Truly Evil?

"Phew. It worked." Ician stared down into the water. "Next plant." He went ahead and tried to replicate the strategy on the next plant, drawing a little bit of gauze to replace the earlier bait and letting it drift gently onto the water.

This time, it wasn't just one plant but several that arced towards the gauze before going right on past it and rearing out of the water. Five of the carnivorous stalks were now flailing about above the water, occasionally launching forwards to take snapping bites at the ponies on the edge of their tank.

"Okay, bad idea." Ician pulled all of his instruments away. "I don't suppose anyone has some Greek fire or anything that could kill those things?"

A shake of the head from June.  "That wouldn't work anyway, Greek fire floats in water.  I might have something that'll help, though..."  She set down her backpack, opening it so the inside was hidden.  She stuck a hoof in, casually tore through dimensions to reach her storage space, and pulled out a broken jar.  She stared at it for a few seconds, eyebrows high in surprise.  "Must've landed another jar on it.  That is bad."  Another few seconds, ended with a shrug.  "I'll clean it up later."  She tore into the storage space again, this time near a pile of various tools.  She picked out three large hedge clippers, a machete, and half of another machete, setting them down one by one with a grin.  "There we go.  They're probably a bit dull by now, just a fair warning."

"Right..." Ician took the tools and dropped another piece of gauze into the water, waiting to chop at the plants with relatively advanced weaponry instead of his tiny surgical instruments. "Thank you."

Dusk drew his sword to cut these things down, but first he charged up some fire magic and attempted to light one of the stalks on fire. "You want fire? I have plenty of it," he said.

The plants began making their attacks at the three, each one had a stalk performing in roughly the same manner as they attacked. Rising out of the water, arcing up slightly, and then lunging forwards in an attempt to catch something in their improvised mouths. The only difference was the one lunging towards Dusk since it caught a face full of fire. While it hit solidly, and the plant did rear back and pull itself back underwater for a second or two, the fire did rather minimal damage because of how alive the plant was and the fact that it was still dripping with water. A second one however was readily available to fill it's place.

Ician stumbled backwards, still hacking and slashing at the plants with his weaponry, making sure that his weapons moved as fast as they could. Hopefully it would be enough to evade the plants' strikes before they reduced his offensive capability to nothing.

Casting fireballs at the plants was easy for Dusk, but the water didn't exactly help things. He needed something that would burn hotter, and burn these plants before they returned to the water. But that would take a good bit of power to do that.

A plan was needed, but everypony was occupied fighting those things. So, to buy time, he decided to light all of the plants on fire. Once they all were dousing themselves, Dusk asked, "Anypony have any ideas on how to kill these? My fire's not burning them fast enough."

June quickly took a tactical retreat, backing away from the plants.  She quickly reached through the backpack, withdrawing a green bottle labeled as "Drink of Kings", and a smaller label underneath warned of its 97% concentration of alcohol, and 3% concentration of Poison Joke.  June read the label, took a swig, stuffed a rag in the neck of the bottle, and smiled.  She held out the bottle for one of the unicorns to take, shouting "I found a molotov cocktail!  Try it!"

Dusk took the bottle from June and read the labels. "Wait, you took a drink of this?" Dusk asked, "I hope whatever happens to you doesn't end up ruining our chances here." Dusk figured he'd wait until the plants came back up from putting their fires out before using the molotov.

Sure enough, the plants did resurface and went straight for another lunge at the group with their 'maws' open wide. Completely oblivious to what surprise might be awaiting them.

"Well, that's your opportunity." Ician gestured to Dusk. "Bombs away. And try not to burn down the manor with it." For his part, he readies his own weapons for another pass at the plants, seeing if he could catch them unawares for maybe when they were on fire, if the molotov did the trick.

Dusk then lit the cloth that was in the bottle and tossed it at the plants. He figured it would only harm one, but one less plant would be helpful. The bottle then hit one of the plants in its mouth and shattered, creating a near instant inferno on, and in the plant.

Yes the bottle hit, and with something pretty dang close to an explosion, the lead plant was engulfed in flames both in and outside of it's maw. It quickly pulled itself underwater, but a severe amount of damage had already been done in the short amount of time. Dragging itself underwater though had a slightly adverse effect on the other plants as well.

With a decent portion of the alcohol spilling off the lead plant, and a bit more coming off as it dove underwater, the surface of the pool ignited as well. Flames raced up the other plants that were on the surface, causing them significant damage as well. Weakened but not beaten, the plants tried to resurface, only to get caught in the blaze that was still going and more or less destroy themselves. Sustaining too much damage, the plants went limp and slowly drifted to the bottom of the tank, no longer moving.

"That did it all right." Ician reached down into the pool and again tried to obtain the golden object, seeing if whatever was keeping it there had gone.

June cheered as the plants retreated, and took out another Drink of Kings bottle.  "I'd offer you all a celebratory drink, but I think we'd all prefer you to be sober.  And alive."  She took a long drink, droining about half the bottle, then pulled out a smaller bottle to counteract the poison joke.  "Be careful though, they might be playing possum.  Please don't die."

"Phew, glad that's over," Dusk said. He also was glad he wasn't the one going into the water, but he didn't really want to say it.

While nothing else in the pool moved, the glinting object didn't budge anymore that it had previously.

"Okay... looks like someone's going to have to dive in and take a proper, good look at it." Ician glanced at the others. "Or maybe get rid of all the water somehow. Can you generate fire intense enough to evaporate it, maybe?"

June lifted an eyebrow.  "You want to risk steaming all of the paintings, go ahead.  But I'll swim down to check it out."  She pulled a scuba mask through her bag, and took off her sunglasses.  Underneath, her eyes were tightly shut.  Strapping on the mask and a pair of reflective swim goggles, she cautiously dipped a hoof in the water, seeing if anything would react.

Nothing in the pool stirred as June dipped a hoof into the pool.

June took a moment to make sure her mask was on, and jumped into the water.  She swam down to the onject, and got a closer look.  She had, however, rather conspicuously neglected to fasten an oxygen tank to the scuba mask.  She did seem to be doing fine, however, releasing a few bubbles now and then as she looked the object over.

To put it simply, the glinting object was a rather over-sized padlock fastened to a regular sized dull grey key.

June came up onto the surface, climbing out.  She removed the mask, keeping the goggles on.  "It's a lock.  A big lock.  It has a little key on it, too."  She couldn't smell for enchantments underwater.