Hollow Shades Grand Finale Part 2.9.1
Speech Increased To 2.5
They moved quietly down the deep, humid tunnel beneath the town hall—careful not to disturb the loose pebbles and skittering bugs that covered the uneven stone steps of the winding path—until they came across a fork in the way. Two branching tunnels that split from the main downward descent into darkness. One led East and up, back to the surface, and the second went West and kept straight across the ground.
“Dead end,” Juniper said as they passed the fork and ignored both exits. “There’s lots of tunnels like that, that just go back and twist around each other, to keep ponies off balance.”
“And the other one?” Jelly asked, as she eyed the second tunnel, angled upward and away from the earthy dungeon. “Where does that lead to?”
“Just the surface,” the vampire pony shrugged, “somewhere outside Hollow Shades, I guess. I haven’t really explored most of these. I just know the Mayor had them dug out, just in case.”
Their descent was marked by the quiet dread of the unknown. Every step echoed off the rocky walls and trailed ahead of them like an alarm, and their very breaths hung heavy in the warm, uncomfortable air of the underground. By the time they reached a small plateau, all three of them were short of breath and sweating hard.
The two mares led the way, with the guard behind them and the skeleton ponies trailing at the back—having learned their lesson after the guard stormed out of the town hall, ready for action, but without a clue as to where it was—and Juniper carried a small lantern that hung from her saddlebag. It was just bright enough to illuminate the tunnel ahead by a few meters, but not too bright. If there was anypony down there, at least the light wouldn’t be the one to give them away. They had the guard’s heavy gear for that.
“Some advice, friend,” he said, as the vampire mare adjusted the bucket she wore as a helmet. “That armor won’t offer much protection in a real fight.”
Juniper scrunched up her muzzle. “Oh yeah? Well at least I’m not the one rattling and clanking around in the dark!”
The guard paused for a moment, and the rings of his chainmaille hauberk jingled and clinked against each other from the sudden stop.
“Best offense is a good defense, am I right?” He glanced up at Jelly Squish. The goo-pony mare giggled and nodded from atop the guard’s helmet.
“Don’t take his side!” Juniper turned to face them and stomped on the ground; her muzzle scrunch intensified by a factor of ten. “It’s not fair! You’re not... even wearing... anything...”
Juniper’s eyes went cross-eyed for a moment as realization slowly dawned. Jelly Squish was naked! While a crimson shade quickly flared on her vampire pony cheeks, she turned back around and pressed her bucket tighter against her head. Luckily the others didn’t seem to take notice!
“Lightly armored means light on your feet. Smart.”
“I know!” Jelly Squish said.
They proceeded into the darkness ahead, past the plateau and deeper into the earth, until they came upon a pair of iron doors closed shut by a locked up bolt. Juniper walked up to it with the keys jingling in her mouth, and opened the lock after she fumbled with it for a bit. With a loud, ominous groan of rusted metal, she pushed the bolt aside and the heavy iron doors yawned open before them, like the maw of some dormant beast. A gust of air entered the cave-like room ahead, and the light of the lantern flickered slightly.
“Well,” Juniper stammered a little, but her voice held for the most part, “this is it, you guys. Is everypony ready?”
Behind her, the famed guard of unmatched power unsheathed his blade and readied his shield. Atop his head, Jelly Squish scrunched up her muzzle and frowned, ready to deliver a serious dosage of butt-kicking. For her own part, Juniper sucked in a deep breath and tried to stifle the worst of her fears. Then she stuck one hoof in the darkness...
...only to feel the guard’s hand on her withers. She stopped.
“You hear that?” he asked, and nodded at the quiet blackness within the room. Juniper strained her ears, but try as she might, she couldn’t make out anything but the slight crunch of dust and pebbles under her hooves. “I swear, there's something out there. In the dark.”
The vampire pony gulped. “I-I’m sure it’s n-nothing,” she said, and took one tiny step forward into the unknown. “Come on, e-everypony! We need to hurry...”
Slowly, the group made their way into the secret vault with nothing but Juniper’s lantern to light the path. It was a spacious place, empty and dirty, with nothing in the way of furniture or equipment of any sort—at least, until they came upon the middle of the cavernous cellar—and there, at the very center of the floor, was a deep depression. It took all their luck not to stumble and fall into the steep incline.
“Woah!” Jelly Squish peeked from behind the guard’s head. Perched upon his shoulder, she had the best view of the horrendous machinery that lay at the very bottom of that great crater.
It was a massive contraption, at least three times as tall as the guard himself, and wide enough that six pegasi could stand side by side—wings fully extended and never touching—across its breadth. Its overall frame seemed to be brass and iron in the shape of a wire-frame bowl, rusted and decayed to the point it seemed rickety and frail, but strong enough to withstand the rest of the Machine. It’s body was a monster of tubular wiring, support beams, and heat exhausts. Huge and bulbous protrusions of some sort of netting hung from it, seemingly at random, and they pulsed with unknown purpose. A sickly-pale, steely glow emanated from its core—barely visible through the brass and iron, but very much alive with movement—trapped within the very heart of the contraption.
There it lay, the dreaded machine, operating by rules all its own and fully engrossed in some terrible task as unknowable as it was dangerous to our heroes. And it did all of this in perfect silence.
Jelly took a shaky breath and slid down the guard’s back and onto her gelatinous hooves. She slid closer to the edge of the crater. The depression was slanted at a steep, but not impossible angle, with marked ‘steps’ of sorts, staggered to form an uneven stairway down to the center from all angles. The rock was oddly smooth, like it had melted and flowed to coat the steps before solidifying over them, but there was no buildup down at the center. There was only the Machine.
“By the Gods! What manner of power is that?” the brave guard asked, but got no response from his companions. They stared in awe at the monstrous thing in the depths of the earth beneath them, where neither sun nor moon shone, and the only light was that sickly glow that came from the dark innards of the iron and brass body of the Machine. Even Juniper, who had seen it already, could do little more than gawk at the monstrosity of it.
It was an impossible thing from somewhere beyond, and by all laws of nature and reality, it should not exist in their realm. And yet...
The Machine began to hum. A low rumble, powerful and terrible, that made the ground itself shake from under our heroes. The dread glow intensified then, and the brass and iron beams began to rattle fiercely against their bolts and binds. The Machine had awoken.
“What is going on?!” Jelly shouted over the now deafening shriek that the Machine spewed into the vault. She had asked Juniper, but the vampire mare did not hear her. Even if she had, she couldn’t have replied. Not with the fear that gripped her.
“It... it’s been activated!” she cried, and desperately backed away from the edge of the crater as it shuddered and groaned under the strain of the living monster in its depths. “We have to get out of here! It’s... it’s a trap!”
But it was too late. From all around them came the sounds of claws as they skittered across the stone floor. Dozens of them, if not hundreds. Closer and closer they came, from behind, from across the vault, and from all around them. The guard tensed the moment the first of the monsters came into view. Jelly Squish’s eyes widened and her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Juniper screamed.
Surrounded and with nowhere to run, our heroes and their skeleton pony minions watched as hundreds of pincers clicked! and clacked! with malicious intent.
The mudcrabs had come.
Worse still was the voice that followed after them...
“Well, well, well... what do we have here?” the Mayor said as he stepped out from behind the Machine—his invisible fur coated over by a pale cream and his trench coat to protect him from the sun—with two burly bat ponies with newly-lit lanterns on his trail. They were broad, heavyset creatures of the night, clad in a silvery-white armor that was unlike anything the Lunar Guard was issued. They opened their fanged mouths and hissed at our heroic protagonists, fully surrounded and ensnared now that the mudcrab menace had edged ever closer to their little group!
Blood racing and temper aflare from being captured in so terrible a trap, our guard of mighty martial and spoken prowess leveled his sword at the mayor, and growled at him, “You come up to me, fists raised? You looking for a beating?”
Pierre simply smiled—a cold, calculated smirk, so devoid of humor and so dark that it chilled the blood of the two mares—and raised a hoof. Something gave him pause.
“This is your last chance, Juniper,” he said then, and his stone glare settled on the trembling vampire mare. “Come with me. Now.”
Juniper Fields was shaking from her hooves to her blonde mane, painfully aware of the size of the monstrous pincer-claws of the hundreds of alien beasts surrounding her. Each was at least the size of a small foal, and they looked vicious.
But there was one thing that was stronger than fear, even one so terrible as the kind she felt in that moment. Though it took all her strength, Juniper shook her head fiercely. She would not abandon her friends.
Pierre’s glare turned into a snarl, and he let his hoof fall. Almost immediately, the two bat ponies hissed and extinguished their lanterns, plunging them and Pierre into darkness once more. Then came a gust of wind, a flash of steel and the crash of glass and metal as one of the winged ponies slapped the lantern from Juniper’s hoof.
“H-hey!” she cried out, but it was too late. The lantern hit the floor and its light weakened, flickered, and died. The valiant guard swung his blade hard, but the bat pony merely chuckled and deftly flew away, perfectly shrouded in shadows.
“I can’t see! Where are they?!” Jelly Squish backed away from the skittering sounds that came from all around, and pressed herself tightly against Juniper’s back. The vampire pony stared into the emptiness, catatonic as terror and the monstrous creatures closed in around them, faster than she could process. The sounds were a storm and she was caught in the middle, with nowhere to go!
But there was hope. There was the guard!
“Gotta keep my eyes open. Damn dragons could swoop down at any time,” he said, as yet another of the bat ponies made a pass at him in the shadows. He felt the air as it parted, and the lightning-quick shift in pressure as the pony swung an armored hoof at his head. It was only sheer luck and his own great skill that allowed him to dodge the blow before it landed.
But the mudcrabs were now mere meters away! The sound of their chitin frames against the stone was so loud he could barely hear himself think. Worse still, his companions were frozen in shock and terror. It would all fall to him.
“No lollygagging!” he said, and picked up the nearest pony in one arm. Slimy goo seeped over his fingers and through his armor, but he paid it no heed. There was fighting to be done!
“Eep!” the goo-pony mare cried as the guard yanked her up.
“Vampire!” he then shouted out and nudged Juniper out of her trance. “To Arms!”
The vampire pony shook her head clear and nodded once. “R-right! Let’s gooo-aaAAH!”
The first of the mudcrabs was upon them.
The guard swung hard against the beast, and his steel sword broke through chitin and flesh as it sent the mudcrab hurtling through the air and over the heads of its thrice-cursed brethren. But no sooner had it landed, than a second mudcrab fell into place to replace him, and two more right behind it. So the guard stepped forward, in all his glory and fierce determination, and swung again, and kicked out, and slashed and hacked and carved a bloody path across the swarm.
But it wasn’t enough.
“Juniper, we have to go!” Jelly Squish shouted out as the guard carried her through the sea of mudcrabs. She bucked and punched as fast as her gooey legs could manage, desperate to keep the mudcrabs from climbing onto the valiant guard’s exposed back. But it was a losing battle.
“I can’t see!” the vampire pony cried out. “I can’t see! They’re— eep! They’re climbing on me!”
It was then that the guard stopped. The exit was just ahead—he could faintly see its outline against the glow of the Machine—and he knew that he could reach it. The mudcrabs were many, but they were no match for him. The skeleton ponies still stood their ground against the worst of the crustacean tide, and though the bat ponies kept harassing his advance, he knew that he could make it.
“Juniper!” Jelly Squish screamed. All that could be heard of the vampire pony was the sound of her frightened sobs. The guard’s hands clenched around his sword and shield until the knuckles turned white.
He could not leave a friend behind.
“Watch the skies, traveler!” he shouted, and turned with a speed that startled the goo-pony mare on his shoulders. He drew back his shield arm and, with a force to rival the mightiest dragon of legend, the brave guard threw his shield across the cavernous darkness!
Juniper yelped as a powerful force slammed into the mudcrabs on top of her and blew them away in a shower of snapped legs and shattered chitin. Tears flowed freely, and a little trail of snot wriggled its way down her scraped nose. There were pinch marks everywhere on her body, and more than a few of them dripped blood or had fur torn from the skin. But she was okay, and help was on the way!
A thunderous force stomped across the cavern and past the last of the surviving skeleton ponies—the guard ignored the mudcrabs as they pinched at his heels and legs, and he shrugged off the blows as the bat ponies rammed into his helmet and shield-less body with their armored hooves—to reach her, who had not long ago been his enemy. Juniper could scarcely believe it as she felt his arms wrap around her midsection and lift her up.
“Everything’s in order...” he whispered, and turned back to the exit. For a moment Juniper could almost believe it.
But then the iron doors slammed shut and the sound of the bolt as it locked into place filled the room.
And the mayor’s wicked laughter was the last thing they heard, before the army of mudcrabs descended upon them...