//------------------------------// // Karza III // Story: Applejack at the Edge of the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// “The very same,” Karza bowed his head slightly to her. And raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her right after. “I assume you must have heard of me from the ponies of Maple Town. You certainly aren’t from there—or from Equinestan at all, are you?” He stifled a laugh. “What a mistake you’ve made to stumble into my domain. Surely you were warned otherwise? Will I need to punish the ponies of Maple Town for your mistake?” Applejack glared at him. “What’s your deal? And yeah, I was warned but I aint afraid of you or whatever crazy things you can do. I came out here to stop you from terrorizing the ponies of Maple Town, and to make sure you don’t do the same to the rest of Equinestan. So tell me why you’re doing this.” “Ahahahaha!” Karza threw his head back and laughed loudly. “A mere peasant like yourself could never hope to understand the machinations and ambitions of the mighty Karza!” “Humor me,” Applejack clicked her tongue. Karza snorted in amusement. “No. Why should I? Now turn away and go back to town unless you wish to suffer my wrath. My power is far beyond your imagining.” “That so? Cause you just sound like a total nutjob blowing hot air,” Applejack raised an eyebrow. A dark shadow passed across Karza’s face as he glared at Applejack. He stood up tall with a nasty smirk on his face. “Such impudence. Very well then, foolish mare, I will show you the unparalleled, unique, and unstoppable power that I wield! Soon you shall tremble in fear and regret!” Karza reared up on his hind legs while his cape fluttered about- “There’s no way I’m letting you hurt anypony else!” Applejack yelled and ran at him. She reached out her hoof and got ready to send a disarming tremor into his body, just one that would rattle him a bit, not break anything. When suddenly his body quickly rose off the ground and he began floating in the air. Applejack blinked, perplexed, at the earth pony levitating over her head like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Fool! Gaze upon the glory of Karza!” Karza shouted. Immediately several rocks lifted off from the ground around the road, floating up towards him and levitating or spinning around his body in rings. The rocks ranged from the size of coconuts to bowling balls, all effortlessly moving about and apparently controlled by Karza’s will. There were dozens of them—no magical aura or sign of anything else affecting them. Applejack had never seen anything like it and she found herself backing up to get a little distance between herself and him. “Alright… so I guess everything they said about what you could do wasn’t hogwash,” Applejack said. “Insolence! You will never be able to speak a word of doubt about Karza again!” Karza yelled and the rocks floating around him started to shoot out towards her. They didn’t move super fast but it was fast enough for a rock to still do a lot of damage if any of them hit her, so Applejack quickly found herself running and jumping out of the way of them. The rocks slammed into the ground all around her, either embedding themselves deeply or kicking up piles of dirt, some smashed into the larger boulders around the passage and exploded as Applejack weaved between them to give herself some cover. Meanwhile Karza flew overhead, moving without moving his own body in any way, like a unicorn with a levitation spell but again no tell-tale magical aura around his body. He continued to fire rocks in her general direction, dozens of missiles raining down at her. It was only because of Applejack’s spry body and reflexes that she was able to avoid them. She ran through some of the boulders directly off the passage, jumping off one right as a rock the size of her head smashed into it, and came sliding back onto the road, glaring up at Karza but not even panting in exertion. “Hahahahaha!” Karza laughed, not intimidated by her lack of exhaustion in the slightest. “All you can do is run around like a frightened peasant! But I have just been toying with you this entire time! Now watch and be amazed!” And Applejack watched. And though she tried to keep any worry off her face and any doubts out of her mind, she still couldn’t help but grit her teeth as Karza started pulling huge boulders out of the ground. The giant boulders of granite easily floated up just like the smaller rocks, including some of the ones she had just been running through and jumping off of. Some were torn straight up from underground, leaving holes and scars in the dirt around the rocky passage. Dozens of them, just like before, were held up in the sky around Karza. Applejack couldn’t figure out how in the hay he was doing any of this but honestly she wasn’t sure if it mattered too much. No matter how he was doing it, one of those boulders would flatten her into a pancake. He wasn’t waiting around for her to do anything either. Karza started throwing the boulders at her with glee. Perhaps because of their size or wind resistance they couldn’t move as fast, but they almost didn’t need to with how much bigger they were. “Dang it,” Applejack muttered and started zig-zagging along the road while the boulders fell upon her. The good news was she didn’t really need to keep her eyes glued on them—she could see their shadows on the ground and know where they were going to land well before they actually did. Applejack exhaled and put everything she had into her trusty hooves to avoid the boulders, hearing them flying down, and then feeling the ground quake as soon as one smashed right into where she had just been running. Clouds of dirt and dust were kicked up each time one of those boulders smashed into the ground—completely altering the layout of the passage. Karza was throwing them all without any care—without any real strategy. Just throwing them in her general vicinity and hoping one would hit instead of boxing her in or trying to drop them all on her at once. Perhaps he was just toying with her all over again. A vein pulsed on Applejack’s forehead. She was going to show him. “Hahahahaha! Tremble before the almighty Karza!” He shouted even as her back was turned to him and she focused entirely on dodging the boulders. One nearly the size of a small house came down and smashed into the road right next to her, it’s huge weight and the force of impact enough to knock Applejack off her hooves this time. She skidded across the dirt and saw a shadow over her head, growing bigger and bigger as the boulder came down at her. Applejack pushed herself back up and jumped out of the way just in time as another boulder pulverized the ground where she had been. That was still hardly it though as Karza followed her along, more boulders levitating with him, and dropped them right at her. There was less room to maneuver now as the passage had been peppered with so many boulders, quite a few that had been dug right up from underground. The formerly open road was now a maze of large boulders that Applejack had to run and twist around while Karza tried to smush her. She just didn’t really know what she could do against him aside from run as long as he was up there. She couldn’t fly after all. Or jump that high. And even if she could he would just move out of the way. How was she going to beat him? With two boulders left that Karza could throw at her, she got an idea. No more running away. As the two boulders came flying at her, one right behind the other, Applejack stood her ground. “Have you accepted that you can do nothing, foolish peasant?” Karza yelled at her. Applejack ignored him and steadied herself, taking a deep breath and concentrating as hard as she could. Let’s hope I’m as strong as I think I am. She thought. The first boulder was falling towards her and had taken up almost all of her vision when Applejack turned around and put all her strength into her hind legs. She bucked the boulder not just with all the natural strength of her earth pony body but with a powerful Hoof of the Earth tremor coursing through it as well. The boulder was launched backwards into the second one and the two collided—the great force and the tremor surging through the both of them and causing both boulders to explode in the air in a shower of rubble. Most of it rained down around and upon Applejack, but it was all just pebbles now so she ignored them, calmly standing in the rain. Some of it though shot up far enough to almost reach around where Karza was floating and now the strange pony was no longer belittling and taunting Applejack. He stared down at her with a frown as Applejack turned around and looked up at him with her normal steely gaze. He neither exploded in anger or pulled up more boulders to throw at her. Instead he slowly floated back down to the ground and calmly tilted his head in question to her. “How did you do that?” Karza asked. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Applejack smirked. “Yes. I very much would. I am the almighty Karza, tell me what your power is so I can use it myself, peasant,” he demanded. “How about if you promise to stop doing all of this I can teach you?” Applejack sarcastically asked. “Ridiculous,” Karza snorted and rolled his eyes. “If you are still going to be defiant I suppose there’s only one thing to do.” “Give me your best shot. I’m not afraid of anything you can throw at me,” Applejack furrowed her brow and tensed up. Karza smirked. “You’ll now see why all of Equinestan will soon be mine to control.” His hooves then sunk into and merged with the ground, the earth creeping up and melding around his black fetlocks. However, despite the fact that he had rooted himself in place, Applejack had no opportunity to attack him. Almost instantly the ground started rippling underneath her hooves, bouncing and stretching like it suddenly had the consistency of clay or dough. The boulders embedded everywhere moved around or sunk down like they were swimming through water and Applejack did her best to stay standing and not let herself get carried away by the frankly outrageous way the ground was now moving. It was almost like it had come alive and was moving with a mind of its own. Applejack knew though that somehow, someway, this was all the work of the smirking earth pony standing before her. “This is but a taste of what I can do! Now fall, peasant!” Karza shouted. Earth spikes shot up towards her from the ground. From her sides, from behind her, from in front of her, and some even directly below her body. But she had felt them coming. Just as Karza was using his strange powers, Applejack was using Hoof of the Earth to feel the vibrations and changes in the ground. She was able to jump up and out of the way of the spikes right before they skewered her. Landing back on the soft ground that almost felt like jelly beneath her hooves now. Karza’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and his smirk turned to a frown. “I don’t know how you’re doing that but it won’t help you for long.” Applejack knew he was probably right with the amount of control he had of the landscape, but she wasn’t backing down. More spikes launched up at her that she jumped away from just before they actually broke the surface. While small rocks and pebbles fired out of the ground at her like arrows immediately after. Applejack wasn’t exactly Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie, she couldn’t move so sharply, and thus a decent number of the rocks and pebbles hit her. Most just scuffing or bruising her, but some leaving small cuts in her skin as they flashed by her. The ground was continuously bouncing and shifting beneath her hooves too to make it harder for her to run or do anything besides just staying on her hooves. More pebbles came shooting at her along with larger and larger rocks, Karza simply overwhelming her with pure numbers. One rock the size and shape of a pineapple hit her in the shoulder and Applejack was knocked to the ground again. “Hahahahaha! Yes—fear the might of Karza! Realize that I could have ended things with you in but a moment but merely wanted you to witness all of the amazing things that I can do!” Karza madly laughed. Applejack rolled her eyes from her prone position and shot a powerful tremor through the ground towards him. Karza watched in confusion as the ground split and cracked as a snakelike trail made its way towards him. Possibly shocked because something was happening to the ground that he had nothing to do with. Either way he could tell it was dangerous and upon seeing it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon he unmerged from the ground, his body once again looking like it was melting away from the dirt, and he levitated himself fully up into the air and to safely just in the nick of time. The tremor—with nowhere else to go—exploded right where he had been stuck in the ground. Dirt and rocks were blasted up and fissures shot up all around it. Applejack clicked her tongue and stood up, she wanted that to finish it. At least the ground had gone back to normal. “Peculiar,” Karza said, rubbing his chin as he looked down at the after-effects of Applejack’s tremor and then over at the orange mare herself. “But don’t think this means anything. If it’s something simple I hardly need to be touching the earth directly to use my great powers. I’ve had enough of you and I believe it’s time to end this for real.” Karza made a slicing motion with his hoof and the earth split open beneath Applejack’s hooves before she could even react. She fell into it and in another split second before she could even shout or move the earth closed back up around her—only leaving her head above ground. The rest of her was buried and the pressure of all that dirt around her kept her from being able to move. Applejack struggled, trying to force herself out of the ground, but no matter what even her strength wasn’t enough for her to dig her body out. Not normally at least. “I will leave you here as another warning and reminder of my power. You put up a better fight than those soldiers—so your defeat will have even more meaning. Tell the others when they find you that you could do nothing to the all-powerful Karza! Tell them of my greatness!” Karza shouted as he floated back down to the ground. He chuckled in amusement as he watched her struggle, just a head tugging and bumping around. “Fret not—ponies from Maple Town are coming already, just stay here and ruminate in your failure.” Applejack stopped her struggling and sharply glared up at him. “You haven’t won yet.” The ground shook and the surface cracked and Applejack launched herself up out of it with Hoof of the Earth, coming down easily on her hooves just a few feet away from Karza. And now they were facing off again. A brief moment of shock passed over Karza’s face before vanishing. “I don’t know for sure if I’m more curious or annoyed with you right now,” Karza coldly regarded her. “But I suppose you’re right—this isn’t over yet. Come back tomorrow and we can finish things. And I will discover the secret behind the power you possess. Those Equinestanians coming this way would only get in the way of my goals.” And with that Karza sunk into the ground—cape and all. Applejack’s eyes widened as he slunk away, not expecting that. She sent an exploratory tremor into the ground but couldn’t find him at all. He was gone. “Tch. Dang it,” she slammed her hoof down. And only a moment later she heard hooves running towards her from the direction of Maple Town…