Valey's tunnel finally came to an end, dumping her head over heels into a room after another grate she forced herself through. The sound stone waited patiently in front of her, held in her teeth as a flashlight once again, illuminating a room much like the one above the dusk statue only with the ceiling twice as high. Valey stretched, reveling in the feeling of nothing touching her ears after having them flattened for so long by cold steel, arching her back and shaking her legs and firmly deciding she didn't want to try swimming through that pipe ever again.
Tottering only slightly, she stepped past a heavy spool of cable probably intended to be threaded through the pipe, ducking her head to pass beneath a lowered bar on the ceiling. It was the floor that had gone down, meaning the two broader pipes that formed the walls to the first room now only hugged the roof, and by crawling Valey was able to slip beneath one, hoping to find a way outside. Her efforts were met with success; a grated iron door was the only obstacle between her and a stone staircase brimming with the scent of fresh air. She eagerly poked her way up, paying close attention to her cutie mark to avoid being found.
The steps morphed into a spiral, and abruptly she came to a squat wooden door strengthened with bands of iron that made her flanks tingle. She turned up her nose; that must have been a street-level exit opening right near a patrol. No good. Hopefully the underground area would continue, and she could find another way out...
Valey retraced her steps, scouting the entirety of the pipe room attached to the bridge. The only thing she found was a floor-level grate in the wall slightly wider than she was and just tall enough for drainage, looking like it opened into another, lower room. She slipped through that as well, silently thanking whoever had invented batponies for the ability to shadow sneak and wondering why a city that really disliked them that much had used entirely ineffective measures to stop them from sneaking around.
The sound of running water graced her ears, and she moved down a lightly-slanted surface to find a stream of something flowing past. Was she in a sewer? It didn't smell exceptionally foul, but her cutie mark still warned her not to even think about drinking it.
A storm drain, she decided, remembering the storms that fell from the mountains and deposited unending amounts of rain. That would mean it likely opened to the streets above, which in turn meant both light and a way out. But she scanned both directions of the long, slanted tunnel and couldn't see anything, finally determining she was just too far below the street level to find anything. The tunnel ran roughly north and south, she figured, and though Starlight's scent was more to the southeast, she walked north, heading upstream and constantly smelling for wafts of fresh air.
The tunnel branched uncontrollably, and Valey avoided small or waterless passages like the plague, knowing the only way she'd be able to find her way back was by following the river and always turning downstream. She never found grates to the world above, though, and as her hunger mounted again, so did her frustration. It felt like she was wandering in circles, making no progress and...
Valey blinked, stopping short. Did she hear voices?
She pressed an ear against the brick wall; someone was definitely talking nearby. She couldn't make out the words, or even how many voices there were, but they were close... There. In the ceiling above her, slightly behind where she stood, was a trapdoor, a sheet of wood covering a hole in the roof and forming the floor above.
Taking the sound stone and stowing it in her saddlebags, Valey swam up the wall, noticing now that the faintest trickles of light filtered down through the boards. She reached the underside of the trapdoor, evaluating it and determining she could get through, but stopped to listen further, just in case.
"...Unfair, is what it is!" an angry male voice was saying, hoofsteps resonating that suggested someone was pacing. "Everlaste should pay for this, or Gyre should take care of her, or... something! But now if I keep my job, I'll have to travel and she won't be able to come with, or I could quit it and... and..."
"There, there, Kouskous," a grandfatherly voice consoled. "Such are the dangers one acknowledges when taking up this line of work. Now that you have someone to take care of, action will help more than anger, and the best action you can take is to ensure neither of you come to any more harm. If you drop out now and choose not to renew your contract, they will let you stay here, and you can ensure that you remain in good health yourself and find a new life."
"But... it's Stormhoof!" the voice Valey supposed was Kouskous protested. "Seven generations, Grandpapa! All of my family history..." A pause. "I can't stand their culture, either. So much snooting about. And their attitudes toward sarosians..."
Valey perked in interest. "Are how much different from our own, my boy?" the other voice finished. "Gyre is filled with rural creatures who need someone to be beneath them so they do not feel they are the bottom of the Empire's barrel. Stormhoof is filled with those at the top, who need someone beneath them so they continue to feel comfortable. And there are still no laws here preventing you from treating whomever you please however you like."
Kouskous sighed. "I still don't know what kind of work a backwater unicorn like me could get, staying in a place like this. You watch. I'd sign off, and the moment I did... Nothing but scraps. How would I take care of her then, Grandpapa?"
"That may be true," the grandfather admitted. "But I think your horn is good enough to find something. Perhaps you could even become a teleporter. Remember, there are many occupations here that don't exist out on the edgelands."
"A teleporter!?" Kouskous sounded indignant. "Grandpapa! The whole point of quitting would be so that I could not travel! It's not like she could-"
"Unnnnnngh..." A third, female voice weakly groaned to life. "Kouskous, don't worry about me... I'll be back in action in..." She trailed off.
"Ho! The sweet lady wakes!"
Kouskous snorted. "She does, and I'm still horribly ticked they left her here to recover instead of a hospital. Not even going to check if she's all right. Dazzle! Please, talk to me!"
"Ow..." Dazzle faintly moaned. "Hurts..."
"You have multiple fractures and breaks, as well as quite a bit of head trauma and swelling, young one," the older voice consoled. "You've been seen to by doctors, and they repaired your head and ribcage as best as they were able, and you should be safe from internal injury. Your legs and wings have been set and left to heal manually, so try not to move and tell us if you need anything. And if it's any consolation, Wallace Whitewing visited the stallion who did this to you with that famous retribution of his, so you have been avenged."
"Mmmm... Thanks, Grandpapa..."
Valey decided she had heard enough. Feeling no danger on her flanks and hanging under the trapdoor, she reached a hoof out from the shadows and rapped, figuring these were ponies it might help to get acquainted with.