Five miles directly below Ponyville there is a cavern of truly massive size. It is approximately 1600 feet tall so high that you could fit the Empire State Building inside and still have some room to spare. The cavern is significantly wider than it is tall. If you were to walk from one side of the cavern to the other the journey would take many days. Not that there is such a thing as a day down here for the sun never shines. This great cavern is called the Underdome. It is a world of eternal night.
Life flourishes here in the darkness. The air is not cold as you might think but is instead hot and humid like in a tropical rainforest. Here insects grow to monstrous sizes, dryads whisper strangely in bioluminescent mushroom forests and unspeakable things swim in vast subterranean lakes whose dark waters lie deceptively still.
Hanging upside down from the ceiling of the Underdome are hundreds of small furry creatures. This is the home of the cave ponies, a creature found nowhere else in all of Equestria. They are just as colorful as normal ponies and they sleep with their large leathery bat wings curled up around them. Anypony walking on the cave floor below should be deeply afraid for they could become victim to falling excrement.
Cave ponies are a unique species of bat pony that have evolved to live in the savage nightmare world of the Underdome. They don’t have eyes but their hearing and sense of smell are far superior to other ponies to compensate for their lack of sight. Unlike normal bat ponies which eat fruit cave ponies are carnivores and are unable to digest anything but meat. Their mouths are filled with sharp little fangs. Two of the fangs in the upper jaw are significantly larger and longer than the rest and are visible even when their mouths are closed. They are actually kind of cute. You would not want to hug one though as they are carriers to all sorts of horrible diseases.
Daisy Sunshine is flying through the vast open space of the Underdome at one hundred miles per hour. Her coat is yellow and her light green mane is long and messy. She is sixteen years old and her cutie mark is a daisy flower. Her two longest fangs are six inches long.
With every single move she makes she unleashes a continuous high pitched screeching sound. “kEekKeeEkKEeekKEEEEkKeEkKEEeEkKeEkKee” This sound echoes off objects in her vicinity back to her huge ears. With this echo she can determine the shape, size, distance, velocity and even texture of objects around her. She is not at all handicapped by her lack of eyes.
In a strange way she can see as her brain translates the sound she hears back into images in her mind. What she sees is very abstract but looks sort of like a drawing drawn with colored pencils on a black piece of paper by an incredibly skilled artist. Different frequencies of sound appear as different colors. High frequency sounds appear red or orange while low frequency sounds appear blue or purple. The world appears very pretty to her.
She flies in an erratic zigzag pattern. To a casual observer her flying may seem awkward and clumsy but in actuality the opposite is true; her every movement is deliberate and purposeful. The bones in her bat wings are extremely flexible and can move asymmetrically of one another allowing her to perform incredibly complex aerial acrobatics by manipulating the shape of her wings. Daisy effortlessly zooms, loops, twists and somersaults through the air relishing the sweet freedom that Mother Nature has given her.
Her stomach begins to growl. It isn’t very loud but to her hypersensitive hearing it seems as loud as a clap of thunder. She is hungry. Very hungry. But what does she want to eat?
Suddenly a pungent musky smell enters her nose. It is the scent of her favorite prey: giant naked mole rat. The creature is not close to her but her hypersensitive nostrils allow her to track prey for more than a mile away. For a moment she simply flies in place a long line of drool hanging from her maw thinking of ripping and tearing into juicy delicious flesh.
Then Daisy folds her wings to her sides and dives straight down headfirst. The air whips by her face as she falls faster and faster until she reaches terminal velocity.
“EeeekKEEeEkKEkKeEeEEkKEEEEkKEeekKEEEeEkKeeeeEEkKeeeEkKeeeeekKEkKeKe”
She pulls up abruptly forty feet above the cave floor. The scent trail is strong and she follows it eagerly, dodging between massive stalagmites. After flying for half a mile she can finally “see” the giant mole rat scurrying about below her. She can hear it squeaking too. Squeeek! Squeeeek! Squeeek! Squeeeeek! This one is about the same size as a pony through some can get considerably larger. There you are!
Pink, wrinkly and almost completely hairless giant naked mole rats look somewhat like ugly old men. Their jaws are quite strong with four enormous buck teeth, two facing upwards and two facing downwards, which are actually outside of their mouths. They are called “naked” not because of their lack of clothes but because of their lack of hair, although they do have some whisker-like hairs that help them feel their way around in the darkness.
Their appearance is not the only thing that is strange about them as they are the only known eusocial mammal in Equestria. That means they live in colonies like bees and ants. Each colony has a single queen who is the only one allowed to breed. A giant mole rat colony can have between a dozen and a few hundred members.
Giant mole rats are omnivores which mean that they can eat both plants and animals. Their diet consists mostly of fungus and rock grubs, huge white worms as long and thick as your arm with circular mouths filled with rows of shark like teeth and the ability to spit acid that allows them to tunnel through solid rock like dirt. Rock grubs are another one of Daisy’s favorite snacks.
The giant mole rat stops and looks straight up with its beady black eyes but is unable to see the angel of death that had come for it. It can’t see anything at all. Just darkness. Total, complete, unending blackness.
But it can hear her eeeking and it knows what that sound means. Danger! It runs away screaming. SQUEEEE! SQUEEEEEEEE! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Daisy is too fast for it. She gracefully swoops down so that she is flying a few feet directly above it. She can hear the giant mole rat’s heart beating and smell the fear in its sweat. You can’t escape me silly rat!
Then she opens her mouth very wide, cave ponies can open their mouths twice as wide as normal ponies, and plunges sharply downwards. Her fangs easily penetrate its thick neck and she tastes warm blood.
Still alive and kicking the giant mole rat collapses on its side with Daisy on top of it. She sinks her fangs deeper into its neck. Then she violently yanks her head backwards and rips out half its neck in a shower of blood and gore. The giant mole rat finally stops struggling and lays still. Daisy then starts ripping into its belly. Her two six inch fangs cut through flesh and bone like a knife through butter forming two deep vertical slashes liberating the giant mole rat’s soft squishy entrails.
The smell of blood lingers in the air serving as a beacon to predators. Soon Daisy’s many friends will be here to join her as they are also very hungry.
Daisy begins sucking up the giant mole rat’s small intestine like one long string of spaghetti. Sluuuuuuuuuurp! It tastes like … well it tastes like rat. She licks the blood off her face with her long slimy red tongue and grins widely showing off her lovely teeth.
“Mmmm tasty!” Her voice is surprisingly pleasant and easy to listen to like a girl next door.
