Not wanting to wait another day and risk losing the trail, or let the spells they’d cast to augment their combat strength expire, the party quickly headed into the mine, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy tracking the surviving Gloomwings. The trail was difficult to follow, but Pinkie’s keen instincts allowed her to spot the signs of the monsters’ passage.
“How exactly do you track flying creatures across a stone floor? In the dark?” Rainbow Dash asked, as Pinkie Pie flitted this way and that around the corridor, making ‘mmm hmm!’ noises every time she found a trace.
“Trade secret!” Pinkie Pie said, giggling.
“Butterflies shed scales from their wings,” Fluttershy said, from her position on Macintosh’s back. She was still too weak to fly, and so was using him as a mount. “Not very often, but when they’re flying quickly in a panic, more often than they would otherwise, especially if their wings are damaged.”
Pinkie Pie pouted. “Fluttershy! That’s a secret!”
Fluttershy ignored her. “There’s also splotches of blood from the ones that were wounded. Their blood is black so it’s hard to see against the coal, but it’s shinier.”
“Stop giving away all my tricks!”
“So we’re not just following the train tracks into the deepest part of the mine?” Applejack asked. “Because I can’t help but notice that we’re following the train tracks into the deepest part of the mine.”
Pinkie Pie grinned. “Isn’t that what you asked me to do? To follow the tracks?”
Whichever set of tracks the party ultimately followed, they were led to the same place – the end of the line, where the mine cart tracks came to an abrupt end at a large, hollowed out chamber, from which narrow exploratory tunnels extended to map out the seam. In the middle of the chamber, four of the Gloomwings flitted around the ceiling, avoiding the attention of several drifting clouds of vampiric mist. As the party approached, both sets of monsters turned to face the new source of food and warm bodies.
The Gloomwings wasted no time diving at their foes, diving at the party before anypony could react, fluttering their mesmerizing wings and biting at Pinkie and the ghoul that was keeping her company in the front line. Pinkie’s eyes lost focus as she was overwhelmed by the writhing patterns, and she screamed and flailed wildly with her hooves at the butterfly that had bitten her, only for it to nimbly dart out of reach.
Twilight steeled herself, and managed to keep enough control of her mind to close her eyes. She shoved Macintosh aside, leaving him squeezed in the corridor that, for him, was a tight fit, and got close enough to swing her hammer over the head of the ghoul, slamming it into one of the gloomwings and crushing its thorax. Macintosh followed her lead, closing his eyes and skewering the creature with his lance.
On his back, Fluttershy closed her own eyes, and started summoning.
Unfortunately, the dead Gloomwing left a hole in the line for the vampiric mist to flow through, and with their eyes closed the first that Twilight knew of its arrival was when she felt her blood drain from her body as it coiled around her, slowly turning pink as it absorbed her life. Applejack and Rainbow Dash charged forwards to help her, the griffon managing to disperse a bit of the foamy substance with a swipe of her claws.
Twilight opened her eyes, trying to keep from looking at the butterflies since she was being attacked from a different direction, but wasn’t able to avoid glancing at them… but even in her confusion, the sting from her bleeding wound was enough to focus her efforts on attacking her enemy, although in the close quarters she couldn’t use her hammer, and the greatsword she pulled out as a backup had much less of an effect on the misty substance.
Fluttershy’s spell completed, summoning a trio of small air elementals behind the Gloomwings… but before she could order them to close their eyes, they were already confused. Fortunately, their position left them only able to attack the enemies, although one of them instead started attacking itself. The other two focused on the vampiric mist, but their attacks were largely ineffective against it. They did attract its attention, at least.
The frenzied flailing of the ghoul in front had paralyzed one of the other mists, which left only two to try to drain more blood from Twilight and Pinkie. Pinkie managed to dodge out of the way, but Twilight staggered as another oozing sore formed under her armor, feeding the mist surrounding her.
“Wait a second,” Rainbow Dash said, narrowing her eyes at the mist, as she spotted its weakness. “I know how to deal with this.” And with three swift flaps of her wings, she dispersed the creature.
“What in the name of the wind was that?” Applejack asked.
“It’s called skill,” Rainbow said with a smirk.
Meanwhile, the front line was in chaos. Pinkie and Twilight were still flailing around in confusion – Twilight managing to hit herself with her sword – and the crystal pony ghoul went down under a butterfly’s claws. Fluttershy kept her eyes off the enemies, and spent her time healing Pinkie and Twilight with her wand. The healing from each charge was weak, but it at least closed the bleeding wounds left by the mist, although the mist surrounding Pinkie Pie kept re-opening them.
“Well, watch this, poprocket,” Applejack said, biting down on her dagger and leaping at her target, slashing at it with her claws as she pounced, opening up a large bleeding wound, although since her target was undead, no blood emerged. Her target was also in the opposite direction of the mist or the Gloomwings, and supposedly on her side.
“Hah, betrayer!” hissed the ghoul Applejack had attacked in her confusion, and his claws raked at her wings, although he failed to catch the nimble winged cat.
“Stop fighting!” Rarity commanded.
“She attacked me first!” the ghoul complained.
“It wasn’t a request!” Rarity replied, backing her command up with a spell.
Rainbow Dash leaped forwards to take the place of the fallen ghoul, flapping her wings to attempt to disperse another patch of mist, with less success. “Pinkie Pie, please snap out of it!”
“Rain… bow?” Pinkie Pie said, turning to blink and look at her friend… only for the butterfly she’d been fighting to suddenly bite down on the back of her neck, and impale her with its wicked clawed forelegs. They sank into her back just beneath her shoulder blades, and with a sickening squelch emerged from her chest, covered in blood and bits of lung tissue. Pinkie Pie coughed, flapping her wings weakly, then slowly slid off the impaling limbs and collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood… which was quickly siphoned up into the waiting mist hovering above her. A butterfly that had previously been distracted by the elementals shifted its focus as it saw her fall, and darted through the party – flashing momentarily in front of Twilight’s gaze, which she’d tried to avert – and landed on the fallen pegasus, a spike-like ovipositor emerging from its abdomen.
Fluttershy gasped, and channeled the rest of her divine energy into one last healing spell on Pinkie Pie… to no effect. She was already dead.
“Don’t let it implant her!” Rarity shouted. “If the eggs hatch, there’ll be nothing left to revive!” She charged forwards, shouldering past the others until she could shout out a few words of arcane power and reach towards the Gloomwing perched on Pinkie’s back with a hoof cracking with electricity. Her desperate move was for nothing, however – it fluttered up out of the way as she swung at it, then landed back on Pinkie and prepared to implant.
Rainbow Dash turned to slam at it with her claws, tearing rents in its wings. As it dug its ovipositor into Pinkie’s flesh, she grabbed it in both of her foreclaws and tore it in two, leaving its pieces to splatter to the ground. Its severed abdomen convulsed, and a spray of tiny black eggs spilled across the stone floor, fizzling like tiny firecrackers made out of shadow and evaporating into nothingness.
Unfortunately, there were other butterflies, and with single-minded focus, the next landed on Pinkie Pie and began to inject her. Twilight risked opening her eyes to try to stop it, and viciously slammed her hammer right into Macintosh, denting his armor and drawing his own confused attack in retaliation, which she managed to block.
Rainbow Dash shook loose the insect bits stuck to her claws, and leapt on the second butterfly, tearing it to pieces as well – but everypony who wasn’t out of their minds with confusion could see that she was too late.
The remaining Gloomwing turned to flee, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t about to let her get away. As she ran off after it, Twilight dispatched the remaining patch of mist, and looked in dismay at Pinkie Pie’s body. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Rarity replied. “Perhaps if she rises as an undead before the eggs hatch, her flesh will prove unappealing? None of the ghouls had living eggs in them, after all. Otherwise… it would be best if we burned her body now.”
“Can we cut the eggs out or something?” Applejack asked.
“We can try,” Rarity said, looking uncertain. “But Pinkie Pie herself was the only one of us skilled in that art.”
“Then we need to get back to the surface,” Twilight said. “Dash!” she called out down the tunnel. “Get back here!”
There was no reply.
“You stay here and try to get the eggs out of Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said. “Let me go find our prodigal Rainbow. She’s probably babbling nonsense and chewing on her own wings, and I’m immune to the confusion.”
Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash chased the Gloomwing down the narrow, twisting tunnel, until a light ahead marked the end of the line. There, in a chamber that looked less like a mine and more like a crypt, what looked like an undead unicorn gave a comforting caress to another wounded Gloomwing. He turned to stare as the griffon approached.
“You! Are you the one who’s been murdering my children?” the unicorn asked, his voice dry and cracked, his face contorted into a snarl.
“And what if I am?” Rainbow Dash asked.
With a short incantation, and a flash from his horn, the unicorn shot a beam of magic into the griffon’s eyes, blinding her.
“You think that’s going to stop me?” Rainbow Dash screeched in rage, throwing herself at the spellcaster. Her claw scraped against his hide, but it was like punching stone.
“Kneel before me, fool, and perhaps I’ll spare your life!” the unicorn intoned, firing a gray beam of exhaustion from his horn that had no effect whatsoever on the griffon.
“Your monsters killed Pinkie Pie! I’m going to tear out your throat and leave your corpse for the ghouls!” Rainbow Dash cried, stepping forwards and slamming two more fists uselessly against the wizard’s stone flesh.
“Cease your squawking, little bird,” the wizard snarled, and with a *pop*, the griffon was no more. Instead, a brightly colored songbird fluttered in midair, chirping in impotent rage.
After several blind attempts to peck out the wizard’s eyes were completely ignored, songbird Dash chirped indignantly and flew for the exit, only to be snatched out of the air by a hidden ghoul.
“Be quiet,” Rarity hissed, as she shoved her into a pocket of her robes.
Rainbow squirmed, but couldn’t escape her grip. Quiet as a mouse, Rarity slipped away back towards the party.
By the time Rarity returned with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy was a panicking, bloody mess. Between her lack of formal training, and the best available surgical tool being Applejack’s dagger, Pinkie’s corpse lay open in front of her, mangled and flayed, with most of the organs removed. Despite their desperate measures, they’d been unable to even locate the eggs.
“We need to leave this place, now,” Rarity hissed. “Before the rest of us end up dead, or worse.”
“No argument here,” Applejack said.
Pinkie Pie was wrapped up in her cloak, and tied to Macintosh’s back, and the party retreated from the mine with all due haste. At the surface, they were met by Deep Bore and Pebble, who took their news with grim concern.
“So ye failed us,” Deep Bore said. “Th’ mine is still a deathtrap, and two or ye met yer end, or near enough.” He glanced at the brightly colored songbird, who chirped back at him.
“We can finish the job later,” Twilight said. “We’ve cut down on the number of Gloomwings significantly, and cleared out the ghouls and the mist.”
“Which only leaves the lich,” Pebble said. “I’m not sure we can re-open the mine with a lich lurking in the depths.”
“Well… no,” Twilight replied. “But he hasn’t shown his face personally, has he? You’ll still have to avoid the Gloomwings, but if you stick to the middle part of the mine, he’ll probably stay in the depths doing… whatever it is he’s been doing. At least for the next three days.”
“Three days?” Applejack asked.
“One day to make it back to Crossroads if we leave now, and press on through the night,” Twilight explained. “Two days travel back, at a normal pace. Oh, we’ll probably need a day there recovering. So, four days.”
Applejack paced back and forth, her tail lashing. “And if we run into trouble on the way?”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Twilight replied, gritting her teeth. “Crossroads is the nearest place with a real Temple, and nothing less is going to save Pinkie Pie from being worm food.”
The trip back to Crossroads was miserable. A stinging salt-storm engulfed them as they traveled through the flats, the acid salts burning their flesh and draining the remaining charges from their wands of Cure Light Wounds before they finally emerged onto the hilly plains. They had a few hours of travel, which might have been pleasant if not from the acid burns that no one had any magic left to cure, before another more conventional storm rolled in, and soon they were slogging through the mud as a driving rain tried to melt them into a puddle of exhausted flesh.
In the end, they were still five miles out when Twilight and Macintosh, weighed down by their armor, collapsed in exhaustion. Rarity, as an untiring undead, had to slog the rest of the way with Pinkie Pie’s corpse tied to her back. Her delicious, enticing corpse...
Rarity shook her head to banish the thought. “No, Rarity. Raise Dead will not restore missing limbs or organs, so you cannot snack upon Pinkie Pie. Besides, she’s too fresh to really taste good.”
Rainbow Dash gave a sharp chirp, riding in her mane.
“Oh… but I’m so hungry,” Rarity moaned.
Rainbow Dash landed on her muzzle, and shook her head back and forth.
Rarity sighed. “FINE. I suppose I can find some offal once we reach town.”
Once they did reach town, they had little trouble convincing the priests to quickly cast Remove Disease to kill the Gloomwing eggs, as a matter of public safety, as well as a preservation spell to prevent Pinkie Pie from rising as undead. It wasn’t until the others arrived in the morning, with the treasure looted from the bandits and from Trixie’s gang, that they were able to negotiate for a Raise Dead.
At standard rates for pawning adventurers' loot, they didn’t have enough.
Fluttershy was unrelenting, however, and with Applejack’s help they managed to trade everything they had to sell, along with some fireworks and healing scrolls that Pinkie Pie had on her, for the series of spells needed to bring her back and get her up to full strength. One of the Restoration spells would have to be cast after a week had passed, of course, but they made sure to get the agreement to cast it on her at that time in writing.
After the intense negotiations, the spell itself was almost an anticlimax. The pink pegasus was placed on an altar, a large diamond clutched to her chest, and with a flash of magical energy, she took a loud gasp of air, then coughed and choked, a pained look on her face.
After the Restoration spell, she was more herself.
“So what was it like, being dead?” Rarity asked.
“It was horrible!” Pinkie Pie said. “It was sooo boring, like I was watching everything that was happening but I couldn’t do anything because I was dead! I just had to lie there like a corpse and wait for you to get me to a priest. I can totally understand why you came back as a ghoul.”
“Chirp,” Rainbow Dash said, perching on Pinkie Pie’s head and dancing back and forth. “Chirp chirp!”
“Right,” Twilight said. “Now we need to get Rainbow Dash changed back. Can anypony cast Dispel Magic?”
No one answered.
“Can we afford to pay someone to cast Dispel Magic?” she asked.
“Sugarcube, we can’t afford tonight’s dinner,” Applejack said. “Those greedy priests drained us dry. We even had to sell that axe Macintosh was plannin’ to use later on.”
“They actually gave us a really good deal,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, compared to what we would have gotten if we’d sold the weapons and armor to anypony else.”
“We didn’t actually pay them for healing Rainbow’s eyes,” Rarity explained. “Fluttershy managed to wheedle it out of them. When we asked for a Dispel Magic…” she shook her head. “Everypony has their limit. We convinced once of the acolytes to try, but his spell didn’t work.”
“So we’re still down one,” Twilight said with a frown. “It’s only Rainbow Dash, but after that last disaster…”
Rainbow Dash chirped, and fluttered up into the air.
“What?” Twilight asked.
The brightly colored songbird did a circle in midair, then dove at a nearby barrel, slamming her beak into it. With a loud crack, the wood shattered. The diminutive creature fluttered back and forth, smacking her beak and claws into the wood against and again, until nothing was left but splinters.
Everypony just stared.
Rainbow Dash chirped, and landed on Applejack’s head. She chirped again, nodding towards the gate.
“Okay,” Twilight said, blinking the confusion out of her eyes. “I guess we can work with that.”