Of Fire and Ice

I turned slowly to my companions, fearing the worst.

“So,” I started, nervously looking at the empty coffins, then back at my companions. “What are the chances that there are zombies here?” I asked, hoping for a negative.

“None. What are you, five? Everypony knows that zombies don’t exist, Al.” Cold Snap deadpanned. I sighed in relief.

“Well, actually, with all the defensive enchantments on this place, in combination with how long these corpses have been here, residual magic may have seeped into the bodies, animating them in much the same way that one would create a golem. So actually, It's quite likely.” Gryphos said matter-of-factly. It almost physically hurt me to admit how much sense that made.

“God damn it, of course it is. Well, since more than half the coffins are currently open, I’m going to go ahead and say that we are most definitely fighting our way through.” I said, more irritated then anything else. Cold still looked stunned that Gryphos was able to say something that intelligent. “Well,” I said, gesturing to the first set of stairs. “Let’s get moving then. Horrible undead abominations won’t kill themselves, after all. We started our walk up the first flight, moving up a floor in the giant room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. I whirled around and saw what was probably one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever seen The Walking Dead, Zomponies looked somewhat like that, only you could actually see the centuries old flesh roll off of bones as if it were liquid. What was worse was the ribcage seemed to contain the rotting organs, only half preserved. As it stood, I could see what looked like its large intestine slowly coil out of the remnants of the stomach cavity. I moved my eyes up to the skull, to see half decomposed eyeballs left in the eye sockets, a strange green flame burning behind them. The skin that used to hold the jaw in place had fully decomposed, and as a result the jaw was completely unhinged, swinging with the motions of the abomination.

Being the manly man I was, I let out a very feminine scream possible and shot a huge bolt of fire at the creature. As my companions spun around to see what had happened, I was stuck staring at the smudge on the wall that was the zompony. I was breathing heavily, that bolt of fire having taken quite a bit out of me. I turned around to see two dry looks.

“Hey, don’t judge me! You two didn’t see it! It was horrible. A-absolutely horrible.” I said, my stuttering doing wonders to defend my last scraps of honor

“Yeah, right. Sure it was.” Gryphos said dismissively, while Cold just rolled her eyes. They moved to the other side of the room, walking up the stairs to the next floor. I just sat down, trying to recover from the nightmare fuel that I had just seen, when I heard two extremely feminine screams from the next floor up. I ran up the stairs, only to see bones scattered all over the room and a zompony hanging from a wall, impaled on a large shard of ice the size of my head. I turned to the gryphon and the mare, who somehow looked both sheepish and terrified at the same time. I like to think that I looked smug at that point, but I probably looked terrified too. I just pointed at next set of stairs, and they nodded. We moved on, desperate to get out of this tomb without becoming one of the occupants.

~~~

After three more floors, a few more screams, and plenty more zombies, we came to a large set of doors. They looked to be made of a dark stone, obsidian perhaps. I pushed them open, and we entered a chamber about the same size as the orgasmic treasure room. In it was a raised platform, with a staircase winding upward around it. At the top of the platform was a coffin, larger than the rest of them. I looked questioningly toward the others, but they just shrugged. I’m not sure how Freezie shrugged, but she did. We walked over to the stairs, moving as stealthily as a small horse, a cat-bird hybrid, and an oversized ape could. When we reached the top, I saw two things that bothered me to no end; one was the largest coffin of them all, and the other was a large urn, made of some sort of glowing clay and covered in runes and hieroglyphs.

“My life is just a bad video game refren-“ I started, before the coffin’s lid slowly rose, revealing a skeletal hoof. I took a startled step back, knocking into my companions and falling on my ass in one fell swoop. The lid slammed to the ground with a loud bang, as the figure in the coffin stood. Its skin was mostly intact, showing that the coffin was quite effective in preserving what was inside. The remains of a once lush mane swayed slightly as the figure stepped slowly out of its tomb. It seemed to look around, before stretching a pair of skeletal wings. It turned toward us slowly, and when the creature finally was facing us, a partially chipped horn pointed at us in was undoubtedly a threatening fashion.

“Who dares disturbs the eternal rest of Queen Akhal-Teke, last of the great Mareyans?” She rasped, her voice obviously having been unused for centuries. I’m not particularly used to conversing with long dead royalty, so luckily Cold decided to speak up.

“W-we were simply passing through, your majesty.” She said, obviously terrified. I simply nodded rapidly, and I heard Gryphos doing the same. The zombified Alicorn chuckled at what I’m sure was a very humorous and pathetic sight. I felt my head stop moving, held in the grip of some invisible force, which I assumed was her magic.

“Do you really think you can fool me? I recognize this one’s form. You are obviously disciples, here to free your master. I suppose I should congratulate you for getting here, but you can celebrate your minor success in the void.” She said, her voice progressively becoming more menacing. I felt my head released from her grip, only to see her horn glowing, obviously building some sort of power.

“DUCK!” I shouted, just as I felt a large bolt of pure magic give me an unwelcome haircut. I turned to my companions to see that they luckily still had their heads on their shoulders. I pointed towards the staircase, and started moving. Cold and Gryph got the gist, and started running toward the stairs as well. We continued running down the stairs to the tune of massive blasts of magic over our heads, slamming into the column as she somehow flew in circles around us on her badly decomposed wings, strafing us like some sort of dive bomber. We had reached the bottom of the stairs when I had a series of brilliant ideas. “Gryph, get in the air and push her down toward us!” He looked confused for a moment, before a blast of arcane might slammed into the stone next to his head, and he flew off to complete his task. I turned to Cold and pointed to the floor in front of our little piece of cover, “Freeze the floor over there. I’m pretty sure that’s where she is going to crash.” She nodded and lit up her horn, shooting out a burst of blue light toward the floor, covering it in a shining sheet of ice. As I stood to enact my part of the plan, I heard an avian screech followed by the distinctive sound of a gust of air. I watched as the undead Alicorn was violently pushed toward the frozen ground. She collided with a crunch, the brittle bones holing her legs together crumbling under the stress of the harsh landing. The queen attempted to rise up, but her mangled legs and the ice worked in tandem to stop her. I slowly walked toward her, an aura of heat melting the ice under my feet so I wouldn’t look like an idiot.

“Any last words, your majesty?” I said sarcastically, still angry about my surprise hairdo that made me look like a slightly younger Colin Mochrie. She looked up to me, the flames that were her eyes dim.

“I know not why you wish to free your master, but I urge you to reconsider. It would cause naught but pain and chaos to all” She said, her voice almost pleading.

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, raising my hand to her face slowly. “But I’ll keep that in mind.” I finished, shooting a lance of fire into her head, incinerating most of her face. I stood and stepped back. “I think I saw a door back at the top of the column.” I said, and we walked back to the stairs together in silence.

When we reached the top, I saw the door, a similar type of material to the door that lead to the crypt. I also saw the urn from before, completely intact and undamaged despite the magic missiles that had been flying about. I carefully walked over to the clay construct, wondering just what would warrant such a guard.

“Hold up Al. After all that, the warnings, the boss fight, the manecut, you still want to open some enchanted urn that was guarded by a malevolent Alicorn zombie?” Gryphos asked from beside me.

“It’s called a haircut, and yep.” I responded simply, slowly moving my hands to lift the lid of the urn. As I grabbed the edges of the lid and lifted slowly, I was shoved onto my ass again as the lid shot into the air and a cloud of white mist shot up, then landed in front of me, slowly solidifying into a the shape of a woman. A human woman. Needless to say, I was a little surprised. Stranger still, she materialized wearing jeans and a black t-shirt (much to my hidden disappointment), which didn’t strike me as the attire of some sort of evil spirit. She looked from me, to my companions, and back again, before settling on me. She grinned widely and stuck her hand out at me.

“Hiya!” She said in an extremely peppy voice. “My name’s Eris! Would you care for an apple?” She snapped the fingers of her other hand and a golden apple materialized in her outstretched hand. It took me a moment to connect her name to the apple, but when I did, I preformed one of the most majestic facepalms ever seen by any living being.

“WHAT IS MY LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE?”