Twilight lit a light with her horn. “Nightmare Moon said there would be five tests. I think we just passed the first one.”

In the pink glow of Twilight’s magic, the forest felt almost warm…until the ponies looked past the fifteen feet or so of light to the dense darkness beyond. The canopy was so thick it cast the forest entirely in shadow. Twilight Sparkle’s horn was the only light the ponies had. Instinctively they bunched closer together.

After several minutes it became clear that no pony wanted to start moving through the forest. Applejack cleared her throat.

“Here’s a puzzler." She looked younger without her hat on. “Why’s Nightmare Moon giving us the chance to beat her? Don’t make a lick of sense.”

“She wants to plunge Equestria’s economy into eternal depression,” Twilight said. “I don’t think she cares much about sense.”

“She likes playing a game,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering nearby. “I know the feeling.”

“Maybe she’s just being nice,” Fluttershy whispered.

“It’s a regal gesture,” Rarity said knowingly. “She has to give us a sporting chance. It’s in the rules somewhere, I’m sure.”

“I bet ol’ Nightmare Meanie just wants to be friends deep down,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Yeah…probably not that,” Twilight said. “Can we chalk it up to evil insanity and move on? I don’t think it matters.”

“Just a Northern minute now y’all,” Applejack said. “We can’t go off half-cocked. Remember how Nightmare Moon kept going on about her sister, Princess Celestia?”

“Well, Princess Celestia did lock her sister in the moon for a thousand years the last time Nightmare Moon tried something like this. She’s probably upset.”

“And Princess Celestia kept the money supply growing with the numbered garish domicile project,” Applejack said. Twilight winced at the way she butchered nominal gross domestic product. “Now Nightmare Moon is undoing that.”

“And she reversed the same punishment Princess Celestia inflicted on her and took her throne,” Twilight said. “Clearly she has a sister complex.”

Something clicked in Rarity’s eyes. “But don’t you see, Twilight? What remains of Princess Celestia’s legacy is you.”

Twilight blinked. “What?”

“Nightmare Moon has her sister’s throne and her sister’s Bank,” Rarity said. “She doesn’t have her sister's protégé.”

“If that Alicorn wanted to end this, it’d be over as fast and sure as a rattlesnake bite,” Applejack said. “So she wants you for something. Maybe she wants you to be hers the way you were Celestia’s. A…dark economist.”

There was a pause.

“Cooool,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That’s Princess Celestia,” Twilight said. “Anyway, I would never become Nightmare Moon’s ‘dark’ economist.”

“Celest—Princess Celestia probably never reckoned she’d see the inside of the sun,” Applejack countered.

Twilight didn’t have an answer.

She shivered. The temperature in the forest seemed to be dropping, the light of her horn dimming. The thorns looked sharper, longer, and not where they were a few minutes ago. The Everfree Forest was a magical forest, and one that hated ponies….

“We should keep moving.” Twilight peered her eyes, trying to see the dark path ahead. Her pink light didn’t penetrate far, but the trees and bush narrowed before them. “We’ll have to go single file. I’ll take lead since I’ve got the light.” But instead of walking forward, she turned to the other ponies. “Everypony okay with that?”

“I’ll go first,” Rainbow Dash said, “since I’m the fastest.”

“I’ll go first,” Applejack said, “since I’m the strongest.”

“I’ll go first,” Rarity said, “since I’m the most beautiful.”

“Rarity," Twilight sighed, "out of all the irrelevant criteria yet presented, that is the most irrelevant,”

“Nonsense.” Rarity tossed her hair, which didn’t work half as well in Twilight’s weak light. “Can you imagine any monster harming me?”

“I’ll go in the middle,” Fluttershy whispered, “since, uh, no pony is listening.”

“Girls, is anypony else here trained in economics?” Twilight paused. “Didn’t think so. I’ll take the lead.”

Rainbow Dash jabbed her hoof in Twilight’s direction. “I said I’m taking the lead! Doing awesome stuff is sort of my thing.”

“I should be in front,” Applejack said. “Worst case scenario the Cerberus doesn’t get to eat me.”

“No!” Twilight flared her horn’s light. “I’m taking lead, and that’s final.”

“I’m taking lead,” Pinkie Pie said, “because I’m already walking.” She trotted off into the blackness.

Twilight and the others stared as Pinkie Pie was swallowed by the shadows.

“W-Wait up!” Twilight raced after her, shining her Unicorn light on Pinkie Pie once more.

Pinkie turned her head at the sound of hooves clattering to catch up. “Oh, you guys are coming too? Neat!”

“Pinkie, don’t run ahead like that,” Twilight said. “The forest isn’t safe.”

“But you guys were going backwards,” Pinkie Pie said. “You kept inching toward the entrance, and then we would have to answer those silly questions again.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Rainbow Dash protested.

“Never said you were.”

Bathed in Twilight’s magical glow, Pinkie Pie took the lead, followed in single file by Twilight, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy, with Rainbow Dash hovering just above and behind her fellow Pegasus. They stopped at a fork in the path.

Twilight frowned. “Which path do we take? Nightmare Moon said she would be waiting in a castle…the castle of the Knights of Economics!”

Rainbow Dash perked up. “The what?”

“The Knights of Economics,” Twilight said. “You know, Frankie Knight, the famous economist? She and some other econoponies built a castle right in the middle of the Everfree Forest, trying to purify its corrupt magic. But I don’t know which fork leads us to it.”

“Distract me,” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight hesitated. “What?”

“Distract me. It doesn’t work if I’m thinking.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Pinkie Sense. I’ll find our way if you just distract me.”

Twilight facehoofed. “I should have known better than to let the party pony take the lead.”

“Somepony had to.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Rainbow Dash huffed.

“Settle down y’all,” Applejack said. “Pinkie Pie is the best businesspony in Ponyville. If she believes in Pinkie Sense, I believe in Pinkie Sense.”

Pinkie Pie hopped agitatedly. “Hurry up and distract me!”

“I’ll handle this,” Rarity said. “No pony can keep talking about nothing like I can. Pinkie, darling, do you remember the conversation we were having about Nightmare Moon corrupting Twilight and turning her into a dark economist? You know what it’s like to destroy a competitor. How would you get back at Princess Celestia if you were Nightmare Moon?”

“Oh, I would totally turn Twilight into a dark economist,” Pinkie said. “Yeah, and I would make her read dark books full of evil spells and fill her with hate and suffering and real business cycle theory. I would make her wear all black with lots of pale makeup and she’d have to drink blood instead of water and left! and call herself Shadow Twilight and….”

Twilight and the other ponies shared a stunned silence as Pinkie trotted off down the left fork, still talking. They ran to catch up with her.

“…Give out walnuts and pennies on Nightmare Night instead of candy!” Pinkie Pie inhaled. "And—"

“I ask, Pinkie,” Rarity said loudly, “because I know you’ve been rather successful yourself competing in the bakery industry. Whatever happened to dear Mr. Landbiscuit?”

The pace slowed as they approached another split in the road. This time they faced three paths. Pinkie Pie frowned. “Um…oh, I remember!” She trotted on the middle path. “He’s living a happy and fulfilling life in a psychiatric ward. I should visit him sometime.”

“I think that would be unwise,” Rarity said delicately.

So it went. The path continued to branch, split, and meander. It hid behind thorns and under rocks, wound across narrow bridges and through groves of trees with frightening faces—Twilight wasn’t sure how literally to interpret that. Pinkie Pie, chattering aimlessly with Rarity, led them past it all. With her in charge, the forest itself stopped seeming frightening. The obvious thorns and cliche darkness almost seemed…funny.

“This forest isn’t so scary,” Rainbow Dash said. She stuck her tongue out at a looming tree. “Blehhh!”

Twilight trotted after the pink earth pony with the incredible sixth sense. “Pinkie, this is amazing. Just how are you doing this?”

“LA LA LA!” Pinkie Pie shouted. “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Twilight frowned. "What—"

The light from her horn vanished. Absolute darkness fell over the ponies.

“AHHHHH!” Rainbow Dash screamed. There was the sound of two ponies colliding and falling to the ground, as if Rainbow Dash had tried to fly into the hoofs of a blind, unprepared, and nevertheless incapable Fluttershy.

“I can’t see my hoofs!” Applejack wailed. “I can’t see my hoofs!”

“No pony looks good with zero lighting!” Rarity gasped.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie shouted. She sounded more serious than Twilight had ever heard her be. “Turn your light back on!”

Twilight concentrated. A few brief sparks fell from her horn, but that was all. “I can’t!”

“Why not?” Pinkie demanded. “We need your light!”

“I can’t!” Twilight cried. “It’s not working!”

“Then think! I’m an Earth Pony; I don’t know anything about magic! What could have happened?”

Twilight closed her eyes—the forest looked exactly the same, but it helped—and thought. She couldn’t have run out of magic with only a basic data gathering spell. “I don’t know!”

“Figure it out right now or we’re through!” Pinkie snapped. “You’re a powerful magician, right? What’s eating you?”

Twilight realized. She opened her eyes—pointless—and said, “We’re in the Everfree Forest. It hates ponies.”

“And?”

“It eats ponies and their magic. We’re in its belly…digesting.”

The temperature plummeted so fast it made Twilight’s head feel dizzy. All around them she heard the black thorns rustling, shifting, moving. Fear, real, mind-stealing fear ran through her and set her legs shaking.

“No!” Rarity panicked. “I can’t be eaten! Stomach acid does terrible things to my complexion!”

“I should have let that Cerberus finish me off,” Applejack moaned. “It’s a better fate than being et by a forest.”

“Angel, put that carrot down,” Fluttershy whimpered. Somepony beside her vomited noisily.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said numbly. “I brought you all here to be eaten. I’m so sorry.”

Twilight didn’t see it, but she felt Pinkie Pie’s hoof connect with her face. She fell backwards, stunned.

“All you ponies need to get it together!” Pinkie Pie said. “You’ve all been acting weird the minute we got in this forest, standing around discussing the villain's motives and plot rather than plunging ahead thoughtlessly like the ponies I know. I don’t think there even is any such thing as a dark economist, and if there were Twilight wouldn’t become one.”

Twilight blinked—at least she could feel the motion of her eyelids. Was Pinkie Pie seriously the voice of reason?

“Twilight wouldn’t become a dark economist,” Pinkie Pie continued. “She’d become a grey economist. Get it? Because twilight is in between the day and the night? Pretty good, huh? Been looking for an opportunity.”

Never mind.

Twilight started as hoofs lifted her from the ground. One yanked her tail. Twilight jumped in surprise, and a bright light flashed from her horn and faded.

“Got it!” Pinkie Pie pulled Twilight’s tail again, yielding another burst of light. She sped up, tugging Twilight like an obstinate gas-powered flashlight.

“Pinkie!” Twilight wailed. "What are you doing?"

“You think the forest is eating us? Twilight, you’re supposed to be smart! Nightmare Moon is here! The Knights of Whatever lived here! The forest doesn’t eat ponies. There’s a way to beat it. You knew that before we even stepped hoof in here!”

Twilight’s panicked brain couldn’t keep up with a lecture from Pinkie Pie on logic, not while her tail was being pumped and her horn emitting light like a schizophrenic light bulb. “Sto-o-op!”

Pinkie pulled. Light burst onto Applejack’s confused eyes. "All you ponies—"

FLASH. Pink light illuminated a startled Rarity’s pale face.

"Need to—"

FLASH. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy tucked their heads behind their wings.

“BUCK UP!”

And there was light. Not much of it, a weak pink glow that only gave shape and depth to the shadows that surrounded the trembling ponies, but there was light, and it came from Twilight Sparkle’s horn.

“Finally.” Pinkie Pie released Twilight’s tail. “Can we keep going now?”

Rainbow Dash coughed. “I wasn’t scared.”

“I was,” Twilight said. “Thank you, Pinkie.”

The pink pony’s eyes were bright and friendly. “No problem, Twilight. Remind me to throw you a party when we get back.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Duh! I never forget about a party appointment.”

Bathed in the cool glow of Twilight’s horn, the six ponies wound their way through the forest.

Pinkie Pie stopped suddenly.

“My Pinkie Sense is tingling,” she said. “We’re near something.”

Twilight gulped. “Nightmare Moon?”

“Doesn’t knarple like it.”

The narrow path of bramble in front of them split with a groaning rumble. The two forks split again, and those four multiplied, each heading off in a different direction. Even as the paths grew exponentially, others twisted, turned, closed off. Each road was lined with warped trees and bristled with ready thorn, and all of them were moving, changing and growing like a chameleon hydra made of spikes.

“There’s dozens of paths!” Twilight shined her horn on them, but the all looked the same, murky and foreboding.

“They’re splitting up farther ahead too,” Pinkie said. “Maybe a thousand in all.”

“I’ll scout ahead,” Rainbow Dash said.

“No,” Pinkie said. “It’s playing me, and it’ll only cheat more if you try to help.”

“I’m sick of cheaters,” Twilight said. “How about I blast a hole in this forest?”

“It’s only cheating a little,” Pinkie said. “Which means we keep playing.”

“Applejack said something like that too.”

“It’s the Knightian code,” Pinkie said distractedly.

“It means we keep playing as long as there’s a game to play,” Rarity explained. “How else do you think a town that has the Carousel Boutique at one end and Sweet Apple Acres at the other ever survived?”

“I can’t knorp anything,” Pinkie said. “Let’s go.” She trotted off down the nearest path.

It took Twilight’s brain a moment to catch up with her ears. “Pinkie! Where are you going?”

“Don’t know! Keep up!”

They caught up with her. Pinkie glanced back. “There’s no way to tell, but we’ve got to pick something. Don’t worry, if anything kneerps I’ll knorp it.”

The path Pinkie Pie chose was winding and hard. The ground pushed back at their hoofs with every step, the sharp prickling needles closed in from either side. Even walking in a line, the road was so narrow the bramble scraped their sides. Only thanks to Twilight’s magical glow did they manage to avoid losing an eye to thorns that waited in ambush like midair mines. Overhead the forest seemed to shrink in, the branches drawing over their path like the closing mouth of a great beast as they marched willingly into its belly.

“Pinkie,” Twilight whispered, “maybe we should go back?”

“And let Nightmare Moon win? No way!”

Twilight winced at how loud Pinkie Pie’s voice was. “I just mean maybe we picked the wrong direction.”

“I don’t think there is a right direction,” Pinkie Pie said. “Just a right destination.”

Twilight relented, but as the path went on with no sign of ending, she began to feel fear again. What if they were trapped in a maze with no way out? It would be an easy task for Nightmare Moon to doom them to endlessly wandering the forest. "Pinkie—"

“Just keep walking.”

The trail, if you could call it that, tapered even further. The sharp bramble constricted around them like a straightjacket made of knives, and the branches pressed down like the foot of a wooden giant timberwolf, intent on crushing them. It forced them down onto their bellies, crawling across the rough dirt and unforgiving rocks. Needles jabbed at them, thin branches whipped and drew blood.

Was this, Twilight wondered, how the forest digested ponies, flaying away their skin, forcing them to wear their own bodies to soft weakness until they were nothing but blood, bones and guts to be absorbed by the roots in the hard soil?

“Pinkie Pie,” Applejack’s voice trembled, “are you sure this is right?”

“Just keep crawling.”

“I can’t fly!” Rainbow Dash complained. “This hurts!”

“A bit of ground is good for you.”

“This is doing terrible things to my skin,” Rarity moaned.

“Calluses are in this year.”

“Meep,” Fluttershy meeped.

“Mope,” Pinkie Pie concurred.

“Pinkie!” Twilight whispered. “I could blast a hole in the wood. We could make a run for it.”

“Not if it means losing the light!”

Pinkie Pie crawled forward and disappeared into a mouth. Twilight blanched.

It ate Pinkie Pie!

Then she saw what was right in front of her eyes: an opening. She crawled forward, paying no mind to the rocks that dug at her ribs or the sharp bramble that poked holes in her side. She squeezed herself through the narrow hole and emerged into a wide-open space lit by a pale blue glow.

Pinkie Pie stood a distance away, gazing up at a statue of a tall Pegasus.

“You did it!” Twilight shrieked, running forward. “Come on, girls!”

“Yeehaw!” Applejack pulled herself through. “Pinkie did it, y’all!”

“Fabulous!” Rarity gasped, allowing Applejack to help her out. She was followed shortly by Fluttershy, who shot out of the opening as if she had been kicked by somepony. Rainbow Dash emerged and took to the air, whooping as she made a circuit around the other ponies.

Twilight trotted over to Pinkie Pie, who smiled at her. “Great job, Twilight. I knew you could do it.”

“It’s all thanks to you, Pinkie Pie. I’m sorry for doubting you.”

Pinkie Pie shrugged. “We had to pick something.”

Twilight nodded and looked up at the tall statue. The Pegasus’s wings were spread triumphantly open. It held a spear in one hoof and a book in the other. “Who is this?”

The other ponies crowded around them. Pinkie Pie pointed at an inscription at the base of the statue. “Frankie Knight.”

Twilight sucked in air. She looked up at the noble face of the Pegasus and then down at the inscription. It was faded and blurred, but she could make out one group of lines.

Knowledge shrinks what ignorance compounds

Uncertainty brought you here to-day

No profit led you, but profit you found

When the Night called you to play

Twilight frowned. “Seems vaguely ominous.”

Rarity gasped. “Look!”

They looked in the direction her hoof pointed. A glowing blue ball not even the size of an apple with bright green eyes and bug-like wings rose from the ground.

“It’s cute!” Fluttershy said.

“No,” Twilight said. “It’s a Parasprite.” Next Chapter: Rarity's Test: Gossip Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 12 Minutes