“Blue?” Heavy Keel called as he floated into the cabin. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” I said from my tub of water in the corner. “This sucks.” The ghostly griffon sighed and came over. Taking a gulp of air from the tub, I brought my head out of the water and stared at the griffon. “Did you find anything I could wear to help me breathe out of water?”
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.” My eyes scanned his face for a moment, before my head dunked back down into the water for another breath of air. I came back up.
“Anyway,” he began again. “You’re temporarily decommissioned, so we need another pony who can help us. Since, ya’ know.” He gestured to himself. “Dead and waterproof.” I snorted.
“The dead part doesn’t really seem to have affected you that much.” He chuckled in response to that.
“It’ll take more than that to keep a griffon away from his duty to do good for seaponies, lad.” I thought for a moment, a new question bobbing around in the sea of my mind.
“Actually, what was a griffon like you doing in the Royal Equestrian Navy?” He grimaced, turning away from me.
“It is a…” He turned back, a hint of sadness in his eyes. “A long story.” Biting my lip, I glanced between the sad griffon and the floor. I dunked my head back in the tub, taking a breath.
“Sit down and tell me,” I spat through my bubbles. “I’ve got time.” He hesitated, claw raised halfway into the air. Keel shook himself and clambered onto the couch beside me. He gave an audible gulp.
“Well, I was a young chick, see.” He tugged at one of his wings, bringing it in front of him to stare at. “My mama and I lived in Griffonstone. I would go to a friend of hers every day while she went off to work in a coal mine.”
My ears perked up as I brought my head out of the water. “And where was your dad?” Keel flinched, but held his resolve. He inhaled slowly.
“My da left us in Griffonstone to go train with the army.” He ran a claw over his head. “Never heard hide nor tail of ‘em from chick to griff.” A faraway look took place in his eyes. “I always looked up to da from what mama told me about him… I… I think mama knows why he never sent letters, but...” He sat silent, then shook his head. “That’s all I have to say about that.” I nodded understandingly.
“Most of my education came from my mama’s friend.” He paused, eyes scanning the room. “Feather.” He gave a sad smile. “I never had a proper education, but I did learn how the world works from her. Mama always came home with tired eyes and dusty wings, and she’d make dinner and teach me how to cook for myself, but that was about all the time we had together. Mama meant good, but Griffonstone was a harsh place to get bits in.”
“One night, when I was about your age, mama came home with blood dripping down her face.” Keel sucked in a breath. “When I went over to ask her what happened, she told me that we had to go. O’ course, I wasn’t one to question authority, so I helped her pack up and we left.” He wiped away a tear. “I… I never thought to say goodbye to Feather. If I ‘ad known…”
I hesitated as the ghostly griffon sat on the verge of tears. “Known… known about what, Keel?”
“The Diamond Dogs that ran the mines outside of town raided Griffonstone that midnight.” I pulled up out of my tub and stared in horror as he continued. “Mama told me later that she’d been a part of the small group of griffons working the mines that had escaped the alpha’s wrath. He had just found out that the diamond mine had finally run dry and… and he decided to start early on taking everything from the griffons of Griffonstone.”
“Mama and I found a regiment of Royal Guards approaching Griffonstone during our escape. My mama spilt everything out about what had happened to her but the guards had somehow already been informed.” He shuddered. “They were moving to help defend the town, and so I decided I’d join up with ‘em and help. I… I found Feather in her home.” He tensed up. “G-gone, Blue.”
I brought my dunked head from the water and sat down on the bed next to the shivering griffon. I attempted to wrap a hoof around him, but he waved me off. “A-after that…” He cleared his throat, staring at the wall. “After that, mama and I went with the guards. Griffonstone wasn’t safe for us anymore.” He ran the back of his claw across his eyes.
“Two years after that, mama and I had settled down in this ponytown called Fillydelphia. Feather ‘ad taught me some manners, so after a while the ponies had warmed up to me.” As I began coughing, he shoved me towards my tub, which I gratefully flopped my head into. “A sergeant posted at a recruitment center there saw me take down a pair of muggers on my own and gave me the pitch.” Keel moved his jaw around a bit. “That was the last time I saw Fillydelphia or mama; it was all letters from that point on.”
“My first post after training in Canterlot was in Manehattan. That happened to be the first time I saw an ocean.” He chuckled. “A captain saw me standing on the docks one time, staring off into the ocean’s horizon. I was so transfixed on the ocean that I didn’t move until his ship’s side touched my beak. That was the moment I was transferred from the Royal Equestrian Guard to the Royal Equestrian Navy.”
“Things were great after that. I’d never known how much one could enjoy life, and from the letters my mama sent in reply to my obsessions with the sea, she was glad that I’d found something I wanted to do. It sure beat wandering around Fillydelphia doing odd jobs.”
“And that’s when you were assigned to the seaponies?” I interjected. Keel chuckled and shifted around on his seat.
“Actually, that was when I promoted to captaincy.” He gestured around him, grinning widely. “I got a ship, a crew, an officer’s weapon, the whole package.” He settled back down, still grinning. “First voyage was a patrol, and boy what a patrol it was.”
I rolled my eyes as he paused, waiting for me to ask the question. “What happened?”
“We patrolled all the way from the northern Equus coast to the southern coast. Up the Equestrian coastline to the Griffonian Empire, further to the Dragon Lands, and all the way down to the Zebrican Farlands.” He sighed, leaning back. “And after our fourth resupply at Manehattan’s port, we went east to explore an archipelago. And that, is when we found the seaponies.” I blinked.
“Wait, how long ago was this, Keel?”
“Captain Keel,” he hummed. “This was about fifty years ago, so I guess that would make me eighty by now.” My jaw dropped as he stared at his fur with a smug grin. “I still look young as ever, though.”
“Fifty years? You mean you were the one who found the seaponies?” I shook my head disbelievingly. “And here I thought that seaponies were mare’s tales during my early life, when in reality, their existence has been confirmed for about half a century.”
“Yup!” He laughed heartily. “We were supposed to keep it secret though; the seaponies were practically an ancient civilization that was still trying to figure out how tools worked. I would probably take longer than they did to figure that out; underwater tools are kind of hard to make work.” He sighed. “Anyway, that’s when we started running patrols around the seaponies to protect against pirates. We stuck around their area and in their city for five years, and after that, I started running undercover work for the crown.”
“Undercover?”
“Mhm. Ya see, there was a smuggling ring out there in the archipelago that shipped goods that were first brought to the badlands, out to the maritime boundary to be shipped to the Equestrian ports. Stuff like firewater, which was prohibited at the time, and dragon opium.” Keel leant back, sighing in contentment. “Especially dragon opium… yeah…” He shook his head and bolted back up. “B-but yeah! I was given an honorable discharge so that I could be made a privateer for the crown. I immediately began looking for new crew members in ports, local sailors who were thirsting for a pay, no matter the method. The navy let me keep my royal vessel to keep up a story that I’d stolen the caravel on my own, so at least to give me some reputation. Some smugglers saw the meaning of that to be that I knew how to evade the authorities, and I was instantly given offers for trade routes all across the Equestrian coast and the archipelago.”
“Wait, is the island here apart of the archipelago?”
“Finally!” Keel shot me a smile. “Yes, and that brings me to my next point; the island.”
“What about it?” I tilted my head.
“That would be where I died.”
“Wait, what?”
“What? I’m dead, can’t you tell?” He looked himself over. “I’m pretty sure the glowing makes it obvious.” He sighed, waving my confusion off. “Turns out there was a pirate den. My boys and I got ambushed while we were gathering some fruits for our supplies. My boys fought well, but the pirates outnumbered us. Captured all of us and threatened to have our heads if we didn’t tell ‘em where we moored our ship. I broke out and distracted ‘em all while my crew headed back to the ship, found their cove, and burned all of their fleet. Course, you know what happened to me back at the pirate encampment.” He smiled sadly at me, my head still dunked in the tub. “The lead captain was real mad when he found his ships burning, so he took that anger out on me. Ten days later, I wake up on the island a ghost.”
I frowned. “That sucks.” Keel chuckled.
“Yes, I suppose it does suck.”
“Pirate’s aren’t cool at all.” I sighed, sinking deeper into the water. “Trust me, I know.” Keel raised a brow.
“What would you know about pirates?”
I rolled my eyes. “I was a smuggler, remember?” Keel’s mouth formed an ‘o’ as I continued. “My brother and his friends were, at least. I was mostly just there to help with the heavy lifting.” I frowned as my brother’s trademark grin came into my mind. He had smiled a lot and quite easily. I raised my head and looked at Keel, finding some similarities to my brother in his eyes. My frown deepened. “We hauled maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred-fifty crates of cargo on every trip, and our schooners made it fairly obvious that we were worth pirating.” I sighed. “We got attacked a lot.”
“And inspected a lot?” I snorted.
“Like you wouldn’t believe. I swear, every time we undocked or docked, there would be a royal sitting there to make sure our modest fleet was heading out to another Equestrian port and not a smuggler's den.” Keel hummed thoughtfully.
“Bringing us back to our initially topic, which we seem to have diverged from quite a bit,” Keel coughed as I flushed. “Would you happen to know where those dens would be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why I wouldn’t. Why do you ask?”
“Let me answer that by asking another question; do you know anypony in those dens that you can trust with helping the seaponies?” I brought my head out of the water, thinking.
“I… I suppo— oh.”
“Oh is right,” Keel said grinning. “Now fill that bucket over there with water and come show me the way.”