-Canterlot Castle, Maries-
“It is urgent that we speak with Princess Celestia.” The stallion in the armor before us was being horribly obstructive, most likely because of our species.
“Sure, that’s what most ponies believe.” The stallion rolled his eyes.
“We’re not ponies though, we’re lawyers and representatives happen to be on a time sensitive case so, if you could please move out the way sir.” Marie tried sweetly.
“Like a creature like you could legally become a lawyer in civilized society.” We glared at him and Mara started to growl slightly.
“Is something the matter here Maries?” We all smiled at hearing the voice of Princess Cadence, we turned to her with a calmer demeanor.
At least we could understand in some part why one of our beloved prospective mates had a fascination with toying with the Royal Guard.
“Yes, we have a manner most urgent and there are no other ponies in line, yet this stallion will not less us through.” Maria stated blithely and the guard looked between us and Cadence.
“Uh, you know this horrible beast Princess Cadence?” The stallion in question asked.
“What you may see as a horrid beast, I see as a friend being held up for no apparent reason whatsoever. I know that Aunt Celestia would certainly like to hear about this.” Cadence lit her horn lifted the guard and walked into the throne room with him. “So if you’ll excuse us, I believe me and my friends have business to attend to.”
“We thank you for the assistance Princess Cadence.” We said in unison and with respect clearly earned.
“You’re welcome, ponies aren’t the only beings that require some love and friendship.” Cadence led us up to a bored looking Celestia, she sat up and smiled at the sight of a panicking and flailing guard held in her niece’s magic.
-One week later in Zebrica, Zebra Village, Jacky-
The quest to the find the book was… underwhelming. We found it in an alcove in the ruins and we discovered the book that was cursed with awesome.
The book wasn’t exactly cursed to do anything negative to whoever wielded it. It was the book itself that had a curse, the irony of which is that the curse made the book entirely illegible.
It’s a good thing we eventually figured out what the book did, given the only clue we had to go on was that the map called it the ‘Animating Album’.
It would become quite useful with the modifications I wanted to make to this ship, said modifications were going to require supplies and that’s what Gene was out buying. For once I was stuck on the ship while Savannah and Flotsam were out having fun, with the exception of Nefer who was playing with the Animating Album.
“Nefer, get down from there!” Our little errand runner was currently using the black inky tentacles coming out of the book to carry him around the underside of the balloon. I could see that two of the tentacles were wrapped around his barrel and four others were safely sticking to the balloon without going into it. It made Nefer look like a demented spider on top of being an anugyptian feline plant hybrid.
The imagery of Nefer having spider legs growing out of his back made me shudder silently in horror.
“In a minute Captain, didn’t you say we needed to check the balloon for leaks?” Nefer was right, I did say that we needed to do that. If we didn’t have a balloon then the airship wouldn’t fly, we didn’t exactly have much in the way of an emergency mast and I’m surprised we haven’t had balloon trouble yet.
I’m chalking that up to the ships name that it has handled my luck so far, what with the buffeting winds, icicle hailstorms, flaming clouds and average weather with birds trying to ram their beaks into the balloon constantly. It was definitely not for the lack of trying on my lucks part, what with its attempts to take this airship down.
If anyone had to bother to ask how a cloud could be lit on fire, then they didn’t know me very well enough to know that physics takes a lunch break where I’m involved.
“Fine, finish up and get down here, your sister wouldn’t like it if you fell and hurt yourself!” The little guy looked sheepish for a moment and then nodded to me. “I would also like to say nice initiative, we can’t be careful enough!”
“Thanks captain!” We really couldn’t could we? Speaking of which, I hoped Flotsam got that life vest she had been wanting for a while. Nefer and the rest of us couldn’t always be there to keep Flotsam afloat, so a life vest was warranted as the one time she nearly drowned was one time too many.
I continued to carefully watch as Nefer used the book to climb around the balloon. I would actually rather have Belfry do this, but he was going to help Gene carry those supplies back to the ship.
“Any hissing noises?” We were keeping the balloon partially inflated for a few reasons, one of which was testing structural integrity of the thing that kept us flying.
“Aside from the one coming from down there, no I don’t hear anything.” What did Nefer mean by hissing noise coming from down here?
There was nothing on the ship that will hiss like that, unless it was the quiet engine sputtering out. I didn’t think it was anywhere close to having problems the last time I checked it.
I slowly turned my gaze to see a humongous snake staring at me, it flicked its tongue in my direction and then smiled slightly. It was long and big enough to lift its head up onto the deck, so one can imagine how big this thing is.
“The flora of Zebrica is quite beautiful, except for that one occasion, but all its animals are really quite lousy.” That and I was about to be attacked by a giant anaconda that apparently had a taste for parrot judging by the way it smiled after smelling me with its tongue. “Nefer when you’re done with that, come on down and wait for me to come back from this!”
Nefer looked down at me quizzically until he saw the anaconda lunge for me and I jumped off the side of the ship as it gave chase.
Just another day of being constantly harassed by my luck. The local zebra population gave me a wide berth as I led the snake away from their village.
They had better be grateful for this, because I certainly wasn’t doing this for charity!
-Two hours later, Nefer-
“Are you okay captain?” I was worried about Captain Blackcap when that giant snake chased after her, but I knew she could run pretty fast. The anaconda almost caught her several times before she ran out of sight and it was only now that she was walking up to me covered in mud scratches and slightly singed feathers.
“Had to warn it off with a point blank powder blast from my party cannon and found out that I had to remove my weapons from the cannon before I used it.” I lowered a rope ladder for her to use and she started to climb up with a faint smile. “Thanks Nefer. Using my cannon was quite cumbersome to say the least, but I’ll be okay. Though having to crawl into the snake’s mouth to pull my weapons out of it is something I’d never want to do again. Next time I’ll just use some ipecac, I’m pretty sure the zebras import or possibly even export the stuff if they started growing it locally here.”
“What’s ipecac?” I was curious, because she said growing. Growing meant it was some kind of plant.
“It’s a shrub that can be used to make a medical syrup that causes vomiting when swallowed or introduced to the body.” That sounded rather nasty, but I can kind of understand why the captain would want that. A lot of the larger creatures here wanted to swallow her alive for some reasons, there were much easier things to prey on than Captain Blackcap.
“That sounds gross, do you think it works on Giant Venus Meat Eaters?” I had to ask because she was swallowed by one of those not too long ago. I didn’t like that big toothy plant at all, it was really mean spirited.
“Probably not Nefer, ipecac is supposed to work on biological creatures and not botanical ones.” Okay, it was time to check on my trees growing at the rear of the ship. I believe it’s called the stern, nautical terms weren’t entirely useful in the air when you wanted to call something out from below. “Hey Nefer, can you leave the Animating Album with me please?”
Huh? Oh right, I was holding it in my tail!
I dropped it in front of Jacky and then went to go check on my trees, I really liked them. I paused for second and turned back to Captain Blackcap.
“Captain, what do you call if you see something below the ship while in the air?” I can understand port and starboard perfectly fine, but airships also have an up and down.
“You say hold side for down and sky side for up. If you need to say something is left and down, you’d say it like port and hold side.” Captain rubbed me on the head affectionately. “From there I’m sure you can figure it out. If you need to be more direct about whether something is more to the forward or back, then stern or bow can also be added to the statement of directions to be more specific.”
I nodded and went to check on my trees, nobody can get scurvy while I’m around!
-Jacky-
Smiling in Nefer’s direction as I picked up the Animating Album and just looked at it. It was a simple brown covered book with two symbols on the cover and not much else.
One of the two symbols was an ankh representing ‘life’. Sekhet taught us that and repeatedly mentioned that souls were sacred. I don’t think this book had a soul, but the book could mimic it using magic.
The second one was a little harder to figure out, it was a triskelion. The symbol that represented ‘motion’ or that things came in the number three, both of which were accurate to the album’s abilities.
It was the most useful object we’ve found on our treasure hunts so far, yet the danger we went through to retrieve was highly disappointing.
No traps involving intelligent boulders, no fireball spewing sconces, no giant ice monster, all it was doing was just sitting there waiting among the ruins to simply be picked up. The only real danger was that it was in the middle of a jungle in Zebrica.
The ‘Cape of Ill Winds’ and the ‘Luck Flipping Turtle Coin’ were not very useful. Well the cape might actually be useful if I wanted to charge at the most dangerous thing around, I wasn’t much of a cape person despite being the captain of this ship. I was also quite sure that Flotsam should never use the cape, as it would likely immediately drag her into the nearest body of water.
The Animating Album didn’t curse the user, you could use it as much as you want and it had a particular trait I wanted to test out.
I opened the book pointed towards the deck and the inky tentacles shot out of it to pull itself to the deck and it disappeared into the wood, seemingly melding with it fluidly. The entire airship shuddered as if it took a large breathe of air, it now felt like the entire ship was alive.
After a few seconds of that I put my talons to the deck and then pulled it back with the cover of the book attached to my palm, I close the book and the tentacles pulled back into the album’s cover. The ship suddenly stopped feeling like it was a breathing being and alive.
The last one to touch the book has control of it, nice to know. If it was animating something it couldn’t be taken by anyone else. If the Animating Album was animating itself it could be used as a defensive and offensive weapon with the tentacles of ink made from the illegible script found in the book, in fact the script itself being animated may be the reason why the writing in the album is as warped as it is.
As for why it’s an album? Well the things it is used on appear in the book as pictures, such as The Ardent Survivor taking up the entirety of page two. Page one had a picture of the book itself and my party cannon due in part to a small incident.
The Animating Album had about twenty or so pages covered in strange writing, two of those pages were taken up by the three images. The larger the object, the more space it takes up in the album.
Why didn’t I see more pages filled in in this thing? It had to have been used by someone else at some point and thus there should be more pictures in the album… darn it I just remembered something that I forgot to tell Maries!
I didn’t tell her that I saw Jade’s fire or that Jade was still around… in a sense. I was just happy to see her and catch up on our lives that I forgot about it, in fact she could have delivered that information to mom! I guess I had to wait for Ratatoskr then.
In any case it was kind of obvious that the book animates itself, but it only had a limited number of objects it could animate unless we could figure out what erased all the other objects in the book. Once we eventually figured that out, the one object that we likely wouldn’t be able to erase without destroying the album’s special properties was the album itself pictured on the first page.
The album only did three things. It attached to something, animated it provided that it wasn’t alive previously and then it could be detached from an object to end the effect. It wouldn’t animate the dead or already living, it would animate constructs created from the dead such as wood being from chopped down trees.
“Did all the wood on the ship just seem alive to you too captain?” Nefer plodded on over to me and titled his head curiously as he rubbed at the green skullcap on his head.
“Yes, I was just testing something with the Animating Album.” So I wasn’t the only one who felt the ship becoming animate. I guess a side effect of animating an object was that it became a lot more noticeable to someone’s instincts. “So… how are your trees?”
“They’re doing really well captain! All the good soil samples I’ve gotten is making them bear some really tasty fruit!” He pulled a lemon out of a pouch and held it up to me. “Can you help me make some lemonade?”
“Of course, Nefer.” I started moving for the door to below deck. “I could use a nice drink after my run-in with that anaconda, I'm thankfully not its main squeeze!”
Nefer giggled brightly and followed me into the galley.