It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door

It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door is a 143,000 word novel written by Jetfire. It is an adventure story starring Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Rarity, and explores the lands beyond Equestria, west of the Everfree Forest.

Style
Dangerous Business is written a traditional, third-person omniscient, past tense style for the most part. Of special interest is the section in chapter 14, where Rainbow Dash enters "The Dreaming": this part of the story is told in the present tense, using different colours to denote the words of different speakers.

Plot summary
Twilight Sparkle falls ill with a terrible disease called "horn rot" during a failed attempt to help Rarity learn to teleport. The only cure for her condition is the rare Beneviolet, found only at the top of the Archback mountains, far to the west of the Everfree forest.

Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Applejack take it upon themselves to travel past the Drackenridge mountains and through the country of Glidedale to retrieve a Beneviolet for Twilight. On their journey, they encounter the magic-wary earthponies of Gildedale, the amiable Pronghorn messengers, and the ancient and mysterious deer of the Shimmerwood Forest. Each of these groups teaches the ponies something important about themselves, and bestows a gift upon them.

The story reaches a climax as the three adventurers must fight off a gigantic world snake to send the Beneviolet to Twilight before she succumbs to her illness and dies.

Sequel
A short, light-hearted sequel called "A Day for Spike and Twilight" was written later. Reading it is not essential to one's enjoyment of the story, but it provides further world-building in the spirit of Dangerous Business.