//------------------------------// // Chapter Sixty Two, The Hail Maries: Throw. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Eerie Eel Eye, Fizzle- A large creature roared and snapped at the airship as we flew higher into the air, that massive eel had almost snatched us out of the sky. With an airship this small, we were not going to escape it if it had actually caught us. I watched the huge eel fall back into the sea with a hint of trepidation. “Well, we’re in the right place.” I stated bluntly. “So… how many airships did you total in your line of work again Daring?” “Can we not discuss this right now, that thing was pretty close to being a problem for you guys.” Daring was underestimating me. I could have probably taken on the sea monster, despite me being morsel sized compared to it. “I can just fly away, while you can’t and I’m not risking your lives in the waters near here with monsters that big.” “At least mom made me incapable of drowning before we left, now if only she could have made me giant eel proof.” I muttered loudly and felt Mara placing her head on mine. “Also you’re unfortunately not part sea snake and we didn’t exactly want to risk any more magical shenanigans with any part of you Maries. I remember Dr. Bones distinctly telling me that all of you are already mystically unstable enough as it is with the whole fire breathing goat thing, we don’t need to go making things worse with mom’s magical alchemy.” “That’s why we’ll be waiting for you up here while you go dive into the place that Briny Depths apparently lived for a while.” Maria looked over the side of the railing at the many giant snake like shadows shifting through the water below. “A very dangerous place at that, judging by all the movement down there.” “The first clue said ‘eye at the center of the eels’. After seeing just one of them near the edges of the given territory, being this low in the air seems to be quite lethally stupid. I think Fortitude and Flamberge were simply born under a lucky sign to have avoided being attacked. Briny Depths said that things were quiet in the middle of the eye, so we should be able to let you off to start searching for whatever it is we’re here to find.” Well at least Marie seemed confident in my abilities. “If only we knew exactly what we were looking for here, we have no idea what we need to take with us or what we’re going to find down there when we do know what it is.” “Can I just say that I don’t like the idea of our Fizzle going down there alone?” Growled out Mara, Maries have been quite protective of me since they got themselves back together. I could say I was equally protective towards them, because let’s face it I’m probably the most dangerous of the four us. Sure they could viciously bite, claw, poison and enflame, but my magic could do just as much if not more damage in seconds. “I have some diving equipment I can use, so she won’t be down there by herself. I really hate getting ‘the bends’ and being underwater really isn’t my thing. Any further than three hundred meters down will start causing me some problems.” Having read Daring’s somewhat exaggerated stories, she really didn’t enjoy being waterlogged on any adventure that requires her going into a highly flooded place. “If this is a sunken city I’m letting Fizzle handle it, because I really hate underwater adventures. They always end in big things with large teeth trying rip me to shreds and given that we’ve already seen one big thing that fits the description… Anyway, I’m betting we’re looking for a glowing eye shaped jewel.” “I’m quite sure that we can handle anything down there with little trouble.” Mostly because I had enough magical output in my horn to deflect the magic from the Staff of Sacanas, while it was powered by the stolen magical strength of four princesses no less. Didn’t necessarily point that out to anyone and I didn’t want to sound egotistical about how much magic I could unload in seconds. “If it looks like we’re about to be chomped down on, and provided we can be swallowed whole by whatever is doing the chomping, it’s probably a better idea to swim down that things throat before the teeth get you.” We all became silent as Daring started steering the airship, likely on loan given Daring’s history, higher and closer to the area that we would be searching in. As we did so, I considered how far I’ve come with my magic. I had no problems with getting power out of my horn, it’s always been an issue control and recently the capacity of magic that I had to use. I’ve only recently gotten the hang of levitation, one of the simplest things any unicorn could do with magic. It was like running a marathon for me, but it was good stamina training. I could levitate large objects easily, things like a five hundred pound ball of steel or anything larger wasn’t a problem for me. Anything smaller was a lot harder to lift without immediate issues. For example, what would happen if I were to try and levitate a simple orange? Well it became freshly squeezed in seconds, usually all over the room I was training in and I was drained afterwards because my horn tended to bleed magic really fast. Thanks to my magic bleed, my reserves were enormous enough to match four alicorns. I seriously scared myself sometimes while training to get my magic down to attempting to lift a grape, with little success to show for it. I was good for using my magic in powerful short bursts, but any sustained spell like levitation was hard to keep going and exceptionally hard to not overpower. At least I knew I wouldn’t kill a pony by accident and I might give up on drinking grape juice. -Several hours later, Above Eerie Eel's Eye, Daring- I really hated underwater missions. Fizzle was lucky her mother could give her the ability to never have to deal with ‘the bends’, though I don’t envy her having to cough up all that ocean water even if she couldn’t be drowned by it. We probably should have asked a sea pony for their help with this. We had stopped for lunch and to discuss how we were going to approach the area that the pirate ship was in. Fizzle was still going to wear a wetsuit and flippers, we were doing things properly even if she could breathe underwater. This place was eerie and not just because of the name either, an entire ring of deadly monstrous eels with glowing bits and this large area in the middle of all of them was nearly empty of them. At least it was empty enough of the large toothy water monsters that they might not bother us, but I was curious as to why that was. There was just something that was very off about this place that I couldn’t put my hoof on. I shrugged and hefted the oxygen tank onto my back and checked my wetsuit once more to make sure everything was fitting correctly. I did not want any incidents like the last few times I’ve had to do dangerous dives, sometimes with very little of oxygen left. “Are you sure you can watch the ship?” Just asking for clarification from Maries, I had nothing against them aside from being from a relatively backwater society. Beyond that, I had nothing against them personally and they were pretty cool for lawyers. “We can handle things up here; besides, with the anchor down the airship isn’t going to move around all too much and we hopefully won’t have to do anything at all.” Nodding to Marie, I unfurled a rope ladder until it was well and into the sea. The last few times that the rope ladder just wasn’t quite long enough, I always ended up in horrible situations. I’d prefer a rope ladder be too long that you could cut off, to a rope ladder that’s too short and exceedingly hard to grab onto. “We’ll make sure to keep the balloon filled and the airship ready to go for your return.” Sounded like Maria was on top of things. “You better not let anything happen to Fizzle down there!” Yeah, yeah, Mara, I’m well aware of what you could do to me if I don’t. I wasn’t about to fail another person that was helping me. I leaned back and flipped my way into the water with a splash, a second splash joined me seconds later and we were submerged. We both turned on the dive light helmets and looked to each other and proceeded to check the other’s helmets. Fizzle was not a professional diver, but I could handle my helmet if something went horribly wrong. We were good to go and I kept sending glances to Fizzle and she seemed entirely fine with being underwater without an oxygen tank as we dove deeper into the water. It was fairly obvious as we swam down deeper she wasn’t going to drown and because she could have all that water in her body without drowning, her body wouldn’t get the bends because of decompression problems. She was quite the lucky mare, all she had to do was cough up all that salt water and I might get the bends if I go up too fast. That usually happens when I’m being chased. The entire area was dark until we came close to the sea floor about two hundred meters down, look around we didn’t see much of interest aside from a mass amount of red coral stuff and disturbing lack of life in the area otherwise. I was busy looking for something that my light could rebound off of, I was absolutely looking for a jewel. Fizzle was just slowly sweeping and looking for anything, after a time Fizzle motioned to me to swim back up and I agreed. Upon hitting the surface at the rope ladder I learned something disturbing, after Fizzle coughed up several lungs worth of water that is. “This place is literally in the eye of a humongous dead eel, Briny was living in...” I held up a hoof to stop her. “I thought something was odd about the reef around here, there were no fish at all in the coral.” Eerie defined this place perfectly, that it was actually in the cavity of an eel’s eye and this large… that spooked me. I would definitely be adding this part to my latest story, also Fizzle would be stated as having been equipped with scuba equipment too. It wasn’t a lie, as she was wearing some equipment. “Is everything okay?” We heard the three voices and looked up at the two heads poking over the side of the ship to look down at us. “We’re good, but we might need the tow ropes lines.” Because I didn’t want to get lost going too far from our parking spot. It didn’t take us long before we were beneath the waves once more and tugging ropes along with us to help us find our way back to the ship. It took about thirty minutes of searching for us to realize that we were halfway into the eye cavity and that this area was 'monstrously' large. I wasn’t about to rip up the veiny coral or do anything to disturb the unnatural silence of the place as we dragged our ropes along through the dark water, the sun hadn’t even set yet and we were about two hundred and fifty meters deep. The only movements around here were me or Fizzle, any other movement was a reason for immediate alarm. We eventually found the pirate wreck and hauled up some things that Fortitude and Flamberge hadn’t found when they were previously here according to Briny Depths. A little payday for us at least. -A day or two later, Fizzle- I saw something glinting off of the dive light, I made some rapid motions to attract Daring’s attention and I pointed in the direction of what I thought I saw. We were far deeper than we previously were and it was much harder for Daring to move around with the crushing weight of the ocean all around her, I was having similar problems even if I wouldn’t need to decompress. We both investigated what I saw and blinked at the metallic bone white staff like object that looked to be out of place and I made questioning gestures to Daring. She made a grabbing motion and backed up a bit while sweeping her light around to keep watch of our surroundings as I swam forward. Getting close, I looked at the object and gripped it in my hooves. As soon as I was almost done pulling it free, I looked up when I felt the movement of something large and then saw a long line of bioluminescence light up, it led to a pair of massive eyes. How had something that large managed to sneak up on us? It's coloration might have helped at these depths. Daring’s quivering light was on it behind me, telling me she hadn’t spotted it until now either. I quickly wrenched the staff like object free and fired an underwater ball of lightning into the creatures face from my horn making it let out a terrible wail that could possibly be heard for miles underwater. I immediately turned and started swimming for it while the large eel was distracted. Sure it wasn’t as massive as the eel’s eye cavity we were diving in, but it was still a big threat. Daring was swimming ahead of me and kept glancing back as we rapidly swam towards the surface. Daring barely avoided the snapping teeth of the giant eel that brought around these strange facial claws to try and grapple onto her, I fired a spark of magic at it. Each time the zigzagging spark of magic stopped, it unleashed a powerful concussive explosion. This happening underwater, the explosions acted like depth charges and stunned the monster for a bit. we started to swim for the surface faster. We breached the surface and I tried to yell something with my lungs still full of water, Daring thankfully managed to get the word out as she spat the rebreather from her mouth. “Pull us up, now!” Daring shrilly yelled as we grabbed onto the ropes. -Daring Do- The ropes yanked us upwards as the massive eel snapped its teeth close beneath us, snapping the ropes just below our tails. Maries was hauling our flanks out of the water at a breakneck speed with her paws and a minute later the bends hit me quite hard. Fizzle struck the beast in the eye with a blast of fire and the circling creature wailed before diving back into the water. Darn it, teeth and the bends, teeth and the bends, it never fails with me! Thank goodness Fizzle was here, because I did not relish the idea of being swallowed alive with a limited oxygen supply again. -Days later, Airship Mauled, Kuril- “I’m going on your next adventure regardless.” I stated as I looked over the strange staff like object, I was really quite worried for my daughter’s life. “How do we find this circle of the ancient alpacas?”