Applejack Jungle Adventures

In a world beholden to many secrets kept far from human eyes, there were few more isolated than the murky, boggy Toxic Jungle. A forbidden land with as much natural beauty as deadliness, it was the desire of every merchant in the Six Kingdoms to plunder its depths even once... A handful of the rare natural-evolved treasures from its deepest depths could make a man's fortune, and while there was normally no shortage of muscle-bound oafs willing to venture into danger to pad one's coin purses, not even the most glory-hungry of fools could be persuaded to readily venture into that particular hellhole.

The habitat itself was ferocious enough on its own, home to dozens of varieties of life-ending flora, but the beasts that prowled its undergrowth were the true reason men kept their distance. They had grown into frightening and fantastical beasts in the shaded darkness, changing to match their poisonous and deadly surroundings until they could thrive under the dystopian conditions. Slimy manticores sleeker and faster than their surface-dwelling counterparts... Bog-dwelling dragons made leathery and brutish from hundreds of generations of inbreeding with crocodiles... Bioluminescent insects that could pump out enough poison to fell an elephant! All of these and more lurked in the Toxic Jungle, running their own evolutionary lines completely undisturbed by the kingdoms of man.

The Merchant Prince Jordi had promised any adventurer who would venture into the jungle their weight in gold if they returned with the poison glands of a great beast known as the Morbusaian. He might have gone empty-handed forever, if not for the woman who knew no fear.

"’Reckon that bounty’s as good as mine. There ain’t a single critter in this whole dang jungle I need to fear, no matter how big they gettin’!" A boastful shout to nobody in particular disturbed the otherwise tranquil atmosphere of the Toxic Jungle. There, amidst the heavy brush and ominously-coloured flora, paced a lone woman. Not just any woman, but the renowned warrior -Applejack, beautiful as she was dangerous, powerful as she was arrogant.

But who could blame her? When you could physically look down upon others of your kind, and strangle monsters to submission with your bare hands, it was hard not to start to think that you were unbeatable. Applejack, once the strongest woman the world had ever known, had been visited by a great goddess of war in her youth, forging a pact that had elevated her to the status of a legend. With steel-hard skin said to be impervious to any weapon, and towering over even the tallest of men, if anyone could make the journey into those grim, blood-soaked depths, it would be her.

It was for that reason that the golden-haired avatar of battle wore very little. When arrows began to bounce off of her paradoxically supple flesh, she saw little need to cower behind armour. She proudly displayed most of her unblemished figure, the only exceptions could be traced back to feminine modesty, essential functionality, or a trophy of some sort. The vest she wore was among those trophies, it possessed a lengthy, mane-like shawl of dark fur, wrested from the Gore-Wolf that had previously been its owner. It hung loosely on her frame, never fastened, and for good reason. For in addition to her impressive height and awe-inspiring martial prowess, Applejack had been blessed in another way, a way that was only spoken of in hushed whispers, far from her earshot. Applejack's chest, simply put, was immense. Twin, wobbling globes that seemingly stuck out a full foot in front of her. They were only constrained by a bikini-like harness that tentatively bridged the collar at her neck to the leotard-esque leather garment around her bizarrely thin waist. It was said that wherever she went, her breasts were first to arrive, and looking at her, it was easy to believe.

And if her breasts were the first to arrive, Applejack’s ass was definitely the last to leave. Firm, globular cheeks bulged off her frame, no less diminished in their awe-inspiring size for a lifetime of exercise, but infinitely more toned and smooth. One could run their tongue over every last inch of those cheeks without encountering a single bump or blemish, only the flavour of bronzed Amazonian bitch. Coupled with a veritable mile of toned legs that extended from curvy rear to boot-clad calf, Applejack had inadvertently become the fantasy of many males throughout the realm.

For three days and three nights, Applejack tirelessly carried on into the deepest, darkest depths of the Toxic Jungle. She would have searched for as long as it took to find the Morbusaian, yet even her herculean body had its limits. Even the world’s strongest army could hardly march on an empty stomach and her supplies were being stretched thin...

To make matters worse, glimpses of a great beast came to her when she least expected them. She had discovered some time ago that the exterior of the deadly jungle that had claimed so many lives was merely the skin of a greater, more terrifying whole. On puncturing it and diving inside this core, the supple-fleshed warrior found she had plunged hundreds of feet down into a place almost like another world. In the darkness below, she walked paths that had never been touched by human feet and breathed musty air that had never entered the lungs of an outsider. Navigation was only possible by wavering floating lights, glowing fungus and her own keen eyes.

On the occasions where the light dimmed and she had only scant moments to hurry to another source, Applejack soon enough became aware of something large and primordial hunting her, waiting for an opportune moment to reveal itself. And as her hunger overtook her once again and she considered finishing her rations, it came to her.

On the fourth day, she found a great tree that glistened wetly with the layers of slime coating it. An interlocking criss-cross of hundreds of arm-thick green and purple vines hung on its great bulging bulk, pulling down branches and lending it a ghoulish appearance. The vines mummified the tree, holding it down to the earth.

As she approached, she caught sight of great bulging fruit, each blue orb the size of her head at the least, and some even larger. The smell was intoxicating, promising refreshment to her aching joints and her burning throat, and yet... As she stepped closer and seized one of the low-hanging orbs with both hands, something did not seem quite right.She paused just long enough to become aware of a scratching sound overhead, eyes darting skywards.

Two potent predators came face to face with each other.

The Morbusaian was a great and heavily-scaled lizard 18 feet long, with several long dorsal-fin spines ridged along its back. The brown-coloured beast had its fore, centre and hindlegs dug deep into the tree’s bole, keeping it planted firmly on the wood. It was hard at work pumping its magical venom deep into the tree’s sap system, flooding it with the magical substance that would bring the carnivorous beast a healthy diet of prey.

Applejack looked down at the fruit clutched in her hands and became aware of an oily substance moving under the skin... So this was how the beast hunted its prey! Her eyes then moved to the base of the tree, where dozens of animal skeletons were gathered around large, poison-swollen fruits with single bites taken out of them. She growled under her breath and cast it aside, reaching for her weapon.

And not a moment too soon! The creature unstuck its long, barbed tail from the three and swished the dripping, steel-coloured tip in the air malevolently. If she wouldn’t eat the fruits, he had plenty of other ways to inject her with poison! His bulk dropped from the tree’s trunk and hit the ground hard enough to dislodged dozens of vines, sending green whipping all around the pair. A quick duck of her head was all that stood between Applejack and having her skull smashed in as a green lasso went soaring over her.

The jungle shook as the monster roared, then began racing towards her on six strong legs!

"I reckon you'd look mighty fine mounted on my wall. Iffin' I had one!" The proud warrior never missed the opportunity to let out a boastful cry in the heat of battle. If it were not for the fact that the fiend had been charging toward her this very moment, she might have added a few insults about the thing's parentage. In any case, the barbarian was forced to bring her weapon to bear in preparation of the reptile's assault. The Morbusaian was in for an unpleasant surprise.

Such a weapon! Applejack clutched a tremendous, curved axe, as tall as a man and nearly twice as heavy, so large only the strongest of men could hope to lift it using both arms. Commoners had no chance of even that. And yet, here and now, Applejack lifted it towards the beast with a single hand, the enormous bladed head gleaming even in what little light the depths of the Toxic Jungle had to offer.

But even with her trusty weapon at the fore, Applejack could not simply meet the monster's charge with one of her own. While she could assuredly take no real damage from the monster from the outside, it's potent toxin could very well prove to be lethal, should it get it into her body.

She was in no hurry to test if that was true.

Jumping back, the amazon warrior dodged the Morbusaian's initial charge, circling around it as she waited for an opening. Its fangs and tail were equally discolored and oily, speaking of their virulent nature. She would have to treat this monster as if it possessed an equally-ravenous head on each end, both eager to bite into her flesh and have her join the numerous skeletons that decorated the base of that sweet-smelling tree.

The beast was content to circle with her just as tightly, angling its spined neck this way and that. It did not comprehend the nature of the glinting weapon clutched in her hands, only that its prey had it upraised between the two of them. It hissed at her in a long, guttural sound never before heard by human ears. It hoped to scare the busty one into lowering her guard and presenting something juicy to sink its fangs into, but she was a steely one. A worthy foe for itself.

The great monster rushed the amazon, throwing all its way into a berserker rush and hoping to overrun her. That gigantic bulk came crashing towards her, belly fat enough to leave a deep furrow in the dirt. The Morbusaian bulldozed its way across the clearing, tossing up clods of grass and moss and roots as it circled with her around the large tree.

Finally, it backed the woman's plump butt up against the bole of that ancient growth. The monster threw its head back, snarling, then pounced, launching ten tons of scales and slime and hungry lizard towards Applejack. There would be no time for another headstrong boast, or a proud taunt towards the vicious beast. Its nightmarish roar set a flock of birds to the air somewhere in the dense jungle above. It ripped stones and clods of dirt free of the steep walls around them, filling the air with a fine dust. The piercing loud wail left Applejack stunned, which was exactly what the Morubsaian had been waiting for.

The predatory animal circled around her, snarling and snapping each step of the way. Eventually it couldn't wait another moment and dug all six of his ferocious claws into the dirt, preparing to strike. The Morbusaian leapt straight towards the powerful blonde, aiming to sink its serrated, dagger-like fangs into her supple flesh.

But to Applejack, the airborne bulk was just a blur of motion and movement as she continued to reel. Precious seconds she needed to use responding were being rapidly burned up.

All the monster's considerable weight was behind this most decisive of strikes. but in what was perhaps the reptile's greatest mistake: It had underestimated its quarry. Applejack had not developed her ego from words and physique alone. She had built it over countless victories and conquests against both man and monster, some even larger than this one!

She had reeled from the shockwave of it's ghastly scream, but had recovered with just enough time to evade. Applejack did something she had done only a handful of times before: she knelt to another. As she moved downwards onto one knee, the lizard's trap-like jaw clamped over nothing more than a good deal of rotted bark. Before the creature could take another bite, Applejack rose, driving her knee straight into its underside. Organs and tissue it had considered safe from attack were now rupturing from the blow to its fleshy underside. It had thought itself untouchable, and was now paying the price! Its own reckless charge amplified the force of her blow, knocking the weighty beast onto its back. It skidded through the mud a good few feet before coming to a complete stop, belly upturned.

The largest predator in all the Toxic Jungle had met its defeat against a single woman, born of a mortal. Applejack was free to approach, as long as she was mindful of that whipping tail. The beast's eyes met hers and it let out a mournful cry, its last breath before she silenced it. Applejack ended the wretched thing's life with a single chop of her axe

The work of retrieving the poison glands was short and brutal. She made a quick incision in the throat with a hunting knife, working carefully. With a vista of reds and whites and pinks laid out for her, the barbarian sought for a fist-sized pair of purple, veiny sacks. Finding them, she closed her hand around the bulges and tightened her bicep, dragging them free. As she did so, slimy black goop oozed from the fleshy tubing hanging underneath. It splattered the carcass with foul-smelling fluids and she covered her nose.

Now all that remained was the trip back to the perverse merchant, where he would shower her in gold. She could live the rest of her life swimming in fine wine and food! If only she'd known of the danger lying in store for her! There was one more adversary waiting for the woman on the road back to the Merchant Prince's Keep. It was no beast of the jungle, but something far worse. For the Merchant Prince had rivals far and wide in the human world, and one such enemy, a desert princess, desired the poison glands for herself.

At that very moment, a human tribe living on the outskirts of the jungle were rousing themselves to the hunt nearby. There was only one place that allowed transit to and from the Toxic Jungle, and they knew the area well. When Applejack arrived, they were already waiting for her.

There was a sheer cliff face leading up and out of the Toxic Jungle. She could make the climb easier by using the thick vines and moss growing up the side of the cliff. If attacked, she could take cover in the dozens of trees growing along its surface. They had grown their roots deep in the cracks, making them longer and wider over hundreds of years.While Applejack stood at the base of the cliff, planning her climb, forty strong men were hunkering down at the top. The large dark-skinned natives had brought hand-crafted longbows. They rumbled with sinister laughter as they nocked arrows designed to fell elephants.

"Something ain’t right...." Applejack murmured in concern, several steps into her climb. Right when she was about to start planning as to what kind of delicacies she would treat herself to first, the barbarian had noticed there was something unusual about her surroundings.

Here in the heart of the Toxic Jungle she should have been able to hear the cries of birds, but her ascent was met with a deafening silence punctuated only by the clatter of small stones tumbling down from above. It was so very unusual, Applejack found herself gazing towards the ledge of the cliff... just in time for an immense arrow to whistle past mere inches away from her ear. It was followed by an entire wave of identical missiles, dense enough that they were flying towards her like rain.

"You jus’ made one heck of a mistake!" Applejack bellowed to her shadowed attackers atop the cliff. Clearly, she had walked into an ambush, and by a sizable force no less, if the amount of arrows sailing past her body was taken into consideration. It wasn't too surprising, the barbarian had been due for another sneak attack by those who wished they could be half as mighty as she. Applejack had stopped keeping track of the enemies she had made, they all underestimated her, just like these ones were doing now. They thought themselves unassailable atop the cliff, and Applejack an easy target in her climb. What they didn't know was that she could climb much faster when she was angry.

Each of the hunters had sacrificed years of their lives learning their trade. Every one of these men was a trained survivalist, able to live in the jungle as comfortably as his own home.They'd spent days hunkered down in the undergrowth, spying the deadly creatures that lurked on the outskirts of the Toxic Jungle. Each of them had felled, skinned and prepared creatures that the civilized people of the Celestine Kingdoms told their children about to scare them into behaving

It had all been to prepare for moments like this. After years of hunting the world's deadliest game, they could nock an arrow, aim and loose the string almost entirely by muscle memory.

Applejack knew she had to move quickly if she wanted to engage them on the summit. At least there they'd be fighting on even ground. The path to the top of the cliff was treacherous, but with no other options, she began to climb, ducking her head under arrows or deflecting them with her steel palms.

The rock was craggy and provided frequent handholds, and once she was climbing amongst the many trees growing out of the cliff, their branches began to absorb fire intended for her. A single arrow would never be enough to kill the greatest warrior the world had ever known, but it could slice a tendon or leave a hand too wounded to get a firm grip on the rocks.

Soon, she was halfway up the cliff's face, the ground a vertigo-inducing splotch below her. Applejack paused in her climb to wipe the sweat from her brow and snap an arrow wedged deep into her bicep. The muggy air made her muscles ache and her vision teem with illusions. How easy it would have been to just let go and fall!

Then, the woman realized the fire had temporarily stopped. She cast her eyes upwards to see the natives were changing their tactics: a felled log, thick around as a man's body, had been brought forwards and rolled to the edge of the cliff. The angry fiends were gathered around it, shrieking insults in their native tongue at her before they hurled the log straight down at her.

When Applejack suddenly found her position on the cliff unnaturally shaded, she had to give them some credit. Their back-up plan wasn’t half bad. She had been gaining ground on their position despite the hail of over-sized arrows, but a glance upward revealed something that would be a bit trickier to surmount. Had she been on the ground, it would have been child's play to simply catch the log and toss it aside. But with three limbs relegated to keeping her position on the cliff secure, catching the immense length of timber was not a viable solution.

Acting mostly on her honed instincts, Applejack tensed her muscles, and lunged towards what she hoped was a handhold towards her left, the sudden burst of movement sending countless pebbles falling toward the ground in a potent example of what could very well happen to her. But the barbarian never once contemplated a chance of failure. Instead, she tensed her formidable muscles in her right arm, mustering all the strength she could… before planting a resounding palm-thrust into the left side of the heavy log. For a moment, all it's momentum seemed to have been halted, as if the blonde had caught all that wood in a single hand.

But then the log tilted vertically, the brunt of its weight spinning away from Applejack. it tumbled harmlessly to her right, and it became clear to the men she had deflected it with a well-placed strike. Was there nothing this woman couldn’t do to foil their efforts?

As an echoing crash resounded up the cliff, Applejack's enemies began to peek up over the ledge, to see if their gambit had bore fruit. Contrary to their expectations, they could not see a sign of the towering blonde's body...until a muscled arm reached up and grabbed an unlucky soul by the collar, easily pulling him over the edge to meet the same fate as the log.

Applejack had made it to the top.

The air was still as the big-breasted beast of a woman hauled herself all the way up onto solid ground. The clearing was dotted with dozens of large, dark-skinned natives, remorseless pigs who wouldn't rest until they had her head on a pike. Their bloodshot eyes were bulging; a mixture of confusion and rage overtaking the men.

She heard the sound of an axe clearing its belt-loop to her right moments before thudding footfalls forced Applejack to action. She dove to the side and tucked her head in, hitting the ground arms-first and turning it into a sprawling roll. The practised motion saved the warrior woman's life as the axe sliced through thin air. With honed reflexes, Applejack leapt to her feet and braced her back against a sturdy, lichen-choked bole.

"What sort of monster are you?" roared a man. His voice was almost drowned out as another dozen arrows took to the air. The sound of splintering wood filled her ears.

The climb had left her woozy and slow to respond. She didn't have the energy for another dodge like that for the moment. Applejack's arms and legs were screaming in pain. The urge to simply give up and fall to her knees was there, lurking in the darkness. She could easily surrender to the searing sensations in her calves and forearms and collapse.

But even a moment's rest would be the death of her. Time to rest? There was no time for anything but fighting and dying in the Toxic Jungle. She would not die here, her fate was much grander than that. What she needed was a distraction, something to buy some time.Her eyes turned upwards to the ancient tree she was braced against. Why not return their previous favour?

"The strongest sort, I reckon!" Applejack shouted back, before tightly gripping the tree’s trunk. Since she’d started using it as cover, the great rotting wood had become increasingly arrow-laden, until it was totally inundated with sheafs intended for her.

To an outsider, it might have appeared the barbarian woman had finally lost her mind: her posture made it clear that she was trying to uproot a tree with her bare strength alone, despite it being near a size and a half larger than the log she had been 'forced' to deflect. Just overcoming the impressive collection of roots that maintained the tree's irrevocable hold upon the earth was beyond mortal means.

However, as Applejack grunted and pulled, the inconceivable happened. The tree shook. Then it moved. And then, with a symphony of echoing cracks and thunderous booms, the enormous tree rose up from the craggy ground they all stood upon, its snapped and twisted roots the only indication it had ever been planted there in the first place. Slowly but surely, Applejack became visible as the busty barbarian herself proceeded to heft it up over her head with a root in each hand, a wicked grin upon her face. This wasn't the first time she had improvised a weapon, but it could have very well been the first time she felt so good about it.

"Alright then. Which one of y'all has the spine to try me first?"

The men's training and martial prowess meant nothing against this level of strength. They witnessed the fury of a God, as if it were something taken from their dreams and fantasies, brought to the here and now. Applejack was exerting her impossible strength on real, physical things they could see and touch.

The men’s hearts sank as an almighty groaning and creaking of wood reached their ears. The tree's roots were being hewed in half, or ripped free of the soil wholesale. The foliage overhead heads rustled, the long shadow being cast over them changing with the flow of light winds.

It all came with eerie clarity. All the details they were forced to acknowledge settled on their minds with a sickening weight. An act of strength that simply should not be possible forced its way into their reality. They could see their lives ending in those bulging female muscles and those cool, almost-relaxed eyes.

Her new weapon in hand, Applejack was free to face down her enemies on more even grounds. Their numbers advantage seemed to have lost its weight. Back when they'd accepted the job they'd laughed at the idea of sending fifty men to kill one woman, and yet... How many could she kill with one swing? They were just normal men, a blow from the tree's thick trunk would shatter collarbones and break spines.

And then there was the economy of the weapon. How many men could she hit with one swing? As she watched them, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, she wasn't contemplating their strength as enemies. She was figuring out how many she could hit with one swing.

"Draw your weapons!" roared their chief in their harsh tongue. Applejack knew only the basics, but even then she could easily detect the quavering in his words. "Spread out! Go in all at once!"

One by one, steel blades glimmered in the afternoon sunshine as weapons were drawn. Weapons forged by master craftsmen were pitted against dark, wet wood, thick around as a horse's stomach and coated with moss and bugs. The silence was pierced by the angry growling of men who wanted to cheat their fate. Resentful of the woman's absurd strength and beauty, they charged her all as one.

"All at once!? Why... Yer jus' making it easy for me now, fellas!" Applejack roared in laughter, adjusting her titan-grip upon the base of the tree as the first of her would-be assassins appeared to have stepped into the range of her improvised weapon. Their plan was to swarm her in close combat, under the assumption that the mighty tree she hefted would be too cumbersome to use with so little distance between them. However, the natives had severely underestimated the strength of the barbarian they now faced. With little more than a shift in her posture and a well-placed foot to brace herself, Applejack started her first swing far earlier than any of her enemies imagined was possible...until now.

Coasting mere inches above the ground, the enormous tree was swung in a wide arc in front of Applejack, catching a good manner of brutes in the side with all the force of a siege weapon. The lucky ones were either forced to the ground or knocked aside, undoubtedly suffering the kind of broken bones that would decidedly put them out of commission. As for the unlucky ones...they were taking the express route down the side of a cliff in a matter most ironic considering their earlier assault. One swing. One swing was all it took to dispatch a whole squad's worth of trained fighters and mercenaries. There were still many left, however, and to their credit, they had barely slowed their charge even as a good number of their brethren had been taken down so quickly. They had wagered that there would be no way for Applejack to reverse her weapons momentum in time to strike them as well. But to their horror, they realized all too late that had never been Applejack's intention. Continuing her swing much farther than was necessary, the amazonian warrior did not stop.

She was coming back around for another swipe.

Like a trained caber tosser, Applejack made slight adjustments of her feet with each turn, keeping her centre of gravity lined up with the end of the weapon orbiting her body. Whenever one of the tribals got close to her, she shifted away, half-leaping, half-staggering, across the open field. Their commander was too stunned for words at first, simply watching his organized rows of men be sent flying to the earth and sky.

When he finally found his voice again, it was with a great shout. "Back away! Archers, take her down!"

By the time he gave the command, however, the dozen or so archers were among the last fodder at his command. Each man among their number had been handpicked for the task of archer, chosen for both the immense forearm strength necessary to draw their great bows, and the height of a giant, so as to be able to hold the weapon steady and not scrape it along the ground while firing. Like their fellows, they were among some of the best in the world.

Applejack let out an almighty bellow as she came to a standstill, feet spread far apart. Her immense chest was heaving with the incredible exertion of her action, dry mouth sucking in full lungfuls of air. A wall of arrows took to the sky, casting a long shadow of her form.

In place of the cries of a wounded beast, they merely heard a series of dull wooden thuds as the arrows pounded home into the trunk of the upraised tree still clasped in her arms. Applejack lowered the now-studded bole and began judging the distance between herself and her enemies.

"You oughta reckon somethin' less wasteful than expensive arrows when I gots something like this! Here, lemme do you an honesty and... give... them... back!" she laughed. Applejack taunted her determined foes, widening her stance. She had to admit that she was a little impressed they hadn't all turned tail and fled at the sight of a good number of their comrades being flattened or knocked skyward by the tremendous tree she wielded. Clearly, these weren't her typical would-be assassins and opportunists who frequently dogged her in her travels! But the prospect of a challenge only enthused the amazon to fight even harder than before, and it soon became clear that she had adopted the unusual stance for one purpose alone. She was about to throw that very tree like the largest javelin that ever was.

Applejack could see the look of confusion on her enemies faces. It was one thing to hoist or swing the tree, but to attempt to launch it the great distance that stood between her and the gathered archers? It was impossible! Absurd! And yet, as Applejack dug her heels down into the earth, she prepared herself for it's launch. Unimaginably powerful muscles tensed up her body, carrying a force that originated in her legs with the forward step she took, and traveled all the way to her arms, which compelled the thick tree to move. In less than a second, it had left the barbarian's grip. A moment later, it was more than a foot in front of her. Another second after that, it was already halfway towards her enemies, careening at a velocity once believed to be unobtainable...

The Commander of the small unit of tribesmen went to hit the dirt a little too late. The tree struck him in the shoulder, and he crumpled almost instantly. His body hit the ground in a heap, and the men around him were thrown into a panic.

"She's a monster! A real monster!"

Lesser warriors might have turned and fled, but these honourable brethren seemed content to tough it out to the end. With her improvised weapon out of her hands, the playing field was a little more level, and the remaining swordsmen could close with her, while the archers continued to fire volleys from a distance.

Applejack soon found herself in close quarters with three berserkers. On any other battlefield these tall, shaven-headed brutes were titans able to knock down multiple men at once with their sheer strength, or send them flying like ragdolls with a single punch. Each was a scion of his house, carrying a uniquely forged blade with their family's insignias on it and a multitude of carvings and beads that each told a story. They had fought in countless theatres of war as highly-sought mercenaries for their great size and strength, and yet the tallest of them still only came up to Applejack's shoulder! But still, fighting all three at once would be suicide. Applejack backed away, looking to use the terrain to her advantage, which made them pause a moment. One called in his tongue for archers to fire, and a wall of fire locked off an entire avenue of escape to her.

"The poison! Who has the poisoned arrows?" growled one of the men as he pounced on her, double-fisting his sword to bring it down on her weapon. The blow would have broken an ordinary man's arms, but all it did to Applejack was make her feet sink into the mud a little more.

Poison! Sure enough, on his word, the other archers parted to let through a young man who looked like he had no place on this battlefield. He was more of a pack animal than a soldier, with six bags around his hips and multiple pouches hanging from his chest. He buckled under the weight of an immense backpack bristling with supplies. The small, freckled figure with locks of bright-red hair looked out of place amongst all these brutes. He dropped the backpack and began digging inside, fishing out quivers of arrows for the arrows that dripped a cloying purple fluid. The rare and precious tree-sap they coated their arrows with was the most valuable man-hunting resource they brought to bear, with all the trees of the Toxic Valley together only bringing up a small jarful a year. Now they threw it around like candy, and she was all the more in trouble for it!

"Poison? Listen, sugarcube, you really think I'd'a come to the Toxic Jungle if I were afraid of a little poison? You're gonna have to do a whole lot better'n that!" Applejack shot back.

While knocking back another one of their berserker's furious blows, she caught a glimpse of some unassuming figure scurrying around the remaining archers. The amazonian warrior had taunted the mercenaries with the futility of their latest gambit, but in truth, she wasn't actually certain if she was impervious to the effects of toxins. Certainly, she possessed the strength to crush boulders and a body able to shrug off any mundane weapon, but she had never exposed herself to venom to see if that superhuman resilience extended to an attack from the inside.

This, coupled with the fact that her melee opponents were refusing to back away even knowing that they'd be in the target area of said poison-tipped arrows, meant that they were willing to lay down their lives if it meant taking her down. They were unrelenting with their attacks, even as it seemed as if all it was amounting to was a momentary distraction. But at the same time, that's all it would take to let one deadly arrow pierce her skin, and send it's lethal contents coursing to her heart. Applejack had to act quickly. Finish the ones close up, and then make the survivors regret not being cast down sooner, when she was in a far more favorable mood...

The first Berserker made a misstep a few minutes into their fight. Weary and worn down from his blows missing their target by inches, he stepped into a position where he could use his blade to block if need be. It was a clumsy move not accommodating for a superhuman opponent, and Applejack was quick to take advantage.

A two-handed overhand swing came down on the man. He raised his sword to attempt to parry, only realizing his folly at the last moment. Applejack's mighty axe struck his weapon with a great ringing sound, followed by the unmistakable gut-churning ringing of his sword shattering into a dozen fragments. His cry of pain and fear was abruptly silenced as Applejack sliced through his armour and into the muscles beneath.

She had conquered dozens of powerful foes today alone, felling some of the strongest warriors this jungle had to offer, yet the busty, heavyset Amazon still wasn't permitted a rest. Her muscles were still being galvanized to war, no matter how much they ached.

A volley of poison-tipped arrows were let loose at her current location, the Amazon evading all but one of them. The satisfaction of evading strike after strike was suddenly cut short by a prickling sensation on her arm, and then the feeling of blood mixing with the unwanted foreign substance. With her accelerated heart rate in the midst of combat, the dirty dark liquid would flow through her body even faster, shorting out light and life with its passage.

She had no way of knowing if she'd live through this. The thought that her life was over, and continuing to fight was pointless, flitted through her mind, only to be instantly cast aside! It was not an Amazon's place to choose when her fighting was over! She would continue to crush her foes until none remained!

Applejack knew that whatever toxin just had been introduced into her system could not have been good. Her mind initially raced with what could happen as a result, jumping from total paralysis and suffocation to a messy liquefaction of her innards. All imagined possibilities ended with her untimely death, and yet, faced with this, the barbarian smiled. If death was inevitable, there was no reason to hold anything back now. Letting loose a fierce battle-cry that could shake even the most stalwart of knights, Applejack barreled onto the second berserker at a breakneck pace, and put everything she had in a horizontal swing. Her bald foe didn't even have the time to attempt to block the strike with his weapon, and Applejack's battleaxe barely slowed down as it passed through one side of the man's abdomen and exited the other, effectively separating him from his waist down. His body spun in the air in a gory spectacle, blood spraying from both severed stumps and splashing crimson on Applejack's body. As the last of the berserkers witnessed this, he faltered for a single moment, his sense of self-preservation resurfacing when faced with this avatar of slaughter.

The Amazon took advantage of this momentary hesitation, and was upon the man in the blink of an eye. Only, instead of striking him down with her bloodied axe, she grasped the man's throat with one of her hands...and went straight into crushing the life out of him. He dropped his weapon, scratching at the iron grip around his neck to no avail. Denied of air, his flailing body eventually twitched to stillness, but by then Applejack had already begun to pace towards the archers that had shot her, still carrying the dying man in her off-hand. This band of mercenaries might have finally condemned her to death, but they would regret their cowardly tactics for Applejack was determined to make every single one of them perish before she could expire. The archers were next...

The barbarian woman hit the archer's like a stampeding elephant. She struck a felled tree with her feet and leapt, long golden hair fanning around her shoulders as she passed through the air. By the time she'd touched the ground, two of the archers were rolling on the ground, clutching broken arms.

The mountain-woman whipped this way and that, dishing destruction on the gathered men one by one. Those closest to her drew knives and short blades also coated in the poison, but despite the sinister flow of dark liquid through her veins, the woman had barely slowed a bit. Attempts to strike her from unguarded angles ended in flashes of her ensorcelled steel.

The fight was all but over and the men were finally breaking. Those that could still run did so, careening away through the bushes and undergrowth, howling in fear. The others crawled or hid themselves in the undergrowth for fear of retribution.

Applejack stood at the centre of the fading whirlwind of violence, surrounded by broken trees, cracked rocks and the remnants of her foes. A great dust cloud hung in the air, whipped up by the woman's great energy alone. She sucked in great breaths that made her chest heave. Hard-formed abdominal muscles tensed and untensed. She tossed her head and breathed a great sigh.

Her vision was dimming, but if that was the worst she had to expect then the storm was truly over. Compared to felling the great Morbusaian and battling a whole troop of jungle-faring predators, a three-day hike through a mosquito-infested jungle in the blistering heat should be easy.

The warrior woman was turning to go, when she heard a little whimper just out of the corner of her hearing. It came to her slightly slower than usual, no doubt an after-effect of the poison in her body. She whipped her head in that direction in time to see the small red-haired man from earlier. He was standing on a small rock, a bow clutched in his hands. He looked unsteady and afraid, like he might drop it at a moment's notice.

"Sorry," he said quietly, cringing away from her like she might just go ahead and choke the life out of him then and there. He released the bowstring.

Applejack's vision blurred for a moment, her stomach lurching. When she came to again, three or four entire seconds had passed. And an arrow was poking out of her belly. The young tribal watched nervously, ready to run at a moment's notice.

"Ooh, I had just 'bout enough of this! You'll regret that, runt!" , Applejack growled angrily, once the shock of being punctured by yet another poisoned arrow wore off. She had completely forgotten about the younger man in her rage, faced with almost-certain death, she saw no reason to pay any attention to somebody so plain and feeble. After all, what harm could he do that an entire troop of battle-hardened mercenaries could not? As Applejack lowered her hands to grab at the arrow stuck in her abdomen, she had discovered that her expectations had been succinctly overturned. The Amazon's mind raced at the improbability of the situation, that she could actually be harmed by this supplier. Only the combination of masterwork arrowheads and the near-superhuman strength of the archers had managed to make one of the toxin-slathered arrows pierce her skin, there should not have been any way for this whimpering rodent before her to do the same! It was then that Applejack considered the poison running through her, and the fact she had relaxed her body upon believing that all her foes were dispatched. Be it by one or the other, or perhaps a combination of these two factors, she had unknowingly exposed herself when she let down her guard...and was now paying the price.

Unwilling to let such a puny man be the one to end her legend, she cast a baleful glare towards the one perched atop a rock, and stomped towards him, battle axe in hand. Almost immediately, Applejack realized she had reached the limits of her strength with her body under assault from the inside. She ponderously trudged forward as if her legs were mired in the thickest swamp, and her struggle to breathe reminded her of the trek in the thin-air peaks of Valtear mountains. Applejack attempted to heft her battleaxe as she drew near, but when her arms failed to lift the weapon again, she allowed it to fall to the ground behind her. She didn't need a weapon to beat this brat! The Amazon was nearly within grabbing distance, all she needed to do was reach out for him, whereupon she could practically crush him beneath her body weight alone! Only, as she reached out toward his trembling form, grasping his heavily-pocketed coat, the world began to spin and the ground came rushing toward her.

Everything went dark...