“Despite the blood and the muck and the gore and the grime, and the taste of death, both friends fought in tandem against the darkness.”-DJ Pon3 The Legend of Link
“Buck me, buck me buck me, where is it!?”
both friends slowly backed against the wall in avoidance of the grasping limbs and the unseen corps -like body. They reared their heads this way and that hoping to eliminate any blind spots, any unseen avenue of attack, their ears radared in every direction, before laying flat in frustration. What good did any of it do against an enemy that could pop up right under their hooves?
Epona snorted, stomping her hooves against the ground. A coward, the creature was a coward.
“Why don’t you come out here and face us you limp noodle!”
Epona shot a glance at Octavia, surprised at her friend's newfound persistence… had she always been so determined?
What had changed?
Abruptly the creature burst from the earth, and sludge toward them at an alarming speed!
Both equines jumped apart, each diving and rolling from copious looming hooves, each springing out of the ground at them in their turn.
Epona recovered in her role just in time to see the creature turn to face her.
Buck this!
She Charged, barreling into the gaunt mass, she screamed at the top of her lungs and held on to it between her forelimbs grappling it into the ground with her.
In the blink of a moment both she and the creature disappeared, as the creature sank into the earth, dragging Epona with it.
All Octavia could do was watch in horror as her friend disappeared, just barely being able to recover from her shock in time to again roll to the side as an arm shot toward her. The next would have caught her if not for…
The undead appendage stopped short. It withered in the air as if in pain.
Suddenly all of the hoofed arms spasmed in apparent desperation, before…
Finally after giving a final writhe of pain the hooves all fell to the cavern floor amongst the bones of old foes and muck. If not dead before, dead now.
And there was silence. Only the incessant dripping of the well could be heard, and the eternal chanting of the long departed spirits could be heard.
…
And then.
A muffled voice could be heard.
“Um… A little help please?”
“Epona!” Octavia rushed over to help her friend, who , from what she could see when she got to where Epona was, was almost completely submerged in mud, only a hoof and her muzzle sticking out of the earth.
Where the creature had last submerged had been a softer part of the room, where Epona had been able to follow after it with relatively little injury, but now she found herself stuck unable to swim any further though the grime.
Octavia grabbed her friend clutching Epona’s main between her teeth and pulled.
“Ow, Ow, Ow ow ow ow ow!”
Octavia dropped her and both lay panting in a crumpled heap.
“Ha! Ha ha ha ha! HA! …. Buck me buck me buck me, what in the carrot! What in the bucking Carrot! By Celestia’s Main, by Faron’s Horn, What in the actual Carrot juice!... H.. How are we still alive, what the buck was I thinking!” Epona rocked in a kind of mania, and all Octavia could do was watch in a shocked silence.