1 Discovering the Way

The sun was shining and the birds were singing in the trees as the slow breeze wafted through the branches of Sweet Apple Acres. Not a cloud in the sky to mar the seemingly perfect afternoon, although the picturesque vista belied the somber gloom that hung over the Apple household. Hiding under her bedsheets, curled into a tight ball with her hands gripping her pillow against her chest, was young Applebloom. Her eyes were dripping with tear and her nose was runny from the raw emotion that had been poured into her bedsheets upon her return to the house earlier that day. See, there was something special about this day, one that made most of the town overjoyed for those it had happened to, but for little Applebloom, it was the anniversary of the worst day of her life.

Exactly one year prior, she and her fellow Crusaders had been searching for their cutie marks, as they had been since the founding of there little club. But that day proved to be anything other than ordinary. First Scootaloo had discovered her talent for flying aircraft when she had snuck into the cockpit of one of the newest planes to roll onto the tarmac and flown it halfway to Canterlot before being turned around by Rainbow Dash and the other Wonderbolts. Then Sweetie Bell had discovered her love for singing right in front of a talent scout from Manehatten. Needless to say, the party that followed their discovery of their marks was epic to the most amazing degree, except, Applebloom hadn’t attended.

Seeing her closest friends earn their marks without her, and then moving on to lives that she could never follow them to, had crushed the little filly’s heart like an ant under hoof. She had raced home while the others were celebrating, and spent the entire week sobbing in her room, barely eating and only coming out to use the bathroom if she absolutely had too. To say the disbanding of the Cutie Mark Crusaders was a crushing blow to the young mare’s psyche would have been an understatement of Princess level proportions. It took months before Applebloom could even look at her friends again without feeling her heart break, and almost two seasons before she could bring herself to speak to them again. It wasn’t born of malice or hatred, but the complete loss of connection she had felt when the other fillies got their marks.

Now, on the anniversary of her greatest shame, Applebloom was planning something, something that would change her life for the better, or would end in complete disaster. She sat up slowly, wiped her eyes with one hand, and then slipped the pillow case off of her bed before stuffing it with some of her most prized possessions. She picked up the photo that rested on her bedside table and looked it over with a singular tear in her eye, the smiling faces of her family looking back at her from the last Apple Family Reunion. Sniffing once, she stuffed the photo into the pillow case with the rest of her things and slipped on her favorite blue-jean jacket over her apple green shirt. Her signature pink bow found its place in her crimson mane as her tail slipped out the hole in the back of her cargo pants, forcing her to fiddle with the loose hair before she was satisfied it wouldn’t bunch up against her flanks if she walked too long. With that done, she slung her packed pillow over her shoulder and climbed out of her bedroom window while the rest of the household was out working the orchard. Granny Smith wouldn’t be awake until it was close to dinnertime, and her siblings weren’t going to be back until even later once the work harvesting the apples was complete for the day.

Applebloom walked off into the northern parts of the orchard, knowing fully well what she was doing would get her flank tanned if she was caught, but she couldn’t sit by any longer while the world passed her by. If her friends could get their marks on a day like today, then with Celestia as her witness, she could do the same.

“Look out world, Ah’m comin’ to get ya.” She said to herself as she walked off into the wild unknown between Ponyville and Mt. Canterhorn.

For the majority of the day, Applebloom walked along the old dirt road that had once been the connection between Ponyville and Canterlot, which had fallen to the wayside as the railroad overtook it as the fastest way to the capital. Now the road was little more than an overgrown dirt path that wound its way through the Whitetail woods and into the plains beyond that bordered the Everfree Forest. Applebloom had no true idea what she was doing, but if her sister could go off on adventures and come back completely fine, then so could she. She planned on visiting her Aunt and Uncle Orange in Manehatten once she could get a train ticket in Canterlot, although what she planned to do with herself to find her mark afterwards was still up in the air.

Suddenly, as she came around a bend in the road and exited the Whitetail Woods, Applebloom was assaulted by the sickeningly familiar stink that could only come from one source. Her eyes widened in fear as a quintet of Timberwolves stalked out of the darker Everfree and onto the path, two blocking her retreat while the other three spread out to surround her as they licked their hard, wooden lips with vine-like tongues. Applebloom stood in place, her hooves frozen in terror as the wolves prowled around her like a circle of vultures, only these vicious predators were not going to wait for her to simply drop dead from fight, no matter how hard her heart tried to beat itself out of her chest.

Without waiting for her to even scream in fright, one of the wolves lunged at Applebloom, its claws aimed to maim and kill as it growled out a challenge in the back of its throat. A last-second leap to the right saved Applebloom from losing her head, but it wasn’t enough to stop the second wolf from jumping on top of her and biting into the base of her left shoulder with its thorny teeth. Applebloom screamed as fresh blood soaked the cloth of her shirt and jacket, the wolf taking another go at her as its body pinned Applebloom to the dirt. Its teeth dug into her flesh as she tried in vain to push the larger creature off of her, but it was not meant to be.

The next bite closed around her neck, and Applebloom choked as the wolf’s teeth closed in around her windpipe, thankfully not puncturing it but still cutting off her air supply. A single green eye locked with hers, and in that instant, Applebloom knew she was going to die. The darkness began to creep into the sides of her vision as her struggles began to weaken, her hands falling flat to the ground as she gaped in a desperate attempt to breathe. All through this, the wolf simply watched her as her eyes began to glass over, and as her world went dark, the last thing Applebloom thought was how foolish she had been, going off on her own in search of a destiny that would never come to pass.

Then, like a switch had been flipped deep inside her, Applebloom felt something strange run through her body. Something new and powerful that filled her body with energy. Her eyes snapped open as she pressed her hands into the wolf’s underside, feeling that same power surge through her hands as the wolf was flung high into the air, a ragged gasp of air filling her lungs as the Timberwolf came crashing down and disintegrated upon impact. Applebloom barely knew what she was doing as she stood up, blood dripping down the sides of her neck and shoulder as she flung her hands forward, an invisible shockwave throwing the Timberwolves backwards with enough force to shatter their forms against the nearby trees of the Everfree. For a moment or two she stood there, breathing hard as she waited for the wolves to reform and try again, but nothing happened.

Feeling the strange power ebb slightly as she came down off of her high, Applebloom sat down on the road and stared at what remained of the Timberwolves. She lifted her hands in front of her and stared at them like they belonged to somepony else and wondered just what in Equestria had just happened.

“What was that?” She asked herself as she slowly lowered her hands and pushed herself to her hooves. “Ah can’t use magic like a unicorn can, so how did I do that if Ah’m just an earth pony?”

Her question left unanswered, Applebloom felt that it would be best to return home before anything else tried to kill her and had better luck than the wolves. Yet as she walked back to Sweet Apple Acres, she could still feel the same power flowing and ebbing inside her chest like a small flame, although the thought of suddenly developing magic powers was far from her mind as the pain from her wounds finally registered with her brain.

“Gah! Mother-bucking apple rot that hurts!” She cried as she held a hand against her shoulder, trying to staunch the flow of blood as it continued to ruin her favorite jacket and run down the side of her body like a small river.

She was thankful her family hadn’t heard her string of curses, or she’d have gotten an earful from Granny and her sister before they proceeded to wash her mouth with soap. She knew there was no way she could get back home and take care of her injuries without her family finding out, but she made a vow to herself that she would at least keep her new powers a secret, until she could figure out what they were and if they could be a danger to anypony.

As she crested the last hill leading back to her house, Applebloom spotted her sister racing around the farm, shouting her name as the filly stumbled back down the hill. It only took a second before Applejack spotted the younger Apple sibling and raced up the slope to meet her, her emerald eyes widening in shock and fear as she spotted her sister’s injuries.

“Land’s sake, Applebloom,” she cried as she knelt down and inspected Applebloom with both her eyes and her hands as she pulled the ruined jacket off the filly’s shoulders, “What happened to ya? Ya’ll look like ya got into a fight with some Timberwolves and lost. And what’s with the big idea runnin’ off and not tellin’ anypony where ya were goin’? Ya’ll had me and Big Mac worried sick about you.”

Applebloom averted her gaze as tears formed in her eyes, “Ah’m sorry AJ, Ah just had this crazy idea that Ah could go off and discover my destiny like when you were a filly.” She wiped her eyes and leaped into her sister’s arms, bawling her eyes out as the full implications of her little adventure crashed down upon her mind. “Ah’m sorry AJ, Ah’ll never run away again for as long as Ah live. Ah just wanted to prove that Ah could get my cutie mark and be a cool filly like Scoots and Sweetie. Ah never meant to get mixed up with Timberwolves and worry ya’ll and almost lose my life – ”She clapped her hands over her mouth, only realizing too late how much she had said.

Applejack looked down at her sister with wide eyes, “Did Ah hear ya’ll correctly, you really did run into Timberwolves and nearly got yerself killed!?”

All Applebloom could do was nod, although instead of the verbal thrashing she expected, she was plucked from the ground and cradled in her sister’s arms as the larger mare raced through the orchard and into Ponyville proper. Applebloom could only stare in wonder up at her sister as she pounded down the street at speeds that would put Rainbow Dash to shame, only coming to as stop once she came bursting through the doors of Ponyville General.

“Ah need a doctor, and Ah need one now!” Applejack cried as the nurse at the front desk jumped in surprise. However, it only took a single look at the wounds on Applebloom to convince the dark grey mare that the older Apple sibling meant business.

Before Applebloom could blink, several nurses and a pair of unicorn doctors had rushed her into the emergency room, the events of her attack coming from her mouth almost of their own volition as the doctors peppered her with questions. She only barely managed to stop herself from revealing her new powers when they asked her about how she managed to get away, although from the look Applejack gave her when she lied, she had a feeling her sibling knew she hadn’t been telling the truth. However, that all passed into the darkness of unconsciousness as the I.V. drip did its job, the last thing Applebloom could remember was Big Mac and the rest of her sister’s friends rushing into the room with worried looks on their faces.

Far across the galaxy, in a bar on a forgotten planet that no one cared to name, sat a young man who wore a brown cloak about his shoulders. His clothing was dirty but well maintained, and if one cared to look closer, they would notice that he carried himself with a confidence that belied his rough exterior. His hood was currently pulled back, revealing a head of messy brown hair that sat above a pair of warm green eyes, his sharp nose a fierce contrast to the calm smile that graced his lips. Upon his belt were a custom blaster pistol of his own design, and a silver cylinder that could ignite into a golden blade of superheated plasma with the press of a button.

Prax Solaris was a Force wielder, although unlike the Jedi and Sith that had reformed their Orders upon the destruction of the Empire, Prax was a part of a much more select and secretive group. He was one of the second-generation members of the newly reformed Jensaarai Order, who dedicated themselves to keeping the balance within the Force and to ensure that another conflict between the Light and Dark never again consumed the galaxy like in the Clone Wars. However, unlike the normal members of the Jensaarai, Prax was part of an even more select group known as the Wanderers.

Trained extensively in the Temples of the Mind, Body and Soul, and chosen directly by the Force, Wanderers were some of the few Jensaarai that regularly left the home system, although they were far from simple vagabonds. Wanderers would wait for years, sometimes decades, before receiving a vision from the Force, guiding them towards whatever they were tasked to find. It could be a person, an artifact, even a planet that had yet to be discovered, but the one certainty was that at some point, every Wanderer would receive their vision and become a Seeker. Then, once their mission was complete, they would go back to being a Wanderer and continue on with their lives until the Force called upon them again.

It was in that cheap bar, on some backwater world in the Outer Rim, that Prax felt a disturbance in the Force. He set his drink down as images flashed before his eyes, of a small planet far beyond the Reach, deep in uncharted space, and the constant presence of a round red fruit. An apple, if he remembered the name correctly from some of his ventures into the Inner Systems. His lips curled into a grin as he stood up, his cloak billowing behind his as he dropped several credits on the counter and walked out of the bar.

“So, the time has come at last,” his light tenor voice was slightly muffled as he pulled his hood up to shield his head from the light snow that was falling outside, “it would seem I am going to be on a longer trip than usual, if this vision means what I think it does.”

Prax followed the main road until he found the local spaceport, which constituted of small docks that allowed the ships to land without having to deal with the large backwash that normally followed as the craft touched down. Prax climbed up one of the landings to his personal ship, an old T-6 shuttle that had been repurposed after the end of the Clone Wars into a long-distance communications ship, and then repurposed again into a small gunship during the height of the Empire. Outfitted with twin turbo laser platforms along the sides of the main fuselage, the star craft could destroy anything smaller than a cruiser with relative ease, although the lack of powerful shields left much to be desired on the defensive side of things if combat became necessary. However, thanks to the rotating crescent-moon wings, shielding was almost never needed because Prax could simply evade enemy fire instead of taking it. Its advanced hyperdrive made traveling the galaxy far easier than relying on conventional transportation, and with its advanced communications array, he could contact the temples on Jen-Saarinos from almost anywhere in the galaxy.

With the air lock sealed and his grip on the controls secure, Prax powered up the engines of the ship and lifted off, rotating the wings into their vertical flight position as he powered out of the atmosphere and into the vast void of space. He could sense where he needed to go and powered up the hyperdrive, typing in the coordinates with the guidance of the Force before flipping the main activation switch. The stars before him seemed to stretch into infinity before his ship made the jump to hyperspace, the tunnel of blue and white lights signaling his entrance into the higher dimension. By the calculations of the nav computer, he would arrive at his destination within the next planetary cycle, assuming the planet rotated at the standard rate of twenty-four hours. However, because he was traveling into uncharted space, deep beyond the Outer Rim and into the Reach, Prax was preparing for an adventure unlike anything he had experienced before. Few Wanderers had ventured into the Reach, and even fewer outside the Jensaarai had made the journey, so he was going into this adventure with no idea as to what he would find.

Prax leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head, staring into the swirling vortex of hyperspace with a grin on his face, “Off to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, oh what I wouldn’t do to have a witty one-liner for when I get there.” He tapped his chin with one hand as he stood up and walked into the personal quarters of the ship’s aft, “Maybe I could say something like, ‘That’s one small jump for me, and one giant mess for others to clean’.” He chuckled to himself as the terrible idea bounced around in his head for a moment before he entered his personal chambers, “Nah, I’ll just go with the usual Jensaarai shtick and go in under the radar before checking the place out on foot. Can’t be too much more difficult than the last adventure I went on, could it?”

Prax had no idea that at that very moment, the subject of his vision was being patched back up by a team of doctors, while her loved ones watched on in worried anticipation. No one and nopony knew that roiling inside the young filly’s body, was a fount of Force power that was wild and untamed, waiting for the right moment to unleash its striking fury on anything and everyone around it. The clock had started ticking, and only the Force itself knew when the timer was going to run out. The Jensaarai knew nothing of the dangers that awaited him upon his arrival, while the ponies of Equestria were completely unprepared for the shock that was about to literally come falling from the sky.

Author's Note

Hello everypony, and welcome to the first chapter of my new book! Hope you all are enjoying it so far, and I will endeavor to get more chapters out as soon as possible. Also, little side note, the Jensaarai (Jen-sar-ri) were a group of Rouge Jedi that broke off from the Order during the Clone Wars according to the Star Wars Legends. This is not the same group, my friends and I simply came up with an alternate history and used the name because of the old canon's use of both Dark and Light-side Force abilities. Everything else about this group of Force wielders is completely original

Anyways, I hope to hear from you all, leave a like, comment in the towel section below, and give me a follow if you feel so inclined. Anything else is fine by me.

See you all next chapter,
Shadow Quill, Messenger of the Moon.