Epona awakens from a deep slumber. With barely an explanation, she is plunged into the continuation of a crazy adventure in which she must save her newfound Friends, Equestria, and beyond.
Proofreading by (Although the author is often slow in implementing), Well Geboren New Chapter every Two Weeks
“The day came and went, and they stayed in Ponyville under the crystalline roof of Princess Twilight sparkle, and another day came, and another, and they stayed in Ponyville, and the clouds came and they did not leave, indeed a shadow covered the land. Indeed the heroes were stagnant, lost in slumber under the shadows of a great evil.”-DJPon3_ The Legend of Link
Navi found herself humming as she pulled the heavy cart of apples behind herself, a cart much too heavy for a fairy to handle… of course she was no longer a fairy… and neither was she truly Epona (perhaps the greatest steed in all of Hyrule) …
No, she didn't want to think of it, didn’t want to even consider it.
Gray clouds churned against a darkened sky, a desperate contrast to the land that she and her companion had found themselves in. In what seemed ages ago, and before that things had been so simple. She had been a horse, a simple mare without a care in the world, and she had been a fairy, both of her being the faithful companion to a simple lad in green, the hero known as Link.
Again she tilted back and kicked against a tree, apples raining in the wake of impact, and thudding one by one against the ground.
But now she was one entity, a large earth pony, Epona; who loved both puzzles and the feeling of the wind in her mane. And who on top of it all might be going mad… but she didn't want to think about that. Just pull the cart, buck some more apples, pull the cart, buck some more apples. Truly nothing felt better than the odd comfort of work at the Apple family farm.
And it felt like something else was off… something she just couldn't put her hoof on…
But she just couldn't bring herself to think about it.
It had been such a long time since they had landed in Equestria, her and Link... And well the others… and there was something … something that she was forgetting… Was there something happening outside of Ponyville?
She glanced up at the clouds and shuddered, before forgetting the subject almost entirely and returning to her work.
Just then something red bounced off her nose, an apple rolling to a stop in the grass before her hooves.
Her jaw dropped, to see its source. For in the shadows of the branches of the tree balanced upon a limb was Sheik such as Epona had not seen her in the longest time, not as a pony, but a Hylian!
“One grows accustomed to the shadows when darkness is all one knows…
…Is light truly light if no one is there to see it?”
Epona shook herself, unable to speak, unable to find the words to describe her unbelieved shock at what had just happened, and at who was before her.
Upon arriving in Equestria everyone had become a pony, Link, Sarea, and all the other sages they had found so far had become ponies; of sorts...
Ruito and Darunia still being unique, rather fishy in the case of Princess Ruito and Rocky in the case of Darunia, but ponies non the less. And the fairies both herself and Gation(Sarea's fairy) had become a part of the nearest equine, Octavia in the case of Gation, and Epona in the case of herself; even the evil phantom Gannon had been transmogrified into an equine.
But how was sheik here now again a humanoid, and then there was something else.
The apple hadn't hurt… it just kind of bounced off and landed in the grass… and…
She glanced down… the apple was gone. She looked back at Sheik only to stumble backward in surprise, Sheik who had been high in the tree was now directly in front of her almost nose to nose, and she was a pony again.
“There are many inconsistencies in lies, and in dreams. Much easier sometimes to hide in shadow” The mare smiled… “Do you fear the light of truth?”
Epona tried to respond but found the words to escape her.
Sheik stepped back, eyes downcast. “Look... I'm… I'm sorry I haven't been upfront with the two of you…It's my fault you're in this mess.” She looked back at Epona with a level gaze. “It will be made right, I promise.”
In a flash of light Sheik was gone. Probably a damned Deku nut… did those grow in Equestria?
The orchard was gone, Epona found herself standing in the center of a great void of darkness, a desolate empty floor cool beneath her hooves stretched on forever before her.
I'm dreaming, she thought… but she couldn't find the words to describe the feeling… she just knew it to be true… and… why, why do words escape me?
“Oh, Thow are here… I'm so glad you're here… thank goodness I, I tried to wake the others… but I couldn't, and my sister… she’s… The sun hasn't come up in months!''
Out of the darkness, the speaker emerged. Not quite as tall as Celestia, but just as flowing and regal, a large sender dark blue mare approached Epona.
“Thow must be Epona, it is good to meet you, Sheik told me something of your… situation… Argh but there isn't time for that! Listen when thow waketh you need to investigate the well, in Ponyville, only there will you find the truth and maybe be able to help your friends!”
“Malevolent forces even now are mustering to attack Equestria, nay neither is Hyrule safe.”
Epona opened her mouth to speak, to respond, to ask at least one of the many questions that formed at the tip of her mind but refused to form the shape of words on her tongue! Still the words escaped her, depriving her of themselves.
“The well, find the eye within the well. It is thine calling!” And then an incandescent light shone at the end of the alicorn's horn.
Epona awoke to the sound of her own voice, words actual words; sweet and beautiful crisp words, more savory than the brightest of apples.
“Hey, wake up! Can Equestria's destiny really rely on the fate of such a lazy pony!?“ She chuckled at this, using on herself the same phrase she had used on her green-clad companion so many years ago, and then the sadness set in. Who was she if not for Navi?
She gazed out into the darkness before her.
The orchard was absolutely silent save for the gentle snore of a sleeping Applejack who lay amongst the nearby trees.
“A serene expression touched the air… not that anything could be heard… not from that far away, but she could feel it, a subtle change in pressure… a distant melody. She could feel it, somepony was playing her song.”-DJ Pon3_ The Legend of Link
“Applejack.. Applejack?”
Epona nuzzled the sleeping pony with her nose to no avail, Applejack was dead to the world. It was concerning… She had been trying for the greater part of an hour to awaken her friend and nothing had changed, if anything Applejack seemed even deeper in her slumber as the snoring had subsided. Applejack turned over in her sleep snuggling up to the nearest apple (a soft aged thing) as if it was a stuffed duck…or bear, or whatever it was foals cuddled with in Equestria.
Epona sat down with a harrumph and an exasperated “Buck me.” She shivered. It was colder than it had once been, air rose from her breath as icy smoke, and the chill of night stood her coat on end. How long had it been?
The sun had been high when they each slumped against their respective trees for a quick nap, tummies full from a big lunch, and bodies drained from a hard morning of apple bucking… She must have been asleep… she counted out on her hooves, flicking her eyes from one to the other, maybe, two, three , four, six, hours… But it was very cool for a summer night, a thin layer of frost lay upon each blade of grass glittering like fairy dust, and there was this horrible smell.
She hadn’t noticed at first, too weary for strange dreams and then all too concerned for her new friend who despite the chill still slept soundly. But there was this smell.
A noxic musty sweetness, her stomach turned in the worst way in the notice of it.
The apples had turned and seen at a glance even the apple that the orange mare snuggled up to had gone soft, that was perhaps the best of them. The worst, the ones in the baskets, the ones nearest to each other shriveled and blackened, near dust. Apples everywhere, and none on the trees, all aged well past their prime, many sat as lumps of ancient goop on the ground.
“Buck me… buck me buck me buck me!“
The horror of the situation struck her chest like a drum, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think.
How… How long have I been asleep!
And then she ran. Everywhere she looked seemed to be some new terror, shadows permeated the night, trees cropped up in the dark. What seemed not so long ago so full of green now bereft of leaves, emancipated from life. Long dead leaves crunched at the step of her gallop, the squalor of long bad apples squashed beneath her hooves matting the once white stockings of her fur in icky blackness and ilk.
She slowed as she came upon Ponyville proper, as the road passed from dust to cobblestone and the sound of her own hoof beats against the stone unnerved her. Better the quiet pace of a nervous trot, at the very least better to catch her breath, if not to avoid being heard by… It unnerved her… How quiet everything was.
How could there be anything in this silence? A thought that somehow did not set her at ease.
She had never been around such silence… Not in Hyrule, not in Equestria, not as Epona nor even as Navi with her boundless knowledge had she ever known such uncanny laconism.
Indeed it was as if every object in town stood in resolute muteness, attendant to even her most restrained movement. The walls had ears.
She could hear her heartbeat, a steady but rapid thrumb, thrumb, thrumb. She could hear the very blood passing through her veins, the same pulsing throb of life. Compared to the silence, her stifled breathing sounded like shouts, her hoof steps like thunder. For a moment she thought she could hear her own sweat against her own face and back.
Wordlessly she steadied herself. She imagined Link's gentle touch, his soft words of encouragement, the gentle singing of Malon, the feeling of a soft brush on her coat.
Breathe. It's ok. It's ok.
Buck me! It's not ok, in what bucked up reality would any of this be ok!
Breathe. It helps nothing to get worked up. Look around, figure out what happened, think!
Ponyville was silent, but why was it silent; on the street not a pony, not a creature stirred.
A thought struck her amongst a half-remembered dream. The mare in her dreams “I had tried to wake the others but I couldn’t-” and“The sun hasn’t come up in months” Who were the others and…
Link!
With that single thought, every part of her was in accord, and for once everything was clear. Again, she galloped, paying no mind to the thunder of her hooves, the echo of her clacking reflecting down the empty streets of Ponyville.
She skidded to a stop before the crystalline doors of Castle Friendship… She heard something, beyond the cycling of her own bodily functions… no she didn’t hear… she felt it. Someone… some pony was playing her song.
Link!
He had to be ok. Maybe the same force of chance that awakened her had also awakened her companion, she could only hope.
In a swift single motion, she pivoted bucking open the towering doors. The entry hall stood before her, walls of crystal ghostly in their translucence and beside the continued echo of her entry, near silent. It seemed to beckon to her, and she could hear it, someone was playing her song. But it was different somehow…
She felt herself drawn forward, the familiar sound a comfort, even amongst that dreadful silence. It was something she knew… but it was also alien to her… It wasn’t the sound of an Ocarina, nor was it the gentle singing of a well-known friend… No it was something else, and somehow just as comforting, just as alluring. It was her song… but it was different, deeper, richer… it was being played on… Strings?
-and it was in that place that a bond was formed, a friendship that could surpass any evil. -DJ pon3 _The Legend Of Link”
The thrumming echoed throughout the halls, the deep rich reverberations of a cello could be heard. The country-isms of Epona’s Song syncopated within the click-clack of her hooves against the cool crystalline floors of Castle Friendship. Epona’s ears twitched, pivoting from one side to the next.
She found it, although alluring, to be slightly off-putting… How welcoming the castle, the music, seemed; when compared to the startling silence, the darkness of outside. But there was something else too. She placed a hoof against the door from which the music issued and stopped. At that moment, as a myriad of wordless thoughts filled her mind, it took everything in her not to ball up and cry. She took her hoof from the door and chewed at it for a moment, considering.
The music stopped.
“Breathe it's ok.” She told herself.
She bit her lip and placed her hoof against the door again, and despite herself knocked. Knock..knock
“he…hello?” She timidly called into the next room.
“She came, she actually came! It worked!”
There was the sound of a hollow wooden object hitting the ground with a resonant clatter and…
“Your ALIVE!”
The last phrase was uttered as Epona found herself rolling backward, the door slammed open from the inside and a gray form wearing a manic grin plunged her into an enthusiastic embrace. “I can't breathe,'' Epona squeaked from within Octavia’s grasp, then sweeping her friend up and off of her hooves into a massive hug. Tears touched Epona's eyes, she had seen Octavia just yesterday, right? Why did it feel like years?
“So…You have no idea what happened either? “
“No, I…I don’t. Last I remember… I was bucking apples with AppleJack… I remember we decided to wait an extra day to wait out the scheduled showers. And we were bucking apples, we stopped for lunch… and I woke up… and; and everything was cold and dark and…”
Epona broke off, even sitting in the library as they were, with the comfort of fire's warmth to proscribe the dark, the proceeding thoughts chilled her bones.
Octavia set her tea glass aside to comfort her trembling friend. For the second time that night, Epona found herself locked in the comfort of embrace; But there was something else to it too… Octavia too was shaking. She removed herself from the embrace.
“I… I’m sorry… This dreadful night is getting to me something awful… and that not a single other pony is awake… How is it just you and me and… …They look so peaceful.” She nodded toward the pair on the opposing couch, who had apparently slumped over mid-conversation; Link, and the DJ. The green-clad stallion and the pale mare each slumped over each other in drooling slumber.
Again Epona tapped at Link's cheek with her forehoof, a half-hearted endeavor after the many failed attempts to awaken her companion. Ice buckets, feathered quills, many varieties of musical instruments, and a remnant plethora of other attempts littered the floor around them. And the pair slept on, all of Equestria slept on...
Octavia gazed for a moment toward her cello which had been removed from the floor and placed neatly against one of the many book shelves.
“I had thought that music might be able to bring the sun back… I had been playing with this theory for some time… That music is magic.” she gave a light chuckle before continuing. “Perhaps not the most surprising statement of all time… but important I think… I think that is part of the reason the Ocarina, those songs worked so well. Equestrian magic and Hylean magic may not work well together, but music… Music is music wherever you are, a language that surpasses all barriers… Music connects us all. She stared at her cello for a longer strand of time before continuing.
“I thought I might be able to bring the sun back with one of those songs… It worked earlier on that ocarina. But now to no avail. I thought I might be able to awaken Saria with her song… but I just ended up pinging myself with a message… who would have thought. And then I played for you, and you came, and Im… I'm so glad you are here. But that begs the question… Why won't the sun come back up… and why is everyone still asleep, and why only us.”
Epona sat for a moment in silence gazing out the window as a light patter of rain, glistening drops that from the glow of the fireplace, gleaned like starlight patted lightly against the glass. To any resident Equestrian, without any Pegesi to tend to the clouds this might have been off-putting, but Epona was not a local and she found the rain somewhat calming and in her quiet consideration she was reminded of something.
“I had a dream.” she said “When I was asleep, she didn't tell me her name… But she said something about the night, about how everyone… I mean every pony was asleep. She said something about her sister, and that the sun hadn't risen in months. I, I don't think I had ever seen anyone quite like her, slender and dark, and her main shone like the stars “
“ Luna!”
“She said forces of evil were preparing to attack Equestria… And that a way to save my friends was in a well here in town… something about an eye… I think she was talking about the Lens of Truth, and I think it's here in Ponyville! I think somehow it might help end all this!”
Octavia shivered as she stepped out into the rain. This was unnatural, clouds acting on their own. She looked up, the towering cumulonimbus grimaced back at her menacingly as endless drips burbled from their surface. She ducked her head down and followed after Epona, the both of them making their way deeper into Ponyville, and nearer to the village's quiet center.
“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.
“His malignant laughter echoed throughout the desert and a shadow covered the land."-DJ pon3 _The Legend Of Link
Ganon Blinked. It was all he could see right now- the sky, the distant clouds, and even despite the half shade of the haggard Acacia which loomed above him, the overwhelming brightness, No wait… there was more.
Now a gaunt Scorpion lumbered its way across one of the few branches above him, its black armor gleaming in the sun's light. His head throbbed.
He let out a pained groan as he attempted to raise himself to a seated position.
Why do I feel so weird… he wondered, as well as What is this place?
Slowly, and despite the blistering heat and the accursed brightness, his senses began to clear.
The details of the environment and his situation began to register. He was in a desert, and not his own, no he knew that one far too well. This sand was too soft, and the sun, no dapple of shade could block out the glittering rays, the sun was wrong. The place seemed empty, but Ganon knew better than that, it was teaming with life, he glanced at the Scorpion, it wouldn't live alone, not without something for it to hunt, and not without something to hunt it. All the same, the wind blew, and with no signs of other life.
Ugg
It was impossible to think… his head throbbed, his mouth was dry…
Water, water was the secret to life in the desert, water and the knowledge of how to get it, and how to keep it. And as powerful as Ganon was, and as much as he sought to be the master of all power, he knew he was nothing without that burbling source of life, in the desert water was power.
Ha, the Great King of Evil defeated by something as mere as a desert. No, he would not let himself be defeated by something as simple as that… He would not underestimate the desert. It was enough that he had underestimated that boy… The boy!
Every part of his plan had come together perfectly. He had the triforce in a single room, they were resonating and preparing to reline, a moment he had waited for seven years, or more. The princess and the fairy boy, who would have thought. The boy was all alone, the miasma saw to that... It was just me, and him, and… I should have won, I knew I would with near infinite power at my disposal, and yet… he bested me, how? And yet… I'm still here. No. No the boy hasn't won yet.
He stood up, or attempted to as he “stood” his legs buckled and he crashed back to the ground.
Muttering a curse under his breath, he looked up from where he’d face-planted into the sand. What was wrong? He glanced down at himself, wondering why exactly his limbs felt all wrong and his center of gravity had changed and why….well, why he couldn’t even stand on his own two feet anymore.
His jaw dropped.
Where he was used to seeing….well, his own body, he seemed to have taken on an equine form. His arms and legs had turned into four furry, hoofed limbs. His robes were still in place, but his purse seemed to have turned into some type of saddlebag. “ACCURSED HYLIA WHY AM I A HORSE?!“ He thought, leaping to his feet--er, hooves. Now that he knew...well, what was wrong, he seemed to be able to keep his balance. Wobbling slightly, he balanced on his back legs….all four felt, unnatural.
Something was seriously wrong here. He needed to figure out what was happening…..now. This was all way too strange! What was the last thing he could remember, how had he gotten here?
The spell, that had to be it! Something one of his lieutenants had shown him, he had laughed in their face to even think he would need it, but it had its use.
The boy would never beat him, not with the infinite cycle of attempts that such a spell provided.
He glanced at the unfamiliar desert, it had been unexpectedly powerful; only meant to bend time, it seemed to have bent space as well. He looked down at the strange shadow cast by his unfamiliar form, apparently more than that.
Perhaps some other power resonated with the magic between that and the full power of the triforce clashing, cascading within that single room.
Unchecked magic could bring any number of possibilities.
He glanced toward the north and east, channeling his power to enhance his vision, he perceived a glimmering tower atop a regal mountain. This was a different world entirely, with its own magic, and its own power, he could feel it as a knot in his chest. It would be his. Hyrule, this unknown land, and infinite realities. It would all be his.
He gazed at his hoof, the triforce was still with him; all he had to do was want, and the power would come. He reached out to the source, the raging gatha of magic that existed all around. It still existed in this world, if covered in a thin film of … something else… It was different, if something else.
Still that same elemental force of existence that originated from the goddesses and permuted the rhythm of everything was there. That was it, magic was a song, and this place only sang in a different mode. But both stuck on the major scale, both could be bent with the dark energies of the Phrygian and the Eldredge. He reached out, and he could feel his forces, even in his weekend state he could call upon his power, and he could call his followers. He would call a silent war down on this land, on every land. By the time the curse called the boy and the princess into this land, Hylia curse them both, it would be too late.
“The voices of spirits long gone whispered melodies to them, the cool voice of the crypt howled in its own whimpering way. All the same the heroes continued forthwith.
The cool dank darkness that ebbed all around them would not be their end… but it so easily could have been. Perhaps the well was only the beginning of the darkness”…- DJ Pon3 The Legend of Link
Octavia gazed again at the grotesque skeleton which still leaned against the dead end of a wall. It glowered back at her silently.
“Which… which way do we go now?” she asked, a hint of tremble in her voice.
Epona smiled; “Forward” With that, she stepped right through the wall. Simple as that, she didn't crash through it, or dash through it, or smash it into any number of pieces. She merely stepped through, as one might a threshold or the sash of a curtain.
Octavia approached the wall, and held her hoof before it, only a hundredth of a meter away, a breath, a hair. Epona had stepped through so confidently and for the moment Octavia could only stare in frightened awe. She bit the inside of her lip and stepped forward… and just like that she was through!
Suddenly she lost her breath as Epona threw her against the wall.
Epona made a hushing motion with her hoof as a horrifying flaming pony skull bearing skeletal wings, or rather a pair of skeletal wings bearing a blazing pony skull, flapped past them along the connecting hallway.
“Sorry about that” Epona whispered, she seemed almost as breathless as Octaviea. ..”I had almost forgotten how scary this place could be” It was a lie, such a place could not be easily forgotten, but… she had to say something, to break the tension, some barrier with to yearn against the dark. She glanced around the corner, the creature had moved on, its sickly green flame infecting some other hallway.
The well was just as stark and formidable on this side of the wall as it had been on the other, but this side was larger; a seemingly endless maze of cobbled hallways crisscrossing every which way, an enthralling catacomb permeating the depths of Ponyville. Such a place should not exist here, was not built by pony hooves and backs. It was almost an organism of stone growing to forever entrap its prey. How many more fake walls, how many fickle floors could exist in such a place, what secrets rested in its depths? For a moment Octavia felt detached, as if she was floating steadily away from her own body, her breathing was all too shallow all too quick, even as she struggled to not make a sound. Epona touched a hoof to her shoulder. “Come on friend, we need to keep moving. Through that wall there.“ With her other hoof, she pointed across the hall.
Having stepped into the wall a shocking scene greeted the two ponies, even Epona; who through her fairy was familiar with the intricacies of the crypt, felt her stomach squirm at the sight before them.
A harrowing room filled with indisputable signs of captivity and torture, a place that reeked of death.
Prison cells lined every corner, and in the center, a crux, an actual crux; its crossed beams and the floor below were still red with the rust of blood.
Octavia approached the structure, in somber reverence, what that poor soul must have endured… nopony... No-body deserved such an end.
In pony history such a structure hadn't been used since… Well not since the princes tried to enact taxes… and it was even thought then that they had gone too far… and that, that had only been a means of tying a pony up to glue feathers to their back and mane… this structure, this structure was far worse.
Suddenly Epona ripped Octavia from the scene, whirling her around in something like a mock pirouette, ending with each in the other's forearms and then one atop the other. Octavia's shock at the sudden maneuver was soon answered as a rock or something of the sort splashed in some distant pool beneath the crux, the floor was fake.
There was something like a moment of silence, each panting in unison Epona upon Octaviea.
Octaviea squinted, the dull light above them was growing steadily… dimmer?
Suddenly she threw Epona off of her and bucked up, just in time too. As a massive clawed talon of mangled and bloated flesh descended from the ceiling above, only to be burst apart by Octaviea’s startled kick, sending chunks of flesh and rot flying everywhere. She grimmest as goop, chips of bone, as well as the unidentifiable, trickled off her main and snout.
At this, Epona couldn't help but chuckle.
They continued their foray proceeding through the next wall before, them having circled the crucifix giving it a wide berth.
Suddenly it was Octavia grabbing Epona and thrusting her to a wall,as another skull flapped down the hall, this time managing to singe her tail.
“That's it!” She screamed before bucking the poor thing into shards even as it fell to the ground at her hooves.
Epona was breathless, but she politely nodded in thanks.
On the wall before them a grim fountain smiled, a face, its mouth gushing rank sewage. Octavia found herself drawn from her thoughts as of all things the lavender sound of music issued through the otherwise dreary halls of the labyrinth. She looked up to her friend, Epona had Link's ocarina, which she had tied by a cord along her neck; and she was now playing it, serenading the fountain with the sweet lull of a lullaby. Octavia only for a moment wondered at it, before, and quite abruptly the fountain stopped burbling.
Epona set the ocarina back to her side and smiled. “We can go back to the entrance now.”
The entire water level of the demi dungeon had lowered, where there had once been streams of sewage where now just crevices of stone, now they stood over, which Octavia had stepped around when it had been filled yet neglected to note an emptied pool.
“We have to go in there?”
Epona nodded.
Octavia shivered at the thought of entering the drain.
“They saw the face of death in that desperate night. It was as the sun kissed the horizon that they would depart, that she would depart from this world.”- DJ Pon3,The Legend of Link
At that moment, the moment in which our heroes entered the well, the last of Equestria succumbed to the storm. So that from one border to the next, and even tumbling into the sea, Equestria was covered by not just eternal night, but by the churning clouds of a malignant storm.
As the last of Equestria succumbed to darkness, darkness not even the stars could touch, Luna mourned her sister.
She despaired, kneeling beside her sister's bed, she reached her hoof out to stroke Celestia’s lambent mane.
“The memory of you torrents despite the night around me. You… You were always so bright, and… “
Tears brimmed in her eyes.
“I… I can't sister. I can't do this alone…
I had a dream.”
She chuckled, a painful chuckle, there was a madness to it, her laughter was not a cackle, but it was crying.
“ I… I can’t do anything … I tried to help… to do something, and yet… I try to call out to them in their dreams… Like I tried to call out to you… and they don't hear me. It's like this black tide, a shadow, has covered all of Equestrea’s dreams. Oneírōn has always been a place of truths… many lies and flights of fancy don't get me wrong, but … It always seemed to point to some greater truth… but that's all gone now…all ponies see in their dreams anymore are the lies, their greatest fears, and fulfillment of their greatest greed… Sister…I can't do anything…they don't hear me, see me….
You couldn't see me.
Vinyl Scratch opened her eyes and stretched yawning. She wiped at her eyes with her hooves, and smacked her lips, in hopes of dispelling that sour sleep taste.
She shook herself before attempting to stand.
She was numb, tired in the way that only too much sleep could provide.
She glanced at Link who was likewise beginning to stir.
Her thoughts were cut off as just then-
BANG!
The library doors shot open, and none other than a ragged and bloodied (bits of monster guts still hanging from her mane) Octavia stood panting as she held them open.
In a moment Octavia was on top of her beloved roommate whimpering, sobbing into her mane.
“It worked! You're awake, alive, I'm so happy!” she bawled.
Link watched in utter confusion.
“Wha… what happened, what's this all about…and where did all these feathers come from… why am I wet?
Octaviea removed her face from her friend's mane... And looked to link, a look of remorse crossing her face.
“Epona,... she's gone, I'm sorry.”
It took a moment for Octaviea to get her wits about her, and when she did, or at least as she somewhat managed to regain her composure she asked that Link and Vinyl find everyone so that once she had showered she could share her story.
Link for a moment in his utter confusion looked as if he wanted to argue, to have a million questions answered right there in that moment, but nodded in obligation when Octaviea responded with a stern look that could melt a forest.
Epona, no Navi, it was definitely a Navi thought. Navi was surprised to find that upon approaching the door she was not afraid, even in considering what lay beyond.
She looked to Octavia.
“Ready?”
Everything they had been through so far, their courageous crawl through that disprit well, had led to this moment.
Octavia nodded, there was a look in her eyes, determination.
“Breach!” Epona swung around knocking the door out of its mount, revealing a room that was…
Empty, the room was empty.
It took some time for Octavia to shower, steam churned as she pushed her water heater further than perhaps it had ever had to go before to cleanse her coat of the awful muck from that well. The sun, which had first kissed the horizon as she exited the well, was teetering on the edge of its noonday peek and threatening to teeter into the after as she began to dry.
She thought a little, of Epona, of an old friend, and, of the dire state of Equestria; but set all this aside in the showers' warm embrace.
There was commotion in Ponyville, in fact in most of Equestria that morning as the populace awoke to the horrors of having slept for several months on end, and as for the rest of Equestria the gathering of dark clouds and forces of darkness. Only in Ponyville were the skies clear and bright, and the streets free of monsters and shadow.
As for Vinyl and Link, their mission was pretty straightforward, despite the long night their friends were mostly where they had left them.
Link and Vinyl having gathered who they could, and the complement that they had gathered, composed of Darunia, Ruto, Saria, and -
Bon Bon met Twilight in the map room of her Crystal Castle.
“It's Dark!” remarked Saria in startled surprise. And so it was, the map which had once shown all of Equestria as it had been, a land of radiant light and magic, and harmony was now dark. A shadow covered the cartograph in the form of malignant clouds, tendrils of a fogged miasma tumbled off onto the floor. Only Ponyville stood, a radiant light against the dark.
Twilight nodded wordlessly.
The group waited for Octavia in stunned silence.
“There is one hope… I can't quite believe it myself, but I did find some pony… She’s a stranger in this land… but she could see me… it was like there was this light… this force of magic. An alien magic but powerful nonetheless, protecting her.
I think I was able to guide her to something that calls out to me, a truth in the darkness…
There may be hope… but as ill as fate has been…as unkind…
They've taken the castle… luckily no pony was hurt, although I doubt I can keep them out of this chamber for much longer.
As if in response, a banging could be heard, a resounding retaliation against Luna's meager barrier.
… oh sister I love you.” She buried her face into her sister's mane and wept. “If only I could awaken you.” she sobbed.
