It was a horse.

A beautiful white horse.

Just standing there in the middle of the path.

It pricked its ears forward at the sight of the Spy and fixed him with a curious, blue-eyed stare.

Spy approached slowly, not wanting to startle it. He spoke in a low, soothing voice as he drew closer.

'What are you doing down here, my friend? This is no place for a horse. Is this what the Sniper's up to? Keeping a horse in the sewers, of all things? Good thing the path's wide enough for you to turn around here, though this place can't be any good for you.'

The horse snorted when he drew closer, and took a couple of small steps backwards. The sound of hooves hitting stone clattered and echoes around the tunnel.

'Woah, uh...'

He ducked his head down and to the right to check, '...boy. I'm not going to hurt you.'

The horse took great snuffling breaths, breathing in his scent. Slowly, Spy pulled off one of his leather gloves and reached out to stroke the animal's soft muzzle. The horse allowed him to for a moment, then tossed its elegant head up out of reach.

Even in the dim light of the sewers, Spy could see it was a handsome beast, though not of any particular breed he could recognise. Its build seemed somewhere between Arab and quarter horse, but it had an incredibly long mane. The mane was damp and stringy looking though, dripping water on to the concrete below.

Its ribs showed through more clearly than they should have. Spy wondered if it might just be because it was old; grey horses barely appeared this white until much later in their lives. However, there were no other signs of old age. No scrawny haunches, prominent withers or noticeable dip to its back.

'How could he keep you down here?' Spy asked softly. It looked to him as though this was most likely an animal in the prime of its life being kept in terrible conditions. 'With this constant dripping, its a miracle you haven't got rain rot.'

He was feeling angry now. Though this was certainly better than dead women floating in the water, Spy wasn't going to stand by and let the Sniper get away with animal cruelty. Spy had a real soft spot for animals. It wasn't a side of him that his team mates ever saw, but why should they? The only animals they regularly encountered apart from Medic's doves were Soldier's raccoons and they were less animals, more demons wrapped in banded fur.

'Now, how am I going to get you out of here?' Spy wondered out loud. The way he'd come would be too narrow and slippery for the horse. He didn't want to end up breaking the poor thing's legs whilst trying the rescue it. There were other ways of the sewer, but he risked running into the Sniper, wherever he was. Then again, maybe it'd be a good idea to confront him about this. Spy would be willing to help him hide the horse from the Administrator if he agreed to move it somewhere safer.

'I'm going to try and find your owner, boy. Don't mind me, just got to get past.' If the Sniper had a bridle or a head-collar or even a rope, that'd make it much easier to move the beast.

The horse watched him warily for a moment, then pushed its muzzle into him, still sniffing. It gave a friendly little whicker.

'Woah, boy. Don't push me into the water. I'm afraid I haven't got any sugar lumps in my pocket, just cigarettes.'

It pleased him how quickly the poor animal seemed to be taking to him though. He reached out a hand to pat its neck but found the coat there slimy and sticky.

'Urgh. First thing I'm going to do when we get you out of here is give you a good wash. You'll like that, wont you?'

The horse nosed at him again, and there seemed an odd amount of intelligence in those blue eyes, even with their wide, sideways pupils.

Then, without warning, the horse collapsed down. Spy took a startled step away from it, wondering if he'd somehow managed to kill Sniper's horse in the few minutes he'd been there. How on earth would he explain that to the bushman?

But the horse was fine. It lay on the ground with its legs tucked under itself, watching Spy intently.

'Well there's a surprise. Who taught you to do that? Sniper?'

He'd rarely come across horses trained like this, and certainly never in a sewer before.

'I'm sorry, I can't ride you, I've got my best suit on!'

But he wanted to. It had been years since he'd last had the chance to ride, and he missed it.

'This is a terrible idea,' Spy muttered to himself as he swung one leg over the animal's back. He barely had chance to grab a fistful of mane before the horse surged back on to its feet. Despite the suddenness of it, Spy marvelled at the beast's strength. It might be under-nourished, but this really was one fine horse.

He clicked his tongue and pressed his left thigh against its flank. Just as he'd hoped, that was all it took for the horse to start turning. There wasn't much room to spare, but it managed to turn around without smashing Spy's head into the brickwork, or sending him into the murky water below.

He encouraged the horse to start moving down the path with a quick squeeze of both legs. Once again, it responded beautifully.

Spy wondered what Sniper was going to think of him appearing out of nowhere, riding his horse. The image was enough to make him laugh. Likely the Sniper would hear them coming first; every step they took echoed down the path and around the deeper tunnels.

Then the noise died away. It took a moment to register with the Spy. Had they moved from concrete on to soil? He remembered the path being noticeably more squelchy in places, but he'd thought that this whole section of the sewers was concreted.

He leant over to look down at the ground. A strange trick of the dim light made the horse's legs look almost green-grey rather than white and the hooves gleamed in an oddly fractured way. As though it had claws rather than hooves.

The horse was moving forward at a determined pace and Spy started worrying it might slip on the soft ground beneath and and go crashing down, taking Spy with it.

'Woah, boy.' In lieu of a bridle, he tugged on the beast's long mane. It flung its head back and snorted irritably, but slowed down all the same.

'There. Good boy.'

Spy went to pat the side of its neck reassuringly, but an odd thing happened. The moment his hand touched the horse's coat, it stuck there.

'What on earth?'

Spy tried to tug his hand away. It didn't move. He tapped a finger of his other, gloved, hand against the animal's neck, and that stuck fast too.

'What the hell is this? Glue?'

He tried wriggling his hand out of the tight glove, but just ended up with more finger tips touching the beast's coat..

He decided that he really wanted to get off this particular ride. Spy went to swing his right leg over the horse's back, but to his horror, they were trapped too. If he could get his hands free he would be able to undo his trousers and possibly slip out of them. Running around the sewers in his underwear wasn't ideal, but it would be preferable to being trapped on this animal's back.

Spy was beginning to panic now. His left hand was gradually slipping out of the glove, but no matter how much he tugged and writhed, the rest of him was stuck. What made it worse was the way the horse was beginning to speed up again and no amount of wavering commands to, 'Stand, boy, stand!' would make it stop. It had gone from obeying his every command to ignoring him completely.

They were approaching a narrow corner now, and the horse showed no signs of slowing down. If it kept going on like this, it was going to end up plunging both of them straight into the water.

'Stand! I said, Stand! Stop! Please, stop, you stupid animal! Sniper? Sniper!' He was shouting now, hoping that the Sniper would appear and come rescue him. Yes, it would be humiliating to be found literally stuck to his horse, but it was better than being trapped there forever.

At the name, the horse swung its head round to gaze at the Spy with one big blue eye.

Spy stared at the beast in horror. There was something horribly wrong with its face.

'Oh God. Oh God, what are you?'

This looked nothing like the beautiful animal he'd first encountered. Gone was the pure white coat, replaced now with green-grey skin. The skin was stretched taut over its skull and pulled back from its teeth into a permanent grin. And those teeth!They didn't belong to a horse, or any animal that Spy could think of. They were impossibly long and thin and jagged, as though the beast's mouth was full of shards of glass and splinters.

'Oh God, oh God, oh God.'

The creature whickered again, and this time it sounded more like a snigger than a friendly welcome.

Spy caught sight of something shifting in its eye. The pupil itself seemed to squirm, as though it were a leach trapped within the eyeball. It contracted into a perfectly round pupil, and for a moment there was a small spark of humanity about it.

'S—Sniper?'

Then it stretched itself out into the thin, slitted pupil of a cat.

'Sniper? Sniper? Please. If that's you, just stop. Stop!'

But the monster didn't. They were just a few metres away from the end of the path and it surged on, powerful muscles propelling it into a quick trot.

'Oh God no, let me off!'

Spy had no idea what was going on, but he didn't care. All he wanted to do was get away.

Finally his left hand slipped free of the glove and he thrust it into one of his jacket pockets.

His butterfly knife seemed like a pitiful weapon when compared to just one of this monster's fangs, but it was all he had.

Spy flipped open the Balisong and plunged it into the creature's neck.

The beast screamed. It was an awful, guttural noise that echoed up and down the sewer tunnels.

He went to wrench the knife out for another attack, only to find stuck there as tightly as the rest of him.

The beast's head snaked around, its mouth gaping open impossibly wide.

It was Spy's turn to scream as it snapped its jaws shut over his arm and pulled, shredding his suit and turning the flesh beneath it to ribbons.

Then they reached the edge.

The beast flung itself into the water with a triumphant shriek. Spy didn't even have time to gasp in one last breath before he was fully submerged. The shocking cold made him gasp, precious air bubbled from his lips and spiralled back up to the surface.

Webbed paws tipped in hooked claws, slashed through the water, dragging them down ever deeper.

If there had been time for Spy to think, he would have remembered then something Demoman had once said.

When he had too much to drink, the Scot had a habit of ranting on about mythical creatures. Recently, he'd begun to suspect there was something in the sewers. 'Thought it was a giant alligator or a kelpie or some kind of tentacle monster,' he'd said. None of the others had paid much attention to him at all.

'But then I saw the livers. You've seen them, haven't you, lads? You've seen the way it's only ever livers that come floating out the sewers, never any other body parts. You mean you haven't noticed? Pah! None of you ever pay attention to the stuff you should. None of you notice the signs. There's an each uisge down in those sewers, I tell you. An each uisge.'

But Spy didn't have time to think. There was no room in his mind for anything but drowning. It was a terrible way to go, the stabbing, burning pain of water filling his lungs, but better than being eaten alive. The last thing he saw before the light faded from the world was the each uisge's great leering face and the promise of worse things to come.

When Spy finally respawned his legs gave way beneath him and he crumpled down on to the cold floor. He clutched at it, reassured by it's solidity, while staring wildly around the room. Everything was ordinary. Everything was safe. Everything was as it should be.

Apart from the smell. The stench of stagnant water permeated the room.

Spy raised himself up on shaking arms to see the Sniper standing in front of him, slouched against the closed door and staring at him with expressionless blue eyes.

Spy had no idea what to say, or what to do. He was frozen in place, his mind blank of everything but one thought.

He promised himself that if he made it out of this one, he was never ever, going to call the Sniper 'horse-faced' ever again.

Apologies to anyone with their fingers crossed for a tentaspy! I do have an idea for a story about a tentaspy that I want to write one day, inspired by the song, 'Me' by ASP. Give it a listen, it's an interesting song. Great atmosphere.

The inspiration for this fic came from a short drabble on Tumblr with a wendigo Scout in it. I wondered to myself what other mythical creatures I hadn't seen combined with TF2 before and the idea of Sniper being a kelpie popped straight into my head. But while I was double-checking that kelpies could take on the form of a man as well as a woman, I came across mentions of the each uisge. I pronounce it 'ehck ooshkay' but everywhere I've found with a pronunciation guide for it tells you to say it completely differently, so call it whatever you want. Just make sure if it's going to be something rude, that you don't say it to its face.