//------------------------------// // Bonehorns and Waterbreathers // Story: Caravel // by Odd_Sarge //------------------------------// I rubbed sleep from my eyes as I stumbled out of the cabin. A large group of seagulls had landed on the prow of the ship, squawking incessantly. My bleary vision cleared, and I glared up into the sky. Tiny wisps of white clouds dotted the light blue sky. The sun beamed down onto the deck of the ship, warm, but not warm enough to be uncomfortable. I sighed in contentment, stepping down into the cargo bay to grab an early morning meal. As I emerged into the darkness, I lit a nearby lamp with my magic. I squinted, my eyes adjusting to the light. The cargo bay looked the same as it had a day before; pink packing peanuts littered the floor around the crates on one side, the lid of the crate I had opened lying off to one side. As I stepped towards the crates, I stumbled over something lying on the ground. “Woah!” I landed face first in a pile of packing peanuts, sending the annoying little things flying everywhere. Shaking my head, I stood and picked up the hammer I had tripped over. I turned it over in my telekinesis; there was nothing unusual about it. Snorting, I tossed the hammer onto a nearby workbench without really looking. I tensed as I heard a clatter from the workbench. The sound of heavy iron on wood drew me to the workbench as I stepped over. Lying on the ground was the hammer, but that was not what held my attention, it was the crossbow lying on the workbench. “What the…?” I approached the crossbow laying on the table, or at least what was left of it. The weapon had been largely disassembled; the stock and barrel were the only identifiable parts of the crossbow. The limbs had been disconnected, as well as the rinsers, missing along with the screws that had held the pieces together. Even the drawstring for the arrow groove was missing. Cocking my head, I stowed away my questions to ask Keel about later. I returned to the banana crates to grab a bite to eat. Just as I went to peel one of the edibles, a shout of alarm sounded from above. Sighing, I placed the banana into a pocket on my coat and stepped onto the deck... … Just in time to be sent sprawling to the ground. “Narwhals!” I heard Keel cry through the sound of crashing waves and creaking of wood. “We’re not fishing you fools! Quit rocking my ship!” The ship tossed from side to side as I scrambled for a support beam. Clutching the wooden mast closely, I scanned for the ghostly captain. I spotted him floating above the water, yelling down at the waves. “Keel! What’s going on?” I shouted to the griffon. His head snapped to me. “That’s Captain Keel to you, Ensign Blue!” “Ensign?” I cried, confused by the lack of an actual answer. The ship took on a familiar cyan coloration and the rocking ceased, but waves still crashed over the ship’s sides. From my point of view, we hadn’t taken on much water from the waves, with small splashes here and there. However, Keel saw otherwise. “You stabbed my ship!” Keel roared as a wave smashed into him, pushing him back. However, the stalwart captain pushed against the movement, and instead flew back over to the ship, landed, and sent the ship hurtling forward. His eyes were filled with fury as they locked onto mine. “Blue, I need you on the rear swivel gun.” He glared at the sight of a narwhal horn peeking above the turbulent water. “I’ve got to go patch a hole on the lower deck.” Saying nothing else, he disappeared. The ship continued moving as I rushed up the stairs towards the stern of the ship. I hadn’t fired a cannon before, but as I found myself standing before a small crate of black powder and ammo, I knew just what to do. “Load grapeshot! We don’t wanna kill them, but if they won’t back down, we’ll make ‘em back down!” The voice came from nowhere, but I was left unfazed as I slammed the metal container into the swivel gun and slid the holding pin in. Aiming with my telekinesis, I sweeped through the area behind our ship. A horn popped up through the water. I aimed and lit the fuse. A puff and the clink of metal sounded as the burst of grapeshot went flying, lightly grazing the horn. There was an awful moan as the narwhal sank back down below, only to be replaced by another. Sliding the pin then the spent round out, I loaded in another shot. Lighting the fuse, I aimed at the new narwhal. I was momentarily stunned as I watched the scarred, grey face emerge. Clunk! I blinked at the sound; I hadn’t loaded grapeshot that time. Luckily for him, but unluckily for me, the small calibre round glanced off his horn, chipping off a bit of the narwhal’s extended tooth, but did nothing to hinder the narwhal’s distance between us and him. “That’s Old Tooth! To hay with that!” A loud whoosh came from my side, and I watched in awe as an empty crate soared overhead. With amazing accuracy, the crate nailed Old Tooth right between the eyes, just below the horn. The battle-scarred creature howled as it sank back into the depths, eyes glowing red with hate. I sat there for a minute longer, eyes scanning our rear for any more targets. When no more narwhals appeared, I sighed a breath of relief, removing the holding pin and tossing the spent round to the side with my hooves. From behind me came the clack of claws. “Didn’t know you could actually shoot the swivel gun.” I turned to Heavy Keel. “I didn’t know either,” I said, pulling the banana out from my coat pocket. “Why were narwhals attacking us?” He groaned, ruffling his ghostly feathers as I peeled my banana. “I’m guessing that they’ve claimed this area as their territory. It’ll make our job a whole lot harder.” I raised my brow and swallowed. “And why would that be?” “They’re guarding the area where the seaponies used to be.” I blinked. “Oh. Right.” “I do have an idea though…” He held up Bowspirit. The crossbow looked shinier than the day before, and I blinked back to the crossbow lying on the workbench just a few minutes prior. “I replaced a few of the old parts on Bowspirit with a new crossbow that one of the Royal guards brought on.” He tossed the crossbow to me, which I caught in my magic, and pulled out a quiver of arrows. “The Guard has made a lot of improvements in the years since my captaincy… at least, as a living griffon.” He pulled out an arrow and inspected it. The tip of the arrow looked like an extended claw. “Non-lethals; send a shock through whatever it connects with.” He placed the arrow back into the quiver and tossed the container to me. “Even the bowstring on the new crossbow has more efficient enchantments,” he remarked. “You’ll definitely be getting a lot more power for your pull.” I paused in the examination of my new toys and looked at Heavy Keel. “You know, I never thought about this before, but why would I need a crossbow if I’m going to be talking to seaponies?” He grinned. “The caves have more than seaponies down there.” My hooves touched down against the sand, signalling that I had reached the bottom. I recalled some earlier remarks from Heavy Keel earlier that morning about the Bubble. With a bit of willpower, the dim light around me grew to illuminate the entire area. I spun in a circle, slowly examining the place where I had touched down. I was greeted by what I would describe as an empty volcano. A small tunnel on one side of the rocky interior caught my attention, and I slowly began moving towards it. Just then, a small burst of movement caught my eye. Quickly moving, I yanked the crossbow strapped to my body from my back and pointed it towards a ridge above the tunnel. I waited, but the perpetrator of the movement refused to reveal itself. Swallowing thickly, I cautiously continued moving towards the tunnel, increasing my light just a tad. The tunnel was found to the southwest of the seaponies, or so Heavy Keel told me. The plan was to use the tunnel to go underneath the narwhals and reach the seaponies in their caverns. While Keel told me that the tunnel was used as a major traffic area for seaponies, it certainly did not play the part. I continued moving through the empty tunnel for what seemed to be about half an hour before I found myself going down a slowly steepening slope. I readjusted my grip on Bowspirit as I stared down the natural slide that had appeared before me. With another deep breath, I continued through the eerily silent tunnel. I kept Bowspirit held in front of me as I advanced into the darkness. My mouth felt dry despite being surrounded by water. I swallowed thickly. The light in front of me brightened just a bit as I did so, but I was too focused on what was ahead to actually recognize what I had done. The slope leveled out about a hundred hooves ahead of me, the sandy path leading straight up to a round opening from which magenta light poured out. After walking forward a bit more, I threw Bowspirit through the tight gap and followed suit. I felt a tingle in my horn as I stepped inside, and no sooner had I tried to use my magic to levitate Bowspirit from the ground, I was suddenly filled with a blinding pain. I fell to my hooves, rolling as I cried out in pain. From the corner of my blurry vision I could see a flash of yellow swim by. Before I had time to recognize what was going on, I felt something push through the barrier of the Bubble. Instead of water flooding in as I had expected, the searing pain in my head simply doubled and moved down to my neck. It felt as if my skin was being given the worst buffalo burn in the entire history of Equestria as it moved this way and that. The air around me was filled with my screams for what felt like hours, when with a sudden crack and hiss, the pain was gone. I sat up, struggling to my hooves as my world swam. The warmth that the Bubble had given me before was now gone, and now I simply felt… cool. It felt as if a nice, fresh breeze was rolling over me. I craned my neck as I tried to remove the stiffness that had taken hold in my muscles. As I placed a hoof on my neck to rub a particularly sore spot, I froze. It felt as if I was blocking my nostrils with a hoof. I suddenly launched into a full blown panic, removing the hoof as I began to hyperventilate from my neck. I could see bubbles flow from the sides of my neck as I looked from side to side. I covered my muzzle, but to no avail; where my nostrils had once been, it was no more than a smooth edge. It appeared that there were still more problems to come when I noticed that the bubbles had been coming from inside the Bubble. Which meant that water had flooded in at some point, and I was now surrounded on all sides. One thing was for certain; I could breathe underwater. How had the crystal done that? With the tingling in my horn now gone, I went to pick up Bowspirit, only to find a pocket of air in place of the crossbow. Bewildered and a little more than scared, I sat up from the sandy bed and scanned the cavern I had entered. It remained the same as when I had entered before, but with two major differences; it was a lot brighter, and a new hole had opened up on the opposite side of the cave. I stood fully, cleaned of all my gear, feeling more naked than usual, and with the newfound ability to breath underwater. I tapped the Bubble three times. I disappeared in a flash, reappearing back on the deck with Keel. In doing so, I had completely forgotten about the new change to my body. “What happened?” The griffon captain said worriedly as he came to my side. I gasped and heaved as my gills struggled to find air. I crumpled to the ground, hacking and wheezing all the way. “Oh by the gods, hold on Blue!” My vision began to blur as half a minute passed. My lungs burned and tears welled up in my eyes. Keel returned quickly, picking me up gently as he could in his claws to droop my head into a bucket of water. I greedily sucked in the air, tearing up at my near-death experience. Keel laid a claw on my withers. “I don’t know what happened down there, but you’re not going back down alone.”