Twilight Sparkle wakes to a wasteland. Equestria as she knows it has been destroyed. Twilight must find out how this happened, and she must fight through a toxic gas that changes ponies into something unrecognizable to do it. Are her friends alive?
Twilight Sparkle wakes to a wasteland. Equestria as she knows it has been destroyed. Her friends have scattered to the winds.
Twilight must find out what happened, where the Princesses have gone and what has happened to her friends. To do that, she must fight through a toxic gas that has changed ponies into something unrecognizable. Have her friends survived at all?
There's a dark secret behind all of this, and in a journey that heralds only pain and turmoil, does Twilight really want to know the truth? Or are some things best kept close to a pony's chest?
Different fragments of colour shone brightly into her eyes. She squinted, attempting to lift a hoof to shield herself, but her forelegs didn’t cooperate.
None of her cooperated. She couldn’t move.
Where am I? What’s going on? Why can’t I move?
Twilight’s eyes moved in a panic. Everywhere she looked, all she found was more bright lights, more colours. A mixture of purple and pink, but hard to look at for longer than a few seconds at a time. Her breath caught in her chest.
How do I get out?
Her horn flared hot with magic. With fear as her motivator, Twilight focused on her power, scrounging up just enough to send a beam of tangible light from her horn.
Seconds later, she heard a crack.
The immaculate façade of colourful glass shattered around her, the sound like a thousand bells ringing in her ears. Twilight screamed as the object holding her still suddenly crumbled around her, leaving her tumbling onto the hard ground beneath. Jagged pieces of her prison grazed her legs as she tried to scramble upwards, gasping out in pain with every new incision.
As soon as she was standing – on albeit unsteady legs – she looked down at the remains of her prison.
It wasn’t glass, she realised. It was pieces of multi-coloured crystal. The same crystal that grew in stacks inside of her palace.
She blinked, ruffling her wings as jagged pieces of crystal fell from her feathers and scattered onto the ground. What was going on? Where was she?
She was indoors. She must be; the ground was cool beneath her hooves. Not quite stone, not quite earth. More crystal?
She looked up and her mouth fell open.
Hanging above her was the rotted remains of her library home. Golden Oak’s roots, once decorated so beautifully to remind her of home… now limp, black, and decidedly dead. Twilight looked about herself more closely. This was the throne room of her palace.
Now she understood what was beneath her hooves. Not the ground at all, but the table.
The table had somehow encased her in a ginormous piece of crystal.
Oh, she was going to have a field day with this one.
“Spike!” she called out, suddenly excited with her discovery. Mentally, Twilight was already mapping out what supplies she’d need for a full scale essay. No doubt Celestia would be thrilled with the new developments happening from within the Palace of Friendship. “Spike, you’ll never believe what happened!”
Twilight’s voice echoed eerily through the room. Odd, she’d never seen the palace as eerie before. Maybe it was from where the roots had rotted away the lights, leaving nothing but the crystals to cast a subdued glow into the room. She would really have to get that replaced. Maybe she could put a spell on it to get the roots to regrow; it really would be shame to part with the last reminder of her first home in Ponyville after all.
“Spike?” Twilight called again, a little worried this time. Maybe he was napping somewhere.
She trotted to the edge of the table, jumping off and landing with a flurry of her wings. She could still feel pieces of crystal in her coat; she’d have to clean herself up before she started on her essay.
Walking towards the hallway, Twilight opened the door with her magic. She frowned. The hallway was dark too, the crystals still the only source of light.
“Spike? I think there’s something wrong with the electrics…” Twilight said loudly, glancing about herself. Nopony answered her.
As she walked down the hallway, Twilight began to open doors at random with her magic. The kitchen, the dining hall, the library… but she found no one. Nothing.
Come to think of it, everything seemed a little dusty. Which was strange, especially in the library; she was nearly always in there. It didn’t have a chance to get dusty.
“Spike? Come on, this isn’t funny anymore,” Twilight said nervously, stopping dead at the front doors.
Nopony was in the palace. Maybe Spike had gone out to the spa? Maybe he’d found Twilight encased in that crystal and gone out to find somepony to help? Come to think of it, what had she been doing just before the table had decided to… well… eat her?
“Spike?”
Twilight opened the doors.
And she nearly screamed.
There was… nothing.
Simply, nothing.
Where lush grass and exotic flowers had once grown… now there was just a barren wasteland. Greyish black dirt, rubble and little else was scattered as far as the eye could see.
“No,” Twilight said quietly, shaking her head.
There was no way…
“No.”
She slammed the door shut, closing her eyes.
“NO!”
She turned on her hooves, racing down the hallway.
“SPIKE? SPIKE, WHERE ARE YOU?”
She ran through every room, galloping to every nook and cranny, the whole time she didn’t stop screaming for Spike.
Then she changed tactics.
“STARLIGHT GLIMMER?”
Her friendship student, surely she was in the palace somewhere.
Twilight found herself gasping for breath exactly where she had started, hoof-deep in sharp crystal shards. She shook herself, mentally and physically. This was wrong. This was… impossible. How was she alone? How was the outside… nothing?
She trotted back to the front doors, ears splayed against her head. With a burst of magic, she opened the doors again and a hot, dry, ashy breeze hit her in the face, ruffling her mane.
She coughed, eyes watering, as she looked out at the world before her. At what remained of Ponyville.
She could see the town from here… or rather, what was left of it. She could see collapsed structures, pieces of rubble and burnt wood. Dusty broken carts and rotten food. And nothing else. Not a single sound carried on the air. It was entirely silent.
She was alone.
The days seemed to bleed into each other. With each one, Twilight hoped she would wake from this nightmare. She was never successful.
It had taken her three days to realise that there was no more weather, and the reason for that seemed to have something to do with the fact that there weren’t any clouds. There was a layer of something in the atmosphere. She’d flown upwards, hooves reaching towards the sky, only to fall short of victory when her muzzle had hit an invisible barrier.
The collision sent a shockwave through whatever she’d hit, giving it a visible shape for a brief time. What Twilight saw made her heart sink into her stomach.
It was a dome.
Equestria seemed to be encased in a giant dome.
Although she’d wanted to put all of her energy into studying the dome, something else took priority. Namely, food and water.
A few old spells used before unicorns had learned farming from the earth ponies allowed Twilight to magic up the resources she would need for fresh soil. Fortunately the palace had been stocked with seeds of all kinds, and a few ‘accelerated growth’ spells gave her the food she needed in a matter of hours. It was nothing fancy, but it would keep her alive.
So would the ‘weather in a bottle’ spell she’d devised. There’d been a time when Rainbow Dash had scoffed at Twilight’s efforts to make a small, hoof-sized raincloud. Now, it was the only thing keeping Twilight from dying of thirst. She couldn’t restore weather to Equestria, but she could sustain herself, hopefully long enough to figure out what had happened.
Because something had definitely happened.
This wasteland was unsettlingly similar to what Twilight had discovered when Starlight had first tried to destroy her friends’ cutie mark connection. By stopping Twilight and her friends from discovering their cutie marks simultaneously, it had kept them from ever meeting. Without meeting, they had never become the Elements of Harmony, and without the Elements of Harmony, Twilight and Spike had been thrown into several alternate dimensions where different villains of their past had never been defeated and subsequently taken over Equestria. The final reality Twilight had seen – the one she’d dragged Starlight into against her will – had been much like this one. Barren, silent, dead.
Could the table have malfunctioned somehow? Maybe there had been elements of the time spell still connected to it? That would have explained the environment, but it didn’t explain the crystal.
The days after Twilight had solved her food and water problem were dedicated solely on studying the crystal and its properties. Days and nights – which were hard to distinguish as the dome gave the sky a permanent reddish-tinge – were spent in her lab, mixing together different concoctions to test the crystal’s many components.
But there was nothing special about the crystal. Testing it with the others that decorated Twilight’s palace gave the same results. The crystal could have spontaneously grown from the table for a multitude of reasons, but Twilight’s experiments were unable to tell her why.
“Whatever the reason,” Twilight mused after nearly a week of constant testing, “it protected me.” She probed one of the remaining shards with her hoof. “This palace saved me.” She thought of the other thrones that adjourned the throne room. The five others with her friends’ cutie marks and the sixth that sat next to her own.
Twilight sighed, closing her eyes. “So why didn’t it save them?”
It was easy to lose track of time in a world without it.
Twilight realised very quickly that the sun and moon appeared to be gone. There was one entity that gave light and whatever it was it was far beyond her reach, lying somewhere past the dome that covered Equestria.
There weren’t any stars either.
No stars, no light, no life, no colour.
What kind of reality had she fallen into? How could she get back to hers?
Those were the thoughts that swallowed her mind every time she tried to sleep. But they weren’t the only ones. Sometimes her mind wandered to other places, darker places.
What if she hadn’t slipped into another reality? What if something truly terrible had happened to her Equestria and she really was the sole survivor?
Twilight remembered the conversation she’d had with Celestia after her royal crowning as the newest Princess of Equestria. She’d been told what becoming an had Alicorn meant. She was far from indestructible… but she had great power, great abilities, and one of those meant that as of her transformation, she would never age. She couldn’t die of old age.
She could quite literally spend an eternity here.
Twilight tried to still her mind after that.
“I can’t stay here.”
Twilight wasn’t sure how long it had been when she finally cracked. Which was part of the problem.
“This is silly,” she muttered to herself, pacing from one side of the throne room to the other. “If I stay inside this palace forever, I’m going to start seeing my friends on those chairs.” She pointed to Applejack’s throne with her hoof. “What d’you think AJ? Am I going crazy? Be honest.” She snorted, rolling her eyes.
“What about you Pinkie, think I’ll have fun staying cooped up like this?” She shook her head in frustration. “I could survive indefinitely inside here… but eventually I’ll run out of reading material.” She barked out a laugh. “Oh, if Rainbow Dash heard that she’d have a field day.” Twilight’s smile was strained. “Of course that’s all you care about,” she mimicked Rainbow’s voice poorly, “Twilight Sparkle, biggest egghead around trapped in a literal nightmare and all she cares about is how many books there are to read.”
“Well it was a joke, Rainbow!” Twilight said, whirling towards Loyalty’s empty throne. “Of course I know that books are the least of my problems! But if I stay here, I’ll never figure any of this out! I can’t just hope the answers come to me! I can only learn how this happened through exploration!” Twilight’s last words echoed, hanging heavily in the air. She blinked, trying to stem the tears just about ready to flow. “Plus, if I stay here…” She looked bleakly at each empty throne, her eyes finally falling towards Spike’s smaller chair at Magic’s side. This time, she couldn’t keep her tears from spilling. “I’ll just be reminded of the ponies I miss the most.”
Twilight sank to her haunches and wept.
After a day’s rest, it only took Twilight a few hours to gather the essentials. She prepared enough food through her farming spells, and magicked up a few hoof-sized rain clouds into sealable glass jars. On her command, they would expel the rain inside and create perfectly safe drinking water. If she had been in any other situation, she would have been pretty proud of herself. As it was, her preparations to leave barely brought a smile to her lips.
After packing some quills and ink, she added some vials and other scientific equipment she might need for experimentations along the way. If she could find anything that might bring her closer to a solution to all of this, she didn’t want to waste any time finding the proper necessities.
Which left just one more item to pack.
Twilight trotted into the palace library, eyes scanning over every spine.
After waking encased inside that crystal, one of the first things Twilight had done was come here to think. To find a way out of this mess. Being as pragmatic as she was, the first thing she’d hoped to find was her journal – anything that might have cleared up the buzz in her head where her memories of this whole incident should have been. Unfortunately, she’d come up empty hooved. She’d checked every inch of the library and every other room in the whole palace, but she never found it. Whether or not somepony had taken it purposely was beyond her, all she knew was that right now, she needed something to keep her thoughts in check.
She might be the only pony left alive in all of Equestria, but Twilight still didn’t feel comfortable talking out everything she found out loud, it felt too much like madness. At least with a journal she wouldn’t feel self-conscious about it. Besides, she had more control that way.
Finding a spare journal on one of the shelves, Twilight levitated it towards her. Blowing off the dust that had manifested on it, she slid the book into her growing saddle bags. That was the last thing on her check list that she would need to carry.
Despite only taking very short ventures out of the palace since she had arrived, Twilight knew that the new ‘climate’ of Equestria was hot and dusty. There was a burn to the air, an uncomfortable sizzle that went right to the skin that reminded Twilight rather unsettlingly of radiation. Still, with a few rudimentary protection spells, she reasoned that whatever damaging particles in the air wouldn’t be able to do much harm to her. Of course, even with her skin protected, that still left the dry winds spitting dust and granules into her eyes.
Rainbow Dash had gifted Twilight with a pair of brass flying goggles shortly after she’d been given her wings. They were useful, though because Twilight had always preferred teleportation to flying, she’d used them rarely. Now, she could finally find a proper use for them. They still existed in the same spot where Twilight had left them in her bedroom, which did give praise to the pre-existing theory that this dimension was somehow her own, but Twilight refused to pay it mind. Instead she slipped the goggles over her eyes, put on some green boots to protect her hooves from the hot rubble, and finally headed outside.
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #1 – A Whole New World
This is Twilight Sparkle, as, uh, you might have already been made aware. In this journal, my aim is simple: to remain sane. Also, to document what I see here in this strange new otherworld.
I’ve already lost track of how long I’ve been here, but a little while ago I awoke inside a crystal easily the size of five ponies with no memory of how I got there. Even more distressingly, once I escaped, I found that the world I had awoken to was nothing like the one I had left.
There is nothing here. It’s a wasteland of a world, much like the one I saw in one of Starlight’s many alternate realities. If this is somehow a world where I never made friends with the Elements of Harmony… then I’m not sure how I can get back.
And although I hate to admit it, a part of me wonders if that is even the case. My palace remains exactly like the one I left. The goggles Rainbow Dash left me were still in my bedroom, the dresses Rarity made for me still in my closet (albeit a little dusty). Spike’s bed is still in the palace, which must mean that I hatched him as a filly. If all these things remain true… then can I be in an alternate reality at all?
There is a dome around this world – whatever world it is – and I aim to find where the dome ends. Whatever happened to this world, my journals have gone missing, which means somepony didn’t want me to know the truth. Perhaps it was the same pony responsible for trapping me inside the crystal. My first theory was that the castle had saved my life under the stress of a catastrophic event… but now I’m beginning to wonder.
Because if the palace could have saved my life, then why not Spike’s? Why not my friends’? Because if the palace had my best interests at heart, it wouldn’t have left me alone. I was… I am the Princess of Friendship, but now it seems I no longer have any friends to guide me. I need to find the truth. I need to know what happened and if there is any way to reverse it.
My first stop is the Everfree Forest. It’s dangerous, I know, but if anything could have survived an event like this, it would be the wildlife that resides there. As well as that, in one of Starlight’s corrupted realities, I found Zecora hiding there with a group of my friends. If anypony has survived, then I want to find them. I have to hold on to that chance, no matter how slim. I refuse to believe I’m the only pony left in Equestria. Furthermore, somepony made that dome. Somepony is responsible for this. I simply can’t be the only pony alive. And a spell that large… that consuming… it could have only been created by another Alicorn.
Which means somewhere out there, the princesses must still be alive. Celestia, Luna, Cadence, even little Flurry Heart… I will find you all.
The air seemed to get hotter the longer Twilight remained outside.
Despite the lack of an actual sun, the air seemed to prickle around her. Twilight knew that without her protection spells, the atmosphere would have been more damaging. She could feel it like an electric spark, bouncing off the thin shield of magic around her body, desperate for a way inside.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d walked for. The distant orange hue of the orb that stood outside the dome never shifted in position. There was no night or day; there was no passage of time at all. The only thing that allowed Twilight a sense of her progress was the steady pain in her hooves the further she walked.
So far, she’d seen nothing. Only rocks and rubble, the occasional wreckage of a long-abandoned cart. It was like ponies had dropped everything and run.
There was one thing that Twilight was grateful for at least, and that was the lack of bodies. She hadn’t found a single one. No gore, no blood and no bones. Considering the state of the world, she supposed that whatever remains there may have been could have been reduced to ash just like the wildlife, but she hoped for something more promising. Maybe everypony had been evacuated. Maybe that was what lay beyond the dome. Salvation.
But if that was the case, why did nopony think to come find her at the palace? Was it that much of a rush? Had there been no time? Had her friends just assumed she would be coming?
Twilight’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. Every time she thought of her friends, it only reminded her of just how alone she was. She’d written her first entry in her journal, but it hadn’t helped as much as she’d thought. Writing down her thoughts couldn’t substitute for a real conversation with another living thing. Unfortunately, the journal was all she had. That, and steadily growing mad.
There wasn’t much to rest under, so Twilight was thankful that she’d thought ahead and brought an old shawl with her. It was a dark green, matching her boots, and she was quick to throw it over her shoulders after what she presumed was a few hours of constant movement.
She took a break beneath the hood of her shawl, propping herself against a hot rock to take a drink from one of her water jars.
Midway through a sip, Twilight’s ear pricked to a noise from somewhere behind her. Releasing the jar from her muzzle with her magic, Twilight spun around, expecting to see somepony. But there was nothing. Nothing but a few pebbles knocking loose in the wind.
“Pinkie’s family would love this,” Twilight said sullenly. “The whole world’s been converted into one giant rock farm.”
Everfree Forest was nothing like Twilight remembered.
The forest had always been governed by its own kind of magic, giving it a unique style of wildlife, but as Twilight came closer to her prize, she realised that what remained of Everfree was nothing like she’d hoped.
The trees had rotted to blackened husks, completely barren of leaves. The soil was rock hard, lacking any kind of moisture, and as Twilight placed her hoof on it, she winced. It was just as hot as the scorching earth before it, easily burning through the mediocre protection of her boots.
Looking upwards, Twilight could see a slightly distorted version of the red sky, only this time it was decorated with black, sickly vines. The dead twigs stretching from deader branches.
This was the hope she’d been looking for. But there was nothing here.
Crack.
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. Her eyes scanned the dead bushes in front of her.
“Hello?” she asked. Clearing her throat, she said again, “Hello?”
Nothing answered her. She sighed. Maybe it was just more rocks.
Crack.
No. That couldn’t be. The dead trees may not be good for much, but they would have certainly blocked the wind.
Click.
“Is anypony there?” Twilight asked, heart beating faster in her chest. Even if a spear had protruded from behind one of the dead trees, she wouldn’t have cared. If somepony out here was alive, that was all that mattered.
“Please,” she reasoned. “My name’s Twilight Sparkle. I don’t know what’s going on…”
“Twilight Sparkle, did you hear that?”
The flutter in Twilight’s stomach turned into a full-fledged storm. That voice was… wrong. Warped like a changeling, but somehow even more menacing. Almost mechanical.
“Sssparkle,” another voice said, barely distinguishable from the last. “Princcesssss.”
Well she certainly couldn’t feign innocence now. Whatever was speaking, they knew who she was.
“That’s right,” she said slowly. “Who am I speaking to?”
A strangled sound came from the trees. Twilight realised that the creatures were laughing.
“The lassst voice you will ever hear.”
Quicker than she could perform any form of spell, two figures jumped out from behind a bush.
In the shadow of the broken trees, Twilight wasn’t sure what they were at first, but as they came closer she felt her body lock into place.
They were pony-shaped, but that’s where the similarities ended. The two creatures were alike - almost identical - with a grey coat and a long sickly green mane. Their manes fell limply over their faces, Twilight was sure that parts of them had fallen out in clumps. Their eyes were bloodshot, their irises a matching metallic grey. Each of the creatures’ muzzles was splayed into a snarl, showing an unfathomable array of sharp, shark-like teeth.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The flesh on their bodies seemed to be rotted. The fur on their coats had fallen out in patches, leaving awful grizzly rashes on their skin. In other parts, the skin had peeled off; whole chunks of the creatures’ flesh were entirely missing.
The creature on the left’s ribcage was on display, the one on the right was missing one of its back hoofs.
Surely these things couldn’t still be functioning?
But then the one on the left took a step forward.
“Fresh meat at last!” they cried in unison, creating an awful robotic chime.
Twilight didn’t wait around to figure out what they’d do next; with a burst of magic she teleported herself to the other side of the creatures and ran.
If walking on the hot earth had been arduous, galloping through it was surely worse. Twilight could feel the pain like lighting striking up her hooves, but she didn’t dare stop. Behind her, the two creatures refused to slow. The ground didn’t seem to faze them like it did Twilight, and what’s more, they were able to talk just as loudly as they ran.
“Do you sssmell her magic?”
“Such a feast!”
“What sshall you eat first?”
“Drain her magic, drain her blood, eat the flesh!”
“Yess!”
Then they began to repeat it like a mantra.
“Drain her magic, drain her blood, eat the flesh!”
“Drain her magic, drain her blood, eat the flesh!”
“Eat the flesh!”
“Eat the flesh!”
Twilight knew she couldn’t run forever. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest, her mouth was sandpaper dry. If she kept this up, she’d die of exhaustion before the two pony creatures could even reach her. But giving up wasn’t a choice. This wasn’t a situation she could talk her way out of; whatever those creatures were, she very much doubted she could leave them on their way after a lecture about the importance of friendship. If she didn’t think of something fast, these creatures would kill her.
She couldn’t let that happen. She refused to die like this. She was the Princess of Friendship, the Element of Magic, she was an Alicorn and if there was even a chance her friends were still out there, she would find them.
With a roar, Twilight skidded on her hooves, coming to a hard stop. A burst of magic erupted from her horn and she teleported 180 degrees, facing her enemies.
The creatures faltered in their run, confused. Twilight grinned, that was all the time she needed.
A hard blast of magic shot from her horn, sharp as a blade’s edge. It sliced through one of the creature’s sides, cutting through its flesh with a sound like a ripping page.
But the creature didn’t react at all. The wound was deep, but instead of blood, the gash began to seep a thick black liquid. Twilight’s eyes widened in surprise.
“She thought she could kill ussss,” the injured one cried.
“Silly Princessss,” the other chided. “Sshould have known better.”
“NO!” Twilight shot another bolt of magic. This one sliced through the creature’s leg, ripping it off entirely. More black ooze fell rapidly to the ground, bubbling as it made contact with the earth, but the creature continued with little hindrance. Twilight couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Another blast from her horn severed the creature’s other hoof. It fell to the ground with a crunch, but still it tried to push itself forward. All the while the other creature trotted forward, teeth gleaming.
That’s when Twilight’s frustrations grew to all new levels. With a mixture of fear, anger and adrenaline as her guide, the magic in her horn grew until it buzzed inside her skull. Only then did she let it go. This time she aimed it directly at the creature’s head.
In an explosion of flesh, brain matter and black ooze, the creature’s head exploded. The tip of a spine poked through as the creature fell to the ground. Dead.
The other creature let out a roar. No more slow movements for dramatic effect. This time it was coming in for the kill.
But this time, Twilight knew what she was aiming for.
It was over in a second. All she had to do was think about destroying the beast and suddenly its head was gone in an explosion of magic and black blood. Two rotten corpses lay on the dry, barren dirt. Twilight had won.
“What in the hay were those things?” she muttered to herself.
A more timid pony may have left it there. But Twilight’s mind was wild with theories, her brain a mass of gears clanking together for an explanation to what she had witnessed. Before she even reached the corpses, she was holding a vial in her magic.
“Samples,” she murmured. “I need samples.”
In the end, she settled for two vials of ‘blood’ and a sample of the creatures’ fur. The black ooze was strange, it didn’t seem to act like a normal liquid. In fact, if Twilight didn’t know any better, she would have thought the blood was somehow alive. But that was preposterous. Then again, so was the idea that a pony could have its legs chopped off and not feel a thing. So was the idea that a pony would eat flesh or have sharp fangs instead of teeth. None of this made any sense.
But there was one thing she knew for certain.
Whether or not those creatures had been fully alive, they existed, which meant Twilight wasn’t the only pony out there. There was still hope.
“Flesh eating, magic sucking ponies…” Twilight muttered to herself. “What next? Lycans?” She paused, shaking her head. “No Twilight… don’t even go there.”
Twilight decided to cut her journey through Everfree short. If those husks of ponies littered the forest, there was little hope that anypony would survive there for long. Despite her hopes in finding a friendly face in Zecora, the chances that the zebra still resided there were very thin.
Instead, Twilight cut her losses short and mapped out a new plan of action.
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #2 – The Husks
Without the proper equipment at my disposal I won’t be able to come to any definitive conclusions, but what I saw today certainly wasn’t normal.
I didn’t find anypony in Everfree; if Zecora had ever been there at all, she was long gone by now. I did, however, find something.
They have a pony’s build, that’s for sure, but they are most certainly not ponies. Not anymore, at least.
What I saw in Everfree was a monstrosity. Walking abominations. They were rotten, falling apart at the seams, yet there was a gleam in their eyes. There was something too alive about them. I’ve decided to call these creatures ‘husks.’
It beats the other word I could use for them. The one so commonly used for the walking dead, but even in written form I’m too afraid to say the word. If I write it, then it makes it true, and I can’t stand that. I just can’t.
From closer examination I realised that the creatures weren’t completely rotted. Their flesh surely was, and it was even falling from the bone in places, but that’s what was odd. The bones. Celestia, if anypony reads this journal they’ll think I’m some kind of monster, but I did what I had to do to understand what I was seeing.
By pulling away parts of the flesh, and also studying the bones already protruding from the corpses, I was able to decipher that the bones were made of a different material. Not just calcium and collagen, not anymore; they were stronger, harder. And there was something more. They were shinier too; not quite like the gleam of a Crystal pony, but close. Unnervingly close.
Like I already stated, I don’t have the equipment on me to test what this means. My lab back at the palace is advanced, but it was never designed to tackle a problem like this. The only lab I can think of with the right equipment is the one in Canterlot.
Ponyville may have been a ghost town, but I can’t assume every town is like that. Canterlot is a lot larger, after all, and could be crawling with husks for all I know.
From the, uh, short conversation I had with the two husks in Everfree, it seems that their diet consists of pony meat, blood and magic. Considering their excitement when they saw me, I can only imagine that an Alicorn would be quite a feast. Maybe they use the mixture of flesh and magic as a way to sustain themselves… I’m not sure. I don’t know how anything can remain somewhat alive when their heart has stopped beating, but the husks were definitely of an undead archetype.
If I can travel to Canterlot, I might be able to find out what the husks are. Not only that, if I can survive the journey there, well, perhaps Luna and Celestia have left me some clues at their palace. Maybe they knew I’d survive this. I can only hope.
Which leaves one last thing.
Once I thoroughly checked the husks’ bodies, I found something that I had been expecting, but could have never prepared myself for. Both ponies had cutie marks. They were greyed out, worn from where their own flesh and fur had betrayed them, but I could still make them out.
If these creatures had cutie marks, then they had once been ponies. Which means they weren’t created like some kind of sick Frankenstein experiment, and if they weren’t created then there’s a chance that whatever did this to them is some kind of infection.
I’m no idiot; I’ve read the myths on the undead. Bites are usually the cause for transference of infection, but I’m beginning to wonder if the atmosphere has turned against us as well. It would explain why it feels as though the air is trying to attack my protection spells.
Whatever the reasons, I’ll know more if I can make it to Canterlot alive.
Twilight’s hooves beat against the hot earth in a fierce gallop, her breath catching painfully inside her chest. The red world spun around her as she tried to pick up speed, but the dense atmosphere was stifling, the dusty air barely accepted in her lungs. She wouldn’t be able to run forever.
But her pursuers would.
“Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”
They all sounded the same, chorusing in an ear-splitting mechanical roar. Twilight could hear their hoofsteps behind her, slowly gaining.
She couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t know what she’d been thinking trying to walk the wasteland unconcealed. She could have tried an invisibility shroud, but the resulting loss of energy in a spell that powerful would have meant her progress to Canterlot would have been elongated from several days to several weeks. She couldn’t afford that time, not with her dwindling supplies and not with the monsters that stalked the new world order.
Twilight hadn’t thought about it, had just hoped that she wouldn’t run into trouble. It was stupid, there was nothing to hide behind out here. Just rocks, boulders and oh yeah, more rocks. It was just a matter of time before the husks saw her.
And see her they did.
Now they wouldn’t stop chasing her.
Twilight craned her neck around, shooting an undirected blast of magic that she hoped would slow the husks down. She heard a satisfying crunch from behind, along with the grunt of another fallen body. She grinned to herself. Good. That might have stopped one, maybe two of them. Just four more to go.
Of course that would have been the moment her legs betrayed her. Twilight’s shoulder spasmed, a jolt of pain shooting up her right foreleg as her boot caught on a rock. She fell, her wings extending out to the sides in an attempt to catch herself. But it was no use.
Twilight yelped as her body collided with the hot earth. The protection spell around her body flared, saving her from too much damage, but she could still feel the jagged rocks cut into her skin as she skidded across the dirt.
She scrambled upwards, hooves digging into the ground to gain traction, but she knew she wouldn’t be fast enough. The husks would be upon her any second.
Twilight turned her head, eyes burning, as she caught sight of the four husks behind her. Their sharp teeth glinted under the red sun, their metallic, hungry eyes filled with malice. Twilight tried to will more magic to her horn, but the shock of her fall had left her dazed and ultimately useless. She couldn’t find the energy to protect herself.
She was just about ready to accept defeat when she heard a different sound. A new set of hooves against the ground.
Then everything went white.
A flare of green magic shot out from somewhere behind the four husks, colliding directly with the closest’s skull. Black ooze splattered over Twilight’s goggles, her protection spell flared around her muzzle, black blood bouncing harmlessly onto the ground, bubbling into the dirt.
Twilight stared in shock. As did the husks.
“Protect!” one of them shouted out. “Don’t let her-”
But the creature couldn’t finish, because another burst of magic severed its head.
Twilight stifled a scream as the dead, grey face of the second husk rolled to a stop inches from where she stood. She lifted her hoof, narrowly dodging a spurt of black blood.
“Well don’t just stand there!” shouted somepony new.
Twilight squinted, catching a mint green coat in the distance.
“Run!”
Twilight obeyed.
Another burst of magic behind her confirmed that a third husk had fallen, which left just one more. Twilight closed her eyes, her legs felt numb as she pushed herself to go faster. She wasn’t sure if she could even still feel her heart beating.
And then there was somepony running beside her. She could catch that same mint green in her peripheral, which was the only reason she didn’t attack out of pure instinct.
The relief of another survivor was somewhat marred by the fact that she could die at any second.
“Is the last one dead?” Twilight rasped. She wasn’t sure how much further she could gallop.
“It will be,” the pony said. Twilight thought she recognized the voice. A mare’s voice for sure – a unicorn of course - but it was more than that.
Then the mare turned around, aiming her horn at the last husk.
There was a crunch, a thin rain of black blood and crystalized bone; then it was dead.
Twilight ground to a halt, her legs shaking beneath her. It took her a second to realise she was hyperventilating.
“Whoa, whoa,” the mare said. Her features looked blurry to Twilight. She wasn’t sure if that was the blood on her goggles, or the lack of oxygen in her brain.
“’m sorry,” Twilight murmured. She tried to use her magic to grab a water jar from her saddlebags, but her horn only sparked before fizzing out completely.
“Hang on,” the mare said.
Before Twilight could blink, there was a jar levitating before her in a soft green glow. Twilight gratefully took the jar in her muzzle, taking three drawn out sips before she even started to feel like herself again.
“Feelin’ better?” the mare asked, eyes glancing nervously behind them. “’Cause we really oughtta go.”
Now that Twilight’s vision had cleared, she realised why the mare’s voice had sounded so familiar. The green coat, the white and mint mane. If Twilight could see her flank behind those dark green cargos, she knew she would have seen a lyre cutie mark.
Twilight gaped. “Lyra Heartstrings?”
Lyra’s eyes narrowed. “How in the hay…”
“Twilight,” Twilight said incredulously. “Twilight Sparkle.”
It seemed the fight had been just as taxing on Lyra, for her eyes suddenly cleared like she was looking at Twilight for the first time. “Well I’ll be damned,” Lyra said. “And here I was thinking you were long dead.”
Twilight wasn’t sure how long she stood staring at Lyra in open mouth incredulity.
Lyra on the other hand seemed to recover in a matter of seconds. She nudged Twilight’s shoulder, urging her forwards. “If you can stand then we gotta move,” she said firmly, eyes narrowed. “The blood will just attract more.”
“I…” Twilight stammered, shaking her head. She fell into a hurried trot by Lyra’s side. “I have so many questions.”
Lyra raised a brow at that. “What like?”
“Like… what happened?”
Lyra’s stare was hard, and as Twilight watched her she realised how tired her old friend looked. In fact, it was more than that. Now she was able to have a proper look at her, Twilight realised that Lyra looked substantially older. There were bags under her eyes and her mane was longer, unruly and uncared for.
“You’re not kidding are you?” Lyra asked after a few moments of contemplation.
“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.
Lyra opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, a horrible screech sounded from behind them. Twilight nearly jumped out of her skin.
Lyra’s eyes widened. “We don’t have time,” she growled, looking behind them frantically. “There’s more of them coming, we’ve gotta run. Now.”
Twilight’s limbs still ached, but she managed to dwindle just behind Lyra’s stride. “Where are we going?” she asked between breaths.
“No time,” Lyra insisted. “I’ll explain later, just move.”
Twilight didn’t dare argue; she could hear the husks behind them, their metallic screeches echoing easily through the empty air. She kicked into a higher gear, forcing herself to go faster. Every part of her screamed against it, but she paid her body no mind.
But then Lyra stopped. She came to a halt so quickly that Twilight very nearly ran straight into her hind quarters.
“What the-”
“Shut up,” Lyra hissed. She pointed a hoof to a large rock protruding from the ground. “Get behind that, now.”
Twilight complied, following Lyra with her tail between her legs. She was a lot different from how Twilight remembered. Colder, angrier… but Twilight could see that Lyra knew what she was doing. She had experience with the husks, and Twilight had to trust her. She didn’t have another choice.
Just as Lyra pressed Twilight’s back against the hot stone, a shadow loomed over them, sending a chill down Twilight’s spine. She glanced upwards, catching a pair of orange wings against the harsh red sky. It gave the unsettling illusion of fire.
“Who is-”
“Shh.”
Twilight clamped her mouth shut, staring upwards as the creature stopped mid-flight.
It was a pegasus; that was clear even from the ground. A mare, too. She had a wild orange mane, but there was something wrong about her. Her coat had lost its sheen, though she wasn’t nearly as greyed out as the husks. Twilight squinted against the red sun, her eyes widening in shock as she realised another detail about the mare.
Her right foreleg was completely silver; the whole thing had been replaced with some kind of robotic appendage. It was hard to see the details from this distance, but Twilight was positive. The mare was some kind of cyborg.
As she continued to stare, another shape appeared in the sky next to her. A blue maned stallion with bright eyes. It wasn’t until he stopped completely that Twilight realised why they were so bright. He was wearing some kind of device over his eyes… or his eyes were the device. Either way, they were completely digitalised. Twilight had never seen anything like it.
It was only together that Twilight realised who the ponies were. She’d seen them flying plenty of times at all sorts of events. Most recently, Rainbow Dash had performed alongside them.
Those were two of the Wonderbolts.
Twilight didn’t dare say what she was thinking out loud for fear of having Lyra shove a hoof in her mouth. Still, there was no denying it. The orange pegasus was the leader of the Wonderbolts, Spitfire. The blue one must have been Soarin. As Soarin turned in the sky, facing Spitfire directly, Twilight noticed that one of his wings was a metal replication. How it was able to fly as well as flesh and feathers, she wasn’t sure, but it reminded her much too much of a past reality when Starlight had been in control of the world’s fate. Twilight suddenly felt sick.
Lyra didn’t seem to notice Twilight’s reaction. That, or she didn’t care. Her gaze was firmly fixed on the two cyborg pegasi as they communicated with each other above their heads. Twilight couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Spitfire pointed a hoof in the general direction of the husks that had been attracted. Their screams still carried easily to Twilight’s ears, drowning out anything she might have heard from the sky.
Soarin glared at Spitfire, his lips rippled into a barely contained growl. Twilight shuddered; she’d thought that Spitfire and Soarin were different from the husks, but there was something just as animal in their behaviour as the undead ponies chasing after them. If they survived this, Twilight had a hundred questions she wanted to ask Lyra.
Finally, an agreement was made. Soarin disappeared in a cloud of smoke, metal and biological wings beating against the wind, and Spitfire dove to the ground, landing just feet from where Lyra and Twilight were hidden.
Lyra stared imploringly into Twilight’s eyes, begging for her to be quiet; not like she needed to be told. Everything about this new Spitfire screamed danger.
The husks that had been running towards them slowed as they saw Spitfire standing her ground. Lyra slowly inched around the rock, guiding Twilight with her so they remained out of sight.
Twilight watched from the small corner of vision she had around the rock as the husks skidded to an unsteady halt just a small distance from where Spitfire stood.
Twilight wasn’t sure what was happening, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Spitfire lowered her head, snorting out a puff of air before driving her hoof into the dirt. It cracked under her weight, making Twilight jump.
The husks mirrored her actions. The one in the lead growled a mechanical growl, narrowing its metallic eyes.
Then they ran.
Spitfire towards the husks, the husks towards Spitfire. Twilight was sure they would collide, but at the last moment, Spitfire arched towards the ground, her wings arcing out at her sides in one ferocious flap that sent her propelling into the air and above the husks’ heads. In the same motion, she came crashing down onto the husk in the centre, all four of her hooves meeting its skull in the same instant.
Twilight winced at the sickening crack of bones as its skull exploded. Black blood pooled out of the creature’s head, coating Spitfire’s hooves in oily ooze. It didn’t bother her in the slightest, and before any of the husks could even turn their heads, she’d brought her metal hoof directly into the neck of the husk in front. It went cleanly through the flesh, tearing it away like it was nothing but sodden paper. The husk fell to the ground, writhing as blood spurted wildly from the wound. With another precise slam of her metallic appendage, Spitfire severed the creature’s head.
The rest of the fight passed in a fiery haze of red mane and metal. The husks landed a few lucky shots, but Spitfire proved her superiority. Soon the wasteland was drenched in black blood and husk corpses. Only one lucky undead pony stood now, its grey eyes wide, but not fearful. Instead it looked resigned. Its lips drew back into a sharp-toothed snarl.
Spitfire grinned. “Y’know what I’m gonna say,” she said.
Twilight stifled a gasp. Spitfire’s voice held the same mechanical undertones as the husks, but apart from that, she sounded just like she had when Twilight had known her. Brash and unflinchingly powerful.
The husk growled. “Thisss is our ground.”
“We already covered this last time,” Spitfire enunciated, gesturing with her mechanical hoof. “From this wasteland to Canterlot is our territory. We see you on it again, you’re gonna die.”
“Ssshe will not like this.”
Spitfire rolled her eyes. “Right, your fearless leader. Where is she huh? Hiding in the shadows like always?”
The husk snarled again. “Sssshe will not-”
“Save it.” Spitfire moved into the husk’s space, their muzzles inches from each other. “Pass the message onto your leader, and if we see you again…” Spitfire mimicked slitting her own throat, sticking out her tongue. She grinned wickedly. “Get me?”
The husk’s eyes narrowed. “Ssshe will come.”
Spitfire barked out a laugh. “Sure, whatever.” With that, she lifted her mechanical hoof back before slamming it hard into the husk’s chest.
Twilight winced as the creature shot backwards. She could hear several ribs crack, and when the husk stood, a part of its chest cavity was on display. A rib was sticking out at an awkward angle, black blood trickling from the wound. The husk didn’t seem to pay the injury any attention; it got back onto its hooves with little issue before turning and running back the way it came.
Spitfire grinned in victory. “Hey Soarin!” she yelled out. “Guess who just got us dinner!”
Lyra’s eyes widened at that. Twilight gave her a questioning look, but Lyra only shook her head as Spitfire shot off into the distance.
Then Lyra was dragging Twilight out from the rock. “We don’t have much time,” she insisted. “They’ll be back for the bodies.”
“What?” Twilight asked incredulously. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?” Lyra growled. “To eat dummy, they eat greys. Don’t you know that?”
By the look of incredulity on Twilight’s face, Lyra got her answer. Her eyes narrowed. “Just where in the hay have you been all this time?”
Twilight winced. “I… frozen. I think. In a crystal.”
Lyra’s eyes widened before she shook her head. “We don’t have time for this. Look, I’ll tell you more when we’re back at base. For now, just follow me, we need to get out of here before the borgs come back.”
“Borgs?”
“Cyborgs,” Lyra said. “C’mon, that one was easy.”
Twilight refrained from wringing her old friend’s neck. Instead she gritted her teeth. “I was actually heading for Canterlot, I thought there might be-”
“No way.” Lyra was already trotting away.
Twilight was quick to follow. “You didn’t even listen to what I had to say!”
“I don’t need to,” Lyra said. “Canterlot is a death trap, didn’t you hear that borg? They made that place their home base a long time ago. They might prefer grey meat to ours, but they’ll eat anything given the chance.”
Twilight frowned. “How does that work anyway? What about being part robot means they have to eat-”
Lyra whirled on Twilight. “I don’t know,” she snarled, closing the space between them in one stride. “I’m not an expert on borgs, nopony is. If you go near ‘em, you die. If you go near the greys, you die. If you’re caught in the swarm, you die. This is the world we live in. Now I don’t know how long you were in that crystal, and I don’t know what you remember, but I don’t have the time or patience to explain it. Right now we have to get the hay out of here before more greys sniff us out.”
Twilight backed off, affronted. Her ears dropped as Lyra turned back, stalking her way towards whatever base she was talking about.
“What happened to you?”
Lyra paused. Twilight was sure she was going to start yelling again, but instead she just ducked her head, sighing heavily through her snout. “I lost somepony.” She shook her head morosely. “We all have.”
Twilight decided not to talk again after that.
It was only when they stopped to rest that Twilight thought it prudent to speak.
Lyra levitated a bottle of water from her own supplies, taking a drawn out sip. Her eyes remained fixed in the distance, wary for any kind of movement.
Twilight cleared her throat.
“So… where are we going?”
“Home,” Lyra said quickly, placing her water in front of her.
“Where’s home?”
Lyra still didn’t look at her. “Appleloosa.”
Twilight perked up at that. “It survived?”
“Nothing survived.”
Twilight winced. “But-”
“Places didn’t survive,” Lyra corrected, “ponies did. We rebuilt and protected what we could there. Some towns weren’t even that lucky.”
Twilight thought of what remained of Ponyville and suppressed a shudder. She glanced the way Lyra was watching, staring into the bleak emptiness of the wasteland. For the first time in a while, Twilight realised that the red sky looked a little darker, deepening to the colour of dried blood. It made the details in the distance blurry and unfocused.
“So you call the husks greys, huh?”
Lyra actually smiled at that. “Husks? Nice. Wish somepony had the imagination to think up something like that.”
“Greys isn’t so bad.”
Lyra snorted.
Twilight sighed, opening her saddle bags with her magic. She produced two apples from the bag, levitating one over to Lyra.
Lyra stiffened when she saw it, plucking it out of the air with her own magic. Her eyes widened the longer she stared at it. “Now how in the hay did you get your hooves on one of these?”
Twilight shrugged. “Unicorn magic left over from the dark ages. A few rudimentary farming spells coupled with a fast growth spell and… well… apples!” Twilight laughed awkwardly, taking a bite out of her own.
Lyra sniffed the apple before taking a bite. Her eyes closed in satisfaction. “You can taste the magic,” she said wistfully.
Twilight tried to smile. “How do you make yours?”
“Earth ponies mostly,” Lyra said with a shrug. “Some unicorn magic here and there to help keep the soil from dying.”
“And water?”
“There’s a reservoir underneath Appleloosa,” Lyra said through another bite. “It was deep enough that it didn’t get affected by the Event.”
Twilight paused, gesturing with her apple. “The Event?”
“Really?” Lyra turned to look at her then, eyebrow raised. “Just how much don’t you know?”
Twilight realised with a dark certainty that she knew a lot less than what she previously thought. “The last memory I have is just after the changeling invasion… Thorax asked for our help in tracking down Chrysalis.” Twilight frowned, trying to think back to the conversation. She remembered Princess Celestia approving the whole expedition, and she remembered heading out with her friends, but she couldn’t remember the outcome. She must have managed to get home of course, otherwise she wouldn’t have been in her palace when she awoke.
Maybe there had been a fight? Was it possible Chrysalis had something to with this… Event?
It was only when Twilight had come back to herself that she realised Lyra was staring at her.
“What?”
“That’s what you remember?”
A coldness seeped into Twilight’s bones. “How much am I missing?”
Lyra shook her head incredulously. “Twilight, that was years ago.”
Twilight stiffened, her heart sank in her chest. She opened her mouth to respond, but she couldn’t find the words to aid her.
Years?
“I…”
Lyra’s eyes softened. She stood to say something, but before she could, her face was obscured by shadow. Twilight’s eyes widened in fear, looking upwards for another borg, but there was nothing there except for the dark red sky.
Dark red.
It was getting dark?
Before Twilight could ask, Lyra was rushing to her things in, lifting her saddle bags back onto her back. Twilight felt a weight on her spine as Lyra helped her with her own bags.
“We need to find cover,” Lyra insisted.
“What?” Twilight asked. “It’s only dark.”
Lyra’s laugh was humourless. “It doesn’t get dark here, dummy. That’s the swarm.”
“Swarm?” Twilight vaguely remembered Lyra mentioning that earlier. “You said that’s one of the ways to die out here, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Lyra was fastening the last strap on her bags with her teeth. She rushed forwards, butting Twilight in the side. “I wasn’t kidding, the swarm is bad news, the only kind of weather we get ‘round here since Cloudsdale exploded.”
“It exploded?”
“We don’t have time!”
Twilight nodded, frantically trying to keep up with Lyra even in the new shadows that surrounded them. “What is the swarm?”
“Nopony knows,” Lyra explained quickly, although she’d already broken into a jog. “We think the borgs can control it somehow, but whatever you do, don’t let it touch you, okay?”
“What does it look like?”
Lyra’s hooves suddenly dug so hard into the ground, Twilight heard it crack. A shudder passed over Lyra’s whole body as she stared out the way they’d been heading, jaw agape.
Twilight looked around her and immediately understood why. Heading towards them was a mass of green, incredibly toxic-looking gas. It floated through the air with purpose, almost as though it could see them standing there. It rippled; everything the green gas touched seemed to quiver around it. Twilight half expected to see the ground melt.
“Run,” Lyra gasped. “RUN!”
It didn’t matter how fast they ran, the gas was an unstoppable force. It continued with speed and grace, intoxicating everything it touched. Twilight felt tears spring to her eyes as she forced herself into a gallop. She didn’t know what the swarm would do to her, but it didn’t matter. No matter what it did, it was going to kill them both.
“We have to get out of its way!” Twilight insisted, but even as she spoke she didn’t know how. The gas encompassed everything; there wasn’t a direction it wouldn’t reach.
“Down,” Lyra said suddenly, pointing her hoof towards the right.
Twilight wasn’t sure if she’d misheard, she could see nothing but barren dirt. “What?”
“Down!” Lyra cried. “There’s a hole in the earth up ahead, if we can get below it, we can block ourselves in!”
Twilight’s eyes widened. That was perfect! They just had to make it there in time. She was beginning to hear a sizzle in the air, an uncomfortable pressure was pushing against her protection spell. Whatever this gas was, it was stronger than her magic. She wouldn’t be able to keep it out.
Lyra turned swiftly, heading towards the proposed crack in the earth. Twilight skidded to keep up, but she wasn’t as strong as Lyra was, the turn in the earth twisted her hoof out from under her. Twilight gasped in pain as she hit the ground, her chin bouncing off the earth hard enough to daze her.
“Twilight!”
Stars glittered in Twilight’s eyes as she tried to right herself. She turned her head, her stomach sinking as she saw the gas just feet away. It had changed in shape. What was once a wall was now a semi-circle, slowly closing them in.
“Leave me,” Twilight rasped, lips trembling. She dropped her head, pressing her face against the hot earth. “Leave me Lyra, you don’t have time!”
“Like hay I will!”
Twilight’s head shot up. Her eyes burned with twisted desperation. “We don’t have time, you have to go!”
Lyra spun around on her front hooves. She took one second to scan the gas before her expression shifted. Twilight couldn’t read what she was thinking, but in the next moment she was running towards her.
Twilight could feel tears pooling in her eyes. “No,” she said weakly. “No, Lyra, don’t-”
Lyra grabbed Twilight’s mane in her mouth, lifting her up sharply. Twilight gasped out as Lyra pulled her upwards. She fell against the unicorn, hissing in pain as her hoof hit the ground.
“It won’t work,” Twilight said hopelessly, she couldn’t stop the tears anymore; they flooded her face, making it nearly impossible to see.
“Yes it will,” Lyra said, but there was no determination in her voice. Twilight thought it sounded more like acceptance.
That’s when she realised.
“Lyra, no-”
Too late, Twilight felt the familiar tingle of foreign magic on her skin. Lyra’s mint glow encompassed Twilight completely, lifting her from the ground.
“Lyra!”
Lyra’s eyes were gleaming, but Twilight didn’t see any fear in them. She smiled at Twilight, bowing her head.
And then the magic strengthened, not just levitating her, but carrying her towards the hole in the earth. Twilight’s legs scrambled uselessly as she was deposited into the hole. The second the magic disappeared from around her, Twilight tried to leap out, tried to call out to her, but a rock was already rolling over the hole, painted in a soft green glow.
The last thing Twilight heard before everything went dark was Lyra’s voice, warm and determined in the silence.
“I’m coming Bon Bon.”
Then she began to scream.
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #3 – Lyra
I want to dedicate this entry to Lyra Heartstrings. Without her, I wouldn’t be alive to write this down.
I don’t know how long I sat in the dark and listened to her scream. The gas sounded painful – more than painful, I don’t actually have the words in my vocabulary to properly describe the sounds I heard. Just know that they will haunt me for the rest of my life.
At some point, Lyra did stop screaming, although I know that what happened next was nothing close to peace. I know that she died, just like she had explained to me.
What she failed to tell me was what else the swarm does.
Because it most certainly doesn’t just kill you.
It brings you back.
It must.
Because what I heard next was laughter. An awful, corrupted laughter like a thousand bells ringing in a broken harmony. It was distorted and terrible and I knew exactly where I’d heard it before.
The husks that had cornered me in Everfree sounded just like that when they were laughing.
I’m so sorry Lyra, truly I am. If I hadn’t run into you, you might still be alive right now. Instead, you’re a husk and I’m hiding behind a boulder waiting for you to leave because I’m a coward.
I’m a coward who is too afraid to see your face now that you’re one of them.
I’m a coward because I know that if I see you, then I will have to kill you.
Oh Celestia I am so sorry. Because I know that’s what you would want, I’m sure. I don’t know if you’re still conscious in there or if it’s just your body being controlled by an unknown force, but I know that either way, you would want me to kill you.
And I’m sorry.
But I’m a coward.
When I first saw you again after all this time, I was sure that you had changed. That you were hard, perhaps even cruel. But you proved to me that your heart wasn’t cold or hard, but filled with a warmth and compassion that I can only hope I can spread even in your absence. You deserved more than this.
The tracks had been long-since abandoned, she didn’t suppose many trains came down here in a world like this. Still, it was an easy land mark to guide her into the town. A part of her hoped the husks weren’t smart enough to figure that out as well.
Lyra’s loss clung to Twilight’s chest like a parasite. She’d never seen a pony die before, she supposed she could still say she hadn’t. But hearing a pony die like that? In some ways, Twilight thought that worse. She didn’t even know what the gas had done to make Lyra into a husk; all she knew was the outcome.
Twilight had to wait hours in the dark before she was positive husk-Lyra was gone. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much, because she knew she didn’t finish the job. Lyra was still out there in some way. Because of Twilight’s cowardice, she could never truly be at peace.
Twilight came to a stop, stifling a sob. She had to be stronger than this. Lyra had saved her life. Lyra had valued Twilight’s life over her own. She had to make that count. In this world order, everything Twilight knew was dark and wrong. The dead walked and many ponies were long gone. Appleloosa was still standing in some way, and there were ponies there that would need Twilight’s help. She could share her weather spell with them so they wouldn’t have to worry about running the reservoir dry. She could even use magic on their farm land to ensure they had enough food to keep them going no matter the…
Twilight’s mind spun to a stoop. She was going to say weather, but there was no weather. Only the swarm.
What if the swarm somehow made its way to Appleloosa?
No. Twilight was sure they had a way to protect themselves there. Lyra had mentioned unicorn magic, which meant that there were unicorn survivors there experienced enough to protect their friends from the gas seeping between possible cracks in their shelters. They’d survived this long, after all.
Then again, so had Lyra.
Twilight continued the rest of the journey in subdued silence, though she kept her ears and eyes open for trouble. Fortunately, she made her way without seeing a single borg. Any husks that may have been roaming were too far away to notice her, shrouded in her green cloak.
Twilight almost didn’t realise when the tracks stopped at Appleloosa station. The old building was rotted in places, but the original structure still somewhat stood. Twilight wouldn’t have dared touch it in fear of the building collapsing, but if it had managed to remain in any part through the hell it had gone through, then she had hope for what she’d find within the town border.
It was only when Twilight got close to the farmland on the outskirts of town that she stopped, fur prickling on her skin. There was a disturbance in the air around her. There was something different about the magic here.
Twilight frowned, glancing about herself. If she was right, the farmland should have already started by now, but there was nothing. No soil, no trees, just the same dirt and rocks. Come to think of it, she should have been able to see the town from here too. But there was nothing.
This couldn’t be right. Lyra wouldn’t have lied to her about Appleloosa, not after what she’d done to ensure Twilight’s safety. It had to be the magic then.
Somepony had used a spell here recently… or was still using a spell, it was hard to tell. As the Element of Magic, Twilight knew when she was dealing with something powerful, and whatever this was, it took a great deal of magic to perform.
So what was it?
Twilight knocked the dirt with her hoof, wincing when she realised it still ached from earlier. “An invisibility shroud,” she said to herself, almost in awe. She’d considered doing something similar to herself to keep the husks from finding her, but this was on a much larger scale. Whoever was responsible for this had made the entire town of Appleloosa invisible.
Which left one question.
How in the hay did she get inside?
Twilight doubted she could just walk in through something this powerful, there were probably confusion charms set in place to turn any wandering eye away. The only reason Twilight had got this far was because she already knew there was magic at play.
She could wait for a survivor to show themselves?
Of course that only worked if there was somepony watching her. For all she knew she was miles from the actual base of operations. Maybe she hadn’t even entered from the right direction. There was no telling what lay beyond the magic.
“I’m going to regret this,” Twilight muttered, lowering her head. Focusing all of her power, she managed to create a small bubble of pulsating pink magic around her body. Adding that to the protection charm around her skin was difficult, but not impossible. Besides, she only needed to keep it up for a few seconds.
Walking carefully forwards, she felt the invisibility shroud connect with her bubble. Twilight winced, forcing her Alicorn magic into play to ensure that her bubble won the power struggle currently issuing between both spells. Finally, the invisibility shroud began to rip around her bubble. Twilight didn’t want to disturb the spell to an extent that it could break, she just wanted to create a small pony-sized hole that she could fit through. That was her bubble.
Sure enough, Twilight made it through. As she did so, the world opened up around her. What had been dry wasteland seconds ago turned into acres upon acres of fresh soil, apple and cherry trees. The trees were withered, Twilight realised, not nearly as healthy-looking as what she remembered, but she supposed that was to be expected. At least there was fruit on them. Nowhere close to the bountiful produce of the past, but if it was edible then she supposed that was all that counted.
Twilight was on the soil for a count of twenty eight seconds before she felt a large stick being shoved into her side.
A stick that was being controlled by magic.
“Who are you?” a voice yelled, frantic and female and somewhat familiar.
Stood to her right was a white adolescent unicorn with a purple and pink mane. Her green eyes glowed fiercely as she prodded Twilight again. Twilight winced.
“I said who are you? How’d you do that?”
It took Twilight a moment to speak. She knew she recognised that voice… and that colour scheme. But this unicorn was almost fully grown, there was no way she could be… unless…
Twilight realised there was only one way to be sure. Tentatively, she pulled her hood down with her magic, revealing her face. With a bit of shuffling, she managed to poke her wings out from behind her saddle bags too. Twilight gave a sheepish smile. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Hi, Sweetie Belle.”
She must’ve been right, because Sweetie Belle’s eyes popped wide open.
“OhmyCelestia,” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “No way.”
Suddenly, Twilight’s forelegs were forced together, nearly throwing her off balance. Sweetie Belle’s horn was alight with magic, tying Twilight together with a rough binding spell. Twilight could have probably broken the spell, but if this was what she had to do to gain Sweetie Belle’s trust, then she’d do it. She’d play the role of prisoner.
Sweetie Belle trotted around Twilight, her eyes bright with determination. When she reached Twilight’s hindquarters, she pushed her forwards.
Twilight stumbled; Sweetie Belle was in control of her limbs until she said otherwise and Twilight could tell she’d rarely had to use a spell like this in the past.
“You’re coming with me,” Sweetie Belle said crossly.
“Sweetie-” Twilight said. “It’s me, Twilight. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Sweetie Belle grunted. “But no one’s seen Twilight Sparkle for years. Besides, even if you are Twilight Sparkle, you just broke in.” Sweetie Belle swallowed hastily. "So... you're going to have to come with me."
Twilight’s ears drooped. “I understand.”
“Well. Good.”
Twilight chewed her lip as they walked. She could see buildings in the distance, these ones looked somewhat newer, like they’d been rebuilt. But the main source of her focus was on the barn that stood just at the edge of the farmland. It was large, easily twice the size of Sweet Apple Acres, and painted a fresh shade of red and white. Twilight felt at home just looking at the place. Of course, she doubted the ponies inside would be as welcoming as the barn felt.
Twilight couldn’t get over how much older Sweetie Belle looked. When Lyra had told her that her last memories were from years ago, she hadn’t wanted to believe it. The extra years on Lyra’s face could have been due to stress or exhaustion, she’d reasoned. But there was no way of explaining this other than with the truth. Twilight had been gone much longer than she ever would have wanted or expected.
Sweetie Belle pushed open a door on the barn’s right, guiding Twilight into a kitchen area. It was simple and rustic which was what Twilight had come to expect from the Apple Family.
“Applejack,” Twilight said suddenly. “Sweetie, is Applejack-”
“Stop!” Sweetie Belle said, before her voice softened. “Please. I- this is a lot to take in. I have to- I’ll go and get her.”
Sweetie Belle pointed to one of four stools by a small wooden table set. “Sit there. Don’t get any ideas of leaving. I can keep this spell going from a distance.”
Twilight nodded, taking a seat. “I won’t move a muscle.”
Sweetie Belle nearly smiled before her eyes hardened. She nodded once before trotting out of the room.
Twilight sat in silence, drinking in the room around her. The kitchen was of a decent size, decorated with worn but colourful wallpaper and aged knick-knacks that looked like they must have been salvaged from Ponyville. There was a pot of something simmering on the stove; Twilight thought she could smell apples. Her stomach growled against her will.
“Alright, alright, Ah said Ah was comin’ didn’t Ah?”
Sweetie Belle returned, but she stopped short at the kitchen’s entrance, tripping over her own hooves before scurrying back the way she came.
A moment later, Applejack entered looking faintly curious.
Twilight’s heart nearly stopped beating in her chest.
Applejack looked older too, a little like Lyra. Rough around the edges, tired-looking, her yellow mane loose and falling around her shoulders. But she was alive. She was here.
Twilight thought back to Honesty’s empty throne at the palace and nearly burst into tears on the spot. As it was she couldn’t keep a strangled laugh from creeping out of her muzzle.
Applejack’s mouth fell open. Her entire body went rigid.
“Sweetie Belle, is this some kinda-”
“It’s not a joke!” Sweetie squeaked insistently from the hallway. “She says she’s-”
“Twilight?” Applejack asked, her voice was firm, but Twilight could hear the emotion - barely contained - behind her words.
Twilight’s lips trembled. “Applejack, it’s me. I swear to you, it’s me.”
Applejack shook her head, looking dazed. “Ah ain’t honestly sure Ah could dispute that. Unless them greys have gotten mighty better at disguisin’ themselves in the last few days.”
Applejack’s eyes were beginning to shimmer. “Ah… Ah think Ah have to, sugarcube.”
Twilight’s wings flared outwards with joy. She threw herself from the stool – breaking Sweetie’s spell in an instant – and galloped the small distance to Applejack before practically falling into her open forelegs.
“Applejack,” Twilight breathed, her chest hitching and falling as the sobs finally started. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Ah have too, Twilight, Ah have too…” Applejack still seemed dazed, but she returned the hug just as strongly, which was all that mattered to Twilight in that moment. She wasn’t sure if she could keep herself upright otherwise.
Finally, Applejack seemed to come to her senses. She held Twilight a leg-length away, her expression desperately searching for something. “Where in the hay have you been Twi? All this time… why, we looked everywhere for yah.”
“Everywhere?” Twilight frowned. “Applejack… I woke up in my palace.”
Applejack looked just as confused. “You… woke up?” Then her eyes widened. “Yer palace?”
“You never checked my palace?”
Applejack scoffed. “Sure we did. It was the first place we checked.” Applejack’s gaze softened. “Twi, yer palace wasn’t there.”
“No.” Twilight shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I woke up there. On the palace table… in a crystal! I’ve been in there for… well, what I’m beginning to understand might have been years… I…”
Applejack wound her hoof securely around Twilight’s shoulder. “That might be so, but trust me Twi, since the last time Ah checked some months ago, yer palace has been gone.”
“So…” Twilight frowned, trying to understand. “The palace camouflaged itself? Can it do that?” She pulled herself away from Applejack, pacing the kitchen. “But that can’t be right, somepony took my journals… and if somepony was able to do that, that means my palace wasn’t invisible the whole time!” Twilight stopped, turning on the spot. “Unless of course it was, and whoever stole my journals was the pony responsible for turning my palace invisible in the first place.”
“Uh Twi, you ain’t makin’ a lick o’ sense.”
Twilight froze, offering Applejack an exhausted smile. “Sorry… it’s just… a lot to take in. I… I don’t know much about anything that’s going on.”
Applejack nodded understandingly. “Ah can see that sugarcube. Ah don’t quite know what happened to ya’ll, but we can try to figure it out together if that makes yer feel any better?”
Twilight grinned. “Thanks, AJ.” She shook her head. “I know I’ve already said it but I’ve missed you.” Then Twilight’s mind shifted. “Hang on… Sweetie Belle is here… so that means Rarity…?”
Applejack’s smile grew wider. “Yessir, Rarity is here too. She’s not much good at farmin’, but she’s gotten better through the years, mostly she helps with the magical border. Actually, she went on an expedition to the camp in Manehatten this mornin’ along with Pinkie Pie and Big Mac.”
Twilight’s heart felt lighter than a feather. After carrying around the fear of her friend’s possible demises all this time… to know that they were alive. That they were out there.
“Manehatten has a camp?”
“Quite a few actually.” Applejack tipped her hat. “We send some of the ponies who stay with us over there every once in a while, make sure they got enough food and such. Fact, Lyra Heartstrings headed that way some moons ago too.” Applejack made a face. “Well, uh, not moons no more but ya’ll get what Ah mean.” She smiled. “You remember Lyra, right Twi?”
When Twilight didn’t respond, Applejack’s face fell. “Twi?”
Twilight opened her mouth to speak only to taste salt on her tongue. Tears had begun dripping down her muzzle without her even realising. She wiped them away, stifling another sob. “I… I met her out there.” Twilight tried to smile. “She, uh, she’s the only reason I even found out about this place.”
“Twilight?” Applejack’s voice was stiff.
“She didn’t make it.” Twilight felt so small in that moment, like she could just fall through the world and no one would pay it any mind. She closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry. She saved my life but the swarm… it…”
“It’s okay.”
Twilight looked up. “What?”
Applejack sighed. “You heard me, Ah said it’s fine.”
“Applejack… how can you say that…”
“Twilight.” Applejack’s voice was suddenly a lot harder. Whatever Twilight wanted to say next was cut off completely. “Now you may not have been livin’ the same life we have been these past ten years, and that’s okay, but the fact is a lotta us have lost ponies we cared about greatly. Mine included.” Applejack paused, lowering her gaze to the floor. “Lyra lost Bon Bon to the swarm on a normal enough expedition, after that, she was never the same.” Applejack swallowed. “Big Mac had ter stop her from runnin’ outta the protection spell one night. She tried ter get herself killed. Now, we thought she was past this. Guess we were wrong.”
Twilight smiled bitterly. “She saved my life. I don’t care why she did it, whether it was selfish or not. She could have let me die and still died herself, but she didn’t. That counts for something.”
Applejack tilted her head. “Ah reckon so.”
Twilight sighed. “Ten years?”
“I’m sorry sugarcube.”
Twilight shook her head, her lips twisting into a hard line. “I can’t believe it… I mean, I always knew this was going to happen. That I’d stay young and watch my friends age. The curse of an Alicorn and all that. I just figured I would have been there to watch it happen.” She winced. “And that it wouldn’t have been the apocalypse.”
Applejack chuckled. “It could be worse.”
“I suppose.” Twilight tried to smiled. Another thought came to her. “What about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash?”
Applejack’s ears dropped at their names. “We never saw ‘em after they were called back ter Cloudsdale.”
“Cloudsdale?” Twilight’s mind raced. She remembered what Lyra had said. Something about an explosion. “So they’re…?”
“We don’t know.”
Twilight’s chest tightened. “Why were they called back?”
If it was possible, Applejack looked even more confused now than she did when she’d first walked into the room. “The war?” she supplied slowly.
“War?”
Applejack frowned. “Twi… now Ah know you weren’t in no crystal during the war.”
“I…” Twilight gaped before righting herself.
War!?
She cleared her throat. “I don’t remember anything after we were sent to find Chrysalis.”
“Really?”
Twilight nodded. “I don’t know why, but I’m starting to wonder if somepony took my memories on purpose.”
“Well,” Applejack said after a few moments of contemplation. “Ah better get us some hard cider outta the, uh, adult cupboard, looks like we got some things to discuss.”
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #4 – A Reunion of Sorts
Ten years.
I’d been in that crystal for ten years.
The longer I talked with Applejack, the more I realised just how much I'd missed. The world ended, ponies died, my friends died, and I was asleep. I was asleep for the whole damn thing.
When I first awoke from that crystal, I’d been convinced that the palace table had taken me to another universe. There was just no way that this wasteland could possibly be my home. But now I understand. It became this way while I was unconscious. The world was sent into chaos and I never knew. Somepony locked me away from my friends, they imprisoned me in a crystal inside an invisible palace.
It sounds like an old foal’s tale. A story your parents would tell you before you went to bed.
Be good or the evil wizard will lock you away in a crystal coffin.
This is my reality. I can’t deny the truth any longer. The world I knew is gone, replaced with a wasteland beneath a dome. And the more I learn, the more I realise that nopony seems to know how it got there. They’re just as clueless as I am.
But somepony did this to me. Somepony denied me not just these ten years, but the memories of the years before any of this even started. I don’t remember a war; I don’t remember all the pegasi in Ponyville being recruited into the war effort. I don’t remember the last time I saw Rainbow or Fluttershy’s faces.
“Oh I knew it had to be you, I just knew it, knew it, knew it!”
“That’s nice, Sweetie,” Twilight managed through a choke. The adolescent unicorn’s forelegs had been wrapped around her neck in a very tight embrace for the past few minutes. “But could you maybe, loosen your grip, just a little?”
“Oops!” Sweetie let go, smiling sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Twilight. It’s just… oh my gosh, we all thought you were dead!”
“Sweetie Belle!”
That was Applejack back from the ‘adult cupboard’ with the ciders. Twilight tried to cover her laughter with a cough.
“It’s fine, AJ, I would have thought I was dead too.”
Applejack shook her head. “Still don’t mean she should be botherin’ you like this.” Applejack gave Sweetie a half-serious look. “’Specially when she’s still got chores ter finish on the farm.”
Sweetie Belle blushed at that. “I was on a break!”
“Oh really?”
“Really!” Sweetie Belle eyed the bottles Applejack was placing on the table. “Hey, can I have one?”
“No!” Twilight and Applejack said together. Twilight laughed. Applejack didn’t.
Sweetie Belle pouted. “Come ooon! I’m old enough now. Rarity would totally let me!”
“Finish yer chores, then we’ll see,” Applejack said, dismissing her with a hoof.
Sweetie Belle groaned. “Fine.”
With that, Sweetie left the room, whipping her tail in a disgruntled fashion. Twilight watched her go.
“I still can’t believe how much she’s grown,” Twilight said, uncapping her cider with her magic.
Applejack shrugged. “She may be bigger, but she can still be jus’ as demanding.” Applejack rolled her eyes. “Rarity says it’s ‘cause she still has a hard time adjustin’ to this new world. I say she jus’ wants ter do less work.”
Twilight chuckled. “Can you blame her?”
Applejack smiled, taking a sip of her cider. “Naw. Still fun bein’ the boss though.”
Twilight frowned, clearing her throat. “You, uh, you never did say what happened to your granny. Or…”
“Apple Bloom?”
Twilight nodded reluctantly.
Applejack sighed. “She’s alive, far as Ah know. She decided she didn’t want ter spend her life farmin’, not in a world like this. She wanted to help other ponies, those who might noth’ve been as lucky as us.” Applejack suddenly found the indents on the table a lot more interesting. “Ah can’t blame her, Ah know there’s ponies out there still who barely make it by. Still, Ah worry.”
Twilight wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I… wow, AJ, I’m sorry. That must be hard.” Twilight offered her a sympathetic smile. “At least she’s okay?”
“Fer now.”
That was true enough. Twilight had seen the dangers out there first hoof. What with the borgs and the husks, or, greys as ponies here seemed to call them running around, she was surprised Applejack would have ever let her sister go. Then again, thinking back to what Apple Bloom had been like as a filly, Twilight assumed it hadn’t exactly been a well-discussed expedition.
“As fer granny,” Applejack continued, “well, she always said she was gonna go out on her own terms. And she did. Peacefully in her sleep. She never let no grey or borg get to her, even when she was darn near chasin’ them outta the town border.”
Twilight smiled despite herself. “That sounds like her.”
“Crazy old mare,” Applejack said, shaking her head. “Least Ah don’t have ter worry ‘bout her risin’ like the others.”
Twilight’s stomach clenched at that. “Applejack… how did this happen?”
Applejack sighed. “You really wanna know? Maybe whoever took yer memory was doin’ yer a favour.”
Twilight’s expression was as resolute as her tone. “I have to know.”
“Okay,” Applejack said, taking a large swig of cider. “Jus’ don’t say Ah didn’t warn you.”
“It started with what you remember last; Queen Chrysalis. After she ran off like that, Thorax was desperate for her capture. We figured that without her hive or a connection to a source of love, she’d be easy ter find.” Applejack winced. “We were wrong.”
Twilight nodded slowly. “I think I remember a little of the search. We split up, didn’t we? I went to Griffonstone…”
“Eeyup,” Applejack said. “And Ah headed down ter the Crystal Empire.” She shrugged. “None of us found nothin’, it was like the Queen had jus’ disappeared.”
“But she returned?” Twilight guessed.
Applejack nodded forlornly. “More powerful than we’d ever thought possible. She’d rebuilt a new hive, one that didn’t know about that fancy old metamorphosis Thorax and his hive had gone through. She also rebuilt her throne so nopony with magic could get near her.” Applejack grimaced. “As the Elements, we were called back to Canterlot. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna sat us down in the throne room an’ told us that what the Queen was doin' was an act of war.”
Twilight shuddered at the thought. She shook her head. “I don’t… what happened next?”
Applejack sighed. “We don’t know much of what happened in the fight on accounta the fact that we were earth ponies. Celestia requested that all pegasi be used on the war front. Unicorns couldn’t use their magic with Chyrsalis’ throne, earth ponies couldn’t reach the battlefield on hoof, but the pegasi could still use their wings.”
Twilight gaped. “All the pegasi? Even Fluttershy?” She couldn’t imagine the sweet and terrified animal-loving mare on the front line of a war.
Applejack’s eyes hardened. “Ah don’t believe it myself neither. Whether she was used in the fight or to help prepare soldiers Ah don’t know, but Rainbow Dash…” Something caught in Applejack’s throat. She paused, taking another swig. A bitter line crossed her expression.
“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight prompted softly.
Applejack closed her eyes. “She was one of their best fighters. All the Wonderbolts were. They rivalled the Royal Guard pegasi somethin’ fierce, and those stallions had been trained as fighters.” Applejack opened her eyes. “But Rainbow got hurt.”
Twilight’s heart contracted.
“Nopony knew how bad,” Applejack continued. “Turns out it couldn’t have been as bad as we thought, ‘cause next we hear she’s back in the fight. But soon after that, things turned sour.”
Twilight frowned. “How?”
“Some anti-war revolutionary types got it in their heads that if they threw a spanner in the works, they could stop the war.” Applejack gritted her teeth. “They were only half right.
“Cloudsdale was the base of operations, all soldiers went in and out dependin’ on their health and service status. So these revolutionaries decided to blow the thing up. We don’t know how, but after that, everythin’ started going wrong.”
Applejack looked out to the window, frowning. “The Princesses said it was a toxin created from the explosion, though it never made much sense to us. Suddenly, the weather had a mind of its own, nopony could control it. Tornados, storms, all sorts ravaged the land, destroyin’ crops and the like.” Applejack sucked a breath through her teeth. “Didn’t stop there ah’course. The bad weather had encouraged ponies to build underground shelters, and it was a good thing we did, ‘cause next the sun turned on us.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “Celestia wouldn’t…”
“Not the Princess,” Applejack corrected. “The sun. The Princesses lost control of the sun and the moon. It started out with the sun refusin’ to set, then it got hotter… crops died, old and young ponies started dyin’ from the effects too.” Applejack sighed. “Finally, the ground weren’t safe for us no more. The Princesses told everyone to make like a groundhog and get underneath it.
“Granny Smith opened the barn’s shelter to anypony who needed it, that just-so happened to include Rarity and Sweetie Belle.” Applejack took a hearty swig. “We had ter encourage Pinkie ter stay with us too. She didn’t want ter leave the Cakes on accounta the fact that the heat had…” Applejack swallowed hard. “Well, like Ah said, a lotta young’ns didn’t make it.”
“Oh Celestia,” Twilight murmured. She took a swig out of her own bottle, relishing the bitter taste, but absently wishing for something stronger. “What happened? To the Cakes?”
Applejack’s gaze drew distant. “Ah don’t think they tried much ter fight the swarm. They were some of the first in Ponyville ter turn.” Applejack shook her head. “Surely not the last though.”
“Where did the swarm come from?” Twilight asked. “It didn’t look natural.”
“None of it’s natural,” Applejack muttered. “The whole darn world went ter crap ‘cause of those revolutionists.” She shook her head. “Nopony knows what started the swarm; some say it was part of the toxin that the Princesses say stole our weather magic from us.” She smiled bitterly. “’Course that ain’t quite true. Those borgs in the sky… Ah don’t know what made ‘em, nopony does, but they can move that swarm. Ah’ve seen ‘em do it.”
Twilight’s heart beat faster in her chest. “What? You mean they make it?”
“Ah ain’t sure ‘bout that.” Applejack’s cider was nearly finished. “But once it’s comin’, them borgs can guide it wherever they see fit.”
“So it just came? Without warning?” Twilight shook her head. “What about the dome? How does that fit into everything?”
Applejack glanced skyward, as if she could see right through the roof and into the magical dome itself. “It came with the swarm Ah reckon,” she said quietly. “Happened through the night. We was all in the shelter after a particularly bad storm, then we heard screaming.” Applejack’s eyes glazed over as her mind was sent reeling to the past. “There were… ponies on the street… so many of ‘em. The swarm had rolled in as part o’ the storm; none of us at the barn ever saw it, but it had crept into pony’s homes, had infected anypony who hadn’t been underground.” Applejack closed her eyes, a shudder passed through her body. “They were coughin’ up this black goo… chokin’ on the stuff. There were fillies crying, writhin’ in pain. Then they’d lie still. And we thought that was that. Big Mac even went to help collect the dead… a lotta ponies did. And then…” Applejack’s eyes opened and Twilight realised with a start that she was crying.
“It’s okay,” Twilight said, pressing her hoof against her friend’s shoulder. “You don’t have to say anything more if you don’t want to.”
Applejack shook her head, pursing her lips. “They came back,” she whispered. “They attacked us. They had these sharp metal teeth an' they screeched like banshees… they turned before we knew what was happenin’, these impossible dead ponies rottin’ from the inside.” Applejack shrugged off Twilight’s hoof, finishing her cider in one large gulp. “Anypony who got bitten by those things ended up joinin’ them. The greys, we called ‘em.” She barked out a joyless laugh. “That’s when the dome went up, after the first infection. Like we’d been cut off from the rest of the world. An’ we had.”
Twilight’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”
“Notice anything since you woke up?” Applejack asked coldly. “Bet you seen more greys than you could shake a stick at. Some borgs, too. Betcha haven’t seen nothin’ else.”
Twilight’s eyes widened in surprise. “You can’t mean…”
“Eeyup.” Applejack’s expression was as bitter as the cider. “The dome’s a magical border. Only ponies exist inside of it. Anythin’ else was thrown outta the infection zone.”
“So you know where the dome ends?” Twilight’s heart picked up in her chest. “It doesn’t go on forever?”
“Nope.” Applejack sighed. “It cuts off in the Frozen North territory. Encompasses all pony cities, but not Griffonstone, not Yakyakistan and not Thorax’s hive territory.” Applejack pointed a hoof at Twilight’s cider. “Yer gonna finish that?”
Twilight blinked. “I, uh, could go for something stronger actually.”
The two ponies laughed. A kind of laugh that could only be brought on through the exhaustion of the knowledge that they had just shared.
“Ah can arrange that, got some Apple Jack Daniels saved up fer a special occasion.” Applejack shrugged. “Guess this probably qualifies.”
Twilight followed Applejack to the cupboard, leaning her weight against one of the counters. “So that’s why you believed me right away?” she asked as Applejack balanced the bottle of amber liquid atop her hooves. “Because I couldn’t have been a changeling… because they don’t exist here. They can’t.”
Applejack laughed humourlessly. “Guess it was one way ter end the war.”
Twilight closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this…”
“None of us can,” Applejack said, pouring out two glasses. “Still, we gotta live with what we have.”
“And the Princesses?” The question had been welling inside Twilight for quite some time, but she hadn’t wanted to say it, hadn’t wanted to hope. “…And Spike?”
Applejack slid a glass towards Twilight before taking a swig of her own. “Ah figure Spike was spared by the dome on accounta the whole dragon thing.” Applejack closed the cupboard with an exasperated sigh. “We stopped wishin’ fer the Princesses a long time ago. Frankly, a lotta us figured they abandoned us.”
“No,” Twilight said automatically. “That’s not possible. They wouldn’t do that to us.”
“Maybe not from what you remember,” Applejack said darkly. “But the war changed us, Twi. It changed them.” Applejack’s expression softened. “We was just glad it didn’t change you.”
Twilight took a sip of her drink. She greeted the burn in her throat like an old friend. “They wouldn’t abandon us, no matter what happened. Especially not Cadence, especially not my brother.”
“Yer do crazy things fer the ones you love,” Applejack said softly. “They had a young’n too, remember. I suspect they wouldda done just about anythin’ to make sure Flurry Heart was on the outside of that dome.”
“I…” Twilight cut herself off, shaking her head. “I…” There was nothing she could say, she realised. The truth was she didn’t know any of this. This was ten years of a history she hadn’t experienced. And a year before that she couldn’t even recall. No matter what she said, it wouldn’t change the deep seated grudges and beliefs that had been born from years of abandonment. If the Princesses hadn’t been seen for all this time… was it impossible to think that they might have fled their own kingdom?
But then… if even the Princesses - the kind and warm hearted leaders of Equestria - had left their world behind, why had Twilight remained? What had kept her here? Who had entrapped her?
“When was the last time you saw me?” Twilight asked suddenly. “During the storms and the swarm, when Cloudsdale exploded… where was I?”
Applejack frowned. She’d already finished her drink. “Ah don’t quite remember,” she said slowly. “But Ah reckon you was in Canterlot by then. All the Princesses were.” She tried to smile. “If you’d been in Ponyville, Ah wouldda made sure you was with us when the world fell apart.”
Twilight smiled back. A warmness had spread in her chest, and she liked to believe it was the warmth of a friendship rekindled, and not just the triple shot of whiskey she’d just knocked back. She sighed, suddenly feeling so, so tired. “Starlight Glimmer?” she finally asked. “Did you…”
Applejack shook her head. “Sorry sugarcube. Ah reckon she was with ya’ll in Canterlot. If she survived the initial outbreak… well, Ah don’t know where she is now.”
“Lyra said Canterlot was borg territory,” Twilight said carefully. “But the closer I get to the answers I'm looking for, the more I realise that’s where everything seems to lead me.”
“Don’t do nothin' crazy,” Applejack warned. “Lyra might’ve had a death wish of her own, but she was right in keepin’ you away from there. Nopony who’s gone to Canterlot has come back alive.”
“But we’re the Elements of Harmony,” Twilight insisted. “If anypony can do this-”
“We ain’t no more,” Applejack said roughly. “Kindness an’ Loyalty could be dead fer all we know. An’ the rest… well we ain’t nothing like we once were. Not after this.”
“You’re still helping ponies,” Twilight said. “That counts for something.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ straight,” Applejack said, quick to change the subject. “We got runnin’ water in the bathroom upstairs. You take a shower, get some grub an’ have an early night. Ah’ll run through chores with ya’ll in the mornin’, introduce you to the whole group.”
“Ah’ll wake you,” Applejack insisted, sliding Twilight’s glass away from her. “Go on, Twi. You’ve had it rough, Ah know, but you’re safe here. Safe as yah can be. Jus’ rest, okay sugarcube?”
Twilight pursed her lips. She knew Applejack had her best interests at heart, but she also knew what her own heart was telling her. She sighed, glancing out to the hallway. “Where do I sleep?”
Applejack’s smile was genuine. “Bedroom upstairs to yer left. Ya’ll can bunk with me an’ Sweetie. Usually, Rarity and Pinkie sleep there too, but they won’t be back ‘til later.”
Twilight nodded. “Thanks AJ.” She bowed her head. “And I’m sorry.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ to apologize for. Jus’ get some rest.”
Twilight headed for the bathroom.
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #5 – Home Sweet Barn
I just spent twenty minutes in a shower watching ten years’ worth of dirt and grime wash out of my coat. I call that a productive ‘evening’.
What Applejack has told me is true. Going to Canterlot alone would be a death sentence, with all the borgs and ‘greys’ that hound the area, I’d be dead before I could even set hoof on palace grounds.
But if I had the other Elements at my side…
It’s wrong to think this way. After all this time walking the wasteland alone, having my heart broken time and time again, seeing death and being responsible for even more of it… I shouldn’t be planning to leave the first place I’ve felt safe in for, well, ten years I guess.
When I wake up I’ll see the rest of the farm. When I wake up, Rarity and Pinkie will be here. We can catch up. Maybe Rarity is still making clothes for the other survivors. I’m sure Pinkie still throws parties to keep everyone’s spirits up. I only wish Rainbow and Fluttershy were here too.
Oh, Celestia, it doesn’t matter how much of the story I know, it doesn’t change how much I wish I could turn back time and make it right. I don’t know how I could. If the Elements had been useless against Chrysalis’ anti-magic throne then I’m sure I wouldn’t have known a way to defeat her even if I did go back to where it all began. I can’t stay in the past, despite the missing years. I have to look to the future. I have to a find a way for this world to fix itself.
And again, I can only think that what I need is in Canterlot. Because if the Princesses are beyond the dome and I was in Canterlot at the time of their departure… then why did I wake up in my palace? Who put me there? The Princesses must have known. And if they knew, then they must have left a clue. I have to know what happened, because the more I think of it, the more I realise that the answers for fixing the future might just lie in my forgotten past. So much for trying not to stay there.
I can’t forget. I can’t let this go. But I need my friends' help for this to succeed.
I’ll rest now. It’s been a long… you know, I’m not even sure how long it’s been since I left my palace now. All I know is I have a lot of sleep to catch up on, and something tells me Applejack isn’t going to let me sleep through the ‘morning’ chores.
Twilight awoke to an empty bedroom and a note on her bedside table.
Thought it best to let you sleep in. Come down to the kitchen when you’re ready, I’ll show you around the farm. X AJ.
That, Twilight surmised, was a pleasant surprise.
Her shared room was a beautiful collection of patchwork bed quilts, cushions and red and white decoration. There were old Apple Family pictures on the walls, evidently salvaged from Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight thought she recognised some of the ponies in the pictures. As she came down the stairs, she saw a photograph of Granny Smith and her siblings. The picture made Twilight smile.
As she reached the downstairs hallway, Twilight caught the scent of something sweet drifting over from the kitchen. She licked her lips, realising with a start just how hungry she was. Days of restricting herself to a single apple or carrot a day had done wonders for her appetite.
Twilight paused in the archway to the kitchen, surprised to a see a green earth pony with a dark green mane stood by the oven. A quick scan of the surrounding area proved that Applejack was nowhere in sight. Twilight cleared her throat, blushing awkwardly.
The mare turned around. Her mane had been tied into two pigtails around her shoulders, dressed with a pink bow each. She smiled brightly the second she saw Twilight.
“Well good mornin’ to yah!” the mare said with a grin. “You must be Twilight Sparkle!”
Twilight smiled back, her stomach knotting nervously. This was the first stranger she’d met since waking in that crystal, unless she counted the husks who’d tried to kill her on the way. “Uh, yes I am!” Twilight glanced to the door that led outside. “Applejack told me to meet her here?”
The mare beamed at her. “Ah’course!” she said. “Cousin AJ is out in the farm right now, she’ll be with yah shortly.” She turned back to the oven. “In the meantime, we got some flour in from the Manehattan camp last night, so there’s fritters fer breakfast.”
Twilight’s stomach rumbled excitedly at the thought.
The mare chuckled. “Ah see ya’ll are hankerin’ for some. Ah’ll get yah a plate.” As the mare trotted to the cupboards, she glanced Twilight’s way. “Name’s Apple Fritter, Ah do the cookin’ here most o’ the time. That soup ya’ll tasted last night? One of mah recipes.” As Apple Fritter placed a new plate on the counter, she continued: “’course Ah had ter change a lotta mah old recipes after the Event, but if mah Ma taught me anythang it’s ter work with what yah got.”
Twilight chuckled, trotting over to Apple Fritter. “Well it was very delicious.”
Apple Fritter blushed. “Well thank yer kindly.”
Twilight sat at the table with a plate of fritters and a glass of water. The first bite was otherworldly, the second just as good. Twilight polished them off in a matter of seconds. Apple Fritter watched her the whole time, grinning eagerly.
It was odd, after spending so much time alone, running for her life, splattering all sorts of black blood across her hooves just to survive… Twilight had almost forgotten what it felt like to share a smile with another pony. Here, under a shroud of invisibility, it was easy to forget that the outside world was nothing more than a wasteland. It was easy to forget that the living dead walked the hot earth, rotting from the inside out, hungry for flesh and magic. But Twilight couldn’t forget. And she most certainly couldn’t forget what might be waiting for her in Canterlot.
After exchanging a few easy words with Apple Fritter, Applejack came trotting into the barn. She nodded towards her cousin. “Candy Apple’s got herself in a spot o’ trouble with the golden cherry trees,” Applejack said. “Could yah give her a hoof?”
“No problem,” Apple Fritter said, grinning broadly. “It was nice meetin’ yah Twilight.”
“You too.”
Applejack chuckled as Apple Fritter left. “See yer met my cuz.”
“She’s lovely,” Twilight said, gesturing to the plate she was washing up. “A wonderful cook, too.”
Applejack nodded. “She always had a knack in the kitchen, Ah tell yah, ‘sides from Pinkie she’s probably the happiest pony you’ll ever meet since the apocalypse.”
Twilight finished with her dish, drying it with a flash of her magic. “Are Pinkie and Rarity…?”
Applejack gave her a knowing smile. “Lemme show you ‘round the farm.”
The farm was decidedly larger than Twilight had imagined. As well as the cherry and apple trees being cultivated on the side that Twilight had ‘broken in’ on, there was a whole tended soil area for golden cherry trees at the front-side of the barn. The golden cherries seemed to have fared better than the apples, but they still seemed smaller post-apocalypse, more withered.
Twilight frowned. “You know with a touch of magic I could keep the farm in better condition.”
Applejack grinned broadly. “That’d be mighty kind, Twi. We got quite a few unicorns here at the farm, but none of ‘em know enough ‘bout farmin’ magic to help us much past tendin’ soil.”
“Well,” Twilight said, pointing her horn at the nearest tree. With a little concentration, Twilight was able to connect her magic’s flow with that of the life inside the tree. She felt it pulsate within the roots, taking root beneath the soil. She smiled as the bark began to glow, her magic inching its way through the trunk. “It might take a few days, but I’m sure I can get to every tree.”
Applejack drew Twilight into another hug, laughing softly. “Sugarcube, Ah gotta say Ah missed yer somethin’ fierce.”
Twilight laughed at that.
The lack of animals was startling, but not surprising. After what Applejack had said, it made sense that none of the animals would have existed within the border. It was good in a way, at least they were spared of the swarm. Still, Twilight couldn’t help but think of Fluttershy.
As they trotted through various farming ground – Applejack explaining the different chores as she went – Twilight began to notice how many ponies she didn’t recognise going about their daily routine. She saw earth ponies planting seeds and pulling ploughs through the dirt, dirt that was being kept alive by the magic that a few unicorns were performing, trailing behind the earth ponies’ efforts. The community was larger than Twilight had expected, but so many of these ponies were strangers to her. Hardly any of them were from Ponyville or even Appleloosa. And also, as Twilight focused her attention more on the ponies and less on Applejack’s voice, she realised that there was not a single pegasus pony among them.
“AJ…” Twilight said, apologising when she realised that Applejack had been in the middle of talking. “Where are all the pegasi?”
Applejack glanced about herself before lowering her head. “Not many o’ ‘em made it back from the war,” she said softly. “We try not ter talk ‘bout it much, but the fact is, the only time anypony sees a pegasus nowadays is in the sky… as one of them borgs.”
Twilight looked up at the dome instinctively. She saw nothing, though even if a borg had been up there, it wouldn’t have seen them with the shroud intact. Which reminded her.
“I can help with that invisibility shroud,” Twilight said suddenly. “I realise it must take a lot of energy for the unicorns here to keep refreshing it. If I add my Alicorn magic, we can change the recharge time from three times a day to once every few days, easy.”
Applejack’s expression softened into something of relief. “Twi, you’d be doin’ a mighty kind service helpin’ out them poor souls. Celestia knows it takes it outta ‘em usin’ all that magic.” She glanced towards the ploughing fields. “Plus all the magic they provide fer our soil.”
Twilight smiled. “I’m just glad I can help. Which reminds me.” She gestured towards the barn with her hoof. “I left some jars in my saddle bags under the bed. They have some small-scale weather enchantments attached to them that creates replenishable drinking water. It should be useful.” She thought it best not to mention the test tubes and other scientific equipment stowed away in there. There was no use frightening these ponies if they realised she had live samples of husk blood hidden beneath her bed.
Applejack was thankful for the support and continued the rest of the tour with a renewed vigour. By the end of it, the red sun’s heat had gotten to the both of them. Twilight could feel the sweat prickling beneath her fur, and Applejack looked about gasping for a drink.
“Ah’ll show you the barn where we keep our equipment,” Applejack said. “Then we can head on inside an’ get us somethin’ ter drink.”
Twilight nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
One thing Twilight hadn’t expected from a supply barn was the one thing she should have wholly anticipated.
“SURPRISE!”
The instant Twilight opened the doors, streamers came blasting from the ceiling. A wall of multi-coloured confetti sprinkled from all angles, raining down into Twilight’s mane. There was only one pony in all of Equestria who could somehow throw a welcome back party in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
Twilight squealed with renewed delight. “Pinkie!”
Twilight was very nearly tackled by a mane of ruffled pink joy. Pinkie appeared from seemingly nowhere, pulling Twilight into a hug that on all accounts should have knocked the wind right out of her, but instead felt like an accumulation of the things she had been missing all at once. Twilight found herself laughing, burying her muzzle into Pinkie’s shoulder.
“OhmygoodnessgoddnessGOODNESS, I missed you sooo much Twilight!” Pinkie squealed, jumping up and down with Twilight still firmly wrapped in her forelegs. “When Applejack told us that you had turned up at the barn, me and Rarity didn’t know what to think, I mean it’s been ten years Twilight, ten whole years! And I knew this called for a Pinkie Party, but with the whole end-of-the-world thingy I was severely lacking in streamers butbutbut we’d just traded some supplies in Manehattan and they had an old party store, can you believe it? And I needed confetti for my party cannon because it’s my cannon, I couldn’t just go to a party store and not buy confetti for my cannon and I got side tracked and next thing you know I had half the store with me and Rarity told me that that was an obscene amount of party stuff and that I’d never need to use it and flour and food materials were so much more necessary but lookie now! You’re home and I can throw a PAR-TAYYY!”
Pinkie didn’t pause for breath once and Twilight had never been more thrilled for it. She hugged Pinkie back just as tightly, laughing along to her mad story. “This is amazing,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes. “Thank you so much.”
“Awww,” Pinkie said. Her eyes were glistening too. “We’re just glad to have you back!”
“All of us.”
Twilight’s ears perked up at the sound of Rarity’s voice. She squealed as the unicorn trotted forwards; Rarity was already crying, large globular tears freely running down her face and muzzle. Sweetie Belle stood in the corner, smiling brightly.
“Oh Twilight, darling, all these years!” Rarity said, sweeping Twilight into a hug the second Pinkie let her go. “I bet I look a mess compared to you, all safe and sound in that crystal.” Rarity made a huffing noise. “To think, the absurdity and just utter rudeness of it all for your castle to disappear like that. I swear to you Twilight, I will not rest until we figure out who did this to you!”
“Rarity,” Twilight said, tears leaking onto her friend’s shoulder. “Thank you.” She looked out to Applejack , Pinkie and Sweetie Belle, her smile extending to all of them. “I can’t thank any of you enough. I… I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you all.”
“It’s not worth thinking about, honestly,” Rarity assured. “Now, we don’t have too long until we must return to our arduous work ethic.” Rarity shot Applejack a humorous look. “But we have plenty of cider, and Apple Fritter brought in some extra fritters from breakfast, so dig in everypony!”
Twilight laughed, joining her friends at the makeshift table Pinkie must have rolled in from the barn house. For the first time in a long time, she felt truly happy.
Twilight found herself working until the early hours. Or at least she must have been, because everypony else had abandoned their chores in favour for their beds long ago.
The red sun beat down just as harshly, but a subdued breeze seemed to blow in from nowhere, ruffling Twilight’s mane and leaving an ashy taste in her mouth. Twilight paid it no mind; instead she tried to imagine that she was simply helping Applejack out on the farm on a hot summer’s day. Once the work was done, she’d be meeting Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy at the lake for sunbathing and swimming. Pinkie would bring Gummy and Spike would be there too, trailing after Rarity as always.
Twilight focused her energy on the last of the golden cherry trees. She’d been working all day to get at least one of the farms fully protected from the sun’s unrelenting heat. She could feel the pressure on her horn’s magic, sapping the last of her energy, but it didn’t matter to her. With a final burst of magic, the golden cherry farm was finished.
Twilight sighed, trotting over to a nearby rock. She could see the barn off in the distance, a few windows still aglow with soft candlelight where the last of the survivors had yet to relinquish their consciousness. She’d join them soon enough, but for now she just wanted to be alone.
Seeing Rarity and Pinkie that afternoon had been amazing, and spending that time catching up, eating and talking had felt like old times again. Twilight could ignore the significant exhaustion in her friend’s eyes, the small differences to their faces and manes that gave away the strain of those extra ten years. For a while she’d been able to pretend that everything was fine and that they were simply celebrating a normal Pinkie Party like always.
But it simply wasn’t true. Her friends might still be the same in many ways, but they had also changed in others. Rarity no longer worked as a fashion designer. She made a few pieces here and there for protective purposes, but mostly she’d spent the last ten years focusing on her magical ability just so she could keep the farm safe from harm. Sweetie Belle might still sing to entertain the survivors, but there weren’t any fillies or colts on the compound that were in need of help finding their special talents. Even if there were, Twilight wondered if foals would even acquire their cutie marks in this warped and torn future. Maybe they could only have marks to do with survival now. What did a husk-evading cutie mark look like, she wondered?
Pinkie was in high spirits it seemed, but Twilight had learnt from Rarity that the rest of her family was currently MIA. The only member to be accounted for was Maud Pie. She lived out in the Manehattan compound – apparently this new rock infested wasteland was like a Hearth’s Warming gift that never ended for her. Twilight had to stifle a laugh at that.
All her friends had lost somepony, just as Lyra had explained.
As Twilight looked out beyond the barn, out past the invisibility shroud where the overpowering wasteland never seemed to end, she wondered just how many ponies were out there right now. Lost, or surviving on their own. Was Apple Bloom with some of them? Did Twilight know any of them? Was somepony being killed by a husk right now? Or attacked by a borg? Was the swarm ravaging somepony? Were they turning into a husk as Twilight sat there, staring at the fire-like sky?
Twilight shook her head. All of this was so wrong. She’d spent a day fixing cherry trees just to feel like she was doing something worthwhile, but she knew in her heart that she was just stalling. When was an appropriate time to ask her friends to come to Canterlot with her? Twilight grimaced at the thought. She couldn’t expect her friends to go along with this, she could barely believe herself every time the thought crossed her mind. She was safe here; was she really willing to give all of this up just for the small chance at finding an answer the Princesses might have left for her? It was more than a long shot, it was border line insanity.
Then again, wasn’t everypony a little insane now?
“Ya’ll alright there sugarcube?”
Twilight jumped, turning at the sound of Applejack’s voice. She was stood by the rock, a look of concern on her face. Her hat was missing and there was sleep in her eyes.
Twilight tried to smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I just… got caught up in my work, I guess.”
Applejack followed Twilight’s gaze towards the wasteland. “It’s late,” she said quietly. “Maybe it’s time to get some rest?”
“Maybe.”
Suddenly, a thought struck Twilight. Something so simple, so easy, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it sooner. “Hey,” Twilight said. “Those… expeditions you guys go on, how often do you do that?”
Applejack’s eyebrow rose in suspicion. “Every week give or take. Why?”
“Could I come with you on your next one?” Twilight asked.
Applejack’s expression shifted to that of exasperated understanding. “We don’t go near Canterlot,” she warned.
Twilight bit her lip before nodding. “That makes sense I guess.”
“Twi,” Applejack said slowly. “Yah have ter let this go. It ain’t healthy fixatin’ on somethin’ you just can’t have.”
“I know,” Twilight murmured. She glanced back out at the wasteland, trying to visualise Canterlot stood out there somewhere in the distance. Her first home. The royal capital. “I just…” She sighed. “I have so many questions.”
“We all do.”
Twilight turned sharply to Applejack. “Then why can’t we go?” she urged, a pleading note in her voice. “I understand the risks, AJ, but wouldn’t it be worth it if the answers to this whole thing lay somewhere in the palace?” Twilight shifted on her hooves, wincing slightly. “Plus… I’ve been taking samples of husk-uh-grey blood and the only place in Equestria that might have the technology to properly analyse them is the laboratory in Canterlot.”
“Husks, huh?” Applejack’s lips quirked with amusement. She sighed, shaking her head. “Ah get ya’ll want answers, Twi, but really, do yer think a bit o’ blood is gonna give you a cure ter this mess? Or even what yer wanna hear?”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know.” She threw her hooves up in frustration. “That’s the whole point! I don’t know. And I want to. I need to.”
Applejack’s eyes flickered over Twilight’s expression before she softened. “Here’s what Ah’m gonna suggest,” she said. “Next week, Ah’ll let ya’ll tag along on our expedition ter trade some goods. You’ll get a lay of the land that way, an’ you’ll see what it’s like trekking with a group of ponies.” Applejack bowed her head not unkindly. “Ah can betcha it ain’t nothin’ like travellin’ alone.”
“So what?” Twilight asked. “If I do that and I still want to go to Canterlot, you’ll join me?”
Applejack sighed. “Ah reckon Ah won’t be able ter stop yah either way. Least if Ah’m with yah my conscience will be clear.” Her eyes narrowed. “But we trade first. Maybe then you’ll realise just how stupid this whole plan sounds in the first place.”
Twilight realised this was the best offer she was going to get. She needed answers, and Applejack understood that. Heck, maybe a part of her wanted those answers just as badly. With the samples Twilight had collected, there was a chance she’d be able to figure out a piece of this puzzle. Maybe she’d never find a way to defeat the husks; maybe she’d get to the lab and find that there was nothing worth finding. Maybe her dream of retrieving a lost letter from the Princesses was exactly that. A dream. But there was only one way she’d find out for sure.
Twilight bumped Applejack’s hoof with her own. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #6 – All Work and No Play
I can’t put down in words how good it feels to see my friends again after all this time.
In one week I’ll be leaving the compound with Pinkie, Rarity and Applejack. We’ll be taking supplies to a settlement hidden in the cliffs just off of Neighagra Falls. The ponies there manage to keep off of the borgs’ radar, but Applejack tells me that the trek is a long and arduous one, posing many husk threats along the way.
I can’t say I’m thrilled about that, but if I can prove to Applejack that the four of us are more than capable of accomplishing this task together, then she’ll agree to accompany me to Canterlot.
I think that if I explain myself to the others, Pinkie would agree to come along in a heartbeat. I can’t say the same about Rarity; I know that she still thinks of Sweetie Belle as her responsibility despite her being older and more than capable of taking care of herself now. I also know that Sweetie Belle would be devastated if anything were to happen to her big sister.
I don’t want to put my friends in unnecessary danger, but the truth is that none of us are safe, not even in Appleloosa. The husks and borgs pose a threat to us at all times; taking a step out of the shroud for more than two seconds could get anypony here killed. I can’t ask for more than my friends are willing to give, but given these ten years where the dead have walked and cyborgs have roamed the skies, I’m willing to bet that they might just agree to this. If for nothing else than to help me.
I love my friends, they have always been the best of me.
Together, I know we can do this. We can make it to Canterlot.
The week went by in a blur of magically-induced exhaustion.
Twilight spent as much time as she could on the farm, protecting the trees and crops from the wasteland’s relentless red sun.
At the same time, she would sacrifice a dose of her magic to the invisible border around the town. It was worth it, she decided, especially to see all those exhausted unicorns with genuine smiles on their faces. Some of them even followed Twilight around, studying her spell work. They were committed to memorising her spells so that Twilight wouldn’t have to perform them alone in the future. Twilight couldn’t help but commend that.
It was hard work, but it was consuming work, which meant that Twilight could focus on it without thinking too much about what the end of the week would entail. Every time she got into bed, her mind would wander to the halls at Canterlot palace; she would see the lab there, clean and pristine as always. She refused to imagine a lab with cobwebs and dust, without ponies in lab coats studying the experiments that Celestia had approved of and funded for their projects.
Twilight remembered being a young filly, staring in wide eyed wonderment at the way those ponies had been able to manipulate the world – not just with magic, but with science. She became obsessed with it – how two compounds could be put together to create something entirely different, how new and exciting technology was being developed right under everypony’s noses and none of them ever seemed to realise.
As she grew older, Twilight had used what she’d learnt from watching those ponies in her own magic. In some ways, she believed that a perfect mixture of science and magic was what had brought her to where she was now. The Element of Magic. Princess of Friendship. Everything needed a balance – such as a balance between her magic studies and friendship – science had taught her that.
She missed Canterlot. She missed her first home. Most of all, she missed the library. All that knowledge, lost and locked away. She wished she could be there now, but she couldn’t bear the thought of what it had become in her absence. What those brutish borgs had done to her once immaculate home.
The soft snores of her friends would drive her from the dark recesses of her mind, reminding her of where she was. She was on a farm with Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie, all sleeping right next to her. She tried not to think of those that were missing. What mattered was her friends, and perhaps once they’d made that trade in Neighagra Falls, it would be those same friends that would help her make the journey to Canterlot again after all this time.
Soon she’d have the answers she was looking for; she knew it in her heart. She just had to be patient.
Within the blink of an eye, the week was up and Twilight found herself charming four jars of water for each of her friends. They’d all agreed that her weather enchantments would serve much more practical and far less time consuming than carrying dozens of jars to and from the reservoir.
Rarity had designed new and improved boots for Twilight, assuring her that these ones wouldn’t wear against the hot surface of the earth. She’d even sewed her a new cloak from a darker material, one that would blend in far better with the wasteland and prove it much harder for the borgs to see her from the sky.
Twilight kept her brass goggles. It was a tie to Rainbow Dash and she refused to let anypony take them from her. Her friends seemed to understand this without asking, which Twilight was thankful for.
All too soon they were making the journey to the edge of town.
Sweetie Belle trailed behind them, chattering insistently to Rarity, checking and double checking that she had everything with her.
“She does this every time,” Applejack said with a fond eye roll. Twilight couldn’t help but think she was reminded of her own sister.
Still, Twilight could understand Sweetie’s urgency. Going out into the wasteland was no easy feat, experiencing it on her own had been terrifying, and losing Lyra after only just reuniting with her still left an uncomfortable pressure in Twilight’s chest. A part of her was afraid of journeying out with her friends. At least when she was alone, the only pony she had to be worried for was herself. Twilight wasn’t sure what she would do if she had to witness another of her friends die.
Or partially die at least. The thought of Lyra being out there somewhere still haunted Twilight’s dreams. A husk of the former pony wandering the wasteland aimlessly, ravaging any survivors that she might find along the way. By refusing to kill Lyra, did that make Twilight responsible for every kill that husk-Lyra made? The black ooze on her hooves had been hard enough to wash off, to think of living pony blood, red and fresh, dripping from her fur…
“Twilight?”
Twilight jumped, turning to face a concerned looking Applejack. She realised that she must have still been talking. “Huh?” Twilight asked.
“You alright, sugarcube?” Applejack asked.
“You are looking a tad pale, darling,” Rarity added. “Did you remember to eat breakfast this morning? I have an apple if you-”
“Awww,” Pinkie said, bouncing alongside Twilight’s stride. “It’s okay Twi, we’ve all been there. Going out there is super duper scary, but together it’s a little less scary. You’ll see!”
Applejack sighed. “Maybe not the best pep talk she needs right now, Pinkie.”
“No, it’s fine.” Twilight bumped Pinkie’s shoulder, smiling gratefully. “Thanks, Pinkie. I guess it’s just a little daunting. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Among the four, they had one large cart to deal with between them. It held trading supplies for the town in Neighagra Falls which Twilight had been informed was called Emerald Pass. Inside it included a few crates of apples and cherries, jars of jams and ciders and some boots and protective gear that Rarity had been working on throughout the week. Thanks to Twilight’s help with the invisibility shroud, she’d had more time to prepare the clothing and she was more than thrilled to show it off to the survivors. Twilight thought it nice to see Rarity excited about fashion again, even if it was more about safety now than it was about style.
It was decided that Pinkie and Applejack would do most of the heavy lifting with the cart. Though everypony would have a turn with it, any hills or particularly rough terrain would be dealt with by the earth ponies. Twilight had never doubted Pinkie’s strength before – growing up on a rock farm was bound to give anypony serious skill – but the added ten years of farming made Twilight even more revered with how much the mare could carry. As for Applejack, well, she didn’t need an apocalypse to prove her strength; she’d been formidable with pulling carts since she was no bigger than Apple Bloom. Or, uh, Apple Bloom ten years prior.
“Are you sure you’ve got everything?” Sweetie Belle asked again, glancing nervously at Rarity’s saddle bags. “Spare boots? Water? Oh, I can go get more food if you-”
Rarity wrapped Sweetie Belle into a tight hug, laughing softly into her sister’s mane. “I’ll be okay, Sweetie,” she assured. “In the meantime, the farm will be your responsibility alongside Big Mac.” She smiled fondly. “Do you think you’re up for the task?”
Sweetie Belle gave a serious nod. “Of course.”
“I have no doubt you’ll do a splendid job,” Rarity said, kissing her sister’s cheek. “But we must get going, every minute counts.”
Sweetie Belle’s ears drooped, but she hugged Rarity one last time before letting her go.
Twilight trotted to Rarity’s side as they lined up against the shroud. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
Rarity gave Twilight a sideways smile. There was something pained in her expression, but she sobered quickly. “I’ve done this many-a time Twilight.” She sighed, glancing to where Sweetie was stood. “It never gets any easier, I’m afraid.”
With that, Twilight and Rarity took the lead, bowing their heads towards the shroud. With their combined magic, they created a bubble big enough to encompass all four friends, plus the cart that Applejack was pulling. Everypony waved goodbye to the few ponies within seeing distance. Some of them waved back, some of them smiled, some simply continued with their chores. This was a regular occurrence, Twilight realised, everypony was resigned to what they were doing by now. The dangers that the wasteland posed had become normal to them. Twilight realised that whether or not they made it back safely, these survivors would continue to prevail without them.
Twilight ruffled her feathers uncomfortably as she walked through the shroud, Rarity by her side, Pinkie and Applejack taking up the rear. Sweetie Belle’s face was visible for three precious seconds before the bubble popped and the shroud snapped shut, leaving nothing but the wasteland behind.
Twilight nodded towards the bleak distance. “So… which way do we go?”
Applejack trotted forward with the cart, glancing towards what remained of the railway station. “We’ll follow the rails fer ah spell.”
Rarity nodded gravely as the ponies headed forward; even the gleam in Pinkie’s eyes had dimmed. Twilight sighed, expression leveling as she followed her friends into hell.
Pinkie danced playfully from rail to rail, jumping across the abandoned track, making a game out of the broken boards that lay between. Still, Twilight could see her ears standing at attention. There was a constant wariness about her even when she seemed so carefree, a trait no doubt inherited from a life in the wasteland.
“We’re gonna take the rail ter Dodge City,” Applejack explained. The cart creaked lazily behind her. “From there we’ll take a path down past Baltimare. Baltimare’s got a few civilisations still intact as ya’ll know.” She nodded towards Rarity and Pinkie. “But Dodge City became grey grounds ah long time ago.” She bowed her head, her hat slipped forward. “Can’t be helped. It’s either that or go through Canterlot.”
Rarity shuddered; Pinkie paused on the rail she was balancing on. Her tail twitched before she continued, smiling softly to herself.
Twilight regarded her friends’ reactions doubtfully. It was the first time any of them had mentioned Canterlot without her input, and none of them seemed thrilled about it. She lowered her gaze, staring without seeing at the rails before her boot-clad hooves.
At least the clothes were helping. Rarity had been right, the boots provided more than adequate protection; Twilight could barely feel the scorching earth beneath her hooves. As for the cloak, it was dark without suffocating her in the heat. She felt light as a feather beneath it, and the material was somehow comforting instead of claustrophobic. Twilight absently blew a strand of her mane away from her muzzle.
Even with her friends by her side, the wasteland looked – unfortunately – the same. Rocks, black dirt and little to nothing else. Any trees that stood were husk-like and dead, the only change in the terrain was an odd crack here, a hole in the earth there. Twilight tried her best not to look at them, in her mind’s eye all she could see was Lyra’s face. A strained smile. A hollow gasp.
I’m coming Bon Bon.
Twilight had never asked her friends whether they’d killed husk-Bon Bon. If they had, they hadn’t told Lyra, she wouldn’t have been so willing to turn otherwise. Still, a part of Twilight hoped that they’d somehow reunited. It was a pointless dream, even if they had teamed up, they’d have only become more efficient at killing together. She doubted that the husks could feel friendship like ponies could, or anything for that matter. They probably felt hungry. Perhaps they were like changelings in that way, but even emptier on the inside.
“How do husks think?” Twilight asked absentmindedly.
“Huh?”
Twilight’s head shot up. She hadn’t realised she’d spoken out loud.
Her friends were staring at her. Pinkie’s head was tipped to one side, she wobbled on the rail before righting herself.
“I just mean,” Twilight said slowly, “from what I saw, the husks can communicate, the first two I ever met even spoke to me. But… it’s like they don’t quite have a mind of their own.” She thought back to the group she’d encountered with Lyra. The way Spitfire had spoken to them. “Do they have a leader?”
Applejack snorted. “Ah reckon so, it’s all they talk ‘bout if yer leave ‘em alive long enough.”
Rarity cringed. “I’ve definitely heard them speak of some kind of leader, although they’ve only ever referred to them as a she or her.”
“I think they have a queen,” Pinkie said with a shrug. She stuck her right hooves out, balancing precariously before leaping to the track running parallel. “Kinda like the changelings. They all talk like they share a brain.” Pinkie chuckled. “Spooky-ooky.”
Twilight frowned. “Seriously?”
Applejack smiled exasperatedly. “Sorry, Twi, we’ve never really had time ter study ‘em before on accounta the fact they keep tryin’ ter kill us.”
Rarity snorted at that. “In any case, I agree with Pinkie Pie; those creatures are far too close minded to be anything other than a queen’s drones.”
“But that’s…” Twilight shook her head. This was good, better than good; this was a step in the right direction.
If the husks shared a mind, then they must collectively relay information to their leader. If they had a leader, then whoever she was could very well be the answer to the whole infection. To be in control of the husks would mean that whatever virus or contagion lay inside this pony was significantly different from the others. In short, this fearless leader the husks talked about with such ardent reverence could very well be Patient Zero. If Twilight could successfully collect samples from her… Her mind froze, she realised her friends were still watching her. She cleared her throat, quickly finishing her sentence. “…Interesting,” she said.
“I like that word,” Pinkie said happily as she concentrated on her next jump.
“What?” Twilight asked.
“Husk,” Pinkie explained with a grin. “It sounds way better than grey. I mean grey explains what they look like, sure, but husk is all ooooooo.” Pinkie jumped onto her hind legs, making a spooky gesture with her front hooves. She giggled. “I like it!”
Twilight smiled despite herself. Despite the heat of the wasteland, the dry dirt and the horrifying possibility of being chased by the undead at any given moment, Pinkie Pie was still Pinkie Pie.
“I like it too,” she agreed.
“Uh-oh.”
Some hours into their travel, Pinkie had paused, leaping from the track to stare directly out ahead of her.
Twilight glanced to Applejack for an explanation, but her expression was stony as she looked past Pinkie’s gaze.
“What is it?” Twilight asked, looking to Rarity in confusion.
If it was possible, Rarity looked even paler. Her eyes were wide, her chest rigid. “Nothing good,” she clarified.
“Husks,” Pinkie said, pointing her hoof down the railway.
Twilight squinted, she couldn’t see anything. “How do you know?” she asked.
Pinkie glared into the distance. She didn’t respond.
“Makes sense,” Applejack said reluctantly. “We’re comin’ up ter Dodge City. The track’s aboutta run right up close ter it.”
Twilight nodded, eyes narrowing. This was something she could deal with at least. She looked to Rarity. “Ready?”
Rarity shook herself, snapping her mouth shut. She smiled warily. “I suppose so.”
In the last ten years, Rarity’s magic had greatly advanced from the simple levitation that all unicorns were expected to perform. Although it was rare for unicorns to delve into the darker arts – namely, attack magic – in this world, it seemed it was necessary. As a pony who made frequent trips out into the wasteland, Rarity had accumulated several good attack spells, including the ones Twilight had witnessed Lyra perform.
Although Pinkie and Applejack had strength on their side, Twilight and Rarity had distance. You couldn’t be overpowered by a hoard of husks if they weren’t able to make it to your vicinity in the first place.
Twilight smiled, lowering her head as she and Rarity took the lead. Applejack took centre with the cart, Pinkie keeping close to her side. She’d procured a loose plank from one of the tracks and had it clamped firmly between her teeth.
Twilight supposed they were as ready as they would ever be.
Dodge City appeared as a hazy backdrop to a chaos-fuelled dispute.
Six husks were gathered on the tracks ahead of them. One had been a unicorn once, although the flesh around its skull was mottled and rotted. The rest were earth ponies, two male and three female. Their green manes were matted and loose, one of the males was moving with a visible limp, the unicorn was a mare and she bared her jagged teeth at a husk that was laid out on the track. She spoke to it, her words lost on the dusty air. That didn’t keep Twilight from imagining the husk speaking – that robotic chime chorusing inside her head. She shuddered.
Pinkie Pie bit down hard on her plank, expression solidifying.
Before Twilight realised it herself, the husks had noticed their presence on the tracks. The one on the ground leapt to its hooves at a speed she didn’t think possible for something so rotted. This particular husks’ muzzle had peeled away completely, leaving nothing but a skeletal snout and black gristle in its wake. One of its eyes was missing.
The once-unicorn sized up Twilight immediately. A smile rippled over its decaying features.
“Princessss,” she said.
Twilight charged. Beside her, Rarity did the same.
The fight was close-knit and confusing. Twilight’s focus had been so firmly fixed on the unicorn running for her that she hadn’t noticed the husk stallion gallop in from her left. She shot a blast of magic at the unicorn which was narrowly dodged, only to find Pinkie leaping in out from nowhere. The blur of a plank was all Twilight saw before a satisfying crunch resounded from her left and the husk stallion’s head was caved inwards. He fell, but didn’t die. Pinkie winked at Twilight for what seemed like a millisecond before she leapt at the husk, throwing the plank at him with all her might.
Twilight looked away, aiming again for the unicorn. She saw a flash of white magic hit a husk in the background, a spray of crystalized bone and blood exploded like sick confetti in the distance. Rarity’s lips twisted into a grim smile as she aimed her horn at her latest attacker. Twilight’s attention wavered and she missed a second time. The once-unicorn grinned broadly, her glass-like teeth glistening under the red sun.
“Alicornn,” the once-unicorn hissed in her disharmonious drawl. “Princessss.”
“That’s me,” Twilight muttered. This time she didn’t miss.
The creature howled as her horn was ripped from her head, singeing her dead mane in the process. She wavered, but didn’t drop. Instead, she dipped her head and charged.
Twilight ducked out of the way a second too late. The husk collided with her shoulder, bringing both of them down against the hot earth. Twilight felt a rock cut into her flank, felt the warmth of blood blossoming against her side, but she paid it no mind. She rolled with the husk in the dirt, her shoulder slipping in and out of cracks in the earth. One moment, she would find herself upright and towering atop her attacker, only to find herself on the ground a second later. Twilight yelped as she felt another rock dig into her back. The husk laughed like a dying animal.
Twilight closed her eyes, forcing her magic’s radius to encompass the both of them. A second later, the motion was stopped, but not in the way that Twilight had hoped. Staring upwards, she found the once-unicorn stood over her, its rotten hooves harnessed in the dirt on either side of her head.
The husk chuckled. “Ssshe wants you,” the husk said. “but ssshe won’t have you.” The husk’s face came down towards her, its snout exhaled a puff of rotten breath into Twilight’s muzzle. Twilight gagged, eyes watering beneath her goggles. The husk flashed its glass teeth. “I want you,” it said. “Magic and flesh and blood. So much magic. Alicorn magic. Princess magic!”
Twilight had had enough. With a barely stifled roar, her horn exploded, sending the husk flying into the air. It skidded, fur ripping from its underside as it stopped several feet away. Motionless and stunned, Twilight finally had her chance.
She didn’t waste it this time.
The creature didn’t even have time to register what was happening. Its grey eyes brightened with recognition for one precious second before its head exploded, showering the surrounding area in long-dead blood.
Twilight panted, energy flaring as she glanced out hungrily for more. Around her were the remains of four other husk bodies not including her own. With a yell from Applejack, the final husk was propelled into the air by a well-aimed kick. As the creature landed, Pinkie whacked it in the head with her plank, now dripping with black ooze. Rarity yelled out, her mane was frazzled, her eyes wide. She blasted the husk – although it was already visibly dead – with her magic. The creature’s already deformed head was reduced to nothing but flesh and cracked bone. Twilight glanced away as the black ooze sprayed outward.
Rarity’s chest heaved as she circled the ground she was stood on, nearly tripping over her own hooves. “Was that the last of them?” she managed through gasps. Twilight could tell she was close to hyperventilating.
Mimicking the actions of the first friend she’d met in this new world, she levitated a jar of water from her saddle bags. “Rarity,” she said softly. “Here.”
Rarity’s pupils were as tiny as pinpricks, but they were still able to register the water before her. Her breath slowed, her legs wobbled.
Pinkie was there in an instant, holding her steady. She murmured something to Rarity as she drank deeply, to which Rarity nodded, closing her eyes.
Applejack was drinking too, though she didn’t look nearly as frazzled. In fact, once she paused for breath, she nodded to the cart. “You’re hurt,” she said.
It took Twilight a moment to realise she was talking to her.
It took Twilight a moment longer to register the pain burning through her flank.
“So I am,” she said, nodding weakly. “Uh… how bad is it?”
Applejack slipped her jar onto the cart. “Not too bad,” she said, frowning. “Still, we’ll need ter patch it up ‘fore we continue. Chances are, that was jus’ the welcomin’ committee.”
“Great,” Rarity said through gritted teeth.
Pinkie forced a smile.
Applejack secured some gauze around Twilight’s flank, which immediately began to dye red. The injury wouldn’t need stitches, but the blood would be a definite problem. Although husks weren’t the brightest bunch around, they could smell pony blood from a mile away. Something told Twilight hers would be extra potent.
Dodge City passed in a haze of blood and screaming, metallic voices and desperate yells. By the time they’d made it past the city and onto the dirt track leading to Baltimare, everypony was covered in dirt, grime and a substantial coating of black ooze.
Twilight quickly observed that the blood wasn’t dangerous so-long as it didn’t go past the skin. After her injury, she’d conjured a simpler version of her protection spell, coating the area of her wound with a thin layer of magic to protect it from infection of any kind. She didn’t much feel like turning into a husk on their journey to Emerald Pass, especially as her friends would have been the ones to have to kill her if she did.
They’d stopped to wash some of the blood from their coats under the shade of a long-dead tree. With only water jars to work with, the task was slow and practically pointless, but everyone felt a little fresher once it was finished. Pinkie had even found a new, cleaner stick to play with.
It was Rarity’s turn with the cart, but Twilight insisted she go instead. Her friend still seemed twitchy, her nervous energy had worked on the battlefield – not a single husk had gotten close enough to do her damage – but there was something wild in Rarity’s eyes that Twilight was unsure of.
Twilight trotted alongside Applejack, trying to find a comfortable position for her wings beneath the cart’s rough harness. “Is Rarity okay?” she asked quietly. She didn’t think Rarity could hear her, Pinkie seemed to be keeping her occupied with a long-winded summary of the battle she’d had with a pretty resilient husk.
Applejack mulled over Twilight’s words before sighing. “Okay as she can be.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“She ain’t a fighter,” Applejack said slowly. “Sure, she’s trained and she knows what she’s doin’, but every journey out the wasteland is jus’… it does damage to her mind.” Applejack tapped the side of her head with her hoof. “Ah’ve seen it before, some ponies jus’ can’t cope with this world. Rarity’s stronger than most, she does what she can ter get by.” Applejack shrugged. “Sometimes Ah wonder if she only does it ‘cause of Sweetie Belle.”
“Then why come out at all?” Twilight asked. “I mean, couldn’t she just stay at the farm and help there?”
Applejack smiled at that. “Rarity’s the element of Generosity fer a reason, sugarcube. She makes all them fancy outfits that keep ponies safe out here. Keeps them from catchin’ sunstroke, keeps them from burnin’ their hooves on the dirt. She loves seein’ smiles on ponies’ faces, ‘specially if she caused ‘em.” Applejack looked towards Rarity with something of respect in her eyes. “Ah can’t say Ah’ve ever seen a pony more dedicated ter keepin’ everyone she can as safe an’ protected as possible.”
Twilight blinked, realising that her eyes were beginning to tear up. She cleared her throat, but couldn’t find anything to say. Instead she just nodded, focusing her energy on pulling the cart fast enough to match Applejack’s superior stride.
The journey to Emerald Pass would take a day or two at best. Dodge City was a no-go for stopping, but Applejack had promised that Baltimare would house them for an evening.
Twilight learned that trades were made with the survivors at Baltimare often. They’d managed to get their own farms going out there, and in general the community was larger than the one in Appleloosa. Still, the ponies there weren’t as experienced with magic and farming. They didn’t have any spells to keep them protected from borg or husk invasions, but fortunately they’d survived every one they'd met so far. They were grateful for extra supplies, and Applejack had hinted that new spells ran like a fine currency in this world. If Twilight could spare a few lessons to some of the unicorns during their stay, then the Baltimare base would be more than willing to welcome four extra mares for the night with open hooves.
Twilight was just able see the city in the distance when Rarity shrieked.
Pinkie clamped a hoof over Rarity’s mouth, turning her head towards Applejack and Twilight with wide eyes. Twilight had rarely seen Pinkie afraid – she was usually one to laugh in the face of danger after all – but this seemed to run deeper than fear. This was a terror only built on by personal experience, constructed brutally by witnessing true horror first-hoof. Twilight glanced towards the sky in question. Pinkie nodded.
Borgs.
Twilight knew what to do.
As if in a dream, Twilight threw the cart’s harness from her back with the help of her wings. She closed her eyes, and in the next second all three of her friends were caught in her magic, glowing with a subdued pink aura. Rarity and Pinkie were lifted from the ground, landing just inches from Twilight. Applejack was pulled closer to Twilight’s side.
Twilight could hear the beat of mechanical wings in the distance. Could nearly smell the smoke and blood in the air. She did her best to ignore those senses, instead honing all of her focus on her magic. She could add to an invisibility shroud at a compound based in Appleloosa no problem; the spell had been pre-existing and enhanced daily by several other unicorns. Creating an invisibility shroud for herself would have been taxing but doable. Creating an invisibility shroud for four ponies? That would be much harder. For it to work at all, she would have to time it perfectly.
Twilight counted the wing beats in the sky, trying to predict how close the borg was by the drone in the air. It was easier to guess by watching the dawning look of horror on Rarity’s face. Twilight took a stab in the dark and cast the shroud at the moment both sound and expression coincided best. It opened like a bubble, creating a shimmering surface around the four ponies. Twilight reached out and extended her magic to her rooted Alicorn abilities, strengthening the shroud.
Rarity’s eyes widened when she realised what was happening. Twilight ground her hooves into the dirt, the stress of the spell a visible weight on her back. Something flew overhead at a speed strong enough to move the loose rocks on the ground. Twilight bit her lip.
Then the weight lifted. A warm, ethereal, white glow was added to her magic. The shroud blossomed outwards, comfortably fitting the four inside now instead of straining around their bodies. Rarity’s smile was shaky, but the magic was familiar to her – a spell she’d been performing for ten years. Another shape followed the first in the sky, leaving an electric blue trail of sparks in its wake. The colour was astonishing against the red sky; nearly alien.
A third form appeared, this one leaving nothing but smoke behind, like a busted piece of machinery skittering pollution into the horizon. Rarity was watching the sky, horn aglow. With the final figure passed, she nodded to Twilight, expression solemn.
Twilight let go of the spell, sweat blossoming on her forehead. She resisted the urge to fall to the ground. A spell that, in her old world, would have been so simple, took every bit of energy for her to perform now. She panted, realising just how thirsty she was.
Rarity held a jar out for her in her own magic. Twilight sipped from it gratefully. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t- I wouldn’t have been able to-”
“It’s alright,” Rarity said, her smile was stronger this time. She hugged Twilight gently once the jar was half empty. “It’s what I’m here for.”
Something about that declaration made the warmth in Twilight’s stomach enlarge tenfold. She wanted to hug Rarity again and never let go, but Applejack was still stiff as a board and Pinkie was gazing up at the sky, gaze distant and somewhat dreamy. They had to keep moving. If there were borgs in the area then it was imperative that they get to Baltimare as soon as possible.
The scream that cut through the air, however, stopped any train of thought Twilight might have had.
A quick count of her friends proved the scream hadn’t come from any of them. It had come from somewhere ahead, somewhere in the wasteland. In the direction – Twilight realised with a sinking in her gut – that the borgs had gone.
“Oh no,” Twilight murmured.
She was galloping forwards before she could stop herself.
“Twilight!” Applejack called out, suddenly finding her voice. It came out strangled, indistinct, but Twilight could sense her friend’s desperation.
“Twi!” Pinkie yelled, and a beat later Rarity called out too.
Twilight could hear her friend’s hoof steps behind her. That would be good. If something had happened to somepony… they would all have to be there to help.
The wasteland tore past Twilight’s vision in a blur. The hot air ripped at her coat, the dust caught in her nostrils, but she ignored it. She ignored everything. The screams had become wails, first grief-stricken and then, quickly, turned to rage, echoing against the sky.
Twilight skidded on her hooves, nearly running directly into the culprit.
A grey mare was stood in the wasteland, slate-grey eyes staring up at the sky in ardent desperation. Had it not been for her light blue mane that fell in depleted swirls around her shoulders, Twilight would have thought that the pony was a husk.
She was weeping, staring up at the sky, her wails alternating from yells to screams, back to wails again. Finally, the mare’s lips trembled and she fell to her fore hooves, head pressing into the dirt.
Twilight reached out a hoof awkwardly. She wasn’t sure if she should touch the mare, or wait until she had settled. Would she settle?
“Excuse me?” Twilight barely whispered.
The mare turned so fast Twilight nearly screamed herself. She stood to her full height – just a little shorter than Twilight – and nearly bumped straight into her muzzle. The mare’s fur bristled in outrage and with a wisp of air, two feathered wings flared out at her sides.
Twilight gasped.
“You’re a-”
“Pegasus,” the mare bit out acidly. “Yeah, I know.”
It seemed, Twilight realised, she got the question a lot.
It didn’t stop her from asking.
“How-”
“Twilight!”
Applejack had caught up, Rarity and Pinkie just hoof steps behind.
The mare looked at Twilight, her eyes red-rimmed, then to her friends. Then, with a jolt, she looked back to Twilight.
The mare’s lips trembled. “You’re a…”
Twilight realised the pegasus wasn’t the only weird sight in this wasteland. She suddenly felt a little self-conscious. “Alicorn,” she murmured, trying but failing to replicate the mare’s tone.
The mare choked out a strained laugh. “A… wow.” She shook her head bitterly. “Just my bucking luck.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Applejack growled, lining up side-by-side with Twilight.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “AJ,” she hissed. “Don’t.” She gave the mare a level look. “What happened? We heard you scream.”
The mare blinked, her eyes glistened with fresh tears. “Borgs,” she said, her tone dripping with poison. “They took the mare I was sent out with. Twinkle Shine. She…” her voice drew off. The mare took a shuttering breath. “They just grabbed her. I couldn’t-” she shook her head. “They were gone before I could even take off.”
“You’re from Baltimare,” Rarity realised.
The mare nodded. “First trip outta the compound… we were just supposed to be doing a routine scouting. We don’t get too many greys in the direct area. But… we hadn’t been watching the skies.” She closed her eyes in frustration. “So stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, silly,” Pinkie said, smiling softly. “Anypony can make that mistake. Borgs are rare.” She shrugged, looking up at the sky. “If Rarity hadn’t screamed so loud, we might be borg-candy right now.” She giggled at the thought. Twilight tried not to feel unsettled by that.
Rarity gave the mare a sympathetic smile. “What’s your name?”
The mare’s expression solidified. “Foggy Night.”
“Well, Foggy,” Applejack said, “how well’d yer know this Twinkle Shine?”
Foggy grimaced. “Not well. But… we were s’posed to keep each other safe.”
Twilight’s heart squeezed in her chest. She understood what it felt like to be responsible for another pony’s life. The fear of losing them was bad enough, but to feel that guilt weigh down upon you if and when it actually happened? To feel like you’d personally failed?
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But maybe it’s not too late.”
Applejack was already shaking her head. “Don’t think like that,” she warned. “It ain’t good ter hope ‘bout that sorta thing.”
Pinkie shrugged. “I don't know, Twi.” She cocked her head to one side before making a face. “It's a real long shot.”
Twilight frowned. “That’s what you all think?”
“What else can we think?” Foggy asked before bowing her head. “I…” Her lips were trembling again.
“It’ll be alright sugarcube,” Applejack said. She’d never been a good liar. “We’ll walk yer back ter base, we was headin’ there anyway.”
Foggy choked on a sob.
Perhaps it was just ill timing, a sad twist of fate. Perhaps the universe truly hated them, but no sooner had Applejack offered their help did a distant, strangled scream echo in the dusty air.
Twilight’s ears perked up. “There,” she said, turning to her friends desperately. “You see!?”
Everypony was looking at her sadly. “Twi…” Applejack said slowly.
“Oh darling,” Rarity whispered.
“Don’t you see?” Twilight asked again, harder this time. “She’s still alive!”
She turned and ran, galloping through the dirt, ignoring her friend’s cries in the distance. This time she didn’t care if they followed, she barely paid attention to the sounds coming from behind her anyway. All she cared about was the mare screaming, and the chance that she could save her.
They were the Elements of Harmony. This was their job.
Twilight nearly tripped over her own hooves, so she abandoned them, lifting herself inches above the ground, propelling herself forward with her wings.
As the sounds got closer, she touched down again, hooves painfully skidding against the ashy surface.
She’d reached the mare, barely recognising the scene before her as she landed.
The same wasteland stretched into the distance, but Twilight knew she’d never been here before, never stepped hoof here on her way to Appleloosa or on her way to Baltimare.
A soft pink unicorn mare was laid out in the dirt. The borgs were nowhere in sight, but there was a husk, just one, stood in the dirt. Twilight thought she might recognize the husk, but she wasn’t sure. Could it have been the one that had survived Spitefire’s attack? They all looked so alike. Same colour, same rotten flesh. Same manes, same eyes… but she looked familiar, didn’t she?
The unicorn’s mane was blue and purple. It had been styled once, but was so matted in blood that it was hard to tell what that style might have been.
The husk was stood over the unicorn. She was no longer screaming; instead violent, barely audible sobs shook her whole frame. Tears bled from her eyes like a broken faucet. A chunk of her flank had been ripped out, obliterating her cutie mark entirely. It wept fresh blood.
Twilight stared at the husk. Her legs suddenly felt like jelly, she wasn’t sure how she was even standing. She tried to yell something, but her voice refused to work.
The husk bowed her head over the unicorn’s. And then, with no warning at all, she bit the unicorn’s horn in two. Her glass teeth shred through the bone like it was nothing. Twilight’s heart lurched as the crack echoed in the air.
The unicorn was beyond screaming. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her eyes went wide before falling half-lidded, barely alive. A stream of baby pink energy poured from her horn. Uncontained magic free and new to the world was being forcibly drained from her. Twilight watched, unable to move, as the husk opened its glass mouth and the magic seeped inside.
The colour drained from Twinkle Shine’s coat, taking on a sickly hue. Her eyes nearly closed, like there were weights being pressed on her lids, but she struggled for life, struggled for hope.
Twilight managed to step forward. One hoof cracked into the dirt.
“Stop!” She’d meant for her voice to resonate – like that of Luna’s Royal voice when addressing her subjects. But instead it came out rough, barely audible. It was brushed away like a leaf on one’s shoulder, carried in the opposite direction by a phantom breeze.
Then the husk descended on the unicorn, sinking its shard-like teeth into her chest.
“No!” Twilight managed something of a strangled whimper that time. She shot forward on legs she couldn’t feel, not sure what she was going to do. She shot a blast of magic at the husk, but it missed by several yards, burning a nearby rock.
The husk looked upwards, a twisted grin forming on its deformed face. Several ribs still jutted out of its body from where Spitfire had kicked it, but Twilight could see something writhing beneath its chest. The bones were crunching inside of her, moving and rearranging – fixing themselves. Just like magic.
Twilight looked to the baby pink unicorn with the baby pink magic.
She was writhing in pain, and this time her screams carried, but they were nothing like the screams of before. This time a mechanical undertone sang softly with each scream. Her eyes bugged out – now too wide for her head – the irises were shifting, darkening from their once-blue to something deader. The blood on her flank was already thickening, turning to oily ooze.
Twilight shook her head. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.
She couldn’t.
She didn’t even know this unicorn. But she couldn’t.
Something made a noise behind her, but it was so warped, like her ears were full of water. Twilight couldn’t make sense of it.
Then the husk’s head exploded. It was almost comical how suddenly it happened. Like a monster in a cartoon. A piece of shattered skull landed by Twilight’s hoof. The body collapsed to the ground. Dead.
Rarity was by her side, breathing heavily, but Twilight’s ears were ringing.
Applejack was in front of her, saying words that might as well have been in a different tongue.
And then Pinkie was there instead. She wasn’t smiling. Instead, she took Twilight by the hoof, guiding her somewhere. Twilight didn’t know where, but she let Pinkie take her. Anywhere was better than here.
She thought she heard a thud behind her. A heavy object connecting with a skull. She thought she might have heard a scream. But how could she have when she heard nothing at all?
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #7 - Unnamed
I could have saved a life today. I think I could have.
I think I could have.
But I froze. Like I froze with Lyra… like I hid behind a rock because I couldn’t kill her.
Maybe I couldn’t have saved a life today.
Her name was Twinkle Shine and I did not know her. I met her friend, Foggy Night. She’s a pegasus. But all the pegasi are dead, or borgs or… I hate this world. I hate that I woke up here. I wish that crystal at my palace had had the decency to kill me. Then I wouldn’t be here, then I wouldn’t have needed to save anypony.
I didn’t save her. I watched her die. I watched her turn.
It’s Lyra all over again.
Rarity killed the husk.
I think Applejack killed Twinkle. She won’t tell me. She doesn’t speak about it. I… did I ask her? I don’t remember. I don’t remember getting into Baltimare at all.
Everypony’s asleep and I think I slept too. I think… I think Pinkie took me to the cart to sleep and then I was in the town. I don’t remember meeting anypony. They shuffled us inside like we were illegal goods being transported under the shroud of night.
The bed Twilight woke in was not her own, nor was she alone.
Her head felt like led, her eyes like sandpaper. She squinted against the glare of the red sun as it bled through a window on her left, presenting her with a much unappreciated consciousness.
The room was small, she realised. Not quite cosy, not quite claustrophobic. The room was bare aside from the bed she was laid on and an identical one two feet to her right. The sheets were a pale yellow and smelt of mildew. There was an old wardrobe in front of her and a door directly to its right. It was closed.
There had been somepony asleep next to her at some point, she was sure. She recalled waking in the middle of the ‘night’, desperate to write in her journal for a reason she now couldn’t remember. She’d smelt something sweet next to her then, like apple spice. The smell lingered even now, a constant reminder on the single ruffled pillow by her side.
Applejack.
The bed next to her was occupied. Pinkie Pie lay spread eagle at the bottom of the bed, loose yellow sheets dangling precariously from her hind leg. Rarity was tucked in at the top, flat on her back. Her mouth hung open slightly, soft snores escaping her lips.
Twilight relaxed at the sight of them. It was always reassuring to wake up some time between everyone else. Not the first, not the last, it dismissed any awkwardness that the following morning might bring. Namely, talking to strangers.
Twilight had no doubt she would have to deal with that anyway.
She didn’t remember much of the day before, though she thought that for the best. Any time she tried to think about Twinkle Shine or the husk that had stood over her, her mind went blank, fading out to soothing static. Honestly, Twilight could cope with that particular memory’s erasure.
She shuffled her wings under the sheets, kicking them from her body. She supposed she wouldn’t be getting any more sleep, not now, and she was beginning to feel hungry.
She trotted over to the small wardrobe, finding her saddlebags inside. With a flash of her horn, she brought an apple to her lips, savouring every bite. The bittersweet taste diminished enough of her hunger that she began to question where Applejack had gone. She glanced to the closed door.
Where were they? The room could have easily belonged to somepony’s house, but could have equally been a shoddy hotel. She knew they were in Baltimare, but that was just about where her memory ran dry. She could remember hushed voices, Pinkie’s hoof on her back ushering her inside. Rarity had thrown an extra shawl over Twilight’s back, covering her wings from view. Another voice, one idly familiar, had whispered something she hadn’t heard. Foggy Night, perhaps?
Twilight shouldered the door open, careful not to wake her friends.
Light from a window on the far wall caught her right in the eyes yet again. Twilight moaned softly, rubbing her head. What was it about falling asleep in a fit of tears that gave you a headache worse than a hangover come morning? A part of her mind wanted to stage a full scale experiment, the rest of her was far too exhausted to care.
The walls were beige and bare of pictures, nothing like the barn in Appleloosa. She couldn’t see any happy families smiling at her; there were no details to allude to a life at all.
The downstairs hallway led to three other doorways. Only one was open, a small living space where Foggy Night was sat, a mug of something steaming in her hooves.
“Ah can’t thank yer enough fer helpin’ us here,” Applejack’s voice said from somewhere inside. Twilight felt immediate relief.
Foggy nodded solemnly. “Least I could do,” she grunted. “You pulled me together. If you guys hadn’t showed up when you did, I doubt I wouldda had the guts to come back here at all.”
Twilight bit her lip, remembering the state she’d found the pegasus in.
“Ah’m sure nopony here wouldda judged yer,” Applejack said quietly. She paused; a slurp pierced the silence that followed.
Foggy grimaced. “You’d be surprised. Folks here aren’t the forgiving type. ‘Specially not with the only pegasus still on the ground.” She sighed. “You shouldda heard the things they said when I first showed up.”
“You ain’t from here?”
“Nope.” Foggy smiled ruefully. “I was born in Cloudsdale, worked in the weather factory half my life. ‘Bout the same time the war began I got in an accident there, busted my wing up so bad I was grounded for months.” She winced. “By the time I was even close to healed, recruitment there had stopped; the war was too far gone for them to care about one pegasus left recuperating with their family in Baltimare.”
“Yer family?”
“Gone.”
“Ah’m sorry.”
“It’s cool.” Foggy shrugged. “Most ponies here don’t have much family anymore. There’s so many of us though, we don’t get ‘round to discussing it. We just work on the farms, cultivate, eat and sleep.” Foggy nearly laughed. “That pink friend of yours was the first pony I’ve seen smile here in years.”
“That’s no way to live,” Applejack muttered.
Foggy nodded thoughtfully. “Good way not to die, though.”
Twilight took that as her moment to enter. Foggy stiffened when she saw her, eyes darting out to the hallway. “Anyone else awake?” she asked in means of greeting.
Twilight shook her head. “Pinkie and Rarity are still asleep.”
“No one else?”
Twilight frowned. “How many are there?”
Applejack chuckled. “This here’s a refuge fer travellers comin’ and goin’ from Baltimare. They got a strict rule that nopony who ain’t a resident can stay for more than two days.”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “That’s a little rude.”
Foggy cracked a smile. “So’s showing up as four extra mouths to feed.”
Twilight shuffled her wings awkwardly. “We brought our own,” she muttered.
“Folks here don’t care about that, I’m afraid,” Foggy said with a dismissive hoof. “Can I get you something to drink? We got coffee beans in storage, not many ponies drink the stuff so it’s pretty much at your disposal.”
Twilight nodded. “Sure.” At the moment, she’d take anything caffeinated to wake her up from this infinite nightmare. She briefly wondered whether drinking enough caffeine could theoretically wake her up from reality itself. Would it be worth it to try?
As Twilight came to sit down on one of the worn sofas, Applejack nodded to her back. “Yer got yah shawl with yah?”
Twilight nodded, frowning. “Why?”
Applejack sighed tiredly, taking another sip of her coffee. “Folks back in Appleloosa might’ve accepted you with open hooves, but ponies here, well, let’s jus’ say they took the princesses leavin’ a might harder than most.”
“What are you saying?”
Applejack’s expression hardened. “Ah’m sayin’ they could get riled up seein’ a princess back like this. Might start thinkin’ you have all the answers. Or worse. They might want somepony ter blame this on.”
Twilight swallowed thickly. She rubbed her forehead with her hoof. “You’re right. Oh, Celestia, I’m so stupid. I should have thought of that.”
“Ain’t your fault.”
Twilight grimaced. “Sure.” She stood up and headed back for her shawl.
By the time Twilight had collected her shawl, Foggy had returned with her drink. A few minutes later a bleary-eyed Rarity appeared in the hallway, looking for all intents and purposes like a mare to be reckoned with. She took a mug of coffee with unflinching silence, only joining in with the conversation once she was on her second cup.
Twilight wasn’t sure how many mugs Pinkie had helped herself to, but by the time she’d appeared from the kitchen, she was practically buzzing.
“This place is so weird,” Pinkie mused, glancing out the window. “Nopony says anything. I bumped into three ponies in the kitchen, none of them returned my hellos, howdys or how-ya-doin’s.” She pouted.
“It’s a different world out here,” Rarity added in agreement. “It rather reminds me of certain areas in Manehattan.”
Applejack nodded. “Ah guess we never realised much jus’ tradin’ with the locals.”
Foggy placed her cup on the stained table in front of her. She flexed her wing absentmindedly. “When you work so hard to stay alive, it starts to affect your conversation skills.” She shrugged. “We don’t get many attacks here fortunately, but we barely leave the compound past a certain way. That’s when you start gettin’ disappearances.” She lowered her head, a swirl of blue mane falling in front of her face. “Like Twinkle.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Twilight said resolutely. She took another sip of her coffee. After the second cup, she’d begun to feel alive again; even her headache had become an easily dismissible drone in her skull. “I’ve lost ponies out there too. In fact, one of my friends died saving my life.” Even now, speaking of Lyra felt wrong, but Twilight continued despite herself. “I wanted to do something to help, but I couldn’t. And when I saw Twinkle with that husk…”
“Now now, there was nothin’ yer couldda done,” Applejack reminded.
Rarity nodded. “She’s right, darling. It was an unfortunate circumstance, but that creature had already taken her magic. Even if she had been saved, she would have been brain-dead at best.” She winced when she realised Foggy’s expression. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to come over quite as harshly as that.”
“It’s fine,” Foggy said softly. “I know. Of course I know. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I could have done more.” Her wings flared. “I’m the only pegasus Baltimare’s ever met since the war, and I didn’t even try to fly after that borg.”
“Shock is a terrible thing,” Twilight said understandingly. Although her memories were fuzzy, she could recall the emptiness she’d felt in her chest, the way her legs had felt weightless and unreal beneath her as she’d watched Twinkle Shine lying on the ground.
“At any rate,” Applejack said. “We should be headin’ off soon, unless yer want us stickin’ ‘round ‘til word spreads ‘bout Twinkle.”
Foggy shook her head. “I took you in through the south gate. The community here is so wide-spread, chances are some ponies here didn’t even know her name. Won’t stop them pretending they care in some way, just to have something to complain about, but, what can you do?” She laughed bitterly. “I need to check in at the farm anyway before they give my rations away to somepony more time sensitive.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, it’s worse than the weather factory.”
Applejack nodded. “We know the way outta town.”
Foggy smiled. “It was nice meeting you.” Her gaze lingered on Twilight for a beat longer than everyone else. “All of you.”
Twilight nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for her.”
Foggy shrugged. “You did more than anypony else would have. Hey, if you ever find yourself in Baltimare again needing a place to stay, hit this place up. Say Foggy sent you. I’ve got some friends here who’ll keep you safe if they know you did me a solid.” She glanced at Twilight’s poorly hidden wings. “They’re super discreet.”
Twilight smiled. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“It’s what we should be doing,” Foggy said, glaring towards the window like she was silently cursing her whole town. “Maybe one day, somepony else will see that.”
“It only takes one,” Pinkie piped up. “You’d be surprised how quickly kindness grows, you just gotta plant it first.”
The cart had been parked on the street just around the corner of the building. As Twilight and her friends trotted out to collect it, she realised for the first time just how different Baltimare looked.
The buildings were decrepit, old and in some places, wholly broken. Bricks were crumbling to dust in places, woodwork had come undone. The buildings that stood and continued to house life were duller, somehow. The paint had begun to peel away, leaving claw-like marks on the surface. The red sun stood high in the sky as always, giving an unsettling glow to everything it touched. If Twilight squinted, it seemed to her as though the thatch roofs themselves had been set ablaze.
Despite what Foggy had said, the streets gave no impression of the vast amount of ponies that lived there. Most of them must have already been working, but Twilight still spotted a few, hurriedly galloping down the streets or trotting in pairs, their exhaustion plainly visible in their eyes. She watched a few foals running to keep up with their parents, already breadwinners at such a young age.
Applejack was right, this was no way to live. Despite the conditions being no better in Appleloosa, ponies worked together there. They were a community, they helped each other, leant a hoof when needed. They even entertained each other. Pinkie threw small parties, Sweetie Belle sang in the orchards on warm dusty ‘nights’. They drank cider, they laughed. Here, it looked as though most ponies had forgotten what it was like to feel happiness of any kind.
Twilight only hoped that Foggy and her friends could spread a bit of joy somehow. She thought back to her Palace in Ponyville, the intrinsic mystical map that guided her friends to towns in need of friendship. She wondered how many places the Elements would have been needed if the map still worked. Would their cutie marks ever stop glowing? Would their work ever be complete?
She followed Applejack around the corner almost in a trance. She could see her friends talking amongst each other, and she gave the illusion that she was listening by nodding her head when it seemed necessary, but she was just as much caught in her own world.
Then a hoof caught her shoulder.
Twilight gasped, turning her head quickly to the source.
A middle-aged mare with a frayed yellow mane and brown fur stared at her with wide, helpless eyes. “I was right,” she gasped out, turning her gaze towards a stallion just a few steps behind her. “Dust, I was right.”
“Um,” Twilight said, looking nervously for her friends.
The mare grabbed her with both hooves now. “Princess Twilight Sparkle… I knew it had to be you. I remember you… from before the war… you… you’ve returned to us.”
“I…”
“Where are they?” the mare asked wildly. “What’s happened? Are the Princesses returning for us? Do they know how to fix this?”
“Let it go, Caramel,” the stallion said tiredly. He had a greying moustache and a similar dead-eyed expression to the rest of the community. “She doesn’t know anythin’.”
“Where are they?” Caramel hissed.
“I don’t know!” Twilight said desperately, trying to remove the mare’s hooves from her shoulders. “I… I don’t know anything, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Please, you’re hurting me.”
“That’s enough!” Applejack said, butting between the mare and Twilight. Caramel let go, her breathing stiff, her eyes unnervingly wide.
“You ain’t gonna get your answers hurtin’ mah friend like that,” Applejack scolded.
“Yeah!” Pinkie said angrily, hopping over. “What’s your deal lady?”
Caramel huffed. “How can you believe her? She’s a Princess of Equestria and you expect me to believe that she doesn’t know where the rest of her kind have gone?”
“My kind?”
“Alicorns!” Caramel hissed. “You creatures thought yourselves so much better than us, didn’t you? Immortals just like that filthy Discord! We trusted you!”
Caramel tried to take a step forward, but Applejack stopped her. Rarity and Pinkie glared from the side lines.
Caramel’s lips trembled. “You abandoned us, and now that you’re back you won’t even tell us what to do. You liars!”
This time when Caramel tried to dart forward, the stallion named ‘Dust’ grabbed her, pulling her away with visible effort.
Twilight stared in silence. She didn’t have anything to say, there wasn’t anything she could say. She didn’t know where Celestia was, or Luna or Cadence or even her brother. She didn’t even really know what had become of herself in the last ten years. She could have lied to the mare, told her something pleasant, that they were working on a way to fix things, but when she tried to speak, no words were forthcoming. It was like her tongue had tied itself into a perfect knot. She could only absorb the truth that this mare believed, the truth that she had been taught from a decade of neglect from the royalty that she had put her faith into.
If Twilight had been like her, like any of them, wouldn’t she have done the same?
When she finally found her voice, all she could say was, “I’m so sorry.”
The mare snorted. “Don’t even bother.”
Then she spat at the ground by Twilight’s hooves before Dust finally managed to pull her away. He gave Twilight an apologetic look, speaking under his breath to Caramel as they trotted further into the city.
Twilight blinked in a daze. This was what ponies thought of her now. Her kind. Like she wasn’t equus at all, but some kind of abomination. An immortal god walking amongst mortals. A species who thought themselves too powerful to care for the lives of ponykind. A species who abandoned them when things became too much to bear.
Even as they left town on the cart, Twilight still held that thought closely to her chest. It wasn’t so hard to believe, after all. Why else would Celestia leave? What else explained the bubble of magic around pony civilisation, the one that could only be held stable by Alicorn magic? What else explained any of this?
As Twilight watched Baltimare fade into the distance, she imagined that those thatch roofs really had caught on fire. She imagined the town burning. She imagined her mentor, the Princess of the sun itself, turning a blind eye on them as the very star she controlled destroyed their civilisation. Twilight looked away then, back into the haze of wasteland that stretched on seemingly forever. Back to the path they would be walking until they came across Emerald Pass.
Back to their inescapable reality.
The Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Entry #8 - Moving Forward
I met a mare today that blamed me for everything that has happened. She rejected me, told me that I was no better than Discord. A spirit of chaos. A pointless immortal.
Discord may have reformed from the time I remember, but I still understand her point. Whatever I was doing ten years ago, I allowed myself to be frozen in that crystal. I allowed this world to turn to dust.
Whatever happened to the Princesses, I have to assume that they survived. There is no other way to explain the magical bubble that keeps us all trapped in our own sickness. But, if they did survive, and they’re out there on the other side somewhere… then I know that they must have abandoned us. If in ten years they never came back, never tried to help the ponies here that have had to fight so hard every day to remain alive… what else can I assume?
Perhaps the world is just as torn on the other side. If the sun really fell from Celestia’s control – and the moon from Luna’s – then I can’t hold hope that life outside this dome could really be any better. I can see the sky from here, but no stars; something tells me that if I went to the edge of the dome, I’d see a blurred version of reality. Another untruth. I don’t know what’s happening out there, but even if the Princesses knew nothing of our fate, it still means that they are in control of it.
We are alone here. We have been abandoned. And I am part of that problem.
I’m a Princess to these people, but my time has passed. If I had been here since the beginning, maybe I could have helped, but there’s too much hatred surrounding the royal name for my ‘help’ to come of any use. The only thing that will bring society together now is the magic of friendship, but when the dead walk and a very different kind of magic lurks - the magic of science and biology, of sickness and blood – I don’t know if ours can win any longer.
It’s been ten years.
I can never forget that. Ten years that I never lived. Ten years I never saw. Ten years I could have helped. Locked away.
My instincts want to take me to Canterlot still. I don’t care what I find there, but hearing what Caramel had to say has sealed my decision for me. If I want to find out what happened, I know I can find those answers in Canterlot. It’s where all of this started. It’s where the Princesses vanished. It’s where I vanished.
Soon we’ll be in Emerald Pass. Soon we’ll have made the trade with the ponies there. Afterwards, I’ll finally know if I have my friends' support. I’m not sure if I will anymore, the years have been hard on them and Canterlot has become a living ghost story, one haunted by mechanical spirits. But no matter their answer, I know mine already. I will be going to Canterlot. Alone or together it doesn’t matter. I know what I have to do.
