“Hello?” Twilight’s knees knocked together and made an awful racket. “Who are you?” But she knew who she was.

YOU KNOW WHO I AM.

Twilight jumped at a voice both familiar and unheard-of.

The specter had opened the book, the black book of power that Twilight knew so well, knew it deeply as the foundation of her soul. It was the book that had spoken to her in the library all those years ago, the same day the skinny, clown-dressed mare had finally noticed her. Such was her connection to the book that she could hear the letters the moving statue picked out.

The grim reader advanced.

“What have you done with my friends?” Twilight said. “What have you done to Ponyville?”

SPEAK MY NAME.

“Frankie Knight.”

KNAVE. FRANKIE KNIGHT’S SPIRIT IS DEAD.

“You killed it.”

NO.

Twilight felt shame sting her. “I did this.”

YES.

“You are…somepony who went missing. I don’t understand. Why are you a statue? Why do you have that book? What is happening to Ponyville?”

IT IS BEING OPTIMIZED.

“This hardly seems optimal to me!”

I DID NOT SAY FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE.

The dread pyrite was getting closer. Twilight moved back slowly. “Then who are you?”

It paused.

I AM THE CERTAINTY BY WHICH UNCERTAINTY KNOWS ITSELF. I AM THE SHADOW CAST BY DARKNESS. I KNOW THE REGRET THAT LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF ALL PONIES, FOR I AM A DEATH BEYOND RESURRECTION. I AM AN END BEYOND MEANS. I AM THE STABLE-MARE, AND I SHOVEL OUT THE DISCARDED CRAP OF EXISTENCE.

The staff clicked, and a shovel-blade shot out.

It advanced again. Twilight hurried to think of something to say. “I will pay you to put this right. I promise, I run a bank, it’s right there….”

YOU PROMISE? YOU?

The specter cast the book aside into the snow. The pages fluttered in the wind, familiar pages that Twilight could have recognized them even from a single word, or just the smell. She had read those pages many times, and it pained her to see them bent and thrown away like rubbish.

This was definitely not the statue of Frankie Knight.

“Now hold on!” Her horn glowed lavender. The sight of Foundations treated so roughly restored some of her spark and fight. Later she would compare it to the effect of strong drink. “You had better—”

She vanished in a flash of light from where the specter’s shovel would have crushed her skull. It swung around faster than she thought possible and caught her on the side. Twilight felt ribs break. But there was no time for fear, or pain, or memory, and she vanished again, appearing on the other side and blasted the statue with a lavender beam. It splayed off the cloak without effect, and Twilight teleported before another murderous blow could take her.

There was more distance between them now, not easily crossed in the thick snow. It was coming down faster now, cluttering her eyelashes and forcing her to blink. Each time she teleported the specter turned instantly to see her, not like a magnet, more like learned habit. As if she had seen Twilight fight many times. As if she had been there for every single battle.

Despite the current impasse, it was obvious who was going to win. Twilight’s breath came labored with her damaged side, and the cold sapped her strength. The specter did not even seem to be living.

She should run. Run, and….

A long moment of nothing stretched out like the snow in front of her as the stone enemy advanced. It took slow, even steps. As if it would follow her to the end of the world, to the end of all worlds, and needn’t hurry. Even if she escaped now, this, this inevitability would still be following her.

“Please don’t kill me,” Twilight said as it drew near. The handle swung around and cracked the side of her head. She crumpled, knees sagging: Only the snow kept her from being knocked onto her side. She cried out in pain. The next blow, aimed at her neck, silenced even that.

She couldn’t move. The specter blurred in and out of sight. It touched her face, her back, with its blade, the metal colder than the snow; she would have flinched away from it if she could have.

First save the world, then friends.

The specter lifted the shovel to swing.

But it was the other way around, wasn't it...?

Oh. So stupid.

The blade flashed. Red blood spurted onto the snow.

Fluttershy was surrounded by black trees. She didn't know quite where she was. Vines had grabbed her and the others and pulled them apart. Now she was alone.

“You really mustn't touch me,” she said. The vines drew near again. “I really mean it. Don't touch me! You must pay me a hundred bits, no, a thousand—eeeek!”

She shrieked as they grabbed hold of her and dragged her to a tree that, though she did not know it, was an iocane tree.

They say that when a groundhog emerges from its winter burrow, if it sees its shadow, winter will persist six more weeks.

This story is mostly true.

One minor note is that the groundhog does not look for its shadow. Rather, it checks the snow for iocane powder.

Iocane powder is white and cold and soft when fresh. It is in all facets completely indistinguishable from snow. (Or not—iocane powder is not real, and yet its influence is felt.) Should the groundhog find so much as a single flake of iocane, it will retreat to its winter hideout. It is only when all the powder is gone, when the groundhog knows the thing that is, and the thing that isn’t, will the thing that will happen indeed become.

Spring.

The other minor note is that it is not six more weeks of winter the groundhog’s failure brings. That is only because groundhogs tend to start checking about six weeks before they stop noticing iocane powder.

No, the continued failure of the groundhog brings winter forever.

Bear these things in mind for dear Fluttershy, and poor Rarity, and Pinkie Pie and Applejack too.

“Eeeeeeek!”

Fluttershy struggled as she the vines dragged her in front of the iocane tree. Some gentle dust or powder fell from its leaves and onto her face. She sneezed, but it was inside her.

“Ribbit.”

Fluttershy blinked and looked around in alarm. For a moment it seemed as though she were

“Ribbit.”

home in the garden as a filly and

“Ribbit!”

she was tickling Mr. Ribbit Tickles again and

it was a beautiful sunny day. The garden was bursting with green, and the smell of fresh dirt filled the air. The dogs lay dying by the tomatoes, their breath coming in labored gasps. A pig was split open on top of the onions, its entrails spilling out. Birds writhed in pain on the ground or spun madly through the air before crashing, infected with some fatal disease.

Fluttershy stumbled back and tripped over a lamb bleating insanely, its legs bent four different directions. She stared at it in horror as it twisted on the ground.

Her back was wet. She rolled over, and gagged loudly at the strings of semi-dried blood that came with her. Her body quaked; her mind reeled. A calf’s knee broke under it and it collapsed. Feathers blew off dead chickens and caught on plants.

Fluttershy screamed. She screamed and screamed and

“Ribbit.”

took a deep breath and screamed again

“Ribbit.”

smelling tasting blood and metal and rot and screaming screaming screaming

“Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy jumped. Tears leaked from her eyes and mixed with the sweat and snot and leaked into her mouth as she cried. “Daddy!” She wiped her cheeks, smearing blood and dirt on her face. Words babbled out and spluttered through blood and snot and ended up an incoherent mess exploding out of her mouth with the force of rib-bruising sobs.

Father knelt in front of her and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Fluttershy, I need you to listen to me.”

Fluttershy nodded, hiccuped, and wiped her eye. “What’s happening, Daddy? I’m scared.”

“Everything is…the critters are….” For a moment his face was strangely blank and featureless, his voice toneless and uncertain. Then it was as if his face came back to him and he remembered how he sounded when he spoke. “There’s a terrible disease spreading. All the critters are dying, and we’ll save those we can, but some of them we just have to… help ease the way.”

“Ribbit.”

Fluttershy stared at him.

“Ribbit.”

“No, Daddy, no, no no—”

“Fluttershy—”

“No! No! No!” She shrunk away from him, turning away, saw a duck’s neck twisted around and jerked, shaking. She stared at the dirt until she saw it was moving, and realized it was ants consuming the corpse of something she couldn’t look at anymore. Her eyes found Father, who looked blurry through a film of tears.

“Come here.” He led her to the bleating lamb, its legs twisted and broken. “Like this.” He broke its neck expertly. The snap echoed inside Fluttershy like the toll of a bell.

“Do you understand?” he said.

She stared at the dead lamb.

“Ribbit.”

“Fluttershy, I need you to help me.”

“Ribbit.”

“Do you think you can do that?”

“Ribbit.”

At some point he had taken her to Mr. Ribbit Tickles, who lay on the bloody soil, turning less green by the second.

“Can you do it?”

Her fillyhood friend struggled to croak. One leg twitched and pushed against nothing.

“Fluttershy?”

That magical night, that puddle bursting with life, a small, hopping friend with somber eyes and green-brown skin, smelled like a melting corpse, snap, feathers drifting in the wind, in her mane, bloody, organs spilling

“Fluttershy?”

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Father sighed and put a hoof on top of Mr. Ribbit Tickles and there was a noise that Fluttershy would never, ever forget.

A long, long shadow appeared over everything, and when it was gone it was a beautiful sunny day. The garden was bursting with green, and the smell of fresh dirt filled the air. The dogs lay dying by the tomatoes, their breath coming in labored gasps. A pig was split open on top of the onions, and Fluttershy began to scream.

Vines dragged Rarity in front of an iocane tree. Her shrieks slowed and then stopped as she inhaled a sudden snow of powder.

The room again, dark, the curtains open but the sky cloudy with a portent of rain. Applejack beside her, face tight, unmoving, speaking little. The ozone of awkward silence filled the space between them.

Rarity searched for words, and found ugly ones. “You should talk to that yellow Pegasus, I forget her name, she says her pet frog died.”

Applejack’s shoulders were like storm clouds. The hat kept slipping over her face, covering her eyes.

“She was quite old,” Rarity said, and winced. Why was it that everything she said came out so ugly? She hated this moment. She hated thinking about it.

“Rarity.”

“Yes?”

“What’s all this?”

Applejack didn’t point, but Rarity instantly looked at the dresses on a small rack in the middle of the room. “Those are the dresses I’ve made. Do you think they’re pretty?”

“Do you?”

Rarity considered the leftmost dress, which was full of holes and looked as if it was home to a family of moths. “Well…beauty can be….”

The next dress was an unfathomable dirt-brown with slime-green polka dots, and actually dripped mud.

The middle dress was just cut wrong. It wouldn’t fit on a pony, but it would fall off one.

The next dress smelled of moldy basement carpet. The last dress was black. No, it wasn’t a dress. Just a cloak, a black cloak.

“Do you want to try one on?”

Applejack didn’t answer. Rarity hopped off the bed and hurried over to the rack. The black cloak was the only thing even halfway presentable, so she took it off and displayed it. “Well? I think it would fit you.”

“Rarity!”

Rarity flinched and dropped the cloak.

Rain hammered on the roof. Applejack slid off the bed and left without a word.

After a while, Rarity took the brown-and-green dress and pulled it over her head.

A Unicorn with a blotchy face and a muddy dress gazed at her from within the mirror.

“No,” Rarity said. “This is a beautiful dress. I am a beautiful filly. Applejack is simply out of her mind.”

Lines blurred toward a far point on the horizon, and it was morning of the next day. Time for school.

It was disconcerting to see that Applejack wasn’t in class the next day. The teacher had brought bowls of live worms and showed them how to stuff them up their snouts. After that they had to clean all the mud from the floor. It was pointless though. The mud was oozing through the walls and dripping down from the ceiling.

The mud clung to her hoofs. She scrubbed her hoofs with a sponge outside until it hurt. When that wasn’t enough, she scraped her hoofs against the ground. Bloody streaks marked her path until a train rammed through the schoolhouse.

Rarity screamed. Wood and brick flew through the air. Dust swirled and whipped around her, making her cough and cover her eyes and snout.

When she could open her eyes again, the train doors were opening. An orange pony with a large black hat stepped off. Her face was strangely blank and featureless.

Then it blurred in Applejack’s face, and Rarity saw the hat was not a hat, but a vulture, its claws sinking into the flesh covering Applejack’s skull. Blood ran down her face as she stamped the ground frustratedly.

“Consarn this train,” she said. “Ought to turn the conductor into a toad.”

Rarity cringed as she approached the witch. “Applejack, what’s going on?”

The vulture turned its head her way, black eyes unblinking. “Train to Ostlergon’s stopped,” Applejack answered. “Can’t get to the Fruit Salad until it’s fixed.”

“That’s perfect timing,” Rarity said, looking at the vulture. “I’ll bring you a dress so you have something to wear.”

Applejack didn’t answer. Rarity turned, and the rack of dresses was there. She took the black cloak, trembling, and held it up.

The vulture’s eyes pierced her. “Reckon it’s pretty enough?”

She considered the plain black cloak.

“I think it’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.”

A long shadow fell over them; it was the darkness of the bedroom, Applejack beside her, stony and silent, the clouds grey and heavy, and Rarity started to cry.

Rainbow Dash bit and bucked for her life. The vines that had grabbed her and the others had separated them. Her wings were trapped in a thicket. Thorns stabbed her flank; blood ran down her legs.

“Get off me!” she shouted. The vines rebounded and grabbed hold of her. They pulled her, but her wings were still caught. Rainbow Dash screamed in horror as much as pain as she felt skin rip and muscles tear.

“Stop!” a voice commanded. The vines hesitated, then released Rainbow Dash and retreated.

“Get me free!” Rainbow Dash shouted at Pinkie Pie, who had appeared through a bush. Her wings, she couldn't bear to look at them as Pinkie Pie helped untangle her from the thicket. She shut her eyes. “How bad are they?”

“How bad are what? Say, are you going to pay me for helping you? I don't do this stuff gratis, capiche?”

“Pinkie Pie, are you seriously still talking about that?” Rainbow Dash flexed her wings experimentally and winced at the searing pain. “Ow-ow-ow! Pinkie Pie...say, your cutie mark.”

Pinkie Pie's six balloons glowed their different colors on her flank. They pulsed musically, blinking in rhythm: blue, lavender, orange, white, yellow and pink.

Her face was dark with anger.

Rainbow Dash kept her damaged wings as still as she could. She couldn’t quite hold Pinkie Pie’s stormy gaze. “What happened to you?”

Author's Notes:

Remember the scene where Westley slaps Buttercup?