Applejack woke when she heard an unfamiliar voice suddenly taunting her.

"Say pal, you don't look so good," the voice chided in an almost musical tone.

Applejack tried to stand and see who was talking to her, but her entire body felt like lead and refused to move. She had never felt half as sore as she did now, despite having worked on a farm her whole life. That didn't mean she wasn't putting her all into at least opening her eyes. She did managed to briefly open an eye and catch the blurry sight of two hooves in front of her. Was the speaker black or grey?

"You better find something to eat before night." Applejack felt a shiver run down her spine. The voice was mocking her in the same, condescending way that Discord had, but lacked the draconequus' usual mirth.

Applejack's body was starting to lighten and she no longer felt like the ground was trying to buck her off, yet when she managed to crack her eyes open she only managed to catch the faint outline of the speaker before her eyes closed again. He was a fairly tall unicorn, but something was off about him.

"After all." the voice paused.

Again Applejack struggled to open her eyes, even a single eye would be enough. She just wanted to know where she was, who this pony standing before her was, and finding out how she got here would be nice too.

"We wouldn't want you to starve now would we my little pony?" the voice laughed just in front of Applejack's face.

Applejack's eyes fluttered open revealing the stallions face, the sight made her breath catch in her throat. The stallion's face was inches away from her own as he glared down at her with cruel eyes that simply oozed malevolence. The stallion's sharp curved horn was pressing right up against her own forehead, she shuddered as she felt the cold dark magic crackling across it. What unnerved her the most was the wide, cruel smile fixed to the stallion's face as he chuckled at Applejack's fear. The same wide smile she'd seen various predators flash when they believed they had cornered prey.

Then with a slight pop, and a small puff of black smoke, the stallion was gone and Applejack found herself very much alone in the middle of a grassy field. She struggled for breath as she pushed herself to her hooves, the weight on her body having almost disappeared with the stallion. She quickly spun around searching for the sinister stallion half expecting him to reappear and trying finish her off while she was still confused.

Yet no attack came. She just stood in a large empty field in the early morning sunlight as the wind rolled across the plains and a couple of rabbits peered at her curiously from behind a patch of tall grass.

"Now where'd you get off to you sneaky long horn?" Applejack muttered as she continued to scan the field for any sign of the stallion. Minutes passed and Applejack failed to find hide nor hair of the slippery unicorn. Slowly she began to loosen up confident that the unicorn was not about to come back. "Darn creep, sure hope he didn't do anything unseemly ta me while I was out."

Suddenly concerned Applejack set about checking herself for anything obviously wrong. She was surprised to find that she looked and felt perfectly fine. Her coat was clean and tidy, her mane was still in the neat pony tail she always did it up in, and she couldn't find so much as a scratch on any part of her body. Even the stiffness that had paralyzed her during the stallion's speech had faded to nothing leaving her feeling fresh and ready for a hard day's work. This did not have the calming effect it should have had on her.

"What the hay is going on?" Applejack quietly murmured as she pondered the mystery.

She knew she had been foalnapped, it was the only thing that made sense after having woken up at the hooves of a mysterious stallion in the middle of no where. Yet she would expect to feel the after effects of whatever he had used to knock her out, her mane and coat would probably be a mess, and she wouldn't have been surprised to have had rope burns on her legs. Yet she was fresh and clean as the morning dew with her mind so clear she felt she could match Twilight in a battle of wits, heck she was even still wearing her favorite Stetson. So why couldn't she remember how she'd gotten here or who that greasy stallion that had greeted her was?

Applejack fell back onto her haunches as she massaged her temples trying to get her brain to remember how she'd ended up in this mess. She remembered that she had been at Twilight's house helping talk the girl through her latest panic attack brought on by her new royal duties. She'd calmed the girl down and headed over to Sugarcube Corner with Twilight for some snacks and tea when Pinkie had dragged them both into a party to celebrate the birthday of Angel Bunny. Applejack had partied with her friends for a couple of hours before excusing herself to head home and help her family in the fields while the sun was still out. Then nothing. Just a brief stretch of blackness and her waking up here.

Had she been attacked? Put to sleep with a spell and secretly transported to some strange field in the middle of who-knew-where? Had the experience been purged from her mind with a memory spell? Was even half of those things even possible? Applejack sighed, this was starting to sound like one of the adventure novels Rainbow Dash liked so much.

Applejack shook her head deciding it didn't do her any good to sit there pondering how she got here, she just needed to get home. As it was she'd already burned a large amount of time simply trying to think about her situation instead of dealing with it. And the best way to deal with this situation and find out where she was was to explore. Promptly choosing to set off to the west, Applejack soon stopped by a patch of tall grass. She wasn't particularly hungry, but the stallion's words where still ringing in her head.

"Find food before nightfall huh? Well that's going to be mighty easy with all this grass growing around here, might as well sample a bit." Applejack grabbed a mouthful of the grass and chewed about three times before she spat it back out, "Bleah! I'd have to be starving to be willing to eat that stuff."

Admittedly Applejack was never a fan of the taste of grass, but this stuff was so bitter as to be all but inedible. She sampled some of the regularly length grass at her hooves hoping to wash out the taste of the tall grass only to find it tasted worse, leaving her retching.

"Okay maybe it won't be quiet that easy," Applejack spat out a bit of the taste still stubbornly clung to her tongue, "Sure hope something in this place is edible."

Applejack spent her next hour sampling bits of various plants trying to find something that didn't make her sick to her stomach. She found the flowers growing sporadically through the field to be tasty enough, but woefully unfilling. The trees scattered about all seemed to be pine trees, and while some ponies might claim to enjoy the taste of pine trees and their cones, Applejack found both repugnant. She eventually came to a berry covered bush she had been avoiding due to the bright red berries growing on it, she really hoped they weren't poisonous. She timidly sampled a few and found them delicious, tasting somewhere between strawberries and cherries. Applejack picked five of the bushes clean of berries so she'd have them to eat later.

With food taken care of, Applejack resumed her westward exploration of the plains. In less than half an hour, Applejack began to notice a change in the smell of the air and hear distant crashing sound. The air became wetter and the smell of salt quickly began to overwhelm the smell of the grasses and pines. While birds still sang and danced about, they were rapidly drowned out by the sounds of pounding surf. As such Applejack wasn't surprised when she came to a cliff overlooking the ocean.

This confirmed her initial suspicion that she'd been transported somewhere far away from Ponyville. She really hoped this didn't mean she was on some deserted island in the middle of nowhere, it would fit with all the clichés she found herself in at the moment. Ponynapped, unable to remember how she got here, unicorn using dark magic, trapped on a deserted island, all she needed now was for a buff stallion to sweep her off her hooves and she'd have the whole set.

She needed to stop reading those trashy romance novels when she got home.

Shaking herself out the train of though, Applejack examined the ocean beneath the cliff wondering if she might be able to make a raft and sail away if this was indeed an island. She highly doubted it after a mere second of examining the waters.

The ocean was raging violently against the cliff side as if the sheer cliffs had insulted the ocean's mother. The cliffs themselves were little better being almost impossibly vertical and made slick by the waves, she'd never be able to climb down the cliff much less get any kind of water craft she could possibly make down there. She sighed and turned to walk north along the cliffs in hopes of finding a place where she might actually have a chance of building a boat or something if this did turn out to be a deserted island. Or better yet finding a small coastal town that could tell her where she was an point her back home

Two hours of walking revealed that something was wrong with this island. Applejack didn't know much about oceans, but she was fairly sure normal ocean waves wouldn't twist themselves to slam as violently as possible against the sheer cliffs. Not only the waves, but the cliffs themselves seemed to always be at least thirty meters high while being all strangely smooth and slick. She would have expected at least one part of the cliffs to somewhat climbable at some point along the sea. Yet the cliffs ahead seemed just as imposing and impossible as all those she'd seen so far. She debated turning away from the cliffs and exploring plains again, but she didn't see any signs of a high hill or mountain anywhere, which seemed off to her.

Now that she looked inland, she noticed that while the plains seemed almost completely flat, the ground did rise and fall gently giving her only a few hundred meters of sight before a slight high rise cut off her view from the rest of the land. She could see a what looked like a small forest in the distance, something she should probably avoid that if it turned out to be anything like the Everfree, yet the land was devoid of the usual anomalies one would find scattered about. No large rocks, no rivers, no roads, and no rising smoke to show a weary traveler the way towards civilization.

Applejack took the time to sit down and much on some of the berries she'd collected as she pondered what she should do. She still didn't know whether this was an island or simply ocean front property along the Equestrian coast line. She could follow these cliffs until she reached a river or some form of civilization, and possibly end up following the cliffs for weeks or months without finding a thing. Or she could try heading inland to find some kind of civilization or something that might help her survive or tell her where she was. Yet that could easily lead to her wandering these rolling hills until she starved or died of dehydration.

Applejack grimaced, she really didn't like the idea of either direction, they both held risk with no promise of any pay off. She didn't want to be on this island any longer than she had to be, she was needed back home. Applebloom was still to young to do much work on the farm and Big Macintosh wasn't nearly enough to work the farm on his own. Granny and Applejack's friends might help him, but Granny was too old to work all day and the girls had their own lives to live off the farm. She knew that they'd be able to manage a few days without her, but she had no idea how long she had been out. What if it had been weeks or months? No, she had to stop thinking like that, she had to trust in her family and friends to be able to manage the farm without her for until she could get home or her friends could find her. For now she had to focus on the here and now if she wanted a chance to get back home.

Applejack sighed wiping the berry juice off her mouth with the back of her hoof before standing. She walked along the edge of the cliff, still being careful not to walk too close to the edge while keeping an eye out for anything that might help her. She figured that at least sticking to the cliffs she wouldn't have to be worried about getting any more lost than she already was. At least in any normal place that would be the case, but this place was constantly showing in dozens of little ways that it wasn't normal.

As if to prove her point, a large bunny saw Applejack approaching and ran away from her screaming bloody murder causing another bunny to raise its head and watch Applejack nervously. Applejack paused to ponder this, sure bunnies were always nervous around ponies they'd never seen before, but these bunnies were acting like she was a predator intent on eating them. But what kind of insane pony would ever even consider eating a bunny?

Wait, those weren't bunnies. Applejack gazed back at the animal that was still watching her nervously. The thing sure looked like a bunny at first, but she noticed that the thing's eyes were orbs of white and the thing had two tiny horns growing from its head. Applejack blinked moving close trying to get a better look at the critter, but seeing her approach the thing screamed and ran to its hole disappearing from sight. Applejack trotted over to the hole and gazed down knowing the thing would be hidden deep below the ground out of sight. Yet she couldn't help but stare curiously down the hole and ask the air, "What in tarnation was that?"

Applejack shook her head, she had to keep focused. She couldn't let herself get distracted by a couple of curious critters when she was trying to find her way home. But they did remind her of the oddness of the place. Heck even the air felt odd here. The air seemed heavy and ever so slightly unfriendly in someway that she couldn't quiet put her hoof on. It was like the air in the Everfree forest except that it was even thicker and more unfriendly. It gave Applejack the uncomfortable feeling that she was being followed, stalked, hunted.

She tried to tell herself it was nothing, that she was alone in this place. After all she'd seen no sign of anypony or anything bigger than a few crows and those bunny looking things since she'd arrived here. Aside from that one unicorn stallion, if that stallion could even be called a unicorn. Applejack shuddered at the memory of the unicorn; everything about his face had screamed evil and cruelty, to the point he seemed more akin to monsters like changelings and windigos than ponies. A sudden thought occurred to her as she thought back to how those bunny-things, had reacted to her.

What if the unicorn ate meat? What if he was hunting her now?

Applejack looked behind her trotting just a bit faster as her ears began to flick nervously worrying that the unicorn would appear next to her and try to bite into her neck. She began to trot faster. What would she be able to do against a unicorn like him? He seemed to have had brought her here without her even remembering it, if he caught her would she even be able to fight against him? She began to trot faster. He had dark magic and the same cruel horn as Sombra and the changelings, if this guy was even half as strong as Sombra, who had survived fighting Luna and Celestia, then what could she do against him? Applejack broke into a run.

Applejack ran faster than she had in the Running of the Leaves, she ran filled with blind terror from the fact she had been ponynapped by a unicorn brimming with dark magic. She ran because she had no idea where she was, how she had gotten there, or how she would escape. She ran because she knew that she was alone and helpless before a possibly pony-eating monster that she was sure was chasing her.

Applejack skidded to a stop when she felt something fly off her head. Looking back as she gasped for breath, she noticed her Stetson had been knocked off by a low branch from one of the many pine trees that made up the forest she was now in. Walking over to pick up the Stetson Applejack quietly cursed herself for acting like a scared little filly. She was the Element of Honesty for Celestia's sake. She'd faced down evil unicorns, monsters, and crazed gods before and walked away. What was one more evil monster, even if this one she'd be facing alone.

Applejack flipped her Stetson onto her head and took a deep calming breath before looking around the forest she now found herself in. It seemed to be composed entirely of pine trees all close enough to make moving through them messy but not close enough to really slow her down. At a guess she would say it was the same forest she had spotted before her panicked, and rather embarrassing, flight. Since she'd been sticking to the cliffs even during her panic, that meant that she'd already started to loop around on herself. Did that mean she really was on an island? Or simply a very narrow peninsula? Sadly only more exploring was going to answer that question.

Applejack pushed her way through the trees making sure to keep a hoof on her hat to prevent it from falling off again a was stunned that mere minutes later she was back on the rolling plains. She had expected to be in the forest for hours despite its apparently small size, just how long had she been running? A quick glance at the sky showed her that the sun was already beginning to set behind the horizon. She'd spent nearly half the day running like a mad mare and had hardly noticed it. She wondered at this, she had always been in good shape, but she'd never been able to maintain a sprint for hours on end, much less doing so without feeling like manure afterwards. Applejack sighed shaking her head again writing it off as a mixture of fear and being in better shape than she gave herself credit for. It was only one more slightly odd thing about this place, she should probably stop being surprised by it.

Her attention was brought back to her surrounding by her stomach rumbling quietly with hunger. It had been hours since she had last eaten and she hadn't had anything to eat but a few berries all day. She reached for some of the berries she'd collected only to notice that they'd fallen off her back at some point during her run. She scolded herself for wasting food before spotting another conveniently nearby bush full of berries. Trotting over Applejack began to snack on the berries and wonder over what she should do for food. She couldn't depend on conveniently places bushes of berries forever. She still planned to be gone in a few days, but a pony can get mighty hungry after a few days without anything to eat.

As she finished of the last few berries off the bush the sun finally vanished behind the horizon making the plains Applejack stood in suddenly turn pitch black.

"Golly it gets dark here." Applejack muttered to herself. She lifted her hoof in front of her face and found she couldn't even see it. How was she going to continue exploring with it being this dark? Heck she could easily tumble off the edge of a cliff and die in this darkness. She didn't want to stop for the night yet, but she might not have a choice with how dark it is.

Then from the darkness came a snarl that quickly turned to an angry hiss.

"The hay was that?" Applejack yelped suddenly feeling her earlier fear creeping back into her. Realizing that she was a breath from becoming a scared filly again, Applejack straightened her back and set her face in a scowl. She was not going to let this unicorn turn her into a scared filly again, she was to proud and stubborn for that. She opened her mouth to tell the stallion off. Then something attacked her.

Applejack felt something tear deep into her side like a trio of knives that had been sharpened to a razor's edge and heated in a fire and her breath caught as it felt like some terrible serpent coated in blades was tearing through her throat. She screamed out in pain as she collapsed to the ground clutching her guts, sobbing quietly at the intense pain. She felt her charred, horribly rent flesh, how deep the cuts were how raw her insides felt. She was lucky to have survived such and attack.

The last of Applejack's courage vanished as she heard that awful twisted snarl again. Terror overwhelmed pain as she leapt back to her hooves and ran for all she was worth through the darkness hoping to outdistance her unseen attacker. But as the snarl turned to a hiss Applejack could still hear it coming closer for a killing blow. Applejack ran through a patch a fireflies who scattered at her intrusion and looked behind her hoping to see her attack in their light and maybe get one good buck in before the monster cleaved her in two. She was surprised when instead she heard the hissing stop as the fireflies scattered into the night.

Applejack briefly wondered if she'd somehow escaped the monster when she heard the snarl once more turning to a hiss. She bolted hoping she could somehow someway find a way to escape this monster that was chasing her, somehow she had briefly escaped it, but it was on her again. This thing seemed to to have stopped chasing her when she ran through the fireflies, maybe it feared them for some reason. But there was no more fireflies that she could see and judging by the hissing the creature was about a heartbeat away from killing her.

Applejack braced for the horrible pain of flaming knives ripping her apart when the ground suddenly seemed to fall out from beneath her hooves. Applejack yelped as she was enveloped in a slimy wet darkness. She felt herself squeezed and propelled through the wet darkness despite her best efforts to slow herself as she was rocketed towards her unknown destination. Applejack had no idea where she was but it was scary, vile, and disgusting. She wanted out.

And suddenly she was, ejected into the cool night air where she landed face first on a patch of grass. Applejack spat the bits of slime out of here mouth and tried to wipe her face off with a hoof trying not to imagine how much gunk was clinging to her coat. She thought that Rarity might well faint if she looked even half as messy as she felt at the moment.

"That might be the most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced," Applejack groaned rising to her hooves. But at least she was away from that monster.

As if summoned by her thoughts Applejack once more heard the snarl already starting to morph into an angry hiss, just how persistent was this thing? Applejack whirled and saw something that made her heart soar. Clusters of fireflies. Dozens of them danced in the field. Applejack ran towards them hearing the creature closing in behind her.

She leapt into the nearest cluster feeling the thing brush her hoof as she did so. She landed hard gasping for breath dizzy in the giddiness of finally being safe from that horrible monster and being able to see again in the faint lights cast by the dozens of dancing fireflies. Yet she might not be safe yet, things were getting darker, was she about to faint from her injuries?

No, she realized looking about her, it was getting darker because the fireflies she was using for shelter were scattering away from her leaving her in the dark. Which was what the thing was waiting for. It once more announced it's presence with a snarl speeding in towards Applejack from the dark. Applejack leapt to her hooves and raced to the next dense swarm of fireflies just ahead of the horror that hunted her.

This continued for hours, Applejack finding brief solace in the light of the fireflies as she struggled against the pain of her injury. And every time the fireflies tired of granting her sanctuary she would be force to run once more into the dark chased by a horror that she could not see and only continued to grow more horrible in Applejack's tired mind. Applejack soon begin to beg the fireflies to stay and protect her from the beast, but her pleas feel deaf on their ears leaving her alone in the dark with her hunter. Until at last Applejack lay crouched in the last cluster of fireflies tired, weak, and desperate.

"Please," she beseeched the fireflies around her, "Please don't leave me alone in this darkness with that thing, I'll give ya anything yall want. Please just don't leave me." The fireflies shunned her and began to scatter. "Please!" Applejack tried to grab the specks of light with her hooves to hold them close so that they might protect her, "Please don't leave me!"

It was useless. Applejack was left in the darkness and her hunter was already announcing its approach. There were no more fireflies to shelter her, and even if there was, she was too tired and worn out from spending the night and day running. Her side felt like it was burning, her legs were once more made of immovable lead, and her mind was filled with the uselessness of continuing to flee from this creature. She lowered her head in surrender, tears rolling down her face as she mentally apologized to her friends, Granny Smith, her brother, and her little sister. It looked like she wouldn't be able to make home to them after all.

The hissing was right in her ears and Applejack could feel the black ethereal presence of something in the dark surrounding her. She tensed waiting for the monster's horrible talons to tear her apart, only to wait on in silence. She waited wandering if the creature refused to kill her if she was not running, was it so cruel as to taunt her before killing her?

"What are ya waiting fer?" Applejack shouted, "If yer gonna kill me just do it already."

Still no attack came and Applejack cracked open her eyes expecting the impenetrable darkness of night or maybe some horrible glowing eyes glaring at her. Instead she saw a wide green meadow in the shining rays of an early morning sun. She was alone in the grassy plains, no signs of the terrible thing that had been chasing her. Just her and the wonderful rays of Celestia's glorious sun.

Applejack collapsed onto her belly and openly wept. She cried out of terror from what she had experienced that whole horrible night. She cried in rage over how useless she'd been, running in terror. But mostly, she cried with the wondrous Celestia sent relief that, somehow, she was still alive. She had survived her first hellish night in this terrible place. She had survived.

Author's Note

Name: Applejack

Nickname: The Honest
Motto: Ain't nothing like a hard day in the field!

Sanity: 200
Health: 150
Hunger: 150
Melee damage: x1.0
Perk: Can work a farm, Really likes her Hat
Special items: Trusty Stetson

Deaths: 0