The first thing Spike noticed when he woke up was the ceiling - old, darkened beams of wood far above him.
The next thing he realized was that it must be the middle of the day, judging by the sunlight streaming in through the window. He sat up and looked around, recognizing one of the guest rooms at Sweet Apple Acres, and suddenly, the events of last night came flooding back into his head.
Did that actually happen? he wondered to himself. Or did I have the most bizarre dream ever?
His eyes fell on the bedside table, and any hope or fear that it might not have been real vanished instantly as he saw the necklace lying on it. Obsidian, with a quill-shaped emerald.
Spike groaned and fell back. I didn't imagine things then.
A knock sounded on the door, accompanied by a familiar voice. "Spike? Are you awake?"
"Uh ... yeah. Come in, Apple Bloom." Spike rose from the bed and sat down on the bench beneath the window.
The door opened with a creak, and Apple Bloom walked in. The shock seemed to have worn off slightly, and she was actually smiling. "Good morning, sleepyhead. Or should I say good afternoon?"
"What time is it?" Spike asked.
"Half past twelve." Apple Bloom looked at him, worry in her eyes. "Are you okay? You went out like a light after that appeared." She pointed to the necklace.
Spike smiled bashfully. "I guess it was too much to take in. I try and guess what it is I was feeling, and the next thing I know, that thing shows up out of nowhere."
"It will be alright. We have our families and friends to turn to, after all," Apple Bloom said.
From almost anypony else, Spike would have treated these words as simple reassurance, but Apple Bloom was different. She firmly believed in what she said.
He remembered something. "Apple Bloom? I meant to ask something last night, before the necklace appeared. Do you have any idea what your element might be?" Spike would have been the first to admit that he was curious about this, but there was more to it. He felt that it was important to know the answer.
"I've thought about that." Apple Bloom looked down. "I'm not very good at thinking, though. I can't really say."
"Don't be so harsh on yourself." Spike patted the bench next to him. "Sit down, let's talk this over. Perhaps we'll find it together."
Apple Bloom hesitantly sat down next to him - or lay down, Spike could never quite tell how to call it with ponies. He looked at her and thought for a moment about how to start, then he had an idea. "Did you have any other dreams of that - special kind? Apart from the one last night, I mean."
"Only one, though I'm not sure it was a dream, because I wasn't asleep. It was yesterday evening, after I'd come back from crusading. We were having dinner, and I must have zoned out from what Applejack told me." Apple Bloom looked at Spike. "What about you?"
"The same. I'd even say it must have been at about the same time - about sunset?"
Apple Bloom nodded. "Anyway, I was thinking about what we'd done that day, and how we still didn't have our cutie marks, and how I ..." She blushed.
Spike swallowed once, then he looked Apple Bloom in the eyes. "AB?"
That name, which he'd not used before, got her attention. "Y...yes?"
"You were thinking about me." It wasn't really a question.
Apple Bloom breathed in sharply. "You ... you know?"
"I realized shortly after you'd left." Spike smiled. "I must have been pretty blind not to see it before, to be honest."
Apple Bloom turned her head away, blushing even more deeply. "And you...?" She obviously couldn't bring herself to finish that question - perhaps she didn't know how it should end.
"AB, I had a crush on Rarity." Her ears perked up at his use of the past tense, but he continued. "I know what it's like to be in your position, and if I hurt you at any time, I'm sorry." He cast down his gaze and closed his eyes, remembering several occasions where he might have unwittingly stomped on Apple Bloom's feelings.
He felt a hoof wrap around his shoulders and looked up. Apple Bloom was smiling at him, though her eyes were brimming with tears. "It's okay. Granny Smith always says that pain is a part of life as much as joy is." Her expression turned serious. "We should talk about this later, but for now, we were talking about something else."
"You're right." Spike felt relieved that Apple Bloom wouldn't hold anything against him. "So what was your vision like?"
"Well, it was like this ..."
***
Apple Bloom was falling, ever falling through a pitch-black void without beginning or end. She had been falling forever, and she would continue falling until the end of time.
That wasn't the worst part, though. The void was more than just emptiness - it felt cold, dark and greedy, for it was her own fears that threatened to overwhelm her. They attacked her, not with weapons but with her own thoughts of inadequacy.
You will never get a cutie mark.
You will never be anything special.
You will always be the little sister of the strongest stallion in Ponyville and the Element of Honesty. That hurt worse than the others, because it had a ring of truth to it that the other two lacked.
He will never notice you. Why should he? That hurt even worse than the one before, because it was laced not with truth, but with doubt. Where the other thoughts seemed to pierce her like icy needles, this one was like an icicle straight through her heart.
Just as she felt the numbness and cold overwhelm her, she suddenly realized that there was actually something else here. She peered through the shadows and saw ...
The Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse. Only it wasn't the smallish treehouse they had built; this looked more like the Royal City of Canterlot, but with a distinct touch of Sweet Apple Acres to it. The lofty spires were topped by weathervanes, and the main building looked exactly like the farmhouse, with a lone apple tree standing right next to the door. The jury-rigged appearance still gave it away for what it really was, though.
As Apple Bloom drew closer, she noticed that the void seemed to recoil from the house briefly. Then, just as she was hoping it would go away entirely, it seemed to regroup and started to attack. Darkness drew in on the house from all sides, threatening to overwhelm it any second.
Apple Bloom's eyes were drawn to the apple tree. She realized that six of the apples bore carvings that she recognized as the Elements of Harmony. There were others that she knew belonged to ponies she loved - Big Macintosh, Granny Smith, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle. Finally her gaze fell upon the apple closest to the top of the tree. It was small and rather oddly shaped, almost like a pear, and its purple skin seemed to glow with a soft greenish light.
They're my family and friends. Everything will turn out right.
The apples in the tree suddenly blazed with light, none more brightly than the purple one at the top, which was now difficult to look at. As the void seemed to prepare for its final, decisive assault, Apple Bloom heard a voice.
You will need them. They will need you. And so will I.
Spike. As she thought the name, the void drew back from her, and from the clubhouse, and then...
***
"...and then I realized Applejack was shaking me by the shoulders," Apple Bloom finished.
"How did you feel when you came back?" Spike thought he knew the answer, but he needed to make sure.
"I was cold, but I also felt as if a fire was burning in my heart." Apple Bloom looked uncertain. "Does that make sense?"
"Yeah. I felt the same after my first vision." Spike scratched the back of his neck. "It wasn't a void, but an ocean in my vision, but I guess that makes sense."
"What do you mean?" Apple Bloom asked.
"I'm a dragon. Water can do some very nasty things to me, as Twilight realized after the last Winter Wrap Up." Spike shuddered at the memory. He had been fortunate to get away with just a simple cold - from what Nurse Redheart had told them, he could have died if the water had been any colder.
Apple Bloom, however, didn't seem to be listening. She looked deep in thought, as though she was trying to figure something out. Finally, she turned to Spike again. "If you had to give that black ocean in your vision a name, what would it be?"
"Um..." Spike had tried to avoid thinking about the water, but Apple Bloom might be on to something here. "Fear, most likely, though there was something else there."
"Yeah, I thought so too. I'd hoped you might be able to put a name to that 'something else'. You're the smart one here, after all." Apple Bloom grinned half-heartedly.
"Ever the confident one, AB. Have you ever considered that it might be your special talent?" Spike joked.
"What, confidence? Nah. I just think everything will eventually turn out alright, that's all." Apple Bloom had barely finished saying that when she suddenly vanished into a flash of brilliant silver light. Spike's nictitating membranes closed instinctively, but the flash disappeared as rapidly as it had come.
Apple Bloom was still lying on the bench, which was probably a good thing, for she was shaking heavily. "What in tarnation...?" She looked at Spike, and realization struck both of them. Their eyes wandered to Apple Bloom's neck.
It was a simple affair - an unadorned necklace of burnished copper set with an orange gemstone shaped like a hammer.
Spike forced a smile. "What you said before that happened, how you feel - that's exactly what confidence is."
"Oh." Apple Bloom carefully touched a hoof to the necklace. "So that makes me ..."
"The Element of Confidence." Spike hugged her. "Congratulations."
She was still trembling, but since she didn't have this revelation combined with a massive infodump, she seemed to hold up better than Spike had done. "I thought it would turn out alright, and the darkness retreated."
"I thought of my friends, and the ocean withdrew." Spike thought for a moment, then it hit him. "Of course! That's it!"
"What's what?" Apple Bloom asked.
"The ocean. It wasn't just fear. There was something behind that, something darker and more evil. The fears were mine, but they were magnified." Spike felt that the answer was within reach.
"Yeah. Something was driving the fears, using them against us." Apple Bloom seemed just as excited as Spike felt. "And I can almost put a name to it. It attacked our hearts, from within ourselves. It was trying to plant the seeds of ..."
They looked at each other as the answer finally came to them.
"Doubt."
***
Meanwhile, at Sugarcube Corner...
"Pinkie?" Mr. Cake called out as he entered the kitchen. "Just checking to see if you're ..."
He fell silent in horror as he stared at the scene before him, mouth agape.
Pinkie Pie was sitting on the floor just staring into the distance. Her usually poofy mane was straight, flattened against her head, her eyes were red from crying. At the sound of Mr. Cake's hoofsteps, she slowly turned her head in his direction and started to speak, in a voice raw from despair.
"Please help me, Mr. Cake. I don't know how to make cupcakes anymore."
As she slowly made to get up, Mr. Cake's eyes fell on her flank, and he gasped. Her cutie mark had vanished almost completely, only the barest outline of the balloons left.
"Let's get you to the hospital, Pinkie. I'm sure the doctors will know what to do." He was quite sure that the doctors had never seen anything like this, but he tried to keep up appearances for Pinkie's sake.
Neither of them noticed the slender black tendrils dancing around Pinkie's cutie mark as they left the bakery, nor the quiet, high-pitched laughter echoing around the room, a laughter that resonated with words.
When doubt extinguishes laughter, despair will reign.