Rainbow Dash struggled through the snow after Pinkie Pie, unable to fly with her torn, bleeding wings. “Wait up!”

Pinkie Pie forged ahead, cutting through the forest with her axe.

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth. “I’ll pay you to wait up!”

“Now you’re talking!”

Pinkie Pie slowed down and let Rainbow Dash catch up. She let her Pegasus customer put a leg around her shoulders.

“If it hurt to walk, you just had to ask, silly,” Pinkie Pie said. They started walking again. “Don’t be so stubborn!”

“I did ask!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did! You just didn’t listen, and then I had to pay you.”

“Right, you asked eventually. Could have saved yourself a lot of pain, you know!”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “My wings! I might never fly again.”

“It’s a sunk cost!”

“What’s a sunk cost?”

“If you want to know—”

“I’m not paying!”

Rainbow Dash decided the conversation was a lost battle. Her wings throbbed painfully, and it frightened her to wonder if they were permanently damaged. All she would have left was her money, and what good was money if you couldn’t fly around dropping bits on poorer ponies below?

In an effort to distract herself, she surveyed the transformed town. She knew where they were by the houses that appeared out of the ever-rising snow, which was now up to their knees and difficult to walk through. Plants grew around the buildings, encircling them in root and vine. Branches spread out overhead like a spiderweb being woven around them, crossing and and overlapping.

“What’s going on?” she said. “I thought you were friends with the Everfree Forest. Now it wants to kill us?”

“The forest won’t kill them,” Pinkie Pie said. “I wouldn’t be friends with it then, and it doesn’t want to not be friends with me. It wants us gone, but it can’t pick, see?”

Rainbow Dash looked at the quiet bumps of civilization amidst the snow and wood of the natural world, the one without all the stuff Twilight talked about.

“Still no pony’s come out,” she said. “It’s a ghost town.”

“Ghosts? You mean ponies who died?” Pinkie Pie said. “But that’s the whole question, isn’t it???”

They found Rarity alone amidst a group of trees. Pinkie Pie let Rainbow Dash down and set to work hacking apart the vines holding her.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash struggled toward her friend and grabbed her, but she didn’t respond. She shook her. “Rarity!”

But the Unicorn continued to stare at nothing.

Rainbow Dash turned to Pinkie Pie in despair. “Pinkie! I'll pay you to tell me what's going on!”

“I’m not sure,” Pinkie Pie said, hmming to herself. “I wish Twilight were here.”

“Me too,” Rainbow Dash said fervently. “I don’t understand this magical stuff.”

“No, I mean that she’s the only pony I’ve known who never, ever needed help with this.”

“Help with what?”

“Help with letting go OH MY PINK CELESTIA WHY AM I ON A TRAIN—”

Winds whooshed; there was a vacuum noise of a balloon inflating very fast—

The schoolhouse exploded into flying bits of wood and brick, debris erupting everywhere as the train came to a crashing halt.

Rarity stared numbly as the door opened and Applejack walked out. There was only a thin trickle of blood running from the talon-inflicted gashes on her head. The Earth Pony’s face was pale, as if she had lost a lot of blood, and an eyeball hung by some gooey red string, swaying loosely in front of her face. The vulture squeezing its talons into her scalp pecked at it with no reaction from the witch.

“Consarn this train,” Applejack said, lifting her hoof as if to stamp it, but it came down with no force at all. “Ought to turn the conductor into a toad.”

Rarity approached her dully. “I don’t suppose you can tell me how many chucks can a wood chucker chuck.”

The vulture plucked at the eyeball. “Train to Ostlergon’s stopped,” Applejack’s voice said. “Can’t get to the Fruit Salad until it’s fixed.”

“What if I hit you?” Rarity said. “Or suppose I just start walking? And I keep walking forever? Do I find what keeps casting that shadow?”

“If only I had a dress,” Applejack’s voice said after a moment, with a bit of a jerk, as if being prompted.

Rarity sensed the dreaded rack of clothes behind her before she saw it. She suddenly wanted to kick it over and run and never look back.

Something banged from inside the train. Rarity jumped and whirled around, heart racing; this was something new. Applejack didn’t react, but the vulture jerked up sharply, glaring its black eyes at the train.

She saw it this time; shadowy hoofs through a foggy window, slamming against it. “Rarity!” a voice from out of the mist of memory. “Rarity, the dresses look uglmmph!”

Black tendrils from inside the train wrapped around something and began to drag the creature away. “Rarity!” it shouted one last time, and was gone.

The voice was too familiar. Rarity dashed forward, but a powerful dread pushed her back from the train doors. She listened, and heard very faintly, the sound of a balloon popping.

“Got to get to the Fruit Salad,” Applejack’s voice said.

Rarity turned. Applejack’s one good eye was looking blankly into space, but the vulture glared at her with black, demonic beads.

She ignored it and strode briskly past them. She seized the dresses with her magic and flung them to the ground.

“I did not make these tacky, foul dresses!”

Applejack’s head stayed pointed toward the train, but the vulture’s turned to follow her.

It screeched at her, piercing and raucous. When it did it again, she threw the dresses at it, knocking it off Applejack’s head with a squawk.

“What,” Rarity screamed, “did you think would happen to a wretched like me in an awful nightmare like this? Pressure makes diamonds out of coal! Ugly as I am,” tears stung her eyes, “my friends make me beautiful.”

The vulture tore itself out of the tangle of dresses, screeching furiously.

Rarity stepped forward. “You wanted me to put that black dress on Applejack? Never! None of this happened, none of this is real, even if I could have chosen this, I never would have!”

The black, twisting bird launched itself from the ground at her, beak open.

“Show me all the threads of the lives I could have chosen!” Rarity said, her horn glowing. “I will stitch a dress out of them and make you wear it!”

The vulture’s sharp beak was only inches from her face when it snagged, caught by the cloak around its leg. It hit the ground with a thump and an angry cry. Rarity threw out her magic, and the muddy, moth-eaten, misshapen dresses swirled around and trapped the struggling bird.

Tangled up and looking more and more ridiculous, the vulture squawked and stumbled around until it collapsed, fabric falling over its face and muffling its final cries.

Seeing it colorful and demented, Rarity could think of only one thing to say.

“Clown!” she shrieked at it.

“I’m going to be late for the Fruiii,” said Applejack, who wavered, and collapsed.

Rarity caught her.

“Applejack, dear Applejack,” she said, holding her friend. Applejack’s face was pale; hardly any blood leaked from the many gashes on her head where the vulture had perched so smugly. Rarity kissed each one.

“I will heal all these scars,” she murmured, “just be my friend.”

“Fruiii,” said Applejack, detached eye lolling.

Rarity began to cry. “I don’t care about you, I don’t care what is going on with you and your family, these witches of fruit, these scars on your head mean nothing to me, nothing at all. I only care about myself, Applejack, you know that about me, but I want you. I won’t let you take yourself away from me. Just please be my friend, wear my hat, my dress; they’re not worth a bit if you’re not wearing them. And don’t ever belong only to yourself.”

She leaned down to kiss her friend’s cheek, and then she was shivering in the snow, blinking and disoriented.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash said, appearing in front of her. “You’re back!”

“I…I…what?”

“You have the freakiest dreams!” Pinkie Pie said, a little woozily. Her body was covered in long red marks, as if she had been squeezed tight by many thin tendrils. “Remind me to charge you double.”

Rarity looked uncomprehendingly from the vicious red lines encircling Pinkie Pie’s body, to her glowing cutie mark, to Rainbow Dash’s bleeding and torn wings.

“What is going on?”

“We came to save you!” Rainbow Dash said proudly.

“You did? Why?”

“Because you’re our friend!”

“O-oh, yes, I suppose I am.”

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie said. “Your cutie mark is glowing.”

They all looked. Rarity’s diamonds were in fact glowing, each a different color, blinking in musical harmony. The song was faint, but pervaded not the air, but the background itself, something they couldn’t quite get out of their heads.

“…Yes, it is,” Rarity said after a while, as if she wasn’t surprised at all, but needed something polite to say. “And those marks on your body….”

“Worker’s comp will take care of it,” Pinkie Pie answered.

“Ah…of course. And Rainbow Dash, your wings….”

Rainbow Dash squeezed her eyes shut. “Be honest. How bad is it?”

“I, I’m sure Fluttershy will know what to do.”

Pinkie Pie grabbed her axe. “Then let’s go find her.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to help me break this lamb’s neck?” Father said.

Fluttershy jerked at the dull crack. Then she settled back again in a rare patch of dirt that wasn’t covered in blood or rotting flesh. Ants roamed over her hoofs toward their next decaying meal.

Father staggered toward his next victim. He had been on his hoofs for weeks or years, it felt like. The…whatever it was wasn’t resetting things as well as it used to. Father was tired as if he had been walking a while, the animals were more and more rotten and broken with each restart. Mr. Ribbit Tickles, who had been smashed so many times, was barely alive as a squashed lump with two of his legs fallen off.

“It’s lots of fun!” Father slurred, tripping and stumbling over something that was melting off its skeleton. Sticky rotting goo clung to his hoofs as he walked.

There was no point in answering. She had tried to talk to him, and he always turned the conversation back to killing.

So for a while now she had been sitting in a little ball and trying not to think about anything much.

Father stood over Mr. Ribbit Tickles. “Fluttershyyy,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to help?”

“I’d like a cup of coffee and a slice of pumpkin spice cake,” she answered.

It didn’t make a difference. It never did no matter what she said.

“Rib-rib-rib.”

Father bent down.

“Rib-rib-rib.”

Fluttershy shut her eyes and prepared to listen to her old friend die in pain again.

Something small and hard struck her on the head.

“Ow!” Wincing, she rubbed her head where it smarted and looked around. The field was the same as ever, full of dying animals and no conspicuous thrower of things.

“Put it out of its misery, you dumb—” The voice cut off in a strangled yelp. A familiar form at the edge of her vision flickered and was pulled back by something before Fluttershy could get a clearer look.

What had hit her was a rock. It lay by her hoofs, a sort of fat spiral. It kind of looked like a snail.

It kind of reminded Fluttershy of real life, and things that had actually happened.

And what had happened to her old friend, and what could not be undone by any power.

Not even by whatever magic sustained this place, or what cast that long shadow….

And in that moment of clarity, the riddle solved itself.

She got up. Then she sat back down, breathing hard, her vision swimming. The snail-shaped rock was near her hoof. She took it, and walked as bravely as she could to Mr. Ribbit Tickles’ disfigured form.

Father moved out of the way.

“I’m not sorry even a little bit,” Fluttershy said. There was no reason to apologize for something that she had never done, and hadn’t happened. She sank to her knees in front of the broken body of her old friend, and that’s when things started to go bad.

Mr. Ribbit Tickles rolled one dark, filmy eye her way.

“Fluttershy,” he said.

“You can talk?” she gasped despite herself. It was stupid, she knew, yet the thought of her companion being more verbally expressive had been a dream of hers.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“You’re already dead.”

“No. Not in this place. In this place the past is present forever, the familiar forms and rules and patterns never change.”

“This is hell.”

“For you, maybe. For me? I am alive again.”

“You can’t bring back the dead.”

“Look at me, and say that.”

Fluttershy opened her eyes, which she had shut to stem the flow of tears. “I wish you weren’t a part of this. I don’t want to remember you like this.”

“Don’t remember. See. I am here. I am like this. You are like this.”

“No.”

“Death. Decay. Rot. Suffering. Pain. The world is like this. It surrounds you, if not quite as closely as it does here. Is it gone because you cannot see it?”

“Are you here because I can see you?” said Fluttershy, her throat burning.

“Whom will you choose to let die? Whom will you choose to let suffer? Why not drive the knife in yourself?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Fluttershy wiped her eyes, smearing dirt and blood across her face. “It’s different, thinking like that doesn’t work, I tried.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ribbit Tickles. “You let me die. But you didn’t kill me, and you won’t here, and this is your prison forever and ever.”

Fluttershy cried while Mr. Ribbit Tickles went on.

“We will play here forever. You feel in your heart that the pain of choosing to kill me is too great, no matter what reward might follow, no matter the pain you bear here, you fear the cost of this choice more. How it might change you in ways beyond the simple, obvious solution to your immediate problem. What rules are broken, what paths are taken from you, in ways that cannot be perceived, but will be felt.”

The world was darkening, but not like the shadow that signaled the restart of the cycle. Like the light itself was dying, like the world was growing cold and afraid and angry. Out of the corner of her eye she could sense Father changing, or merely losing form, becoming a black writhing wraith, as if whatever power kept him was no longer concentrating on doing so.

“I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt you,” Fluttershy said, though she didn’t know who she was talking to.

“As you should be,” said the toad, “but it is not enough to buy release. You cannot bargain here.”

“No,” Fluttershy said. “I can bargain with myself.”

“Don’t you want to play with me, Fluttershy?”

“Yes,” she said honestly, “and with all things, but I want to play with my friends more right now.”

She lifted a hoof over him. It was soft as hoofs go, and on the end of a weak leg, but it was more than strong enough to squash an already broken toad.

“Your friends, what would they think if you do this?”

“They’d think I’m taking too long!”

She plunged her hoof down. And stopped halfway, a wall in her stomach she couldn’t pass.

“You lose,” said the toad simply.

“No, she doesn’t!” said the voice from before. Fluttershy felt a warm chest against her back, and a hoof wiping her tears, though she didn’t look, didn’t dare look.

“Fluttershy,” said the voice from out of a different life, a different world, “you once told me there was a storm on my face. I kept wondering if the storm ever had to break for you, if it would, what would happen and how amazing it would be. But I don’t think that’s right anymore. I don’t think you need to crack and rain thunder and lightning. I think you’re strong enough to bear the weight of the whole sky, however heavy and grey. And HEY I’M NOT DONE YET MMPH!”

The weight withdrew too fast from her body, as if being roughly pulled by something. Faintly, in the distance, something popped, like a balloon. But Fluttershy’s tears were stopped. The wall wasn’t gone, but she didn’t try to go through it. She pulled it down with her. Everything she had went into that moment. An old friend, real or not, didn't deserve anything less.

She would never forget the feeling of tiny broken bones in her hoof.

Tears turned to little snowflakes in the cold wind and were carried away.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash said, holding her legs out. “Oof!” Fluttershy had shoved herself facefirst into her belly. Rainbow Dash held her, saying nothing.

Pinkie Pie sagged nearby, breathing heavily. Red streaks were more common than pink on her body.

“I’m glad your back,” Rarity said eventually, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Fluttershy, if you want to show your face, I have a tissue I can sell you…pay me later.”

“Oh, thank you,” Fluttershy said, taking it and blowing a pathetic sniffle. Then she noticed. “Your wings!”

“Am I going to be able to fly again?” Rainbow Dash said worriedly.

Fluttershy hesitated.

“I’ll pay you,” said Rainbow Dash, feeling a knife stab her heart.

“Okay.” Fluttershy inspected Rainbow Dash’s wings. Occasionally she felt them, eliciting a yelp from Rainbow Dash, then she found her medical box in the snow.

“The bleeding isn’t bad, but the muscles will need time to heal,” she said firmly as she began tearing bandages. “Keep them still and don’t even think about trying to fly until I say you can.”

“Like Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said automatically. “With her head, I mean.”

“No time to waste,” Pinkie Pie said, leaning on her axe. “But the forest doesn’t have Twilight.”

“Who does?”

“I think…nothing does.”

“Then let’s rescue Applejack,” Rarity said.

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. “Say, Fluttershy…your cutie mark is glowing.”

It was true. Her butterflies glowed one by one in gentle rhythm. Another instrument added to whatever harmony played beyond the edges of their hearing.

“Cutie mark mystery magic can wait till we rescue everypony,” Pinkie Pie said. She took one step and sagged, wincing in pain. “Rainbow Dash,” she said heavily, “I’ll pay you to—”

“Oh, shut up,” Rainbow Dash said, and helped Pinkie Pie lean her weight onto her shoulder.

Author's Notes:

Diamonds do not in fact form from coal, but let's not tell Rarity this.

Only one more chapter with really horrible awful stuff in it, I promise....