Hell's Dungeon

“Oh sweet merciful Celestia…. it’s over…” Twilight breathed heavily.

Twilight shakily reached a hoof down to her belly and touched the small burnt scab, wincing. Applejack slowly picked Twilight up onto her back.

“Applejack, I can walk just fine. You don’t need to carry me.” Twilight attempted to crawl off of Applejack’s back, only to be held in place by the earth pony’s strength and hoof.

She shook her head. “No can do, Twilight. You may be strong an’ all, but until you’re sure as sugar I’m gonna carry you, no matter what.”

“B-but-”

“No buts. I ain’t gonna hear it. You’re mah friend an’ you’re hurt. And I’d rather have to buck an entire orchard in the summer heat than let you go and injure yerself further.”

Twilight didn’t put up any further resistance, her heart touched. She nuzzled her head against Applejack’s neck as a sign of thanks.

After a few brief minutes of securing Twilight to the apple pony with a vine, the group began to walk through the swamp’s mud. Everything seemed new and terrifying, so much so that even Pinkie Pie refused to laughed at any of it, aside from a rock that looked like a face. Every now and again, Rainbow Dash would enter a coughing fit, which would caused the group to stop until it faded back to ‘normal’ breathing. Listening carefully to Rainbow’s breathing, Fluttershy heard it start to become more raspy than usual. What struck her as strange though was that she swore she could hear a faint buzzing somewhere, but couldn’t put her hoof on it. Deciding it must just be her imagination, she put the thought out of her mind.

Eventually, the group stopped by what looked to be a large pool of murky water dotted with small rocks and even a few dead mangrove trees. To the far east of the pond was an enormous fallen over tree, hollowed from the years of rot and age, leaving only a rock-hard shell.

Rainbow Dash coughed a few times, wheezing dryly. “We’ve been walking for hours. Can we please stop to rest? I’m not feeling to hot.”

Twilight looked over to her pegasus friend as saw in her eyes the toxins slowly making an impact on her system. Rainbow looked unusually tired and shook every so often.

“Rainbow Dash, are you alright?” asked Twilight.

Rainbow Dash strained to smile. “N-never better! I’m just a little worn out.”

The buzzing sound started to get closer, albeit still too quiet for anyone to hear, aside from Fluttershy.

Rarity stepped a bit closer to Rainbow Dash, who was starting to drip with sweat. “Are you sure, darling? We’ve only been traveling for a few hours and you are usually still full of determination on these quests we do.”

“I-I’m fine. Just tired. I… I think I…” Rainbow Dash brought a hoof to her forehead and swayed back and forth. “I think that cloud is starting to get to me. Everything’s starting to ache and I’m thirsty as hell.”

Twilight tapped Applejack on her back. “Applejack, can you set me down? I need to take a closer look at Rainbow Dash.”

Applejack lowered herself to the ground, letting Twilight step back onto the ground, allowing her to get closer to their poisoned friend. Twilight placed a lone hoof onto Rainbow’s forehead, pulling it back in pain.

“You’re burning up! And I don’t mean a fever, I mean you’re hotter than what should be possible for any living creature!”

Rainbow Dash sat down, trying her hardest to keep herself from falling over. “It’s getting really hard to keep myself up. I’m just going to take a nap right here.”

“Let’s get you someplace dry to rest,” said Fluttershy, guiding the fellow pegasus over to the gigantic tree shell. Calmly she set her friend to lay down inside the interior.

All Rainbow Dash could manage to respond with was moaning and laboured breathing. True to Twilight’s word, she was burning up inside. To Rainbow, it felt like her insides were boiling and it hurt worse than the time she broke her a wing trying to impress her old coltfriend.

An hour had passed and Rainbow Dash still wouldn’t wake up. Twilight had tried a multitude of spells to try and rouse her friend, but most just resulted in a fizzle or wouldn’t work at all, like someone had sucked the magic right out of her. The only thing anyone could think of was to reduce her unnatural fever and help ease her pain, which Fluttershy saw to with some of the surprisingly clean and pure water of the lake by the hollow tree. Although originally murky, it turned out to just be a layer of algae floating at the top, but otherwise the water helped to ease both Rainbow’s fever and pain, as well as speed up Twilight’s own healing.

“Girls, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think Rainbow Dash is going to be able to move for much longer in her condition. She’s getting weaker by the second.” Twilight looked down at the burnt hole on her belly, noticing it to be half the size than it was a few hours ago. “We have to find the exit to this swamp as soon as possible.”

Sighing with relief, Fluttershy walked back over to the gathering of ponies, feeling Rainbow Dash would be fine left alone. The log lay only about twenty feet away, after all.

“I’ve done all I can to make the fever go down, but without the herbs I usually use for my remedies, I can’t fix it permanently,” began Fluttershy. “Though, the pond water helped bring it down. I just hope she holds on long enough for us to get out of here.”

Applejack took off her stetson to wipe her brow. “We all do, sugarcube. Ah swear, this is just getting more and more hopeless by the minute. It don’t help none that it’s hotter than a sauna in the summer in this here swamp.”

The strange buzzing increased ever louder, this time more audible. Everyone’s ears twitched from the sound coming from somewhere, pulling their attention south.

“What in Equestria is that darn buzzing sound?” asked Applejack. “It’s makin’ mah skin feel like its crawl.”

Fluttershy whimpered and started to back up into the log. “I knew I didn’t imagine that sound…”

Pinkie Pie, who was finding it difficult to remain cheery, smiled awkwardly. “It sounds like a jackhammer! Is somepony building a house?”

Twilight shuddered at the grating noise, looking in its general direction. “I don’t like this.”

Like flies descending upon rot, an impossibly large mosquito dropped down from the sky and hovered in front of the equine group, startling them. Three more followed suit, each of which had small bits of red covering their proboscises.

Though the ponies were instinctively fearful, Fluttershy was the first to actually build up the courage to walk up to the mosquitoes, though she still felt unsure if they represented a threat. The buzzing almost seemed like it wanted to deafen her as she approached the one in front of her.

“H-hello there, little guys,” Fluttershy said with a quiver, lifting up a hoof to pet the head of the large mosquito in front of her. She gently stroked its carapace, a small smile creeping over her muzzle. “Even though you look scary, you’re all just softies aren’t you?”

The mosquitoes responded with tilted heads, excluding the one being pet. Almost as quick as lightning, the mosquito in front of Fluttershy flew forward, knocking her to the ground. It landed violently on top of her and attempted to stab into her neck, only to be bucked off by Applejack.

“These ain’t no friends, they’re varmints!” screamed Applejack as she stomped on the hawk-sized mosquito’s wing, eliciting a quiet ‘scree’.

With the same ferocity and speed, the other three thrashed around in a circle around the ponies, looking for a chance to catch one off guard. The mosquito-hawks exclusively kept their heads turned on Twilight the entire time, as if to strike fear into her. They could smell the traces of blood on her stomach, itching to taste more than the puddle from earlier.

Meanwhile, Applejack kept herself lowered to the ground and facing the now wingless mosquito, who buzzed his wing stubs angrily. It lashed forward, trying to jab at her chest, only to be deflected each time by two powerful hooves.

Applejack smirked. “That all ya got, pinhead? You look like yer hardly tryin’!”

Twilight on the other hand, was trying to throw up a forcefield around her and her friends, only for her horn to light and fizzle disappointingly.

“I-I can’t cast my shield spell!” exclaimed Twilight.

Over by the tree log, Rainbow Dash groaned loudly, attracting the attention of the bugs. The three winged mosquitoes each let out a screech, flying without care on over to the ponies unconscious friend.

“Oh no you don’t, you ill-mannered insects!” Rarity lit her horn and wrapped one of the bugs in her magic, compromising one of its wings and forcing it also to become ground-bound and turn back.

Every so often, the mosquito-hawk would skitter forward a few inches, its proboscis dripping with paralytic saliva. Applejack backed up further to ensure she stayed between Fluttershy and her opponent.

She snarled. “Ya think your pointy nose is gonna scare me? I’ll snap it off and shove it right in yer eye!”

Another sickening snap of wings, as well as an insect leg this time, and Rarity disabled another one if the flying terrors.

Thinking quickly, Twilight gathered as much of the ambient magic around her into her horn and released a shot of mana at Applejack’s target, disintegrating half of its head. The mosquito-hawk started screeching loudly and seized on the ground violently before ultimately lying dead. Twilight then turned her attention to the last flying mosquito and shot another bolt of mana towards it, only managing to fry off a small portion of an antenna and scorch some of the fallen tree it was flying towards.

Time felt to slow down to a crawl for the girls. Nothing anyone could do would be able to stop Rainbow Dash from being harmed. The final mosquito-hawk plunged down towards her, vibrating in delight at finally getting an easy meal. The air was so dense with fear and worry that it was almost palpable. That is until Pinkie Pie jumped out of the log and splattered the mosquito-hawk with one swipe of a dead tree branch, which shattered into thousands of pieces. Her breathing increased to deep huffs, while her mane and tail sluggishly drooped and became straight and dulled. Even her fur color dulled itself from its usual hot pink.

Aside from the green blood that covered Dash’s fur, nothing remained of the threat that once was. She lay blissfully unaware of the fate that could have befallen both her and her friends.

Pinkie Pie knelt down to hug Rainbow Dash, tears streaming down her cheeks. Words escaped her and she just sobbed into the rainbow mane, crying incoherently.

The feeling of tears dripping onto her face was enough to finally stir Rainbow Dash from her toxin-induced coma. Her eyes fluttered open and she groaned from her sore body. “Ugh, my head. The hell happened?”

Pinkie Pie embraced Rainbow into an even harder hug. “Dashie! You’re okay! I-I th-thought you weren’t ever gonna wake up again!” Her mane regained some of its usual poofiness.

“Whatcha mean?”

Although she wasn’t expressing it, Twilight also felt relief in her heart. She wanted to cry along side Pinkie Pie, but held her tears. “You said you were starting to get tired and you were thirsty. And you nearly fell down while Fluttershy helped move you into this tree.”

Rainbow Dash looked at her front hooves, trying her hardest to remember what had transpired her. Other than remembering feeling some slight aches and a little feverish, there seemed to be a gap in her memory. “I remember walking and then everything went black for a few seconds. Now I’m here lying down and- uh Pinkie? You can stop hugging me now.”

“Sorry I-I just… I was scared,” Pinkie Pie admitted, her voice quivering. “These giant bug thingies dropped out of the sky and Fluttershy tried being nice and then Applejack crushed one of their wings a-and… Oh Dashie, they tried to kill us!”

That grabbed Dash’s attention more than anything. “Whoa whoa whoa, what in the hells of Tartarus happened while I was out?”

Twilight and Rarity explained everything that had happened in the last hour, making sure to not leave out any details of the fight with the strange mosquitoes. What shocked Rainbow Dash the most was that the insects immediately reacted violently to Fluttershy, of all the ponies of the group. She did exclaim about how ‘awesome’ Pinkie Pie was in getting rid of the last one of them and started complaining about being useless during the whole ordeal.

All of the complaints were interrupted by a growl from Rarity’s stomach. In the entire unknown amount of time the group spent walking, no one had noticed the hunger and fatigue they felt. It hit all of them at once, the growls of hunger going off one by one.

Rainbow Dash gripped her belly sofly. “Guess this place took more outa of us than we thought. Did anypony think to pack snacks?”

Pinkie Pie noticed a perfect chance to cheer up her friends, her mane and fur returning once more to their cotton-candy selves. She reached into her mane and pulled out a stack of paper wrapped meals, each marked with their cutie marks. A sly grin grew on her muzzle. “Does THIS answer your question?”

Twilight looked at the pink terror curiously, as if to try and figure out how so much food managed to fit in her mane. Instead of racking her brain in pain, she just shrugged it off to Pinkie being Pinkie. Even if it was a little stranger than usual.

The group set up camp inside of the hollow tree, carving a small pit and lighting dead branches in the middle of it. Pinkie Pie tool time to pass out each of the carefully wrapped meals. Unsurprisingly, each meal contained foods her friends favored, even the more obscure ‘fancy’ food Rarity enjoyed. The group ate in relative silence, aside from the periodic small talk about what might be happening outside of the dungeon or about how much actual time had passed. Eventually, the sky grew darker than before, signalling night time. Taking this as a cue to rest, everyone decided to sleep around the magic-enhanced fire, Applejack making sure to add enough wood to keep it burning for a few more hours.

Unbeknownst to the ponies, the dungeon seemed to shift reality slightly, moving the log further inwards towards the center of the swamp, as if to help along the contestants. Feeling they’d suffered enough by the claws of its ruler, it slowed the passage of time inside itself to better give them more hours of sleep, even going so far as to slow Rainbow Dash’s ailment. Dragus however, was not pleased that his entertainment would be interrupted by notions of ‘sympathy’.