The Fading World

by Neon Czolgosz


In Living Memory.

One week ago...


The morning delivery brought good news for Applejack, and good news had been a rare thing in Ponyville as of late.

She finished her morning chores on the farm, passed off all the council affairs she could to the town mayor, walked through the endless acres of sweet potato fields into the lone apple orchard to find her younger sister, and sent her sister off to deliver a series of messages. Applejack could return to the farmhouse, then, and wait.

She was half-way up the tracks to her home when two stallions called to her. Between them, they carried a rail-thin cream coated pony with a two-color mane that had seen better days, and a fresh bruise under her right eye.

“Boss, we caught this mare stealing,” said the brown-coated stallion. He was Caramel, a cousin of Applejack, and as trustworthy as anypony was these days.

“She slipped through a grate into the eastern granary,” said the other, a navy-coated pony by the name of Noteworthy. “Had a sack with three week’s worth of rations, easy.”

“Did she break the grate?” asked Applejack, sharply. Stealing food was a serious offence alone, enough to earn weeks in the stocks or even exile. Destroying farm property was a capital crime.

“Nah, boss. She just took the screws off. We caught her when she was trying to put them back on.”

Applejack nodded, mildly relieved. She did not have time to preside over an execution today. She turned to the mare in the middle. “Were you stealing food, missy?”

The mare looked downward and trembled. “P-please...”

Applejack put a hoof under the mare’s chin and lifted it sharply. “You look at me when I’m talking to you, understand? I’ll ask again. Were you stealing food?”

Tears flowed from her eyes as she nodded softly. “I’m s-sorry, I’m s-so sorry...”

“Tell me why you did it. Don’t lie to me, it’ll be so much worse if you lie.”

“I h-have a wife, and she’s p-pregnant,” said the mare, haltingly. “Twice this week we’ve been to the ration line and there’s—there’s just not enough left for one pony between us. I’ve b-been giving up all my food to her but it’s just not enough and she’s barely got the energy to stand upright and I’m dizzy from hunger all the time and I just wanted enough food to make sure I wouldn’t lose them both and oh Celestia I’m going to die please don’t kill me please don’t leave her without me...”

The mare broke down into incoherent sobbing, sagging her weight against her two captors. Applejack stood, unmoving.

“Caramel?” she said.

He snapped to attention. “She’s, uh, she’s got a wife. A unicorn, plays the harp at Berry’s. I think she’s pregnant, yeah.”

Applejack nodded. “Alright, Caramel, track that mare down and get her to Redheart for a check up. Make sure she gets fed. We ain’t had a pony die from hunger since Pappy’s day, and I ain’t keen to have one on my watch. Then track down Mayor Mare and tell her that ponies ain’t getting fed in the ration queue. Our books—not t’mention a glance at the dang granaries—say we should have enough to scrape by. If there’s something hinky going on with our food supply, she needs to sniff it out. That’s her top priority.”

“Yes boss,” he said, and stood expectantly.

“That’s all, sugarcube, off you go.” As he ran off, she turned towards Noteworthy. “You. Put the heat to this mare, medium-style. I want her standing up and working tomorrow, but very clear that she comes to the authorities if something’s up, instead of slithering around like a dang grass-snake.”

Applejack waited just long enough for Noteworthy to pull a heavily-knotted length of thick hemp rope from his saddlebag, knock the mare to the ground, and start raining down blow after blow on her limbs and body. Applejack then turned to walk down the path, ignoring the pathetic whimpers from the pony she left behind.

She soon approached what was jokingly called the Apple Clan Farmhouse. A century ago it had been a farmhouse. Now it was almost a castle: a large, fortified, three-story building built on an artificial hill, with clear gardens sloping down the sides of the hill, a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the surrounding fields and granaries, with a twelve-foot palisade surrounding it. There were four watchtowers with guards posted day and night, and a crow’s nest atop the Farmhouse proper.

It was the caged heart of Ponyville. The town mayor practically lived there. Petitioners and scribes visited ten hours a day, searched twice on entry and on exit. The family archive had long outstripped Ponyville library, carrying every guide and reference material the town could need, and carrying the only magical tomes and ideological tomes in Ponyville. All matters of civics, law, and organisation in Ponyville ran through the Apple Clan.

She walked through the brick-arch doorway and hung up her duster coat, still carrying the package in her saddlebag. Guards nodded respectfully as she moved through the house. She greeted Mayor Mare, Filthy Rich, a few petitioners that she knew from town as she passed by, and went straight to the study.

A smile crept across Applejack’s face as she saw her grandmother dozing away at the desk. She set the package down in front of her.

Applejack opened a cabinet. Inside were two-dozen neatly-stacked scrolls and several shelves of bottled mixtures, powders, and herbs. She unfurled a particular scroll and hung it on the back of the study door, then blew a pinch of powdered blood onto the parchment. The parchment glowed and the room seemed to list slightly, though only for a moment.

She checked a rune carved into the cabinet door. It glowed a faint orange. The spell had worked. Only the three ponies she had invited would be able to enter the room until it was dispelled.

There was a knock, and she opened the door. Exactly three ponies entered, a giant, red stallion, a pegasus with a rainbow mane and a soldier’s bearing, and a butter-yellow pegasus who seemed to shrink between the two.

“Mac, Dash, ‘Shy. Good to see y’all. Take a seat.” All sat except Applejack and the rainbow-maned pegasus. “Somethin’ up, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow Dash nodded quickly, and began to pace the room. “Uh, yeah. Kinda. I dunno how your magical tests and experiments worked or anything, but I put out those feelers and stuff you asked for? Yeah. Something big is up. The Council of Unicorn Mages in Canterlot is going ballistic, the Manehattan Collective have gone underground, and the Griffic Seer Society is dark, they’ve like, they’ve shut down Condorcorum, mare, like the whole city. I can’t even reach the farther-out groups. If you think this ‘Grail War’ thing is going on right now, well, you’re not alone.”

Applejack nodded. “Everything adds up. It happens once a century, and this is that once.”

“Right, right. Before we go any further, though...” said Rainbow Dash, eyes shining with uncharacteristic worry. “Are you sure this is worth it? Don’t get me wrong, none of those other tools deserve to win, but you guys have spent your whole lives keeping Ponyville independent. You’ve kept out of politics, kept out of magic east of Everfree, and kept Sweet Apple Acres safe. This Grail War isn’t going to be a tangle, it’s going to be the tangle. Everything you own, everypony you know, it’s all fair game.” She sucked in a deep breath, and looked directly at Applejack. “And whoever wins, you’re gonna have at least three factions mad as hell at you.”

Applejack was about to reply, and then a wet, gurgling cackle came from the far end of the room.

Granny Smith was up in her chair, puffs of purple steam rolling out from between her lips, golden eyes glowing with unearthly light. Bone and gristle popped and crunched as she stretched her neck, and looked directly at Rainbow Dash.

“You don’t think sendin’ my granddaughter to war is worth it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Rainbow Dash squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable with the Apple matriarch at the best of times. “I was only—”

“Shush!” snapped Granny Smith, putting up a hoof. “Now, you lissen here, lil’ birdie,” she rasped, “an’ lemme tell you all about what Sweet Apple Acres was like when I was a foal.”

Granny Smith stepped around the table. As she moved her sickly-green coat seemed to fade, revealing strange flesh underneath, rough and woody as if she had bark for skin. A thousand tiny runes were seared onto her body, and they lit up with the same golden fire from behind her eyes. The runes faded in and out, quieting and quickening in turn, welling up into one pure fire—

The room was no more. The five ponies found themselves in the middle of a sepia-toned field. The Sweet Apple Acres Farmhouse was visible in the distance, still on its hill but with no palisade, no watchtowers, and no warding pylons blinking along the rooftops.

Rainbow Dash blinked as the realisation struck. They were in a wheat field. She’d had wheat bread before, in diplomatic meetings and parties of the rich and powerful. Strange stuff, with a thick, crunchy outside and a soft, warm, yielding inside. Nopony grew it in Equestria any more, it was too much work for not enough food. It needed twice the amount of land, care, and weather as a crop of potatoes, and then needed husking and milling just to be edible. Everything was potatoes or sweet potatoes, with just enough garden-grown fruit that ponies didn’t start getting scurvy. And yet all around her was a sea of wheat, enough to feed a town entirely on bread and then some.

The scene moved, and the land of the farm shifted beneath them. Atop a hill, they could see the farmhouse, and the wheat fields, and the spot they had previously stood on. From here, they could see the fields for what they were: a tiny lake of gold surrounded by orchards. Orchards! Not a single, sad relic of days long lost, tended out of die-hard tradition and a need for their family magic, but a score of them, thousands of trees all swelling with crisp, juicy fruit.

Another shift, this time into Ponyville proper. It was midday, and yet only a dozen ponies were waiting in the ration queue at the town square, not the grim half-mile line that usually stretched through town. Town guards strolled through the streets, instead of patrolling the outskirts in heavily-armed eight-pony squads. There were no boarded-over windows, no desperate families of refugees sleeping outside the town hall.

The sun set, and the sun rose, and time cycled on. The wheat fields thinned out, and sometimes the harvests failed altogether. Apples on trees turned from proud things as thick as a hoof to sour little stones that could stave off scurvy and not much else. Fields were torn up and planted with sweet potatoes, at first because they were hardy, and then because food was getting more expensive everywhere and they had to keep up. The town changed, slowly. Every year was a tiny bit tighter than the last one. Prudence became necessity. Ponies from other, unluckier areas flowed into the place where no working pony went hungry. Bandit raids turned from simple robberies into deadly military strikes.

Every year was the same: a simple progression from the previous one. And every decade was less recognisable than the last.

The illusion faded, first patterning out onto the walls and surfaces of the study, and then disappearing completely. Granny Smith’s runes faded. Her pale-green coat was solid once more. She shuffled back around the desk, slumped into her chair, and looked at Rainbow Dash with tired eyes.

“That, my child,” she said, “is why we ain’t just gon’ hunker down at Sweet Apple Acres. ‘Cause soon enough, there ain’t gon’ be a Sweet Apple Acres.”