The Legend of Rarity: Zecora's Mask

by LittleAngelStocking

Chapter Eight

“I cannot believe this.” Rarity looked at the bow. It was made of some darkish wood, and the ends were lines with gold. A small quiver of the same make had a bunch of arrows in it.

“This. This is unbelievable.” She paused, looking it over. It belonged to the zebra, but… it was awfully pretty. And surely they’d understand, maybe they’d even let her keep it once she rescued their princess.

She hated the idea of using it on something that wasn’t a silly little game, but… it was so pretty. “I’ll keep it for now, I shall return it once I have finished this silly temple.”

She turned around and headed back out the door. “Where to next,” she asked aloud, turning. There were more doors up on areas on the ‘second floor’ but she saw no way to get to them. She headed up the curved wooden ramp and looked around. She noticed one of those weird fairy-things fluttering around in a floating pink bubble. Levitating up the bow, she used her magic to ready an arrow, and then she let it fly, it popped the bubble and leaved the creature unharmed. It floated over to Rarity, and without question disappeared.

“This gets weirder and weirder,” she sighed, but silently thanked the many hours she’d spent in that bow and arrow game back in clock town. It was so much easier now that she had her magic, but her aim would have been awful had she not practiced in the game.

“Now,” she stated, “Maybe… maybe the bow is needed to progress forward…?” She looked around. On the far wall, above the door that lead into the room where she’d gotten the key, was another door. And above the door, was an eye. It was lined with gold, and after brief contemplation Rarity aimed the arrow, and let go. The arrow was about an inch off, and bounced harmlessly off the gold. But Rarity was a patient lady, and levitated the arrow back and tried again.

This time it hit it dead in the center. The eye shut, and two ladders magically appeared in either side of the wall. “Excellent!” Rarity smiled, and then stopped when she realized she had no way of getting over there.

She was not swimming, and she wasn’t going to jump onto the giant wooden triangle again. She headed back down the ramp, and thought. She needed to be clever, she needed to find a way, quickly. Than an idea hit her. She took one of the ladders in her levitation, it was a little heavy but she managed. She pulled it over, and placed it gently in the water. To her relief, it floated. She let go of the levitation on all but the very end, and stepped onto the ladder. When it started to sink, she quickly grabbed hold of the other end in her magic, and carefully pulled it towards the other side.

She was starting to sweat, this was hard. “Just a little further…” Rarity usually wasn’t one to talk to herself, but these were special circumstances.

Made it! Rarity galloped off of the ladder, but instead of letting it sink to the bottom she dragged it back onto the floor. She sighed in relief. She was surprised that had been so hard, she wasn’t as good as Twilight when it came to heavy magical lifting, but she could carry bags upon bags of – mostly clothing – without a problem.

Maybe it was because she had been riding it and hadn’t levitated herself, or made herself lighter. With a shrug, she turned towards the unused ladder, and briefly wondered just how she was going to climb it.

She placed both front hooves over one rung, and then her two back legs onto a lower one. Slowly, she raised one foreleg to a higher one, then a back leg, then her other front leg.

She made it to the top and collapsed. That hadn’t been as hard as she’d imagined, but… what kind of equine would create such a thing? That must be terrible for ones back.

Wiping sweat off of her forehead, she headed into the door.

More swamp water. Delightful. Around the entire room were wooden catwalks, luckily there were bars on the sides, so she had no chance of falling in. To her right, there were stairs leading down into the water. She couldn’t fathom why, than she guessed it was for somepony stupid enough to somehow manage to fall over the bars. She noticed a fairy in a bubble under the water and shot it with her arrows, to which it fluttered over without hesitation, and disappeared.

In front of her was a catwalk, but a large stone box blocked the way. Much to her disturbance, there was a black painting of none other than Zecora’s creepy mask on the stone. Honestly, even though it was more or less a silhouette it was very recognizable, considering its heart shape and six spikes on each side. On the far left side of the room was a door and stairs leading up in the opposite direction. She headed up to the stone block, and looked around. The bars prevented her from simply jumping to the other catwalks, she was in the center of the room now and she guessed there four in each direction. She pressed her shoulder into the cold stone and pushed.

She pressed her fore-hooves into it, and it finally budged. She pushed with all her might, and sighed in relief when she finally moved it out of the way.

The door had bars over it. Pleasant surprise.

An unlit torch sat next to it. Actually… how did the temple have light at all? It’s not like there were windows. An idea hit the fashionista – and she headed down the right catwalk, to the corner where another small platform was. It had a lit torch, and colorful moths were circling it. Rarity couldn’t help but take a step back in disgust, but magically pulled a long, loose piece of wood from the catwalk and held it over the fire, lighting the tip. She then galloped over to the unlit torch right next to the door, trying to ignore the fact that the moths were following her, and lit the torch. The bars lifted and she went in.

Much to her relief, it was simple and straightforward. Just a room with a wooden chest lined with gold, like the other chests in the temple. She trotted over to it and opened it.

Another fairy. That’s a letdown, she thought and turned back towards the door. She tensed, waiting for bars to come down, or some horrible monster to appear, but nothing happened to her relief. Avoiding the bug-ridden torch, she went up the steps, and noticed that there were three more platforms. One on the far wall in front of her was part of the wall – but the one between her and that one was floating. Rarity blinked, trying to see some sort of magic or sense a magical energy that would make it do this.

There was none. Rarity gritted her teeth, she knew she shouldn’t care but it made no sense! She jumped onto it, briefly freezing in fear that it might fall, but to her relief it stayed put. She saw a wasp nest hanging on the ceiling, directly over the swamp water, she noticed.

She pulled out the bow and shot it down. Several wasps that were flying around it went after the falling nest and not her, she thought thankfully. And to her surprise there was another fairy where the nest had been. How many did she have now? After thinking it over a moment, she confirmed that, this one included, she now had seven.

To her left was a massive opening, and she jumped over to it. Large steps went up a dark hall and disappeared behind a curve. Rarity headed up into it, a determined look on her face.

Dark. It was very, very dark. A torch cast flickering shadows on the wall, but she couldn’t see beyond a few feet. “Okay, I swear I see eyes in there.” She said to herself. They were the same eyes she saw in the first room – she was sure of it.

There were jars surrounding the torch, wooden sticks sticking out of the top. She shattered one with a hoof and lit a stick, and waved it around in front of her, making sure it would blow out, and then headed forward.

Something moved in the corner – she was absolutely sure of it. Shadows moved in the corner of her eyes, and she subconsciously held the handle of her little sword with a bit of magic.

She brought her stick forward. There was a small platform in the center of the room, surrounded by three unlit torches. She brought hers forward, and lit one.

Then she felt something brush her leg.

She dropped the stick, and the flame went out. She screamed as several pairs of orange eyes stared at her from the darkness, and moved towards her.

She waved her blade widely, and that sent them back a bit, but then they ignored it and continued for her.

“GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAY!” She cried, she felt her sword slash through something, followed by an animalistic squeal.

The others backed away, and she glared at them menacingly, lowering her horn. “Get away from me, you ugly beasts! Stay back, lest you join your friend!”

She was honestly quite a scary sight to the right ponies – her normally snow white coat was stained and gray; her hooves were scratched and filthy. Her mane was sticky and wavy, having uncurled and hung wildly around her face, lips twisted in a fierce snarl.

“Back, I say! BACK!”

One pounced onto her back, and she screamed, backing into the wall. Chaos followed. The shadowy black puffball-creatures all pounced on her at once, she flailed wildly, slashing her sword in all directions.

They felt fuzzy, but not like furry fuzzy, more like… well, scratchy. And cold.

Rarity managed to slash several on her back, but accidentally slashed a long cut down her back. “OWWWW!”

There weren’t many creatures left, and Rarity either slashed, scared, or crushed under her hoof the ones that were.

Finally, she was sure she’d gotten them all. She slowly stood up straight, stinging pain making her back throb.

Slowly, she sheathed the sword and picked up the discarded stick in her mouth, it was easy to find since she had lit a torch at the exact moment she’d dropped it.

She walked to the three other torches and lit them noting that there was a door near the second one, and her ears perked when she watched a treasure chest materialize on the center platform.

“Oh,” she gasped as she walked up to it. “It’s good to know my hard work has paid off-“

It was a pink fairy.

“…Of course.” Rarity ruefully sighed as the fairy approached her, then gasped when it disappeared. The pain slowly ebbed away, and she felt the open would on her back seal shut, she felt better, less exhausted.

“...On second thought, I love fairies!”

~~~

The door lead into a room that made Rarity want to jump off a cliff.

The room was massive, giant bugs buzzing around near the ceiling. Small squares were floating back and forth, crossing each others paths, and Rarity could see another door on the far side of the room.

“I’m going to have to jump over the floating blocks.” She said as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

But considering what the rest of this world was like, maybe it was the most natural thing.

And Rarity waited for the right moment, and jumped. The floor was quite a long way down, and there were holes in the floor, and she could see more of those black shadow creatures moving around below.

She crouched down and hoped the nasty icky disgusting horrifying nightmare fueling bugs above didn’t see her. Never had she actually been glad to be dirty; but a snow-white coat definitely wasn’t very subtle.

When another block passed she jumped onto it. She noticed each one had one of those pink flowers, although she now associated them as ‘the kind of flower that broke my fall when I first came to Clock Town’.

“When I was a little filly, and the sun was going down,” she sang quietly. “The darkness and the shadows, they would always make me frown. I’d hide under my pillow, from what I thought I saw”

She jumped onto the next block. “But granny Pie said that wasn’t the way to deal with fears at all, she said Pinkie you’ve got to stand up tall,”

The last block,

“Got to face your fears, you’ll see that they can’t hurt you just laugh and make them disappear…”

She jumped onto the platform, and headed down the dark steps, lest the bugs finally notice her.

Author's Note:

I feel like a moron. I realized too late that you don't get the bow in that room, the dinalfos has it, and I've mixed up a few rooms. Grr, I feel stupid.

Anyways, enjoy, my children.