Sweetie Belle opened the sidebag containing the package, and pulled it out. She examined the writing on the wrapping and the inked hoof stamp, and postage sticker.

86th Day of Spring, Year 1004
Twilight Sparkle
Golden Oaks Library,
Ponyville, BB-PNV
→
Princess Celestia

Sweetie took the envelope attached to the package, and tossed it, then went to work trying to open the package. The little string came off easy, but when she tried to rip off the paper wrapping, that was a different story. Bright violet sparks shot back at her, and she grew increasingly frustrated with the package. It was probably a spellbook or something important. In her rage fit, Sweetie stomped on, kicked, bit, and struck the package, but the paper was as strong as wood. She buck-kicked the package into a tree, then tackled it.

For the better part of a degree, Sweetie Belle flipped out and let loose on the package, and beat the crap out of it. she gnawed at it, while trying to rip the wrapping off with her hind hooves, as if she was a cat trying to disembowel a mouse. Twilight Sparkle’s seal spell fought back and shot sparks at her, which stung.

Sweetie grunted in frustration, and stomped on it. She threw it in the river, bashed it with a rock, threw it back up onto dry ground, then something new happened, the package zapped her back, right on the horn. Sweetie Belle squealed in agony as she went down for the count. But that just made the normally timid filly angrier. she recovered and got up.

“So you want to play hard, do ya, well how about this!”

She flexed the muscles in her head, and tried to shoot some of her own magic at it, but nothing happened. Then she remembered she couldn't cast magic because of that bucking blood apple pie she had to eat last night. Sweetie Belle swore.

She sat on her flank four hooves away from the package. She tried shooting magic at it, but so much for imagining it like Sea Spray told her to. She tried again and again to cast magic. Then, out of nowhere, she fired a powerful bolt at the package, causing the air around it to crackle. She was stunned and felt woozy. Almost tipped over and fell down. But what really happened with nopony even knowing, was the spellbook had cast it's own magic at her.

Then she saw it, and gasped with a smile. A tear in the paper. With new-found excitement, Sweetie attacked the package and ripped off the paper like it was nothing. She didn't care how she broke Twilight Sparkle’s protection spell.

After ripping off the wrapping paper and tossing it aside, Sweetie was surprised to see the spellbook. It looked nothing like any other she saw in her entire life. It was bound with a brown leathery material, etched and painted on it was an illustration the young filly could hardly comprehend. She saw strange, scary looking symbols, with a picture of lightning bolts criss-crossing each other in a coat-of-arms like symbol. In the center was a series of strange star-like symbols.

The filly was not yet aware that the spellbook enchanted with wild and dangerous magic, was on to her. An inaudible low-frequency sound resonated from the book, putting the unwary filly into a mild trance, brewing up a sense of enticement in her, a desire to open it and see for herself all the wonders in the unicorn world, and a plethora of promises made many thousands of years ago.

Sweetie Belle became no longer aware of the world around her. It was just her, and the spellbook. It was thick, like one of those heavy 50 bar encyclopedias that Twilight threw around her library, which could squash Spike flat.

Sweetie Belle felt like she was under the growing hypnotic trance, and as she stared at the illustrations and glyphs on the front cover, magical data, invisible, began streaming into the corner of her subconscious where dreams came from.

The filly couldn't believe her luck. She scored an epic spellbook.

Sweetie Belle opened the book and started looking through the pages. She felt her hooves and mouth tingle as she touched the ancient paper. Each page held countless paragraphs of symbols and letters she had never seen before, accompanied by glyphs, graphs, charts, recipes, and such. Highly detailed illustrations followed. She flipped the pages to the back of the book, but she never got to the last page, they kept turning and turning as if there were infinite pages.

What the hay...

She flipped back to the first few pages but wasn't able to find it. She knew nothing of the language in which the spells or explanations were written. She could only guess at the few illustrations and pictures. One showed a unicorn beaming a powerful spell at a bunch of pegasi. And another drawing portrayed a large mushroom cloud rising above a fire.

Then something else caught her eye, a diagram accompanied by an explanation in its ancient language. It was a simple illustration, with writing strewn all over it. There was a line and a symbol of a sun above it, then a vertical line stretching down to a large shaded box. But Sweetie Belle didn't have time to think because at that moment, the spellbook, as if waiting in ambush, 'attacked.'

A huge bolt of hot blue shot out of the spellbook, striking Sweetie Belle right in the face. She squeaked and tried to jump back, but before she could do that, the beam of magic centered on the tip of her horn and seeped into her brain, paralyzing her. In a brief split second before Sweetie Belle lost contact with the outside world, she wondered if it was a defensive spell to take out unwanted intruders, such as herself.

The spellbook vibrated and shook, and on its own began flipping pages, spewing out more crackling bolts of magic which lashed out like ethereal appendages, zeroing in on the petrified filly, and spread across her body over her fur. Soon she was wrapped in a field of magic from nose to tail. She involuntarily stared at the book, unable to look away as it worked its magic on her. Finally after ages, the book found a suitable prey, and would consume it and infuse the poor filly with all its unholy infernal power, and make her feel the full wrath of its vanquished, yet still anguished authors, who once upon a time millennia before the Summer Sun Celebration, created this spellbook in hopes of exacting revenge on their enemies who threatened to annihilate them from the face of Equestria.

The very instant Sweetie Belle was shot in the face, she saw nothing but blinding white, and the world went dark, the spellbook the only object she could see. She tried to step back, turn away, desperately wanting to run. She forgot all about trying escape from Ponyville at this point. Now she was shit scared of being consumed alive by a spellbook.

She tried to scream but she was paralyzed where she stood, rooted firmly to the ground as the spellbook, now floating and turning its pages violently, shooting beams, bolts, and wisps of magic all over her. Every volt of magic hurt, even more so as it beamed right into her damaged magic system, right down the horn, through the nerves and the tubes all over her which stored and carried magic. Her magic system fumed with rage and she felt the burning sensation all through her body. She felt like her organs were about to fry and all the blood her body about to boil into a furious hot vapor. But her eyes were locked open and she was forced to stare at the pages, and her mind began reading the spells, scanning the symbols, and etching them into the core of her subconscious, and her soul.

The pages snapped to and fro, and she was involuntarily learning magic at an impossible rate. Magical data was being beamed into her little brain by the terabyte. If she could think, she would have been screaming for Celestia or whatever was controlling the spellbook to stop.

Then the poor filly began to hallucinate and trip out. She was already no longer able to see the grass, nor the trees or river around her, and certainly not the bright daylight. Her brain seized and hurt like hell as high voltage beams of energy and memory shot through it, re-writing it like a hard drive. She began to hear and see things.

Sweetie Belle began to hear the echoes of voices, then the voices themselves. The speech was muffled but the words became clear, as if she could understand them, and yet the arrangements of words were different. Then she began to see things, and soon that came clear to her. She saw unicorns. Lots of them, talking, shouting, crying, and screaming. In fear, or rage. Her mind soon flooded with memories that weren't even hers; carrying her from scene to scene. She unwarily was reliving the moments, violent, war-torn moments of unicorns who lived in the past. Through them she witnessed entire cities burning, violent bloody battles waged between unicorns and earth ponies. Violent raids on villages, 'witch' burnings, torture, and murder. Without knowing it, Sweetie Belle re-lived the violent deaths of thousands. She was stabbed with spears and swords, she was splashed with hot oil, she was burned at the steak. Every bit hurt like hell, and there was no way that the poor filly could describe the agonizing gruesome deaths her ancestors experienced.

The scenes became longer, and more vivid and detailed, full of violent, physical, and magic combat, accompanied by explosions, blood, and gore.
She was standing guard at a fort when she heard somepony shout, "Here they come! By the light of Celestia look at all of them!"
She looked up saw the incoming Pegasi. The entire sky turned black as their number stretched from horizon to horizon. but she somehow knew these were no ordinary Pegasi, when they arrived and attacked, she saw they were much bigger, and had the features of ravenous, carnivorous beasts, with sharp claws on their hooves, and long, razor sharp teeth. They barked and growled like the wolves and bears. The earth ponies and unicorns who fought back together stood no chance. They were decimated and shredded alive by a hurricane of claws and gnashing teeth.

She was whisked away to another scene, which didn't consist of violent suffering and death. Here she relived the moments of a young unicorn mage who stood before what Sweetie thought was a council. She stood, robed and hooded, along with a group of other initiates, paying attention to these higher-up unicorn mages. Infront of them, hovered a stack of menacing looking spellbooks, all orbiting one another.

"We have created the ultimate weapon, in which all unicorn kind must take up in the war against our annihilation," the faceless group said. "Take this spellbook, and use it to bestow all we have invested to each and every unicorn. Thousands of unicorn magi, scholars, and alchemists have sacrificed everything to bring this book together. You will be the new messiahs; you will deliver this new word of salvation to our kind, and they will rise up, empowered by the magical plane, and the anguished spirits of the damned, and your followers will unleash the the furious vengeance, and smite our enemies off the face of Equestria! Go forth and fulfill the prohecies!"

Another memory flowed through her, and this time, she watched white-robed unicorns working at a large apparatus she did not understand.
"We did it, mylord, we have successfully cracked the very particles from which all is made. We have found ways to fuse them all together. With this kind of energy, we can obliterate MILLIONS of those damn Pegasi and earth ponies once and for all! We shall begin creating these devices in earnest. Soon enough, one will fly to the very black hearts of the cloud cities and vaporize them!"

Then a white hot flash, and a deafening boom. Sweetie was now outside, hiding from the light, and flipped off her hooves by the violent blast wave. She got up and gazed in horror at the menacing mushroom cloud that loomed over the horizon. Hundreds around her cheered, and then another-

There was a violent blast, very local, but loud as hell, as if an entire box full of 200 decibel air bang canisters detonated at once. The spellbook 'exploded,' violently throwing the filly back. She slammed laterally into the trunk of a nearby tree, bounced off and landed into a nearby bush, with so much force the barreled through it, and smacked the ground, and the world went dark.

The site, within two trots of the spellbook, was instantly scorched gray. The spellbook, which anypony who would have seen this, was not destroyed as they'd have guessed. Instead it dropped and hit the ground, shut, waiting for its next subject.

Nearby, the letter that came with the package read:

It didn't take long for a few ponies to come check out where that startling explosion came from. The first on the scene was Twilight Sparkle, who detected the burst of magic and came galloping as fast as she could. She parted the plants, bushes and vegetation and made her way to the magic hot spot. She saw the spellbook lying on the ground, everything around it scorched grey.

"Oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit..." Twilight panicked as she quickly thought this out. Somepony managed to open the package which she herself sealed, and got into the spellbook...

She didn't want to think about what happened to the poor unicorn who got into the spellbook. Nothing remained of the poor moron. Twilight found herself hyperventilating, clearly afraid of the consequences she'd soon face for losing an extremely dangerous spellbook, and her mind boggled with the guilt she was already feeling now that because of her somepony was dead, probably blown right out of existence. But who?

The anxious lavender unicorn ran from the library with the spellbook safely tucked in her sidebag, got to the train station in time to add it to the town's outgoing mail, but when she got there, she found it was gone and was frantically re-tracing her hoof steps. She would have gone to the town guard, but she didn't trust the increasing number of Apple ponies there. Infact, Twilight had intended to leave Ponyville real soon and apply for a self delivery permit so she could get the package, and herself into Canterlot, well out of harm's reach. Then she'd track down Sundowner and have her brought to Canterlot as well.

But now that the spellbook was used and probably killed somepony, Twilight had to face the facts that shit just got blown all over the place, and it was only a matter of time before the townguard, and the Apples looked into it, and used the incident to trump up their clout and anti-unicorn sentiment.

As Twilight frantically paced around the spellbook and looked about she had no idea that the culprit was lying behind some bushes just a few trots away from her. Twilight cast some protective spells on herself, and placed the spellbook in her sidebag. She wasn't sure to stay or go. The student had been up for days on end with no sleep, and found it very difficult to think straight. She grew increasingly paranoid and scared. Her Element was hard at work trying to tear her apart from the inside. She planned on jumping aboard the afternoon train but now she'd have to wait until the night train.

Sweetie Belle dreamed. First it was nothing but black, then she recognized the recurring nightmare she had countless of times before: she was in some dark place, seeing nothing but black, and trying to escape from something that was after her. She woke up crying from the dream, even more frequently since Applejack adopted her.

It was basically a routine dream, then things began changing fast. She found herself stepping over bricks, rocks, splintered wood, glass fragments, and other bits and pieces of destroyed objects. Then among all the debris she began to recognize bone fragments, bits of flesh, rotted blood and decayed gore.

She was running through this dark wasteland, and the rest of this nightmarish world began to materialize around her.

“Allright! Move out!” the earth pony stallion in front of her shouted. She found herself among a troupe of six ponies, four earth ponies and two unicorns. They kept low to the ground, shuffling around on their stomachs, maneuvering with their hooves. Each donned leather garbs, and had loaded sidebags.

Above them, chaos. The whole area was under attack. By the Pegasi. They flew around by the thousands, feverishly scanning the remains of the city for any live earth ponies to feed on or unicorns to kill.

Many of the pegasi were those mutant monsters she was strangely familiar with. She was no longer Sweetie Belle, but a young unicorn fighting for her life in this place and time. Some pegasi were equipped with weapons that beamed lasers and lightning bolts.

The six ponies shuffled on the ground, then when deemed safe enough, they got up and galloped, careful to remain hidden by the ruins from the night sky and ravenous Pegasi.

The earth ponies accompanying them were equipped with weird magic beam guns; bestowed on them by their unicorn allies. The unicorns shot back spells and beams of raw magic from time to time, shooting down Pegasi who go too close.

Then she realized that even though they were on the ground trying not to get killed by the pegasi warriors and bloodthirsty pegafreaks, the group was on the offensive, and were following a cloud. No natural cloud, but an airborne hydroglass aircraft disguised as a cloud. A war ship of some kind, piloted by the Pegasi, one hell of a killing machine. It shot out lightning bolts in all direction, fired supercooled ‘hail bombs’, whipped up devastating tornadoes.

She looked up at the ominous aircraft. From end to end this ‘cloud’ spanned 400 trots. No recognisable nose or tail. The largest of the earth ponies on the ground lugged with him a weapon meant to destroy the cloud ship, 200 trots above them.
A new sound grew from behind them, that of howls and barks, and they looked back, and ran for cover; they found it in the remains of a collapsed windmill. They exchanged tense anxious glances with other allies, and hunkered down as the new threat came into view- a flock of pega freaks, easily in the hundreds flew over them, then dived for the ground close by. The pegafreaks, mutant pegasi with claws on their hooves, razor sharp teeth and hulking muscle mass, began sniffing around. The group remained hidden under the remains of the windmill. They knew better than to engage the pega freaks.

After a few minutes the pegafreaks barked and snarled at one another and took to the air. The place was too saturated in magic residue and radiation for them to properly sniff out fresh prey.

The six-pony group moved out again proceeded to a decent vantage point, all the while shooting at pegasi, trying not to get hit by lightning bolts, or hail bombs. Each of the six had spells cast on them enabling them to detect surrounding electrical instabilities. Soon as their hairs stood up, they bolted, seconds before the spot was struck by a 500 kilo-amp 30 million volt lightning bolt. The blast wave was local but devastating, and the thundering boom that followed was deafening. Each pony on the ground wore a special head cap that protected its ears from the never ending serenade of ear shattering thunder. They were also spelled to protect them against the neural effects of infrasound.

A lightning bolt exploded less than ten trots behind them, blowing up the ruined house and throwing them to the ground with its shock wave. The instantly-fulgarized ruins collapsed into a heap of ash.

Puny 30 kilo amp bolts were fired by pegasus troops flying above. They mastered the art of targeted electrical transfers from air to ground, from negative to positive charge. To them it was like shooting laser beams.

The unicorns and their earth pony allies fired back with magic beams from their own hoof guns and horns, making for epic shootouts from which at least one pony on either side was blown to bits.

The three pegasi warriors above quickly turned their attention to a new threat from below and this group made good on that. They all opened fire, shooting down two of the three pegasi warriors, forcing the other one to flee before they could get him too. Then they quickly scattered before another massive bolt of lightning struck their spot.

As the battle raged on all around them, they made their way out of the city and into the fulgarized burned remains of a forest, trying to get a vantage point close to what they were instructed back at base was a vulnerable side of the cloud machine above them.

After climbing a hill shrouded in dead shrubs, they came to a good spot, and readied their offense. The big stallion bit off the ropes that he used to lug a large cobalt tube. The tube, heavy as hell, was loaded with magical explosives. Very dangerous.

The team hoisted the tube on its base, and the unicorns opened their spellbooks, and began charging up the spell needed to launch this projectile at its target. They were also aware that dozens of teams, if not taken out by the Pegasi already, depended on them.

Magic was beamed on the primitive rocket, and this unicorn whom Sweetie Belle became, stood by with her team surrounding her, ready to blast the hell out of anything that got too close. She beamed her luminescent aqua magic on the rocket, and ran the spells through her mind. She looked up at the Pegasi cloud ship, and imagined the target site, right where two identical bulges of cloud stood out against the rest of the structure.

Then she fired a blast of magic at the rocket, and it blew its way into the air, screaming up to its target, and vanished within the cloud itself.

The team said nothing as they turned to flee-

The world exploded around them. Sweetie Belle was thrown and slammed into a tree. She was pulled to her hooves by two other ponies who screamed at her, but over the deafening roar of the never ending storm and war, she just nodded, struggled and limped. She was injured, but far from giving up. They looked and saw more rockets shoot up at the Pegasi cloud ship. They all disappeared, then all at once they blew.

The whole cloud lit up, and exploded in several blasts, forcing everypony on the ground to take cover. The crew of Pegasi inside stood no chance. They were instantly scorched alive or shredded by exploding shards of hydroglass. The whole thing began to disintegrate and it rained hydroglass, metal, hail bombs and other Pegasi-made ordinance, and corpses.

A sense of triumph overtook the mare and her team. They cheered over their victory. But only for seconds before they retreated out of sight.

Soon enough, massive swarms of raging Pegasi arrived on the scene and engaged those who dared to destroy their new killing machine, or even fight back. The team galloped, shooting back at those who chased them. They retreated into an old wooden building. Big mistake.

The Pegasi fired lightning bolts at it, causing the wood to ignite, and quickly burn. The team found themselves trapped inside as the fire quickly engulfed the building. The place was tinder dry after years of drought, and lit up as if it had been doused in oil. Suddenly, each of the three surviving ponies faced death via fire and struggled to escape. Just outside they heard the roar of the horde of pega freaks barking and growling inside. The air grew stifling hot, and the flames began to lick at their flanks...

Sweetie Belle woke with a violent jolt, and a gasp. Her stomach hurt like hell and she flopped and flailed till she got on all four hooves, and her stomach violently contracted, and she puked out the contents of last night's supper. It was that blood apple shit she was force fed. It had gone black inside her stomach, and her system, now loaded with magic energy, expelled that stuff out of her. She gasped and panted until she caught her breath, then she heard a nearby rustle.
She instantly fired up her horn, and looked around, ready to blast the hell out of those-

A squirrel jumped from a bush branch and climbed up a nearby tree.

No more fire, and the sounds of a more familiar world returned to her. The echo of the stream of the nearby brook trickled into her ears, and she saw the leaves and flowers of the bushes surrounding her. She was still scared and by some instinct she never had before, Sweetie Belle bolted from inside the bush and made her way back to the brook before realizing that there was no danger, she was back in Ponyville, safe and sound. Well from all that chaos, death, destruction and pain she just dreamed about. Seemed so real...

As she arrived back at the brook, Sweetie Belle's memory came back to her. The spellbook!
She made her way back to where she was before being fried by that spellbook she stole from Twilight Sparkle.

Nothing remained of the spellbook, nor even the saddlebags she stole from school. What was left was a trot-wide circular patch of grass scorched grey. She remained hidden, as she thought she heard ponies talking near by. She went back to the river. Still confused about all that just transpired from the second she opened the spell book. Her memories of Sweet Apple Acres and Applejack's tyranny came back.

Sweetie found that hiding spot by the water; the grassy overhang where plants and overgrowth stretched down into the brook, concealing a half-trot wide little den. That was the place she and Applebloom met Scootaloo that day when the three of them tried to train together.

She sat in the den, and gazed out over the water, and the surrounding forest. Everything was bathed in bright gold pre-dusk sunlight. How many degrees had it been? Surely Applejack would be bloody furious now. She sat there, trying to think things through. She tried to remember the ultra-vivid and painful dreams, but found she couldn't remember much. Still she felt phantom pains all over her body. Then she realized she conducted magic no problem back in that bush.

With a mere thought, Sweetie Belle's horn charged up with magic, bright pale-blue magic. She looked at a rock, and just as she thought about it, the rock lifted into the air, drawn up off the ground and held by her magical tractor beam. This magic had come with sudden ease. It hurt to cast but she had no problem levitating the rock, then she let it drop to the ground.

She tried the light spell Sea Spray taught her and suddenly her horn lit up so bright, and she felt the burning sensations as magic surged through her. It startled her more than it hurt and she shouted, "Stop!"

And the horn light spell died.

Sweetie's heart beat quickly and she felt herself shaking. She sensed the immense surge of magic power within her, and credited Twilight's spellbook for that. But she quickly discovered as she ran things through her mind, she suddenly knew more spells, and quickly turned to the rock in front of her. Trying out a new spell for the first time, she flexed the muscle under her horn and beamed her magic at the rock.

After a minute the rock began to glow, and melt. She reduced it to a small glop of searing hot magma. The dirt and grass around it scorched and smoke came up, but she was too preoccupied by another spell that came to mind, and exercising that, Sweetie discovered she could compress the little lump of magma and control how it cooled. What she got was a strange crystalline mass. She had just done one thing Rarity had always wanted to do: Turn ordinary rocks into jewels. Rarity was big on jewelry as well as fashion, but her own line of gems was small as the materials were expensive to order, and nopony in Ponyville would have afforded the obviously high priced trinkets.

Somehow she altered the arrangements of the chemical elements and compounds that made up the original rock. She wondered if Rarity would be proud, then her mind, still scrambling things around in her brain brought back Applejack's strongly worded no-magic lectures.

In a fit of sudden rage, Sweetie Belle lifted the translucent agglomerated agate and involuntarily propelled the thing at impossible speed, slamming it into a small foal-sized boulder on the other side of the brook. The rock she re-made only partially shattered, and the rest of it instantly melted. Now the boulder had a massive crack in it, with multicolored glass stuck on it.

She panted, more startled by what she just did. She wanted to destroy that rock. Blow it the buck up. Just like Applejack. The anger in her made her blood boil and she assumed a predatory cat's pose and charged up her horn, about to blast raw magic at-

Hooves kicked up the dirt behind her and she spun around. Applejack!
Just as she was about to release the crackling magic at the new threat, Sweetie saw that the foal tumbling down into the dugout was dark orange and sported a magenta mane. SCOOTALOO!

Her normal instinct kicked in and just before she blew Scootaloo away, Sweetie turned back and pointed her charged horn at the dirt, and lost her hold on it. There was a massive spark, and it kicked up a cloud of dust around her.

Scootaloo, after failing to climb down into their little hideout, and tumbling into it, got up and saw Sweetie Belle coughing and gagging in a cloud of dust. She heard the snap of magic, but had no idea she could have been killed.

"Sweetie Belle!" Scootaloo cried, still heaped up on her back from the fall into the pit.

Sweetie kept coughing 'til she got the dust out of her nose, mouth, and throat. She was gasping for air, and her heart went off like a machine gun, threatening to blow itself up. Now she broke a sweat.

"Buck...I could have killed you!" Sweetie Belle breathed, still shaken from everything.

"What?" Scoots said as she got up.

Sweetie had no way to explain everything to her friend. "What...what are you doing here?"

Scootaloo sweating and breathing like she just scooted a marathon sat down next to her. "I can't take it anymore."

"Take what?" Sweetie asked.

"Those Apples! I can't spend another degree or even minute at their farm! I just can't. They're all completely bucked up and batty insane!"

"Obviously," Sweetie said flatly. "That's why I didn't even go home. I snuck out of school at lunch time.

"Applejack is freaking pissed, Sweetie Belle," Scoots warned her, "Everypony at school is saying you broke the bathroom window. I seriously think she wants to rip you in half. She...she...she damn clobbered me upside the head!"

Scootaloo started tearing up and crying.

"What the hay for?"

"She wanted to know where you were and I didn't know so she beat me up. Applebloom too. She took one of those hickory sticks and whacked us both with it."

Sweetie Belle fumed with rage but she tried not to show it. She didn't want to scare Scootaloo away with her newly acquired powers. "How'd you escape from there?"

"I got on the poop cart when nopony was looking. You know that giant cart that two stallions have to pull? It's got all those buckets of poop from everypony's house? They drop all the poop off and we gotta shovel it into the dirt in the fields-"

"I know," Sweetie Belle replied, "I hid on it too to get across the big river. I'm leaving Ponyville. And I'm never coming back. What about Applebloom. Did she make it out too?"

Scoots shook her head. "Nope. Applejack lashed the living hay outta her; she could hardly trot. She almost made it to the cart, then one of those big Appleton ponies showed up and bashed her for getting too close. I wanted to wave to her but I didn't want to get whacked and bashed too. I...I..." She started tearing up too, and couldn't keep from crying.

Sweetie gazed down at her flank and the backs of her hooves, and saw all the red marks. Both did not like how Applebloom was still stuck at Sweet Apple Acres.

"Sweetie, I don't want to be here either. my family wants to give me to the Apples. Diamond Tiara was saying the other day how Dad and Mom were gonna get lots of bits, apples and cider if they sold me to Applejack. They were with Mr. Filthy Rich and...and stuff. And Dinky Doo was all like 'Ma and Pa 'r gonna make you live at Applejack's and she said I could get lots and lots of apple honey jelly'"

"What?" Sweetie demanded in disbelief, "Why the hay would Dinky Doo say that? You know she's a moron, right?"

Scoots was taken aback with that cold response. "...what?"

"Dinky Doo's an idiot. And she's dumb, just like Derpy. I seriously think Derpy dropped her on her head when she was born. Probably popped her out in mid air, and too dumb to even notice."

"Sweetie Belle! Why are you being so mean? Derpy's nice to us, and Dinky...she goes berzerk over apple jelly...I don't think she gets what goes on at Applejack's farm.

Sweetie Belle scoffed. She no longer cared. She despised everypony. Right now she only cared about Scoots and Applebloom.

Scootaloo looked at her friend, and saw the cold impassioned glare on her face as she looked out over the brook. All around them crickets and birds chirped, and frogs croaked. Five trots away, four elegant cranes walked along the shallow river, ducking their heads under the water in search of fish. They were Fluttershy's newest addition to this area around her treehouse, which was close by.

The two fillies missed Fluttershy. She was so kind and nurturing to them both. They both pondered seeking refuge at her home, but Sweetie Belle, heck, even Scootaloo figured Applejack would round up a posse of raging mad Apples to either storm Fluttershy's house or burn the whole place down. Paranoid thoughts, probably but now they didn't rule out such horrible prospects. They heard enough stories from the other Apple foals who witnessed the fiery executions of unfavored ponies in the messed up towns they came from.

"How long have you been here?" Scoots asked, wiping the tears from her face.

"I don't know....things have been really messed up. Do you promise not to tell anypony about this? Like, Pinkie promise?"

"Y-yeah. I promise," Scoots said cautiously, and Sweetie Belle told her her tale of the spellbook, from how Twilight Sparkle dropped it, how she stole, read, and got fried by it, all the messed up dreams she had, and her newfound magic.

"Whoa..." Scootaloo said as Sweetie lifted a rock with ease. She demonstrated by shooting at random targets with magic bolts and beams. She lit her horn, and set fire to a few twigs.

"This is nothing," Sweetie Belle said-

"Please, can I come with you out of Ponyville?" Scoots interrupted. She was bad with that habit.

"Well, yeah," Sweetie replied, "Why not. Buck this town and everypony in it. I hope Celestia blows everypony up like the Summer Sun Celebration fireworks....But...I don't want to leave Applebloom here. I'm gonna go and bail her out."

"Y...you...you mean go back to the Apple farm?" Scoots gasped, and started shaking.

"Eyyup," Sweetie said with determination. She looked at Scoots and saw the fear in her eyes. "Don't even come, you can just stay here 'til I come back with Applebloom.

"No way!" Scootaloo protested as she jumped up and placed her front hooves on Sweetie Belle's shoulders, "Don't go, they'll kill you!" She was terrified of losing her family and now Sweetie Belle and Applebloom.

"Chillax, Scoots," Sweetie said, using her magic to gently push her hooves off of her. "I got this, I swear. I got a lot of magic. Those Apples will pay for what they did to us."

"How?" Scootaloo asked in disbelief. A question ran through her mind about Sweetie Belle: Is that really you?-

"Get down!"
Sweetie Belle tackled Scootaloo to the dirt. Panicked, Scootaloo tried to fight her off. "Get off me!"
"Shut up. Stay low and don't move or make a sound," Sweetie hissed urgently. She lowered herself next to Scootaloo, now in battle mode, following those instincts etched into her from the spellbook and its nightmare. She put a hoof over Scootaloo's mouth to keep her from talking, and frantically scanned the sky through the dangling grass and vines that concealed them from view.

Scootaloo didn't know what to think but did what she was told, soon enough, she saw why, and the skin under her soft orange coat went pale and her blood turned to ice. She felt panic rising up in her and Sweetie Belle, half slumped over her, held her tight. "Stay calm, don't panic."

They watched as Rainbow Dash soared over the woods and brook, gracefully flapping her wings as she flew around. She appeared to be looking for something on the ground. The bright blue rainbow-maned mare flew around, circling over them.

"I think she's looking for us," Sweetie Belle hissed, "Or you." She tensed herself up, and felt the magic readying itself. Then she realized she was prepared to shoot Rainbow Dash if she got too close. Thanks to the spellbook, she instinctually hated pegasi and regarded them with the highest caution. Her bond with Scootaloo prevented that instinct from causing her to attack Scoots as well.

The two fillies remained frozen and silent for several minutes as Rainbow Dash circled above, then swooped down, scanning the edges of the river, before flying up past Fluttershy's house and out of sight.

Both fillies started breathing again, having held their breath for a few minutes. Sweetie Belle briefly switched back to her normal self.
"Sorry. I didn't-"

"I know..." Scoots said, remembering all she explained about what the spellbook did to her. She had every reason to fear Rainbow Dash, who banished her from flight class and sent her to the Apple farm. She figured RD was out to find her, snatch her up, fly her back to Sweet Apple Acres, then rip the wings out of her back. She threatened to de-wing Scoots more than once.

"But still, how...how the hay are you going to rescue Applebloom?"

Sweetie gazed out at the cranes across the river. Majestic birds. Not for long. "Heh, check this out."

"Sweetie Belle, what are you doing? Those birds...they're Fluttershy's prized pets-"

Sweetie Belle silenced her friend with a cold gaze, crept up to the opening like a cat, charged up her horn, and let loose with a massive, blinding, deafening explosion of magic. A massive bolt shot out and split out and struck the birds. At the same time, a magic beam shot out of her, turning the path through the air into plasma, and struck the biggest bird in the breast, blowing it the buck up.

The deafening snap, crackle, and pop sent flocks of birds flying from the trees, screeching in panic, and all of the critters fleeing for cover.

Pale blue smoke rose from Sweetie's horn. She was startled, shocked, surprised, then excited with that much power shooting out of her. A sly smile spread accross her face. She had the confidence but never the experience of that new spell. She looked out at the mess accross the brook. The birds were all blown to crispy pieces, one had disappeared entirely, except for it's neck and head, and it's feet, scattered about. Blood seeped out of the others and stained the dirt before reaching the water.

A sly smile spread across Sweetie Belle's face. I'll have my revenge.

Author's Notes:

Hydroglass = An altered state of water which is solid, and behaves like glass. A common building material in the Cloudlands.

Pegafreaks= Mutant pegasi described to be genetically altered to behave like savage carniverous beasts, preying on other animals. According to legends and myths, pegafreaks were trained to feast on the flanks of wingless ponies. Any historical article that mentions them is highly classified and the Pegasi have denied all allegations of the pegafreaks' existent, past or present.