Chapter 22: Big Brain Part 2
The ponies looked with disgust and horror when they looked at the new room. The walls, ground, and ceiling weren't as covered in flesh as the dungeon, but instead, they were a lot covered in blood. And the reason why was easily visible.
The room was full of torture devices. There were a few iron maidens against the North wall, some of them open to show the bloodied spikes in them. A brazen bull above a brazier was present, and not far beside it was one of these tables with two cylinders for quartering. Two things looking like trestles here, a table below a hook with a crank there, another table below a pierced water basin, the water dripping drop by drop on the head of the table... Those were just a few examples of what was in this room.
Also present were half a dozen ghosts of various creatures all hooded and armed of something that was clearly made to inflict intense suffering, and a Bogmire-like purple ghost who possessed many whip-like tentacles instead of arms.
«We should have expected a room like that...» said E. Gadd.
"As if we needed more proof that Thanatos is sick in his head," said Apple Bloom.
«And you can thank Grogar for that,» said Discord.
As the hunters began to fight the ghosts, Apple Bloom asked "What do ya mean?"
«Well... I suppose that it's backstory time. Did you know this? Grogar is our daddy, to Thanatos and me!»
"Say what?" said Applejack in shock, which got her whipped by the purple ghost as a result.
«I know, what a shock. Nobody ever guessed. I wonder why.»
«Yeah, we wonder why,» deadpanned Spike.
«Grogar created us, first me, then Thanatos. For Thanatos, he hesitated. He had already created a being that could create chaos, why would he need to create a being of death? But after a moment, he thought 'why not?' and here was Thanatos. Having more control over the dead was always nice, as if he hadn't already enough control with his necromancy. And you know what he did? As soon as Thanatos had seen the day for the first time, he killed him!»
There were many gasps. «Thanatos was alive?» asked Rainbow.
«Rainbow!» shouted Fluttershy.
Discord laughed. «Don't be mad at her, Fluttershy. I understand her. It can be really shocking. Yes, the Spirit of Death wasn't always dead. He had a flesh and blood body. And contrary to me, a rather banal one. But, you know, a Spirit of Death not dead... That wouldn't work. Or that was what Grogar thought. So he killed him barely ten seconds after his creation. Father of the millenium.»
"Ah think Ah understand now why there's a whole room for Grogar to be tortured," said Apple Bloom as she captured four of the torturers in one go after many slams.
«Yeah, Thanatos really doesn't bear Grogar in his 'heart'. And it wasn't helped that Grogar treated us more like slaves than sons. This is where Thanatos' sadism comes from. He started to take pleasure seeing others suffer like he suffered, and from there, it went from bad to worse. It's also because of how he was treated that he developed such a need to be always in control. He never want to be controlled and powerless against someone again. As for me, well, you saw how I was. But I'm proud to say that I'm the main reason why Grogar was defeated by Gusty.»
«Really? How so?» asked Twilight.
«I tripped him, giving time for Gusty to take his bell. That wasn't in your history books, uh?» At this, Discord laughed while the ponies looked at him in disbelief.
Meanwhile, the remaining torturers had been captured, leaving only the purple ghost who quickly was captured by Applejack with the help of Sweetie Belle and the clones of goo.
But no key appeared, so just in case, the hunters went to check the closet iron maidens.
"Well... Uh... Thanks, Discord, I suppose," said Sweetie Belle.
«Don't. You know what I did next. Equestria basically traded one tyrant for another. The ponies, if they had seen my act, wouldn't have thanked me long. And so, while I began turning Equestria into Chaosland, Thanatos settled in the Spirit World where, apparently, Grogar has been banished. From there, we began a kind of neutral relationship. We would do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't get on each other's way. And where I was eventually stopped, he obviously continued his 'fun' under the muzzle of the ponies.»
"Which he apparently got bored of," said Apple Bloom.
By then, they had checked the whole room to see if there was a ghost hiding somewhere, even using the DLD, but they found nothing. So this left them to choose between two doors: one East and one in West.
They tried East, and the door was unlocked. So they passed it and immediately began to fight the many torturer ghosts present as well as the two Bogmire-like ghosts with whips for arms (that Apple Bloom decided to name Whipper), the few Splitters, and the few disturbing creations of Big Brain (spider-like ponies and zebras, griffons with sharp tongues, a sledgehammer minotaur, and a donkey with five tails that acted like whips).
The room was bigger than the previous one and had essentially chains on the walls with torture tools here and there, not a table or other thing like the brazen bull present, so there was much more place for enemies to be in number.
"Little Ghost, can ya destroy the eye-ball here, please?" asked Apple Bloom.
With a nodded, Little Ghost began to destroy the few eye-balls present on the walls where there was flesh while attacking Big Brain's minions with her chainsaw.
Once the last eye-ball was destroyed, Apple Bloom, in the middle of slamming two torturers on a Whipper, said "Grogar'll receive the punishment he deserves. There's no doubt that he'll backstab us, at least after he gets his hooves on that power-absorbing device and we take care of Big Brain, so an eternity trapped in a portrait'll do him some good."
«You freed him knowing that, so I suppose you have something in mind to fight him,» said Discord.
"Well..." She smirked. "He doesn't know about mah ghost form."
Discord cackled.
Once all the ghosts were captured and Big Brain's minions were killed, the hunters went to the exit at the other end of the room and tested the door only to find out that it was locked. This left them no choice but to return in the previous room and test the last door there.
The door was unlocked, and they entered a smaller room full of torture devices and tools, leaving barely any place. The room was also full of webs. Well, the whole castle was usually full of webs from the many ghost spiders that called it home, but in this room, the webs were really everywhere and in such quantity that the hunters could barely see through some of them that looked more like veils of silk.
In the darkness, among the devices and webs, small forms could be seen moving. When the hunters moved the flashlights to see what they were, the forms revealed to be beheaded heads of various creatures, ponies, griffons, zebras, and so on, walking on spider legs. Like real spiders, some could be seen moving down threads of web coming from a little hole in their back. Some even had insect mandibles.
There were some shrieks from the spectators, but the hunters, while disgusted, immediately attacked the spider-heads, Applejack being so strong that she could crush the heads under her hooves while the others mainly sent them flying with powerful air punches or stabbed them with their weapons. Little Ghost was the exception, doing a bloody mess with her chainsaw. Some of the spiders sent threads of web at them, attempting to slow them down or even immobilise them, but the ponies constantly moved, sending the heads flying around dragged by the threads.
Over thirty smashed heads later, the room was empty of enemies, but still no key, to the ponies' wonder. So they began to search with the DLD again.
Eventually, Little Ghost encountered a section of wall that seemed to be on the bring of collapsing, in the Southwestern corner of the room. She blasted it with her powers, creating a hole through which she could see a new room with no other entrances.
"What was that, Little Ghost?" asked Apple Bloom as she and the others approached, having heard the blast.
"I found a secret room!" informed the ghost. "There was a badly made wall blocking it."
"Good job, Little Ghost!" said Sweetie Belle.
They entered the secret room that was totally engulfed in darkness, but thanks to their flashlights, they quickly found out that the room was full of skeletons.
'Living' skeletons. Probably possessed.
It wasn't hard to smash them into pieces, no ghosts surprisingly coming out of them. But then, like timberwolves, the pieces gathered to form a giant deformed skeleton with heads and legs poking out of everywhere and backbones and ribs going in all directions, some of the ribs even forming claws on the hooves or fangs in the mouths.
And it was promptly destroyed by a powerful energy blast from Little Ghost. Really, what did they expect? It was still a skeleton! And this time, the ponies sucked up the bones so their Poltergusts could destroy them before they could gather again.
But no ghosts still came out. Either they were sucked up with the bones, or there were no ghosts controlling them, meaning that they were given life by someone's power, probably Thanatos.
The key appearing at least meant that they had nothing to fear anymore in this room.
However, on their way to the locked door in the second torture room, they had to fight an armored minotaur with four arm-chainsaws in the first torture room. At least, with Little Ghost's chainsaw, it wasn't hard to cut off a leg before beheading it. A Boggy also attempted to stop them in the second torture room, throwing countless torture tools at the hunters, but they quickly dealt with it too.
They reached the door, unlocked it, and opened it.
They got quite the surprise.
The following room was entirely filled to the ceiling with water! And strangely, the water wasn't going through the open door, as if there was an invisible wall. It was also plunged in darkness, so they couldn't see much what was awaiting them in there.
Because of the water, the clones of goo had no choice but to return in their recipient.
Apple Bloom had no choice but to take a big breath before they entered the water-filled room and began searching for the exit. However, what they quickly found was the presence of many ghosts of fishes including a lot of piranhas, and a couple of sharks.
Apple Bloom didn't have the time to fight ghosts. So she left the fighting to her friends while she continued to search for the exit door, Little Ghost remaining at her side to protect her. Before long, she found the door in the North wall, near the northeastern corner, but it revealed to be locked. But then, she also discovered the presence of a hole from which the water was coming in the Eastern wall, near the ceiling, and below that hole was a red button.
She pressed it.
Outside of the castle, the water tower's roof then closed, stopping the waterfall from constantly supplying it. However, it didn't have any result at first as it took some time for the water tower to become empty. Apple Bloom was starting to think that she would be forced to turn into a ghost to avoid drowning when, finally, the water level of the room started to diminish as the water went into another hole in the ground. She quickly swam up to recover her breath.
The water gone wasn't a problem for the ghosts of fishes who could still swim, but in the air, but it certainly improved the mobility of the ponies, making the fight much easier, especially to avoid the jaw of the sharps. Soon enough, all the fishes were captured and the key appeared, letting the ponies unlock the door.
Next came a long and narrow room full of swinging axes, reminiscent of Gorros' castle. It was only a matter of timing to pass them, so they weren't much a problem, but the whole thing was made difficult by the poisonous darts sent by the few pony-spider things crawling on the ceiling. So Little Ghost went ahead to cut them with her chainsaw, having nothing to fear from the axes.
Then came a small arena-like room where the ponies had to fight a few abominations made from all kinds of animals. It was as if Big Brains wanted to make new kinds of chimeras, manticores or other hybrid-type animals, or cerberus like the one they fought on the big bridge. As the things were coming out of two entrances in the North side of the arena, in a jumble, there were snakes with feline legs and an extendable tongue, winged rats with a lot of fangs, wolves with chameleon skin, a chimera made from a rhinoceros, a bear, and a dragon, some weird cerberus with the head of a lion, the head of a tiger, and the head of a leopard, and even what seemed to be a disturbing failed attempt at recreating Discord.
Discord was very displeased by this last one.
The snakes and the rats could easily be sucked up and killed by the Poltergusts, but the remaining beasts were more problematic. With their chameleon skin, the wolves could easily hide themselves in the decor and forced the ponies to be constantly on guard. The chimera hit like a train without counting the dragon head/tail that could breath fire, the feline cerberus was very agile and deadly, and the fake Discord...
Well, the ponies almost had pity for the fake Discord. Without chaotic magic, the thing really wasn't a danger as long as the ponies remained careful of its eagle claw and lion paw. Also, the thing was very deformed, the various parts of its body having different proportions.
But with stabbing and cutting, the ponies still managed to kill all the abominations and continued their adventure to reach Big Brain.
They traversed a room where they had to jump fro platform to platform, all of them regularly coming out of lava before sinking back in.
Then came a long and narrow room full of holes in the walls and the ceiling from which came arrows as they traversed it.
Then there was a room where the ceiling slowly moved down, threatening to crush them. In this room, they had to play a deadly game of hide and seek, having to find eight Hiders hided in cupboards, closets, drawers, and pots before it was too late. When the last Hider was found and captured, the key appeared and they just the room a few second before the ceiling suddenly fell to the ground.
But they hadn't much respite. The following room was another long and narrow one with a boulder rolling in it, forcing them to run. And the following one was one where they had to traverse a pit full of spikes by jumping from moving platform to moving platform, some of them appearing and disappearing.
Then came a bigger room, another arena-like one where they had to fight more of those abominations in greater diversity. Some of them however looked more like monsters than modified animals. One was literally just an agglomeration of animals stitched together that just didn't want to die.
It took many minutes of constant electrocution and burning to kill that thing. There were just too many brains, hearts, and whatever else for simple weapons like the sword or the chainsaw to work.
But it was just the biggest example. There were many others that would have been worthy to appear in a horror story. Big Brain really went all out in trying to create new lifeforms, not caring for the final results and how good they looked.
It was a bloody and messy room that the ponies left to enter an even bigger room, yet another arena.
In this arena, however, they ended up fighting ghosts of alicorns which, they knew, should be impossible! There were no records of any alicorns existing before Celestia and Luna. And they were certainly not painting ghosts, Pyrite was still in his prison crystal in Tartarus. Unless there was another ghost with Pyrite's ability?
But something was clearly wrong with these alicorns, especially when the hunters remarked that they were all made of at least three colors without counting the manes and tails. One, for example, had red, blue, and brown fur with blue wings and a red horn. More shocking, there were males among them. Was it possible for male alicorns to exist? They weren't sure. Strangely, some of the alicorns looked more androgynous to the point that it was impossible to say if they were male or female. They also all had eyes that didn't match in color. Some eyes even were multicolored!
Twilight then gasped as she understood.
«They're merged ghosts! Big Brain used Grogar's powers to merge ghosts of ponies to create alicorns! That's... MONSTROUS! He MUST be stopped!»
«Grogar warned us when he said that Big Brain was using his powers to experiment on souls. I suppose they're the result,» said E. Gadd.
«But do they have the power of an alicorn?» wondered Smart Spirit. «Can Big Brain reproduce it?»
"We'll see soon enough," said Applejack.
Thankfully, the alicorns simply revealed to be winged unicorns slightly more powerful than the average unicorn, both in magical powers and in ghost powers, and physically stronger too thanks to their earth pony part. So they offered more resistance and more challenge than the usual pony ghost, but in the end, they were still captured the same way than the others.
However, it seemed that Big Brain didn't like seeing his masterpieces being so easily defeated because as soon as the first fake alicorn was captured, more ghosts came, all of them seemingly the result of an experiment some more stable than others. There were some very horrible amalgamates among them, and the ponies swore to find a way to separate the poor souls forming them.
The fact that there weren't THAT many ghosts, only a few dozens, made the hunters thankful that Big Brain had gotten Grogar's powers only a few days earlier. They didn't dare to think what would have happened if he had gotten it, like, one year ago.
Big Brain probably would have become the biggest threat, even bigger than Thanatos, with his army of ghost alicorns, deadly created lifeforms, and all the powers he would have absorbed.
When the last ghost was captured, the hunters could continue. Now going South, they passed a door and entered another large room.
A truly horrifying room.
The room had two platforms, one at the entrance, and one at the exit in the opposite side, and both of them had the top of a ladder going down.
However, they couldn't see the bottom of the ladder because the room's lower level was filled with a sea of body parts and other remains of creatures, whatever hadn't be used in the experiments to create all that they fought on the way.
And to reach the exit, the hunters now had no choice but to walk on those remains.
Also, the opposite end of the room was entirely covered in flesh, with quite the number of eye-balls staring at them.
Apple Bloom placed a hoof on her muzzle, the horrible stench of decomposing bodies almost making her throw up.
"There're so many... That monster..." she said in disgust.
"We... We will have to walk on that?" asked Sweetie Belle who wanted to turn around.
"No choice..." said Applejack.
"Lucky me, I can simply roll on the wall. If you want, I can take you with me, Sweetie Belle," proposed Scootaloo.
"Yes! Please!"
"I'm so glad to be a ghost..." said Little Ghost. "I can levitate you to the other side," she then proposed to Apple Bloom and Applejack.
"No need. Save yer energy for the fight against Big Brain," said Apple Bloom.
After a long moment of hesitation during which Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle called back the clones of goo, and very reluctantly, Apple Bloom and Applejack jumped down and landed on the sea of remains before Scootaloo turned into a scooter and let Sweetie Belle climb on her. The pegasus robot then rolled on the wall and quickly reached the exit platform.
Slowly, with hesitant steps, Apple Bloom walked on the body parts, Applejack remaining beside her. After a while, Applejack let her sister climb her and began to walk faster. But then, an alarm suddenly blared in the room as a red light activated, and the sound of something big and metallic slowly moving came from below the sea of remains. The level of the sea of remains lowering, starting by a straight line going from one platform to the other and slowly spreading to the sides, made Applejack understand that it was in hers and Apple Bloom's interest to start to run, but she still had a long way to go. But she continued to run toward the ladder and didn't stop.
When she saw that she wouldn't reach the ladder in time, she then propelled herself with a very powerful air blast and then used streams of air to quickly move forward, Apple Bloom clinging strongly on her back. Still, despite the air, she continued to drop little by little, but still managed to reach the very bottom of the ladder. She then quickly made sure that she had her four hooves filmy on the bars before she looked down.
Far below, the remains were dropping into the purple void beyond two giant metallic doors that constituted the floor of the room before they opened. Once nothing remained, the doors then slowly began to close.
As they closed, Applejack climbed the ladder and joined the others.
After hugs were exchanged between the friends and congratulations were given to Applejack, the hunters then opened the door.
Stats
Page generated in 0.036 seconds
Total duration
762 users online
731,346 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
In our world, the iron maiden was an invention of later eras and never actually used as a torture device. Of course, Equestria has moved well past the Middle Ages anyway, and there's nothing really stopping people from using them other than it being literal torture.
10485679
That's what I read. But of course, Thanatos doesn't care. As long as it can hurt and give a slow and painful death, anything works.
This reminds me of the time I defeated a Diddy Kong in Super Smash Bros Ultimate by throwing his own banana peel at him while he tried to recover with his Rocketbarrel Boost. He probably wouldn't have made it anyway, but I wanted to get that banana peel off the stage. And what better way than to interrupt Diddy Kong's jet pack?
Cue the Indiana Jones theme. Again.
Spiders, why did it have to be spider. *shudders* good thing that there were no tarantulas, otherwise I would just faint.
Also, this reminds me of the Skulltula house in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
But still, this chapter really brings out the gross imagery with the laboratory and the various body parts.
10485719
The banana peel is surprisingly the worst enemy of Diddy Kong.
You don't make a dungeon without at least one giant rolling boulder.
10485919
I don't know. I think that I would freak out more if I see a beheaded head on spider legs.
media1.giphy.com/media/uocOywWJPcVXy/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47ex2ttuvqmf11wwpfxwwrwprbd80ms37i1nulpkr0&rid=giphy.gif
Oh god, that house.
media1.giphy.com/media/uocOywWJPcVXy/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47ex2ttuvqmf11wwpfxwwrwprbd80ms37i1nulpkr0&rid=giphy.gif
And in the next chapter, we will enter the actual laboratory where we will encounter the brain behind all those horrors. Be prepared.
10485919
Trust me, I fear spiders just as much as you do. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I never got past the spider boss fight in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (the other reason is that I had trouble dodging the little spiders and purple blobs).
10486211
That's definitely more disturbing, but I think it's less scary than an actual spider.