Applejack tugged at the rope tied around her waist. She hurriedly picked up the slack as Fluttershy, at the other end of the rope, slowly made her way to Applejack through the dark.

The rope coiled beside Applejack’s hooves, counting down the meters. When she reached down to the last two Applejack put a waiting hoof up for Fluttershy to touch.

The Pegasus’ nerves were frayed, as were Applejack’s. It wasn’t just the dark and the fear of whatever was scuttling around. Neither of them had brought food or water; their mouths were as dry as the cavern walls enclosing them.

When they heard ‘underground’, they expected something to the likes of the Diamond Dog tunnels―lit in some capacity and relatively near the surface. This place wasn’t. It simply wasn’t. Not even close.

She should have brought supplies! All Applejack considered was the rope she always carried and two cloaks she borrowed from Luna’s wardrobe, the weird splotchy ones. She would give them back. She didn’t steal them. She just… needed them. She’d make up for them.

The rope was their one grace that stopped them from losing each other more than once.

Fluttershy’s muzzle touched Applejack’s hoof. The Earth Pony pulled her friend into an embrace. “Ah gotcha, sugarcube,” she whispered encouragingly.

“I’m okay,” Fluttershy assured, hugging back with equal strength. “I didn’t find anything on my side. Maybe we missed a passage on the way?”

“It’s fine, sugarcube. Ah found where to go already. Follow where my hoof is pointing, about a meter in front of us. Careful, it’s on the ground,” Applejack instructed.

Fluttershy shuffled forward carefully. A loose pebble clinked loudly a dozen times on its way down a vertical shaft. Applejack and Fluttershy tensed, not daring to breathe. They waited for a minute, both of them letting out relieved sighs when there was no response.

“Climbing down in the dark. If that ain’t fun, what is?” Applejack joked.

“Oh my. Are we sure they went down this way?” Fluttershy asked.

Applejack chuckled. “Trust me, Luna and Raegdan went down this way. Ah’m sure of it.”

Inwardly, she agreed with Fluttershy on the general sentiment. Sometimes there were two, three, four, or even more passages to choose from. A grim choice to make when you can’t see them all or the echoes lie all the darn time! They’d been lucky so far. They picked the wrong path a couple of times, but always the din of combat dancing through the darkness would point them back in the right direction. As long as they were close enough.

Applejack was pretty sure she got it right, either way. Just to the right of the hole—and she wasn’t going to mention this discovery to Fluttershy—she found something that was growing cold and went splotch when she prodded it. They had gone down this way, and it had been blocked before. Wasn’t the first time, probably wouldn’t be the last either.

Applejack announced she was going first. She put the rope up on her back, and slipped down the edge, her back hooves searching for something to stand on. This is hard. Borderline impossible, she thought, grinding her teeth in frustration.

A couple minutes later she realized it had been impossible. That climb wasn’t made for a blind Earth Pony. Her leg found an edge and she stupidly put her full weight on it without testing it. It crumbled under her, and she followed it on its fall, her perilous balance on her hind legs betraying her.

She maddeningly scrambled for something to hold onto. She might have yelped or screamed. The falling rock brought more down, and above it all an Earth Pony screaming profanities her grandma would empty the entire pepper shaker into her mouth for.

Applejack’s head hit the wall on her way down. Her legs were bruised and cut from blunt and sharp edges. Her ribs creaked loudly when she landed on a groaning pile of stone.

“… You hurt?”

Yes, she did hurt, thank ya kindly. Applejack shook her head, and the pain on her head registered sharply, adding to her aches. She pushed herself up and she almost fell anew. She couldn’t see a darned thing, but if she did it would all be spinning, she was sure.

“Applejack, are you hurt? Please, answer me!” Fluttershy cried from above Applejack.

“Ah’m okay,” Applejack shouted back. She heard Fluttershy let out a deep sigh of relief. She placed a hoof on her head and pulled back as soon as she felt it throb. It was wet and sticky. “As okay as somepony going down a rockslide head first can be,” she murmured to herself.

Applejack carefully crawled off the shifting pile of rocks she had been standing on before something else fell again. From here, she could hear the distant dying echoes she had come to associate with Raegdan and Luna. The twangs of spells, the sharp flap of wings, and the piercing crack of metal against flesh.

She looked up, out of habit more so than because she had a chance of seeing anything. “Fluttershy, ya think you can—” She was about to suggest that her friend try to hover down her way with as much care as she could. She stopped.

Something shrieked.

There had been plenty of such noises, but always remote, always muffled by bedrock and distance. Screams, kicking, scratching and dragging, crunching and grinding, always echoing from far away.

Not this time. This one sounded way too close for comfort.

“Applejack…”

“Fluttershy, ah think you should start coming down no—”

An avalanche of roars, blurring the line between anger and need, followed the solitary screech. Applejack felt a sense of pressure, as if an immense claw descended from behind them, narrowly fitting the cavern and the air itself recoiling in horror before it. Dirt, rock, and stone groaned under its weight, the cut of its claws, its speed.

An endless mob united under a single want and with a single purpose.

Fluttershy’s squeal almost covered the panicked clopping of her hooves. Applejack yelled as loud as she could to guide Fluttershy back in the right direction again lest she get lost in the dark in her panic. Applejack shouted—pleaded!—for Fluttershy to just jump, to fly her way down. She had no idea if what was coming was really that close, but she was certain it wasn’t far and that time wasn’t on their side.

Her friend flew. But it was pitch black and Fluttershy had never been the greatest of fliers. And blind like this, not even Rainbow would have stood a chance.

Fluttershy tried to keep away from the walls. She felt her hoof brushing against one, and backed off. She couldn’t see there wasn’t space behind her or the extruding rock on her left side.

Her wing bone snapped in half.

The powerful jaws lurched around Raegdan’s torso with enough strength to partially deform the thick steel cuirass. The stone-scaled monster violently rippled its long body, thrashing wildly as it seeked to undo Raegdan’s grip on the edges of the tunnel’s mouth that held him out of its lair.

The creature resembled a pale eel with blind, atrophied eyes. Needle-like protrusions laid at the end of strong elongated jaws. It was large enough to swallow a pony whole. Its head alone was almost twice as big as one.

Luna held a long-bladed dagger in her magic and aimed for the eel monster’s eye. It made for a challenging target. She didn't want to stab her companion or allow his body to disrupt her magic’s grip of the weapon.

“Will you please fucking kill it already!” Raegdan barked out.

“Hold still!” she impatiently yelled. The dagger’s point weaved left and right. Raegdan’s covered head aimed for her voice, blind as he was in the darkness.

“Are you fucking kidding me? How!?” he roared. The monster’s mouth tightened its grip around him, screeching and undulating in harsher waves.

“Squirm less!”

There was a dull pop, like a walnut cracking. Raegdan’s left arm and shoulder socket parted ways. The disbelieving exhale of his lungs rushed out of the helmet as the pain of a red-hot poker nestled comfortably in his joint.

Raegdan dryly swallowed. “Alright. Fuck this. I had enough.” He released his hold of the side passage's edges. Without nothing to hold onto, the eel was free to pull Raegdan into the darkness and out of Luna’s sight.

She cast again her small mote of light, a barely visible point of lesser dark that only served to give shape to their surroundings. It hovered at the mouth of the tunnel and slowly inched inside.

Her ears perked up at the hiss of dislocated air behind her.

The dagger swiveled around her in a one hundred eighty degree arc and buried itself in the cranium of a rock-eel lunging for her. She pulled it back out, ignoring the greedy hold of the sucking meat and sinew, stabbing over and over, plunging it underneath the soft flesh of the jaw hinge.

The eel fell broken on the floor amongst the carcasses of the rest of its kind, writhing in illucid searing agony. Luna reared up and brought her armored hooves down on its head, ending its torment with the crushing of its skull.

She kept going, stomping the underbelly of the beast as the Princess worked out her frustrations. Her loud swears possessed both quality and quantity. Her roars were crashing waves in her own ears. Luna stopped, waiting for the swells of her chest to cease. She needed a moment, both to breathe and for the tunnel vision to fade, to stop seeing in shades of shaking red.

She stumbled and slipped on the viscera and secretions that pooled around her.

It didn’t matter. They were dead; five corpses littered the ground, a sixth in the making beyond the walls. They won. They won and their prize was to continue while fatigue was slowly piling.

There will be more. Luna groaned at the thought. Would they even be able to give the kidnappers any pause by the end?

The sound of ripping sacs and snapping bones echoed in the endless tunnel. She looked up in surprise. She was certain the eel-like creature was dead, she had turned its head into ugly mush, so what—

A fresh nightmare burst from the formerly untouched chest of the eel. It screeched out a warped newborn cry. The bald, shiny head lacked eye sockets but had a mouth filled with teeth. It was covered in muculent goop and blood. It gazed around with all too much awareness.

Luna screamed in disgust and fright and instinctively backed away as the black-carapaced nursling scampered away using two gaunt appendages and a barbed tail. It scurried up the incline and away from Luna.

Her dagger was out of the parent’s skull and impaled on the skittering horror’s back in one smooth motion, killing it.

With careful steps, and keeping her eyes on the largest corpse for more surprises, she approached the tunnel Raegdan had been yanked into. Hoping she would be heard, she hissed with care: “Raegdan, be wary! Some of the creatures are either infested or impre—”

“Holyfuckingshitwhatthefuckisthiskillitnow!”

“—gnated,” Luna finished, waiting for the frantic sounds of steel against flesh become less squishy with each strike until only sharp thuds of metal against stone and wet plops could be heard. “Are you done?” she asked wearily.

A sharp thud. A wet plop. “Done.”

“Is it dead?”

“Dead.” Another thud, duller this time. “Very dead.”

Luna collapsed against the wall and watched as Raegdan crawled blindly out the elevated gap. He laid on his back with some effort, breathing equally heavy. “None of them ran off, right?”

“None,” Luna replied. She was so tired already. She wasn’t going to go over whether it was worth it or not to keep their back clear as Raegdan obsessively insisted again.

She reached for the whistling silence of the moon that always occupied the back of her mind. It wasn’t nighttime yet, but it would be soon. A day fraught with struggle in this twisted maze had gone by. They hadn’t reached below yet, and what a grace would it be not to have to.

They had headed mostly to the north and east. They were making good time. If they found the right passage, perhaps they could make it without ever seeing the Deep Forest.

Raegdan rammed his shoulder against the wall a few times until it was obvious he wasn’t getting the results he needed. He scooted his way over to Luna and presented his left arm. “Some help here?” he begged, sounding on the verge of being sick.

Luna made sure her hold of Raegdan’s arm was secure. She struck from below and near the shoulder. The bone moved like a lever and was forced to rest back into its socket with a muted crackle. Raegdan hissed in pain and cradled his abused arm. He fell back down and Luna followed.

“We should take a minute. We have…” Luna grabbed her canteen and took a swig, “earned that much,” she concluded with a chuckle and a relieved smile that was a pale display of the euphoria she usually felt after a won fight.

“Heavens, I didn’t think there’d be this many. I hoped more of them would have been dragged off,” Raegdan panted. Luna cast errant thoughts aside lest they distract her, and let tension and muscle fatigue fade as she relaxed her body and allowed weariness to slough off. Her guards would be fine. She had to believe that.

Raegdan stood up with a weary groan after a minute passed, and, groping his way back, found the tunnel he had collapsed out of. He slowly climbed up inside it, dagger in hand once more.

“What are you doing?” Luna asked, getting up herself to retrieve her dagger.

“They can’t have had only one exit. This has to lead somewhere. I want to check it out,” Raegdan groused. “We’re not going down as fast anymore or to the direction we want. Not enough. I think we picked the wrong way. We turned west again.”

“We don’t want to leave the main paths,” Luna warned. “It’s a veritable labyrinth of entangled crossroads, pitfalls, and dead ends outside of them. I say we move on. Our path may twist right again.”

“I’ll take a look either way, see if it crosses into another one. If there’s nothing here we’ll backtrack to the previous fork and take another tunnel.”

“The one with the poisonous fungus or the one that breathed and had eyes?”

“Flip a coin. I’ll be right back.”

Luna let him go, allowing herself more rest. She moved across and peered into the other sideline where the eel creature that had attacked her emerged from. With the aid of the little light she cast her vision was almost as clear as during a bright day. The short, round tunnel led to a chamber. What concerned her were the myriad signs of intersecting tunnels along and beyond that one in shadowed edifices.

Either this creature made use of a number of ambush points indeed, or there were more of them that could pop out of here soon.

This might not have been the best spot to stop.

On the other hoof, Raegdan might have it true. These trails might lead deeper and those snapping eels would surely have dug more exits. If he found one to a side passage they might save more time.

She inspected the path ahead, dreading the surprises that were yet to come. “If we continue this way, that is,” she muttered to herself.

Luna knew they still had a ways to go until they escaped the suffocating enclosures and the tiresome, scorching humidity. They had been relatively uncontested so far. All that had been left behind were the weak and the ambushers that had no skill in pursuing their prey.

With her ear against the stone, Luna could almost hear them. The true dangers that stalked these stone paths. A great mass, their footsteps shaking the earth. A predator of unfathomable size flexing a muscle lazily, claws scratching the rock as it brought its prey closer to its grasp. How great their numbers must be to hear them so clearly even now.

Somewhere behind her, pebbles rattled and loud breathing and groans echoed. They were being followed for a while, and the pursuer was getting closer. She had tried to increase their pace. Raegdan refused to.

“We should have ran from some of these fights instead of insisting on facing them all,” Luna breathed quietly, pushing thoughts of what awaited them further beyond aside. “We could then have avoided what comes after us. It’s almost like Raegdan wants—”

Hold on a second.

They didn’t lose what followed because Raegdan refused to move faster than he did, cleared the way ahead, and was strangely unconcerned about what followed and leaving anything alive that could have potentially impeded…

Oh. Oh no. He didn’t. He didn’t!

He did, didn’t he?

Her armored companion slowly climbed out to the main tunnel again. He crawled and made his way to the floor, this time gingerly reaching for it with his fingers to make sure it was there. Once down, he bore his discarded backpack again and sat to catch his breath.

“Raegdan,” Luna prompted, gazing up the incline, recognizing the increasing scuffle and menacing growling as the frightened mewlings they truly were.

“Yeah, what?” he lazily asked.

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Raegdan froze mid-way standing up as if she cast the most potent flash-freeze spell.

“Well?” she challenged after a few sweat-filled moments on his part.

“Look,” he explained as if it was paining him. “I’ve played this game a thousand times before with Celestia. I’m not about to start playing a round with you, too. That’s a rhetorical question because no matter how I try to answer, I’m fucked.”

“Most certainly,” Luna agreed. She took a few steps up the incline and fortified her spell of light, infusing it with enough magic to shine like a lantern. The luminescence was brilliantly blinding in this deep darkness, akin to a lighthouse’s beam.

She inhaled and called out loudly enough for her words to reach out undistorted. “We know you’re there! Come to our light!”

The tentative scrambling ceased for two seconds and then jumped to a mad dash. Every now and then there would be a small exclamation of pain as somepony would trip or hit against a jutting rock.

All too soon she was presented with two mares that stared at the light as if it was an object of worship, the pure fear etched on their faces slowly melting away like snow in the presence of the sun.

“Oh, thank Celestia, we thought we lost you for real! We got turned around and-and… How was Ah supposed to know there’d be so many tunnels?” Applejack hoarsely cried on the edge of panic. A frayed rope hanged loosely on her back, half-covered by the ripped cloak that Luna knew Applejack didn’t own.

Fluttershy almost threw Luna down when she scrambled on the larger pony for dear life. She hugged Luna’s neck as if she never meant to let go. “I’m ready to go home now, I’m ready to go home now,” she was chanting quietly, not daring to blink.

Luna glanced at Raegdan as she patted Fluttershy’s back. She spotted the other half of Applejack’s cloak on the Pegasus’ left wing, used as a very shoddy bandage that had gone bloody. At least it had worked well enough, and whatever wound it covered had stopped bleeding, though what Luna could see of the flesh was raw and burning red.

“I imagine this is the part where you planned to say, ‘Gee, Luna. Who would have thought they’d follow? Golly, you better take them back and I’ll go ahead on my own. Don’t want to waste time,’” Luna pressured.

Raegdan’s poker-faced helmet gazed back. “Is that a no, then?”

“No, it’s a yes. Of course I agree with your stupid idea. Prance off and die, with all my blessings,” Luna hissed in ridicule of the insanity proposed.

Applejack raised her hoof. “Hey, can Ah say something mighty important before you two—”

Luna pushed the girls away, letting them huddle on their own under the light, forgotten at once.

“I s’pose that’s a no…” Applejack said.

The brief lapse into anger that was the first wall of defense Luna had built a long time ago crumbled. She had known this moment would come ever since she woke up and realized that with the poison gone so was her strength.

“Tis I, is it not? You believe me too weak, too diminished!”

Raegdan uncrossed his arms. He looked at her in disbelief. “You think this is why? That the problem is you?”

“What else is there to think?” Luna bitterly said.

“Maybe that it was me and not you that held a knife on little flame’s throat because I heard something I didn’t like?” he clamored, raising his arms. “That it was I who abducted you out of a hospital and almost got you killed? That Cast Iron is dying because I didn’t do my job? That Night Lilly did die because she did my job. And now, you fucking insist on coming with me to do my job, and this doesn’t tend to end well for the sorry fuckers who try to clean up my messes, does it!”

Raegdan’s hands reached for the back of his helmet in clawed, shaking shapes. He spun around as if to leave only to turn back after a couple of steps, now pleading. “Look, I’m only trying to do you a favor—”

Luna interrupted him. “And I don’t get a choice on whether I accept this ‘favor’? You think I want—”

Raegdan interrupted back. “It’s better if I’m on my own—”

“—to leave you alone as if I possess no awareness of—

“—you don’t want to go down there again, anyway—”

“—my own faults or yours? You wish me to—”

“—so sue me for caring. Take Applejack and Fluttershy back, and then you can—”

“—abandon my friend, alone? And you presume to call this a favor to me?”

“—head north so if I don’t get to them in time, you—”

“I am not leaving you on your own, get it through your thick skull!”

“Damnit, woman, will you let me finish a sentence?”

“My apologies. Your grievance rings true. You should have the chance to excuse yourself,” Luna gracefully said after a moment. “You have ten seconds to give me one single argument that you would listen to were our roles reversed. You may begin.”

Raegdan stalled, his rigidity fading as the seconds passed. “I… I don’t need help here, so—.”

“Time’s up! And absolutely not!” Luna declared. “There shall be no more debate. If you never cared if I asked for help or not,” she insisted, striking her hoof against his chest, “then you’ll be treated the same and you’ll have to learn to like it!”

“What about the rest of what I was say—”

“The rest is bullshit!” Luna roared.

“Whoah, nelly,” Applejack muttered in awe. “Ah s’pose we ain’t botherin’ with keeping quiet no more, huh? That might not be a good idea if you’d let me explain...”

Raegdan remained silent for a few seconds, not acknowledging Applejack at all. “I don’t care if it is. It’s not like it matters, because you only have two choices now, Luna: Either you take them back to Ponyville and stay safe or you drag them down there with us,” he announced.

Luna gritted her teeth. “If you weren’t my best friend, oh, the ruination I would bring upon your scheming butt!”

Applejack and Fluttershy idled nearby, watching Raegdan and Luna. They had managed to get this far with no water, no light, and no supplies of any kind. Luna was impressed, though she’d not let them know. Raegdan was in the right. And yet...

Time floated by, shaved second by shaved second, and still she remained undecided. Anger gnawed at her, anger for and towards all of them—Raegdan, herself, and the two girls. She turned to the two young mares.

“One question arises: what would possess you to regard shadowing us a good idea?” Luna duplicated the expression of fierce disappointment that Celestia rarely, but effectively, mobilized.

“Ah sure as heck wasn’t gonna sit back while mah sister is in danger,” Applejack mumbled, avoiding eye contact. “Fluttershy caught me following ya, and… shoot, Ah thought that since she just gallops over to the swamp at her leisure, me and her woulda been able to keep at yer tail… But listen, we got more important stuff to talk abo—””

A quick hush from Luna silenced the pouring rationalization that she was in no mood to hear. “Applejack. Fluttershy. What you have done has only endangered yourselves. You’re forcing my hoof. I gave orders to my Lunar Guard that I promised myself only scant days ago I never would give again. I won’t allow their trust in me to go to waste because you idiots didn’t think—”

Luna forced herself to stop. She kept the anger at bay with great effort. It wasn’t the two mares’ fault.

“You won’t take them down there,” Raegdan said once more, and he had her dead to rights.

“I shall return you both to Ponyville post haste; Raegdan can’t and won’t wait for me. He will continue on his own. I don’t blame you for this. I only hope I will not have a change of heart if he’s hurt or killed thanks to my absence because you—” She forced herself to stop, ignoring the foul taste on her tongue left by the words she uttered. Keeping quiet, she regained her calm and allowed the implications and weight of the situation sink in the girls’ minds as she stared down at them forbiddingly.

Applejack exchanged a look with Fluttershy, and both of them glanced behind them at the endarkened journey home.

“Ah don’t think that will work.”

“I… I don’t think it would be right either way…” Fluttershy muttered. “What if you don’t, Princess?” she suggested, strength—her usual level at least—again present on her face.

“What?” Luna and Raegdan chorused.

“I mean, um… we’re here already, so wouldn’t it be almost the same if we continued on?” Fluttershy wondered.

“What Fluttershy’s tryin’ to say,” Applejack interrupted, “is that there isn’t any reason to take us back so late in the game. What if we go the other way out, ya know? We skip the arguing all hoppity like, and nopony has to leave anypony behind.” A smile fit for a clown whitened the dark. “Which is what Ah’m trying to get at—”

“You are proposing,” Luna said slowly, trying to understand, “that we allow thee to… tag along?”

“I think it’d be better, too,” Fluttershy interjected again. “It’s safer if we all stick together.”

“Yeah, because if we ain’t—”

“I… No. No!” Luna shook her head. “That puts our mission in peril. We must focus our efforts on reaching the young drake, Rarity, and thy sister on time, not you.”

“That’s enough of that!” Raegdan said loudly, stepping in between Luna and the girls. “You two are going back with Luna, this isn’t a fucking deba—”

Applejack sidestepped around Raegdan, ignoring him with practiced ease that made him furious, and addressed Luna. “Yes, yes you gotta focus on that, and we understand what it all means for y’all, Ponyville ain’t breeding idiots. Yet it ain’t fair that Ah sit at home twiddling mah hooves all pretty like while you…” Applejack cast her eyes around at the walls bearing down on them, “...y’know.”

“We, um, wanted to help,” Fluttershy said. “We might not be very useful—this place is really scary—but we think…” Fluttershy exchanged a quick look with Applejack. “We think that you need somepony to go with you to remind you it’s not just you two alone when it’s hard or dangerous. And that ponies recognize that what you do isn’t easy.”

“And somepony had to warn ya about—”

Raegdan was ready to argue further, but Luna raised a hoof for silence. There was no need for him to waste his breath. Luna was already nodding, feeling ashamed, terribly small, and foalish.

She remembered the day she started on her path well. Celestia standing in front of her, almost blocking the door, as Luna made her claims that she was ready, that she wanted to go and offer her strength to other ponies. She wasn’t ready, and she had no idea what mires of despair she would descend to.

Applejack and Fluttershy however? They knew far more now than that silly little Alicorn did then. If Luna knew half of what these mares did, she would have never walked out that door. She wouldn’t have been strong enough.

The girls ran into this umbral underworld without hesitation. She had no right to deny them. Not when they were right.

“We shall continue on. Together, all of us. Applejack and Fluttershy speak true.”

Raegdan stepped in front of her, trying to hide the girls out of her sight behind his mass. “Now hold on a second, Luna. This is a bad idea. Think about it a second.”

“Think.” Luna tilted her head. “Think,” she repeated. “Yes, let me think. I think I know better than everypony here about what awaits below. I think that I’m the Princess and you’re the guard under my orders. And I think I already made plain what we are to do.”

Raegdan straightened up. “You’re not fucking serious.”

“I assure you, I am ‘fucking’ serious. This is an order. Do you remember what that is? What you swore to obey were I to give them? Now hop to it, my guardsman.”

“Can Ah say something before we go marching?” Applejack asked. She pointed up the gentle incline. “About where we came from—”

Luna nodded and slipped back into the now, sentimentalities and principles exiled to where they wouldn’t affect her senses. “We won’t go that way, not yet. We shall move back and try another path if this one is truly misleading us. Stay close and stay behind us. Raegdan, if you could take point—Applejack, stop moving your hooves like this, I assure you, I am paying attention to you.”

“No, you ain’t, because Ah’ve been trying to say this for ages!” Applejack barked, bursting with impatience.

“Which is?” Luna asked, now curious.

Applejack pointed to the path behind them. “Ah think all the monsters are on their way back home!”

“Can’t be,” Raegdan argued, standing straight. “We’d know. We’d have heard them.”

Applejack pointedly looked around her, taking in and showcasing the grizzly scene at her hooves. “Well, Ah’m just at a loss as to how to explain this in-ex-plicable phenomertron—”

“Phenomenon,” Fluttershy corrected.

“... Phenomenon. It couldn’t be that y’all were making too much ruckus yourselves, now could it?”

Luna pressed an ear against a smooth portion of the nearest wall while Raegdan eased his backpack off. He took an unlit torch out, his right hand securing his hammer, and watched the darkness behind them distrustingly.

“The stones agree with them.” Luna stepped away from the wall, looking shaken.

“Ah ain’t a liar if you didn’t get it yet,” Applejack protested.

Raegdan made a calming motion, his eye glued to the darkness. “No one’s saying that, little apple. It might only have been a couple of stragglers. Leaf Stream and the others were supposed to buy us more time.”

“What if something went wrong?” Fluttershy questioned.

Luna and Raegdan traded dreaded looks. “I’m going back to check,” Raegdan decided. He struck a match and the torch blazed into life, painting the tunnel in hues of washed out yellow.

“I shall scout our way forward,” Luna said.

Raegdan and his sphere of light turned around a bend and were gone, his footsteps impossibly silent despite his bulk and armor. The reddish light was visible for a short while until it too finally vanished.

The magical flare of light diminished and floated to the ceiling, nesting inside a crevice from where its glow was hidden and only a suggestion of illumination could be made with it. The princess made haste towards the opposite direction Raegdan went. A blink, and she was gone as well.

The wait was shorter than Applejack would have liked. The silence broke, and the shrill wails began anew, once again close enough to not be mistaken. First one, then others joined the rising cacophony.

Applejack glanced to Luna’s route, pondering whether to wait or take Fluttershy and run.

There were more high-pitched screams and growls so cavernously deep they rattled the bone. Still waiting in place, Applejack and Fluttershy concentrated on making them out, what they were, how close they were. Among them, even as they escalated in intensity and volume, Applejack could tell the clean sound of metal impacts. These clanged loudly and rhythmically.

It came closer.

“This way, assholes! Come on, follow the light! I’m here! Right here! Come get your dinner!”

“He doesn’t mean us… does he? Please don’t mean us,” Fluttershy pleaded, shifting in place.

The uproar continued but seemed to stall, perhaps even moving slightly further away if one dared to hope. Minutes passed while this flimsy hope became more solid, and then Raegdan emerged into their faded well of light. The new scars on his armor might have been a trick of that pale light; they hoped it was a trick.

He halted, breathing roughly, indicating he had been dashing like a madpony. “They'll come back this way any moment. Is Luna back yet?” he wheezed.

“Not yet,” Applejack replied. Raegdan moved with a new, exhausted limp, wanting to catch up to the Princess, and Applejack and Fluttershy followed. Only a few paces away, Luna found them again with alarm on her face.

A few exchanges later, each one more frantic, Luna and Raegdan figured out a few things:

One. There was an outpour of creatures following right behind them. The only reason they’d been safe so far was that the monsters kept throwing themselves at one another and possibly spreading through all tunnels like water flowing down a labyrinthe of pipes.

Two. Raegdan had managed to stall the closest ones by the skin of his teeth, making them think he had run down a different path, but that wouldn’t last.

Three. Luna had found that the tunnel forward turned all the way around. It probably looped back to where they came from. And she could hear more monsters coming from there.

Four. Now Luna knew that the monsters have managed to get in front of them as well. They had followed the path they believed their prey went down on, and were about to be proven right in a turnabout way.

Conclusion. They were standing in the middle of a meet-up they couldn’t survive. Or, as Raegdan put it:

“Fuck me!” He kneeled on the ground, emptying his backpack and looking as if he had a conniption.

“We still have options,” Luna said after a second of tense stillness. “We’ve got one route remaining to us. If it’s clear—”

“I don’t know if it’s fucking clear!” Raegdan roared. “I know it’s tight enough to work as a noose. Get rid of everything. We’re only taking the bare essentials!” He helped Luna undo her saddlebags and started digging through them.

Applejack’s ears flicked to the side. The commotion was getting louder, and louder meant— “Not to disturb y’all or anything, but Ah think they’re getting closer!”

Raegdan, swearing under his breath all the while, quickly lit another torch and lead the way. A small treasure trove of supplies and weapons was left behind as he clutched the severely diminished backpacks in just one hand. They reached the place they’d met up before, and pointed to a hole on the right that Applejack hadn’t noticed before.

Applejack could hear the approaching, scuttling noises that had hounded Fluttershy and her. Like wet fabric dragged across coarse sand and nails along the inside of your jaw.

Luna paused next to Raegdan to stare towards the source. “They know we’re here.”

Raegdan let out an almost silent, awkward laugh. “Oh, you can bet your ass they do. Luna, you go in first, then these two. Get in,” he insisted, pushing her.

Then he ran to a hole on the opposite side of the passage, a few feet over the ground. The torch swooshed loudly as he fanned it to brighten the flame, and he threw it as deep inside as he could.

He waved for them to hurry up as he stood next to the entrance, waiting to help them up. He kept looking back and front as if something could be on them at any moment. Luna took the two bags they had kept, both of them barely half full, and crawled in.

Fluttershy went next, ready to comply but hesitant. “Are there a lot of them?” she asked, openly nervous.

“Just a couple hundred, no biggie,” Raegdan hissed. “Just go!”

“What if they’re small enough to follow us in?” Applejack asked.

“Then they’ll eat our legs first. Heavens, move already!”

Luna half-turned from inside, her eyes suddenly brightening in crescent cerulean light. “You two follow me right now and stay close!” she ordered, keeping her legs bent and crawling in the low-ceilinged space.

Applejack took her turn behind Fluttershy. Metal scraped the rock both from ahead as Luna crawled and from behind her as Raegdan followed. Applejack didn’t have to bend her knees as much as Luna or crawl like Raegdan was almost forced to do. She could hear the dry dragging sound approaching ever closer.

Drrr… Drrr…

She followed the hint of Luna’s light ahead, until she noticed that all noises behind her had ceased. She looked back, the pale rays of bitter light allowing her to see Raegdan holding a finger in front of where his mouth should be. He slowly, very slowly, curled his finger down and placed his palm down with utter care.

“What?” Applejack mouthed, not daring to move a muscle. The feeling of danger she felt ever since she and Fluttershy jumped into that darned hole in the ground intensified to the point of being a physical weight. She was suddenly aware of drops of sweat running down her face and of the almost oily consistency of the air. Her ears bent in fear with each ever-increasingly distant scratching coming from Luna and Fluttershy.

Raegdan’s hand lifted off the rock, making a shooing motion.

She shook her head.

The light was gone. She could no longer see a thing. All was darkness.

Drrr…

Applejack carefully scampered forward, stopping when she felt Raegdan’s breath hissing on her cheek through the pinholes of his helmet.

She spoke with the lightness of a ladybug’s breath.

“What…” She swallowed, wishing she could dare to close her eyes even though having them open revealed nothing. “Is wrong?”

Drrr…

Raegdan answered back. Applejack held her lungs still in order to hear him.

“They got my leg. Keep. Moving.”

There was a second or two of peace.

Drrr…

Then Raegdan was dragged back violently fast.

Metal-born sparks almost blinded Applejack as Raegdan’s armor grinded against the tight passageway. Raegdan covered three meters back towards the entrance in the blink of an eye. His arms reached for the sides of the tunnel as he was surged on his back, his fingers reaching for any hold.

He found one. Light started flooding the tunnel as Luna from up ahead strengthened her spell for an instant. Raegdan was barely illuminated by the light, Applejack’s own shadow not letting her see more than the outlines of his upper torso at most. Further along there was movement and coiled terror taken form.

She saw narrow heads, shaped almost like sesame seeds. Jaws wide open, and they kept opening further, and further, and further, until they were brushing against the floor of the cave. Shadowy limbs rippled like seaweed. And further behind there were more—hairy limbs and chitinous ones—all reaching for their next meal as they swatted at each other.

Pain and panic painted Raegdan’s scream: “Go! All of you go! Luna! Get them away now! They’re coming in!’ His helmet seeked Applejack’s eyes even as the outcrop of rock he was holding on cracked and barely managed to re-adjust his grip before he was dragged further back.

“Little apple, run!” he grunted through teeth gritting with effort. His arms shook as he fought to pull his body up even by an inch. His torso twisted, trying to follow up the rotation of his leg as the pulsating darkness attempted to tear off what it had caught if it couldn’t pull it to itself. He screamed in pain. “Just… run! Run, you damned moron, run! I’m fucking dead, save yourself!”

Her hooves were scared into motion.

Applejack knew that running away was the wiser option, but Granny would have her tushy served on a tray, all piping hot from the thrashing she’d give her, if she got a whiff that Applejack turned tail and abandoned somepony. Especially when she could still help.

The sparks Raegdan’s armor produced before and the rebounded light were enough to guide her. She vaulted for Raegdan’s chest.

Applejack relied on memory of recounts, having never seen the stuff in action. Her teeth found the little ring and, as Rarity had described Raegdan had done, she pushed the small lever with her hoof. The ring came off easily and the metal lever popped out, ringing against the wall.

Applejack’s teeth caught the segmented metal orb in a tight grip. She uttered a prayer in her mind, faster than Rainbow Dash would ever even dream of being, that this wouldn’t end with her mouth turned to mush. These things had timers, right? Long ones, please? She darn well hoped that Rarity’s flowery and extensive, detailed exposition hadn’t been filled with purple prose where it mattered.

Raegdan’s one eye met hers. Judging by how it widened, her hopes about the timer diminished. Oh, well.

“Oh—”

She whipped her head, and gave it the best throw she could, using all her experience in lasso throwing to send it just beyond where she believed the tunnel’s entrance was.

“—shit!”

A second passed and nothing happened. Raegdan’s efforts redoubled, managing to drag himself with Applejack’s help almost back to where he had been when he got caught. Another second passed.

Applejack started worrying. It was nifty that she got it wrong and it did have a timer after all, but how long would it take for the darned bomb to—

The explosion blinded her completely. She fell on her side, her hooves covering her eyes and her mind reeling from what the flash had exposed to them. Of shapes drawn like stretched caramel melting under an unforgiving sun, bones in arcs that shouldn’t support weight, and the mad, broken eyes of ancient, screaming souls scratching through their prisons cells for a crack that might lead them to a mythical freedom.

Applejack tasted earth, gravel and blood, and her nostrils were clogged by the same dust that stung her sightless eyes. The stone around them grumbled and roared like a wave turned tsunami or a stream transformed to a raging river. Everything shook, and it still hadn’t stopped, a true earthquake. Shouts assaulted her ears, but the deafening thunders smothered them.

Somewhere beyond the light, darkness, noise and silence, boneless wraiths screeched their dragging, damaged screams through impossibly long maws.

Her senses were gone and assaulted at the same time. Blind vision was flooded with red fire, her ears made no sense of any sound and yet were battered from all sides. Her bones vibrated so hard she barely realized that she was being dragged, that there was a coil tightening around her ribs. She fought against it, kicking wildly.

The grip tightened even more, and she now recognized the cold of metal against her chest. Raegdan’s shout overpowered the tumult, telling her to stop fighting, to move, move, move! He was shouting non-stop, for everypony to run, to run, to run because the world was coming down.

The tunnel was falling on their heads. Debris rained on her, and she forced herself to kick harder in a desperate bid to help and avoid being trapped. One of her hooves was pulled out of a cascade of stone that tried to hold her with a malicious grip.

A blurred glimmer, blue and indistinct, shone ahead, floating over an eye of darkness. A blob of yellow, recognizable and familiar, called her name.

“Go! Go deeper!” Raegdan shouted, Applejack’s fear reaching a crescendo at the recognition of panic in his voice. “Just jump!”

Luna, she could almost make out Luna, grabbed Fluttershy and vanished into the hole. Raegdan’s mad dash brought them to the lip of the well, rocks falling on them all the while, small, then bigger as the collapsing wave reached them. Her brow ached and felt wet.

Raegdan dived into the bottomless pit without a second thought while Applejack and Fluttershy screamed.

Their fall was broken softly by what Applejack found out later was a dead body. There had been no time to delay. Luna pulled Fluttershy behind her with her magic, dragging her into another burrow and Applejack followed. She could tell from the shaking and noise that the pit they had jumped into no longer existed.

From that point on all sense of time had gone.

There had been nothing but trembling shadows and darkness as Luna’s light played and danced across jagged, sharp rocks, casting crude and distorted shadow puppets of stones grown to mountains and the monstrous silhouettes of the ponies themselves. Steadily, they dragged on, their speed sluggish, the effort leaving them wheezing through grit and thick dust. The only sounds their labored breathing, poor Fluttershy crying in pain, and the grinding sound of backpacks being dragged behind them or pushed in front.

Every now and then the light ahead would vanish and be replaced by tumultuous flashes of spellwork. There would be a few moments of rest in the dark and then the light would return, and with it the crawling, Luna breathing a little heavier up front. The light would vanish again, just long enough for Applejack and Fluttershy to crawl over slick, wet stone. Sometimes, Raegdan would be left behind, distant screeching sounds of metal and beasts reaching them long before he rejoined them, every time taking longer, every time catching up with more effort.

They crawled. They climbed and fell through natural chimneys. They slipped through perilous passages. They ascended, then descended, ultimately ever downwards. On and on, for what could be an eternity while a poisonous claw kept scratching their minds with the image of a dead end and another collapse. Entombed alive. Entombed alive. Entombed alive. There would never be a way out.

A crack on the rock blazed with the hint of light.

The crack became a hole.

The hole an opening.

Raegdan’s fingers caught the edges of the opening as he fell. He hung from the ceiling for a couple of seconds, his head twisting left and right. He let himself drop, landing on his feet almost silently, bending his knees and crouching on the floor as he absorbed the force of the landing. He laid still and held his dagger, ready to spring into action.

“Clear,” he whispered after a minute of tense wait. He sheathed the dagger and reached up with both hands. Fluttershy fell through first and he caught her, depositing her on the ground instantly. Applejack jumped next.

They had arrived into another tunnel, but this one was wide and tall, much like before. The back of it led into the darkness, but a few meters down the opposite direction it took a turn, hiding the source of the light that had pulled them in.

“Ah almost forgot how not being afraid the roof will fall feels,” Applejack announced, taking a deep breath. Big mistake. There was still a lot of dust and dirt in here as well. She coughed it all out.

Raegdan’s eye zeroed in on her in a heart-stopping instant.

“Admittedly, that mighta been a tad mah fault,” Applejack conceded. He still stared on. “Ah couldn’t think any—”

“Stupid,” he growled, correcting her. “Stupid! One isn’t worth three. You cut your losses!”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Nice way for a fella to say thanks…” she mumbled.

“Nice doesn’t matter! You could have killed everyone for the sake of one. Never do something that stupid again,” he finalized.

It was a well-rounded, researched, and very axiomatic—thank ya, Twily— argument. Applejack gave it the due it properly deserved.

A big wet raspberry. “Dear Mister Kettle, Ah’m writing this here letter to ya to bring to yer attention the color of your hiney—”

Raegdan’s eye almost flashed red. Applejack was certain the hurt one did turn crimson before he closed the eyelid. “Don’t you get it yet? The moment I know I can’t help you any of you, I’m gone. I’ve done this before and to people I liked a hell of a lot more than you. Next time you better run, because I will.”

Luna landed on her own, her wings spreading to slow her fall and Raegdan stepped away from Applejack. With a nod of her head, Luna stealthed into the shadows behind them while Raegdan vanished towards the light, both of them gravely silent. The two young mares were left behind once more.

Applejack’s own plan of taking stock of her many bruises and pains—and especially the thick crusted blood that had dried on her forehead—was quickly disposed of. Too many of the… fluids that had been rubbed into or otherwise stained her coat were not her own.

New plan: Don’t throw up.

From the side, near the wall, Fluttershy whimpered quietly. Applejack’s glanced over automatically. Fluttershy was leaning against the wall with no strength of her own to stand. There was fresh red upon her yellow coat.

Applejack was there instantly, helping Fluttershy to sit down. Delicately, she looked for the source of her pain. She found it on Fluttershy’s left wing. She had suspected that the long bone that supported her wing had snapped in two, but Fluttershy didn’t really seem hurt enough for that.

Or perhaps she hadn’t felt it, in the shock and adrenaline of the whole chase. Fluttershy was neurotic at the best of times, and that disguised the pain that should have clued Applejack in. It only got worse after the rigors she went through. The jagged edge had pierced the thin skin. Fluttershy’s yellow feathers were stained red and soaked so deeply they sagged under their own weight.

“Oh, sugarcube… Why didn’t you say something?” Applejack bemoaned.

Fluttershy answered though self-bitten lips. “I-I didn’t want to be trouble, and we were in the dark and didn’t… I didn’t want to slow us down… I’m sorry.”

“No offense, sugarcube, but that was mighty stupid—Raegdan! Luna! Come here, quick!—but we will fix you up now, don’t you worry.”

“It… It really hurts…” Fluttershy wailed meekly.

Luna and Raegdan were back immediately, rushing madly only to find them sitting together. There was annoyance on the Princess’ face that lasted only until she spotted the broken wing. Applejack gave them a brief explanation.

Carefully, they lowered Fluttershy down on her side. Luna inspected the protruding bone, and Raegdan pulled out a pitifully small satchel of medical supplies. They cleared the laceration on her wing of dirt and dried blood. It started to bleed again, and disturbing the wound brought fresh waves of pain.

“Fluttershy,” Luna soothed, “we need to push the bone back into place and set it. I’ll do what I can for the pain, but I cannot completely expunge it.”

Fluttershy whimpered, shaking her head in denial while dust-born coughs wracked her body, making her shiver in agony with each one.

“I’m sorry, but you must endure,” Luna insisted.

“I don’t… I don’t want to…” Fluttershy cried. “It hurts…” Raegdan kept Fluttershy’s wing carefully spread and open backwards while he pushed away her cheek every time she tried to glance back at it, stopping her.

Applejack moved closer. Her body almost touched Fluttershy’s as she slumped next to her friend. “Sugarcube, Ah know you’re hurting but it’s gonna be hurting a world worse if we don’t fix it. Just a snap and it will done, okay?”

“Please, no,” Fluttershy begged, blanching at the description. Bad wording there, Applejack admitted.

Raegdan brought his hand in front of Fluttershy’s muzzle, holding something. “Here, bite on this,” he instructed. “Look at Applejack and nothing else. It will only last a second and then you will be too numb to feel the rest. It will pass in a moment. There won’t be pain after that, it’ll be the memory of pain. You can deal with that.”

“I—”

A small bundle of cloth was pushed between Fluttershy’s teeth. “I will be done in a second,” Raegdan promised, looking straight into Fluttershy’s teary eyes and holding her chin. “One touch, and then it will be done. It will only take a moment and then we’ll bind it, okay?”

Fluttershy nodded in a daze. “Only… memory after...” she repeated. The light from Luna’s spells reflected in the suddenly semi-hazy surface of her eyes.

Raegdan smiled at her, petting the top of her head. “It’s just pain, little yellow. Just pain. Pain can be ignored. You can do it. Are you ready?”

Fluttershy nodded once, twice—Raegdan’s hands forced the protruding, broken bone back under the flesh where it belonged and straight in line with its other half. Fluttershy hadn’t really seen how bad it was, and none of them had told her.

Fluttershy screamed. She bit on the cloth so hard her neck muscles stood out, and she cried out a heart wrenching shriek, only drowned by the thick roll of cloth. Raegdan kept her wing straight, holding it from the furthest edges, while Luna’s magic danced around it carefully, avoiding contact with Raegdan. Bright blue magic cocooned the wound, pulling the skin together and healing it. Bandages along with wooden sticks taken from short quarrels followed soon after, binding her shattered wing.

The whole process lasted well over the moment they had promised. Fluttershy had fainted seconds afterwards, although Applejack suspected that Luna’s spells were the reason for that.

“Could have done that from the start,” Applejack commented drily.

“The abrupt shock would have brought her back to her full faculties. Now she can at least sleep off some of it.”

“Is her wing going to be okay?”

Luna hesitated before replying. “I hope so. It needs proper care. For now, this will do, although flying is naturally out of the question.” Luna sighed and turned to Applejack after a last thorough examination of Fluttershy’s poor wing. “Right, next one.” She pursed her lips.

“Next wha—”

Applejack’s forehead was unexpectedly splashed with water from Raegdan’s canteen. She shook the liquid out of her eyes, a renewed sting burning over them and her vision became clearer. Raegdan’s hands grabbed her head roughly and kept her still, his fingers prodding along and coming off painted red.

“Are you feeling dizzy?” Raegdan asked, checking her head from all angles and pressing gently on her skull with his fingertips at the same time as he searched through her mane.

“The way you twist mah head back and forth, yeah. Loads.”

“How about your breathing? Any difficulties?” Luna asked, her face uncomfortably close.

“Mah throat’s parched, but apart from that I ohmygoshah’mblind!”

A bright light beamed in her eyes, leaving spots in her vision.

“Her pupils are normal,” Luna announced in front of her, invisible after the assault she commited. “No concussion.”

“Just a cut. Not enough for stitches,” Raegdan’s blurry head said to blurry Luna, blurrily nodding at Applejack. “Bandage. First clean it or it will get infected. Her, too.” He looked down at both him and Luna, taking in the dark blotches all four of them were covered with that Applejack refused to acknowledge what her intuition told her they were. “We should wash too.”

“Dry caverns are not renowned for their bathroom facilities,” Luna commented.

“There’s a small waterfall coming down from above just outside,” Raegdan pointed out. Moonlight shone beyond the large stone arch, and faint smells and sounds of the outside world flowed in.

Raegdan sat next to Fluttershy. “I’ll bring her along when she wakes up.”

Luna was waiting for her at the exit’s threshold, looking outwards with an expression of emptiness. The faintest of breezes blew through her mane that once again shone with stars, capturing a small meteor shower among her hair and making it drift with golden sparks in her wake.

As Applejack approached Luna smiled at her with an outlandish sparkle of nostalgia.

“We’re here then, eh?” Applejack felt a shiver at the idea of looking with her own eyes at what was expected to be the worst of the worst.

The Princess’ smile widened. “The deadliest corner of Equestria. Welcome to the true Everfree Forest.”

Applejack walked out of the tunnel. She fell on her flank in amazement.

“Woah,” she breathed. “It’s… It’s beautiful!”

Author's Notes:

Chapter 49 is coming soon (Monday at the latest, I presume).