Ponest Dungeon

Chapter 12: Foraging the Farmstead

Week 8, Day 7, Afternoon

Pain.

Pain was becoming far too familiar a companion upon Blueblood’s awakenings, he mused from his prone position.

Groaning from a general feeling of discomfort, heaviness and—perhaps—agony, Blueblood shifted his position slightly, the sounds of crunching glass and grating wood greeting his ears. His eye fluttered open to a hazy view of a small bit of sunlit debris—he was apparently pinned underneath something large and wooden, judging by the feel of it pressing into his back; he figured it was most likely a bookcase, if the books scattered in front of his field of vision were any indicator.

This… reminds me of the millennial anniversary of the Summer Sun Celebration.

“Auntie?!” Blueblood tried, and failed, to lift his head; the only result was a painful grinding of his forehead against some glass shards.

Do you remember how worried I was?

“Auntie, I… I think I’m hurt,” Blueblood groaned into the rubble. “I can’t… move. Where are you? Can… can you help me?”

I have helped you, so much, nephew. Did you know that Nightmare Moon was going to return that very day?

“Nightmare… Moon?” Blueblood replied, figuring that he didn’t really have too many options other than talk, seeing as how Celestia hadn’t actually physically appeared to him… yet. “The Mare… in the Moon?” Despite his struggles, he still couldn’t position himself well enough to stand.

Yes. Do you recall the prophecy; that on the thousandth year of the Summer Sun Celebration, the stars would aid in her escape?

“Yes—” Shifting again and wincing in pain, Blueblood felt a sudden warmth in his mouth as he slipped and accidentally bit through his lip. “—what… what does that have to do with anything?!”

Don't you see Nephew? Don’t you realize? The Celebration passed without incident; I defeated the prophecy, cheated fate itself.

A splitting headache overwhelmed Blueblood’s senses as he attempted to light his horn. “What… are you saying—”

I spent years reviewing Luna’s own research before I was able to fashion the correct relics, before I was able to properly conduct the rituals. But, through arduous expenditures of time and resources, I was able to ensure that the stars would be unable to fulfil their role. It is ironic that it was through her own hoofwork that I was able to ensure the path of one star; I summoned it here, to us, to ensure that it won’t ever be able to aid in her escape.

“You—” Finding a sudden renewed strength in his outrage, Blueblood forced himself upright within the pile of debris, wincing as he struggled to regain his hooves. “You did this?!” With a pained grunt of adrenaline-fueled exertion, he threw off the bookcase that had been pinning him to the floor.

Only after taking a few breaths to steady himself, did Blueblood take stock of himself and his surroundings. He stood in the Manor’s western hallway, which was strewn with various toppled pieces of furniture and a fine coating of shattered glass, which crunched underhoof with every movement. He felt like he’d been bucked a few dozen times, and bloodied glass trickled down his muzzle and to the floor. “You… crashed a comet… into Equestria?!”

I guaranteed that Nightmare Moon could never be able to bring eternal night to this land.

“You almost brought eternal night to this realm by not returning!” Blueblood yelled at the sun, clearly visible through the shattered shutters and wide windows in the hallway—

“Prince Blueblood!”

The powerful voice resounded through the door at the end of the hall, rattling the debris and sending the last few remaining shards of glass tumbling from their frames to the floor. The door—to the foyer if Blueblood recalled correctly—was forcibly ripped from its mountings and thrown behind Tempest as she stepped into the Hall through the now-vacant doorway. Apparently unharmed herself, she scrutinized him for a moment. “You appear to be… less than critically injured.”

“An accurate assessment,” Blueblood managed, wiping glass from his face and clothes as he stumbled to follow Tempest into the foyer. “How badly are we hurt?”

Week 8, Day 7, Evening

Not everypony in the company had returned to the drawing room; some had gone to help clean the manor, whilst others had gone into town to help the townsfolk. Blueblood was glad he could count on a few level heads at this point: Tempest, Zecora, Twilight, Starlight, Bon Bon, and—no; he didn’t count Lyra.

“Most of our company suffered mere cuts and bruises from the incident,” Tempest reported, standing at attention. “Everypony’s efforts to fortify the manor were adequate to prevent damage to the building’s core structural stability. Despite nopony being able to gain access to the observatory prior to impact, it is—” She spoke the next word almost maliciously. “—miraculously, undamaged.”

“What about Rainbow Dash?” Blueblood asked. “That dumbflank was outside when the pressure wave hit; I heard somepony say she was rushed over to the sanitarium?”

“That is true,” Tempest continued. “Apparently she suffered severe internal and external injuries… they don’t expect her to survive.” She looked to Blueblood with an expression that spoke of both harsh reprimand, but also begrudging acceptance. “Apparently the entire reconstituted Ponyville weather team was airborne at the time of the impact; none of them lived. Miss Dash is either extremely lucky, or extremely resilient—or both, to have evaded death.”

“The whole weather team?” Blueblood asked, facehoofing.

“Yes. Coupled with the original losses caused by those mosquito swarms, we are extremely short on local pegasi; that means we can expect more unpredictable weather for the foreseeable future.”

Lyra bounced up in her seat. “Where did it land?”

Tempest’s glare threatened to cook Lyra alive in her chair; the rickety wooden seat accommodated the added strain of Tempest’s gaze by collapsing unceremoniously underneath a swearing Lyra.

Bon Bon ignored her floundering “best friend.” “It obviously landed west outside of town, since everything’s been blown down from that direction, but do we know how far out? Is it close enough for us to easily travel to?”

Crossing his forehooves, Blueblood gave Bon Bon a sidelong glance. “We don’t know yet. But considering the damage to the town, it was likely within trotting distance. Are you proposing we set out for the impact site? Why the sudden interest?”

“Comets and meteors tend to contain rare ores. I imagine we might be able to sell some to the alchemists up in Canterlot for a pretty-bit; we could actually profit from this fiasco.”

“Fair enough,” Blueblood lit his horn and tried to get as much of the glass off of the drawing room table as possible. “I had Snails draw up a trajectory based off of what he saw—crazy colt watched it the whole way down, apparently—and he places the comet landing site right—” His hoof landed on the local map he had unfurled. “—here. Dead center of this apple farm—yes, Twilight?”

Lowering her hoof, Twilight looked from the map, to Blueblood, and back again. “Uhh, forgive me if I’m wrong about this—”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “Just spit it out, Twilight.”

Her face taking on a pained expression, Twilight looked up again. “That’s… Sweet Apple Acres; Aren’t Applejack and Big Mac from there?”

“Oh… horseapples,” Blueblood swore.

Week 9, Day 1, Dawn

“And you ain’t gonna stop us,” Applejack said as she crammed muffintack into her saddlebags.

“Eeynope,” confirmed Big Mac.

Winona barked.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Blueblood said, completely deadpan. “But you two are going to take Twilight and Snails with you. Snails has the best idea of where the comet landed, and Twilight has an impressive grasp of alchemy and the occult; she’ll be invaluable in case the comet—which I have some reason to believe is unnatural—has some kind of disrupting effect on the surroundings.”

Applejack scratched at her mane. “What about Starlight? Her and Twilight seem to be closer than peas ‘n a pod.”

Blueblood shrugged. “Starlight offered to help research on this end. Apparently she doesn’t appreciate… nature.”

“My family farm ain’t nature. It’s a farm,” Applejack drawled.

“Eeyup,” nodded Big Mac.

“I know that… look, don’t ask me; I just know I wanted one of those two staying back here, and she offered.” Watching the siblings continue their hurried packing, Blueblood put a hoof on Applejack’s withers, causing both her and Big Mac to tense. “We’ve lost too many ponies already,” he said in a low tone. “Be. Careful.”

Applejack nodded.

“Eeyup.”

Winona barked.

Week 9, Day 1, Morning

“This is fascinating!” Twilight exclaimed as they trotted along. “Were these glyphs always here?”

“Eeynope,” Big Mac replied as Twilight poked at one of the massive boulders that bordered the Apple Family property.

“These runes seem to have been carved within the last few years,” Twilight continued. “There isn’t any significant weathering or any other signs of aging on these markings, but—”

But the diagrams and charts depicted in the carvings cover a span of time far exceeding their apparent age. Starlight’s voice sounded from nowhere in particular.

“Well, I don’t ‘member any of this here,” Applejack drawled. “Last time I was here, it was just a wooden fence, long as the eye could see. How ‘bout you, big brother?”

“Eeyup.”

Snails eyed Big Mac. “Yup, the same, or yup, different, eh?”

“Uhhh,” Big Mac frowned.

Winona tilted her head and whined.

“It’s clear as a sunny day he meant ‘different,’” Applejack cut in, tapping at one of the massive stones. “I don’t see why Granny Smith went an’ replaced the old fence with all these rocks—”

According to Celestia’s records, Blueblood began, ... odd, there aren’t very many entries in here regarding Sweet Apple Acres, just references to requests… for financial assistance… hold on. Tempest, help Starlight keep an eye on the group, I trust your tactical acumen will keep them safe if something happens while I’m out— and then Blueblood went silent.

After a few minutes of Tempest not saying a single word, Applejack looked at Big Mac. “Granny never said nothin’ to you about the farm being in trouble or her needing money, did she, big brother?”

“Eeynope,” Big Mac shook his head, though his expression said that he may have suspected as much.

“Now, why didn’t ya tell me she was hav’n trouble? I’d’ve come home lickety-split!”

“Eeynope; she didn’t want to drag you back if you were still pursuing your dream, AJ.”

Holy SHIT, he can talk!

“Starlight!” Twilight whined. “What did we discuss?”

What? I didn’t call him out on an idiosyncrasy he didn’t have… Oh, c’mon, don’t give me that look! The whole family has speech problems! One doesn’t talk, and I can’t understand what the other one says!

Twilight facehoofed, and then gave Applejack and Big Mac an apologetic look. “Please ignore her. And I thought I was socially awkward.”

Hey! I am not! There was a brief pause. What? No, I’m talking to the group… I did not just insult the Apples! Well, where have you been? Starlight asked. Really? The town archive was open? No, I don’t care if you just took them. What's that? It looks like—

—Architectural blueprints, Blueblood said. Celestia undertook a massive construction project at Sweet Apple Acres a few years ago. Apparently, the farm had suffered from a few consecutive years of vampire fruit bat infestations and Granny Smith couldn’t afford to pay the farmhooves she had hired to run the farm in her heirs’ absence.

Both Applejack and Big Mac turned their heads down in something approaching regret or shame.

Granny Smith came to Celestia and requested assistance, Blueblood continued,and—sweet, holy Celestia… she delivered… There was a whistling sound.

“Well?” Applejack asked. “What?”

Blueblood’s voice was filled with disbelief. She spent millions of bits on this project: granite imports from Griffonstone; rare minerals and herbs from Saddle Arabia, Mount Aris, even Yakyakistan. The designs I liberated from public records state that this is all some elaborate anti-fruit bat measure.

Except that’s ridiculous, Starlight cut in. Even an amateur astronomer can see that these designs are all analogous to the travel of extant celestial bodies. Although… there are some parts in here which claim to exert forces over a long time to cause movement on a massive scale over tremendous distance; we’re talking literal astronomical levels of movement, here… wait, did… did Celestia—

Wait a minute everypony,Blueblood replied. We need to actually take a good look at these plans before making any assumptions. It looks like she might have constructed this in addition to the fruit bat repelling features to actually try and deflect incoming meteors and comets. If that’s the case, we’ll need to figure out why she was worried about such a thing. Who would even try to drop a comet on Sweet Apple Acres in the first place?

Applejack pressed a hoof to the closest of the intricately marked boulders. “Well, if we do find out whodunnit, they’re gonna have an awful lot to answer for. Bringing a comet down on lil ‘ole Granny Smith’s head; the thought just bakes my biscuits!”

Snails cocked his head again. “Is that a good thing, eh?”

“Consarnit, no!”

Week 9, Day 1, Morning

The viewing enchantment shrank to a pinprick.

“You lied to them,” Starlight said with all the subtlety of a class-IV tornado.

Tempest raised an eyebrow and looked at Blueblood.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yes I did.”

Starlight tapped the stack of plans with one hoof. “This array is pretty clearly designed to turn the entirety of Sweet Apple Acres into a… well, for lack of a better term, comet magnet. There’s nothing at all in the design to repel fruit bats.”

“I can see that,” Blueblood said. “But they—” He pointed at the closed viewing aperture. “—do not need to know that right now, possibly not ever.”

“Why,” Starlight asked, with no small amount of incredulity, “would you keep this from them?”

Blueblood pursed his lips.

“You must have no social skills,” Tempest said, not unkindly. “Allow me to explain; Applejack and Big Macintosh have at least one family member that is most certainly now dead on that farm. If we tell the Apples that the Princess was responsible for the death of their family member, or members, then they will likely seek vengeance upon the Princess, with probable intent to kill her. Blueblood has made it quite clear that one of our ultimate goals is to find and rescue Princess Celestia from this place. It would be detrimental to the company’s agenda to let this knowledge pass beyond this room.”

Nodding his head, Blueblood turned his eye from Tempest to Starlight “Well said, Tempest. We cannot afford to allow this particular bit of knowledge to spread.”

“These plans must have taken years to put together,” Starlight said, running a hoof over a piece of parchment that showed the area of the farm perimeter the party was walking along.

“And more years to have it all constructed,” Blueblood confirmed, looking momentarily up from the portion of the schematics he was examining. “Celestia never does things small.”

“No kidding,” Starlight said, turning back to the closed viewing window. “What are we going to tell them?”

Blueblood pondered for a moment. “We mix the truth in to make a more convincing lie. In its current state, the array attracts comets. But we say that it wasn’t designed that way; somepony must have tampered with it.”

“It doesn’t feel right to lie about this,” Starlight said, “especially to Twilight. She’s smart; she’ll know something is up if we don’t let her look at the diagrams, and if we do let her look at them, she’ll see right through your fabrication.”

“The Apples don’t seem to be the investigative type,” Blueblood said, “But, I can definitely see Twilight figuring this out.” He rubbed his forehooves against the sides of his head. “Okay… we’ll let her know when she returns. But she is the only one we tell.”

Week 9, Day 1, Noon

“You’re coming up on the entryway now; you should be seeing some kind of circular stone aperture.”

We see it, Twilight said. There’s a large granite disk blocking the entryway, though.

“You should be able to just push it out of the way,” Starlight said as she read the diagrams. “There might be some thaumaturgical discharge. Those stones will be loaded with arcane energy.”

“Tell them to make sure they check the sides as they enter,” Tempest thundered into Starlight’s ear. “They’ve been sloppy during the whole approach.”

“For what?” Starlight said, with no small amount of incredulity. “Farmhooves? If anything, this is a rescue mission.”

“I highly doubt that,” Tempest responded flatly. “I’ve read all of Blueblood’s after action reports; there is nowhere in this county that I would go unprepared for combat.” She looked over to where Blueblood was, now fully engrossed in one of Celestia’s journals, then leaned close to Starlight, somehow managing to speak in a passable whisper. “From certain signs I’ve seen here, I’m sure that there has been combat in these very halls; you should always be on your guard.”

“In… these… halls?” Starlight looked around the observatory as if it had somehow taken on a more sinister air.

“You see the gouges in the floor? The blood stains over there?” Tempest pointed a hoof. “Those are from when Blueblood was assaulted… in his own base of operations. And I’ve seen… other signs as well—“

It’s opening! came Twilight’s excited voice. As the aperture opened, a bizarre light crept in from the edges, along with arcs of what appeared to be electricity. You’re right, there’s a lot of—oh… oh my… what is—

The enchantment died.

It didn’t just power down and turn off, or shrivel to a pinprick: it released a scream of agony as its arcane matrix was corrupted and shredded; it howled as its energies were torn asunder; it pleaded with the three ponies who watched it; Please, no more. Please—

“That voice... It’s… Celestia,” Starlight whispered.

Blueblood dropped the journal to the floor and sprang to his hooves. He regarded the display—which, while shaded an unhealthy red, had definitely taken on the likeness of Celestia—with a mixture of fear and confusion. “Auntie?”

Please… no more, it wailed as the strange light disrupted its very being.

“Auntie—” Blueblood reached for the struggling enchantment.

Tempest’s hoof struck the table hard enough to split it in half. The distorted image of Celestia’s face ripped apart when it happened, the anguished cry of it rising in concert with Blueblood’s own. A cloud of crimson mist remained, but then flew into Blueblood’s gasping mouth.

“What have you done?!” He raised his forehooves to grasp at Tempest, but withdrew them and grasped at his own head, screaming in sudden apparent agony.

Starlight reached out a forehoof. “What the—”

“Stay back,” Tempest said, holding a foreleg between Starlight and Blueblood. “I just killed an unknown entity that seems to have been masquerading as his divination spell. The question you’ve asked is the correct one, however; we must know what foul magicks power this enchantment of his.”

As Blueblood rolled around on the floor, his eyepatch came loose and fell away from his face.

Both mares watched on as light poured forth from Blueblood’s eye socket, alternating between the dark crimson of venous blood, and an ethereal color which—while defying rational explanation—was reminiscent of both blue and green simultaneously.

“He’s giving off two different kinds of energy,” Starlight said, her horn lit. “One feels like what drew me and Twilight here. The other… it’s… difficult to explain; it’s similar, but also wholly different.”

Tempest’s gaze cooly regarded the thrashing form of Blueblood, occasionally switching between him and Starlight. “I despise contradictions, Miss Glimmer. Explain.”

“The observation enchantment… it was made of energy from here, from what is seeping out of the Castle of the Two Sisters. When his eye glows red, it is the same energy.”

“And the—” Tempest struggled for an appropriate word. “—other… color?”

Starlight stared at nothing for several moments. “The same as what I felt when the comet passed overhead… and from the enchantment as it was being disrupted… wait—what about the others? They’re still at the farm.”

“Irrelevant,” Tempest said, shaking her head. “They’ll either enter and brave the farm without support or they will turn back.” She gestures towards Blueblood. “Either way, we have our own problems; they’re on their own. Before we can even try to reestablish contact, we need to ensure the Prince’s health and safety have been stabilized. We’ll start with you dissecting the spell he’s been using; we need to know everything about it if we are going to reverse what is happening to him now, not to mention prevent it from happening again in the future.”

Sighing, Starlight started looking through the mess that had resulted from the table’s destruction. “It should be in here.” She looked back at Blueblood. “I sure hope I can reverse this.”

“If you can’t reverse this, one of us will need to dispatch him,” Tempest said coldly.

Starlight looked at Tempest with a shocked expression. “You’ll want to kill him?”

“If I were permanently stuck writhing in agony,” Tempest stated flatly, “I would expect you to do the same for me.”

Week ??, Day ??, ???

“What just happened Twilight?” Applejack’s voice echoed over itself as she spoke. The effect was peculiar, and even seemed to precede words that she hadn’t even spoken yet.

The group was only a few hoof lengths past the opening, but the haze that surrounded them prevented them from being able to see much farther than that. If they advanced into the orchard, they would not be able to see the way back.

Looking around warily, Twilight lit her horn and sent a cone shaped beam of light into the peculiar radiance that now surrounded them. “There are serious spatial and temporal distortions—”

“Don’t speak fancy with me Twilight,” Applejack cut in. “Use plain Equish so I can understand!”

Her expression appearing nonplussed for a moment, Twilight scrunched her muzzle before turning to Applejack. “Time and space are not normal here, they’re acting crazy.” She cast a worried glance in Applejack’s direction. “Maybe we should head back to Ponyville, get more instructions from—”

“No way, no how, Twilight,” Applejack said firmly. “We’re not going nowhere until we make sure that Granny Smith is a-ok.”

“Eeyup,” came Big Mac’s confirmation.

Snails shrugged. “Well, I don’t see why we should go before we find their grandma, eh?”

“Fine,” replied Twilight. “We’ll search for Granny Smith. But this place is wild with energy and—” She indicated one of the multitude of scorched apple trees. “—I don’t think that much survived in here. One thing those rocks surrounding the property seemed to have done was keep the heat of the impact from setting the surrounding countryside on fire.”

“Well, that’s just crazy, Twilight. I mean, look!” Applejack pointed a hoof at a silhouette in the haze. “That looks like my cousin Caramel over there!” She waved her hoof. “Hay! Caramel! Whatcha doin, standing out in the orchard like that! Come over and say hay!”

Hair bristling, Winona started to growl at the approaching figure.

“Applejack,” Twilight said. “I don’t know if that was a good idea.”

“Consarnit, Twilight. How’re we gonna find Granny if we don’t talk to nopony? And besides, Winona never liked Caramel much anyhow; he kept misplacing her food.” Applejack turned to face the figure as they approached. “Well, howdy, Caramel!” She blinked when she received no response. “Hay now, you forget how you greet your cousin, like how you forget everything else?”

The group recoiled as the mist parted to reveal that the pony approaching them was entirely devoid of coloration, as if they’d had the pigmentation sucked right out of them. Their empty eye sockets, mouth, and a massive rent in their barrel suddenly began to spill forth an unnamable color; it looked like what they had seen bleeding off of the comet.

“Caramel?” Applejack asked warily, still recognizing her cousin from his faded cutie mark.

Caramel lunged at her, but Winona caught him by the throat and dragged him—hissing like a snake—to the ground. There was a crunch as Winona bit down, but not the familiar sound of her teeth breaking bone; this sound was more like pulverizing rock. The Caramel-thing coughed, sending a cloud of crystal shards into the air.

“Don’t breathe it!” Twilight shouted.

Everypony backed up, quickly pulling out hoofkerchiefs or other pieces of clothing to cover their muzzles.

“Those crystals are pulsing with the same energy as this whole place,” Twilight explained. “We should all limit our exposure while here, unless we want to end up like—” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “—Caramel here.”

Caramel’s body suddenly erupted into a large crystalline growth. All of his familiar features were obliterated in mere moments, leaving only the faintly glowing smoothness of crystal.

“What the—” Twilight reached a hoof towards the crystalline aberration as it began to hum with a melodious resonance.

Snails fired a crossbow bolt, which impacted the crystal and shattered it, breaking Twilight from its hypnotic influence. He started to reload his arbalest. “Your eyes were going all swirly, so I figured I’d better do something.”

“Thank you, Snails,” Twilight managed as she shook her head. “I don’t know what was hap—”

A sudden shuffling sound became audible over in the distance. As the group looked out into the colors, more shapes began to appear.

“Who… who are they?” Twilight asked.

“If I were to guess,” Applejack said, her eyes widening as new figures approached, “Apple Fritter, Apple Bumpkin, Red Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Caramel Apple, Apple Strudel, Apple Tart, Baked Apples, Apple Brioche, Apple Cinnamon Crisp, Apple Cider, Apple Cobbler, Apple Honey, Apple Munchies, Gala Appleby, Jonagold, Lavender Fritter, Peachy Sweet, aaaaand Perfect Pie.”

Lighting her horn and levitating her skull, Twilight looked askance at Applejack. “Why do you have so many ponies working on one farm?”

“It must be time for the Apple Family Reunion,” Applejack drawled with despondence. “You lost our invitations again, big brother?”

“Eeyup,” Big Mac said as he drew his flail.

“Whoever did this is gonna have lots of explaining to do for hurting so many of my kin,” Applejack said, teeth gritted as she drew her mace. “Put ‘em up, Winona!”

Week 9, Day 1, Afternoon

“Do it again.” Tempest stared at Blueblood.

“I’ve never done this before!” Starlight shouted. “If I do it again, it could kill him!”

Tempest eyed Blueblood’s still-thrashing form. “Yet the alternative you described to me is that, if you do nothing, the two conflicting energies will cause a repeat of what happened to that vestal, Amethyst?”

“I’m not completely sure,” Starlight said, shaking her head. “We don’t mix energies like this, it’s just… not done!”

“Well,” Tempest said. “You’re the only unicorn we have on hoof with any knowledge whatsoever about this. I’d attempt it, but my horn—” Tempest became quiet all of a sudden, her brief and unexpected display of vulnerability causing Starlight to stare in disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” Starlight offered. “I’ll try again. I just… don’t know if pumping him full of eldritch energy is the best thing.”

Blueblood screamed again, arching his back as cracks of various colored light started to seep across his face from his eye socket.

“I’ll have to time it just right,” Starlight said. “If I charge his body when he’s giving off the comet’s light, it should force the entirety of the comet energy from him…”

“Don’t tell me the technical bits,” Tempest replied. “I know the risks, so just do it.”

Starlight lit her horn and waited for the crimson glow to fade from Blueblood’s eye. When it did, she blasted his body with as much eldritch might as she could. She felt a strange feedback along her horn, which quickly morphed into a sharp feeling, as if somepony were dragging crystalline shards along her horn and into her brain. Holding a forehoof to her head, she cried out in pain, but continued to channel the energy.

Blueblood screamed in apparent agony as the oddly colored light poured out from his eye and into the room, forming a sort of free-floating mist. The cloud of color sat there, suspended near the ceiling, pausing as if to survey the room.

Grunting with effort, Starlight used her last ounce of strength to force the last of the color from Blueblood. She collapsed to the floor, completely exhausted.

Sitting up, Blueblood regarded both mares… with both of his eyes. “What… just—” He looked towards the ceiling and the roiling cloud. “Look out!” he cried, as the cloud suddenly swirled downwards.

Tempest body-tackled Blueblood away from the vertical vortex, crashing them both through the desk remains.

Looking up just in time to see the approaching cloud, Starlight screamed as the color flew into her eyes. The downward flow of color inexplicably exerted a force which lifted her into the air. It compressed into her face in the matter of a few mere seconds, before dropping her unceremoniously onto the observatory floor

When Starlight tried to rise shakily to her hooves, the others could see that tears of blood ran freely down her cheeks, while blackness had consumed what lay in her eye sockets. With the color vanished, she reached out blindly with one hoof. “Umm, did the lights blow out? Somepony light a candle or something.”

Blueblood looked at Starlight with a pained expression. “The lights… are on Starlight.” He waited a moment for the statement to sink in. “We can see you… just fine.”

“I…” Starlight’s voice trembled. “I can’t see?” She lit her horn, lightly at first, but then glaring to almost daylight levels. All while she swung her hooves around wildly. “No! NO!”

Shielding her eyes from the intensifying corona atop Starlight’s head, Tempest looked at Blueblood as Starlight began to wail.

“I can’t see! Oh, Celestia! I can’t see! I—”

Tempest brought her hoof down on the back of Starlight’s head, silencing her screaming and causing her hornglow to sputter out.

“How are you Sir?” Tempest asked as she hefted an unconscious Starlight across her back.

“Aside from witnessing that?” he said, perhaps a bit too abrasively. “I’m just fine and dandy, I—” He pulled up his left foresleeve, exposing the white fur underneath.

“Huh… weird,” he said. “I thought I felt—” and then something that ran the length of his entire left foreleg moved under his skin. He recoiled from the leg, straightening it and trying to hold it away from his body, but found there wasn’t really any way to properly distance himself from… himself.

Tempest cooly regarded the writhing flesh on Blueblood’s limb, then glanced over to Starlight.

Blueblood followed her gaze. “What in Tartarus did she do to me?!”

Week ??, Day ??, ??

Apple Fritter was dragged, hissing, into an extradimensional portal by a voluminous, vermillion-tipped tentacle. Apple Bumpkin received an arbalest bolt to the face, just before Winona tore one of her forelegs off. Big Mac smashed the crystalline spawn that tore Bumpkin to pieces.

“How many of them are there?!” Twilight yelled, spinning around and thrashing Golden Delicious and Red Delicious with a hail of tentacles.

“I reckon that there ain’t this many Apples in all of Equestria,” Applejack said as she bucked the head off of a pony who looked surprisingly like Caramel. “What the hay? This one here’s Caramel again!”

“So it’s copying them, eh?” Snails skewered an Apple Crisp and an Apple Strudel together, allowing Big Mac to crush the resultant sprouting crystals in one blow.

“If this place distorts space and time,” Twilight said, throwing another Apple Fritter to be bucked by Big Mac, “then we might just be repeatedly drifting back in time to right before we destroyed them, making it so we have to do it again.”

“Well, that’s fine and dandy,” Applejack drawled, smashing in Gala Appleby’s head with her mace. “But how’re we supposed to stop ‘em if they keep-a-comin’?”

Big Mac snapped the neck of yet another Caramel, and stomped out the crystal that grew out…

And there were no more ponies.

“Uhhh… I guess I spoke too soon,” Applejack said, wiping her own blood from her brow.

“Eeynope,” Big Mac said, pointing at a strange rock that floated slowly towards them.

“What is it, eh?”

“I think… perhaps a shard of the comet,” Twilight answered, lighting her horn to scan the object.

The strange color flashed from crevices in the rock—

And they vanished.