//------------------------------// // Chapter forty, it’s a big world: Moderately curious. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -???, Flotsam- “Mnnn… where?” I opened my eyes and saw a weakly grinning Nefer in my face, my head and body hurts. I also felt really weak at the moment. “Nefer, what’s going on and why does everything feel wet?” Looking around I saw that we were treading water with Nefer clamping onto me and his blue leaves were all spread flatly against the surface of the water. Wait… we were in water… deep water… we were in deep water! I felt my breathing start to quicken, I was going to drown! I don’t want to drown! Sea ponies are not meant to drown! I’d even be the first one to do so and it’d be nowhere near where someone could record it for posterity! I am very much hydrophobic right now! I heard a shifting noise from above. It was a slowly lowering ceiling, which we also seemed to be moving up closer towards and then some spikes popped out. “Uh… you’re having a really bad nightmare?” It wasn’t a statement, it was more like a question and Nefer seemed to be trying to convince me that this situation wasn’t as bad as it looked. “It’s nice to see that you’re at least alright big sis… well at least for the next minute or so anyway. Boy do those spikes look really sharp despite being rusty! I’m sure Captain Blackcap will get us out of this, it’s not as bad as it looks… really!” We were in a room filling with water and lowering ceiling spikes… how is this not as bad as it… so weak… my last sight was my eyes rolling up into the back of my head and the spikes getting closer. “Big sis? Flotsam? Sammy!” -Some time later- “Uhn… what?” I slowly sat up and saw both Jacky and Gene standing at a doorway leading to a wide open U shaped hallway full of boulders rolling back and forth. “So that’s why I’m awesome as a flotation… oh sisters awake again! Hey there… how are you feeling big sis?” One would think you’d know better than I would Nefer. He licked my cheek affectionately. “Look… I know your wings are burnt pretty badly, but we need you to fly over it and find a way to disable it Gene.” Jacky turned back to me when she noticed that I was awake and looking at her. “We’ll all be safe right where we are and I promise not to accidentally let my bad luck make me stumble into another death trap like the last one.” Gene sent Jacky a searching look and then he sighed. “Fine… just don’t die… you scare me sometimes Jacky.” I watched as Gene nuzzled his beak into Jacky’s neck and stroked her head feathers. “It’ll take more than what life can throw at me to bring me down Gene. I’ve lived this long, a few minutes to disable the boulder trap won’t be that bad.” As Jacky hugged Gene tenderly, my eyes slid closed. “Also I might have garnered a slight phobia of large rocks after what happened in Turtle Toga.” -Some time later again- “Errg… why is everything spinning?” I opened my eyes and blinked as I saw black tail feathers and I felt my body pressing into Jacky’s shoulder. “Oh good, you’re awake again Sammy. Quick question… how close is the horsefly right now?” The horse what? What was Jacky talking about? I turned to look at her face as she turned her head to me… no she wasn’t looking at me… she was looking at something… oh my goodness! What was that horrible, horrendous and most hideous thing I’ve ever seen in existence that was currently chasing us?! It had large fangs and solid red bug eyes, its head looked like a highly deformed ponies... I think I was going to be sick. “Almost on top of us.” I weakly told her. Jacky ran slightly to the left and closer to the wall of corridor and that horsefly thing followed her movements. It slammed its head into the wall, both dazing it and slowing it down. “Thank goodness that blood sucking monster is really stupid.” Jacky sent me a glance as she kept running. “Oh… looks like you’re blacking out again.” I was doing what… again… -Some more time later- “Oh not now of all times!” Jacky sounded very distressed about something as I groaned out, my left leg felt like it was in a vice. “This has to be one of the absolute worst times for you to be waking up!” “Ugh… my head is killing me….” I felt something gripping me tightly when I tried to move. “Look… whatever you do… do not look up and try to move around as much as you can!” I blinked and looked up at Jacky clutching tightly to my left hoof with her right talons. Her left hand was currently occupied with holding the edge of something above us that looked like a walkway and all I saw was a stone ceiling full of bricks. “Uh… why shouldn’t I look up?” I asked dazedly. “I don’t see anything up there. Also why would I want to move around a lot?” “It’s so you wouldn’t look around in any other direction.” Jacky stated in a rather sincere tone. “You tell someone to not do something and they will immediately do the opposite out of habit. So I instead, I told you to do exactly the opposite of what I wanted you to.” “That’s kind of leading isn’t it, I mean what if I took your order to move around more seriously?” I asked still feeling a little out of it. “You didn’t though, it was a better idea than telling you to not look around at what is currently going on around us.” Jacky looked at me with slightly weak grin. “That would lead to you completely freaking out and falling to your death because you would make me lose my grip on you. Now that I brought your attention to it, please do go ahead and do that.” My eyes widened as I finally came to my senses, I kept staring at the ceiling and tried not to look away from Jacky holding onto my leg above me in a death grip. I could hear lightning, rain, thunder, howling winds and a screeching noise. My gaze slightly drifted from Jacky and I saw another walkway and storm clouds were vaguely just outside my vision… said clouds were below me. Don’t think about it too hard… don’t look down De’ Brie… everything will be okay. On the other walkway Gene was riding that large annoying butterfly that had taken a shine to Jacky and he was angling that spear for that vaguely familiar horrific looking monster. Said monster had Nefer on its head trying to gnaw through one of its antenna, for all the good his little cat teeth were doing to it. My gaze slowly started to drift downwards. “Don’t…” Jacky said sternly, I looked down anyway and saw myself dangling over a void of dark clouds full of arcing bits of lightning. I swallowed and tried to keep as still as I could as my hoof turned and gripped onto Jacky’s talons tightly. “Good… keep panicking calmly like that.” “You know, you could let me fall and…” I was about to suggest sacrificing myself for Jacky when she glared down at me. “Nope, we’re not doing that whole sacrificial act shtick!” Jacky looked weary and tired, but she was still keeping a tight hold on me… how long had we been hanging like this? In fact, I think she was drawing blood with how tight her grip just got. “I’m not letting you go, you’re a part of this crew and you will continue to be important to us damn it!” “C-c-captain?” She couldn’t be serious right? She should just save herself the trouble of having to keep me around. We heard a roar of pain and we both turned to see the horsefly thing falling towards the clouds. Multiple arcs of lightning leapt up at it before it could even touch them. We watched as its body was completely vaporized in a bright flashy manner. “So… death would be relatively fast and painless at least.” Jacky said in a humorous tone. “I’ve had worse days.” “Worse than being at the bottom of a floating continent above a storm of imminent death?!” I yelled over the roaring winds coming from below. My mane started blocking my view of the terrifying abyss that was below me. “Yes actually… this has actually been one of my better days.” How can Jacky sound so conversationally bland in this situation?! We’re both about to die! “Not even in the top ten worst situations I’ve ever been in come to think of it. Well it would be the top if we fell, but it wouldn’t be that big a problem anymore at that point.” “How are you not freaking out about all this?!” She looked down at me with a smile as that giant butterfly and Gene grabbed her arm and quickly heaved us both up onto the walkway. I felt my belly slam into the surprisingly solid and sturdy stone. I took in a breath of relief and Nefer was soon upon me nuzzling his face against my neck. He was muttering ‘big sister’ over and over again with worry. I lifted my head and saw Jacky bending down, looking towards me with a smile on her beak. “Because it all worked out in the… and… there she goes again.” What was Jacky talking…? “We’ll have… long… her… later… “ -A short while later- I gasp and jerked upwards only to be forced back down by a surprising amount of soft burnt feathers. “She’s awake again Jacky.” Gene muttered, I was apparently being carried by him now and we were in a corridor again. “Eh… if she stays awake this time, then that’ll be a miracle. Now how do we get by this one?” Ahead of us, Jacky was rubbing her chin with her right talon and looking down a normal looking stone hallway. “Eh, nothing for it. Let’s stop to eat something to get some strength back.” I actually managed to stay awake long enough to eat something, then promptly passed out again. -A bit later than last time- When I woke up, I blinked and sat up groggily. When looked around I saw a room full of gold, jewels and treasure. There was also a really big blue crystal jutting from the ceiling, I flicked an ear at hearing Nefer’s voice. “It also says do not remove crystal under any circumstances on threat of world ending consequences… big sis is awake again!” Seeing Nefer’s ear twitch as I sat up, I looked at the large room beyond the group. “Are you okay how many parts of my tail am I holding up?” “Two?” I said groggily rubbing my head with my right hoof and staring at my bandaged left, trying to recall why my left hoof might have been bleeding. It didn’t take me long to remember hanging over volatile storm of death and I wished I couldn’t remember it. “No, that’s not… oh hey my tail is prehensile, I didn’t know that!” He looked back at his tail to see one part of the trident curled up behind him. “Do you think my tail is strong enough to carry or drag stuff with big sis?” “Get back on track Nefer, is there anything else pertinent to this room that we should know about right away?” At Jacky’s command, Nefer went back to reading the wall. “Nothing except don’t do anything to that large crystal, all this treasure here is kind of a bribe for whoever makes it this far. So long as we don’t touch the crystal we should be able to take whatever else we want.” Nefer looking over the strange symbols and squiggles on the wall. “Apparently it is one of four keeping this continent afloat and if even one of these crystals is removed, the entire continent could crash into the sea.” “Right, it’s as we thought… we need to find a way to seal the entrance to the temple and this room altogether in case someone else comes along with the idea to mess with this powerful crystal.” Jacky waved her arm to encompass the whole room. “I’ll try to see if that, ‘Cape Of Ill Wind’, is here. Also nobody is to go anywhere near that crystal, do you hear me! Otherwise pick up and find whatever treasure you want while we’re here, because we’re certainly not coming back to this place once we leave. Otherwise, let’s do some treasure shopping and if you see the cape call for me about it!” -Minutes later- There was some pretty neat stuff here, I just raked some random gems and jewels into my pack and picked up a gaudy looking scepter. We’d be flush with funds for a while from this adventure, I even picked up this green tapestry with gold trim that looked like a… “I think I found it!” Coming over to me took it to look it over, Jacky looked over it and the map. “That’s it we found it!” She took up the cape and held it aloft. “Our first successful treasure hunt. Wonder how you activate this… whoa! Deactivate, deactivate!” Jacky almost slammed bodily into the large crystal, when the cape jerked and started dragging her through the air towards the thing. She narrowly avoided hitting it. “We definitely got what we were looking for, because the most dangerous thing in the room is hitting that crystal.” Jacky stood up and wiped the sweat from her head as she stowed the cape away in her pack and continued looting the treasure for two swords and a few other odds and end. “If everyone’s about done filling their packs, then come on and let’s get out of here before we do something stupid like I almost did!” “Oh great, I’ll actually get to see every trap we passed on the way in.” I commented dryly. Sure I was only awake for a small portion of it, but something made me think that was better than having been awake for the whole thing. I did get to see them all, the fire traps, rolling boulder traps and even the water and ceiling spike room. It was all a pretty straightforward jaunt back to the entrance of the temple with the large butterfly carrying some stuff for Jacky. If it was going to be following us around until we left, it might as well be put to work. “How are we going to seal it off?” Nefer asked as he had dragged a large metal pot all the way back to the entrance with his tail. I think he was going to plant something in that pot… possibly himself. Eventually, Gene thought up a good idea which required my help and one of the fallen pillars from the destroyed field of them from the whole giant exploding beetle monster thing. I broke the walkways and the support structures in the hallways, all while backing towards the entrance and then collapsed that using my abilities. I really did not like having to eat three banana peels to do it though and that made me a bit nauseous. -Jacky- “Okay, let's get back…” A giant bee swooped down and grabbed me. “Why is it always me-he-he-eeee?!”