There was a tiny portion visible on the surface, just enough so that nopony might ever wonder about what might exist within the deeper layers. And that surface aspect was how most thought (or didn't think) about the land itself, the same applied to earth pony magic, and --
-- it was how the world would perceive the family giving up Apple Bloom.
It was easy for Applejack to picture, in part because it gave her an image she could just keep replaying over and over, a short length of film going through internal spools on endless loop as flickering light showed her a possible future. And it also gave her mind something to do while her magic was focused within her own soil, because a fosse had to be dug and so that was exactly what was taking place. In fact, it had been taking place for some time, as the grey clouds steadily thickened overhead. There had already been one partial release of that hovering burden, and the humidity was refusing to let Applejack's fur dry out from the drizzle. She was standing on the edge of a half-dug pit, looking at an ever-deepening gap in the land -- but it was something which had her on the edge. Not yet within the earth itself, and the atmosphere retained its own claim -- but it felt as if there was water soaked into her very being, and --
-- don't think 'bout that.
Most observers would only see the surface level of the clearing: about forty body lengths across in one direction, maybe two-thirds that for another. It was simple enough to measure, and the most basic of personal math was where most ponies would stop: this long to cross, that many snacks provided by simple grazing. But to dig...
On their own, ponies were poor diggers: without machines and devices to help, hooves were left to helplessly scrape at the ground. Rarity could readily detect gems within the earth, but reaching them... clearing a patch roughly the size of her own body to the depth of a knee, over and over again -- that would exhaust the unicorn, and it was one of the reasons she so often asked Spike for help. The land had mass, that mass had to be shifted, simply going down by the full length of a leg required excavating bale-weights of earth, and to dig out something the size of a fosse by hoof and teeth alone...
Even for earth ponies who were willing to sing together, with every instrument playing the same note under the cover of a fully false chorus, it took an effort. They were shifting bale-tons, and there were multiple complications involved in that. Mass wasn't being altered or destroyed, only moved -- and that meant they needed places they could move it to. And when you looked at all of the layers... Topsoil made up a fairly narrow band. Then you had subsoil, digging from there got you down to the substratum, and if you had to keep going...
Applejack, who had the benefit of experience, knew a decent fosse could be formed without needing to deal with the bedrock. But the world was being peeled back in layers and eventually, it would all have to be put back.
To that degree, Elstar was careful, and she respected that. (She could hear his efforts within her land, was listening closely for any subtle notes which might tell her more about what she was up against, and knew he was doing the same.) Places had to be found for everything and there was only so much you could try to compress, especially when the world itself was about to be turned into a weapon. Some degree of that was being done around the edges of the fosse, and you could risk a little more towards the bottom -- but for the most part, the land was being carefully placed around the tree trunks which lined the clearing -- at least for the bulk of the mass. Substratum soil could go just about anywhere, but much of the topsoil would be ultimately used to coat the walls of the pit. The duel was not to the contract, and so there was no need to make every surface into exposed rock.
They were unearthing strange colors as the layers peeled themselves back, bale-tons moving under the direction of careful music. Hues which Applejack had only seen a few times before, with some of those having been exposed at the uppermost levels of a far-too-new ravine. And deep in the past, as the Advocate had listened to the anger in the song of a slow, cold voice...
This ain't a pit. It's a wound.
Some of the perimeter trees had roots which stretched into the clearing: those had to be protected. They had already disrupted thousands of insect lives: some were still huddled within the tiny portions of their tunnels which had remained intact, only now the hosting portion of the earth had been placed between two young saplings, some twelve body lengths away. Others had fled, and their fearful instincts had no concept of how to survive under a sky which had suddenly come to them. Even smaller wriggling lives would line the fosse itself, and Applejack knew that even with the Effect to help, it would take days before the grass truly recovered. Days which brought them that much deeper into autumn, as the land approached its own time of sleep. The little death of a continent.
But Elstar was careful, perhaps because he believed the land would soon be under his own custody and so wished to wound it no more than necessary. Akane, however, mostly just flung random lumps off into the trees, even when Rocksteady told her over and over that things had to be done in stages, that they had to be ready to place a false cover over the pit with just a few minutes of notice, to shift the rest of the disturbed land further out of sight, and it would be easier if everypony knew exactly where every last part was...
The Apples did puzzles in the winter, and so had become rather good at tracking pieces. Akane was the sort of pony who expected everything to assemble itself as it was being dumped out of the box, and took the presence of any two parts which had stuck together as a sign that the world was capable of a stronger effort and just wasn't bothering to accommodate her. Akane didn't care, and so no matter how many times the Advocate cautioned her, clumps of earth continued to wind up in low branches.
But to a degree, everypony was working together, because it was necessary. Granny was doing her part and it was hard not to become lost in those notes, drift within a song which Applejack hadn't truly heard for years, not at that level of intensity. Apple Bloom... notes quavered, shifted octaves without warning, and a little portion of the most recent peel (a long line of earth curling back from the base, about two hoof-heights tall and a body length wide) would threaten to slump. Applejack usually had to rescue her sibling there: the youngest Malus still hadn't come into her full magic and trying to help during a group effort meant an awkward attempt to echo notes through a voice which had yet to find its own song. And with both parents lost and Granny's daily capacities uncertain, the job of teaching fell to the elder siblings...
...one imprisoned, and that status might stretch out for years. The other was standing on the edge of a pit whose rim was progressively building higher, and also on the edge of loss.
(She sent her voice deeper into the land, started shifting up from that layer, and wondered where the tiny underground stream had gone -- then found it again, somewhat below the point where it had originally been. Water had its own way of wounding the world, and so the years had seen the channel cut its way towards a greater chill.)
It was so easy to picture, and so she watched it happen over and over as the layers moved like heavy gauze being stripped away from wounded fur and bleeding skin, as the grey light touched a world it had only known once before. As the flickering illumination of an inner cinema projected her failure.
There would be a document, the first of several. (Elstar would write the initial version, and then pass it on to a lawyer so that the words could be polished into the smoothest of lies.) It would speak of duty, responsibility, and how there was just too much of both for Applejack to manage any more. Really, how long could she have been expected to keep going, with the palace pulling her away from the Acres so much of the time? She wasn't capable of devoting her life to the upbringing of a filly, not when her life hadn't truly been her own for years. And when she was away from the Acres? Granny had good days and by definition, that also meant she had bad ones. Mac? He would simply cooperate, perhaps suggesting that the existence and duration of the Crusade clearly indicated that nopony had been doing a particularly good job to begin with.
Or he might jus' leave.
Ah told him t' get out.
Ah told him...
The document would say many things within gleaming letters, because the only way you could polish horse apples was with a lathe of falsehoods and fears. Each word would represent a claimed fact, one more number piled into a predetermined equation where the total could only equal I can't.
I can't be a Bearer and a big sister.
I can't be an Element and a substitute parent.
I can't do this any more.
The document would claim a choice, when there was none to be made. To serve the thrones or to be part of a family. And when it came to finalizing the lie, all Applejack had to do was sign.
Legal surrender of custody, witnessed by a judge. The first resort would be to request that a family member take over. And there was Elstar standing in the phantom courtroom, freshly semi-groomed for the occasion, ready to help.
The world didn't have to know about the duel, the loss, or Applejack pushing her terms to the point where Elstar had been able to push right back. All it would see was the surface level: a mare who'd given up. Somepony who would be crying as she left the courthouse, and Honesty still didn't mean she had to tell everypony the true reason for her tears.
They did the digging together, Maluses and Mutsus, because that was the only way to get it done. And with every exposed layer, every ribbon peeled back under grey sky, Applejack felt the wound grow deeper.
There were parts of the world which Sun had never been meant to touch, and the dimmed rays which reached the exposed gap were incapable of granting anything approaching natural hues. Perhaps that was why the soil which covered the walls of the fosse looked so much like half-clotted blood.
The pit awaited them and in stories, the last tenth-bit of preparation would have been immediately followed by combat. Reality, however, had seen the last portion of displacement followed by something which Applejack had known to be ready for. Even with multiple earth ponies involved, the digging had taken a fair amount of time to do properly (as opposed to what Akane seemed to think qualified), along with significant effort. It meant the opposing factions went to different sides of the wound, and what little remained of fast-fading hospitality allowed the Mutsus to take a few apples from the trees -- although Granny, who was visibly irritated about one mare's carelessness, made sure the visitors were restricted to the ones which had been hit by clumps.
"An' this all gets put back if somepony comes?" Apple Bloom half-whispered. (She'd barely touched her fruit, with consumption limited to a few nibbles near the stem.) "Fast? How can anypony do that, after it took so long t' clear out? An' it's spread all over --"
"False layer," Applejack softly replied. "Topsoil's kept close so we can scoop it up quick. Prop it up a bit, an' then -- well, we're mostly holdin' it in place." She'd told Twilight that her own magic couldn't do much about gravity when it came to something which was already falling -- but holding a shaky false roof (or floor) together through sheer willpower could be managed for a while. "Rest gets scattered real thin, so the whole area just looks like it's got some weird mud around. We'll get enough warning time for that, an' nopony knows the Acres well enough t' spot off-colors except us. Scatter's not hard, not if we all do it at the same time. It's like dumpin' pieces out of the box."
"But what 'bout puttin' it back t'gether?" It was a natural question. "There's gonna be pieces everywhere."
"We couldn't by ourselves. Not anythin' close to bein' jus' the way it was," the older sibling (something which would hold for at least a few more minutes) answered. "But the land remembers. It guides. Even so..." The sigh represented far too much, and failed to contain any of it. "...it ain't gonna go back proper. It'll be close, if we all work hard, but... there's gonna be differences. Things which have t' heal. It's been years since Igneous, AB, years, an' things were jus' gettin' close. An' two duels in the same place..."
"That's bad?" The youngest was listening intently, because it was something to do other than think about what was coming next.
The memory of a crackling fire failed to warm damp fur. "Daddy told me y'could tell when a place had seen too many fights. A duel's as much screaming as singing, and when y'scream... the echoes last longer. Enough ponies, an' Ah guess some of 'em never faded. The fosses which got used over an' over -- plants wouldn't grow right, and some of 'em changed. Every note y'sang there got twisted." The shudder wasn't so much instinctive as displaced. "An' a few places stopped listenin' t' anythin' that wasn't a scream -- calm down, AB. Two ain't enough t' do it. But we probably shouldn't plant anythin' here for a year or so."
"We," her little sister quietly echoed, and yellow eyelids trembled shut.
Ah'm scared too.
An' the worst thing Ah can do t' make y'feel better is t' tell you.
"Ah'm gonna do mah best. Y'know that."
"Ah could've told 'em to stick their terms where mushrooms grow," the smallest forced out. "Ah could've jus'..."
"An' then we'd be at default. Stuck with 'em. Only way out is forward, Apple Bloom. Y'know that."
A slow, oddly soft breath. "Y'know the worst thing about you bein' Honesty? The real worst thing?" (The older sister, with motion unseen, slowly shook her head.) "Ah can't even ask you t' promise me you'll win."
Her own inhalation was sharp, and the air stabbed her from within. "AB --"
"-- 'cause y'don't know." The little body shivered, and the hair bow vibrated in false harmony. "An' when y'don't know, a promise is a lie."
Desperate now, she'd been desperate for hours and it was finally reaching the surface "-- y'know Ah'm gonna do everythin' Ah can t' --"
"-- Ah love you."
Applejack stopped.
"Ah haven't said that much, last few years," the youngest half-whispered, refusing to look at anything except the memories playing behind closed lids. "'cause sometimes Ah'd blame a bad Crusade on you, if'fin y'interrupted, 'cause it was easier than blamin' mahself. An' sometimes, y'weren't home, an' others, you'd be mad at me an' Ah didn't want t' say it 'cause that was how Ah won. Ah love you, an'..." The soft tail twitched, with the tip pointing across the pit. Towards the Mutsus. "...Ah'm scared. Ah'm allowed t' be, Ah think. 'cause y'can't promise, an' right now... Ah'd take a lie. Jus' t' pretend Ah felt better."
Moisture moved across Applejack's fur. Part of it came from renewed drizzle. Some did not.
"Honesty's the worst Element t' be," the elder sister eventually said. "Did Ah ever tell y'that?"
"Ah believe it."
The older sibling leaned forward.
"Ah love you too. Y'know that."
The younger felt the contact, moved into the gentle nuzzle.
"Ah do."
They held the position for a while.
"One more thing," Apple Bloom whispered. "While we've got time."
"What?"
And in tones of merciless rage, "If he wins, Ah'm goin' Crusadin' every wakin' hour of every day. Ah'm gonna Crusade in mah sleep, 'til he decides he can't take it no more an' gives me back jus' t' make it stop."
"Apple Bloom --"
"There's gonna be cannons."
"-- Ah know y'might think that's gonna --"
"-- an' y'know the one we never got 'round to? Finding out if there's a mark for bein' an alicorn. Ah'm bettin' that one's gonna break him in a week."
Applejack blinked.
"AB?"
"Yeah?"
"Not that one."
"We never thought it would work! That's why we never went for it. But the stuff we could try --"
"-- an' if you don't try any of it, Ah'll help y'get the cannon."
Warm orange eyes shot open --
"-- we begin," the Advocate stated. "Everypony take your place along the rim."
And then there was no time left.
The rim had been built up to roughly Applejack's height over the base soil. The fosse itself, dark and clotted with the world's blood, descended to about four times that: the slant of the walls was such that it was effectively impossible for a pony to climb out, although a fast-moving one might manage to run for a body length or two before tumbling back in.
It was thirty-five body lengths across the longer end, and twenty across. You needed room to move in a fosse, along with material to work with. Extra space for dodging also meant potentially having more to dodge.
"We sung together," their Advocate quietly reminded them. "We listened to each other." And it could have been a last desperate request for peace -- but that time had passed. "Are the seconds satisfied that nopony used the chorus of our labor as cover for their sabotage?"
Apple Bloom blinked.
"Um..."
"You would usually get one last chance to inspect the fosse for traps," Rocksteady gently explained. "But since you don't have your full magic, you can ask Granny to do it for you."
"...oh," the youngest said. "Thanks. Um... Granny?"
"It's neutral," the elder immediately told them, looking down from her position on the west edge of the rim. (The other Maluses were at the north, with the Mutsus on the south and their Advocate (with staff) occupying a small section of the east.) Granny had uncovered a semi-oval flat piece of slate during the dig, and was currently using it as a place to rest.
Akane merely shrugged, and the blue-black tail whipped a little more dirt away. "Seems okay."
"There is to be no interference," the Advocate instructed them. "This duel is between Applejack Malus and Elstar Mutsu. Nopony else. The seconds may only intervene if cheating is detected, and that solely after I allow it. To do otherwise is to invoke penalty."
Granny drew a deep, shuddering breath. Apple Bloom, who hadn't heard enough of the right stories, simply looked worried.
"An' what's --"
"Don't," Applejack immediately broke in. "Swear y'won't try t' use magic, no matter what happens t' me. An' y'swear on Mommy an' Daddy."
The smallest pony's eyes instantly went wide with fear.
"Y'ain't never asked that. Not even for the Crusade --"
"-- an' that should say somethin' about why Ah'm askin' now," the older sister frantically interrupted. "AB, Ah need you t' swear --"
"-- Ah swear." The youngest swallowed, took slow breaths until the trembling stopped. "On Mommy an' Daddy. But why --"
"-- we're doing what now?" Akane called out from the heart of her personal boredom.
"The seconds," Rocksteady harshly said, "do not interfere --"
"-- yeah, whatever. Penalty. Like that ever happens," their cousin dismissively declared. "Fine."
The Advocate looked from one side to the other, and it took a long moment before his expression returned to patient neutrality.
"Direct attempts at negation are forbidden," he reminded them. "You have each chosen your own song. You will not attempt to drown out the other."
Both duelists nodded.
Ah told Twilight... A tiny part of what she'd said in breaking the Secret: that earth pony magic was automatically additive, with none of the disastrous clashes which were found in unicorn and pegasus group efforts (although for unicorns, 'group' required a spell of its own and stopped at three) -- but subtraction came just as easily. If two singers who possessed the same tool at the same strength asked for opposing results, they would effectively cancel. In the lexicon of legend, it was known as debate -- and the existence of a fosse meant the time for debate had passed. He could ask for something which would stop her, and she could ask for something that might counter. But she could no longer simply try to ensure that his question went unanswered.
Surrender or unconsciousness. She'd been in enough fights to learn that it was a lot harder to knock somepony out than stories made it seem.
The dark soil which lined the fosse was becoming steadily darker as the drizzle continued to soak in, and some of the little clumps shifted as that which lurked beneath mindlessly wriggled away from those tiny impacts. Air heavily sank into her lungs, left some of that weight behind.
"I attend," the Advocate said. "I manage. I judge." A deep breath, with eyes slowly closing as his tail sank -- and then, in a voice which rumbled like shifting bedrock, "The earth awaits. The land abides. The contract will be honored."
Applejack stepped up to the absolute edge of the rim, and dozens of rocks welled forth from the soil. Pressed tightly together, a makeshift platform bound by dirt and sheer will. Something which would hold her weight for just long enough.
She looked down at Apple Bloom. Shifted her head hard to the left, added a little body shake to the end of it, and watched her hat cover the bow as a shocked face raised to stare at her.
"Don't want it gettin' dirty," she told her little sister (hers, still hers). "Keep it safe." And then she faced her cousin again.
"Mah song," she told the world. "To the end of the contract."
"Mine," the stallion replied. "As the last notes heard," and stepped onto his own platform at the same moment Applejack took hers. Both conglomerations slowly moved down the slope, coated by the slow weeping of the sky.
"It begins when you are both within the earth's heart," the Advocate told them as they sank into the pit. And that was followed by the words which set up the echo and briefly sent her back, the ones which ultimately decided everything. "It ends when it ends."
The grey light followed them into the fosse.