My Kingdom For A Cruise Liner
"Mmmm... nngnhhfff..."
Rainbow Dash lay on her side, forelimbs twitching. Her eyelids fluttered as her muzzle scrunched and unscrunched.
"Grffff... wnnaa... mhhf? Guh!" She sat up with a gasp. "What?!"
Darkness surrounded her, full of the echoes of churning waves. A celestial canopy of glittering stars hung overhead.
Rainbow Dash panted and panted. "Who? I... I thought..."
She brought a hoof up and ran it through her bangs. Her mane felt ice-cold to the touch. Something fluttered through her starving gut, and she couldn't explain it.
Just then, something moved out of the corner of her vision.
She turned to look, body stiff and rigid.
Yaerfaerda bobbed up and down in time with the undulating sea. Its lavender colors pierced Rainbow's mind across the dull night.
Rainbow's nostrils flared. With a melancholic sigh, she sank back to the surface of the raft. She curled up into a little blue ball, resting the edge of her cold pendant against her crossed forelimbs. As she started to shiver, her ruby eyes stared off into nothingness, framing a confused and exhausted face.
Squinting in the bright daylight, Rainbow Dash unscrewed her canteen. After taking a deep breath, she turned the container over directly above her gaping maw.
Nothing happened.
So she gave the canteen the tiniest of shakes.
Two droplets struck her tongue, and that was it.
Seething, Rainbow reluctantly screwed the container shut. She stared at the empty thing in her grasp, then glanced forlornly at the salt water lapping all around the raft.
With a quiet shudder, she trotted over to the bag that was tied to the mast. Pilfering through it, she brushed past the bag with the two and a half remaining Heaven Slices and pulled out the container of Nebulum. Leaning back, she held the jar up to the light. There was barely enough mist inside the enchanted container to refract the suns' rays. If she didn't know better, she would have guessed the jar was empty too.
The day broiled around her, levitating waves of heat off the ocean waters so that they thoroughly baked Rainbow from all angles. Her mouth was like a piece of the Grand Choke that had followed her, and it felt just as sandy beneath her tongue too.
So, with anxious shudders, Rainbow began twisting the nozzle of the container.
She stopped halfway—though—then released her grip of the jar altogether. Her heart ached at the mere thought of it, but she courageously put the container back into the bag anyways.
She was uncomfortably thirsty... but she wasn't dying.
"Not yet," Rainbow muttered.
And once the bag had been tied back shut, Rainbow crawled back under the lean-to, collapsed on her side, and proceeded to do nothing.
As the day wore on...
That night, there was no sleeping.
The wind had grown incredibly unpredictable—or at least that's what Rainbow Dash had assumed at first. The raft kept being yanked north and south—but never east. Rainbow lost count of the number of times she had to untie/reattach the rope so that the sail was repositioned to better catch the wild gales.
No amount of concentrated effort could keep pushing the raft east. Rainbow tested this—continuously through the night—with no small amount of cussing under her breath. The task of re-casting the sail was incredibly frustrating, with Rainbow having to summon tiny spurts of magic from her pendant in order to illuminate the raft around her.
When at last she felt as though she had gotten the raft pointed appropriately towards Yaerfaerda again, she couldn't help but notice that her velocity was practically nil. Instead of churning through the waves—or even coasting over the swells—it felt as though the Scootaloo was only drifting along at a glacial pace.
Rainbow Dash grumbled. Gnashing her teeth, she pulled the sail down, tied the rope around the mast, and planted her flank on the stern.
"That's it... friggin' useless strip of tree bark, I swear." Frowning, she gripped the raft in all fours and beat her wings. "There's always one way to move a Scootaloo."
And, just like that, the craft began cruising forward, propelled by Rainbow's sheer wind powers.
"Hah! How do you like that, ya stubborn melon fudge?!"
By sunrise, Rainbow's wings were too sore to even move.
The pegasus whimpered, collapsing on her chest as her strength finally gave out. To her utter frustration, the raft came to a near-complete stop, barely moving fast enough to form a wake behind it.
With a frustrated groan, Rainbow covered her eyes. Her tail dipped lazily in the water, relishing in the last touch of cool liquid before the sun's baking arch cooked everything all around her once again.
At last, Rainbow tilted her head up. She looked defeatedly at the mast and its deflated sail.
Despite her misgivings, she got up on wobbly legs, ignored the pain in her wing-muscles, and trotted up to the mast. Unfurling the sail, she stretched it out and tied its rope to an outer peg in the raft. Standing back, she stood in place and... simply stared at the contraption refusing to work.
Rainbow felt a wind. She knew that there was a breeze rolling past her. But—despite what she sensed—there wasn't even the slightest ripple to the patchwork fabric.
Frowning, the pegasus stood up on her rear hooves, took a deep breath, and literally blew on the sail.
A three square inch stretch of fabric undulated and rolled back, then was still once again.
Rainbow plopped back down onto her hooves. She exhaled heavily. "I don't get it. I just don't... get it..." She turned and looked at the water surrounding her. The entire world was an endlessly shifting plane of blue waves. "...what is it that makes this place tick?" She gulped. "Or untick?"
A streak of lavender flickered.
Rainbow jerked and looked east.
Yaerfaerda hovered in place, just above the horizon, bright and steady.
Rainbow blinked. She cocked her head aside and gave the symbol the stinkeye.
It continued lingering in the same spot along the blue line, as constant and shimmering as ever.
"... ... ..." Rainbow sighed. Her wings were still too sore to continue giving the raft thrust, and the rest of her body was beyond exhausted. Nevertheless, there she was, stuck in an aquatic desert where magic and the elements were swiftly crumbling all around her.
It was precisely around that point when the pegasus began anxiously pacing in tiny circles.
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At least she isn't having hallucinated conversations, at the moment.
I'm guessing that something is stopping the sails from working. Perhaps some kind of magic?
you think? . . .
5754989 "Tick tock, this is a clock."
Welp, fudge...
I'm guessing that this fic's going to end where RD falls into unconsciousness because of tiredness, hunger, dehydration, and other nasty stuff. Then Scootaloo finally lands on a shore, and something's going to pick RD up and will take her somewhere, where the next story's going to take place.
5754994
and as constant as a clock . . .
Verdax sending a bit of wind to starve travelers?
I really hope RD tiring herself out is actually doing something. It would really suck if it hasn't moved her at all and it wasn't worth it.
I dunno… you can catch a nasty intestinal disease on those cruise ships and spend the next few days… well… you know.
...yeah, Rainbow, ride Scootaloo all night long!
i am so sorry. I even made myself sick with how horrible that was.
You'd best figure out how to Macgyver your way out of this one real quick, Miss Dash. You are against the clock, as usual.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the sea
Slowing down to a frustrating stop, life is but a dream~!
5755030
Yes, you should be thorougly ashamed.
Looks like this whole journey is finally starting to take the wind out of her sails.
5754988 Magic stopped working a long time ago. This is where physics stops working. Soon the boat will sink, as buoyancy stops being a thing.
Middle of the ocean, as the wids are complex and sideways, then still? means a few miles further on, ther will be rough weather again, and then steady winds, but theyll be westwards? Becalming everything in the middle? If so, then tacking becomes difficult, because you need a really good rudder, or preferably keelboard.
Or Stephen.
This is getting worse now. Her water supply is getting too depleted.
If she doesn't start getting somewhere some time soon, things are going to get really bad.
^ Your daily dose of Captain Obvious.
-Spirit
Interesting fact about doldrums: during the colonization era, Spanish ships would transport horses across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the Americas. When they reached these doldrums, the heavy ships would find themselves stuck in hot, windless weather. Soon, the sailors would run low on water, and would be forced to deprive the horses of their water, and the horses would die. The sailors would then throw the bodies overboard.
Thus, latitudes containing doldrums (namely between 30 and 35 degrees, both north and south) became known as horse latitudes
Get it? It's funny, you know... because our blue East Horse is stuck in... horse latitudes...
It's a shame she doesn't know about the latent heat of vaporization of water. Or she could continually splash water on herself, so the evaporation would cool her more than the water itself would.
From bad to worse. I hope rainbow looked up how to do on the fly desalination before she left Val roa. Honestly it would have been dumb not to.
Well....probably should have used the wind while it was around Dash, even if you weren't going east,going somewhere is better than going nowhere.
and would have let you conserve that energy.
-Treachery and deceit, kingdom of conceit Yaerfaerda.
The desperation is palpable.
I have no memory of what Yaerfaerda symbol looks like, but at this point I'm picturing it as a giant lavender middle finger.
wait, wasn't it established that breaking/consuming part of a heaven slice would cause it to leak out its magic? Considering the grand choke and great sea thingy like to destroy magic, isn't leaving half a heaven slice an intrinsic waist of said heaven slice?
5755085
Don't forget electromagnetic force. Atomic Bonds will stop working. Existence might be a bit difficult.
Ooh ooh, it's the thing!
Also, this is the chapter where IC literally took the wind out of Rainbow's sail.
5755290 I guess she trusts the lightning bolt preservation magic to protect it from being half-broken as well as from being in the choke.
That, or she's fooling herself and is already undead.
5755288
LOL
5755030
Too far, brah.
Perhaps another dead spot? Maybe something under the waves?
If true, then this section could be another device like stratopolis
"Or rather, Twilight's kingdom for it hahaahaHAHAHAAHAHAHA ...I'll show myself out." —Tchernobog
5755085 Nah, once you turn off the physics engine, everything will just noclip infinitely.
5755288 It looks like ):(
5754994 i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/204/CaptainAmerica1_zps8c295f96.JPG
5755625
Goddamnit RD, people have died from dehydration with a half-full canteen before, if you're thirsty take a bloody drink.
Huh. I'm just now realizing how meta this story gets with the ):( symbol and it's "commenteer" other meaning.
5754994
Tick, tock, goes the clock
She keeps Chaos at bay, oh
Tick, tock, goes the clock
Even for Austraeoh
5755085 How can sinking be real if gravity isn't real?
The west side of this continent had a major Statopolis powered storm preventing travel. Is it unreasonable to think there would be a similar thing where it stops travel not by the weather being too rough, but toocalm?
If there is, my money is on seapony city/ruins/magic/technology
IC is still getting inspired by Horse with no name I see:
The ocean is a desert with it's life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love
5755987
Simple. Magnetism isn't real, so there's nothing between her and the sun's solar wind, which will push her down into the water.
5755912 I love little snippets of depressing poetry! It really helps with the atmosphere of hopelessness here in the comments.
Dash needs some drugs.
Pray for assistance from Axan
She really needs to rig up a desalination device....should have paid more attention to Bear Grylls. Also gonna need a Bear named Grylls somewhere in this series .
Looks like the only thing to do now is swim across the entire ocean
Ooo so now the wind is saying no? Rude.
5755288 Headcannon updated.
5755290 I think she discovered she could halt their decay with her pendant. Like it locks the enchantment down.
And this is the part where the Dead Sea, as I shall now call it, fights against the travelers. Here we go . . .
Say hello to the East Horse Latitudes.
5755030 That's okay, When she ran into all the rainbow Changelings, I made the Incest or masturbation Joke.
The way I see it, the world needs people like us. We Make the Joke, So everyone else can secretly laugh in their head, without feeling guilty for having made it.
I dunno, I actually found this line to be kinda sweet. Just like naming the ship after Scoots. Little scootaloo Never gave up, Ever, And even on an ocean where the currents fail and the wind blows but doesn't hit your sail, The Scootaloo Keeps Moving. Even if slowly.
And now even physics are broken.
Rainbow, I'm afraid physics don't work like that.
(Though granted, they don't seem to be working at all right now.)
5756532
While she can, Rainbow Dash flies east with her wings. When they fail her, she will trot on her hooves. When she reaches the sea, she will build a raft. When the raft fails, she shall swim east with her four hooves. And when she can swim no longer, she will sink with her muzzle to the sunrise.
(some liberal paraphrasing there)
((kind of surprised I didn't see a Dawn Treader reference some time in the last six books or their comments, really))
Hey, now that Rainbow has built and christened her own ship, maybe she can understand Floydien a little better.
Physics, how does it work?
...actually nevermind. This is magic bullshit.