Appledashery

by Just Essay

And Then One Day, She Got In

The only thing more unsettling than the dull silence contained within the factory were the constant thuds of Rainbow's heart that utterly shattered it. She trotted forward, one trembling hoof at a time. No amount of medicine was enough to fight off the numbness that was now hounding her system.

Nevertheless, in a courageous stride, she approached the patch of floor where Stu Leaves lay. A distant hissing filled her ears, denoting the rush of blood through her skull. Without hesitation, she picked up the jug of cider in one hoof and the Alicorn Chalice in the other. The mare flapped her wings, carrying both items away from the gurneys and into the front room adjacent to the electrified spectacle.

Rainbow Dash set both items onto the table, then grasped the solitary folding chair. She dragged it, pivoted it with a slight scraping noise, aiming it towards the mechanical array where Serenity Shindig was unconsciously imprisoned.

Then, on swift wings, Rainbow Dash flew into the other chamber and gathered a series of black crystals from Silver Shill's collection. She placed them all around the chair, taking her time to breathe into each and every one of the curious shards. She watched with nervous, darting eyes as each object glowed with an onyx brilliance, filling the immediate air with otherworldly tingling.

At last, with a shuddering sigh, Rainbow Dash slumped down in the chair, tucking her tail underneath her flank. She laid back, nostrils flaring, as she gazed ahead.

The mechanical sarcophagus and its chaotic energy core flickered across the factory from her. Shindig, Felix, Frederick, and the four "guests" all formed an eerie symmetry between her and the host machine. The only thing that was off was Stu Leaves' dormant body, lying on the concrete floor beside Applejack's gurney. The stallion's figure upset the entire balance of the operation.

Rainbow Dash was about to upset it even more.

Biting her lip, she reached a hoof over, grabbed the pitcher of cider, and tilted it slowly so that its bubbling contents rolled down its lip and into the deathly black hollow of the Alicorn Chalice. Her fuzzy ears twitched from the ticklish sound of fizzing ambrosia. Then, when at last Rainbow was satisfied that she had filled the Chalice to the brink, she placed the nearly-empty pitcher back onto the table... and sat there.

Her eyes tilted up towards the windows that lined the ceiling of the large concrete structure. Blood red sunlight wafted in from the dying evening. Outside, the Fillydian atmosphere lingered, quite possibly the last glimpse Rainbow would ever enjoy of anything real.

With no small amount of trembling, Rainbow reached a hoof over, hooked it through the handle of the ancient artifact, and then raised the goblet to her muzzle. She paused, her nose sniffing the sweet scent of the waiting beverage. Quietly, her ruby eyes darted up and across the interior.

She saw Applejack's beautiful, graceful figure lying on the gurney. The mare's golden mane was draped over her shoulders, some of it cascading over the side. Her body slowly rose and fell as her muzzle's freckles twinkled under the last hint of sunlight.

Rainbow took a deep, deep breath, then finally brought the broth to her lips. She closed her eyes, releasing all inhibitions as she drank, drank, drank. It felt like an eternity since the pegasus had last indulged herself with cider. She was so mired by the recent circumstances that the honey-sweet taste of the substance practically flabbergasted her. She nearly choked once or twice—through sheer surprise—but she maintained her composure, drinking evenly, cleanly, and before long the entire contents of the Chalice had been emptied.

Swallowing the last of the nectar down her throat, Rainbow Dash cradled the goblet in her hooves. She breathed in. She breathed out. She breathed in again... and she breathed out again.

Nothing was happening.

Rainbow Dash opened her eyes.

The same factory loomed around her, its gray concrete panels looming under a crimson haze. The metal array flickered with electricity across from her, and the bodies remained dormant on their gurneys.

Rainbow Dash blinked. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at the pitcher on the table to her left, then finally at the Chalice clasped in her hooves.

She turned the thing over, examining its empty contents. At last, her eyes fell over the black-winged alicorns gracing opposite ends of the goblet's lid. The closer of the two figurines clutched the edge of the Chalice, its head sharp, graceful, and unmoving... until it blinked.

Rainbow's blood went cold. Her eyes narrowed as—

With a loud neighing sound, the black alicorn spread its wings, flapped the glossy appendages, and detached from the container altogether. The tiny thing flew in orbit around Rainbow Dash and her chair, circling closer and closer, lower and lower.

Rainbow gawked at it, her muzzle hanging open, shivering. At one point, as the obsidian body streaked by, she glanced straight ahead into the room adjacent to her. A sharp chill ran up her spine.

Shindig's eyes were open, and she was glaring at her. The lid to the urn in her grasp rolled back, and a dark mist began pouring out—

Th-Thap! The tiny black alicorn landed squarely on Rainbow's fuzzy blue chest, weighing her down.

Rainbow froze, unable to move. The Chalice slipped from her hooves, rattling to the concrete floor. Struggling, she tilted her head as far as it would go and stared down at the puny equine mounting her.

The alicorn's eye flickered red. It leaned back, rearings its hooves... and then sank into Rainbow's chest, disappearing altogether.

Rainbow Dash gasped. She tried lifting her hooves, but she was glued to the chair. Her lungs began quivering, her heart palpitating. Something rose up from her gut, rippling, bubbling, undulating. At first, it came out of her mouth in a little river of spittle... and then in a thicker, solid stream. She didn't feel like she was vomiting... or even choking. And yet, as she drooled and sputtered, the liquid came thicker, denser, and more forcefully. Soon enough, a veritable flood of moisture was rolling out of her mouth, spilling all over her neck and chest and limbs.

Her eyes darted down, and she caught the tell-tale orange sheen of cider rolling across her body. To her horror, the liquid multiplied in volume, gushing out of her mouth in a veritable monsoon. She couldn't breathe, couldn't gasp, and just as the sensation was becoming unbearable, she heard a consistent roar of thunder from the center of her skull, piercing outward in opposite direction. Within seconds, the same liquid was trickling out her ears, forming puddles on the floor. Her coat was covered in a fine sheen as every pore emptied, sweating bubbly cider from every orifice. The mare couldn't help but cringe as a waterfall formed between her legs. In a panicked jerk, she tried looking down, but suddenly her eyes were tearing up, soaking up, fogging up.

"Grllggghhhh!" she whimpered as jets of cider came out her eyes. Rainbow Dash was a living sprinkler at this point, vomiting and leaking ambrosia in every direction. As her water-logged eyes adjusted to the sensation, she could see that the entire floor of the factory was now covered in a fine layer of cider. The liquid level rose, and soon her chair and the table beside her floated in the bobbing currents. The gurneys in the opposite chamber floated off, carried along invisible orange rivers to nebulous destinations. In a fuzzy blur, Applejack's body floated off, rocketing away at the speed of sideways hail.

Rainbow Dash flung a hoof towards her, only to topple off the chair completely. She rolled and twirled in a monsoon of cider, being flung around in a cyclonic spin. Flashes of concrete and pipework blurred past her, taunting her. She screamed, but all that came out was bubbles and madness. Spinning for the umpteenth time, Rainbow Dash spotted the windows to the world outside. It was flooding outside too, with huge jets of cider pelting the building from every angle. The stress was too much. The concrete pylons buckled. The glass panes cracked. Giant fissures formed in the heart of the factory, ready to burst.

The mare flinched, hugging herself as the world imploded around her.

With dull thunder, the factory ruptured. Sheets of concrete debris flew off into the liquid ether, carried by currents stronger than gravity itself. Tsunamis of bubbly orange quaff rolled Rainbow Dash in every conceivable direction. She tried swimming in a straight line, but her limbs and wings could only flail wildly. Completely gone was the infernal machine that Flim and Flam had built, or the heart of chaotic stone that powered it. Across the flooded expanse, Rainbow caught hints and glimpses of darting black things, like the very tips of wings sculpted out of volcanic glass.

There was no end to Rainbow's panic. All this time, she couldn't tell if she was drowning, holding her breath, or both. The pressure on her eyes was strangely nonexistent for being at the bottom of an unfathomable ocean of cider. This was magnified by the horrifying realization that she was just as much full of the stuff herself.

The agile flier struggled to keep herself even, but the currents carried her swifter and faster towards some unspoken destination. Gradually, as the chaos grew more and more bearable, she spotted things surging by her, like shoals in river rapids. Rainbow spotted the streaking blades of windmills, a steam pipe or two, and balconies with flooded flower gardens. She let loose a muffled shriek, trying her best to swim towards the darting structures, but they all disappeared as soon as they appeared. Something drifted past her face, glittering with jewels. Out of the corner of her twitching eyes, she could have sworn that it was a tiara. Rainbow reached for it—only to bump into something large and gangly from behind.

The mare twirled about.

Tens of thousands of dead horse faces loomed beyond the depths, their horns and wings just as dormant as their bobbing heads.

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth wide, and the resulting scream propelled her backwards through the copper-brown miasma. She spun and twirled multiple times, and in so doing she spotted a beacon of light surging in rhythmic pulses. Kicking, thrashing, she aimed herself towards the beacon and began swimming. With rapid strokes, she pushed forwards... upwards... and the light grew brighter, bigger, whiter. Somehow, the mare knew deep in her gut that it was sunlight, and that only urged her all the more forward as she approached a solid wall of undulating air.

SPLASH!

Rainbow Dash pierced through... and fell. Plummeting from a cider atmosphere, Rainbow Dash descended upon an enormous ocean of the same stuff. Orange waves and eddies shimmered as far as the sunlight could touch in every horizon. The mare fell for the better part of a full minute, and at last her body landed in the bubbling depths, rolling over, toppling. She kicked and thrashed her way to the surface, emerging once again, this time restrained by a merciful gravity.

"Bgrllfkgrkstt! Gguhghgh... Chllesttiaaaarglglll!"

She splashed. She rolled. She surged forward, and somewhere—somehow—she made contact with something solid. With a dull whimper, Rainbow threw herself straight towards it, and she rolled upright onto a sloped stone shore. Deep shivers hounded her body. One hoof at a time, she pulled herself onto dry, sunbaked concrete, then outright collapsed with wet heaves.

The undulating, vomitous motions consumed her. Grimacing to the point of implosion, the mare pushed herself up on all fours, lurched, and opened her mouth wide.

"Graaaakllkgkkkkk!" Rainbow threw up a solid column of orange liquid. It took the better part of two minutes to empty the full content of her lungs. At last, the pony collapsed in a puddle of her own juices, clinging to the concrete shore like it was her mother's bosom. She panted, wheezed, and shuddered. Slowly, ruby eyes weak and thin, she tilted her head up and looked straight ahead.

A giant pale blob occupied her vision, fading in and out of a sickly fog.

Rainbow Dash winced, squeezing and unsqueezing her eyes shut. She ran a forelimb across her muzzle and stared ahead, blinking fixedly.

Gracefully, an enormous trapezoidal building came into focus, its angular pale frame looming three stories high above the mare and the shallow concrete shore where she had been beached. Rainbow's ears tickled with the gentle roar of rolling waves from the cider ocean all around her.

"Hrmmmf..." Coughing, sputtering, the mare slowly pushed herself up on buckling limbs. "Grff... that was easy..."

Comments

[RoboRed]

...Okay,
1) That was mildly terrifying.
2) That was trippy as fuck.
3) I'm going to lol if this experience puts Dash off of cider.

[Salad king]

Got any more of them trippy trips?

[TwilightUCrazy]

Well then... that happened.

oi39.tinypic.com/9umdlh.jpg

[RainbowJack2000]

Well, that was grim. Very grim. So dark.

[FloydienSlip]

What the fuck did I just read? What's in that cider?

[Sharp Quill]

Tens of thousands of dead horse faces loomed beyond the depths, their horns and wings just as dormant as their bobbing heads.

The fabled alicorns, I presume. Either Rainbow Dash is not perceiving this plane correctly, or it wasn't as advertised.

And do those crystals need occasionally recharging? Silver Shill is no longer able to breath on them periodically.

[Tchernobog]

... The Grid clearly ain't what it used to be...

[Sheendough]

5534105 More importantly, how many times did SSE watch Yellow Submarine while on LSD to come up with this shit?

[Lightning Bearer]

lolsnaps.com/upload_pic/Walmartbabyhasseensomeshit-71274.jpg

[Jay_Baker]

There are good trips and bad trips........Rainbow Dash just had a bad trip.

[YoshiFawful64]

That was... weird. And gross.

[Sam the Anti-Ninja]

Let me show you how deep the cider mug goes.

[Leftover of Saikano]

This reminds me of this. A lot.
imgdonkey.com/big/SFlEdklhQw/the-start-of-inception-oh-thank-god-he-actually-survived-titanic.gif
As I said, don't mix your alcohol with your medicines. I'm sure this is an adaptation of the first experience of the author with cider.

[Aatxe360]

5535306

I'm surprised anyone else was paying attention that she was taking medicines. Did you remember that Zecora included as the possible side effects in the form of hallucinations?

Rainbow is definitely not in Orlandoats anymore. I wonder if she'll hallucinate Winoa in the role of Toto or Angel as the White Rabbit...

Maybe both.

In this type of chaos, Lancie may be closer than she realized. I actually wouldn't be surprised for a Pinkie Pie cameo. Let's see how far this hole goes.

[BabySkittleMonster]

Well... This was a pleasant chapter. Totally not freaky as hell.

Pwy dwi'n twyllo? Neb. Roedd pennod hon yn afiach. Ych a fi... Gormod o pethau hull yn y dyfnderoedd i wneud o'n hwyl i rhywun.

[DrEggnog]

I think this is where that Random tag comes in.

[arancaytar]

You weren't kidding about this arc being trippy.

[Boop-Happy Lass]

brbrbrbrbr... trippy.