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

Applejack didn't wake up that day. No one had expected her to, given the situation and everything going on, not after seeing her that morning. She was shivering, she was cold, but she was not in conditions bad enough for her life to be in danger. Twilight took the news with resigned understanding, like she'd known it would be like that. She clearly didn't like the facts, but she wasn't angry, she wasn't surprised.
Apple Bloom was worried, as were the other members of Applejack's family, but Twilight reassured them. She told them Applejack would be fine the day after at most. Inwardly, obviously without making mention of it, she regretted not looking more into Applejack's condition, not doing more in the time they'd had. It seemed Stella had been ahead of her there too. But she only regretted the way things had gone mildly, not fully. The time she hadn't used to study Applejack's illness she had used on other things, things she'd at that point deemed more important and which would still in time be useful. She could hardly blame herself fully for a mistake that was only that in hindsight.
No using the Elements against the other alicorn. No easy solution, but it was expected and perfectly reasonable of Stella to take measures to prevent that from happening, and it was all things considered a good thing she'd chosen to go about things that way. One single member of the group incapacitated in ways that wouldn't compromise her in the long term. It was almost kind compared to everything else she could have done.
Twilight did not doubt it was Stella's doing. Just to confirm as much, though, she'd had the stallion look at Applejack. He'd confirmed it, and alongside that he'd brought up some rather interesting things about the mare's condition. Nothing Twilight had time to worry about, but it would all be useful later on. If she won. If she didn't, she wouldn't be there to worry, so maybe worrying at all wasn't a worthwhile way to spend her time.
Applejack's mind kept wandering, according to Rainbow, in places one could not easily reach without Luna's guidance. There was no time to have the pegasus dedicate herself to that particular task either, unfortunately, though the details of that too interested Twilight. Rainbow said something about Applejack's dreams being separated from the rest, existing in their own plane, their own space cut off from everything else. Just another thing they lacked the resources to research.
Twilight was interested, among other things, as to how exactly Stella had induced that reaction in Applejack. Clearly, something to do with simulating the same kind of presence as the Behemoth or abominations in general, given what Twilight knew about the situation, but that was still knowledge beyond her then present level. Enough so that she wouldn't even know where to start. In some ways it was yet another of Stella's many quiet but intense displays of talent, knowledge, and intelligence.