Pinkie took a deep breath, I could feel the weight of the answer she was about to give like a palpable presence. “Rarity, Applejack, keep an eye out for… him… Twilight deserves an explanation.” The two mares, my friends, just nodded solemnly and went out of sight as Pinkie turned back to me. “Twilight… I’m not a magic pony like you, I don’t know how all this stuff works but… When I… came back… I felt like I did before I died, empty and terrified and sad, laughing felt like throwing up but I couldn’t stop.” She paused and played with the ash on the ground, I didn’t like being out here any longer than I had to but I knew I couldn’t rush this kind of thing out of her. “When I came back I was the broken element, I don’t know if your magic had something to do with it or… I don’t know… but that was me… Madness, laughter without joy or… or any sort of reason, just one crazy pink pony laughing in a corner to herself.”

“But I don’t understand Pinkie, the ‘Other’s were all evil…” I said quietly, moving closer to her.

Pinkie laughed, a dry mirthless sound I didn’t like hearing coming from her, “And I wasn’t?” Pinkie said with an empty expression, “Twilight, I killed, skinned, disemboweled, and bucking ate other ponies.” I broke eye contact and stared at the ground, I had nothing to say to that, she was absolutely right. “But eventually I… I came back, little by little until that moment down in the basement of the Castle in this world, staring at that knife on the ground and I realized that… I was trying to decide what to do.” Pinkie breathed out heavily as if she was letting something go that had long overstayed its welcome, “That’s when I came back for the first time, all the way back. I faded in and out for a while after that but each time was shorter and shorter, until finally, I was back for good.”

“But Pinkie, that doesn’t answer how,” I said, I knew I was stating the obvious but the strain of all the unanswered questions was beginning to show.

“I know that,” she hissed softly making me back up a trifle, but her face softened and she leaned against me, “I’m sorry Twilight, here’s what I know: When all of you started to forgive yourselves, started to fight back, something in me… sang… it was sort of like… hearing a tune you used to know from a long distance then you start humming along with it, then more and more of it starts to come back. Madness was strong but… our friendship was stronger.”

Her words softened my heart, what she said made sense in a way, we were all connected by the elements, broken or not, something else bothered me intensely though and I had to ask. “Pinkie, why didn’t Rainbow Dash come back?”

Pinkie sighed, “I don’t really know for sure but… I think it’s because Rainbow Dash wasn’t there when you worked the spell that…”

“That broke the Elements of Harmony,” I said, the words weighed like granite in my throat, it sounded right though.

“Yea, so she didn’t end up like us, broken and… crazy…” Pinkie said, she sounded sad but she had a soft smile on her face, “I’m kind of glad she didn’t end up like us… y’know Twi’?”

I hated to admit it but, after seeing the consequences of everything that had happened, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“One other thing… Pinkie… what… what happened to Rarity?” I asked remembering her cold black eyes and monstrous fangs.

“That was Rarity’s choice, she should tell you,” Pinkie said sternly, I had expected the answer so I just nodded.

“Rarity, let’s go we need to get to the farm,” Pinkie said in a stage whisper, enough to carry over to the disheveled fashionista where she was keeping watch for that… thing… along with Applejack and the two fillies.

As we started to move out I turned to Pinkie, a new question shoving into my mind, “Hey Pinkie, the ‘Others’, they could turn into… monsters, so…” The look on Pinkie’s face was indescribable, so much so that I stopped talking as the words died in my mouth, I dropped the question then and there, remembering Princess Celestia’s words to me from so long ago.

‘Some knowledge should be left in the darkness’

+=+

We made good time, coming upon the ruins of the farm, I hadn’t expected much after seeing what this world had made of my own home but it still caused a familiar ache of grief in my heart to see the homestead of the Apple Family in such a condition. The farmhouse itself was mostly collapsed, with whole sections the huge two story building caved in on itself, sometimes all the way through to the ground floor.

“We only need to make it to the porch,” Rarity whispered, we were taking a circuitous route around the rotting carcass of the barn, the only other pathways would have forced us to cross open ground that, well, really wasn’t an option.

I nodded and turned to Pinkie but she was gone, worry rose like a tidal wave as I opened my mouth to call out for her but Rarity stopped me, I realized she was covering the fillies eyes, “Why are you-”

“Shh,” she whispered and gestured up; I looked skyward and saw Pinkie standing on a single support thirteen feet up.

“How did…” I started to ask before stopping myself, “right… left in the darkness.”

Pinkie dropped down effortlessly and stooped low, “Ok, mister metal colt isn’t anywhere to be seen for now, let’s go.”

We moved fast now, trying to make as little noise as possible but knowing haste was the better option here, if we made it there it wouldn’t matter if that grill-work monstrosity saw us. Rarity made it first, she moved like a snake in oil, fast and silent, but something was wrong she turned to face all of us even paler than normal standing in front of a patch of air that looked… bent.

“Pinkie!” she hissed.

Pinkie made it up to where Rarity was standing and blanched, “No…” she whispered, “no, no, no, no, no, no… it’s not fair…”

Applejack and I clambered up the stairs of the front porch with a worried look, AJ spoke first, “Pinkie, wha’ is it? Wha’s…” The smell must have hit her at the same time it hit me because she went dead silent at the same moment I felt my heart go hollow.

Pinkie only said one word as the smell of a charnel house sluiced into my nostrils, “Duplicity.”

+=+

Pinkie had barely gotten the word out before I got barreled into the ‘crack’, as Pinkie had named it, by Applejack, she shouted ‘TAKE THEM’ before gracelessly depositing Applebloom and Scootaloo by Rarity and we were gone. I didn’t even manage to yell “WAIT!” before I felt a burning, freezing, sensation of sliding through grit and glue, it was altogether one of the most unpleasant feelings I’d ever had but we made it, I heard Applebloom yell out for her sister as we vanished, the echo was still ringing in my ears as I found my hooves standing on solid oak. Applejack was already at the door, it was unlocked. Not broken down, not bashed in or torn up, it was unlocked.

Somehow that made me feel worse. Much worse.

“JAMES?! GRAN?! ANYPONY?!” Applejack yelled as she burst into the front room, the smell was bad here, worse than outside, “WHERE IS EVERYPONY!? COME OUT THIS AIN’T FUNNY!” she screamed as she ran into the empty living room, looking out windows and around corners, I went the other direction into the dining room and kitchen. I didn’t see anything, I couldn’t pin point the source of the smell.

I heard a loud crash from the hallway, I started towards it in worry but stopped as Applejack came in to the kitchen from around the corner with an odd look on her face, I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Hey Twi’, see anythin’ o’er there?” she said, something about her tone seemed strange, I wondered if she had found… something.

“No, I didn’t, you?” I asked warily, not sure I wanted to know what she had found if indeed she had found anything.

She shook her head by way of answer and I turned back to the dining room.

“I don’t get it, why was the door unlocked, where is everypony, and where is that smell coming from?” I muttered angrily, more and more questions and I never got any answers; this was starting to royally get on my horn.

“Tha’s the body ah reckon…” Applejack said nonchalantly, idly toying with one of the discarded kitchen utensils on the counter.

“Well I-” I began to answer but choked and whipped my head around to stare at Applejack, “What did you say?”

“Ya’ll asked what the smell was,” she said, a slow hateful grin starting to stretch across her face, “Ah reckon its body tha’s doin’ it.”

The coin dropped.

“D-duplicity…” I whispered backing up as the grin distorted into an almost sleazy smirk, I felt my flank bump against the wall, “W-where…?”

“Don’t ya’ll worry yer pretty little mane, Miss Honesty is jus’ takin a li’l nap courtesy o’ mah buckin’ hooves tha’s all,” the ‘other’ applejack said.

I mentally cursed myself for a foal, I should’ve seen it, the differences, she even moved differently than Applejack, but I had been so concerned that I’d missed what was right in front of my face. I felt my stomach turn as she advanced, the way she moved was wrong, she swayed in a gross parody of seduction but her bones moved all wrong beneath her skin, she licked her lips lasciviously with a hideously forked tongue that was the color of rich silver. I tried to move, tried to scream, to throw a spell, anything, but my body wouldn’t obey, she changed as she advanced, it wasn’t like Contempt or Shame, it was slow, like she was shedding a fine dress in the presence of a lover. First her legs hitched and she let out a soft moan as the skin sloughed elegantly off of her forelegs and her alien joints cracked back into place revealing the wet and bloody muscle of two analogous limbs, but with far too many joints and each ending in a cartilaginous blade.

I felt sickened, disgusted by her and… myself… I couldn’t stop watching her, she was hypnotic, and her movements had a kind of vile grace that was as fascinating as it was abhorrent. That thing, the ‘Other’ Jack leaned forward on her too-long forelimbs with the speed of a striking snake, her hat thrown to the side in the flash of movement. I barely had time to scream in pain before her lips clamped to mine and her tongue slid past my lips at the same time that those horrible blades punched violently through my legs and into the wall behind. Her, its, mouth had the coppery taste of blood, I screamed, trying violently to rip out of her embrace as I reared up and slammed against the wall, I heard more of her unnatural joints crack and the unwholesome sound of slick bone sliding into place. Past my own horror and the familiar outline of her face I saw her back half fall to the floor in a gory heap. I was shaking, terrified and helpless as I saw what passed for her lower section a coil of gristly meat and spinal vertebrae that served as some kind of prehensile tail. The thing that wasn’t Applejack withdrew her tongue and lips with a breathy moan, all that was left of the facsimile she had worn to catch me off guard was her face and the chest, her eyes were no longer the beautiful emeralds I admired, instead they were black speckled with an unhealthy green color and split down the middle by yellow blades of malicious glee.

“Mmm… ah always did wond’r what ya’ll tasted like Twi’,” it whispered into my ear, “Now, ah’m gonna find out.”

All pretense of her falsehood fell away as the flesh of her face turned the pallid color of old paper, ripping and flaking away as the skin at the edges of her mouth split to allow a pair of gleaming mandibles to tear free and I stared down a churning maw of bruise-color flesh and serrated sharks-teeth and as feral hiss escaped from the depths of her gullet I reached the haze of pain for something, I touched it just as I felt the tips of her mandibles pierce my neck.

NO

A sound like a hammer split the air and in that instant I fell away from everything, I felt the cancerous heart of my broken element hemorrhaging power inside me; it beat a rhythmic tattoo in my skull as I felt my world go dark for a moment before luminescing like never before. The thing, Duplicity, was lying on its back looking dazed, I felt taller, bigger, and by the twin goddesses, I felt POWERFUL.

“No…” it whispered, hate and disbelief replacing the smugness it had worn until now, “No… you can’t.”

I heard a tearing and another crackle of power surged through me like adrenaline.

CAN’T WHAT? NO, I CAN DO ANYTHING

My voice was like thunderbolts cracking the frame of the world, with a thought I lifted the poor shapeless thing into the air and I couldn’t recall for the life of me what I had found so frightening about it.

“No, Let me g-” I silenced her words and replaced them with screams as I broke her in half, but I knew it would take more than that to kill her, I had cut Shame in half and that still hadn’t ended her. I felt something tug on my face as I thought about smiling and another sound of tearing that brought another welcome surge of delicious energy. With another thought I pinned her to the ceiling.

GOOD BYE LITTLE THING

It screamed as I pulled on her from all directions, I heard snapping and popping as her joints were forced out of place and her vertebrae separated, humours and fluids splashed across the floor and dining table as I flensed her muscles apart one by one, it was the act of a few seconds and a single thought and then with a colossal ripping sound and one last pitiful whimper the thing tore, pieces and part scattering everywhere, ricocheting of walls and cupboards and splattering vile fluids across the once peaceful room. With a twitch of will I deflected the splatter of flesh and fluid that would have struck me, idly altering their trajectory to fly around me with the same effort I might have used to cock an eyebrow.

I had never felt so good, this must be what it was like to be Celestia or Luna every day, but no… even they couldn’t understand, Celestia had said it herself hadn’t she?

I’M STRONGER THAN HER

A whisper of movement, so slight I only detected it thanks to my new-found senses, I saw a blur or orange-cream fur and grimaced, with another thought, an impulse, I dragged her out of the hall way and pinned her against the wall.

ONCE WASN’T ENOUGH LITTLE THING? PERHAPS I SHOULD COLLAPSE YOU INWARD INSTEAD THIS TIME.

She clapped her hooves over her ears and cried out as a trickle of blood slid out of her left nostril, she stared in abject horror at me and I growled.

I was beautiful. Wonderful. Magnificent. How dare that arrogant little shade look at me with such a disgraceful expression.

With a choking gasp a single word slipped out from between her lips.

“T-twilight?”

Sudden shame filled me, this wasn’t Duplicity, it wasn’t a shade, it was Applejack. My friend, Applejack, why… why hadn’t I been able to see that? Why hadn’t I remembered? I tried to open my mouth, to answer, but a death-rattle was all that issued from my lips, what was wrong? I turned to the reflective surface of the kitchen window and my mind went blank as it tried to take in the sight.

The images came in jerking blurs.

A warped skull and skeletally thin frame.

A mouth full of razor-sharp knives.

A pair of outstretched skeleton wings and a horn the color of fresh blood…

Was that…

I screamed, I think I heard all the glass in the house shatter, Applejack dropped to the floor and clutched her ears, trying to shut out the sound I was making. I felt the power bleed away back into that horrible pulsating tumor in my mind as I fell to the ground, retching and screaming and weeping. I slumped to the floor and stared lifelessly ahead, barely taking in what I’d seen. After experiencing the senses of… whatever that thing was… everything looked dull, it was like I was deaf, no sound, no color, no sensation, I saw Applejack start to rise but fall down again as she caught sight of something to my right that had been behind the counter. I saw her rush over, past me and I idly followed her strangely jerky movements with my eyes, slowly bending my head to alter my perspective.

Applejack was cradling something, a pony, wrinkly and old, covered in cuts and bruises. I passed out as Applejack screamed her soul out over the body of her murdered grandmother.