“Stupid mud,” Sprout muttered, stomping another hoof forward and wincing as mucky brown water sprayed in every direction. “Stupid swamps, stupid vines, and stupid robots.” He took another step, fighting back a cringe as the cold mud enveloped his fetlocks. “You go just the teensiest bit power-drunk crazy, and they throw you in a swamp for community service,” he continued his furious rant. “Miles away from civilization! Where’s the community I’m even serving?!” He snorted, then coughed as swamp-water made its way up his nose, and furiously shook his head.
“What even is a swamp lily?” he muttered to no one at all. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t even exist. It would be just like them to send me on some wild-goose chase. Hoping I learn a lesson, are they? Ha! I’ll find this imaginary lily just to spite them.”
He stomped on a tuft of grass, then shrieked like a little filly as he plunged up to his shoulder in thick mud. “Cold, cold, cold,” he muttered, scrambling backwards, only to trip as his back hoof dipped fetlock-deep into another hole.
“Ugh!” he shrieked. “What does it take to get out of this stupid swamp!” His saddlebags thumped on his hips as he scrambled back to his feet.
“That’s what I was wondering,” another voice muttered crossly from behind him.
Sprout released another shriek, and reared as he noticed the pegasus lounging in the branches of a tree behind his back. It was a pink pegasus. The princess? It might be. Fighting down his pounding fear at the sight of those feathered wings, Sprout tried to force himself into his ‘tough cop’ persona. If he had one at all that hadn’t been absorbed into ‘psychopathic villain’...
“Hey! How did you get here?”
Ah, so he did still have it. Good.
“My phone died,” the pegasus moaned, shaking the rectangular device in one hoof. “And my livestream stopped early!”
“Ahhh…”
“And! I am also lost! Here, in this swamp!” The pegasus fainted in a dramatic swoon over the bark.
Interesting priorities… Sprout thought. “Ookay then…” What was her name again? “Lily?”
“Pipp!” the pegasus snapped. “Princess Pipp!”
“Right! Pipp, yes. I, ah, wasn’t talking to you, though, Pipp. I’m, ah, looking for a lily? A swamp lily? Have you heard of it?”
“Of course not,” Pipp sighed. “Pegasi live in the mountains. I’ve never been in a swamp before, actually. I just wanted to livestream it for all my adoring fans! But now I can’t!” She swooned again.
“Alright then. I’m just going to be… over here. Looking for lilies.” Sprout turned away, then stopped, and forced himself to turn back and offer a wide smile. “It was nice meeting you though!”
Pipp stared at him, wide-eyed. He wondered if perhaps had something stuck in his teeth. He smiled a little wider.
“You look like a manticore with indigestion,” Pipp said.
The smile dropped from Sprout’s face. “Thanks,” he said crossly, turning again with a swish of his tail.
“No, no, wait, that came out wrong.” There was a rustling sound, and Pipp alighted by his side, wings outstretched. “Look, I’m lost, okay? D’you mind if I just follow you around for a bit and see how you get out?”
“You can fly,” Sprout pointed out in a flat tone. “I’m not sure I could stop you if I wanted to.”
“You sure tried earlier,” Pipp said.
Sprout’s ear twitched irritably. “That was when I had my giant robot. Do you see a giant robot now?”
Pipp shrugged merrily. “True, true.” She flared her wings and flapped up into the air. Sprout flattened his ears, and tried his best to ignore her flapping and flailing around his head. “What are you looking for again?” she called down.
“A swamp lily,” Sprout answered.
“Do you think somepony living in a strange hut made of trees in the middle of the swamp might know where one is?”
“Uh, maybe?” Sprout stopped and squinted up at her. “That was very specific! Why?”
“Because there’s one over there!”
Sprout’s head shot up, and reared briefly, straining to see over the swamp bushes and trees. Sure enough, a door was just barely visible through the underbrush, strung all over with beads and herbs.
“C’mon, I’ll lead you there!” Pipp called. “Follow me?”
“And you need me to show you how to get out of here?” Sprout grumbled. But he turned around, and followed the pegasus to the cottage door.
“So, do we knock?” she asked cheerly, landing and sticking her face far too close into his personal space.
“Uh, I guess so,” he stammered, taking a step backwards. “Um… you knock.”
“Okay!” She trotted up to the door, raised one hoof, and rapped sharply on the weather-worn wood. From inside, there came a crash, and a muffled curse.
Oops, Pipp mouthed. Several seconds passed. She raised a hoof to knock again, just as the door flung open, and a black and white striped head poked through.
“Greetings, Travelers, excuse my punctuality,” she said. “It has been very long since I was able to offer hospitality.”
“Uhh…” Sprout stared. “Are you rhyming? What are you? Are you a pony?”
Pipp flared one wing in front of Sprout’s face, blocking his sight. “Ignore him,” she said cheerily. “He’s just a little stupid. Less so than we learned most earth ponies were, buut that’s not the topic!” She poked him sharply in the side. “Learn to read, idiot,” she hissed. “She’s Zecora the Zebra, clearly!”
Sprout, still smarting from the ‘stupid’ comment, opened his mouth to retort, and found himself staring directly at a little sign with neat, curly writing declaring this to be the home of ‘Zecora the Zebra’, nestled directly above the door. “Oh,” he said.
“Zecora is indeed my name, though it is long since I heard it said,” the zebra said. “Once I was well known for my potions and fame, but all who once spoke it are long since cold and dead.”
“So… if you lived so long ago, how are you still around?” Sprout asked, eyeing the strange zebra cautiously.
Zecora coughed into her hoof. “Would you like the tale of death and woe, or the quick story that comes and goes?”
“Uh… short please.”
Zecora hummed thoughtfully. “For many years, I was a tree. Now it is time to be me.” She nodded in appreciation of the brief rhyme.
Sprout stared at her wordlessly. “That… explains nothing. What’s the long version?”
“Ah!” Zecora sat back on her hind legs and pulled out… some kind of stringed instrument? From an invisible pocket behind her back.
“A ballad I have composed ov’r years of yore,” she intoned.
“With verse both great and mighty.
a tale to thrill, and not to bore,
Lest we all grow old and - “
“Wait, wait, stop, I don’t think I actually want to know!” Sprout blurted out quickly. This sounded like it could go on for a while. “The short version is fine!”
“... flighty,” Zecora finished the line, frowning. She tucked the instrument away again, clearly annoyed by his interruption. “What is it that brings you here, so far from home and confronting fear?”
“Ummm…” Sprout stammered, still thrown off by the strange zebra’s rhyming patterns. “I’m, uh, looking for a swamp lily? Have you ever heard of one?”
“I’m just looking for a way out,” Pipp added brightly, flaring out one wing to block Zecora’s line of sight to Sprout. “Did I mention I’m also a Princess? Princess Pipp, of the Pegasi, daughter of Queen - ”
Zecora cut her off with a flat look. “Neither your title nor your lineage do I desire,” she said. “But my words may help your quest to inspire.” She nodded to Sprout.
Sprout frowned, sorting out her words in his head. “Inspire?”
“The location of the flower that you seek is a secret that has long been mine to keep,” Zecora explained. “And I may be able to give it to you - “
“Really? That’s great! Where is it?”
“For an errand delivered by two,” Zecora finished. She turned her head back to Pipp. “Is it a deal, Princess? I may also show you your path to regress.”
“Re-what?” Sprout asked, still bewildered. “I thought you could show me where the lily is?”
Pipp groaned, covering her head with a wing. “You are an idiot,” she muttered. “She’s offering to show you where the lily is and guide me out, but only if we do something for her.” She glared haughtily over the zebra’s head. “I am sorry, Miss Zecora, but I am a Princess, I don’t do errands.”
Zecora shrugged. “Then I abandon you to your fate. Farewell, for the hour is late.”
“No, no, no, wait!” Sprout scrambled forward before she could shut the door, shoving a hoof into the crack. “She’ll help, if you show us the flower and help us get out!”
“You do not speak for me!” Pipp cried, indignant.
“I do now,” Sprout hissed. “Shut up. Please, Zecora?”
Zecora opened the door again and regarded him with a regal air. “My offer still stands,” she said. “If you two will listen to my demands.”
Sprout checked to make sure Pipp was following him through the door behind him, and followed Zecora across the main room of her… tree-house. It was, quite frankly, creepy, with the only light coming from the fire that billowed under an enormous cauldron taking up the center of the room. Jars, scrolls, and beakers filled every available nook and cranny on the shelves that covered all the walls of the room. A set of stairs on the far wall spiraled upward - presumably - to living quarters above. At least, Sprout hoped she slept and ate somewhere. Maybe she was actually a ghost? He shivered, but kept moving. He needed that lily.
Zecora stopped at a low table, and nosed open a map. She pointed a hoof at a spot almost precisely in the center. “This here is my home in which you stand,” she said. She moved her hoof several inches sideways to what appeared to be a large clearing. “This is the place my errand demands.”
Sprout frowned, trying to figure out if using the same words to rhyme with two sentences in a row was cheating or not. After several seconds of dead silence, Pipp huffed.
“And what is it you want us to do, exactly?” she asked dryly.
“Clear the lake of its vermin without falling to his wrath,” Zecora replied. “And I shall offer you both the flower and the path.”
Dead silence followed this statement. After a minute, Sprout tipped his head to one side and asked, “So, is this rhyming thing a curse or something? Do you have to do it? Because that was kind of vague, and - “
Pipp groaned, and bit into Sprout's tail, dragging him away. “Let’s just get this over with,” she muttered around her mouthful. “This is so stupid.”
“What kind of vermin?” Sprout shouted as Pipp dragged him back through the door. “Are we talking like snakes, or mosquitos, or - “
The door slammed shut in his face, just as Pipp let go of his tail, and he flopped head-first into the muddy ground. “Ew! Yuck!” He spat, sitting upright, and trying to rub the mud off his tongue. “That’s so gross!”
“Well?” Pipp called, already in the air and soaring away. “You got me into this! Are we going, or what?”
Sprout groaned, and began to reluctantly trot after her, as she led the way towards the lake. “I hope by ‘wrath’, she meant ‘a really terrible hair day,” he muttered. “Because I’m already having one of those!”
“Yeah, me too, dirt-snout!” Pipp called back, clearly possessing both super-hearing, and super-annoying-passive-aggressive-anger-issues. “Pick up the pace, I’ve got an adoring audience to get back too!”
Sprout was going to build another robot just for the sake of making the annoying pink Pegasi princess shut up. He was. Just watch him. He breathed deeply through his nose, and trotted on.
The lake turned out to simply be a slightly deeper section of swamp, so the ground was one giant puddle, instead of a mud-bath. Sprout picked his way through slowly, wrinkling his nose as the chill water soaked into his fetlocks. Pipp, of course, soared perfectly overhead, undisturbed by the gross mud below.
“You see anything yet?” Sprout shouted up at her. “Anything that looks like vermin?”
“Nope!” She answered cheerily. “Just a lot of mud!”
“Really?” Sprout mumbled sarcastically. “I never would have guessed there was mud down here.”
“Yeah, it’s everywhere!” Pipp called down, again demonstrating that super-hearing that was equal parts unnerving and infuriating in turn.
Sprout shook his head, snorting. A foul stench filled his nostrils, and he snorted again, then sneezed as the scent filled his nose more fully. “Do you smell that?” He yelled. He looked around, noticing for the first time the strange, yellow fog that seemed to be rising from the muck.
“Smell what?” Pipp circled overhead, and staggered in midair as the scent reached her too. “Eww! Sprout, what did you eat!”
“You think it’s me?” Sprout flicked his tail, offended. “I did not cause this!”
“Well, who did?”
“I don’t know! Maybe the smell is the ‘vermin’?”
“In what world do earth ponies live that you would call a ‘smell’ ‘vermin’?!”
“Well, maybe zebras are different from earth ponies, did that thought ever cross your small, feathery-brained mind?”
“Who are you calling feather-brained, mud-for-brains?!”
“Excuse me, I - “ Sprout broke off mid word as his snout bumped into something tall and… warm, in front of him. He had been so occupied with staring up at Pipp during their shouting match that he hadn’t noticed the fog getting thicker, or the tall, scaly thing that rose up in his path. He stared, befuddled. Was it a tree? Did swamp trees normally have scales? “Hey, Pipp?” he called up. “What is this - “
“Aieee!!”
Pipp’s squeal froze Sprout in his tracks. A cold chill dropped around his heart as the thing in front of him moved in a sharp, jerky motion. Three more things moved in the fog, and slowly, four scaly heads revealed themselves to Sprout’s horrified eyes.
The heads paid no attention to him, but snapped and growled at each other. The three smaller heads were following the fourth one closely, which held something pink and furry in its mouth like a piece of prey.
With a thrill of cold terror, Sprout realized that the prey was Pipp - and the other heads were fighting for a chance to eat her.
For a second, the pink lump lay terrifyingly still in the creature’s mouth, and Sprout feared that Pipp was dead. Then, as the head holding her swung closer to Sprout than the others, he saw her wide, fearful eyes, and he realized she must just be holding still so as not to draw attention.
Help me! She mouthed frantically to Sprout as she swung by, before the head turned, and she passed out of his sight again.
Sprout tried to move - he really did! - but his hooves felt as though they had been glued to the ground. What was that thing?! It was so huge! What if it tried to eat him too?!
Then Pipp squealed again, and before Sprout could think, he felt his legs jerk forward until he was driving at a gallop straight towards the menacing beasts almost against his will.
“aaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHHHHAAaAaaaaa!” He yelled inarticulately as he flung himself forward and kicked at the neck of the thing holding Pipp. The beast flinched, sending Pipp flying from its mouth, and turned to face Sprout, staring at him with wide, fearsome eyes.
“Oh no,” Sprout whimpered, his legs suddenly feeling like stones again. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” He tried to back away as all four of the heads suddenly moved towards him, sloping down towards… was that a single set of shoulders?!
One body, four heads… the word itched at the back of Sprout’s mind, but he couldn’t dredge it up, only stare in petrified fear as it moved closer… and closer….
“Sprout! Run!”
Wings beat suddenly overhead, and Pipp swooped down and kicked the lead head on the jaw. It bellowed, turning to snap at her, but she soared neatly up out of reach. Two heads laughed at the other’s misfortune, but the fourth remained focused on Sprout. He twitched, trying to run, but with that terrifying green gaze still locked to his own, he couldn’t make his body listen to his commands.
Pipp swooped again, this time aiming for Sprout’s head. Her hoof connected solidly with the side of his skull, and he yelped, spinning in place from the impact. “Ooowww!”
“Run, idiot!” She yelled again, and this time, his legs obeyed.
“What even is that?” Sprout yelled as he ran, keeping pace with Pipp through the fog by listening for the sound of her wingbeats.
“I have no idea!” She yelled back.
“I do!”
“What? Well, why did you ask?”
“Because I don’t remember the name! I read about it once, when I was a foal! It’s a.. It’s a…” He racked his brain. “Hydra! It’s a hydra! That must be the vermin Zecora was talking about!”
“Fantastic,” Pipp said dryly. “How do we defeat it then!?”
Sprout panted, feeling the strain of running so hard through the muck pull on everyone of his muscles. He strained to think, trying to picture the brightly colored pages of the book - Sunny had loved that book, it was a picture book of all the creatures of Equestria. It had included unicorns and pegasi, so of course it was a forbidden volume. Sprout had only read it on a whim. He could picture the elegant drawing of the hydra, see the name spelled in curling font underneath the image… weaknesses, what were its weaknesses?”
“Fire!” He bellowed in triumph, the answer springing to his mind. “It’s a creature of water, it’s vulnerable to fire!”
Pipp groaned. “Where on Equestria are we going to get fire from in the middle of a swamp?!”
“If we can stop for a second, I might have some lighters in my saddlebags!”
“Keep going then, I’ll check!”
The flutter of Pipp’s wings receded into the distance, and Sprout forced himself to continue at his breakneck pace, hoping he was still going in a straight line. The fog around him seemed a little bit thinner, but he still couldn’t see much more than the ground beyond his nose. After what seemed like an eternity to his aching muscles, Pipp returned.
“It’s pretty far behind us, and it looks like it might be angling towards our right,” she said. “We can probably stop for a second here.”
Sprout instantly skidded to halt, and stood with his muzzle between his legs, breathing heavily. He coughed as one particularly deep breath drew in a clot of mud along with air, and hacking, nosed open his saddlebags.
“I packed for - ygjnbvcxsergbhv.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I packed for every eventuality. I think my mother threw in one of her patented Canterlogic Flame Throwers™.”
“Why is that even a thing?” Pipp demanded. She had descended to his eye level, but insisted on hovering inches above the ground, keeping her perfectly fluffy fetlocks just out of the muck. Sprout eyed her jealously.
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Ask my mother. I think she was worried about invading tree ponies at the time?”
“Whatever,” Pipp groaned. She pulled her phone out from somewhere behind her wings and held it up. “I so wish I could document this for all my fans. Totes sorry, guys!” She yelled up to the sky.
“Shush!” Sprout hissed, frantically pulling Canterlogic Flame Throwers™ parts out of his bags and trying to put them together without liberally coating them in mud. “What if it hears us?”
“Then you blast it with your flamethrower thingy, duh!”
“Not if it’s not ready yet!”
“Well, you’d better hurry up!”
Sprout glanced up at the frantic note in Pipp’s voice, only to see that the fog had cleared just enough to reveal the hydra charging towards them, no more than fifty feet away. He squeaked, and tried to redouble his speed assembling the Canterlogic Flame Throwers™’ barrel. “Pipp! Distract it!”
“Why me?” she demanded.
“Because I’m busy, and if you don’t, we’re both going to be hydra food!”
“Fine, fine,” Pipp groused, lifting off and buzzing away towards the hydra. “But I’d fly away, only you would be eaten!”
“Thanks, very comforting,” Sprout grumbled. He focused on the parts in his hooves. If that was the tab that slotted into the ignition, then that piece next to it should be the spark-holder -
“Hi-yah!” Pipp shouted, followed by the slap of hooves against a solid surface. “Take that, hydra!”
The hydra roared, and Pipp let out a trailing shriek that followed her position across the sky. “Hurry up, Sprout!” she cried.
“I’m trying!” Latch that in there, clip that one piece there, that bar needed a screw to hold it in place… Sprout worked frantically, his hooves seeming to fly across the pieces as he assembled them at breakneck speed. Pipp squealed just as the last piece clicked into place, and he glanced up to see her snatched out of the sky once again by the hydra’s second-right mouth.
“Pipp!” He shouted. Hoisting the Canterlogic Flame Throwers™ onto his shoulder, he took off at a gallop straight towards her. “Don’t move!”
He skidded to a halt ten feet away, his hindquarters dragging in the mud as he braked, and pulled the ignition switch. Flames blasted in a thick sheet out of the mouth of the Canterlogic Flame Throwers™’ barrel, and the hydra squealed as its scales were bathed in scalding flames. Dropping Pipp in the mud, its heads’ flailed, snatching at Sprout, but he concentrated the flame on the closest head until it jerked away, screeching.
With a final, agonized bellow, the hydra turned tail and sprinted out of the bog. Its lashing tails threw up a wave of mud and water, which crashed through the fire, extinguishing the flames like they were nothing. Sprout dropped the Canterlogic Flame Throwers™ as the wave approached, but he didn’t have time to move more than a step before it descended upon him and buried him beneath the flow.
Cold, thick mud clung to every inch of his skin. He could feel it soaking into his mane, trapping his hooves, covering his eyes and his nose. He opened his mouth to gasp for air, but only welcomed in more mud, coating the inside of his mouth, sliding in thick, gooey ooze down his throat. He choked, and tried to cough, but coughing required air and he didn’t have any air there was only mud he was going to die he was going to -
Something pulled at his mane, and his head was yanked abruptly up into sweet sweet air! He coughed, shaking his head, blinking open his eyes as the mud slid off his eyelids. Pipp dropped his mane and hooked her forelegs under his shoulders, pulling the rest of his body out from under the mud that had buried it. She dropped him onto the ground, and he coughed, and coughed, and coughed, hacking up mud out of his lungs. Finally, he groaned, his aching lungs finding only air for the first time in minutes, and looked blearily up at her.
“Thanks,” he choked weakly. “You… you saved my life.”
She shrugged, pawing at her fluffy chest until she noticed her hooves were now covered with mud, and dropped to land on the ground. “Don’t mention it,” she said. “You saved mine first. Twice, actually - the hydra got me twice.”
Sprout thought about it, and decided she was right. “Great,” he said. “I accept wealth and accolades in my honor.”
Pipp snorted with laughter, then froze at his blank expression. “...oh, you weren’t kidding,” she said. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
For some reason, Sprout found he kind of believed her.
“You feeling up to walking?” Pipp asked. “Because we did what the creepy zebra told us to do, and I think I’m ready to get out of this swamp.”
“...hate swamps,” Sprout mumbled. “Never goin’ in one again.”
“Never thought I’d say this to an earth pony, but I am in complete agreement,” Pipp said. She held out a hoof and pulled Sprout to his hooves. “Let’s find Zecora and get out of here, okay?”
“Okay,” Sprout agreed fervently.
Zecora was not hard to find. The exhausted ponies retraced their steps, leaning on each other for support, and found the zebra standing in the trees not fifty feet away from the lake where the hydra had been. She had a straw gardeners hat on her head, and a matching woven basket at her side.
“I am most glad to see you survived, for to break a deal would have greatly wounded my pride,” she said, with far too much cheer, as they approached.
Sprout growled, and forced himself to stand on his own four hooves so he could storm up to her and wave a hoof in her face. “You think you could have warned us about the freakin’ hydra in there?! We almost died! And you’re worried about your pride!?”
Zecora shrugged casually. “The hydra is vermin, is it not? I pray you find my impasse quick forgot,” she added hastily as Sprout’s brow furrowed in anger. She nosed open the basket at her side, and delicately held out a large white flower. “Here is the Swamp Lily that you sought. And to you, I will show the path you should have wrought,” she told Pipp.
“It’s about time,” Pipp scoffed. “My fans are long overdue for an update.” She held up her mud covered phone and sighed. “If a battery recharge will even help anymore.”
Sprout turned towards the path that would lead him home, then hesitated. Turning back to Pipp, as she prepared to follow Zecora in the other direction, he called out. “Hey! Pipp?”
She turned to look at him, tilting her head questioningly. He licked his lips uncertainly, then gathered up his courage and blurted out. “Do you… do you want to stay in touch after I get home? I know you’re closer with Sunny,” he added hastily as she hesitated to respond. “And I get that I’m the one who was trying to kill you and all earlier, but you saved my life back there, and you might actually be sort of cool, and - “
“Sprout!” Pipp interrupted, flaring her wings for attention. Sprout snapped his jaw shut, and she smiled. “I would love to stay in touch,” she said gently. “Besides, Zipp and Sunny are closer than me, and it’s just awkward to be friends with your sister’s friend too. So. Friends?” She held out a hoof to Sprout.
Sprout wrapped his hoof around hers, and smiled. “Friends.”
Author's Note
This was pretty fun. Definitely not something I would have written on my own. It's good to write for this fandom again.
