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// 12. A Decision That is Never Easy 
// Story: The Strands of Time 
// by Faedelaide 
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"So do you want tuh...to explain to me whuh... why your husband struck up a cuh... conversation with a swarmling?"

"Charred if I know! I just found him there talking with that maniac! Do you want to explain why you did nothing to help?"

"Well, as it turns out, in the weeh... week or two since we began the muh... migration, the swarmlings thought it'd be a good idea to ehhh... expand their territory."

Behind them, Raven could hear a low, dangerous buzzing growing louder. "All of them?"

"Likely just the sss... soldiers, but thah... that still numbers them in the hundreds."

"Then why don't we just dig up? You said they don't like sunlight, right?"

Blur sighed. The buzzing grew louder by the second. "Unless y... you can somehow keep hold of Branch aahh... and your bags and still manage to hold on tuh... tight enough that neither of you will fall off, weeh... we've got to find a pre dug tunnel."

"Can't you hold some of it?" Raven shouted.

"I only have tuh... two digging claws, Raven!"

Blur turned a corner, bounding back into the main chamber. Above them, the bone chandelier swayed lightly, and behind them, the rumbling of the swarmlings continued to grow in volume.

"Ravenous little kuh... cockroaches! Decided they'd take our home while we were ahh... away."

"There's nothing we can do about it now, Blur. How do we get out of here?"

"I'm wuh... working on it," Blur's head snapped around in all directions. Carefully, he eyed each pathway, seemingly trying to remember which one could possibly lead to the surface.

"How do you not know which tunnel leads to the surface?"

"We never use them when we can just buh... buh... burrow up on our own. We only use it wuh... when migrating, and you could probably guess how long it's been since my last muh... migration!"

Towards the end of the tunnel, Raven noticed a small speck of orange glittered among the hanging bulbs. A second later, twenty more joined alongside it. The humming was now a deep, auditory wave that shook sand from the ceiling and threatened to crash the bone chandelier right on top of them.

Suddenly, an idea flittered through Raven's overwhelmed mind.

"Blur, I've got an idea."

"Tell me kwuh... quickly please!"

"I'll keep the swarmlings busy, you get up there and try and dislodge that chandelier."

"Ruin won't like it if his huh... home is destroyed."

"Yeah, you're right," Raven snided, "I'm sure he'd rather leave it full of firewinder eating parasites! Just do it!"

"Alright, ok," Blur slithered up the wall with a quickness nearly but not quite matching the voracious pace of the swarmling herd, which now seemed to have numbered in the hundreds.

Raven took Branch's bag into his hoof. Praying that the swarm would leave his coltfriend alone, Raven climbed up to a higher ledge and waited.

He watched anxiously as Blur gnawed on the chandelier. The lizard's old, blunted teeth barely made any impression in the thick bone, and his claws were just as ineffective. Raven gulped. This plan was going poorly already.

But it was too late to turn back now. The volume of the swarm's rumbling had reached a deafening climax, and not a second later, hundreds of small, insectoid ponies burst forth from the dirt passageway. Like the smoke above a great fire, the blob of swarmlings pulsed with hues of red, orange and yellow. Their bright orange faces snapped in all directions, mandibles flailing. To raven, it almost looked like how he imagined the sun to look, freed from the cover of the clouds. 

Then the swarmlings, in all their brilliant golden rage, turned to the first thing their detector organs could spot: a lone, unconscious Insecticorn. In a great, writhing wave, the insecticorns synchronized. They began to move as one, creeping towards Branch's motionless body.

Raven dove into his saddlebag. He had only a few seconds at most until the swarm devoured Branch, and both Raven and Blur were devoid of any ideas. Though, he knew he had one thing that might draw the swarm's attention. It had a very negative effect on Buzz, so why wouldn't it work on the others?

Raven could feel the cold wood of the small box on his hooves. He wasn't sure if it would be enough to distract all of them. After all, there was no way that just one little crystal could feed hundreds of swarmlings, all of them so desperately hungry that they'd be willing to eat someone like Branch. The desert was truly an awful place.

As Raven ripped the box out from under the clumps of skullberries, he took a passing glance at Blur. the pale serpent was clawing and scraping at the thick bone as hard as he could, his neck glowing a bright, angry orange. He had barely even gotten halfway through. Everything was up to Raven now.

Another vibrant, orange pulse coursed through the rippling mass. A few of the swarmlings' mandibles scratched at Branch's skin. Their glowing orange membranes rattled in excitement. Then, another pulse ran through the hive, a different pulse. All at once, every single swarmling's horns turned towards Raven. He had to keep himself from collapsing out of fear as hundreds of glowing orange faces pointed in his direction, or rather, the direction of the crystal star. The crystal glowed brightly in Raven's hoof, but he knew the swarmlings would have seen it no matter how dim it shined. The pulses increased in tempo. The rythm was slow at first, but then quickened until the swarm was like a rapid waterfall of alternating black, yellow and orange. 

"You hungry? Go get it!"

With a shout, Raven hurled the star towards the farthest wall. For a brief moment, he could only hear the quiet clinking of the crystal as it fell onto the rough ground at the cave's floor. In the next second, the entire cave was filled with the sound of hundreds of vigorous wingbeats. The swarm, with a blinding pulse of yellow and orange, pounced upon the crystal in an instant, as if they had waited for a feast like this for a thousand years. 

Taking this as his chance, Raven took his saddlebags and sprinted towards Branch. He tried to lift his coltfriend onto his back, but the weight of everything on him was much more than he was able to handle. He looked up at the chandelier again. Blur was still gnawing away at the bone, and yet there was still so much left. it seemed Raven was going to have to slowly, painfully find a way back to the surface all on his own.

Raven scanned the menagerie of hallways that lined the cave walls. A nearby tunnel seemed to incline towards the surface, and seeing as he had no better options, he bolted for the hall. The less time he spent pondering the better; he had no idea how long the crystal would distract the swarm.

Raven had barely reached the tunnel when, as if on cue, the deafening clap of thunder boomed behind him. He turned to look, but couldn't quite make out the details. The once dense swarm was now widely dispersed. None of the swarmlings stared at him. Instead, they were transfixed on the black, ashy patch that was scorched into the dirt. The crystal star shined a bright purple in the epicenter of the blast, and what appeared to be several charred, hollow exoskeletons were scattered about. A swarmling corpse still held the crystal in its now thoroughly burnt jaws.

The swarmlings didn't move, taken aback by what had just happened. Raven told himself to run, but he found himself just as glued to the scene as the swarmlings were. He knew the crystal was powerful, but to think he and Branch had been holding on to something that dangerous, and hadn't known it...

A light snap jolted Raven from his thinking. Some of the swarmlings looked up towards the ceiling, and he did as well.

Blur was nowhere to be seen. Aside from the bite and claw marks, a single black bolt had carved it's way along the underside of the chandelier and up to the ceiling, where small cracks were now forming. Flecks of dirt floated down. It tickled the swarmlings' faces, and some sneezed in irritation. Then it all came crashing down at once.

Some swarmlings just barely dodged the initial cave-in, zipping out of the way in time to avoid the titanic centerpiece. The bones of the chandelier clattered and snapped, creating a deadly spread of shrapnel that punctured wings and dragged several unlucky swarmlings to their death. But as the chandelier began to settle, and both Raven and the swarmlings took in what had just happened, the rest of the ceiling collapsed as well. It tumbled down in titanic hunks that crushed hallways and flattened any poor soul in its wake.

Finally getting into gear, Raven kicked up clouds of dirt as he sprinted down the hall, the small plumes mere microcosms of the titanic, destructive quake that rattled the whole cave. Adrenaline began to flow through his veins as if some nozzle in his brain had suddenly switched on. All of a sudden, Branch wasn't so heavy anymore. Raven's saddlebags were light as feathers, and for that matter, so was Raven. He looked down in his haze to see himself almost flying down the dirt hallway. Bulb after bulb splatted unceremoniously onto the ground. The tunnel darkened with each passing moment, and behind him, Raven could distinctly hear the frenzied buzzing of enraged swarmlings. Rocks continued to tumble down the collapsing dirt walls. Raven was barely able to maneuver out of the way, feeling just the slightest scrape along his leg as a boulder bounced down a nearby wall. He heard a faint but unmistakable crunch behind him, and dared not to turn around and look.

He didn't know how long it took, but eventually, both the buzzing of the swarmlings and the rumbling of the cave stopped. The rush of panic in Raven's veins began to subside, and he, after taking careful consideration to set his partner down safely, promptly melted onto the cool dirt floor. For a moment, he debated falling asleep right then, but before he could deliberate much further, again he felt the rumbling of loose earth. His head jolted upright, but as he listened to the minute, increasingly intense vibrations, he noticed that they seemed timed, almost synchronized. He stood upright and watched the tunnel's exit, waiting for for the swarmlings to come blasting through any second now.

But there was only one swarmling, and it was far from a threat. It was enclosed tightly in a giant, pearly white claw, where it thrashed and bit at its scales in an attempt to free itself. Blur humored the bug for a moment more as he trudged over to join Raven, but he was quickly losing interest in the little creature. Having had enough of its presence, he crushed it within his claw. The swarmling cracked, popped, and then went limp in his hand. Having now deduced that the swarmling was surely dead, Blur tossed it into his mouth and swallowed it whole, letting out a quiet belch as he finished his meal.

"Thuh... that was something, huh?"  

"Yeah... and so was eating a swarmling like a snack."

"Hey, a luh... lizard's got to eat. Besides, they wuh... would've done the same. You know that."

"Yeah, I guess. I'm glad Branch didn't see that, though."

"Yeah. Sss... speaking of," Blur craned his head towards Branch. With his thin, pinpoint snout, he gently nudged the pony's shoulder. There was no response. "How's the wuh... whelp?"

"He hasn't moved since the bug attacked him," Raven spat, "I don't know if we should wait for him to wake up or... or what."

Blur stared at the motionless figure for a second, then turned back towards the cave-in. "Well, I'd sss... say the worst is behind us. We only got one way to go now. I cuh... can't dig, but I can carry the little guh... guy until he comes to."

Blur began to scoop Branch into his arms and onto his back, but Raven huffed. "what's the point? We lost the star, the firewinders are gonna beat us to the crystal paradise, and now my coltfriend is unconscious."

"Well yes, we did lose a... a lot of daylight, and now everything fruh... from my home is destroyed, but I wouldn't say it was a total loss."

Raven turned to sneer at the drake. "Oh yeah, how?"

"Well fff... for one, I think we taught those roaches a valuable lesson..." 

Blur held out his hand to Raven. Raven gasped as he looked closely at the dragon's claw. From between his scaly fingers, a faint purple light escaped in thin rows, lightly illuminating his face with a soft, lavender glow.

"They'll think twuh... twice before attacking us again."

Raven held the small crystal star in his hooves with unabated awe. "Blur, I think you might just be on to something."