Carrot Top, Derpy, and Lyra all followed in the Doctor’s trail this time as he set about circling the cottage, looking in every sizable space and every corner for the TARDIS. With every corner he turned that did not contain the blue box he grew angrier.
“You said it was a... a spaceship, right?” Carrot Top suggested, “Maybe you forgot to park it right and it just zoomed off on it’s own?”
The Doctor shook his head. He gave her credit for trying to be helpful, but she was totally clueless. Finding no trace of the TARDIS in the pony’s back yard, he withdrew his own key and the sonic screwdriver from his coat pockets.
“What’s that?” Lyra asked.
“Screwdriver, but sonic,” he said, pressing down on the side of it and holding the lit blue end at the head of the TARDIS key, “Kind of a multi-function tool really. I packed it full of all sorts of little gadgets and functions.”
The key glowed bright gold for a moment, but then faded gradually. The Doctor held the key aloft in front of himself, waiting for it to glow again. It did so very slowly.
“Here Derpy, take a key. Lyra, you share one with Carrot Top, hold onto it carefully,” the Doctor said, “They’re connected to the TARDIS, and I’ve got them homing in on it’s signal. See the glowing bit there, how it pulsates slowly?”
Derpy held her key up to her face, watching it glow with a bright golden light out of the creeping darkness.
“That’ll get faster the closer we get to the TARDIS.”
“Like a metal detector?” Lyra suggested, holding the key she had been given in front of Carrot Top’s face.
“I suppose,” he said, “Let’s get started.”
The four walked along the dirt road outside the cottage, along the edge of the woodlands. The key seemed to pulsate a very slight amount quicker, but it still seemed sluggish and distant. As they trotted along the road, the key began to lead them on a direction away from the village of Ponyville, and closer to the forests.
They stopped on the edge of a tangled and overgrown section of the forests: the Everfree. The Everfree Forests were notorious for being dangerous and unruly, and as a general rule ponies avoided going in there.
Derpy remembered childhood stories of foals that ventured into the woods, only to never be seen again. The prospect of going in there was daunting, and one she was not looking forward too.
“Doctor, I’m not sure about this,” Carrot Top said, shying away from the forest’s edge, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go back to my cottage.”
The Doctor looked back to her, raising an eyebrow. He took a moment to glance at the others, noticing Derpy’s uncomfortable expression. Sighing, he took his companion aside for a moment.
“Listen,” he said in a low voice that the others couldn’t hear, “If you really don’t want to go into the Everfree Forests, I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he said, “So I’ll tell you what- why don’t you keep your friend Carrot Top company while Lyra and I press on. We’ll find the TARDIS soon enough, and pop back to the cottage in no time. Sound fair enough?”
Derpy nodded. The Doctor patted her on the back, and several moments later he and Lyra saw Derpy and Carrot Top walking back up the road in the direction of the cottage. The two then continued to the edge of the Everfree, walking in as the key’s pulsation guided them deeper into the woods.
“So Lyra, you ever been in these woods before?” the Doctor asked, stepping over a rotted log lying over the forest floor.
“No,” Lyra admitted, “But I believe the stories. Well, some of them.”
“Which ones?” he asked.
“Well, there’s one about a manticore living somewhere in here. Another story has it that there’s a scaly monster that turns ponies into stone statues, but it gets confused with tales of a mystical dragon living in a system of caves,” she rattled off, ducking through the ever-thickening tree coverage and low hanging branches.
“It doesn’t bother you any?” asked the Doctor, “You’re not scared of them?”
“Strange monsters and creatures are one of my hobbies, Doctor,” she admitted, “Yeah they’re supposedly dangerous, but I think it’d be cool to see one for myself.”
They stopped in the center of a small clearing on the forest floor. Ferns and brambles grew up to neck height all around them, leaving the two craning their heads to see what lie ahead in any direction.
The key was pulsing much quicker now, with a steady rhythm that increased the deeper they plunged into the dark woods. The flat grassy clearing led to thicker tangles of bushes and shrubs, and branches that formed a tough-to-navigate thicket. Twigs cracked beneath the pair’s hooves, and they began to make their way up a rocky incline.
Somewhere nearby, a stream gurgled. The Doctor and Lyra were now atop a rocky hillside, facing a waterfall and a semi-deep pool. The key’s flashing seemed to be drawing them toward that waterfall, and as they neared it it began to pulsate in the quickest succession yet.
“We’re getting close,” the Doctor said, “Hope you don’t mind getting wet.”
The Doctor led the way through the waterfall, which had covered a tight crevice in the rocky hillside. The inside was dark, and barely wide enough for them to fit through. The Doctor gave the key over to Lyra, and clutched the sonic screwdriver in his teeth, holding down the button so that the bright blue end acted as a flashlight of sorts.
Inside the crevice was a cavern of sorts, with jagged rock faces and low ceilings. It wasn’t the type of place one could find bats, but the floor was wet and a stream ran through it. This forced the Doctor and Lyra to wade in water less than a few centimeters deep in some places, but in others all the way up to their stomachs.
Lyra was a bit uncomfortable in the cramped cavern. She felt jagged rocks scraping against her sides, and at one point she hit her head rather forcefully on a jutting stalactite, after which she held her head low and was wary of every protrusion. At one point, she felt something underwater scuttle by her hooves.
“I felt something on my hooves,” she told the Doctor, “what is it?”
“I felt them too,” he replied, “It’s probably crayfish.”
“Crayfish?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Like miniature lobsters, they are. Too bad you lot are all herbivores, I’ve heard they’re quite tasty.”
“That’s gross,” Lyra said, “You eat meat? What are you, part gryphon?”
“No, I’m a Timelord,” the Doctor replied, ducking beneath a rather large stalactite, “We resembled ponies, but our internal organs and physiology is much different. I’ve got two hearts.”
“You’re joking.”
“Am not!” the Doctor protested. He stopped himself, as they had come to section where the water fell from somewhere above. There was a dead end ahead, but a hole above them that allowed water to flow down existed, though with barely enough room for one of them to squeeze through at a time.
The Doctor lifted Lyra up onto his back so she could go through the hole first, allowing her to climb up and help lift him up from the surface up higher.
They were now in a more spacious cave of some kind, and in the dim light from the screwdriver the Doctor could see organic greenish material coating the floor of the cave, and head of it piled up among rocks and boulders. The material was sticky and clung to their hooves as they walked over it.
“Eew, what is this stuff?” Lyra said, trying to scrape the greenish material off her hooves and legs, “It’s sticking to me all over.”
“Looks like a mucus of some kind, definitely from an animal rather than plant fibers,” the Doctor guessed. He had taken the key back from Lyra by this point, and held it aloft. It was flashing very rapidly now; they were close to the TARDIS.
“So, if this stuff all over the place is mucus,” wondered Lyra, “Does that mean we’re in something’s belly?”
The Doctor snorted, and kicked at the ground beneath him to demonstrate a point.
“Feel the ground? That’s solid rock, that is. I’m guessing that if this were something’s digestive tract, you wouldn’t see solid rock and this greenish stuff,” he explained, “Does the skin under your fur burn?”
“No....?”
“So that stuff’s not acidic. That is to stay, it isn’t here to break down matter. Whatever this stuff is, it’s likely been deposited in this cave by another creature, or a group of them.”
They stopped walking as the key ceased blinking entirely, instead glowing brightly. The Doctor dug at the gravel and sand beneath his hooves, frowning.
“That’s odd,” he said, “According to this we should be right on top of the TARDIS...”
He looked about anxiously, pointing the sonic to illuminate the empty corners and hoping to see a large blue box. Lyra paced around the spot, eyes following the light created by the whizzing end of the sonic screwdriver. She then got an idea, and drew her attention to the roof of the ceiling.
Hung from the roof were clusters of greenish pods, similar to the cocoons built by caterpillars. The rocky ceiling was totally covered in very large cocoons, and right above the spot on which they stood was the largest cocoon of them all, containing a blue police box inside.
The Doctor followed Lyra’s gaze and whistled, impressed.
“That’s not something you see everyday.”