“Hurry, we have to... get back... to the entrance!” Redheart yelled as she gasped for air. She turned her head for just a moment to make sure the other two were still following and noticed that they were indeed being chased by several of the creatures.
Lyra fought back the pain of her burning legs and the ache in her heart, her will to survive forcing her forward. “So what’s the plan when we make it out? We can’t just leave them down there,” she managed to spit out.
Red began running ideas through her head when she spotted the light of the entrance coming into view. “Once we pass the entrance, we’ll each turn and bottlenose them with everything we’ve got. I know it’s not the best plan, but we don’t have a lot to work with at the moment.” She huffed and began charging a spell as they broke into the setting sunlight of the desert.
Lyra focused all of her energy into Vinyl’s currently charging spell, pouring all of her grief and sorrow into the white mare. It was almost too much for the sorceress to handle, feeling all of Lyra’s heartache added to her own, but she pushed past the pain as she felt the enormous surge of power pulsating from her horn.
As the first kobold stepped foot into the light, both mares fired what they had collected. Redheart shot a blast of light energy that combined with Vinyl’s supercharged bass missile, the resulting wave of energy knocking the first three creatures back into their allies. The intense sound wave seeped into the walls of the tunnel, causing several chunks of the walls to cave in on the kobolds unfortunate enough to be near the back.
Vinyl sat staring dumbfounded as the entrance crumbled in on itself, sealing away their current threat as well as the only known path back to Octavia. She continued gazing, her thoughts racing violently at the prospect of never seeing her marefriend again, before everything started to blur around her. Fatigue set in quickly as everything around her went dark.
“Vinyl!” Lyra rushed to her friend’s side and began panicking. “Vinyl, are you alright? What happened? Oh no, you pushed yourself too hard, didn’t you?” Lyra began shaking her vigorously until Redheart pushed her aside to give the unconscious mare a proper inspection.
“Relax,” she finally said, breathing a sigh of relief to herself as well. “She’s fine, but her body needs time to recover from that last surge of energy.”
“But can’t you just heal her?” Lyra asked, panic still present in her tone. “We don’t have time to sit around waiting for her, our friends need our help!” She pounded a fist into the cooling sands as tears streamed from her eyes once more.
“I’m sorry,” Redheart replied, “But I can’t cure exhaustion like that at this level. She needs rest and we need her if we’re going to have any hope of rescuing them,” Red firmly stated. ‘Luna was right. This is far more intense than any adventure I’ve been a part of.’
Inside the tunnels, Octavia utilized her cello once more as a shield as she prepared for whatever monster was loudly chittering behind the near fully raised gate in front of them. Behind her, Bon Bon was shivering from a mixture of pain and fear, barely able to stand.
“Stay behind me,” Octavia commanded as the gate finally finished its ascension into the ceiling, revealing an eight-legged, brown monstrosity easily four or five times the size of an average pony. A wicked pair of driveling fangs clanked loudly from the giant spider’s mouth, all five of its eyes focused intently on its next meal.
Octavia’s blood froze in her veins just at the sight of the menacing arachnid, spiders not being one of her favorite creatures to begin with. She wanted nothing more than to scream as loudly as her lungs would allow, but her baser instincts told her that would be a bad idea at the time.
‘Oh, of all the creatures these damned kobolds could be keeping as a pet’ she thought to herself before a slight twitch from the spider returned her full attention. The spider finally lunged, aiming for the pony’s exposed neck with its venomous fangs, only to receive a mouthful of wood and splinters. It jumped back an impressive distance for its size and reared itself back for another attack.
‘Why can’t I sense its aura?’ Octavia wondered to herself as she rolled out of the way of its next charge. ‘There’s no malice or hatred coming from it at all. It’s just hungry, I suppose.’ Raising her cello up high by the neck, Octavia shot a daring glare back at the spider. “I have not endured hours in the scorching desert and a fall that should have been the end of me just to end up as spider food! Now,” she narrowed her eyes and slung the cello over her shoulder, “Bring. It. On!”
The spider leapt again, but was met with the backside of the cello to its face this time around. It hissed a bit at the impact, but with hunger outweighing the pain it attacked again before the mare could recover her stance. It shoved her forcefully with its superior weight and bulk straight back into the wall, pinning her in place speedily with its front two legs. Before she had time to react, a pair of fangs found their way digging into her neck.
At this point, Bon Bon was petrified to her core from watching Octavia’s losing battle with the beast and knowing that she could do little to help in her current condition. She clenched her eyes shut as Octavia let out a blood-curdling scream. Her thoughts drifted back to first meeting the cellist; how they’d become friends in just days after she had introduced her to Lyra. She remembered how Vinyl and Octavia had been there for the couple during their first rough patch. “What are friends for,” the grey mare had told her when they finally made up and she couldn’t thank the pair enough.
‘What are friends for.’ Bon Bon repeated the words in her head. She picked up her twin blades, all signs of fear and pain now replaced by determination and focus. A few deep breaths and she began her advance, leaping onto the spider’s abdomen and plunging the daggers in with as much force as she could muster.
The spider released its hold on its victim, hissing in pain. It reared up quickly, sending Bon Bon tumbling off of its back and into a harsh roll onto the floor. The arachnid flailed and shook vigorously, desperately trying to rid itself of the spiky weapons protruding from its back.
Octavia fell to the floor and immediately clenched her hoof over her fresh wound. She could feel the poison coursing through her veins, rapidly weakening her muscles and blurring her vision. Shaking away the feeling, she stood once more and grabbed her weapon of choice.
“And this time,” she raised her cello high over her head with the last of her remaining strength, “Stay down!” She brought the instrument down upon the spider’s head, all eight of its legs immediately spasming before going still. The grey mare collapsed on the ground herself, a smile playing at her face for the first time since entering the kobolds abode.
“We did it Bon Bon. We really did it!” Octavia raised her head a bit to find her friend, though all she could see was the occasional twitching of the spider’s legs. She pulled herself to her hooves again and stumbled around the massive corpse to find Bon Bon in much the same shape as their foe. The faint rising and falling of her chest was the only sign the cream mare was still among the living at all.
No. Not after all of that. “Bon Bon!” She rushed over to her side and turned the wounded mare over onto her back. Bon Bon’s eyes were gently shut and she showed no visible signs of any pain. She’s unconscious. Octavia pulled off her saddlebag and began rummaging through it for her first aid kit. Redheart has insisted each of them carry one for the bonus it applied when attempting any kind of non-magical healing. She cleaned the wounds and wrapped them promptly, but small trickles of blood continued to seep from the already soaked bandages.
Bon Bon’s color started to pale and her skin was quickly losing its warmth as each minuted passed. “No! Please don’t die!” Octavia continued doing everything in her power to stop the bleeding and save her friend, but she was no doctor and only knew what little she had observed from visits to medics herself. She broke down crying into Bon Bon’s stained fur as the rogue’s breathing grew ever more shallow.
“I failed. I took on the role of the protector, but it was you who ended up saving me in the end,” Octavia whispered as she dried the tears from her eyes. “Some protector I turned out to be!” She stomped her hoof in anger as more tears blurred her vision. “I let my friends down, I don’t want to play this anymore,” she choked out.
“Wait! That’s right!” she perked up as realization hit her. “Luna, you said you wouldn’t let any of us die in here since it could really result in death!” she shouted loudly. “I think you’ve let Bon Bon get close enough here, so please wake us up now!”
Silence.
“Luna, did you hear me? Bon Bon is going to die if you don’t do something!”
Still more silence.
‘Ok, this is really bad. Why isn’t Luna answering me. Is this a test? Or did something go wrong.’ “Luna, please!” Octavia cried out again in vain. Her previous fear quickly sank back in during the silence that followed. ‘What am I suppose to do?’ She was startled from her thoughts when the spider let out one final hiss of air as its legs curled deep into its body.
A warm light bathed over her, coursing through her entire being. She instantly felt renewed and energized as the power filled her veins. She sat staring at her own hooves for several seconds as she tried to decipher just what in Equestria was going on here.
“Instant power, renewed stamina...This must be what they referred to as ‘leveling up’,” she concluded. “I guess that means I’m level two now? Wait! Level two. I get a healing ability at level two!” Octavia placed both hooves onto Bon Bon and began a prayer she didn’t realize she knew.
“By the grace of the moon and her Guardian Princess, let your healing power flow through me and unto the deserving. Lay on Hooves!” As she finished uttering her words, a silvery energy flowed from her center and through each hoof into the swiftly fading rogue. The effect was almost instant, Bon Bon sat up and gasped for air as her wounds quickly sealed and her wing joints mended. Octavia noticed the same strange light from her level up now surrounding Bon Bon, mixing in with the silvery light of her healing power. She was about to inquire about it but was cut off by Bon Bon’s voice before she could get a word in.
“What happened? Did we win? Are you okay?” Bon Bon fired off questions as she ran her hooves over where Octavia had been bitten by the spider. After determining for herself that her friend was indeed fine, Bon Bon sat back on her haunches as the realization of what had transpired washed over her. “I was about to ‘kick the bucket’, as they say, wasn’t I?” Bon Bon gently asked, not sure if she even wanted to know the answer.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” was all Octavia could manage before breaking into tears once more. She moved forward and brought Bon Bon into a big bear hug as she let out all of the raw emotions she had pushed aside.
“Oc..tavia... I can’t... breathe again.”
Octavia released her hold of the mare and blushed a bit at how she was behaving. “Terribly sorry about all of that. Still don’t know my own strength, it seems.” The two shared a laugh as their minds began wandering off to the state of the others.