Applejack awoke to find herself in a forest clearing, the sounds of chirping birds shaking her out of her slumber.
“Huh…?” she said out loud as she rubbed her face. “Where the hay am Ah?”
She didn’t remember falling asleep in a forest. Hay, she didn’t even remember coming to a forest. The last thing she knew, their class had been on a-
“A plane…” Applejack looked around. All around her, the clearing was dotted with wreckage of what had been an airplane, some of which were charred black by fire that was thankfully extinguished by now.
Half a turbine rested in the dirt close to her, its nose half buried in the ground, and she could see a wing just a little distance away. She had been in the middle section of the plane and that looked to be what was around her. She didn’t see the tail or the cockpit, but judging from the arrangement of the wreckage, the plane must’ve broken apart even before landing, with each segment landing in different parts of this forest. Most of the middle segment of the cabin was still in one piece, just ahead of her position.
“Where am Ah?”
Trying to move, Applejack realized she was still buckled in in her seat, and as she looked to her left where Lavender Lace and Trixie were supposed to be seated, she jerked back in horror and scrambled to undo her seatbelt. Trixie was lying in her seat, her neck bent at an impossible angle, with her tongue sticking out of her mouth like some sort of sick cartoon. Lavender Lace, however, had a large shard of part of the cabin wall jutting from her neck, cutting deep enough that her head was lulled to the side, with blood pooling down her body and staining the fabric of her seat, and parts of Applejack’s as well. She could even see part of her poor friend’s spine from where she was seated.
Finally undoing her belt buckle, Applejack tipped to the side and fell, hitting the dirt ground hard and spinning stars into her vision.
“Ow…” She rubbed her head and tried to have a better look around.
Now that she was paying more attention to her surroundings, Applejack noticed more of her fellow classmates and other passengers lying around the wreckage, some faring no better than Lavender Lace or Trixie.
One stewardess was lying on a piece of the floor near her row, her body bent in all kinds of angles Applejack didn’t think was possible. Bones from her knees jutted out of her skin, and her head had also been caved in. A large man leaned against a piece of the cabin on her right, his head flattened and gnarled, which probably was the result of something slamming into him on the way down.
There were plenty more gruesome sights, but Applejack couldn’t take it anymore and she let out what was left of her lunch onto the forest ground.
“Ap-Applejack?” she heard someome call as she wiped at her mouth with a hand. It was Twilight’s voice.
“Twi?” Applejack looked up to see her friend lying close by, trying to stand. “Twi, you’re okay!”
“Yeah. What… what happened?” Her friend adjusted her cracked glasses. She had blood running down the side of her face from a gash in her forehead.
Applejack shook her head. She didn’t know what happened. She had gone to sleep after lunch and somehow, she’d slept through the entire crash. She had no idea how the plane went down, nor did she know where they were.
“Is anyone else still…” Twilight gulped and choked back her emotions as she saw Trixie and Lavender. “Is anyone else still alive?”
“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash suddenly appeared from behind the turbine, supporting an injured Sunset Shimmer from under her shoulder. “Two here…”
Rainbow had some minor cuts and bruises across her body, like Twilight and Applejack herself. Sunset had some of those too, but she had a pretty serious cut along her right shin, which was still bleeding profusely. Her face was looking pale and she needed some medical attention soon.
“Any sign of the cockpit?” Rainbow asked. “We need some first aid gear.”
“Mr. Discord had a first aid kit. If we can find him-”
“He’s right… there…” Twilight pointed a finger to a spot under a different part of the plane’s cabin, where more bodies were lying.
Applejack spotted a familiar blood-soaked lab coat on a grey haired man, with a metal rod pierced through his chest.
“No…” she croaked as she began to take in the depth of their situation. She had friends and teachers among the wreckage who were dead and she didn’t even know why. They’d faced trial after trial together and all it took was one plane crash to send their world crumbling down.
Applejack wanted to cry, but she knew Sunset needed some supplies now or she would be another friend she had to mourn for.
As she searched around Mr. Discord’s remains for anything resembling his carry on, she eventually found it a little further away from his body, next to the body of a woman who had her neck broken as well. She didn’t know how to open it, but she managed to find a plane axe close by, so lifting it high, Applejack hacked her way through her teacher’s sturdy luggage, grabbing the bright white first aid kit from within and rushing back to her friends.
As she tended to Sunset’s injury, Twilight and Rainbow went about, deciding to see if anyone else close by had survived the crash.
“Do ya know what happened, Sunset?” she asked
As she gave Sunset’s cut a swipe with a cluster of alcohol wipes.
Sunset winced harshly and groaned. “I don’t know. One minute we were flying, and suddenly the plane just began to fall from the sky. There wasn’t much of any warning besides the masks falling from above. The plane began to tear apart as we hit the taller trees of this forest. I was right at the end of the middle section when the back tore off. It was scary. They landed some way behind us.”
Applejack pictured her friends in the rear of the plane. Fluttershy and Rarity had been there. She hoped they were okay.
“We found some more people!” As she began to wrap Sunset’s leg up, Rainbow and Twilight came back with a handful of people, all of them bruised and battered from the crash.
Sandalwood, Watermelody and Brawly Beats were among them, along with a stewardess called Sandy Scapes and a rather large man called Five Clubs.
“That’s everyone?” Applejack eyed the newcomers.
Rainbow nodded. “Sorry, AJ. Everyone else is dead.”
“Well, what are we going to do now?” Twilight asked. “We should try to find other parts of the plane. See if anyone’s still alive.”
“Do we have food?” Five Clubs rubbed his large belly. “We need food and water. Or a phone. We need a phone to call for help.”
“No signal, dude.” Sandalwood pocketed his phone.
“Surely our crash must’ve been reported,” Sandy Scapes told us, tying up her brown hair with a scrap of her jacket. “It won’t be long before search and rescue comes to find us.”
“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Five Clubs threw his arms into the air. “We’re going to starve!”
“We should have some snacks and leftover lunch in the plane.” Sandy pointed to the mostly intact part of the middle cabin. “And we can take shelter there too during the night so we don’t freeze to death out here.”
Five Clubs was the first to rush towards the cabin in search of food. Applejack followed along with the others, with she and Rainbow helping Sunset over so that she wouldn’t put too much pressure on her injured leg. They did what they could to turn the cabin into a makeshift campsite. They moved all the bodies outside, with Applejack upset that so many of her friends and teachers were dead. It wasn’t easy just tossing their bodies aside like that, so she resolved to go bury them tomorrow. Each of them took one row of chairs each, and there were spare blankets in the cabin crew compartments for the night. They still had enough food in there to last about three more days as long as Five Clubs didn’t gobble everything down.
After a dinner of stale chicken pasta from the afternoon’s leftover lunch and some peanuts, the group settled down for the night. Applejack stared at the scratched and torn cabin ceiling as she lay there, unsure of what to make of all this. Just what were they going to do now?
It had been about midnight when she heard the crack of wood outside the cabin. Applejack’s eyes immediately slammed open and she sat up. It sounded like a twig crunch somewhere out in the forest. Was someone out there? Perhaps someone else woke up and decided to take a late night walk. That was disgusting, considering all the bodies out there.
Bodies…
Perhaps it was a predator out there. She didn’t know which forest they were in, but potential forest predators included wolves, cougars, or even bears. She cringed at the thought of wild animals taking apart the bodies of her friends. They at least deserved a proper burial.
Getting out of her makeshift bed, Applejack put her hat on and wandered over to where the cabin merged with the cold outdoors. She at first tried to peer through the darkness out there, but once she realized she couldn’t see much even with her eyes adjusting to the dark, she took out her phone and flipped on the flashlight.
Just as she did so, something scurried from the flash of light within her beam, darting off into the darkness with almost nothing but the whistle of the wind and the movement of some leaves and twigs. That had caught Applejack by surprise and she jumped back a step.
“What in tarnation was that?” she whispered to herself, her heartbeat intensifying from the sudden movement.
She flicked the phone’s flashlight about, but there was nothing out of place. Everything was as it was, with all the bodies and debris lying about.
Had she hallucinated something darting off? Perhaps it had just been the shadows shifting when her beam came on. But then she remembered what had awoken her. Something had stepped on a twig or a dead branch out there and she had been worried it was a predator after the bodies for some free food.
She had wanted to chase it away earlier, but after what had just happened, her resolve had crumbled and going out there in the dark was far out of her mind now. Applejack scurried back to her row of chairs and ducked behind it, her eyes still on the opening of the plane’s cabin. She just hoped whatever was out there wouldn’t take the bodies of her friends and teachers.
Applejack didn’t think she got any sleep that night, but when she first heard the chirping of birds, she realized that the sun was already up and Rainbow and Sunset were already up, standing on the forest grounds and looking around
“What’s up?” Applejack rubbed her eyes and walked over to join them, standing at the edge of the cabin.
“We counted twenty seven bodies yesterday,” Sunset explained. She was now using a long pipe for a walking stick. “If I wasn’t mistaken, there’s only twenty five now.”
“Like I told Sunset, we probably miscounted,” Rainbow continued. “Twenty seven is a lot of people.”
Applejack frowned at the speculation. If there were bodies missing, then she wouldn’t have imagined what happened just the night before. It had actually happened. Something had been out there in the dark. Something that needed meat.
Other than the shadow she saw darting away, she had seen no other signs of what animal it could’ve been. No bear could move that fast. A wolf perhaps, but she couldn’t be sure.
“We should bury ‘em.” Applejack sighed and leapt down the edge of the cabin, her boots crunching against the clearing’s grass. “They deserve it. Plus, no predator’s gonna get ‘em after.”
“AJ and I will get the bodies together.” Rainbow joined her. “Sunset, you wake the others. You’re in no position to help with the hard work.”
Sunset wanted to complain, but Rainbow was being logical. There was no way she was going to be dragging those bodies with one leg down, so he reversed herself and went further into the plane to wake the others.
“Mad stuff, isn’t it?” Rainbow said as she dragged the body of a skinny man to the center of the clearing. “If you asked me yesterday, I would tell you you’re crazy if you think I’d be burying my friends anytime soon.”
“Tell me about it…” Applejack frowned at the thought.
“What do you think we should do?” Rainbow groaned as she lifted another body. “Someone’s bound to know the plane went down. Rescue should come anytime. But what I was thinking is going out there to find the rest of our friends. The back half of the plane would’ve landed somewhere south of our segment.”
“Ah was just about thinkin’ that very thing, but…” Applejack thought of how to word it. “There’s some wild animals out there. Ah think Ah saw one of ‘em last night.”
Rainbow dropped her body. “Last night? What happened?”
Applejack went on to explain the darting shape from last night. She hadn’t known if she was seeing things, but when Sunset told her about the missing bodies, she became more sure she had seen something.
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Rainbow waved. “Probably just a fox or a wolf. We can take them. Besides, you still have that axe, right?”
Applejack managed a laugh. “That Ah do, Dash. Guess we’ll see what the others think once we’re done with all this.”
Without any tools, Applejack and Rainbow Dash had dug out twenty five holes in the ground with scraps of the plane’s cabin. Brawly Beats and Sandalwood came out to help bury the bodies and when that was just about done, it was almost sundown and their stomachs were rumbling.
“Phew, I’m starving…” Rainbow wiped sweat from her forehead. “And man, even with all that work, it’s getting colder. Maybe we should start a fire.”
“Yeah dude. Maybe we can get some firewood from the trees around us.” Sandalwood pointed.
“We’ve got five bodies left to bury,” Brawly said and picked up one of the plane scraps.
“Tell y’all what.” Applejack took the plane axe off her belt. “Ah’ll go get some branches and what not while y’all finish up. When y’all are done, we should already have a fire goin’.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Sandalwood smiled.
“I’ll keep an eye while you’re gone, AJ.” Rainbow gave her friend a pat on the back. “Look out for wolves.”
As Applejack trudged along the forest grounds, the sun began to descend, bathing her surroundings into a golden orange, which was a sight to admire should she not have needed daylight to gather wood. The cowgirl began to chop at the closest branches, gathering them up under her arm as she perused the trees. It wasn’t as hard work as the digging earlier, but the plane axe was no woodcutter’s axe and it took a little more effort to lop off those branches.
Applejack had been about halfway in when she became aware of something. The forest was quiet. Like, deathly quiet. All this while, she realized there had been birds singing in the trees and insects making all sorts of sounds, but now, it had gone dead silent.
Silence in the wild only meant one thing, and that was that a predator was closeby. Applejack’s arm hairs suddenly stood on end as she realized this observation and she suddenly felt watched. What was out there and where was it?
A scratching sound abruptly broke the silence and Applejack jumped and spun around, dropping a few branches.
At first, she saw nothing. Everything in the forest looked the same, until she spotted one tree at least ten meters down. It was a pine tree, just like most of the other ones around her, but something was off. There was someone hiding behind that tree, slightly peeking out at her, likely still thinking she couldn’t see them.
“Is that you, Brawly? What’cha doin’ over there?”
There came no answer.
Applejack kept looking at it, but the more she did, the more she realized it definitely wasn’t anyone from the plane. Hay, it didn’t even look like a person anymore. Whatever was behind that tree was of a dark colour, with smooth hairless skin, unlike any forest creature she knew. Its fingers, which were curled around the trunk, were unnaturally long and seemed to grow as the sun began to set, it’s body melding into the shadow of the woods.
Her flight response taking over, Applejack backed away slowly, keeping an eye on whatever that thing was, and all the while, the creature just stood there, unmoving, and only when she was far enough, Applejack spun around and ran back to the plane. She arrived back at the clearing with only a pitiful six branches for the fire, but she wasn’t going to go back in there and get more.
“What, that’s it?” Rainbow asked as she saw her coming back.
Applejack dumped the branches by the plane’s entrance, then walked over to her friend. “There’s somethin’ out there.”
“What something?”
“Some thing.” Applejack kept her eyes on the treeline.
“Well…” Rainbow took the wood from under Applejack’s arm. “We need that fire. I’ll start her up.”
Everyone went about doing what they could to get the fire going and to ration out the food. Five Clubs gobbled down his meal in no time and wanted more, clearly having zero survival skills. Everyone else ate what little they could manage, with Watermelody making a work of art with her fork.
Sandy said they only had about a day’s worth of food left, but Applejack wasn’t quite paying attention. All this while, she had her eyes trained on the woods around them, hoping not to see any strange faces looking out at them. She didn’t want to see what that thing was, that was true, but at the same time, she was curious as to what it was and what it actually looked like.
And then it hit her again like a ton of bricks. The forest around them was still deathly silent. The only sounds she could hear were the crackling of the fire and the occasional scrape of a utensil against their food trays.
They weren’t alone out here.
“I’m tired.” Five Clubs stretched his arms up and yawned. “We should get some sleep. Rescue better be coming tomorrow. Do you know who I am? I own basically the biggest company in Manehattan. If we’re not rescued soon, the government’s going to be hearing from me.”
Everyone seemed to collectively roll their eyes together, but Applejack was too busy keeping an eye on things to care. She still didn’t see anything fishy out there, but now that it was dark, she couldn’t see anything out there at all.
As her friends went back into the plane one by one, she was soon left alone outside by the pitiful fire. There was a crack and a snap out there in the woods, followed by what sounded like something dragging along the forest floor. After that, it went silent. Applejack began to hear her heart beating in her ears and it seemed to drown out all other sounds. She couldn’t even hear her footsteps as she backed up towards the plane.
When she was close enough, she hauled herself up into the cabin and turned around one last time. Everything was still quiet, but then she spotted something. There seemed to be something glinting at the tree line, behind one of the trees. They seemed like orbs of faint light, reflecting the campfire’s dying flames.
Applejack’s back stiffened. Those were eyes. And they were just looking straight at the plane cabin. They were looking straight at her.
Ducking back in, Applejack rushed to where her friends were setting up their sleeping areas and she motioned for them to remain silent.
“What’s the meaning-” Five Clubs demanded, but Applejack silenced him with her hand, then pointed outside.
“Something’s out there watching us. Keep quiet. Don’t make a sound.”
“I told you,” Rainbow began in a whisper. “It’s just wolves or foxes or something.”
Applejack wasn’t convinced. Not anymore. “That’s no wolf out there.”
She was about to say more, but then something bumped into the side of the cabin and she immediately cut off her words. There was a low growl on the other side of the plane wall, followed by some kind of guttural sound that sounded like a motor trying to start.
No one moved a muscle. Applejack clutched the plane axe tightly and inched her head closer to the window in her row, but it was too dark outside to see anything. The thing out there must’ve seen her go into the plane. It knew where they were, so what was it trying to do now? Was it toying with them? Was it trying to provoke them to make the first move?
Applejack didn’t know, but then Five Clubs suddenly rushed past her, running down the aisle on his stubby little legs.
“I gotta get out! It’s gonna eat me!” And then he hopped off the edge of the plane. “Eat them instead! I have so much to live for!”
Sandalwood stood to go after him, but Rainbow Dash pushed him down and signaled for him to remain silent.
Applejack couldn’t see what happened, but she heard his footsteps running along, and then suddenly a sound that sounded like something heavy just leapt into the air.
They heard Five Clubs release a blood curdling scream and the sound of something being torn. And then… silence again.
No one uttered a sound. Applejack poked her head up behind her seats and tried to look out into the darkness, but the fireplace was in cinders by now and it didn’t help at all in illuminating what was out there.
She kept imagining something would enter the plane any moment now and she clutched her axe tightly. She waited for any signs of life, like those long fingers the creature had, curling over the edge of the cabin, but even as daylight pierced the clouds and the singing of birds returned, nothing else had happened that night.
No one got any sleep that night.
Watermelody was hysterical by now and she demanded they go find the head of the plane to see if they could find a radio to call for help. Applejack and her friends wanted to go find the backend of the plane to see if Rarity and Fluttershy were doing okay. They couldn’t come to any agreement and in the end, they decided to split off into two groups. One would find the plane head to see if there was any way to call for help, and the other would go find more survivors.
Brawly Beats, Sandalwood and Sandy Scapes went with Watermelody, while Twilight, Rainbow and Sunset went with Applejack. The two groups quickly set off while the day was still young, in hopes of making it back here or to someplace safe by nightfall.
On the way out, Applejack saw no signs of what happened to Five Clubs, except for patches of bloody grass near the campfire. She could only assume the worst for the man.
The trek through the forest was slow, with them having to help Sunset along, but they weren’t going to leave her behind. All this while, they had accomplished everything thrown at them together, and they weren’t about to lose that advantage just yet.
Pinkie Pie was fortunate to not be on this trip. Her parents didn’t allow her to go on planes, because they were giant metal deathboxes. How right they had been…
On the way through the forest, the girls had stopped occasionally to drink from brooks leading down from a mountain in the distance, and being a farmer, Applejack knew which berries they could eat, and which they couldn’t. They also pocketed a bunch to eat along the way.
It was a long trek through the forest, going in the direction of the mountain, and as the ground began to slope up, it began to get harder and harder to move at a steady pace. Applejack began to wonder if they were going the wrong way, but eventually, they spotted bits and pieces of the plane’s exterior, along with a couple of luggages. That was a good sign.
Pressing on a bit more, they eventually came across the back end of the plane, still retaining most of the tail, but like their middle section, was torn and wrecked all over, scattered across this part of the forest. Unlike their forest clearing, this place was full of trees, and the tail had crashed into one, caving it in a little, where it was eventually halted from rolling down the hill.
Bodies lay all across the forest, and Applejack spotted the familiar Whizz Kid lying against one of the trees, his upper body bent unnaturally against it. More people and students alike lay around dead, some of the more gruesome than others. One woman had a piece of shrapnel through her midsection, just about splitting her in half. Only just a bit of her body was still held together at her left side.
Twilight looked away and looked like she was about to hurl. For a while, no one said anything. The mood here was too sombre for anything to lift their spirits. The only hope they could hold on to was to find Fluttershy and Rarity, who were hopefully still okay. Surely there must’ve been survivors here too, just like they had survived back at the forest clearing.
“Hello, is anyone here?” Applejack called out as they approached the tail end of their crashed plane. She waited, expecting a reply from inside, but no reply came.
The group of girls cautiously approached the plane and when they were close enough, Rainbow climbed up into the cabin to have a look around while the rest of them surveyed the destruction outside. One of the plane’s wheels had dislodged and rolled into one of the trees, smashing the trunk down. Pieces of the cabin were strewn across the area, with a rather large piece slicing a woman’s top half of her head clean off. Her brains and eyes were already gone, likely eaten by the wildlife here or worse…
“There’s no one here.” Rainbow walked out to the edge of the cabin, scratching her head. “Maybe they upped and left.”
“But where would they go?” Twilight adjusted her glasses and went to have a look around. “Maybe they left a clue somewhere for us to follow.”
“Anything we can use in there?” Sunset asked, tapping the side of the plane with her makeshift walking stick.
“No food, if that’s what you’re asking.” Rainbow shook her head. “I know. I already check. It’s been cleaned out.”
“Okay, sounds like there were survivors here.” Applejack tapped the brim of her hat and looked up at the sky. They still had some daylight to go. “They didn’t go down to our crash. We would’a seen them.”
“Maybe they went up the mountain?” Rainbow pointed at the distant, but looming shape above the tree line. “Search and rescue would definitely have a better visual of us if we were there.”
As they looked around, they saw no signs of Fluttershy or Rarity, which hopefully meant they had made it away from here.
“Maybe we should head back, then. I’ll be close to dark before we even make it back.”
Twilight soon returned. In her hands were pieces of paper, which she said hung from a few trees around the crash site. The papers didn’t contain much in terms of where the survivors might’ve gone, but the words on it were scrawled quickly and hard, and what they said made all of their hairs stand on end.
“It seeks us,” Twilight began to read off the papers slowly. “It comes in the night. It fears the light. No no no. It knows where you are. It toys with us. We must escape. Don’t kill me…”
Instantly, Applejack didn’t feel safe in the woods again. She remembered that creature looking at her from behind one of the trees when she was collecting firewood. The sun had still been out when she had seen it, and it didn’t do anything until night time. While it did roam around in the day, it seemed to only strike at night. That meant that it could be out here right now, watching them.
Applejack craned her head up to listen to the calls of animals around them, and again, she realized she could not hear them.
They weren’t alone.
“Into the cabin.” Applejack whispered to her friends and began to back away towards it.
“What do you-”
“Now,” she breathed.
Her friends didn’t question her again and they all crept into the tailend. When she made sure they were all safe inside, Applejack went to the edge and peered out, scanning the forest with her axe clutched tightly in her hands. And as she had suspected, there it was again. She could make out its shape lower down the hill, half hidden behind one of the trees, its long fingers curled around the trunk. With the sun still being up, unlike the last time, Applejack could see more of the creature’s features this time. It had white shining eyes and where its mouth was was a huge black maw. No teeth, no tongue. It just seemed to go forever. Its body was skinny and naked, and it had blood splashed across its left leg and chest. Its legs were of digitigrade nature, with its knees bending low and almost touching the ground. Its toes were curled and ending in stubby segments with what looked like toenails sticking out the top of each toe.
Even though Applejack had seen it, it didn’t move. It just stayed there behind the tree, watching them, almost like it didn’t know she could see it. Something about it was off. It didn’t feel… natural. Applejack had seen predators in the wild before, like lions and bears. They prowled the woods in search of prey, but all that was natural. This thing felt… evil. Applejack didn’t know how to explain it, but this was no natural predator. This was something else.
“Maybe we should find our way up the mountain too.” Rainbow joined her and jolted her up from the sudden noise. “Woah, what is it?”
Applejack pointed to the tree. “Ya see that? That’s the thing. It’s just… watching us.”
Rainbow squinted, but then her eyes shot open with surprise.
“I… I see it. What in the hay is that?”
“Ah don’t know, Dash, but Ah think that’s what was out there last night. Ah saw it the other night too. And then it got Five Clubs.”
The girls snuck to the back of the plane and huddled near the bathroom as the sun began to set. According to the papers they find, the darkness drew the creature out and let it make its move. While it seemed to watch them during the day, the night was when it would come out to hunt. Applejack had witnessed it on the first night, taking two of the bodies, and then Five Clubs the following night.
There was a whistling of wind, and just as the sun passed down below the line of trees, there was a thump against the side of the cabin, followed by the same scratchy sounds they heard the night before, along with the guttural growls.
None of them moved. None of them made a sound. It was as though they had been sucked into a vacuum. All Applejack could hear was her own heartbeat and she had to control herself from breathing too loudly as well, in fear that the creature might hear it.
It was out there and Applejack could imagine it stalking around the plane, trying to spook them to come out. To make a wrong move. But she wasn’t going to do that. By now, they knew better than that. Perhaps if they stayed put, the creature would leave by morning.
Their assumptions were proven wrong when a set of curled fingers made themselves known at the edge of the plane’s cabin. Then another set emerged next to it and Applejack realized that none of them were safe anymore. She tapped her friends to get their attention, then pointed to the bathroom and motioned for them to shut the door. Then she lifted her axe and gave them a determined look. She had to buy them time.
Getting on her feet, Applejack shakily made her way down the cabin as the creature’s head came into view. Its white eyes glowed in the darkness, and its mouth was as dark as ever, sucking in the light of anything around it. Applejack froze on the spot for a few seconds, but then she knew what she had to do and with a yell, she charged down the aisle and raised her axe high.
Her friends called for her from behind, but she had to do this. She had to give them time to get away.
She jumped and hacked at the creature’s hands as she got closer, but almost as soon as she had started, the creature was already gone, scurrying away into the darkness in a blink of an eye. Applejack jumped down and then yelled for her friends to get away.
Before she could do anything else, she was blindsided by something moving very fast, throwing her up into the air. She landed on her back and knocked all the air from her lungs. Then the creature was above her, looking at her face with its stark white eyes and gaping maw. It reached a glaw over her chest and dug them in, spearing pain deep within Applejack’s body and soul. She had never experienced such pain and such terror before.
“Applejack!” Suddenly, Sunset was on the creature’s back, smacking it across the head with her walking stick.
The creature threw Applejack to the side and grabbed her around the neck.
“No!” Applejack heard Twilight cry, but they were too late.
The creature drove its claws into Sunset’s chest, and she spat blood out at its face. With a sickening tearing sound, they could only watch as the creature ripped most of her chest out along with her heart, stuffing it into its dark mouth, which closed over it without any chewing.
Sunset spasmed in its grip for a few seconds, then her eyes went blank and she stopped moving.
If the creature could smile, it did, and going down on all fours, it disappeared into the woods, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
“Sunset!” Rainbow was out of the plane and running to the woods. “This beast needs to die! I’m gonna kill it!”
“Rainbow, wait!” Twilight hopped down as well, but then stopped to help Applejack. “AJ, are you okay?”
The cowgirl was having difficulty breathing, but because of Sunset, she hadn’t met the same fate. Sunset had sacrificed herself for her and that only made her heart ache more. They couldn’t let her sacrifice go to waste. “We need to kill it.”
“We can’t. It’s too fast! We need to get away from here.”
“But Rainbow’s already gone after it. We need to help her. We need to do this for all our lost friends.”
“You’re hurt, AJ. We need to get you someplace safe.”
Applejack however, shook her head. “We need to kill it.”
Twilight could do no more to try to convince her friend, instead, after using some of the bandages they still had, they were in pursuit of Rainbow and the creature, following the trail of blood down the hill, along with Rainbow’s frantic footsteps ahead. Applejack had hurt the creature with the axe with her preemptive strike. It could bleed. If it could bleed, then surely it could be killed.
As she ran on after the monster and her friend, tears stung Applejack’s cheeks as they trailed down her face. From the crash, to the death of her friends and that monster terrorizing them, only her determination to bring justice for her friends kept her running on. It was too much for her to keep going, but her friends deserved to be avenged. Just leaving now and letting their deaths go to waste wasn’t an option.
The run down the hill in the dark eventually led to a cave entrance at the bottom of the hill, obscured by a cluster of trees. If the trail hadn’t led them here, Applejack was certain they’d never have found it.
This had to be the creature’s lair. It was a random cave in the middle of a forest. She was sure of it.
“We need to go in.” She looked at Twilight and nodded. Rainbow was likely in there already, having recklessly gone after the creature before they could plan anything.
Twilight didn’t seem so sure about the plan, but she followed Applejack anyway. Applejack didn’t think it was possible for their surroundings to be any darker, but once they were far enough in the cave, the darkness became overbearing; it felt as though the darkness itself was trying to swallow them whole, and their only light source, which didn’t do much to help, was the light from their phones.
In here, the only sounds they could hear were their footsteps against the rugged stone, along with a faint dripping of water somewhere further down. Applejack didn’t speak a word to Twilight, nor did Twilight say anything. They didn’t know what lay ahead, but they did know that letting the monster know they were coming was going to be a dead giveaway, in all sense of that word.
The tunnel they were going through twisted and turned, even going uphill once, forcing them to haul themselves up over boulders and slopes. Eventually, the girls came upon an open cavern, spanning somewhere high above their heads where even their phone flashlights couldn’t reach. This big area was slanted down to the right, with patches of puddles dotted around their vicinity. Stalagmites and stalagtites ascended and descended from the floor and ceiling, and the worst of it, Applejack found clusters of bones when she flicked her flashlight around. Not just small piles of bones, but huge stacks of them, with skulls and everything, some of which were still stained red.
And then, there was a scream. It was a scream Applejack knew well. It came from Rainbow Dash.
“No, no no no no.” Applejack raised her axe and picked up her speed through the cavern.
There at the far end, just under a small natural alcove was Rainbow and the beast. The beast had its jaws around Rainbow’s neck and the girl’s screams were slowly starting to get more gurgled and choked. Blood pooled down around her clothes and the cave floor as she fought to dislodge the creature, but she couldn’t muster the strength to do so. Sporting no teeth earlier, tiny fangs jutted out from the mouthline now, stained red with blood.
“Rainbow!” Applejack ran over, her need to help her friend easily overpowering her fear.
She swung the axe at the creature’s head without hesitation, feeling the blade sink through its dark flesh and stopping against a rather hard skull underneath. Black blood flowed from its head wound, but lifting a hand, it slapped Applejack away, sending her falling to the cave floor with a slide, dropping her axe.
“Twilight, we needa help Rainbow! Quickly!” She pushed to one foot and winced as she tried to stand.
The bespectacled girl didn’t have all that courage Applejack had, but she scurried to the axe and grabbed it in both hands. By now, Rainbow Dash’s voice had gone hoarse and her eyes were starting to roll back in her head. They were running out of time.
Twilight approached the creature and swung her weapon, aiming for its white and reflective eyes. The axe connected with its left eye and there was a sickening squelching sound as Twilight chopped again and again. The creature let out an unearthly screech, dropping Rainbow from its jaws, then reached its claws up and slashed Twilight across the neck as it tried to defend itself.
Twilight spun around, her hands already clutching for her neck as Applejack ran over to catch her. “No, no no, Twi!”
Twilight gasped for air, blood flowing down and staining her shirt. Applejack peeled off a part of her skirt and pressed it to her friend’s neck, but there wasn’t much she could do about something like this.
“Ah’m so sorry. Ah’m so sorry!” she croaked, tears stinging her eyes. She had brought Twilight into this. She shouldn’t have asked her to come.
The creature scratched at its wounded eye and leapt about under its alcove, screaming and clawing at the rock.
“Keep the pressure. Please.” Applejack gave Twilight a gentle squeeze, then got to her feet and grabbed the axe.
With a deafening battle cry, she rushed the creature, swinging the axe at its limbs, each blow containing all of her strength. The creature suddenly dodged the next one, stepping away so fast that even the blink of an eye would’ve missed it. It suddenly pounced on her, driving its fangs deep into her right shoulder and ripping out a chunk of flesh from her.
Applejack screamed in pain, but she couldn’t let it stop her now. Lifting the axe again, she chopped at its now exposed neck, pushing against it hard. Blood splattered down at her face from above her, but she cut out with her weapon and sliced at it again and again. The creature raised a hand to defend its injury, but Applejack got up and cut one of its fingers off as she aimed for its neck again. The creature fell back on its back and tried to scurry back, but Applejack stomped a foot on its chest and cut at it again and again and again. She didn’t stop even as bones were cracked and organs were ripped, not until she heard the sound of metal against stone.
Breathing hard, Applejack stepped off the creature and eyed its now loosse head, unmoving on the cavern floor, its mouth opened, the darkness within it still going on forever. She had done it. She actually did it. The creature was dead.
Her adrenaline draining, Applejack dropped the axe and grabbed for the grievous wound on her shoulder. Reaching a hand to it, she shuddered as she felt wet flesh and bone where most of her shoulder used to be. Black marks started running down where the flesh had been torn like that of roots of a tree. They seem to move on their own, twitching under her skin.
Her battle over, Applejack limped her way over to Rainbow first to check on her. She lay on the cave floor on a puddle of water that was now stained a dark red. Her eyes were glazed, looking at the ceiling forever frozen.
“R-Rainbow?” Applejack choked on her friend’s name, but there came no answer.
Pushing back on her feet, she darted over to Twilight to find the same blank expression looking up, her chest motionless as well.
“No. N-No, Twi…”
Applejack sunk to her knees and sobbed against Twilight’s shoulder. She had killed the monster that had taken her friends, but at what cost? Was there even a point anymore. The wound in her shoulder began to sting and throb, but Applejack did nothing to staunch the bleeding. She didn’t see a need to anymore. Her vision soon began to blur at the sides as the pain became more intense, but she wasn’t done mourning. She didn’t think she would ever be done mourning.
Throwing her head up, Applejack let out a hair raising wail, which echoed out into the entire cavern, spanning miles and miles down into the earth, where something darker began to stir.
“Anything?” Watermelody asked as she lit a branch on fire with some flints to grant them some light in the pitch blackness of the forest.
“Still nothing!” Brawly Beats yelled from the cockpit of the wrecked plane.
A day ago, their group had found the cockpit, rushing to it to search for any way they could use to call for help. They had found a radio in there, but till now, all they could hear was static.
“I got some firewood.” Sandy Scapes dropped a pile of dead branches on the forest floor and looked around warily. “We should hurry up. There’s no telling when that creature might show up.”
“Too true.” Watermelody looked around as the night air went silent.
She saw something gleaming at the edge of her vision and looked, but there was nothing there.
“Something wrong?” Sandy asked, looking in the same direction.
“Hmm… I thought I saw…” Watermelody frowned as she looked back at the stewardess, but then froze mid sentence. Behind her, just barely visible in the fire light, was a face, still half hidden in the shadows. Its white eyes were bright, reflecting the light of her torch, and its unnaturally long mouth was curved into a smile, revealing a dark void that absorbed all light around it. “S-S-Sandy!”
The woman turned, but the creature was already on her, grabbing her by the legs and pulling her down as her screams pierced the night.
Watermelody didn’t think twice and darted off to the plane, yelling with all her might. “The creature! The creature is here!”
As she climbed into the cockpit, something grabbed her leg and yanked her down, knocking her head against the edge of the plane. She felt metal cut into her forehead and she fell onto the grass below as the creature stood over her, pinning her down with its long and lanky arms. Rows of tiny razor-like teeth suddenly sprung up from under its lipless mouth. She didn’t know if she had hit her head hard or not, but this creature had the remains of blonde hair on its balding head and for some reason, it had a stetson atop that very same head as well.
But she didn’t have time to brew over that as the creature sank its teeth down into her neck. For the brief duration of her last moments of life, her screams rang out among the forest.
No one was coming to help now.
Author's Note
A little long, but I do hope it was at least a little interesting. Please let me know what you think. 
Will there be a sequel one day? I was thinking about it, but we'll see how this one goes first, eh?
Moral of the story, kids, wear your seat belts while seated. 
Cheers, everyone!
