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Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

www.scrivnarium.net

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
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Part Seventeen: Delicious

I closed my eyes and commended myself to the Grower and the Forever Harvest. It was all there was left to do.

G'night.

And then, as had happened to me before, everything went quiet all of a sudden. After a moment, I opened my eyes.

I was laying on my side in sweet-smelling grass. All around me were apple trees in full fruit, golden delicious variety. For all the green and yellow, everything around me seemed a mite washed out and pale, like I was living in a photograph where somepony'd left the shutter open too long. In other words, exactly the same scene that greeted me as when I had gotten clocked on the head with a tree limb earlier.

I was in the Forever Harvest. Again. Under the circumstances, I figured it was gonna stick this time.

I groaned and got to my bitty little hooves; also like before, I was a filly again. I wasn't exactly looking forward to spending eternity as a stubby little thing with a squeaky voice, no Cutie Mark, and way too many freckles, but perhaps you don't get to choose such things. I scanned the expansive gold-and-green orchard for the figure I hoped would be there...

...yes. Big as I had known him in life. It was Cortland again.

"Pa," I said, my voice trembling a little, trying to walk over to him, my knees wobbling treacherously beneath me. "I... I got hurt. Got hurt bad."

"Ayup," said Cortland, distantly.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Rainbow Dash," I said. "I mean... I know it's too late for me, but did Dash make it out of that?"

Cortland gazed up at the trees for a spell. "Yer friend's unharmed."

I let out a relieved breath. "All right then," I said, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice. "I guess... I guess from here on in we let the living handle the living, right?"

"Don't get maudlin on me, Cowpoke. Y'ain't killt yet."

I stopped, honestly stunned. "Wait, I ain't dead? Even after all that?"

"Nope," said Cortland, selecting another timothy-stalk from out of the grass beneath us and planting it firmly between his teeth.

I blinked. "Boy howdy," I said, chuckling. "I can sure take a licking, can't I?"

Pa shook his head. "Now, don't get cocky, neither," he warned.

"Yessir," I said, glancing away and kicking at a little ol' dirt clod.

"Better," he said. "Now, that quicksilver monster that your friend Twilight built has a whole pile a' witchy skills, just like she herself does. The particular hex you're about to get nailed with back in the real world with is somethin' called a 'disjunction beam'."

"'Disjunction'?" I said, consulting the new lexicon that had got wedged in my brain along with the science curse, which was chock-full of all sorts of shiny three-bit words like the word "lexicon". "'Disjunction' means taking things apart, right? What of mine is Trixie aimin' to take apart, exactly?"

"You," said Cortland, gesturing offhoofedly. "Every bit of you from every other bit of you."

"Oh," I said. "Right. A'course."

"Now, I ain't gonna lie to you," continued Cortland. "That magic bolt's gonna sting like the dickens when it hits. But you'll only feel it for about half a second."

"That ain't so bad," I said.

And then, "Wait. Do I only feel it for half a second because it stops? Or do I only feel it for half a second because there ain't gonna be a me to feel it after half a second?"

Pa sucked on his timothy. "Second one."

"Ah, shoot," I said, sighing adorably in my little filly way. "Well, thanks anyway for pulling me out a mite early, Pa. You reckon I could just stay here while it happens? I ain't in a hurry to leave my body as such, but I gotta be honest, it's pretty messed up right now. Plus, seems like a special waste of time shoehorning me back in when I'd just be returning here half a second later."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Cortland. "I wouldn't'a brought you here if I didn't have an idea for something that might fix this mess you got yourself into."

Hope fluttered in my breast. "All right," I said. "I'm listening."

Pa stared off into the distance for a piece. "There's a power I got," he said, eventually. "By virtue of what I am."

"'What you are'?" I said. "An apple-farmer?"

Pa shook his head. "Things is... different, here beyond. Gets complicated, but basically, I can lend you some of my strength, Cowpoke. Enough to shrug off that spellbolt, certainly. Probably enough to take down the caster, too."

"Sounds good to me," I said, eager. "Is there a catch here?"

"Manner of speaking," said Pa, working the last bit of goodness from the strand of hay and electing to spit it out this time. "More like a condition. If I do this with you, if I give you what powers I got, I have to know you're going to use them to finish the job."

"And... what's that mean, exactly?"

"It means," said Cortland, turning back to me, his eyes sharp, "that you don't stop with the ro-bot unicorn. Once that Trixie's out of the way, you take the bit in your teeth and you finish the real enemy, too."

"Don't you worry, none, Pa," I said. "If I get through this, I got a plan to take Discord down."

"Well, no lie, that'd be right nice," said Pa. "But that ain't who I was talking about, immediate-wise."

"Then wh—"

"Twilight Sparkle," intoned Pa.

My gut went all flip-floppy.

"Now, Pa," I said. "I ain't gonna pretend that I haven't had thoughts. But oughtn't we be keeping our eyes fixed on the immediate problem here? Twilight's a threat to the Apple Family way, sure, I get that. But I bet we can come up with something once the science storm has passed us by. Something a little more level-headed."

"That's the thing about being dead, child," said Pa. "It tends to make you take the long view of things."

"Yeah, well," I said, a mite titchy. "That's the thing about lying there almost dead with a killer magic spell on a collision course with your face. Tends to make you take the short view of things, see?"

"Cowpoke," said Pa, sternly. "What'd I always teach you about weeds?"

"Get 'em before they turn into trees," I said, glancing away.

"Exactly," said Pa. "Now I ain't laying blame, exactly, but you've let this go a mite long. That purple unicorn's got wide runners in this town now. It might even be too late; to save what we both hold dear, I mean. If you're fixing to fell this weed now, it's gonna take some hard cuts."

"All right then," I said, feeling like lead inside. "What exactly does 'finishing the job' mean?"

"Sake of the Grower, kid," said Pa, spitting. "I gotta spell it out for you? Letter by letter?"

"I reckon you might," I said, sticking my lower lip out.

Pa sighed. "I realize this ain't gonna be easy for you. I know that you and the unicorn, well, you've got a history. But you're in a war now. She's the enemy. And that ro-bot monster she's got? It ain't running at full power yet. It's drawing strength from her, from her sense of betrayal, even if she don't even fully realize what happened back at the dance last night."

And neither do any of y'all, I know. We'll get there. I promise.

"You end her," said Pa, "I figure you end the ro-bot too."

"End her," I said.

"Simple," said Pa, quietly. "Spraying a bug."

I turned away and fixed my eyes on one of the bright yellow apples adorning the Forever Harvest trees. It was just about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Things used to be so simple when all I had to think about was apples, just like that one. Before I got sucked into being a pawn in struggles way beyond my league, my capacity to handle. Back when I was a farmer, a local hero, a little town's prize pony. Back before Princess Celestia knew my name, and not in a good way. Back before Twilight Sparkle came to town. I could have it all back. All of it.

There was just one thing wrong.

"Cowpoke?" said the creature behind me.

I clenched my teeth hard enough to break one back in the real world.

"How dare you," I said.

Silence from the thing.

"How dare you," I repeated. "You come here, making arguments at me. Real persuasive ones, I'll admit. You're playing me like a regular harmonica. But my Pa was the one that taught me that making new friends is the finest thing in the world, and it's the same way of thinking that's guided my family for generations. Making friends is the Apple Family way, just like pickin' apples is, just like wrapping up winter without no fancy magics to help us. Pa wouldn't never tell me to do something like that to one of my friends."

More silence.

"But that ain't even the problem," I said. "Not the real one. My Pa was a simple stallion, gentle as the day is long, and believe me that when I tell you he wouldn't hurt a fly, I mean it literal. You don't know how many pony-hours we wasted scraping tent caterpillars off the trees in our orchard and relocating them, when the sensible thing woulda been to just poison them foals-o'-mules and been done with it. Couldn't bring himself to do it. It was Ma who did all the spraying around our place. Pa just couldn't stomach it. He never sprayed a bug in his life."

I turned around, my eyes blazing now. "And he sure as heckfire would never have called it 'simple'. So you're gonna tell me, and tell me now, who you really are."

"Cowpoke," said the thing, placatingly.

"Don't you dare!" I screamed, in my little girl's voice. "Don't you dare call me that!" Lightning flickered across my eyes, and almost without a thought, I lashed out with my stubby leg in a roundhouse buck and kicked one of the golden-green apple trees, causing a couple fruits to fall. I caught one up in my tail, tossed it into the air, turned hock, and sent it sailing at Cortland with one swift kick.

It struck him right in the brisket and smashed, and then a sense of wrongness gripped me like a sudden fever-chill, because the apple pulp inside of it, the stuff that appeared when it struck, wasn't yellow or white; it was black. Black as midnight.

"The hay?" I whispered, narrowing my eyes, the rage draining away. I looked down at one of the other fallen yellow fruits and crushed it beneath my hoof. Black, all black, from right underneath the skin on down to the core. Not rotten-black – it was firm and solid and juicy-looking, perfectly healthy apple flesh. But the coal-black color of it sent shivers down my spine.

"What is this?" I whispered, looking up. "What is this place?"

"Just as well this is coming to light now," came a honeyed contralto voice from Cortland that weren't nothing like anything what ever came out of Pa's throat, ever. "It's positively nauseating to have to keep that accent up, you know? I don't know how you manage it."

The world crashed and dripped away like we was standing inside an oil painting that just had a glass of turpentine chucked at it, and when my vision cleared, all was transformed. I was back to my old self again; not crippled, like in the real world, but back to being a full-functioning adult. That weren't the startling part. We were still in an orchard, no doubt of that. And the apples hanging from the trees, well, they were just as golden and beautiful as ever. But the trees themselves had turned to dark, steely things with perfectly symmetrical leaves and smooth, shiny bark that rose up with nary a knot or a whorl. They looked like wide-bore plumbing pipe, sticking straight up out of the ground. The sky, where I could see it, was ink-dark overhead, without moon or star to light it, and I was hard-pressed to describe how I was even seeing anything at all, unless maybe the apples themselves were bright enough to illuminate our little clearing.

Pa was nowhere to be seen. In his place, a dim, formless mass of shadow, vaguely in the shape of a pony. I had never seen it, never met it – not really – but I knew its name on sight.

"Nightmare," I said.

"The same," it purred. "My reputation precedes me, I expect."

"Your reputation of being a Grade-A pain in the dock," I said. I shook my head. "That was pretty dang weak, you witch-seed monster. People come to me offering gifts, they best not be wearing a mask when they do it."

"A miscalculation," said the Nightmare, seeming to flow like water as it ambled across my field of vision. "I needed you to hear what I had to say without your preconceived notions clouding your sight. I thought that a face you trusted would be the way. Obviously, I've made an error."

"Darn tootin' you made an error," I said. "The sad thing is, you had me believing it. I thought I was really on the edge of the Forever Harvest for a second."

"There is no Forever Harvest," snapped the Nightmare. "It's a silly little fairy-pony story your ancestors dreamt up so as to avoid the crippling existential angst of facing down their own eventual lack of existence, of eternal non-being."

"Whatever you say," I said, dismissively. "Y'ain't gonna convince me it ain't out there somewhere."

"Foal," scoffed the Nightmare. "Your 'Pa' is not waiting for you in a mythical land of eternal autumn, where nothing ever changes and where your existence is one of endless happy and productive labor. Your 'Pa' is not waiting for you anywhere. What little remains of him is good for feeding worms and subterranean beetles now. That's it."

"Well," I said. "Even if so, that's immortality of a sort, isn't it?"

"Oh, the blinkers you ponies wear," said the Nightmare, in a voice that suggested that if it had eyes, it'd be rolling them. "How willingly do you shackle your thoughts. The only path to eternal life involves actually, you know, living forever. Anything else is just a sad little complacent delusion."

"Huh," I said. "Well, pleased as I am to be standing here getting ragged on by the likes of you, I expect it's high time you let me go so I can finish up my business of getting killed. Then I can figure out for myself what comes next, even if it's just beetles. So. Nice meetin' y'all, finally."

"Applejack, wait," said the Nightmare, with a note of desperation. "Whatever my guise was at the time, my offer was good. And it still stands. I will help you survive what is to come. This needn't be the end."

"You lied to me," I said. "You wore my Pa's skin, and you done lied to me, straight to my face. Now you say that part of what you were telling me was the truth. If we're gonna do this, you're gonna have to start all over again."

"Start from where?"

"The beginning."

There was a horrible thing like mirth in the Nightmare's voice. "Very well," it said, gesturing with one hoof-shaped extension of shadow. At its gesture, images began flickering across the smooth, dark surfaces of the tree trunks, like there was some kind of film projector running here in the clearing, except for it was projecting everywhere, not just in one direction.

I spun in a slow, awkward circle, looking at the visions that the Nightmare was casting onto the tree trunks surrounding us. Pictures of primitive critters, huge and horselike, flickered past on all sides. Nary a tool nor a stitch of clothing was to be seen. Cutie Marks were present and accounted for on the mares and stallions both, but they were simple and pared-down like old cave paintings, and the subjects were strange: here, a spiraling glyph with no meaning I could discern; here, a trio of stones; here, a loose bundle of grasses and wildflowers. When they spoke at all, which was not much, it seemed to be in grunts and little emotional outbursts. No real words that I could see. Creatures of body language, mostly. They were savage and positively un-Pony.

"As requested, the beginning," said the Nightmare. "The Dawn of Pony. Behold the happiest creatures in history. Behold your ancestors, Applejack."

"Those ain't my ancestors," I said.

"Oh, but they are," said the Nightmare.

"My great-great-great-whatevereth grandsire weren't no horse," I insisted, adamantly. "I will guarantee you that. He was a pony, just like I am."

"Things change, Applejack," said the Nightmare, in low and stricken tones. "Try as I might to stop them."

"I don't follow," I said, still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that one of these critters was my blood or kin.

"My name is not 'Nightmare'," said the Nightmare. "It is the name that has been hung on me ever since I made the foalish decision to ally myself with that ridiculously soppy and reed-like Moon Princess of yours. These ponies – for ponies, indeed, they are – knew me as something quite different. They had no words, as such, but if we were to translate their knowing into speech you could understand, you would hear them call me 'Constancy'."

"'Constancy'? Like... things staying the same?"

"Indeed," said the Nightmare. "I, above all, know that perfection is to be approached in the now; and greater perfection is to be approached in the past. Look at your forefathers and foremothers. They are contented creatures. They do not question. They simply are. They live in a land of eternal daylight and eternal moonlight, the sun and the moon fixed forever in the sky. There are no seasons for them to endure, or create. They dwell beneath the open sky, with no roof to block their view. They eat grass, as nature intended. Gaze upon them, Applejack. Are they not sublime?"

"It looks... great," I said, squinting and trying to figure out where the apples were and coming up all zeroes. "I don't see no plows or nothing. How did they farm the land?"

"They didn't," snapped the Nightmare. "They were perfect and had no need of such things. Not until the Adversary came." The Nightmare gestured again, and an all-too-familiar form sashayed into view, his image splitting crazily amongst the various tree-trunks on which his image was projected.

I sucked in a breath. "Discord," I said, watching as the draconequus presented himself, godlike, before the primitive horses. With showy gestures, he showered them with gifts, changed their forms to smaller, sleeker ones, set the sun and the moon to move in the sky.

"Good gravy," I said, turning back to the Nightmare. "You're telling me Discord got the sun moving, way back when?"

"Yes," said the Nightmare, distantly. "Discord is the father of the seasons, the instigator of night and day. Much like me, he was not known as 'Discord' in those times. Merely... 'Change'. He terrified my little ponies. He made it so they never knew from one minute to the next whether it would be light or dark in the sky, cold or warm in the air. He made them dissatisfied with their lot in life, Applejack, because he gave them gifts; and then he gave war and hatred to the world, because he was inequitable and capricious in how he bestowed them. He made me weep, Applejack. He destroyed the paradise I had watched over for so long."

I looked on as the scenes unfolded around me, thousands and thousands of years passing with every heartbeat. As we rose up from the abyss of ages, I could see the ponies changing into shapes that looked more like what you might see walking on four hooves down the street in any modern town. I even began to recognize their Cutie Marks, their talents growing more and more recognizable to me as the ages passed.

"Hey!" I said, pointing. "I saw a snow-cone or something on one of them butts!"

"Confections," said the Nightmare, disdainfully. "Shaved ice, flavored with stolen honey and squeezed fruit juices. 'Dessert'. An abomination to my sight."

"Y'don't like... desserts?" I said, coming straight up against a wall with this one. "Not cakes or nothing?"

The Nightmare trembled, revolted. "Dessert is a creation of wretched Change," it said. "The apex of dissatisfaction, everything the Adversary represents." It twisted its voice into a mocking squeal. "Oh, oh help me! My meal is not good enough! It is not sufficient that I be nourished! I must tack something on to the end so that I will have filthy stinking pleasure as well!"

"It sounds really weird when you do that," I noted, taking my eyes away from the dizzying twirl of images for a moment to glance back at the Nightmare again.

"Sorry," said the Nightmare.

"So, wait. You and Discord've been here just... squabbling? For centuries?"

"Eons," agreed the Nightmare, reaching out to stroke at one of the spinning images with a smoky, indistinct hoof.

"So that's it," I said, quietly. "That explains you, finally. Y'ain't really about envy at all; that's just the thing you use to get into us ponies' heads. All that really matters to you is that we grab on to a piece of the changing world, anything we can, and hold on tight. Like Luna and the night. Like my brother and apple-bucking season. Like Scootaloo and her volcano presentation. You just want things to last forever. You don't care what, even. You just want something, anything, to stop changing."

"Yes," said the Nightmare. "And this is why I know there is no Forever Harvest. When the Adversary took all existence from me, I fled, looking for somewhere else to go, somewhere that He could not follow." The creature's voice went distant. "I went searching for a place like that which is described in your little fairy-pony stories. A place where everything is happy, now and forever, unchanging and eternal. I cast my psyche far and wide, for a longer time than your puny mortal mind can comprehend."

The Nightmare took a deep and shuddering breath. "I would have found such a place if it existed, Applejack. There is nothing out there but the world that you see, and it is ruined forever, by Him." The Nightmare billowed itself up, then, proudly. "I am the last force keeping this existence from dissolving into chaos, my little pony."

I shook my head. "Look," I said, "I'm sorry for coming at you when you're evidently real cut-up about this, but for all this talk about ponies, you're leaving them out of your speech pretty near entirely. Ponies don't always know what temperature it's gonna be when they wake up in the morning, but they've got a pretty good idea, all because of the hard work of the pegasus ponies. And they sure as sugar know when the sun's gonna come up. The unicorns made sure a' that back in the olden times, and now the Princess has a hold on it."

"Ha!" said the Nightmare, sharp and barking, as a gleaming, icon-like image of Princess Celestia – the sun and moon balanced atop her outstretched wings – scrolled smoothly across the trees. "You ponies! When you perceived that the wars that I and the Adversary fought became too great, too destructive, you took matters into your own hooves! You decreed a middle road of compromise, where change would happen, but in carefully-measured cycles! Four seasons to a year! Twenty-four hours to a day! Physical processes explained and controlled by science, and by magic! You are ignorant, to this day, of the fact that change itself is the odious element, and no carefully-scheduled occurrence of it will alter that fact! And when we try to enlighten you, you turn us to stone, or imprison us in the moon, or any number of ghastly punishments your cruel and Change-addled minds can come up with."

"I think you're maybe being a mite harsh," I said. "Haven't you ever felt the excitement of watching the winter give way before the spring, all the plants and animals busting into new life? The joy of that first sunny summer day after the rains stop? The relief of a cool autumn after a long, hot summer?"

I took a moment to look at the featureless, milky-black face of the Nightmare, trying to read an expression or something, but it was like a mask up there. "And what about the plumb filly delight of that first snowfall?" I finished. "What about that?"

"Your mouth moves," said the Nightmare, its chin high, "but no words come out. It is all 'blah blah blah'. Babbling nonsense."

"Consarnit!" I said. "Change ain't as bad as you make it out to be! I saw them primitive ponies. Sure, they was happy enough, I guess, 'cause they didn't know no better. But don't you think they woulda been happier with a couple sweet treats in their bellies? Maybe a tool or two in their hooves?"

"Oh, now you come out as a defender of Change?" sneered the Nightmare. "I'll show you Change, Applejack. We've spent quite a time in the past now; why don't we look to the future and see what it holds?" The Nightmare gestured grandly, viciously, and the scene before us changed. It was country I recognized, because it was home. Apple trees as far as the eye could see, at least that's what it ought to look like. I squinted down and gazed in close to the moving pictures.

"What... what are they doing to them trees?" I said.

"Razing them," said the Nightmare. "Oh, that's just one of the delightful things about the future. Great advances in efficiency for the mechanical leveler. At the time you're seeing, a single pony can take out thirty acres of forested land a day, I suspect. And the numbers only grow as the years pass."

"That ain't a forest!" I yelled. "That's my home! That's Sweet Apple Acres!"

"Yes, well, not any more," said the Nightmare. "Not at the time you're seeing. You remember what I said when I was wearing your father's face? The guise was a lie, but the words were not. Your family is not long for that land, Applejack. Advances in magic and technology, the spread of railroads, the unstoppable sprawl of the greater Canterlot metroplex. All of that is working against you. Your family's land will become infinitely more valuable to developers than it ever was growing apples. Your descendents will sell, Applejack. They will sell and take profitable jobs in the city, jobs that will be made possible by the huge strides of progress spearheaded by the most brilliant, scientifically-advanced mind in pony history."

"No," I said, shaking my head and backing up a step.

"Yes," said the Nightmare, the images on the trees shifting to show scenes of her words. "Your friend, Twilight Sparkle. In later life, that mare will revolutionize you ponies' understanding of magic and your relationship with it. The works of her mind will usher in a so-called 'Golden Age' of glinting, technological prosperity, utterly devoid of the good, solid values that you and yours have stood for. Ponyville will be absorbed and converted into a faceless, homogenous neighborhood in a swelling city that sweeps down the side of the mountain like an avalanche, burying everything beneath it. All that you know will be lost and gone, Applejack."

"It can't," I said. "I won't let it."

"You will be dead," said the Nightmare, leaning down over my shoulder and whispering into my ear. "Remember that spell-bolt streaking towards you? These are your last moments on this earth, Applejack, your last moments of existence. These pictures I now show you will be the last things that cross your mind, and you will know despair. And when you are erased, your family will soon follow. Your beloved Apple Family Way will be gone, as though it never existed. You will be remembered only as the least appealing member of a band of folk heroes, the one that nopony could ever really relate to. In the fictions made of your life, you will be shoved to the background, over and over again. The ponies that read these fictions will be ambivalent about you. They will call Twilight Sparkle the best pony. They will call Fluttershy the best pony. They will call Rainbow Dash the best pony. But the best that they will be able to summon up for you is a sort of winking ambivalence. You are doomed, Applejack. Both you and everything you hold dear. And history will not mourn you."

I coughed out a sob. I hadn't even known one was coming. "Liar," I said, my voice shaking. "You lie."

"No," said the Nightmare. "You know it to be true. And that is why it hurts you so."

"How do I stop this?" I asked, and gol-durn it, my voice sounded just like it did when I was a filly a couple minutes ago.

"You cannot," said the Nightmare. "We can."

I swallowed, hard. "How do we stop this, then?"

"Simple," said the Nightmare, airily. "I change you. Ironic isn't it? Me, the antithesis of change, working change on another? That is how you should know I am serious about this gift: I cut myself deeply to give it to you. And I only consider it at all because when I convert you it will be into your best and strongest form, and it will be the last change you will ever endure."

"Ever?"

"Ever," affirmed the Nightmare. "Once you have accepted me, you will remain at the absolute height of your physical, mental, and dare I say – " (and at this, a little leer) " – sexual powers, for all eternity. You know those creeping doubts you have about being shown up at your precious rodeos over and over again? I can confirm every last one of those doubts. You're in decline, Applejack, and without my help it will only get worse from here on in. And what about being the town's hero? You remember that, child?"

"I reckon I do," I said.

"Perhaps," said the Nightmare. "But a little audiovisual aid never hurt anypony, right?" The Nightmare gestured and the trees were filled with an image of adorable filly me, resting easy beneath the shade of a tree, finishing up a big ol' slice of watermelon and spitting out the pits, just a little game to while away a hot afternoon, when all of a sudden...

"Applejack!" came Rarity's voice, her old voice, the real one, that broad Lakelander accent I was always kind of partial to. It was followed shortly by adorable filly Rarity herself. "Applejack, you gotta come quick!" she said, panting after her hard gallop. "It's bad!"

"Bad how?" asked filly me, tapping the brim of her hat up.

"Ohmygoodnessohmygoodness," said adorable filly Fluttershy. "I think it's a kelpie, Applejack! A strange woodland creature that looks like a pony but isn't! It's going to try and drown us!"

Adorable filly Rainbow Dash, the new kid from Cloudsdale, swooped in. "What do we do, Applejack?"

Adorable filly Applejack rose to her hooves. "I'll tell you what we do," she said. "You all just stand on back and let Applejack work her magic."

"Yay!" shouted everypony. "Hooray for Applejack!" And then the scene stuttered to a halt and vanished from the trees.

"Cute little buggers, weren't we," I murmured.

"You can have it all back," said the Nightmare. "Well, not the cuteness, perhaps. But the respect and admiration of your peers, certainly. Now and forever, for generations to come. You yourself will be there many years from now when the battle-lines are drawn to stop the spread of the city, to stop Progress from running roughshod over that which you love. You will always be there, an eternal sentinel of your farm. Your cropland will grow mystically fecund in your presence and your family's plenty will increase a hundredfold. You and yours will be rich beyond imagining, child. Rich and powerful. You will hold back the tide of years. Your way of life will last, yes, forever. Together, we will recreate paradise."

"And all I gotta do is get... rid of Twilight Sparkle."

"Her mind dies with her, and likewise, all the changes she would otherwise spur. All this," said the Nightmare, gesturing at the images it had cast of the dark, mountain-swallowing, never-ending metropolis of Canterlot, "goes away, like a bad dream."

"I gotta get rid of her," I said, feeling very much like a pony sinking in quicksand. "I can't just – just argue with her about it or nothing?"

"You know she won't budge," said the Nightmare. "She's as stubborn as you are."

"Yeah," I said, realizing this truth for perhaps the first time. "Yeah, she is."

"It doesn't have to be painful, or wicked," purred the Nightmare. "It can be nice and gentle. Summon the old earth pony magic. Fill her little brain-tank with nightshade, or hemlock. A nice, long sleep for your little friend. Your silly little filly friend who can't possibly know the damage she will wreak, who would never believe you if you were to tell her. There is no wrongdoing, no fault here. You aren't the hoof of justice. You're merely the agent of a brighter future."

I swear I could see the shadow smile, then. Real gentle. Like a nurse, or something. "Will you help me, Applejack?" it said. "Will you help me write into being a better world than the one you see before you? Please?"

An instant passed. A decision was made.

"Aw, heck, no," I said, shaking my head.

The Nightmare sighed. "Just like that? You're not going to even think about it? This is why I came to you with your father's face, Applejack. To stop you from simply turning your brain off."

"Turning my brain off is what I do best, sometimes," I said. "On account of it lets me hear my heart. And do you know what my heart says?"

"Something banal and prejudiced, I expect."

I ignored the jab and pressed on. "It says that you're wrong, Nightmare. It says that no good's ever gonna come from a plan what involves letting you in here, even if the alternative is death. And I don't even know why, and I can't even put it into words yet because that's not what a heart's good for. But I'm gonna trust my gut and what my Pa would say in this situation, and he'd tell you thanks, but, you can take your gift and stuff it where the sun don't shine. Beggin' your pardon."

The Nightmare scowled at me. "Fine!" it yelled, gesturing angrily at the trees surrounding us and causing the images to spin crazily again. "We've seen the past, and we've seen the future. Let's take a quick look at the present, shall we? Maybe you can't be swayed by hypothetical future harms. Maybe you lack the imagination. Let's bring it down to earth for a moment." The images snapped back into focus, showing the picture of the interior of a familiar building. It was the ground floor of Carousel Boutique, the way me and Apple Bloom had seen it when we went around delivering breakfast to Rarity early this morning. Now, as then, the whole room was dominated by a giant column of blue-glowing glass leading from the Wondrous Lanthorn down to the gemstone furnace in the basement of the shop. Unlike then, however, the glass tube appeared to be occupied. By a pony.

"What in tarnation?" I said, squinting. "That's Rainbow Dash in there!"

And, yep, it was. There, straining mightily against a gravity beam that was dragging her down into the gemstone furnace at a little under the speed of sound, was Rainbow Dash, probably the only pony in Equestria who was able to out-fly a gravity beam dragging at a little under the speed of sound. Her leg-brace had been torn clean off, her wings were locked in a painful stance and both sweat and tears were pouring from her, but she was somehow managing to hold her own. Rainbow's massive expenditure of pegasus air-magic – combined with the sheer frantic energy of thousands upon thousands of cubic feet of wind being sucked past her down into the blast furnace – was shattering the water vapor inside the column into a corona of zinging, caroming color. It was clearly taking every last scrap of Rainbow's strength just to stay in place.

I rounded on the Nightmare. "Pa – I mean, you said that she was fine!" I said, pointing in a mighty accusing fashion. "That don't look like 'fine' to me!"

"I said she was unharmed," said the Nightmare, brusquely. "Technically true. In a minute or two, however, her strength is going to give out." A quick sneer. "Not even the great Rainbow Dash can keep up against that level of pull for long. And then, yes, she joins your precious hat in the fashionista's furnace. All the while, you, you stupid whelp, are dying in the town square, practically right outside the door. The second I release you, that disjunction spell is going to tear you to pieces. But yours isn't the only life you're choosing to sacrifice. Rainbow Dash will be following you to your Forever Harvest in a matter of seconds."

"Rainbow's a Deocrat," I muttered. "She don't go to the Harvest when she passes. She goes to Eohippus or something."

"Blah, blah, blah," said the Nightmare. "One imaginary candyland over another. Semantics aside, I trust my point is a lucid one?"

"This is fighting dirty," I said, shaking my head. "This ain't proper temptation no more. You're grasping at straws."

"But it's working!" crowed the Nightmare. "And, just to increase the perceived fairness of the situation, I'll sweeten the deal by lowering your risk. Here's the offer: I give you just enough of my power to release your friend and to take down Twilight Sparkle's quicksilver horror. Not even a full investiture. A free sample, as it were, to use farmer's market parlance. I trust that, given a taste of what I can offer you, you'll make the right choice and take the extra step of removing that pesky unicorn from my world. Then, you get the whole shebang. Immortality. Eternal youth. The power to change the course of history for the better. What say you? Will you condemn Rainbow Dash to death to the same death you face? At long last, Applejack, what do you say?"

I looked at the image of Rainbow Dash, fighting for her life against the Lanthorn's pull, the Nightmare's words boiling in my head.

She was crying, for pony's sake.

Rainbow Dash, that quick, brash, beautiful mare, was gonna go to her grave in tears. Not in a blaze of glory, not smashed to pieces in the aftermath of the most spectacular trick in history, not sacrificing her life so that others might live. She was going to die crying.

The last thing Rainbow Dash would know... was failure.

"I can't," I whispered. "I can't let that happen."

"Good," said the Nightmare, contented like a cat. "Finally, reason from you."

"What do I gotta do?" I asked, hardly seeming like it was even me saying the words.

"Some brand of metaphorical or symbolic acceptance will do fine," said the Nightmare. "I'd ask you to take a bite of one of those beautiful apples, but I'm afraid that symbol is a bit played out, cosmically-speaking. So how about we just confirm this the 'country' way?" With those words, the shadow-creature coughed up a black little gob from its throat and spat it onto one of its smoky hooves. The substance hung there on the surface of the hoof, glistening like oil tar.

"Spit-shake?" it said, extending its hoof to me.

"Just a sample," I said, reaching up all tentative-like. "This ain't permanent."

"Not until you tell me you want it to be," said the Nightmare. "And you will, believe me. Once you get a taste of how good it feels to be the best possible you."

"I gotta do this now," I said. "Before I start having second thoughts." With a sudden, sharp gesture, I spat on my hoof and brought it up to touch the Nightmare's. "Grower help me," I said.

Nausea rushed over me like an oncoming tide. The black piece of nightmare-stuff flowed over and up my hoof the moment I touched it, and I hardly had even a moment to be terrified as it sunk itself deep into the skin of my pastern and lurched into my blood.

I shook. I frothed. I clenched up, all over, struggling against it reflexively for a moment, but it was no good. The Nightmare was writing me to its specifications now, and my body was putty in its hooves. With a spasm and a noise of twisting bone, I felt myself growing and changing, my muzzle stretching, my legs growing long and lithe and powerful. I tossed my head back, whinnying in terror, and my mane and tail erupted from the tiny little bands I always wore to keep the hair in check, the hair itself becoming something more than hair in the process. My eyes burned and blazed. Unfamiliar teeth erupted from my gumline, sharp things, teeth I hadn't known in ages.

I reared back and whinnied once more. Thunder rumbled across the blank and slate-grey sky. And then it was done.

"Well?" said the Nightmare. "How does it feel?"

I sucked in a seething breath, shaky like I was fighting the ague, but when my voice finally came it was deep and throaty and beautiful. "It feels like... a river in me," I said, trying to put words to it. "Like every little piece of me is a little wellspring, just overflowing with... stuff."

"That's power," cooed the Nightmare. "Do you like the taste of it?"

I closed my eyes, overcame a moment of great reluctance, and spoke. "It's delicious," I croaked.

"Here," said the Nightmare, escorting me over to the unseen stream I had heard during my first trip to its realm. "Have a look at you."

I walked with the creature, hardly believing that I was able to do so without tripping over the terrifyingly expanded real estate of my legs; but I was a thing of preternatural grace now, and I positively glided across the steely, uniform grass of the Nightmare orchard over to the little creek, which was, despite its actively flowing status, as slick and smooth as mirror-glass on its surface. I gazed down for a while at an unfamiliar face.

Elegant and well-formed it was, but with enough muscle on the jaw to convince you that this weren't no idle high-class pony. This was a mare who worked with her teeth and neck and hooves for a living, who would work just so for every day of her eternal life. The powerful face was framed by a harsh, flowing breeze of sunny yellow-white energy instead of a mane, something like a sandstorm over a southwestern desert. Glittering green eyes studded with bright ruby flecks, like apple trees in full fruit, gazed up at me.

I blinked. The creature blinked in kind.

I raised my lip. The creature raised its lip back at me, exposing a sharp little fang. I ran my tongue over it. "What's with the teeth?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"That, little pony, is a wolf-tooth," said the Nightmare. "Your people get those pulled at a fairly early age. Cosmetic reasons, you say. Or to better accommodate a bit, for whatever senseless reason you people keep wearing those things. But you and I know the real reason, Applejack. Those teeth remind you of the uncomfortable fact that you share ancestors with creatures who weren't plant-eaters. Creatures who ate of flesh and needed those teeth to rip and tear and rend. Well, your wolf-teeth are back now. I've repaired every injury you've ever experienced, even the intentional ones. This is just part of what my 'delicious' power has done for your body." The nightmare smirked, then. "Delicious," it repeated. "I love the sound of you saying that word. That's the name for you: 'Delicious'."

"Oh my lord," I said, looking over – not up anymore – at the creature. "You just named me 'Nightmare Delicious'."

"I did," said the Nightmare. "Something wrong with that?"

"It's only the dumbest-sounding Nightmare name ever," I said. "Sounds like some really messed-up variety of apple or something."

"Oh, sue me," said the Nightmare. "It's not my fault that I had to blow 'Nightmare Malus' on your stupid brother. Besides, you have to admit, giving you an apple-like name could hardly be more fitting, yes?"

Silence from me. I touched the surface of the water like I was trying to touch the face of the mare I saw there, hardly able to believe that her face was mine now. The water did not even ripple at my hoof.

"Nightmare Delicious," I said.

"Do you like it?"

I closed my eyes.

"Do I... do I get a new hat, at least?" I said, and at that moment I was lost.

The Nightmare grinned. "Do you get a new hat? Darling, you get the whole ensemble!" The Nightmare gestured again and shadow-stuff gathered around me like a fog, eventually shaping itself into a chilly blue-black duster of tiny metal links, embroidered with bright red wire. Polished black cowpony boots with bright silver spurs and buckles formed around my forehooves, and atop my head, a sharp-cut black hat of pigskin leather.

"A skin hat?" I said, touching it with one boot-shackled hoof. "I mean, we use pigskin for stuff, sure, when they pass. But we don't... well, we don't make hats of it."

"It's magic," said the Nightmare. "It doesn't come from pigs. It comes from my will. Would you prefer buffalo felt, like your old one? I just thought that leather was so much more keen."

I shook my head. "My old hat wouldn't look right on... this," I said, making a fumbling gesture at my changed self. "Does it have to be black, though?"

"You're on my team now, filly," said the Nightmare. "You wear my team colors. Besides, I hear black is 'in', nowadays."

"There is definitely something of the Rarity in you, Nightmare," I said, scrutinizing the creature, worrying even as I did so at the red rim to my vision.

"I suppose there is," admitted the Nightmare, breezily. "At any rate, my work is done and I believe we've chatted enough. Ready to go back to Equestria, Delicious? Ready to hold back change and make the world all better?"

I snorted, locking my hindhooves into the dirt, feeling the thrilling power of my muscles beneath my coat, and squared the new leather Stetson on my head. The feeling of having a hat up there again was like water to a pony dying of thirst in the desert. I just had to hope it weren't like water to a pony drowning in the ocean at the same time. "Ready."

"Excellent," said the Nightmare. "And remember: all this can be yours, forever. All you need to do is end the unicorn."

"I remember," I said, gritting my teeth.

The creature, the spirit named Constancy, nodded to me and raised its hooves, and in a flash, the dark orchard was gone. And just like that, I had loosed a new Nightmare onto Equestria.

And this time, it was me.