Mountain of Misfortune

by Kiernan

Chapter the Sixth: Up the Creek

Author's Note:

This chapter's real title is "Up Shit Creek," but the rules put in place by the administrators of FiMFiction made it a rule that the story's name, as well as the chapter names, cannot contain profanity unless the story is rated M, and this story is rated T.

As Abi’s body crashed into the stone wall, it gave way, as if it were the door at the outlet of a garbage chute. She tumbled to the floor, rolling over and slamming into the wall. It was painful, but she could keep going.

She stood up and looked around. No longer was she in a cave, per se, but rather some kind of hallway. The floor was flat, the walls were stone panels, and there were unlit sconces lining the walls. Given that her entrance to this section was through a door that led to a stairway, this all seemed to indicate that somepony lived here.

However, there was no telling how long ago that was. If somepony still lived here, they could help her leave. Then again, it was possible that nopony else had been down here in centuries. Carved stone had a tendency to stay carved for a long time, especially if there was no rainwater to wash it away.

“ART?!” she called as she regained her breath. “ARE YOU DOWN HERE?!”

Her voice echoed down the halls, but there was no reply. The only change was a cold wind rushing down the hall.

As she shivered, she lowered the intensity from the glow of her horn to just her immediate surroundings, rather than all around her. She didn’t need the light, per se, but if anypony was around, it would help them see her, and it would also alert her if there were spiders, snakes, or anything like that crawling near her.

There was wind down here. That meant that either something was moving the air down here, or there was an outside force, perhaps the actual wind, that was creating some kind of airflow through the tunnel. For example, if, at the end of this hallway, some wind were to blow across the entrance, it would create a vacuum that would suck the air towards it. If there were a volcanic vent at the other end, the hot air would try to escape, cooling as it went until it was chilly where she was. Or, the wind could be pushing straight through.

“Follow the wind,” she sighed. “That’s probably the best way to solve this.”

As she stood up, the wind rushed by her again, this time in the opposite direction, then back the original way. It was like the cave was breathing.

The hallway was huge. A dragon could easily fit down this path, or an ursa, or some other giant beast that lived in a cave. Maybe even some eldritch horror with giant claws and tentacles on its face.

She shivered again, not from the cold, but from the imagery she had conjured up. It was a horrifying image she had designed, and she hoped that such a creature didn’t truly exist, and especially not in the same cave she was trapped in.

Of course, if something was breathing, it had to be breathing in different air than it was breathing out. Otherwise, what would be the point of breathing?

She took a breath herself, and immediately regretted it. Whatever was breathing, it had halitosis, and it was one of the worst cases she’d ever smelled. It was like sewage, as if the beast sustained itself by slurping up the contents of whatever septic tank it could find.

Waving her hoof in front of her nose, she called out again. “HELLO?! IS SOMECREATURE LIVING DOWN HERE?! I’M SORRY TO INTRUDE IN YOUR HOME, BUT I NEED HELP!!”

Only the rush of wind answered her. She couldn’t tell what direction the breathing was coming from, only that it stank. Could she really trust that whatever it was was sapient? A dragon would probably have warmer breath, and an ursa wouldn’t help her find the exit except by chasing her away from its den, so what could she hope to achieve with words, really?

She turned to the left and turned up the light on her horn, enough so that she could see both walls. She had a fifty-fifty shot of picking the right way to go to find whatever lived here, if anything. That granted an equally good chance to find the exit.

She started walking, glancing up at the walls. Whatever lived here had to have been sentient. The carvings on the walls were very intricately designed, and the repeating pattern made it clear that this was not a naturally occurring formation, but something that was planned out. But that could have been ages ago.

She passed panel after panel, sconce after sconce, and there were no visible doors. There was only more and more hallway, running in a straight line. There weren’t even any corners.

Come to think of it, her entrance had been through one of the wall panels, that was actually a chute door held closed by gravity. That panel didn’t look like a door when she’d looked back, but a wall panel. Could it be, then, that the rest of these panels could also be housing secret doors? There were some possibilities.

She approached one of the panels and placed her hooves on it. A firm push yielded no results. Trying to slide it was equally fruitless. And there was no section of panel that was able to be pulled, so nopony was going to be able to do that.

She moved on to the next four panels, finding each one just as immovable as the last. “Hidden doors,” she scoffed. “What a stupid thought. Who would want to live in a place so full of hidden doors that you couldn’t find the real ones? Who in their right mind would want to live in a place so confusing?”

She sighed and continued on, idly pressing her hoof against each panel as she walked, just in case. If one was a door, it would feel different, for sure. If not, the hallway couldn’t go on forever. Eventually, she’d find something.

As she pressed her hoof to a wall panel about two hundred metres down the hall from where she started, she suddenly fell over, with the door swinging open to her touch. She hadn’t been expecting it, and because she wasn’t braced for it, she tumbled end over end until she landed in a wet hole.

“Eugh,” she groaned, picking herself up. The slop she had landed in covered her face, and after wiping it from her eyes, she brushed it from her horn and looked around.

The very first thing she noticed about the room was the echo. Her groan bounced back into her ear four times before she could take in the smell. And what a smell it was. She had thought the cold wind in the hallway smelled bad. The warm air in here was even worse, practically burning her nose with every breath.

A drop echoed in the chamber, and she lit up her horn a bit more. She was on the bank of some kind of lake, and a lot of thin stalactites hung from the ceiling. What she had landed in was some kind of colloidal substance; a solid suspended in a liquid. Mud, most likely.

In the middle of the lake, underneath the stalactites was a very tall island, made from the dripping above. The stalagmites almost reached the bottom of the stalactites, meaning that they would soon form some kind of pillar.

She turned and looked back away from the lake. She obviously hadn’t come here from the lake itself, but from the hallway above. She could see the door, still hanging open slightly, as well as a small stairwell leading up to it. A few nails sticking out of the stone suggested that some wooden steps had led up here at one point, but had long since rotted away.

A loud splash brought her attention to the lake. A series of ripples emanated from the island, though didn’t seem to be centred on the shore. Something had fallen into the water, or had created a bubble just off the island.

“Hello?” she called, hearing herself respond back.

But there was more response. After a few seconds, she saw something launch from one of the stalactites into the stalagmite island with a wet plop. It was a solid mass, rolling down until it ended up stuck to the side wall.

Something didn’t seem right about those stalactites, either. There was something about them that didn’t seem quite right. She couldn’t tell from here, but they almost looked like they weren’t stalactites at all.

She took a deep breath and shook her head from the smell. She could almost taste whatever it was. She held her breath and thought to herself, “I could probably reach them to check them out.”

As she took a few steps out into the lake, it was clear that the hot liquid was becoming deeper. What’s more, the soft mud beneath her made her sink even further, and soon, she was up to her knees. She wasn’t even a quarter of the way out, and the water would only be deeper if she continued.

So instead, she opted to walk around the lake. Surely, there was an area that was less deep to cross, if not an elevated path. Granted, that would make the island a peninsula, but she wasn’t married to the idea that it was an island in the first place.

It was hard to move this close to the water, though. As her hooves sunk in the mud, it displaced around her, and when she tried to lift her hooves, it would suck her back down. There was some solid ground further down, but having something pulling her down was terrifying.

She moved away from the water to make it easier to move, but tried to keep enough light on the shore to take note of what was around there. There were no fish in the pool, at least as far as she could see, but it looked like there were a few crabs, or perhaps some kind of lobster-like creatures scuttling around.

She soon found a path just under the surface of the lake that led to the island. She made her way down to the water’s edge and started walking across. The water came up to her chest now, and the mud was up to her elbows, but that was the deepest it ever went. Just when she was having second thoughts, she started moving back up as she reached the island.

The smell was even worse over here. She shook the thought from her head and tried to climb up the stalagmite. It was very wet and slippery. But that was to be expected, as water and chunks of mud seemed to be sliding from the stalactites above.

She managed to make her way up to the top, and by some miracle, she heard voices. “Yeah, I saw that one. It was kind of impressive, but I thought she was trying a little too hard. With a high degree of skill, it should appear effortless, even if it’s not.”

“I mean, yeah, I know what you mean. But even with her flailing about, she still managed to do the whole thing in one go. Honestly, anypony fully cognizant after taking such a beating is impressive, even if you could tell that they were giving it their all.”

Abi looked around, trying to find the source of the voices, but was unable to source them until she climbed a little bit higher. The stalactites were hollow, and the voices were coming from them. More importantly, there were ponies up there right now, and they had little more important to do than discuss some mare’s performance. She needed only let them know she was down there.

The stuffy, stinky air had taken its toll on her. It was hard to breathe, and unpleasant to boot, so she had opted out. If she was going to draw their attention, she needed to shout, and to do that, she needed a lungful of air.

Opening her mouth and taking a deep breath, she was caught off guard as something shot out of the stalactite in front of her and lodged itself in her mouth. It hit her with such force, in fact, and caught her by such surprise that she lost her grip and fell to the ground, colliding with the ground with enough force to knock the air out of her lungs.

Thankfully, the ground was soft, so she managed to land fairly safely, but the water was starting to drain into her impact site, splashing on her face.

Or perhaps, water wasn’t what to call it. While the ground had hit her hard, as had that lump, she was hit even harder with the realisation of where she was. This was not a naturally-occurring underground lake. She had been trouncing through a septic tank, she’d been punched in the throat with a log of shit, and now there was a steady stream of piss dripping onto her horn.

It took her some time to regain enough of her breath to sit up, and even longer to stand. Breathing was hard, and she really didn’t want to, but she had to. Likewise, she didn’t want to climb up the pile of shit and scream into a toilet pipe that she was stuck in the septic tank, but she had to.

She began climbing as soon as she could stomach it. She wanted to vomit, and if she weren’t trying to save her waning energy for climbing, she would absolutely do so. She could still taste the vile clump that had forced its way between her teeth. She couldn’t tell if the liquid dripping down her face was sweat or urine, but it didn’t matter now. She had to hold it all in until she at least had confirmation that somepony was on their way to save her.

About halfway up, her grip gave out. She had reached for what looked like a sturdy point, but it was brittle, and fell away, slamming into her knee, forcing all of her weight onto just one slippery anchor point.

This time, rather than slamming into the ground, she slid down, and quite a bit further, too. There wasn’t anything sturdy enough to grab onto that didn’t break on impact. She didn’t stop until she was underwater.

She wasn’t far from the surface, and she had regained her lung functionality. She just had to swim up. She wasn’t the best swimmer, but she could swim. She kicked off the bottom of the pool with all four hooves toward the surface.

Unfortunately, she didn’t move. The same suction that had been pulling her down as she walked the shore was holding her hooves in place. It was like quicksand. Except, it wasn’t sand. She was caught in a puddle of quickshit.

She had to pull herself free. She yanked on her hooves, one after the other, but none of them were budging. Every single one was stuck in the muck.

She began to panic. The air above was foul, but she still needed it. She would die if she couldn’t take a breath.

She pulled and pulled, and yet, nothing came of it. Her lungs burned from holding her breath. Her eyes began to well up as her lips began to weaken. She could almost feel herself turning blue.

In a last-ditch effort, she released all of her air in as loud a scream as she could, but her call for help would only burble on deaf ears. Once her lungs were empty, there was nothing left. Unable to hold onto what little strength she had, her light started to flicker, and a minute later, went out entirely, and the lake was still once more.