The Final Chapter
“This is a bad idea, Brújula! A very terrible idea!”
Daring Do, Lady Adventurer extraordinaire, glanced at her temporary companion. “What makes you say that, Pasos? You were perfectly fine with guiding me here up ‘til now.”
She took a long, slow look across the entrance to the tomb again. This one had been well-hidden in the hot, endless jungles of South Amareica, but it had all been worth it. The tomb of Vete a la Mierda Demasiado, first Earth Pony explorer to die on this continent after they had befriended the local tribesmen.
It was of massive historical significance, because Vete a la Mierda had been buried in the small amount of time between befriending the locals and the country of Plantain annexing them, leading to long-running hostility between the two countries. Finally, Daring Do had found the tomb, and she would be the first to discover how the Criollos buried ponies not of their culture! She would be famous! Well, more famous.
Her Pack Mule, Pasos Izquierda, pointed at the crumbling line of hieroglyphs trailing around the entrance. “That is a warning, Brújula! That says that this place is not a tomb!”
With a roll of her eyes, Daring started tapping at the great stone block in the doorway, looking for a weak point. “Then what is it, Pasos?”
“It is a prison! Those carvings say that whoever enters will lose that which they hold most dear!”
Daring squinted at the carvings. They did look awful skull-and-bones-esque. “Look, we’re here already. It’d be a waste to get this far and not get inside.”
“And how do you plan on getting past that stone block? The doorway was built around it. This is not a place that is meant to be opened.”
Daring started tapping around the stone, looking for a weak point in the block. “I got a way. Ah!” She found a weak point, a crack running down the left side, and starting pulling out a jar of thermite.
Pasos looked on with disgust. “Your way is explosives?”
“Not explosives,” corrected Daring Do. “It’ll just slag the block. Shouldn’t harm it beyond that.”
She finished smearing the silvery gel over the crack, and stepped back, wiping the rest off on a hoofkerchief. Then she stuck a fuse in the end, and lit it with her lighter.
The fuse burned down, and when it finally reached the end, the pony and the mule had to look away. The paste turned as bright as the sun, hissing as the moisture from the recent rain instantly turned into steam around it.
“I’m not going to follow you in there, Brújula.”
Daring shrugged. “That’s alright, you don’t need to. Just wait out here, I’ll check the tomb.”
Finally, the paste finished burning. Daring turned back to it, evaluating the flash-melted rock, and the hole it had burned through into the tomb. “Well! Let’s go see what they buried Mierda with, huh?”
Without waiting for an answer, Daring trotted care-free into the crypt, scrabbling over the ruins of the door. Behind her, Pasos yelled something to the effect of “You know not what you have done, Brújula!”
He didn’t follow her in, true to his word, and she shrugged. Whatever. He’d done his job, she’d pay him when she got back to camp...
The air inside the tomb was stale, despite the new entrance made in it. Because it was built directly into the mountain, there were no other entrances inside, and no light, no plants, no other life but her inside the final resting place of Vete a la Mierda Demasiado.
She paused in a hallway that seemed just a little too long and empty. Searching the floor, a line of stones stood out. With no sense of caution, she pressed her hoof down on one, and it ground into the floor.
With a louder grinding noise, and an almost comical ‘crunch’, the floor before her started moving into the walls. Age had taken its toll, however, and almost as soon as they started moving, the stone floors collapsed downwards, revealing a pit full of rusted metal spikes.
Daring Do just chuckled in relief. “Easy enough. They didn’t plan for Pegasi, I guess.” She hopped into the air, and just flew over the spike pit, gently alighting on the other side.
A few twists and turns later, she entered another room, with three large trenches cutting through from side to side. A click beneath her hoof—another pressure plate, no doubt—activated the sound of running water, and a ‘clunk’ before three massive, bladed pendulums began swinging from side to side, blocking her way.
“Ah, a classic. Well, could wait for the pendulums to swing to a stop, but I don’t have the patience for that. Grappling gun time!” True to her word, she pulled a bright yellow pistol out of her bags, screwing a tank of compressed air into the handle and clicking a grappling hook into the barrel. Taking careful aim, she fired the hook right into the ceiling, at the base of the pendulum.
There was another grinding noise, and a ‘ping’ as the pendulum came free, the ancient mechanisms smashed by the hook. She didn’t even bother retrieving it from the rubble. After all, she still had a dozen more in that bag.
After destroying the other two pendulums, she finally entered a grand stairway. With another roll of her eyes, she stepped on the obvious pressure plate. Two massive doors on either side of the corridor fell into it, smashing as they crashed into each other. If she’d been running, she would’ve been caught in between them and likely pulverized.
She was just about to trot forward when a cacophony of hisses echoed from either side, and a swarm of snakes emerged from either side, slithering over the rubble of the doors and towards her.
Daring didn’t mind Snakes—it’d be tricky to explore jungles if she was afraid of them, after all—but these were large enough to give her pause. Either through magic, or some other force, these were all Anacondas, easily fifteen to twenty feet long each. Enough to swallow her whole if they caught her unawares.
She hopped into the air again, and let them all slither past her, making their way to the entrance. Hopefully Pasos wasn’t still standing out there, or he’d get a nasty surprise.
As soon as they were gone, Daring poked her head into the spaces they’d came from. Sunlight fell through a thick canopy, lighting a deep cave with smooth walls. That must have been how they survived, then, but how they managed to get that big was beyond her area of expertise.
As she entered the final room, she glanced around. There was another stone door, with the “warnings” carved right into it this time. this one didn’t have any convenient weak points, and so she simply had to smear the rest of the thermite around the edges of the door in a circle. As she stepped back to light the fuse and examine her handiwork, there was a noise like clattering bones behind her.
She turned to see three skeletons, with glowing eyes and golden blades, assembling themselves from the bones scattered across the room. “Intruso,” One growled. "Deja este lugar. Va a traer ruina a nuestro país si se abre esa puerta."
Daring blinked. “What? Speak Equuish.”
"Caballo amarillo, que no se advirtió de nuevo." It hissed in response.
With a shrug, Daring just grabbed a pair of auto-cocking revolvers out of her other bag, holding them in her wings. The skeletons barely gave them a glance. "Hemos visto estos palos de trueno. Tememos que la que guardamos más".
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Daring muttered, lining both the sights up on the lead skeleton’s head. Behind her, the fuse finished burning, and the thermite lit with a hiss.
“Pull!”
With a pair of gunshots that echoed in the temple, the skeleton’s skull exploded into a hundred bony shards, and the rest of the skeleton clattered to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The other two watched it drop, and then started advancing on Daring, who barely spared them a glance, firing in two different directions. She missed every shot, but it made her feel better.
"¿Estás Tomb Raider? O Grave Robber? O tal vez simplemente estúpido?" the left one asked, as Daring Do tossed the revolvers away, leaping forward to grab the centre skeleton’s discarded blade. It was heavy, but her personal trainer had made her bench-press way more than this before. With a battle-cry, she swung the blade with all of her might in a wide arc, smashing the speaking skeleton to bits.
That put the last skeleton between her and the still-burning thermite. She grinned, then dropped the blade, opting simply to buck it right in the ribcage. Her kick launched it right into the door, which was still burning hotter than magma, instantly burning the flailing skeleton, and leaving just the smell of burnt carbon.
After gathering the discarded swords and waiting for the thermite to cool, she trotted inside the massive domed room. It was lacking any decoration, except for some worthless stone statues and tablets covered in more illegible hieroglyphs, and so she moved to the stone coffin in the centre of the room.
It was sealed shut, but that didn’t mean anything when Daring spun around, bucking the stone lid off with her hindlegs, and releasing a cloud of gas, mixed with the smell of rotting corpse. Sticking her head over the side, Daring grinned. She’d found her prize.
Pulling the gold statue out of Vete a la Mierda Demasiado’s hooves, she dropped it into her saddlebags, and considered taking a few of the tablets around the room.
Eventually, she decided against it. They were too heavy, and she couldn’t read ‘em anyway. Other explorers would come here when she got back, and they’d be able to take them. Just like that, she left the ancient tomb, only pausing to climb over the rubble she’d left in her wake.
* Lobster *
Daring hadn’t been able to find Pasos on her way back to camp. Seemed his old silly superstitions had gotten the better of his desire for bits, and he’d left for good.
Oh well. She didn’t need the Pack Mule anyway.
Hacking through the jungle with her custom machete, she finally cut her way back to camp, and sheathed the blade as she entered the clearing. In moments, she had tossed the bags of explosives and priceless artifacts into her tent, and then went about re-lighting the fire, and making some quick stew.
As she closed the lid of the pot, sleep hit her like a wave, and she decided she could use a quick little nap. Just a quick one. She pulled the brim of her pith helmet down over her eyes, and laid down a short distance from her cooking fire, where sleep overtook her easily.
As Daring started snoozing, the bushes at the side of the clearing rustled, and one of the snakes from inside the tomb emerged. At first, just its head poked out, tongue tasting the air. The smell of the stew had drawn it in, but it seemed it had found a much better meal instead. It started slithering out into the clearing, three feet, five, ten feet, twenty, all sliding out of the underbrush and towards Daring.
Daring wasn’t a heavy sleeper, but as the Snake approached, she stirred slightly. It paused, not wanting to wake her, and when she had fallen back asleep, it gently nudged its head under her own. She practically wrapped it around herself, trying to cuddle with it, and it accommodated her, moving to “cuddle” her with its coils.
“Hey, what- gah!” Daring awoke with a start, something choking her, and she realised one of the snakes from the tomb had found her. Daring’s hooves flew to the creature wrapping itself around her neck, trying to pull it off. She was Daring Do! She wasn’t gonna let some random-ass snake get the better of her! “Ever heard of -agh- ever heard of me? You don’t even know how much -erk- trouble you just slithered into, you stupid snake!”
If it cared, it didn’t show it. It just managed to wrap itself around her barrel, at which point Daring started getting concerned.
She had good reason to be. It squeezed, and any air Daring had left came out in a strangled gasp. It used the opportunity to wrap itself one final time around its legs, and then look back at her.
Her vision was already going fuzzy around the edges, but she glared as hard as she could at the reptile. She was not going to let this stupid snake best her. Even without any air, even when being squeezed in a scaled vise, she was going to keep fighting it.
Because she was Daring Do. She couldn’t die like this.
Then something in her went crunch, and her pith helmet flopped onto the jungle floor beside her.
Her eyes went wide, and Daring Do tried to scream as the snake’s grip only got tighter, crushing her barrel like a beer can. She tried to squirm, but something was wrong, something in her felt off. She kept kicking her legs, frantically now, desperate for escape.
There was another crunch, and Daring Do couldn’t move her hind legs anymore.
She couldn’t even feel them anymore. everything below her shoulders was just a cold numbness, and what wasn’t obscured by the snake was twitching spasmodically, uncontrolled. The Snake started shifting, with her still in its grip, until she was sitting upright. As Daring’s vision started to go black, her forelegs were still flailing wildly, still trying to find purchase against the scales, anything to gain the upper hoof.
With one last, final, crack, Daring’s vision went white from sheer pain. Unconsciousness was merciful after that, but brief, and when she awoke a few seconds later, something was very, very wrong. Her vision was at a strange angle, looking between her legs, flopping over the coils.
What was worse, she couldn’t even move her head. The snake had taken that from her.
With another shift, the coils around her neck shifted, loosening, and she could breathe again. Yet, at the same time, the ones around her barrel tightened, so that the only breaths she could take were short gasps, faint whimpers for more air. All she could do was blink, slowly realising what the snake had done.
It had broken her neck.
The snake had actually broken her neck.
And yet she lived.
Daring Do was just that awesome, she told herself. Even a broken neck wouldn’t stop her, and she would still beat this snake.
Another crunch from her barrel caused those thoughts to drift away like mist. The worst part wasn’t the pain, it was the utter lack of it. Something else had just broken inside her, and she couldn’t even feel where it was, what had broken, just that had something in her had been pulverized.
Her broken neck also gave her a perfect view of her crotch, and whatever had crunched had apparently been important. She lost control of her own bladder, and piss started running down her thighs into the grass. She couldn’t feel any of it. Not the sensation of pissing, nor the warmth of the liquid soaking her legs. All she could do was smell it. So that still worked, at least.
A drop of blood worked itself down her lip, slipping with a cold ‘plop’ into the puddle of piss she was sitting in, clouding the surface. As it did, a thought dawned on Daring Do.
“I’m going to die here.”
Death had always been a distant possibility, not even worth considering. Traps could be avoided, angry natives could be bribed or outrun, but this Snake was going to kill her, right here. She was going to die in this fucking sweltering jungle, alone, except for the snake.
Nopony would ever find her. Nopony would ever know what happened to Daring Do, adventurer extraordinaire. At best, she’d be a footnote in the history books.
The snake slid a coil beneath her chin, shifting her head, still mounted by her broken neck. Curling around her head, it looked right in her eyes.
Daring Do stared right back, staring into the eyes of the predator.
It was an animal. Just some dumb reptile. But it had bested her. And now it owned her.
But all it wanted was a meal, and that was what she was going to become. Daring Do was snake food. Even now, after it had utterly dominated her, taken away everything she was. It had taken her body, trapping her dying brain in what might as well have been a corpse already, all the way up to her hat, which laid on the jungle floor, discarded.
The snake’s mouth opened, and Daring looked into its fang-lined mouth again, this time coming head on. That was all she was to it, a meal. Daring tried to scream, but the air wasn’t there, and the snake silently enveloped her head. She was helpless to stop the snake’s sheer strength.
Daring Do’s vision went dark, and she prayed death had taken her, but all that came was a wave of saliva, washing over her mane, soaking her head, pushing itself into her mouth, her nostrils, her ears. She was drowning in the snake’s saliva, the taste of dead things and torn leaves, slurping across her, painting her, marking her as the snake’s prey. Only when the snake swallowed did the ocean of saliva drain from around her, and it left the taste on her tongue.
With tears streaming down her muzzle, mixing with the spit soaking her head, rubbing off against the snake’s mouth, she swallowed the snake’s saliva. The taste remained. All she’d done was let the snake mark her insides as food as well.
Quietly, with next to no air, Daring began crying, the snake working itself down her neck. She could almost tell which part of spine had broken, because that was the point at which she couldn’t feel the snake’s mouth, just its throat.
Her eyes opened, blinking away the saliva as best they could, and staring down the throat of her predator, lit by the mid-day sun streaming through his flesh. It was like staring down a tight tunnel that never ended, hidden by twists and turns in the flesh. She was going to be—Tartarus, she was being pulled down this tight, crushing tunnel, sliding forward to meet her end in a snake’s stomach.
Daring Do was going to die in this snake’s belly, where nopony would ever find her. She was the snake’s food now. That was all she’d ever be. Everything she’d ever done, everypony she’d ever met, everything she’d seen, the ponies she loved, all of the secret thoughts in her head, all of it was going to end in a miasma of digestive acid.
She might as well have had an Anaconda as her cutie mark. She belonged to it now.
It was only when her never-ending slide forward paused that Daring Do realised the snake had stopped swallowing her, even for just a second. Stars, she wished she could feel anything below her neck, anything at all, just to know where the snake had stopped swallowing.
Gravity shifted, and the wall of flesh squeezing her head was slammed against it. That must have been it—the snake had reached her waist, and had uncoiled so it could swallow the rest of her. It was almost mocking her, teasing her with freedom, and then taking it away again. Her slow squeeze forward continued again, as if nothing had happened.
Finally, her muzzle hit a wall of flesh, the entrance to the snake’s stomach. She sort of ground against it for a minute, before it finally opened, and she was pushed through. She landed, head-first, in a small pool running along the bottom of the long stomach, and the contractions from the snake kept shoving her along. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the stinging stuff out, but she eventually stopped while her right eye was still submerged.
If she’d had any control over her body, she would have been able to pull her head up, keep her muzzle away from the stinging acid, but she couldn’t even do that. She just had to keep that eye closed… for how long? For the rest of her life, however short that would be?
Daring Do started sobbing again. Not like this. She didn’t want to die. If she ever had to, she wanted it to be surrounded by friends and family at a ripe old age, or maybe killed by a really clever trap in a tomb, when she had a companion that could tell the world what had happened to her.
Not like this. Not as just another meal for a snake.
The Anaconda started moving, sliding away somewhere, as the acid’s stinging started getting worse. More started draining in from around her, and she was powerless to stop it from going up her nose. Her sinuses burned, and she could taste blood, and she finally opened her mouth and eyes to scream, only for more acid to push its way in.
It started eating through her eyes, and her vision went black. The snake had taken everything from her now. As the acid ate through her sinuses into her brain, her last thought was simply, “Not like this.”
Then yellow stomach acid met unprotected gray matter, and her brain started dissolving into soup.
* * *
A couple days later, Pasos stumbled back into Daring’s Camp, pushing through the undergrowth. The camp seemed mostly untouched, but the fire had burnt low, and whatever she’d been cooking had been completely overcooked.
“Brújula?” Her pith helmet was lying on the ground, as if discarded, but Daring was nowhere to be seen. The mule moved to the tent, pulling open the loose flap.
Then he recoiled from the smell, and the cloud of flies that had settled all over the pile of shit sitting in the tent. Holding his muzzle, he poked his head back in, and looked at the pile again. It was about half as big as he was, and rivulets of shitwater trailed through the undulations in the tarp floor of the tent. Chunks of bone and fur poked out randomly, all stained brown, even over the fur’s yellow.
This was all that was left of Daring Do, in the end. Shit and bones. Anything she’d dreamed, any of her achievements, none of it had mattered in the end. She still ended up as a pile of Snake shit, covered in flies, with her own skull being filled with her remains. Stepping closer, he clutched it with his hooves, pulling it out of the pile with a slopping sound, as the shit on top slid down to the floor. He dumped it in her saddlebags, and closed it, waving away a few adventurous flies.
Shaking his head sadly, he turned back to her pith helmet, taking it in his mouth. He could still taste her shampoo on it. With a certain sense of finality, he tossed it onto the remnants of the campfire..“I did warn you, Brújula. You would lose that which you most hold dear.”
He slid her saddlebags onto his back. “I’m going to take whatever you took back to the tomb, and then leave your skull there as well. You shall share your grave, your prison, with Mierda, with your greatest success. It seems a fitting end. Much better than being found here.”
He took one last glance around the campsite, at the burning pith helmet, at the flies buzzing around the entrance to the tent. With another shake of the head, he turned and left the clearing. Nature would reclaim this campsite, and the last resting place of Daring Do would never be found.