Legend of Zelda: Wielders of Harmony Part II: The Pony of Hyrule

by Scriblits Talo

The Well

“That scream, that blood curdling scream. She couldn’t move, and the creature was approaching.
-DJ pon3 _The Legend Of Link”

AIYIAAAAaaa!!!!”- The creature screamed, a resounding torcurred sound that echoed throughout the square.
Octavia’s heart thundered in her chest, her blood was ice. Most concerning of all, despite the horror before her she could not move, only able to stare in shock at what approached her! A lean lumbering mass of rotting pony, a seeming anathema to life itself. It approached her slowly, a menacing groan issuing from behind the creature's wooden mask, a carnivorous groan, a groan of despair. And all she could do was stare and she was sure it was the end!
All at once, she lost her breath as something slammed into her with the force of a truck.
Recovering from careening headfirst into her friend, Epona reeled around to face an atrocity she knew all too well. “Its gaze will paralyze you. Stay low, then buck the death into it. On my count, three... Two”
The creature approached, empty soulless eyes fixed on Epona.
“One!!!”
Suddenly Octaviea sprung from beneath her friend uncoiling the entire length of her mass into the undead monstrosity, in a sudden instant the creature shattered into a puff of shadowed mist which at once retreated back into the well.
For only a moment Octavia watched in awe as her disintegrated enemy retreated “I…I did it, it's gone!”

The victory was short-lived as just in that moment another scream touted the night, this time Epona frozen in the creature's gaze.

“AIYIAA-”
With a single swift kick the creature fell to silence and regressed into the well.

“Wha-what were those things?”

It took a moment for Epona to recover, her breathing a ragged sputter. Catching her breath she spat.

“Redead”
she managed… “Or something like them… I never knew them to be quite so … Equine.”
She glanced at the well.

“It’s trying to escape.”

She approached the well and looked down into its depths... Below her the eldridge gloom of the well cascaded in ripples of miasma. She wrinkled her nose, the macabre pit exuded wrongness.
Just then Octavia also popped her head over the side.

“What do you mean it's trying to escape? You can’t just say something like that and walk off!”

Epona shrugged, beginning to climb into the well.

“Wait! Where are you going! Didn’t you just say something is down there… I mean, I know we have to get the lens, but isn't there a safer way to go about it then…”

She gulped looking into the miasma below. “Going into that.”
With a sigh,and the realization that her plea was not worth it Octavia began following Epona into the well, down the ladder, hoof over hoof.
The well was just as Epona remembered, no it wasn't Epona's memory, but she knew it all the same.
It had been seven years since she and Link had been down here… It was just as scary then as it was now… But she did not have Epona’s brute strength then, that comforted her some, that now she wasn't just a mere fairy… Although she didn't remember the water being so… unnerving.

Suddenly she found herself jumping nearly from her skin as Sploosh! Octavia lept from the last rung of the latter splashing into the water below.

“You ok, you look like you just saw a ghost?“

Epona sighed heavily "er,.. Im ok”
They continued forward into the dark corridor, away from the unwelcoming maw of the well’s entrance.
“C-can you hear them?” Epona asked.

“Hear wha…oh… I hear them. They sound so sorrowful… I, I don't think I have ever heard anything so sad.”

Epona nodded. The voices of spirits ebbed on, stories of tragedy and woe besetting the companions in a sighing crying chant, a song of woe theming the damp walls with echoed misery.

“Watch OUT! “

“AHHH!!!!” Octavia called out in surprise.

Epona pulled her friend out of the way just as a massive skulltula descended from above, its bone-like carapace marked in a ghastly grin.

Its soft belly is its weak point. Epona thought to herself, bucking the bug would do no good, it would just swing back and…

Both ponies backed away from the menacing arachnid and until they could back up no further, finding their flanks pressed up against the damp cool wall of the chamber, and… Something rustled up against Epona's back… a chain!

That's it!

Epona bit down on the chain and craned her neck, in a swift movement she pulled it from the wall and a link snapped as the length emancipated from its mount.

She flicked her head, the length coiled and uncoiled in a single trembling movement ending with a sharp crack.

She grinned. Was that fear she saw in the monster's soulless eyes?

Again she flicked the chain, sending it into a sharp crepitate, then twisting herself in a quick summersalt of a spin she cracked her makeshift whip up against the creature's caprice wrapping around and snapping it in the back.

The creature fell against the ground disappearing into a puff of mist. Destroyed.

She nodded toward Octavia, the chain still hanging limp from her mouth, now splattered in spider goop.

“After you” She managed.

And then they came to the wall. The corridor ended abruptly in a dead end with a blood-stained wall on which rested the gaunt skeletal remains of a long-deceased earth pony.

Whatever was turning creatures into ponies… did so even in death…

Epona shivered. She glanced toward Octavia, not daring to meet her eyes…

“You… you might not want to follow me here. It doesn't get any better from here.”

The companions gazed at the corpse. A grim reminder of not only the horrors they had encountered before but also that which resided before them.

Although Octavia, and for that matter Gation had never been through the deepest depths of the well, they could feel it, the dark energies that lay ahead, even despite the obvious dead end. A palpable sense of dread washed over her. Yet still.
She thought back over everything she had faced, everything that had come before. Truly how much worse could this be? And her friend needed her, she was certain of it.

“No… No, I can’t let you go into this alone.”