Fluttershy finally hit the ground from her long fall and remained still. She was not in pain, but the sudden surprise of falling away from all of her friends caught her very off guard.
"♫I took all of his money and it was a pretty penny
I took all of his money, yeah, and I brought it home to Molly
She swore that she loved me, no, never would she leave me
But the devil take that woman, yeah, for you know she tricked me easy
Musha rain dum a doo, dum a da
Whack for my daddy, oh
Whack for my daddy, oh
There's cider in the jar, oh♪"
Fluttershy cautiously peeked out from her hiding spot to see Berry Punch stumbling forward, a large axe on her back and a bottle of cider hanging off her lips before she threw the bottle away from her. Fluttershy stepped out, knowing she could trust Berry Punch to at least keep her company in her time of need.
Berry Punch stopped mere inches from Fluttershy's face and her eyes squinted and widened to try and get a clear visage of what she was seeing.
"Oh, hi! It's the animal mare!" Berry Punch clumsily announced. "I dun see you too offen, probably because you have a bajillion pets to take care. Now, me, I jus' need to make sure this axe dun get scr- scratched."
Berry Punch began laughing as she reached into her bag and shook out a whip. "They di'n't say 'nything 'bout whippin'! HA HA HA!" She went to strike the whip out, but it was just laid forward without a crack. "H- hold on, I can do it."
Fluttershy watched in disappointment as Berry tried again and again to make the whip crack. She went beside her and tenderly gave a tap on Berry's shoulder.
"Um, I can help you with-" Fluttershy started before Berry Punch wrapped the whip around her neck and began continuing on her stumbling trot.
"Tha'ss the spirit pet lady! Come with me for a... psssh... thing at the castle." Berry Punch said, pointing to an ominous looking castle in front of them. As she pointed to the castle, cracks of lightning and thunder came down before a cloud line revealed a moon. "Lookit, juss wants comp'ny. How can you say no to a face like that?"
Fluttershy had bitten down on the whip to restrain her whimper of fear as Berry Punch dragged her along, still singing her song.
"♫Being drunk and weary I went to Molly's chamber
Takin' my Molly with me, but I never knew the danger
For about six or maybe seven in walked Captain Far Roll
I jumped up, fired my pistols, and I shot him with both barrels
Musha rain dum a doo, dum a da
Whack for my daddy, oh
Whack for my daddy, oh
There's cider in the jar, oh♪"
After passing through the gate, it shut on both mares as Berry Punch hefted her axe off and brought it to her mouth to swing.
"You smell dat?" Berry Punch muffled through the axe's bindings in her teeth. "It's death."
As Berry Punch said this, a skeleton pony came forward towards them and then moved back as Berry Punch made a swing at it.
Fluttershy's eyes shut for a moment before she heard something coming at her. A bat went to swoop down at her and it didn't look like he was willing to talk to her. She gave a squeal and twisted her neck away from it by instinct.
SNAP!
The whip cracked out and the bat burst into flame before disappearing from sight. Fluttershy at first felt horrible, she had just murdered an innocent animal. She then thought that it would be odd that a whip would make something burst into flame.
"You got it, sister!" Berry Punch yelled out. "Take that holy whip to it!"
Fluttershy saw another bat coming and went to turn away again, but instead of keeping her eyes shut, she kept them open as the whip cracked against the next bat. At the crack, the bat's mouth opened revealing long rows of sharp teeth, each covered in a film of red. She knew what bats these were and knew right away that these weren't the kind of animals that she would allow in her care.
"Vampire bats," she murmered, this time with a sense of bitterness behind her word. She took the whip and snapped it again before looking toward the skeleton and realizing that nothing she would see here would be of kind nature and would not respond to it. She briefly moved the whip from her mouth and made a silent prayer to Celestia for the safe passage of any evil to whatever beyond waited for them.
She struck her whip out to the skeleton and watched it blow apart its bones before they burst into dust. If this was what she needed to do to continue and get to her friends, she would do so with fervor.
"Heh, heh, yeah!" Berry Punch cheered. "Le'ss do it!"
Both Berry and Fluttershy went further into the courtyard and were greeted with more skeletons. Some pulled a rib bone from their rib cage and held it up in fury.
Berry took a big swing with her axe and knocked a skeleton over in the first attempt and knocked another skeleton over as she moved back.
Fluttershy's whip struck out in accurate shots, one knocking the skull off of one skeleton pony and making the body fall to the ground before turning to dust. The duo seemed to be working well as the skeletons began retreating further into the castle. Entering inside, Fluttershy and Berry were met with a staircase going up and a hallway continuing on.
"Git up tha stairs," Berry ordered, giving a slight shove to Fluttershy toward the ascending path. "Somethin' called out back there for me."
Before Fluttershy could argue, Berry charged away down the hallway into inky blackness. She gave a nervous gulp and started creeping up the stairs. The light in the castle was well lit and its look was very elegant despite its worn appearance of the walls. Reaching the top of the stairs, she noticed a large gap she wouldn't be able to go over. Her eyes went down and instead of seeing the hallway that should have been below her was a row of spikes jutting up. She tried to flap her wings, but despite her resolve to fight the monsters, her fear still kept them shut.
Looking up, she noticed a hanging ring and wondered why it was there. She began thinking of turning back until an idea came to her head. She thought that this would be a rather silly plan, but decided to strike her whip at the ring and swing across. As the whip snapped to the ring, she felt herself pulled from the floor and begin swinging. She let out a peep of fear as she rocked back and forth for a moment before she managed to fall down on the other side.
Fluttershy rubbed her backside and got back up with the whip in tow. Her trip was continually halted by more skeletons, vampire bats, and ghouls, each meeting the fate of her whip striking them down. She kept walking on before seeing a part of the castle she was in was collapsed and filled with water. She could see large beasts swimming in the water and what she was sure would be the exit.
Her caution and precision had been a remarkable advantage for her during the trip, further assured by a piece of the ceiling coming down before she was ready to jump splashing in the water in front of her. She kept moving forward when a sudden pony head came flying out at her, snakes striking out in its mane. Fluttershy yelped and held up her hooves and wings to defend herself. She felt a rush of air and then wet droplets momentarily hit her, making her worried that something came out of the water.
She hurriedly dropped her wings and hooves and struck out with her whip toward whatever was in front of her. She kept their for a moment, seeing a tall, muscular mare wearing a mask look down at her as a small cut from the lash went across her chest. Fluttershy began to try and step back to gain some space, but a sea creature leaped out of the water behind her. Before she could react with her whip, the giant mare swung an axe and sliced it in half, making a torrent of red blood spurt from it before hitting the water.
"So, animal mare," the giant purple mare began. "Ready to continue on?"
Flutttershy recognized the voice, a chill of familiarity against the harsh contrast of what she knew the voice belonged to. She cautiously peeked at the cutie mark and noticed that it was grapes and a strawberry.
"Berry?" Fluttershy whimpered.
"Now, how'd ya guess?" The masked mare standing above her chuckled. "I thought the Terror Mask would throw off any suspicion to who I was..."
Fluttershy tried to see if Berry's eyes could be seen beyond the mask, but was greeted with red circles staring back. Berry Punch looked completely different, and not as abhorrently slurred as she normally was. The axe she wielded looked to be a simple house axe in her hoof when before it was almost as big as she was. Her once normal and somewhat padded belly fat of a body had become a beastly ripped form, her abdomen stretching against skin, leg muscle tight enough to show the veins that pumped underneath.
"We can stay and chat, but I'm afraid that business needs to be done," Berry finally spoke up. "We have blood to spill, adventure to be had, and according to Masky-" she said, tapping the mask she was wearing. "-says that at the end of the castle is the way out."
Fluttershy gave a nod and pointed out to the door she was going to. "I was ready to go over there and-"
Berry Punch didn't let Fluttershy finish as she rushed forward with a loud roar. She burst through the door and instantly impaled a monster with her axe into a wall before gripping a ghoul and crushing its head to the floor and making the head smash out. Other monsters attempted to jump her, but the strength she had kept them away as she threw them around. Two jumping midgets for mares attempted to leap at her simulataniously and were rewarded by being bashed into each other before they were kicked forward into a stone wall and plastering their blood.
Soon the entirety of the hallway was leaking red everywhere as Berry Punch gave a few deep breaths from her exertion. She decided to move back and get her axe as she noticed Fluttershy, mouth gaped in pure horror at what had happened. Berry Punch removed her axe from the wall, dislodging the corpse from its held place and gave a nod to Fluttershy.
"Like I said," Berry Punch said, briefly wiping the remnants of gore and blood from the metal. "Blood to spill, adventure to be had, and getting the fuck out."
***
Fluttershy and Berry Punch continued on their way, both attacking any deterrents along their way with their own style. Berry Punch had continued her animalistic approach on killing her enemies as she forcibly broke them apart with her bare hooves and by every slash of her axe. At one point, she just stopped where she was after making one rather large snake creature become decapitated and let the spraying blood fall down on her like a shower.
Fluttershy still kept to her caution and accuracy, feeling a sense of pride after taking down a large pony knight that needed to be struck at its helmet to be hurt. She was worried about Berry Punch however, she had never seen her act this way before and had begun to doubt how noble her intentions really were. In one instance, she watched how Berry Punch struggled against a mangled flesh creation of a pony, a bag over it's head and long rotating blades replacing its forelegs.
Fluttershy's whip struck out multiple times at the pony's shoulder to disable the blades that were making a sound similar to a cat howl. She was sure that the pony was losing the battle and would surrender itself before Berry Punch ripped one of the forearms off and used the spinning blades to cut into the back of the pony's neck and letting the blood spray all over her. Berry Punch's laughter mixed with the rev of the spinning blades sent chills down Fluttershy's spine as the now disemboweled and decapitated pony fell to the ground.
"This is fun," Berry Punch slurped, putting up a dripping hoof above her mask's mouth and letting blood drop down.
"This is murder," Fluttershy argued. "And you're enjoying hurting others at the expense of spreading their blood everywhere you can."
Berry Punch set her hoof to the ground and turned to Fluttershy, the red eyes of the mask looking at her. "This is how Masky works. I don't argue as long as we stay alive and bring Discord to hell."
A chill came over the two as they tried to see where it was coming from.
"How annoying," a reverberating voice stated. "A brutal killer with a holy pony. I've always hated 'odd couple' relationships. They are so easy to read."
A heavy fog started to cover the ground and began slowly rising up as the female voice continued. "Both of you will leave here and be met with a true destiny. You will turn against each other and one of you will perish while the other will move on and ignore the consequence. Then, the war is over. The gloves are removed and you see the bodies."
A ghostly apparition began to appear in front of them, a pony cloaked in long black robes and holding a scythe.
"I've seen the bodies. Lining the streets. The world set ablaze," the apparition continued in its speech. "And what is ironic, despite Discord summoning the Dark Rainbow to secure his place as Equestria's ruler, he never hurt a one."
She became solid and brought her head up to reveal a glint in her eye.
Berry Punch snatched up a severed limb of the corpsed pony and threw it at great velocity at the cloaked pony. The limb was avoided, but snatched up in the cloak revealing a green pony wearing glasses.
"It is my mission to end all that wish to end Discord's victory. It is my purpose to end one of your lives, and it is up to one of you to make that choice." The green pony calmly continued, despite being revealed. "If only one of you remains then you may gain safe passage," she explained, showing a door beyond her covered in a thorny bush. "If you cannot make a decision when this hourglass ends, then both of your lives will be forfeit."
The green pony set a small hourglass down and looked out to both ponies. "Know my name is Min Tea, and I am the Element of Deceit. With my word, I promise that no harm will come to the one that survives."