//------------------------------// // Chapter 35: Kaelynn // Story: Forbidden Places // by Starscribe //------------------------------// It wasn't good to be a fish. Kaelynn had ample reminders of that fact anytime she wanted to leave her sequestered corner of the Bright Hawk, even for brief social interactions with her friends. When leaving for anything more, there was a good chance she would end up getting into even more trouble. I should've just waited in the tank. There wasn't anything I could do to help.  It wasn't true, though. By the time she'd dragged Ryan back to the tank, he barely had enough strength left to change back into something that could swim. Something about his being part-insect struggled with the sudden drop in pressure. Kaelynn had barely even felt the effect of higher altitude, though she knew instantly she enjoyed only a brief moment of borrowed time. Her rebreather didn't use charged oxygen tanks, or else she would have already exhausted them. Instead, it bubbled external air through the water reserve. That rebreather now floated in the water beside her, reserve tank split from where the initial acceleration had torn it. The mechanism is fine. It's okay, Kaelynn, you aren't trapped. You can fix this. She would get a chance to try, assuming they escaped from the pirates who wanted them all dead. She swam past where her clone floated in the water, still recovering, and over to the windows. They were higher than the water-level, of course, and she could get only vague colors and shapes through them from below the water's surface. Were they still accelerating? From within the water, she couldn't tell anymore. We need a radio. I wouldn't need to go around the ship to ask questions if they could pass messages to me. Of course, what Kaelynn really needed was to get her songs right. "Still out, Ryan?" She nudged the other seapony with a hoof.  They twitched, facing her in the water, but still hanging mostly limp. "Won't we run out of air in here too?" "Eventually," she said. "But slowly. There's not much we can do to help the others at this point—either they get this plan to work, or we die." She was getting better at recognizing the melody of her words. Everything had its own little tune; words just didn't make sense without one. She hadn't been so good about hearing and singing it when she was on four legs, but in here it all made sense. Ryan didn't reply, and she let herself drift past the resting seapony—all the way to her little songbook. Of course the paper used by seaponies and hippogriffs wasn't really paper at all, but something thick and waxy. It made the book incredibly thick in her hooves, even though it had only about fifty pages. But it held together in the water, and whatever it was written with didn't bleed away as she opened to fit through. I was singing when the world tried to crush us. One of these. She flipped through, humming to the tune as she examined page after page. Understanding this book came to her the same way other languages did. There was magic in it, warping her brain the way the Worldgates also warped her body. It didn't work on Janet's Spanish, but it did work on text. Apparently it worked on music too. Either that, or seaponies happened to use the western notation she'd grown up seeing since childhood. Too bad I didn't go further than piano lessons. I might be able to sing these by now. She stopped on a page, recognizing the tune instantly. A simple glance at the notes and she could practically hear them in her head, exactly as she'd sung in desperation a few minutes back. The song had a title: "Ceaseless Determination." Instead of volume, the note on the first measure read "with desperate purpose." Well, she'd got that right.  Kaelynn hummed along to the words of "Ceaseless Determination." Instead of the sudden wave of alien strength, nothing happened. Where had all that power come from before? "Do they require a specific emotion? That would be so..."  Impractical, obviously. Incredibly inconvenient, if the only way to cast spells was to embody a specific feeling when she tried to use them. But maybe trying to view the whole through the lens of what made sense as a practical and useful tool was where she'd gone wrong. Whatever they'd really been like, the hippogriffs spoke about seaponies like an artistic, creative bunch. Basically the opposite of the way she saw the world.  Kaelynn flipped through a few pages, skimming their titles. "Abundant Healing" was the next, followed by "A Feast In Memory of Slain Enemies"  If only the hippogriffs kept better records, I could at least know that all of them were actual spells, instead of songs the birds like listening to. The ship moved, rocking gently forward, then back. It settled after a few seconds, and Kaelynn looked up. They weren't going up anymore. Did that mean they'd succeeded? They weren't falling to their death, so that had to count for something. She flipped past a few more spells. "Pressure Mounts to Venture Through the Abyssal Gulfs" included an entire page of catchy percussion accompaniment, but how was she supposed to sing with "looming dread"? Suppose every single one of these was a spell. Which one gets me out of the damn tank? There was no guarantee any of them would. Kaelynn had sung every single one by now, sometimes with Ryan singing along. It sounded much better with two voices, but unfortunately that didn't make them more magical. Something was different up there. I matched the emotion, and the magic actually did something. Unfortunately, it was confounded with lots of other variables. Maybe she'd been using simple adrenaline to make it back to the water, holding her breath as water trailed behind her. Maybe Ryan's own magic had been part of it somehow. One song caught her eye, and she stopped on the page. "Walking on Air". It was the only title to reference either of those concepts. But could she sing with "innocent curiosity?" That's probably why this one never worked. I'm not curious about the world out there, it's my world. It isn't new. Yet, this universe wasn't hers. It was full of great and terrible things. Monsters in ancient ruins that knew of ancient human cultures. Incredible cities of sculpted stones, monarchs who ruled over night and day like Greek gods. Now probably wasn't the best time to tinker with it, with pirates bearing down on them and death at their heels. But this single rush of potential... she was curious about that. Maybe they could make magic work after all. If she had trouble roleplaying, she could always pretend she was a little mermaid. The ship listed, then the water around her tilted forward. Ryan was dragged along for the ride, mostly limp. Kaelynn swam against it, over to the edge. The not-bug seemed to be doing better down here, so she let him rest. Kaelynn didn't much feel like resting now that she was on the edge of something. She sang. Simple words, about friends waiting for her, all the exciting things they would teach her. The melody was simple too—high and bubbly, with short phrases punctuated by long pauses. Unanswered questions for the universe asked by a curious little fish. How many times had Kaelynn failed at this song, along with so many others? She should probably be trying something simpler. Maybe she should find the one that purified water, that would probably be useful. Or she could go for the one that sounded like it would help her grow food. But none of those would get her out of the tank.  As she sang, Kaelynn realized she was curious. It wasn't just that she needed to know if they were going to get killed by pirates, though that was certainly true. There was something else. Once she was caught up in the song, it brought its own emotions along. That had always been the power of music. That was why she might choose to listen to something she liked while feeling depressed, or maybe turn on some Johnny Cash if she really wanted to wallow in it. She wanted to be out there, needed to be out there.  The song finished, and Kaelynn took a breath—and started to choke. She flopped up and over the edge of the tank, hacking and coughing water as she rolled down the ramp. Her head burned suddenly, nostrils stinging with liquid taken down the wrong pipe. Liquid in her lungs. It was chilly out there—not the icy cold above, the ship was insulated better than that. But it wasn't pressurized. This was an incredibly stupid time to be playing with magic. The realization hit her almost as suddenly as the acceleration had a few minutes before. She was outside, breathing! Her song worked! It was easier to stand while gently angling down. They weren't falling—they hadn't completely disengaged the crystal. This was the gentle downward path from the ship's helm. It would do them no good to escape the birds only to suffocate or freeze in the upper air. Kaelynn surged with excitement—she'd done it. Forget the stupid half-broken rebreather. Forget the tank that trapped her. She should've let the hippogriffs leave her this way from the beginning. The tiny dry section of her room didn't have a mirror, but the polished metal side of the tank wall served almost the same purpose. But her reflection here was... different. She had wings, for one. Not feathery and graceful like the pegasi they'd met. Not even huge and powerful like Janet's or Galena's. These were waxy and round, like a duck's. They looked a little strange, emerging from the rest of her slightly shiny, scaly body. Not a frog's skin, that comparison was gross. Not wrinkled like a turtle—she was more like a newt, scales shiny in the thin sliver of light from distant windows. Her tail still ended in fins, though they were far wider now, frilled and clear a little like Ryan's. Ryan... he needed to see this! She hurried to the edge of the tank, and nearly tripped going back up the ramp. It was the thin air—the key to moving at altitude was slowness. She needed to make each action deliberate. She made it to the edge of the tank, then splashed with one hoof. The water still felt warm and welcoming. Inviting, particularly now that they were at extreme altitude. But Kaelynn sure as hell wasn't going to splash back inside to try and reverse her magic now. She wasn't giving up weeks of effort. What about going through a Worldgate? I can't be the next one to test them, just in case. Her splashing produced the desired effect, though it took almost a minute. Ryan swam over, a light blue shape cutting through the water. Seaponies looked surprisingly graceful from above. Did the others look at her like that? "You... standing," Ryan whispered, in her voice. Speaking into the air without a machine, her voice was almost inaudible, and lacking all music. "Singing... worked?" She nodded eagerly. "I'm going to go... up. Check on the others." But slowly. The air felt like it might be getting better, but her head was already pounding. "You stay here... until you feel better. If we get attacked, you'll hear it." She spun slowly this time, taking each step like she was an astronaut afraid to bounce off the surface of a light asteroid. She was already too far away to hear Ryan's objections, but that was fine. She didn't need magic emotional senses to know her boyfriend needed some time to recover. A little thin air wasn't going to keep Kaelynn shut in her room now. She opened the hall, then began her slow way up the stairs. She hadn't been able to help before, but all that had changed. Kaelynn wasn't going to be helpless anymore. She wouldn't be spending the rest of this expedition in a fishbowl. She had legs.