Applejack at the Edge of the World

by MagicS

The Trouble of Being Applejack

Applejack looked at the page from the herbal encyclopedia Herbal Remedy had torn out and given to her once more. Doing her best to familiarize herself with the appearance of Icebane. She didn’t want to go all this way only to accidentally walk past it without recognizing it. At least thanks to the little flowers that were supposed to be on the apex of its stems it should stick out pretty well. The mountain was likely going to be mostly snow and rock, so a dash of pink should be easy to see.

She shook her head and put the page back into her bag. “There’s about a hundred ponies I can think of more suited for something like this.”

But they weren’t here and the ponies of Roc’s Nest needed her help anyways. Might’ve been an easier task to focus on if she had gotten to meet with more of them and really spend some time in the village—but the situation just didn’t really allow for that. She might’ve accidentally caught the flu that was spreading if she stayed there for too long.

And Alpine Climb might’ve caught a black eye if she actually did follow Applejack all this way.

Instead Applejack was alone as she craned her neck up and looked at the tall mountain she stood before. It had taken some time to get here after Alpine Climb had ditched her, but thankfully the trip was uneventful. No giant birds had come down to try and eat her at least. But it was late. No matter what now she wasn’t going to get back to Roc’s Nest before tomorrow morning. She had spent too much time walking and talking today and though she was a little worried about setting up her tent here considering what was supposed to live up on those peaks, there was nothing she could really do about it. All she could do was find a cave or somewhere where she’d be hidden from view from above. Then she could get back on her mission to find the Icebane before the crack of dawn tomorrow.

It just wasn’t safe to keep traveling right now. Not when she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to find a safer place to set up camp higher on the mountain.

“Good thing it still looks easier to climb than if I was trying to make it up Mt. Everhoof,” Applejack said, rubbing her chin and examining the middle point of the mountain she was standing at.

Alpine Climb had been right, there were a lot of noticeable paths up and around the mountain. Easy to climb ledges, sloping paths that had clearly been carved out long ago, even if they were cracked and worn down now. She could see rock bridges and ledges higher up, all the mountain peaks crowded close together and would make it easy for her to travel from mountain to mountain if she couldn’t find the Icebane on the first one. Though she didn’t know how easy traveling up them would actually be—not with those birds there.

She couldn’t see or hear any of them right now, they must’ve stopped for the day. But she knew they were somewhere up there. Resting. Waiting at their nests. When they inevitably saw her… Applejack wasn’t entirely sure what was going to happen.

“No use worrying about it right now, better just sleep and get a good night’s rest,” Applejack shook her head and went looking for a fitting spot to set up her tent.

She found a small nook in the side of the mountain that would do—the ground would be rough and uncomfortable but there was nothing she could do about that. Applejack quickly got to setting the tent up and threw her stuff inside. Before just going to sleep though, Applejack took out the page one last time and looked at the Icebane again. Hopefully when she found it there would be more than a single plant around. Applejack knew from the bag she had been given and what Herbal Remedy said that they wanted at least a few individual plants. Probably needed at least that much to make enough medicine for the village. After all, even if they had enough to cure all the currently sick ponies, that didn’t mean that more couldn’t get sick later too.

Applejack sighed and folded the page back up, putting it away. “I’ll find you tomorrow.”

---

There was a cold breeze in the air the next morning. Enough to cause wisps of hair from Applejack’s mane to billow about her face. Her tent was packed away and she stood in front of the first of many ledges to climb up while pre-dawn sunlight peeked over the horizon. Applejack stretched her hooves one by one and then finally cracked her neck to get all the kinks out after sleeping on the rocky ground. Good thing she was used to roughing it.

“Here I come, Icebane,” Applejack said and hopped up the first ledge, then the next, and eventually found her way to a winding path that led up the side of the mountain. All the while she also kept her eyes on the sky and her ears perked up. She knew she had caught a glimpse of one of those birds while walking to Roc’s Nest. She didn’t want to suddenly find a sky full of them.

So her pace was a bit slower than she normally would’ve been going. And she stayed pressed up against the side of the mountain to try and look as indistinguishable as possible. Even though her orange coat probably made her stick out like a sore hoof anyways. The rock that made up these mountains was all grey and blue granite and soon enough she’d be walking through snow and ice. There was no way her luck was good enough to avoid being spotted by a bird of prey that already had to have way better eyesight than hers. Applejack knew that. She was just going to have to do her best to avoid them and hope that they didn’t come out her way while she was somewhere that she couldn’t hide.

“Everything just a big ol’ problem,” Applejack muttered.

The wind got worse the higher she went as well and soon Applejack was fighting against it, lifting a hoof up to block it from blowing directly into her eyes. Snowflakes came with it and peppered her mane and coat even though there was no snow and ice actually on the ground yet. They would melt in a second at this altitude.

C-Crack!

Applejack froze and looked up the moment she heard the sound from above. The shifting and tumbling of rocks as they rolled down the side of the mountain. On a ledge high above her she saw a few pebbles falling down. Something had displaced them. She didn’t see anything else though. No other movement, no other sounds.

“Wind couldn’t have done that,” Applejack gulped.

But as she stood there, still, nothing else happened. She kept staring up at the same spot, waiting for something else to move. She didn’t want to be the one who started up again first.

Her patience wore out not before too long though and Applejack slowly started her walk back up the mountain. If something was watching her then so be it. She still needed to get the Icebane. Now she barely watched where she was walking anymore—instead she almost kept her eyes focused entirely on the sky. Those birds, if one of them was responsible for those rocks, surely knew how to sneak up on their prey without making much sound. She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the sky for more than a second. If Rainbow Dash was anything to go by then something with big and powerful wings could swoop down and grab her up in an instant.

She had to be extra careful with her hooves now though—and sometimes she couldn’t help looking away from the sky when she needed to climb up something.

Everything really was just a big problem right now.

But perhaps luck was smiling down on her just a little bit. The weather lessened up slightly the further she went, there was still wind as there always would be at this altitude, but it no longer carried snow down with it and the sun was now out high enough where she could see everything easily and even get warmed up a little depending where on the mountain she was. And now she was going through a crevice in the mountain that mostly shielded her from the sky above. Something would have to be perched right above the crevice and looking down it to see her walking through, so Applejack could take a slight breather.

She was unfortunately still a little hungry and thirsty. The past few days she practically hadn’t had anything. Even the biscuit and tea she had yesterday was now almost a full twenty-four hours in the past.

Not the hungriest she had ever been but it was making this a little more difficult than it would normally be. As soon as Applejack got out of the crevice she peeked around very carefully, checking up and down the mountain and all the nearby ones, getting a grasp of where she was. And then looking up.

Empty skies still.

Both a good sign and a bad sign. Applejack was getting the suspicion that those birds were well aware of her and were intentionally keeping out of sight. One moment there’d be nothing and the next she’d look up to see a dozen of them circling her. They were probably waiting for her to go somewhere they knew about, where there would be no place to run or hide. Applejack hoped that she found the Icebane well before she traveled anywhere like that.

Speaking of, she had hardly seen any vegetation at all. There were some other shrubs, some moss growing on the rocks, a few decrepit trees with their roots barely hanging onto the side of the mountain. But no flowers, no herbs, nothing that came close to looking like the Icebane. The higher she went up she’d probably see less and less as the snow and ice became more common. That was actually a benefit though, it would make the Icebane even more obvious.

So since she still didn’t see any signs of danger she left the crevice and started walking up the mountain once more. It was now high enough where a light dusting of snow covered the ground and some of the rocks had a thin sheen of ice on them. Applejack had to be even more careful about where she stepped and had to keep her eyes doubly peeled for the sky and for the herb that should be growing around here. If it wasn’t for how much colder it was getting she might be sweating a little. There was definitely a nervous feeling rising up in her chest. The air—the atmosphere of the whole situation was changing the higher she went and it wasn’t just because the air itself was thinning. No matter what though, she never saw anything or heard anymore rocks being disturbed. A pony with a worse sense of self-preservation and survival skills would actually think they were alone and okay up here right now.

Come on, its gotten icy now, that plant has to be around here somewhere. Applejack thought, no longer wanting to speak out loud.

She climbed higher as the mountain got thinner, already up at the highest quarter of it. There became less obvious ways of forging ahead, less places to climb up, less paths that had been traveled by other ponies before her. The mountain started to become more broken and jagged, there were ledges and outcroppings she couldn’t see above, taller rock formations that shot up almost like miniature peaks themselves.

Applejack walked slower.

Applejack walked quieter.

Applejack looked at the sky—and for a split second scanned the ground.

She repeated that and repeated that and repeated that.

While she walked by the edge of the mountain she briefly looked down to see how high up she was. That was a mistake. Applejack certainly didn’t consider herself to be afraid of heights but she didn’t exactly love being up here either. She tore her eyes away from the drop and continued walking on. When she rounded the next corner on her winding way up the mountain, she had to freeze.

She had come out onto a flat ledge, a summit close to the mountain’s peak, that was surrounded and covered in gigantic bird’s nests.

They were empty but that still didn’t make Applejack feel any better.

Applejack gulped, first checking the sky again, before she walked over to the nearest one. Carefully she put a hoof into the nest and felt the bed of twigs that made it up. Still warm…

That also was not a good sign.

She still had to find the Icebane though and the Rocs weren’t here so there was nothing to do but carry on. Applejack walked past all the nests and started walking up a ledge of rocks that led more into the center of the mountain. Snow now fell regularly around her and the rocks were slick with ice but she held on easily enough. Her heart was beating a bit harder in her chest than it had been before. She noticed that but couldn’t exactly stop it. Applejack could really almost physically feel the mounting sense of dread around her. Though she had certainly fought and overcome more dangerous things than a few big birds she didn’t like to go through any of it. Fighting for survival wasn’t her idea of a good time.

When she made it to the top of the ledge though she finally came across the spot she may have been looking for this whole time. A flat part of the mountain surrounded by large pillars of rock with a bed of snow covering it and a long dead tree in the center. That wasn’t what drew her attention though.

There were plants poking out of the snow. Just barely thanks to the fresh snowfall, but they were there all the same. Healthy and alive despite the climate, Applejack felt her heart race as she ran over to the ones she saw. As soon as she got to the nearest one, Applejack dug it out of the snow, using her hooves to scoop the snow away and throw it behind her. Once she saw the plant sticking up freely out of the rocky ground she pulled out the page from Herbal Remedy and gave it a final look.

Spindly twig body, needle like leaves, icy climate, pink flower on top.

This was it. She had found the Icebane.

“Whew,” Applejack sighed in relief and dragged a hoof across her forehead. “There we go now.”

Trying to not break it or lose any of the roots, Applejack very carefully pulled it up from the ground. She didn’t know if all of the plant had the same medicinal use or just one specific part of it so she was going to make sure she brought the whole thing. That went for any other Icebane here. Of which she thankfully saw plenty of—dozens of them on the snowy ground. Applejack went from one to the next, excavating them all and depositing them in the bag she had been given. She wanted to fill the thing up if she could and it looked like there might have been enough Icebane for her to do that.

Her hooves were getting a little numb from digging through the snow, the only real issue, but she was too happy to dwell on that. Going by the words of Herbal Remedy she had found more than enough Icebane for Roc’s Nest.

“This is great, I’ll be able to get back before sundown too,” Applejack smiled.

There was one last Icebane plant to dig up over by the dead tree in the middle of this snowy field. Applejack went over to it and pulled it out after moving the snow away, sighing in relief as she deposited it in the bag. Patting the now full bag she sat down and took a deep breath.

“Time to head back. Hope it’s easier to get down this dang mountain than it was getting up it,” Applejack said.

Rustle rustle—thump

Applejack frowned.

“Yeah… aint no way it’s that easy, is it?” She said as she looked up and all around her.

Sitting on all the large pillars and rocks surrounding the snowy field where she had just harvested the Icebane were well over a dozen birds that dwarfed her completely. Dwarfed even the largest bird she had ever seen Fluttershy care for. The only flying creatures she could think of that would’ve regularly been bigger would’ve been grown-up dragons. Their sharp and powerful talons grasped the rocks and let them stand there easily with their wings folded as they peered down at her. Their beaks were just as sharp as their talons and it almost looked like they could open wide enough to swallow her whole.

That wasn’t half as bad as the way they stared at her. Vicious, predatory eyes that didn’t see a pony, only more prey. They only saw Applejack as a thing to eat.

And now she was up here, stuck between all of them, in the middle of their own territory.

“You birds are making a big mistake, let me just tell you that,” Applejack said to them—not sure if they could even understand her, but wanting to at least attempt to warn them and end this without any trouble. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I’ll defend myself if I have to. So let me just head on down off the mountain, and you can go back to doing your usual thing. That sound okay? I’m not prey. You’re gonna regret it if you try and come after me.”

The Rocs’ heads tilted and they chittered as she talked, a few of them glancing at each other and ruffling their feathers. There was no fear on their faces—only confusion. In the next moment they refocused their full attention on Applejack and the flock spread their wings, leaving their purchase they dove down at her.

Comments

[RoboRed]

...Yep, it just ain't that easy.
Running time is now.

And Alpine Climb might’ve caught a black eye if she actually did follow Applejack all this way.

hah

[redmar]

Getting away from the Rocs while keeping the Icebane will be difficult. I wonder if Applejack might learn something about the Rocs change in behaviour while trying to escape from them.