//------------------------------//
// Bleach 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

It was like a knife driven straight through her chest. Like a wound sliced open, only without any blood pouring out. It felt cold, colder than anything had ever felt, and just a moment later it began to spread. It spread through her chest like water seeping into it, making her feel cold in places she'd never even felt properly before.
It didn't only start in her chest. Cold crawled up her legs like frost growing over her coat, and for a moment she even gave a dazed look downwards only to confirm that no ice or snow was actually there. Her blood began to carry along the cold as it passed through her chest, spreading it farther through her body, into her limbs and up her neck and into her head.
Her vision grew foggy, her hearing muffled. Her thoughts became slower and her mouth went dry. Colours bled out from her eyes as things appeared in blurry shades of icy grey. She lost feeling in her legs, barely aware they were there anymore. On some level, she still knew she should have been focusing on something else, but she physically couldn't. The cold was the only thing she could place her attention on.
It was so cold. So impossibly cold. It had reached her heart, and somehow it felt like it was reaching even deeper into her. She felt it crawling up her spine, clawing at her bones, digging in her flesh, slithering into every last part of her body. In her eyes, in her lungs, in her hooves, everywhere. Everywhere she could feel and in dozens of places she hadn't even known she could feel. Everything was cold, to the point of losing the feeling in her skin.
Her breath slowed. Her thoughts ground to a halt. Her heart stopped. Her legs failed her, and with eyes wide open Applejack fell to her side. She watched it all happen from inside her own head as if it was all slowed down, and yet she failed to process it as her mind refused to move, as cold spread through her thoughts as well.
Her body hit the ground, and some part of her that still had some freedom of thought was surprised at how it neither bounced nor shattered. She lay there on the crystal, wondering if the warped and muffled vibrations she heard were her friends talking to her. Her eyes remained on Nightmare Moon's black, skeletal shape as her vision clouded, growing more and more hazy, blurry blotches and shapes melting into each other until there was only a single indistinct patch of grey, then nothing. Only darkness. Only cold.
Her body lay in shadow, eaten from the inside by ice and frost. No sound and no light came to her, and no heat could melt what was biting into her body, into her mind and soul. She had not even the strength left to shiver, nor enough control to force herself to. She was motionless, alone, deaf and blind, and she felt cold, and nothing else.