Cracking the Elements of Harmony

A warm, diffused light welcomed Applejack to a brand new day as she opened her eyes. The hours from the fall to now had passed in an instant, without dreams or sensations and she found herself in a strange state. She turned her head to the side with all the full force she could muster, yet her head moved slowly, as if held in place by tar. Her eyes followed the head with a slight delay, smudging shapes and drawing nonexistent lines through the hut, as her brain struggled to process the signals coming to it. Even the sounds from outside were slowed down and garbled beyond recognition.

When her eyes stopped to where the head was pointing, she saw terrifying masks moving around on the curved wooden wall in front of her. They were bobbing in random directions, and for a moment she thought one of them had opened its mouth to devour her. The sight took the air out of her lungs, and she felt it passing her nostrils as a current of water, but she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even look away. Then she noticed, with the corner of her eye, a candle’s flame dancing on the shelf and with the same delayed response, her eyes followed her head to take a better look. And it really was dancing, but then so was the shelf itself. She struggled to focus her eyes, but she could see it regardless – the entire room was warping. She couldn’t quite form a coherent thought, but she was wondering if she wasn’t drunk, despite feeling that it was impossible.

She turned her head around to the other side, and saw a glowing window right next to her. Unlike the yellow light of the candles in the hut, this light was coming from the white glare of early morning fog outside. She felt the pang of guilt and terror. It lasted only for a moment, and she didn’t immediately understand what had brought it about - a shout from her subconscious about breaking her word and causing trouble for somepony else by missing an appointment.

The chariot had left without her, the Guards having used up all reasonable excuses to delay their trip back to Canterlot. They were under strict orders not to enter Everfree, so as not to cause suspicion and alert the other Guards in Ponyville – and Princess Celestia a moment later – to their secret mission. Shining had said nothing about what to do if Applejack was not to return in time, what she was doing in the Everfree in the first place, or that she was called Applejack in the first place. As far as they were concerned, they had obeyed their commander to the letter, perhaps even slightly beyond, and now it was time to return to Canterlot. As for who the pony in the box was, what her mission was, or why she wasn’t back at the rendezvous – Canterlot was full of secrets regular Guards had no place to ask about. Especially not in times like these.

Wha… What’s th… this… was the first thought she managed. With every tiny move of her head, her vision cleared ever so slightly and she could now see the outlines of shrubs poking through the fog past the window. Even her movement was improving, and she wasted no time in using her improved abilities to look around. She was back at Zecora’s hut, there was no doubt about that, but the fire under the cauldron had been extinguished. The un-burnt pieces of wood under it suggested the fire hadn’t merely died out. But the rest was normal. Or as normal as anything could be after she had fallen asleep so suddenly and awoke on – she looked down and saw Zecora’s bed beneath her. But there was also something else.

Her legs were wrapped up, the hooves hiding below the cover. She suddenly remembered how the previous night had ended, the memory forcing her mouth into a cringe and her heart to pound. How bad the damage to her legs was, she couldn’t know, but one thing was preventing her from biting the bright white gauzes that made up the dressing. There were bloody imprints on the bed below her, the blood long hardened. Yet the cloth was new. The realization that Zecora had taken care of her throughout the night coincided with the memory of what was in the cauldron and she felt the hairs on her back shooting up. But as they did, she realized that she was only now starting to feel that she had legs. Her entire lower body was slowly coming back from a state of numbness she didn’t know she had. She looked around, listening carefully for any approaching hoofsteps, as she regained her body. Then the progress stopped.

At the tips of her forelegs, a squeezing sensation was numbing her hooves, as if they were trapped under large, blunt tweezers. At the hind legs, a strange tingling sensation was growing from her flank all the way to her hooves, where the same numbing sensation appeared. Only here, the tingles of what felt like hundreds of ants walking over the length of her legs took priority over the numbness. She turned back. The wrapping on her hind legs covered up her cutie mark, a few strips of bandages even wrapped around her lower back, just in front of the tail, to help hold it all up. Her legs ended at the dark-yellow bedcover that was haphazardly rolled against the wall at the edge of the bed. She carefully moved her leg in a brushing motion to untangle it from the cover.

Wha…

She stared at her leg for a good minute as every muscle in her body contracted. Her lungs were suddenly squeezed tight and a taste of bile spread over her tongue. She swallowed it back. Then her heart started beating ever faster, forcing her into a state of frozen motion. Powerful trembles traveled from her head to her legs as every fiber of her body wanted her to escape the bed she was laying on while keeping her confined there at the same time. The sound of her teeth chattering was the only thing echoing through her mind as it fought to stop the truth from reaching it. The gauzes ended at the knees, right where the hocks should have started. Only the gauzes tapered down at that point.

“AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” Applejack could no longer hold back the tears or the scream. At that point, keeping quiet from Zecora was as much of a priority as contemplating her next breakfast. She screamed for as long as she could, already seeing flashes before her eyes of everything that she would miss from now on. No more apple bucking, no more plowing, no more seeding, no more farm work at all – the very work that helped keep her family barely above the line of poverty. It was only when she ran out of breath, when she stopped the scream and forced air into her lungs, that were now being squeezed to the point of crushing pain, that she thought about the simplest thing she would miss – walking, trotting, jumping, running for victory in the Running of the Leaves. And as soon as she thought of that, she let out a new scream, tears blinding her vision.

Hyperventilating and exhausted, Applejack finally stopped screaming after a few minutes. She was still looking at her hind legs, only now the terror and sadness of her loss were slowly being replaced by worry and hate. The thought of how she would now live on the farm was responsible for the first emotion. There was no way for Big Mac to do all the work himself, but the fear went far beyond the lack of her contribution. From the provider, she would now be reduced to a dependant, unable to work but needing to eat and sleep under the same roof nonetheless. The first traces of thought about how the family would secretly look at her were starting to form. The hate was obvious, though. It was meant for Zecora, who was responsible for that turn of events. For the zebra who had taken her legs, who had mauled Rarity and who had killed Fluttershy. Quite what was going to become of Pinkie Pie, nopony knew. When the hate built up to the point of crushing all other emotions, Applejack hissed through clenched teeth, “No.”

The word contained a rebuttal to every scenario of death that had passed before her eyes, for every sight of begging for help and for the question looming in the back of her mind, Will I die here?

With the cold streaks of tears pressing against her face like dull blades of knives, she rose up, putting most of her weight on her flattened-out forelegs. Then, she slowly swung the back of her body around, to the very edge of the bed, making sure to glide her hind legs along the cutie mark on her right side so as to not any pressure at all on the tips where her legs ended. Once in position, she looked down to the floor below. It wasn’t high by any standards, Zecora seemingly happy to sleep closer to the ground than any pony Applejack knew, but in her current state, she felt as if the drop was a cliff face. If she wanted to leave quietly, there was only one way down – to drop her legs sideways on the ground and then climb down from the bed with her forelegs.

The bed creaked ever so slightly as Applejack followed through with her plan, looking at the floor the whole time. It took every muscle in her body to gently and slowly lower herself down, but years of apple bucking had strengthened her back and her legs. She tensed up even more just before her rear touched the ground, as she expected pain at that moment. A gentle breath escaped her as the pain didn’t arrive. She looked back to the bed, where her forelegs were resting, having been freed from under the cover by the motions she was making. Then she stopped moving.

The bandages on her forelegs were as expertly wrapped as the ones on the back were, but that wasn’t the only similarity. They didn’t end as abruptly as the ones at the back, but the bandages wrapped up slightly too soon and slightly too narrowly at the bottom of her legs, right where the hoof would be. The feeling of the blunt pressure returned and she pointed her left leg toward herself. At the bottom of the wrapping, there grew a fresh dark stain, and the first drops of blood soon formed on the surface. And it was only with the stain that she clearly saw the round shape of the bone below the bandage, the blood pooling all around it, creating a dark round circle, before finally covering it as well.

On some subconscious level, she knew that, if she started thinking about it now, she would scream until her voice would disappear. She knew that she most likely wouldn’t make another move, if the episode with her hind legs repeated herself, and that she would collapse to the floor from the overwhelming mix of terror for what had been done to her, and indifference for living on as she was. Fighting to live, her mind blocked out all thoughts and changed her condition into a mere picture, to be looked at, rather than lived. An obstacle to overcome in a dream.

She slowly put her right foreleg on the ground, in the same way as it had been on the bed to avoid any unnecessary stress, and then the other. A part of her wanted to stay on the ground, just like that, for a few moments, to catch her breath, but the drive to escape overwhelmed that. The only way out was to drag herself out of the cottage and the forest, using the whole lower part of her forelegs as hooves, and she wasn’t about to waste a second. She again shifted her weight forward and started crawling to the door, her rear dragging along the ground.

News of Applejack’s disappearance finally reached Shining Armor. Twilight, who had been waiting close by the landing spot, hiding in the shadow of a massive pillar, knew even as the two Guards stepped to the ground that something had gone wrong. By the time the first few words were spoken, before she even made out the distraught expression on Shining’s face as he was told Applejack wasn’t there, she was already galloping to the chariot. The need for secrecy was taking a second seat to the need to save her friend.

“Where is she?!” Twilight shouted mid-gallop, and the three ponies in front of her turned their heads to her, two in wonder, and one in fear. Before any of them could think of an answer, and before Twilight had stopped, they suddenly looked up, toward the castle behind her. Twilight was already slowing down when she caught their gaze, and followed it herself, only to see a colorful shadow fly overhead, followed immediately by the sound of hooves hitting the ground. She wasn’t the only one who was watching Applejack’s arrival.

“What happened?!” Rainbow Dash asked Shining with a threatening voice, as if he was to blame for the empty carriage.

One of the Guards wanted to tell her to move away, that she was interrupting official matters, but Shining responded before he could do that. “I don’t know.” He returned the tone given to him then turned right back to the Guards, ignoring Twilight entirely. “Strap yourselves back in! Take me-” He had wanted to say, “To the tower,” where he would tell Celestia what had happened, but not before giving the Guards orders to call together the platoon in Ponyville to scour the Everfree, trotting one pony wide if need be. He no longer cared about the consequences for his actions, the only thought now going through his mind being that of saving Applejack, if it was still possible. But he never got to say it, as Twilight took to the sky, Rainbow Dash following suit.

“WAIT!” he shouted at them, but the words barely registered in their minds. He wanted to scream from the pain of seeing Twilight fly off into the pink-colored sky around Canterlot. He wanted to scream from the pain of sending Applejack to her death and of every other failure he had had in the last days. He had failed to uphold his pledge to Celestia, he had failed to discover who was hunting down his friends. He had failed to stand up to Twilight, even if it would have meant anger and pain from her side, and he had failed to stop them from leaving at this very moment. An urgent need gripped his heart; the need to followed them right now. The need to land wherever they would land and run alongside them, underneath them, whatever it would take, until they found Applejack. Only one thing was stopping him. If he left Canterlot, the force field would collapse immediately, exposing all inside to whatever was waiting for them outside. And that was the one thing he would not fail at.

The chariot lifted from the ground, Shining shouting orders against all codes of conduct at the closest Pegasi, that weren’t pulling his chariot, to fly down to Ponyville and to the Everfree, before continuing to the tower where the princess slept. In those few seconds, Twilight and Rainbow had just pierced the pink bubble, ripples forming in their wake. Rainbow took the lead as the more experienced flyer. The white shine of fog over the Everfree made a direct route impossible, so she looked at Ponyville in the distance and instantly plotted the fastest route, past all the troublesome air currents she knew were on the way. White clouds, moving rapidly and randomly across the sky in front of her signaled a difficult journey, but she didn’t even have to look back at Twilight to know that the princess would follow behind, copying her every move. Behind them, the Guards were taking flight as well.

“Ugh.” Applejack was crawling through the soggy dirt of the ground beyond Zecora’s hut. She had crawled all the way through the hut, one pull of a foreleg at a time, wondering with each movement if she was going to stumble and strike a hoof or a stump against the hard floor below. She had gone past the stairs, her hind legs bouncing ever so slightly as she descended, pain arriving in rhythmic jolts. She had taken a wide detour around the shaft, for fear that the trap door hadn’t broken completely, and was merely waiting for her to finish the job. And now, here she was, plowing with her legs and muzzle through the leaves on the ground, sinking into the mud just enough to slow her down and force additional effort from her body. Every now and then, she did stumble, as she did just now, her right foreleg slipping, the stump where her hoof used to be hitting a patch of harder ground.

The fog had only intensified since she first saw it at the doorway. It now consumed shrubs, trees, and even sound, the noises of yesterday seemingly silenced by the gentle white blanket. But Applejack knew where to go. She had been to Zecora’s enough times to know the path by heart, and she just kept going, despite the occasional pain, despite the eerie silence around her. For a moment, she thought about the Elements of Harmony, hidden away in the Tree of Harmony somewhere nearby. She thought about how the sounds of yesterday, that drove her to gallop to the hut and jump right past the trap, had probably come from Zecora herself, not some monstrous animal, as their sightings had been decreasing ever since the Tree had been brought back to life. Then she thought about how the fear had delayed the inevitable just long enough for her to see the contents of the cauldron and how empty the hut had been in the morning.

She stopped and listened. Then she rose up to her forelegs, as much as she could, and looked around. There was nothing to see, but the trees disappearing into the fog all around her. There was nothing to hear, but the beating of her heart. And then she realized that she had done exactly what Zecora had wanted her to do. In the hut, she stood a fighting chance and a brisk rescue once Shining would learn of her absence. In the middle of the Everfree, on the other hoof… She looked down. The poorly-formed path was still there. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then the first sound pierced the silence, the sound of a twig snapping. And then another one.

With a slow movement, as if the act would slow down time to give her more time to think, she looked in the direction of the sound, but the only thing she could see was the fog and the outlines of two trees directly in her field of vision, yet far enough to be partially obscured. She kept looking at the space between them, her ears scanning in all directions to hear the approach of any creatures from behind, but the sounds didn’t stop. Instead of the random noises of yesterday, they were coming from between those two trees and only intensifying with each passing second. Without even realizing it, she turned her whole body in that direction, to face the threat head on. Running was a practical impossibility anyway.

The outline appeared first. It was the shape of a large creature she couldn’t immediately recognize; too large for a wolf, too segmented for a bear; the rounded shape sprouting protrusions from its sides and top. The glowing eyes appeared second, a yellow shine so often seen in cats. She widened her eyes in response. She wanted to whisper, Manticore, but the fear of being heard kept the whisper in her mind. Despite the deliberately slow steps of a cat toying with its pray, she maintained hope that the creature hadn’t seen her yet. And then the manticore came out of the fog, eyes glaring directly into her own, and mouth watering at the sight of a fresh meal. She moved her eyes away, and glanced around her for any weapons to use – a well-placed stone to the eye would buy her some time – and that’s when the beast pounced, wings spread and poisonous tail lifted in preparation for attack.

Applejack leaned slightly to the side and crossed her forelegs over her head as much as she could, her mind scrambling to form a more coherent defensive technique, and her body tightening up in expectation of the pain. She knew a single sting could mean paralysis and more, she knew a slash of its claws could go straight through her entrails, and she knew its weight was enough to crush her ribs. But the manticore didn’t use any of those weapons. It lunged straight at her forelegs and tore at them with its blade-like teeth. The lower parts of Applejack’s legs snapped like twigs, before the first scream escaped from her mouth, the manticore’s teeth slicing with ease through the thin layer of hardened muscles around the bones, then continuing through them as well. But the manticore didn’t tear them off. Instead, it released its grip and moved away, leaving the lower parts of her forelegs dangling by the skin it had not sliced.

As stifled scream escaped her lungs as she pressed herself to the ground, desperately trying to move her head away from it. Her heightened state of awareness made sure she received even the tiniest signal from the world around her, and Applejack felt every fiber brake, every muscle tear and every tendon snap. She felt the fires burning under her skin in clusters, as nerves sent out cries for help, blood smearing all over her face. She twisted in agony, trying to make herself as small a target as possible, but the manticore took that to its advantage. Having broken her legs, it moved swiftly around her, swiping its paws at random parts of her body; a swipe across her head, a stab at her back forcing her to twitch about in response. Then it stopped and Applejack peered through her shut eyelids, through the sharp shapes of her broken limbs, for the first time since the first bite. She saw only two things; the jagged edges of the broken bones, covered by a stream of blood, slicing through the muscles, flesh and fur in front of her, and the manticore’s eyes. She saw it slowly moving around her, so as to face her head-on. It was lowering its head as it walked, wanting to see her suffering up close, a row of blood stained teeth showing the smile that told her it was enjoying every moment of it.

The look of victory in its eyes was enough to give her a new dose of energy, albeit one that had a single purpose. There was nothing but numbness in her limbs as she backpedaled as fast as she could, the halved legs slipping on the leaves and mud below her then digging in to slow her down further. The effort on her side was monumental, the effect minimal. The manticore gracefully followed her, knowing that this was one meal that wouldn’t get away. The knowledge allowed it to indulge the lion’s side of its mentality, to playfully kill the damaged pony. Applejack crawled back as far as her legs would take her, her mind racing to find an escape plan, but the loss of blood was proving too much. She stumbled as a drunk to the ground, her body no longer obeying her as it should. Then her muscles refused to lift her back up – a clear sign for the manticore that the fun had ended.

The manticore approached and casually swept a paw at Applejack’s head to force her to the ground and gain easier access to her neck. The force of the strike and the impact of her head against the ground dazed her. By the time she managed to open her eyes, the beast had already placed a paw on the side of her head, just behind her eye and under her ear, pinning her down with just enough force to stabilize her. Applejack had no more resistance to give, her body lying on the ground as a wet rag, but still she opened her eyes, tears flowing from them. Escape was no longer an option, but she at least wanted to see what it was doing. Pain was no longer a concern, but she wanted to know how she would go.

Already flexing its legs for the next step, the manticore suddenly stopped and jerked its head upwards; listening in to sounds Applejack couldn’t hear and releasing some force it was putting on her. She turned her eye to see what the beast was doing and at the same moment, with an urgency she had not seen from it, it looked down at her, determination visible in its face in place of content. Applejack held her breath, knowing that this was where she was going to die and prepared for anything the beast would do, when something happened that halted her surrender. No longer feeling her body and no longer disturbed by the sight in front of her, there was now only one thing keeping her connected to the world, and that sense picked up a faint echo. In a split second, just as the manticore was preparing to swoop down to her neck, Applejack’s ears had registered the distinct sound of hooves hitting the forest floor in rapid succession. The instant left her with just enough time to carry out the only possible act of self-defense.

Drawing from unknown reserves of strength, Applejack turned her head under the loose grip of the manticore’s paw and bit down on one of its claws with all the strength she could find. She felt her teeth dig into its flesh, down to the bone, but no further, and in that instant, the manticore pulled its paw away. Hair and stripes of flesh remained buried behind her teeth, but the victory was short lived. More annoyed than hurt, the manticore swooped down on her in revenge, only not on her neck, but her head. Its teeth caught her muzzle, sinking into the jaw and her tongue from below and down on her nose from above. She didn’t have the time to realize what the beast was doing before it bit down, hard. Her jawbone shattered as the teeth passed through it, as did the upper part of her muzzle. When the two rows of teeth finally met, they held within their grip most of Applejack’s mouth and nose, and a large part of her tongue. The manticore pulled its head back to tear the chunk away and spat it out, but didn’t continue the attack – the echoes of hooves had grown too loud, but it was the occasional flapping of the wings that really scared the beast.

As the manticore took one final look at the meal it was going to lose, before running back to the trees from whence it came, it retracted its tail back - the venom would serve a better purpose another day. Applejack’s vision was colored with a thick layer of red, forcing her eyelashes to twitch in an automatic response to rid the eyes of the intrusion. Blood poured from the gaping wound on her head, down into her throat, to her lungs and outward at the same time, all over her head and the ground below it. As the first stream of blood reached her lungs, her body strained from the violent coughs that followed, spewing blood all around her in sprays, but more blood filled her lungs. She fought to keep her eyes open, pulling against the desire of her body to shut down from the stress, and as she was about to lose the battle, she heard the unmistakable voice of Rainbow Dash scream from somewhere behind.

“There!”