-The Volcano, evening, Temple of Dark Flames staircase, Jacky-
We both silently walked up the staircase, Gene and I.
A decision was made and now I was contemplating if it was a good idea.
I had made that decision and as soon as we saw light going up the stairs, I thought about the things we learned from Huoshan.
Huoshan told us the GODLESS agents would either seek to capture Ember or go after the longma royal family, not to mention Teatime was going to be gunning for me.
Honestly, I was a bit terrified to see what Teatime would send after me this time. He was only at the bar to scout things out before Sweetcakes attacked him and his... acquaintances that tolerated each other’s presence at the very least.
Teatime’s airship wasn’t in the air dock where it had been sitting before we came in here, which sent up plenty of red flags for me. Probably should have asked Ollie or, if I could stomach listening to his accent, Fred for more information on how to identify where runes could be. The fact that runes could blend into a given area when not in use made them hard to spot, but not invisible.
“Hey, Captain, Mr. Eric, what happened in there?” Little Tem, bless his sweet heart and bright eyes, he came up to us looking a little worried. “Did you find the treasure?”
“We found what we were looking for.” I answered and started to make my way towards the entrance. “Now let’s get out of…”
“Wait, don’t go up!” I paused at Nefer’s panicked tone and Gene focused his attention on our favorite quadrupedal feline crew member. “Look at the ceiling at the entrance.”
Looking up, I saw something that chilled my blood. Teatime had laid a trap at the entrance for us. The rune looked rather innocuous, given its location it was no wonder that we missed it coming in. I reached into my ammo pouch and took out a rock.
Instead of pulling out my bow out from my cannon was, wherever it went when it was tucked away, I chucked the rock so that it landed beneath the glowing rune. Darn, I had hoped that would have set the rune off.
“What are the chances that it’s set to perform a single one way teleportation and the first person that enters the field of influence gets teleported straight into a cell? Well it might take more than one person if we’re standing close enough to one another.” There were some things I should consider about Teatime, like exactly how far up I needed to push his threat rating. He was definitely the brains over Dispel and Shocking. “How are we going to trip it? It certainly looks active.”
“I’ll…” Gene sounded like he was about to volunteer, I didn’t like that or how quiet we were acting towards one another.
“If I get us all captured, then I’m very sorry Captain!” Yelled Nefer as he charged forward up the steps.
“Get back here!” I tried to stop him with a lunge and collided with Gene as the cat dodged our attempts to grab him. I yelled after our favorite plant cat that ate soil and was so adorably innocent a lot of the time. “Nefer!”
As soon as Nefer was under the rune, a sphere of magic swallowed him up. He was just gone, I rushed up the stairs and looked up at the rune. I stopped just short of the circular scorch mark that was its field of effect.
I spent the next thirty or so seconds of just standing there staring at it, it started to blink ominously and then it started shining and was getting brighter by the second. Gene roughly grabbed me by the shoulders digging his claws into me straight through my down and pushed with all his might to launch us through the entrance before an explosion collapsed it behind us.
-One minute earlier, The Grand Time, Current Location:???, Nefer-
Landing on metal face first hurt, but I quickly got up on my paws and looked around. I saw Captain’s rock, bars and lots of pipes. The room seem empty otherwise, except for the cage I was currently in.
I pressed my face against the bars and my whiskers let me know that the gap was wide enough for me to squeeze through. I think this cage was meant more for Jacky or Gene.
I forced my face and head between bars, then twisted the right half of my body slightly to get my front right forepaw through the gap, then I started pulling rest of myself through the bars once I got my other foreleg through.
With one hard pull against the bars with my forelegs, and a sharp push of my hind legs as well, I shot forward with a small popping noise and rolled into the wall with a solid thud. Everything was upside down now… I think I’m sitting on my head.
Mewling in pain and flicking my trident tail out of my face, I rolled away from the wall and got up on my paws looking towards the entrance in a panic.
I hope nobody heard that!
My left ear flicked as I heard someone coming beyond the closed door. I looked around for somewhere to hide… not much in this metal room. So behind the door or one of the random pipes? The pipes were too high up for me to reach and I don’t think Teatime is going to be nice to me if he catches me here.
Behind the door it is!
The door slapped open squishing my body into the corner painfully, I quickly covered my mouth with my paws and tried not to scream as one of my three tail tips was crushed into the corner painfully. My eyes watered, but I stayed brave and strong like a pirate!
Teatime trotted into the room with his head held high and his eyes closed. He opened his eyes after he said a few words.
“It seems to me that I’ve caught… a rock! I go to all that trouble to set up a trap and they beat it with a rock?! Maybe I should actually consider learning that parrot’s name…” Teatime seemed quite upset to see only a rock in the cage, I thought about how upset he’ll be when he sees me and the fact that I got free so fast. “That rune was set to only activate when something living passes under it! Blast it all, I could have gotten a bargaining chip from this, how did they fool the rune? I guess I’ll have to take whatever treasures that parrot found from her during my assault. First things first, I’ll detonate the rune there since it’s compromised.”
While he’s busy focusing on the Captain’s rock and making his horn glow, I carefully shifted the door slightly so it wasn’t hurting my tail. I grabbed the end of the door and clambered up it as silently as I could. I jumped off the top of the door and squeezed myself into a small spot above the pipes.
I did not want to run out into the hallway and have to fight those dangerous mechanical ponies by myself. I need to figure out what to do next, I’m not much of a fighter and my only weapon is still in the cage. I’m sure the Captain will want her rock back at least.
“It is unfortunate that Dispel is the only one capable of fighting at the moment, fixing his armor is always quite tedious and cuts into my genius planning!” Teatime turned around and walked towards the door while grabbing it with his magic. “We could have used Shocking and his new minion on this, at least they’ll put up a good defense in case we’re boarded. Otherwise they are not ready to do any active fighting.”
The guy sure likes to hear the sound of his own voice. He shut the door behind himself as he left.
I stayed up in my spot and counted up to sixty.
Wait… if I was waiting a full minute, shouldn’t I count down from sixty?
So counted down too just to be sure I was doing things right.
Not hearing or seeing any sign that someone was going to open the door or was coming in, I carefully hopped down to floor trying to create as little noise as possible and made a thudding sound.
I froze as I heard the sound of hooves hitting the floor out in the hallway and they made metallic sounds. They got louder and then they started getting softer.
Okay, so mechanical ponies don’t investigate sounds, that’s a good thing. I guess airships make a lot of creaking or groaning sounds so I guess it made sense that they wouldn’t investigate every little sound, so I was probably safe for the moment.
I wouldn’t be able to climb up to the crawl space above the pipes without opening the door though, that was… bad. I want to go with bad.
The golem ponies might actually investigate open doors, the top of the cage was clearly visible upon entrance and I couldn’t get up to the pipes from there.
What would Captain Blackcap do? Well she’d be in the cage to start off with and her curse would probably start destroying the ship just by her being on it and a whole lot of weird and amazing stuff would happen. My family is so awesome!
While I’m thinking of it…
I approached the cage and turned so that I could thrust my split tail through the bars, then I focused enough to get one of my three tail tips wrapped around the rock. I moved away from the cage with a weapon to use on something, but the metal ponies weren’t exactly fragile.
What could I do with this rock? Do I smash it against things or do I throw it? A rock is one of the most ancient tools in the world that anyone can use, but what to use it on? Oh I know!
The master rune is supposed to be on this ship, I can find it and destroy it!
No… wait… Shocking and that Jock guy are on the ship, if they don’t catch me then there’s a big chance that Teatime or the clockwork ponies will get me before I can do anything to the master rune.
Teatime is a unicorn, who would just lift into the air where I’d be helpless. Shocking would cruelly beat me up. Don’t know about Jock personally, but that guy wasn’t very friendly at all. Also if I get caught then I’d be a hostage… so I just won’t get caught. I already knew this would not be easy.
I have to be smart about this and think carefully, I don’t want to disappoint my family or big sis.
-The Volcano, Mountainside, Gene-
The entrance to the temple was sealed off… that wasn’t too horrible. Though I wonder if it felt like an itch to Huoshan, apparently he let us bypass a majority of the temple by teleporting us directly to his chamber in the middle of himself. Said teleportation was limited to anywhere inside of himself.
We spent a few minutes catching our breaths.
“Gene, go tell Flotsam that Nefer might be captured and on Teatime’s ship.” ‘Might’ was an iffy word to use here Jacky. Nefer was definitely trapped, we just didn’t know to what extent.
Various explosions happened in the distance, throughout the city we could hear the sounds of battle starting and saw something that made Jacky whimper both in fear and awe.
The front gates were blown away, destroyed by the biggest machine Teatime has ever made stomping through the rubble. I hurried to go meet up with Flotsam, Jacky could take care of herself from here.
-Jacky-
I stood there staring dumbly as Teatime made his thrust into the city, it seemed he was also teleporting various clockwork pony golems throughout various parts of the city.
“His entire airship…. is a freaking golem.” Yes, a giant six legged metal monstrosity with two large segmented tentacles that swatted the attacking longma away.
There were at least forty or so mechanical ponies rushing forward to attack after dropping out of the bottom of the slowly walking airship. The longma guards were reacting to the strangely forward offensive fairly well, I could see ice flying and a spot of yellow smashing her backside into the machines.
I pulled out my griffon mask and got a closer look, Velvet yelled something at Paprika and she nodded. Paprika broke off from attacking the machines and started to aid the Huoshan Guards in defending and moving the civilians up the central staircase towards the middle tier and a number of hired fighters starting to dig in there.
There were likely many situations across the entire city with Clockwork’s golem’s teleporting in. That wasn’t the worst of it, as large wyvern like machines came flying through the air on what looked to be powerful fans built into what looked like rotatable stiff metal wings. They were attacking the left and right arms of each tier of the city, counting ten for each arm at each tier. Their feet, long whip like metal tails and crushing mechanical jaws tore at their surroundings.
Then I spotted something that made things much worse, the golems Velvet was quickly defeating? Their destroyed parts were disappearing and within seconds a fresh golem dropped out of the airship. When Velvet turned her sights on the walking Airship, a crescent beam lashed out at her making her leap away and then skip off the air to avoid another beam that shredded its way through a building.
I could see Dispel Grace already leading a contingent of golem ponies out into the city to track down Ember. If Ember was as stubborn as I thought she was, she wouldn’t sit in the palace while all this action was going on and would want to get involved in the fighting.
“Hello Huoshan, prepare yourselves for a grand… old… time!” Teatime’s voice carried throughout the city as he stopped his airship momentarily to deliver those words. A large black bolt of energy hit The Grand Time rocking it back a bit, but did no damage. “You might have a powerful unicorn on your side, but can they keep it up long enough to actually do any damage?”
I didn’t know what to help with first and was terrified of that airship, that thing was built better than Hollow Heart’s Battle Tank and it can repair many clockwork golems in seconds.
I made my way along the ridge towards the central staircase where Oleander was already busy reading Fred to build up her power. Several Huoshan Guards were already assaulting the wyvern that was flying up here to deal with Ollie, and were taking serious injuries for her.
These wired wyverns were tough and fire resistant, it didn’t take a genius to guess that Teatime made all his golems like that on top of those partially disabled runes for city wide anti-fire fields.
“Okay, we can handle this...” Something shifted and the air felt... heavier.
I looked to the sky and saw the moon turning red.
“Horde leak, horde leak!” A soldier screamed while pointing to the base of the mountain where a rip in the air started forming. “We need firewalls!”