The tall windigo gave a disappointed sigh as he stepped in, closing the door behind him, then shook his head as he walked over to the table and began to fill a plate. “I am well but I still have had no luck in finding my son.”
“Ah yes, Snöflinga is still out there, unaccounted for, isn’t he?” Puddinghead asked as he hoofed over a wine glass to Snjóstormur who took it with a soft smile. “No luck in his normal spots?”
“None,” the chieftain sighed, taking a sip of his wine before turning his head towards Hurricane. “No sign of him from any of your captains?”
“If any captain has spotted him then they have not reported it,” the pegasus replied with a frown. “Though with how your kind isn’t well known to most commoners, they could be afraid that others might think they were intoxicated on duty or some such nonsense.” He waved it off with a wing.
“Hasn’t your son done this before, hiding out for a while when he’s in one of those moods of his?” Platinum shook her head. “He’ll be back sooner or later once he comes to his senses.”
“I know that, but he has been gone for far longer than normal,” Snjóstormur replied sharply. “Despite what some may think, we windigos are not heartless, we do care for our families.” He glared hard at the mare with her giving him a light smirk back. “He might actually be one of my only worthwhile sons. Snöstorm might be my oldest and most talented but he, Pyry and Lumimyrsky lack the inquisitive nature Snöflinga has. For Búri’s sake, Snöflinga is always trying to figure out everything. My other sons just accept what is before them; did you know he was the only one to actually to question some changelings I had impersonate several windigos?”
“I suppose that is why you decided to make him your chief Ymir’s Advocate, my boy?” Puddinghead asked with a raised eyebrow with the windigo looking a bit sheepish.
“No, it was Glaciärblått that convinced me at long last that despite his stutter and his lack of a spine, he would be perfect for the role and give Snöstorm some decent guidance,” Snjóstormur admitted. “I was going to tell him before he ran off but…”
“There is nothing you can do now,” Hurricane placed a wing on his shoulder. “He will turn up sooner or later.”
“Quite right,” Puddinghead said as he took another sip from his glass before looking at Platinum who rolled her eyes before several platters of food was lifted away and table was brought forth. “Thank you, my dear.”
“Please stop with that grandfather act, Puddinghead,” the mare grumbled as the other stallions nodded their heads. “I did not care for it when my own grandfather was still alive and… well you know what happened to him.”
“Is that a threat, Platinum, because you know that I am not scared of you and your magic,” the Earth pony said with his eyes narrowed, tensing up as if to use his own magic with Hurricane snorting loudly, causing the other two ponies to glare at him.
“Please, we’ve kept this… agreement going for this long, let us not end it before we finish our goal,” Snjóstormur said with an exasperated tone. “Once we find these legendary fires that will let us cement our control, we can…” He suddenly frowned and walked towards the window, threw it open and glared downwards before jumping out and looking around.
“Is there a reason why you opened the window to the cold, Snjóstormur,” Platinum whined. “It is freezing out there…”
“Speak for yourself,” Hurricane muttered. “That breeze feels good to me.”
“I thought I felt something,” Snjóstormur said as he looked back in. “Like someone was right there…”
“We do have our people wandering about the camp and keeping guard,” Puddinghead spoke up. “Perhaps one of them was lingering a bit and had moved on by the time you looked.”
“Perhaps.” Snjóstormur did not look convinced as he climbed back inside. “At any rate, I don’t detect anyone out there now.”
“Good; now let us get to business,” Platinum said faintly as Snöflinga ushered his companions away from the site, doing his best not to drain their emotions too quickly and was thankful his father was unable to sense his own emotions at all - emotivores were unable to feed off each other, after all.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Snöflinga whispered urgently as he pushed them along, the trio numbly following his orders in their blank state. “We’re nearly there,” he hissed as they neared the hill before he let go of his drain of their emotions. With startled noises, the four of them lost their balance and began to roll down the hill, much to their surprise.
When they had reached the bottom, Pansy sat up with a groan. “Ouch.”
Cookie, who was shaking it off easier, gave Snöflinga a look as soon as she’d recovered. “Seriously? I know Clover didn’t mind being fed on earlier, but was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Clover put in before Snöflinga could speak. “You were trying to cover up our emotions to keep us safe, so your father wouldn’t find us, weren’t you?”
“Y-yes, exactly,” Snöflinga said. “Sorry I had to do it so quick, but if I’d taken time to warn you, he probably would have caught us. Well, you more than me, since we can’t sense our own kind’s emotions, but either way, I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
“Well in any case, we still need to get out of here,” Pansy said as he flew onto the deck of his ship with Snöflinga flying up onto it and Clover using her own magic to tug Cookie and herself onto the deck. “We will have just enough power to get us into the river; after that we will be at the mercy of the open waters.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Cookie said as the ship began to slide towards the river.
“Let’s move, people, and hold on tight.” Pansy warned as the ship hit the water, with the deck becoming temporarily submerged before it attained buoyancy.
Shaking her head to clear the water off of her, Clover turned her head to spot a very panicked-looking Snöflinga who was detangling himself from the staircase. “Are you okay?”
The windigo shook his head, tilting his head towards the river. “Cccc-can’t swim,” he forced out of his lips.
“Really?” Pansy asked from the helm with a concerned look on his face that only deepened when Snöflinga nodded his head. “Damnit, we were going to need you to see through the storm but if you can’t swim then-”
“No,” Snöflinga spat out loudly as he floated in the air. “Let me do this; I need to be helpful somehow.”
“If you’re sure Snöflinga,” Cookie said, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “I can understand the need to prove yourself but don’t be a fool about it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Snöflinga grunted. “As long as I stay out of the water.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll hold onto you tightly,” Clover replied with her horn lighting up to once again create her tethering spell.
There was no conversation for the next while, aside from occasional calls for control as they steered the ship down the river and towards the ocean with the storm returning and worsening the further they got away from the secret meeting.
Eventually, the four reached the ocean and steered away from the shores, Snöflinga sighing as he landed for a moment with Cookie waving him over to the helm. “Better,” he muttered. “Now we just need to keep an eye out for those stupid fish.”
“What fish,” Pansy asked curiously as he continued to steer this grounded airship through the waters.
“Sirens,” Snöflinga said. “They’re like… seaponies? But the normal seaponies are peaceful kelp farmers most of the time. Sirens are emotivores like me, but also a lot meaner and carnivorous. And they like luring ponies into the water with their music and drowning them before consuming them.”
“I’d never even heard of seaponies,” Cookie said with a frown. “Are they a fourth tribe or something?”
“Yeah, but they keep to themselves like the rest of you ponies do, only a lot better at it,” Snöflinga said as he prepared himself to take off again. “My people have seen them a few times, but they’re a lot better at staying hidden, so it’s not worth the effort to go after them.” He grimaced. “My people and the sirens both feed on negative emotions, so we’re natural rivals. But we just look for existing negative emotions, they actively come looking for trouble and like stirring it up to make it worse.”
“Can you do the same trick as you did before, to hide us?” Clover asked, bundled up against Cookie with the winds starting to pick up again.
“Wouldn’t work; they can’t sense emotions like windigos and changelings can, and even if they could, it wouldn’t be safe to drain you three like that in this storm,” Snöflinga said loudly over the blowing winds. “Beyond making you all dull, I would need to focus on-” He let out a yelp as a particularly harsh wind dashed him across thee deck and into the remains of the broken mast still attached to the deck before going over the edge of the ship.
“Snöflinga!” Clover shouted, dashing to the railing and bracing herself as she did her best to pull the windigo back aboard, her face tight with concentration. A second later, Cookie thundered over and leaned over the edge with her hoof out to the terrified windigo whose snow magic was causing a miniature blizzard at the edge of the ship.
“Grab my hoof!” Cookie yelled at him with Snöflinga looking up with wild eyes before he slapped his hoof into hers, the mare barely wincing at the freezing touch as she pulled him back aboard with a layer of ice spreading out from the windigo’s hooves. “Back to Pansy; it’s too dangerous for any of us out here!” she shouted, pushing Snöflinga and Clover forwards with the pegasus struggling to control the airship but the difference between the airships and the waterships was starting to show with the abnormal groaning that was coming from the hull.
“I think we need to beach this thing,” Cookie said nervously as she looked to Pansy. “It’s getting even rougher out here than we expected.”
“You’re right,” Pansy told her as he shook over a layer of frost while wondering how best to calm the windigo down. “As soon as possible.”
“What is it Snöflinga?” Clover asked, causing the two to turn towards her. She was staring at Snöflinga with concern as he had an even more horrified look on his face before they all turned around to see what he was looking at.
It was a massive wave heading straight at them.
“What’s the spell, what’s the spell,” Clover muttered to herself as she tried to recall what she had read once a few years ago about shield spells while doing her best to ignore Cookie moving in front of her as if it would actually be effective in protecting her.
Just before the wave hit, Clover was able to cast a single spell before everything went dark.
With a groan, Snöflinga shuffled around only to feel the coat of another person next to him. Moving to the other side, he felt another person with both bodies beginning to groan and stir. He was wondering what was going before he recalled what had happened. He then began to open his eyes, whining at how sore he felt with the others also moaning at their own pain.
“What hit me?” Pansy grumbled from the right side of Snöflinga, while Cookie winced as she pushed herself upright. Looking around, Snöflinga was able to see that Clover had either been laid across them or had made her way there herself.
“A lot of water, if I were to guess,” a female voice said, causing all four of them to look towards the source. “You four washed up on our shores after that terrible storm in your little mare’s bubble shield.” It was a middle-aged Earth pony mare with a glittering coat. “It was a very impressive spell, if you ask me.”
“Thank you,” Clover said as she sat upright on Cookie’s lap with the blanket falling around her flanks. “But it was really something I read about a few years ago, so I don’t deserve all the credit.”
The mare raised an eyebrow at her. “Humbleness is one thing, child, but there’s nothing wrong in being proud of your accomplishments, as long as you don’t take it too far and be obnoxious about it.”
“But it was just one spell,” Clover started.
“That you read about years ago,” Cookie said. “But you pulled it off successfully the first time you tried, long after you first heard about it. I’d say you deserve to be proud of your accomplishment.”
Clover just blushed, looking off to the side with the other ponies just beaming at her with Pansy turning away from her to look at the other Earth pony in the room. “Where exactly are we, miss…”
“Clear Heart, and you are in the Crystalline Shore’s inn, though we do get called the Crystal Empire from time to time. We are a small depot town, so we are used to all sorts of travelers,” she said while looking at Snöflinga who flinched under her gaze. “But as long as you don’t harm anyone in my town, you are welcomed here for as long you four require to recover before traveling again. Though,” she said, turning to look at Pansy. “You might wish to use a proper ship this time.
“It was something of an emergency,” Pansy said stiffly with his ears going red. “We did what we could with what we had.”
“Of course you did,” Clear Heart said with a soft smile. “What we recovered of your belongings are over there in the corner and we are serving food right now.” With that, the mare closed the door.
Once he was certain she was gone, Pansy turned to the others. “We seriously need to talk.”