The gargant hum of memory shook Twilight to her bones. The spell of postcognition was not a difficult one, nor was it even particularly complicated, and she wasn't even sure if other unicorns who used it perceived it the same way she did. It was fair to say, however, that she never felt quite so small and insignificant as when she used the simple spell and was brought face to muzzle, with the collective genius loci of Equestria. The incessant murmuring of memories old beyond reckoning, instinctively she knew that even as she and her friends were barely eyeblinks in the immortal lifespans of entities like Celestia and Luna that those so-called eternals were but whispers in the endless age of the world's soul.

She was not going far though, less than the span of a breath. The shadows of time slowly rewound, the mists of the morning returned as the sun retreated across the sky and dove back beneath the horizon, revealing the Luna's moon emerging from where it had sunk just that morning.

A few more hours, the thought passed through the mind of the lavender sorceress as she turned back the clock, searching for the face of her friend as well as hated visage of her enemy whom she now knew was most likely still alive. Or whatever passed for 'alive' in a case like his.

Finally the shadows coalesced together, revealing the scene she sought. Jasper, his head silently tilted upward, whorls of dark magical energy churning about his body as he desperately sought out the answers that had eluded his mind. Twilight saw the moment where he clearly came upon the knowledge he sought, the horror and sorrow on his face could have been born of nothing else. The scholarly part of her that reached for all knowledge out of pure curiosity wanted to know, however, even had her teacher not specifically forbade research in the matter, the look on Jasper's face would have been all the reason she needed to avoid it.

Then He came out of the shadows, unfortunately the simplistic replay spell lacked an auditory component, and even the visuals were misty and distorted. Twilight cursed her lack of skill, making a silent promise to practice up on her divinitory magics the next chance she got. She knew that certain members of the Nocturnae were so skilled that they could essentially relive the experience in full detail, gleaning minute facts that even the one who lived the experience had not noticed at the time.

Twilight scrunched her face in reproach, reflecting on how useful that kind of skill would be in a place like this. Not that she wanted to steal away such a skill from Princess Luna at a time like this, as she had freely admitted, for all she knew this exchange would lead to a absolute dead end.

Words were exchanged, well, words came from Twist, hateful glares were the majority of Jasper's contribution to the conversation, not that Twilight could blame him. She saw the beginnings of his strange paralysis as he began to charge the mad Doctor only to be dropped slack to the ground by a single world from the stallion's mouth. Twilight watched closely as it occurred and, try as she might, all she could make out from her admittedly limited lip-reading skill was the word: 'No'.

Does the Doctor has some kind of subliminal conditioning built into Jasper? The thought was deeply unsettling, doubly so because it seemed more than possible.

Twist continued to monologue while deftly seizing her friend and dragging him roughly across the ground in a vaguely easterly direction. Then they left the zone of the spell and the mists parted, all possible information gleaned, she even had a direction for Applejack to start in on. As Twilight came out of her trance she opened her mouth to call out to Applejack, only to see her standing right on the path she'd intended to point out, wearing a wry smile on her freckled face.

“Ya'll know ah've been trackin' lost hogs n' cattle since ah was filly righ'? Ah don' need no hocus-pocus to pick up day-old tracks on muddy ground.”

The rest of the girls were just standing around grinning, Twilight had been holding them up with her spell, she knew it too. She didn't regret it though, she'd wanted to see how it all had played out before she'd arrived, the tracking had always been nothing more than a convenient excuse.

“Yeah I know, alright, let's go find us a lair, girls.”

The darkness had closed in hard since I'd escaped from the hospital, the endless pounding, yelling, and screaming in my mind hadn't made the feat any easier. Years of brutal practice put back into use covered my tracks behind me with almost insulting ease, the guards never had a chance. The blood-soaked banshees howling in my psyche screamed to just kill them and be done with it, that we never would have left an enemy behind us in the days of the war.

But they weren't enemies, right? I was sure at the time but now... mere hours after the event my mind began to crack and fracture as I staggered towards my destination.

I couldn't be sure now, had I left an enemy behind me or not? I had killed so many, so very many. I could taste the molded mouth grip of my weapon mixed with the metallic hint of blood, I'd bitten through my lip. It taste good, the blood, it had been too long since I'd fought, since the fire in my breast ignited with the cold fury of mortal combat.

The stink of decay was in my nostrils, I'd come here before, and now I was here again. Drawn here by the endless screams for blood and vengeance and most of all... answers.

Why are we?

I intended to answer that question, maybe for the specters in my skull or maybe just for myself but either way I was going to find answers. I retraced my steps, seeking the path I'd taken, and eventually the path I'd been dragged along, covering my hoofsteps as I went with practiced skill, nopony needs to follow me here. This is something I had to do by myself.

What time was it?

The night was falling, my careful trek and the time spent covering my tracks had brought me here over the course of hours. Or maybe I'd just been wandering about, lost in the haze of red mist that hung across my eyes. I could hear wordless howls echoing up from the dirt beneath my hooves, I wondered how it was possible anypony couldn't they were deafening in place, the pain was almost unbearable as I staggered towards one of the most audible sources.

A stone crypt whose owner's name had been weathered away by decades, or possibly centuries, of neglect. Yet there was something strange... I reached out with my mind, my magic, I felt the dull hum of fresh warding spells and mechanisms that folded over each other like clockwork gears. On impulse I reached out, depressing an innocuous-looking stone that sat to the side of the crypt entrance, and it sunk into the ground with a grinding of mechanical levers.

The door was pulled a hoof deeper into the crypt before sliding dustily out of my path to reveal a stairwell.

The screams were a pandaemoniac hurricane erupting from the well of blackness laid bear before me. I knew instinctively that this was a place no mortal pony was meant to venture, but the howls of red hot rage and suffering beckoned me forward all the same. Undeterred, I took a step onto the mouldering stone and let the dark swallow me whole.

Two more hours had passed, the walk through the graveyard to where they'd found Twist and Shale had been short but once they reached the point even Twilight couldn't help but flinch at the sheer number of decrepit mausoleums that that towered up out of the decay-ridden earth. Two hours of poking, prodding, and searching had turned up nothing, without the light-globes that Twilight had brought with her the search would've been over after the first hour, as the last light of evening vanished over the horizon leaving the six in a cloak of darkness.

Fluttershy was coping surprisingly well in Twilight's opinion, in fact, the determination on her face was almost unsettling, as if this were a personal matter which, considering whose life was probably on the line here, gave Twilight an unwelcome twinge of jealousy.

She hated herself a little bit for the feeling, especially after having wronged her friends the night before, but she couldn't shake the feeling. Determined to put that thinking aside she shoved those thoughts to a dark corner of her mind where she would deal with them later. Finding Silver Twist's safe-house, assuming it actually existed which Twilight was positive of despite having no evidence of it, was the primary concern.

“Anything girls?” She called out after the second hour came to a close, five weary and frustrated noises told her they hadn't been any more successful than she had. Pinkie had even tried to make a game out of it at first but the grim atmosphere of the graveyard made the attempt seem almost perverse and she had given up. This wasn't a place for the Element of Laughter, clearly.

“Wait, I think I got something here,” Rainbow's voice called out, sparking a tiny light of hope in Twilight's heart. The friends gathered up in front of a crypt that looked, more or less, like all the others. Maybe an especially weathered example, probably one of the earliest crypts built by a wealthy family of old Ponyville.

“What is it? What did you find?” Twilight got the first there and found Rainbow examining the stone with a critical eye that seemed out of place on her usually carefree face.

Rainbow was acting oddly, she had on ear pressed to the stone and occasionally flapped a wing or muttered to herself as she moved along the aged stone.

“Can you guys hear that?” she asked without looking at her five friends who were beginning to give her odd looks.

“Uhm, what exactly are we supposed ta be listenin' fer?” Applejack moved alongside the cyan pegasus and matched her position, pressing an ear to the doorway. “Sorry sugarcube but all ah hear is... well... rock.”

“No, I mean the air current, can't you- ugh, nevermind,” Rainbow huffed as she searched for whatever it was she was searching for, leaving Applejack looking confused. “What I wouldn't give for another pegasus' opinion on this one.”

“uhm... I can... if you don't mind I mean...” Rainbow rose from her position and gave Fluttershy a flat stare.

“Oh, right... uhm, no offense girl but, you're not exactly weather pony material...”

“O-oh,” Fluttershy's face fell, looking absolutely dejected as she vanished behind her bangs. The sound of Rainbow's face-hoof echoed slightly in the graveyard stillness.

“Oh geez, uh, hey, 'Shy, I didn't mean it like that... I'd be happy if you'd give it a listen ok? I just... I keep almost hearing something I feel like it's coming from around this crypt. Like air currents or something,” she described as Fluttershy emerged from her hair looking somewhat hopeful and trotted over to the door and pressed a pastel ear against it.

Fluttershy began moving along door in the same scooting motions Rainbow had before pulling away and nodding. “I hear it, it's really faint but... there's something behind here.”

“Ah, darling I think that's the case with all these crypts, and I'd imagine I can guess what's behind them,” Rarity pointed out a touch dryly.

Rainbow shook her head though, “Fluttershy means there's something more, I felt it too, it's a pegasus thing, we can feel air currents moving around us, it's part of how we fly, and there's a definite current coming up from this place.”

“So... what does that mean exactly?” Twilight asked, her brow furrowed.

“It means,” Rainbow said as she turned to the offending doorway with a cocky grin, “that there's a really big space behind this door, and probably another exit that's letting air in through.”

“Big like...”

“Big like a safe-house,” Rainbow confirmed.

“Ok then, stand back,” Twilight commanded, her voice hardening.

“Uhm... why?” Fluttershy squeaked, already backpedaling.

Twilight's horn began to glow with a bright mulberry light, “Silver Twist probably put up some defenses, we don't have time to figure out all the mechanisms needed to safely get past them so I'm doing the next best thing.”

“Which is...?” Pinkie piped up.

“Ah think she means she's gonna huff'n'puff'n blow the crypt door down,” Applejack said, her voice colored by discomfort. “An' ah gotta say, ah'm not sure how ah feel about that considerin' it's a restin' place.”

Sweat had begun to trickly down Twilight's forehead as she focused her power, “Applejack, I don't even want to think about what a war criminal like Twist has been doing down there, so something tells me the dead won't be holding any grudges about scrubbing this place clean of his filth.”

The orange cowmare grimaced but nodded, unable to find any fault in that line of logic.

“Alright girls, hang on to your manes,” Twilight warned them, they all backed up, diving behind whatever nearby pieces of strewn stonework looked sturdiest.

The lavender prodigy of magic took a firm telekinetic grip on the crypt as a whole, knowing that what she was about to do should be well within her abilities, especially after her duel with Twist the night before.

Still, she'd never just ripped something apart before.

The sound of stone screaming as it was forcibly wrenched apart split the air like prolonged crash of thunder and with a resounding SNAP of power the wards on Twist's safe-house expired violently, the anchor they had been placed on annihilated as Twilight Sparkle grasped the crypt itself and violently ripped it in half, revealing a gaping stairwell leading deep underground.

“Jackpot,” Rainbow remarked as she swept up to it in a flurry of cyan feathers only to stagger back from it with a stricken expression on her face. “Holy Celestia, that smell!” Dash's hoof was pressed against her nose in a vain attempt to mitigate the charnel stench rising from the shadowed stairwell, even as she approached again, far more gingerly this time, her eyes began to water.

Fluttershy was next up since Twilight was still catching her breath from the exertion of her mighty feat of magic. The pastel pegasus' face went pale and her eyes grew wide with horror as she encountered the same horrendous smell that Rainbow had. It wasn't the ancient decay of a long-mouldering crypt, nor was it even the stink of an open grave.

No, this was the smell of sin.

The metallic cloying stink of rotten blood spilled in quantities too large to consider, behind that was the corrupted rotten smell of diseased flesh. There was no rhyme or reason for such a smell, rather, it combined to give the inescapable impression of madness and murder.

Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, and even Rarity after a moment of hesitation stepped up alongside Twilight, staring down in to the stinking abyss. To Twilight's surprise the only one holding back, the one she'd been sure would be able to laugh off anything was the only one who hadn't stepped a single hoof forward. Twilight looked back towards Pinkie and felt a chill run up her spine at what she saw.

Her normally vivaciously pink friend's coat had become drab and muted, the colors were washed out of her mane and tail as well which, unlike their normal cotton-candy form, were drab, limp sheets of pale hair. Pinkie's eyes had gone wide with something akin to dread as she stared past her five friends and into the stairwell like it was a gaping, hungry maw of some loathsome beast.

“P-Pinkie? Are you ok?” Twilight stepped closer to her friend nervously, she'd never seen Pinkie like this, not even when she'd been upset over the whole secret party incident. “W-Whats wrong?”

“I don't want to go down there Twilight.”

Pinkie's voice was so soft and quiet it was like she and Fluttershy had swapped personalities when Twilight wasn't looking.

“I know Pinks, but we've got to,” Rainbow said, flapping up next to her fellow prankster. “We need to know what's down there, believe me, I don't wanna go anymore than you.”

But Pinkie shook her head violently, backing away a few more steps.

“No... that's not... I have a bad feeling Twilight, real bad, like, super-duper-whammy bad,” now that sent a shudder of worry through Twilight, everypony in Ponyville, even the empirically concerned Twilight Sparkle, knew to trust Pinkie's vaunted Pinkie Sense. “My chest is all pinchy, and my heart is twitchy-witchy, it kind of hurts... I... the last time it was this bad was...”

Twilight knew instinctively before her friend said it.

Pinkie said it anyway though, “the day the war started.” Twilight heard a sharp intake of breath from Applejack.

“Something really bad is down there Twilight... I don't want to go, I don't want any of us to go, it'll... I mean something...” tears of fear sprang up in her eyes as she grabbed Twilight by the shoulders, “something really really terrible is down there, Twilight!”

Her features falling sorrowfully, Twilight nodded, “I know Pinkie, I don't need your Pinkie Sense to tell me that, but... I have to find out what happened down there. If you don't want to go...”

Pinkie's eyes suddenly hardened, “No! If you're going then I'm going! No way no how are you going anywhere without auntie Pinkie Pie watching your back!”

Twilight hugged Pinkie fiercely, “thank you, Pinkie, I... I really need to do this.”

“I know...” she whispered back, “I just... hope things don't go too badly.”

Have you ever imagined what it might look like if a pony were to raise a house of worship dedicated to the veneration of insanity? If I had needed further proof that Silver Twist was utterly out of his mind then this... place, would have cinched it.

The worst part, however, was not the obvious profanity of unholy fane I was standing in, it was the smell of the gore or the chill sensation of perversity that pervaded the entire complex. It was the fact that here, in this place at the center of it, Twist had raped the very laws of reality with depictions of chaotic angles shearing geometry into bite-size chunks that made my mind bleed as I stared up at the infinitely twisting ceiling. Logically I knew that it couldn't be more than twenty hooves above me, assuming that there were no other floors, but to my eyes it seemed to rise and expand like a tower until it vanished into the merciful darkness.

An almight CRACK broke me out of my reverie, something I was momentarily grateful for. Even the voices stopped screaming for a while. Until I heard the voices, not the ones who endlessly asked me inane questions of their own existence, but familiar voices, friendly voices.

My...

The pain throbbed like never before, casting me down to the ground like I'd been struck by a sledgehammer. I could feel the evil stirring all around me. That was when I realized what I was hearing, what I had always been hearing through the walls of Celestia's memory suppression. I knew because I could feel it... them... him... waking up.

What could I do though? I knew I had to stop my... my friends. I had to save them.

By any means necessary.

For whatever it was worth the six mares got used to the stench that rose from the stairwell which seemed unsuitably long for a crypt. Perfect for a safe-house though of course which fit Twilight's theory.

“Alright girls, keep an eye out,” Twilight cautioned as they came to the entrance at the bottom of the stairs, the door was open, curiously. “We don't know if the Doctor had any help.”

“Ah'll keep an eye a the rear Twi', ya'll got any spells what let us see in the dark though?” Applejack ventured as she moved to the back of the group, past a washed out Pinkie and a jumpy but determined Fluttershy.

“Uhm, no, I don't, why?”

Applejack responded dryly, “Cuz ya'll're lightin' us up like a jack'o'lantern on Nightmare Night with that there light spell o'yours.”

“O-oh... well, no helping it, we've got to have light right?” Twilight answered meekly as Applejack's warning played out in her head.

“Ah reckon we do, jus'... be careful up there sugarcube.”

The hallways were stained with the must of long years of unkempt maintenance though not nearly as many as it should have been since this crypt shouldn't be have been opened in at least a century. Somepony had been through here in at least the last decade and cleaned it out good, the majority of the floorspace was clean and clear if a bit dusty.

“So... where do we go now? I mean... if you know...” Fluttershy's meek voice came through loud and clear for once in the sepulchral silence of the hall.

“I don't know Fluttershy, we're looking for a study, maybe a lab of some kind, Twist was a scientist after all,” Twilight answered without looking back, her horn illuminating everything in a ghostly purplish glow.

“Well, let's do try and find it quickly, this place is completely uncouth,” Rarity answered, a hint of a whine in her voice.

Rainbow Dash chuckled out loud, “We're twenty feet under a graveyard in the lair of the genuine mad scientist and your first complaint is about the décor? Classic.”

“Well, excuse me miss prism-mane if my sense of style is a permanent facet of my personality,” Rarity huffed back before shooting her friend a good-natured smile.

“Ah'm sorry but could ya'll maybe be a bit quieter?” Applejack spoke softly as she trotted backwards, keeping her eye on the darkness before her. “Ah ain't buyin' that this place is empty, an' ya'll are gonna bring down every critter in this place a'fore long.”

“Rarity and Rainbow's ears flattened a little, “Sorry AJ, just... trying to lighten the mood y'know? This place gives me the heebie jeebies,” Rainbow answered, softening her usually boisterous voice.

“Agreed, my apologies, I wasn't thinking.”

“Ah don' need any apologies, ah jus' want all'o'us to get outa here ok. Pinkie's warning ain't sittin' well with me,” Applejack said, saying out loud what most of them had been thinking since Pinkie's ominous prediction.

“Girls, you should come look at this,” Twilight's voice broke through the conversation from ahead, bringing the five mares up next to her.

She was standing in a wide archway easily large enough to allow the six mares to stand abreast and stair into the massive antechamber in front of them. It was constructed like a chapel or temple, with row after row of moldering pews set up, divided by a central aisle. The entire area was constructed out of some kind of black stone, it was smooth as obsidian but had a depth to it that made the supporting pillars seem to swirl with an inner malevolence. None of them could properly see the top of the chapel but it curved like a peaked gable rooftop, an old architectural style only seen in Canterlot and a few places in Fillydelphia anymore. At the head of the central path dividing the interior was a preacher's lectern upon which rested what looked like a large book, behind that was an altar that glistened in the ghostly half-light put off by Twilight's horn.

“U-uhm...” all six had been standing speechless at the unnerving chamber when Fluttershy spoke up. “Isn't it... too big?”

“Huh?” Twilight tore her gaze from the chapel to look at Fluttershy, “what do you mean too big?”

“I mean... uhm... isn't the ceiling a little too... high?”

Twilight furrowed her brow, as she looked around the room, it was incredibly large of course, massive really, almost as big as the Temple of the Sun and Moon in Canterlot. The comparison struck an odd chord in the lavender mare and a sneaking suspicion crept up formlessly in the back of her mind.

“N-no way...” she muttered as she frantically began looked back and forth, her mind churning out mental calculations on width, volume, heights and other measurements. “This isn't possible,” Twilight said, so softly that it was mostly to herself.

“I'd ask if something is wrong, darling, but that describes this entire room so... is something specific about it bothering you?” Rarity asked stepping forward and shuddering as she took in the black and

“Yes, Rarity, something is bothering a lot, this...” she swept her hoof to encompass the entirety of the chapel, “doesn't any of this look familiar?”

“Uhm, ah'll admit, somethin' about it is ticklin', but Ah jus' figured it looked like most churches do, y'know?” Applejack answered, the others bobbing their heads in agreement except Pinkie was making herself as small as possible.

“Of course it does, because all of the churches are based off the original one, the one in Canterlot!” Twilight hissed, nearly shouting but, remembering Applejack's warning, holding her voice down.

“Ok, so what's the big deal?” Rainbow asked in confusion.

“The 'Big Deal' is that this isn't just based off of the Temple of the Sun and Moon, it IS the Temple of the Sun and Moon.”

The silence was deafening, interrupted by a single cough from the orange cream cowmare.

“Ya'll are gonna hafta explain that one Twi'.”

Twilight planted a hoof squarely onto her face, “this room, this entire room is an exactly perfect architectural duplicate of the main chamber of the Temple in Canterlot. An EXACT. COPY!”

That sent that the five other mares back on their hooves. None of them were exactly fervent church-goers, Celestia never having been one to play up her own divinity, on occasion even denying it. It didn't change the fact that the idea of some mad doctor pony building a corrupt copy of their Princess's Temple beneath a graveyard was more than a little unnerving.

“Why the hay would somepony do that? I mean, I know the Doc is a nutbar but...” Rainbow trailed off as she looked around the chamber with renewed discomfort. “This is just... like, capital 'C' Crazy.”

“It's not crazy, Rainbow, it's rather brilliant actually,” Rarity answered, shocking them all, even Twilight who had been opening her mouth to explain stared stunned at the alabaster fashionista. “What? Just because I'm not a graduate of the Academy doesn't mean I don't know a thing about magic, I am a designer after all, and this place... now I know why I dislike it so much. It's built to channel magic, and not the good kind I'd wager.”

Twilight nodded darkly in agreement.

“You're right Rarity, when I said it was an exact copy that wasn't exactly right, it's off just enough to change the alignment of the architecture towards...” Twilight swirled her hoof around a few times searching for the word before settling on, “...darkness.”

“So it's built ta make evil magic... what... evil'er?” Applejack asked incredulously.

A cold, harsh voice from the entrance interrupted them.

“No, it's built to make it stronger, by an order of magnitude.”

The six Elements stared open-mouthed at the filthy and stained but unmistakable rust-coated unicorn standing in the archway. He seemed distracted, almost not even noticing the six mares who were working their mouths in a manner akin to a displaced trout.

“The Master used it to amplify his magic, to do what before he could not without his star pupil,” the dirt and blood-stained Jasper continued. “Working wonders of black magic not seen since old nightfall when Luna lost her mind.”

“J-Jasper?” Twilight was the first to recover and stepped forward, meeting his gaze and expecting the same storm-grey eyes she'd known most of her life. Instead she saw eyes that were as cold as northern ice, the same color but utterly without remorse or mercy. “Jasper... what-”

“Jasper?” he asked solemnly, all emotion fled from his face, “Yes... maybe I am... is that my name?” He seemed to be asking the air around him and, horrifyingly, some kind of unwholesome whispers answered him. “Maybe... maybe maybe maybe- NO!” his sudden roar took them all by surprise, his emotionless face no twisted with rage, confusion, and hatred.

“No, no, no, no, no... this isn't... you are not 'we', that means...” Jasper's lips peeled back to reveal his teeth in a shark's grin. “That means it's time to kill again.”

Jasper's eyes flashed to arterial crimson as he drew out a balanced steel scythe.