“I hope it doesn’t look suspicious when we immediately come back up the stairs,” Larkon said as they ascended the steps. “That mammoth working the platforms is going to see us.”
“We’ll just act naturally like we’ve been doing,” Abalun said.
“I’m covered in sweat, and some of it is yours Larkon, yuck!” Rainbow complained.
“Shh!” Larkon shushed her. “We’ll find a place for you to come out soon, I promise.”
“The both of you need to quiet down. Just follow my lead again when we get to the top of the stairs, if that mammoth down there was correct we just need to turn and go into the first door we see. Don’t even bother looking at the mammoth up at the platforms or anything else,” Abalun said.
Larkon and Rainbow Dash were silent in their reply. The party rounded the last few steps and soon emerged back into the bottom level of the basement in the second warehouse. Then, as nonchalantly as possible, Abalun and Larkon made an about face and went right over to the door they had previously seen when they were up here. Instead of pausing in front of it and possibly drawing more attention to themselves, Abalun immediately pulled it open and stepped inside, holding it open for Larkon and Rainbow Dash to join him.
When they entered all the way and the door swung back shut they could now look around this “sorting” room.
A row of lights hung from the wall, some flickering but still bright enough to give them all the illumination they needed. And the room was deathly quiet and totally devoid of other mammoths.
Abalun and Larkon though both had their blood run cold when they saw what was inside here.
“Rainbow Dash, I think you can come out now,” Abalun softly said.
“Finally!” The pony said and lifted up Larkon’s hood, sliding right out and hovering in the air, shaking her head vigorously and throwing sweat everywhere. “So what’s… in… here...”
Even Rainbow Dash’s breath was halted as she at last was able to take a look around the massive sorting room and the hundreds of weapons and armor inside of it. Dozens of stands that propped up armor plating fit for mammoths sat everywhere, racks of steel-tipped spears numbering maybe five hundred in total were leaning up all across the walls, heavy iron balls attached to chains—flails—were just left in piles and strewn about on the ground. War hammers, axes, shields, clubs, all sorts of other weapons and accessories for an army going to war filled up the sorting room almost to the point of overflowing.
“This… this is worse than I imagined,” Larkon said as he walked forward, practically dumbstruck. “I had figured he was making weapons but nothing like this. Not this amount and not so well-made. The mine, the room downstairs, it’s all a huge weapons factory and storehouse.”
“How many weapons are there? This is incredible… it’s like he plans to arm every able-bodied mammoth in the city someday,” Abalun said as he walked towards a suit of armor.
It was all just lying around like an unkempt garbage pile too. Some spears in one place, then a bunch in another. Everything was clearly just tossed in here and left to the “sorters” to make it right. Rainbow Dash floated around the room for a bit to check things out and saw a mass of empty crates and lids in the corner. The same size as the crates they had seen being taken to the third warehouse.
“I get it, everything is temporarily put here after it’s made and then boxed up and stored permanently in the other room,” Rainbow said. She then turned and raised an eyebrow at Abalun. “Did you see any of this stuff being made in that room downstairs?”
“Now that I’m looking at it in completeness, yes, I did.” Abalun said. “I’m not exactly familiar with things like weapons so I didn’t notice but I saw these flails and sets of armor being made by some of the mammoths down there.”
Rainbow Dash frowned. “Sorry, if I could’ve seen out from Larkon’s robe I would’ve known from the start.”
“Well we know now,” Abalun said.
“I just can’t believe this,” Larkon said, still in shock as he walked up and down the various rows and piles of weapons.
“Uh, Larkon? You alright?” Rainbow Dash asked. “This is kind of what we wanted to see, isn’t it? Now we have proof that Karkona is doing something illegal. Very illegal.”
Larkon nodded. “I’m just a little overwhelmed right now. I feel like I’ve failed somehow, letting this come to pass. Not even just letting him have the time to make all these without any of us doing anything, but as a historian too, that there would be mammoths still alive today that want to use these weapons of war. I just… I think I feel a little sick.”
“Easy there big guy,” Rainbow said as she flew up to him and rubbed his side. “I get it that a pacifist like you is a little uncomfortable right now, take some deep breaths.”
“Sorry… I’ll be alright,” Larkon said as he steadied himself. The large mammoth sat down on the ground and rubbed the sweat from his brow.
“Like Rainbow Dash said, this is good for us though. Proof. Real, solid, proof of Karkona’s illegal activities. Not just words that the senate can waffle about, but actions that can and need to be punished,” Abalun said. “We’ve done it, Larkon. We can bring down Karkona with this. It’ll be one more step to having true peace in our city.”
Larkon managed a slow smile. “Yes. I suppose you’re right. We should be celebrating this, our spying has been a success.”
Rainbow Dash grinned too and flew around the sorting room some more, looking at all the various weapons. “Awesome! So like, should we actually fill up a box with some of these and try to take it outside?”
“I’m not sure if we’d be able to do that,” Abalun said. “We’d surely be noticed if we took an entire box full of weapons. Even carrying anything out would be tough to hide.”
“Hmm...” Rainbow Dash thought, her hoof holding her chin. “Wait, got it! We load up one of these empty boxes full of weapons and take it to the third warehouse like it’s our normal job. That’s what they all expect us to do, isn’t it? Then once we’re in the third warehouse we can just take it out the backdoor and run off with it. By the time anyone notices what’s up I bet we’ll have enough of a lead on them that we can get it back to the city.”
Abalun considered it for a second and smiled. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Yes, that might be our best bet,” Larkon said. “If the third warehouse is the same as these two it should have the same backdoor. We can just throw any random weapons and armor in one of those boxes, let’s hurry up with it.”
“If another mammoth interrupts us or asks us any questions it could end very badly,” Abalun said.
“Even with it being late at night we might also be seen carrying that box through the city. So we just have to hope against hope,” Larkon said.
“Whatever, then I just get to beat up whoever tries to do anything,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Hard part is just getting it out of here without anyone making a fuss in the first place.”
“It’s going to be heavy too,” Abalun said as he pulled one of the empty crates over from the corner.
“The two of us should still be able to carry it together easily enough,” Larkon said.
Rainbow Dash went down to the floor and grabbed the chain of one of the flails, attempting to heft it up. She was able to lift the chain part a bit but the iron ball and the thick wooden handle were way too heavy for her. The ball was the size of her head—she didn’t even want to imagine the damage it could do when swung by a mammoth. As she looked around at the rest of the weapons and stuff she realized that much to her dismay it was probably all going to be a little too heavy for her. Abalun and Larkon would have to take care of filling up the crate.
“Okay, you two really need to pick up the pace cause I can’t really help out with any of this,” Rainbow Dash told them.
Larkon grinned as he picked a spear off from one of the racks and gently placed it into the box. “And you do realize right after we finish this you’re going to have to go hiding out in my robe again, right?”
Rainbow put a hoof to her forehead and groaned. “Like I haven’t had enough of that already...”
The two mammoths got to work on filling up the box with as much evidence as it could hold, they needed to show that this wasn’t just some random mammoth in the slums making a weapon or two, they had to prove it was an entire industry and Karkona was making all kinds of things for a nefarious purpose. Seeing pieces of armor, shields, and various different weapons would fulfill that purpose. Abalun picked up a flail with obnoxious ease and deposited it away as well while Larkon picked off several pieces of armor plating from one of the stands and put them in.
Rainbow Dash was at least able to help with securely putting the lid on when they felt like they had enough inside, but that was about it.
“Okay!” The pegasus grinned at her comrades. “Let’s take this thing out of here!”
Down below, the foreman was walking up and down the rows of table and inspecting the work. Not just checking to make sure the work was getting done but making sure it was getting done at an acceptable level of quality. You didn’t want armor that would fall apart or a flail whose chain would break in the middle of swinging it around. He lightly nodded his head each time he passed a table in acknowledgment of the work being up to par, things looked good today. But right after he passed one table he paused, looking back at it instead of continuing. An odd feeling had come over him.
The table he had just passed held a mammoth working on tusk caps—pointed metal caps that were fit over the tusks of a mammoth to make their built-in weapons even more dangerous.
Why did the tusk caps bother him so much?
He stood there staring at them for a minute while the other mammoths down here continued their work. And then his eyes widened and he took a sharp intake of breath as he finally realized what that wrongness with the other mammoth he had just sent away was.
His tusks. The tips were filed down to be blunt.
The other mammoths in the warehouse probably didn’t give him a second glance, if they even noticed at all, but no mammoth working with Karkona would have blunt tusks. He had kept his hood down and tried to shy away from that other one in the green cloak the whole time too. They weren’t just lost or confused or anything now were they? In hindsight it seemed like they must’ve been trying to explore the mines and everything below the warehouse.
By this point the other mammoths had noticed him and the angry expression that twisted his face. They had stopped working for a moment, unsure if they should say something or just be quiet.
The foreman was unsure of some things too. He didn’t know who those two mammoths were or why exactly they had come here, but he did know one thing for certain.
“We’ve got rats,” the mammoth growled.