At first it was hard to tell that they had gone anywhere.
The roof above was choked with roots, there were what looked like the columns of a vast and forgotten temple all around, and a large pit in the middle of it all. However, the moisture in this cavern was simply water dripping from above. There were no pony corpses, living or dead, dangling from the roots as far as Apple Bloom and Twilight could see. The air was the same slightly musty scent you get from any cavern with a colony or two of bats, but aside from that the thick miasma of rot and decay was nowhere to be found.
As Twilight’s horn blazed to life, a bright white orb of light taking shape on the tip of her horn, the darkness all around them fled away. What was revealed was a perfectly normal cave... And Starlight, collapsed on the ground. The wound in her shoulder had reopened, and a wide pool of blood was slowly spreading around her body.
“Starlight, no!” Twilight cried in alarm and quickly set to casting spells to staunch the flow of blood and heal the wound.
All Apple Bloom could do was watch while Twilight scrambled to help her friend. She couldn’t help but feel bad for dragging Starlight and Twilight into all this. If she understood what was going on, and she thought she did, it seemed it was all her fault for dwelling on the loss of her parents. She had caused this, as much as those crazy copies of her family members. If she had just been satisfied with the life she had, the family and friends she had, then maybe none of this would have ever happened in the first place.
As the guilt rose up inside her, a soft voice “Apple...Bloom...” drifted to the filly's ears.
She spun around. Behind her was a pit not unlike the one she had seen in the other world. It’s depths were equally hidden in shadow, though it looked quite empty from what she could see. Had she really heard a voice coming from there? Carefully, slowly, she leaned over the edge and gazed into the abyss below.
Wreathed in black flames, a skeletal pony rose from the depths! Empty eye sockets that blazed with hunger bored into Apple Bloom's soul as it hissed “Stay with us!” before a rusty chain wrapped around her throat!
She had just enough time to scream before she felt a great weight tug her forward... and over the edge into the darkness below.
“Apple Bloom!?” Twilight looked up when she heard the filly cry out. She had been distracted, tending to Starlight so she had lost track of the youngest Apple sibling. She turned the light of her horn up as far as it would go and swept it around the cavern left and right. At last the light fell on a little yellow pony with a bow in her red hair standing at the edge of a huge pit, “Apple Bloom are you okay?”
She didn’t answer right away, but when she did her voice was hushed, so quiet it would have been lost entirely were it not for the comparative silence of the cave. “Ah thought ah heard... Ah thought Ah saw something, down in the pit. Ah think it’s just the dark playin’ tricks on me.” In a louder voice, that trembled slightly with tears, she intoned the mantra of children everywhere who had regretfully had enough “Ah want to go home.”
Twilight’s heart broke for the little filly. She hadn’t asked for any of this, and it was clear the experience had left her shaken. “We’ll get you home as soon as we can, but first we have to get Starlight out of here. I’ve done what I can to stabilize her for now but she needs a doctor.”
The bleeding had stopped at least, but Starlight was still out like a light. It was clear she wasn’t going to be going anywhere under her own power any time soon.
“I’d just teleport us all to the hospital, but I’m worried my magic might not be a hundred percent back to normal yet. With my wings in the shape they’re in, it’ll be hard carrying her on my own,” Twilight lifted her burned wings gingerly as if to illustrate her point. “Think you can help me get Starlight out of here Apple Bloom?”
The filly sniffed hard and wiped at her nose with the back of her hoof, but she nodded her head. “Uh-huh. Just leave it ta me!”
Getting out of the cavern ended up being much easier than Twilight thought it would be.
It turned out the chamber they were in connected up to a tunnel system she had actually stumbled into a few Nightmare Night’s back that extended under the area where the Apple family put up their annual ‘Haunted Corn Maze’. There were a few twists and turns, and a lot of gnarly roots to navigate, but in no time at all they were out in the fresh night air under the glow of a full moon.
Twilight could have bathed in that moonlight after the dark claustrophobic depths she had just crawled out of, but getting Starlight help was her first priority. Fortunately Sweet Apple Acres wasn’t far and Applejack, the real Applejack, had taken one look at the stricken Starlight and had run to fetch the paramedic ponies.
When the pegasi medics arrived there was a whirl of activity and questions that Twilight took great care to oversee, once her own burned wings had been bandaged and splinted of course. As the pair of fliers carefully loaded Starlight into a snug harness so they could carry her to the hospital, Twilight sat down with the whole Apple Family at their unbroken dining room table to tell them everything that had happened.
"Are ya tellin' me the Pony of Shadows is back!?" cried Applejack in alarm after Twilight had finished telling her story.
"Not exactly Applejack, at least I don't think so," replied Twilight, her brow furrowed as she clearly sought for the right words to both allay her friends fears but also convey the gravity of the situation. "The Pony of Shadows was banished from our world, but there are other worlds out there, like the human world where Sunset Shimmer lives. While our Pony of Shadows was banished to limbo and likely will never return, there are other worlds with their own ponies who fell for the promises that the darkness made to them. Twisted reflections of the Equestria we all know and love."
"Ah'll say!" chimed in Granny Smith. "A world where the Apple family consumes its own, sowin' them in the ground like seeds and reapin' their life force, drainin' them till they ain't nothin' but living corpses! Whoo-nelly, it gives me the heebie jeebies just thinkin' about it!"
"Eeyup." was Big Mac's contribution to the conversation.
"And our Apple Bloom somehow attracted their attention?" asked Applejack
"It's important that I stress that it was not Apple Bloom's fault," Twilight answered with a sad look in her downcast eyes. "Any pony that was lonely or depressed could have attracted their attention. That Apple Bloom happened to live here at Sweet Apple Acres and was a member of the Apple family herself just made the attraction all the stronger. Their world isn't just dying, it's dead, and the only way they have to keep living is to drown other ponies in sorrow so they can draw them in from other worlds to feed on. That's why I think they tampered with the Cutie Map through the Ouija board. They didn't just want Apple Bloom but anyone close to her as well."
"So it was this Weegee-doo-hicky that was ta blame for everythin' then?" asked Granny Smith, touching the innocent looking game board that sat on the kitchen table tentatively, as if she expected it to jump up and bite her.
"No, it really is just an ordinary piece of wood. I'm still not sure how, but it simply served as a conduit to the other world through which the dark power of the evil Apple family could flow," Twilight held the game board between her hooves. "I suspect it was Apple Bloom's own strong emotions and focus on the board that allowed this, but with the wards I've placed up around the farm there shouldn't be anymore risk of it being used by nefarious forces from outside our own dimension. It's just a piece of wood now, with no special powers for good or ill."
Applejack seemed to consider Twilight's words carefully. When she next spoke, though her eyes were hidden by the brim of her hat, her voice was clearly thick with emotion. "Is Apple Bloom going to be okay?"
"She's been through a lot Applejack. It doesn't seem like she was hurt physically, but there are some wounds that we can't see. It was such wounds that drew the other worlds attention to her in the first place. Unless those heal... I'm not sure I can really answer that question one way or the other," Twilight set down the ouija board and turned her back on the Apple's. "I should get going. I want to check up on Starlight before I head back home. In the morning we'll all go back down into those caverns and we'll find those ruins again. I think that it's those that are the real source of this problem and the sooner we find a way to seal them off or destroy them the sooner we can put all of this behind us."
"You take care of yerself too Twilight. Thems some nasty burns ya got on yer wings there. Er... how didja say that happened again?" Granny Smith eyed the alicorn Princess as if she didn't wholly expect to be told the truth.
"Just like I said Granny, they accidentally got burned off by a spell that I cast," Twilight lied, awkwardly. While she hadn't been shy about relating the truth about the evil versions of Big Mac, Applejack, and even the fate of Bright Mac and Pear Butter in the other world, she somehow felt uncomfortable telling Granny Smith about the acid spewing, blood slurping, beastial version of herself. "I'm sure they'll heal soon. Try not to worry about me. It's Apple Bloom that needs your love and attention right now."
Saying that, Twilight vanished in a flash of purple magic.
"Ah reckon she's right about that," Granny Smith looked forlornly up the stairs to the second floor where Apple Bloom's room was.
"Eeyup," added Big Mac sadly.
"Ah'll talk to her," said Applejack stoically. Her eyes might have still been hidden by her hat, but the tears streaming down her freckled cheeks were all too apparent. "It's high time she heard the honest truth."