Friendship Is Mind Control

Consequences

Sudden, absolute silence rang in Twilight's ears. The tornado of power was gone, everything utterly still. The unbearable, blinding light was gone.

Her eyes slowly opened.

Stars. That was her first impression. Nothing but stars, tiny shards of coloured light set in unfathomable blackness, above and all around her. Instinctively, she glanced down, and her heart juddered in her chest as she saw only stars beneath her as well. "Ahhh!" she cried, stumbling, both terrified of falling, and with nothing to fall from. She was standing on empty space.

For a moment, her panicked, gasping breathing was the only sound, before she slowly wrested control of herself again. Okay. She was breathing, even if she wasn't sure whether there was really anything there to breathe. She held her breath for a moment, before her body rebelled and sucked in a gasp, then held up her hand as she exhaled. Warm, soft breath tickled against her skin.

That suggested she was still alive. On the other hand, being trapped in infinite space, standing on nothing, was a contradictory piece of evidence.

She was stark naked, she noticed in a distant, uninvolved way. Her hand absently rubbed over the complex lines and circles marking her bare skin, still new enough to keep noticing them each time she saw them in her peripheral vision.

She had faced Celestia. She'd lost - all but lost, at least, as the sabotaged Elements of Harmony had betrayed her, and her friends were stolen, one by one. Then, at the very last, her desperate gamble with Luna had paid off. Luna had given her everything she had, and then...

And then...

White light.

And then...

This.

She was probably dead.

She should feel more upset about that, Twilight thought distantly. Shock. That's what this was. That's why she felt so far away from her emotions, and why she seemed to be coping with the situation.

At least she'd have plenty of time to get over it.

In the silence between worlds, shaky, slightly hysterical laughter rang out.

Eventually, Twilight sobered up, wiping her eyes. Methodically, she ran her hands over her body, pinching her skin and testing herself with her nails. No apparent wounds. Her responses seemed to be intact, both pleasurable and painful. She scuffed her foot against the nothing on which she stood, and felt nothing but a glassy smoothness. Very carefully crouching, her groping hands encountered the same surface.

Tentatively, she rested on all fours, then eased herself down onto her side. Rolling onto the back, she stared up into the endless stars. Lying this way, she could almost persuade herself that there was ground beneath her, almost make herself forget the tingling fear that she might fall at any moment, and never stop.

A minute crawled past, then another, counted by her breath and her pulse.

Was this all there was? If she was trapped here forever with only masturbation to distract her... maybe that was some kind of ironic punishment for all the lust-driven decisions she'd made, that had brought her to this place.

At least the view was pretty.

As her eyes adjusted, she was picking out more and more stars and galaxies in the darkness. Colourful nebulae glowed softly, red and brown and blue. It was beautiful. She leaned her head back further. Straddling the invisible horizon between stars below and stars above, there was a vast, misty nebula, like an unfurling cloud.

She jerked, rolling over onto all fours, her heart hammering as she momentarily came face to face with the nothing she was lying on, before she rose to her feet.