Brown Tunnels
The Diamond Dog tunnel smelled like shit.
It wasn't surprising, Raj reckoned. It was a hole in the ground that dozens of mangy animals shared, it wasn't going to be pleasing to any of his senses.
The large tunnel they sprinted down was lit with sputtering lamps, oil flames shaded by panels of wax paper. The light was yellow and dim, but showed them the whole of the tunnel. It was large enough for him to stand upright and the floor was surprisingly flat and had a noticeable downward grade. They clutched their weapons tight, ready for attack from all sides.
They skidded to a halt in a cavern larger than the entire Apple house. The same dim lanterns from the tunnel were nailed to the raw stone and illuminated dozens of tunnels all along the surface of the canyon. The particular tunnel they came out of led onto a high ledge next to a curving river that cut along the outer edge of the chamber, the water calmly flowing along fifteen feet below the edge.
The three of them stepped out into the big room, scanning for any dogs or other threats. No noses poked from the dark passages and no fleeing shadows flickered in the tunnel mouths. Raj stepped over to the ledge and peered down with a small flashlight. No tunnels emerged at the water's edge and there wasn't a shelf for dogs to hide under. They were alone.
“Where the heck did they all go?” Applejack broke the silence, her voice muffled a bit by the handle in her mouth before she slid it back into its harness. “We saw 'em come down here, right?”
Raj nodded “Yeah we did. Don't know where they went.”
“M-maybe we should leave. Ah've been down here before. It's twistier than a hydra's guts, real easy to get lost in.” She bit her lip and fidgeted with her hat, suddenly unsure.
Raj looked his shoulder at her “Don't think that's happening Applejack. If you want to leave, you can. Your brother and I will take care of this.” he replied honestly.
Applejack's eyes widened and she started toward a choice diatribe before she was interrupted by her brother's rumbling voice. “Wait, ah hear something.” said Big Mac. He flicked and rotated his ears, trying to catch the sound he'd faintly picked up. “There.” He pointed a hoof at a tunnel mouth high on the wall.
“Alright, come on.” Raj walked over to the wall and started hauling himself up, Big Macintosh not far behind. After a few moments of nervousness, Applejack followed behind.
At the tunnel's entrance Raj could hear a faint roar coming from further down the warren. It seemed to surge and dip, but there was a constant drone that was too faint to make out anything in particular. Raj furrowed his brow “What is that?”
“Don't rightly know, can't say ah wanna find out neither.” She dusted herself off with her tail “Celestia knows how far away that is. The way these tunnels're built? Could be miles away.”
“Or it could not be.” He shot her a sidelong glance. “You're really pushing for us to leave.”
“Ah just don't want us doing anything stupid.”
“Like talking at full volume while infiltrating an enemy stronghold?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
Applejack shot him a look like she had more to say, but just set her gaze forward and nodded once before falling into step behind him.
It turned out she was right. The three of them soon found themselves slogging through long passages of haphazardly arranged switchbacks and dead-ends. At some points the tunnel narrowed down far enough Raj had to crawl, at others it was high enough the ever-present lantern light didn't reach the ceiling. At every juncture Raj marked the wall with a line of yellow spraypaint, giving them a path to follow out. More than once the echoing racket faded out of their hearing, forcing them to wait for it to start again before they could resume moving.
The entire trip in they were wary for Diamond Dogs, but none showed themselves.
The noise quickly resolved itself into the fervent barks and howls of Diamond Dogs. There were no words, just screamed malice. Placing his hand on the ground, he could feel the stones shuddering.
Big Mac watched him kneel and muttered “Must be a lotta dogs.”
“Good thing we're only looking for one.” Raj stood up and kept walking forward.
A few bends later they saw another chamber ahead, this one lit brightly. The noise they'd been following clarified, signaling that they had finally found the source of it.
Raj crouched and proceeded warily, his staff held up to avoid knocking on the wall or scraping the ground. As he got near the noise got even louder. Standing just beyond the mouth of the passage were two burly dogs in ramshackle armor, looking down a perilously sloped ledge at something in the center of the chamber that had them hooting and hollering. They were so absorbed in whatever spectacle was present they never sensed Raj coming up behind them.
The first one he grabbed and hurled back to the Apple siblings who caught him and proceeded to clobber him unconscious. The second one grunted something and tried to whip around, but Raj's arms snaked under his foreleg and across his neck. A few seconds of panicked struggling later the dog went still.
Raj knelt down and peered over the edge.
The first thing he noticed was that there were dogs in the chamber. They stood in pits or on ledges dug into the wall. Some hung off rocky protrusions or clambered over their fellows. A few brawled with one another or simply hung back with reserved demeanor.
The second was that there were hundreds of them.
“Holy moly.” whispered Applejack at his side.
“Yeah.”
“There's, there's more here than ah ever...” Applejack gulped “There's enough dogs down there to overrun alla Ponyville.”
“Yeah.” Raj repeated.
“No wonder they were so hard up for food. There's probably not enough game for a hundred miles to keep all them mouths fed. Golly.”
Big Macintosh pointed downwards “There something going on in the center.”
Far below, in the center of the chamber, Ace was facing off against three dogs very near his size. Two of them came at his sides, low and baring fangs. The black dog met them head on, smashing one to the ground with balled fists. The other one didn't hesitate, but Ace's improbable speed kept him away from the other dog. He slashed at the other dog's legs with the now-bony tip of his tail and caught something important as the other dog went tumbling to the ground. It let out some yelps and started to limp away.
With Ace distracted, the third dog made his move. With surprising speed, the beast closed the distance and latched onto Ace's chest with claws and fangs, worry and pulling at his pectoral. The black dog let out a cross between a bark of pain or laughter and wrapped his forelegs around the other dog's back, raking with his jagged claws.
The pain proved too much and the other dog unlatched to howl in agony and that was all the chance Ace needed. He grabbed the other dog's face by the jaws and started to pull, splitting the other dog's face apart. Wild terror flashed in the creature's eyes and it slapped and clawed at Ace's arms. The black dog ignored that and, with a great exertion, tore his arms upward and shattered the dog's jaw. The creature's tongue lolled out obscenely and its eyes rolled back into in their sockets. Ace threw the broken creature to the ground where it shuddered pathetically for a moment before Ace descended on it, messily driving his muzzle into the nape of its neck. He shook his head and tore upwards, coming up with a white vertebrae in his mouth.
“Oh mah god.” muttered Applejack.
“Ah'm gonna be sick.” Macintosh trotted back away from the edge and did just that. The sounds of his repulsion were masked by the howling cries of the dogs in crowd as they screamed at the bloody display in both repulsion and adoration.
“What is this? What's happenin'?” Asked Applejack, her face ashen.
“He's asserting.”
As they watched the two remaining dogs recovered from their previous attacks and consolidated themselves close enough their sides were pressing together. Ace laughed and bit through the verterbrae in his mouth with an audible crack. He dropped to the all fours and charged the two dogs.
“Whaddya mean?” She whispered, never taking her eyes off the violent spectacle below.
“You told me that Diamond Dogs are pack animals. Well, we just embarrassed Ace pretty badly outside, injured him and sent him running. As soon as they got inside, some of the bigger ones must have challenged his dominance. And now, well...” He gestured at the bloody fight.
“You tellin' me he's killing his boys just to prove that he's still in charge?” She asked.
Below, one of the remaining dogs lost a significant part of his face to Ace's claws. The remaining dog watched this and immediately lowered himself down and rolled over to show his belly in an act of submission. Ace was having none of that and pounced, tearing into the dog's exposed weakness.
“Yeah, I am.” Raj turned “We need to go, there's way too many dogs here. We never should have-”
He cut off when he saw a small, brown shape at the mouth of the tunnel, standing less than a body-length away from Big Macintosh as he heaved onto the stones. The little dog inhaled and let out a howl before he was sent bounced back down the tunnel by Raj's hurled staff. He peeked back over the edge, hoping the din of the celebrating dogs covered it.
Every single dog in the theater/cavern were staring back up at him. Some of them just looked confused, others frightened, but most looked absolutely bloodthirsty. Ace pointed a soaked claw up at him and screamed something incoherent that whipped the assembled dogs into a frenzy.
“Run!” Raj spun on a heel and started beating feet for the tunnel, scooping up his staff as he went. The Apple siblings sprinted behind him.
Beside him, Applejack huffed “How'd they hear him over all that noise?”
“I don't know, a special warning howl or something. Shutup and run!” Raj skidded in the dirt and took a corner hard, going over the map of the tunnels he had in his head while still searching for the yellow paint lines.
They had a solid lead on the creatures, but they were in their home, terrain that only the Diamond Dogs had knowledge of. They'd barely made it five turns before they heard the baying of hounds echoed down the tunnel they were facing as well as behind.
Applejack looked back and forth between the tunnel they had just come from and the one that was marked. She turned to a side passage and shouted “C'mon this way!”
Raj stopped her with a tail grab as she started down the tunnel. She stumbled and angrily snapped her head back to him “Hey, what gives?”
“We can't go that way. They're herding us. This is the straightest path out and they're already blocking it. We deviate and we'll never get out.” he slammed the butt of his staff on the stone floor. “We go through.”
The Apples looked at him nervously, but nodded all the same. They drew their axes and set themselves at the mouth of the tunnel. Deeper down, they could all see the ragged shapes of approaching dogs in the lantern light.
With a feral scream, all three of them went barreling down the tunnel at the wall of dogs.
The effect was reminiscent of a cannonball hitting their ranks. Raj's shoulder charge sent the first line of dogs flying back, their airborne bodies knocking their fellows to the ground to be trampled by feet and hooves.
Most of the dogs were sent reeling by the sudden assault, either too dazed or too scared to fight. The ones that weren't leaped at their attackers, still mad with bloodlust from the spectacle in the theater. Those were swiftly battered down with staff or hoof or chopped with one of the Apple's axes. They stood in a rough formation, Raj covering the front with great sweeps of staff or sharp strikes when one got too close. The siblings stood to each his wings, covering the sides.
They didn't worry about the rear, as they didn't leave any dog behind that could fight.
After minutes of slogging through the brutal quagmire, just when Raj was thinking that they would never clear the path, he stepped over a beaten dog and they were through.
He took a second to look around, suddenly surprised as the lack of violence. He glanced behind and saw a tunnel layered in Diamond Dogs in varying states of injury. A thin splatter of blood covered the end of his staff and more of the stuff was splattered on his arms and legs. The Apples had gotten the worst of it, most of the ichor having splashed on their faces from savage ax impacts.
They wasted no more time than that and kept moving. Raj's hunch proved correct, it appeared that the dogs had not been expecting their quarry to make it beyond that tunnel as the next several passages were free of canine presence, save the odd howl echoing through the corridors as the dogs tried to synchronize around their prey.
They were just beyond half-way out when they next ran into another pack of dogs. These were guarding a wide, curving tunnel thick with side passages that twisted away from the central stem. Upon seeing the intruders, they hunched low and growled mindlessly. Some barked up white foam and snarled terrible threats at them while heavy, armored beasts stood at the front.
All three set themselves, ready to fight through the mob again, when the Apple sibling's eyes widened and they leaped forward, Big Macintosh shouldered Rajrishi with him, sending him stumbling forward. Raj shouted in confusion before he looked back at the ground they had been standing on.
The formerly solid, stony surface was boiling and cracking. Rising out of it were dozens of dogs.
They now had a pack to the front and the rear.
“Just sprint it! Go!” Shouted Raj as he hurled himself at the line of dogs and blasted a hole in it for the Apples and kept running.
Before, they hacked and beat their way through the horde of enemies. This time, they hopped and ran, dodging reaching claws and grasping pounces. Applejack nimbly sprang off of individual dogs, moving with practiced ease through the throng of dogs. Raj and Mac didn't have that agility, but they had strength. Where Applejack bounded over obstacles, they crashed through them, breaking bones and sending dogs flying.
Raj was ahead of him, bludgeoning a hole in the mass of Diamond Dogs. He swung his staff wide and sent a wall of furred bodies flying against the opposite wall. He started to push forward when he heard a terrible bellow of agony behind him.
He whipped around and saw Macintosh on the ground, a black shape intertwined with him. The giant dog's mouth was clamped over the back of his hock. Mac was screaming, his ax discarded, and swung down at Ace's head over and over. He ignored the strikes and pulled back, widening the wound and bringing a renewed keen of agony from the red pony.
Snarling madly, Raj dove at the big dog, clearing the distance in one leap. He threw a haymaker at his head, but the dog swayed out of the way. The punch sailed past and struck the wall, sending small fractures through the stone.
Ace let out an evil little giggle and bounced away, his muzzle stained with purple pony blood. Raj cast a glance down at Macintosh's prone form. A grapefruit sized chunk had been torn out of the back of his leg, leaving a bleeding void. He strained and grunted, trying to get up on the damaged limb.
“APPLEJACK!” Raj shouted as loud as he could while battering away dogs that flocked at the sight of a downed pony. The orange pony glanced back from her fight and her eyes widened at the sight of her maimed brother. She cleared the distance between in a flash and knelt near her faltering brother.
“Sweet Celestia Macintosh...” She said, tears welling in her eyes.
“Damn... damn dog was waiting for me. Hit when mah back was turned like a...” he didn't finish his sentence, instead his eyes rolled up into his head and he toppled.
Applejack cried out and caught him, tears flowing freely down her face. She shouldered his weight and took up his fallen ax. “Rajrishi, we need to go!”
“I know!” he screamed back as he struck at the dogs pressing from every side. He eyed the nearest passage leading from the main thoroughfare and pointed his staff at it. “There, go!”
He dove back into the mass of dogs, clearing a path with wild swings. The dogs fought back, emboldened by their leader's momentary presence and the terrible damage done to Big Macintosh. Claws raked across his flesh and teeth sunk into his limbs. He considered that the price of doing business and pressed on, opening a hole for Applejack and her brother to follow into.
Raj pressed himself flat against the wall as Applejack went racing past. Raj rounded on the approaching wall of canines and started to club downwards at them, the passage to narrow to swing sideways. Quickly the narrow space filled with limp and beaten dogs, but more and more climbed over their fallen kin as he backed up.
Quickly running out of options, Raj spun and sprinted after Applejack. The dogs bounded over their fallen comrades and snapped at his heels.
In a moment of malicious inspiration, Raj hauled his staff back and smashed it into one of the wooden braces holding the tunnel up as he sprinted past. The magically strong wood shattered the brace, and as soon as it fell the whole tunnel started to rumble. The dogs skittered to a halt and started retreating, immediately recognizing the sound and knew exactly what was to follow.
The ceiling started to cave and dust layered over him as ran, heavy stones smacking the ground and scraping off his shoulders. He ran for all he was worth, head down and screaming.
He breached the end of the tunnel and his foot struck a rock. Swearing loudly, he stumbled and hit the ground, going into a slide that ended with a painful impact against the opposite wall. A wave of dust washed out of the tunnel after him, snuffing the lone lantern in the chamber and plunging him into darkness.
Raj groaned, flexing his back and pressing a palm where he smacked against the wall. It felt hot, but not wet or tender like he'd broken something. He'd have a bruise for a few days, but it wasn't enough to put him down.
He sat up and his head swam, his sightless eyes swirling in his head. He let out another groan and clutched at his head. He sucked in a deep breath and was thrown into a fit of coughing from the damp dust clinging to the air. He leaned back, body wracking.
Something warm pressed against his shoulder and Raj flipped out. He slapped it away and started blindly swinging. He felt his hand glanced off of something furry and he lunged at it.
“Whoa partner, whoa!” said a calming, female voice “Calm down, we're good.”
Raj froze “Applejack?”
“Yeah. You still got that flashlight?”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” He fumbled in his pockets and pulled the little light out. He clicked it on and illuminated Applejack's dusty face. She grunted and shaded her eyes from the light. Raj turned it aside and muttered an apology.
“Come help me with this.” She trotted over to a large boulder against the wall and started pushing, rolling it towards the collapsed tunnel. Between the two of them they were able to easily block the passage with the heavy stone.
Raj leaned against the rock and panted. “How's Macintosh?”
“Not sure, bring the light.” she tilted her head and Raj shined his flashlight at the big pony's prone form. He grimaced at the sight.
His entire leg was soaked in purple blood, everything below his gaskin was hanging on by stubborn bits of tendon and muscle, the bone bit through cleanly. The pony himself made no sound, having passed out from shock during their flight into the chamber.
Raj shook his head and whispered “I think he's gonna lose the leg Applejack.”
“No he ain't, he's an earth pony. It'll grow back on its own. Heck, he's already stopped bleeding.” Raj looked down and saw that no blood was pooling under the wound. Applejack continued “We just need to get it splinted so it don't go and open up again.
Nodding, Raj fetched his staff and tied it to the big pony's leg with the shreds of his shirt. Ragged claws had torn it apart quite thoroughly, so he didn't consider it much of a loss.
Raj stood up and scanned the chamber “Alright, we need to get moving again. If you carry him I think we can...” He trailed off as he searched around “Where's the exit?”
“Ah didn't, ah didn't see it.” She craned her neck around, following the disc of light “Check again.”
They did, going in a complete circle around the chamber several times. Applejack had him search higher on the walls and the ceiling, thinking that there might be a tunnel like the river chamber, but there was only featureless, gray stone.
After minutes of fruitless searching, Raj finally said what they were both dreading. “There's no way out.” he looked at her “We're trapped.”
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where did the flashlight and spray paint come from.. otherwise pretty good I'm surprised They haven't killed ace yet though
> purple pony blood
lolwut? (Noticed this in an earlier chapter too, but still…)
Aside from that, not too shabby. 5237961’s point stands though; where did this stuff come from? If they had it before‐hand then perhaps you should’ve mentioned they hid it amongst the food crates.
Flashlight, spray paint can, earth ponies regrowing limbs... dude, I thought by this point you'd know better writing than just pulling convenient shit out of your ass.
6056735 You realize that even the best stories we (mostly) all know and love do that, right? Hell, it's a basis for a lot of fiction I like!