~Tohro~

It just came out of nowhere. I didn’t think it possible, but just when I firmly believed nothing could overcome us, after all we’ve been through, the world proves to me, once again, that there’s always something waiting in the shadows, ready to strike at your confidence.

In this case, it’s a robed quadruped with a jet black body, who stands over Caro. He’s just fallen unconscious.

“What the hell?!” I shout, immediately leaping into a battle stance. I crouch, flare out my wings and point my crossbow at the robed creature. “What did you do?!”

“Tohro?” Shae was just about to cross the wooden bridge when she heard Caro collapse, but she doesn’t know what’s happening in the slightest. She turns towards the sound of my voice. “What’s going on?”

“Stay there, Shae,” I command.

I don’t take my eyes off Caro, or the robed creature. On closer inspection, I can see blood dripping down its lips. My breath catches in my throat as I see the bite marks on Caro’s neck, and consider the worst possibility. If that comes to be, something’s going to bleed.

I move closer to the creature, my steps slow and arduous. “Walk away. I don’t care who you are or what you want, but I’m giving you an out, and if you’re half as stupid as you were to attack him…” I nod in the direction of Caro. He’s stirring a little bit, but his eyes still remain shut. “...you’ll take off.”

The strange pony doesn’t seem to care for my threats. Its mouth curves into a grin, presenting jagged fangs.

“Last chance,” I state.

The robed creature moves towards Caro in a strange, non-fluidic way, its limbs stiff and its movements sudden. It places its black hoof on Caro’s barrel, and in doing so causes my skin to crawl. I tighten my grip on the crossbow and aim, my hoof on the trigger.

“Back. Off!”

“Tohro, what’s happening?!” Shae shrieks.

“Shae, stay right there!” I growl.

“Can’t you hear that?! Something’s coming!”

“What?” I tune out the pounding in my ears long enough to listen up. At first, there doesn’t seem to be much beyond wind against stone, and the creaking of the wooden bridge. Then, I hear it. A faint, distant racket of wingbeats and chattering. Undeniably there, soft as it may be. What causes me panic is not knowing what the hell it even is. I’ve never heard such a sound in my life.

The only certainty right now is that we’re all in danger. What else is new? I reaffirm my aim with the crossbow and step closer to the robed creature. “What are you playing at?!” I yell at it. “What’s going on?”

The creature kneels down, its forelimbs reaching around Caro’s neck and stroking his fur. It speaks, its voice dry and scratchy. “He… be...longs to… Mo...ther…”

“He belongs to me!” I fire the crossbow. I hear a distinct shatter, and the creature is flung away from Caro. It leaves a trail of green liquid as it rolls to a halt, rather far away.

“Tohro?” Shae asks once again.

Is this how it’s going to be until we reach Everfree? We’ll be put in danger, and she’ll be clueless towards what’s happening beyond a few ambiguous noises. This is going to be harder than I thought. “Shae, don’t worry,” I say, more for myself than for her. “I’m over here. Follow my voice.”

Shae steps away from the bridge and slowly approaches me. She reaches out and touches my wither, and she doesn’t seem keen on letting go anytime soon. “What happened?”

“I think we have followers,” I say grimly.

“Shokenda?”

I scrape some of the creature’s green… stuff off the ground and examine it. It’s a bit more viscous than a pony’s blood. It reminds me of something a squashed insect would leave behind. Whatever this is, it’s not related to the Blackwings. “No, this… this is new…”

“...We should probably be moving now, shouldn’t we?” Shae asks. She’s obviously holding in her terror. I don’t know how she does it, considering that distant skittering sound is getting less distant by the second. “Tohro?”

“Rightly so.” I get on my joints and hook my forelegs underneath Caro, lifting him onto my back. Unfortunately, this is the one time I wish he didn’t have the muscle mass of a centaur. I’m over-encumbered and can barely run. “Dammit!” I groan as I slowly move to the bridge. “This can’t happen! Not after all we’ve been through!”

Caro moans as his eyes flicker open and closed. “T...T…”

I take my first step onto the bridge. “Stay with me, darling… I lost you once, like hell that’ll happen again.”

Shae’s foreleg presses against my shoulder. She follows my hoofsteps as closely as possible. Even though it’s a bit of a tight fit between the ropes of the bridge, it’s far superior to her walking it alone. The problem is how slow we’re moving. I can still hear the skittering.

I bite my lip as I adjust Caro’s position on my back. No matter what I do, I can’t find a comfortable way to carry him. I take solace in knowing we’re nearly to the end of the bridge. At least I’ll be able to move quicker when I’m not weighing down rope-suspended wooden planks.

“I… I don’t think.... we can... outrun this one,” Shae pants.

I hate to agree with her, but… “We can’t fight it either. Not like this. Not…”

The skittering becomes loud enough to overtake my voice. It seems to be coming from beneath us. I swallow and look down. Instantly, fear takes ahold of my body and clamps down upon my legs.

More robed creatures. Hundreds of them, all ascending the face of the mountain as if gravity has no meaning. It’s like a loud, mobile cloud, and it’s coming for us. I swallow, thankful for the first time ever that Shae can’t see anything.

“Tohro?” Shae shakes my foreleg. I can barely hear her over the sound of the creatures. “Tohro!”

“Not like this…” I murmur, looking back towards the end of the bridge. There, as if a veil was lifted, appear several more of the creatures. I sense that they’re all staring at us from beneath their hoods, intent on doing Divines know what to us.

One of the creatures limps forward. As he approaches, I painstakingly reach into my wing and grasp a blade.

The creature then turns aside from me, instead stepping to one of the stumps that holds the rope… that holds the bridge up… “Oh no.” I shove Caro off of me. He lands on his side with a groan.

I flap my wings, ready to take off. Just as I leap into the air, something snags around my hoof. My stomach and jaw slam into the bridge, my foreleg dangling between two planks as one of the creatures holds me down. Two more of them use him as a ladder, crawling along his body and up to the bridge.

“No, no, no…” I repeat under my breath. “No!” I flick my hoof and trigger my hidden blade. It pierces the hoof of the creature holding me down, and after a moment of inequinelike screaming, it lets go, falling back down to the hundreds more below. My hidden blade is covered in its green mucus.

Now unrestrained, I start to take flight yet again, but my moment of hope is brief. The limping creature is already taking its sharpened stump of a leg to the rope, and with one sweep, it slices through. As I start flying, I turn around and see the bridge tilt sideways. Shae screams as she’s tripped up. The first thing she does is fumble helplessly until she finds Caro’s foreleg. She hooks one of her forelegs around his, and uses her other to feel for something sturdy to grab onto.

It happens quicker than I can calculate. First, I take my wing blade and throw it at the limper. It cuts into his neck, causing him to stumble and fall off the cliff’s edge. Then, I turn and fly to Shae and Caro. Just as Shae lets out a cry and her hoof slips off the the bridge, I take ahold of her hoof, and embed my hidden blade in the bridge.

“TOHRO!” Shae screams. I can see the pain in her face as she clings desperately to me, and to Caro. I could barely hold him. What good is a young mage’s strength? “I CAN’T HOLD ON!”

I look to the end of the bridge again. I was foolish to think getting rid of the limper would be the end of it. Two of them bare their sharp, gleaming fangs, and bite into the other rope, eating it like dinner.

“Tohro?”

I look down at Shae. Her cheek brushes against my hoof. I can’t tell if her tears are from pain or from sheer terror. “What should I do?” I ask. “Anything. I’ll do anything.”

Shae bites her lip. “L-Let go.”

Judging by the weakening hold of my hidden blade, the snapping rope, and the alarming amount of creatures coming upon us from both sides of the bridge, we don’t have many other options. It’s just comes down whether or not I want to give these things the satisfaction of watching us fall by their will.

I flick my foreleg and disengage my hidden blade. The instant gravity takes ahold of me, I catch one final glimpse of the rope eaters. I see something else under their hoods: intense, blue slits for eyes that change from angry and disdainful to completely shocked. Now their satisfaction is mine, and I show it through a bittersweet grin.

And now I’m falling, with Shae‘s hoof in mine, and hers in Caro’s. It’s not a long fall, not by our standards, and with my flight and Shae’s levitation magic, we should be fine. For now, I enjoy the turning heads of the creatures as we fall past them, down into the darkness below.

Caro slips out of Shae’s grasp.

~Vision End~

“Foolish, foolish, foolish…”

Caro can hear two things. The first is a faint ringing in his ears that he can’t get rid of no matter how much he shakes his head, not that he can do so without making himself feel sick. The second thing is somepony muttering between dull thudding noises against the cavern wall.

There’s not much in the way of light to give context to the situation, aside from wet dirt, stones, and towering stone walls. The only thing that cuts through the darkness is a sliver of sunlight that falls from the ceiling above. Caro knows that there’s no going up there; his dashing shout is too imprecise, and Tohro isn’t strong enough to lift him up for longer than a few seconds at a time.

Thinking about Tohro makes Caro suddenly feel more alert. Not knowing where he is makes his nerves go into overdrive. He immediately lifts his face out of the dirt and looks around the dark room.

He sees Tohro standing just outside the light, and his nerves calm themselves. His relief is short-lived when he sees what Tohro is doing, and comes to realize what the source of the thudding is.

“Foolish!” Tohro shouts, slamming his hoof against the wall. “Why am I always torn in two directions?!”

Caro is about to respond before he starts coughing. He realizes that the air around him is filled with dust. He rolls over and gets back on his hooves. “Not our finest hour, was it?” He stumbles over to Tohro with a hoof across his forehead. “Sleeping for a few weeks didn’t do me any favors…”

Tohro leans against the wall by his forehead. “That is the least of our problems,” he says grimly. “We were falling. I had only two paths to choose between. I had seconds, seconds, to choose.” He slowly turns his head to look upon his choice. “You want us to always be together? This is the cost, my dear! I end up leaving a blind mare to her lonesome while I dive to save the Dragonborn! What a marvel!”

“Wait, Shae’s not…” Caro looks around, stepping in a circle. “Oh. Oh no…”

“I had you both! I was ready to flap my wings and break the fall, but then Shae let go of you. The fall must have been too intense for her to hold on… I tried going back to look for her, but...” Tohro pulls his head back from the wall. “You would have been fine! You’re the fucking Dragonborn, you would’ve survived the fall. Then you would have woken up from the bite, and found a way out of the caves by yourself!”

“So where was this thinking when you had to choose between going after me or Shae?” Caro asks. He doesn’t sound angry, though he stands tall and rigid over Tohro, his lips tight and his brow low.

Tohro softly grunts and shakes his head. “I was bound to make the wrong decision sooner or later. Story of my life.” He points to Caro’s saddlebag. “Do you have a torch?”

Caro reaches into the saddlebag, but he doesn’t turn away from Tohro. “I’m not going to hold this against you. I know we agreed that we need to stay together, but I think having a blind mother of two under our care usurps that.” He hoof slips into the hook of the lantern. He pulls it out of his bag and gives it to Tohro. “Shae is much less likely to come back from an injury than I am.”

“Already renewing our vows, are we?” Tohro jests, laughing solemnly. He stands there, holding the lantern, his expression blank. After a few tense seconds, he says, “...Couldn’t bear to lose you.”

“You won’t,” Caro says. He kneels down to the lantern and whispers, “Yul.” A small burst of flame lights the lantern, bathing him and Tohro in a warm, welcoming light. “Just so you know, even if we’re apart, I’ll be with you in spirit, just so long as I know where you are. In time, I would have figured out that you were with Shae, and that I would have to find a way out of here.”

“Speaking of which…” Tohro moves the lantern up high, swishing it around. Its glow reflects off the moisture of the walls around him and Caro, revealing a tunnel on the other side of the room.

“Into the abyss,” Caro says with a sigh. As Tohro attaches the torch to his belt, Caro holds out his hoof. Tohro takes a deep breath, and accepts the gesture. “It just goes to show you that there’s enough problems in the life without fretting over one’s mistakes.”

“At least the dark doesn’t make you suffocate,” Tohro mutters.

Caro wraps his free foreleg around Tohro’s neck and kisses his cheek. “I’m here. It can’t touch you.”

~Shae~

I open my eyes. There’s no difference.

My shoulder, chest and left side of my face are sore. I feel all three parts with my right hoof, applying pressure to detect if they’re bruises. And… Yes, all bruises. My shoulder seems to have taken the crux of the fall, and my face is a little swollen.

Ever since the Elder Scroll took my sight, I’ve trained myself to do a few particular actions when I can’t get my bearings. I’ve had to do this a few dozen times, so it’s already routine to me.

First, I get a feeling for the ground. It’s dirt mixed with rocks, as well as a few roots. It’s fertile ground. At least, it would be, if it weren’t for the lack of sunlight. I know that I’m not outside because I can’t hear any trees or birds or rustling grass. Being blind helps one appreciate those things.

Secondly, I call out for a familiar presence. “Caro? Tohro?”

I wait for a few seconds. No response.

I call out again. “Hello?”

More waiting. Every passing second is intensifying agony, as well as a rising realization that my situation is far, far worse than it should be.

I’m alone in the dark.

I slam my hoof into the ground. “FUCK!” I then take a deep breath. “Okay, okay, dammit, okay...”

My legs are fine, but my sore shoulder causes me to flounder as I stand up. I end up leaning against the wall, which I use for support. I shrug off the pain and get into some semblance of a standing position.

"Think, Shae, think... No, you can think... Calm... Don't freak out. Remember where you are... You're in a cave... we're in a cave to find something... someone? I must have... Right, I was falling… Must have gotten separated from them...”

I’m not doing myself any favors by just standing here. Whatever those creatures were, they might come back, and I will not be a sitting target.

But what if they find me anyway? No. No!

“Yes, keep talking to yourself; you're not crazy, you just need to hear a voice to keep calm. Breathe. Remember your breathing exercises…” I raise my hoof to my chest, inhale, then hold my hoof out, and exhale. “Okay. Okay. Okay..."

I start to move. "The ground is uneven, sloping steeply up about five paces away from where I landed. There's... another slope, less steep I think, about... ten paces from where I landed, forwards and to the left of the path I fell down.” I giggle to myself. “See? Logic. There's always something logical; you're not dealing with Discord here.”

I hear a faint whistling.

“Just a cave... filled with cave-related things, like underground streams, bottomless pits, spiders, dammit, no! You'd hear spiders, you damn fool! Don't think about them, please stop…” I brush against something. “GET OFF OF ME!" I scream, backing away quickly.

I lose my balance and fall over backwards. My voice is silenced by a mouthful of dirt, which I spit out the instant it touches my tongue. I get back on my hooves, ignoring how exacerbated my bruises have become. They’re throbbing.

I stand up… again, then keep walking forward, this time a bit more slowly. “Can't trip if you're trotting calmly, yep. No sirree, can't trip. Gotta stay calm. Can't think about what's out there. It’s just a cave. There are no spiders, no skeevers, no draugr…” Are there? “No, no, no draugr. Certainly no draugr. You’ve researched draugr, remember? This place is far too moist for draugr…”

I hear a distant whispering just barely within earshot. Draugr certainly don’t whisper… What does whisper, though? Ponies? Good ponies? Possibly? Possibly Caro and Tohro?

“Hello?!” I shout, my voice quivering. “Is somepony there?”

The whispering becomes louder. It’s not Caro or Tohro’s voice. Their voices don’t sound this haggard. I try to listen to whatever’s being said, but I can’t understand a word they’re saying… whoever they are. It doesn’t even sound like a language. It sounds like gibbering nonsense.

“Forget what I said,” now whispering to myself. “I don’t want to know who you are. There’s nopony here.” I slowly, carefully, step towards the wall. “There’s nopony here…”

As soon as I can feel the stone, I rest my back against it and lie down. I remember the techniques Eavesdrop taught me. That seems like a lifetime ago.

I focus on the whole of my body, and concentrate a subtle amount of my magic throughout myself. With any luck, I’ll be turning invisible, and whoever’s coming this way won’t see me. They likely won’t see me. They probably won’t... Possibly.

As the hoofsteps and incoherent whispering grow closer, I lean my head back against the wall. It’s taking every fiber of my being to avoid screaming myself until my conscious fades. At least if that happened, I wouldn’t have to be afraid of whatever’s in the waking world.

I still remember what it was like to see, to the point where images still appear in my dreams. They’re just memories, though. Wintercolt Academy. Equestria on a sunny day. The Rainbow Palace. Celina and Luna looking at me with pure love in their eyes. These dreams were all faded and distant, like looking through damaged glass, but it’s still seeing. And every time it happens, I wake up crying.

My worst blind dream came the night after the Elder Scroll did this to me. In a moment of desperation, I reached out to Luna. I expected some sort of salvation, or at least something familiar that I could hear and touch without fear of the unknown. But I saw nothing. I just heard Luna call to me once, before I woke up. Again, in tears.

I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of hurting. But I know it’s all worth it, just so I can be back where I belong, with Celina and Luna. I can still be a good mother to them.

Until then, though… There’s nopony here.

~Vision End~

~Rosemary~

I look over the edge of my perch. I can’t see all the way down the vertical shaft before me. Can’t shake the feeling that this’ll be the point of no return, at least until I find Shae and the boys. I look behind me, gazing up along the path I took to get into this cavern. See you later, sunlight. This is where I leave you.

Ready for anything, I hitch my lantern to my belt, wrap my scarf around my muzzle, adjust my hat, and crouch down. “Into the abyss,” I say confidently.

I leap from my perch, and fall into the darkness. The walls are lousy with vegetation, allowing me a hoofhold to slow my descent. I grapple onto a vine, then kick off the wall, soaring through the air to grab another vine on the opposite wall. I let out the breath I’d been holding in, then check below me. Good, I can see the ground now.

With a grunt, I let go of the vine and enjoy another moment of weightlessness before my hooves hit the ground. The dirt is wet, so the impact isn’t too rattling.

I don’t want to run into foreign territory, especially when that mystery mare’s living map claimed that there were hostile forces everywhere in these catacombs. Just to be certain, I take out the map and give it another look. I’ve been checking it constantly to ensure I haven’t lost Shae or anyone else yet.

I’m closer than I was before, that’s for true. I can see Caro and Tohro’s inky names moving quickly through the winding paths. Fortunately, I can’t see any red dots surrounding them, although I can’t help but wonder if they’re just in hiding, whoever they are.

What causes me greater concern is that I can’t see Shae with them. Did she get lost? Is she…? No, no, that’s a foolish thing to think.

I notice something in the corner of the map: an etching of Nutmeg. I didn’t draw that. Where did she come from? She turns to me and says, “I’m happy you’re making the smart decision, sister.”

“I was an idiot to think I could save you myself,” I say. “Just wait a little longer, and I promise you’ll be home before Mum finds out.”

An etching of Cinnamon steps out from behind Nutmeg. “You know you are going to have to tell her what happened to us, right?” he asks.

I stare at my siblings gruffly before folding the map shut.

“How rude!” Nutmeg shouts as I stuff the map into my bag.

The path goes even deeper than I anticipated, though thankfully I don’t have to make another leap of faith. I step out into a dome-shaped area of the cavern, where a large waterfall can be plainly seen. Much like the water, I descend, walking down a winding, wallbound arrangement of stones. The moss is a little slippery, so I have to take it slower than I would like to. The path expands at a hole in the wall, next to the waterfall.

There’s not much to be found in this room, just a bunch of dirt and stalagmites, and a chest buried in the corner. Oh! Chest buried in the corner! I gallop to it quickly, sliding to a stop right in front of it. It’s a tough one to open, owing to all of this vegetation binding the latch, but with a hard push, the lid comes off. There isn’t much in the chest, aside from some stray bits, a quartz, and a few rusted swords. I have a feeling this isn’t a trove. It might be somepony’s storage. But who would live down here?

I leave the contents of the chest be, shutting the lid and continuing forward. A smaller cave entrance lies ahead, covered in webbing. I’m filled with a moment of looming fear, now aware that an arachnid might be roaming about, but calm down quickly, knowing I can handle it.

I pull out my falchion, about to take it to the web, only to see Cinnamon tangled up, hanging upside down. His eyes are vacant, and his fur is greying and unsaturated. “You’ve been tangled in a web of lies for a while now, Rose,” he whispers.

With a strained grunt, I slash at the web. Cinnamon disappears, and the way forward is revealed to me.

I continue into the cave. This corridor is winding, with many paths branching off of it. Peering down a few of them, I can see that they lead to small, packed-in areas filled with moss and various animal skins. They look like sleeping areas, of a sort.

It’s getting harder to see ahead, even with my lantern. Natural light is dwindling with every step. Whatever dwells down here, it can’t possibly be of ponykind.

I come across a collection of stalagmites with enough breathing room between them for me to keep moving. My bulky figure and heavy baggage makes it difficult to maneuver through them, but I manage. One of my bags snags on the last stalagmite, causing me to trip and spill a few red potions. None of them break, thank Hephaestus. I get my bag off the stalagmite, restock my potions, and survey the area.

I’ve stepped out into a circular chamber. More stalagmites border the room, integrated with the walls. Holes in the upper parts of the walls are carved out, with enough room for a pony or two to fit. Makeshift windows, perhaps? ...Or sniping perches.

I look up towards the ceiling when I hear a rustling noise. The webs become thicker and thicker as they reach the top, and in the center, riddled with the decayed corpses of dozens of ponies, is the nest. And who better to occupy the nest than its owner? The largest spider I’ve ever laid eyes on comes into view. It’s awake, and very much mobile.

Nutmeg is up on the ceiling among the corpses. Suddenly, she starts moving, breaking one of her forelegs out of the webbing. She raises her hoof to the part of her mouth that’s still intact. “Shhh.”

Not that being silent would do me any good. The spider is already spinning a web trail, latching on and descending from the ceiling. Its limbs creak as they extend outward, touching the ground before me. Ugh, it’s so hairy.

I can see my reflection in its every eye. Eight black orbs staring me down is more than enough to make it known that I’ve stepped upon its territory, and it doesn’t take too kindly to that.

It lunges at me with one of its legs. I duck and roll away from it, standing up to see that it was a strong enough thrust to end up embedded into the wall. The spider removes its leg, revealing to me many little sharp teeth that travel down from the base to the very tip. Now I know I have more to worry than ending up a bloodbag.

The spider spits a wad of discolored mucus at me. I dart back from that, as well as the other wads it throws at me. The mucus is viscous, like molasses, and it clings to the wall. I ready my falchion, ready for a counterattack, but another wad strikes my foreleg and sends me back against the wall, forcing the falchion out of my grasp.

The spider is approaching quickly. I’d be more terrified than I am if I hadn’t prepared for this. I reach for my belt and pull out one of my many knives. I cut at the mucus, grazing over my foreleg. After a few good slices, I’m cut free. When I land on the ground, I find myself looking at only a single eye of the spider, followed by an impressive view of its pincers.

“Mine’s sharper!” I shout, shoving my knife into one of its eyes. The spider shrieks, its legs buckling as it stumbles away from me. A trail of blood follows in its wake.

My falchion is just a few paces away from me, but the spider doesn’t seem intent on letting me get it. In a skittering rage over its lost eye, it scrambles to strike at me with its front legs. One jab after another creates a hectic storm of chitin and blurred images of the chamber around me as I gallop for dear life. This chamber seemed so large before, but this thing eats up so much room it’s hard to find anywhere to run.

It’s when the spider slams all of its front legs into the ground at once that I have a window of opportunity. I make a break for the falchion, picking it up in mid-gallop. I turn around, now ready to face this beastie properly. The spider tries to skewer me like a Saddle Arabian kebab, but I sidestep it and scrape the leg with a swing of my sword. With another swing, the falchion’s fire enchantment comes to life. I leap to the crest of the beastie’s leg and slice through it with two downward slashes. Exoskeletons are tough customers.

As the spider screeches and flails about with its remaining seven legs, I step away from it, as well as the twitching severed one. I kick it away once it’s done moving, which the spider seems to take offense to. It focuses its screeching on me.

“Watch your language!” I shout, brandishing my flaming sword. “I had the courtesy to cauterize the wound, so be grateful.”

The spider doesn’t take too kindly to that. In a bloodrage, it charges at me, its pincers hungry and its remaining legs strong and fast. As it lunges, I dive to the side and roll under its swiping leg, swinging upward. The leg splits, and the spider is now short two legs to walk on. Nothing more than a common insect. Aside from it being a hundred times larger than a little crawler.

I turn around, twirling my sword in celebration of my imminent triumph. My eyes widen as I’m blindsided by another leg and tumble onto my back. This time, I hold tight to the sword, ready for the next attack. The spider’s leg swipes over me. I’m able to deflect its attempt to stab me, but the combs slice through my foreleg. A bit of my own blood splashes into my eye, turning half of my vision into a blur. As I instinctively wipe the blood out, the spider gets closer.

“Be with you in a moment,” I growl, wiping the last of my blood out of my eye. I raise my sword to strike at another one of the spider’s eyes, but then I’m struck in the gut by the blunt end of its leg. My back hits the wall, I lose my falchion again, and I lurch over its hairy appendage. Ugh, even its hairs are sharp. “Hello,” I say meekly as I look at myself in its eyes. “Has anyone told you you’re angry when you’re ugly?”

Its pincers flap rapidly. I can see a set of bloody fangs, making it apparent that I’m too much trouble to warrant webbing up and saving for later. The beastie wants to drink my blood right here and now. I hate it when this happens.

Suddenly, a rather bad idea pops into my head. Two swords I should not touch are slung over my back, and I’ve been resisting the urge to make use of them this whole time. I know I’m not worthy of wielding Excalibur, and I do not want to know what’ll happen if I try to use it. Muramasa, however, can be used by anypony, with a few stipulations…

With a bit of a struggle, I free my foreleg and reach behind me to grab the rough hilt of Muramasa. I don’t feel anything come over me as I remove it from its sheath. No turning back now… If I want to put it away, I’ll have to draw blood. Hopefully it accepts spider blood.

The spider screeches just before I sink Muramasa into one of its eyes, and then its screeches escalate to wreck my eardrums. Its screams continue when I slice through its leg without any resistance. I land on the ground, clutching Muramasa’s hilt firmly against my chest.

That felt good. I don’t know why I was so apprehensive towards this beauty of a katana before. It’s weightless, sharper than any sword I’ve ever used or even seen, and it fills me with a sense of power I’ve never known before. Divines be damned, I love this!

The spider lunges at me with another leg. My body knows when to raise Muramasa high, step to the side and slice right through the leg. The spider, down to a mere five legs, can’t move towards me without collapsing. It falls, unable to support itself on uneven sets of legs and a significant loss of blood, which it flounders helplessly in. Obviously it’s miserable, but to Muramasa, this is a feast. Fucking beautiful.

I sprint to the spider so quickly my vision becomes like a tunnel. I slice at its face, cleaving right through three eyes, and take out another two with a perpendicular slice. It’s a shower of blood and other liquids. I hope Muramasa is enjoying itself, because I am.

When the spider’s legs lose all tension and splay out on the ground, its body follows suit. With a scream I didn’t know I could muster, I leap onto the spider and shove Muramasa dead center into it. Removing the sword is like unplugging a reservoir full of blood.

I humor Muramasa by letting its blade bathe in the geyser. That’s when I notice something curious about the sword; every drop of blood is absorbed into the blade, like water into fabric.

As I dismount the spider’s corpse, I take out Muramasa’s sheath. I hold my breath as I line the blade with the sheath, sighing with relief when the blade lets me put it in. I feel dizzy. It’s like coming down from a skooma high, although I’m not entirely sure I liked the high in retrospect. I feel a little unclean, and the fact that I’m covered in blood and guts does not help.

Okay… It’s clear to me that Tohro is meant to wield this. He’s far too nice to let himself be taken over by this blasted katana’s bloodlust. Who knows what could’ve become of me if I let myself carry on with it?

I’d probably end up looking something like the ragged looking earthwalker boy who steps into the room. I catch my breath when I get a good look at him. He wears only fur rags, which doesn’t seem necessary when his coat is so wild. He’s caked with dirt, his eyes are sunken and red, and his teeth, which I can only see because of his jagged lips, are yellow and misaligned.

“Hello…” I say cautiously as I put Muramasa on my back. “Somethin’ tells me you’re more familiar with these caves than I am. Would you happen to have seen a pretty lavender unicorn passin’ through? Because if you have, I’m envious.”

The homely pony stares at me like a child stares at the first zebra he’s ever seen. The very sight of me seems to be a world shaking event for him. He walks up to me, his head tilted and his nostrils fluctuating.

“I… do so take that as a no?” I ask with a nervous chuckle.

He raises his foreleg, then quickly touches the brim of my hat before quickly pulling away. I step back immediately. He steps forward and touches me again, this time on my face. Offended and confused, I shove him away.

“None of that, ya bampot!” I yell. I’m tempted to threaten him with one of the swords I have on me, but the desire fades away as I see how pathetic this pony is. Besides, who would I be to cut somepony down when I’m intruding on their territory? That’s a whole other level of rude. “I’ll be leavin’ now. No bad blood, I trust?”

Just past him, I see a small entrance surrounded by recently cut webs. That must be how he got in. I walk around the pony and head towards the exit; well, ideally it’d be an exit from these caves, but I’ll gladly accept an exit from this nightmare.

That ragged boy better not be staring at me.

If there are more ponies like that skinny fellow back there, it would explain why these passages are so cramped. I pass by more sleeping crevices, some of them smaller than the ones I’ve seen before… Oh, mercy me, there are children among these savages, aren’t there? I pray to Hephaestus I don’t come across any of them.

I step out of the passage, breathing easy now that I can stand up fully straight. I take in the fresh air… Relatively fresh air. I’m on a carved-out balcony, with torches lining the edge. Their light isn’t thick enough to illuminate much of whatever’s below. All I can see when I look down is uneven rocks. Odds are, if the savages haven’t added any torches or carved out any pathways down there, I’d best not take a leap.

I need to get a bearing on my surroundings. I set my lantern down, reach into my bag, and take out the magic map. It’s still showing a rough sketch of these catacombs. I’ve made a fair amount of progress, growing closer to Caro and Tohro’s marks. As for Shae, I still can’t see her. Even when I say “Shae Sparkle,” she can’t be seen.

I grit my teeth, as if biting down on the worst possibility. I refuse to let myself think such a thing. Only when the flimsiest reasoning for her to still be alive fails to reign true will I accept losing her. Until then, I’ll keep searching. Caro and Tohro can lead me to her, no doubt.

As I continue to scan over the map for any other areas of interest, I hear a rustling to my left. It’s distant, and it doesn’t sound like a monster, so I ignore it. I say to the map, “Treasure,” but that doesn’t bring up anything. The most I can hope for is a pony named Treasure walking about.

The rustling is still going on. It’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore. I grunt and return to the map, planning out a course of travel. It seems that there’s a pathway straight to Caro and Tohro’s neck of the catacombs. I’ll have to cut through a few caves, and I don’t look forward to whatever I’ll have to fight to get there, but with any luck I’ll intercept them, or at the very least catch up… I hear grunting.

The map shows a few new marks, all of them in red, surrounding me on all sides. One in particular is very close, and it’s coming out of the passage behind me.

I grab my falchion and turn around, pointing it at whatever’s coming my way. I immediately drop my aggression when I see it’s just the savage boy again. I put my sword away. “I said I’d be on my way. You needn’t be botherin’ me.”

The boy pulls a knife out from his belt and advances on me. I jump back and keep my hoof on the hilt of my falchion, waiting for him to strike. With a yell, he charges at me, but his form is poor and predictable. I dodge to the side, stretch out my hind leg and slam it into his side. I then grab him by the neck and shove him over the ledge. He hits the ground, though not hard enough for anything to be broken.

“Think about what you’ve done!” I yell at him.

I can still hear the rustling and grunting. With a grunt of my own, I grab my bag and follow the torches along the balcony. I climb a stone staircase and step over some collapsed pillars. When I turn the corner, I see what the source of the grunting is.

I look into the red eyes of savage filly with a painted face as she lies on her front. A muscular savage is crouched behind her, thrusting his hips with wild abandon, a telltale grunt escaping his mouth every time he pushes forward. The filly seems… indifferent.

I let out a disturbed whine as I step away. As I force myself to look away from such a horrid sight, I see that I’m the only one who takes issue with it. Other savages stand among the two… intermingling ones. Curiously, they’re all male. Or not so curiously. They must be waiting their turn.

I shake my head. I can’t be seeing this. When I look again, I gaze into a worse sight: Nutmeg is in the filly’s place. She’s crying. “Sis...ter…”

Nutmeg disappears when I shake my head again. The submissive filly glares at me. She crawls forward and stands up, leaving her dominator disappointed. Her legs shake slightly as she holds out her foreleg. Her dominator, who remains disgustingly unsheathed, takes a spear off the wall and gives it to the filly.

She points the spear at me, yelling a series of clicks and jabbers that I can’t make the slightest sense of.

“Oi, I’m not tryin’ to invade on anythin’, I’m just passin’ through,” I say back. “I’ll just leave, and you two can continue with…” I take notice of the strange markings beneath where the filly was lying down. “Uh, this is some sort of ritual?”

The filly’s spear touches my chest. She continues to spout gibberish.

“Okay, you can stop that!” I raise my hoof and bring it down on the spear, snapping it in half.

She shrieks, the clicks interspersed now with warbles and growls, like she's speaking both bear and blue jay at once. Another spear comes flying my way, and I just bat it down the staircase behind me, where it rolls off the edge. "I'm goin', ya indecent cads, sheesh. Fuckin’ weirdos, the lot of ya." I trot past the filly, not bothering with trying to ‘save’ her; if her behaviour so far is any indication, she's not in need of saving.

The stallions all stare at me and make odd sounds of their own as I pass, the one with his personal spear still hanging out even taking a step towards me, which I stop with a firm shove to his face. "No. I got a mare I fancy, and you’re twenty baths and a sanity check away from bein' remotely in my league, anyhow."

The filly's lost all interest in me at this point; apparently, since I don't seem intent on joining, she's fine with getting back to business. The stallions all clamor to join with her, and I leave them to their whining and growling to show off their dominance, with me all but forgotten. I can't help but mutter a parting "Good riddance," before turning back to the map.

Among the grotesque sounds of the resuming ritual, I hear Nutmeg scream. I don’t turn around.

~Vision End~

~Shae~

I wake up, and immediately move my forelegs about erratically, feeling for anything familiar. I’m still up against the wall, my hind legs are still lain against the dirt, and the world is still dark. Nothing has found me. For the moment, anyway. I can finally breathe easily… Again, for the moment.

I keel over and scoot my hind legs close to my stomach. Once again, I feel my scar tingle as I thought forms in my mind. The thought of some shapeless beast striking me where I stand, my body going numb before I’m even aware of their presence.

My thoughts then drift to the nightmarish armor of the unicorn elite, his horn surrounded by dark magic. I see his horn become a demonic version of Excalibur as he charges at me. I try to move, but my hooves are suspended in the air by Shokenda, and in the distance, Celina and Luna watch with broken eyes as their mother— “NO!” I scream, slamming my head against the wall. The impact is great, and my skull begins to throb.

No more of that. No more thinking. There’s nopony here… There’s nopony here…