“Twilight, dear?” Rarity leaned closer to the charred pony's closed eyes. “I am so sorry, but we simply must ask for your help...”
Twilight's nose twitched. One of her eyes slid open, but there was no light of thought or intelligence within.
Rarity cringed. “Twilight, darling, are you there?”
Zeccora tutted somewhere behind her. “Rest and quiet are what is needed for this pony's care; my word you have not heeded, and my patience you dare.”
Fluttershy crouched down beside her. She examined the blackened burns all over Twilight's coat and let out small whimpers in sympathy. “You poor, poor thing...”
“Please, Twilight. Can you tell us what happened at the library? Do you have any idea where Applejack may be?” Rarity bit her bottom lip.
Twilight blinked with dampness in her unfocused stare. “All I remember is a light, one so bright I can still see it. And then...” she looked up at Rarity, her eyes full of confusion, “...I woke up inside the Everfree Forest, like this.”
Fluttershy looked up from where she'd been examining Twilight's coat, her eyes wide. “You really can't remember anything at all?
Rarity's heart fell along with her hopes; her fears confirmed in an instant. “You cannot even remember why you were shut inside the Library for weeks?”
“What?” Twilight blinked in shock. “I was shut inside... for weeks?”
“Are you serious?” Rainbow barged in beside her. “You don't remember anything at all?
“No...” Twilight looked down and away, her expression lost to confusion and doubt. “I was trying to do something, I think, but then...” She trailed off and seemed to go limp against the floor. One of her eyes drifted closed, and her other went half-lidded and dull. “I can't remember,” she whispered, her voice paper-thin and weak.
Rarity brought the book down in front of her and opened it to the page Pinkie had found. An ornate title sat above it, swirled and glided in silver: The binding and forging of the light compass.
Slowly, Twilight's other eye opened and began to focus. She looked at the page, going from word to word, her breathing laboured and uneven.
“Could you make one for us, Twilight?” Rarity heard the ridiculousness of her request even as she spoke it, but it was all she had; the one last thing between them and being lost to argument, squabble, and despair. “Could you make one of these compasses to help us find Applejack?”
Twilight's eyes began to glimmer as she read. She spoke, her voice raspy and dry. “How did you find this?”
“~It was under ccceee!~” Pinkie Pie sang from the back of the room, bouncing up and down in place.
“Never mind that, can you make one, Twilight?” Rarity pleaded, holding her front hooves tightly together. “Are you well enough to attempt such a spell?”
Twilight's eyes darted down from the page. “I could try, but I don't...” She trailed off, shook her head, and drew a breath. “No. I'll try. If Applejack is missing, I have to.”
“Well, you don't have to, I mean, if you are simply not well enough...” Rarity cringed again.
Rainbow Dash spoke up from behind them. “There's no way she can do this, I mean look at her, this is stupid, you're going too far-”
Rarity turned and lifted a hoof, silencing her. “Please, Rainbow. If she wants to try, we must let her.”
“It says you need a personal item from the pony you want to find,” Twilight said, looking up.
“Yeah, we know.” Rainbow Dash walked over and lifted something from under her wing.
The Stetson hat's brown, wrinkled brim and beaten top sat on her hoof. Rainbow bit her bottom lip, took a breath, and nodded at it. Her voice came out clipped and unsteady. “Found it in the library. You know. Upstairs.”
Twilight's eyes scrunched shut. She ground her teeth, began to concentrate, and a tiny spark of light ignited at the very tip of her horn.
Applejack's signature hat began to glow. A flicker of light burst from inside it, and for a moment they all glimpsed it; a circular compass seemingly made from light itself.
It winked out of existence. The ghost of its shape faded slowly from all of their eyes, its imprint stained red with brightness. Twilight let out a pent-up breath and lay gasping on her bed of blankets; her eyes unfocused, her tongue hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Rainbow Dash dropped the hat onto the floor and shoved Rarity aside. “Twilight, no!”
“Oh no, Twilight!” Fluttershy squeaked, moving to cradle the unicorn's head.
Rarity staggered backwards into a table, her eyes fixed to Twilight's face, too shocked to say anything. A bottle tipped over the edge and smashed on the floor, but nopony noticed.
The others pushed forwards, shoving Rarity further away. Zecora pulled her shaman's staff from the wall and brandished it at them, clearing them back from the stricken pony. “No, no! This fallacy you all must cease; leave this poor pony in peace!”
Herded out by the angry Zebra, the group of friends found themselves standing outside her house. The door shut quickly in their faces, and silence descended after the hubbub of shouting and scuffling.
Rarity sat back on her haunches and crushed her styled tail against the filthy floor of the Everfree forest. She stared straight ahead at nothing, looking into the distance, until she noticed Rainbow Dash standing in front of her.
“Well?” Rainbow said; her eyes narrowed to glaring lines.
Rarity couldn't look at her. She hung her head, still too shocked to speak.
“Was this part of your `plan'?” Rainbow walked in a circle around her. “Some `plan'. You just wanted to boss us all around, didn't you?”
It took several deep breaths, but Rarity managed to compose herself enough to answer. “No, Rainbow. I did not. I just wanted to help-”
“By nearly killing her!?” Rainbow jumped into the air, hovering in place in front of her. “Some friend you are!”
Rarity returned her angered glare. “What would you propose we do? I have yet to hear you voice anything but criticism and useless, irritating noise.”
Rainbow's eyes flashed dangerously. “I'm sick of listening to you! You can't lead, you can't plan, and you hurt Twilight even more because of some stupid, selfish idea!”
“How dare you!” Rarity leapt to her hooves and advanced on Rainbow. “I am not selfish! Not that I listen to any of the hot-air that comes out of your braggart, blowhard mouth-”
“Would you girls QUITTIT!” Pinkie pie jumped between them, reared up on her hind legs, holding a hoof out at both their faces. “You're making Fluttershy cry!”
Rainbow scoffed. “Oh, yeah, cause that's hard.”
Pinkie frowned at her. “She wanted to tell you something, but you wouldn't listen and just kept arguing like two grumpy-meany-pants.”
They all turned to look at the yellow Pegasus. Fluttershy wiped her eyes and cowed under the sudden attention. “Uhm, well, I just wanted to say that I might know of another unicorn who could, maybe, possibly, cast that spell for us.”
“Oh?” Rarity frowned in thought. “Who, dear? Surely you don't mean the princess.”
“Um, no, I don't think Twilight would like Princess Celestia to know about all of this just yet.” Fluttershy looked even more nervous than usual. “I... saw her near the edge of the Everfree forest a few days ago, and a few times before that. I don't think she ever went very far from Ponyville.”
“But who? Who else apart from Twilight and the princess could possibly possess enough magical talent to-”
Rarity trailed off and watched realisation dawn on Rainbow Dash's face at exactly the same time.
Scratching branches whipped past Applejack's face. She tore through the undergrowth chased by distant, chilling cries that echoed between the trees. Her heart hammered at the thought of losing her way back to the crevasse and the lake. It had become her makeshift shelter since that first night: the things that roamed the forest seemed unwilling to cross the water.
Every gap between the passing trees held glimpses of malevolent eyes, glistening teeth, and hooked claws. The part of her mind that knew they weren't real grew quieter and less sure by the second. The leaves in her oilskins rustled loudly and she quickly built up a sweat. She'd needed the extra warmth in the freezing nights, but the noise made her worry that much more.
A pool of light from the fading sky fell through the trees in the distance ahead. It looked like the one she'd marked with a set of crossed branches pointing towards the lake, so she galloped across the rough terrain to reach it.
Panting, her breath misting in the cold, sharp air, Applejack searched the clearing and found nothing but broken rocks. Panic settled in her chest, clenching her heart, but she forced it back and spoke aloud. “No sweatin' AJ. Ya'll know where that cubby-hole is. Just gotta retrace yer hooves to find it.” She peered into the trees to find the right direction, but something caught her eye in the distance instead.
Far away, so faint and small she barely noticed it, the orange glow of a fire trembled between the trees. She lifted her head up and broke into a smile. “A fire, somepony else!”
A whooping cry echoed from somewhere far-too close by and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Applejack set her jaw. “Ah gotta find help: time to run like the wind, A.J.” She kicked her front hooves in the air and plunged off at a full gallop towards the distant light.
More chilling cries sounded from behind her and she risked a quick glance back at the clearing. A black shape flitted through the moonlight where she'd stood, its long limbs carrying it over the rocks in a single bound.
Applejack kicked more force into her hooves and beat them against the frozen earth, taking up more and more speed. She gritted her teeth, ignored the beginnings of fatigue in her limbs, and forced herself to run faster until she flew between the trunks with leaps and dives. The wind rushing by her flanks pulled loose leaves from beneath her oilskins into a slowly falling trail behind her.
It finally started to come closer. Her legs burned and her lungs ached, but she was doing it. She was going to reach it. The glow brightened, the light sharpened, and she realised it wasn't coming from the forest floor, but from somewhere up in the canopy. Picturing a warm, cosy tree-house with glowing windows in her mind, she put on a burst of speed and ran the last few minutes towards its source.
Grinning with excitement, Applejack burst through a mesh of branches into a small clearing covered with fallen leaves. She ground to a halt, sliding on the slippery foliage, and stopped to stare.
A pillar of weather-beaten stone rose from the forest floor in the clearing's centre. Thicker than any tree, it tapered inwards towards a wide stone dish at the very top. Twenty-hoof-high flames shot up into the dark sky from inside, roaring and snapping in the wind, a haze of warping heat and thick black smoke billowing all around them.
Four intricately carved stone griffons leapt from each side half way up the pillar. Their talons reached outwards, their wings lifted in flight, and their beaks were open in shrill, silent cries. The firelight from above lit their angular faces and cast their eyes into pits of deep shadow, as well as highlighting their sharp features and extended claws. Moss and vines grew on their backs and wrapped around their wings, but the effect was still as striking as it must have been the day they were carved.
Applejack panted to get her wind and walked around the base of the pillar. The whole place, the clearing, the stone; it steeped in the distant age of aeons gone by. One of the griffon's wings on the far side had broken off and left only a jagged stump on its back. She found it at the base, broken in two, half-buried beneath a layer of soil and leaves. Looking up into the black void of its shadowed eyes, she watched it glare at her through the weathered ages that had worn its talons, blunted its claws, and pitted the stone of its feathers. A shiver ran through her spine; she somehow knew it was older than anything she had ever encountered in Equestria.
Peering closer at the pillar's stone surface, she scratched at some of the moss to reveal rows of strange, beautiful symbols. “Maybe that's their language; no wonder ah' couldn't talk to em.”
She looked back up at the flames burning steadily overhead, lighting the patch of forest around her, and nodded. “If somepony lit this thing, then somepony's gonna be back to stock it when it goes out.” She looked back down to the trees, to a dark gap between them, and went absolutely, completely, and rigidly still.
There was no sound this time. No whooping cry, no crash of undergrowth. The monster between the trees glared at her from the edge of the light's extent, its eyes locked to her, the glow of the flames burning within.
Applejack ceased up. She could make out its hidden bulk, the glint of bared teeth, and the stench of something savage and animal.
It leapt at her in a rush of blurred movement with no warning or any chance for her to prepare.
She screamed. Her limbs jolted as through struck by lightning and she launched sideways into a roll across the rough ground.
The monster grazed her side, brushing past her with barely a hoof to spare.
Applejack came out of her roll, scrambled to her hooves, and turned wild-eyed towards it.
The blur of blackness turned and came straight at her, its ivory claws and teeth catching the firelight.
She moved to dive to one side, but a sick clench in her stomach told her she hadn't been fast enough; something lashed out of it and slammed into her side, raking fire across her flank, swatting her from the air like a dead leaf.
She struck the ground rolling and tumbling. Her limbs and her head hit jagged rocks and thick roots until she finally slammed into a tree and bent double across the rough bark, her legs tangled and her head laid back up to the sky.
She tried to breathe. Her chest singed with so much agony she ended up hissing through her teeth instead. Her eyes were open, but she couldn't see. Everything was dark, dark like the forest at the edge of the fire's light.
Everything went quiet. She looked down through a slow and detached haze like a dream and saw the black shadow of the monster hunching down. Its paw raked the ground in front of it; its eyes locked to her in preparation to charge.
The forest around her began to change. The dark wall of the canopy morphed into a bright blue sky; the barren permafrost beneath became a rolling field of apple trees. The sun poured down over Sweet Apple Acres just as it always did, and across the two figures standing on the doorstep of the farmhouse that day.
“But, when are ya comin' back, big sis?”
“When Twilight sees sense.”
“But, what if she doesn't? You're still comin' back, aren't ya?”
A roaring snarl dissolved the image away. The black blur charged straight at her across the fallen leaves, the ivory white of its razor teeth above bloodshot eyes, its speed and ferocity locking the end she saw approaching in her heart.
Applejack's eyes widened into saucers. Her hooves gripped the wood of the tree. The pain along her side pitched up into blinding heights, but she threw everything down into her limbs and let out a cry of vocalized agony as she threw herself backwards away from the trunk.
“Oh, I'm comin' back.”
A blurred slash flashed over the wood where she'd been, gouging deep claw-rakes through the bark, sending a spray of sawdust through the air.
“Ah promise you.”
An angered growl came from the black shape. It stalked in a wide half circle around her, watching her, staying outside the edge of the fire's light.
Her limbs trembled. It felt like the creature's teeth were sunk into her side, biting down harder every moment, but she locked eyes with it and climbed back up to her hooves with gritted teeth and stinging, water-blurred vision. She planted her hooves onto the frozen earth and stood her ground: the act nearly costing her everything she had left.
It stalked around her, growling; the hunger in its eyes knowing she was done.
Applejack gasped for air. The world kept trying to darken into a long tunnel ahead of her, with the far side dimming into the distance. Something pattered down onto the leaves below her; something that dripped from her side and ran down her legs. She shivered with a cold that went further and deeper than before.
The monster lunged to one side, snarled, and then lunged to the other. Its burning eyes blurred into twin patches of light that overlapped each other, going in and out of focus.
Applejack slowly turned around. She planted of her front hooves into the earth, digging them in, and limbered her back pair up. Her vision swam, the cold creeping deeper inside her with every moment. She knew there would only be one chance.
It charged. The threshing teeth and pounding claws blurred over the clearing floor.
A.J watched it come, scrunched her eyes closed, let out a scream, and bucked her back legs out with everything she had left to give.
The blow landed squarely on something that felt like sinew and snapped like bone. The impact slammed through her and threw her forwards over the ground, but not before something caught her side and raked new lines of fire along her already wounded flank.
Golden hues of leaves came up to meet her, and all at once she realised she couldn't move her legs anymore. She collapsed down onto the forest floor, landing hard and rolling several times before flopping to rest some distance away.
Yelping and mewling sounds mixed with the sound of erratic, limping footfalls that fled quickly away into the distance.
Everything went still; everything but the raindrops that had begun to fall silently from above. Except they weren't raindrops anymore. Applejack blinked against cold, wet leaves, and looked up into the beginnings of gently falling snow.
Another image came into her mind; Applebloom laughing, the snowball she'd just thrown flying through the air, Granny Smith's red knitted scarf snugly around her neck.
She went to breathe, and raw, ragged agony lanced through her flank. Warm wetness trickled down inside her oilskins. Something shiny caught her eye on the leaves beside her, and she bent her neck to look.
Dark, scarlet blood covered the dull orange of the fallen leaves all around her. Slowly, she craned her neck to look at her injured side, and at the deep, welling claw-rakes torn through Rarity's oilskin jacket. She thought of Rarity angrily telling her off, and a painful laugh escaped her.
The snow came down heavier around her, landing on the red stains on the leaves, on her head, and in her eyes. Her laughs turned to soft chuckles, and then died away altogether.
A ring of eyes glared at her through the trees. The monsters advanced in unison, creeping forwards towards the smell of blood, their teeth glaring yellow and white in the light of the fire burning overhead.
Applejack didn't scream, didn't wail, didn't cry. She just watched them and thought of home, of Granny Smith and big Macintosh, of the fresh smell of her orchards and the thud of apples landing on soft, fertile loam.
Something golden flicked across her vision and slammed into the ground in front of her. Water and leaves splashed her, making her flinch, but she looked back up and blinked.
The griffon with the broken beak stood with her back to her, facing them alone, her wings lifted and twitching with tension.