The Tallmare (being reworked)

by hus

ch22 The Cave part2

Twilight looked around the old damp wet underground lake. Cold water dripped down from the ceiling above into the shallow water below. She brightened her horn seeing no other exit, only that on the other side she saw surprisingly intact paintings despite the wet conditions of the cave. She looked down at the water and lightly put her hoof in, feeling the immense cold temperature stinging her hoof. There was no way around the lake. So, she leaped into the lake and her hoof landed on solid slate rock. She noticed this and she looked closely down at the transparent surface and noticed the water where the big slate ended just a couple feet in front of her. So she galloped towards the deeper part of the edge. The sound of her hooves splashing against the water reverberated echoes off the walls until she felt her body sink in. She lightly paddled her way to the surface with deep heaving breaths as the icy cold water touched her chest.

When she reached the edge she could see the black paintings even closer. The first painting depicted five black circles each close to the other but one remained undamaged. The others depicted had cracks in them. The second one depicted black spurts of paint coming out the sides, vaguely resembling fire, obviously what the pre-civilized Equestria artist had intended. The other appeared to be hit by a sludge of green paint while the other green paint was sprinkled about the circle with little gems waxed in between the green paint. The final fifth sphere was blue with tiny bits of green and brown paint on it.

Twilight looked above the painting of those mysterious spheres and saw that the painting above it there were creatures she didn’t know how to describe. One appeared insectoid with multiple heads and it appeared to be spilling goop out of its top. Another was a solid black swirl with crystals waxed into it. The final one appeared to be a golden fire with an oddly drawn face and head of a mare screaming. Twilight didn’t know what they were, but they all seemed to be bickering about something.

She didn’t precisely know how these paintings survived. Maybe it was the fact that the cave was only wet on one side. That could have been a likely answer. And before she got back to swimming in the cold water again, she found her answer to how these tribal ponies got to this side of the cave. She did indeed notice there seemed to be eight old rotted wooden planks submerged into the muddy sand of the surface she was currently on with some nasty cave crustaceans crawling around blindly as they got disturbed by the foreign substance known as light. And there were rusted-away metal studs in the wall that were chipped away to an unrecognizable state and could only be noticed from the angle Twilight was currently in.

After taking another swim through the water and arriving on the other side she looked down at the hole she entered from. She surely didn’t like the claustrophobic feeling of crawling through the tunnel again. Or the fear of falling down another tunnel and falling into some dark inescapable chamber. But she had to navigate, she didn’t want to an unfound corpse in a cave.

So she crouched down onto her legs and cramped herself through the tunnel again. When she arrived back at the fork in the tunnel she saw the other options of where next. One option she really didn’t want to go down was the one that sloped down into an infinite darkness of no return. The other two was one that sloped up and one that was conveniently straightforward.

She chose the one in front of her and crawled straight through it. Oddly enough this tunnel didn’t seem to be made by erosion. She guessed, that somehow, the ponies of old must have found this naturally formed tunnel and evened out the spaces like some elaborate miners and stonecutters. She continued to shove herself through that tunnel until she saw the exit. She carefully climbed out and lifted her head cautiously as she took in her new surroundings.

It was another stalactite-filled area, but it wasn’t as closed off as the previous section. It was wider and it seemed to be more sloped. As she walked forward she could see old dirty bones that looked not too fresh, more like a thousand years dead. There were old iron spears that had their metal tips corroded to a rocky form. And there were arrowheads that seemed unrecognizable besides their basic shape. As she continued to walk she noticed a den with an old but more recent campfire put into place. She walked up to the small den and noticed a huge mural. Flocks of miniature hoof-drawn ponies gathered around two of the mysterious beings she had seen in the other part of the cave. Their heads seemed to be turned in confusion even though their faces were turned even their posture was confused. Then on the other side of the wall, it seemed that the monsters had changed into something she shockingly recognized. Two alicorns, one a stallion and one a mare. Princess Galactica and Prince Cosmos of the Void of Space.

The drawings seemed to be now in a jumping position as if they were filled with glee. Twilight was questioning what the hell were those first two alicorns? She had only heard stories about how they were the mother and father of Luna directly or in other stories of how they adopted the two sisters and made them alicorns. They were not ponies for sure. Now that Twilight was thinking about it more a more dreadful thought came to mind. What were those black spheres and that one blue sphere? Worlds.

She moved away from that mural and saw another one on the wall. It was a circle. Inside that circle were many beings and many things. Apelike creatures crawled up to the ceiling to get out. Some other creatures of indescribable shape were attempting escape as well. They seemed to walk to another scene where a forest was. There, a bunch of what she expected to be warrior stallions, fought them off. Then on the bottom right of the huge circle was a broken sphere with little drawings of ponies floated up to the circle and entered. At the center of the circle was a black dot that seemed to form all these creatures. The creatures seemed to fight and escape on their own volition. There were many different scenes outside the circle. Some scenes depicted creatures pointing their fingers/claws/tentacles at each other and sending pony warriors to their death. Then there was one that she shockingly recognized. It wasn’t Equestria related but a continent away. She recognized this as the griffonian deity Mar. The crow of the wild. The griffon in black seemed to eat something similar to discord in its mouth. Said creature was almost a combination of a goat and a yeti. But unlike the yeti, it seemed to have no hair.

She didn’t know what she saw and what it meant, maybe the underworld? Or some old pony religion. When she was done looking at it she turned her head slowly to see Vinyl. She was there just laying on the floor. She looked malnourished and her eyes were unmoving and bloodshot. She ran over and placed her head on her chest. No heartbeat. While her ears rested on her unmoving chest she saw Applebloom alive. There were bitemarks on her legs and a tight rope placed between her mouth seemed so tight it made her cheeks bleed.

“Applebloom are you ok? What happened to her? What happened to Vinyl?” She said as she inspected the small earth pony filly with concern and anxiety. The filly only whimpered while her eyes looked to Vinyl. Twilight didn’t understand a word she was saying and didn’t have any tools to cut the rope around the filly’s mouth. The filly kept whimpering and got louder as if she were trying to warn Twilight of something dangerous. As Twilight scrambled and looked for an arrow that was still sharp even after thousand of years of eroding she felt a tap on her shoulder. A tap that was so unusually cold it seemed dead.

She slowly turned, then there was Vinyl smiling. Her eyes were still bloodshot like she was still dead. Twilight didn't even notice the large pimple-filled rash under Vinyl's fur on her leg.

“I say Twilght, I see you have discovered my hidey hole. My little place I can go and wait.” The DJ said chuckling to herself as Twilight stared at the unicorn horrified.

“Vinyl how the fuck are you still alive??” Twilight stammered as she held the filly close to her while backing up. Twilight’s horn started to dim and Vinyl’s eyes glowed in the pitch dark.

“I see Twilight you’re feeling fear. Your horn is dimming probably because your brain is moving all of that magic in order for your animalistic fight or flight instinct to kick in. But I can assure you you are safe, she’s not. To how I am still alive, well the silent queen’s resurrection was flawed."

As Twilight brightened her horn, the DJ’s lips curled upwards and old yellow snake-like fangs protruded from the top of her gums and the flesh above those fangs were filled with tumors, like her own body was revolted at her accursed form. The undead mare twisted her head and bit the young filly’s neck and started sucking vigorously, the sucking caused a lump to move down Vinyl’s neck while the rash started to heal inch by inch. Her body pulsated and shook as if she was having a seizure. Then once the filly was dead and dry the DJ looked back with the skin of her eyes stretched back and her mouth was stained with red sizzling blood. “I can not stay in the sun too long Twilight, my body burns with every inch like an allergic reaction. I don't even recognize the mare who I was before the death of me. And yet I still live. My body is immune to so many stuff like cancer and to any magical or physical disease that is thrown at me. It all just costs some mare or stallion’s blood or some poor unfortunate life form in my way. After all, the Tallmare takes care of me. I never was the DJ that you knew before I died, that DJ was a dumbass and wasted her life without learning the beauty of the dark. I hate that mare and I hate that I have her memories.”

“So let me guess, you’re a Celestia damn vamppony? To be honest, through all my reading of fiction I thought that you guys never existed but then again I thought that wacky old story that Applejack story wasn’t real either. But here I am with a creature of the night. More hideous in pony and I guess I got to run.” And so the element of magic did. The DJ shrieked and galloped after her while crawling on the floor like a centipede. Twilight quickly crawled through the floor and scooted desperately as the vamppony followed chase. Twilight in response fired a couple of rounds of solidified magic into the accursed mare's face as she continued to crawl.

The vamppony continued to shriek and crawl through the tunnels whiled Twilight crawled desperately, navigating her way through the tight uncomfortable crawl space. As she continued to drag herself she felt her horn starting to throb in pain again, she looked toward the direction of where she entered te tunnel and saw the head of the faceless mare poking out of the darkness.

She turned her head back to the tunnel sloped upwards and started to desperately crawl towards it. In response Vinyl started to move towards her quicker as she saw her prey trying to escape, The DJ wanted her prey cornered and she could easily sense the sweat and heavy breathing coming off her prey. Twilight quickly scooted around her before the vamp bit at her flank, causing Twilight to groan in pain as she continued to drag herself to the other tunnel.

even with the tight air, throbbing pain in her horn, and the actual vamppony sucking her flank, she pushed herself up through the tunnel. She bucked and bounced her flank up to the ceiling of the cave to get Vinyl off, which did work and she smiled as she continued to crawl through. Vinyl still continued to crawl after her through the dark cave and Twilight noticed that the headache was vanishing.I guess the silent queen is leaving me alone so her little vamp can catch her prey she thought as she threw a magic bolt behind her and hitting Vinyl again.

As she started to crawl again she lifted her and bumped her head on the ceiling and felt it was, softer. Then as her horn brighter she saw that there were roots and dirt dangling above her, which made her smile even wider as she pushed herself up wards. Dirt covered her and blocked her vision as the hanging dirt and roots compared into the crawlspace. She desperately climbed out of the heaping mass of dirt and saw it was midday. She pushed the rest of herself and saw Vinly trying to climb out as well, but unfortunately for her, the light s made her eyes extremely irritated and Twilight could tell that it could've been less extreme if she wore her glasses.

Twilight quickly galloped through the woods with so many thoughts rushing throughout her mind. She felt happy she escaped the cave but the fear in with her still lingered, then there was Appelbloom who she promised that she would bring back. But probably what haunted her mind more was the paintings, soo deeply tucked away down in the crawlspace Nopony has explored, with a history that seemed to contradict all she had been taught. But now she needed to head back to her friends, this little horror story wasn't over