The crags seemed to be leading down a long and elongated path now and there were far too many times Sunset Shimmer had nearly slipped on a loose stone and would’ve fallen to her death if not for Applejack.
“Ya gotta be more careful,” she had been told multiple times. And Applejack was right.
While she would just come back if she died, she would still die. It wasn’t something she wanted to experience, especially if she died from falling into the lava below.
As they got closer to the bottom, the heat from the lava below began to make itself known, with a constant discomfort going through Sunset’s entire body. She tied her hair up into a ponytail, but it didn’t really help much in staving the heat off.
As they rounded the next cliffside, Sunset’s ears began to pick up a faint song coming from a cave entrance to her left. Normally, songs were very much welcomed, seeing as they could break into song whenever they wanted, but in this world, Sunset learnt that even songs could kill you.
“Great, another one of those things coming up.” Sunset unsheathed her star sword.
Lit by the faint glow of the lava, two more of the singing gargoyles could be seen. Their song, even at this distance, was already pricking Sunset’s eardrums.
“Think we can take ‘em?” Applejack asked quietly. “Or do we lure one of ‘em over at a time?”
Sunset picked up a stray pebble and smiled. “One at a time, preferably.”
Cocking her arm, Sunset let the pebble fly. Her aim was true, and the rock struck the closest creature in the back. Laboriously, it turned around, its eyes swiveling this way and that to see where the stone had come from.
Almost immediately, the gargoyle charged at them, its singing getting louder and more lethal as it got closer. Sunset immediately plugged a finger in her left ear, but it did little to fight off the deafening song.
“Charge!” she heard Applejack yell, an oil urn in her free hand.
She tossed the jar at it, spilling oil all over the creature, before rolling under its reaching arms, slashing at its right leg as she passed it. Electricity arced across the creature, stopping it in its tracks as it reeled from the sudden shock.
Sunset used that chance to conjure a fireball and lobbed it right at the creature’s massive head. Applejack got clear as the eye gargoyle began to burn, its song rising up into a shriek of pain and fury. It still tried to advance, but both Sunset and Applejack dashed over and cut at it from its front and back. Blood and flesh pooled around the creature’s legs and eventually, its song ceased, though there was still one more to deal with.
“I think the faster we kill them, the less damage we do to our ears.” Sunset ripped her sword free from the monster’s melting flesh.
“Great plan, Sunset Shimmer.” Applejack hefted her axe over one shoulder. “Alright, when Ah say charge, we both run at it like a one-eyed jack with diamonds. Ya ready?”
“Ready!”
The remaining gargoyle turned around just in time to see the two screaming warriors charge at it. The creature’s eyes widened in shock and it raised its arms to defend itself, getting a scratch across Sunset’s arm before her sword and Applejack’s axe struck home with a sickening squelch. The monster flailed about, but like a pair of Roaman senators, Applejack and Sunset stabbed and hacked at its body in a frenzy. Before long, it, too, fell over and died.
“Phew,” Applejack said, wiping her forehead. “That’s that.”
Sunset nodded, pulling her sword up and sheathing it. “Give me a moment. I need to bind this…” The fiery haired girl looked down at her arm where the monster had clawed her. But there was no wound there. “Huh?” Then she noticed that her new ring was glowing slightly.
Applejack noticed too. “Uh, Sunset? Where’d you get that?”
“Found it in a chest a little way back. Why?” She touched a hand to her ear and realized she could still hear.
“That’s a Ring of the Evil Eye.” Applejack bent her knees to get a closer look at it. “Why, Ah’ve only heard stories of one. Lore says when ya kill things, ya get healed by their souls. That explains why ya don’t have a wound on that arm. Hey, how’s ya hearin’? Mine’s quite muffled.”
“Yeah it’s… Actually not bad. Somewhat dampened, but better than before.”
Applejack took a drink of estus, then tapped the side of her head. “Alright. That’s better.”
The two girls continued down the path. There were a few hollows on the way, but Sunset and Applejack made short work of them, making sure to knock them off the cliff so that they wouldn’t have to deal with their tentacle forms.
“Man, I can’t wait to get back to Twilight,” Sunset said, checking ahead for any enemies. “I must have gathered a lot of those souls by now.”
“Fyrlon, huh?” Applejack reached up for her hat again, grumbling when it wasn’t there. “Been a while since Ah’ve been back there. Maybe Ah should pay a visit once we’re done with your flame gatherin’.”
Sunset looked at her, with the two of them now heading down a rocky slope over the chasm to the opposite side. “What do you mean we?”
“Why, Ah’ve decided to help ya. Maybe Ah’ll even find Rarity on the way and teach her a lesson.”
“Can’t you two just be friends?” Sunset groaned and almost slipped on another pebble. “All this is in the past. We can move on if you both are agreeable to it. You are meant to be friends. Not enemies.”
“Ah just want my hat back,” Applejack said shortly. “Now come on, Ah think Ah see something up ahead.
The path slanted downwards, and at the bottom of the slope was a familiar, but foreboding sight.
A fog door, melding into the rocky surface on the other side.
In front of it stood a single hollow, but this one’s tentacles were out, four of them acting as the legs for the poor undead. Its many eyes swiveled round and round, keeping an eye out for intruders, which had yet to see the two girls from this distance.
“Whatever made these hollows like that, Ah’m pretty sure is behind that gate.” Applejack held her axe in both hands. “Let’s get this guy.”
Sunset nodded and aimed high. Throwing her sword, she teleported to it in a flash, appearing high above the tentacle hollow.
Its eyes all turned up to her as she fell, her left hand already readying a fireball. Applejack ran down from the slope, her axe above her head as she let out a fierce battle cry.
The tentacles tried to reach out to both of them, but Sunset’s fire rained from above and consumed the creature, its tentacles now writhing in agony. With another throw, Sunset lodged her sword through the hollow’s head, materializing next to it and cutting out just as Applejack slammed her electrifying axe deep into the hollow’s chest.
It managed to knock Applejack down and throw Sunset off, but it didn’t last much longer, soon dropping dead. Fire really seemed to work wonders against them. They were so much harder before Sunset had been given the pyromancy flame by Sandalwood.
“Well, here we are…” Applejack breathed and looked over the edge. Sunset joined her and looked down. The lava was much closer now and much hotter than before. “Wonder just how deep we are. What’cha reckon, Sunset?”
“Not deep enough,” Sunset said, half to herself. She needed to get to the Cataclysm Hollows as fast as she could. Hopefully it would be the next area.
“Depressin’ attitude you have there.” Applejack clapped her on the back. “But at least you’ve resolve. Come on. Let’s go see what challenge lies before us.”
The cowgirl walked Sunset over to the fog gate, then stepped aside to let her enter first. Sunset gulped and retrieved her sword from its sheath. She didn’t know what awaited her inside, but there was only one way to find out.
“You wanna go first, or should Ah?” Applejack gesticulated at the fog door.
Sunset sighed, looking at her reflection in her sword blade. “Let’s go in together.”
Applejack nodded, and stepped up to the fog. On her nod, both girls entered the next room.
The first thing Sunset noticed was the heat. It was far hotter in this room than it had been previously, and the area before had already been sweltering. Sweating through her armor, Sunset looked around as Applejack found her bearings.
It was a big room, alright. Stone, with a craggy ceiling. The floor around the room center dropped off, revealing a pool of lava below. And at the far end of the room was what appeared to be a huge mass of black roots. The entire room was on a slope, with the roots at the bottom of the incline.
Then the roots moved, and Sunset knew she had been mistaken. The room was filled, almost to the brim, with tentacles at least five times the size of the ones the hollows had.
And then in the center of them all was a huge lumpy mass of eyes, all of them now looking directly at Applejack and Sunset. A low groan filled the cavern and soon the tentacles began snaking their way over, each of them much longer than Sunset had imagined them to be.
“Here we go.” Applejack readied Dragonslayer and charged forward, her weapon arcing with electricity.
Sunset raised her blade and sprinted for the mass of eyes at the center. She threw a fireball, but it was blocked by a tentacle. She had expected it to do some damage, but the tentacle was just too long and thick to suffer anything more than a minor burn.
“Ah, crud.”
And that was all Sunset had time to say before a tentacle bashed her in the chest, sending her flying back. She tumbled on the ground and came uncomfortably close to the edge of the platform.
Meanwhile, Applejack was not faring much better. Her axe bit deeply into a dark tendril, but even Dragonslayer’s weight and magic were insufficient to contend with the flesh and sinew of this monster. With a spasm, Applejack found herself pushing against the monster’s strength. Her boots left skid marks on the floor as she was forced back to the door.
Sunset leapt to her feet and rushed back at the enemy. She vaulted over one lashing tentacle, ducked under another, and was in the process of circumventing a third when a tendril wrapped around her leg and threw her away with surprising strength. For the second time, Sunset found herself rolling toward a fiery doom.
This isn’t working. She realized. Applejack was still wrestling with her axe. They had both been lucky so far, but it was only a matter of time before this monster scored a lucky toss of its own and landed them in the lava below.
Sweat ran down Sunset’s face in rivulets as she considered the situation.
At that moment, the tentacles in front of the eyeball cluster opened, and a beam of orange energy blasted out, forcing Sunset to throw herself flat to avoid being hit.
“Oh, come on! Heat vision on top of everything else?!”
One of the tentacles found its way around one of her legs and lifted her up, while another one pulled at her left arm, both trying to rip her apart.
Sunset screamed in pain as her left shoulder popped, but she managed to throw her sword backwards, and then disappearing from the tentacles’ grasps and appearing down on the ground where her weapon had landed. She quickly scuttled back and downed an estus to relieve herself of the pain so she could keep moving to avoid more of the creature’s tentacles.
There was no safe way to approach the eyes. They could see all around the cavern and with the mass of tentacles to protect it, getting to it seemed quite impossible.
“Woaaahhh!” Applejack landed beside her, part of her shoulder armor missing and having a few bruises on her face.
Another beam of orange energy lanced out, carving out a trench in the floor. To Sunset’s alarm, the floor beneath them began to crack, tiny bits of it falling away down into the lake of magma below.
“This is bad,” Applejack said, getting to her feet. “That durn thing is too well protected for us to get close. Any ideas, Sunset?”
“We need to get it distracted.” Sunset looked at the mound of eyes; there were two arms poking out from beneath the flesh, almost like someone had been crushed underneath. They were long and slender and as red as the rest of the creature. “But with eyes all over the thing…”
Applejack nodded and fought back a tentacle as it tried to wrap around her arm. “It’ll see us coming from any direction.”
More tentacles shot out from the mass of flesh and snaked over to Sunset and Applejack, who had to leap away and cut at what they could. Sunset parried one, then threw her sword up to avoid another one, but two more tentacles caught her in midair, now slithering around her waist, trying to squeeze the life out of her.
“Ah gotcha, Sun- Aaah!” Applejack was swatted aside, sliding to a stop beside the fog gate.
Sunset squirmed and reached for her pack, looking for one of the oil urns Applejack had given her. Perhaps she could get rid of some of the tentacles to get to the core. Retrieving one, she began to tip it over the tentacles around her waist, keeping it as far as she could as she emptied the contents so as to not get any on herself. She was desperate to get out before it could crush her, but she wasn’t about to set herself on fire doing so.
The smell of oil soon filled the air, and Sunset felt the tentacle stop moving, as though trying to figure out just what this substance was. For a moment the tendrils went slack, and Sunset slipped free, then pointed her left hand forward, willing the air to ignite. A combustion blossomed forth and set the oil alight, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh.
A guttural screech came from the blob of eyes in the center and the tentacles recoiled away from Sunset, allowing her to drop to a roll and run to Applejack’s position.
“Seems fire is still our best bet.” She helped her friend up. “That oil of yours is really something.”
“Thought they might come in handy.” Applejack pulled out a few oil urns from her pack. “Only cost me seven thousand souls. Let’s see how it likes some in its big face.”
Applejack readied one and lobbed it as hard as she could towards the creature’s head. Unfortunately, it was a bit too far and it landed short of it.
“Dagnabbit! We need to get closer. Could ya cover me while Ah throw ‘em?”
“You got it.” Sunset eyed the two burning tentacles. She should be able to keep them back with her pyromancy, at least for some time.
One more tentacle propelled over to where they were, but Sunset used a combustion spell and it coiled away from the explosion, giving Applejack time to rush forward, another urn already ready to throw.
Tossing a fireball, Sunset kicked away a tentacle that had been snaking for her leg, then fired a combustion spell at it. Only, when she extended her left hand and the pyromancy flame to cast, nothing came out.
“Huh?” She waggled the flame in her hand. “The pyromancy flame doesn’t make magic anymore?”
“Oh, ya didn’t know? Each spell can only be used a limited number of- Oof!”
In her distraction, she had let Applejack get hit and all the urns in her arms went sailing and crashing into the ground just ahead of them, a pool of the oil already spreading down the slope.
Wait… Down the slope.
Sunset watched as the oil began to seep downhill. There had been a lot of urns, and the oil puddle expanded steadily, soaking the stone floor beneath their feet and settling around the base of the monster, just as she had hoped it would.
“Applejack! That’s it!”
“Huh?” Applejack blinked at Sunset as she tried to get up. “What’s that now?”
“You did a good job getting all that oil there…” Sunset conjured up a fireball and threw it just as a trio of tentacles wrapped around her, two around her legs and one around her sword arm. “Hey!”
She struggled as they all pulled in a different direction, but as her fireball landed on the ground, the oil was quick to be set ablaze and the fire immediately began to spread down the trail, all the way to where the mass of eyes were. The oil had soaked into the creature all around, and Sunset’s fireball was devouring the oil, the flames clawing and biting like a hungry beast. In no time at all, the conflagration reached the mass of eyes.
There came an inhuman scream, a screech that shattered the smaller rocks all around the monster and the tentacles around Sunset let go in an instant as they began shriveling up like dried plants. All the tentacles in the room began to flail about as the flesh on the eye mound began to turn black.
When the entire monster had been charred, the flames died down and the creature began to flake away, just like everything else. The scene reminded Sunset of Rainbow Dash’s death and she shut her eyes to kick the memory out.
“Whew!” Applejack exclaimed. She ran her thumb on her axe’s edge, checking for any nicks or notches. “Good thinkin’ there, Sunset. We did it!”
The girl opened her eyes again to see a bonfire at the other end of the room where a dark tunnel could now be seen. “Yeah… Glad this one’s done. I’ve had enough with tentacles now. They are so gross and slimy.”
The bonfire was swiftly put to use, with both girls basking in the warmth of the fire’s glow.
“When you rest at a bonfire, your spells get filled up again too,” Applejack explained. “Now that you’re a pahromancer, resting at bonfires is all that more important for you.”
“Mhmm. That’s good to know,” Sunset said, looking at the pyromancy flame that Sandalwood had given her. It glowed and pulsed, almost like a heart. She found the sight somewhat comforting.
They sat in silence for a while longer. Then, at an unseen signal, both girls rose to their feet, determination on their faces.
“Ready to see what’s next, sugarcube?”
Sunset nodded. “Let’s do this.”