Samudra's Journal

by vren55


Entry 63: More Queens

Curse it. Just… curse it all.

Ten years into our alliance with the changelings and two kelpie queens emerged in after five year periods. Not together thankfully, but the emergence of any kelpie queen is something to be concerned.

Well the queens do not really pose a threat to my power. I crushed the damn upstart not too far from Aquamaris. She wanted to attack my capital, endanger my seaponies, try to make a statement to the rest of Aquestria. I didn’t even let her come close to the city boundaries.

What really worried me was the number of kelpies she led. Before today, I hadn’t encountered very large groups in Aquestria. Say… ten to fifteen kelpies at a time? The queen that led the group on the surface had about fifty kelpies. The first of the queens that I encountered during this period led one an entire company, one hundred kelpies.

The sheer numbers meant they killed over fifty of my escort and wounded sixty more. By the Creator, these monsters are ferocious. Aside from their natural armor, they seem just...faster, more maneuverable than the usual deep pony or sea pony. Granted, I have very little to compare against. I cannot recall of the kelpies of decades ago were as fast or as nimble. It’s what my soldiers were saying, but they were not the soldiers of fifty years ago. Which is another problem I’m running into when fighting these kelpies. By the time we encounter them, the veterans that had fought the last kelpies are either too old to fight, or have been shifted to other units and duties.

I am most intrigued by the second queen, though. She tried to ambush me on a tour of Aquestria by setting a trap that would have worked, but not on someone not of my calibre. She had an informant within my court that told her of the route I was about to take for my annual tour and it’s possible diversions.

She then gathered twenty kelpies and laid an ambush along my route. We were skirting one of the mid-ocean ranges in the middle of the Eastern ocean on the way to the Aquestrian city of Urchinspike which offered the kelpies quite a lot of hiding spots. I hadn’t expected they would be so audacious, and neither did my captain of the guard… well, former, captain of the guard, he resigned later that day.

Their attack began with an blast of ocean current that ripped my litter from my litter-bearers and drove it into the sea floor. The blast also had the effect of disorientating my guards. The kelpies then sprang upon my escort, who were hampered in their efforts to fend them off because the earlier blast of water had scattered their formations, while also disorientating them. The queen herself charged at my litter, and tried to use her hydromancy to crush the litter around me, whilst boiling the water inside the litter.

I’d be dead, if I wasn’t the Aquestrian Empress. I brought my own hydromancy to bear and basically overpowered hers, so that I could escape from my litter and engage her myself. I asked her to surrender, told her it was a good try, but she would die.

For some ridiculous reason, she said: “That will not work on me.” And attacked. I let her try to kill me with her hydromancy, before turning the water around her into steam and watched as she screamed in agony.

Good riddance. She tried to kill me and her attack killed half of my escort before I put them all down.

That being said, this “Tethys, Queen of the Kelpies” was at least more inventive than the rest of the queens.