbow Dash knew that ponies who were good in life went to their heaven - Elysium - after they died. That is, if they didn't have to be purified in purgatory for a time first.

"So shouldn't there be at least a few other ponies here?" Pinkie looked around at the expanse surrounding them, barren save for the four of them. "We're the only ones, it's just us. Why isn't anypony else around?"

Rainbow frowned in thought, considering Pinkie's "words" as her pace slowed, then stopped altogether. Her head was tilted down, rose eyes narrowed and brow scrunched in thought. There had to be something that was missing in the equation...

Several seconds passed before the blue pegasus's eyes widened, a realization hitting her. She stole a glance at the lavender unicorn. Noticed her intense concentration on the Elements. Noticed the ever-darkening magical aura surrounding her horn.

It all clicked in the cyan pegasus's mind. As if out of nowhere, she let out a roar of fury, legs shaking in rage as she whirled around to face the others. "Because we AREN'T in purgatory at all!"

"What?" the others chorused (save Pinkie Pie, who leapt back slightly in surprise).

"We're dead," Rarity deadpanned, as if reminding Rainbow Dash of the obvious. "This doesn't seem to be Elysium, and if it is then heaven isn't what all other ponies say it is." A pause. "Unless you're saying that we're in Tartarus. In hell."

"None of the above," Rainbow sneered, tearing off more of her own flesh, as the painful jolt stopped her hooves from shaking. "Though I'd almost prefer Tartarus... oh heck, I'd almost prefer nothingness, compared to where we are now! Because if I'm right - and I'm almost certain that I am - this forsaken void where we are-" she threw a glare of utter hatred toward Twilight, "-is her doing!"

An uncertain silence.

"H-How can y'all be sure of that?" Applejack questioned hesitantly after a moment, chancing a look at the snarling pegasus.

"How?!" Rainbow screeched, glaring at her in fury. "HOW?! Because it suddenly explains everything! Everything about why we're here!"

The others watched silently as Rainbow Dash looked through the veil, the trio waiting to hear just what it was that the pegasus had realized.

Eventually, the cannibalistic pegasus spoke again. "Don't you see? Why is it that we're stuck in here, when that filly and dragon apparently went off to Elysium, and maybe those other ponies that the traitor killed whose skeletons she had on display? It's because we had the Element things within us. We've more-or-less been kept in a stasis because of her!"

"Wh-What do you mean by th-that?" Pinkie gestured, trembling slightly. If what her former friend was implying was true...

The blue pony whirled around to face Pinkie. Before the pink earth pony could react, she found herself flat on the ground, Rainbow Dash standing over her before roughly tearing off a small part of flesh on her right front hoof.

Pinkie would have screamed, but her lack of a voice box left her unable to do so, only leaving her able to wince in discomfort. There were tears in her eyes from the sudden pain as fur and flesh were slowly torn away and blood began to flow from the fresh wound.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" the pegasus hissed menacingly, bringing her face close to Pinkie's so that blood dripped onto the pony's pink coat.

A weak nod from Pinkie Pie at the stinging in her hoof, but a bit of relief surfaced in her gaze as the feeling soon subsided.

"And look at that, your blood's freely flowing. That just proves my point," the pegasus said as she moved away from Pinkie, swallowing the torn strip of flesh to allow herself to talk better.

"What's yer point?" Applejack inquired softly, only briefly glancing at the pegasus before turning her line of sight to the ground again.

Rainbow Dash looked like she wanted to attack the farming pony in irritation. "My point is that if this was truly purgatory, we wouldn't feel pain. Or at least the injuries that we had when we died would heal!" An uncertain pause as she reconsidered. She couldn't say anything for certain as far as injuries were concerned, but she corrected herself with the one thing she knew would be true. "Well, at the very least, we'd see other ponies here besides this pathetic bunch!"

She glared at the three others in turn, appearing to study their expressions for any sense of comprehension.

"Don't you see?! Why do you think our manes can grow back and some of our injuries heal, but not others?" Rainbow quickly glanced at her flanks, making sure that the former marks were still gone. The moment she confirmed that was the case, she continued, her stare now directed toward her murderer. "And most importantly, why do you think she can communicate with us in her dreams, when she does get a minimal amount of sleep after doing her stupid research? And why can we only see her and not communicate with anypony else?"

"We've never tried," Pinkie gestured.

Ignoring the mute earth pony and not bothering to translate, Rainbow's rose eyes narrowed in a deep-seated anger.

"I can explain exactly why - she manipulated and warped us. She wanted to keep us down with her, because of our Elements, and unknowingly, she did. Her power binds us here... neither moving on to heaven or hell, Elysium or Tartarus..." The pegasus lowered her head. "... Not even purgatory."

Rainbow Dash's voice now dripped with contempt. "Her magic has controlled our lives and our deaths."

The others were silent as the impact of the pegasus's words washed over them. It all made sense now. They wouldn't have been forced to stay in this earthly plane, but Twilight Sparkle's horrendous actions and magic was so warped that she had made it so. Kept her true experimentation subjects trapped here while the filly, the dragon, and likely those others she had killed, all went free.

"... I hate her," Rainbow growled each word laced with venom. "I hate her more than anyone or anything. She deserves to die! She deserves to burn forever in Tartarus!"

The spirit ponies looked at the scientist, realizing just how severely her mental breakdown was taking its toll, much to Rainbow Dash's twisted satisfaction. Twilight was clearly becoming malnourished - her mane and tail were horrendously unkempt, there were bags present under her eyes from exhaustion, and she hadn't eaten or slept for the past few days, save for eating the single apple she had brought from Applejack before. Even that seemed like it had happened ages ago - to Twilight, time had become a blur.

It was evident that Twilight was neglecting the needs of her own body in exchange for her time-consuming research. Her body was practically screaming at her to meet its proper physical needs to sustain her - to eat, to sleep, to rest. But Twilight couldn't. She flat-out refused to do it. She ignored her hunger and sleep deprivation as best as she could, and only drank water when she felt that she absolutely had to - and that, too, she hadn't done for several days. Even in her deluded state, Twilight knew full well that somepony could live for quite a while without food, but only days without water.

Nearly falling over from the exhaustion she was feeling, the unicorn's horn glowed as she used her magic to allow a small glass to materialize, filling it with water from a nearby container. Raising it next to her, Twilight tilted the small cup, letting only a minuscule sip of the refreshing liquid wash over her dry throat. Being such a small sip, it didn't quench her thirst near as much as she could have, nowhere near the proper amount to be healthy. But at least it was something. Something to keep herself sustained as she worked.

As if paranoid that even that tiny drink had wasted precious time, the unicorn returned back to her notes, exhausted eyes skimming over the complex formulas and coding that she had noted down about the Elements, and how to find their proper DNA coding from within other ponies. Her head was practically flat on the table as she used her magic to scribble down the details of her notes, every reaction and bit of genetic code recorded as meticulously as possible.

"Gotta make sure I note down everything," Twilight mumbled, fighting back a yawn. "If I don't, how will anypony else be able to decipher what I'm telling them to do to find the Elements?" She found her eyes beginning to close before she forced them open, mentally insisting to herself that she couldn't stop her work, ignoring her body's demands to sleep.

Rainbow Dash's eyes burned with hatred, especially now that she had realized what Twilight had done. Eternally condemning them in this prison. It may not be Tartarus to the average pony, but it had become close to Dash's personal Tartarus. Because not only was she trapped in that emptiness, the only pony of the outside world to be able to see was Twilight Sparkle. And seeing as the bookish unicorn hadn't been sleeping, there was no way for Rainbow Dash to get to her.

"Let her starve, then," the pegasus grumbled. "It's her fault she trapped us here, even if it is unintentional." She raised her voice, directing it toward Twilight despite the barrier between their worlds. The foggy, shimmering nature of the veil appeared to be thinning more and more, less like an illusion and more like a window. Perhaps her voice would carry through.

"Go on, starve yourself to death for all I care."

To the surprise of everypony, Twilight's head shot upward, looking around with paranoid eyes. She had only heard the voice faintly, but it had been there, all the same. The voice definitely hadn't been her pestering conscience. "Who's there?!"

Blinking in surprise, Rainbow Dash spoke again, taking the opportunity. "I am, you freaking idiot."

The familiarity of the voice suddenly hit Twilight, and her feeling of unease rose. "R-Rainbow Dash?"

Pinkie and Applejack's eyebrows rose in surprise.

"She can hear us," Rarity said.

"Correction," Rainbow Dash retorted, "she can hear me, since I was directing my words at her." She rose the volume of her voice, speaking to Twilight again. "Yeah, it's me Traitor Sparkle."

Twilight looked around in disbelief, searching for any sign of the spirit pony. "But I'm not..." she yawned, but forced herself to keep her eyes open, "... not dreaming-"

"No, you're not," the dead pegasus scoffed. "This is real. You're not dreaming or hallucinating or any feathering horseapples like that, at least, not with us. I'm here, and I'm watching you. We all are."

The echo of Rainbow Dash's voice caused Twilight's eyes to close firmly close, shaking her head to clear it. "You're not real, I'm just imagining this... it's just exhaustion..."

"Oh believe me," Rainbow said angrily, "if I had the capability to, I would charge at you right now and tear you apart. You say you're doing this for Harmony, but all you're doing is causing nothing but chaos!"

The unicorn suddenly froze, a look appearing in her eyes as she swiftly opened them. She whirled in the direction of the voice, and it was then that the dead ponies noticed her changed expression, an expression that surprised all of the ponies watching. It was very different from all the anger and insanity that had been present in her eyes before. An emotion that joined her exhaustion and frenzy.

The look was fear.

"... Take that back," Twilight whispered hoarsely.

A grim smile appeared on Rainbow Dash's face - she had found the murderer's emotional weakness. "No."

Twilight's breathing became rapid. Her own chest felt tight. "Take it back."

"What was that one chaos-guy's name I heard about in legend - Discord? Spirit of chaos or something?" Rainbow mocked, enjoying the look of a different kind of desperation in Twilight's eyes. "Yeah, you're just like him."

The scientist looked around to try to pinpoint where Rainbow Dash was. Her eyes darted around, more alert as she turned wildly around, seeking out the source of the taunting voice. Her legs were shaking as Rainbow Dash's accusation washed over her, constricting her mind. "I'm... I-I'm not like him! I'm nothing like him!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the dead pegasus snapped in a sarcastic tone, a hoof on her chin. "I was wrong. You aren't like him at all - you're much worse!"

"TAKE IT BACK!" Twilight screeched in a desperate cry, rushing toward where she heard the voice coming from, intending to charge at Rainbow Dash.

But she didn't cross over into that invisible world - the speed of her charge simply caused her to crash into one of her steel tables, dazing her for a second as stars appeared in her vision.

"Ha," Rainbow taunted, her voice right nearby. "You can't get to us. You've still trapped us in this stinking blasted void. You can't get in, and we can't get out. Not yet at least."

The veil from the deceased ponies' side shimmered slightly as if to emphasize her point.

Twilight whipped her head around, still attempting to pinpoint the source of the voice, trying to convince herself it was only a hallucination.

Rainbow's voice was full of rage, the two practically next to one another, save for the worldly separation. "I hope that you feathering die and burn in Tartarus for all eternity," she cursed in a declaration of hatred. "Then - and only then - will I be happy."

"Don't know if that's possible," Rarity drawled.

"You don't even know what happiness is," the pegasus snapped.

"I don't feel it," the former designer pointed out, jaw clattering, "but I can recognize it when I see it. And you never seem happy."

The other three stared at her.

"A lack of emotion has brought logic," Rarity explained in response to the surprised glances of the others.

"Whatever." Rainbow Dash now turned to the veil, to the desperate-looking unicorn. "We'll be here, waiting. I know you're gonna try to kill again. But you'll be found out. And when you are, you'll die."

A chill went down Twilight's back, but she forced herself to regain her composure. "Nopony will find out until the time is right."

"And what time will that be?" the dead pegasus taunted.

"When my work is done, Once I've properly gathered the signature of Kindness, I'll be able to analyze all the Elements of my friends." She forced a laugh. "Then I'll be able to find their essence in other ponies properly."

"What does that have to do with your crazy torture stuff?"

Twilight's violet eyes narrowed in the direction of the voice. "That's for me to know, and you to find out. You'll learn soon. I have a grander plan here, and you're just the catalyst."

There was a silence.

"Fine," Rainbow Dash finally spoke. "But as an FYI, this place, wherever the Tartarus it is that you've trapped us... I don't think it will be a prison for much longer."

Twilight's eyes widened.

"The barrier is thinning, you sick scientist. You can hear us now. And I have a feeling that soon, it will be like a window." Rainbow Dash's voice rose. "We shall be free. I shall be free from this purgatory-like imprisonment!"

"W-What do you mean?" Twilight inquired, attempting to regain her composure and quell the unease that was creeping into her heart. "You're dead."

The pegasus snarled. "That much is obvious. But you'll see, Traitor Sparkle." Her voice lowered, eyes narrowed. "I will break free. I will reach you! Then you will DIE!"

And the pegasus turned from the veil in a huff, leaving Twilight alone to ponder the impact of her words.

The lavender unicorn shook off her wariness, regaining her composure and shaking off Rainbow's words. She quickly returned to her procedures to take her mind off of the conversation she had just had, muttering as she forced herself to stay awake all through the night.

"I'm not like Discord.... I'm not like Discord... I'm not like Discord..."

---

The night seemed to drag on forever.

Twilight had buried her attention in her research, shaking away any distractions when such thoughts returned to the forefront of her focus.

But somehow she made it through the night, attempting to force the sleep-deprived appearance from her eyes as she ascended from her lab and returned to the library's main interior.

Instantly, she heard a commotion from outside. But there was something about it sounded different from that of the previous day upon realizing that Applejack had disappeared. Rather than sounding like the populace all talking together, it was more of a congregation of numerous exclamations and fragmented conversation. As if ponies were trying to talk to one another, but at the same time were wary of saying anything.

With a bad feeling rising in the pit of her stomach, the unicorn darted out her door to see ponies scattered around Ponyville. And none of them looked the least bit calm.

Ponies were running around with hammers clasped in their teeth, some with wooden beams carried in bags. Some ponies were in groups, while others were extremely jumpy and kept glancing around suspiciously at everypony, as if terrified they were going to be jumped and beaten up right then and there. The Mayor tried to calm other ponies down and get them all to pay attention in an orderly manner, but even she seemed to be on edge.

Not good. Definitely not good.

Of course, the ponynapper knew that things spread quickly in this town, but she had never seen the Ponyville populace look this collectively freaked out before.

Twilight hurried out her door and tried to blend in. Luckily for her, her panicked, sleep-deprived appearance didn't seem as terribly unusual as she had feared - it appeared that a few ponies had a similar look to them."

"T-Twilight?" one of the ponies in question inquired with a yawn, a sea-green pony named Lyra Heartstrings. "You look more tired than I do, and I'm pretty dang tired!" She darted her eyes back and forth from Twilight to the other ponies, and took a few wary steps away. "This is awful, all of this is... wait a second! Celestia! We can have Spike send a letter to-"

It was then that she noticed the devastated, crushed look on Twilight's face.

Lyra gasped. "... Don't tell me that Spike's gone missing too?!"

Twilight nodded dully, letting her panic freely show on her face, though hers was much more due to the thought that Celestia might find out about her murderous deeds. She wasn't about to tell Lyra or anypony else that Spike had been missing since the day before, when Applejack disappeared, but everypony had been so intent on boarding up their homes - and Twilight hadn't panicked - that they hadn't asked.

But now that Rarity and Sweetie Belle had vanished without a trace, the sudden disappearance of ponies was sending the others into full panic mode.

Twilight's violet eyes widened, having a sinking feeling in her stomach as to why the other unicorn was backing away from her. But of course, she just tried to hold a confused expression.

"Sorry, Twilight," Lyra said apologetically, "I'm just..." she nervously scuffed a front hoof on the ground. "... I'm unsure if I can trust you."

Twilight heard a few other nearby ponies muttering, having overheard Lyra's statement. It seemed that their small group, able to hold on to some form of conversation without falling silent or leaping away from each other, was becoming the center of attention.

"What?" the lavender unicorn attempted to quell her pounding heart, keeping an incredulous and shocked expression on her face. "Lyra, why would you think that?"

"It's not just you, really - it's anypony," Lyra clarified. "After everything that's happened, now Rarity and Sweetie Belle are missing too!" She whipped her head around, making sure she was several hoofsteps away from any pony around. "BonBon and I noticed a pattern that seemed to point to the ponies related to the Elements of Harmony getting snatched..."

Twilight began to inwardly become tense. Oh no oh no oh no oh no, they're catching on... nonono oh Celestia please no...

"... but Sweetie Belle's Rarity's sister, and she's not connected to the Elements," the musical unicorn went on. "If whoever the culprit is trying to get rid of anypony connected to them, then something might have happened to Apple Bloom and Big Mac when Applejack got kidnapped."

A cream-colored pony with a blue and pink mane came up to join in the conversation - Lyra's best friend, BonBon. Noticing a few other ponies were beginning to stare, she raised her voice. "That still doesn't change the fact that there seems to be a trend. And I'm sure I'm not the only pony to notice that trend. Am I right?"

The other ponies who were listening nodded their heads, and as Fluttershy carefully got to the front of the crowd, she nodded her head rapidly, her eyes wide with anxiety to a more severe degree than most of the others.

Twilight attempted to stop herself from shaking. The pattern was catching up to her, and it seemed that now herself and Fluttershy were high on the ponynapper suspect list.

BonBon's eyes narrowed at her. "The way it seems, you or Fluttershy-" her gaze shifted back and forth between the two she spoke of, "-are either responsible for this mess or the next ponies in line."

Twilight gulped.

"So any way you slice it, you should be carefully watched. And we can't exactly trust anypony else now."

The other ponies listening were clearly in agreement with BonBon, a number of them putting some distance between themselves and others. Panic and suspicion were clearly running rampant.

"S-So why are you two not looking suspicious of each other?" Fluttershy managed to ask.

"Because we're best friends," Lyra replied managing a small smile despite the dire circumstances. "We've been around each other long enough to notice a major issue that's going on."

But the two glanced at each other for an instant with a questioning look.

Unfortunately, not too many others in the town shared those sentiments with other ponies. Derpy glanced nervously at Carrot Top. Colgate hurried off to board up her house even more than she had the night before. Fluttershy hovered away from anypony who gave her a suspicious look, but there was a spark in her eyes that indicated she'd make whoever was doing this regret ponynapping her friends.

In short, it was complete chaos in Ponyville that morning, almost everypony suspicious of one another.

Two of the only other ponies who seemed to stick together through it all were the two remaining members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The pair were devastated that the third of their party had been taken to who-knows-where, but all they could do was comfort each other and do their best to stick together through this time of suspicion and unease.

Despite all the panic ensuing in the town, the babble of exclamations of fear and panic were suddenly broken by a loud voice, one that didn't shout but caught the attention of everypony around.

"It seems panic has begun to spread. What is it that fills you with such dread?"

The exotic voice and rhyming pattern silenced the commotion for an instant as the ponies turned to face the speaker. It was one that everypony these days new and respected in the town - Zecora, the zebra who had made her home on the outer edges of the Everfree Forest.

"Zecora!" Twilight exclaimed. Ordinarily seeing Zecora would be a welcome sight, but in these circumstances, the sight of the zebra made her uneasy.

"What if Zecora is the one doing it?!" BonBon called out.

"She only comes here once a month," Carrot Top retorted. "Besides, she doesn't seem at all nervous like anypony else." She turned her head to glare at the others as she said 'anyypony else'.

Twilight could hear her own heart beat loudly in her chest. Zecora had a knack for figuring things out, so Twilight knew she'd have to be extra careful. So she tried to act how she would if she were just as in the dark as everypony else. "We're in a crisis right now, Zecora - a ponynapping crisis!"

"First Rainbow, then Pinkie, then Applejack, and now Rarity and Sweetie Belle are gone too!" Fluttershy exclaimed with a squeak.

Zecora's brow arched at the mention of Applejack in particular - somepony able to ponynap her must be incredibly powerful.

Fluttershy's wings fluttered nervously as she went on. "We suspect it's somepony from the town, but... everypony's usually so nice here, I just can't imagine.."

"How do we know it's not you, Fluttershy?!" BonBon demanded, pointing an accusatory hoof at the yellow pegasus. "You're connected to one of the Elements - maybe you're just acting afraid and docile when really you're the one kidnapping other ponies!"

"I-I-I'd never do anything like that to anypony! Honest!"

"How can we be sure of that?"

"What if Twilight's the culprit, we can't count out her!" Carrot Top said. "She's connected to one of the Elements too, and she's a genius!"

"What if it's not either of them?" Derpy offered, hovering above and glancing down at Twilight and Fluttershy. "They seem nice enough."

The two Element-holders managed small smiles of gratitude.

"Sure, Derpy," the black-coated pegasus Thunderlane said with a roll of his eyes. "You could say that about just about anypony here, but clearly that's been shown to not be the case anymore." He shot a sharp look in her direction. "Who knows, you could be the ponynapper!"

"But-"

A firm hoof stomp from Zecora got everypony's attention, silencing their accusations.

"You shouldn't call other ponies out," the zebra said gently, "when it's your safety you should be thinking about."

The ponies of the town agreed, but there were still a few wary glances.

Zecora stepped more into the crowd, and the assembly parted with questioning eyes.

"The pony doing this might not even be connected to the Elements at all," Doctor Whooves pointed out. "Innocent until proven guilty."

Zecora looked thoughtful, pondering everything that she had seen and heard from the ponies she had grown fond of. Finally, she spoke again.

"Whoever it is who's caused this to be done, seems to pick off grown ponies one by one."

"Wh-What about..." Apple Bloom choked the words out, tears of sorrow in her eyes. "What about Sweetie Belle?"

Zecora frowned in sympathy for the young pony and slowly came closer to the filly, patting her with a comforting hoof. "Sweetie Belle, my friend, was still quite young," she said sadly. "Not near the strength of a grown one."

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo bowed their heads in sorrow for their lost friend.

A determined glance was visible in Zecora's eyes. "There is an idea that I should say, which could help prevent more from being snatched away."

Her words instantly had the attention of everypony, every gaze resting on her as they listened attentively. Any plan was better than no plan, especially because the ponynapper had snatched Rarity and Sweetie Belle from their home despite their house having been as boarded up as any other.

"Tonight when each pony sets off for home," Zecora began, "you must make sure you do not go alone."

The others nodded. Twilight's heartbeat quickened. This could ruin everything!

"Having two ponies as guards would be best. Three can be to a group, so at least one can rest."

The population of Ponyville began to take up a cheer, supporting Zecora's idea. Even Fluttershy looked enthusiastic about the plan.

"If this goes off without a hitch..." Zecora's gaze wandered over the ponies, and Twilight could have sworn that the zebra's eyes lingered on her a second longer than on the other ponies.

"We will catch the pony who is doing all this."

-0-0-

With some help from Zecora, the ponies of the town organized which three ponies would stay together, two acting as guards while the third of the house slept. That way, if the ponynapper decided to strike, they would likely be able to be identified, restrained and brought to justice.

Everypony loved the plan. Except, of course, Twilight.

Her mind was a blur of anxiety. This could ruin everything, absolutely everything she had planned for! How would she be able to get to Fluttershy with guards around?

The two ponies who were chosen to watch Twilight were Thunderlane and Blossomforth, two of the pegasi who had created the hurricane to get water to Cloudsdale. The two looked warily from the other ponies to Twilight, not taking their eyes off her as they traveled to her house when night fell.

The three of them only exchanged a few quick words to each other as they entered, watching as Twilight went upstairs and into her bed, turning on her side so that she faced the boarded-up windows.

She struggled to keep her eyes open, mind racing. Every moment that she wasted here left her closer to being found out. But she had to get to Fluttershy somehow...

And then, in a flash, it hit her.

A spell she had thought to try for a while. A death energy spell.

What if it doesn't work? she thought frantically to herself. I partially created it, what if it only works partway and they can run, or scream for help? She shook her head, eyes determined as she rose from her bed. No. It's a very drastic measure... and I don't want to kill them... but I have no choice!

With that, she slowly walked downstairs, causing the two guardponies to look at her.

"What's wrong, Twilight?" Blossomforth asked, looking concerned.

Twilight sighed, steeling herself to put her plan into action. "I can't sleep."

"Well, don't worry," Thunderlane assurred. "No ponynapper is going to-"

Suddenly, before the pair could blink, a glow from Twilight's horn caused steel bolts to appear on the doors and windows, trapping them.

"What the-?!" The two hurried to the exit, but it was no use - they couldn't break it down.

"You're not getting away," Twilight said as she stared the two guards down, her worried demeanor replaced by something far more sinister. "Just like my friends - they wanted to escape too, but I couldn't let them."

A gasp from the other two ponies, unable to believe what it was they were hearing. For a moment, their hearts seemed to stop.

The deranged pony stepped closer to the pair, lips curled up into a smile. "I had to experiment on them to get the proper genetic material."

Blossomforth's green eyes grew wide in horror at the snarling mare. "Y-You're the one who's been doing this?!"

A nod from Twilight, her gaze firm. "Yes."

Forcing himself out of his shock, Thunderlane's eyes narrowed as he rose into the air with a flap of his wings, Blossomforth following suit. "Twilight Sparkle," the black-coated announced, attempting to sound brave, "we hereby must place you into custody for crimes against ponydom under the charges of first-degree murder!"

The two pegasi dove for Twilight, each one swiftly grabbing onto her. Thunderlane grabbed her front hooves while Blossomforth got a grip on her hind hooves, gripping the unicorn's limbs tightly to restrain her.

Twilight struggled, using her magic to free herself from the pegasi's grasps, landing squarely on the ground like a cat. Her sudden escape caused Blossomforth to accidentally buck Thunderlane in the face, dazing the other pegasus for a split second. A threatening growl escaped the unicorn's throat as she stared up at them, eyes beginning to glow white.

Thunderlane and Blossomforth froze in mid-air, stunned. The friendly unicorn had turned into something that was less than equine and more like a wild animal of the Everfree Forest, or perhaps even a demon from the depths of Tartarus itself.

Either way, they now knew who the culprit truly was. But it was too late.

The two pegasi hardly had time to react before the unicorn in front of them lashed out, blasting forth a powerful burst of magic. In wasn't the familiar magenta color they knew her magic to be - it was an ethereal black shade. As if possessing a mind of its own, the magic from Twilight's horn, more solid than energy-like as it extended, tightly constricted them, separating into several tendrils. One part of the aura split to begin encircling their bodies tightly, wings included, to render them incapable of restraining her and calling for help. Another dark tendril was placed over the mouth of each one to silence their half-formed exclamations of shock. Despite the more solidified forms of the magic aura around their bodies, the concentrated magic still retained a translucent, shimmering appearance.

The two ponies flailed as much as they could, attempting to fly and disentangle themselves from the magical energy, but the unicorn wielding that power merely stepped forward a few paces. She glared directly at them, violet eyes blazing with determination. Suddenly, the irises and pupils were hidden behind a shimmering white light that illuminated them. A glow that lit up the startled expressions on the two pegasi's faces.

Thunderlane and Blossomforth just managed to glance at each other with terror in their eyes. They were trapped.

But then, to their surprise, the restrictions around then slackened slightly. A voice quietly spoke.

"... I'm sorry."

The pair looked down at the pony who had captured them, surprised that she had uttered those words. With her apparent mental state now, it hadn't seemed to them that the unicorn was capable of any form of decent moral coherency. Yet here she was, lessening her restraints and apologizing for her actions, the glow no longer stemming from her eyes. The dark aura, however, remained the same.

Twilight's voice was genuinely sincere as she gazed at them, her eyes now having returned to their ordinary appearance. "If you hadn't offered to watch me, this wouldn't be happening. Then again, two others would have been sharing this fate." A sigh that seemed almost regretful, that there was still some hope for Twilight's conscience. "It just happened to be you two through the process of random probability of assigning ponies to keep watch. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all."

For a reason they couldn't quite understand, they saw Twilight wince slightly. As if something had hurt her. Unknown to them, the hot and cold flashes had returned - at a more severe degree than before - for a flickering instant and caused the young mare discomfort. But that feeling quickly passed.

A pause before Twilight's mouth turned up in a smile, tightening her magical hold once again. She steadily began to levitate the two captured ponies upward a little higher into the library's central room, appearing to now enjoy their futile attempts at escape. The two pegasi, realizing that the unicorn's brief normalcy was gone, attempted to fly in opposite directions, hoping to confuse Twilight's magical hold. But the frantic beats of their wings got them nowhere. They were constricted too tightly for escape to be possible.

For a those few precious moments, Thunderlane and Blossomforth had thought that Twilight had come to her senses, though it seemed as if that sense of normalcy was gone. But they held onto one potential hope, however fleeting - had that sense of her ordinary demeanor been a facade, or was there some part of her still in tune to the pony she had once been? Despite the horror and betrayal evident in their gazes, there was a lingering question in their eyes. A desperate question that allowed them to cling to a shred of hope.

Are you still in there, Twilight? The old Twilight we knew?

The unicorn's eyes flashed white once again, the bright glow setting to remain in her view. Her voice now grew less regretful and more cold. "But at least you two get to be the first participants for a new technique of mine!" She looked up at them, the smile on her face almost gleeful as she chuckled, voice a sinister whisper in the dark. "Just think of yourselves as being part of the test run!"

The dark aura then pushed past their closed mouths and slipped through, grazing over the tongue and down through both pathways of the throat to reach their stomachs and lungs. The pressure was slowly suffocating them as their respiratory muscles became harshly squeezed, threatening to burst apart from the ever-tightening form.

The eyes of the two ponies bulged, practically falling out of their sockets as they attempted to cough out the tube-like aura that invaded their bodies like a surgical implement, but now even some of the energy coiled around them began to seep into their skin. A sort of tingling appeared on the surface of their respective black and beige coats, as if their epidermises were home to millions of insects or worms that were struggling to get out. The tingling quickly caused their bodies to look as if they were more liquid than solid, rippling like water.

Twilight only smirked, eyes glowing brightly as she controlled her magic to slowly erode the structures from within, the rippling on the captives' skin accompanied by legs slowing before hanging limply, they attempts to flail and kick becoming useless. The unicorn had disintegrated their very bones down to the marrow, leaving only thick muscle and veins behind in the pegasi's limbs as their legs hung in the air like limp rubber.

"You can't run now," Twilight said coldly as the guards' legs fell still. "Even if I let you go, you wouldn't be able to run."

The two struggling ponies were beginning to be nothing more than flesh, viscera, and muscle, as their skin too began to erode. The black and beige coats rapidly were turning a sickly green, as if a chemical was poured onto them as their skin slowly rotted away. Even with this terrible process being inflicted on the suffering ponies, no blood flowed from the gaping holes. The veins that ran through the skin were left miraculously untouched, like a haunting web hovering around each of them. Such was the nature of Twilight's magic.

The two had appeared to nearly become transparent as their skin was steadily removed, green and rotten like a corpse left in the open before eroding completely from their bodies. The muscle still clung tightly to the bones that remained from their torsos to their skulls, and the organs were actively moving and pumping, even through the suffering that was being inflicted on their owners' bodies.

A brief widening of the tormentor's eyes. A flash that transcended the aura from her horn and caused a spark from within each of her captives. Right around their ribcages where the internal coils tightened their hold.

In that moment. the glow coming from Twilight's eyes and horn was joined by another source of light. A powerful light from within the two inflicted that caused them to convulse in agony, attempting to scream but suffocated by the energy from within them.

The spark wasn't just any light. It was fire.

The flames started out merely as small flickers, barely visible. But the fire quickly grew in magnitude, smoke and burning flame filling up the insides of the two ponies held within the grasp of Twilight's magic. The flames danced around the bone, charring it as the organs within were set alight - red, orange, yellow, and even blue flames encircling the organs and turning their flimsy bright structures a charred black. The hearts of the two ponies were literally burning, arteries and ventricles destroyed and charred from the flames as the oxygen in the lungs was choked out by the thick smoke that filled them.

A sudden jerking motion of the energy was seen from the bowels of the two flailing equines through the torturous consuming fire, and Twilight Sparkle roughly tugged her magical aura from within then as if reeling in a fishing line. The sinister unicorn didn't even flinch as the fierce velocity caused the esophagus to be forcefully torn from the mouths of her two captives, dislodging the connected organs along with it as several pieces of muscle and blood were hacked up from within with a powerful, breathless bout of coughing.

The ruptured esophagus and strips of harshly torn muscle flew out of the pegasi's insides, stomach acid accompanying the fragments tearing from the inside of the mouths and splattering wetly onto the library floor. What remained of the rattled, charred organs clashed against the ribcages like a broken drum, causing several of the ribs to crack. As if the violent jolting and fire had been a twisted signal, the web of veins ruptured at last, letting blood spill onto the library's floor as life completely left the the two ponies' eyes. First Thunderlane, then Blossomforth, who managed to shoot a final gaze of horror at their murderer.

Twilight finally released her magical hold, the fleshy forms of what was left of the ponies' bodies crumpling to the ground with sickening thuds. She was unable to exactly determine whether it was the blood flow, the fire, or the dislodging of organs that had delivered the final factor in murdering them - if she had her equipment on hoof, that would have been easy to figure out. But what mattered was that they were dead. They couldn't threaten her progress anymore. Nopony was there to monitor her, or run for help and alert the others after witnessing her dark deeds.

Now, Twilight thought as she quickly levitated her saddlebag onto her back, time to go after Fluttershy.