//------------------------------// // Murphy's Curse // Story: Legend of Zelda: Wielders of Harmony Part II: The Pony of Hyrule // by Scriblits Talo //------------------------------// “The voices of spirits long gone whispered melodies to them, the cool voice of the crypt howled in its own whimpering way. All the same the heroes continued forthwith.  The cool dank darkness that ebbed all around them would not be their end… but it so easily could have been. Perhaps the well was only the beginning of the darkness”…- DJ Pon3 The Legend of Link Octavia gazed again at the grotesque skeleton which still leaned against the dead end of a wall. It glowered back at her silently.  “Which… which way do we go now?” she asked, a hint of tremble in her voice. Epona smiled;  “Forward” With that, she stepped right through the wall.  Simple as that, she didn't crash through it, or dash through it, or smash it into any number of pieces.  She merely stepped through, as one might a threshold or the sash of a curtain. Octavia approached the wall, and held her hoof before it, only a hundredth of a meter away, a breath, a hair.  Epona had stepped through so confidently and for the moment Octavia could only stare in frightened awe. She bit the inside of her lip and stepped forward… and just like that she was through! Suddenly she lost her breath as Epona threw her against the wall. Epona made a hushing motion with her hoof as a horrifying flaming pony skull bearing skeletal wings, or rather a pair of skeletal wings bearing a blazing pony skull, flapped past them along the connecting hallway. “Sorry about that”  Epona whispered, she seemed almost as breathless as Octaviea. ..”I had almost forgotten how scary this place could be”  It was a lie, such a place could not be easily forgotten, but… she had to say something, to break the tension, some barrier with to yearn against the dark.  She glanced around the corner, the creature had moved on, its sickly green flame infecting some other hallway. The well was just as stark and formidable on this side of the wall as it had been on the other, but this side was larger; a seemingly endless maze of cobbled hallways crisscrossing every which way, an enthralling catacomb permeating the depths of Ponyville.  Such a place should not exist here, was not built by pony hooves and backs.  It was almost an organism of stone growing to forever entrap its prey.  How many more fake walls, how many fickle floors could exist in such a place, what secrets rested in its depths?  For a moment Octavia felt detached, as if she was floating steadily away from her own body, her breathing was all too shallow all too quick, even as she struggled to not make a sound.   Epona touched a hoof to her shoulder.  “Come on friend, we need to keep moving. Through that wall there.“  With her other hoof, she pointed across the hall. Having stepped into the wall a shocking scene greeted the two ponies, even Epona; who through her fairy was familiar with the intricacies of the crypt, felt her stomach squirm at the sight before them. A harrowing room filled with indisputable signs of captivity and torture, a place that reeked of death. Prison cells lined every corner, and in the center, a crux, an actual crux; its crossed beams and the floor below were still red with the rust of blood. Octavia approached the structure, in somber reverence, what that poor soul must have endured… nopony... No-body deserved such an end.   In pony history such a structure hadn't been used since… Well not since the princes tried to enact taxes… and it was even thought then that they had gone too far… and that, that had only been a means of tying a pony up to glue feathers to their back and mane… this structure, this structure was far worse. Suddenly Epona ripped Octavia from the scene, whirling her around in something like a mock pirouette, ending with each in the other's forearms and then one atop the other.  Octavia's shock at the sudden maneuver was soon answered as a rock or something of the sort splashed in some distant pool beneath the crux, the floor was fake. There was something like a moment of silence, each panting in unison Epona upon Octaviea.   Octaviea squinted, the dull light above them was growing steadily… dimmer? Suddenly she threw Epona off of her and bucked up, just in time too.  As a massive clawed talon of mangled and bloated flesh descended from the ceiling above, only to be burst apart by Octaviea’s startled kick, sending chunks of flesh and rot flying everywhere.  She grimmest as goop, chips of bone, as well as the unidentifiable, trickled off her main and snout. At this, Epona couldn't help but chuckle. They continued their foray proceeding through the next wall before, them having circled the crucifix giving it a wide berth. Suddenly it was Octavia grabbing Epona and thrusting her to a wall,as another skull flapped down the hall, this time managing to singe her tail. “That's it!”  She screamed before bucking the poor thing into shards even as it fell to the ground at her hooves. Epona was breathless, but she politely nodded in thanks. On the wall before them a grim fountain smiled, a face, its mouth gushing rank sewage.  Octavia found herself drawn from her thoughts as of all things the lavender sound of music issued through the otherwise dreary halls of the labyrinth.  She looked up to her friend, Epona had Link's ocarina, which she had tied by a cord along her neck; and she was now playing it, serenading the fountain with the sweet lull of a lullaby.  Octavia only for a moment wondered at it, before, and quite abruptly the fountain stopped burbling. Epona set the ocarina back to her side and smiled. “We can go back to the entrance now.” The entire water level of the demi dungeon had lowered, where there had once been streams of sewage where now just crevices of stone, now they stood over, which Octavia had stepped around when it had been filled yet neglected to note an emptied pool. “We have to go in there?” Epona nodded. Octavia shivered at the thought of entering the drain.