As unpleasant as the situation had grown for Fluttershy, the situation Snails faced was indeed dire beyond his wildest dreams—or rather the nightmares that Luna insisted on forcing into his brain whenever he tried to sleep. Horrific visions of creatures that were slimy and slow—but unnaturally devoid of their shells.
He was in a part of the zone he had never been, deep behind enemy lines—that enemy being slugs. Slugs abounded, and the land was replete with them and their strange, incomprehensible squelching. Fluttershy had run off somewhere, and Snails now found himself alone.
She was far braver than him. More confident, more powerful, and so much more beautiful. Somehow, the slugs did not frighten her. She could see the beauty even in the most disgusting, repulsive, downright unnatural abominations of monsters, the product of what surely must have been the most profound and blasphemous arcane rituals. Without her to deal with them, he was alone and unprotected.
Alone in the forest, he paused, out of breath, seeing nothing but darkness around him. From the box he carried, he produced a snail. It looked around, oddly calm for the high degree of danger.
“Which way did she go, George? Which way did she go?”
The snail shrugged—but then its tiny eyes widened and it slowly retracted into the box, closing the lid. Snails sighed, because he could feel the shadow. Not quite one of gloom, but one of annoyance. He slowly turned to see Tuo looming over him.
Despite his age, Tuo had developed exponentially faster than normal ponies, probably due to an aspect of his immortality or whatever genetic traits gave him dark eyes and a darker coat. Snails was already tall and slender, but Tuo was even taller—and although he was also thin, the armor he wore more than overcompensated. Like when Snips had grown a pompadour to disguise his short horn during college.
“Hello, Snails,” he said, his voice distorted through his audio system but still bearing his characteristic cold amusement—as if he was constantly aware of a joke but too proud to show it or let anypony else in on the punchline. As if the whole world was just so terribly, sadly amusing.
Snails let out a long sigh. “So. I guess we have to fight, eh?”
Tuo tilted his head slightly. “Violence is merely a tool, Snails. One of many. I am not being paid to fight you, and although my skill is prodigious it does cost me energy to cast spells. I am no Twilight Sparkle.”
“But you managed to get her niece.”
"In that she hired me, yes."
“You’re not dating?”
“She is the Scion of House Twilight. And I am a halfbreed. We are simply fans of indulging a certain passion.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Nor should you. You would consider it deviant.”
“Is it?”
A low chuckle escaped his mask. “I am a pureblood. No action is deviant, from my perspective.”
Snails nodded. He did not get it, in part because of the duality, but also because he got the idea he did not want to. He himself was not a pureblood that he knew of; all purebloods he had ever known were white. Except for the ones with curved horns—and there was only one of those left. Tuo’s mother.
“Regardless,” continued Tuo. “Violence is but one tool. As are words.” He paused. “And as is money.”
Snails sighed. “Every dang time?”
“How much would it cost to make you leave and totally ignore my actions?”
“Tuo, you know I can’t do that.”
“Fine. Since you refuse to broach an offer, I propose five million bits.”
Snails shook his head. “It isn’t about the money.”
“Is it not? Money is a tool, and a powerful one. With that much, you could built a sanctuary for every species of snail you choose. Every conch, every pond snail. Organized and cataloged perfectly. In the image of the sanctuary that your foalhood hero uses to imprison her animals.”
Snails sighed again. “Sounds like a good deal. But I refuse. Counteroffer.”
Tuo tilted his head. Snails had never counter-offered before.
A sad smile crossed Snails’s face. “I don’t need money. But free the conchs.”
A dull sigh—or perhaps a laugh—escaped Tuo. “You know I cannot do that. I am the only thing keeping the species alive.”
“In a private aquarium. With no hope of putting them back where they belong.”
Tuo paused. “I suppose then you do understand,” he admitted. “Money is a pointless thing. So easy to make, so easy to have so much. As much as you want, and more. It is a trivial, pointless thing. Common. Vulgar. Useless except as a mundane tool. A tool to find that which is rare. Impossible. Beautiful. Truly of value.”
“Like the Princess?”
“Like the thing in the center of her brain that no matter how hard I cut and no matter how many surgeries I conduct I can never find.”
“Didn’t know you were a doctor.”
“I am not. The process is so much more beautiful when an amateur conducts it.”
Snails summoned a tiny, weak cutting spell. One that he normally used—with some difficulty—to slice warm butter prior to spreading it. He steeled himself for the encounter. “When I woke up this morning, I chose violence.”
Tuo nodded. "I never wake up making that choice. Fools force me into it by not accepting cash." He produced his own cutting spell, one nearly the length of his own body.
Snails looked at it, then turned his eyes up. “Compensating?”
“Hardly. I would have expected you would be difficult to intimidate. Your mind is so much more even than most. So level. So linear. You could have rivaled me as a wizard.”
“Not my thing.”
“I severed your horn once before. This time, I will do so so that it does not grow back.”
Snails shrugged. “Being an earth-pony would be just fine with me.”
Tuo shifted his weight impeccable subtlety. The cutting spell was a projection of will; he did not need to actually swing it. Snails blocked it with his tiny spell—and his spell shattered, filling him with the smallest ping of feedback. He did not attempt to dodge.
The spell landed against his head—and Tuo's pseudoblade ruptured from the feedback wave. Although barely perceptible, Snails had already prepared a shield spell—and one of a particular type. Of the known types of shielding spells, bucklers and domes were considered the easiest to cast—and shells were considered among the most difficult, second only to three-dimensional crystal-constructs.
Snails’s shell proved more than adequate—and his level, durable mind withstood the impact of the spell with barely any perturbation. In a true wizard fight, he would be at an extreme disadvantage—save for the peculiar nature of his mind. So little was going on in his head that he had nothing to be distracted by, rendering his focus absolute.
Tuo momentarily faulted. Snails leaned back, the headbutted him—directly in his horn. Snails’s head had a great enough density to survive the incident, but Tuo was sent reeling, his horn appearing slightly shortened on account of having been partially pushed into his brain.
“You can give up if you want,” said Snails, shrugging.
Tuo regained his composure as he regenerated. He did not reply, other than a short chuckle—and the ground beneath Snails erupted in a shockwave of red magic.
With the reflexes of a snail, dodging was trivial. As he turned over in the air, Snails picked up a small rock and threw it; it pinged harmlessly against Tuo’s armor. Injuring him was not really the point, after all. Snails was an inherently nonviolent pony, largely due to his complete inability to perform anything except defensive magic.
Tuo compensated again, shifting his stance to an almost imperceptible degree and casting an area-of-effect spell, igniting the surrounding area with magic fire—but as it erupted, the spell faltered and began to collapse. Tuo coughed, suddenly falling to his knees.
“What did you do to me?”
Snails just smiled—and Tuo turned his head to see a small snail waving from his back. A magic sealing snail. Snails had placed it on him while he was still reeling from the headbutt—and it had drawn a magic circle around his midsection, the slime dissolving into his armor.
“You cannot cast a magic circle ON a pony, that’ is absurd!”
He tried to take a step forward, only to find that his armor would not respond. Looking down, Tuo found a small contingent of snails already climbing his body, their mucous rapidly hardening to the strength of concrete deep in the joints of his power-armor.
“See? That’s why I’m naked most of the time,” admitted Snails.
“Because you do not have a social obligation to hide your color.”
Snails turned, about to perform a retreat and attempt to find Fluttershy—when the ground started to shake. He was knocked to his knees, not knowing what was happening—and the ground a distance away began to suddenly rise.
Snails watched, frozen, dumbfounded at the sight—at first beyond his comprehension, but then seeping into his mind. He could not resist the truth he was witnessing as the soil fell away from it, raining down in a landslide of rocks, mud, and bog—and as the behemoth growled in an imperceptibly low frequency.
It was a scene out of every nightmare, now brought before him in the flesh. The sight of a giant slug, one of impossible size, looming over the tallest of trees—and continuing to rise, a giant thousands of yards in scale. Even at a distance, he saw its eyes emerging on long, distended stalks—eyes the size of whole towns, cloudy and blind for a life spent underground. Below them, he saw the sensory barbels the size of skyscrapers—and a mouth filled with millions upon millions of pony-sized teeth.
“N—no!” he cried, stepping back. “Not that! Anything but that!”
There was a rush of air and ions as Tuo moved, a simple spell suddenly freeing him from the bounds that Snails had been led to suspect should could contain him.
“It is best not to turn your back to me, Snails,” he said—and Snails felt a sudden shock to his chest. His eyes widened as his breath caught in his throat, and he felt the thick, warm fluid running down his body and dripping to the ground.
He looked down, tears welling in his eyes, as he knew he had lost—and found himself staring into the eyes of an engorged, banana-sized banana slug that Tuo had placed on him.
A giant slug was bad enough, but it was at a distance, almost abstract in its horror—but this was somehow so much more worse. It was touching him. Touching him and, due to the adhesive properties of its blasphemous mucous, quite firmly affixed.
Snails screamed like a little filly and sprinted wildly into the woods, running into threes and tripping over rocks, injuring himself in the process before falling down a small chasm and rolling down a hill.
Tuo watched him go, finding the incident vaguely comical. When he turned back to his armored employees, they were holding each other, terrified. They had followed him to act as support, even though they themselves were not good at mercenary work any more so than any other soft and adorable pony. Tuo generally considered them a form of cannon fodder.
“Is something the matter?”
“You’re too scary.”
“Please don’t slug us.”
Tuo bowed. “You are valuable members of my team. I would not hurt you. Unless I was paid to. Ironic, of course, considering I have next to no use for the money.” He shrugged. “Regardless, please gather miss Argiopé and return her to the support mech. My medical staff will thaw and then fix her.”
“Can’t you use a spell?”
He shrugged. “My healing spells are severely carcinogenic, so yes, I could. But I think she may be married to our client? I did not bother to ask. And in fact I do not want to know. The idea of a romantic relationship with an invertebrate disturbs me.”
One of the crystal ponies pointed. “What about the giant slug?”
Tuo shrugged. “I would have had to awaken it eventually. It is unfortunately too large for my private collection.” He paused. “However, once we get to the ruins, if you see any artifacts of cultural or religious significance, do collect them. They belong to me now.”
The crystal ponies nodded—but it was clear they were nervous. Tuo of course knew why. It was the reason he wore the armor when he was around them—although he of course still saw it in their eyes. He knew who he looked like, despite the total lack of relation. How they instead looked upon so fondly and trusted so dearly the one who was in fact in the descendant of the one they truly feared.
Tuo dismissed this. He did not require their friendship—only their compliance.