Ever alert – sometimes to a fault – Fluttershy’s luminous azure eyes followed the arc of Celestia’s sun, Helios, as its slow, pondering descent brought it close to the horizon line; standing over Ponyville like a monolithic guardian was the snow-capped bulk of Mount Cayuse, and she took a brief half-second to appreciate the way in which the dying embers of effulgent amber light kissed its glittering peaks. If one were feeling fanciful, you could almost describe it as a million tiny fireworks going off at once. With a small shake of her head, Fluttershy retrained her attention on the way home. Though the skies were now beginning to shade from blue to grey, she could just about make out her tiny cottage on the other side of town. Not long now. Icy fingers of cold air pressed against her from all sides. In spite of her thick yellow coat, she shivered involuntarily. Home. Hot chocolate. Snuggling with Angel Bunny. The evening would be something to savour after a long, trying day.
Some ponies were of the opinion that Fluttershy didn’t like to fly, but they were wrong about that; it was true that she didn’t have much of a head for heights, but she did enjoy the purely physical sensations associated with being in flight: the beat of her wings, the rush of air, her pink mane and tail whipping dramatically in the breeze. Especially at night, with nopony around that she might accidentally bump into, Fluttershy could almost believe that she was alone in the world and consequently she felt a little freer in her movements. The vibrant shades of orange given off by the setting sun, colouring the landscape ahead of her in brilliant coral tones, lulled her normally fidgety mind into a state of relaxation: with nothing and nopony around for miles, she was able to simply fly to her destination in her own sedate, undramatic way and not worry about what anypony else thought of her. In so many ways, Fluttershy knew, she was the exact opposite of her best friend, Rainbow Dash.
Banking into a turn in order to avoid a sudden updraft that would’ve upset her delicate balance, Fluttershy suddenly became aware of the spicy scent of cinnamon being carried on the air currents; she inhaled a bit more of the heady aroma, quickly realising its source: she was passing over Sweet Apple Acres, and her eyes scanned the verdant orchard that was in the full bloom of spring. Mighty trees brimming with green thrust toward the sky filled with juicy, red apples. A wry smile crossed her muzzle as she recalled the time she’d been accidentally turned into a bat-pony by Twilight. Her stomach chose that moment to rumble, reminding Fluttershy that she hadn’t eaten in hours. There hadn’t been time to, what with one thing and another happening today.
Briefly, the thought crossed her mind of dropping in on Applejack on the way home and begging for a slice of Granny Smith’s famous apple crumble; assuming her senses weren’t letting her down, Fluttershy was pretty sure that’s what that delightful smell was as she made a low pass over Sweet Apple Acres, her belly practically grazing the tips of the trees as she did so. Reluctantly, as she picked up a little height, she decided not to. She didn’t want to bother the Apples so late in the day. The fact that they’d be welcoming and polite to a fault would just make her feel even worse about the half-baked idea. There’s plenty of food at the cottage, and more than that, I’ll get to see Angel again. Could life get any better than that?
Fluttershy knew that she was many things, but she didn’t count being superstitious as one of them; still, when a sharply-pronged fork of grimy purple lightning sizzled across the sky – bringing a brief false dawn to this side of Ponyville – she couldn’t help but get the impression that somepony, or somebeing, had just given her unvoiced question a profoundly negative answer. She hovered in place above the farm, trying to take in the enormity of what it was she had just seen. Fear sent a cold chill along her spine as she remembered the weather report from earlier that day: no storms had been scheduled for the village. This was not the work of her fellow pegasi at the weather factory, which meant that … it was a rogue.
Rogue storms: those weird, unnatural phenomena generated in places where magic was allowed to roam free and unchecked like the Everfree Forest; they were totally beyond the control of even the most powerful of ponies, and the advice for dealing with them invariably boiled down to a single command, “Run!”
Nine times out of ten, Fluttershy’s rational mind knew, they were nothing to worry about, save the occasional bit of property damage if they got too close to a town or village; as they were born from magic, once they were freed from the place of their birth they would rather quickly burn themselves out with no new intake of energy to sustain them. Irrationally, however, Fluttershy felt very, very unsettled by this particular rogue storm. Deep in the core of her being, past the flesh and bone – right down to the spirit, the very essence of magic that tied her and every other pony to Equestria – she sensed the wrongness of it somehow. It wasn’t that it was alive and radiated a sense of evil, as far as she could tell, anyway, but … Fluttershy hesitated. Some dormant pegasus instinct inside her longed to understand it. On impulse, she approached the heart of the storm as it churned over Sweet Apple Acres.
Its central mass appeared to be nothing so much as a roiling, sable-coloured cloud; not a cloud in any traditional sense of the word, but more like the noxious fumes that were said to bleed out of the smoking pits deep beneath Tartarus. Fluttershy could easily believe that this thing was hell-spawn itself. It pursued an erratic path across the sky, spitting out bolts of amethyst-tinted lightning seemingly at random. With a tilt of her head and a curious expression on her muzzle, Fluttershy wondered at its purpose. Twilight had told her that there was always a reason behind every form of magic, even the more arcane and esoteric sorts.
The last of the sunlight’s dying embers shed no radiance upon the core of the rogue storm; whatever light did hit it was immediately drawn away, lost forever in its inchoate interior spaces. Fluttershy soon found herself forced to duck and weave in a fashion that she was most unused to in order to avoid being singed by the wildly coruscating bolts; quickly, she reasoned that making any sort of close approach would be tantamount to suicide. Her natural affinity for weather magic might offer her a modicum of protection, but she wasn’t willing to bet on it. The sensible thing to do would be to get to the Castle of Friendship and warn Twilight. If this thing didn’t die out before reaching Ponyville, there could be disaster …
Apparently having exhausted the possibilities of fooling around with the now-elusive pegasus, the storm returned to thrashing around wildly through the skies; Fluttershy, her eyes widening in alarm, saw Applejack exit her house and trot along the dirt path – utterly heedless of what was happening high above the farm – toward the orchard and its trees, either going for a post-dinner stroll or intent on getting an early start on the apple harvest.
In what could only have been a massive coincidence, the core of the rogue storm chose that moment to lance through the sky toward her.
Fluttershy called out to Applejack, but she was already under a thick canopy of trees and couldn’t hear her desperate cries. Come on, her body screamed at her to get moving, Rainbow Dash would already have covered this distance by now!
Trying to shout over the storm venting its fury was an exercise in utter futility, but still Fluttershy bellowed at the top of her voice. There was just no way she could reach Applejack in time. She’s an animal in trouble, isn’t she? You can do this!
Without an iota of thought to her own safety – concern for her own well-being now shunted aside in favour of an adamant determination to warn Applejack and her family of the danger posed by the rogue storm – Fluttershy dive-bombed toward the ground, picking up speed at a tremendous rate; the wind whipped at her, dust smacked against her eyes and caused them to water, but still she continued to flap her wings furiously until they throbbed with pain. Somehow, she kept pace with the flailing black mass of its core. It continued to spit bifurcated projectiles all around it, but through a combination adrenaline and long-buried reflexes coming to the fore Fluttershy managed to avoid each and every one of them. Doubtless, it was just the stress of the moment playing tricks on her sense of time perception, but once or twice she could’ve sworn that her body was moving well in advance of a bolt being fired off!
Soon, though, her reserves of adrenaline were all but used up and Fluttershy felt the wave of tiredness come crashing over her like a wave; she’d asked more from her body than she’d ever done before – even when helping Rainbow Dash transport the water up to Cloudsdale – but it wasn’t enough. She tried shouting out Applejack’s name once again, but between the vicious snarl of the storm raging beside her and the thick covering of trees, it just wasn’t enough to catch her awareness. Her wings were heavy and leaden, muscles cramping, and sweat was pouring copiously from her brow. Urging herself onward, though, Fluttershy started moving again.
Somehow, she made it through the dense blanket of trees before the storm. Leaves and branches snapped angrily at her, but Fluttershy ignored the red welts they cut into her skin. She could deal with them later. Her eyes scanned the orchard quickly and found Applejack bucking trees a short distance away. Over the sound of her hefty kicks, everything else was just the buzzing of flies. Fluttershy had seen time and time again, when Applejack was in the zone like this, Equestria could be invaded by Changelings and she’d be none the wiser.
“Applejack!”
From somewhere behind and above her, Fluttershy could make out the sound of a hideous crackle; craning her back, a look of dread was etched deeply into her muzzle as the rogue storm burned away the tops of the trees, sucking up any loose detritus into the swirling vortex that was its cold, black heart.
Another bolt of lightning arced its way out of the cloud.
Fluttershy’s tired, tense eyes followed its path.
It was going to hit Applejack!
Everything, it seemed to Fluttershy, was happening to her in slow-motion all of a sudden; she felt as though her brain had been mired in a sticky layer of treacle, and she was having to paddle furiously – in a metaphorical sense – to keep up with what was happening. Crying out in a blind panic to warn Applejack of the danger – the sound of her name seemingly dragging out to infinity – she charged at her, forelegs outstretched, determined to shove her out of the way of the bolt.
At the last possible second before Applejack’s body was struck, Fluttershy’s extended hooves made contact with her sturdy ribcage; ordinarily, she wouldn’t have had an ounce of the strength necessary to even nudge her never mind knock her over, but Fluttershy’s body surged with a lightning of its own: her impressive speed had caused her to build up so much kinetic energy that even a tough earth pony like Applejack couldn’t remain standing in the face of it. Her hat went fluttering into the breeze as it was unseated from her head.
Applejack, for her own part, had only just become aware that anything was wrong at all when she felt something collide with her; her jade-hued eyes registered surprise as they met Fluttershy’s own, just in time to see them opening wide in a mixture of horror and pain as she was struck solidly in the back by the deadly probing fingers of the storm.
Her scream was the stuff of nightmares. An agonised bawl as every nerve ending lit up in a fiery paroxysm of untold anguish.
And then, Fluttershy was gone. Only smoke and ash remained, drifting on the wind.
The storm’s central mass seemed to convulse sharply, as if it had swallowed something rotten, then turned itself inside out and disappeared. The clouds and lingering forks of lightning soon faded back into the ether along with it. Applejack scarcely noticed.
“What the-?” The absurdity of what she had just witnessed was almost enough to make her laugh, but other than those words, Applejack found that her throat couldn’t do much of anything else but make strange choking sounds. There was absolutely no way in Equestria that what she’d seen had been real, right? It was a dream. It was a nightmare. It was one of Rainbow Dash or Discord’s pranks. Wasn’t it? Some gut feeling told her otherwise, though. Applejack paced back and forth over the spot where she’d quite clearly seen Fluttershy hit by the lightning bolt, her mind racing furiously to find some alternative explanation that meant her dear friend was still alive and well. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but her legs were filled with a nervous tension and wouldn’t let her stand still to process things. Her heart felt dull and heavy.
She felt her knees turning to jelly. Fluttershy. Gone. Applejack fought to stay upright, scrabbled with an outstretched limb for the comforting solidity of one of the trees, but missed and sank despondently into the dirt, knocking over one of the bushels of apples that she’d been happily filling moments ago; for a long time, she just lay there, eyelids pressed tightly shut as she fought back the tears which threatened to overwhelm her. This can’t be happening.
Through her grief, a word popped into Applejack’s mind; something very much like resolve coursed through her, and she found the strength returning to her wobbly legs as the word repeated itself. Carefully, she pulled herself upright, her eyes steely and determined. Fuelled with a tenuous glimmer of hope, Applejack fled in the direction of the Castle of Friendship. The word was simply, “Twilight.”
If anypony knew how to fix this, it would be her.