Something wrong with the apples.
"Now Twilight, you know how I don't like to ask for help when it comes to matters of the farm."
It took a lot of effort for Applejack to say this simple sentence. Applejack had her hat off, deciding to fiddle with it between her fore-hooves instead. She looked disheveled, worried, and pale, and she kept glancing nervously at the sack strapped to her side. Twilight always saw Applejack as proud and strong. The stalwart head of her family that always knew what to do. She was different now, more akin to the kind of jitters Fluttershy had in her early days. Even when their lives were on the line Applejack was one of the last to lose her cool. To say that it unnerved Twilight that she seemed so scared at this moment would be an understatement.
"Tell me what's happening Applejack. This must be serious if you're shaking the way you are."
Applejack let out a nervous chuckle at that. She looked off into the distance, trying not to make eye contact with Twilight or Spike. She was shaking in her seat. Even her hooves couldn't keep still with how on edge she was. The farm pony breath shuddered as she tried to calm herself down. finally, she allowed herself to start talking.
"It started around a month ago. I had noticed that some of the trees in the south orchard weren't growing quite right. They were twisting themselves in all kinds of weird ways ya see? Everything from their trunks to their branches were being contorted in ways that trees ought not to be growing. I should know, I spent my whole life around them trees."
The shuddering redoubled in Applejacks body as her breath hitched. Her eyes went wider, belying the fact that she was on the verge of giving into panic.
"We Earth Ponies know our trees Twilight. While they can't quite speak like you or I can, they have their own ways of sharing their feelings."
Applejack turned to the princess at this, staring her in the eye from across the table. Twilight could not move or look away from the stare. It was so intense, trying to convey the gravity of her next words.
"My trees are in pain Twilight. They don't want to grow like they have been. It's not natural. They're forced and twisted into these abominable shapes by something I don't understand. It's only getting worse too. Not only the trees, but the apples too."
Applejack pulled out a sack that she had on her side and poured the contents onto the table before the two of them. It was difficult to even call them apples at this point with the way they looked. each one had grown contorted in unsettling ways. Some looked like they were almost limbless torsos of ponies writhing in agony. Frozen in time in the form of fruit. The light didn't reflect off of them right either. Even the light that reflected off of them were wrong. They reflected things that didn't make sense or weren't even close too. like the titles of books from across the room, or even objects Twilight knew were in other parts of the castle. It looked wrong and uncanny, and it caused her wings to ruffle the more she looked at them.
"They won't stop twisting neither. Even while they were in the bag I could feel them moving about in there a small bit. Stretching and growing while I walked over here. It's too slow to watch happen, but we Earth ponies can feel it. If you take y'alls eyes off of them for too long they change frightfully quick. It's... it's when I saw the seeds that I decided to come to you for advice."
She took out a knife from the bag and cut open one of the apples. It took a moment for her to steady her hoof over the skin of the strange fruit before carving into it. Apples usually give off a nice crisp sound when they're cut into. It's the kind of sound you like hearing in the kitchen on a warm summers day, or at a picnic. This was not that sound. It was deeper in pitch and it had a strange Doppler effect. It echoed off strange parts of the room, hitting Twilight's ears in such a way that it made her check behind herself. It was almost like the sound was coiling around the room like a serpent.
The seeds look like effigies of ponies, elongated and writhing in pain. Their black faces were visible with reflected light, screaming out in silent agony. Twilight wanted to play it off like a trick of the mind, but the more she looked at it the more detailed they seemed. They seemed frozen in time, reaching out for help inside of the apple, trying to stop their pain. They even had ears pulled backwards like one did in when a pony experienced sadness or fear.
"There all like that. Every seed looks like ponies trapped in the pits of tartarus itself. When I reach out to them with my magic, I can almost hear their screams in mah head. Granny wants to burn the whole south orchard down before it infects the rest of our trees. I just wanna know why its happening first before we do that. This ain't right Twilight. Nothing about it is."
"I think we should consult Discord about this. Maybe Zecora as well. They would know more about this than I do right now." Twilight couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice when she said that. She was desperately fighting the urge to run out of the castle in the presence of these cursed fruit.
"That might be a good idea. Discord knows about chaos and such. If I didn't know him better I would have thought he'd have done it, but his magic is nowhere near as...evil as all this. He likes to change things for fun, not cause things like this."
"I didn't think it was him either, but he's the closest thing we know of to whatever this is. I have never read anything like this before. "
Out of curiosity, Twilight tried to reach out to one of the apples with her magic, attempting to lift it off the table. The second her magic touched the fruit however she pulled it back and jumped in her seat. She could feel the telekinetic field warping as it touched the apple. Her magical energies felt like they'd caught onto a fishing line, reeling her in before she had managed to break contact.. The short encounter had made her heart race a mile a minute and her breath nearly leave her. Whatever was causing this was active and dangerous to experiment with blindly.
"Lets find those two. We'll get to the bottom of this Applejack, I promise."