Fish Eye listened around the constricted-but-open space she'd been spirited into. The thestrals had blindfolded her, but they apparently hadn't noticed that hippogriffs retained a certain sonar sense from their alternate physicalities, and Fish Eye was closer to her fishy nature than she'd been… well, for most of her (admittedly short) adult life. Her brief sojourn through Auntie A's realm had reminded her senses of how to see with squishy bits other than her eyes.
And her other squishy bits were telling her that they were in a large, long, low space, like the insides of one of the lift bodies in the Princess's Bit's envelope… except you couldn't go in there, because it was all thaumically excited air, and you'd suffocate in minutes.
"Where are we, anyways?" she asked the pony-shaped lumps in the open space around her.
"Shut up, Eye!" said the lump with the ensign's voice.
The recumbent lump that Corporal Ping's voice had been coming out of laughed with Corporal Ping's voice.
"Lovely, isn't it, you pink disaster? I always knew that if I needed something hidden on this ship, I'd just have to put it in-"
"Where can they have hidden him?" Gilda raged at her major, who was laying back in her hammock with a compress over her eyes. "I've arrested Bob and three other troopers who've been seen coming in and out of the offices. I'm thinking we ought to start arresting corporals next!"
"Why not just jump the queue and arrest the ensigns and Fruit Salad?" Gleaming Shield said around her migraine headache and the compress that was failing to reduce it. "The rest of the bats can't possibly have spirited Ping away without them noticing, or authorizing it."
"Because I don't want to admit that the entire troop is on the verge of mutiny, which is what that'd mean if Fruits and the ensigns were in on it."
"You don't want to admit it? Does that mean you think it's true?"
Gilda didn't say anything. If she said it, and made it true…
"Gilda, we're half the way to Bitalian nowhere, chasing some mystic quest of George's, with half of our griffon troop scattered the other halfway to Neighpon and the other half on guard duty. If the bats are going to mutiny…"
"What the… the…" Gilda stuttered, bereft of any profanity sufficient for the occasion. If they crossed this line, if the bats had crossed that line…
"What are we going to do?" Gleaming completed Gilda's horrified thought. "I suggest setting the Bit down and getting ready to turtle up with Charlie Troop and call in what's reachable of Apple Troop."
"If we don't know where they're all forted up, we could set down, and find out they've all just absconded."
"At this point, that would be good news, Gilda. This is a-"
"Disaster!" snarled Sergeant Fruit Salad. "All the prophecies say that tonight is the night! We're two thousand air-miles from the caverns, the dream world is leaking nightmares from every crevice, the Mother is due to be released at midnight, and we're hiding in the envelope stowage closet!"
Ping silently admitted that the grizzled old sergeant had a point. Everything Ping had tried to do to bring order to their world had just made things worse. Conspiracy against the matrons, night-assaults, sacred rituals, half-hearted flirting with demonic bargain-hunters… each move had rebounded on his punch-drunk head.
"Be calm, sergeant. We are here, because she will be here. The Mother was never to return to us in the trap which is the caverns, she's far too canny for that. The White Princess knows us, knows those caverns. It had to be out here, where the snares of the Enemy couldn't entwine around the Return, and bring one more dawn down to day."
"But sir!" objected Fruits Basket. "The dreamscape is becoming overrun. Nightfang has relapsed, and Durian…"
"I can't find Durian," Ambersweet said with a quaver in her voice. "She was missing from her bunk, and nobody's seen her in the dreamscape. I'm afraid she crawled off into some corner and- and-"
"Hold it together, Private!" Sergeant Fruit Salad barked. "We'll find her yet. But damn the day-ponies for taking us here. Everythestral knows that central Bitaly is littered with the tombs of dead gods and neglected battlefields. Prime nightmare-spawning territory!"
"That's a myth, Sergeant!" objected one of the other ensigns. "Places don't breed night-hags and nocnice, ponies do!"
"It might be a ruddy myth to you matron-trainees, but every soldier knows that graves leak nightmares, like rot breeds maggots. Especially untended ones. And dead gods? Damn big nightmares."
As the sergeant and the shieldmaidens squabbled, Ping wished he could see their expressions. It would have given him more of a clue how to proceed than the waver in the shieldmaidens' voices, and the suppressed panic in that of the sergeant, alone.
"-graves don't do anything but hold rotting corpses! The only thing producing night-hags are the guilty consciences of grave-robbers!"
It was a sign of how badly confused the lines of authority and division between the military world and the dream-world had become, that they were even meeting like this, corporals and sergeants and shieldmaidens and ensigns and spear-stallions. Even if many of those present wore two or more hats in the two hierarchies.
"What difference does it make!" the sergeant snarled. "We're still leaking mares left and right, and you can hear the screaming and yelling out there among the day-ponies. You're losing your grip, you-"
"What we have to keep in mind," Ping interrupted, firmly, trying to keep his indecision out of his own voice, "Is that we are not the only ones stumbling around in this darkness. We have to preserve our force, and keep our formations intact until the Return. All will be well, then. We only have a few short hours until midnight, and we no longer have to hide from the rest of the squadron. They don't know where we are, we are safe for now. I can assure you that none of the day-ponies will think in a thousand years of looking for us in the-"
"Oh, hey, what are youse guys doing up here?" said a very unwelcome voice. "I was just coming up to pull some of our rope stock for the - whoop! Easy there, filly. You nearly pinked me with that pig-sticker of yours."
What specific sin against the Mother of Dreams had Ping committed, that she afflicted him with an annoyance like-
"Has anyone seen Purse Strings?" Gilda yelled into the corridor, and one of the runners looked up from his station against the bulkhead, rising from a slouch.
"Saw 'im twenty-five minutes ago, fussing over the mess you- er, we left in the launch bays, Sarge."
Gilda glared at Mickle Joe. "Well, go get him, winds damn you! I want to go over the ship schematics, we're forgetting something, and I can't remember what!"
"Oh, yar, that's a rough 'un, sarge. Will do, marm."
"And put a civil tongue in your maw, private, before I find a rank below that to bust you down to!"
"What's that, civvie? Me marm would kiss you for it, sarge. Always 'ated me goin' into the service, marm did."
"Fly, you fool!"
"I'm flown, your flockship!"
Gilda turned back to Martingale.
"You were saying, lieutenant ma'am?"
"I'm down three griffons, and five ponies. All of them unresponsive, and three, a griffon and two ponies, are screaming and carrying on. We're restraining them in the stockade-"
"Brig, ma'am," corrected the lieutenant's adjutant.
"Brig, whatever, we've had to restrain them, and the doctor is beside herself trying to figure out what's going on. I think it's some sort of thestral trick. They're sabotaging us!"
"I've never heard of such a thing," Gilda objected, cautiously. "Is that a thing?"
"Can't be sure," Martingale conceded. "But there's always been rumors. If they're mutinying, they might be pulling out the secret tricks to overwhelm us. Where's the Major?"
"Checking her books for quick tips on batpony-handling," Gilda said, henfully resisting the urge to roll her eyes in front of Gleaming's subordinate. "Maybe we can get a leg up on the problem."
"She should have those books memorized by now!" Martingale snarled.
"Look, Lieutenant, get your griffons in talon, and mind your own wind. We need to find those missing ponies. The batponies aren't attacking us, so far as I can tell. They're just hiding. Find them, and we find the solution to what's going on."
Purse Strings, where did you disappear to?
Strings couldn't see very well in the darkness of the stowage closet, once they'd busted his lantern. And what he could see, moved strangely, as if there were serpents in the darkness, just out of his lack-of-vision.
"You know, it ain't easy to replace the glass in those things, this far from civilization!" he complained.
"Shut up, Strings", said the ensign. At least he thought it was an ensign. Hard to tell from just voices, and a brief, startled flash of lighted closet, before they'd tackled him and broke his lantern. The dead space below the spine of the envelope, around the access crawlspace between the cells, made a lovely place for stowing spars, rope, and other long-ish luggage that couldn't comfortably fit down in the bays.
And, apparently was ideal for thestral conspiratorial convocations. The ensign left, closing the hatch behind him.
There was a pinkish spot in the now-less-populated darkness to Strings' right, among the coiling, slithering nothings which Strings was fairly sure was just his suppressed panic manifesting in hallucinations, phantasms. The pink phantasm turned to him, and a beak formed just brightly enough in the dimness for him to see the smile, under a white stripe that must have been a blindfold.
"First time being foalnapped?" it squeaked in the voice of the doctor's airheaded sister. "Don't worry, it gets better, eventually. And I've been promised. All things will be well. We're things, too, aren't we?"
Oh, it wasn't a phantasm, it was the doctor's airheaded sister.
"You may be a thing, little miss, but I'm a pony."
"Yeah, I've heard that one before. Don't try it on the batponies, they might think it's a suggestion they ain't ponies, by inference, yanno?"
Strings grunted, struck by the argument.
Then he was struck by a spear-butt from the darkness.
Strings hadn't even heard the thestral come through the hatch. He was really losing it.
"What's going on back here? Be quiet, the both of you!"
Why did she only hit him!
"It helps if you're cute. Cute gets away with lots when you've been captured!" chirped the doctor's infuriating, blindfolded sister.
Now that the hatch was open again, he could see that they'd clapped them in the aft hawser-hold, a closet within the bigger closet, and although Strings couldn't quite make out what the other bats were going on about out there in the larger space, he could see real movement, something other than the snakes in the dark.
He thought about asking the pink menace what was going on, but Strings was coming to understand that the lance corporal could say things that would get him-
"Ya wanna know what's going on?" Fish answered the question the earth pony hadn't asked. But she knew he was wondering.
She knew all sorts of things now. And could answer them, if she wanted.
"We're being held to keep their world going, Mr. Strings! It's a very important job, being a captive. And surprisingly helpful! You employ all sorts of guards, and keep them in jails where they can't hurt other ponies while they're jailing you up. Not that I mean you, Ambersweet. You wouldn't hurt a fly. Unless he landed on Mr. Strings' muzzle just before you whacked him one for talking out of turn."
"Eye, just… shut up."
"Oh, will you whack me one, too? Yes, ma'am. Shutting up now."
"You outrank me, Lance Corporal."
"Are we keeping to ranks now, Private Ambersweet?" Fish asked. If she outranked the guard, the guard could hardly give her orders.
"I… have no idea what we're doing anymore, Lance Corporal."
Fish Eye leaned forward in the darkness behind her blindfold, in the open space which must have been the hawser hold, a blindness within a box within a box within a balloon.
"That's the secret, Private. Nopony ever knows what they're doing in the dark. That's why we light a candle."
She could feel the thestral hesitating, on the cusp…
"Hey! No candles. We're in a flammable stowage space!" squawked the stores-master pony.
Fish Eye slapped her talons over her blindfold, frustrated. Everyone was stepping on her lines today!
"Hey!" squawked the thestral private. "When did you get untied?"
"Oh, this?" Fish Eye asked, wiggling her talons. "Oops? Sorry, I can't see where the rope got to… could you give me a hoof, and we can get me tied up a-"
"FRUITS BASKET! FRUIT SALAD! WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! WE KNOW YOU'RE HOLDING CORPORAL PING HOSTAGE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HOOVES UP!" Sergeant Gilda's command-voice rattled through two hatches and was hardly muffled at all by all the coils of heavy rope and other stowage cluttering around Fish.
The squawks of dismay from Fish's captors were less muffled.
EVERYONE was stepping on Fish's lines today. She'd hardly gotten started, abyssal depths take it!
This was going to be a long night.