//------------------------------//
// 2 
// Story: Staying for the Night 
// by All of the Above 
//------------------------------//

There was a dry permanence about the bad taste in her mouth.  Though it was unpleasant and could easily be rectified, she refused to wash it away.  Applejack didn't want to say a word, nor did she dare to finish the partly eaten pancakes lying in front of her.  That stallion sitting in across from her...

She didn't know why exactly, but she didn't trust him.

The stallion ate his pancakes in an uncomfortable silence.  Not since they were outside had they even spoken to each other.  The only thing resembling some kind of conversation was the stallion making a gesture that said, "More pancakes?"  To which Applejack replied with a shake of her head.

Applejack wasn't sure if the stallion was keeping silent on purpose or more focused on his own food rather than her.  He ate in small bites, but he didn't swallow in small amounts.  Annoyingly, he used his magic to eat with a fork.  His small horn glowed with a gentle beige color.  The fork levitated off the table, and stabbed into the pancakes.  Every time he went for another bite, his fork would hit the plate, making that annoying scraping noise that nopony liked to hear.  All at once, three pieces went down his throat while three more were stuffed in his cheeks like a squirrel.  She was surprised that he wasn't choking to death.

She found her eyes wandering around the quaint little kitchen.  Despite the fact that it was old, dusty, and defiled beyond all belief... it somehow reminded her of home.  From the wooden patterns on the walls to the lighter atmosphere, so much of it made her feel a little bit safer.  

Her eyes caught a glimpse of a small cobweb situated in a corner.  Normally, Applejack wouldn't stand for a cobweb anywhere in the house.  Even seeing one in a place like this set her off.  

As her eyes narrowed and the web came into focus, she soon found out that it wasn't a cobweb.  It was a spider's web.  

Not much of an improvement.

There were two bite-sized spiders.  One that lied on the ground, and one that played on the web.  The one on the ground had its legs bent towards its body  Some of them were absent.  Parts of its body, specifically its legs, looked like they were hacked off.  It wasn't moving.  The other spider playfully wove its web, almost like it was ignoring the other spider as best as it could.  

It wasn't until the umpteenth time that his fork hit the plate that her concentration came to a screeching halt and her patience beginning to crack.  Though words were plentiful and easy to find, harvesting the ripe words for a meaningful chat proved quite the challenge.  A pony like Twilight would have a hard time finding such words.  Bad words and insults were practically gift wrapped for her to use.  Every which way her mind seemed to go, the bad plants stuck out like a broken horn.  But the more she searched, the right words were coming to her.  They were a chore to pick out, but they were there to use.  

After a while, she had the perfect sentence to use.  It was obvious that she should have asked him this quite some time ago, but pardon her if she was a built startled by a monster trying to kill her.  It was a general icebreaker, the first question that ponies ask when they meet somebody new.  

Before this one was organized, she had one in mind that she immediately through to the side.  It was insensitive, and he probably wouldn't like it if that was the first thing she asked about.  

His horn.  

At first glance, Applejack didn't notice.  It wasn't until she realized how short it was that she started to stare.  She thought he was born with it, but then thought that it was broken off or something.  Applejack has met a lot of ponies.  Unicorns included.  But meeting a unicorn with a broken or deformed horn was an abnormality.  

Ignoring the horn, Applejack asked her question. 

"What's yer name?"  Applejack asked like she was ready to burst if he went for one more piece of his pancake.

His fork stopped before it dug into the pancake.  He swallowed hard.  She could see the food sorrowfully sliding down his throat.  

"Hmm?"  

"Ah asked ya what yer name is?"

"So she finally decides to speak," the stallion said, glancing towards the mare.  She didn't look happy.  The stallion wiped away some crumbs off his face.  "Arkane Vander."

Applejack raised an eyebrow.  She nearly laughed.  "Are ya jokin’?"

Arkane chuckled a bit.  "I wish.”

“Mom and dad weren’t the best, huh?”

Arkane thought about it for a tiny moment.  “No.  Not really.”

Applejack said nothing.  Arkane went back to his pancakes which were about gone.  If he wanted to, he could have shoved the whole thing down his throat and swallowed it in one gulp.

As he finished the plate, he let out a satisfying sigh.  "How about you?"

"Applejack."

Arkane thought about it for a second.  "Lovely name."  He stood up.  Taking over the plate to the sink, he washed it off with the water that came from the sink.  Though this house was old and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, it had indoor plumbing.  

That was the thing about the house.  With each passing minute, the house didn't feel so abandoned.  The kitchen had sunk into her subconscious like a pleasant memory.  The moldy look became familiar, and it seemed a tad brighter.  Perhaps the place wasn't all that bad.  

"What is this place?"

"I don't know.  I wanted to call it The Nothing Forest.  But something just doesn't feel right about that name.  I don't know how to explain it, but sounds too... Literary."

Applejack thought about it.  She didn’t know what he meant.  

"Do ya... Live here?"

"Well, right now I kind of do live here."  Arkane shook his head.  "I showed up here a few weeks ago.  Went to sleep in my bed, woke up... Not in my bed.  No, I can do better.  Uh... I woke up staring at a wall that didn’t match mine.  No, that doesn’t work either.  The point is, I woke up here and I don’t know how or why.”

Again, Applejack raised an eyebrow.  

Arkane sat himself back into his chair.  “Anything else?”  

"...How do we get out of here?"  

Not bothering to look up, Arkane answered, "I... don't think we can."

"You mean there's no way out of here?"

Looking up, Arkane furrowed his eyebrows.  "Yeah."  He said, emphasizing on the Y.

"We can't... Sneak around that monster?"

Arkane started laughing.  He leaned back in his chair and nearly fell over.  

"What's so funny?"

"I don't know if something hit you upside the head, but you can't be serious!" Arkane kept laughing.

"Ah am serious," she spat.

"Seriously insane." 

"Ya make it sound like it’s a bad idear."  

Arkane stood up.  "That's an understatement."

"Doesn't mean Ah can't try."  As Arkane paced around the kitchen, Applejack stared daggers at him.  

"If you try, I think you might not come back here with all your limbs."

"Ah think Ah can handle just a monster," Applejack said, starting to get angry. 

"I don't know how you interpreted what just happened outside, but I don't think that monster is just a monster."

"All monsters are just monsters.  Doesn’t matter how many claws it has or how many teeth.  What matters is that it can be taken down.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve faced some mighty scary things in my time.  And you know what they were?”  Applejack paused to let the question sink in.  “Monsters.  They were just monsters with nothing to lose.”

“I don’t think you understand.” Arkane couldn’t help but grin and shake his head.  

Applejack slammed her hooves on the table.  “Ah don't think you understand!  Ah have a hoofin’ family!  Ah am not spending another second here without my family!”

Arkane stopped smiling.  A stern look on his face said everything that he need to say.  And yet, he repeated it.

“I’ve tried fighting that thing.  With what little magic I have, I fought for my life to get out of here.  And I couldn’t.  It all boiled down to me being used as a bowling pin for that ball to knock over, again and again and again.  I’m surprised it let me live.  But here I am, hoping that you won’t make the same mistake that I made.”

Applejack didn’t buy it.  She stuck by her words, and they didn’t need to be improved or retold.  Applejack was going to fight that beast, and she was going to win.  Arkane could be left there to die for all she cared.  She was getting out of there, and that was that.

“I’m sorry, Applejack.  I don’t think there’s a way out of this place.  We're stuck here."

Applejack glared at him.  His eyes were nearly condescending her.  

Arkane let out a sigh.  "I’m sorry."

Applejack felt like telling him off.  But what good would that do?  

There wasn't much need for her to be there in that room with him.  She lost her appetite when she nearly died a little bit ago.  So, she decided the best thing to do was to let her mind adjust to this new environment.

And adjusting was the last thing she wanted to do.  



After breakfast, Applejack retired to her temporary room.  Arkane was in the middle of eating her pancakes that she had decided against eating.  He questioned where she was going, and Applejack only replied with a stern grunt and a "Mah room."

Hopefully, Arkane would have the common decency to let her be.

For what seemed like several hours, she sat on her bed staring at a wall thinking.  Applejack thought and thought until her mind almost overloaded from the sheer weight of all the possible escape routes that her mind thought about.  All implausible.  

One idea in particular was to make a run for it.  The idea was immediately tossed inside the bin because she had already proven that it wouldn’t work.  

Pacing around the room, Applejack began getting frustrated.  The hours of planning to get out of there was getting her nowhere.  Hours wasted to come to the conclusion that everything she did wasn't going to work.  

All this thinkin' ain't gettin' me nowhere.

Frustrated, Applejack threw herself onto her bed.  Eyes closed and her body in an uncomfortable sleeping position.  The blanket seemed to reject her body and her pillow didn't wear her head correctly.  Thoughts she had were jettisoned out of her head, ricocheting off the walls and making the loudest nonexistent noise she had ever heard in her life.  

Applejack yelled and threw the pillow and blanket off of her. 

Ah gotta get outta here!  But how?

The question wasn't answered then, and it wasn't about to be answered anytime soon.  

If only she was a unicorn.  She'd use her powers to get her out of there with a stomp of a hoof.

It slapped her across the face.

That bastard is a unicorn.  

Applejack burst out of the room.  The door slammed against the wall, issuing a loud bang that erupted throughout the entire house.  

"Arkane!" she shouted.  

She didn't hear anything.  

"Ah am not repeatin' mahself!  Ya hear?"

He still didn't answer.  

Where is he?

She checked around the living room.  Empty couches and cobwebs occupied the room.  

"Get yer-"

She was interrupted by a loud crashing sound coming from the basement.  

As quickly as she could, she raced down the stairs.  The same door that she thought would let her escape was placed in such a way that made it look like it was trying to seduce her into leaving the house again.  If she was going to go outside again, it would be somewhere in the Apple Orchards.  There, she could stare up into the sky she was used to.  

The basement was empty.  There was not a single pony down there.  There was a bar counter, a dusty, black couch, a smoke stained window that allowed no light inside, and some broken glass littered on the floor, and support beams holding up the ceiling.  This was the darkest place in the entire house. But it wasn't complete darkness.  The light from the upstairs shone through clearly enough for her to see.  

Applejack quickly found the source of the crash.  On the counter, there was brown glass freshly shattered by something that could be heard, but not seen.  There were faint scratches coming from that general direction.  Applejack thought it was the same animal she saw when she first woke up.  

The scratches moved from the counter to the ceiling directly above her in no fewer than a few seconds.  She jumped when she heard them, and quickly scurried forward to hopefully avoid it.  The scratches migrated to her left.  It was a hallway similar to the one upstairs.  

Lying directly in front of the door at the end of the hallway was that same, squirrel like creature that she saw when she first woke up.  It pawed and scratched on the door, hoping for something to open it up for it.  It turned around and stared at Applejack.  It touched the door and scurried off into a nearby room.

Does it want me to open up that door?  

That thing clearly led her to the basement.  It wasn't just messing with the house just to mess it.  The thing knows more than it wants her to think.

Applejack walked to the door, but not before checking the other rooms for Arkane. 

The first door she came across was a small, stone room with no window.  There bits of broken wood stuck in there for a fireplace she has yet to see.  The next room had a window that was also stained by fire.  The room seemed like it was used as a bathroom.  The next room was the one that the squirrel wandered into.  It was empty except for a chair in the dead center of the room.  It faced the wall, so she couldn't see if there was something sitting in it.  She didn't need that question answered.

Before Applejack could open the door, there was something inside of her head telling her to walk away.  Shaking the thought out of her head, Applejack pushed open the door.

"You need something?"

Applejack jumped.  Turning around, she saw Arkane approach her with a slight disorientation in his steps.  She shut the door, not seeing what was in there.  

"Use yer magic to get me outta here," Applejack commanded.

Arkane blinked repeatedly.  His head nodded off a few times, yawning as he struggled to keep his head straight.  "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

Applejack growled.  "Yer a unicorn.  Can't you teleport us outta this place?"

"...Do you really think I would still be here if that worked?"

"Maybe yer just not trying hard enough.  C'mon, give yer horn a jumpstart and let's try to—"

"You don't know how a unicorn horn works, do you?"

Applejack stopped herself.  

"My horn is broken.  Two years ago, I was running out of a cave, and I wasn't looking where I was going."

"What does that have tuh do wi—"

"Broken horn mean I can't magic good no more.  Do I need to simplify my explanation more?"

"Don't treat me like a foal!"

"Then don't act like one.  If I wanted to, I would have gotten myself out of here as soon as I could.  I wouldn't be standing here and having this conversation at all.  You'd be all alone, nobody but you and your thoughts.  If there's some way out of here, then it's not going to be through me.  You understand?"

Defeated, Applejack's gaze fell to the ground.  

"Look... You're going to have to get used to being here for a while.  Escape isn't coming soon."

Arkane sighed.  He turned around, leaving Applejack to her own thoughts and the sound of her brain swirling around.  

Back to the drawing board