//------------------------------//
// Into the Labyrinth 
// Story: Stumble In My Footsteps 
// by alarajrogers 
//------------------------------//

They approached the labyrinth as a group. If the sun had been brightly shining, the hedge maze might have seemed friendly and inviting, but with the pink clouds dimming the sun, even Choco had to admit the entranceway to the maze was forboding. Fluttershy backed up and crouched. "W-We have to go in there?"

"I thought you were in there, at the Gala," Choco said. It had only been a few weeks ago. He had really wanted to accompany her, when she'd told him she was going to the gardens to befriend the animals, but he had also really wanted to try to sell chocolates to the nobility. Ambition had won out over friendship, a choice he regretted now, mostly because it hadn't worked. The nobles and fancy upper-class ponies of Canterlot had been happy to take his chocolate confections, until he'd overheard them insulting Applejack for her humble farmer origins, and perhaps he might have had a few sharp words to say about that, and maybe he'd said them just a little bit too loudly, and certainly throwing an entire dish of fondue at an Equestrian Prince for insulting one of his friends and treating another badly had probably been a really bad idea, so all in all it would most likely have been better if he'd accompanied Fluttershy. Though dammit, she was amazingly cute when she was disheveled, covered with twigs and shrieking. 

"N-no, I didn't go into the labyrinth," Fluttershy stammered. "It looks so dark, and scary..."

"Not a problem!" Rainbow Dash said confidently, with a flap of her wings. "Eris the dummy forgot about these babies! I'll just do a quick flyover and we'll have the Elements in no time." At this point, her wings vanished, and she fell, scrabbling at the air. "My wings!"

In flashes of light, Fluttershy's wings, and Twilight and Rarity's horns, all vanished. Fluttershy shrieked. Twilight and Rarity stared at each other in horror. "Your horn! My horn!" they said in unison, and then screamed. Choco's attention was caught by something else, though.

"Did – did any of you notice if this giant cake was here before we arrived?" he asked.

And then the cake exploded. Choco fell back with a small shriek of his own, as fireworks and confetti blasted out of the cake, along with a long, snaky creature that was very, very pink. "SURPRISE!" she yelled.

As they all shrank back in horror, Eris started laughing hysterically. "You should see the looks on your faces! Wow, did I ever get you good or what?"

"Give us our wings and horns back!" Twilight shouted.

Eris pouted. "But earth ponies are awesome. Aren't earth ponies awesome, Applejack?"

"Uh... yeah, but—"

"But nothing! Are you all ashamed of being earth ponies now? You think you're too good to be earth ponies?"

"I think," Applejack said, "that ponies oughta be what they're born to be. Ain't no shame in being an earth pony – we're awesome, just like you said. But so are unicorns and pegasi. Every pony's the best pony, so long as they're true to themselves. You take away their wings and horns, then they can't be."

"Welllll, I'm gonna give them back, eventually. I just took 'em to make sure nopony cheats! You see, first rule of the game is: no wings, no horns and no magic."

"The first rule?" Rainbow Dash said.

"Second rule is, everypony has to play or the game is over, and I win!" Eris giggled. 

"But now wait a minute," Choco said. "You have wings, horns and magic, so doesn't that mean you automatically forfeit, if the rule is that using wings, horns or magic causes a forfeit to the other team?"

Eris put her paw to her chin. "Good thinking! I can't really take away my own magic, though. I mean, if I could, then how could I give everyone back theirs? See, that's the thing you never think of, Choco! Once you give up your magic, you can't use your magic to get it back!"

"The thing I never think of? When has this even come up?"

"You could agree to not use magic," Twilight said. "And take off your wings, at least."

"Yeah, I could take off my wings and horns!" She snapped, and the accoutrements were suddenly missing from her body. "But if I was gonna play like I was on the pony side, and I couldn't use my magic... well, then I'd guess I'd have to do what you ponies do. You're using just your hooves? I'd have to use just my paws." She extended the claws on her lion paw and began ostentatiously filing them.

"Th-that's all right!" Fluttershy interjected. "You can keep your wings! You don't have to u-use your paws!"

"Fluttershy, what gives?" Rainbow demanded. 

"Isn't it obvious?" Choco said. "Eris is bigger than any of us, and has the body of a predator. Perhaps you're in the mood to fight a dragon griffin hoof-to-hoof, but obviously Fluttershy thinks it's a bad idea, and given that she's the animal expert..."

"She's also the expert on being a scaredy pony," Rainbow scoffed.

"Guys. No fighting. This is the Spirit of Discord we're up against. That means conflict, disharmony, strife. We have to stick together or we play into her hooves – I mean, paws," Twilight said.

"I am right here," Eris pointed out.

"Oh, well, far be it for us to be rude to the ruffian who stole the Elements, and our horns and wings, and did her best to utterly ruin my coiffure by pouring chocolate all over it," Rarity said sarcastically.

"Hmph. Well, if you're going to be rude, I don't need to stand around here listening to it," Eris said. "Good luck, everypony, and have fun!" She bounced, springing improbably high into the air, and vanished in a flash of light.

Choco's friends all looked at each other with varying degrees of alarm – except for Fluttershy, who was so terrified she was crouched on the ground with her hooves over her eyes. Choco knelt down beside her. "Hey," he said softly. "We beat Nightmare Moon. We even beat that dragon you were so scared of – in fact, you did that. We can beat this too."

"That's right, everypony," Twilight said. "Never fear. We have each other!"

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash added. "Like Twilight said, there's nothing we can't overcome if we all stick together!"

"She won't let us," Choco murmured under his breath. He didn't want to say it out loud, because he didn't want to frighten Fluttershy any further, but some instinct was telling him that Eris was going to try to separate them. Ponies working together were harmony, and she was disharmony. The others, however, found Twilight and Rainbow's words encouraging, and it brightened them up. 

Choco stayed close to Fluttershy as they all approached the opening of the maze. "All right, everypony," Twilight said, "let's do this!"

"Together!" they all shouted in response, each putting one hoof down. Choco desperately wished he could put a leg around Fluttershy and still be able to walk. But he couldn't, and they'd laugh at him if he seemed too clingy, and maybe they might even guess his feelings. If we get separated, I'll come and find you, Fluttershy, he thought, putting his hoof down with the rest.

And then hedges sprang up between each of them, separating each pony to their own little corridor. Despite the fact that Choco had expected something like this to happen, it still startled him, and he cried out in shock the same as the others did.

"Stay calm, everypony!" Twilight shouted from behind her hedge. "All of us, head to the middle as fast as you can, and we'll regroup there!"

"Moving out!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

"See you in the center," Rarity called.

Applejack just cheered. "Yee-haw!"

Fluttershy whimpered, gasping. "What's that? Who's there?"

"Fluttershy, hang on, I'm going to try to find you," Choco said. "Don't panic, okay? Just stay where you are!"

"O-okay," Fluttershy called through the hedge. "But... but maybe I should try to get to the center like the others are, and we can meet up there?"

"Uh... yes, that would probably be better, if you're up to it."

He heard her take a deep breath. "I can manage."

"Okay then, see you there!" He started forward, resolutely. He was good at mazes. He ought to be able to solve this quickly and then find Fluttershy. And the rest of them, but they could take care of themselves. 




Applejack raced through the maze, heading for the center, when a branch she had just gone past caught her eye. She turned and came back to it. Yes, there were three Red Delicious sitting right there on the ground.

She barely had time to formulate the question to herself as to what three random Red Delicious apples were doing lying on the ground in the Canterlot hedge maze, where she knew for a fact no apple trees grew, when the apples started rolling away from her, on their own. "What in tarnation?"

There was no help for it – she had to follow them back to where they were going. She figured they had to be leading her to Eris, which was frightening, but maybe the weird pink creature would drop some more hints.

Abruptly she came to an apple grove. Which, as she'd just been thinking, did not exist in Canterlot. "Where am I?" As she looked up, one of the Red Delicious fell off a tree and hit her on the head.  

All the apples started falling off the trees. There was no rhyme or reason to what grew on what tree; Red Delicious and Gala and Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples (oh, Granny Smith, and Mac and Apple Bloom too, hang in there; we're gonna put a stop to all this weirdness, don't you fret) all on the same tree, or trees in this case, mixed together higgledy-piggledy, and now they were all falling down with nopony bucking the trees. Apples rolled toward her, and the sound of eerie laughter echoed through the grove. The apples rolled around her in a circle, forcing her to spin to keep track of them, and formed up into piles by variety – Red Delicious, Gala, and the Granny Smith pile had the few Golden Delicious in it as well. Or did it? She couldn't see them anymore. They morphed into faces, and now it was clear that the laughter was coming from them.

"Who are y'all?" she asked.

The pile of Red Delicious apples spoke, flattening and thinning eerily as it did so. "The keepers of the grove of truth," it said. "You may ask us..."

The Gala apples spoke. "...one question..."

And now the Granny Smiths, with a voice wholly unlike her Granny Smith. "...past, future or present."

"But be warned..." the Red Delicious said.

"...that the truth..." said the Galas.

"...may not always be pleasant," the Granny Smiths spoke.

She couldn't follow them all with her eyes. She was getting dizzy spinning around trying to keep track of which one was talking. "All right then. I don't trust this place worth a hill of beans, but I've got a really bad feelin' about this gal Eris. What's gonna come of this mission we're on?"

The apple piles slithered toward the pond in the center of the grove. Applejack followed. 

"For the answer you seek..." the Red Delicious said.

The Galas said, "...go ahead, take a peek."

That was annoying as all get-out. Why couldn't just one of them finish a sentence at a time? She peered into the water.

She saw herself and her friends, against the backdrop of a crazy, chaotic version of Ponyville where houses she recognized spun upside down or sat on floating chunks of earth. The Rainbow Dash in the pond snapped, "I hope I never see you again!" Fluttershy, Rarity and Choco all chimed in with angry agreement, and Twilight said, "It's settled then."

Applejack reeled. "No! Our friendship? Over?!"

The apple piles bobbed up and down, as if they were on strings. Applejack held her hat to her chest. "It can't be true. It just can't!" How could a friendship as strong as the six of them had be destroyed so easily by one creature? She remembered the whole gang of them staging an intervention when she was well on the road to working herself to death, remembered Choco throwing a bowl of his chocolate fondue at that stuck-up prince who'd sneered at her food – which hadn't helped her sell apples any, but she'd appreciated the sentiment – remembered how they'd faced that dragon together... remembered Nightmare Moon. How could experiences like that be thrown away so easily? "That just can't be the truth."

"When all the truth does..." the Galas whispered to her.

The Granny Smiths chimed in. "...is make your heart ache, sometimes a lie is easier to take." And they laughed.

Dizzy and bewildered, Applejack struggled. The truth is ugly. It's going to end our friendship. If I'm honest, then I lose my friends. If I'm not honest, then I lose myself.

And then there was a sympathetic pink face in front of her. "'Course you could always try the third option," Eris said, and her voice was strangely warm and comforting. Soothing, authoritative. She could trust this voice in the chaos of her roiling emotions. "After all, Granny Smith always taught you, if you can't say something nice, you can always not say anything at all."

Yes! Applejack rejoiced. Yes, I can not say anything at all! If she was silent then she wouldn't tell lies to betray herself and she wouldn't tell truths to betray her friendships and everything would be all right! 

From behind her, she heard Twilight's voice. "Applejack! Thank goodness! I thought I heard voices over here. Who were you talking to?"

Applejack turned to her and smiled, but said nothing.

"Applejack? Are you okay?" Twilight asked. Applejack nodded vigorously.

Twilight came closer. "You can't talk?" 

Applejack considered this, and shook her head. She could talk, it was just a terrible idea that would destroy their friendship. 

"Then... why won't you answer me?"

Applejack made a head-tossing motion, trying to convey that that wasn't important. The important thing was finding their friends. Because now that Applejack was silent, the truths that would tear their friendship apart would never be spoken, and they were all safe.




Panting at the exertion, Rarity came up a hill. "I was expecting an audience with the Princess, not outdoor sports." She tossed her head, eyes closed, to demonstrate her disdain – and walked forehead first into something very hard. She shrieked with a combination of pain and shock – mostly the shock though. But when she opened her eyes and saw what she had hit, she gasped for an entirely different reason. "Oh my..."

The rock that stood before her had three diamonds set into it, perfectly shaped and resembling her cutie mark. Obviously they were intended for her – why else would they look like her cutie mark? They glittered as no gems she'd seen in the past ever had, and she felt an overwhelming need, a wild possessiveness. They were hers. They had to be hers.

She heard a high-pitched giggling, and a pink face swam into view on the surface of the diamonds. "Lucky you, Rarity! What a find! How do you like these, huh? Are they nice? I bet you want 'em..."

"Yes..." Rarity whispered, feeling as if she was in a trance. Like she was dreaming, but she never wanted to wake up. "I do want... very much..." Abruptly she remembered what she was supposed to be doing. "No! No, I shan't succumb to such fabulousness." Her body seemed so heavy as she pulled it away.  "Must... get to the center..." (why?) "to meet... the others..." (but why, if I can have this instead? If they were true friends, would they really want me to leave such a lovely find behind?) Her control snapped, and she lunged at the stone. "Mine!" she howled, and began battering at the stone with forehooves, then hind hooves. No finesse, she had no horn. No hope of staying clean with all the dust. But those diamonds were worth it. They were worth anything. And oh, oh, could it possibly be? They extended back farther than they seemed. Larger and larger and... was this entire chunk of rock merely a thin veneer of mountain stone over a gigantic, gorgeous diamond? And perfectly cut, too! No diamond in the rough could ever be so beautiful!

After great effort, she had finally exposed her prize. "Well, Rarity. It took forever, but it was worth it," she said to herself. "Who knew three little gemstones would turn out to be this handsome hunk of a diamond?" She rubbed herself on the diamond, seductively. It was soo beautiful. Just touching it sent shocks through her flesh, and feelings she'd only ever before had for handsome stallions. "Now to get you home." It was so ironic that the beautiful diamond that made her knees weak with desire needed all her strength to carry it! But she wouldn't fail. Her diamond was hers!

No sooner had she gotten it properly mounted on her back than the wall next to where she'd been bashing out the diamond crumbled, and Twilight was standing there with Applejack. "Rarity!" Twilight said. "Are we glad to see... Why are you carrying a humongous boulder?"

Rarity's hackles had been raised the moment she saw her so-called friends. So they wanted her diamond, did they? Well, they could just turn green of jealousy, then, because she wasn't sharing. "What do you mean, 'boulder?' This big beautiful bedazzling rock is a diamond!" And to think she'd thought Twilight was intelligent. "And it's all mine. Keep your envious little eyes off it! I found it and it's mine fair and square!" Grunting in a very unladylike way, she staggered forward with her burden, every so often checking behind her to make sure neither of the other mares were trying to steal her diamond from her.

"I don't want your diamond, Rarity," Twilight said. "But I'm worried! Applejack can't talk, or won't, and here you are, carrying this huge rock, which you think is a diamond—"

"It is a diamond! Really, Twilight, if you can't see the glorious beauty of this fabulous, huge gem, I cannot imagine what is wrong with you."

"That's not the point! We're supposed to be finding the Elements, so we can stop Eris!"

"Oh, and I'll bet you expect me to put down my lovely diamond so I can help you, is that it? I was not born yesterday!" She sniffed, which was hard to do when she could barely stand upright under the load. "I know you just want to take it for yourself. But you can't. It's mine, mine, all mine!"

"This has to be Eris' doing," she heard Twilight mumble. "It just has to be. Somehow. But what kind of magic could even cause this?"

As if magic was involved here. "I pity you, Twilight. You can't see perfection when it's staring you in the face," Rarity said coldly. "Go, construct all the little fantasies you want. Just keep your hooves off my gem!"

"I will, I will. I don't even want it."

"And what about you, Applejack? Are you going to try to steal my diamond?" Applejack shook her head. "Good. I'm glad we're all clear on this!"




Fluttershy hid in the hedge, teeth chattering, trying to nerve herself up to leave. She jumped out. "Okay, I can do this. I can..." Something brushed past her face. She shrieked, and dove back into the hedge again, before it sank in what that had been. "Oh, wait a minute... Butterflies?" So beautiful! They looked just like her cutie mark! "Wait! Don't leave me here!" She raced after them as they fluttered off.

And came into a clearing, where there was a statue. A mare, her face carved in an expression of shock. After a moment, Fluttershy realized it was a statue of herself. 

"Eeee!" Fluttershy backed away, tripping over her own tail as she did so. 

One of the butterflies spoke in a high-pitched feminine voice. "Remember the time the cockatrice turned you to stone, Fluttershy?"

"Remember how it felt?" another butterfly asked.

They were animals. Her cutie mark. For some reason this allowed Fluttershy to calm the racing of her heart. "I do, yes. It wasn't very nice. But Twilight said, once she'd been turned all the way she didn't even feel it – she was unconscious until the cockatrice reversed itself." She knew butterflies didn't really speak Equestrian, and certainly not so clearly. In fact she generally got very little communication from butterflies; they were peaceful creatures who loved to flutter in the fresh air and collect the sweet-smelling pollen and take mates in their brief dances of love, but they didn't have a lot of brains. These weren't really butterflies. This was Eris communicating with her. Had to be. 

"But what if she wasn't?"

"What if she'd been trapped in the cold, dark, lonely stone? With no friends? No one to talk to her? No one to love her?"

"What if that had happened to you?"

Now she knew it was Eris. Fluttershy straightened up. "It would have been awful," she said, knowing who she was really speaking to. In the palace, she'd looked at the picture of Eris and felt an overwhelming wave of rage and malice and grief and desire for vengeance, and it had terrified her. Stained glass windows couldn't have emotions like animals could and ponies could; what was she feeling? When Eris had appeared at the start of the maze, Fluttershy had sensed from her mockery, amusement, but still, some of the anger, some of the malice. But the butterflies weren't angry. The butterflies were just sad. So, so sad. "My friend Choco has nightmares about that."

"He would, wouldn't he?"

The pink draconequus appeared, sitting on the edge of a stone fountain in the clearing. "But he's sooo eager to inflict his personal nightmare on someone else, isn't he?"

"I don't think any of us are eager to do that," Fluttershy said. "I don't think anypony wants to turn you to stone."

Eris looked directly at her. Her eyes were golden, but her pupils were blue, blue as a cloudless sky, blue as a serene lake. "But that's what the Elements will do to me. If you find them all."

Fluttershy shook her head. "I'm sure they don't have to. They purified Princess Luna. Maybe they can help you, too!" She reached out a hoof. "If you paid attention to ponies' feelings, if you didn't cause chaos that terrifies them and makes it hard for them to live, you could make friends. I know it must have been very lonely for you in stone; wouldn't you like to have friends?"

Eris laughed bitterly. "You'd think it would work like that, wouldn't you? But it doesn't. Ponies won't be friends with me because I have to make chaos, and because they think I look weird! Even when I tried, it didn't work, Fluttershy. Nopony would be my friend."

"I could, if you wanted me to be," Fluttershy said, heart pounding. Was it possible to tame this creature with the power of friendship, without resorting to the Elements? She was right, stone for a thousand years, or more, would be a horrible, horrible fate for anypony, especially if they had to be awake and aware during it.

"I know you could," Eris said, smiling at her, and then shook her head. "But that's not how this movie goes, not yet anyway, and I'm looking for a deeper rewrite than that."

"I don't understand."

"I can't hurt you, Fluttershy," Eris said. "You're so cute and sweet and kind and ugh! I just want to eat you all up! Except not really eat because I don't eat ponies, that'd be gross." Her head snaked forward, looking up at Fluttershy's with a pleading expression. "But can you hurt me? Can you turn me to stone, for an umpteen zillion years, in the cold and the dark and I can't see anything and I can't feel anything and I can't talk and there's nothing, nothing at all but hearing pony voices and they think I'm a statue so they never even talk to me, plus birds pooping on my head! Can you really do that with the power of Kindness?"

Fluttershy felt confused and dizzy, the world swirling around her as the contradiction sank in. What the Elements had done to Eris had been cruel beyond measure. Maybe they didn't know better, then. Maybe they hadn't known she would be awake in the stone. But now that Fluttershy knew... how could Kindness condemn anyone to such a fate? Just for being socially inappropriate and making it rain chocolate? She was pretty sure Choco would make it rain chocolate if he could, and he was her dear friend, possibly even her best friend, certainly one of her best two with Rainbow Dash. 

"Can Kindness be so cruel?" Eris asked.

There was only one answer to that. "No," Fluttershy whispered, as if in a daze. The world seemed very far away.

"If they find the Elements they will use them. They'll make you use yours."

"I won't... I won't let them."

"Will you stop them? Will you prevent them from using the Elements on me?" Eris asked plaintively.

"Yes," Fluttershy said, feeling as if she were floating, although she wasn't because she didn't have wings and nopony was using magic on her. But her head seemed very far away from her hooves. "Yes, I'll stop them."

"Thank you, Fluttershy," Eris said, and hugged her. "In more than a thousand years you're the only one who hasn't been super mean to me, and I knew you wouldn't be but that doesn't change anything. Thank you for being you. I'm... I'm sorry, for what's got to happen, but I promise you, no matter how much chaos there is, I won't let you get hurt."

"You're my friend," Fluttershy said, slowly, almost mechanically, tasting the concept. "I won't let my other friends hurt you."

"Right! Because that's what friends do." Eris uncoiled herself, standing up. "Well, I really enjoyed this little blast from the past, but you know how it is! Gotta go! Chaos to make, ponies to upset, la la la!" She vanished.

A hedge fell down behind her, and she heard Twilight's voice. "Fluttershy! I'm so glad to see a friendly face. This awful labyrinth is getting to everypony."

Fluttershy turned around. Rarity had a giant boulder on her back, and was straining heavily under the weight. Applejack said nothing. There was no Choco or Rainbow. "I agree," Fluttershy said. "Let's all just leave right away."

"We can't do that! We have to find the Elements!"

"We probably don't even need the Elements," Fluttershy said. "We can probably just talk to Eris and I'm sure she'll stop."

Twilight blinked. "No offense, Fluttershy, but are you crazy? What about that mixed-up bag of chaos makes you think she'll stop doing anything? The Princess said we'd have to use the Elements of Harmony to stop her, and so that's what we're going to have to do!"

"Well, they're probably not even here," Fluttershy said. "Maybe she really did eat them."

"Who would ever eat... such beautiful... gems?" Rarity panted. "Aside from a dragon, of course."

"She is a dracon-equus. That means dragon pony," Fluttershy said. "What if she did eat them?"

"She didn't eat them, Fluttershy," Twilight sighed. "Let's just go find the rest of our friends."

Fluttershy walked away, mind racing. She did want to find her friends, but she couldn't let them find the Elements! Maybe once they were all together, she would run out of the maze and trigger the forfeit. Then they would never find the Elements and her good friend would be safe and she would never have to do anything cruel to anypony!

Behind her, she heard Rarity say, "A little help here!" She glanced behind her and saw Twilight help Rarity shoulder her burden. "Thanks, Twilight," Rarity said.

Twilight smiled. "You're welcome–"

"But don't get any ideas about my gem!" Rarity snapped. "I know where you live."

That was good... the two of them would be slowed down by the big boulder, so it would be harder to find the Elements. Fluttershy whistled a cheerful tune. Maybe she would trip them once or twice to slow them down, when she was sure it would be safe for them and they'd just fall on grass and not down a hill or something. All she had to do to save everypony was never let them find the Elements.