The Rainbooms Meet Lamia

by Lord Shadow Eclipse

Chapter 3 (edited)

With the Rainbooms

The girls heard a loud crash and thud just behind them. They all turned their flashlights to the direction of the sounds and were collectively shocked by what they saw.

A creature that seemed eerily familiar to them emerged from the floor in front of them. From the waist up, they girls saw a humanoid woman with ghastly pale skin underneath a tattered toga. She clutched her head with a hand that ended in vicious claws. Her hair was short, messy, and was the color of coal. Her ears were pointed and jutted out from the sides of her head. She rose up until she was taller than all of them. Her lower half was a long and strong snake's tail, the scales being dark green in color with black stripes. From the tip of her tail to the top of her head, she measured at least twenty feet long. Once she was fully aware of her surroundings, the creature gazed at them with bright amber reptilian eyes.

"Uuuuuuuh... hiss?" the creature said.

"L-L-L-Lamia!!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

The girls all screamed along with Lamia. After screaming a few more times, both parties stopped screaming. Lamia quickly slithered behind the statues and climbed atop the one of herself. She glared down at the human girls and talking dog and gave them all a threatening hiss.

"Stay away from me!" Lamia shouted. "I don't mean you any harm, but I will fight you if you attempt to harm me".

The girls all stood there staring up at the mythic creature before them in awe. The silence seemed to stretch on for what seemed like forever. Fluttershy stepped towards Lamia and barely managed to look Lamia in the eyes.

"Are you... Lamia?" she asked the snake woman.

"This is my city. This is my temple. This is a statue of me," Lamia said gesturing to their surroundings.

"You... you're real. The Lamia from myth is right before our eyes. But you're supposed to be a myth," Sunset said.

Lamia's face became a mask of confusion. "Wait, you followed me all the way here and you didn't even know I existed?"

"Yeah! Spike told us you were snooping around our campsite," Pinkie said.

Lamia's cheeks became red and flushed. She looked away from the girls and fiddled with her hair.

"Well... I smelled food coming from your camp. It smelled really good and I was really hungry," Lamia said.

"Well, if you were hungry, you could've just said so!" Pinkie said pulling a bag of chocolate chip cookies from her pajama pants.

She threw the bag to Lamia, who caught it with her tail. Lamia examined the bag and opened it. The smell of the cookies wafting from the bag immediately sent drool dripping from Lamia's mouth. She pulled out a cookie, examined it a bit, and took a small bite. Her eyes widened in ecstasy at the taste of diabetic heaven in her mouth. Lamia greedily devoured the cookies and even the bag the cookies were in.

"Food worthy of the gods!!" Lamia shouted.

Pinkie smiled at the praise for her cooking skills. Lamia slithered down to the floor and grabbed Pinkie's hands, shaking them up and down.

"You must be a muse of cooking! I've never eaten such things before! This is worthy of Olympus!" Lamia praised.

The girls all relaxed at seeing Lamia acting so happy over some cookies. Lamia was even wagging her tail in excitement.

"I'm so happy you like them! It's an old family recipe," Pinkie said.

While Lamia and Pinkie were bonding, the others took this time to examine their current situation. Sunset leaned towards Twilight.

"What do you make of this?" Sunset asked. "I mean, this is the mythical Lamia we're talking about".

"I'm not sure. I don't think I would've believed it if I haven't seen it with my own eyes," Applejack replied.

"If this is Lamia, then she's the same creature that eats children and people," Rainbow said.

"I'm not so sure about the child-eating part. Look at her," Rarity said with the others looking at a happy Lamia. "She doesn't seem to have the attitude of a child-eating monster".

"Besides, if she wanted to hurt us, she would've hurt us by now," Fluttershy said.

"Okay, maybe she didn't eat any children at all," Rainbow said. "But what about the beginning of her story? You know, where she had children with Zeus and Hera made lamia kill them?"

Lamia snapped her head backwards to the girls and stared at them with an expression that they couldn't read. Tears began to form in her eyes. Her face turned into a face of pure rage.

"Zeus? My children? Hera?!" she seethed at them.

Lamia's eyes began to glow and she bared her fangs in anger. Lamia's whole aura seemed to darken. The girls all took a few steps away from Lamia while she gripped her head in pain of the memories. Fluttershy ran towards Lamia and wrapped her arms around Lamia. She looked down at the shy girl.

"I... I'm sorry. It's just... my past is a sensitive topic for me," Lamia said.

"It's okay. You don't have to tell us anything if you don't want to," Fluttershy said.

"Yeah. If you want to talk about it, we won't force you," Sunset said.

Lamia visibly relaxed. "Thank you".

"Oh, where are my manners?" Lamia asked herself. "Greetings, my name is Lamia, the protector of Lamiopolis".

"Is that what this city was called?" Twilight asked.

"Indeed. This city was built in dedication to me," Lamia replied.

"Why did you have an entire city dedicated to you?" Rarity asked.

*****

3,000 Years Ago

It was a time of uncertainty and war. The Persian Empire was invading the land of Greece. Their armies were so massive, the earth itself shook with its march. Wherever they went, they brought nothing but death and destruction in their wake. It seemed like Greece would fall in a matter of months.

A new settlement had recently formed nestled in a fertile valley. The people were those who prayed to the gods with nothing but fervor. At least, until a Persian scouting party showed up.

The wretched Persians took some of their livestock and kidnapped some of their women and children for... unsavory reasons. Some of the men were killed in their defense. And that was a scouting party that attacked. If the Persian Army showed up...

The people prayed and prayed to the gods for their protection, but all they got was another attack the following days and weeks. The people knew the Persian Army would be knocking on their gates in a mater of days. But they had a potential ally watching this from the shadows.

Lamia, after fleeing her kingdom, had settled in the wilderness of the valley. She didn't want to deal with humans and tried to stay away from their settlement when they settled in the valley and formed an entire city. But she was disturbed by the Persian attacks. She decided to watch over the city just in case.

One day, a Persian battalion, led by one of Xerxes's best generals, appeared before the city's gates. He met with the city's leader and made some rather unreasonable demands. The leader refused, saying that they would die for Greece. The Persian general said that he would gladly raze the city to the ground and leave no survivors.

The next day, as Lamia was watching, the Persian force made itself ready to destroy the city. But before they could charge, Lamia rushed out of the forest and killed the Persian general in front of his own troops. The Persian soldiers, horrified by what they just saw, turned and fled. The Persian Army never went anywhere near that valley again.

The people Lamia just saved, thankful for her actions, decided to dedicate the entire city to her. They even went as far as to build a temple for her and worship her as a goddess of their city. Lamia would receive food, shelter, and love from these people. It was a great life for Lamia. While it lasted at least.

After a thousand years had passed, the gods of Olympus had rewarded the people of Lamiopolis for worshipping Lamia with a devastating famine. Crops and livestock died left, right, and center. The people, starving, decided to abandon the village and Lamia. Lamia, watching the whole thing unfold, fumed in anger at the gods for ruining her life once again.

They took everything from her. Her mind, her children, and now they took the people she loved away from her! She hated the Olympians with a burning passion! She wanted nothing more than their destruction! But as she watched the world destroy itself countless times, she knew that the gods had all but abandoned the earth.

*****

In the Present

The girls listened to Lamia's story about the city with great interest. After she was finished, Twilight raised her hand.

"The gods of Olympus are real?" Twilight asked.

"Oh, they are indeed real. And they are a very horrible sort," Lamia said with anger.

"I take it they turned you into a monster?" Rainbow asked. That earned her a punch on the shoulder from Applejack.

"Indeed. They took everything good in my life away from me. No one could hate them more than me!!" Lamia shouted.

After seeing the girls jump at her shouting, Lamia took a breath to calm herself down.

"I'm sorry. That got more emotional than I had wanted. Can we talk about something else?" Lamia asked.

The Rainbooms had already introduced themselves to Lamia. So they had decided to talk about things that related to Lamia so she could have input.

"So, do you have any funny stories from when this city was inhabited?" Pinkie asked.

"Well, there is one that comes to mind," Lamia replied. "One day, there was farmer tending to his pigs. A wolf eats one of the fattest pigs in his herd. But the farmer didn't go after the wolf. His friend asked him why he didn't go after the wolf, to which he replied 'Why would I go after the wolf for eating my wife'?".

The entire group burst out laughing after that. Once the laughter was over, Pinkie let out a yawn.

"Well, this has been fun, but it's still the middle of the night. We should save this party for tomorrow," Pinkie said.

"Agreed, Pinkie," Applejack said. "We should hit the hay".

"Alright, we should go back to bed," Sunset said.

"Do you have anywhere to sleep, Lamia?" Fluttershy asked.

"I sleep in a cave in the forest. Can I visit you tomorrow?" Lamia asked.

"We'll look for you," Rainbow said. "Is your cave hard to find?"

"No, it's not hard to find at all. You'll know it when you see it," Lamia said.

The girls, dog, and Lamia left the underground sanctuary and the temple entirely. Lamia escorted the girls back to the campsite and bid them all goodnight.

Once Lamia made it back to her cave, she laid down on her bed of leaves and gazed up at the stalactite-riddled ceiling.

"Maybe... maybe those girls aren't witches. But their kindness seemed pretty magical," Lamia said. "I think I might like them".