Twilight, after having set the wax on a flame-sanitized surface in her basement, placed a very large self-made glass bowl over the two large slabs.  During her frequent travels to the nearby river, the unicorn found large deposits of sand from a far off beach that seemed to have been carried through the water.  This sand definitely had silicates in it, and so she managed to magically melt the stuff into glass and use her air magic to create masterfully crafted glass objects.  It was a hobby that she only used for practice in finesse of her fire and air control, but lately it had been serving a more practical purpose.  The unicorn pulled all of the air that she could out of the spherical bulb of glass and fixed it down to the counter top vacuum sealing it and keeping it fixed to the table via the difference in air pressure; nothing would get in or out until she wanted it to.

The unicorn took to her staircase and reemerged into the living room of her library.  Spike was sound asleep in his bed at the foot of a bookshelf, so Twilight walked over to see him.  The unicorn magically pulled his blanket up over his body and tucked him in, reverting briefly back to her old self in his presence.  Once that minute task was over with, she grabbed a large black cloak out of her closet and wrapped around her shoulders.  She remembered getting this thing during one of her old, moody "occult" phases, and frankly this entire venture was reminding her of that personal episode.  The cloak was a lovely feeling to her: hiding her away from the suspicious and unworthy eyes that could potentially surround her, but never limiting her abilities.  She pulled the hood over her horn, covering everything that she could with the soft piece of velvety fabric and taking off toward the back door once more.  Her body still had yet to feel any fatigue, and her mind felt as sharp as ever.

Twilight quietly swung the back door to the Library open, sneaking out into the night and taking a few steps toward the forest.  The first thing she noticed, however, was the oddly placed flower sitting in the middle of her dirt pathway.  The curious unicorn lowered her head and tried to examine the thing, though the lack of light other than from the moon was making it difficult for her to really take it in.  She could tell that it was definitely a single flower, though, and that it had bloomed in a place oddly distant from others of its kind.  She shrugged, however, and took toward the night-blanketed forest either way, figuring that it was just some freak seed that had gotten blown there in the wind or something along those lines.  She took to the skies once more, this time going as high as she could instead of skimming along the tops of the trees: trying to spot the heart of the forest if at all possible.  

As she scanned over the dark landscape, she could see from the color shift in the sky that the night was soon to approach its end, and she didn't want to be caught floating around in the day time.  The night air was very warm, warmer than most other nights as a matter of fact, so Twilight didn't mind just staying still and perusing the trees for any sign of a center.  From what she could tell, the expanse of the forest didn't actually end, but simply thinned out in certain places and left pockets of clearing from time to time, extending its reach over the horizon. This prompted her to flip her book open and begin reading.  A small gust of wind blew against her face and pushed the hood off of her head, but didn't blow the cloak off entirely, so she didn't actually bother to do anything about it.  

Just as she was about to ask the book exactly where to go, her thoughts were interrupted by the odd sound of snoring from very close to her back.  She slowly turned around, and caught the image of a snoozing Rainbow Dash on a tiny cloud lazily floating along in the wind.  The pegasus rolled over and opened her eyes a little (not quite "waking up" however), and rubbed her nose with the back of her forehoof.

"Ugh... Twilight, don't you know you're supposed to read in the Library...  You could hurt yourself way up here..."  At the end of this cautionary statement, she rolled back over onto her other side and fell asleep, leaving Twilight completely speechless from the situation.  After she regained her composure, Twilight decided to take off toward the forest a little way, keeping a slow clip and reading on the fly.  

"You cannot reach this place from above, Twilight Sparkle.  Though I must admire your innovation in personal flight.  The trees that surround this place are filled with deadly brambles, and they only thin out enough to pass through toward the ground, otherwise you're likely to get stuck in the canopy and bleed to death."

"Well, where's the closest place I can land?"  Twilight asked in a somewhat droll voice as she dodged out of the way of a flock of approaching morning-birds.  

"If you're still in the air when the sun comes up, you'll be likely to notice a tall, thick, very dark green patch of forest: that's where you'd like to be, but since we're out here at night, the best I can say is to look for a series of very tall trees and land on the outskirts of them.  Once you're there, move into the thickest portion of forest you can find: it will only get worse, but that's how you know you're on the right track."

Twilight looked up from her tome and replaced it by her side, keeping it magically pinned to her so that she wouldn't lose track of it.  Scanning the forest, the unicorn could only barely pick out the various height differences in the individual trees; leading to a small bout of frustration on the matter.  Twilight's night vision wasn't very good (years of reading in a barely candle-lit room had caught up to her) so she ended up flying slowly over the whole forest and looking for varying degrees of height in the treetops.  

With the sunrise came shadows of the trees, giving Twilight the ability to spot the taller portion of the forest, as well as the colors that Iago had instructed her to look for and helping her to spot the unusual section of forest in no time at all.  The unicorn took flight toward the area, still reveling in the wonderful feeling that it was to actually fly.  She made sure not to rush, taking in the scenery as she sped over it, watching over each new development as it came into view and then promptly left.  Nature really was a beautiful thing to Twilight, and the Everfree Forest had started to become fascinating with the rise of her power.  

As she approached them, Twilight could see that the trees definitely grew taller in this area of forest, and far more green.  The height differences seemed to radiate from the center (tallest to lowest), which she assumed held the spring that Iago had told her about.  Twilight examined the trees as she approached them, noticing quickly that their trunks were extraordinarily thick with respect to their proportions of height.  Some of them even seemed to join together in the air, or at least weave their branches together to create an almost impenetrable mass of plant matter.  

Twilight slowly picked her way through the canopy of trees, telekinetically pushing through whenever she had to, and landed on the damp forest floor.  Her hooves sank a little and water welled up around them, but she trudged forward toward a natural arch made from the bizarre trees that reached up toward the sky.  The unicorn entered the arch and glanced around, not seeing anything particularly out of the ordinary right away, but felt a small bramble prick her leg as she stepped forward.  She winced and glanced down, finding that whatever wasn't bare mud was just thick briar patches extending along the ground.  

"Oh I can tell this is gonna be real fun already..."  The unicorn said aloud, yanking her hoof out of the mud and scraping the thorns of the briar against her coat; lucky for her it wasn't quite sharp enough to get through.  She levitated her book in front of her and went to ask it a question, finding to her surprise that there was already an entry on the page.

"Twilight, I need you to pay attention very, very carefully.  There are two things that you absolutely must know about this section of forest: You can not by any means use your magic to move these obstacles out of the way, and you can not trust what you see.  There will be horrors, and there will be aberrations lurking around, but they will not attack you.  If you see anything that you aren't completely sure about, I want you to consult me, otherwise you could very easily die in here."

"I can't use my magic?  Are you serious!?  Why the hay not?"

"The Everfree Forest is more than just a frightening place that most ponies don't like to live in, Twilight Sparkle.  The deeper you get, the more bizarre this place becomes; we're nearly at the heart of the forest, so the usual laws of your world don't apply here.  There is a very powerful ward in this area that prevents the spread of magic: using the elemental magics that I've been teaching you would be like throwing water on an oil fire, only in your mind and your soul."

As the glowing words scribbled across the page, Twilight thought that she caught something out of the corner of her eye and turned to look at it.  Something was definitely off in the distance; groping at the trees with clawed hands and escaping into the darkness of the canopy, but Twilight couldn't quite make out what it was.  "W-what about unicorn magic?"

"Not only is that prestidigitation absolutely useless, but since it entirely uses your horn as a channel, it would likely explode.  Frankly, I don't think you'd look too great as an earth pony with a scorched face."

Once more Twilight's concentration on her book was disturbed, but this time by a horrendous rustling in the bushes behind her.  She spun around to look and saw absolutely nothing, only to feel some kind of moist breath on the back of her neck.  Her head whipped around again, trying to find whatever assailant monstrosity was chasing her through the briars, but still couldn't find anything.  "It'll only get worse, but that's how you know you're on the right track..."  She repeated to herself, taking a few steps forward into the frightening brush in front of her.  She had gotten five steps into the forest heart before she heard a twig snap about three feet behind her, startling her and sending her off running as fast as she could.  

She brushed past brambles and briars, feeling the small thorns rip into the skin of her legs, but sloughing off the pain due to the adrenaline.  Twilight dodged under tree branches, jumped over rocks and stumps, nearly tripping every step of the way and never shaking the feeling that she was being followed.  She dared to look back one single time, seeing nothing directly behind her but the overgrown, shadowy forest covering up her tracks behind her.  Every single step forward brought her deeper and deeper into the thorn bushes.

Twilight had to pause and catch her breath, looking around at her surroundings and noticing an intricate working of vines up along the trees, each one baring a slew of thorns that looked sharp enough to rip through metal.  These vines were much thicker than the small brambles earlier, and imposed immediate danger to even the tiniest mistake in Twilight's steps.  Claustrophobia didn't take long to set in on the unicorn, given that the forest seemed to actually shrink around her as she pushed on forward; she even started hearing more and more distant sounds.  The errant squawk of some unnamed species of bird and the growl of some horrifying canid monster tore through the dense web of dangerous plant life and teased at Twilight's nerves.  

She continued to walk forward, passing off everything that she heard as machinations of her psyche, and trying her best to simply keep calm.  The squeal of a lesser creature in its death rattles threw this off however, sending her heart skipping and rousing her to run once more, but she fought back the urge; the plants here could kill her if she ran into them.  This was demonstrated to her by a very large insect much like the bees from before (though looking to be more fly-like in appearance) landing on a beautifully natural looking mat, only to be devoured by a quick folding of vegetation that left only a muffled buzz fighting for its last breaths.  

Twilight's breathing grew shaky as she calmed down, feeling the sore aches of being cut open in dozens of tiny scrapes along her legs.  She looked down to assess the wounds and promptly wished that she didn't: just the sight of so many small cuts made her feel all the more pained by the wounds.  Blood ran down her legs in a small stream that collected mass as it reached her hooves, staining the mud red as she trudged through it.  She could feel her heart sink as she looked on, taking the route in front of her that bore the nastiest looking patch of brambles, both alive and dead, to wall off her progress.

The unicorn glanced around at the forest, having a minor panic attack as everything continued to change around her.  She decided to place a barrier around herself, silently cursing the magical ward away in her mind.  She didn't quite feel like her mind was set ablaze by the barrier, so she kept it up and ran forward, impacting the briar patch in front of her and immediately feeling the effects.  Each time a thorn scraped against her barrier, she could feel it like a nail on a chalkboard inside of her mind.  She continued through the brambles, fighting back the growing migraine as best she could while still keeping focus.  The sound buffeted her head, making her wince and stumble each step through, and the sounds only grew worse.  Her legs were entangled in brambles, constantly screeching inside of her mind, and forcing her to struggle to pull them out.  Her progress was all but halted in the magical forest, bringing her to the point of hyperventilation and a cold sweat.  

Twilight's heart pounded in her chest, her mind felt as thought it was about to shatter from the constant sonic attack, and her body strained against the entangling vines around her; her barrier wasn't going to hold up for too long.  She noticed the slow shimmer of the body-fitting magical shield begin to fade, so she fought for control, straining her body to the point that every single fiber of her being ached.  She took one more step and felt a sinking sensation in her chest; she had fallen forward.  This was the last straw, and she completely lost her focus, allowing her body to come into direct contact with the brambles around her.  

Her agonized scream was muffled by the surrounding vegetation, letting absolutely nothing escape her general area as the unicorn fell into a net of thorny vines.  Dozens of small puncture wounds littered her body, and the unicorn was sent into a horrible fit of pain with each small movement.  She pulled her hind leg to try and curl into a defensive ball, but felt it get caught in the thorns, ripping away at her flesh when she tried to move it.  Tears streamed down her bloody cheeks and her countenance twisted into a grimace: before each of her eyes was a single, massive thorn that seemed specifically meant to blind her in the most sadistic way possible.  

In a fit of anger and fear, the unicorn tried to set the forest ablaze with her magic, but to her dismay this resulted in her head feeling like it had been split on a rock.  She let out another yell: one of desperation, fear, agony, and unfathomable sadness.  

"No!  No, no no no, I'm going to die in here!"  Twilight screamed out, feeling her tears navigate their way through the bloodstained fur on her cheeks.  She struggled and writhed once more, pulling at every single limb on her body to try and bring them closer to her torso, but only feeling the sadistic thorns rip away at her body even more.  "I don't wanna die!  Somepony help!  Help me, please!"  Every move she made, more thorns pierced her skin and dug into her body; eventually she just wanted it to end and for the pain to go away.  

Twilight tried to glance around and get a view of where her legs were, seeing that each one was pulled in a different direction than the others.  She was suspended in this horrific trap of thorny vines, each one slowly becoming stained with her freely flowing blood.  The area below her fell into a chasm so deep that she couldn't see the bottom: only a foggy crevasse full of these vines and, to her dismay, the corpses and skeletons of hundreds of other unfortunate ponies.  

The instant Twilight spotted this grisly scene, her stomach sank in her body.  If she had eaten anything in the past two weeks, it would have come up just then, but her body settled for a dry retching that left her throat feeling raw (along with several more punctures across her body from the twitching).  "What... W-w-what is this place?!"  Twilight moved her head as best she could without too much pain from the thorns, spotting more and more of the twisted bodies surrounding her.  Every single direction had several bodies, and she could only assume that a number of ponies equaling the population of Ponyville had died in this hellish place.  

Twilight began to sob, not knowing what else she could even do other than curl up and die, her hope literally draining from her body like the unmeasurable volume of blood that she had been losing up to this point.  To her chagrin, she felt something drip on the back of her neck, and she craned it to look.  Dangling just a few feet above her was the visage of some unknown, pale blue stallion with a dark purple mane in about the same situation as she was.  Unlike Twilight, however, this stallion wasn't quite as lucky as to still be alive: a large vine had wrapped itself around his eyes and his mouth, gagging him and puncturing his eyes with the thorns (thankfully the vine hid this gruesome sight from poor Twilight), as well as continuing down his neck.  He wasn't twitching or gasping, so any blood that fell from him was simply being drained by the forest.  

The unicorn couldn't take it anymore, and hung her head down to cry.  All she could bring herself to do was to sob and wait for the sweet embrace of death to take her away from her suffering.  From time to time she opened her eyes, wishing that this was just some kind of nightmare, but time and time again she saw the twisted bodies surrounding her, and her own tortured frame being assimilated into the macabre web.  She grew delirious from her blood loss, and glanced around nearly in a trance, taking in every vine and every corpse, watching various fluids drip all around her in a crimson rain.  Her face was already stained with her own blood and tears, as well as dirt and pollen from the forest, so she couldn't care less what landed on it from her surroundings, and the initial trauma of the sights around her had begun to wear off.  She started to target some of the ponies and try to figure out who was luckiest out of the pack.  One looked as if he was hung by the neck only: a quick death she could assume, but the thorns would have made it painful.  Another seemed to be cocooned in the vines all save his or her hooves: that had to suck.   She looked down with a deadpan countenance and saw, to her surprise, her book sitting just below her and stained a little with her blood.  

This vision was enough to pull her out of her trance, though not enough to restore her liveliness.  She tried to open the book with her telekinesis, and watched it crack a bit before being pressed back by the vines surrounding it.  She tried one more time, forcing the book with all of her remaining might, putting more strain on her mind than she ever thought that she could.  Once more, she felt the nails on a chalkboard within her head, but ignored the pain in her body and in her mind, forcing the book, her only true salvation, to open and advise her.  

"Run, Twilight Sparkle."

"Run?  Run?!  Where the hell am I supposed to run to?  I don't even know where the ground is!  I can't move!  I can't breathe, I can't feel anything, I'm going to die in here!"

"You'll only die if you give up.  That's how this place works, by preying on your fear until every last ounce of hope is drained from you.  Just trust me, run forward."

Twilight looked ahead and saw the gruesome mask of thorns in front of her, waiting for the unicorn to drive her face into it and put her eyes out.  "Are you insane?  I'll be blinded!  I'm already bleeding out over this chasm!"

"Just run, Twilight Sparkle.  The forest wouldn't put that directly in front of you if it didn't want you to fear it.  It wants you to hang there and die, it doesn't want you to run forward."

"But my legs are bound.  I can't do anything without the thorns--"

"The thorns are just there to scare you, ignore them and run before you bleed to death!"

Twilight stopped her argument and pulled her legs beneath her, trying to orient herself into a running position.  The thorns tore into her body once more, this time feeling as though they were damaging her muscle tissue.  Twilight let go in agony, screaming out once more and letting her legs return to their original positions.  She tried again, knowing that Iago had a better idea of what to do than she did, but still not trusting him explicitly.  She held her tortured legs beneath her body and brought her foreleg out to take a step (onto what, she wasn't sure).  She pulled it back and felt resistance, noticing that her body actually moved forward, and her face moved one inch closer to the horrible mat of thorny vines that threatened her vision.  She gritted her teeth and pushed on, moving her legs methodically in a stepping motion, though feeling virtually nothing beneath her hooves.  The thorns tore into her body, almost flaying her with how violent the scratches and tears were becoming step by step.  The moment came that her face would contact the thorns before her, and she simply shut her eyes as hard as she could, pushing on and letting out a blood-curdling scream of anger, fear, and pain.  Her primal emotions took over and she had to fight not to curl back up into the fetal position.  She could feel the thorns penetrate her eyelids and dig slowly, painfully, into her eyes.  She never stopped screaming as the dagger-like thorns pushed themselves into her face and neck, tearing away skin and flesh and making Twilight want nothing more than to die and escape the pain.  A few more steps, a few more seconds of agony, and a few more inches forward in the suspension above a bottomless pit of corpses and sorrow.

She fought and fought, combating her own instincts to sit down and clutch her pained body, and started to run.  She timed her legs so that they held a balance even though they were all being held uncomfortably by tight thorny vines, but she didn't let that deter her.  She galloped into the agonizing thorns and clenched her teeth to try and fight the pain with a tensing of muscle.  She felt a thorn go through her cheek and scrape along her teeth from the front of her mouth all the way to her jaw bone, presumably ripping that portion of her face off and claiming it forever within the vines.  She didn't care anymore and kept on running, hoping for a faster death at full gallop rather than just sitting there and bleeding for days.  Eventually, she felt something strike her hoof and send her tumbling forward, but to her surprise she hit the damp muddy ground of the forest floor.  Her eyes flew open (surprising her that they were still there at all) and darted around her surroundings, looking once more at the mud on the ground and the brambles ahead of her, but not at a web of dead and bleeding ponies in a mesh of thorns.  She was in nature again, turning around to see her book lying in the mud and a large bramble bush behind her with a few vines torn out of it.  

She picked her book up and opened it, looking for some kind of explanation to what had just happened, finding an entry being scrawled out before her very eyes.

"You've just encountered a terror bramble.  One of my personal favorites of this section of forest, at least in plant life.  Its thorns contain a hallucinogenic toxin that make you think you're trapped, though the location of being trapped is different for everyone, usually preying on primal fears and phobias.  The bush tricks you into wanting to stay still until you either bleed or starve to death, leaving your body on the ground beneath it to fertilize the soil and keep it alive.  It's a very sinister plant, and I absolutely love its style.

"You mean none of that was real?"

"None of it was real, Twilight Sparkle.  You may have some minor scratches from the tiny thorns, and some bigger ones from the actual plants around here, but you're largely unharmed.  You may see frightening things for a few days though, the toxins take quite some time to get out of your body with natural processes.  Now keep walking, it's almost noon and you still have to get out of this place alive and with your salts."

Twilight took a few deep breaths and cracked her back, looking around and finding the approximate path into the heart of the forest and walking forward at a slow and deliberate pace.  The unicorn had no idea what would happen next, and knew she wouldn't be prepared for it, but she could feel the scholarly drive backing her every step and reassuring her every doubt.