"She's not just talking to mythical goddesses, your lordship-"
"Corporal. My name is Corporal Two Pings, ensign." Ping looked at the closed hatch behind her. They were alone, and nopony was likely to overhear, but ponies were going in and out of the small, cramped offices all the time, especially with the ship full of repair-perros and mechanical contractors. Although as long as the master sergeant was using her cabin as additional office space, Ping supposed it wasn't as big of a danger as it might otherwise be.
"Your corporalship, sir-"
Sigh. Well, foalsteps.
"-but they're talking through her now. It's so creepy!" the mare whined, the whites of her eyes showing around her slit-pupiled irises.
"Plenty of ponies show signs of split personality disorder after contact with the dream world. Are you sure it isn't nocnice possession?" He knew it wasn't, Ping was just feeling contradictory today.
"She hasn't had contact with the dream world! I don't think I've ever seen her have a nightmare!"
"All ponies have contact with the dream world, and most sophants as well. I can look into her dreams tonight if you like."
"If you don't mind, s- corporal. And the eyes! I've never seen nocnice possession, but unless one of my mentors forgot to mention it, I thought they didn't go black-eyed." She knew it wasn't nocnice possession, Ping knew it wasn't nocnice possession, but the mare clearly wasn't ready to talk about her bat-hen housing a literal goddess.
"Well, no, generally they don't. It's mostly personality changes and an increase in sociopathic behavior. You do know it is probably just that sea-goddess of hers, and nothing worth our worrying over it. We know enough about the travails of dealing with overbearing aunties, don't we, ensign?" Ping looked at his not-underling. Not a minion.
Shadows take it, it's daylight. Do I not get any time off anymore?
"Uh. Yeah. So, I have a joint patrol with that company of the Northern Languedockiens," Fruits Basket said, evasively, her eyes darting around.
Mother take it all.
"Yes, you do, ensign. You know perfectly well what's expected of you, don't you, Ensign Basket?"
"What, aside from what the captain said in the briefing?"
We're not talking about the blasted patrol, you-
"No!" Ping spat. "No... just that. Um." She was staring at him with puppy-dog eyes. I've got to stop using that metaphor with an actual dog on board. "Look…"
She quivered at him.
Ping gave up. "Fine. Follow the briefings. Don't get attached, don't get involved, don't get lured into any alleyways, make sure your files don't separate." Ping almost snarled at the relief in the ensign's eyes.
"Your basic urban patrol rules, yeah. We have done this before, corporal." And there she went, all duty and junior-officer swagger.
"Not as the Guard, you haven't," Ping said, trying to puncture her role-playing. "Remember that. We're not colonial troops, whatever those time-servers at the fort think."
"I never even knew there were Equestrian troops in this part of the Inland Sea!" And… the conversation was over. If only she'd leave.
"Well, yes," Ping said, suppressively. He looked over her shoulder, trying to give her the hint. "Can't say any of it is in my experience, either. You're going to be late, Basket."
"What? Stars and shadows!"
And she was gone.
Ping returned to his invoices and expenditure reports. The company clerk's job was never done, unless the company clerk wasn't doing his job.
And he wasn't doing his job as long as Baker Troop didn't have a proper lieutenant. He'd have to drop a word in the Major's ear.
Eye - Fish Eye's hovering sister finally let her out of the smelly back room in the infirmary. Hawk had nodded her head condescendingly when Fish had shared her concerns about the injured unicorn's mental state, and the sickening swirl of oily contamination she'd had all over her head and shoulders.
Hawk Eye looked different, too, but the slight, warm glow she'd taken on wasn't nearly as upsetting as the way that the colors sluggishly surged and yawed around inside the green pony, like a jug of milk going spoiled.
Fish moved slowly across the main deck of the Bit, looking at all of the sailors and troopers and big doglike locals trotting here and there under the envelope above, and up and out of the hatches below.
The goddess's running commentary was subsiding to a querulous rumble at the back of Fish's mind, like a second internal monologue, but the funny lights and colors weren't going away, and if anything, were getting more distinct.
And wow, that was something. The big, big bird that Fish had always thought of as 'Lady George's roc' was roosting just in front of squadron headquarters, glowing like a fairy light the size of an apartment building.
Well, maybe a Canterlot rowhouse. Bigger than the goddess's shrine, that was dang sure.
It was still a big bird, same as before. Maybe the eyes and beak were more intelligent, less bestial?
And then there was the big golden hat, dripping clouds of black ooze like something… not nice. Not even not-nice in the way that the goddess's shadows were kind of a bit icky, if you thought about it for too long, or were eating, or just generally let your gorge get away from you.
Not nice clean rot, but something… wrong.
Although as big as the roc-bird-thing was, even a golden hat as big as this one was barely a jaunty chapeau, cocked over its crest.
A nasty, drippy, nauseating chapeau.
"Why are you wearing that ugly thing?" Fish asked the not-roc-thing, before she thought better of it.
Wait! Eye! We were going to-
At least Fish had figured out how to keep the goddess from vocalizing using Fish's own vocal cords.
Mostly.
The big not-roc thing was looking down at Fish, and its eyebrow was crooked in a positively hippogriffish expression of confused interest.
"Which ugly thing, lance corporal?" it- no, she said in a deep, rumbling, feminine voice.
A rather pretty voice, now that Fish could hear it.
Wait, that's Lady George's voice! Fish thought, surprised.
"Why do you sound like you ate Lady George? Did you eat Lady George? Why didn't anygriff say anything! Poor Lady George! Give her back!"
The big not-roc-hen reared back in astonishment, her expression quickly shifting to something that looked alarmingly like offense taken. The rest of her glowed golden like the setting sun, warm and comforting and rich and deep… except where the black tarry filth from the golden hat stained her noble head and dripped down her back.
Eye! Don't provoke the turul into eating you! I just blessed you, I don't want all that power wasted in the inefficient digestion of an irritable greater raptor!
"I'm pretty sure you didn't just accuse me of eating myself, little morsel. You want to rephrase that? And stop staring at my roc."
"I have it on good authority you're no sort of roc, Miss Greater Raptor or whatever yo- yes, yes, auntie, I remember. You. Big scary bird thing, why are you a turul?"
First rate, Eye. Remind me never to try and use you for negotiation with anything more powerful than me. You say you are the scion of a diplomatic family? How my hippogriffs survived the surface world as long as they did with diplomats like you, I cannot imagine.
"The same reason you are a hippogriff, lance corporal. I was hatched this way. Are you always this foolish?"
"No, I think I've gotten worse recently. Comes of bad company, probably. The house matron at school always said I'd come to a bad end."
Well, this is an opportunity, we might as well take it. Eye, ask your new friend about the cursed artifact.
"My auntie wants to know why you're wearing a curse that looks like a big blotch of black tar with a golden hat somewhere in the middle of it?"
"Your auntie, is it? Do you have a mouse named Auntie in your pocket, lance corporal?"
"No, I have a goddess in my head! Or maybe my eyes. Auntie A, are you mostly possessing my eyes, or my soul?"
Little of one, bit more of the other. Concentrate on the big sylph-get, Eye, and stop worrying at the mechanics of my blessing.
"A goddess. Right. You hippogriffs really aren't much like your cousins, are you?"
"Which cousins are that? The ponies, or the griffons?"
"Either. So you can see through my curse, can you? When did this happen?"
"Day or two ago! They've been keeping me in the infirmary since then, but now I'm out. Which is more than you can say about poor Miss Heartstrings. I wish I knew more about medical matters and such, but Hawk Eye says it'll just take time, and all Auntie A says is that healing isn't in her remit."
"Right… so you can see my coronet? And the curse isn't affecting you?"
"Not anymore! Auntie A blessed me! Sea and salt, that hurt. I don't recommend being blessed by your goddess, if you can avoid it. Well, it's true, Auntie. I don't care, we're all mortals up here above the surface. Wait, Miss Turul, are you mortal?"
"Yes, little lance corporal. I can't keep calling you that, and I certainly don't want to be called 'Miss Turul'. Call me George. You are?"
"Fish Eye! Oh, fine, Auntie. She says I should start introducing myself as 'Priestess of the Almighty Goddess of the Depths and the Storms, Great Amphitrite!'"
The big turul crooked another eyebrow at Fish.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I'm Fish to my friends, and, apparently, Eye to my goddess."
"Charmed. Nice to meet another - well, you're not a princess, are you? Or any sort of royal."
"Oh, no, we Eyes are as common as smelt. Well, I guess the royals liked us well enough for Mom to get that appointment to Canterlot, and I suppose Mom rubs wings with the pony nobility and their Princess and all that, but nopony ever thought much of me at school, or anywhere else, either."
"Huh. So… it's a religion thing? You think you can maybe use that on the ship? Some sort of… I don't know, sermon or something, to break the curse? I'm tired of pretending to be a stupid animal."
"Hey, making ponies think you're a dumbass is the best, Miss George! You shouldn't knock playing the fool. I find it gets you all sorts of places without too much fuss."
Yes, Eye, I have noticed a certain trend…
"Don't interrupt, Auntie. I'm making progress!"
"You have some issues with speaking the silent parts, and forgetting to say the out-loud portions, don't you-"
"Fish Eye!" Fish insisted, staring up at the turul.
"Miss Eye, yes," the turul agreed.
"Aw, so you're going to join Auntie A like that? Fine, I can deal with being ganged up on. She wants to talk to you, anyhoo. You mind her talking to you?"
"Why would I object to communication with the divine?" asked the great bird.
"Most likely because your own divinities would smell my scent upon your royal self, turul. Do you not have any gods of your own to beg help or blessings?" Auntie A said through Fish, in her pushy, godlike way.
The big bird recoiled like Fish had just tried to stab her in the face. Rude!
"Well, that's disturbing. You're a goddess, milady…?"
"Amphitrite, mistress of the depths and the sea-touched storms, yes. And patroness of these foolish fish the surface world knows as hippogriffs." Fish felt the strangeness of her throat and beak moving without any intent on her part. She'd learned to not tense up, so it didn't hurt anymore, but it felt weird.
"I wouldn't know," said the turul. "You don't see many hippogriffs these days. I think I've met one stallion in the months and years since my exile, other than these Eye sisters you have here."
"Yes, well, problems, you know. Politics. Surface issues. Not really my remit, surface politics. They are by and large safe now, my children."
"You do safe, goddess? You can do safe?" the turul asked.
"Not for you and yours, wind-child. Nothing against you, or yours, but I have no purchase on the greater raptors, your mountains, your high thermals, or your frozen aeries. The high winds and the spirits of the upper airs should love you enough for your own purposes, or what's an affinity for? Do you not have gods of your own, wind-child?"
"Religion is rather out of fashion in the modern world, if you have not noticed, oh wise and ancient goddess of the deeps," said the turul with a voice full of irony.
"Pfft,” Auntie A buzzed with Fish's thickened tongue, rattling against her beak. "The influence of that white pest up on her own high mountain, no doubt. I hear tales, so many stories. But mountains are as far out of my remit as your aeries, Princess Gyongyi. Did I get that right?"
"Close enough, your divinity. You know enough to address me by my proper name?"
"I am a goddess of proper names, princess. Ponies, griffons, hippogriffs and all the rest of the lesser mortals, they think to hang this name or that on a thing, and assume that nogod is paying attention. But some of us - or, as it may be, at least one of us - is paying attention. Before Eye here gave me a view on the surface world, I couldn't see much of anything. But names? Names I read, names I hear, names I can - not see, but know.
"Names matter, Hercegnő Gyongyi, little Gyongyike, Lady George, so many other false names… you have too many words you use like masks. You should look to that. Do you wish to be nothing to nobird, or trash to everything?"
The big bird looked down at Fish and her goddess, troubled. "I would be queen to my people, goddess."
"An admirable desire, Hercegnő Gyongyi. And you labor under a terrible curse, whose fault, I know not. I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I will never claim otherwise, and you and yours, so high up into the airs, on mountains with nothing of the sea about them, have little touch with my element or my realm. But I am sympathetic. It is a terrible thing, to be separated from your people, those who by all right are yours to protect, taken so far from where you can protect them. Insofar as I can help, and your absent gods touch not upon the mortal world, I will help in their stead.
"If I can."