The Last Apple Family Reunionby crash826ChaptersAt the GatesAmong the ShadesGiven a BargainCrossing OverIn a Forest of MetalAt the GatesBehind her, the door locked. A few moments later, with an almighty crash, it indented - three separate dents, inward, each curved like a skeletal forehead and baring teeth that left pockmarks in the leaden gate. She decided that it might not be wise to stick around. Cerberus was, after all, traditionally - mythologically, in fact - not an animal anypony wanted to stay around for long. Not only that, but there would surely be someone along to tell her to come out, and damn them, they'd probably convince her that this was a bad idea in a few minutes. Instead, she turned and took a few steps down the stairs, one hoof after the other. She'd expected them to echo, but they just clattered, leaden - a sound like a loose paving slab. She had never really gotten used to that feeling. Around the steps, as she walked downwards, the walls of the cave were filled with jewels - more than natural, far more than could ever be found near the surface. They gleamed, even with the pale light from the candle on her hat. Thankfully, she'd gotten the candle enchanted by a friend, so that it wouldn't melt or scatter sparks. It'd have to last for a while, of course. She'd have to avoid any sort of water, unless she took off her hat first. (Of course, she'd remove her hat before getting into the water anyway. She couldn't get it wet - no more than she could stop breathing.) The stairs eventually flattened a little, opening to a small stairwell, lit by candles. On the wall, there was a sign, not so much written as carved into the wall, and not so much carved as engraved. In leaden letters: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Of course, she didn't. But she did consider her circumstances. Down there - where she could see pale shoots curling from the dark earthen steps - was, presumably, what she was looking for. That for which she was willing to sacrifice so much - her reputation, her responsibilities, and even her unblemished family record. She'd considered and reconsidered, there on the surface - she was a planner, financially and with her job, after all, though not to Twilight's degree of talent. This had looked like a bad plan in the light, but she had figured the balances and decided that it was the only real way for her to succeed. Twilight had the most influence, but the girl wasn't a rule-breaker (come to think of it, neither was she.) Rarity was subtle enough… but she wouldn't understand why it was so important. And besides - her penchant for wealth wouldn't be good in the depths, here, with so many alluring gems, so many forbidden fortunes. Pinkie Pie… She shuddered. Bringing Pinkie Pie down here would be like dropping twelve boxes of lit fireworks into a retirement home. RD - she loved that girl, but she wasn't subtle. She was rainbow-colored. She could think of things less subtle than rainbows, but most of them were either various different permutations of Pinkie Pie or musical numbers. And she couldn't subject Fluttershy to this place. Going alone had seemed like the only answer in the light. In the stairwell, it felt a little different. She wasn't entirely sure that she had made the right choice. More than that, she would've liked to have someone there. There was no going back, though. Cerberus was at the gates. So, instead, Applejack kept walking. And, in the quiet of that place, she made her own life, her own sound, with music: "Thanks to all my good ol' friends, but now I'm sadly leavin', "Soon I'll come back to the land, so there ain't no use grievin'. "Thank yer folks fer bein' born, and thank yerself fer tryin'..." Down into the dark. "What's the point of livin' long..." She stopped. Down into Tartarus. Down to find her parents, for the Apple Family Reunion. Among the ShadesThe stairs were dark, heavily packed earth, and felt more like walking down a hill in the orchard in winter than stairs. As she got closer to the bottom, they abandoned all pretensions - the stairs became a sloping ramp, a path of solid earth. Whiplike shoots and dark branches grew from the walls, forming supporting arches. Some swayed at her passing, shifting toward her and the candle in her hat. Applejack could hear the sound of rumbling, of tapping, far off in the Earth. At the foot of the stairs, Applejack alighted, tapped her back hoof twice on the last step (for good luck, like her pa had taught her) and surveyed her surroundings. They were mostly as she had expected of the Underworld, but larger. In the distance, she could see no cave walls - no roof. The only thing up there was a sky, velvet and dark with jewels like the night sky. In the distance, mausoleums - pale bone, stark against the night of diamonds. She had emerged from a great dark portal, marked with gold and ruby. At the feet, ponies - or things very much like them, at least, dark or washed-out images of ponies - waved at her and smiled. "Hello? Helloooo? Are you alright?" The head of the party, a stallion of an indistinct forest green shade, smiled at her. "Come on out of the door, won't you? Do you know where you are?" "Uh..." Here was where the difficulty began. Well, this and wrangling Cerberus, of course. "Well, Ah reckon I've got an idea. But Ah'd appreciate an explanation anyway." "Certainly!" The green pony nodded. "We are shades. This is the Underworld. And you, dear, have... passed away. I'm dreadfully sorry, but that is the way that things are." The others around him nodded and smiled in a nonspecific, friendly way. "Well, Ah'd suspected." Applejack smiled weakly. "Can't say Ah'm happy with it, but Ah might as well deal with what's in front'a me. Mind givin' me any facts?" "Certainly. Walk with us?" She nodded, and the green stallion waved an authoritarian hoof. Those around his babbled incoherently for a moment, then turned and made a spot for her. She walked into the crowd, and on another wave, it moved on into the night. "So what's your name, dear?" "Appleja--" Applejack caught herself. "--Fritter! Heh heh, hoo. Apple Fritter, that's right." It wasn't a great name, but she wasn't often at home to lying. "Well, Apple Ja-Fritter, I can tell just by looking at you that you must have lived a long and fulfilling life!" The stallion smiled. "After all, look at your coloration... even down here, you're so vibrant, so solid. I'm in what's considered excellent shape for any shade... but compared to you, I'm hardly even here!" Applejack (Fritter) smiled back at the... shade, she supposed he was. It was true - he was a bit washed, and she could faintly see, on the other side of him, the vapid, stretched smile of a mare such a pale blue that she was more like the distilled water that Rarity drank than a living being. "How come your friends ain't as chatty as you are?" "They... lived uninteresting lives. Mostly, they are just phantom imprints of their old selves." "What a frightful painting," added the blue mare. "Go ahead, try it on me! I laugh at anything," volunteered another. "...right." "Well, do you care to join us, Ms. Jafritter?" The green shade gestured to a group of fairly bright shades; they looked at her with palpable interest. But she had... No time at all, really. "Sorry, Ah've got somewhere ta go. D'you know how Ah could find... specific ponies? Dead ponies, Ah mean?" On the horizon, Applejack noticed more mausoleums, and presumably more shades. "Ponies Ah knew?" "Oh, everyone asks that." The shade's smile vanished. "No one ever wants to stay at first. I tell them that they most likely won't be able to find their way back. But no one listens." Applejack could detect a certain resigned feeling, as well as anger, in the curl of his lip. "But I hope you'll come back some time. And besides..." His eye glinted. "Unless they haven't been dead for long, you may not like what you find. Ponies change down here. And the older ones, down in the Pit..." He gestured with a hoof to the slope of the Underworld - which, she noticed, was downward all the way, only stopping to accommodate cliff faces and tombs. His eyes were hard. "You may search for a thousand years and never find them. And by that time, even such a strong shade as yourself will fade, dear. But don't let me keep you." And with that, he stamped his hoof again, and the clouds of the restless, mindless dead floated off with him, smiling. "Ah ain't got that long." Applejack walked down the slope. The Pit was dead ahead. "Not at all." Given a BargainAs Applejack walked, the Pit stretched out, infinitely close and always central. Occasionally, she attempted a route change - walking in a straight line rather than with the curve of the ground - but, inevitably, the canyon curved with her new direction, so that the Pit was always, eventually, dead center. Thankfully, she could navigate, to an extent, by working with the tomb-apartments as landmarks. Her stomach lurched as her sense of direction, so adept on solid land, faltered in the land of the dead, but she managed to get close enough to a tomb - a few hundred feet from the Pit, maybe? - at which she stopped and decided to get her bearings. With the time to rest, now, she took in the building. It was bone-white, inset with lead, and windows of pale white glass decorated the sides. The architecture was an indistinct, ornate style that Applejack mentally categorized - along with magic, robotics, Twilight's calculating engine and the entire nation of Prance - as Fancy. Above the door, lead letters spelled COURT OF EYE FOR AN EYE. And below that, a bone-chip eye, with a lead knife-emblem pierced into the center. Applejack laid against the wall and considered her options again. As far she could tell, going into the Pit meant not coming out for a long while, and that notion was only reinforced by the way the land shifted. Only by dint of constant effort did she keep herself from walking downward, and even so, she'd still descended about ten or fifteen feet. To come back up was very probably harder than that. From what the green shade had said, searching on her own - as she had planned - might not be wise. And Tartarus was traditionally inhospitable to the living. The best option, possibly, was to find some way of getting assistance from the shades... She groaned. Shades who hated and feared the Pit, and who wanted her to stay up here with them and entertain them for as long as she was alive. The bright ones would never help her go down there, and the dull ones were very probably useless. Allowing natural curiosity to overtake her worries for the moment, Applejack walked to the door and pulled it open, then walked inside. Within, she was immediately overtaken by the incredibly dramatic architectural sense of the passed-on. The walls were luxuriously skull-laden and inset with byzantine corpse faces and silver-and-lead inlaid coffins. Separate, they might be a little dark and frightening, but - combined - they gave the impression that the place was a very small palace designed by a necrophiliac. (She noted that it looked new - behind the gimcrack-evil decor, the walls seemed ancient, and a little ugly. There was a suggestion of deformation.) In the center, there was a tall podium, around which a long line of shades - mostly the brighter shades, she noticed - was looped. The back of the line was near the door, where she had come in. Applejack took a place at the back of the line, if only to find out the purpose of the court. As she waited, humming vaguely under her breath, she observed the center, she noticed a single shade - brighter than the others - on top, speaking quietly to those who approached her. As they got close, they asked nonspecific questions to the podium's occupant, and she muttered oddly resonant answers. As they left, the shades placed little objects around the pillar - one dropped a toy robot, another a framed photograph. Each seemed... not bright, but not as dark as those objects in its surroundings. Eventually, the line brought her to the front. The mare at the podium looked down at her and waited. Applejack had no idea what to say. So she said what came to mind first. "Er, howdy. Nice... not-weather we're havin'." The mare cocked an eyebrow. "Or... not havin'?" "...I take it that you are new, dear. What is your name?" The mare's face curled into a curious, thin smile. "Apple Fritter. Nice ta meet ya." Applejack extended a tentative hoof, then retracted it when she realized that the pillar was far too high for a hoofshake. "Well, dear, I can tell just by looking at you that you have lived an incredibly full life. Your coloration is bright enough to be a living mare! Why, I believe that you could be a fantastic eye trader, should you ever feel the need for anything down here." The mare caught herself. "Oh, but you don't know what that is, do you?" "Well, ma'am, Ah reckon Ah can make a good guess. You're one of 'em, and -" Applejack pointed to the pile of glowing relics. "- You trade something 'r other fer these little trinkets. And it's called eye trading on account'a the fact that you hold it in this building with the eye over the door." "Close, but no. We call it eye trading because all trades are equivalent - an eye for an eye, so to speak. The Underworld takes care of those who make unequal deals." Applejack thought on that - she'd be in no trouble, of course, since she was honest in all her dealings. She could admire a place with an ethic like that. "These 'trinkets' are, essentially, fragments of the living parts of shades," said the mare. "And when you have one, you have a certain degree of control over its owner." The eye trader surveyed them. "I've got a fairly good haul, which is why I'm so bright." Applejack had a thought. "...could you use one'a them things to find its owner? 'Cause... I'm lookin' for somepony, and..." "Oh, everypony's looking for somepony." She waved her hoof. "The odds of me having any part of whoever you're looking for is slim." Applejack muttered a quiet curse. "But I can help you... if you're willing to pay a great fee. And you have to ask yourself, before you pay - will finding this pony be worth it? You could just make a new death for yourself down here." The eye trader looked concerned. "Everypony always wants to find somepony, and it's never as good as they expect -" Applejack didn't have time for this. "Sure I'm sure. What do Ah pay?" The eye trader sighed and slumped on her podium. "Alright. Fine, dear. I'll need..." She considered. "What about your hat?" Applejack said nothing at all. Her expression said it all for her. It wasn't her hat. It was her pappy's hat. The eye trader wisely said nothing more on the subject. Instead, she considered, and settled on: "I'll need the song you were humming while you waited in line." Applejack considered. Could she find them any other way? Would she like what she found? She disregarded that last part. She was willing to pay with a song. "Alright. Ah'll pay with that." And she sang into a silence like a hole in the sky: "Thanks to all my good ol' friends, but now I'm sadly leavin', "Soon I'll come back to the land, so there ain't no use grievin'. A certain energy infused room as she sang, and each syllable inscribed itself on the podium in whitish ink, fading moments afterward. Around the room, shades - bright and dark alike, even those with blank eyes and blanker smiles, perked up and took notice. A few muttered half-asleep phrases, as if waking up. "Thank yer folks fer bein' born, and thank yerself fer tryin'..." "What's the point of livin' long..." She hesitated. But this was her payment. To not pay wouldn't be honest. "What's the point in livin' long, when all you do with livin' long is run away from dyin'..." And with that, it was done. Applejack felt a sudden pressure in her chest, a sensation of air leaving her lungs, and within moments the tune - another line coming out, half-sung already - stopped coming out of her mouth. She could feel it vanish from her throat. A numbness spread along her skin, flew through her hair; her eyes burnt for a moment before becoming cooler, glassy. And she could feel, suddenly, the land of the Underworld under her feet - faintly, darkly, but still pulsing with death - not a mere lack of life, but a feeling of black famine, a polar opposite to the energy she could feel radiating from the soil. She could guess that she would never feel the raw energy of the orchards so acutely again. Death had touched her. The eye trader hummed a few bars under her breath, and her mane shone a little brighter. Around the room, the shades quieted down, the life force gone. "Dear, you may very well be the strongest shade I have ever seen. You've barely faded!" Her eyes narrowed. "Hardly like a shade at all, really." Applejack gulped. Then the trader smiled. "Outside, you'll find a road down to the Pit. Should you follow that path, you may very well be able to come back from there, once you've found whoever you're looking for." Her face became grim. "But be warned. The path attracts the dark things of the Underworld. If you have no fears, you may see nothing more than a few shadows... But I doubt very much that that will happen." It's worth it, thought Applejack. Even if I can't ever feel the land again. I just need to bring them back. Even if I have to stay here. She walked out the doors of the Eye Trader's. Outside, the path was written in calcium-white chalk, down to the Pit, far ahead. She adjusted her Stetson, felt the dead heart of the land under her feet, and went forth. Crossing OverThe path was a white line, extending down through the dead earth. It felt like walking on salt to Applejack - not sand, but salt: finer, crystallized. As she moved further and further downward, shades around her stared and scattered, none touching the path, some marveling at her color and others at the route she was taking. But she didn't much pay attention to them. As she approached the deepest land, the shades thinned out. Other things began to appear, some snarling at her - ponies in bright white habits entreating her away, black shucks staring and snarling, little rowan-foxwood-bramble creatures with gossamer wings blinking at her stupidly and asking her to please come off the path. She ignored them, as she had been warned. She had something deeper - more important - to attend. They thinned, too. A few times, she stopped - the travel felt like hours but exhausted her like days, and a few times, she lay out her Stetson, candle and all, laid it upright and slept in her little circle of candlelight. When she woke, she indulged of the apples in her hat before moving on her way again. She could feel something in her soul, attracted to the deeps. No, not her soul - her soul was a healthy creature and quite offended by the idea. But her legs wanted to walk there. She could feel a little deadness in her, striving. And when she arrived, her legs itched to walk in. She restrained herself. The entrance to the Pit was exactly as she had heard of it - foreboding, nearly organic. Briars reached up from the ground and became latticed iron fence-posts; they curved around each other and tangled into doors, gates; chains and leaden spires. Around each opening in the thick metal briar, there were objects - tattered dolls, worn swords stuck into the ground point-first, and a few scraggly trees with fruit that she identified as pomegranates. Beyond, all there was was a suggestion of… downward-ness, a literal pit extending deep into Nowhere. There was a suggestion of stairs. This was it, Applejack supposed. Her path ran through the brambles of lead and iron - she could see the cold white a bit, past the void. Only thing to do next was to keep walking. As she watched the iron (was it moving, coiling like metal rattlesnakes?), she felt a faint tingle by her hooves and shook them, assuming them to be falling asleep or trembling with the dead land. When the tingle persisted, she looked down. The same things were there as before - a trail of chalk and her shadow. Which spoke: "Ya know, we could turn around any time." She stepped back, startled. At her hooves, her shadow stretched, impassive-seeming, but somehow having spoken - her shape, her form, but maybe a little more solid than above, a little more substantial in the lightless sea of the night. After a few wordless seconds, Applejack decided to test the occasion. "Did you just say that?" "Indeed Ah did." The shadow spoke with an impassive inflection, her voice with a little emotion stripped away. "…Are you one'a those daemons r' maunts r' long-leggity beasties that Ah've heard about?" "Ain't so. Ah've been here a long time, only y'all can't entirely see me all the time." It was her voice, certainly, down to the twang. "But down here, Ah'm as real and clear as a thunderstorm in July." It certainly sounded like her, too; the phraseology was similar. "And why, exactly, should Ah trust you?" The shadow twisted - seeming to shrug without actually changing position, like a trick of the light or the mare-lamp illusion she had seen at Twilight’s. "Ah can't give any back-up on that, so you might as well not. Can't hardly hold it against ya." "Well." This was a novel approach for a monster, but Applejack was prepared to accept the idea that monsters could be creative. "Think Ah'll do that. What did you say before?" "Ah said: we could turn around at any time. The path's right here." "And why would Ah want to do that?" Applejack gestured behind her, where the path bisected the land. "'Cause Ah know it's a nicer place, with nicer folk than here, but it ain't exactly what Ah came here for." Then she gestured ahead, to the latticework. "That's where Ah'm headed." "Think about what you gave up t'get here, first. Think about whether it's worth it t'keep going." The shadow wavered under her feet. "Remember what y'all did to get down here? Happy with that?" She thought - her muscle honed into perfect form, thrusting and pounding the earth, feeling the vibration of potential in the land, knocking the door closed behind her, and a few seconds, give or take, there was a flash of heat and the door ripped itself from its hinges and turned into an orange but she didn't much care, she was already down the slope where being out of sight meant being out of mind meaning no unicorn could get a bead on her, and already the hoof struck with all the force of a thousand world-spanning trees and with a grunt the Royal Guard was nothing but an overgrown foal asleep in his dad's armor and Twilight’s brother, bless his heart, was calling for more pegasi as if that could even slow her down - and stopped. "So I did things Ah ain't proud of. But am Ah supposed t'just let it go ta waste?" "Cut yer losses. Say yer sorry. Y'all got some damage from the trader, but a few months'a recovery and Twi pillaging three libraries fer a cure spell later, yer right back on your hooves and not much worse." Again the shadow wavered, leaning, clock-like, to point another way. "My way, yer less a little money and a little jail time, but the Apple Family goes on and yer friends will call you an idiot, nothin' worse." At her feet, the light (the lack thereof) shifted, and the shadow angled towards the lattices. "Go that way, and y'all pay a price I don't reckon is worth the paying." "And what price ain't worth my parents?" She managed, mostly, to keep the indignation out of her voice. The specter at her feet was a specter, nothing more, but she could certainly feel a healthy dislike for a little shadow that spoke nonsense. On that, there was a pause, and when the shadow spoke up, it seemed to be taking a longer time over its words. "If y'all don't think so now, y'all won't 'til y'all have already paid it. And likely you won't believe that you didn't think so until you've paid it three times over." "Haven't answered my question." But, in moments, the shadow drained - it was no longer a presence, but merely a projection, and Applejack was left talking to nobody at all. And she wouldn't say that the shadow had rattled her, but it had certainly given her something to think about - no need of changing her mind, clearly, but something to consider. So she thought of what sort of price could possibly not be worth paying. She surveyed her inventory: a candle, her pappy's old Stetson (that seemed like too much to ask, by far), and nothing else. She gulped. The image of the eye trader came to her mind, and her hoof came to her eyelid in the manner of a Pinkie Promise. But that was the point, wasn't it? Paying what you could, until you couldn't. And she had to pay. With no more formality, and a certain degree of shuddering from the cold, she walked to the point where two spears clawed open the hedge, and stepped through. The air changed around her - a sensation of eyes, yes her eyes, covered with cool metal, she panicked almost immediately but she could still feel that she had eyes if they couldn’t see, a smothering of earth, like drowning in fabric or wood, a thump that rattled her bones, pounding her front hooves frantically to discover only a wooden lid, the sounds of prayer above her, shaking her head and throwing the metal discs to the wall and hearing the jingle of change and feeling the airlessness of the coffin yes the coffin, airless sinking leaden unnatural death - and, as suddenly as it had began, the sensation ended. The path stretched, luminous, under her feet. Around her, the iron-wrought fences had twisted, without her noticing, into something more like a forest. Dark wooden bulbs hung from the branches. Around her, mist had risen, and she could feel wax under her hooves that felt like fruit, but that wasn't as important as the sudden quintessential wrongness that she could feel - the fire and black powder and dirt mixed into the air, wooden planks broken to pieces by an axe, a tornado on the horizon. And she felt it in her heart, in her eyes, and most of all in the land. She looked back at herself, out of omen or instinct. On her flank, as always, was her cutie mark. A triad of apples. One vibrant and rosy. Another the same. And, on top, the last apple, black as ink. She paused to consider. "S-shadow?" Her voice hardly trembled, considering. "Yes?" it replied. "Y'all got a name?" "Pom's as good as any." "Good." She felt nausea coming on, made a valiant effort to resist it, and failed miserably. Her vision clouded. "Reckon Ah should listen to you some time." Pain ripped a hole in her head, and she was out like a light. In a Forest of MetalIn her dreams, she saw the trees. Each one was like a titan, a skyscraper; from each branch hung violently colored fruit - a vibrant red here, a shining green there. And one monster of a tree might have been enough, but there were ten, a hundred, a thousand - an orchard to top all orchards! And she, walking with her pappy as he bucked apples down into baskets, was the personal friend to every last one of them. She named them, as a token of affection to each for feeding her family, and she forgot most of the names almost immediately. But as she aged, she never really let go of the habit. Even now, she knew the individual names of more than one hundred and seventy-five of their trees, and could recognize them on sight. That was a pretty appreciable fraction by most standards, and it had all started on that day, when she had extended a hoof and said "This here is... Spruce." Pappy had smiled and adjusted his old Stetson, then bucked the apples out of Spruce as if he hadn't heard her. When he'd moved on to the next tree, though, he had said: "What's this tree's name, sugar cube?" "Woody Allen!" She had had a strange imagination as a filly. Woody gave up his branch-loads into Pappy's bucket immediately. They spent the rest of that day naming trees and harvesting, and Applejack had eventually been forced to take notes to remember - but afterwards, as she followed her pappy in the harvest season every day, every year, she had remembered every tree in every aspect, the names imprinted on her mind. They had been given personalities, too. Pappy wouldn't buck a tree until she told him its name, while she followed him on his harvests as a little girl. When he had died, all she could think was that the trees would miss him. Applejack woke to absolutely no sound at all. She was sprawled, heavily, against a great iron pike in the ground, which branched into tiny, pointed poles above her head. Blearily, she tried to remember how she had gotten here - why the ground was so hard, why the chalky-white path was so luminescent compared to the dead rock, why the sky was so dark and starless… It all came rushing back in moments. Applejack turned to the pain again, and saw - on her flank - the same dead-black apple among its two rosy twins. She looked it over for a moment, then turned to the base of the tree and was unceremoniously sick. Having let that out, she considered her next move. She didn't want to talk about her cutie mark. The best next move would be to find out what she could "Shadow?" At her feet, her shadow became, subtly, more than a shadow - an individual specter in its own right. "What's the problem?" "D'y'all know anything about the Pit that Ah don't?" "Well…" The shadow (it had called itself Pom, hadn't it?) ruffled itself without actually moving, as if considering. "Firstly, Ah know what y'all might'a known from songs but forgot - there're four rivers in the Underworld. Or at least they're called rivers - they ain't entirely rivers no more. The first one's the way from the outer recesses of the Underworld, where most of the shades stay, through to the Pit. S'called Acheron. Y'all crossed it earlier." "And there was -" Applejack started, but Pom finished: "- a price, since y'all didn't take two coins on yer eyes." Neither of them said anything about the black apple. "Between each river's a different part'a the Pit. Y'all're in the Forest right now." "And mah parents?" Pom was silent at that. Applejack waited, but no reply came. So, with an increasing sense of resignation, she stood on unsteady legs and walked on, through the trees of wood so petrified as to be iron. The chalk was still scribbled along every inch of the earth, and she kept to it religiously, keeping her steps as quiet as possible to avoid intrusion by whatever unsavory creatures called the forest home. After a few minutes, she sensed Pom returning and decided to venture a question. "So… Pom. S'that… short fer anything?" "Pomegranate." "Ah - like an ersatz apple, Ah guess." "Y'all could say that." "Ah could." Pom said nothing. After a while, Applejack decided to fill the quiet herself. "S'not as dark as you'd think down here, is it? Ah expected it to be --" "Are y'all proud'a what you did?" She misstepped and nearly tripped, surprised. "Pardon?" "Ah'm askin': are you proud of what you did to get down here?" The shadow blurred accusatorially, again expressing without moving an emotion - here, that of some kind of resentment. "Well, of course Ah ain't! But Ah did what Ah had to. Anypony'd do the same. It's stickin' with family." "But y'all didn't think it through at all, did ya? You just jumped on Cerberus and hog-tied 'im and bucked those guards with no eye fer the consequences. Y'all know what that means." "Yeah… Ah know." The punishment for assault on a royal guard was severe, and it was brutal for attacking a magical creature under the care of the Princesses. The punishment for entering the Underworld was worse. "You know that when y'all go back up, you'll be legally, fer all intents and purposes, de --" "Y'all don't have to remind me, Miss Pomegranate." A stray thought crossed her mind -- with the mark it left, n' the little empty feelin' Ah can feel in the ground, maybe being legally… you know, won't be a problem -- and she quickly erased it before she could dwell any more on the black apple. "Ah ain't sure that Apple Bloom would approve." "Apple Bloom didn't know 'em. Bless her heart, but she didn't know them. Ah did." "If it makes you happy." They walked in silence for a while, the path of salt silent under Applejack's feet and Pomegranate gliding with her. The latticed trees swayed around them, noiselessly, once or twice, but nothing came of it and so she ignored it. "Pom?" "Yes?" "How far to the next river?" "Ah'm not rightly sure. But Ah don't believe it's too far." "Ah think I'll be taking a rest." With that, Applejack stopped and slumped against one of the metal trees, laying down and preparing for rest. Pom vanished from her shadow, presumably to take whatever sort of sleep a shadow could take. She investigated the inside of her hat for her food stores, but found nothing but a loaf of bread - she hadn't been able to pack much, for the sake of her agility. She'd been hoping for a food source, but that had been wishful thinking in the extreme - there wasn't much to eat in the Underworld, after all. "Maybe we should be turnin' back." "Pom, Ah'm ignoring that." "Suit yerself. Ah know - and y'all know - there's nothing to eat in Tartarus." Pom vanished again. Applejack miserably surveyed her bread and took a tiny bite that did nothing for her fierce, bottomless stomach, then slumped against the tree again to sleep on an empty stomach. And she felt the little pulse of quiet and lead and silence through her hooves, on the soil of the undiscovered countries. She stood, and decided to test a little theory. She positioned herself and focused - let death flow through her bones, out into her mind and through the land as life did on the surface. She felt the negative force of every iron spine, like the rich potential in every tree in her orchard. And, eyes closed, she bucked the petrified tree. There was a faint rattle in the sarcophagus-metal branches, and an apple the color of a sunset fell into her hat. When she bit it, it tasted like ashes, but it was a godsend for her appetite. The taste of death in her mouth, Applejack slept and dreamed of orchards. (And in her sleep, she ignored the faint star, black as a coal mine, staring down at her acres like a sun in the middle of dying.)
At the GatesBehind her, the door locked. A few moments later, with an almighty crash, it indented - three separate dents, inward, each curved like a skeletal forehead and baring teeth that left pockmarks in the leaden gate. She decided that it might not be wise to stick around. Cerberus was, after all, traditionally - mythologically, in fact - not an animal anypony wanted to stay around for long. Not only that, but there would surely be someone along to tell her to come out, and damn them, they'd probably convince her that this was a bad idea in a few minutes. Instead, she turned and took a few steps down the stairs, one hoof after the other. She'd expected them to echo, but they just clattered, leaden - a sound like a loose paving slab. She had never really gotten used to that feeling. Around the steps, as she walked downwards, the walls of the cave were filled with jewels - more than natural, far more than could ever be found near the surface. They gleamed, even with the pale light from the candle on her hat. Thankfully, she'd gotten the candle enchanted by a friend, so that it wouldn't melt or scatter sparks. It'd have to last for a while, of course. She'd have to avoid any sort of water, unless she took off her hat first. (Of course, she'd remove her hat before getting into the water anyway. She couldn't get it wet - no more than she could stop breathing.) The stairs eventually flattened a little, opening to a small stairwell, lit by candles. On the wall, there was a sign, not so much written as carved into the wall, and not so much carved as engraved. In leaden letters: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Of course, she didn't. But she did consider her circumstances. Down there - where she could see pale shoots curling from the dark earthen steps - was, presumably, what she was looking for. That for which she was willing to sacrifice so much - her reputation, her responsibilities, and even her unblemished family record. She'd considered and reconsidered, there on the surface - she was a planner, financially and with her job, after all, though not to Twilight's degree of talent. This had looked like a bad plan in the light, but she had figured the balances and decided that it was the only real way for her to succeed. Twilight had the most influence, but the girl wasn't a rule-breaker (come to think of it, neither was she.) Rarity was subtle enough… but she wouldn't understand why it was so important. And besides - her penchant for wealth wouldn't be good in the depths, here, with so many alluring gems, so many forbidden fortunes. Pinkie Pie… She shuddered. Bringing Pinkie Pie down here would be like dropping twelve boxes of lit fireworks into a retirement home. RD - she loved that girl, but she wasn't subtle. She was rainbow-colored. She could think of things less subtle than rainbows, but most of them were either various different permutations of Pinkie Pie or musical numbers. And she couldn't subject Fluttershy to this place. Going alone had seemed like the only answer in the light. In the stairwell, it felt a little different. She wasn't entirely sure that she had made the right choice. More than that, she would've liked to have someone there. There was no going back, though. Cerberus was at the gates. So, instead, Applejack kept walking. And, in the quiet of that place, she made her own life, her own sound, with music: "Thanks to all my good ol' friends, but now I'm sadly leavin', "Soon I'll come back to the land, so there ain't no use grievin'. "Thank yer folks fer bein' born, and thank yerself fer tryin'..." Down into the dark. "What's the point of livin' long..." She stopped. Down into Tartarus. Down to find her parents, for the Apple Family Reunion.
Among the ShadesThe stairs were dark, heavily packed earth, and felt more like walking down a hill in the orchard in winter than stairs. As she got closer to the bottom, they abandoned all pretensions - the stairs became a sloping ramp, a path of solid earth. Whiplike shoots and dark branches grew from the walls, forming supporting arches. Some swayed at her passing, shifting toward her and the candle in her hat. Applejack could hear the sound of rumbling, of tapping, far off in the Earth. At the foot of the stairs, Applejack alighted, tapped her back hoof twice on the last step (for good luck, like her pa had taught her) and surveyed her surroundings. They were mostly as she had expected of the Underworld, but larger. In the distance, she could see no cave walls - no roof. The only thing up there was a sky, velvet and dark with jewels like the night sky. In the distance, mausoleums - pale bone, stark against the night of diamonds. She had emerged from a great dark portal, marked with gold and ruby. At the feet, ponies - or things very much like them, at least, dark or washed-out images of ponies - waved at her and smiled. "Hello? Helloooo? Are you alright?" The head of the party, a stallion of an indistinct forest green shade, smiled at her. "Come on out of the door, won't you? Do you know where you are?" "Uh..." Here was where the difficulty began. Well, this and wrangling Cerberus, of course. "Well, Ah reckon I've got an idea. But Ah'd appreciate an explanation anyway." "Certainly!" The green pony nodded. "We are shades. This is the Underworld. And you, dear, have... passed away. I'm dreadfully sorry, but that is the way that things are." The others around him nodded and smiled in a nonspecific, friendly way. "Well, Ah'd suspected." Applejack smiled weakly. "Can't say Ah'm happy with it, but Ah might as well deal with what's in front'a me. Mind givin' me any facts?" "Certainly. Walk with us?" She nodded, and the green stallion waved an authoritarian hoof. Those around his babbled incoherently for a moment, then turned and made a spot for her. She walked into the crowd, and on another wave, it moved on into the night. "So what's your name, dear?" "Appleja--" Applejack caught herself. "--Fritter! Heh heh, hoo. Apple Fritter, that's right." It wasn't a great name, but she wasn't often at home to lying. "Well, Apple Ja-Fritter, I can tell just by looking at you that you must have lived a long and fulfilling life!" The stallion smiled. "After all, look at your coloration... even down here, you're so vibrant, so solid. I'm in what's considered excellent shape for any shade... but compared to you, I'm hardly even here!" Applejack (Fritter) smiled back at the... shade, she supposed he was. It was true - he was a bit washed, and she could faintly see, on the other side of him, the vapid, stretched smile of a mare such a pale blue that she was more like the distilled water that Rarity drank than a living being. "How come your friends ain't as chatty as you are?" "They... lived uninteresting lives. Mostly, they are just phantom imprints of their old selves." "What a frightful painting," added the blue mare. "Go ahead, try it on me! I laugh at anything," volunteered another. "...right." "Well, do you care to join us, Ms. Jafritter?" The green shade gestured to a group of fairly bright shades; they looked at her with palpable interest. But she had... No time at all, really. "Sorry, Ah've got somewhere ta go. D'you know how Ah could find... specific ponies? Dead ponies, Ah mean?" On the horizon, Applejack noticed more mausoleums, and presumably more shades. "Ponies Ah knew?" "Oh, everyone asks that." The shade's smile vanished. "No one ever wants to stay at first. I tell them that they most likely won't be able to find their way back. But no one listens." Applejack could detect a certain resigned feeling, as well as anger, in the curl of his lip. "But I hope you'll come back some time. And besides..." His eye glinted. "Unless they haven't been dead for long, you may not like what you find. Ponies change down here. And the older ones, down in the Pit..." He gestured with a hoof to the slope of the Underworld - which, she noticed, was downward all the way, only stopping to accommodate cliff faces and tombs. His eyes were hard. "You may search for a thousand years and never find them. And by that time, even such a strong shade as yourself will fade, dear. But don't let me keep you." And with that, he stamped his hoof again, and the clouds of the restless, mindless dead floated off with him, smiling. "Ah ain't got that long." Applejack walked down the slope. The Pit was dead ahead. "Not at all."
Given a BargainAs Applejack walked, the Pit stretched out, infinitely close and always central. Occasionally, she attempted a route change - walking in a straight line rather than with the curve of the ground - but, inevitably, the canyon curved with her new direction, so that the Pit was always, eventually, dead center. Thankfully, she could navigate, to an extent, by working with the tomb-apartments as landmarks. Her stomach lurched as her sense of direction, so adept on solid land, faltered in the land of the dead, but she managed to get close enough to a tomb - a few hundred feet from the Pit, maybe? - at which she stopped and decided to get her bearings. With the time to rest, now, she took in the building. It was bone-white, inset with lead, and windows of pale white glass decorated the sides. The architecture was an indistinct, ornate style that Applejack mentally categorized - along with magic, robotics, Twilight's calculating engine and the entire nation of Prance - as Fancy. Above the door, lead letters spelled COURT OF EYE FOR AN EYE. And below that, a bone-chip eye, with a lead knife-emblem pierced into the center. Applejack laid against the wall and considered her options again. As far she could tell, going into the Pit meant not coming out for a long while, and that notion was only reinforced by the way the land shifted. Only by dint of constant effort did she keep herself from walking downward, and even so, she'd still descended about ten or fifteen feet. To come back up was very probably harder than that. From what the green shade had said, searching on her own - as she had planned - might not be wise. And Tartarus was traditionally inhospitable to the living. The best option, possibly, was to find some way of getting assistance from the shades... She groaned. Shades who hated and feared the Pit, and who wanted her to stay up here with them and entertain them for as long as she was alive. The bright ones would never help her go down there, and the dull ones were very probably useless. Allowing natural curiosity to overtake her worries for the moment, Applejack walked to the door and pulled it open, then walked inside. Within, she was immediately overtaken by the incredibly dramatic architectural sense of the passed-on. The walls were luxuriously skull-laden and inset with byzantine corpse faces and silver-and-lead inlaid coffins. Separate, they might be a little dark and frightening, but - combined - they gave the impression that the place was a very small palace designed by a necrophiliac. (She noted that it looked new - behind the gimcrack-evil decor, the walls seemed ancient, and a little ugly. There was a suggestion of deformation.) In the center, there was a tall podium, around which a long line of shades - mostly the brighter shades, she noticed - was looped. The back of the line was near the door, where she had come in. Applejack took a place at the back of the line, if only to find out the purpose of the court. As she waited, humming vaguely under her breath, she observed the center, she noticed a single shade - brighter than the others - on top, speaking quietly to those who approached her. As they got close, they asked nonspecific questions to the podium's occupant, and she muttered oddly resonant answers. As they left, the shades placed little objects around the pillar - one dropped a toy robot, another a framed photograph. Each seemed... not bright, but not as dark as those objects in its surroundings. Eventually, the line brought her to the front. The mare at the podium looked down at her and waited. Applejack had no idea what to say. So she said what came to mind first. "Er, howdy. Nice... not-weather we're havin'." The mare cocked an eyebrow. "Or... not havin'?" "...I take it that you are new, dear. What is your name?" The mare's face curled into a curious, thin smile. "Apple Fritter. Nice ta meet ya." Applejack extended a tentative hoof, then retracted it when she realized that the pillar was far too high for a hoofshake. "Well, dear, I can tell just by looking at you that you have lived an incredibly full life. Your coloration is bright enough to be a living mare! Why, I believe that you could be a fantastic eye trader, should you ever feel the need for anything down here." The mare caught herself. "Oh, but you don't know what that is, do you?" "Well, ma'am, Ah reckon Ah can make a good guess. You're one of 'em, and -" Applejack pointed to the pile of glowing relics. "- You trade something 'r other fer these little trinkets. And it's called eye trading on account'a the fact that you hold it in this building with the eye over the door." "Close, but no. We call it eye trading because all trades are equivalent - an eye for an eye, so to speak. The Underworld takes care of those who make unequal deals." Applejack thought on that - she'd be in no trouble, of course, since she was honest in all her dealings. She could admire a place with an ethic like that. "These 'trinkets' are, essentially, fragments of the living parts of shades," said the mare. "And when you have one, you have a certain degree of control over its owner." The eye trader surveyed them. "I've got a fairly good haul, which is why I'm so bright." Applejack had a thought. "...could you use one'a them things to find its owner? 'Cause... I'm lookin' for somepony, and..." "Oh, everypony's looking for somepony." She waved her hoof. "The odds of me having any part of whoever you're looking for is slim." Applejack muttered a quiet curse. "But I can help you... if you're willing to pay a great fee. And you have to ask yourself, before you pay - will finding this pony be worth it? You could just make a new death for yourself down here." The eye trader looked concerned. "Everypony always wants to find somepony, and it's never as good as they expect -" Applejack didn't have time for this. "Sure I'm sure. What do Ah pay?" The eye trader sighed and slumped on her podium. "Alright. Fine, dear. I'll need..." She considered. "What about your hat?" Applejack said nothing at all. Her expression said it all for her. It wasn't her hat. It was her pappy's hat. The eye trader wisely said nothing more on the subject. Instead, she considered, and settled on: "I'll need the song you were humming while you waited in line." Applejack considered. Could she find them any other way? Would she like what she found? She disregarded that last part. She was willing to pay with a song. "Alright. Ah'll pay with that." And she sang into a silence like a hole in the sky: "Thanks to all my good ol' friends, but now I'm sadly leavin', "Soon I'll come back to the land, so there ain't no use grievin'. A certain energy infused room as she sang, and each syllable inscribed itself on the podium in whitish ink, fading moments afterward. Around the room, shades - bright and dark alike, even those with blank eyes and blanker smiles, perked up and took notice. A few muttered half-asleep phrases, as if waking up. "Thank yer folks fer bein' born, and thank yerself fer tryin'..." "What's the point of livin' long..." She hesitated. But this was her payment. To not pay wouldn't be honest. "What's the point in livin' long, when all you do with livin' long is run away from dyin'..." And with that, it was done. Applejack felt a sudden pressure in her chest, a sensation of air leaving her lungs, and within moments the tune - another line coming out, half-sung already - stopped coming out of her mouth. She could feel it vanish from her throat. A numbness spread along her skin, flew through her hair; her eyes burnt for a moment before becoming cooler, glassy. And she could feel, suddenly, the land of the Underworld under her feet - faintly, darkly, but still pulsing with death - not a mere lack of life, but a feeling of black famine, a polar opposite to the energy she could feel radiating from the soil. She could guess that she would never feel the raw energy of the orchards so acutely again. Death had touched her. The eye trader hummed a few bars under her breath, and her mane shone a little brighter. Around the room, the shades quieted down, the life force gone. "Dear, you may very well be the strongest shade I have ever seen. You've barely faded!" Her eyes narrowed. "Hardly like a shade at all, really." Applejack gulped. Then the trader smiled. "Outside, you'll find a road down to the Pit. Should you follow that path, you may very well be able to come back from there, once you've found whoever you're looking for." Her face became grim. "But be warned. The path attracts the dark things of the Underworld. If you have no fears, you may see nothing more than a few shadows... But I doubt very much that that will happen." It's worth it, thought Applejack. Even if I can't ever feel the land again. I just need to bring them back. Even if I have to stay here. She walked out the doors of the Eye Trader's. Outside, the path was written in calcium-white chalk, down to the Pit, far ahead. She adjusted her Stetson, felt the dead heart of the land under her feet, and went forth.
Crossing OverThe path was a white line, extending down through the dead earth. It felt like walking on salt to Applejack - not sand, but salt: finer, crystallized. As she moved further and further downward, shades around her stared and scattered, none touching the path, some marveling at her color and others at the route she was taking. But she didn't much pay attention to them. As she approached the deepest land, the shades thinned out. Other things began to appear, some snarling at her - ponies in bright white habits entreating her away, black shucks staring and snarling, little rowan-foxwood-bramble creatures with gossamer wings blinking at her stupidly and asking her to please come off the path. She ignored them, as she had been warned. She had something deeper - more important - to attend. They thinned, too. A few times, she stopped - the travel felt like hours but exhausted her like days, and a few times, she lay out her Stetson, candle and all, laid it upright and slept in her little circle of candlelight. When she woke, she indulged of the apples in her hat before moving on her way again. She could feel something in her soul, attracted to the deeps. No, not her soul - her soul was a healthy creature and quite offended by the idea. But her legs wanted to walk there. She could feel a little deadness in her, striving. And when she arrived, her legs itched to walk in. She restrained herself. The entrance to the Pit was exactly as she had heard of it - foreboding, nearly organic. Briars reached up from the ground and became latticed iron fence-posts; they curved around each other and tangled into doors, gates; chains and leaden spires. Around each opening in the thick metal briar, there were objects - tattered dolls, worn swords stuck into the ground point-first, and a few scraggly trees with fruit that she identified as pomegranates. Beyond, all there was was a suggestion of… downward-ness, a literal pit extending deep into Nowhere. There was a suggestion of stairs. This was it, Applejack supposed. Her path ran through the brambles of lead and iron - she could see the cold white a bit, past the void. Only thing to do next was to keep walking. As she watched the iron (was it moving, coiling like metal rattlesnakes?), she felt a faint tingle by her hooves and shook them, assuming them to be falling asleep or trembling with the dead land. When the tingle persisted, she looked down. The same things were there as before - a trail of chalk and her shadow. Which spoke: "Ya know, we could turn around any time." She stepped back, startled. At her hooves, her shadow stretched, impassive-seeming, but somehow having spoken - her shape, her form, but maybe a little more solid than above, a little more substantial in the lightless sea of the night. After a few wordless seconds, Applejack decided to test the occasion. "Did you just say that?" "Indeed Ah did." The shadow spoke with an impassive inflection, her voice with a little emotion stripped away. "…Are you one'a those daemons r' maunts r' long-leggity beasties that Ah've heard about?" "Ain't so. Ah've been here a long time, only y'all can't entirely see me all the time." It was her voice, certainly, down to the twang. "But down here, Ah'm as real and clear as a thunderstorm in July." It certainly sounded like her, too; the phraseology was similar. "And why, exactly, should Ah trust you?" The shadow twisted - seeming to shrug without actually changing position, like a trick of the light or the mare-lamp illusion she had seen at Twilight’s. "Ah can't give any back-up on that, so you might as well not. Can't hardly hold it against ya." "Well." This was a novel approach for a monster, but Applejack was prepared to accept the idea that monsters could be creative. "Think Ah'll do that. What did you say before?" "Ah said: we could turn around at any time. The path's right here." "And why would Ah want to do that?" Applejack gestured behind her, where the path bisected the land. "'Cause Ah know it's a nicer place, with nicer folk than here, but it ain't exactly what Ah came here for." Then she gestured ahead, to the latticework. "That's where Ah'm headed." "Think about what you gave up t'get here, first. Think about whether it's worth it t'keep going." The shadow wavered under her feet. "Remember what y'all did to get down here? Happy with that?" She thought - her muscle honed into perfect form, thrusting and pounding the earth, feeling the vibration of potential in the land, knocking the door closed behind her, and a few seconds, give or take, there was a flash of heat and the door ripped itself from its hinges and turned into an orange but she didn't much care, she was already down the slope where being out of sight meant being out of mind meaning no unicorn could get a bead on her, and already the hoof struck with all the force of a thousand world-spanning trees and with a grunt the Royal Guard was nothing but an overgrown foal asleep in his dad's armor and Twilight’s brother, bless his heart, was calling for more pegasi as if that could even slow her down - and stopped. "So I did things Ah ain't proud of. But am Ah supposed t'just let it go ta waste?" "Cut yer losses. Say yer sorry. Y'all got some damage from the trader, but a few months'a recovery and Twi pillaging three libraries fer a cure spell later, yer right back on your hooves and not much worse." Again the shadow wavered, leaning, clock-like, to point another way. "My way, yer less a little money and a little jail time, but the Apple Family goes on and yer friends will call you an idiot, nothin' worse." At her feet, the light (the lack thereof) shifted, and the shadow angled towards the lattices. "Go that way, and y'all pay a price I don't reckon is worth the paying." "And what price ain't worth my parents?" She managed, mostly, to keep the indignation out of her voice. The specter at her feet was a specter, nothing more, but she could certainly feel a healthy dislike for a little shadow that spoke nonsense. On that, there was a pause, and when the shadow spoke up, it seemed to be taking a longer time over its words. "If y'all don't think so now, y'all won't 'til y'all have already paid it. And likely you won't believe that you didn't think so until you've paid it three times over." "Haven't answered my question." But, in moments, the shadow drained - it was no longer a presence, but merely a projection, and Applejack was left talking to nobody at all. And she wouldn't say that the shadow had rattled her, but it had certainly given her something to think about - no need of changing her mind, clearly, but something to consider. So she thought of what sort of price could possibly not be worth paying. She surveyed her inventory: a candle, her pappy's old Stetson (that seemed like too much to ask, by far), and nothing else. She gulped. The image of the eye trader came to her mind, and her hoof came to her eyelid in the manner of a Pinkie Promise. But that was the point, wasn't it? Paying what you could, until you couldn't. And she had to pay. With no more formality, and a certain degree of shuddering from the cold, she walked to the point where two spears clawed open the hedge, and stepped through. The air changed around her - a sensation of eyes, yes her eyes, covered with cool metal, she panicked almost immediately but she could still feel that she had eyes if they couldn’t see, a smothering of earth, like drowning in fabric or wood, a thump that rattled her bones, pounding her front hooves frantically to discover only a wooden lid, the sounds of prayer above her, shaking her head and throwing the metal discs to the wall and hearing the jingle of change and feeling the airlessness of the coffin yes the coffin, airless sinking leaden unnatural death - and, as suddenly as it had began, the sensation ended. The path stretched, luminous, under her feet. Around her, the iron-wrought fences had twisted, without her noticing, into something more like a forest. Dark wooden bulbs hung from the branches. Around her, mist had risen, and she could feel wax under her hooves that felt like fruit, but that wasn't as important as the sudden quintessential wrongness that she could feel - the fire and black powder and dirt mixed into the air, wooden planks broken to pieces by an axe, a tornado on the horizon. And she felt it in her heart, in her eyes, and most of all in the land. She looked back at herself, out of omen or instinct. On her flank, as always, was her cutie mark. A triad of apples. One vibrant and rosy. Another the same. And, on top, the last apple, black as ink. She paused to consider. "S-shadow?" Her voice hardly trembled, considering. "Yes?" it replied. "Y'all got a name?" "Pom's as good as any." "Good." She felt nausea coming on, made a valiant effort to resist it, and failed miserably. Her vision clouded. "Reckon Ah should listen to you some time." Pain ripped a hole in her head, and she was out like a light.
In a Forest of MetalIn her dreams, she saw the trees. Each one was like a titan, a skyscraper; from each branch hung violently colored fruit - a vibrant red here, a shining green there. And one monster of a tree might have been enough, but there were ten, a hundred, a thousand - an orchard to top all orchards! And she, walking with her pappy as he bucked apples down into baskets, was the personal friend to every last one of them. She named them, as a token of affection to each for feeding her family, and she forgot most of the names almost immediately. But as she aged, she never really let go of the habit. Even now, she knew the individual names of more than one hundred and seventy-five of their trees, and could recognize them on sight. That was a pretty appreciable fraction by most standards, and it had all started on that day, when she had extended a hoof and said "This here is... Spruce." Pappy had smiled and adjusted his old Stetson, then bucked the apples out of Spruce as if he hadn't heard her. When he'd moved on to the next tree, though, he had said: "What's this tree's name, sugar cube?" "Woody Allen!" She had had a strange imagination as a filly. Woody gave up his branch-loads into Pappy's bucket immediately. They spent the rest of that day naming trees and harvesting, and Applejack had eventually been forced to take notes to remember - but afterwards, as she followed her pappy in the harvest season every day, every year, she had remembered every tree in every aspect, the names imprinted on her mind. They had been given personalities, too. Pappy wouldn't buck a tree until she told him its name, while she followed him on his harvests as a little girl. When he had died, all she could think was that the trees would miss him. Applejack woke to absolutely no sound at all. She was sprawled, heavily, against a great iron pike in the ground, which branched into tiny, pointed poles above her head. Blearily, she tried to remember how she had gotten here - why the ground was so hard, why the chalky-white path was so luminescent compared to the dead rock, why the sky was so dark and starless… It all came rushing back in moments. Applejack turned to the pain again, and saw - on her flank - the same dead-black apple among its two rosy twins. She looked it over for a moment, then turned to the base of the tree and was unceremoniously sick. Having let that out, she considered her next move. She didn't want to talk about her cutie mark. The best next move would be to find out what she could "Shadow?" At her feet, her shadow became, subtly, more than a shadow - an individual specter in its own right. "What's the problem?" "D'y'all know anything about the Pit that Ah don't?" "Well…" The shadow (it had called itself Pom, hadn't it?) ruffled itself without actually moving, as if considering. "Firstly, Ah know what y'all might'a known from songs but forgot - there're four rivers in the Underworld. Or at least they're called rivers - they ain't entirely rivers no more. The first one's the way from the outer recesses of the Underworld, where most of the shades stay, through to the Pit. S'called Acheron. Y'all crossed it earlier." "And there was -" Applejack started, but Pom finished: "- a price, since y'all didn't take two coins on yer eyes." Neither of them said anything about the black apple. "Between each river's a different part'a the Pit. Y'all're in the Forest right now." "And mah parents?" Pom was silent at that. Applejack waited, but no reply came. So, with an increasing sense of resignation, she stood on unsteady legs and walked on, through the trees of wood so petrified as to be iron. The chalk was still scribbled along every inch of the earth, and she kept to it religiously, keeping her steps as quiet as possible to avoid intrusion by whatever unsavory creatures called the forest home. After a few minutes, she sensed Pom returning and decided to venture a question. "So… Pom. S'that… short fer anything?" "Pomegranate." "Ah - like an ersatz apple, Ah guess." "Y'all could say that." "Ah could." Pom said nothing. After a while, Applejack decided to fill the quiet herself. "S'not as dark as you'd think down here, is it? Ah expected it to be --" "Are y'all proud'a what you did?" She misstepped and nearly tripped, surprised. "Pardon?" "Ah'm askin': are you proud of what you did to get down here?" The shadow blurred accusatorially, again expressing without moving an emotion - here, that of some kind of resentment. "Well, of course Ah ain't! But Ah did what Ah had to. Anypony'd do the same. It's stickin' with family." "But y'all didn't think it through at all, did ya? You just jumped on Cerberus and hog-tied 'im and bucked those guards with no eye fer the consequences. Y'all know what that means." "Yeah… Ah know." The punishment for assault on a royal guard was severe, and it was brutal for attacking a magical creature under the care of the Princesses. The punishment for entering the Underworld was worse. "You know that when y'all go back up, you'll be legally, fer all intents and purposes, de --" "Y'all don't have to remind me, Miss Pomegranate." A stray thought crossed her mind -- with the mark it left, n' the little empty feelin' Ah can feel in the ground, maybe being legally… you know, won't be a problem -- and she quickly erased it before she could dwell any more on the black apple. "Ah ain't sure that Apple Bloom would approve." "Apple Bloom didn't know 'em. Bless her heart, but she didn't know them. Ah did." "If it makes you happy." They walked in silence for a while, the path of salt silent under Applejack's feet and Pomegranate gliding with her. The latticed trees swayed around them, noiselessly, once or twice, but nothing came of it and so she ignored it. "Pom?" "Yes?" "How far to the next river?" "Ah'm not rightly sure. But Ah don't believe it's too far." "Ah think I'll be taking a rest." With that, Applejack stopped and slumped against one of the metal trees, laying down and preparing for rest. Pom vanished from her shadow, presumably to take whatever sort of sleep a shadow could take. She investigated the inside of her hat for her food stores, but found nothing but a loaf of bread - she hadn't been able to pack much, for the sake of her agility. She'd been hoping for a food source, but that had been wishful thinking in the extreme - there wasn't much to eat in the Underworld, after all. "Maybe we should be turnin' back." "Pom, Ah'm ignoring that." "Suit yerself. Ah know - and y'all know - there's nothing to eat in Tartarus." Pom vanished again. Applejack miserably surveyed her bread and took a tiny bite that did nothing for her fierce, bottomless stomach, then slumped against the tree again to sleep on an empty stomach. And she felt the little pulse of quiet and lead and silence through her hooves, on the soil of the undiscovered countries. She stood, and decided to test a little theory. She positioned herself and focused - let death flow through her bones, out into her mind and through the land as life did on the surface. She felt the negative force of every iron spine, like the rich potential in every tree in her orchard. And, eyes closed, she bucked the petrified tree. There was a faint rattle in the sarcophagus-metal branches, and an apple the color of a sunset fell into her hat. When she bit it, it tasted like ashes, but it was a godsend for her appetite. The taste of death in her mouth, Applejack slept and dreamed of orchards. (And in her sleep, she ignored the faint star, black as a coal mine, staring down at her acres like a sun in the middle of dying.)
