Jack stood on the precipice of the Everfree Forest.
Forests, traditionally speaking, did not have precipices. Usually the trees would simply become thicker and thicker until, before you knew it, you were in the forest. Sometimes a forest could have something approaching a clear boundary due to the involvement of other forces, like a logging company, that would clear out the farther apart trees around the edges and leave a more defined line between forest and not-forest. That was not what had happened here, this forest had a precipice like a cliff.
Jack knew he was on the precipice, he could see clearly the dividing line that separated the Everfree forest from the town of Ponyville. From the whole of Equestria even. It looked like a skin graft on the fabric of this world. Like it had been applied to the environment without the environment’s approval and was being rejected by the world around it.
Every fiber of Jack’s being was screaming that this was a bad idea, it was obviously a bad idea, there was nothing in the Everfree Forest he was even after. It would be monumentally stupid to go into the forest that not only looked dangerous but that every single individual who lived near it also said was dangerous and to do so for no reason was certainly a cut above stupid. Moronic, perhaps.
Why then was he still there? Still lingering at the edge of it, eyes unfocused but staring all the same. Staring into that impenetrable black gloom that pulled at him, pulled at some unknowable part of his soul.
He knew why. It was because the pull of the vast ominous forest was a constant. The screaming to avoid the place kicked and sputtered to life from time to time with bursts of incredible drive but when they eventually died away the pull was still there, reeling him in. The pull was not entirely mental either, it was not simply the draw of curiosity. It had some… physical or spiritual pull as well.
He knew why it had been so hard to walk from the hospital to Cheerilee’s house but the return trip had been a breeze. Why the trip to the Apple farm was a cake walk but returning the scant distance to the hospital had wiped him out completely. Walking toward the forest was the easiest thing that Jack had ever known. Walking away was like scaling Everest. It increased with distance too. Leaving the apple farm that was so close to the tree line had been a struggle for sure but this close to the tree line the pull was strong that Jack felt like if he jumped straight up into the air the strange pull would yank him deep into that unplumbed darkness. It was enough to give him vertigo on flat solid ground.
Jack’s eyes danced away from that darkness as a shadow passed quickly overhead. By the time Jack had moved to spot whatever it had been, however, it was too late. If he’d caught it while it had been silhouetted by the moon or stars he might’ve been able to track it in the darkness but now he had no hope of that. No hope of knowing what brief intrusion had been visited upon him. It had felt important though. A feeling flittered upon him and left the clear impression of mourning before it just as swiftly left him altogether.
With this distraction came a brief respite as his mind was now released from the paralysis that his indecision had inflicted upon him. In this free moment his thoughts turned to Berry Punch. She would be furious when she found out he had left before the proper goodbye he had promised in the morning. Especially since he hadn’t left a note about what he’d done, so she would never know for sure, but she seemed smart enough to piece it together. Jack hoped so anyway, as he wasn't sure he'd be coming back from the Everfree.
With his train of thought refreshed by his short distraction Jack looked once more to the treeline. The nerves screaming in his soul to avoid it had died down in the interim, there was only the pull now. So, with a single deep breath to calm his nerves, Jack stepped into it and did not look back.
The world became hazy then. Not like a drug induced high, not quite. Something closer to a dream. The moment verging on sleep where dreams are real and you can get stuck with a mind whirring at impossible speeds trying to perceive things that don’t exist. Jack lost himself in that haze, it took his mind fully before he could even process it’s presence at all.
After some length of time Jack seemed to snap to consciousness. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, the heavy canopy obscured the sky and he could not even go off his weariness for a guess. He did not feel fatigued at all. He barely remembered all the walking he had done when his mind had been... elsewhere. He felt nothing in this empty place. He felt like he had suspected a ghost should feel back when he had first become one. A void of unfeeling consciousness.
No tactile feeling at all, no fatigue from walking, even his emotions were just subtle waves on the shore of his mind. He had just walked. Fear at this concept of nothingness spiked inside Jack and in that manic moment he was able to use that fear to push away the suffocating absence for a moment. Even then he could still feel it pressing in around him, like air pressure. The pull he had felt outside the forest had become a push inside of it and was pushing in on him from all directions.
No, not exactly, Jack realized. There was still a pull. Fainter now as it was drowned out by the pressure that surrounded Jack on all sides. But he could still feel it, and it was a lifeline now. He latched onto it, focused on this thin cord that went deeper into the forest. By force of will, keeping the pressure at bay by maintaining concentration on this singular thing.
“It won’t help.”
Jack started, his eyes that he had not realized he had squeezed shut were now wide open, staring directly into the face of the thing that had spoken. It was the alicorn he had seen at the apple family farm, but now she was much closer. He could see the dying starlight in her mane. The absolute void black of her coat. In contrast to his sudden and violent reaction however, she seemed placid. No, not placid, depressed.
“You can fight it for a while, but it’ll lay into you eventually. Noone can fight forever, it erodes every creature down in the end.” She said, staring past him.
Jack paused a moment to try and recoup. “Who-?”
“-Am I?” She finished, half-heartedly. Then, she took a deep breath, her stance became stalwart and proud, her voice boomed the answer. “I AM NIGHTMARE MOON! FROM THIS MOMENT ON THE NIGHT. WILL LAST. FOREVER!” The booming ring of her voice seemed to dissipate the constant pressure that Jack felt but in the absence of it he felt it begin to settle in slowly once again. He watched as the stalwart pose deflated back into the slouch she had carried at the start. “Though I suppose that’s ancient history now.” Then her gaze turned back to Jack, her pupils turned to slits. “And who are you?”
“I’m Jack.” This was the easiest question Jack had been presented with in a long time and he was more than happy to have an answer to anything at this point. “No fancy titles or anything though I’m afraid.”
She scoffed at this. “It doesn’t matter, I assure you, we all end up in the same place at the end.”
“Dead?” Jack queried, as this was his usual answer to this assertion but there had been new evidence provided to him that this might not be the end all be all that many expected of it.
“If we’re lucky. Though I think there’s worse for us when our time in this forest is done.”
Jack let the ominous sentence hang for a moment, but, due to being a thinking being capable of speech, decided to try and iron it out. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll have to see it to understand.” She said, dismissively. A voice worn down from explanations that Jack had never heard.
“Well can you show it to me?”
She glanced at him. Then, seemed to change her mind about her earlier dismissal. Her voice seemed to find that rut that it had traveled so many times before. “There is a pit at the center of the Everfree. It goes down into an endless black void from which there can be no return.” She built momentum as she spoke, words like an avalanche gaining force and mass. “None who have entered have ever returned. We can only hope that all they found there was death.” She paused, took a step closer, standing taller, and looking down her muzzle at him. “If I take you to it, you won’t be able to leave, the pull is so strong there you won’t be able to step away. Believe me, being trapped in the Everfree is nothing compared to that. Some linger at the edge of the pit for years, unable to move, and then one day when they’ve given up… they just roll in.”
Jack gave the speech the appropriate amount of silence. It was imposing and dark. Macabre even, souls trapped at the verge of death. People, real people, who were worn down day by day until they gave up and fell into endless nothingness. He should have been properly scared of this. Gave the concept it’s proper respect. But something she had said had snagged on his mind as it flew past and he was unable to focus on the full force of the doomsaying that had been delivered to him. “I’m trapped in the Everfree?”
Nightmare Moon looked at him, stoic, imposing. Then, she broke. She laughed. It was as full of mirth as it was full of maliciousness. “You are the most foolish ghost I’ve met in these woods!” She exclaimed. “You have not tried to leave?” The disbelief was almost palpable in the air.
“It never really came to mind, no.”
“Ah!” She said suddenly, the laugh immediately dying away but her face remained jovial. “Then you are after something in the forest! Some lost kernel of knowledge abandoned in the castle!” Nightmare Moon said, confident.
Jack’s internal voice that had developed in high school to try and avoid conflict with bullies told him to say yes to this. To try and save SOME face in the presence of this clearly powerful and important figure. Instead, he pressed on. “No. I just couldn’t ignore the pull any longer.” Jack had expected a renewed laugh at this admission of stupidity. Instead, however, Nightmare Moon seemed to grow somber. Jack wanted to continue to say something, to try and defuse whatever mood had taken the alicorn, but without the first clue to what had caused it he decided it best to remain silent.
Eventually, she spoke again. “You felt the pull outside the forest?”
“Yes, is that… weird?”
“Only one other ghost has felt the pull that far out. I suspected it was because she never really had a body to begin with. No anchor outside the forest to help her stay away.”
Jack liked the sound of someone else who had experienced his troubles, it usually meant there was hope for getting help with said troubles. “Oh I’d love to meet her, do you know where she is?”
Nightmare Moon locked eyes with Jack, eyes that seemed to have lived centuries in the span of weeks. “It shall be easy for you two to meet, for I am her.”