Fluttershy Digs Deep

by MagicS

Leaping Lizards

The spelunkers were doing their absolute best to travel down a very precarious hole. It wasn’t very stable looking and rocks and huge chunks of dirt were loose in the sides. If you stepped at the wrong place you were certainly going to knock a whole bunch out and possibly start a cave-in. They really didn’t need this thing to collapse on them. Unfortunately it was also the only way for them to go, they had looked around for a while and this was the only hole that went anywhere.

So despite Fluttershy’s reservations this is what they were doing. The hole wasn’t quite a vertical drop but it was close and it wasn’t remotely straight, with a lot of sudden turns and zig-zags. There were places they had to stop at and Maud had to direct them on where to put their hooves most of the time since she had an eye for what was stable and what wasn’t. Even then just the vibrations they sent through the ground each time they stepped somewhere was enough to shake off dust and make little clods of dirt fall off from the walls around them. The going was slow but they just couldn’t really do anything about that.

They also had to keep a little quiet since they didn’t want their voices causing any cave-ins either. Which was perfectly fine with Fluttershy.

“Maud? How long do you think this tunnel goes?” Fluttershy quietly whispered to the earth pony.

Maud slowly blinked once before answering, in her usual quiet and monotone voice. “An unstable tunnel like this probably isn’t very big or seismic events would’ve collapsed it earlier. I imagine we’ll reach the end soon.”

“Okay, well I hope we get out to somewhere safer soon,” Fluttershy said.

“Me too,” Amethyst Star said at her normal volume, making Fluttershy wince.

“I think we’re doing alright so long as nopony trips or some random earthquake happens,” Daylight Gleam said. “And by nopony tripping, I mean-”

“I know you mean me, you don’t need to finish that,” Amethyst Star frowned.

“Sorry, sorry,” Daylight smirked back at her.

“Shh,” Maud reminded them.

Angel Bunny meanwhile was right back to riding on Fluttershy’s back. This time though it was actually Fluttershy’s choice. She didn’t want him bouncing and jumping around in this tunnel while they needed to check for safe spots. He was liable to dislodge something and she didn’t want to worry about him. So Angel was once again getting the royal treatment he maybe didn’t deserve. Though Fluttershy was one of the few ponies who would say he indeed did.

Daylight shined her light on a tight curve and Maud directed them to step on a large slab of stone embedded into the ground one by one so they could safely get around it. Fluttershy noticed it wobbled slightly when she stepped on it and the momentary fear made her legs shake too. She was the last one in line right now and she was happy to follow the others off the rock and into the next part of the tunnel. Unfortunately it was still cramped and the dirt looked even more loose, but at least it seemed to no longer twist and turn so much. The tunnel was a straight, nearly vertical, line down into darkness. The light from Daylight’s horn illuminated enough to see that it was probably a good hundred feet longer or so until it ended. Not a small distance with the way they had to travel down it. Fluttershy just hoped nothing bad happened.

“Well Maud? How should we tackle this?” Daylight quietly asked the “expert”.

“Stay behind me and keep your horn lit up, I’ll make sure we take the right path, just all of you follow exactly where I step,” Maud told them and took the lead. “But that’s not a guarantee that the tunnel won’t start falling apart.”

Fluttershy gulped and got ready to descend down the tunnel. Slowly once more, they all had to brace themselves so as to not slip and tumble down the loose dirt. Gravity was working against them now and even though Fluttershy normally preferred to walk this was one of the times when she would’ve liked to be able to fly. From what Maud and the others had said earlier about their journey before finding Fluttershy, they had fallen down multiple tunnels and holes like this already. She sorely hoped that their bad luck had disappeared. After all despite briefly falling into a whirlpool things had generally been going quite nice in Fluttershy’s opinion ever since the groups had joined together.

Because she was lost in her thoughts she almost slipped on the dirt as she stepped directly where Daylight just had. Daylight’s step had dislodged some dirt and created a smooth hoof print that almost caused Fluttershy to crash into her. Luckily she was able to catch herself just before that happened. But that was a good reminder that she’d have to be careful. Even if they were following Maud’s directions and stepping on the safest spots that didn’t mean they couldn’t affect things for the pony following behind them.

“Um, sorry to interrupt when we’re all trying to be quiet, but I almost slipped. J-Just wanted to remind everypony to be extra careful,” Fluttershy whispered, blushing.

“Did you say something?” Amethyst Star asked. At her normal volume once again.

Fluttershy winced. “I-I was just saying how we need to be extra careful.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Amethyst Star grinned and nodded.

“Shh,” Maud once more had to shush them from the front.

“Sorry, Maud,” Amethyst Star said. This time finally whispering.

No matter what they did though they kept causing dirt to crumble and fall around them the more they stepped. Pebbles and rocks fell loose as the entire, already unstable, tunnel shook more. They were simply disturbing it too much but there was nothing they could do. Fluttershy wondered if this was another tunnel only just recently made by those living rock monsters. It would explain some things.

She hoped she got to the bottom of their mystery soon. Just as she hoped to get to the bottom of this tunnel soon.

Maud meanwhile had just stepped on top of a large rock that wobbled beneath her hoof before falling out of the ground and taking a large chunk of dirt with it. It tumbled and tumbled down, kicking up dust and creating divots in the ground with each hit. All around them now the rest of the tunnel kept shaking and Fluttershy could hear the shifting of earth from right behind the walls.

Maud calmly looked over her shoulder at the rest of them. “We should probably start running now.”

A split second later a stampede of hooves was barreling down the tunnel with absolutely no regard for safety as it all began collapsing around them. Fluttershy chanced a look behind her and saw the entire tunnel crashing to pieces as dirt and rocks caved all the walls in.

“Eek!” She yelped and tried to run faster, practically pushing right up against Daylight.

“How long do we have before the whole thing caves in?!” Daylight asked.

“I don’t know. Less than a minute give or take,” Maud responded.

She sounded a lot more relaxed about it than Fluttershy would have.

“Well how much longer does this dumb tunnel go for?” Amethyst Star asked.

“It should be ending soon,” Maud said.

“Hopefully it’s not a dead end...” Daylight muttered.

Angel Bunny tugged on tightly to Fluttershy’s neck and pressed his face up against the back of her hardhat. That was one rabbit that wasn’t going to get tossed off and left behind. Small hooffuls of dirt kept falling on them all as they ran, along with pebbles, and Fluttershy knew it was going to only be seconds before the whole ceiling collapsed on them.

“I see the exit,” Maud said from the front.

Fluttershy couldn’t see because of Daylight and Maud being in her way but she really hoped that meant the exit was right there. They were probably going to fly out and land rather uncomfortably, but it would beat being buried alive.

“Uh oh,” Maud monotoned. “Count to five and make sure you jump.”

“Why?!” Daylight shouted.

“Trust me.”

Perhaps not too smartly, Fluttershy squeezed her eyes shut and mentally started to count. But she couldn’t help it! This was rather terrifying after all.

One… two… three… four… five! Fluttershy yelled and jumped, feeling the ground beneath her hooves disappear and hearing the entire tunnel collapse with a deafening roar behind her. She opened up her eyes to see mostly darkness with the faint glow of Daylight Gleam’s horn somewhere in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t have time to think about it since a moment later she slammed into a pile of hard dirt and pebbles and began to tumble down it.

“Ooph!”

That was the sound of Amethyst Star hitting it too. More crashing dirt and rocks came from behind them as parts of the tunnel also spilled out and landed with them. Before long Fluttershy landed on solid, even, ground and came to a stop, with Amethyst Star then landing right next to her and a shower of dirt coming right after. Fluttershy could feel dirt and pebbles hitting her hardhat and dust billowed around the two ponies, getting in her eyes and lungs and making her cough and tear up when she tried to stand.

“Is everypony alright?” The voice of Daylight Gleam called from somewhere else.

“Y-Yes!” Fluttershy coughed, trying to open up her eyes just the tiniest amount to see, though it didn’t help much yet.

“I’m okay...” Amethyst Star’s voice was dizzy but she didn’t sound too bad.

“Maud’s fine too, we’re in a new chamber and it looks stable according to her,” Daylight said as she walked over, Fluttershy could hear her hooves. “My head got stuck in a pile of dirt when we got out of that tunnel though. Blech.”

Fluttershy lifted up her hooves to her eyes and rubbed them to clear away the dirt. Blinking a few times she was finally able to see. “That’s better...” Her eyes then suddenly shot open all the way. “Angel! Where’s Angel!” She looked around the new chamber, seeing a decently large stone cavern with a few separate tunnels leading elsewhere, before looking behind her at the large mound of dirt and rocks she had just finished bouncing down.

A couple of white bunny ears were sticking up out of the dirt.

“Ahhh!” Fluttershy screeched and ran right up to the buried rabbit, frantically digging to try and get him out.

Angel Bunny then managed to poke his head out on his own and started coughing, then grimaced in pain when Fluttershy grabbed him by the head and forcefully pulled him out the rest of the way.

“Oh thank goodness! Thank goodness, thank goodness!” Fluttershy repeated as she hugged and patted him on the back.

“Well I guess we can start moving again,” Daylight said.

“Take a rest on my back again, Angel,” Fluttershy smiled and deposited him there, walking down the dirt pile and joining the others. Except for Maud who was busy examining some of the rock that made up this new chamber.

“There’s garnet in these rocks. We’re getting deeper,” Maud said.

“I don’t think we needed an expert to tell us that,” Amethyst Star snorted.

“Let’s just figure out which tunnel we need to go down...” Daylight said.

Angel Bunny coughed on Fluttershy’s back and she frowned, looking back at him. “I’m sorry, Angel. I wish I had some water to give you...” She then went to stand in the middle of some of the tunnels before checking the air flow, only to find it evenly divided in multiple directions. “Oh dear...”

“Well I think something like this was bound to happen eventually. Especially with the way we just came in totally blocked off now,” Daylight said as she looked up at their collapsed entrance.

“Do we just pick one at random?” Amethyst Star asked.

“Let’s defer to the expert,” Daylight said and glanced at Maud.

Maud was already busy glancing over the tunnels and Fluttershy and the others were waiting patiently for her to make a decision. Finally she lifted a hoof and pointed at a crooked one on the opposite side of the chamber from where they had come in. “This one. I think.”

“You think?” Amethyst Star raised an eyebrow.

“I think.”

Fluttershy walked up to it and looked in, it definitely went pretty deep and it was wider than most of the others so it was probably the biggest tunnel leading off from this chamber. But she couldn’t tell for sure if there was an unbroken air current going in and out of it. Still, it seemed like their best choice.

“Alright, let’s go. At least we can all walk together in this one and don’t have to worry about it falling on us...” Fluttershy said.

Amethyst Star frowned at Daylight Gleam. “If I said that you would’ve said I was jinxing us.”

“Yes. I would have,” Daylight nodded and walked right by her without saying anything else.

Amethyst Star snorted and followed along, the whole party now beginning to venture into the new tunnel.

Little did they know that they were being watched. As soon as the ponies (and one rabbit and pet rock) went into the tunnel, creatures emerged from hiding inside the chamber. They came out of tunnels in the walls, in the ground, emerged from trapdoors and appeared from camouflaged spots on the walls. Large, sloped back, bipedal lizards with huge frills at their necks. They crawled across the walls and ground and gathered up together at the dirt pile the ponies had just recently fallen down. Some of them were green, others yellow or orange, but they all had deadly looking claws and huge fangs with long whip-like tongues. A green one dug through the dirt as if looking for something before finally pulling out a small object.

The green lizard looked down the tunnel the ponies had gone into, the rest following his gaze. With a low shriek the scaled creature ran in after them. The other lizards joined him in a chorus of shrieks before running in as well.

---

“F-Fluttershy! You’re good with animals right? S-So do you think you can help us out here?!” A terrified Amethyst Star asked as all of the ponies ran as quickly as they could down the tunnel while being chased by a hoard of lizard creatures.

The lizards were shrieking constantly the entire time too, their loud noises nearly drowning out all other noise

Fluttershy’s face was also locked in a terrified visage as she ran. “T-They’re not animals! I can understand what animals are saying but those aren’t animal noises! It’s a language, they’re intelligent creatures like you and me and I can’t understand what they’re saying!”

“That’s great!” Amethyst Star yelled.

“Just keep running!” Daylight Gleam called out. “There’s way too many of them for us to do anything!”

She was right, there was well over a dozen of the large lizards and they were all bounding after Fluttershy and her group. While some of them ran like normal, others got down on all fours and leaped after them, while some even clambered across the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, their claws and strong limbs giving them all the purchase they needed. At the forefront was a large green lizard with his frill open wide, he was shrieking the loudest of them all.

“We’re not food, we’re ponies!” Fluttershy cried out to them.

“I think ponies are food to them!” Daylight yelled.

“Seriously, look at those teeth!” Amethyst Star said.

“It does seem likely that they’re trying to eat us,” Maud said. Her eyes then glanced to the white rabbit on Fluttershy’s back. “And Angel too.”

Angel Bunny blanched and held even tighter onto Fluttershy. He shivered as he looked back at the lizards and saw their big dinner knife teeth and gaping maws. One of those things could probably swallow him whole.

“Well let’s not let that happen! We’ll just have to outrun them!” Daylight said.

“Can we?! They’re really fast! And they totally live down here so don’t they know this place and these tunnels way better than us? We don’t even know if we’re going the right way!” Amethyst Star said.

“Hm,” Maud grunted.

“That’s not reassuring, Maud!”

Fluttershy was already starting to sweat from running so hard. If worst came to worst she could probably fly off with Angel but she couldn’t leave her friends behind and she didn’t know if she’d really even be able to fly for that long down here. They just had to stick together and hope against hope that they’d be able to lose these lizards. But Amethyst was right, where were they even running to? And soon Fluttershy’s body would be protesting against her running it ragged, this wasn’t good…

Kreeeeee! The big green lizard at the forefront yelled loudly, making all the ponies wince.

“Ugh! What I wouldn’t give for earplugs right now!” Daylight complained.

Kra kra kra kra kra! All of the other lizards started chattering in unison.

“I bet that means food!” Amethyst said.

They kept running and running onwards—right up until Daylight Gleam saw something ahead of them that made her blood run cold.

“Um, Maud? I don’t think this was the right tunnel...” She pushed some more power into her horn to better illuminate what she had seen for everyone.

“Oh no,” Fluttershy whispered at the dead end straight ahead of them.

“W-What do we do?!” Amethyst Star panicked.

“My bad,” Maud said.

“W-We have to turn and fight! That’s our only option!” Daylight said.

“B-But-” Fluttershy tried to speak against that, for a multitude of reasons, but she couldn’t find the words. She was too scared and too nervous.

“There’s nothing else to do! Maybe I can distract them with my magic, or we can try and turn and break past them once we hit the dead end!” Daylight said to her.

“I hope they take a small bite and realize pony doesn’t taste good...” Amethyst Star said.

Fluttershy felt so awful about all of this. Did they have to fight? Was there no way to communicate with the lizard creatures and try to reason with them. With the moles and mollusks earlier she had done an excellent job of solving problems peacefully on her journey and she really didn’t want to stop that now! A little kindness can go a long way. That was practically her motto! She wasn’t so naive to think it could always work out so simply, but she wanted to at least try it.

Buuut… their teeth were really big and sharp.

No matter what they were doing the dead end was closely approaching so they were going to be forced into action one way or another.

“They’re probably not used to really bright lights so I bet I can temporarily blind them with a burst of light from my horn!” Daylight suggested. “Then we can all run past them!”

“That’s just a delay at best!” Amethyst yelled.

“Do you have a better idea?!”

“We have to stop,” Maud said as they reached the wall.

Fluttershy and the others all skidded to a screeching halt and turned around to face the pursuing lizards. Angel Bunny bit his lip and looked at the back of her head, wondering what she was going to do. Daylight Gleam had her horn well lit up, waiting for any kind of signal or go ahead to use her magic to try and deal with these lizards. Amethyst Star was a sweating mess. And Maud had only the smallest hint of a worried look on her face as she backed up against the wall.

The lizards were just about upon them, coming from all over the walls while they continued to shriek and growl.

Daylight Gleam stepped forward-

And Fluttershy jumped in front of her. “STOOOOOOP!!!” She yelled at the top of her lungs, shaking the entire tunnel.

The other ponies (and Angel) all looked at her in surprise and much to the shock of them all, the lizards did indeed stop in their tracks. The ones on the walls and ceiling of the tunnel detaching themselves and dropping to the ground. The two groups now faced off eye to eye with each other, the ponies’ hearts were pounding hard and they weren’t sure what was going to happen next, but Fluttershy took a deep steadying breath and stepped forward.

“H-Hello. N-Nice to meet you,” she said, holding a hoof out to the big green lizard.

“Fluttershy, are you crazy!” Daylight yelled, grasping Fluttershy with her magic and pulling her back.

“Stop, Daylight, we can talk to them!”

“They want to eat us!”

“If they stopped then we can reason with them!”

“We-”

“Uh, guys?” Amethyst Star interrupted. “I think this whole thing is a big misunderstanding.”

The two ponies looked over at the unicorn to see her pointing at the green lizard. When their eyes followed along they saw the big lizard holding his hand out towards Daylight and Fluttershy, his palm was open and in-between his claws was a tiny black bow.

Daylight and Fluttershy’s jaws dropped and Daylight reached up a hoof and started patting her head that was currently missing a certain accessory. “M-My bow? Is that my bow?”

“It must’ve fallen off when we fell into that dirt pile earlier,” Maud said. “Sorry for not noticing.”

Daylight looked down at the bow and then up at the lizard’s face. “You were just trying to return this to me?”

The lizard obviously didn’t understand her words but he was able to comprehend the message nonetheless. “Kra, kra, kra!” He eagerly nodded and handed the bow out to her.

“T-Thank you...” Daylight blushed in shame and embarrassment and levitated it out of his hand, putting it right back where it belonged on her head. “This is an important gift from a friend of mine.”

Fluttershy meanwhile smiled in glee. “Ohhh! This is so nice! See everypony, things have turned out so well. You can find kindness anywhere!”

“Kreeeee!” All the lizards started hollering, their large frills vibrating in some kind of celebratory cry.

“Yeah this is… wonderful. I guess,” Amethyst Star scratched her head.

“I’ll admit to being both surprised and happy,” Maud said.

“So what now?” A still embarrassed Daylight Gleam asked.

“Um, well, we’re still lost and stuck in a dead end aren’t we? Maybe the lizards know where to find a tunnel that goes down?” Fluttershy said.

“Do you think they’ll understand what we’re asking?” Amethyst Star asked.

“Well there’s only one way to find out,” Fluttershy said and stepped up to the big green lizard at the front. “Um, excuse me?” When he heard her speak to him he stopped cheering and looked at her, the rest of the lizards soon noticing and following suit. “Oh, thank you… um, we’re trying to go deeper underground, do you know any tunnels that go down?”

The green lizard tilted his head at her, tongue licking out past his lips. “Kraaaa?”

“Down,” Fluttershy repeated, slower, and gestured at her friends. “We. Want to go.” She pointed her hoof at the ground. “Down.”

The lizard’s eyes lit up and he reached down to the ground, his claws digging out big chunks of dirt and making a small hole. When he was done he looked up at Fluttershy and pointed down his newly made hole.

Fluttershy smiled. “I think we’re getting somewhere.”

Comments

[redmar]

That they were just trying to return Gleaming's bow was a surprising twist. It's good that Fluttershy may have been able to inform of what they want.

[RoboRed]

Well, that was a nice turn of events.

“Oh no,” Fluttersy whispered at the dead end straight ahead of them.

Missing an "h"