Big Macintosh lay in the middle of the woods, sobbing. The tears flowed down his cheeks in thick streams, falling with soft splashes onto the grass below.
Big Mac heard small cracking noises, and saw Zecora emerge from the undergrowth nearby.
“Oh, Big Macintosh, you seem down. What causes your sadness to abound?”
Big Macintosh sniffed, and said “Applejack passed away the other day.”
Zecora looked taken aback.
“I am sorry, I did not know. I will leave you to your sorrow.”
Zecora started to trot away, but Big Mac stopped her.
“Wait! You could help!”
Zecora looked back, intrigued.
“You have potions, right? Well, Ahv been thinking! You could make one that could send me to the afterlife!”
Zecora looked at him, and said “True, a potion like that I could concoct, but safe for you, it is not.”
Big Mac followed Zecora to her hut in the Everfree forest. Zecora took a down a bottle of water, added some red dust, as well as a very odd looking plant.
“Drink this down, and drink it well, and soon you will be in hell.”
Big Mac took the potion, and downed it.
“Wait, Hell?”
“Goodbye Mac, you were better then most stallion princes. Now be prepared for unforeseen consequences.”
Big Macintosh fell to the ground, the life slowly draining from his body.
***
Imagine, if you will, the worst physical pain possible, mixed with the emotional devastation of losing your sister, combined with the euphoric sensation of death. A similar feel was lurking within Big Macintosh for a few minutes after his “death.”
Then Princess Celestia showed up.
“Big Macintosh, for choosing an act as selfish as suicide, and for getting another pony to assist you in such an act, you are condemned to the depths of Hell.”
Big Mac stared in horror at his Princess as she touched her glowing horn to his forehead. A flash of green light sent Big Mac into a deep, dark, shadowy embrace.
***
The ground was very warm. VERY warm.
Big Mac jumped up from the heat of the ground. He looked around quickly. Fire. Lava. Brimstone.
And also his sister, laying on the ground, dead.
Big Mac nearly threw up as he looked at the decimated corpse. Applejack’s stomach was shredded, and small black maggots crawled through her rotting skin.
Then, it lunged at him.
Taken by surprise, Big Mac reacted a little slow. The corpse grappled him and tried to bury its rotting teeth into his neck. Recovering, Big Macintosh kicked the corpse off of him, sending it flying into a nearby lava pool.
The corpse screamed a hideous scream as it burned and died in the lava. Big Macintosh gasped and shuddered.
“Could that really have been my sister?”
“Of course not, you ignorant fool!” Big Macintosh turned around.
Standing there was what Big Mac could only assume was a human. Lyra Heartstrings had spoken of humans quite often, but Big Mac never imagined they were real.
The human in question was a young looking one, somewhere in between Applebloom’s age and Applejack’s. He had longish blond hair that stopped a few inches above his shoulders, wore a green plaid over shirt, and had a shirt that read the words “Blink-182” and had a very odd smiley face surrounded by a ring with three arrows protruding from it.
“Who are you?”
The human sighed.
“I’m Elijah. I got sent to hell after I got hit by a bus. I guess I never really deserved to go to heaven anyway. What you just fought was a demon.”
“A demon?”
“Yes, a demon. It took the form of the thing that would scare you the most.”
Big Mac looked at the pool of lava where the demon had been punted into.
“Are they common?”
“Unfortunately, yes. However, there are worse demons. Now come with me. If you’re ever to survive here, then you’ll need to learn from someone who has never doubted that he’d end up here.”
Big Mac followed the odd human as they walked off over the burning hills.