-Somewhere on the ocean, Flamberge-
We had said farewell to friends old and new and then set out, after a few adventures we ended up in the middle of the ocean. If I had known we’d be out here, I would have taken up that stallion’s offer for that bag of goods back in Fillydelphia.
I have no idea what we’re supposed to do here, but Travel-On had stopped in the ocean and things were quite still. The moonlight shined down on all of us and nothing was occurring. There weren’t any clouds in the sky and things were quiet, far too quiet as we were not even hearing the shifting of the sea itself.
“Is this another one of those ominous locations we should be worried about?!” I asked out loud as I looked over the side of the boat into the water, my voice might have been one of the few rare things that broke the staunch silence of our surroundings.
After I stopped talking, dead silence followed. We’ve already been here for longer than five minutes, we were quite sure we had to do something in this exact location.
“Danger is about, I do not know in what form, water is not safe.” Sweetcakes's tails swished back and forth as she looked over the side of the boat, but didn’t lower her head towards the water.
The only thing displacing the water around here was our boat, there weren’t any waves which was one of the truly odd things about this location. No matter where you were on the ocean there were at least some waves, this location was obviously different. Different meant possible danger for us.
“Maybe we are to enter the water to find out why we are here?” Well that would require a volunteer do something idiotically dangerous Fortitude, which is something we’re all really good at doing by now.
We’ve volunteered for many a strange quest and have survived them all with mostly common sense. When dealing with eldritch abominations, we’ve learned that relying exclusively on nonsense was a far better idea. Trying to adhere to common sense with something that is completely nonsensical, and usually deadly, might get you killed.
If it were me, I would think of something better to do first before jumping into an ocean that was as unnaturally still as this place specifically was.
Dragons were only decent at swimming unless they were of the much more capable aquatic varieties.
My brother would be buoyant as long as he has air in his lungs and would sink like a rock otherwise.
Skelly could go down there, but I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her if she were to go alone.
Sweetcakes might be able to create a bubbles of air for our heads with the tengu fan, but otherwise shouldn’t go alone either. She would have to go down there to keep said magical bubbles going if she can make them.
“Well, we can’t sit here forever!” I turned to our kitsune companion. “Sweetcakes can you provide magical air bubbles?!”
“I can do a lot, bubbles of air not easy, I am capable.” Sweetcakes nodded to me and smiled sweetly with that vulpine grace of hers. At least she wasn’t being as pushy with her affection now, there was also the fact that our friendship was still wobbly after what she pulled at The Volcano.
“We need someone to stay up here, it’ll either be me or Fortitude that goes down! We’ll need some rope to tie to one of us, ‘if’, we’re going to go diving!” I didn’t like the idea of it being me down there, but I would be open for it if they wanted me to do it. “Sweetcakes needs to be down there to keep up the bubbles. Skelly doesn’t have to worry about oxygen, pressure or much of anything else and could get us to safety if something went wrong! Though she might have a problem with her inability to use her axe underwater and we would definitely need a rope around her as she’ll sink while she is all bones.”
Fortitude frowned when I pointed out that Skelly would sink, because bones do not float. Skelly’s daytime form ‘might’ be capable of floating or swimming normally.
“Then you should go with Sweetcakes. I can get in the water, but we should keep Skelly dry as it would be hard to get her out if she sinks to the bottom. If something goes wrong, then we can pull the two of you up on the rope quickly.” Fortitude makes a good point. I nodded and accepted my position of having to face the still sea and I would be relying on Sweetcakes, but otherwise we weren’t immediately jumping in and it was just the plan right now. “Before we are doing that, we should be calling the Sea Pony SOS for help if there is any around here!”
“Noticed that I’m not quite willing to take the dive?” I said in a completely normal tone of voice, though I couldn’t help but smile in my brother’s direction. Knowing that I had volume control problems did not make said problems go away, that and Fortitude grinned at my reference to Sweetcakes.
“It is fairly obvious brother, even I would not be in a hurry to jump in.” Taking in a lungful of air to bellow out the infamous chorus, Fortitude probably should not be the one doing this. “Shoo-be-doo Shoo-shoo-be-doo~!”
That… was not as bad as I thought his singing would be, sounded like opera. We would wait for a minute and then begin preparations, it took a little more than half that time for something to respond.
The boat shook and we all tensed and prepared ourselves for a monster, only to spot a light brown hoof gripping the edge of the boat.
What came up out of the water looked like a normal earth pony mare, she quickly pulled herself into our boat. We took in her light brown coat, shaggy black mane and tail speckled with grey dots in various shades, she also had these oddly bright yellow eyes.
She looked normal, but there were no signs of boats for miles around. She spent the last five minutes underwater, only to come up without gasping for air. This told us there was something highly abnormal about her and we were quite used to dealing with the unknown.
She was not something eldritch at least, but I knew for sure this wasn’t a pony. I pulled my sword and held it towards her, Skelly held her axe at the ready, Fortitude lifted his shield in preparation for a bash and Sweetcakes raised the tengu fan while creating two orbs of fire.
The earth pony shook her head and collected herself, she quickly noticed our aggressive stances towards her.
“Uh… nice weapons? Sorry for spooking you, the name’s Briny Depths!” She greeted us cheerfully, we just kept staring at her. “Whoa, tough crowd… look I know you were the ones calling for help, but I could really use some myself!”
“What would a…!” I motioned at her with my flaming sword. “’You’, need our help for?!”
“Isn’t it obvious that I’m a pony?” She looked around at all of us and then blinked when we didn’t ease up on our caution.
“No, you are definitely not a pony!” I didn’t have to explain how we knew, but I might as well throw something out there. “Also, why aren’t you reacting to Skelly being a skeleton?”
“You mean t-t-that’s not a r-r-really well made nightmare night costume?!” Briny moved over to skelly and started to poke her hooves through our friend’s ribcage. She quickly backed away looking frightened, she was cowering well enough that she was truly afraid of Skelly. “Uh, I don’t think I can help with that and can I ask why you called for help with something like this!”
“Skelly is not why we called for help, we wanted to know where we are or information about why everything around his is so… abnormal… that’s including you!” Being as loud as I was, Briny flinched slightly and looked away rubbing at her left leg in a defensive manner.
“Welcome to The Eerie Eel Eye, this is a spot on the sea that has giant voracious eels constantly circling it and makes the water as calm as it looks.” We apparently appeared in the middle of this place or at least within the safe bounds of this so called eye according to Briny here. “Wait, how did you get by them without them attacking you? You should have met them coming in with a boat like this!”
“Not important, let’s just say that we bypassed them without knowing they were there and can get out of here just as easily!” I pointedly noticed that she made no comment about what she was or why she was still here in the middle of this mess. “What are you and how did you end up here?!”
“Okay, it’s like this, some pirates found something highly important to me and took 'it'! They thankfully were doing things old school instead of using an airship, so it wasn’t too hard to follow them.” She grimaced as if she didn’t want to tell us what she was, she was very shifty with her subject change. “They entered The Eerie Eel Eye and well… they managed to escape their sinking ship after the eel’s attacked it. I on the other… what were these things again, hooves, yes that… I on the other hoof have been stuck here surviving off what I could. The 'thing' they took is still in their wreckage below and it is quite important that I stay here until I can get my... ‘it’ back. The eels don’t come this far into the circle, but I’ve had problems with retrieving my ‘thing’. Even if I did retrieve 'it' I would still be stuck here, but I would at least be feeling far better about my situation. I might even be able to escape this place on my own afterwards.”
“So you need our help to get whatever it is you’re talking about with great risk to ourselves?” I noted that Briny didn’t say anything in her somewhat squeaky high pitched voice, she eventually nodded. “Are there any eels near it?”
“No, it should be safe. I’ve been stuck here for a year, please at least help me get my… ‘thing’… back from the sunken ship.” Should we help Briny? Was that what Travel On wanted us to do?
“Brother?!” I turned to Fortitude to see what he thought.
“We should help her.” I trusted Fortitude’s in-stinks for this.
I watched as Briny oddly sniffed Skelly, then Sweetcakes with an approving grunt, she gagged slightly at my sulfur smell and she then followed that up by sniffing my brother. She was never going to smell my brother again after this.
“Ugh, what crawled into your fur and died! I hope nothing did that to… er… never mind. When you’re ready, I’ll dive in and you can follow me down to the wreckage.” Briny looked entirely too hopeful to be getting our help, also I noted that she cut herself off before she was about to say anything that might be related to what she was.
With a rope tied to our waists and bubbles of air wrapped around our heads, which would drain breathable air form the surrounding waters, we dove in and swam down to see a pirate ship wreckage on a reef in the moonlight. Since the surface wasn’t as choppy as it could be, we could see far more clearly down here.
We followed Briny, who was looking around cautiously as we approached the ship. We got onto it without problems, but ran into the big problem that was bothering Briny in getting her ‘thing’ back. A doorknob, she pointed at it insistently.
It was apparent that she didn’t know how to open doors. Trying the knob, she looked mystified when I rammed the door wide opened. The thing wasn’t even locked and why would it be? The pirates obviously fled the boat in a panic and the only thing holding it shut was pressure. The large holes in the side of this ship told us just how big the eels around here were, hopefully her ‘thing’ was in the captain’s cabin.
Sweetcakes and I swam in after her and watched as she turned the room over with reckless abandon. She wasn’t very smart, given she didn’t seem to care that much about the treasure chest. This was adding more oddities to this supposed ‘pony’s’ nature.
Sweetcakes swam over to her and tapped her with a tail and pointed to the chest, she seemed confused until I tried to move the heavy thing. She got the idea after that that we wanted to move this thing. It took the three of us moving it, but we eventually got it out onto the deck of the ship and tied the ropes to it.
Tugging on the ropes, we took to sitting upon the chest to ride it up to the surface while watching our surroundings. Fortitude helped pull it and us out of the cold waters. Sweetcakes wiped the waters from our body with the winds of the tengu fan, then quickly cured us of a sickness known as 'the bends'.
Briny eventually crawled onto the ship after us still sopping wet, she was perfectly fine and didn’t get the bends at all.
“Wow… so why did we take this chest?” Another oddity of Briny, she didn’t seem to understand the importance. “All pirates ever put in these things is weird shiny stuff!”
I glanced at her and then pulled my flaming sword to break the lock. Given that it was made of gold that wasn’t electrum, this was a relatively easy task. I quickly opened the chest and dumped the contents out into the boat.
“Oh my goodness, there it is, my skin! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank all of you so much!” That would have been really weird if Briny were not crying and hugging a pile of rubbery substance while rubbing her face against it. She eventually stuffed her hind legs into what looked like very weird onesie and when she snapped the hood into place, she revealed her true nature to us.
“’bwark, bwark, bwark’~!’ The grey and brown spotted seal sang happily, we apparently just helped a Selkie get her skin back. The seal peeled her head back revealing the pony head underneath. “Sorry, I’m just so happy to have my skin back! Could you do me one more little favor… could you help me get out of here? I don’t think I can outswim the eels without a huge distraction like last time.”
“Sure, if you don’t care where we’ll end up.” Fortitude answered. “We can get you out of here if you stay in the boat for a bit.”
“Anything that gets me out of here, I don’t care!” Briny hugged her seal flippers against herself and shivered.
“You heard her Skelly, get to rowing and get us out of here!” I shouted and Skelly started rowing.
The mists quickly surrounded the boat, proving that we just did the right thing. We had now had one highly curious passenger that we’ll hopefully drop off at our soonest convenience.
“Whoa… this is so weird… it’s making me feel dizzy.” Briny whined.