The Fading World

by Neon Czolgosz

Genesis

Rainbow Dash didn’t like the farmhouse. She didn’t like the smell of antiseptic, manure, and cheap incense, didn’t like the cramped rooms and cluttered courtyards, didn’t like the confinement and the stink of strange magic, couldn’t stand ‘Granny’ Smith Apple, and could do without the terrified looks she got from the local workers—being a Cloudsdale native carried a certain reputation these days.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Macintosh was a good training partner, Fluttershy was loveable as long as you didn’t hurt her little friends, Applejack was almost as awesome as she was, and she couldn’t get enough of these baked apples that Apple Bloom made. She ate one as she walked through the house, looking for Applejack.

She stopped chewing. She saw somepony who should not be there.

“Hey,” she called out, and “Hey!” she called out louder as a mare with a mint-green coat and a dark green mane slipped into the laundry room.

Rainbow Dash followed the mare inside. The mare pretended to have just noticed her presence.

“Who are you?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Oh! Hello ma’am, I’m the new maid—”

“No you’re not.”

The mare’s eyes widened, and she stammered, “It’s m-my first day here—”

“Do you think I’m stupid? The farmhouse has two maids, an arc— an archiev— a librarian guy, and a page. There’s like, twenty guards here, and they’re one special unit from the Ponyville barracks. I know their names, I could tell you what they ate for dinner last night, and I know there hasn’t been a new maid in five years.”

The mare laughed nervously. “L-look, I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am, they sent me here from the work line yesterday. I need to go, I told Miss Applejack I’d be back with her laundry and—”

The mare tried to walk around Rainbow Dash. The pegasus moved imperceptibly, and the mare fell as if she had slipped on ice. Rainbow Dash quickly mounted the mare and pressed a hoofblade to her neck.

“Are you a spy?” growled Rainbow Dash. “If you’re a spy, you better resist. You better fight back and struggle so I can paint the floor with your neck, you know why? ‘Cause if you don’t resist I’ll have to hoof you over to Applejack. She’ll do things to you that’ll give me nightmares.”

The mare froze, and then burst into tears. “Please don’t kill me!”

“What’s your name, huh?”

“S-sour Apple—gllrk!”

Rainbow Dash pushed the flat of the blade against the mare’s throat until she gagged from the pressure. “There hasn’t been a Sour Apple in the Apple family for a hundred years.”

“I swear, I was sent here from the work line in Ponyville, they’ll have all my records! The guards took my work pass when I came in or I could prove it right here, you have to believe me.”

Rainbow Dash’s expression flickered for a moment, and then hardened. “You only get work passes for jobs inside the town. Out here, they send you with an escort. You’re in big trouble, pal.”

A strange look came over the mare’s face. Her hind legs shifted, rubbing gently against Rainbow Dash’s flank. “We can work something out. I’ll find a way to pay, with my body...”

Rainbow Dash’s face twisted with anger, and then the pony beneath her twisted and shifted and changed until there was a very different looking pony in her place. An athletic pegasus mare with a yellow coat and an orange mane and eyes like bonfires.

“Was ‘Sour Apple’ too plain for your tastes?” asked the mare, in a voice Rainbow Dash had only heard in radio interviews. “Maybe somepony famous, somepony real hot would work better.”

“What the—”

The mare shifted again and now there was no mare at all but instead a griffoness, trailing her tail over Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark. “Heck, I’m going about this all the wrong way. Your tastes are obviously more exotic...”

Before Rainbow Dash could say a word, the griffoness melted away to leave an earth pony with toned flanks and powerful legs in her place. “...Or maybe you want something closer to home.”

“That’s enough of that,” came a familiar drawl. “Get up, you two.”

Rainbow Dash turned her head, and saw Applejack standing behind them with half a smile on her face. When she looked back, the mare was ‘Sour Apple’ again. What’s more, she was no longer underneath her. She was sat across the room on a pile of laundry, fiddling with Rainbow’s hoofblade.

Rainbow Dash looked between the two ponies, her eyes wide. “Wait, is that—”

“Yup, that’s Assassin,” said Applejack. “I summoned her last night. The ritual works better if you do it in secret.”

“Pleased to meet you, Rainbow Dash,” said Assassin, smirking. “Applejack, your friends and family are all so very delicious. It almost makes up for being summoned by such a royal stick-in-the-mud.”

“Shush, you. Follow me, the both of you. We’ve got work to do.”

Applejack led the way through the house and into a small courtyard, ten yards long and eight yards across. A plot of soil, boxed in with wooden planks, took up most of the space. A brazier burned in one corner of the courtyard. A butter-yellow pegasus with a soft, pink mane sat in another, petting a duck. She was Fluttershy, a long-time friend of the Apple family and a longer-time friend of Rainbow Dash.

Applejack picked up a dirty knapsack from next to the brazier and began to unpack it.

“Assassin, are the things I got you for making drones gonna do the job?”

Assassin snorted. “Oh, they’ll work, but it’s still a stupid way to accomplish your task. Fast gestation inside a pony will make stronger drones that don’t need to suckle at our mana to survive.”

“Too dangerous.”

“You run a settlement, Master, surely there are some criminals that nopony would miss?”

“I can’t go crossing that line willy-nilly.”

Assassin groaned. “A mere day after you enter a fight for your life and you’re already hamstringing both of us out of a warped sense of mercy. I would laugh if it weren’t so sickening.”

“I didn’t say I ain’t willing to cross that line, I said I can’t. I’ll explain the difference iffin’ I think it’ll get through yer thick skull. Now, if you’ll kindly start the ritual...”

Assassin grumbled for a moment before nodding to Applejack, who nodded to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, who both nodded back at her. From here, the ritual would be conducted in silence.

Assassin took a pot from the knapsack, filled with tree sap. She opened her mouth and something decidedly non-equine protruded, pulsing and wriggling, before squeezing three droplets out into the pot. She sealed the lid and shook. When she finished, she dropped the pot on the paving at the edge of the courtyard. It shattered, revealing three clear, amber balls that resembled giant frogspawn. These were her ‘cocoons.’

As she did that, Applejack walked into the plot of earth with a trowel in her mouth. She dug three furrows all radiating from a central point, each a yard long, an inch wide and an inch deep. She collected the three cocoons, and planted each of them at the end of the furrows.

She then picked up a watering can, filled at the crack of dawn with four parts riverwater, one part womb-waters from a calving cow, one part egg whites, a teaspoon of her own blood, and a dash of hot sauce. She watered each of the cocoons until the soil was soaked, and then stepped away.

Fluttershy walked onto the soil, cradling the duck under a wing. Rainbow Dash winced. Fluttershy had told her enough about the romantic habits of male mallard ducks that she didn’t feel sorry for the creature, but that wouldn’t make the next part any more pleasant.

The drake was led to the central point of the three furrows, and never saw the sickle that killed him. Fluttershy lopped off his head with an easy stroke and held the body in two hooves above the center point, twitching as blood poured down into the furrows. She pumped and squeezed, pulping the organs inside the body and forcing every available drop of blood and gore out to feed the earth. By the time she was done, tiny flecks of blood had already dried on her face, and the furrows were half-filled. She stepped away, leaving the mallard where it lay.

Applejack bore a bottle of moonshine and gently topped up the furrows with its clear spirit. She took a quarterstaff hewn of applewood with a three-pronged iron claw at one end. She pushed the claw into the brazier, and withdrew a white-hot stone.

She cried, “Hwæt, eorðe byrðre!” and thrust the staff stone-first into the center point of the furrows. The blood and spirits ignited in black fire, and dark flames ran up along the gnarled staff until Applejack forced them back down through sheer strength of will.

There was a rumble. The soil along the furrows crusted over and the flames perished. The three cocoons swelled under the surface, pushing up the soil before breaching like young mushrooms. They grew to the size of softballs, and then to the size of basketballs, and then to the size of a well-fed foal, and larger still.

Each cocoon split as suddenly as it had grown. Some strange and insectoid limbs protruded limply, struggling to claw their way out. Assassin rushed over and began to fuss over the cocoons, peeling each one back in turn until three more beings stood before them on shaky legs.

They looked like a pony if ponies had never existed and the very concept of ‘pony’ was dreamed up by a perverted arachnid. Dark blue chitin took the place of a coat, mandibles replaced jaws, and dragonfly wings replaced feathers. They all chittered weakly, and looked up at Assassin.

“Mother...” they said as one.

“Ah, come to me, my children.” She glanced up sharply at Applejack. “May I take them for feeding? They will be quite the drain on our magic if they are only provided your weak gruel for sustenance, if they survive at all. They need emotion.”

“You go do that,” said Applejack, already packing away the ritual equipment. “In fact, go and carry out your orders.”

Assassin’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”

“The fun ones.”

Assassin’s expression changed immediately to a darkly delighted one. “With pleasure,” she purred. With that she took her leave, and scurried out of the courtyard with her three charges.

Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy all got to work packing the equipment away, turning over the soil, and disposing of the waste. They talked softly as they worked, and they worked quickly. Still, the cleanup seemed to take several times as long as the ritual itself, and by the time Fluttershy had disappeared to wash up and Applejack had led her into the sitting room for a chat, Rainbow Dash really felt like a drink. Applejack was happy to provide one.

Sipping at her cider, Rainbow Dash said, “Couldn’t you have got a normal Servant or something?”

Comments

[Brony_Fife]

GENESIS IS CHAPTER FORBIDDEN!

I find it fascinating the Element of Honesty is in league with Changelings... you know, creatures all about deceit and subterfuge.

And Rainbow Dash is here. Shit just got 20% cooler.

[ZealousChristian24]

being a Cloudsdale native carried a certain reputation these days.

Let me guess; have they gone all Pegasopolis on everypony?

“Yup, that’s Assassin,” said Applejack. “I summoned her last night. The ritual works better if you do it in secret.”

Servant Confirmed! Class: Assassin. Name: "Sour Apple"(Possibly Chrysalis?).

Hwæt, eorðe byrðre

Sadly, I lack a means to translate this(old english?), and my Google-Fu is weak. What exactly does this mean?

Sipping at her cider, Rainbow Dash said, “Couldn’t you have got a normal Servant or something?”

Sorry RD. As far as my research shows, Assassin has always been an odd Servant.

Alright, we have 5 confirmed Masters(Polaris, Sunset, Applejack, Twilight, and Trixie), and one confirmed Servant("Sour Apple"). I figure Gilda will be one of the Masters; not sure about lucky number 7. Awesome as always, and can't wait for more!

[Neon Czolgosz]

5464321

Aye, she may not be the element bearer this time round, but she's still Applejack and she has... similar compulsions to AJ!Prime. Ones that are linked to her 'magic'. There's a reason she said she couldn't use criminals for a dangerous ritual, not didn't want to.

5464397

Don't worry, the story will have a suitably bittersweet ending I promise :P

5464581

Let me guess; have they gone all Pegasopolis on everypony?

Not quite. It'll get covered more when we look at Fluttershy in detail, but suffice to say there's a reason RD and Flutters live in Ponyville in this timeline.

Sadly, I lack a means to translate this(old english?), and my Google-Fu is weak. What exactly does this mean?

Word for word, it's 'What, earth mother!' but highly grammatically and syntactically dubious.

[ZealousChristian24]

5465801 Ah, thank you.

[Avid Reader]

Commence read.

filled at the crack of dawn with four parts riverwater, one part womb-waters from a calving cow, one part egg whites, a teaspoon of her own blood, and a dash of hot sauce.

An interesting recipe.

Assassin being a Changeling. Makes an interesting development for the minions.

Mallard duck. Possibly a typo to a drake in the next paragraph?