The path was a white line, extending down through the dead earth. It felt like walking on salt to Applejack - not sand, but salt: finer, crystallized. As she moved further and further downward, shades around her stared and scattered, none touching the path, some marveling at her color and others at the route she was taking. But she didn't much pay attention to them.
As she approached the deepest land, the shades thinned out. Other things began to appear, some snarling at her - ponies in bright white habits entreating her away, black shucks staring and snarling, little rowan-foxwood-bramble creatures with gossamer wings blinking at her stupidly and asking her to please come off the path. She ignored them, as she had been warned. She had something deeper - more important - to attend. They thinned, too.
A few times, she stopped - the travel felt like hours but exhausted her like days, and a few times, she lay out her Stetson, candle and all, laid it upright and slept in her little circle of candlelight. When she woke, she indulged of the apples in her hat before moving on her way again.
She could feel something in her soul, attracted to the deeps. No, not her soul - her soul was a healthy creature and quite offended by the idea. But her legs wanted to walk there. She could feel a little deadness in her, striving. And when she arrived, her legs itched to walk in. She restrained herself.
The entrance to the Pit was exactly as she had heard of it - foreboding, nearly organic. Briars reached up from the ground and became latticed iron fence-posts; they curved around each other and tangled into doors, gates; chains and leaden spires. Around each opening in the thick metal briar, there were objects - tattered dolls, worn swords stuck into the ground point-first, and a few scraggly trees with fruit that she identified as pomegranates. Beyond, all there was was a suggestion of… downward-ness, a literal pit extending deep into Nowhere. There was a suggestion of stairs.
This was it, Applejack supposed. Her path ran through the brambles of lead and iron - she could see the cold white a bit, past the void. Only thing to do next was to keep walking.
As she watched the iron (was it moving, coiling like metal rattlesnakes?), she felt a faint tingle by her hooves and shook them, assuming them to be falling asleep or trembling with the dead land. When the tingle persisted, she looked down. The same things were there as before - a trail of chalk and her shadow.
Which spoke: "Ya know, we could turn around any time."
She stepped back, startled. At her hooves, her shadow stretched, impassive-seeming, but somehow having spoken - her shape, her form, but maybe a little more solid than above, a little more substantial in the lightless sea of the night. After a few wordless seconds, Applejack decided to test the occasion.
"Did you just say that?"
"Indeed Ah did." The shadow spoke with an impassive inflection, her voice with a little emotion stripped away.
"…Are you one'a those daemons r' maunts r' long-leggity beasties that Ah've heard about?"
"Ain't so. Ah've been here a long time, only y'all can't entirely see me all the time." It was her voice, certainly, down to the twang. "But down here, Ah'm as real and clear as a thunderstorm in July." It certainly sounded like her, too; the phraseology was similar.
"And why, exactly, should Ah trust you?"
The shadow twisted - seeming to shrug without actually changing position, like a trick of the light or the mare-lamp illusion she had seen at Twilight’s. "Ah can't give any back-up on that, so you might as well not. Can't hardly hold it against ya."
"Well." This was a novel approach for a monster, but Applejack was prepared to accept the idea that monsters could be creative. "Think Ah'll do that. What did you say before?"
"Ah said: we could turn around at any time. The path's right here."
"And why would Ah want to do that?" Applejack gestured behind her, where the path bisected the land. "'Cause Ah know it's a nicer place, with nicer folk than here, but it ain't exactly what Ah came here for." Then she gestured ahead, to the latticework. "That's where Ah'm headed."
"Think about what you gave up t'get here, first. Think about whether it's worth it t'keep going." The shadow wavered under her feet. "Remember what y'all did to get down here? Happy with that?"
She thought -
- her muscle honed into perfect form, thrusting and pounding the earth, feeling the vibration of potential in the land, knocking the door closed behind her, and a few seconds, give or take, there was a flash of heat and the door ripped itself from its hinges and turned into an orange but she didn't much care, she was already down the slope where being out of sight meant being out of mind meaning no unicorn could get a bead on her, and already the hoof struck with all the force of a thousand world-spanning trees and with a grunt the Royal Guard was nothing but an overgrown foal asleep in his dad's armor and Twilight’s brother, bless his heart, was calling for more pegasi as if that could even slow her down -
- and stopped. "So I did things Ah ain't proud of. But am Ah supposed t'just let it go ta waste?"
"Cut yer losses. Say yer sorry. Y'all got some damage from the trader, but a few months'a recovery and Twi pillaging three libraries fer a cure spell later, yer right back on your hooves and not much worse." Again the shadow wavered, leaning, clock-like, to point another way. "My way, yer less a little money and a little jail time, but the Apple Family goes on and yer friends will call you an idiot, nothin' worse."
At her feet, the light (the lack thereof) shifted, and the shadow angled towards the lattices. "Go that way, and y'all pay a price I don't reckon is worth the paying."
"And what price ain't worth my parents?" She managed, mostly, to keep the indignation out of her voice. The specter at her feet was a specter, nothing more, but she could certainly feel a healthy dislike for a little shadow that spoke nonsense.
On that, there was a pause, and when the shadow spoke up, it seemed to be taking a longer time over its words. "If y'all don't think so now, y'all won't 'til y'all have already paid it. And likely you won't believe that you didn't think so until you've paid it three times over."
"Haven't answered my question."
But, in moments, the shadow drained - it was no longer a presence, but merely a projection, and Applejack was left talking to nobody at all. And she wouldn't say that the shadow had rattled her, but it had certainly given her something to think about - no need of changing her mind, clearly, but something to consider. So she thought of what sort of price could possibly not be worth paying. She surveyed her inventory: a candle, her pappy's old Stetson (that seemed like too much to ask, by far), and nothing else.
She gulped. The image of the eye trader came to her mind, and her hoof came to her eyelid in the manner of a Pinkie Promise.
But that was the point, wasn't it?
Paying what you could, until you couldn't. And she had to pay.
With no more formality, and a certain degree of shuddering from the cold, she walked to the point where two spears clawed open the hedge, and stepped through.
The air changed around her -
- a sensation of eyes, yes her eyes, covered with cool metal, she panicked almost immediately but she could still feel that she had eyes if they couldn’t see, a smothering of earth, like drowning in fabric or wood, a thump that rattled her bones, pounding her front hooves frantically to discover only a wooden lid, the sounds of prayer above her, shaking her head and throwing the metal discs to the wall and hearing the jingle of change and feeling the airlessness of the coffin yes the coffin, airless sinking leaden unnatural death -
- and, as suddenly as it had began, the sensation ended. The path stretched, luminous, under her feet. Around her, the iron-wrought fences had twisted, without her noticing, into something more like a forest. Dark wooden bulbs hung from the branches. Around her, mist had risen, and she could feel wax under her hooves that felt like fruit, but that wasn't as important as the sudden quintessential wrongness that she could feel - the fire and black powder and dirt mixed into the air, wooden planks broken to pieces by an axe, a tornado on the horizon. And she felt it in her heart, in her eyes, and most of all in the land.
She looked back at herself, out of omen or instinct. On her flank, as always, was her cutie mark. A triad of apples. One vibrant and rosy. Another the same.
And, on top, the last apple, black as ink.
She paused to consider.
"S-shadow?" Her voice hardly trembled, considering.
"Yes?" it replied.
"Y'all got a name?"
"Pom's as good as any."
"Good." She felt nausea coming on, made a valiant effort to resist it, and failed miserably. Her vision clouded. "Reckon Ah should listen to you some time."
Pain ripped a hole in her head, and she was out like a light.