//------------------------------// // Chapter Seven // Story: The Legend of Rarity: Zecora's Mask // by LittleAngelStocking //------------------------------// Bottle filled with water? Check. Saddlebags? Check. Ocarina? Check. Sword that’s never going to be used? Check. “I guess I’d better get going…” “I’m a-jumping across giant flowers…” Rarity sang aimlessly as she did just that, after having found the secret entrance the monkey told her about. She didn’t see where this was getting her, she saw no temple, but she just followed the giant orange flowers. “And I’m filthy, and covered in dirt… and really sleepy, but I must go on… the show must go on, or the world will end… which can’t happen… And I really want to go home and take a nice long bath and forget this mess… but I can’t let down Sweetie Belle…. Oooooh, Aaaaa…. My little pony, my little pony…. My little pony…. I used to wonder what friendship could be… but then the moon came crashing on me…” Rarity was sweating. Whether it was from the stress, or the humid air of the swamp she didn’t know or care. She hated sweating. She could see a ledge a few feet away with another entrance. Finally! She picked up the pace and leapt gracefully over. “This swamp is nasty!” She hissed as her hoof landed in some mud. “Nature is disgusting sometimes!” And those bugs she’d run into earlier. Nightmare fuel. They were like wasps, only the size of a whole filly! They were huge! She hurried into the dark tunnel, trying not to breathe. It smelled positively awful in here, and it seemed to get worse as she continued. Finally bright sunlight greeted her vision and she blinked. Oh. That’s where the smell is coming from. “More swamp water. And it’s blue. And white,” The swamp water looked a lot thicker than the purple stuff, and it was a pale blue with white swirling around in it like somepony was stirring it in. Only one word could do this place justice. “Gross,” she moaned. Luckily, rotten (ew,) logs were floating in the thick nasty mess, and there were short pillars sticking up out of the water, make-shift wooden bridges spanning between most of them. She spotted a tall, bigger one in the distance, but she saw no temple. She went over to the edge, swatting away more bugs. Ugh, bugs this size should only belong in the Everfree! She lightly pushed a log and waited till it floated between her and a small platform, then timing her jump perfectly she leaped onto it, then onto the platform. “No matter the circumstances, I am always fabulous!” she smiled, stroking a strand of hair with a hoof. She stepped onto the catwalk, testing it for stability, then headed forward. Her ears perked when she heard the sound of buzzing wings. She lifted her head just in time to see a massive beetle-like bug, easily twice her size, and land on the ramp in front of her. Two gleaming yellow eyes peered emotionlessly at her from underneath a reddish-yellow carapace. Rarity screamed. She backed away frantically; it clawed the ground with one spindly black leg and spread its wings, ready to charge. “NO!” she cried, as it crashed into her, it charged – straight into the thick, warm water. “GROSSSSSS, NO, NO, NO!” she screamed. As it was about to fall in she managed to crawl up onto its back and leap back onto the safe wood as it fell in, and sunk slowly into the water, struggling madly. Rarity breathed hard. Her back hooves and some of her tail had thick, nasty water dripping from them. She whipped the bottle of clean water out of her bag and poured it over her tail and hooves. “Ew, ew, ewwww, oh gross!” She quickly stopped herself before using all of it. The bottle was now only half-full. Blast it. She galloped up the ramp onto the taller pillar and then ran across the next catwalk to the next, not wanting any more bugs block her way. “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!” She did a running leap onto the biggest ramp, which had a strange carving in the center of the floor. Wooden beams stood on each corner, more beams lying horizontally connecting the four, reminding Rarity of the formations of Lincolt Logs. Song! She thought, pulling out her ocarina. She admired it for a moment before levitating up to her lips. What was the melody again… oh yeah! She played the song. And it was glorious. Well, that is until the ground started shaking, Rarity watched in horror as the water begun to rise. Higher and higher, Rarity prayed it wouldn’t go over the ramp she stood on, she noticed there was a ‘central’ point where the water was highest a few feet in front of her, then something emerged. As it moved out over the water, it took a shape. That of a… a temple! She thought with joy, as it finally fully emerged, revealing a large black building, covered in moss and somehow completely dry. There was a small door in the front. “…How do I get over there?” After a moment, she levitated the ramp over and placed one end at her hooves, the other at the door to the temple. Taking a deep breathe, she started forward. ~~~ “Objectives: save the zebra Princess and find the being Zecora told me about. Easy, right? What could go- NO! Don’t jinx yourself…” she sighed. Dark? Check. Smells bad? Check. Hideous? Check. The material under her hooves felt like a weird combo between carpet and grass. Trees stuck up out of the ground, and she could have sworn she saw little orange eyes in the shadows and corners. How had this place not filled with swamp water while it was submerged? Weird. It made no sense at all. She decided not to question it and press forward. A door with a bunch of odd symbols was on the other side of the room, and she could see wasp nests hanging from the branches. How did those even get… Don’t question it. What caught her eye though, was a small wooden chest over to the side. “I really shouldn’t steal, but… just a peek won’t hurt,” she decided, eagerly making her way towards it. She kicked it open with a fore hoof, and looked in. …A tiny fairy pony thing? It was pink, and seemed to glow. It was about the size of her hoof, and other then the butterfly wings and little pink curled antenna’s that poked out from behind her mane she looked like a normal pony. “Help!” it cried, “The great fairy has been shattered!” it cried in a tiny voice. “Please, return us all to our fountain!” Rarity stared, open-mouthed. “…Pardon?” “You must help! There are 15 of us in this temple, return us to our fountain and we promise you will be greatly rewarded!” The little thing looked desperate. “Right…” Rarity sighed. She supposed she shouldn’t even be surprised anymore. “Come along, then. I’ll find the rest of you…” “Oh, thank you!” and with that the creepy-yet-cute creature. She fluttered close to Rarity and disappeared. “…Where did it… never mind, I’m busy,” Rarity muttered. Her throat was dry from screaming earlier… she hoped there was clean water in here. The lower half of her tail was no longer curled, and hung limply, a few strands dragging the ground to her disgust. She looked up again, and stared at the corner. Okay, now she was sure something was watching her. “Hello…?” she called, and perked her ears. She could hear rustling, coming from almost everywhere. “Hello,” She called again, “Anypony there?” “Strange…” she murmured. “Right. Further into the foul-smelling temple. No problem. Right, let us go.” Swallowing, she made her way towards the door. “Hello-hello?” it was meant to come out in a sing-song tone but quickly changed when the door opened and she was hit with the strongest stink she’d ever had the displeasure of inhaling. She’d thought outside was bad, but this wasn’t open air. The room was rather big, and filled with swamp-water. Not the blue and white stuff outside the temple, no, just the smelly purple gunk. She was standing on a (organic? How did the architects do that?) platform, and on the left side of it was a curved (how!?) wooden ramp that went down to yet another platform just above the water, and a door. In the center of the room was a massive wooden structure, forming a weird triangle, faded red paint forming patterns Rarity came to recognize as zebra style. From what she could tell, there were two floors; on several walls were more grassy (again: how!?) floors, and she saw no way to get to them unless she could somehow get to the doors. “Alright! I can do this!” she egged herself on, and started down the wooden ramp. “I will get through this awful place, I will save the princess! I can- oh, the doors locked,” She looked at the door, a neutral expression on her face. Okay, this was the only other door she could get to without swimming. And it was locked. And she had no idea where the key could possibly be – most likely, the zebra had it. Slowly she turned around, weighing her options. There was another door on the other side of the room, but the only way she could think to get there was swimming, which she refused to even consider. She turned back towards the door, she looked it over. The chains were held in place by a massive lock – she turned around again and bucked it as hard as she could. “Oh, I hope I didn’t chip a hoof! I’m going to need a hooficure if I get home. When I get home,” she corrected herself. She noticed a splinter of wood poking out of the wooden slide she had come down on, and she used her telekinesis to pluck it off and over to her. “Perhaps…” she searched around for something bigger, before pulling her ever-dusty sword out of its sheath. She slid both the sword tip and the splinter into the lock and begun moving them around, having no clue how this was going to work. After a few seconds she stopped. “This is useless! I’m wasting my time, all because I don’t want to get dirty?! The fate of clock town – neigh, the entire world is in my hooves, and the well-being of my sister and her friends as well! I must swim across, I must!” And without the slightest hesitation Rarity dove into the water. It felt… like regular water, if not a little warmer. Then, she felt a slight burning all over, and resurfaced gasping. She quickly paddled towards the other side, going around the weird structure in the middle. The burning itch got worse, and within seconds she was gasping. Oh, it burned! Hadn’t that monkey said something about the swamp water being poisonous? Shouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t swallow it… right? Rarity went faster, vision going black – the pain was impossible to explain, it wasn’t like stabbing pain, but the burn increased to a more agonizing pain in mere seconds. Could poison sink into the skin? Wasn’t that one of the differences between poison and venom? Rarity hated herself right now. The one moment she doesn’t hesitate to get filthy, and it ends up poisoning her. Rarity was going under; everything seemed to swirl upside down in her vision. Finally she hit the other side. She struggled to resurface, before finally coming up with a gasp and holding herself above water by the edge of the dirt. Or wood. She didn’t know anymore, this temple made no sense. Weakly pulling herself up, she collapsed, gasping. Her whole body ached, and she furiously rubbed her itching eyes. “Just… five minutes… five minutes, I need…” she levitated her only bottle of water out of her saddlebag and took a long sip. It was stained ever so slightly red from the potion earlier, and apparently some of the healing elixirs effects were still, if ever so slightly, held in the residual red. She felt slightly better quickly, she felt the fatigue wash away, and while she was still a little dizzy, it wasn’t as bad. She got to her hooves, still feeling mildly itchy but a lot better. She wanted to take another drink, but she needed to preserve what little water she had, and the healing residue might come in handy later. She coughed several times, and rubbed her mouth with a foreleg. She was still covered in the sickly water, but the healing stuff must have long-lasting effects or something. Her mane hung around her face, and her tail dragged completely on the ground; but at this point her only complaint was that it made her heavier. She pushed the door open with a hoof, and walked in. Small room. Little platform in the middle, swamp water everywhere. That was it. There was another door on the other side of the room, but that was just it. “I was expecting more of a challenge…” she mused. “Not that I want a challenge, but so far I feel I should expect nothing less.” She gracefully jumped onto the little middle square, and then to the other side. It was quite a bit higher than the others, so Rarity had to pull herself up with a bit of self-levitation (quite a bit harder than it sounds, actually) and then she was ready to enter the next room which she prayed would be easy. “Oh, Celestia send me to the moon!” She hissed as the door closed behind her, she heard the click of a lock. She was in a small room, about the size of a common living room. A few trees grew out of the ground, curving up into the ceiling, (How the zebra managed to create a temple that looked like something only powerful unicorns could have constructed was beyond her,) the floor had puddles of water here and there, (regular, clean water,) but that’s not what had made her curse. No, it was the two giant wasp-things buzzing steadily towards her, stingers pointed in her direction. She backed away, hindquarters pressing into the locked door, wracking her brain for a way out. Only a foot away, one of them buzzed, and soon an electrical change ran through the stinger. “Oh, by the sun and moon!” Rarity retreated underneath the both of them, and whirled around as the other one electrified itself, and the other got worn off and stopped the charge of electricity and approached her. Rarity saw her chance and pounced on it. Its insect wings buzzed frantically but the white unicorn crushed it into the ground with a hoof, ugly vomit-green guts squishing out of it and covering her hoof. She quickly retreated, splashing her icky hoof in the water as the other advanced. As soon as she saw her opportunity she knocked it to the ground and it quickly met the same fate as its companion. “Ew, ew, ew, ew!” she growled, splashing water on her stained hoof. A noise quickly caught her attention and she turned around. A small chest had materialized on one side of the room. “Wait…” she hesitated. “The zebra intentionally put these bugs here, made it so that the door would lock behind anypony who walked in… so that when the bugs were squashed a chest would appear…?” Rarity had never been more confused. She headed towards the chest and kicked it open with a foreleg. The lid fell back, and inside was a little silver key. “Delightful.” She said, not even sure how much of it was sarcasm and how much of it was actual enthusiasm. She heard the bars on the door lift behind her. “Wait.” She stopped. “This must be the key for the door in the room I swam across. So the zebra must have put the key in here for… protection? Why not keep it with them? Why place it all the way over here? It makes no sense! And now I have to swim all the way back across poisonous water!” Rarity couldn’t even stress it: she currently hated her very existence. She crossed the two rooms back into the main one. Six jars stood on either side of the square she was one, one of them had been knocked over when she dragged herself out of the water. How had she not noticed them? She picked one up in her levitation; looked at it, and then finding no way she could make use of it she tossed it behind her, where she heard it shatter. Rarity had a silent panic attack when she heard the flapping of tiny wings, anticipating more bugs she whirled around – only to find… One of the little fairy things. “Help us, we need-“ “I know what you need, I already have one of you with me, I think. Come along.” “Thank you!” it cried, flapping over to her and disappearing. Now, how to get back across. She knew now she couldn’t swim across, and self-levitation would be too much. She’d pass out half-way across. She ran a hoof through her damp, wavy, uncurled mane trying to think. “Alright, think Rarity. It’s only the whole world counting on you. No pressure.” She paused. “I got it!” she smiled, backed up, and took a running leap. She caught the massive wooden triangle with her fore-hooves, she’d barely made it; this thing was high. Using her back legs and loosening her grip slightly, she worked her way around. Her forelegs didn’t even go all the way around, she could feel herself slipping. Finally, once she was right across from the square with the wooden ramp and the locked door she let go, jumped around, and slid down. When she reached the edge (Which didn’t even touch the water, it curved back down into an upside down triangle and went down into the water) she put all her admittedly limited strength into her back lags and jumped forward. Her hooves hit the ground with a satisfying thump. She sighed in relief – she hadn’t been all sure she could make it. She magically pulled the key out of one of the little pockets on her saddlebags and used it on the lock. She watched the lock fall and the chains clatter to the ground, and she pushed open the door and trotted in. Seriously. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Seriously. Another weird room with the trees and the water puddles, only instead of two creepy bugs were three massive ugly turtle things, about the same size as her. “Seriously!” it didn’t take them long at all to notice her, and to her shock and annoyance they all retreated into their shells – started spinning, and raced towards her. She jumped up and over them as the simultaneously hit where she had just been standing, crashing into each other and were all knocked onto their backs. They all struggled, making weird honking noises. Rarity noticed the door had locked, trapping her in. I have to destroy them to leave, she thought, it was the same as the room with the bugs. “Okay, okay, okay.” She jumped up and fell on the belly of one, crushing it under her weight. That didn’t seem to effect it at all. It finally was able to flip over, sending her crashing to the floor. Instantly it had retreated into its shell and was spinning towards her. Instinctively, she crouched down into the puddle, knowing it wouldn’t do a thing to protect her. Never had she been gladder to be wrong. Apparently right where she was the floor sunk down, the turtle passed right over her. Suddenly, an idea hit her. A sick idea, but an idea all the same. She held low. The other two turtles had gotten to their feet, and one was already spinning in her direction. She timed herself, and then as it passed over her, at the exact moment she brought her head up, eyes clenched shut. Her horn impaled its throat. She could feel her horn pass through soft amphibian flesh. She wanted to throw up. This was sick. The creature squirmed and honked for about a second before going limp. Rarity brought her head down fast, causing the body to fly a few inches way, where it unceremoniously exploded in a cloud of purple smoke. Wait. Maybe they weren’t real? The zebra had placed them here, like the bugs, to protect something? They were magically created? Maybe? It didn’t seem likely, but it made her feel better. The other two were spinning towards her at the exact same time, and head low she allowed them to crash above her, again being knocked on their backs. Dumb creatures, they were. Rarity prepared her horn, but then felt her sword brush against her leg, and blinked. She brought it out with her magic, and refusing to look she slashed the other giant turtle-things into oblivion. She heard them explode, and then the bars on the door lifted and she saw a chest materialize in front of her. Slowly, she levitated the sword in front of her. It wasn’t covered in blood. Come to think of it, neither was her horn. They felt wet, and sticky, but not bloody. Rarity thanked Celestia for that, and trying to ignore the fact that she had just killed three creatures, she headed towards the chest. This one didn’t open with just a kick, so using her fore-hooves she lifted the top. The inside seemed to glow, and she shoved the lid the rest of the way open. She held her hooves over the edge, and peered inside, eyes going big. She reached inside, and pulled out… DA NA NA NAAAAAA …A bow. “Seriously?”