After the summoning, Applejack and Rainbow Dash retired to the smoking room. Here at least they could avoid the constant interruptions of Granny Smith, Filthy Rich, and various other petitioners.
Rainbow Dash sat on the arm of Applejack’s chair and poured herself a glass of cider. “So I had my contacts at the Canterlot embassy put together a dossier on the other Masters—”
“Got it. Read it,” said Applejack, lifting the folder from her side as she gazed into the fire. She looked up, sheepishly. “Uh, thanks.”
Rainbow Dash grinned. “No problemo. Whadya think?”
“Interestin’, that’s for sure,” said Applejack. She took out the files, and began to shuffle through them. “We’re a week out and four of five Masters have shown up. Could be worse. With our Servant, we’ll have an edge scouting out the fifth player iffin’ they show up.”
“It won’t be a big head start,” said Dash. “The Mage Council’s spy network is pretty slick, and they’ve got their best on this Grail business.”
“Yeah. Sunset Shimmer.” Applejack took out the first file. “Prelate of the Council of Unicorn Mages. Senior lecturer at Canterlot University. She’s a bona-fide prodigy and a spellcasting virtuoso. Expert in all major schools of magic, master in conjuration, summoning, alteration, earth-sphere and air-sphere magic, and she’s probably the most skilled fire-sphere grandmaster alive today.”
“She’s no slouch.”
“Ain’t that the truth. She’s a mage through-and-through. We fight her on her terms, and I might as well dig my own grave.” She shuffled the files, and let out a little chuckle as she saw the next one. “Next up, Polaris Blueblood.”
“I think I met that guy once, at some charity ball. He wasn’t giving off a lot of ‘terrifying sorcerer’ vibes.”
“There’s a reason for that, sugarcube. This fella’s a meathead, just like you and me. Jousting champ. Only started studying the family magecraft when his elder brother died, seven-odd years ago. If the Bluebloods are putting him forward, they’re more desperate than I thought.” She put his file to the back of the pile.
Before Applejack could read a line of the third file, Rainbow Dash snatched it away from her. “And the dark horse of the race, Applejack Apple, former bounty hunter and known liar who can’t keep her whisky down—”
“An’ that’s why I don’t drink no more, silly,” said Applejack, nudging her with a hoof.
“Just kidding around, Applesnack.” Her expression turned serious. “What do you think about the last one?”
Applejack’s face darkened. The fourth file had a photo of a purple unicorn with a severely-neat purple mane and a closed book for a cutie mark. “This one’s a odd lil’ critter.”
“You can say that again.” Rainbow Dash took the file and began to read aloud. “Twilight Sparkle, twenty-eight years old, Canterlot born and bred. Had some medical problem with her magic, couldn’t cast spells properly until she was nineteen. Graduated high school at fourteen, earned her doctorate by eighteen.” She put the file down. “Real egghead, huh?”
“That girl is a theoretical genius,” said Applejack. “A decade ago she could barely turn a rock into a top-hat, and there she was creating whole new fields of necromancy. By the time she gave in her thesis, the different departments at the Canterlot Academy were in a bidding war. Not to get her as a postgraduate, to make her a professor. She’d have been a scientist superstar. That... didn’t happen. It got weird.”
Applejack flipped the page and began to think aloud. “She turned down every single offer and took a desk-jockey analyst job at the Equestrian Intelligence Service instead, the very day her spellcasting power met the basic requirements. Spent one year as an analyst, then another year as a full agent. Quit the EIS, went into the Seer Council as a warlock and countermancer. Took a year out to work on her practical magic. Divination, telekinesis, necromancy, evocation, elementalism... she’d work just long enough to become an expert, and move straight to the next school. Then she enrolled in the Canterlot Guard. Soon as she passed basic training, they assigned her to her brother’s old unit, the Watchtower."
“Mage-hunters, right?”
“Yup. Then, two years ago, her command spells appear and she severs all ties with the Watchtower.” Applejack sighed, rubbing a hoof against her temple. “It’s the same story in each job. She had the best ratings in her division for a first year intelligence analyst, and she switches to field work. Her superiors loved her field work, then she switches jobs. Same thing happens in the Seer Council. Best junior warlock, girl’s got real prospects in a tough environment, gives it all up to practice basic spellcasting. Basic spellcasting! And it worked like a damned charm, too. This here report says she made more progress in eight months than your average mage would make in eight years. She weren’t bad as a guard neither—they only take the best for the Watchtower.”
"As dangerous as Sunset Shimmer then, huh?"
Applejack shook her head. "It's... different. Sunset Shimmer's no mystery. Head of a magical organisation, heir of a magical family, best at anything she chooses to touch. She's in this game for the honor of her home as much as anything else, and it's clear where her motivations lie. This Twilight Sparkle, though? I can’t read her."
“Maybe there’s a family thing going on?” suggested Dash. “Her big bro is guard too, after all. Same unit, even.”
“Her whole family are with the guard, and the guard ain’t exactly on level with the Seer Council, or even the Canterlot Academy. No, if this was some family affair, she’d have joined up years ago.” Applejack sighed, stood up, and began to pace in front of the fireplace. “Twilight Sparkle... She could accomplish anything she chose, and she don’t choose nothing. She’s got no purpose, no goals, no... no desire. Sunset Shimmer succeeds and builds on it. Twilight Sparkle succeeds again and again and throws it all away. What could possess a mare to act like that?”
“Huh.” Rainbow Dash’s brow furrowed. “The Masters all want something from the Grail, or the Grail wouldn’t choose them. Sparkle’s a Master, therefore the Grail chose her, therefore she wants something from the Grail. Logic!” she said, triumphantly.
“You’re right,” she said, nodding. “Twilight Sparkle is as dangerous as any Master could be, and I don’t have a dang clue what she’s after.” Applejack stared into the fire once more, her face set in a determined scowl. “And if I’m honest with you, Dash? I find that downright terrifying.”
* * *
Twilight teleported back to her quarters, poured herself a cup of muddy coffee, and continued to read the file that Sunset Shimmer had given her. Her expression grew darker with every page she read. The more she learned about this Applejack, the less she understood.
Some parts were perfectly clear. Applejack Apple was the middle foal of three siblings. Both parents were mages, and both were deceased. The Apple clan was a minor magical dynasty, and the family matriarch, ‘Granny’ Smith Apple, was the current holder of the family lore. Applejack’s elder brother had no affinity for magecraft, and Applejack should have been inducted into the family lore when she came of age. Instead, she left home to travel before she earned her cutie mark, months after her parents died.
Accounts of Applejack’s adolescent years were incomplete and conflicted. She’d been to Manehattan, that much seemed certain. She’d probably been entangled in the criminal affairs of her relatives and notorious gang leaders, Julius Orange and Clementine Orange. Whether she’d caused their deaths, or allowed them, or simply been unable to prevent them, was up in the air.
She’d first learned to fight in Manehattan, at the Sixth Avenue Gym. She’d picked up a few other skills, too.
After Manehattan, the accounts were truly a mess. She spent years underground, pursuing a vendetta against those who killed her aunt and uncle. Or she killed her aunt and uncle herself, and retreated back to the family farm to learn the Apple clan magic in secret. Or she was chased across Equestria by those who hated her family, only appearing to lure her pursuers into traps one-by-one until she could emerge once more.
Applejack had definitely spent several years outside of Equestria, and had definitely traveled with a zebra alchemist and bounty hunter with a terrifying reputation. It was unclear if this had started when Applejack was still a teenager, or if it came later. Her first bounty would have been collected when she was fifteen years old; Twilight guessed she had met the zebra some time before that.
The first two years of her bounty hunting career were simple. Small jobs that paid. Big jobs that paid well. Risk always proportionate to reward. A learning curve of sorts, though Applejack’s skill and ingenuity were already on display. It took either incredible skill or impossible luck to steal a prisoner from a high-security cell in the Fillydelphia Correctional Center and deliver them to the buyer before anyone noticed they were missing.
Her motivations thereafter were... unclear. Irrational, even. No, more than that, they were insane.
Risk was no longer tied to reward, or even in the same universe as reward. She’d march into active warzones to extract delinquent debtors. She traveled through magically-null areas that by all rights should have leached away her life-force and left her a shriveled husk. She spent a year living in the Everfree Forest. Toxic waste sites, vengeance-happy criminal networks, rich bastards with their own private armies, barren deserts... if it was dangerous she’d take the job, no matter how rich or meager the pay was.
She once hid in a pool of molten lava for three days, to catch an adolescent dragon bounty. Twilight was familiar with the magics required to make such a thing possible. They required a sinusoidal metaspell to allow the restorative breathing magics and the high-grade pyromancy to exist in the same space without causing a large explosion. The breathing spell needed to be recast every hour lest it fade, but could not be cast more than once every fifty minutes, lest it cause oxygen toxicity and disrupt the sustenance weave for the metaspell. A fire-protection spell could last any time between ten minutes and six hours depending on caster skill, but it could not be cast on the same sinusoidal ‘vector’ as the breathing spell, which changed depending on the rhythm of both the breathing spell and metaspell during last casting. To sustain all three spells, in a situation where a second’s lapse in any of them would kill her instantly? That required a potent combination of unbreakable discipline and suicidal recklessness.
She perused the files. Each section of the report earned itself a separate place on her desk. She took a pad and neatly summarized the details of each section, and then copied the summaries onto a set of flash cards. The flash cards floated onto a flipboard and sorted themselves in different patterns. Length of job. Payment received. Political involvement. Use of magic. Location. An enchanted abacus ticked away as the flash cards fed numbers into it. No significant correlations. Quantitative analysis could not distinguish Applejack’s approach from mere insanity.
Twilight shook her head. Applejack had been a clear-headed, skilled and intelligent mare all of her life, and the simple fact that she had survived such a career implied more than a veneer of animal cunning on top of madness.
She returned to the files.
Applejack had taken a delicate job in Minos, a slaver empire where millions lived in chains. Entering Minos was easy—anybody with the means to buy slaves or goods was welcome—but evading the brutal state security was not. After laying the groundwork, Applejack sold herself into slavery and put herself under several geasa and contingencies to avoid revealing her true identity. She worked for several months in a notorious amber mine, where the one-year death rate was 25%. She murdered two overseers, both bounties, and sparked a slave uprising. Her magical contingencies sparked to life and disguised her as a noble slave-owner, who was rescued by state security as the entire empire erupted in riots. During her rescue, she kidnapped three other nobles, saving them from being torn apart by their own slaves and delivering them to far worse fates elsewhere.
That was six years ago. Minos had been in a constant state of civil war ever since.
She had worked for a year in Hoofington, a state owned by the robber barons of the Honeywine Merchant Group. A million ponies had once lived there in the breadbasket of Equestria; starvation and emigration had halved that number. Applejack found her bounties in workhouses where foals worked fourteen-hour days, in mercenary bars owned by the Pinkhoof Detective Agency, on farms devastated by corn blight and cruce. She had furthered some of the Apple Clan’s interests there, but Twilight could still not make sense of her presence. The Minos job, the dragon lands, these jobs had paid handsomely at least. Hoofington paid pennies in comparison. After food costs and safe accommodation, she probably lost money. Why take the job? It was hardly a vacation, after all.
The Cloudsdale Bone Garden job interested Twilight greatly. Applejack had been sent to apprehend an instructor from the Cloudsdale Flight School, a difficult task for an earthbound pony. Her approach was novel, to say the least.
She hid in the Bone Garden, a tract of land where the pegasi of Cloudsdale practiced equine sacrifice. The city floated over the area once a year, during the graduation ceremony of the flight school. Pegasi regarded as unworthy—those who failed their tests, flew poorly, or were simply deemed ‘weak willed’— were stripped of their robes, bound, and had arcane runes carved into their skin. They were then thrown from a great height into the Bone Garden below. Victims rarely died right away. Pegasi were good at falling, after all. The ever-present sentries—the Vespid Order—would feed broth to the dying ponies, keeping away their death by thirst and starvation. Their internal injuries and the cursed land would slowly sap away at them as they became part of the stinking, corpse-strewn wasteland. The energies of this dark ritual fed back into Cloudsdale and its citizens, and was the only reason that most Cloudsdale-born pegasi were capable of flight.
Applejack spent three weeks hiding in the garden, avoiding sentries and doomed victims alike, slowly rearranging bones and adding reagents to turn the entire place into a huge ritual circle. When the next batch of sacrifices were presented, they did not die the slow death that powered the rest of the pegasi race. Their souls were twisted instantly and they became vengeful wights as they fell. They attacked the graduating class with terrifying bloodlust, and as the instructor was dragged into the aerial melee, Applejack used a combination of athletics, magic and rope-work to pull him to the ground and kidnap him.
Twilight only read a few more reports before the realization struck: the only consistent detail was suffering.
Not money or treasure, not adoration or excitement, not even danger. These things were only incidental to Applejack’s work. Suffering. Where death, pain, and despair went hoof in hoof, Applejack found her home.
Twilight’s quill scratched furiously at her notepad. “There is no.. rational motivation between any of these actions individually,” she muttered. “However, collectively they represent one thing. They were intentional. Ergo, Applejack Apple desires or simply sees something in events which caused her and those around her both physical and emotional distress.”
“Based on previous accounts, I can conclude that Applejack was and is not reckless with her own life, as indicated by the thoroughness of her preparations and exploits. Therefore, she is not seeking excitement and not moving recklessly. Therefore, contrary to earlier statements, there is a rational reason she began immersing herself in suffering. Whatever that might be...”
Twilight sat up straight, stretched her neck, and summoned another cup of black coffee. She looked down at the notes. A start, at least.
“Applejack Apple...” whispered Twilight, mired in thought. “What were you looking for in all this misery? And what did you find?”