Applebloom never did forget the strange pony who’d saved her in the woods that night. Yet, the pieces just didn’t fit together. The more she thought about it, the less she understood. None of it made any sense.
Back then, all she could do was run. There were no other options. Now, she could think. that’s what bothered her. Applebloom hadn’t slept much in the last few nights, not with the words making a home out of her skull. Those words, never ceasing, plagued her troubled conscious.
'Turns out I’m really good at finding things,' the words droned off in her mind, 'I finally understand what it means, and I will find you a way out of this.' They never left her, those six words, ever repeating, 'I finally understand what it all means.' She didn’t know why those words struck her so violently, but they refused to relinquish their hold on her mind.
She could practically see the pony standing at the foot of her bed. Then she realized she really could. Applebloom jumped out of the covers of her bed, and darted in the general direction of the exit of her small, dark room.
“I’m sorry, friend. I did not mean to startle you. Please don’t run…” The pony in her room spoke in the most beautiful voice Applebloom had ever heard. She’d been too scared to notice it before, but now she found comfort in it, and she took refuge in the kindness of the one who called her ‘friend’.
Applebloom stopped dead in her tracks and turned toward the pony in her room. “It’s okay, I know you didn’t try to.” she said in condolence. Applebloom walked over to the pony, and nuzzled into the pony’s warm coat. She drew back and inquired in a confident voice, “I’m Applebloom, what’s your name?”
“I am Ruby. I’m glad we were finally able to be properly introduced. Nice to meet you, Applebloom.” The pony replied with a bright smile lighting up her face. Applebloom did her best to not be drawn in by the glowing golden eyes that only Ruby possessed. Although, she couldn’t help herself. No matter how hard she tried, there are just some things in life you can’t ignore. So she raised the question.
“Beg your pardon, but… well… no offence, but why do your eyes look like that?” She regretted saying it already, but found that she couldn’t take it back, so she just waited in an embarrassed anticipation for an answer.
“They’re my talent. Do you remember what I said?”
Applebloom’s mind raced back to the place that they’d been those few nights ago. “Turns out I’m really good at finding things.” There was a scramble in her memory and then the words resumed. “I will find you a way out of this!” They repeated themselves again. “Turns out I’m really good at finding things. I will find you a way out of this.”
Applebloom’s eyes came back to where she was in real time, and her gaze was set upon Ruby’s burning sight, and she understood.
“So that’s how you see things, with you’re special eyes, that is?” She asked rhetorically.
“They help me find what I’m looking for. It’s not that I see better, but when something’s lost, I can find it.” Ruby replied to the question, even though they both knew that no response was necessary.
“I was lost… and you found me a way out… How did you escape?” There were so many questions that Applebloom wanted to ask right now, but she forced a limit of one at a time.
“I followed you. I was just as lost as you were at the time, but that was then. I know now. I remember everything. I was born in that small town. Only I know its story… because no one else lived to tell the tale.”
Ruby’s eyelids slid down, grey sheets concealing the golden illuminations of solidified light. She leaned her head onto Applebloom’s, eye to eye with the filly.
The golden eyes flashed open, seeming to dart out at Applebloom’s retinas, piercing into the filly’s consciousness. Applebloom’s world quickly fizzled out into an eclipse of everything Applebloom knew, and all that shone through, was Ruby’s mind.
Ruby’s memories tan free through the now blank space in Applebloom’s mind that was once occupied with her own memories. A spark of recollection ignited into a brilliant array of knowledge.
Applebloom’s vision returned, yet, she didn’t see Ruby, or her room. What she saw, was Sunny Town, vacant in the midday sunlight. She felt herself began to move. She then noticed that she had no control over her grey body. All she was, was a witness, called upon to serve her position in Sunny Town’s past.
Applebloom noticed that none of the ponies that she remembered in the town were present. She didn’t remember all of their names, she only recalled a few, but for now, she was alone in the town. She was alone in Ruby’s body.
Ruby’s body pressed forward, past the large building in front of which Applebloom had returned Roneo his red gem. Although she didn’t remember the name of the pony he had given it to.
They walked by the place that Gladstone had been when Applebloom asked him a question of which she didn’t remember the context of. They then stopped at the appearance of a rather frantic Three Leaf.
“Ruby, I can’t explain now! Come on, you have to hurry!” Three Leaf pleaded seemingly at Ruby’s mercy.
Ruby didn’t ask questions, just followed Three Leaf. She lurched forward into a long stride, then leaned into a full sprint behind Three Leaf. Ruby followed Three Leaf down a rather familiar path. A path that Applebloom knew was significant, yet didn’t know why.
They ran on as the foliage above them began to thicken, blocking out the sunlight that once shone upon their path.
As Ruby ran, she peered up at the solid black building ahead of them, alone among the trees of the dark forest.
A jolt of memory shot through Applebloom’s consciousness. Like a streak of white light, it raced through her mind, infecting fear into Applebloom’s partially numb mind. She wanted to run, wanted to hide, wanted to do anything, but she was a witness. She was forced to do her duty.
They slowed to a trot, and approached the black, wooden door of the large building that so intimidated Applebloom. Ruby leaned over to the handle. She bit down, and pulled, but the light “clack” of the latch reverberated, mocking them.
Ruby wasted no time. She spun around in one swift motion, and channeled all of her strength to the kick being delivered to the door. It fractured slightly. Again she struck at the door, and it began to tear down the cracks embedded in the door. She struck again, and this time, the door splintered into pieces, rewarding them with access to the building in front of them.
Ruby leaped inside, and looking around, found an open door, untouched by her hooves. She had broken down a false door. The thought ran circles in Ruby’s and Applebloom’s conjoined minds, but before Ruby could give herself a reasonable explanation, she was severed of every thought but pain.
The wooden club impacted in the back of her head, sending a sickening crack as it more than likely fractured the pony’s skull. Although, unlike in the stories, this was no quick affair.
In the stories, shed of blacked out in a split second after that single first blow. Yet, this was reality, and it just wasn’t that simple.
The club connected again, forcing Ruby down to the wooden floor. She screamed with the pain that bolted through her body. It connected a third time. Another sickening crack echoed throughout the dark room. Blood seeped from the slits and gashes in her head, spilling into a pool of the crimson red essence of life.
Applebloom didn’t feel the pain herself, but new that it presided in the same body that she did. She felt the emotional pain emanating from Ruby’s mind, a plea for mercy, a cry for help.
The club connected one last time, snapping it in two from the sheer force of the blow that was delivered with it.
With that, Ruby couldn’t hold out any longer, and she slipped out of consciousness, completely incapacitated by the mental damage inflicted upon her. She lay there, lightly breathing, letting her blood seep into the floor beneath her.
--
She awoke, her head hammering mercilessly within itself, blood staining her mane, and grey coat.
Her eyes slowly crawled open, and she found herself barred up in a stone pit at the back of the room, behind a solid steel grate which had been bolted securely to the wall.
Around her lay a half-circle of ponies from the town, glaring at her, not menacingly, but certainly not comfortingly.
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Grey Hoof’s calm voice sounded, somewhat regretfully, “but we have to do this. Forgive me Ruby… Goodbye…”
There was quiet hissing sound coming through a pipe on her right. Suddenly, there was a spark.
Ruby screamed in agony as the heat of the flames vegan to incinerate her flesh, slowly as it did. The pour of tears that had been prevented for so long, finally broke forth, pressing through the blockade of Ruby’s will.
The ponies on the other side of the grate just watched, unmoving as her flesh began to shrivel up and char from the heat of the intense flames. There was only one thing that broke their gaze.
The floorboards smashed open, revealing the soil underneath, and the slowly rising pony. It vaulted, pulling itself up from the breach. It had no skin, or muscle, just bone to hold it together.
“You…… shouldn’t have done…………….. That….” The undead pony sang out to the group of ponies encircling Ruby.
Ruby stared in complete shock, not understanding any part of the scene playing out in front of her.
Slowly, her vision began to fray in on itself, blurring the line between life and death, until finally, her life force had died, and all that remained was a burnt corpse, and an unresting spirit.
Applebloom’s mind raced with thoughts of what she had seen, and despite all she thought, she couldn’t place it. She found no way for the pieces to fit together. Even with the vision freshly engraved in her mind, she still couldn’t see a solution, didn’t find a way out, couldn’t see a reason.
She brought her eyes open gradually, to find the golden suns of Ruby’s eyes peering into her own. An expression of rich desire and satisfaction lit her face, and her gaze was set upon Applebloom, as she slowly began her approach.
“Join me, friend….. We need you…. We wont let them turn you into one of them…….. We will keep you pure….”
Applebloom wanted to run, wanted to scream, but her body disobeyed her. She stared ahead, as the pony’s flesh melted away from her, until there was nothing left but bone, and the two all-seeing eyes of gold.
She got a twitch out of her left hoof, and that was enough to break her out of the trance. She screamed, a full-blooded screech of raw terror, and dived through the window of her room, sending herself plunging to ground beneath her. She landed hard, finding a bed of shattered glass awaiting her.
Stumbling to her hooves, she ran, ignoring the pain, forcing herself to abstain from thinking about the streams of blood falling to the grass beneath her. The eyes were everywhere, ever-present, ever watching, never once altering their gaze, staring blankly down at her.
She sprinted on, leaving her acreage behind, finding her only asylum in the solitude of flight. She ran for Ponyville, unwilling to let her fear engulf her, not letting the weight of the moonbeams encumber her.
A thought struck her, and she found it sickened and repulsed her, but she felt strangely deified. She couldn’t understand herself, wanted to believe she was still sane, but was no longer convinced that she ever was. She ran on.
Weakness in her limbs set in on her, proceeded by blurring vision, before she collapsed to the ground, unable to run any longer. She stared in a half-numbed state of agony, as the ponies of bone slowly converged on her. Her blood had nearly run dry, and all that coursed through her veins was fear.
She screamed again, watching in agony and fear, the ponies of bone plodded slowly toward her. The distance was drawing to a close, and she stared as the eyes drew nearer in the rotting skull of the pony she would have called a friend.
The eyes were set down at her. They looked almost to be pitying her. She knew better. She let out a cry of bitter agony, and watched helplessly as her own flesh burned away with the her identity, and all she once knew. The tears finally broke loose, and begun their justified descent down her cheeks. Falling to the ground as they went, the drops of pain burned across her face, as the flames licked up all her life, and left her a form of bone in a pile of ash.
The golden orbs had brought it to completion. All that remained of Applebloom had been devoured by the curse, and she was lost in its demonic grasp for death.