Ungula

Inside was better.

After ascending the stairs, Twilight and Rainbow Dash had found themselves in a wide, airy hallway, with one side filled with great bay windows empty of glass, overlooking the gray forest remnants.

Opposing the windows were doors, the wood preserved just as the trees had been. They were proportioned just a bit wrong for a pony, thinner than was entirely comfortable, but perfectly traversable. If they weren't solidly closed and locked, that is.

There was no soil coating everything in here. No– there was, once, by the windows, and traces still remained. It had been cleaned.

"What do you think this place was?" Rainbow Dash ventured to fill the silence.

"Government building? University? …Library, even, I don't know how they categorized."

"What, you think they had a different room for every section?"

"Why not? They were all birds, they could get between them easily. You know, when there was air to fly through. Amazing for logistics, that, although– ah."

They had come to a door which was not closed and locked. It was open, just a crack – and light spilled from it.

A brief wordless exchange conveyed mutual understanding of several things. For one, that there was someone in there. For another, that whoever it was may not take kindly to their intrusion. And finally, that they were going to intrude anyway.

Twilight pushed open the door.

"Oh hi! Cmere, look at this."

This presumably-umbrum resembled a very colorful owl. Their feathers were cardinal-red, but upon each was an eyespot pattern like those of a peacock, each in a different vibrant color. The overall effect was that of a very colorful and excitable mop looking everywhere at once.

Cautiously, the pair approached, and examined the indicated section of floor.

Twilight blinked. "That's a snail."

"I know! How do you think he breathes? It's not magical, I checked. So what gives?"

…Rainbow Dash groaned as Twilight, too, became engrossed in the rather large snail. Dash was a nerd for archaeology, but Twilight was a nerd for everything.

As the snail gang chatted about anaerobic respiration, Rainbow looked around at the room. It was… normal. Tables, cushions, rugs. Perches, which were slightly interesting but ultimately were clearly basically just chairs but for owl people. –There! A small bookshelf, mostly bare but for two tomes, one atop the other. Rainbow Dash reached out to open the upper book.

"Wait, don't– oh, you touched it. Nevermind!"

Thaaaat brought the conversation up short. "Whyyyy…?" ventured Twilight.

"Death worm."

"Death worm?!"

"Death worm."

Rainbow Dash rapidly withdrew her hoof.

"–Oh, not in the book, silly! It just gets mad about it. It'll be here–"

There was a knock at the door.

Now, here it is important to remember that there is not, in fact, an atmosphere in this place beyond that which our intrepid explorers bring with them. All of this conversation, while still spoken, is being relayed telepathically to get around the problem of sound not transmitting in a vacuum. This 'knock' was not being relayed telepathically. It was reverberating through the solid stone floor and up through their hooves, jarring their knees as it came and ultimately sounding not actually all that much like a knock.

All this to say, something slammed very hard into the wall just outside the room.

"–around now. Oh, my name is On The Leyline From Knowledge Into The Unknown, by the way! In case you need something to scream while we fly for our lives."

"Twilight Sparkle." "Rainbow Dash."

The red peacock-owl – Leyline – scooped up the snail in her beak and deposited it in a small bag nestled amongst her plumage.

Twilight scooped up her datapad, on which she had pulled up an article on the Farasi Giant Snail.

Rainbow Dash scooped up the pair of books and deposited them in her saddlebag. If there was a death worm guarding them they'd better be good.

The death worm burst through the door and began to do its best to scoop up all three of them.

On The Leyline From Knowledge Into The Unknown was having an exciting night!

First she'd found a big snail, a big interesting snail, which she'd decided to name Life Finds A Way.

Then those ponies had found her! It had been a while since that had happened. Ponies knew different things from umbrum sometimes, so she'd asked them about the snail, and one of them had ideas!

Then the other one had touched that one book that someone had trapped. She didn't really know why they did that? Trap the book, that is, not touch it, that was understandable. I mean, it was sitting right there, begging to be touched, and there was a whole other book underneath it that she couldn't get at! Frankly, Leyline was kind of glad someone had just yanked the feather out and picked up the book.

Whoops, almost died!

You couldn't really fly in a vacuum. Leyline had never quite gotten used to that. When her body was moving on instinct, such as when dodging a lunge from a giant death worm, sheeeee still tended to try and fly. And it didn't work.

Leyline was really glad the purple one was here! She knew things about snails and had just pulled her out of the way of that death worm. Dying would have sucked, probably.

The blue one could fly a little bit. How come? She'd have to ask later, when there wasn't a death worm. Leyline liked the blue one. She was pretty, and colorful. Leyline liked colors, that's why she put so many on her feathers. Maybe when there wasn't a death worm they could go flying together? That would be nice.

Huh, so that's what happens when you set off a thaumobaric charge inside a death worm in space. Makes sense!

Oh, she didn't know the death worm had had baby death worms. That was a lot of them.

"Back in the ship back in the ship back in the ship back in the ship!"

Twilight Sparkle was having a rollercoaster of a day.

First it was exciting, then it was sad, then she made a new friend and it was exciting again, and then the death worm showed up and it was terrifying.

It reminded her a bit of the worm from Dawn, that movie about a worm that lives in the sun and excretes drugs. Thick hide, tripartite mouth full of lots and lots and lots of very long and sharp teeth, hunts by vibrations. Several meters in diameter. Wanted to eat them. Intelligent enough to cut them off from their exit.

It had been a stroke of luck to find that unstable thaumic crystal in a storage room, easily turned into an improvised thaumobaric explosive to feed to the worm.

And then it turned out death worms carried their young inside them, and they were hungry and angry.

What followed was a mad dash down the stairs and to the ship pursued by around two dozen stubby meter-thick worms. And a lot of screaming.

"WHO is THAT and WHY ARE THERE WORMS!"

"World's most autistic bird, I touched a thing, and get back in the ship!"

"Nice ship!"

"Thanks, it doesn't have worms in it!"

Twilight Sparkle had had a rollercoaster of a day, and the moment they lifted off she was all too happy to flop down on the couch in the lounge and refuse to move for several hours.