Drip, drip, drip. The sound of water trickling into gathered pools and puddles had begun to annoy her hours ago, and her dark ears pinned firmly backwards as a display of her quickly diminishing mood. Nazgul’s hooves echoed around the dungeon, it’s dimly lit corridors and culverts a labyrinth she traversed in otherwise silent contemplation; If only she had ignored the poster in the woods, perhaps instead of cobwebs and sickly cold water, she might feel the warm kiss of the sun upon her back instead? The mare kicked a particularly large stone, and exhaled loudly enough to conjure a storm of dust and dirt around her knees, before loudly snorting and coming to a stop. “Where are you?” she hissed to herself, her inky black tail swatting a spider from her left hip before shaking herself free of the debris and grime she had collected on her journey so far. The poster had offered a reward for unquestionable evidence a ‘monster’ had been slain within the crypt, the details had been otherwise vague but spoke of a ‘gelatinous evil’. Nazgul had laughed at the description, how evil could a slime really be, afterall?

As she traversed deeper into the cavern, thoughts of how she could have otherwise spent her days began to fade away, and a sense of adventure began to take hold of the young mare. Her dark eyes scanned every inch of the winding corridor, mindful not to step on the vast array of flora that had suddenly begun to appear, in the form of thick vines lined with sharp thorns, and tall flowers in a wide variety of colour and size. It was almost as though she had been transported to another world, where life here was in much more of an abundance to the one she had not long since left behind. Bats shrieked in the darkness around her, and she tried to ignore the sensation of ‘things’ crawling around across her back and up her legs, steadfast in her quest to find the so-called monster in the deeps.

As the long path led on, the dark mare found herself standing on the edge of a precipice, alerted only to its imminent danger when another stone was kicked into a vast abyss, rather than bouncing along across the cobbles as it had done for what felt like hours previously. One dark ear pricked forwards, her eyes struggling in the low light to make out exactly where she was, and what she might be faced with. Drip, drip, drip. A familiar sound informed her she must be standing before some sort of pool, and her nostrils flared as she drank in the damp air in the cavern. Taking a deep breath, Nazgul allowed the toes of her front hooves to tip precariously over the edge of the cliff she stood on, feeling almost blindly for the incline in the dark, and suddenly became aware of how quiet it had fallen. She paused, a cold finger of fear tracing its way down her back as she strained to find the chirping of insects, or screeching of bats that had accompanied her only moments before; had something frightened them away that she herself were not yet aware of?

She shook away the feeling of dread, and extended one leg to locate the slope downwards, and determined that as long as she were careful, and steady, she could make it down without too much hassle. Nazgul took a deep breath, and allowed herself to slide down the embankment until she landed a little unceremoniously in a freezing pool of water. A momentary panic ensued, as water climbed up her legs and finally seemed to stop at her chest, the cold a shock as she stood rigid as if waiting to continue sinking into its depths. She laughed quietly to herself, her tail flowing along the surface of the water as she began to stride across the vast, hidden lake she found herself in. Up ahead, an ominous glow pulsated from a cavern cut into the rock, a soft turquoise light dancing across the lichen covered rock face before her.

Ignoring her instinct to leave, Nazgul pushed on through the lake and took solace as it slowly began to become shallower and shallower as the light ahead grew brighter, and brighter. Before too long, rocky ground was welcomed beneath her hooves and she took a brief moment to shake the water from her cloudy coat, her oil coloured mane dripping down her dark stained shoulders as they carried her forwards towards the cave. Atop her head, her ears swivelled and spun like satellite dishes, searching for anything other than the constant dripping of what she hoped was water, but found only the steadily quickening sound of her heartbeat. Entering the cave, Nazgul realised she had been holding her breath, and released it in a long puff before giving herself a mental pep talk, after all, what did she expect to find in here?

The light up ahead pulsated and glowed rhythmically as the mare rounded a corner, the ceiling to the cave had become low enough that she could no longer hold her head at a preferred height, and she pushed down a rising sense of fear in the confined tunnel. In the periodic dark between the pulse, her wide eyes settled on a strange and unsettling shape in the cave. There, huddled in the corner, was the monster she had traversed all this way to find. Nazgul held her breath for a second, her body rigid as the creature’s own eyes found her in the entrance of its lair, but it’s translucent form never moved more than an obvious shudder; was it… Frightened? Nazgul frowned, one front leg lifted tentatively off the ground as she inhaled the air around them, her fear slowly ebbing away.

Upon closer inspection of this sentient slime, she could make out within its gelatinous body, the undeniable shape of an uncomfortably human looking skull, just floating around inside it’s bizarre and thought provoking form. “Hello?” she spoke after a long pause, one eyebrow furrowed as the puddle of slime flinched, and released a startled sound akin to a frightened mouse. “You’re no ‘evil’, are you,” she snorted, settling her hoof back to the floor and moving a little closer to the glowing pile of slime. Its eyes bobbed about like a boat amongst the waves as it followed her movements slowly, but otherwise not really moving. She guessed it to be around the size of a pig, and probably less intimidating than one too. A sigh blew through her nostrils as she flicked her tail with some annoyance, “I came all this way to find you, and you’re really not what I expected,” she mused, her velvet soft muzzle wrinkling at the corners in a thin smile. “But I suppose that’s not your fault.” The pathetic creature wobbled and gyrated its strange body in response to her voice, eyes blinking out of sync in an almost adorable sort of way. How was she supposed to slay this harmless little beastie?

Another sigh passed through her nostrils as she watched the creature sway to and fro in the dark, its luminescence constant now rather than a series of pulses and flashes, and she wondered if it had been some sort of last ditch display to frighten her away from its lair? “You’ve got to calm it down with the light show, you’re scaring the locals,” she mused with another hint of a smile, and the creature bounced and wobbled happily in response. “I can’t kill you, you poor thing,” she grumbled, “You’re lucky I'm in a good mood.” Her parting words were offered with one last smile, before the mare began to back herself up out of the tunnel and into the spacious cavern, the dark water of the lake quietly lapping the shoreline. “Ah, this will do nicely,” she said to herself, plucking a weathered looking skull from the shallows and slipping it quickly into the leather satchel across her back, and beginning the long journey home. “Close enough.”