Applejack waved to Zecora. "Hope ah got the spicy peanut stew right."
"Worry not, friend Applejack. Just one sniff takes me right back. Though I love adventure, wherever I roam, I always enjoy a taste of home."
"Thanks for the phantasm-flower seeds," Applejack said. "Winona can't keep the field covered, and it's good to have something strong to scare wild jackalopes out of mah carrot patch."
"Don't forget to ask Twilight about those mystic disturbances last night. It may just be the forest's background magic, but it could prove something more dire and tragic."
"Don't you worry yer pretty head about it," Applejack called over her shoulder.
Applejack hitched up her saddlebags and galloped along the winding path through the Everfree forest. A stiff breeze kicked up from nowhere, whipping her face with thorny branches, howling like a creature in pain, and parting the canopy to show clouds racing across the sky.
Applejack shuddered. She'd visited Zecora a few times this month to exchange seeds and recipes. She'd gotten used to the self-reliant animals, the menacing timber wolves, and the creepy twisty vegetation of the Everfree forest, but she'd never feel comfortable with the clouds. Bags of water vapor and light couldn't think, feel, or grow, so why did they move on their own? It was like watching furniture building a nest, or disembodied limbs running around.
As Applejack moved further along the weed-choked trail, she heard it again. This wasn't the wind. This was a creature screaming in fear. The twisting warble and cracking notes suggested something on the edge of madness. There were other notes in the howling wind: a sound like whetstones on scythes and long tinny rattles.
It was drawing closer, and the patch of forest right before the path reached ponyville was very cramped and narrow. Applejack trotted up to a spot where the path curled around a rock formation and ducked beyond the grey sheet of slate, peering out through a narrow gap. She reached her tail into her back and pulled out an iron axe. Most of the nastier creatures in the Everfree could outrun an earth pony. It was best to meet them on her own terms.
Applejack slowed her breathing and chewed a bit of cud. She sharpened her axe against a chunk of flint. The phantasm flower was a psychoactive hallucinogen as well as an illusion herb. One sniff of this would leave any silly critter running for its life and jumping at shadows. She'd have to explain to Applebloom that this was no time to try out for an herbalist or plant-taste-tester cutie mark.
The metallic cacophony drew closer. Applejack raised her weapon and braced herself for a fight. The screams broke off in faint gasps. She recognized the pattern as the sounds of somepony too scared or out of breath to keep screaming.
The eighth-strangest creature she'd ever seen bounded out of the woods with a wounded timber wolf pup clutched in its front le-, no, its arms. It staggered across the ground on two long legs without a tail to balance them. It wore clothes. The exposed skin was hairless, aside from a thick mass on the top of its head. It wasn't a deformed dragon, or a shaved minotaur, or a tail-less ahuizotl. It didn't look like a diamond dog. What it did look like was a crazed, panicking creature in need of help.
A stink of sulfur and cabbage filled the air. Applejack nearly fertilized the soil as she heard the high metallic hissing and the bronze rattles clanging out. That could only be a pack of copperheads approaching.
Zecora had told her in no uncertain terms never to eat a phantasm flower. Contact with salivary glands would set off the mind-bending chemicals and leave anypony, or any jackalope, screaming at non-existent spiders and running from their own shadow in a short time. It was the active ingredient in that fancy green powder she used in the spectacles that accompanied her story of Nightmare Moon.
Despite this warning, Applejack took a few buds out of her pack, like this, popped them in her mouth, and chewed them. Her tongue started going numb and a ringing built up in her ears. She focused her thoughts on the tales of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Clopping.
The metal-plated snakes wriggled through the air, dripping venom and spitting tongues of green fire. Dappled sunlight glinted off their armor scales. One bite would have a grown colt moving at half-speed and gasping for breath in minutes. Untreated, it would paralyze them in a dozen minutes more. Then the serpents would descend on the helpless prey, like flames on dry leaves. The clouds rumbled like sinister laughter.
Applejack visualized the great mongoose rearing up, drew in a thick wad of phlegm, and spat the wad of petals at the snakes. The petals sizzled and green dust rose up from them. The dust billowed into a three-story-tall mongoose with eyes of flame.
The snakes skidded in midair and whipped around. Most of them dove into holes or fled through the underbrush. One managed to duck under the wavering specter. Applejack hopped up onto the rocks, then brought down her axe on its burnished metal head. Blood and oil splashed her hooves.
"Don't ya'll wanna stay for lunch? " she snarled into the forest. She was answered by squawking birds and the noise of hurried retreats by other predators.
She turned around to see the creature collapsed on the ground, blood running from its nose, still cradling the young timber wolf in its arms. Its skin smelled of dried out sweat, and from the angle of those limbs it had started seizing up with muscle cramps. This critter was damn near dead from exhaustion.
Little red flames danced on the edge of its skin, and a flashing green light lit up a metal object on its wrist. That was probably just the phantasm flower kicking in, like the sense of ants crawling under her skin, and the hollow laughter coming from the evil skull-shaped clouds.
Applejack bit her lip and slowed her breath, fighting back the waves of delirium and nausea. The creature turned its narrow bloodshot eyes on her and croaked out something like speech.
"I think I'm going insane. Doctor, can you help me? I just wanted to save it. Why are puppies green? This isn't the meadowlands exposition center."
Applejack flinched back, but she took another steadying breath. Most clothes-wearing creatures could talk, but this might be another hallucination. Either way, she couldn't leave it here.
"Saddle up partner, it's gonna be a bumpy ride."