Step by careful step, Gloom descends through the dark tunnels of the changeling hive with 99732 lying on her back and occasionally playing with random tufts of bat pony hair it can reach. She doesn’t rush not only due to being barely able to see in the dim light of her glowing horseshoes, but also because she wants to avoid aggravating the drone’s internal wounds. Despite wanting to talk to the little guy more than anything, ever since she picked it up the only thing running on repeat through her head has been:

It’s so light. It’s so fragile and stick-thin that I can feel the ribs under its carapace. I completely forgot how 65536 used to be when we first met it.

“Miss Gloomy?” the drone stops sticking the hair of her grey coat through its leg hole for reasons only known to itself and speaks out, “How come you have shiny hoofsies?”

“It’s not my hooves, it’s my horseshoes. They’re magical,” Gloom stops to raise her hoof and circle it in the air, which is followed by 99732 craning its neck to see and track the motion.

“I thought only horny ponies could use magic,” the drone scrambles to stand up and carefully prod the top of Gloom’s head in search of a secret horn, “I mean, I’m new so I met 65536 only one freezy time, so I’m not sure I understood things right. Some of its stories took a couple breaky times to tell, and I played Scufflestick too, so I wasn’t always listening and-”

“That’s okay, you’re not wrong,” Gloom resumes walking and the drone lies down again, “Skilled and powerful unicorns can make magical items which non-magical ponies can use as well. Princess Luna made mine, and they can do much more than glow, although there’s something weird here in the Badlands that messes with magic so the best I can make the horseshoes do safely is shimmer like this. I’m a bit worried that if I try something more complex it’ll blow my leg off.”

“Gasp, you gotta meet 99856!” the drone grabs her neck, stretches out towards her ear, and whispers, “It blows itself pretty much every other worky time.”

“Up,” Gloom corrects it.

“Nope, that’s where the ceiling is. It’s mostly sideways along with the door. 99111 had to build a heavier and stronger one for the testing cave,” 99732 slides back and finds a comfortable position while propped by Gloom’s saddlebag before coming up with new instructions, “Now take the tunnel to the left and the next one that goes down.”

Magical light or not, even Gloom can’t see the pointed out fork in the corridor until she’s within three pony lengths. She checks Twilight’s magical map and realizes that while it’s done well with directions so far, it also resized automatically to fit the scroll at some point, and it didn’t map any tunnel mouths other than those into which Gloom accidentally walked while 99732 was distracted by talking. They have passed so many parallel branching paths of various sizes that while Glooms knows the direction she has no idea about distance and might easily walk into the wrong one if left on her own.

“Say, is there any way a pony like me could find my way around? In case I got lost without company,” she asks without any real hope. Luckily for her, 99732 says:

“Yep! 10k said that whenever we get the core tunnel main-te-nan-ts shift, we should add small arrows near the floor that lead either to the Guide’s Cavern, the High Score Cavern, or to the throne room. Digging around GC is pretty dangerous and a bunch of drones had something drop on their head and had to find their way back without the hive mind map. They’re on the wall because if they were on the floor we’d scratch them off in time,” it adds, clearly proud of itself, “I understood that part even before 10k explained it to me.”

“Smart guy as well. One more reason to like you,” Gloom chuckles when the drone’s tiny legs hug her back, and lowers her head down to see the arrows for herself. Only now that she’s focusing and with her glowing hoof almost by the wall can she see what the drone was talking about, and realizes that what she thought was the natural stucco-like pattern on the otherwise smooth, stone wall is… writing? Stopping to examine it up closer, she confirms that those are indeed letters of the common equestrian alphabet combined with numbers and pictograms she can’t decipher, “Twilight’s gonna have a field day with this,” she mutters.

“Hmm?” 99732 peeps.

“Nothing, just talking to myself.”

“Gotcha! I do that a lot. I mean, when I’m working somewhere safe. It’s a really bad idea to draw attention to oneself in the spooky places, so if I’m on a shift there I listen to the hive mind tunes. I like the one that goes dun dunn hmm na nanana naa-”

Gloom lets the drone’s train of thought derail onto a trip to an entirely different country and examines the more important thing - the arrows. They are pointing backwards the way they came, which should mean that’s the way to the throne room. She confirms the theory by peeking into the next tunnel they pass and seeing that the nearest arrow points towards her. There’s a clear design flaw in case of a situation where someone might need to flee from one of the safe spots, but it’s clear that the arrows are just the last resort and that no healthy changeling would really need them.

“-you like to trade your glowy hooves? I got some fire goop swirlies that 99111 used to make the super hard door left over,” 99732’s train of thought surprisingly pulls up to the station of here and now.

“My horseshoes? No, definitely not,” Gloom resumes walking according to the drone’s directions, “They’re attuned to me-”

“A tune? Did I say I liked tunes? Especially the one that goes-”

“That means-” Gloom raises her voice only slightly, “-that they wouldn’t work for you even if I showed you how to activate them.”

“Awww,” perked up 99732 slumps on her back again and hangs its head down to see Gloom’s moving hooves and follow every shiny motion, “They’re still very pretty.”

“They’re also about twice the size of your hooves, little guy,” she bends her neck to nuzzle the hanging drone, “What was the fire swirly thing you offered me? I never heard 65536 mention anything like that.”

Gloom’s swishing tail makes its way to 99732’s peripheral vision. Torn between a ‘curious moving thingy’ and a new topic of conversation, 99732 tries to do both at the same time by turning away from Gloom’s head, lying down, and trying to catch the tail with its hoof.

Quick moving whippy! I’ll get you now- wherediditgo?!

“99732?” Gloom pauses tempting the seemingly hypnotized drone with her tail just for a moment.

“Hm?” it twitches, returning into reality, “Right, fire goop swirlies! They’re these weird noodles, about as big as two hooves put together, that live down even below the Guide’s Cavern. They have a super hard, hollow rock that looks all swirly on their backs. I saw one flop into the hot-glowy and it just wobbled back up!”

“Hot-glowy?” asks Gloom. To her, the described ‘thingy’ only sounds like some kind of a snail.

“Yup! That’s this super hot, red and yellow goop that you can’t get close to because it makes it really hard to breathe, but the fire goop swirlies don’t care! And you know what’s even better?” it almost squeaks in excitement by the end.

“No idea, but I’m eager to hear it,” in the darkness, Gloom is smiling from ear to ear.

“I found one of their swirly rocks so I picked it up to trade later, but then the fire goop noodle crawled out of it and peeked out at me! It had two tiny wobblers at the front but it didn’t make any noise like flappy screechers, it didn’t try to crawl on me like swarming skitterers, it didn’t spit anything at me like a melty hisser, nothing. I was so confused that I didn’t even drop it and it just waited for me to put it down. It didn’t even try to eat me!” the drone finishes its explanation with an incredulous look on its face.

“You sound almost disappointed,” Gloom chuckles, flicks her tail again, and hears 99732’s hooves smack into one another as it tries to grab it, still in vain.

“Grumble grumble quick whippy- I- well- no- but… how?” the drone’s inability to believe that something isn’t trying to eat its kind would be funny if it wasn’t entirely warranted, “Even the smiles eat some small bits that fall off, and they’re friends!”

“The what?”

“What what?” the drone attempts to bite Gloom’s tail one final time while holding onto her backside for support, fails, and lays its head near her dock, enjoying the slow up and down motion. The Nightguard stops flicking it on purpose.

“The… smiles?” she repeats.

“Hee hee, you’ll see!”

***

The “core tunnels” -the ones rebuilt into corridors with walls covered in writing, non-slip floors, and marked with arrows- are spacious enough to comfortably accommodate Queen Chrysalis, and while Gloom has passed a good amount of normal holes which were leftovers from old mining shifts she didn’t need to go through a single one to finally arrive in front of an actual sliding double door made from green resin and held in place by rails in the floor and the ceiling.

“Here we are!” announces 99732, defeated by Gloom’s tail and resting face-forward again, “Just spin the dent in the middle with your hoof and then push sideways.”

Gloom furrows her brows as she presses against the plastic-feeling resin, twists, and the disk-shaped indentation in the door’s center smoothly responds to her motion. It’s a simple “lock” and it’s clear that it’s meant to stop only something mindless from getting in and anypony with more than two brain cells wouldn’t even be slowed down, but 65536 never said that drones had anything like this, and it always talked after every winter visit about even the smallest advancements and inventions the drones made on their own.

“Is this mechanism new?” asks Gloom, “You’re talking about a lot of things I haven’t heard from 65536.”

“You’re gonna have to ask someone older for details, but things are moving pretty quickly. There’s something new every couple worky times,” 99732 shrugs, “But the lock I know about - 99111 made a simple, bigger, and heavier one first for the Guide’s Cavern because weird gribblers sometimes kept creeping around, and then decided to play with different kinds here too.”

Turning the first suggestion in her mind, Gloom enters the High Score Cavern. From all she heard 65536 describe back in Canterlot, she was expecting a sight to behold but… with the exception of small, faintly glowing, green heaps outlined on the floor in the distance she just can’t see far enough in any clear detail. There are no sounds of busy drones, no lights beyond the mentioned green things scattered all over at random, nothing beyond the feeling of empty space and much fresher air for no apparent reason. Despite having heard so much about drone home and in overwhelming detail, the reality sharply clashes with the image she built based on 65536’s stories. She was expecting something homely… like a full family living room on a rainy weekend, only sized up and possibly with several hundred well-behaved foals. Not this cold, silent, dead cavern.

Even 99732 notices her sudden tension.

“Are you okay?” it asks carefully, “You can walk around, there’s nothing dangerous here unless you walk through the door in the back.”

“I… just…” Gloom doesn’t know what to say so she deflects with: “I knew you guys had good eyes, but I didn’t know they were so much better than mine. I can barely see.”

“Oh, is that it?” the drone shuffles on her back for a while before, “Ta daa!” its small hoof appears next to Gloom’s face, presenting a glowing green ball. Gloom grabs it with one hoof and examines it, settling on that it’s green, feels warm to touch, and smells faintly of mint, “If you need more, just ask. You’re giving off so much love that I think I could make a whole bunch.”

“Ohhhh, is this glowgoop?” now seeing much further around, Gloom decides to head forward, “65536 mentioned it in passing but there’s no need to spend love to use it in Canterlot. Are those some weak glowgoop piles so that you can see better?” she points at the random green blobs she can see.

“Hehe, nope!” the head peeking from behind her neck giggles as deviously as a drone can, which isn’t much. Still, if there’s one thing Gloom is sure about it’s that a drone won’t try to hurt her for a laugh, so she approaches the green blob.

She examines it.

It’s a green blob on the floor, roughly the size of a hoofball.

Someone drew a smiley face in some black dust on it.

She pokes it.

It jiggles slightly.

Experiment over.

“Let me guess - smiles?” she asks.

“Yup!” 99732 replies happily, “65536 called them slimes but they only eat useless chunks that fall off so we draw smiley faces on them so that any newbies around know they’re friends! You looked pretty spooked there for a moment, hehe, but they’re not dangerous! Go on, you can pick it up!”

Mentally recovering from a drone version of a prank, Gloom sits down and gently picks the slime up. It feels like a softer ball of glowgoop, more like a lava lamp inside a tough membrane, but there doesn’t seem anything particularly interesting about it other than confirming that the fresher air of the cavern is caused by these things with a careful sniff.

Maybe some kind of an antibacterial secretion, since it eats “useless chunks that fall off”? Whatever, Twilight can study them as much as she wants and consider them some specimen in jars.

This reminds her that there are still five observation crystals in her saddlebag she’s supposed to set up. To do that effectively, she needs to know how things work here. Putting the slime down again, she asks:

“Tell me, 99732, when do your shifts usually end? I’d like to see more of how life is here.”

“Some guys are in the workshops in the back. We could visit them but it’ll be better until they come out when they’re done too. Startling 99856 or 99450 could turn out really bad.”

“I suppose bothering others while they’re busy wouldn’t make the best first impression,” agrees Gloom, “Though I don’t really want to return back up already.”

“Gasp!” the drone on her back straightens up, “I’ve got an idea! Did 65536 tell you about Scufflestick?”

“We played a match or two-”

“Ooh ooh ooh oh!” 99732 starts pointing towards the right wall of the HSC covered in honeycomb-like alcoves. With nothing better to do, Gloom follows its direction to an alcove in the bottom row filled with miniature equine figurines made of basic changeling resin, “I play ponies! What do you want to play?”

Gloom lowers herself to the floor, which 99732 takes as a sign to crawl down from her, and starts gathering the figurines.

“I like the gribbler playstyle,” says Gloom, “Not that much strategy but it’s nice to sometimes just turn your brain off.”

“YOU CAN DO THAT?!” 99732 drops its figurines, “I wish I could do that too! Sometimes there’s so much new stuff that I can fall asleep and-”

“Not literally,” Gloom interrupts it, “I meant it as just doing something easy that doesn’t need much thinking.”

“I see, it’s like digging,” it nods wisely and resumes picking the miniatures up, “Digging’s the best.”

“I can’t see any gribbler models in your… uhh, hole,” comments Gloom, examining the various knick-knacks in the nearby alcoves. In general, they contain various rocks ranging from small pebbles to actual gems and a silver or gold nugget here and there. Nothing is under lock and key and everything is on open display, as if it all had equal value and no one was worried about things getting stolen. From what Gloom’s heard about drones as well as her own experience with living with one, both of those notions are correct.

“We can borrow some. 99266 plays them so much it has its own models. Three holes to the right, two up,” the drone points to an alcove without looking. Gloom counts it off, finds a stash of figurines, some of which are vaguely familiar, realizes that she has no idea about the model rules without a cheat sheet, which she admits to 99732, “Huh…” the drone pauses, “Right, no hivemind.”

“You know what? I recall what the monsters I had in my army did. We can build a list and you can tell me what attacks I need to roll. It’s not like we’re playing in a tournament or anything,” Gloom solves the situation, “I’m more worried that your friend will be mad at us for borrowing its stuff without asking. The detail of these is incredible,” she examines a random figurine up close.

“Mad that I’m playing Scufflestick against a real pony? 99266 will be so jealous! I can lend you my ponies if you want to play against it later,” 99732 beams from ear to ear as it counts off its miniatures.

At ease due to how unbothered the drone is, Gloom puts all 99266’s models on the floor and groups the heavily customized models up as well as she can. By the time she’s done, 99732’s army is set up and they can move onto helping Gloom make hers.

“So, I remember I had three five-model units of the spider things that can’t take damage from beam spells-”

If they play Scufflestick the way we did, the battle map will be one to three open caverns and a LOT of narrow tunnels between them.

“Darting swarmers!” 99732 starts picking out the figurines from Gloom’s lineup, each similar but also so different that it’s clear their maker put incredible amounts of time, heart, and care into the work.

“Next, five units of the extremely quick, flying swarms.”

Excellent for overwhelming reinforcements that are too fast or too slow.

“Flappy biters…” 99732 looks closer, “Goop! There are only two of those.”

“That’s fine, we'll have to make do,” Gloom waves it off, “Add one of the big venom spitter worms,” she points to what she thinks is the model, “Is it this one?”

Alright, more area denial instead of quick strikes then.

“Mhm, the wobbly puker,” 99732 shudders, “Nasty things. Both in the game and for real.”

This goes on for about ten more minutes until the two armies are in position, battlefield lines are drawn on the floor using a thumped-up stick of coal mimicking a pencil, and both Gloom and 99732 roll for who gets the opening turn.

“Yesss!” the winning drone punches the air and winces, “Ow ow ow ow, too much moving! My inside thingies are pulling all over.”

“If you need me to move a piece, just say so,” Gloom walks around the battlefield and pats 99732’s head.

“Thank you,” the drone smiles at her.

Once the two “generals” are in position, they exchange looks, Gloom smiles and shows her fangs, and 99732 does the same.

“Let the dice tell a story!”

Author's Note

The usual first contact.
Whoever gets more votes wins which totally changes the story in dramatic ways, I promise. (I may be lying)