Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Ages

“According to the depth gauge we should actually be reaching the ocean floor in just a moment,” Ballast said as he looked at his controls and instruments.

“Cool! So it shouldn’t be much further till Merlantis then?” Rainbow asked.

“Actually there’s still a fair bit of distance to travel,” Senax answered instead. “We’ve gone down all the way, but not over all the way yet. From what the visions tell me… I’d say we’re about halfway there.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “I guess that’s better than nothing.”

“And you were managing your patience so well,” Daylight said.

“The closer we get the more excited I get.”

“Me too,” Senax whispered.

“Look on the bright side, you can enjoy the fact that we’re making history right now. No one has seen this kind of stuff in hundreds of years,” Daylight said. “We’re the first ponies—and griffon—seeing the ocean floor since probably the age of Merlantis itself. That’s special enough to me to take some pride in and celebrate over. Just think how long it’s been since pony eyes have looked upon this.”

She gestured out the viewport for emphasis… even though it was still just showing water and bubbles for the moment.

“Wow, really amazing,” Rainbow sarcastically rolled her eyes.

“You know what I mean, we’ll see it soon,” Daylight frowned.

“The old treasure hunter and explorer part of you getting stirred up?” Gilbert asked her.

Daylight shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“You know if you want you could give us another light ball so we can see the bottom of the ocean better?” Breakwater suggested.

“That’d actually just be normally helpful anyways so we can see all the rocks and stuff around us,” Ballast said.

“Easily taken care of,” Daylight said and concentrated for the second time inside the submersible. Her desire to conserve energy until they reached Merlantis was easily curbed by the practical use of her magic. She couldn’t help that she was uniquely qualified for this sort of work.

A second ball of magical light went out from The Breakwater and into the dark depths of the ocean, lighting it up along the way. It sank down with them, occasionally showing off a deep sea fish or other kind of creature, as they both steadily made it down to the sandy and rocky bottom of the Grand Ocean. Somewhere a thinking creature may not have seen or touched in well over a thousand years. Rainbow Dash couldn’t pretend to care about that kind of thing too much but she did have to admit that it would be nice to look at something new.

They passed by a school of giant transparent jellyfish on their way down, then past some kind of large-mouthed fish with huge teeth, then these weird little shelled creatures with tentacles on their fronts. She wasn’t surprised that some weird animals lived down here, and they’d probably see some even weirder ones the further they got. Like the Leviathan there could be some magical beasts too, maybe some that even existed purely because of Merlantis. Rainbow wasn’t exactly frightened by the idea but she couldn’t fight down here either. It didn’t make her happy to know they’d be helpless if they ran into trouble.

It was less than a minute that they started to see the rocks and cliffs of the very bottom of the Grand Ocean. First they saw the tips of the underwater rock formations, then their bodies, and the labyrinth of rock and crags everywhere. It grew and grew until Rainbow Dash felt like she was looking at something like an underwater version of the Bad Lands or how the landscape north of Hoofica had been. Everything looked blue, black, or gray eve with Daylight’s light. There wasn’t a lot of color down here. At least that was the case until they had really descended to the true ocean floor, deeper past the high spires of the rock formations, into trenches, and down to the sand. Rainbow saw something red and white, tubular, shooting up like weeds all over.

“What are those?” Rainbow asked.

“No idea,” Breakwater shrugged. “No one alive has been down here and whatever those are you definitely don’t find them in shallower waters.”

Rainbow kept quiet along with the others as they looked at everything down here. There were gigantic clams latched to rocks, big orange squid that went swimming by, weird crustacean looking creatures walking across the sand, and all kinds of just downright creepy looking fish. Fluttershy would probably say that every animal is beautiful in its own way. Rainbow wasn’t sure she could agree with that. A grin still came to her face as she thought about Twilight trying to categorize every fish and other animal down here. Rarity would probably be grossed out by some of this stuff, Pinkie would be chattering about something inane—or the party she planned to throw when they reached Merlantis, and Applejack would probably be just as apathetic as Rainbow but a little more focused on what they were doing.

“Does it look like a nice place to live?” Gilbert asked Senax.

Senax just rolled her eyes.

The Breakwater then finally made it right where they wanted it to, floating just a few feet from the surface. Now as far as they knew they just had to go straight and eventually they’d reach Merlantis. The lights of both their vessel and Daylight’s helpful orb showed a mostly straight path ahead, they were in a wide valley down here now with only a few smaller piles of rock around them. Instead of just drifting ahead and down on minimal power like before, Ballast now put more into the engines and the propeller sped them forward. Behind them a cloud of sand and debris was kicked up and with it a whole mess of critters went fleeing away for calm safety elsewhere.

“We’re on the way!” Ballast smiled as they went.

“No sharks, no giant squid, no monsters, no underwater volcanic eruptions please,” Daylight said.

“Don’t jinx us,” Breakwater said to her.

“That’s not jinxing us, saying “I know nothing bad will happen” is jinxing us. But I’m not saying that,” Daylight frowned.

“I could,” Gilbert suggested.

“Don’t,” the rest said.

“Well instead does anyone want a snack? Now that it seems things have quieted down and we shouldn’t have anything to do until we reach Merlantis,” Gilbert said.

“I could go for something actually,” Senax said.

“I’ll grab some of the fruit we brought with us then, it’ll be good to get a little energy,” Gilbert tried turning around as best he could but all he really managed was knocking Rainbow Dash against the hull and pressing Daylight forward into Ballast’s chair. “Um... hm. Not exactly a lot of space to move here.”

“Let me get the stuff, I’m smaller,” Rainbow finally said. She backed up and squeezed past Gilbert to get at their supplies. Even for her it wasn’t easy and she spent way too much time rubbing up against her griffon friend for her tastes. She at least did manage to get into the case they had brought into The Breakwater before leaving Palm Floats and started passing out fruit to the others. Even Ballast could eat now with pretty much no trouble thanks to Daylight’s guiding light and the sonar. Smooth “sailing” they could call it.

“By the way, Gilbert-” Rainbow said as she bit chunks out of a pear. “Don’t worry about it if anything bad happens, I promise I’ll blame Daylight this time.”

“Oh, real mature.”

Breakwater cleared his throat before the two of them could begin arguing. “I’ve been wondering—but do you think there might be anything else down here built by Ponyseidon and the ancient merponies besides just Merlantis? Even just things like statues and monuments, or anything that might be a sign that we’re getting closer to Merlantis.”

"I don’t know to be honest,” Senax shook her head.

“Merlantis is already a whole city from the way Senax described it,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Yeah but was everything they did down here really concentrated in just one place?” Breakwater mused.

“Maybe that’s just how they liked it. They didn’t want to take the glory away from Merlantis by building a bunch of other stuff in the ocean,” Rainbow shrugged.

“It’s hard for me to get into the mindset of my ancestors and think about what they would’ve done. I kind of don’t want to get into their mindset in the first place,” Senax said. She finished eating the peach she had and let Gilbert take the core away to wrap and put back in their little case.

Senax still felt a little cold as she calmly sat back and looked out the viewport at the dark ocean. Daylight was keeping the light at a much lower power than the one she had previously used for practicality’s sake and it didn’t allow them to see much more than sand and rocks out there. It was so desolate. So quiet. Knowing how dark and cold it naturally was down here she wondered how and why her people stayed here in the past. Wouldn’t a tropical island up above have been better? Hopefully Merlantis itself was special. She could see it perfectly in her visions as if it emitted light itself and there was always a great sense of belonging when she laid eyes on it. But would she truly love it? Would it truly be the place for her people to return to and live happily ever after?

She hoped. She hoped so much. But the things she had learned... the doubts in her mind...

She shook her head. There were more immediate matters to deal with. That stuff could wait for when she was on her way back to East Glade.

“You know I kind of always wondered what the ancient merponies did for food down here for that matter,” Daylight said.

“Seaweed?” Rainbow suggested.

“Fishing?” Gilbert added.

“Maybe with the empire they supposedly had they were able to transport large amounts of food from islands above,” Breakwater said.

Daylight shrugged after thinking about it for a moment. “I guess we can only really speculate about something like that. We’ll have to find out when we get to Merlantis.”

“Now I’m kind of curious about that too...” Senax said.

“You’d be surprised what magic can do. I’ve seen food and stuff grown in the weirdest places and situations,” Rainbow said. She shook her head, eyes looking up at the ceiling of The Breakwater. “There’s probably some kind of crazy underwater farm in Merlantis, or magically generated carrots or something.”

“Senax you also kind of brought this up earlier when we were first coming down but do you think your people had any sort of actual transport to get to and from Merlantis in the old days or did they just swim everywhere on their own? It’s a really long swim from the surface if that’s the case,” Daylight asked.

“Dangerous too with sharks and everything else,” Gilbert said.

Senax sighed. “I really don’t know, you should all know that by now.”

“Sorry. I guess we’re all just too curious to help ourselves right now,” Daylight said.

“Actually I’m kind of the same level of curious as always,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Rainbow Dash, shut up, stop lying,” Daylight frowned at her.

Senax smiled at the two of them and resumed her quiet contemplation only broken up by her attention getting grabbed by the occasional colorful fish outside the viewport. Regardless of other issues at the moment, there was a peacefulness to this deep sea world that hadn’t been trespassed upon in ages. It might have seemed cold and empty to them but it had a life and existence all its own just the same. She figured it would probably be a good idea to become familiar with it. And appreciative.

Unfortunately another errant thought of Gilbert’s was about to drag her mind somewhere else it didn’t really want to be.

“Do you think there are going to be a lot of skeletons down in Merlantis?” Gilbert wondered.

The others turned to look at him.

“Well I was just thinking, we don’t really know how that whole slave revolt went… there could be a lot of merponies and slaves that were left down there when everything ended,” he shrugged.

“Gilbert, that may be true but I really don’t think we need to think about such morbid things,” Daylight said.

“Yeah—if there are a bunch of skeletons down there we’ll just move them out of the way,” Rainbow shrugged.

“I’m kind of regretting coming on this trip now…” Ballast blanched.

“Welcome to my world,” Breakwater smirked.

“If there are any skeletons-” Senax said. “We’ll give them a proper burial. Somehow, someway, but they don’t deserve to be just… lying around the halls of Merlantis or whatever. We’ll treat them with respect. In fact, we should treat everything about Merlantis with respect. Aside from getting the Trident to make sure it can’t fall into the wrong hooves there’s nothing else we need to do or acquire. We’ll just look and leave. I’d like to leave it as we found it if possible.”

“It’s your home you know?” Rainbow Dash said. “No one’s going to be able to, or have any right, to call you out over what you do down here.”

“It’s just a matter of respect. Until we’re really living down there, until we can figure it all out, I don’t want to disturb things.”

“There’s definitely going to be a lot to see and sort through. I don’t know about treasure or art or anything, but there’s no question that Merlantis is going to have a lot of ancient stuff in it. Your people will have their work cut out for them, and you’ll probably have to be careful not to break anything,” Daylight said.

Gilbert coughed. “I’ll um… I’ll be extra careful not to break anything either.”

“We’ll do whatever you ask us to, Senax,” Rainbow Dash said.

“So we’re not looting the ancient underwater city?” Breakwater sarcastically asked.

“Certainly not,” Senax frowned at him, but immediately turned it into a smile. “But if there is treasure down there I wouldn’t mind maybe some day giving you some of it. Consider it a thank you gift.”

“The only one who would’ve really looted anything is Daylight anyways,” Gilbert said, winking.

“Only the old me…” Daylight grumbled.

Senax giggled. “Let’s just stay focused… although I get the feeling when we get there we won’t have the time to be silly anymore.”

“Probably not,” Rainbow nodded.

The Breakwater then continued its way east along the bottom of the ocean. The rocks and sand, never having been disturbed in an eon, shifted from the propeller’s current. Senax closed her eyes for a brief moment and centered her mind on thoughts of Merlantis. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

Comments

[redmar]

When they reach Merlantis they won't have any time to relax.