As she had gone along, Scootaloo had noticed that the long, straight tunnel wasn't just what it had initially appeared to be—on either side there had been several tunnels jutting off of the main one that sloped upwards and downwards and to the sides and in all different directions. Scootaloo had eyed these suspiciously, but moved along, continuing down the main tunnel. However, when she had gotten far enough along, she had been able to see the flat end of the tunnel—and that's all it was, just a smooth wall of mud with a single torch affixed to its surface. The filly had groaned and turned around, walking back amongst the series of side tunnels. They all had seemed pretty much the same—or at least no different from what she could tell—so Scootaloo had picked one at random and walked up the incline to wherever it led.

Predictably, this tunnel had just led to another tunnel which led to more tunnels and more forks and tunnels that sloped in all directions and, to be quite honest, they were giving Scootaloo a headache. The moist, stagnant air was humid and uncomfortable and the filly could feel droplets of sweat accumulating on her face as she kept trotting, faster and faster and more desperate as the minutes wore on. She couldn't tell how long it had been since she had seen Mochi—a few times while walking, she counted the seconds for as long as she could and got to fifteen minutes a few times before she decided to just give up.

Scootaloo wanted so very desperately to give up on this whole labyrinth of tunnels, too—her joints ached and her throat was parched and she slowly, steadily, kept losing hope. There was no indication that the tunnels would ever stop, snaking through the underground of the planet to cross with more tunnels that crossed with even more tunnels. Maybe they traversed the entire planet, just below the surface, and nopony above even knew about them. And then Scootaloo remembered that Kevin had said that the ponies of this planet mostly lived underground so if there were tunnels under the surface then the ponies who lived on the planet probably knew about them.

And then the filly thought about Kevin, the colt she had nearly forgotten in the excitement of the last several hours. She wondered what he was doing at that moment. Was it day or night? Would he be asleep? Maybe he was even able to go back to his family in that one village, whatever it was called. Had he said? The details were starting to grow fuzzy in Scootaloo's mind. She wondered if she would ever see the colt again. Of course, that was contingent on her getting out of this labyrinth, though that was seeming less and less possible by the minute. Scootaloo sighed.

And then, somewhere in her peripheral vision, she saw something a little different. The light had changed; it wasn't quite that same orange flickering and dancing shadow on the wall that the torches produced. As she turned her head, Scootaloo could see why; there was a side tunnel to her left with no torches and instead there was an electric light fixture in the ceiling. A bare lightbulb with a weird curly shape protruded downward from the ceiling, illuminating the tunnel with an eerie white light. In fact, it wasn't the mouth of a tunnel at all that Scootaloo was looking at; it was a doorway leading into a small earthen room.

Curious, Scootaloo turned off of the tunnel and into the small room. A quick sweep of the room with her eyes revealed little out of the ordinary—from left to right: a stopped clock on the wall in the corner; a circular black rug on the floor on the left side; a thick metal door on the far wall with a keyhole below the handle; and, in the right corner, bones.

Bones?

Bones.

Scootaloo flinched at this realisation, feeling a weird sinking feeling in her chest. She took a few steps forward into the room, towards that right corner, and sure enough that's what they were. Bones.

Closest to her hooves were two chalk-white ribs, disconnected from anything else, lying on the soft dirt floor. They looked old—they had obviously been there for quite some time and they were dry as... well, you know.

Further back in the corner were more bones, and with a sickening lurch Scootaloo could make out the entire shape of a pony—the large curved jawbone of a skull above, vertebrae leading down to more ribs and the legs perched below. What was even more disturbing was that the skeleton wasn't just lying there or fallen apart in a pile—the pony to whom these bones belonged had been sitting, leaned up against the corner. Not sitting, Scootaloo thought to herself. Cowering. She stared at the bones for a moment longer before turning away to look at the door.

She tried the handle but it wouldn't budge; the door was locked. Standing on the tips of her hooves, Scootaloo looked through the keyhole with an amethyst eye, but she couldn't really make out anything on the other side besides more earth. Sighing, she turned around and slumped against the door.

Scootaloo glanced at the shape of the skeleton sitting next to her and grimaced.