Collapse looks about when they came up to the much larger tunnel. "Wow...this is huge." she whispered to the others and quickly notices the tunnels. "Would say that this place is used, so we better head upwards pretty quick. Wood construction means there is definitely an access point to the surface." Collapse whispered to Magloria and would follow her upwards while sticking close to Jump Start just incase anything happened.
Within Collapse's mind there was a lot of speculation as to who those felines were. Likely another civilization inhabiting an unforeseen landmass, but whatever interest they have with what goes on in underground she had no real clue what that would be. Perhaps minerals, maybe building some kind of machine, who knows. Maybe there was a war above ground with a rival group of cats. Who knows.
The tunnel was rather long, because half an hour passed and they were still slowly traveling upwards. At some point the sparse torches had disappeared too, forcing them to take one if they wanted to keep having proper light.
Then they saw a similar light up ahead, and judging from the way it moved about, it was another group heading towards them.
Magloria quickly looked around for somewhere to hide. A chunk of rock that had been shoved to the side was all she could find, so looks like it would have to do. "Over there. Keep quiet." she said, ushering the two to the place while extinguishing the light with a burst of cold air and leaving them in the darkness.
From what Collapse saw, the 'hiding place' wasn't very big at all. It would be a tight fit to keep them all out of view.
The long tunnel was something Collapse wasn't sure how to feel about. She did however, expect for the ascent to the surface to be long because they were at many miles underground, at least that is what she thought. There was no real way of confirming that.
Upon seeing the moving light up ahead, Collapse's heart would start racing as she would *really* hope that they weren't spotted.
Collapse stayed silent and would hide within the spot Magloria ushered them too. She didn't even dare to respond verbally and quickly nodded. Once she was within the hiding spot she would look to Jump Start as if making sure she was okay. Then she would lay with the others, in waiting to see what would happen once the other group would pass by.
By the time they were properly hidden they were all squished up against each other. Not the best position to be in, but what are the chances that Collapse would complain anyway?
The light came closer until they could see the wagons that were producing it. A set of 3 were being pulled by ox-like creatures, just without the long shaggy fur. They were being driven by a bunch of those same black felines as they had seen before, with a couple that had various grey and cream spots and stripes.
They seemed to be transporting supplies for those guarding the bottom, if what could be seen was any indication.
The group heard some conversation as the caravan of wagons passed by. It just seemed to be idle talk about how one of them caught a massive fish that was thiiiiiiiis big. The others, judging from the scoffing of dismissal, didn't believe them.
If any of them cared to notice they would feel that Collapse was a soft warm pony. Her coat was a bit more floofy than what you would expect by looking at her. Even if they may not want to cuddle with her often, they can't argue with the fact that she is pretty soft. If she was able to, she would mentally compare how soft Magloria and Jump Start are. Who is the softest?
Collapse had figured that the group would be felines, but the ox creatures were pretty interesting. It was likely that the area they originate from had animals and creatures of its own so there was no surprise that they would have animals that would be used to haul things with.
Upon their discussions being heard, it was interesting how they spoke the same language as the seaponies, and as those in Equestria. Maybe that is just being convenient for the plot, but either way Collapse was glad they could potentially be reasoned with if they had to do that. Hopefully not.
Collapse was content with waiting with the others as long as Magloria wanted to, and besides, the squishiness? She could get used to that.
While they were crouched behind the rock as the wagons past, Collapse could make a reasonable evaluation on the softness of both of her companions. Magloria felt leaner and squishier due to a unicorn's natural lack of need to do much heavy work, though she still had a decent amount of muscle. However her hair felt somewhat coarse, likely due to rougher environments she's been in.
Jump Start on the other hand had more muscle mass and as a result was firmer and not as soft. But her fur was smoother and better cared for, making it a more pleasurable experience to brush against.
Overall, they each had their pros and cons.
Once they were left in darkness again, Magloria separated from them and moved to pick up the torch, lightning her horn to see as she did. "Want to light this for us again?" Magloria asked Collapse, prepared to move forward again one they could see properly.
Collapse had smiled in silence as she had assessed the softness of her two companions. Both of them were good for cuddling purposes. And both of them together? My, that would be an absolute dream. To be all warm and cuddled up with her two companions would be great, as both their pros and cons had complimented each other.
If either of them had cared, Collapse's body was slightly stronger than what a normal unicorn would have been due to her line of work, while her fur and coat was a bit smoother than Jump Start's was. Collapse did care about how her coat was after all.
Upon being out in the darkness, Collapse nodded and would proceed to use her horn to start the torch up again. Collapse's horn momentarily glowed a soft orange color as she had casted the spell to light the torch up. Upon the torch being lit, Collapse would follow Magloria upwards.
Another hour passed before they came across the next thing of interest. They could see another light up ahead, but this one wasn't the light of a torch. It was a calm, blue light that, after walking for several more minutes, they could tell was the pale light from the moon.
Jump Start squeed as she recognized what was ahead of them. "We're finally going to be under the sky again!" she said aloud, disregarding the idea of being quiet as she trotted in excitement, much to the frustration and annoyance of Magloria, who was trying to shush her the entire time before clamping her mouth shut and pinning her legs to the floor with magic.
"Quiet! You'll get us caught!" Magloria whispered in a harsh tone. Jump Start immediately recoiled and calmed down, not liking the idea of getting captured by those felines.
Letting go of Jump Start, Magloria looked over to the way out. "Hopefully they're not nocturnal, because this might be our best chance to get out." she whispered.
Upon seeing the pale light of the moon up ahead Collapse silently exhaled. Finally believing this might be all over and they can finally move towards the surface and then proceed with the next phase of the plan to return home.
Collapse found herself very annoyed with Jump Start's sudden exclamation. While she liked Jump Start a lot, she knew the meaning of being silent in such situations and found that to be rather disregarding of the situation. She looked on in silence of the situation and shook her head in annoyance. "They better not be nocturnal or else I'm going to be very displeased with us finally seeing the surface...only to get caught." Collapse whispered quietly in annoyance.
"Yet still we'll have to plan of what to say and what to do if we get caught just in case. I don't want to make enemies here, but I am really not liking the idea of being caught." Collapse also added with a whisper.
Magloria scoffed. "We could plan, but what are the chances that it all gets thrown out the window because it's the wrong thing to say?" she said. "I'd rather learn what they'd like to hear, *then* plan. That was we can be more certain it's not for nothing."
They came up to the exit of the cave. It seemed to have received much more attention than the rest of the tunnel, including wooden supports to keep things from collapsing, and the walls even got chiseled and smoothed to look like large stone bricks.
Beyond the exit they could see what looked like a town of sorts, completely surrounding them. What could be described as stone, wooden and thatch buildings were spread out across several 'levels' of land, each lined with stone walls to prevent erosion, with the lower levels reaching inwards and the higher levels forming a bowl around it all.
Even some trees, tall ones with big bushy tops and thick branches, looked like they had structures set up in them. There didn't seem to be any obvious way up to them however.
The best part was the almost complete lack of felines to be seen. Some movements could occasionally be seen over by distant buildings, but none were nearby.
Collapse nodded. "You know, I think that's the reason why your in charge. You think ahead when others don't." she whispered, before her eyes had scanned the town around in the area.
Looking around at the town Collapse would see it as another obstacle to escape from. While the town would be very interesting to explore and examine in detail, it was both night time to where that would be a lot harder, and the risk of being caught was the main reason Collapse wanted to get out of here. At least they could go into the woods or something, and see how things were in the daytime.
At the very least they were on the surface now. Looking back on it all, it was very surreal that there was entire forests, settlements, rivers and lakes all underground like there is. While that was all very interesting, they weren't qualified to establish relations between the seaponies and the Equestrians.
In the far future, when they return Collapse would like to meet with the Royal guard and have a proper expedition come out here and establish meaningful relations, as that was not something that was in Collapse's power for obvious reasons. Now that they knew where the massive whirlpool was, they would be able to chart things out better next time.
"We should look for away out of this town. Head for a forested or obscure area. Get needed rest, and gain our bearings in the daytime. Then we go from there." Collapse suggested to Magloria and Jump Start.
They could see some of the surrounding land, but instead of the expected woods, it was more like a jungle. Lush plants were absolutely everywhere, including trees that grew over everything.
"There's a problem with getting out, Collapse. From first glance there is no obvious way to reach the upper levels." Magloria said, pointing over to the stone walls where, in order to reach the way out, they would have to jump at least 3 meters in height.
She moved a little bit further forward and checked something. "I could try to create ice stairs that we can climb, however the heat of this place would start to melt them quickly. That would make them slippery and weak."
Indeed, the moment Collapse moved a bit further forward she'd be hit by the warmth of the outside, despite it clearly being night. The days must be really hot.
"So we need to find another way out, right?" Jump Start asked. "They've got to have a stairway out, or something, otherwise they would be trapped in here."
Collapse was very disappointed by what she had seen. Jungle. How annoying, she would have hoped for more normal woods. Jungles had nasty critters and mosquitoes! As well as diseases and other things. She would shudder slightly at those thoughts.
Collapse would follow them. "Or what I could do is test out my fly ring and see what is up over the other side and if I see anything to where we could escape or if I would find that the town ends on the other side or something, I could lift you two up over the side but that is if my Fly Ring works, and I don't really look forward to falling 3 meters if it doesn't." Collapse stated.
"Sure is warm out here for sure. We'd better find somewhere to retreat to when day rolls around but you could make Ice Stairs and we could go over to the other side but I'd rather we not leave any traces of our presence here, so we just need to find another way out." Collapse suggested.
"We don't need you to fly up with your ring to scout, it just needs to give enough boost that we can reach the top of the wall. Besides, if you flew high enough to look around, you'd be high enough for them to see you." Magloria said, but then added "Also I just told you, ice stairs would be too fragile and slippery here."
She began leaving them around the side of the cave entrance and behind a building, to the nearest place where they could climb up the wall.
"Alright then, just fly high enough to get us over. Then we can find a place to safely observe from without standing out." she pointed to the wall, then sat down and waited for Collapse to do her thing.
Collapse walks over to the wall and summons her fly ring around her silently. Once it was on she would take upon a certain stance and the ring would begin to spin when she focuses her mind on it. It silently begins to levitate her off the ground, where she quickly flew to the top of the wall and she looks over.
Upon looking over the wall she would see what is up there, whatever is on the other side of the wall would be the deciding factor if she could lift her two companions over to the other side.
When Collapse reached the top of the wall she saw more buildings, trees, bushes and other things. Most of the ground was relatively flat here. The further she looked from the civilized part, the more wild it became, filled with closely packed trees and who knows what else.
She also saw one of the felines on top of one of the nearby buildings. They were a stripy one, casually laying about and watching their surroundings. They didn't seem particularly interested in doing anything at all, if the way they were practically melting into the roof they were on was any indication. But maybe that was because they hadn't seen anything interesting yet.
Collapse had took in the sights over the other side and took note of that singular feline in particular. It was good to see that there were trees, but the flora and fauna would be another obstacle to deal with later on.
Then she would descend back down onto the ground. "Relatively flat on the other side, I can see the town getting more and more sparse towards the trees in the distance. More buildings and such on the other side too, but the most import thing I noticed was that there was a feline on one of the nearby buildings watching the surroundings. Do you still want me to carry you two over?" Collapse asked.
"Just one? Hmm, we could probably deal with one. Get us up there." Magloria said.
Once Collapse had brought them up to the higher segment of land, Magloria looked around at the scene for herself. "This should be easy enough, all we need to do is distract them with a loud noise, they'll look the other way and we can move over to the other side and into the bushes."
She lit her horn conjuring a moderately sized icicle. Taking aim, she then hurled it forward, causing it to sail through the air and hit a building in the opposite direction to them, shattering the icicle loudly against the hard rock wall.
The feline's tail curled and twitched, but they didn't do anything else.
"Huh. Lazy cat." Jump Start mentioned.
Collapse had lifted Magloria and Jump Start individually up to the higher segment of the land. While she wanted to put her hooves on her two friends and hold them with her hooves, she wasn't going to do that right now and so she just lifted them over gently with her magic before landing next to them silently.
Upon Magloria firing her icicle off at the building Collapse was pleased that the icicle had provided a good distraction, at least she had hoped. "Alright, now that our distraction is done, let's head into the bushes now." Collapse spoke. She had a lot on her mind but it was best that they just focus on getting away and into the bushes without being spotted by anyone. It was best to just not interact with anyone in this area for now. The coast to the shore was likely a few miles away, at least that was Collapse was thinking.
Magloria shook her head. "No, don't move ahead." she said, pointing at the feline that was now gently cleaning it's whiskers with a paw. "They didn't care about the noise, so they'll still see you if you go."
She began looking around. "We're going to have to find something bigger to create a distraction." she said, then her gaze landed on one of the trees. A smile appeared on her face as she came up with an idea.
She turned to Collapse. "Say, do you think you would be capable of igniting one of those trees from this distance? Not in the direction we would head for of course, but one far enough away from us that it won't draw attention to us. Remember, just a little spark isn't going to be enough, and that's not even including the distance your spell will be travelling."
Collapse nodded and stayed put. "I am definitely capable of doing that. Hang on a second." she spoke and stood there and began to charge up an igniting spell. About 30 seconds passes as she charges up the spell and once she was done she nodded. "Alright, let's do this." she smirked and turned her gaze towards one of the trees off in the distance. The tree she selected wasn't anywhere near the direction where they would be heading.
With her mind focused the ignition spell would light on her horn. It was a dim orange glowing spark but it had more punch than what it looked. It would fire off from her horn and with her mind Collapse would guide the spark to that tree in the distance. It would hit the branches of the tree and it would ignite aflame fairly rapidly once the spark's power would spread throughout the branches.
"There we go." Collapse smirks, ready to follow Magloria ahead.