VI.
Corpus Delicti
Everfree Forest, Ponyville Region, Equestria
17. November, 2015
17:40 pm ICT
The lane along the forest was, rather unsurprisingly, horribly paved. A few half-hearted attempts at cleating it with cobblestone aside, it was mostly frozen mud, mush and compost heaps protruding from the forest floor, and ancient roots from nearby trees eroding the pathway into an abscurely desolate state.
The Land Rover rumbled and hopped under every ever so slight elevation or depression in its way, shaking the seven passengers through like in an electrical coin sorter, and pulling them to the left or right, like reed stems in a storm. Golden armour chestplates clanked as they banged together under the constant movement, and ill-fitting helmets wobbled around on the heads of four of the ponies. They were four rather countryfolk-like and stoic stallions, gripping spears and halberds in their hooves, all of them sharing only a few feet of benchspace in the otherwise very spacious vehicle, and anxiously looked forward to guess where they were heading.
Behind them, on the third bench, there resided their guide, who strongly held onto the grips provided above the doors and behind the seats, and directed the path of the car alongside the forest edge with a moaning and ill-sounding, yet noticeably rythmical and deep voice. Her neck- and earrings rang out as she shifted her hooves and laid down her stomach on her seat with a distressed sigh, taking up the entire width of the bench with her spread out limbs.
"How are you feeling back there?" the Lieutenant next to the human behind the wheel asked.
Another moan escaped their guide.
"Never in may entire life, did ever want to strive to travel not on hooves but wheel. Now that I do, I feel really ill."
"Oh, you zebras! If Celestia wanted us to walk everywhere on hoof, she wouldn't have given us the Friendship Express, right?"
"You may laugh now, but you will see; your hooves have better memory!"
"What is she saying?" the human asked her companion.
"Ah, the typical stuff. She is scared of everything that moves for her. But that's also why she knows the entire Everfree like the back of her horseshoe!"
"To each his own, Lieutenant. What about your friends? Are they from around here?"
The pegasus leaned back to his comrades.
"Ah, they're good colts. Born and bred in Everfree County. A bit crazy in the common sense department, but they know good from evil. The chubby one with the horn, for example, he's an ace of a mage. He can take a whole oak and thrust it twenty leaps against the wind. Not everypony can do that, especially not in the Provincial Cavalry. The little pegasus next to him, he isn't the brightest or anything, but he is the fast one. He was in the Wonderbolts Flight Academy before dropping out."
"Aha." she commented with a bewildered expression. The human had no idea what he meant.
"Here in the countryside, everypony is kind of a really unique type. Once you know them, you know them for life, and they know you too. Ponies are really tight-knit around these parts, so it's a big deal if something happens to one."
"Is that why they helped you with Junebug?"
"Yes. I've heard the little one even had a crush on June once. You wouldn't believe how shattered he was when she sucked his affection in and then spit it right back in his face.
Edith nodded strangely. "No, I guess I wouldn't."
"Before long, he had to pin her legs so she wouldn't try and lunge at him. It was so absurd. That thing was probably trying to cocoon him or something. Well, whatever its plan was, we stomped it out."
Swallowing the awkwardness of hearing the story, she began to understand just how hard her disappearance and her subsequent 'replacement' had impacted the other locals.
"What about our guide?"
"The zebra? She's a hermit. Came from the woods one day, in a hood and with shifty eyes. Nopony really likes her though. She doesn't talk with others often, but when she does, she can be really cocky know-it-all-like. Oh, and she is planting her Everfree flora everywhere. Makes the whole place even more dangerous than it has to be."
"Halt past that big fir I see. This is where we'll have to be." the zebra suddenly exclaimed and pointed.
"She says we should stop right over there." the pegasus immediately broke to the human.
The car swung to the left and pulled over on the untamed frozen moss ground.
Edith silenced the motor and the small search party, equines first, ejected from the car.
"Jeesh! Riding in such a thing is like a really tiny haycart. No space for lying at all!" one of the more corpulent guardsponies commented. "Ya... What're we doing here? Isn't this, like, the most abandoned edge of the forest?"
"Yep." the Lieutenant answered. "It makes sense that we start searching for them here."
"Sense, sense... it don't make no sense at all. Darn tootin', I bet that enchantress is just mucking around with us!"
"And why, cadet, would I do that?" the zebra roughly cut him off as she tumbled out the back hatch of the Rover.
"Well, ever since Morion threw you out of the market that one time, you had a grudge against us. Don't deny it." another guard spoke.
"Because buying books on witchery you ponies were too scared to see?" Zecora commented haughtily.
"Ya bet, zebra. You'd end up putting some nasty curses on ponies, just like the last time." the other guard said and waggled his spear in her direction knowingly.
"You fool. I told you many a time... ponies acting dumb is not my crime. And if you choose to blame me so, then you can stay, but I will go!"
Her pouches rustled menacingly as she made ready to turn away from them.
"Now look, Zecora." Lieutenant Fighting said with a raised hoof as he stepped between his comrades and their guide. "This is not about you, this is about a slew of innocent ponies being trapped somewhere in that forest. We asked you kindly if you could show us around this place. You're here all the time, after all.."
"So I will!" the mystic huffed. "But I insist, that accusations you must resist."
"Fine." He turned to his subordinates. "You heard her. Lay off the idle talk for later. Right now, we must focus on finding Junebug and the other lost ones. I cannot tell what awaits us in there. But it's not something that we could face by bickering and spreading hate."
He looked upwards, to the tree tops hanging high above him and absorbing much of the sunlight before it could illuminate the forest around them. It was gloomy and foggy.
Even if though they had lamps, they would have hardly seen what lay ten feet in front of them. "We... we must stick together around here. No matter what. Alright?"
"Yes sir." A lean guardspony exclaimed. "Make ready to kick some major changeling flank..."
"Oh and for the love of Celestia, please lay off the Commander Hurricane."
"Of course, sir."
Step for step, Edith stumbled from tree to tree, extremely vigilant of the unseeable forest floor beneath her. In front of her, the foggy outlines of her pony guides floated around, with one or two guiding lights dangling between them.
The sight seemed, she remembered, not any more real than the rest of her trip. The foreign vegetation, the inhabitants, the native tongue... the haunting scenery of the forest; dark, damp, abandoned and isolated. She wasn't claustrophobic, but the fact that she tapped around the fog behind the guardsponies like a blind woman grabbing onto her one-eyed guide's shoulder was harrowing.
Suddenly, something caught her foot.
The human's eyes shrunk in horror, and she immediately froze in place, stopping dead in her tracks.
The pony lieutenant hurried over to her, looking up and down her still form.
"Are you alright, M'am?"
The otherwise so painfully reserved and rational human did not dare to move an inch, carefully shifitng her eyes downwards, trying to espy what had curled around her foot.
"Hey, don't sweat it." the lieutenant tried to calm her, peering through the mist around her legs. "It's just a vine. Nothing to be afraid of."
She just gulped, uneasily trying to move her foot away, but immediately flinched and let out a pained gasp when she felt the growth tugging at her leg.
"Hang on..." the pegasus said, lowering himself and quickly biting through the vine with his massive horse teeth. "There. Gone."
She shirked away instantaneously and let out several heavy breaths. "Oi Bozhé..." she pleaded in her native tongue.
"Is everything alright? You're acting like there was a hydra twisting around your leg." he asked.
"No. Oh fuck..." she cursed. "I don't know where I'm stepping in this mist, and it's driving me completely crazy!"
"There is only that much that can lie on the floor and hurt you. Don't worry. You must only make sure that you don't trip."
A cold shiver ran down her back.
"I have just can't have it if I don't even see what's under my feet..."
"Really? Any particular reason?"
She took a moment to wipe her nose and snuffle.
"When... when I was a bit younger - I had just started work for the ICMP - I was tasked with an on-site exhumation, in the middle of war zone. And our escort drove us right into a minefield."
"A what? What is that?" the lieutenant asked nonchalantly.
"It's an area where..."
She carefully brushed over the ground with her foot, "Well... when you take one step into the wrong direction, you get blown up."
"Ouch." the pegasus murmured, trying to imagine how that was possible. What strange magic was that?
"A mine blew off a tire, and we had to find our way out on foot. Or rather, our toes. A whole kilometre, shuffling one foot in front of the next one, always staring at the ground, trying to spot any wires or buried metal rods that stuck out of the grass. We needed hours. Then one of my colleagues, he tripped... right onto one of those metal wires."
He face turned ashen. "He triggered one. Lost both legs."
"I... what?" the pony asked gravely, looking down in silence. "Sweet Celestia."
Edith looked at the ground again nervously. "Every time I trip on a root or a rock, I feel like the whole ground around me will go up in flames."
"Now... I'm not really sure what you mean." the pegasus, trying to be soothing, "Because we definitely don't have anything like it in Equestria."
He stomped on the forest floor a few times with all his hooves, "Hay, not even Diamond Dogs could burrow through this soil. Too rooty, you see. The Everfree's as sturdy a ground as can be. The really dangerous things around these parts are the ones that walk it."
"Good... I guess." Edith sighed.
Diamond dogs. Already the inferred dog attribute was unsettling. What other kinds of animals were living here?
And even though the fright was tugging at her nerves, sending chills down her spine, she could feel a certain warmth coming up the further they moved into the infamous forest. For all the talk about the aggressive and hostile environment, it definitely had an air of hospitability to it. It did harbour countless species of plants, and most of the fauna was probably sleeping through winter anyway.
Carefully, she stopped and loosened the scarf around her neck a tiny bit when she noticed that the changing climate had revived her sweat glands. The trees, the organisms all seemed to be packed so densely that they were collectively giving off life-giving warmth. That was probably also the reason for the fog. But why exactly was this forest so warm, so different from the biting cold outside? It felt so strangely homely, so normal. The weather in the rest of rural Equestria seemed stale by comparison.
"Well, the weather around here isn't working like in the rest of the country." the pegasus explained. "It's weird. It almost seems that the weather regulates itself around here. No intervention from ponies required whatsoever."
"Why... why is that weird?" Edith asked.
"Because. That's not how weather works."
"Yes, it does."
"Says the human earth-lubber." the pegasus added haughtily. "You've still got a lot to learn about Equestria."
"You need to come to Bosnia sooner or later. The weather there, it will blow your mind."
Before long, the posse found itself strolling across an overgrown glade in the woods, the zebra scout in front, and Edith slowly pacing her steps at the back. The fog became a bit clearer as it drifted up into the white midday sky.
The group began to spot some dark, solid forms lurking from behind the bushes and trees all around.
Only at closer inspection did Edith notice that they were statues, shaped like equines in various positions. One was down on the ground, seizing her head with her hooves, another one bore a petrified expression on her snout, and looked as if she tried to backtrack into the forest.
"How macabre. Was there a garden or a park here?“ she wondered aloud, "Because this place doesn’t look like there has ever been anything here.“
The Lieutenant joined her side. A visible goosebump travelled down his maned neck.
"That’s because those... aren’t statues.“ He turned around to his comrades. "Alright, colts. This is cockatrice hunting ground. You hear something rustling in the bushes, you blast it.“
Edith touched the statue intriguedly and travelled up and down the stone pony’s neck.
"What did you mean, those aren’t statues? Lieutenant?“
The Lieutenant remained silent for a moment before answering.
"Do you remember when i told you that this cursed forest has swallowed many innocent ponies in long past times?“
"Yes...“
He sighed.
"Never mind.“
He chose to keep the horrifying story of these ‚statues‘ from his human friend. In the worst case, she would probably laugh it off. "Let us go. There is nothing we can do here. Watch the tall grass.“
"Soldiers, to me!“ the zebra’s deep voice rang out. "Over yonder, a place I see!“
Immediately, the human and the stallion rushed over to the zebra leaning on an ancient tree stump, following her pointing hoof to a dark mound gazing out of the forest.
"Is that... a cave?“
In the midst of the trees, a middle-sized cliff rose out of the ground, and right on the cliffside, there was a gate-sized hole that supplied a portal into complete blackness.
"If you look for changelings, this place be it. For only pitchblack holes do they see fit.“
"You mean they are in there?“ Edith asked, confused. "Yeah, I'll need a lot of lights."
She spied around, looking for her suitcase. "Wait a minute. Where did I put it?"
As if on cue, the little pegasus auxiliary came flying up to her, holding the massive metal suitcase in his mouth by the handle.
"Uh, M'am, thoeth thith belong tho you, by any chanthe? You throppeth ith in the woothth."
"Ah yeah... there it is. Thanks." She quickly snatched it out of his mouth, snapping it open, double-checking all the contents, and arming herself with a torch and a handful of long green chemlights.
"Say..." the Lieutenant inquired, peering inside the coffer, "Are you a part-time dentist or something like that?"
Edith only raised an intrigued eyebrow. "What?"
"Well, with all those tooth forms and the paste you got in there..."
She picked out one of the forms - shaped like a deep metal U, just deep enough to place a mammal's maxilla in it.
"You mean this? This and the paste are for making dental impressions."
This perplexed the Lieutenant, however.
"And... what exactly will you need that for now?" he inquired with a forced smile.
The human looked at him, her eyes disbelieving at the fact that he asked.
"What do you think?" She glanced over to the cave. "I think if there is anything still inside this cave, it will probably need identification."
All of a sudden, an electric tension seemed to fill the air, as everypony's eyes shifted back and forth between the human that shuffled around in her suitcase, their superior officer's perplexed face, and the darkly foreboding hollow in front of them.
The pegasus officer swiftly drew a sword from his armour and quickly began passing orders.
"Right. Baschinet! You go in firsht." he barked. "You light ush the way.“
"Aye, Sir.“ A unicorn guard answered and lit his horn in a bright yellow light.
"Compact column, everypony. We don’t want any nashty shurprishesh. Should they come at you, get ash many ash you can and head right for the clearing.“
After that was done, he stuck the sword into the soil and once again minded the human.
"What was that just supposed mean? 'Identification?!'"
The human investigator said nothing.
Both her and his eyes came to stare into the black void that shielded the hole before them like a heavy curtain. It was silent in there. Dull. Lifeless. The damp darkness seemed hostile to anything living.
It reeked of death.
Edith harrumphed uncomfortably.
"I am a trained forensic, Lieutenant. And I can tell the difference between a shelter, and a..."
She cut herself off before she could finish the sentence with an ever-dreadful word. "I didn't think I’d have to... spell it out for you.“
"What didn't you want to spell out for me, M'am?“ he snapped back, clearly on edge.
She didn’t take her eyes from the darkness.
"You know, I've spent half my career exhuming mass graves and tally bones in Serbia and Mali. Just so you know; I'm not exactly in the branche finding missing persons... while they're still alive."
He stared at her with vile, disbelieving eyes.
The lieutenant’s muzzle came awfully close to the human aid worker’s face.
He breathed at her, "Have you really come all this way to tell me that our search for our loved ones is completely in vain? You're telling me that they’re long gone and buried? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, human?!“
Edith looked down.
"Not necessarily. I don't know who or what's in that cave. But whatever it is, it curled up and died a long time ago. Don't you smell it?"
The pegasus dared not to sniff the pungent scent of rot that hung in the clearing's air.
"And there are no lights burning inside that cave. No fire or smoke, even though it's deepest November. And the entrance doesn't bear any signs of recent occupation by any living being either..." She coughed. "So yeah; it's entirely possble. And if you count the fact that - in my experience - the first priority of wartime kidnappers doesn't tend to be the preservation of the lives or wellbeing of their abductees, I...“
She quickly stopped.
Even she noticed that she might have already said too much.
The pegasus lieutenant was more than just taken aback now - he almost shook with either anger or fear. He bobbed his head left and right, with his ears flicking around nervously, trying to deny what the human suggested and clung himself to his own truth.
"We're... not in one of your human countries. We're in Equestria." he hissed slowly, but severely, "And In Equestria... we don't use that word that starts with a D. Ever. Got it?!"
"Now look here. All I did was name a possibility. If you can't look-"
"Have you really thought that I'd barely go three steps and already it'd be late? That all these good stallions who have come here with me to save the lives of their friends, could at most scoop up what's left of them and trot home for burial?"
He shook his head, as if to answer his own question. "No. No no no..."
Edith tried to disarm his fraught trembling.
"The Changelings-"
"You just want your changelings, huh?!" the Lieutenant suddenly burst. "Oh fine! Just declare everypony I've ever loved d... d... a lost cause, and move right on to what you've really come here for? The Changelings?! If you want to save a few of those monsters for yourself, be free to go ahead inside that cave and kindly ask them to step out of the shadows for us. Be my guest."
He pointed at his pony comrades, already positioned around the cavern entrance, "But let us Royal Guards do the job the we came here for to finish. To save the innocent! Every single one of them! And finish it, we will. Even if it’s going to take us a thousand years; we'll find them, and when we do, they will be alive, and happy to see us, and they will be falling into our hooves, greeting us with kisses and tears running down their cheeks. Safe and sound they'll be! This is what will happen! And nothing else! Because this is Equestria, and not bucking Earth!"
Edith looked away. A lump of shock and almost painful guilt travelled up her throat. It would be best if she would just leave him to his delusion.
"And I want to hear nothing about the d-word anymore, and neither will my ponies. Or you can go right back where you came from, human. Got it?!"
Some things just were universal, for better or for worse.
The cave seemed to be a collapsed mountain of a sort, a crack between two massive rock plateaus lying on top of hear other, having been there millions of years, and surely a shelter to countless creatures over time.
The zebra guide herself – for all the vast knowledge she had collected about this mystical place – was hard-pressed not to let her attention slip from examining its untouched, millenia-old walls.
Guided by the brawny unicorn’s horn, the human was right behind him and the zebra, putting one foot in front of the other, gazing into the dark horizon. She felt the nothingness sweep against her face, brush her ears. The lack of sound, even the lack of an echo that she would have expected from a cave this size, made the entire place seem much smaller, more oppressing, as if the darkness was the wall before her eyes, and retracted with every inch the unicorn’s light pushed forward. The air was damp, every sound her lips made was thrust right back at her.
Every breath of warm air floated in around her ears. The air in this place was stale, not moving. It was like she was a giant trapped in a tiny, dark corridor whose walls were close to tickling her skin without actually touching her, breathing her own breath and slowly succumbing to the lack of fresh, cold oxygen and her own companions.
She thanked the heavens she wasn’t claustrophobic, or else this place would have been the end of her.
She felt the presence of the embittered lieutenant trotting behind her, sword in mouth, almost like he was driving her forward in front of him.
Soon, the group was swallowed by darkness. They had moved no more than twenty metres into this cave, but already the saving daylight of the Everfree was weak, far away on the end of the tunnel. Already breaths were growing heavier, more concerned, desperate. The air in this place seemed spent, and smelled even stronger of decomposition.
"Hello!“
Edith ducked as the loud shouts of the equine behind her flew over her. The other in the company stared at their leader.
"Hey!“ he shouted again. He was panicking, Edith could tell by his shouts, and how they were tainted by voice cracking on every other syllable, as the Lieutenant was losing more and more of his composure.
He had smelled the rot. He remembered the human’s words.
What if there was no living soul in this place after all?
"Royal Guard! Ish anypony there? Hello!“
Then something else echoed through the cavern.
From far away, a scream rang out, travelling from wall to wall through the darkness.
Everyone froze in horror. It was a ghastly sound. The throat that had produced it was sore and swollen and hoarse. It sounded like a frantic signal of alarm.
Lieutenant Fighting Fit was the first one to snap out of it, breaking out of formation, leaving his companions behind left and right, charging into the darkness beyond the horn’s light.
"After me! After me! Platoon, after me! Now! Thish way!“
The others immediately hounded after him, lead by the zebra guide and Edith.
Almost blindly, the company followed down the tunnel, heading for a destination they did not know even existed.
The way split into two. One path headed into a claustrophobic crack in the wall, riddled with tremdous stalachyte stones growing out of the ground. The other end seemed to lead over some kind of fall into a much larger, almost ballroom-sized hollow point inside the mountain.
The Lieutenant’s head swing around as he rapidly ran around in circles, unsure of where to proceed next.
"Zecora! Zecora! Where to? Where did that cry come from? Tell me!“
The zebra was as puzzled as him.
"Left or right, up or down... we’d run into the darkness‘ mound.“
"Stop with the riddles!“ he shouted at her. "Left or right, Zecora?!“
Something small hit the zebra’s mohawk mane with a thwack. Shaking the pebble out of her hair, her eyes travelled up. Her ears sharpened.
"Nay...“ she breathed. Within a second, she jumped at the Lieutenant, taking him with her as she dove in the floor. "Back! Away!“ she wheezed.
Before Edith and the others could inquire what she did that for, the ground began to shake as several sizeable stones crashed down from above with a deafening thunder. A hail of ashen rocks, sharp splintery hubris, dirty pebbles, sand and dirt flashed in the horn’s light, drawing a surreal, confusing play of shadows on the white and grey walls around them. They scattered, grasped by the erratic panic of the moment, pressing against the walls and shielding their heads.
One of the projectiles hit the little pegasus Guard on the helmet with a dull clang, causing him to drop on the floor panically and hold on to his headgear with both hooves.
Edith tried to make her way over to the lieutenant and the zebra guide.
Then a rock the size of a plum struck her right below the right ear.
Her jaw jerked to the left violently. She suddenly felt the salty, rusty taste of blood spilling on her tongue. Frozen like a deer caught in the headlights, she sank to her wobbling knees and grabbed her face with a hand. It took several seconds until the pain caught up with her. She moaned as she began to notice she couldn‘t feel some of her grinding teeth, and her gums seemed to be on fire.
"Human!“
She heard a frantic whinny from behind her, and before long her eyes were blurred by black and white striped fur. The zebra guide sat on her haunches next to Edith and lowered her to the ground next to the drop.
Oblivious to the fact that the human couldn’t understand her, the zebra tried to calm her and spoke to her in gentle noises.
"Shush, you poor creature, hush. There is no haste, there is no rush. You're wounded on your mouth and teeth. Through your nose please try to breathe."
The last rock smashed onto the ground.
The lieutenant got back on all fours and hurried over to the guide and the human, not even taking the time to re-adjust the strap of his helmet.
"That was... a cave-in. Is everypony alright?"
"If that was a cave-in, I am a sheep. Would this grotto fall, we'd be buried deep." She pointed him upwards. "If you see what I now see, it was a trap, quite obviously. A basket, sack or plate of wood, laden to the brim with stone. And through a rope, a little tug, unto us it all was thrown."
His eyes darted in all directions nervously.
"Are you saying some pony made this rockfall happen?"
"I would know at a glance, if such a fall would occur by chance. It was a booby trap, alright. And not one triggered by your knights."
Within a second of her explaining, the rest of the trap contraption dropped from the ceiling.
A big, rotten basket, followed with several metres worth of rope, crashed right next to them, nearly missing the muscular unicorn guard.
The Lieutenant galloped back to the point where he had dropped the sword, picking it back up with his teeth, and turned to the gaping darkness to his right.
Then he screamed hysterically, maddened with rage.
"Where are you, you shcum?! You Changeling pigsh! Was that for ush?! Wash that bashket meant for ush?! Come out and fight! We will deshtroy you all!"
Then, suddenly, the darkness struck back.
A creature jumped out of the shadows, tackling the unicorn who was standing behind the lieutenant. It smashed his head against the floor with a gasp, and the light of his horn went out with an almost electrical surge, plunging the frantic group back into complete, alienating blackness.
Another one of the gut-wrenching shrieks echoed around her from nearby, churned out by the shadow creature.
Edith felt the zebra guide leave her side instantly, and through the sudden darkness, she heard a series of shouts, neighs and screams from several of her equine companions. First there was a thump, then the sound of hooves galloping to the position where the unicorn had just stood. A clang from a sword, a hard thud from a blunt weapon, and the sound of somepony jumping into the frey, delivering savage kicks at the aggressor, each one punctuated by a frenzied creak.
Edith cowered on the ground, void of all orientation and the will to move. She did not dare to feel the ground to regain it. She felt compelled to stay right on that piece of cave floor where she lay right now. In her mind, she could virtually feel the blades of grass growing around her, intertwined with supicious looking wires, razor-sharp metal points, waiting to be moved in the slightest way, and unleash fiery hell all around her.
With a hand, jittering from the nervousness and the pain in hr throbbing mouth, she reached backwards, groping her backpack, until she could feel the zipper. Then she ripped it open and pulled out a long, conical plastic tube. She took it in both hands, snapped it and hit it once hard against the cold floor. The fluid inside began to swirl and change colour, and soon, a bright green light spread through the tube like a streak of syrup through a glass of water.
Frantically, she held it up and glanced around. She could faintly see several equine forms darting around, writhing on the ground or carefully stepping through the darkness - then she lost grip of the saving light in her hand.
It fell to the ground and rolled away through the darkness. Edith panicked, falling further on the floor and tried to grab it. But it was too far away, and in an instant, it was gone. The treasured green light had disappeared from her vision.
She saw some vague light travelling down the walls on the far side of the cave chamber. Then she heard the sound of a plastic cylinder impacting on the cold, wet floor somewhere in front of her, much further below.
With a blindingly bright flash of the unicorn's horn, the magically generated warm yellow light returned, illuminating the cave once again.
As Edith's eyes refocused and she regained her orientation, she noticed immediately that everything had changed. The young pegasus had a blueish hoof stomp imprinted in his face, the unicorn had lost his helmet, and stood heavily breathing, and with a big batch of his white mane hair missing from his head, over a dirty, rugged, and pitifully thin equine creature that was pinned to the ground by a maddened Lieutenant Fighting Fit, as the pegasus officer delivered headbutt after headbutt on the downed beast.
"You dirty scum!" he whimpered. His eyes were now openly glistening with tears in the horn's light.
He delivered another, savage headbutt at the heavily breathing attacker. "Transform! Transform! Get out of this pony body, you dirty changeling dreg!"
He punched it on its malnourished breast with an iron-clad hoof before repeating himself. "Transform I said! Transform! Show us your true self!"
He flinched as the zebra guide laid a comforting hoof on his back. Then he dropped his hoof back on the floor, and breathed out.
The creature on the floor below him was the same as before; a mare with a dirty yellow coat and a tattered blue-pink mane, breathing barely, and white, foamy saliva escaping her mouth. A pegasus too, as Edith saw two undernourished wings sticking out from behind her back, even though one of the wings was very unhealthily pointing in the wrong direction.
"Who is that Changeling?" the Lieutenant inquired roughly. "And who is it impersonating?!"
The young pegasus under his command approached cautiously, shivering as he looked down at the beast.
"I don't know a mare who looks anything like this. But I gotta say, those Changelings sure look like the real thing."
"Don't be fooled by their cheap tricks!" the Lieutenant retorted. "It cannot keep this disguise up forever."
The zebra behind him looked concerned, scrutinizing the barely conscious creature.
"Changelings should hold more than this one did. They're sturdy creatures, with stamina, as nature does weakness forbid. This one's weak, and has hardly fought. Are changelings weaker than I thought?"
"I would be weak too if I were stuck in this tartarus-hole for half an eternity! But don't you fret, it won't save this little monster from what's coming to it!"
The guide pondered.
"Stuck... stuck... oh what luck!" she exclaimed and pulled the Lieutenant away from the weakened assailant. "Lieutenant, mayhaps its not a Changeling at all. Just, at wrong place and time, an unfortunate soul."
"Not a Changeling, what?!" the Lieutenant spat. "Are you blind, zebra?! What is this if not a changeling?! It attacked Bascinet! And probably triggered the trap, too! You saw it, didn't you? How could any pony in her right mind do that?!"
The zebra, oblivious to the shouting soldier, put her face down to the creature's frantically breathing snout, inspecting it from close up with an almost motherly expression.
"In her right mind you did say? I think we're talking of another's sway."
"What..." the Lieutenant stammered.
"Look at her eyes. Her eyes tell no lies."
Everypony bowed closer to her. They noticed a faint green shimmer stretching around the inner irises of the pony.
"Sweet Celestia. No." the Lieutenant said hoarsely and softly shook his head.
"Her mind is weakened by an old magic force. But I confess, changelings are the source."
"I knew it!" he hissed.
Pathetically, he used his shivering hooves to try and pat the cheeks of the creature that he had just beaten down so savagely a mere few seconds ago. "What have they done to you? Where is everypony else?"
Meanwhile, Edith took another look around. In the direction her chemlight had rolled off to. She noticed that she lay on a sort of a plateau. The stone floor went slightly downhill, and ended, dropping vertically downwards, into complete blackness. Her light had gone over the ledge and fallen down there.
On all fours, she scrambled after it, trying to see what was left of it.
Below her, she saw the cavern floor, covered by a few inches of thick, murky liquid. One particular spot below her shone bright green and seemed to expand; the chemlight had burst upon impact and now it's illuminating liquid leaked into the apparently sizeable reservoir. The light was the only thing she saw from up there, everything else still seemed to be buried under the veil of darkness.
At least it seemed to be, until the human noticed the fluorescent liquid flowing toward some big, round growth of a sort that seemed to sprout right out of the watery ground. It almost looked like a strange egg. Like an inflated, greenish weather balloon floating on the surface of the pool. What the hell was down there? Another balloon-like object popped into view, drifting past the light from the other side.
"It almost looks like she has been trying to protect something. But what?"
"It is a technique employed by Changelings, I suppose. Slaves, appointed as guards of nests, to fend off their master's foes."
"But what in Celestia's name was this one supposed to be guarding?"
Edith still heard her comrades talking behind her. She still couldn't understand them, but she had to tell them that there was something down there, in the water below them.
She moaned, with her jaw and teeth still throbbing harshly, and tried to get the others’ attention.
Upon her moans, the young pegasus private at his superior's side winged over to her.
"Uhm, everything still okay, human?"
She pointed downwards. The pegasus curiously followed her hand.
Together, they scrutinised the big blobs on the water.
"What in Celestia's name..." he murmured and scratched the mane under his helmet. "What is this stuff? It looks so..."
At a moment's notice, the Lieutenant, the zebra and the other two guards were at their side.
"What on Celestia's golden sun..." Fighting Fit gasped. He turned to the pegasus of the group. "Morion... fly down there and tell us what you see."
"What? me?" the fidgeting pegasus asked with a jolt.
"Yes. That's an order. Move it."
"Sure, Lieutenant, sir!" he croaked.
With a short flap of his wings, he dove of the ledge into the darkness below.
There was a splash of shallow water.
"What do you see?" the Lieutenant inquired.
"I... uh... nothing. Sir."
The Lieutenant beckoned Bascinet the unicorn to illuminate the grotto to the best of his ability.
"Are you alone down there?"
The pegasus trembling voice answered,
"I... I don't think so, Sir. There’s something in the water, Sir."
"What... is in the water?"
There was a sound of hooves moving through the pool. Then they stopped.
"It's... big... and sticky... and..."
"And?"
Another pause.
Then there was a bloodcurling scream from the teenage pegasus.
"Oh geesh, Morion!" the corpulent unicorn shouted.
The others were practically readying up to jump down into the darkness to rush to their young, imperiled comrade's aid, but before they had a chance to do anything, he swept up from below, as if stung by an adder. He flew right over their heads and disappeared behind them in the darkness of the tunnel.
"Morion" the Lieutenant bellowed, trying to rise into the air after him. But he winced, and knocked back onto the floor, holding one of his wings - it had been severly strained in the melee.
He looked at the others pleadingly. "What are you waiting for? After him!"
The others, who had yet to fell a decision to go after Morion or stay put, broke into a gallop down the passage, the wounded human and the injured pegasus in tow.
Occasionally, they heard the sounds of Morion's light armour clanking against the cavern walls, as if he were a maddened, blind bat. Following those sounds, they were soon led back into the saving, white daylight of the Everfree Forest.
Panting, they collapsed on the moss ground, next to the whimpering, sobbing form of a pegasus trooper.
"Morion." the Lieutenant called. "What is wrong with you?"
The pegasus needed a couple of seconds to formulate his words.
"In... water... face... cocoon..." he stammered, hysterical.
"Cocoon?" the Lieutenant repeated. "Cocoon..."
He cursed in his home language, heading back towards the cave entrance. "There are cocoons in there! We need to go back! Now!" he shouted at his human companion.
She understood, but couldn't answer. She felt her mouth being rinsed with blood.
Trying to help, she picked a walkie talkie out of her jacket, and pressed a red button.
"Panich buthon..." she mouthed. "Challing backhup... UN..."
In the commotion that ensued in following moments, as the guardsponies prepared to head back into the cavern, no one seemed to notice that the horrified granite 'statues' that had been standing only a few metres away from the entrance, had suddenly disappeared.