Theo ran below as quickly as she could. She couldn’t imagine what difficulty Sharp could possibility be having: his engines seemed to be assembled so perfectly, with an incredible standard of mechanical tolerance for something that had been built by hoof.
But as she opened the door to the engine room, she was hit with a wave of black smoke that sent her staggering back, hacking and coughing. Oh god we’re on fire. There was no mistaking that terrible smell, even from the top of the stairs. Theo had smelled it plenty of times before, though it had been some years since she’d been so close. Burning oil.
“Are you coming?” Sharp’s voice came from the stairs, strained and just a little terrified. “I, uh… could really use an extra set of hooves. Claws? Whatever!”
She held her breath, lowered her head, then charged through the smoke. Once she got through the doorway it wasn’t nearly as bad—there had been quite a cloud collecting there, and now that it was free to flow, it was more like a stream.
The engine room itself was filled with the fumes, collecting near the ceiling mostly. Flames emerged from the engines on both sides of the ship, their mechanical hatches opened and exposed. It looked far more like Sharp was trying to minimize the spread than to stop the damage at this point.
“Here!” Sharp tossed her a set of goggles, which she caught in one claw. “You’ll need these. Fires of Tartarus are burning in here.”
She pulled them on, relieved for the first time more than annoyed by how silly they looked. She wiped their smudges clean on one wing. “What happened?”
“I… I’m not sure,” Sharp said, obviously on the edge of panic. “There was nothing out of the Crystal Empire, I checked myself. Those maintenance ponies didn’t go in here, the doors were sealed. But… but as soon as I throttled down to stop and hover, something happened. I was watching you on deck, didn’t see until…” His own coat was already burned in places, with scraps of cloth wrapped around him to fight against the burns. For whatever good it did.
“Fire extinguisher?” Theo suggested. “How do you normally fight a fire in a wooden airship?”
His eyes were wide with desperation. He pointed to several large bags of sand on the ground, cut open. They hadn’t worked, obviously. “Used the whole water reserve. We’re still burning. There’s something in the engines I’ve never seen before. Normally you just flush, the fuel falls, and the fire goes out. But something in there is burning steel.”
I know some things that burn steel. What was worse, Sharp apparently didn’t. “We’ll burn,” she said, more for confirmation than to ask. “Right?”
He nodded gravely. “Engines hug half the body. We’re burning from a dozen places. Nothing I can…”
Theo looked back down through the opening, ignoring the desperate pony. There was something down there, something she’d seen during her flying practice. The lake.
“How fast can we descend?”
“Pretty fast, once the flames reach the gasbag,” he said grimly. “I didn’t call you to help me, not really. I wanted to ask… for you to take the filly and go.” He held out a pouch, half filled with golden pony currency. “Take it. Do what you can. Neither of you are strong enough to carry me. You need to get off while you can.”
“Keep your damn money,” Theo grunted, shoving the pouch towards him and yanking on his goggles. “We’re living through this. You too, come on. We’re going down.”
They reached the deck a second later, thick black smoke climbing up behind them. Sharp was in a daze, apparently too confused by his life burning around him to care about anything else. Theo had to jostle him again to get his attention. “Sharp Edge! Do you have an emergency vent or not?”
He twitched, then pointed weakly with a hoof. There was a bright red handle near the helm, with metal tubes going all the way up to the gasbag. “Opens it from the top. You can dump everything in twenty seconds. If you do…”
We’ll all die. Theo might not be an expert herself, or from any kind of practical career, but she knew a fall from a thousand feet into water wasn’t much better than hitting cement.
Theo turned, running from him to the helm. Poor Emerald hadn’t taken her hooves from the wheel, though she was shaking like she might be about to cry. “Summer? W-what is… Why are we on fire?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, pointing at the lake. It wasn’t quite below them, but close enough. Could they steer that much with the engines on fire? “Aim there,” she said, reaching up and yanking on the emergency valve. She felt the shudder from above her, the furious hiss and rushing wind.
They instantly lurched forward, angling backward sharply. Theo nearly lost her grip and fell out into the sky, except that her animalistic forelegs dug deep into the wood.
The engines. They’re the heaviest part of the ship. Now they’re bringing us down.
Bright orange now joined black from the stairwell. One of the windows below shattered as heat belched out from inside. Yet somehow Sharp Edge stood firm on the deck, almost unmoved by the tilt.
It wasn’t just the tilt, either. Beside her, Emerald was lifted right off the deck and into the air. She would’ve smacked painfully into the gasbag herself, if Theo didn’t snatch her hind leg by a claw, holding her down.
God don’t let this be too fast, she thought, desperate. But it was too late to change her mind. She’d never make it to the ballast to try and give them more lift, and she couldn’t exactly add more gas. All she could do was close her eyes and pray that they were falling the right way. Their path was wild and spiraling, leaving a black trail all the way down.
Then they hit the water. The impact was shocking enough that Theo was flung right from the deck, tearing through the helm she’d been holding and taking Emerald with her. She screamed once more, then her cry was lost in the roaring wind and water.
For a few seconds, Theo didn’t move. She was too shocked from the impact to swim, even to fight with her wings to stay afloat. She just sunk, the world growing blurry.
Then she felt something twitch from beside her. It was Emerald, kicking and struggling towards the surface. Theo finally moved, following her in a trail of bubbles.
She broke the surface of the water to a pond that was no longer peaceful. The Horizon floated in the water not far away, huge clouds of billowing steam rising from it. I guess being light enough to fly means they’re light enough to float.
But considering the other option had been dying, she wasn’t particularly concerned with the health of the airship in any case.
But there was one pony she worried very much about. Well, two. Once she saw that Emerald was swimming safely to shore, Theo went searching for brown fur. Sharp Edge had been on the deck, he wouldn’t be far.
And yet—Sharp Edge wasn’t there. You’re not dying on me today, she thought, gritting her teeth. Swimming on four legs wasn’t easy—but at least they weren’t in the high arctic anymore. Whatever chill the snowmelt brought, it wouldn’t freeze her to death before she found the pony who had just tried to get her to jump.
The Horizon wasn’t dramatically sinking away like the Titanic, as she’d initially feared. As she approached, she found it actually bobbing up in the water. The biggest obstruction wasn’t the airship sinking away, it was the deflated gasbag. The whole thing was rapidly soaking through, slumping into the water. The deck of the Horizon would’ve been fully above the water otherwise.
There, something moving! Theo lunged forward towards it—just another patch of flapping fabric in the pond. Was that a patch of brown fur? She had to go forward and find out, before…
Yes, there he was. It was right where the entrance to the lower deck would’ve been. Theo reached it, yanking sideways with all her might. When that didn’t do anything, she used her claws instead. Those cut through without too much difficulty—one cut, then another, and Sharp Edge broke the surface of the water, gasping and struggling for air. He was wearing saddlebags now, which he must’ve swum down into the Horizon to retrieve. They also weighed him down.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Theo asked, furious. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”
Sharp looked back at her with an unfamiliar expression—confusion? He must be dazed from the impact. Theo wrapped her claws under his shoulder, then yanked, spreading both her wings and using them to swim to shore.
It wasn’t far—maybe twenty seconds of swimming, and they emerged on a muddy beach. Theo let go of her companion, then flopped onto the sand beside where Emerald had climbed, closing her eyes.
She wasn’t sure how long she laid there, letting the water lap around her. She heard no explosions from the Horizon, so evidently her emergency extinguishing techniques hadn’t caused anything that catastrophic.
This isn’t the end of the world, she thought, trying to convince herself it was true. All her possessions were in that airship, and it was at least partially submerged. How many of them would survive? More importantly, how in god’s name were they supposed to make the trip to the homeland of her new species, then back to the arctic, without the Horizon?
Sharp is okay. Emerald is okay. That was what mattered. Her new friends had survived. Her plan had been desperate, maybe insane—but it had worked.
Better than jumping and leaving Sharp to burn to death, anyway. There was definitely sympathy for him there—the pony had been so shocked and pained by losing his ship that his only plan was “give her the money and die.” If she could land, then surely he could’ve too, right?
Whatever, it didn’t matter. The shock of her survival was wearing off, and as it did the other conditions came rushing back. The chilly water lapping at her legs and lower body hadn’t been life-threatening initially, but now she was starting to shiver. She pulled herself out, rising shakily to her hooves. At least being naked all the time meant there wasn’t anything to dry out.
“Well that’s the worst airplane ride I’ve ever had,” she said. “If you ever come to my world, you can see one of our airships. With 100% less crashing.”
"Uthini?" Emerald said, her eyes wide with confusion. "Kungani ukhuluma kanjalo?"
Theo’s eyes widened with sudden horror—she had heard that sound before. It was what ponies sounded like when she wasn’t wearing the necklace.
She looked down, eyes widening as she saw what she’d already known she would. It wasn’t there. Theo reached up, pointing to the empty spot on her neck.
She spoke slowly, even though she knew it wouldn’t make a difference. “No… magic,” she said. “Can’t… understand.” Even without a single word of comprehension passing between them, her intention was obvious enough.
Emerald hurried over—far less shaken than Sharp Edge. She leaned in close, staring at the empty place on Theo’s neck, then looking back at the water with panicked eyes. "Celestia isisiza. Ngeke sikubuyisele manje."
Theo couldn’t tell what she had said any more than she had—but her drooping ears and crushed expression were message enough. They were also exactly what Theo felt anyway.
It’s not the end of the world, Theo. Don’t try to solve every problem at once.
Their biggest problem wasn’t the communication barrier, it was shelter. They would freeze to death out here, that had to be taken care of. There was plenty of wood, and Sharp Edge had his saddlebags. Theo would’ve bet money the stallion had rescued survival supplies, if she had any money to risk. Unfortunately it was all floating in a lake.
It took Theo just over an hour to build a camp. It wasn’t that she knew very much about what she was doing—actually she knew almost nothing about it, beyond a single trip she’d taken with her family when she’d still been in the single digits.
But while the ponies in her company had been shocked into a stupor by their near deaths, for Theo it was only the impetus to act.
She was right about Sharp Edge stocking for survival—ponies had matches as it turned out, which was good since she probably would’ve frozen to death if they’d been stuck with flint and steel.
Once the heat of the campfire surrounded them, her companions seemed to recover—at least enough that they were speaking again. Just not to her. She listened closely, trying to make sense of what they were saying. There were a few words in there she was sure she knew—her own name and “pony” were clear, even if words in the alien language were hard to concentrate on even now.
I’m going to have to find that necklace before we go. Not that she knew how the hell they were going to get out now that their airship was under a few inches of water.
But that was a problem for tomorrow. Theo herself was running on steam—she needed to rest, before the mental and emotional exhaustion killed her. If any of my stuff is still intact down there, another night won’t make a difference. She would happily trade every tablet, flashlight, and radio for the translation spell.
She woke from inside a cramped tent the next morning, resting atop a pile of blankets that hadn’t been there when she went to sleep. Sharp Edge sat by the campfire, slowly stirring a large pot.
“Uvukile,” Sharp Edge said. His mane was a mess and there were bags under his eyes, though that was hardly the first thing she noticed.
I took it for granted that we could understand each other, and this is what I get. “I’m awake,” she said, climbing from the tent and shaking herself out. The morning was chilly, but the fire so close promised swift relief. She sat down on a log, watching Sharp stir.
"Ngiyazi ukuthi awukwazi ukungiqonda. Emerald wangena emanzini ukuyofuna isakhiwo. Sizobona lokho angayithola."
Theo’s frown intensified. There was exactly one thing in that entire mess she thought she understood—and even then, it was just a thought. “I’m, uh… sure thing, Sharp. I’m glad about… that.”
She waited patiently while Sharp finished cooking in the old metal pot—it didn’t smell particularly good, but she also was so hungry that she didn’t care. When he brought over a tin cup filled with stew, she ate every bit and even drank the broth. Nearly dying in an airship crash was hungry work.
Emerald emerged from the lake a few minutes later, dripping wet and dragging a large canvas bag along with her. Theo’s eyes widened as she saw it, instantly recognizing it.
This was where she kept her possessions, the only proof that she had a life before, somewhere else.
"Angitholanga umgexo, kodwa ngithole lokhu," Emerald said, dropping it at Theo’s hooves. “Sorry.”
Theo might not know what she was saying, but she didn’t really need to. She leaned forward for a hug, holding the wet pegasus against her chest for a second. “Thanks for bringing that up for me,” she said. “Is the necklace in there?”
Theo didn’t wait for an answer, just opened the soaked canvas and searched around inside with her claws. She lifted out the tablet, her radio, and a few totally soaked technical logs. I guess I’m already pretty late filing those. A few bits of soaked clothing, a hard-plastic case with a few electronics accessories inside.
She opened the box, removing the headlamp from inside and lifting it up onto her forehead. It wasn’t tight enough, but a few quick knots in the elastic fixed that problem. God help me if I had hooves like you guys.
No magic in the bag, though. Theo rose, patting the pegasus once on the head and turning towards the lake. “We can’t go anywhere if we can’t talk,” she declared, walking past them. She flicked on the headlamp into its brightest setting. “I’m going to find the necklace. Stay here.”
She waded out into the water, scanning its surface. This was just a pond, right? She could see the bottom in most places she looked. This wasn’t impossible. She just had to remember… where had she been thrown? She’d been able to understand Emerald right up until the moment of impact. That had to mean she’d lost the spell sometime after that.
Theo began her search. She’d never been the best swimmer in the world, but she was clearly better than either of these ponies. Maybe it was her many memories of heated pools back on Earth, or maybe it was some kind of instinct. She couldn’t deny her body resembled a fisher-bird.
Even if the water didn’t seem that cold at first, the longer she was wet the more of her energy it drew from her skin. She started to shiver, and still all the metal she’d seen were bits of broken engine.
It was at least an hour before she finally gave up, and let herself start to drift over the water. The pond wasn’t deep—she could make it to the bottom just about anywhere. Unfortunately the pond was at least a half mile across at its widest point, and almost as long. There’s no way I could search the whole thing… it’s gone.
What would happen to her in a world where she couldn’t speak the language? More importantly, could she even open the Doorway to make it back?
"Usuvele uphuma amahora!" Sharp Edge called from the water, gesturing for her. "Buyela, ihlobo! Udinga ukuphumula!"
At least some messages were easy enough to understand, even without magic to make the translation possible.
But she wasn’t going to listen. She ignored him, turning back down. She was fairly certain she’d narrowed down the general path that she had taken when she was thrown from the Horizon. If she only kept looking…
There was another bit of glittering metal down there, reflecting the cool white of her LED headlamp. Theo took a breath, and dove. There wasn’t much water, maybe ten meters at most, but that was enough to feel the pressure against her ears, and against her lungs. As she got closer, the darker water overhead seemed to practically close in around her, a constant reminder of just how close to dead she was.
Her claws closed around something metallic, and she pushed off with her hind legs. It was true she didn’t have a clue what she was doing when it came to flying, but she also didn’t need to for this. Her wings pushed off from the air around her, and that was enough.
She made it to the surface, hauling the bit of metal up with her. She held it out, squinting at it in the early afternoon sun.
It wasn’t a necklace, as much as she had wished it would be. It looked instead like something from inside the engine, thrown loose by the impact. It was entirely melted on one side, while the other half was just a pipe. She swore loudly, and nearly tossed it away. But as she was raising her foreleg to throw, she caught a glimpse of something reflective on the underside. A stamp in the metal, of a logo she’d seen before: a stylized feather.
She brought the chunk of metal with her to the shore, mostly because she wanted something to claim that she hadn’t completely wasted her time. She tossed it onto the ground in front of Sharp Edge, who was busy collecting cans and other sealed containers probably taken from the Horizon.
His eyes widened as he saw the metal. "Kungani ulethe ucezu ... oh." He stopped, turning it over as she had. She could see the recognition in his face, even if his words didn’t make sense. "Lokhu akukwazi ukufika lapha. Ngakhele injini ngokwami. Kodwa angikwazi ukucabanga noma yikuphi lapho kuyobe kushisa ngokwanele ukuqubuka kwensimbi."
Theo whimpered, dropping down beside the fire. Somepony had let it burn low in the late afternoon, but it was still warm enough that it was an instant relief against her coat. She closed her eyes, ignoring the conversation she couldn’t understand taking place somewhere nearby. Emerald sounded worried, though about what she had no idea.
It was nearly dark by the time someone jostled her, with another pot of not-exciting stew. She sat up, and drank the whole thing in a few quick sips. "Akudingeki uhlale ubheka, Summer. Kungakapheli sikhathi noma kamuva kufanele sishiye le nto. Angifuni ukuyeka ukubheka Horizon noma, kodwa ngaphandle kwegesi ephikisana nephethiloli akuveli kuleli gama. Ithimba futhi anginakho okuncane."
Theo watched him, willing herself to understand. But it didn’t matter how closely she listened, she still didn’t speak the language. “I didn’t find it,” she said, knowing that he wouldn’t understand any better than she did. “I’ll try again after I catch my breath for a bit. We can’t leave here without that translation. I just… I can’t do this. Living without knowing what anyone around me is saying.”
Emerald hopped up next to her on the other side, offering a wrapped bundle at her claws. Berries of some kind, fresh-picked. She couldn’t tell what they were, but the encouragement was enough to guess they were safe. She picked up the bundle and ate them too. They weren’t great, but it sure beat stew of questionable origin. She licked her claws clean when she was done, nodding with appreciation.
“Thanks, Emerald,” she said, patting the filly on the shoulder. It was the kind of message she hoped didn’t need a translation. Unfortunately it was also too dark to make much progress in her search. The water was cloudy, and only the Horizon was safe enough to comb through.
As she looked, it was obvious that Sharp Edge hadn’t been sitting idle all day. He’d removed the gasbag completely, spreading it out on the shore away from the water. The ship was also riding higher in the water somehow, its deck now totally lifted. But there was still water coming from belowdecks, and she had no confusion about why. The engine compartment had been open to the deck. That was why the ship hadn’t burned in the first place.
“I guess you didn’t find the necklace while you worked on the Horizon?” she asked.
Only confusion answered. "Asisazi ukuthi uthini, Summer,” Sharp Edge said. "Uma lokhu kuqhubeka isikhathi eside, kuzodingeka sithole indlela engcono yokuxhumana. Kufanele kube khona indlela. Amaponi afunde izilimi ezintsha ngaphambili. Nginamaqhawe amanga nawo."
Theo shrugged one shoulder, hoping that was answer enough to satisfy him. She would go back to the lake as soon as she got a little more rest. Maybe the darkness would make broken metal bits stand out more. She just needed to rest for a few more minutes…