Daring Do and the Curse of the Snakebite Anklet
This had been too easy. The thought reverberated around Daring’s head as the old stone door rose slowly up and into its massive frame. Hundreds of tombs, temples, and vaults had given up their treasure after an assortment of challenges, puzzles, and enemies. Every single one had been an exciting and thrilling adventure, as she triumphed through adversity every time. She was Daring Do after all, adventurer extraordinaire. Yet this had been a case of putting in a key and walking through the front door. Well, not a literal key, but the stone carving of an equine skull with an odd jaw. Sure, it hadn’t been an easy key to find, being part of a treasure horde from a different temple, but where was the danger?
The grinding of ancient stonework slowly rising continued to drone loudly. Daring took a moment to actually look at the image carved into it. A mighty serpent coiling around and around, yet where its head would be the hips of a pony emerged and from there she might as well have been gazing upon a mirror. Well, a very crappy mirror that was all blurry so could only make out the simple details. Point is that it was a pony with a snake instead of back legs. All around it were much smaller carvings of zebra in worship, chins touching the floor in deference. It was pretty obviously Mesoamareican, looked Early Period too, but it had different details than any of the groups around at the time. She shook her head, deciding that she’d work this all out after she left, going back to her thoughts.
The temple of Coatlicue. Now that had been a temple. Traps everywhere, rival archaeologist and his flunkies all over the place. She’d been caught, tied up and had to escape in dramatic fashion. And she always escaped, because she was Daring Do. It was what she did. There’d been a backstabbing native, a dramatic and exciting finale, and a horde of treasure. She was definitely going to write that one into a book. It deserved to be. First though she had decided to follow up on this lead, because she was hoping for another dramatic temple run… but so far this hadn’t been anything of the sort, only miles of empty corridors that snaked around and around into a confusing mess. If it weren’t a single path then in all likelihood she would be very lost, but the temple had even lit itself up for her with flaming torches. The only worrying thing really was all the pictographs telling her this place was incredibly dangerous. Yet a million warnings and no traps had sort of dulled their effect. This’d be barely a footnote when she wrote that book.
The door finally finished rising with a loud click, locking into place and allowing Daring through. The adventurer checked her brown leather messenger bag and adjusted her pith helmet before gazing within. Inside was a darkened chamber, only an odd glowing plate set in the ceiling above the pedestal casting any light, showing the pedestal but very little else of the room. Daring grabbed a torch from beside the door before she slowly paced inside. This had to be the treasure chamber… yet it lacked most things treasure chambers did. There were no statues, no tablets, not even a sarcophagus. There was just a pedestal of grey rock.
Usually Daring would be careful, but given how lax everything had been so far she just strolled into the room, hooves clopping on the stone frame of the two foot doorway for the colossal door she had just opened. The skittering of spiders from up above caused her ears to twig, but she heard nothing else. Her eyes watched the walls and floor for any sign of traps as she held her torch aloft in her mouth, but none presented themselves. Nothing stopped her from reaching the plinth.
Daring didn’t know what she expected, but all that lay upon it was a golden anklet. She looked around the room once more, hoping for a big treasure pile to materialise from out of nowhere, but nothing presented itself. She had come all this way for an anklet. She sighed loudly as she gazed upon it. There was no surprise it was a serpent, a hooded cobra from the look of it. From the tail it wound around the leg three times, before it finished with the head, deep red fire rubies glinting from inside the eye sockets. Carefully she lowered the torch to the ground and let it drop, before she lifted back up once more to gaze upon the anklet.
Daring reached for it with her hoof, and then froze. She could picture all of those warnings she had read again and again. Maybe they alluded to the treasure rather than to any traps. The adventurer reached into the pouch of her light green shirt and pulled out a bundle of cloth. Slowly she peeled away the fabric, revealing the dazzling white pebble within, taking care not to touch it with her hoof. The small rock seemed to shine in her hoof as she gently lifted it over the anklet before she sent it tumbling. Daring screwed her eyes shut tight straight away, but even through her eyelids she could still see the dazzling white eruption of light. Even as it faded she could still see random splotches of colour. When she opened her eyes again she had to blink several more times to try and clear her vision.
It took minutes before she could see the rock was dull and lifeless. She picked it up and tossed it to the side without a thought. “Not getting another unwanted package on my crotch,” she mumbled to herself as a reminder of the last time she hadn’t tested an artefact, that damn fertility idol having funny ideas. With everything clear, Daring slowly reached for the gleaming anklet, ready for anything to strike. Her hoof pad took hold, clasping around it and she lifted it off. Instantly she dove backwards, wings flared outwards to help her leap back further, but all she did was kick up dust. There was no click, no beep. In fact there was no noise at all. Not even a triumphant fanfare.
Daring lifted the bracelet to give it a more detailed look. It was very well made. The underbelly was scaled and the back of the head displayed a spectacled pattern shaped kind of like a horseshoe. She turned it around to get a good look at its face, but she quickly found herself staring into the red rubies it had for eyes. Those gleaming gems exhibited special and beautiful warmth, like that of fresh, flowing blood. Daring just couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away.
A blood curdling scream filled the chamber, and it took Daring a second to realise it was from her, and a second later to realise what it was. The anklet was on her right foreleg. She didn’t know how but there it was midway up her. The previously closed mouth was openly bearing its fangs. On the inside of the golden band spikes had slidden out, spearing Daring's foreleg all around, driving deep into her tender flesh. Daring cried out again as she reached with her left forehoof to try and pull it off, blood oozing down her leg in rivulets of vivid red. As soon as her hoof touched it, the snake seemed to coil around tighter, the spikes being rammed deeper into her soft flesh until they struck bone with spurts of a deeper, black hued blood.
The snake anklets bite was excruciating, Daring feeling as if her leg was being used as a butcher’s knife block. Then she heard that click. Her blood would have frozen if it weren’t running down her leg. The click of a trap was a sound she could place anywhere. The door she had entered through began to slide out once more. Thoughts of being imprisoned in here caused Daring to break into action, an attempted gallop earning a shriek of pain as flexing her leg caused every nerve in her leg to light as if on fire, burning, searing pain threatening to overwhelm her.
The door was halfway down, but Daring was sure she could make it. She did every time after all. Yet today was different. Some cosmic force had decided the pebble she had thrown to the side so carelessly would land right where her hoof decided to place itself. The pegasus screamed as she tumbled over, flinging head over hooves as that little rock flew away. Her hat fell from her head, landing back in the room as Daring landed on her back, screaming in pain.
Her eyes opened just in time to see the two foot wide slab of stone weighing in the tonnes about to come to rest. Her upper half was eclipsed by the block of carved rock. Daring’s scream broke off suddenly, replaced by a horrifyingly wet squishing sound, disturbed only by the meaty crunch of snapping bones. For Daring there was less than a second of the worst pain she had ever felt before her muzzle was snapped clean in half and driven back through her brain to cast her into merciful oblivion.
The door was designed to close completely, and the pegasus adventurer lying below it was not going to stop it in its task. The uncompromising, unyielding hardness of stone showed just how malleable bone and flesh could be. Daring’s skull lasted fractions of a second longer than her muzzle before it was pulverised, bones splintering and cracking as the pressure drove down on her top half like a hoof squeezing a tube of toothpaste. The moist meaty insides that made Daring tick were driven downwards, the bones there still holding as displaced flesh drove down into them. Daring’s anus was forced apart by her own rectum, followed swiftly by her intestines and stomach as the meat ribbon of her digestive system was forced out of her own tailhole.
Daring’s skeletal form showed no resistance to the hard stone as snap after crunch cost her any semblance of form. The squishy flesh of her upper half ruptured, bursting open like a pus filled sore to splash scarlet all over the base of the stone door. The line between insides and outsides blurred into nothingness as everything above the waist became a wet red pulp of meat, her lower half giving a macabre dance with the firing of dying signals.
Before her body completely surrendered her marehood’s lips parted as amber fluid rushed out, yellow and red mixed into a powerful stream as it drizzled all over the fleshy pile of her organs between her legs. Her marehood twitching once, then twice, before all was still. Nothing more moved, silence returning to the empty chamber.
“There’s no way that just happened!” Daring’s voice cut through the empty chamber once more, the pegasus stepping out of the dark shadows that filled the back of the chamber. She reached down for the burning torch she had tossed to the floor when she noticed that all of her clothes and bags were gone… yet the anklet was still firmly around her wrist. The eyes seemed to glow even brighter.
“Do you think your eyesss playsss tricksss?” Daring flinched at the sound. She hadn’t heard it so much as thought it, but it wasn’t a thought of her own. “Thank you for sssatisfying my bloodlusssst.” Daring couldn’t help but look around the room before she focused once more on her anklet. “Oh yesss, you were a sssmart cookie, checking for cursssesss. If only you were a unicorn… poor little pegasssusss. You and I, we’re bound together now.”
Daring took a moment to process it all, eyes wide and mouth agape before she gently pulled it shut and swallowed. “You’re a talking anklet,” she said simply. Daring’s head was filled with a dry, mocking laughter that seemed to echo around her skull. “Hey! Don’t you make fun of me! I’m not a block of metal!” Daring shouted defensively.
The laughter subsided. “Oh, but it is ssso very refreshing. It hasss been ssso very long sssinssse I held communion with another,” the voice stated. “But enough of that, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re not a carcassss. Take a look behind you, little pegasssusss.”
Daring felt her blood chill at the voice’s words. It can’t have actually happened… surely that was all an illusion. Slowly she tilted her whole body, eyes kept low until she was facing the door, and then she opened them. What she saw made her legs tremble, hey eyes widen, and gasps emerge from open lips.
The orange glow of the flaming torch lit up to the stone slab that blocked the entryway, now firmly sealed. The base of the door was splattered with still fresh stains of scarlet, a pair of legs and a rump sticking out from beneath the door utterly covered in blood. Above them the door was clearly completely sealed, with not even the most remote trace of an upper half of a body. Even the lower half seemed almost deflated, skin sunken and clinging to the bones. She didn’t have to look far to see why. Between the corpse’s splayed legs was a mound of moist meat. Organs and all the tubes that connected them together were heaped up, a stinking pile of offal still dribbling blood and piss from her own post death discharge.
“Beautiful, isssn’t it? How doesss it feel to see your own ssstill warm body? Ticklesss the nethersss…” the voice hissed.
Daring felt the contents of her stomach rush up her throat, cheeks bulging at the voice within her head’s insinuation. It was a real struggle to force it down, especially as she was still staring at her own corpse. Daring’s own cutie mark stared back at her, there was no denying this was her. There was no denying she was dead… but she was also alive. Stood here, right now.
“How…” A second surge of vomit had to be swallowed back with a gulp as it rushed her. “How am I not dead?” she asked slowly.
“Because of me. I sssaved your life little pegasssusss. Don’t you remember feeling all of that pressssure, pussshing down on your fragile little face?” The voice seemed to deepen in pitch as Daring felt a cold sweat dripping from her forehead. “That sssatisssfying crunch as your sssilly muzzle collapsssed in on itssself? Oh, I can only imagine the pain.”
“Stop it! Stop saying those things! Just shut up!” Daring screamed, stomping her forehooves on the floor. She could remember it, she could still feel it deep in her mind. The hopelessness and despondency as that unstoppable slab of stone came right for her, then that pain. Oh, Celestia, she never wanted to experience that again. Those fleeting microseconds had been worse than an hour of sheer agony.
The voice inside her head chuckled once more. “Oh don’t fret, little pegasssusss. There will be many, many more where that came from. In cassse you can’t sssee the door you came in doesssn’t open from thisss ssside. And your little pegasssusss body didn’t keep it wedged. Oh no, we have to take the back exit.”
Daring was still staring at that pile of organs. Seeing your own insides… it was not something anypony should ever have to see. It was then she noticed her hat, lying there on the floor. She reached down slowly, picking it up and returned it to its rightful place on her head. When she turned back it was resolutely. “Another exit? Where?” she called as she turned back past the pedestal and scooped up the torch with a hoof.
“Sssearch for an indent on the back wall,” the voice said clearly.
Daring moved over to the back wall, casting her torch over the seemingly featureless stone. Her explorer’s eyes even had a hard time catching sight of the hole, but within a minute she managed to find the slot, the open maw of a sculpture of a hissing serpent. Its mouth was a round hole just wide enough to stick a foreleg. “You can’t be serious…”
“Do you wisssh to remain in thisss room forever? I don’t imagine the air will get any thicker. Don’t be a pansssy, embrace my gift to you,” the voice said sharply.
Daring didn’t want to do it, but there was no other option. She shakily lifted her foreleg with the bracelet upon it and drove it into the hole until it hit a plate. There was a resolute click and the entire wall started to shift, dragging apart in opposite directions as the left side of the wall moved left and the other to the right, slowly grinding outwards to reveal a hallway between them.
As soon as she saw the walls moving, Daring went to yank back out her foreleg when she felt like two sharp needles were driven into it, spearing deep. Daring cried as she pulled her foreleg out hard, dragging a golden serpent out with her, fangs still embedded in her foreleg.
She instantly started to shake her leg, trying to get the snake to pull off but it only bit down harder. “Get off of me!” she shrieked, already feeling a burning sensation in her foreleg. Daring wasn’t exactly a herpetologist, but she knew her poisonous snakes, and this was a bad one. Those teeth still wouldn’t release. Daring slammed her foreleg down on the ground, and then struck the top of the snake’s head hard with a hoof, earning an even deeper bite, but she had to get it off.
A few more strikes and the snake tumbled onto the floor, and Daring leapt onto it, stomping and smashing it under her hooves as the tiny crackle and pop of snake bones rang from beneath her with spurts of bright red blood, smearing all over the base of her hooves. Even after the snake stopped moving she kept on crushing and smashing, until all that was left was a pulpy red paste, mixed in with shreds of the snake’s skin.
“Feel better? I would have sssorted the poissson firssst…” the voice reminded her with an internalised smirk.
Daring’s eyes went wide as she quickly raised up her foreleg to look at the two neat bloody gashes, literally dripping with poison. “Buck...” This one looked bad. Her muzzle went to it as she tried to suck out the poison, desperately putting her mouth to it to suck out some venom and spit it out onto the floor, but she could already feel the burning pain spreading through her system. She had to drop her foreleg as she staggered back, the voice in her head laughing.
“Don’t dessspair, little pegasssusss, the way forward is open. You’ll make it out asss sssoon as your heart ssstopsss,” the voice declared.
The fire spread through Daring’s veins, her head already starting to spin. Her panicked breathing filled her ears as she stumbled back, blinking to try and see clearly as her vision already grew spotty. “No! No! Buck you and your snakes!” Daring cried out, staggering back and forth. Her hoof touched the squishy pulped snake and she gave it another smash, and another. Then she went to rise her hoof again, it locked in place, refusing to even move.
Daring hopped to the side on her three other hooves, trying to stay balanced when she felt her other hind hoof go, the mare’s rear half sagging downwards as she struggled to stay upright. “Shplot, shplot biff,” Daring choked out, her tongue so swollen up she couldn’t formulate her words properly. “Ahm Berring Boo!”
“Oh I do wonder what’ll ssslay you. Will your ssstresssed heart give in before your brain?”
The adventurer’s cheeks began to bulge and swell outwards, past snake bites coming back to haunt Daring as her whole face started to bloat, eyelids forcibly sealing as they pushed downwards. Daring staggered back and forth for a moment before back she tumbled, her muscles locking up as the venom robbed them of oxygen, the explorer landing on her back at the same moment as she started to seizure.
A splash of scarlet followed by most of Daring’s swollen tongue splattered out of her mouth as her body shook, spasming this way and that, unrelenting pain refusing to let itself be ignored as her skin burnt like it was on fire with itchiness she couldn’t hope to scratch. Her heart was thumping like the drum of an enthusiastic foal as deep coughs forced her lungs to clear, moments before her throat started to swell.
“My little pegasssuss has tangled with sssnakes before. Ssshame thisss one will be ssso different.”
In moments her desperate wheezing was cut off as her throat sealed shut, robbing her body of any oxygen. As she choked and gagged breathlessly, her mouth started to froth with bloody saliva, forcing between her locked teeth to dribble and drool everywhere. The pressure inside her head kept on growing and then the blood vessels in her eyes erupted, colouring them in red.
Her heart gave a last heavy pound before it cut off, followed immediately by an explosion of blood vessels within her brain as scarlet sprayed out of her ears and poured from her eyes and mouth, her body spasming a few last times as her marehood still was pushed open to release a flow of reddy brown fluid, splashing on the stone floor beneath her, the dissolved remnants of some of her muscles pouring out of her and going all over her legs with a last twitch.
“Quite the photo finisssh,” the voice chuckled as everything faded to blackness and Daring stilled once more.
Daring staggered out of the darkness to fall to her knees on the cold stone. Tears poured from her eyes to splash against the floor below her as she felt herself dry heaving. “Sssilly little pony, there’sss not time for ressst,” the voice hissed urgently.
Daring waved a hoof into the air as if trying to beat back an imaginary face. “You… you’re a monster…” she whimpered weakly.
“Oh no. The monssstersss are the onesss who locked me away here… made these elaborate trapsss,” the voice hissed darkly. “I am jussst guiding you through. There wasss no way to open that door without hitting that ssswitch and taking that sssnake venom. You were ssscrewed from the ssstart.”
Daring tried to get her rampant breathing under control, to still her racing heart, but it was quite a task after what she just went through. “Don’t act… like you didn’t enjoy that…”
“Perisssh the thought. That was sssexy beyond belief. I wisssh I ssstill had a marehood to ssshlick asss you bounced around like quicksssilver in a heated pan."
Daring heaved loudly, but there was nothing to come out. The sudden thought of starving to death made her stomach groan. "You should've warned..."
"No, I ssshouldn't. You would not have ssslid your little hoofsie in that sssnug little ssslot otherwissse. We would be trapped and you would sssuffocate. I would bring you back in thisss airlessss room only for you to ssstill once more again and again."
There was a thought that chilled poor Daring to the bone. As cruel as this spirit or whatever it was seemed, it had its best interests at heart, which for now were also hers. That thought consoled her a little, and a last retch earned a spot of saliva onto the stone floor before the Pegasus shakily pushed back up to her hooves.
"Way ahead'sss now clear," the voice reminded her.
"I'm getting to it!" Daring snapped. A few ragged breaths followed for a moment before Daring sighed again. The dark tunnel beckoned deeper. There was no clue as to where it would lead, but Daring knew it wouldn’t be nice. She looked at her corpse once more, taking special note that there was no anklet on the body, then she noticed her hat still firmly affixed to the corpse’s head. Daring reached down and the pith helmet was in her hooves again, then once more on her head. She wouldn't give in here, she wouldn't because she was Daring Do! No curse could best her. She would escape this tomb.
The sound of clopping hooves on stonework echoed once more as Daring stepped into that newly opened tunnel. There were clear grooves cut down into the floor like an ugly gash, exposing the mechanical insides which had pulled those walls along. The passageway was long and dark, but she could see light filtering in from the end, and strangely enough it wasn’t the pallid light of sickly torches that had lit the way in, it seemed almost natural. The thought spurred Daring to move faster, pushing into a canter.
The sudden sound of clattering stone made her yelp in surprise. For a moment she could imagine those heavy walls suddenly slamming back together to make her into a strawberry surprise, but they stayed stood stock still. Looking down she saw a small rock that her hoof had caught and she let out a heavy sigh.
“Getting jumpy, little pegasssusss?” the voice asked, making Daring flinch and fall back onto her rump, earning another snicker from the voice.
Daring shook herself. “You would be too if you still had a body to lose,” Daring mumbled as she put her hoof onto the wall for support. As soon as she pressed in, the stone slid back with a click, and Daring gasped.
The pegasus’ rump was placed perfectly over the long slot in the floor which she had thought had only facilitated the movement of the wall. It seemed it had another purpose. The sensation of her tailhole being spread wide might not have been so horrifying if not for the fact the tip was pointed, thrusting into her soft anus and pushing through the flesh inside as much as it pushed those anal walls apart, and it didn’t stop there. Her bladder was clean split as it pushed through it, golden urine splashing out around the rising pole, mixing with blood as it oozed down the sides of the cylinder.
“Ooh… that looksss fun.”
Daring managed a soft cry as the spear reached the entrance to her intestines and kept on sliding, opting to go right through them rather than follow the twisting paths. Her body spasmed, rear hooves kicking as the force lifted her slightly off the floor, a soft wet squishing sound the only clue that a thick metal rod was being rammed straight up through her. Her colon gave it no pause, followed swiftly by her stomach and liver, a clear imprint of the spear visible on her chest as it pierced right through those vital organs like they were chunks of meat on a shish kebab.
Her right lung was next, the sac rupturing with an audible popping sound as if a balloon had gone inside of her. She started to gag and retch, feeling the spear in the base of her throat and rising upwards, her body trying to spit it out as she opened her mouth wide and angled her head. With a final wet shlick the tip of the spear, covered in all kinds of fluid but most notably blood protruded from the tip of her mouth. It was only slightly longer than she was, and as her body spasmed only the very tip and base of that thick metal rod were visible as anything other than just a bulge through her insides.
“Resssissstant little pegasssusss aren’t you?”
Daring’s body refused to die. Air flowed around the spear, working with her intact lung which refused to give in. Her heart kept beating, blood still flowing around her and oozing from her gaping anus down the spear, as well as occasionally being coughed out of her maw to dribble down her chin. How was she still alive? She could feel the spear, how it filled every inch of her body with that cool, hard length. The pain was phenomenal, as her body twitched from signals from all over her flaring up, but Daring could still think. She didn’t know how long death would take, but she couldn’t handle this. She could imagine hours, days, sitting on this spear until the blood loss finally took her.
“We don’t have all day, pegasssusss. If you’re going to ssslay yourssself, do it ssswiftly.”
The speared adventurer knew what she had to do. Her hind hooves pressed downwards, stretching out to find the floor, even though in the process it sent more spasm of unimaginable pain, gasps escaping Daring’s mouth around that thick spear tip. As soon as they touched the stone, she pushed all of her strength against it, slowly and painfully dragging the spear back through her entire body as she rose up feet of cold, hard, iron. The weak flutter of wings helped her drag the spear back down through her with a constant, moist squelching until the tip had slid all the way down to the base of her throat. Slowly and resolutely, she realigned her head downwards, and then she lifted her legs. There was a loud, wet crunch and then silence.
Daring popped back into existence on her rump in the dark shadows of the first chamber once more. She was really getting sick of that pedestal. It took her a moment to recover, to get over the sudden emptiness in her entire body as fresh air flooded both lungs. When her eyes opened, she was looking down at the snake poison ridden corpse of her second mistake. Morbid curiosity caused her to check the entrance again and make sure she could still see her lower half lying against that bloodstained door.
“Third time’sss the charm, huh, pegasssusss? Getting usssed to it yet?” the voice asked in her head, it sounding a little louder than before.
“No…” Daring rasped, before sighing and slowly climbing to her hooves. Her eyes fixed on that passageway once more. Even though the trap had been triggered, there was a walkable corridor in between the rows of upwards spears that now lined the left and right side of the passage.
“It’sss jussst a little pain. Don’t be sssuch a baby,” the voice said snarkily, making Daring scowl and roll her eyes.
In silence she started to move back down the corridor, hooves clopping against the hard stone as she marched into the darkness between the ranks of spears. It didn’t take long until she came to the one right in the centre of the long corridor, the one that featured a grisly adornment.
Daring stared at her body. Blood was still dribbling down her front, but beyond that everything was still. The entire corpse was tensed, but she appeared completely unblemished. The tip might have pierced the skull, but not her pith helmet, which still sat snugly hinting how perfectly the spike had fitted through her. Daring could have been staring at a mirror, although the lack of life behind those wide open eyes was obvious. She lifted a hoof and gently closed one eye, then the other, before recovering her hat and replacing it on her own head.
When she looked again she could see the shards of bone that had erupted out from the internal impact, as well as that bladed tip. She followed the spear, able to see it even through her swollen throat and tensed body, the imprint of the cylinder visible through the corpse all the way to the bottom, where that gaping tailhole still leaked. Where the base of the spear touched the floor there was a greasy puddle of urine mixed with blood, the shocks of scarlet and scented yellow individually discernible.
“Kind of sssad really,” the voice said, making Daring raise an eyebrow in confusion. “If we had a big fire, you would have made a ssssucculent meal with ssssuch a clean sssskewering.”
Daring actually took a few seconds to put together a response in shock at the voice’s words. “You… are sick. Please do not mention anything to do with my corpses and food again.” With a loud sigh, Daring turned and then continued down the tunnel.
At the end of the tunnel, Daring finally emerged into the next chamber, and into the blinding light. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, to slowly take in the huge chamber split neatly down the middle. For once there was more than just dull grey brick. The jungle was seeping through cracks and holes, reclaiming the ancient chamber after untold centuries. creeping vines advanced across the ceiling, intertwining across where the reflection from the cool pool below shined. The pool in question couldn’t be rain water, perhaps some holes in the foundation through which an underground river had eroded its way through.
Daring couldn’t stop a smile forming on her face. The river would flow out to a cavern eventually and she’d be back out in the jungle. Although even better than that… the pegasus gave a flutter of her wings, then looked back up to the deep gouge in the ceiling, staring up at the thick canopy she could see up above it, through which rays of sunlight filtered downwards. She wouldn’t need to go all the way through the temple. The exit was right there.
“Sssussspiciousss,” the voice inside her head mumbled. It was taken off guard too, clearly expecting there to be a lot more trials here. After all, there was a doorway on the other side of the room with the way deeper into the temple within sight.
Daring ignored the voice, trotting slowly over to stand in the sunlight, staring up at the window into freedom that lay tantalisingly above. Her wings started to flap in earnest, lifting her off the ground to hover in the air. A few beats and she was up at the hole in the ceiling, staring into the deep green of the canopy above. Another flap and she was out of that temple.
Her eyes took a second to adjust to the brighter natural light, everything turning white for a second. She lowered herself down to the ground, landing on the surprisingly spongy and sticky surface. Her hoof brushed against something, but she paid it no mind for a moment. As soon as she blinked away the last of the light she saw the wall of green mottled with pink in front of her, and was instantly confused.
“I don’t like thisss,” the voice said, and Daring couldn’t help but agree. She took a step back, and her hoof brushed against another protruding spike like thing sticking out of the ground. Then everything started to move and she managed a scream before there was a resounding snap as the voice cried out, “It’s a trap!”
The wall of pink flew forwards as Daring extended her wings, but she didn’t manage to beat them in time. The spongy floor below her had raised up at the same speed, and Daring was crushed between the two halves of the plant’s jaws, her outstretched wings getting caught outside the thick green spikes that caged in the poor mare. Her wings flapped uselessly, while inside the plants maw, Daring thrashed and kicked. The leathery pouch was tight around her, the pegasi’s body held compactly within. Through the light shining through the closed leaves, Daring’s struggling shadow could be seen within the tight confine of the leathery pouch that sealed around her.
“Let me go, you stupid marigold!” Daring grunted as she tried to lever open those jaws with her hind hooves, pressing against the bar like teeth as her body was smeared with sweet sap that must have lured in the insects it usually fed on. Her wings beat and beat, trying to pull her back, but the cage was just too tough. Daring pulled her hind legs back then kicked out with all her might against those bars, but they barely shifted.
A slight gasp of pain came from her as she felt a gash in her hoof from the solid kick. A bead of blood dribbled down, and then onto the leaf. As soon as it made contact, her cage suddenly began to shrink. “Buck!” Daring cried out as the jaws snapped tighter, her body being compressed slowly as she felt her ribs creak, and then start to snap individually. Her wing joints twisted, and the left wing snapped off completely, a gust of wind blowing it away while her right beat weakly at a nasty angle. If felt like Daring was caught in a slowly tightening vice, and then it stopped.
“I think you might have made it mad…” the voice whispered to her, and Daring used most of her air to let out a roar and kick her four legs as much as she could, although they could barely move in the tight pouch. The once sap covered leaves began to ooze something else, and Daring felt her coat starting to itch. The stinging ooze was being squished into every inch of her body from both leaves. Daring then put two and two together.
“I’m not… going… to be… fertiliser…” Daring croaked as she kicked and squirmed in what little space she had. Already clumps of her fur were falling off, exposing the skin below which was starting to blister and turn an angry red. She felt the acids being smeared over her tailhole and marehood, the stinging there especially painful and distracting as the outer lips of her pussy, and the rim of her ass were starting to be eaten away, digested by the plant.
Daring wasn’t sure if it was because she wasn’t a bug, or whether these giant flytraps had that much more powerful acids, but she wasn’t going to even last an hour in here. The gaps in her coat sprouted bloody welts as the acids burned and seared, weakened skin starting to leak more scarlet as the adventurer refused to go quietly. The acids starting to press in through her tailhole and marehood now, getting inside and making her twitch as they burned through those sensitive areas.
“You know, this technically isn’t even a temple trial,” the voice said conversationally, to which Daring responded with a growl. The adventurer couldn’t be bested by a simple plant. She was better than this! Her squirming did nothing though but help apply the acids more generously across her form, helping to grind off her problematic skin and expose her insides to the searing acids. Her weakened flesh was like a bruised peach, and all it took was a pocket of fluids to push against it and in it went, tearing open holes all over her body and she felt the acids flow inside of her, going straight into her cavities and organs.
The adventurer thrashed and wriggled like a worm, able to do nothing more in that tight embrace. She wanted nothing more to claw at her chest, to try and scoop out the acids, but she was practically paralysed by the tightness. She felt a rush of fluids in her throat and when she opened her mouth, acid and blood mixed together spewed forth, to splash right back into her open chest cavity again. Fortunately her heart didn’t last long.
Daring reappeared once more in that treasure chamber, hooves going straight for her belly, but they bounced off the soft intact flesh. She closed her eyes and swallowed with a sigh. “Really, really sick of this room right now!” she shouted irately, but she was still shuddering in remembered fear and pain.
The voice in her head broke into laughter. “It really growssss on you. Jussst give it a few more centuriesss.”
The adventurer sighed again, giving the quick one two that both her crushed and poisoned corpses were there, before she moved forwards into that dark tunnel again. Passing her impaled former self she trotted out into the open chamber once more, and looked up at the hole in the ceiling she had flown through. There was an oddly belch like sound from above and a slimy skull flew down through the air to shatter at her feet. Daring crouched down and picked up the helmet off of it, giving it a shake to get the acids out then returning it to her head. “If we can’t fly out, then we’re swimming out,” she declared.
“Asss long asss we get out, I don’t care how you do it, pegasssusss,” the voice declared in agreement.
Daring trotted over to the water’s edge to stare down into the murky depths. Under the sunlight a few plants had managed to spread themselves to the water, some thick clumps of surface water weeds, some of which featured bright and pretty flowers of vibrant pinks and blues. The air was silent, no sound of wildlife. Daring was confident in her swimming abilities. She lowered her head down, muzzle moving to the water as she took her stance to dive. Then a mess of weeds grew teeth.
The pegasus screamed as she tried to pull back but a pair of massive jaws burst from the water, the soft pink maw clearly visible as her face was slammed into the tongue with force. The unseen crocodile’s jaw flew down in an instant with enough force to crush her windpipe and break her neck with an audible crack as over 3000 pounds per square inch of pressure slammed into her in a microsecond. Daring’s body barely had time to spasm before the crocodile rolled over, the twisting torsion on Daring’s shattered neck causing it to snap completely and then tear the flesh apart as Daring’s head was pulled off and up into the crocodile’s throat.
“Wow… that’sss gotta be an academy record or something…”
Daring’s headless corpse twitched a few last times before the crocodile nudged it back with its lower jaw and the pegasus’s body fell down onto its back with a splat. The stub of her neck was still pumping spurts of blood upwards like a gorey fountain with each tortured heartbeat until it stopped completely. The crocodile leant forward, its thick bloodstained jaws opening again as it pulled in her hind legs, then took another crunchy bite.
Daring reappeared staggering and blinking. It had all happened so fast that it took a few seconds to work out what had happened. All she could feel was intense pain in her neck, but quickly it cleared up. When she did she shook herself. “Buck… everything!” she yelled, slamming hooves against the stone floor.
“Don’t lossse your cool,” the voice said sharply.
“Don’t lose my cool? Did you not see how I just got my bucking head ripped off by a crocodile! This place is the worst! The worst!” Daring yelled, stomping over to the plinth, she’d found the anklet, on, turning around and slamming into it with her rear hooves in a powerful buck. The aged stone didn’t take the hit so well and rumbled down, breaking apart.
“Are we finissshed?” the voice remarked.
Daring lifted the anklet. “And you! You with your snide remarks! Stop it! Stop making fun of me every time I bucking die! It’s not cool!”
The voice made a show of a yawn. “No,” she said simply, and then Daring felt the anklet tighten, those internal spikes driving deeper and making Daring yell out in pain, before they suddenly relaxed again. “Stop being a sssimpleton. I don’t want to cossst you a foreleg before we even leave thisss chamber again.”
Daring grunted in pain and nodded her head. “I’ll stop! I’ll stop,” she declared.
“Good. Then let usss continue.” Daring grumbled lightly, but she turned around and trotted back down that same corridor, passing all of her corpses and over the smashed remains of her skull. Another belch like sound and she barely dodged her own rib cage as it slammed onto the floor and crumbled into bone dust, then she fixed her eyes on the crocodile who was busy with that was left of her decapitated body. “At least sssomeone’sss enjoying it.”
The loud moist sound of ripping flesh came from the edge of the pool of water. Daring could see the chewed remnants of a foreleg being swallowed down into that cavernous throat as the crocodile seemed to barely regard her now that it had its meal. The sight of it eating her though had her clenching her hooves. Daring had fought gators before, but this one must have been 8 foot long, and was still in the process of devouring her remains.
Sat by her corpse, covered in gator saliva was her pith helmet. The sight made her bristle with pride. She was Daring Do, and this was the way out. She just needed to take care of the alligator in the way. Her wings beat and she lifted herself into the air, flying forwards to scoop up her helmet and slip it on her head. The crocodile kept an eye on her, but as she flew over and past him, he concerned himself more with his pegasus meal again.
“What are you doing? You can’t take that monssster on!” the voice insisted in her head, but Daring clutched her helmet as she circled around and charged into the crocodile’s back, elbowing it hard as it let out a sudden roar in surprise and anger. Before it could twist around she wrapped her forelegs around its neck, hooves grabbing into its throat as she press her weight on the back of its head, forcing it down to the ground.
The crocodile pushed off of the ground with its back feet, rolling back to push its weight against Daring and it was quite a significant bulk. The pegasus almost lost her ribs again, but she kept up the motion, forcing the croc to keep on rolling back over before her hind legs hooked under his and stopped them from reaching the ground, preventing that deadly roll again.
The beast still thrashed below her as Daring worked her hooves up, keeping the neck tight with her foreleg as she moved to those eyes, then twisted her hooves to drive them inwards. “How do you like this, you oversized tadpole!” Daring laughed as she smashed against its eyes with force, causing them to retreat in and give her the opportunity she needed to push.. It only shook harder, twisting and thrashing, but Daring’s grip would not be thrown. Her wings extended and wrapped down, taking over the hold of the neck so Daring could shift further up and to those snapping jaws themselves.
Thanks to Daring’s pin the crocodile couldn’t get its jaws open that far, but ideally she didn’t want them open at all. She knew their bite was to be feared, but when it came to opening their mouths they were just as blockable as a pony. She pushed down on the snout with both hooves, gripping and holding that jaw sealed. Her wings pulled up, and the crocodile’s head was no longer touching the ground. With that she could pull off her hind legs and balance back, holding the gator still. “No tougher than any other handbag!” she called mockingly to the crocodile with pride. Its only response was a gurgle from its stomach, and Daring felt her pride take a hit as she imagined her own remains stewing in those acids.
“Let it sssee my eyesss,” the voice declared firmly.
Daring blinked, surprised, but she did just that. As soon as the anklet was lifted to it, the crocodile seemed to calm. “What did you-”
“Let it go.”
Daring slowly and carefully unfurled from the crocodile, then leapt back in a single movement and beat her wings. The crocodile instantly dived down and away into the depths of the pool.
“It won’t bother usss again. Now, aren’t you jussst full of sssurprisssesss?” the voice remarked with what almost sounded like awe.
“Damn… straight!” Daring declared, happy the curse hadn’t gotten her killed again. She couldn’t believe she did it, but nothing was going to hold Daring down. That fat crocodile didn’t stand a chance against an accredited alligator wrestler. She doubted it would tangle with her again, which meant she could advance deeper into the murky green depths. Taking a deep breath in she dived, riding her confidence as she brought her forehooves in front of her and began to work them in a constant motion, hind hooves kicking as she pushed herself below the water.
“A ssshort ssswim to freedom!” Excitement was in the voice this time. Sounded like it wasn’t lying about wanting out of here above all else.
It was getting darker as the sunlight didn’t pierce so far. Daring let out a sudden gasp, a bubble escaping her mouth as a sharp sensation of pain came from her chest. She peered into the water around her, looking for something she might have got snagged on when another short burst of pain came from her rump reminding her of that one time she sat on a tack. So sharp and sudden, leaving a light and pained stinging.
A sudden blur of motion caught her eye as she saw a tiny silverish fish swim right up to her face, and hover in front of her muzzle. Her eyes crossed to stare at it, watching it seem to think about something, before it darted forward and nipped her muzzle. A startled cry might have escaped were she not underwater as tiny fangs rended flesh, taking off a scrap of her fur coated meat. The fish swam back as daring clutched at her muzzle with a hoof. Around it streaks of scarlet entered the water, wafting downwards into the darkness. As if in response more movement caught her eye, and in the depths she could see a million tiny shapes.
“You might want to ssstart ssswimming…” Daring let out a scream as a stream of bubbles, turning to try and swim back up to the surface. She made it an inch before the cloud hit her, a swarm of razor sharp teeth that completely covered her body. Hooves desperately swatted out, knocking a few of them, but most made it to her soft underbelly, her outstretched legs, her feathery wings, even her delicate face and then in dug their teeth, ripping and tearing into her soft flesh.
Daring kicked out, trying to swim as tiny fish peeled away her flesh, taking greedy bites before darting off with tiny swollen bellies. For every one that left though, another two seemed to take their place. Every inch of her body felt like it was being jabbed by tiny needles, before the sting of water on exposed flesh only made her pain worse. She had only swum so deep, but the swarm of tiny fish, worked against her as she tried to push them away. “Fassster! Or you’re chum!”
A particularly enterprising fish found her marehood, lips already having been chewed on and forced its front inside, the slippery scales making her gasp as it pushed up into her pussy, and then into her womb. The fish began to feast and another stream of bubbles escaped Daring’s screaming maw in agony, the fish devouring her womb from the inside. Chunks of succulent flesh being ripped and torn away as blood began to flow out of her passage, luring in more of the fish. “Yeesssh, this is ssstarting to get bad.”
Daring pushed and pulled, slowly getting closer to the surface, but already the fish had chomped and chewed most of her outer coat, leaving bloody welts in their wake. A scarlet cloud followed the unfortunate adventurer in her wake as blood poured from all of her open cuts, making the mare dizzy and faint.
The barrage of fangs only seemed to grow worse. As she pushed against the water one of her legs suddenly locked into place as a meaty sinew was snapped by the onrushing fish. Jaws chomping eagerly over her no longer fighting leg until she couldn’t even see it through the blood in the water around it. “Focusss. Just keep ssswimming!”
One of the fish opened up a hole in her chest cavity, and in it surged. A second later and it was greedily chomping on her kidneys making Daring’s underwater cries weaker and weaker. The surface was so very close. She craned up her head and suddenly she had a collar of fish, munching and chewing at her exposed throat, tearing off thick bloody chunks. As soon as there was a hole water rushed in, carrying yet more of the fish inside of her.
Daring was shaking uncontrollably when her hoof rose above the water, the murky green turned brown with how much blood filled it. A fish found her eyes and crushed into the squishy jelly, yanking back so hard there was a snap, before more fish exploited the hole in her eye socket. Daring could feel her lungs filled with water, her blood rushing out through thousands of tiny holes all while teeth dug into her brain. “Eww… you were right, pegasssusss. That one wasss bad. If I ssstill had a body, I would not have liked that.”
The words reverberated through what was left of Daring’s brain before the teeth tore into something vital, and in a few moments her body gave out. That raised hoof stilled, and then down it sank, Daring’s bloody corpse slowly returning to the depths as more and more fish feasted.
Daring dropped into existence without a single pomp of ceremony. There was a split second of shock, then instantly she fell to the ground, curling up into a tight ball and shivering. “Buck… that… that was horrifying…”
“Yesss, it wasss,” the voice sounded different this time, less like it came from within her mind. One of Daring’s yes creaked open, and what she saw made her gasp.
“My power growsss, little pegasssusss, but ssstill I am chained to you,” the voice explained. A spectral snake tail coiled around the floor in front of Daring, the tip whipping forwards slightly and passing right through Daring without making contact at all. “There isss no need to be ssscared.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Daring declared as her eyes wandered up to the tail, easily as long as thick as a pony and long as five, following it up until it melded with distinctly equine hips. From that point upwards she just looked like a ghostly unicorn, a slender belly complete with navel, a pair of forelegs, a rounded head. Her face was oddly exotic however, featuring a maw filled with fanged teeth, a forked tongue, slanted eyes with slit pupils. A pair of upwards equine ears completed the face, but instead of a mane flowing behind them, her head was graced with a solid scaly cap that sat on the crown of her head, then ran down behind it to her neck in a mimic of a flowing mane. “You’re…” Daring began, then stammered off.
Coyolxauhqui. You can call me Goddessss, or just Coy, both are valid optionsss,” the naga announced. A incorporeal hoof pushed downwards to a plump pair of equine pussy lips, nestled right on the edge of where fur met scale. “And now I have that ssshlickable pusssy. Come, rise up little pegasssusss, it looksss like the only way forwardsss isss forwardsss, no cheating the path.” The naga’s snake body slithered across the chamber, then she stopped with a smirk. “Have you noticcced sssomething yet?” she asked with a grin.
Daring took a moment to unfurl herself completely, then realised she was on the other bank of that pool of water. Somehow she’d appeared here instead of back in that first chamber again.
The naga had made her way over to the door marking the way deeper into the temple. As if detecting her presence, the door gradually rose up, shuddering slightly as it withdrew into the ground. “With more ssstrength, I can help you a little more, pegasssusss,” the spectre said with a smirk. The constant grinding of the door stopped as it slammed into place, the way now open. “Come, more death awaitsss…”
