Speech Increased To 2.5

by EdBoii

Battle of Hollow Shades Part 1

The Battle of Hollow Shades Part 1
Speech Increased To 2.5

---

Juniper knew something was wrong. The air of the tunnel was stale and the incline kept its downward angle for far too long to lead to the surface. There was no way they were headed for the exit...

“Just a little more, you two.” Silvermoon poked them with his spear. “Door’s just up ahead...”

Yeah, but a door to where?

Juniper turned to look at Jelly Squish. The goo-pony had a sad pout on her that hid a fierce determination in her eyes. They’d been captured, yes, but they weren’t beaten. Not yet. The two mares knew something bad was about to happen, and though Juniper had never seen the Machine at work, she knew that whatever fate awaited their brave and captured Guard, it must surely involve that dreadful contraption...

They had to save him. But how?

“There,” Silvermoon grunted as he jabbed at Juniper’s bum with the blunt end of his weapon. The vampire pony eeped! and jumped at the sudden break from her thoughts, to find that she was face to face with another iron door. This one was much larger than the one that led to the secret vault, though. A thin layer of dust covered the thick iron bolt, closed shut and secured by a heavy-duty lock, almost as big as her hoof.

“Here.” Silvermoon tossed them a single key and stepped back, with his spear at the ready. “Open it.”

Juniper and Jelly exchanged another, far more worried look. Just what had they gotten into?

“I don’t have all day! You wanna leave, or you wanna go back to the cells? Hurry up!”

Juniper swallowed hard and fumbled to pick up the key. It fit into the lock perfectly, and it clicked! open with only the slightest bit of resistance on the turn. A new lock? She wouldn’t know. She’d never been this far into the secret tunnels...

She pulled the lock loose and lifted the heavy iron latch with her hoof, then slid the bolt free of its catch. As though pushed by some invisible force, the heavy iron door slowly groaned open into the room beyond, and a pungent stench wafted over the two mares. They gagged as it poured into the tunnel, and the lantern Silvermoon had strapped to his saddlebag briefly flared as its flame caught something in that putrid smell.

But the stink was not what shocked them the most. It was the room itself, and what was within...

...a great cavern yawned open before them, with a skylight at the furthest point in its ceiling, almost ten meters high. Moonlight streamed down into the cave, and illuminated a moss-covered floor, strewn with animal bones of all sorts and sizes... Juniper and Jelly were in no position to judge, but some of them looked suspiciously equine.

Worse still was the thing that loomed far above the ground level, atop a ledge that overlooked the entire room like an eagle’s nest. It was enormous, far taller than even the Guard, and with arms so thick they could be tree trunks. It huffed and puffed the moment it saw the two frightened ponies, and beat its meaty fists against its chest, then reared back on its hairy legs and glared at them with three black eyes filled with primal bloodlust.

It opened its great, fanged jaws and roared. An explosion of sound that reverberated through the cave and down the tunnel like an earthquake.

The cave troll had seen them and there was nowhere to run.

“AWW HECK NAW!” Jelly Squish and Juniper screamed and tried to turn back, only to meet face to hooves with Silvermoon’s applebucking technique.

“In you go, ladies!” he laughed, and kicked.

...only to jam his hind legs into Jelly’s gooey tummy, down to his haunches.

Silvermoon cried out in shock the moment he realized his mistake, and tried hard to dislodge himself. But it was too late. The goo-pony slid up his body and popped! back into shape on the other side of the door, as the bat pony plopped down to the floor and scrambled to get back on his hooves.

Behind them the cave troll howled as it cleared the cavern floor with apeish strides and leaps. It stopped ever so briefly to lob a big, wet chunk of... mud at them. It struck the top of the door frame with a wet smack! and splattered outwards like so much smelly shrapnel.

Juniper’s eyes went wide as saucers as the mud went everywhere—it drenched the door, the floor, and some of it went up as high as the ceiling—but some of it specifically flew straight for her! A big, steamy, and lumpy glob of muddy muck threatened to splash all over her mane and face, and it was all she could do to think of something—anything!—before that happened. Desperate, Juniper screamed and shielded herself with the closest object she could reach...

Silvermoon yelped as two supernaturally strong hooves gripped him by the flanks and lifted him up. But he hadn’t the time to complain, not before a tonne of yucky, slimy, and very chunky... mud crashed into him... and believe me, dear reader, that when I say into, what I mean is very far into him.

“OH MY PONE, IT GOT IN MY MOUTH!”

Truly, the resulting pink eye would have been the stuff of legend, had some rather pressing detail not made itself very apparent just then.

“Juniper!” Jelly cried out from beyond the threshold, and saved the vampire mare’s life. Juniper jumped through the open doorway just as the cave troll’s fist slammed hard into the ground where she had stood but a moment before. Enraged, the monster bellowed and thrashed, and took out all his anger on one very unlucky bat pony.

“No! You gotta help me! It’s got meeeeEEE!”

Juniper and Jelly Squish sat on their haunches just on the other side of the door. Their little pony jaws rested on the floor, completely slack. Their big ol’ eyes were open wide, and their pupils were the size of pinpricks. They watched in silent shock and horror as the cave troll did unspeakable things to the bat pony. Things that surely would push this story’s rating up into the Mature, and then through it, and over into whatever comes next.

“Are legs supposed to bend that way, Jelly?”

“Mine can...” the goo-pony answered even as they both cringed at the wet crunch! that followed from inside the room. “I’m not really sure if yours are supposed to- what is it doing to his face?!”

“Oh my Luna,” Juniper moaned. “I think I’m going to be sick...”

Sufficiently traumatized for the day, the two mares quietly shut the door and secured the bolt into place. Then, in the silence of the empty tunnel—with only the faintest sounds of most perturbing bodily contortion that came from inside the cavern—they reflected on the horrors of equine frailty at the mercy of nature’s more primeval beings.

“So,” Juniper ventured after a while, as she twiddled her hooves. “I know a pretty good therapist...”

Jelly Squish gasped. “Therapy buddies?!”

“Oh, do you really mean it?” Juniper clopped her hooves together and both mares leaned in for a hug. “Yay!”

But there were pressing matters at hoof!

“Alright, therapy buddy!” Jelly said. “What’s the plan?”

Juniper scrunched up and rubbed her chin with a hoof. Behind them, a huge dent appeared on the iron door. It was distinctly pony-shaped.

“We need to rescue...” Juniper paused and her scrunch intensified. “Wait. This is so awkward, but... what’s his name?”

Jelly Squish shrugged. “I’unno. He’s my coltfriend’s friend, tho.” Both mares pondered the question for a while, as they did their best to ignore Silvermoon’s alternated staccato of screams, followed by whimpers, and then a wet squelch! as some body part or another was forcibly detached.

“I mean,” Juniper rubbed the back of her neck, “we could ask him later. I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as we rescue him, right?”

Jelly nodded. This was wise!

“So! Let’s rescue our friend!”

“Right!”

Both mares turned their backs on the battered door to race down the tunnel and back to where their friend was held... when the very audible slam! of the heavy iron door against the tunnel floor froze them in place. Then came the sound of slow, steady, and very heavy breathing, followed by the worst case of morning breath ever experienced by ponykind.

Juniper and Jelly Squish gulped. Silvermoon—or what was left of him—moaned. The cave troll groaned a grave, guttural groan that sent a shiver down both ponies’ spines.

...and it attacked.

Author's Note:

Daily Uploads starting today, kids. This is the home stretch.

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