“Rats?” Applejack raised an eyebrow as she looked at the creature held in Alula's recently reacquired magic. The rat was silent, its eyes flicking around the room in terror.
After their encounter with the rodent regiment, the four had come straight to the Apples' farmhouse and knocked on the door. Then, when that had produced no results, they went around to Applejack's window and Archer had thrown a small rock at it to try and wake her up. When that didn't work, she threw another rock to knock it open a little so she could take another rock and throw it inside the room.
Judging by the yelp they'd heard, that had woken her up. Archer claimed it was just luck – she couldn't have aimed to hit her since she couldn't see where her bed was. Icy preferred to simply assume she was a wizard, horn or no horn.
After that rude (but only kinda since she did ask to be woken if anything happened) awakening, Applejack had come down and let the four in. They were currently sitting in her living room, having just finished relating what had happened.
The clock on the wall claimed it was a quarter to midnight, which would mean they had only been down in the cellar for about an hour and a half. Icy decided that that meant the clock was a wizard, too. An evil one.
Admittedly, she did actually know someone capable of altering the flow of time for a prank, but even ignoring how powerful the effect would need to be, it wasn't worth considering. Between the possibility that there was some grand conspiracy of clocks and timepieces to use their hidden power to fundamentally alter the flow of the space-time continuum for the sole purpose of making Icy suffer... and the possibility that Dinky was capable of being a bit mean, the former was by far the more likely.
The other possibility, that maybe Icy's sense of time wasn't the best, did not occur to her.
She shook her head and refocused on the conversation as Alula was talking.
“...in command of them or it could be that they decided it as a collective but, whatever the case, this is highly unusual behaviour.”
Applejack looked up from the rat and over to Alula. “Anyone ever told you you speak real complicated, sugarcube?”
Alula's expression remained level. “Once or twice.”
Applejack shrugged and looked back to the rat being held in Alula's magic. “Well, not sure if there's much I can do with this li'l fella, but I reckon I know someone who can. I'll take him over to Fluttershy's tomorrow, see what she can get outta him.”
The others all nodded to themselves, seemingly recognizing the name, but it didn't ring a bell to Icy. Furthermore, the rat seemed to get even more agitated at hearing what Applejack had said. Presumably, Icy thought, it didn't know who this Fluttershy was either and assumed that she was some sort of interrogator. Probably a good assumption, but she didn't want it to spend the next night awake in terror.
She got down from her chair so she was at eye level with the rat and spoke gently to it.
“Don't worry, little guy. I'm sure that Fluttershy,” she made sure not to pause before saying the name so it sounded like she knew it, “isn't going to hurt you.”
“Ain't that the truth,” she heard Applejack mutter as she got up and went out of the room.
“We just want to know what you were doing. We aren't going to hurt you or do anything bad to you, okay?”
The rat looked at her. Icy was no expert at understanding animals, but she got the impression that it was suspicious, but open to what she was saying.
After a moment, Applejack returned carrying a small metal box. She opened the box and Alula started lowering the rat into it, setting it off into another frenzy of movement and fear.
“Hold on,” Icy said, looking to Applejack. “Could I have an apple, please?”
Applejack looked up, puzzled, but nodded, indicating the counter where a bowl of them lay. Icy went up, having to hop up on a stool to reach it, before taking an apple by the stem in her mouth. She then walked back over to the box and placed the apple inside, next to the suddenly-confused rat.
“There you go,” she said, smiling. “Just something for the trip.”
The rat didn't look up, but it did start nibbling a little at the apple as Applejack shut the box and closed the latch.
“Dunno why you wanna reward the thing for thievin', but I guess I owe you one, so I won't question it,” she said as they walked to the door.
Archer rolled her eyes a little before looking back, making sure they were out of earshot of the boxed rat. “Really? It's basic good cop stuff, getting it on our side so it'll be easier to get info out of it.”
Applejack nodded. “I guess, but don't see as how that's necessary – just bein' near Fluttershy'll do that.”
“Will it?” Icy asked. “Sorry, I don't know who Fluttershy is.” She looked to the side a little awkwardly. “Actually, I just didn't like seeing it so scared.”
Applejack chuckled a little as she paused by the front door. “Maybe you're related. Still, I get what you're sayin'.” A dark look suddenly came over her. “Still, guess I'll have to go by the carrot stand tomorrow.”
“Any particular reason?” Alula asked, a hint of confusion edging onto her face at the apparent non-sequitur.
“Well, way I figure it,” Applejack answered, “Fluttershy ain't gonna wanna keep an animal confined, which means I gotta ask Angel to keep an eye on it.”
“Angel's her pet rabbit.” Archer informed Icy before she could ask. “He'll be able to keep it in line.”
Icy nodded for a moment before she stopped, an important question coming to mind. “But wouldn't Fluttershy already have carrots?”
“It ain't the carrot he'll want from me,” Applejack explained. “It's me havin' to go up to Carrot Top, buy some carrots and listen to her gloatin' 'bout it for the next six months.” She frowned a little more heavily that it sounded like she should. “Li'l varmint likes to see me suffer.” She shook her head after a moment of brooding. “Anyway, thanks for your help. You just get to bed now, leave this with me an'...”
“Actually,” Alula interrupted passively, “I think we can help some more. While you're conferring with Fluttershy, we can take a look down where the rats most likely took your apples.”
“Where's that?” Icy asked. Alula's voice was even more level than usual which, she'd learned, could mean many things. Few of them were good.
“Where else?” Alula answered, giving Icy an evaluating look. “The sewers.”
“You know, Alula,” Icy spoke into her badge as she hopped down off the last step, “when you said ‘We can take a look’, I kinda thought you meant ‘we’. Not ‘you’.”
“I apologise for misspeaking,” Alula's voice came over the badge, “but it wouldn't work for me to come down there.”
Icy walked a few paces down to give room for Archer and Dinky to come fully down into the tunnels. “Why not?”
“Because you three are the smallest of all of us, Pip notwithstanding. You're in tunnels, so being small enough to manoeuvre in there could be very important.” There was a half-second's pause before Alula continued. “Also, we can't afford to crowd it too much, so the you three should be the best combination.”
Icy nodded – that had answered her next question of why they weren't sending more. There was still something niggling at her, but she couldn't pin it down.
She tilted her helmet up, shifting the beam from the flashlight atop it a little, and went to scratch her head. Fortunately, at the last second, she remembered the plastic boot on her hoof and what her hoof was just standing on and stopped herself. The nice lady who opened up the ponyhole for them had assured them that the sewage flowing along the bottom of the pipe shouldn't have gotten onto the walkways much, but Icy was still a bit hesitant to put the soles of her boots anywhere near her fur.
She heard a couple of clicks behind her and turned around to see two more beams of light turn on, one complete, the other with a small shadow at the bottom cast by Dinky's horn.
“Well, we're here now, no sense arguing about it,” Archer spoke into her badge, her voice echoing from Icy's own – something she was told she'd get used to, but she had her doubts. “Besides, we've only got a couple of hours down here, should make the most of it, huh?”
Icy nodded, rubbing at her nose with the front of her leg – not her hoof. The lady who let them in had cast a spell on them to disable their senses of smell for two hours or so. She never needed any longer, she'd said, since after a while of working down there, she'd just gotten used to it, but Icy was thankful that they wouldn't have to.
“Well, they'd have come from Applejack's barn, so... how far is that?” Dinky asked, looking around the dank stone walls.
A sound came over the comms of paper being straightened, presumably the map of the sewers they'd retrieved from the town hall.
Pip's voice spoke from the badges. “From where you came down, turn left and go about...” There was a long pause and the sound of a ruler on paper, followed by another pause. “five hundred metres – that's the nearest point to the Acres, where their pipes join the main lot.”
Archer sighed, sounding as close to annoyed as she ever got. “Well, better get going, then. Come on, guys.”
And so they set off down the tunnels, Archer in front, Dinky second and Icy third. Archer went on the comms every so often to tell the ponies on the surface how many exits they'd passed, check what junctions they went through and ask which tunnels they should take, but Icy didn't really pay attention, simply following the others and letting her mind wander.
She wished that ponyholes were a bit more common in the streets of Ponyville so they could have gone down one closer to their goal, but she knew it wasn't feasible – the stairs down to the sewer tunnels were both difficult to build and awkward to place, since they couldn't interfere with either the sewers and pipes themselves nor the foundations of any houses. She'd read that Minotuars used ladders instead for that very reason, which let them put a lot more ponyholes (or maybe minotaur-holes... Taurholes? Toroles? She'd have to look that up) in their cities. Then again, given how big minotaurs were, it probably balanced out.
Of course, Icy wouldn't have minded the long walk quite as much if it wasn't for how silent things were. There was little chatter between the three, so as not to distract Archer from getting and using directions, and the sounds of the sewer were a little off. Icy couldn't quite pinpoint it – the movement of the... contents of the sewers sounded fine, as did the occasional drip drip of what Icy desperately hoped was water. Even the occasional creak of old stone didn't seem that worrying.
But there was something missing. Not that Icy had ever been down in the sewers before to hear it, but it was something she'd always heard it in her head whenever she thought about sewers or read a scene with the Pipe-Ponies in X-mares or even just looked down a storm drain, in curiosity or in search of dropped keys. She couldn't put her hoof on what it was, but it was definitely worrying in its absence.
She raised a hoof to wipe away the sweat on her forehead – again, making sure her booted sole didn't come anywhere near it – before realising something.
“Why is it so warm?” She asked quietly. She wasn't sure why, but something about the tunnels made her not want to raise her voice.
Alula's voice came over the badges. “Well, you're deep enough underground that the cold won't penetrate as much. Plus, the breakdown of pony waste produces a lot of heat.” Icy nodded, thankful that they were coming down in the middle of winter – she was getting a little sweaty as it was. “If you go deep or far enough, that heat might start interfering with our transmission a little, but it shouldn't be too bad.”
Dinky looked around, the light from her helmet illuminating her worried face a little. “I hope it doesn't interfere with my chronometry.” She said, not even stumbling over the word.
Archer looked down over the edge of the walkway to the flowing sewage below. “You sure you'll be able to track them, Dinky?”
Dinky's face didn't lose its trepidation. “Well, I don't know, but I might. It's been a bit of time and running water... or kinda-water does mess it up, but...” she thought for a moment, “well, you said they were working together, right? So, they were probably going in the same direction.” She brightened a little. “If a lot of them were moving together, I should be able to pick that up.”
Icy gave Dinky an encouraging smile for a moment before something just at the edge of her hearing distracted her. Her head whipped around, the moving beam of her lamp disorienting her vision for a moment before it settled on an empty corner. She couldn't see anything and could no longer hear anything. In fact, she'd barely heard the sound at all. But she had – a tiny scraping noise and maybe, though she could have imagined it, a slight squeak. And she suddenly realized what was missing from the ambient noise: life.
Life makes noise. That was a fact that even Icy knew. Animal or vegetable, wild or civilized, there was always noise. Even the emptiest field or deepest jungle had noise, whether it was the buzzing of flies and insects, the skittering of small animals or just the wind rustling the grass or trees. So too should the sewers have had the occasional sound of animal life, but there was nothing. Icy could almost see the cartoon sound effects that should have been there but weren't. The place wasn't dead, but it was like everything was hiding. Where were all the...?
Icy turned back to the others, gulping audibly. Whatever was up with the rats down here, it wasn't just one group.
She was jolted out of her thoughts when the others stopped, causing her to stumble a little and almost trip, though the thought of what she'd be falling into helped her to keep standing.
“Okay, I think we're here,” Archer said, a little louder than before.
“Are you at a curved corner with a large pipe going out from the middle of it?” Alula asked precisely.
Archer shrugged, apparently not bothered by the fact the badges didn't broadcast shoulder movements. “Gotta be honest, there's a lot of places like that down here, but yep, we are.”
“Assuming you followed my instructions correctly...”
“We did,” Archer interrupted.
“Then that should be it,” Alula finished, not sounding bothered by being cut off. “Look for a hole that's been chewed into something.”
As Archer began to look, Icy piped up. “Wouldn't they have just gone down the pipes? Why would they make a hole here?”
“Because it's easier to chew through a stone wall than a metal pipe,” Alula's voice informed her.
“Yeah...” Icy trailed off, a little unsure of herself, before continuing, “but I don't think they could chew through either of those, could they?”
“Guess again, Icy,” Archer said, pointing a hoof towards the end of her lamp's beam.
Sure enough, a little above the pipe that, presumably, lead to Sweet Apple Acres, there was a sizable hole with rough edges slanting inwards. It was a bit of a distance away and the low light made it difficult to be certain, but if Icy strained her eyes a little, she could just about make out tiny teeth marks in the stone.
“Wow,” Icy said simply, nonplussed by the sight. “They can do that, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Dinky said, smiling a little as she stood next to Icy and looked at the hole, “Mommy said she once lived in a place with rats. She said that, if they had long enough, they could chew through the brick of her house, the wood of her cupboard and even the metal of her muffin tin.”
“Really? They can break through all that?” Icy turned to Dinky, her eyebrows raising. “So what happened?”
Dinky shrugged. “So could she.”
It took a moment for the meaning to register with Icy, but when it did, her eyes widened a little further and her mouth pulled back into a straight line. “Wow. Remind me not to get on a rat's bad side. Or her bad side, I guess.”
Dinky giggled a little. “That's okay, I...” She paused for a moment, her eyes looking distant briefly, “I don't think she has one.”
Icy chuckled. That would explain where Dinky got it from, at least.
“Yeah, and I think we're already on one rat's bad side, having caught it and all,” Archer interjected, looking down the tunnels shooting off from the corner. “So, might as well get on some more. You ready, Dinky?”
Dinky nodded, her smile going into slight remission as she concentrated, her horn lighting up gold and pointing towards the hole. The edges of it glowed with a matching golden light, which quickly moved down, zipping across the water in a straight line, then alighting on the walkway down the tunnel they didn't come through.
“This way!” She said, trotting off after the glow.
This time, they moved slower, though it was a lot less tense for Icy – the hum of Dinky's magic made an effective substitute for other sounds of life. However, there was also a lot less talking, neither her nor Archer wanting to disrupt Dinky's concentration. The only time they talked was in the quick break they took after about ten minutes to let Dinky get her breath back.
“It's not hard or anything,” She'd explained between deep breaths, “but it's like... holding your hoof out. You can do it, but if you keep it there for long enough or put it out and in again too many times, its gets kinda tiring.”
Fortunately, she'd only needed a couple of minutes' rest before she was okay to go again. Five minutes after that, they turned a corner and stopped.
“Can't be sure,” Archer said as she looked along her lamp's beam, “But I've got a feeling this is the place.”
They were standing at the entrance to a relatively large room or cavern – it was hard to say, since there were the same stone walls, but they were round and shaped like a naturally formed cave. It was around the size of a small living room, though differently proportioned – wider, but with a lower ceiling. There were four entrances, including the one they were standing in, and none of them looked like there was any sewage flowing through them. The floor was too high for that anyway, being level with the walkways rather than the bottom of the sewers. At a guess, Icy would have said the room was built inside a small natural cavern and intended as a junction and landmark for those navigating the sewers. However, it had clearly been repurposed.
In the centre of the room was a huge pile of produce – apples, carrots, beetroots, potatoes, bananas, celery (though Icy couldn't imagine why the rats would want to subject themselves to that), beans, broccoli and even a single cherry on top. The pile reached up past the three fillies' heads, despite how much it sagged. All the food on the bottom was rotten and semiliquid, much of it melding together into a greeny-grey mush. Around the pile were specks, seeds and juices, all laid out in a thin carpet, implying that a lot had been eaten, presumably by the rats, but Icy assumed that they had stronger stomachs than ponies, which was saying a lot. The food on the top, though, fared a little better, being merely unpleasant – you might not throw up if you ate it. You'd just wish you would.
Once again, Icy was thankful for having her sense of smell disabled.
“Well, looks like we found the farmers' stuff,” Archer said, strolling through the strewn-about remnants without even flinching. “Though... I wouldn't wanna tell them their jobs, but I don't think they'll be wanting it back.” She walked around the pile, looking it up and down. “Though there are some brussel sprouts here, so some of it, no one'll want.”
“Hey!” Icy said, trotting a little after her. “I like brussel sprouts!”
Archer turned and gave her a smile. “And you and your kind are a blight upon Equestria.”
Icy huffed, a little offended but mostly playing along. “At least I don't eat celery.”
Archer raised an eyebrow. “Well, let's agree to disagree.”
Icy nodded, a little wary of Archer after this new information, before turning back to the pile. “Okay, well, whichever is bad, I guess it's mostly the rats doing this after all.”
“I don't think it is,” Dinky's voice came from the other side of the pile. “Come look at this.”
Frowning in concern, Icy and Archer trotted around the pile, coming to a stop next to Dinky and following her hoof to see what she was talking about.
Nestled in a corner of the room opposite to where they'd come in was a large mound of straw, hay and filth. It rose up as it went into the rounded wall, but it had a large hollow in the middle. It seemed to be some sort of nest, but it was far too big for any rat. On the other hand, it was too small for a pony.
Or, at least, a full-sized pony.
Icy walked forwards a couple of steps, reaching out a hoof towards the hollow, not touching it but sizing it up.
“Is it just me or...”
“Yeah,” Archer nodded, cutting her off. “Would fit one of us just fine.”
Icy looked back at the other two. “You don't think...”
A noise from the side of the group cut her off. At first, it sounded like the squeal of a mouse or a rat, but after a split second of consideration, Icy realized it a little too deep for that. It sounded like was imitating a rat, but very well. Like they were speaking in rat, but with a pony accent.
Icy didn't have time to giggle at the thought as her head whipped around along with the others'. The beams from their helmets flashed across the walls before converging on the tunnel exit to their left, just in time to see something be pulled off to the side rapidly.
Something that looked remarkably like a small pony's tail.
“Let's go!” Archer said, rushing forward with an impressive acceleration given what she was standing on. Icy and Dinky took a few moments to register what was happening and a few moments more to get up to full speed.
They came out of the cavern one after another, looking to the left for a moment before hearing light but hard hoofsteps from the end of that tunnel. They turned and started running after the sounds, managing to spot the tail darting around another corner.
Another three corners blurred by as they continued the chase, never catching more than a momentary glimpse of their quarry's tail but always able to follow the sound of their hooves.
“Can't get a clear shot at them,” Archer said, a little louder than usual. “Icy, can you skate after them?”
Icy shook her head, taking a moment to gather her breath before responding. “No, too many corners - I'd just hit the walls or fall into...” She stopped to breathe, already beginning to get a little winded, but Archer spoke before she could continue.
“Right, course. Dinky, can you slow them?”
Dinky also took a moment to respond, though given that she was having to run a little faster than the others to keep up thanks to her shorter legs, her fatigue was probably a bit more forgivable than Icy's.
“Maybe, but I'll need to be able to see more of...”
“Then let's do that!” Archer interrupted before accelerating.
Icy took a moment to ponder Archer's tendency to interrupt ponies – it was a little rude, even if circumstances usually meant it was necessary – before speeding up herself along with her, ignoring her legs' slight protest.
After two more corners, they came to a long, straight tunnel. They could see the fleeing figure a little clearer, but only enough to ascertain that it did indeed look like a pony somewhere around their age. They couldn't see anything more, not even its colour, as their movements prevented their lamp beams from illuminating the pony for more than a split second.
Fortunately, they didn't need to see any more for what they needed to do.
“Now, Dinky!” Archer said. A little flare of light in Icy's peripheral vision indicated that Dinky had lit her horn. As she did, a golden glow enveloped the running figure and its pace slowed to a crawl. With their body lit up like that, Icy was able to get a better look at them as well.
It looked like they had a grey coat with a slightly browner grey in their mane and tail. Said mane and tail were extremely scruffy and, though Icy couldn't tell much due to the distance, it wasn't a stretch to imagine it was probably even more matted and filthy than it looked, given where they were.
The figure turned its head as the three pursuers slowed a little, trotting up to him. Judging by the muzzle, it looked like it was a colt and Icy could practically see the stink lines coming off him. It seemed that, in this case, having her sense of smell turned off was the gift that kept on giving.
The figure opened its mouth and a squeal came out. Except this squeal was wrong. In three ways, in fact – it sounded like an actual rat, it was coming out before he'd fully opened his mouth and it was coming from... above... them...
Icy looked up just in time to see a small group of rats jump down from the ceiling, a few landing on each filly's head. She heard the sound of Dinky's magic fizzling out as she shrieked. Turning, she could see a rat wrapped around the little unicorn's horn, tapping and scratching at it. It wasn't enough to damage it, just enough to stop her from using magic.
She could also hear the sounds of the colt's footsteps getting further away.
Flaring her wings, Icy flapped them downwards hard, sending a chill wind over her, as well as lifting her up an inch or so. The wind wasn't enough to freeze the rats crawling over her, since that would be a little counter-productive for getting them off her, but was cold enough to repel them, making them jump down from the hovering pegasus and scurry off in the opposite direction to the colt.
Icy looked to the others just in time to see Archer throw off two rats from her hooves, then grab one clambering on her barrel by its back. Spinning round, she threw the rat towards Dinky, hitting the one on her horn and knocking it off. As the two rats splashed into the sewage below, Dinky's horn lit up again, its glow suffusing her skin rather than enveloping it, and she started shaking herself at incredible speeds, throwing off all the other rats clinging to her.
The three looked in the direction the colt had gone, the sounds of his hoofsteps now barely audible. Icy was about to say something when the glow of Dinky's magic expanded around the three and the sounds got slower and deeper, signifying that they were being sped up.
Without a word, the three sped off down the tunnel. Luckily, the end of that tunnel was a single corner, so there was no question which way the colt had gone. With a bit of luck, they could get to the end quickly enough to hear where he was running and begin the chase anew,
Unfortunately, after they turned the corner, their luck ran out. About thirty feet from the corner was a four-way junction, the walkways giving way to a solid stone floor, and they stopped in the centre of it. Dinky's glow died down as they looked at what was in front of them. And to both sides of them.
Stretching out about ten or fifteen feet down each tunnel were more rats. But not just a few this time – three entire swarms of them, almost forming carpets along the ground. They stared at the fillies, silently daring them to try and get past them.
The three groups in the three tunnels also made it impossible to tell which way the colt had gone. They could just barely hear his hoofsteps, but the echoing of the tunnels masked his direction well. Even if they could get past the rat-blockades, they couldn't find him without splitting up and none of them wanted to risk losing the others in these tunnels.
Of course, that was assuming the rats didn't attack.
Icy flared her wings, speaking to the others without taking her eyes off the gathered creatures.
“Um, I could maybe freeze one group, but I don't know how much good that'll do.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dinky nodding and Archer drawing her bow.
“I can slow some of them down,” Dinky said carefully, “but not for long with this many.”
Icy heard Archer's bowstring tautening. “And I could maybe repel some with a flash-bang.” She sighed, sounding an imperceptible bit put-out. “We canst not give thee explosive arrows, young Archer.” She said in a mocking imitation of Princess Luna's voice. “'twouldst be far too dangerous.”
“Um,” Dinky began after a moment, “wouldn't that risk making the tunnels collapse?”
“Not if I'm shooting them, it wouldn't. Still, least I've got some crowd control options.”
“So, what do we-”
Icy was interrupted, not by Archer this time, but by the rats suddenly turning around and running away, scattering down the tunnels in all directions.
A moment passed in confusion.
“Huh,” Archer said finally. “Well, that settles that.”
Icy looked down the three tunnels, seeing nothing but more tunnels and walls. “Why did they run away? They could have taken us.”
“I don't think that's what they were here for,” Dinky replied, sitting down on the stone floor and panting a little. “I think they just wanted to protect him.”
“Yeah, figures he'd use them to cover his escape,” Archer said before looking at Dinky. “Hey, you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Dinky replied between breaths. “I just used a lot of magic there.”
A thought occurred to Icy. “Hey, why didn't you just speed us up first instead of slowing him down?”
Dinky took a couple of deep breaths before answering. “'Cause doing it to one pony is easier than doing it to three.” She looked away, blushing a little in shame. “I'm sorry, I should have thought...”
“No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that!” Icy blurted out, her heart breaking a little at Dinky's expression. “I was just wondering, that's all, although... aren't the costumes supposed to help channel your magic?”
Dinky nodded. “Yeah, but you don't have one, so I'd still have to do one normal pony, plus me and Archer's costumes. Also, I didn't want to leave you behind. That'd be kinda mean.”
“Well, in any case,” Archer piped up, giving Dinky an easy smile. “'snot your fault – you couldn't have known he'd drop rats on us.” She looked over her back and hooves. “So much for keeping clean, eh?”
Dinky giggled, a small smile coming onto her muzzle. “I don't think that was going to happen anyway.”
“Er, guys?” Icy said, looking around at the four tunnels. “Can you remember the way back to that cavern?”
“Sure, it was back, take a left and...” Archer paused, her brow furrowing, “no, wait, we went left, so that'd be a right and... well, we'll just go...” She looked around, trying to remember which tunnel they had come down.
“It's okay,” Dinky said, standing up. “I can check.”
“In a minute,” Icy said, putting a foreleg on Dinky's horn. “Get your breath back first.”
After another couple of minutes, Dinky was able to scan the ground and find the path they'd taken. They followed her back to the cavern, only to find another surprise waiting for them.
“Where'd everything go?” Icy asked.
Sure enough, both the food pile and the nest were gone, a few strands of straw and a thin carpet of rotten vegetable-mush the only signs that they had ever been there.
“Must have moved everything while we were chasing their leader,” Archer said, looking at each of the exits. “Dinky, can you...?”
Dinky lit her horn once again, but this time her expression fell. “Everywhere...”
“Huh?”
“They went everywhere. It looks like a whole bunch of things came and took things in all directions.”
“Spread out, you mean?” Archer kicked a hoof gently against the ground. “Can you follow the general paths?”
Dinky shook her head. “They're all criss-crossing each other and...” She cantered up to one of the tunnel entrances and shone her horn down it. “Yeah, they're going all over the place, spreading themselves too thin... I can't tell where they're going.”
Icy gulped, feeling her skin crawl slightly. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Archer nodded. “They're learning.”