Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls

by thatguyvex

Episode 144: The Truth of the Treasury

“Did everyone hear that?” Flash sought to confirm, his own ears twitching. He hadn’t fully gotten used to the hearing range ponies had with their larger ears, but that was compounded by being underwater, where sound traveled in odd ways even with the aquatic adaptation spell. 

The others of the group paused. They’d just gone up from the balcony area they’d been occupying and followed Wavecrest’s lead through a spiraling upward tunnel that had brought them to a circular chamber with numerous side openings around its circumference. The chamber had a floor inlaid with pearl carvings in the shape of a crest that resembled an open sea shell containing a vibrant, dual colored circle of gold and blue. Wavecrest had said it was the royal family’s sigil, indicating they were in the main juncture for the royal quarters.

Before they could pick a corridor that would lead to Princess Scylla’s chambers, however, the distinct if subdued sound of reverberating tremors reached Flash’s ears, and he’d halted in place.

“Ain’t just you. I hear ‘em too,” confirmed Applejack, looking back the way they’d come, “Sounds like somethin’ like fireworks goin’ off.”

“It must be the other team,” Twilight said, worry straining her voice, “They might have run into trouble.”

“Should we go back?” asked Rarity, “Was our plan not to fall back from the city and regroup if one of the teams was discovered before accomplishing its mission?”

“Yes, but, we don’t know for sure what it is,” Twilight admitted, “I didn’t think we’d be out of view of any flares they’d send up. I’m not sure...”

“Let’s keep going,” Flash said, and at Twilight’s look he put on an encouraging smile, “The others aren’t pushovers, and we’re already pretty close to finding what we’re here for. I trust them to handle their end of things. Would kind of suck to throw in the towel when we’ve come this far, right?”

“I guess you’re right,” Twilight said, and Wavecrest flicked her tail in agreement.

“Quite correct. If all goes well we’ll be in the Treasury soon enough. Come, the Princess’ chambers await.”

Although the muffled noises of detonations continued a little longer, it faded soon after the group swam up through a corridor on their right which passed through a short curve before opening up into a wide entryway barred by thick, circular metal doors. Or at least, it had been barred. The doors had been torn free of their housing, the metal bent in half and cast aside like a useless frisbee. It stopped the group short, as the damaged doors were in stark contrast to how well kept the rest of the palace was.

“Let me go first,” Admiral Seaspray said, bearing forward with his harpoon, “There is something amiss, here.”

Flash swam forward too, but Twilight held out a hoof to hold him back, giving him a small shake of her head as she said, “You’re still recovering. Just... hang back, okay?”

It irked him more than he wanted to show that she was right. Even if Wavecrest had removed the poison, he could feel his body was weak compared to what it had been. He could probably compensate for it by burning through more spirit energy, but he was trying to conserve that for when another fight broke out. For now he just sighed heavily and let Seaspray go in first, followed closely by Wavecrest. Twilight then went forward with Flash at her side, and Applejack and Rarity brought up the rear.

Beyond the doors were what Flash assumed was supposed to be Princess Scylla’s living area, but that hardly did it justice. This was no mere ‘room’ but rather a massive, two story suite. The initial chamber was a giant square with twin ramps going up to the second floor flanking the walls. In the middle of the room was a raised stone stage about a meter off the ground, with weapon racks lining the walls. From the stage were various stone obstacles, reminding Flash of some kind of child’s jungle gym, only if sized upward and designed with sharper edges. Given the weapon racks and the seating around the stage, he recognized the training arena for what it was. Even in it’s damaged state.

“Somepony weren’t too happy an’ went on a wreakin’ spree,” Applejack said, “Ain’t nothin’ in here ain’t busted up.”

It was true, the training arena was mostly smashed, with only just enough of it intact to make it clear what it had been. Seating surrounding the space was similarly broken, and Flash noticed some of the damage didn’t look like it was simply from blunt force. Some of the stone had been melted or seared by something. 

“It is said the Princess trained in this room with her most loyal warriors,” Wavecrest said, swimming towards the center of the room, “Beloved by her men, she never sent them into danger; she wasn’t fully prepared to face herself. Why is this place so desecrated?” 

“It certainly isn’t a pleasant sight, but this isn’t why we’re here, is it?” said Rarity, nodding towards the various doors that lined all the walls on both floors, “I presume one of these must lead to the bedchambers?”

Wavecrest shot a brief frown at Rarity, but nodded, “It should be the one on the second floor, directly across from the entrance.”

“Anything important in the other rooms?” Twilight asked, “A personal study, maybe?”

“Nothing we need to concern ourselves with, and I’d rather not disturb this place longer than we have to,” said Wavecrest, swimming up to the second floor and towards the opening she’d indicated. It, too, had it’s doors torn aside, pieces of them laying on the second floor’s walkway. The rest of the group followed her, entering into what was presumed to be Scylla’s bedchambers. 

The interior was even worse off than the other room had been. Nothing was left intact. The bowl shaped bed was reduced to broken chunks. The writing desk was now rotted kindling against the wall. What may have once been paintings or tapestries were shredded, and a melted hole was burned through a set of weapon holders mounted on another wall. But most striking was the floor, where something of great heat or acidic quality had melted a pattern, a pattern that Flash knew must form letters.

“Whoa nelly,” said Applejack, “Gettin’ bad vibes aplenty. Hey Twi, can ya read that scribble on the floor there?”

“I... can’t make it out,” Twilight said, “Wavecrest?”

The seapony was floating in the room, staring at the letters silently. Seaspray put a talon on her shoulder, startling Wavecrest for a second before she looked at them all. Flash could see her eyes moved with uncertainty over the letters as she read out, “It simply says...’Murderer’.”

“Murderer?” Rarity said, almost as if her interest was piqued, “As in an accusation? Who would carve that into Princess Scylla’s chambers, and why?”

“C’mon Rarity, does it really matter?” asked Applejack, “We ain’t here ta solve a mystery. Especially one centuries old.”

“There’s nothing to solve,” Wavecrest said with pulled back lips, exposing teeth, “This must have been Charybdis’ doing. An ugly, wicked accusation, born of her own madness and hate for her noble sister. Charybdis was always jealous of Princess Scylla, and knew full well that had she allowed the succession to proceed naturally, that Scylla would have become Queen, not her. That was why she used her dark magics to take over the capital and forced her sister into civil war.”

As if realizing she was ranting a bit, Wavecrest blinked and took a deep breath, holding her staff close, “At any rate, Applejack is correct. We are not here to discuss the past. This room may have been damaged by Charybdis’ rampage, but with luck the mechanism for the secret passage was not damaged. I just need to find it...”

As she began searching, Flash swam a bit closer to Twilight, lowering his voice to whisper to her, “Look, the past might not matter to what we’re doing right now, but if we’re eventually going to face Charybdis herself, I’m thinking it might be useful to at least know more about how she thinks.”

“I don’t disagree,” Twilight whispered back, “But it’s clear this is really upsetting Wavecrest. Maybe we should just leave this be.”

Flash hesitated. Wavecrest had saved his life, and it wasn’t as if he had any reason to dislike her. He even trusted her for the most part. Yet his instincts were telling him something was wrong here. That it was important to learn more about just what happened between Scylla and Charybdis. He didn’t have much to base that on other than what his gut was telling him, but Captain Celestia had trained him to trust his instincts on such matters. Even when the path to victory appeared closed, instinct alone could guide one’s blade. That was what the Captain had told him, at any rate. 

“I trust Wavecrest,” he said, “But I still think we should learn what we can about these seapony Princesses. It might be important, later. You trust me, right?”

Twilight didn’t hesitate on that one, offering him a quick, nervous smile, “I do. Let’s look around here while Wavecrest is searching for the passage. Maybe we’ll find a clue?”

 Despite the room’s damaged condition, there was still plenty to sift through. The same general messiness and lack of organization was still apparent here as what Twilight had seen back on the Odyssey. However there were far more personal effects here than there had been on the ship. Twilight found a number of half melted medals in a broken case and the remains of what she thought was a training weight. Rarity and Applejack joined in the search as well, the former holding up a broken metal plate of an armor, “Not one for fashion, was she? I don’t see anything in here other than pieces of armor. Not even a single dress for a more formal occasion.”

“Not everymare cares ‘bout lookin’ fancy fer a shindig, Rares,” said Applejack, “Even if I don’t mind tossin’ on a dress on occasion, I don’t think its weird that a’ Princess who clearly was all ‘bout the business end o’ war stickin’ ta what she knew.”

“I suppose so, but didn’t she do anything for fun? Even I get tired of sewing and like to unwind with a bit of fun,” Rarity pointed out, and Twilight rubbed her chin. To a degree, Rarity had a point. The more she looked at the contents of Scylla’s room, the more she felt she was getting a mental image of the seapony Princess. Everything was either a trophy or a implement for battle. There were a few scattered remains of books, like the ones on the Odyssey, that pertained to artifacts and foreign lands, but Twilight had an odd feeling that those weren’t so much for fun as they were for knowledge of where to find certain items.

There wasn’t much here that showed Scyllas had any other interests, including being a Princess. Still, what did that have to do with what had happened here in the ancient past?

“Hey Twilight, look at this,” Flash said, motioning her over.

He had moved part of the broken bed, revealing that underneath it had been a small chest, surprisingly intact. As Twilight, Rarity, and Applejack gathered around it, Wavecrest had moved one of the struts of the weapon mounts on the wall. With a resounding click, a section of the wall next to a broken stone cabinet slid aside.

“The passage,” Wavecrest said, “Come, we’re almost... what are you all looking at?”

Seaspray had kept a watch near the door, but now he too gave the ponies a curious look as he swam over to them and looked over their shoulders, “A chest?”

“Um, yes?” Twilight said, giving Wavecrest an apologetic look, “I’m sorry, but aren’t you a little curious, too? You clearly admire Princess Scylla, so what harm is there in learning more about her?”

“Mmph, more like disturbing her spirit,” Wavecrest muttered, but there was equal parts curiosity as hesitance. She actually glanced back at her satchel with the journal tucked into it, frowning thoughtfully before turning back to Twilight, “I’ll say a prayer of forgiveness later, I suppose. Let’s see what you’ve found, but let’s not take long.”

Twilight agreed, there. She knew that time was short and the rest of her friends might be in danger at that very moment. But she had a feeling Flash was on to something. Knowing more about Scylla and Charybdis may well prove to be important. The chest was made of stone, and had a small brass lock on it, which Twilight tried jiggling around with her magic.

“I could break it open, I think,” she said, but Rarity put a hoof on her shoulder.

“Let me, darling. I have a way with these things, and it wouldn’t do to damage anything inside.”

“O...kay?” Twilight said, briefly confused as she watched Rarity lick her lips and point her horn at the lock. A soft blue glow exited Rarity’s horn and entered the lock, which began to rattle.

“Aaaaaaand just twist a bit here, jimmy a tad there, presto!” Rarity declared with a smile as the lock popped open. Both Twilight and Applejack looked at her with surprise.

“Alright, how’d ya know ta do that? Ya ain’t moonlightin’ as some cat burglar, are ya?” Applejack asked, and Rarity laughed, waving her hoof.

“Oh perish the thought. I’m a law abiding mare. That said, I, um, well this is embarrassing to admit, but ever since I opened my boutique in Manehattan I’ve occasionally forgotten the key and needed to get inside after closing. So I taught myself a bit about locks. It’s really not a big deal. Most locks operate under similar principles, and with a fine enough control of magic...”

Rarity trailed off, gesturing at the freshly opened chest. Twilight raised an eyebrow, wondering if perhaps there was more to Rarity’s story than she was letting on, but now wasn’t the time. “Well let’s see what’s inside.”

That said, she lifted the lid and they all peered inside. 

“Huh... ain’t what I was expectin’,” Applejack said.

Within the chest was a series of odds and ends, the first of which Twilight noted was a stone plate with a detailed carving on it. Much like a painting or picture, the stone plate was a portrait of two seapony fillies next to a statuesque seapony matron. One of the fillies had a large head crust shaped like waves and had an energetic smile on her face as she used a fin to wrap around the other in a tight hug. The other filly was small compared to the first, with a smoother, straight headcrest and she wore an awkward smile like she wasn’t sure of herself. Above the pair, the older seapony mare had fins lightly held on each daughter’s shoulder, a look of motherly love somewhat clouded by severe, stern features. The crown the elder wore, a four pronged affair culminating in a crest that held a carved jewel with the royal signet on it made it clear who this was.

“The Queen and the Princesses,” Wavecrest said, reverently.

“They look happy together,” Rarity said, “Hm, no King in the picture?”

“Aqualania was a matriarchy,” Wavecrest said, “Although the father would have been in the picture had he been alive. From the histories we know he died defending a settlement from a seabeast, but little else, and not long after the Princesses were born.”

“What’s all this other stuff, do ya reckon?” Applejack asked, picking up one of the objects inside the chest. It looked like an instrument of some sort, like a curved flute carved from coral.

“That’s an echoer, a simple but popular instrument from the time,” Wavecrest said, frowning at some of the other objects inside, “And I see a deck of Currents and Reef tokens. A child’s game. And that there is a bond bracelet made from different seashells. Young seaponies exchange those when swearing oaths to one another.”

“But it’s broken,” Rarity noted.

“I feel like these must be things Princess Scylla wanted to forget about,” Flash said, “I mean, why hide them in a locked box under her bed otherwise?”

“But she didn’t get rid of them either,” Twilight said, “They must have still been important to her. Hmm... another journal?”

Beneath the rest of the objects in the box was a small book of bound coral and treated pages. A coral pen was even tucked into the book’s spine. Twilight could sense the faint magic enchantments on the pen and books, probably to allow it to function underwater. She looked at Wavecrest, and then at the other journal, “Wavecrest, is it alright if we look? I know you didn’t want us examining the other one.”

The seapony witch curled her lips, “It... it just isn’t important, I think. Princess Scylla’s thoughts are her own. We shouldn’t disturb them, for it might make her spirit restless.”

“Do you mean that metaphorically or literally?” asked Flash, “Because at this point I’m starting to seriously wonder what’s up with the things I’ve been sensing or lack thereof lately.”

“I cannot speak to your senses,” Wavecrest said, then glanced at Twilight with a measuring gaze that lasted several moments. Eventually she gave a disgruntled, reluctant nod, “If you must, take the journal, but I insist we go now. We’re out of time. You can read the journals later.”

“That’s fair,” Twilight said, and took the small journal out, giving it over to Wavecrest, “Hold onto it until then.”

It was a sign of trust, and Wavecrest took the second journal with a grateful nod. At that moment all of them heard and felt a tremor run through the palace.

“Sounds like the fun down below is getting serious,” said Rarity, “I think Wavecrest is right, haste is in order.”

There was certainly no argument from the others present, and in short order Wavecrest was leading them through the secret passage. This opened into a narrow shaft that led straight down, and so down they went, straight towards the deep bowels of the palace.

----------

  A short time earlier...

Aria shot a venomous look at the sahuagin guard who jabbed at her side with a trident as she was ushered back into her and Sonata’s “cell”. She gave the weapon an irate slap with her tail, and the sahuagin growled at her, but Aria just growled right back, barring her prominent siren fangs.

“Oh go eat a dead fish, you blowhard! I know you can’t kill us, because your ugly as sin boss bitch wants us for some forsaken reason.”

The sahuagin burbled something in its language while it’s three companions looked out from outside the room, and the creature gave one last half hearted jab at Aria with it’s trident before returning to it’s post to fume. Aria snorted and turned around, swimming back to Sonata, who watched her with a bemused grin.

“Yeash Aria, I think you hurt his feelings.”

“I damn well hope so,” Aria said, flopping down next to her sister, then much quieter she added, “Got what I needed, too.”

“Awesomesauce! I’m ready, too. Heheheh, I can’t believe that trick worked, too,” Sonata’s grin widened as she whispered back to Aria. 

It had taken a bit of time once the sirens had worked out a plan of escape, but they’d convinced the guards to take them out one at a time to relieve themselves. Granted the language barrier had required some creative pantomime, and the guards had been resistant to the idea until the siren sisters made it clear that if the guards didn’t take them somewhere proper for answering the call of nature, then they’d get the results flung at them from inside the cell. Sonata had been taken first, and then Aria next, and each time the siren in question had used the opportunity to not only get a better idea of where they were being held, but to acquire any object of use they could snatch up to hide underneath their fins, even bound as they were.

The objectives had been to get ahold of a weapon each. The chains they were bound with couldn’t be easily loosened, but ultimately they still had a decent amount of mobility in the water, and between their teeth, their powerful tails, and the objects they’d obtained without the guard’s knowledge, the two sirens were about as deadly as they were able to make themselves. In Aria’s case, what she’d hidden beneath the fins on her arms was a sharp piece of hardened shell from a broken sculpture they’d passed as the guards had taken her to the palace’s privy. Sonata had snatched up a chunk of fallen masonry just small enough to hide, but big enough to crack a skull. 

Having also now seen what lay outside their cell, they had a simple plan. They were held in some kind of temple, in one of the side rooms branching off from the main chamber of worship. While the front entrance of the temple led out into a courtyard that was packed with sahuagin, the courtyard itself was open to the rest of the ocean. If Aria and Sonata could just get past the guards in the immediate temple then they could make a break for freedom by swimming straight out into open water. Of course this did carry the problem that if they were spotted then there was nothing to stop the sahuagin from pursuing, and while both sirens were fast with their tails free, there was no way to guarantee a successful escape. 

Conversely, they could try exploring other areas of the temple in hopes of finding a back exit, but that was risky by itself. The guards rotated every couple of hours. If they waited for a shift change to escape, it’d give them some time, but the risk of any random sahuagin discovering their escape and trapping them in the temple was still pretty high.

Ultimately the pair agreed that if they were going to get out of here, fleeing out of the courtyard was the best play. Even if they were recaptured, it wasn’t as if their situation would get much worse. The only other problem was that any fight to take out their guards would make noise, so they needed either a distraction, or a way to take the guards out fast enough that even if it did make noise they could escape before anycreature came to check.

The weakened part of the ceiling Aria had spotted when they’d first been put in the cell seemed to be their best bet. If she could collapse it on the guards, they could finish off any survivors fast and be out of the temple before any other sahuagin realized what had happened. 

Silently the sisters nodded to each other, preparing themselves. The guards, used to the two sirens looking sullen and tense, didn’t seem to realize the subtle shift in the pair’s attitude. Aria slowed her breathing, wishing not for the first time that she still had her siren gem. A song of sonic force would have been a lot easier to do this with than her own body. There was a moment of fear as well, over whether this was about to get her and Sonata killed, but she shoved that feeling aside with a push of anger. Without another moment’s hesitation, she launched herself up towards the portion of ceiling beneath the archway entrance into their cell.

The guards saw her move, of course, but were slow to react, having not truly expected such a sudden motion. Aria slammed her whole body into the ceiling, using her shoulder as a battering ram. Siren’s were not small creatures, and their body’s were built for powerful bursts of speed underwater. She’d aimed her strike well, the cracked and weakened section of ceiling buckling under her impact.

Stone crumbled down on the surprised sahuagin, not as fast as it would if on the surface, but fast enough through the water that the fishmen had trouble swimming out of the way. Two were pinned by the falling debris, while the other two hesitated a second between deciding what to do; flee, help their pinned comrades, or attack. That hesitance cost them, as Sonata, who’d been tensing to strike alongside her sister, burst out of the cell like a living torpedo. She body checked one sahuagin while her mouth, now gripping the stone she’d taken, whipped about and smacked the rock across the other guard’s face.

The struck guard didn’t go down, but was momentarily stunned as he swung his trident in a blind fury. Sonata yelped as one of the trident’s prongs scraped her side, but then she growled and rushed forward, “That hurt, you jerk!”

Granted, with a rock in her mouth it came out more like “Tugh hugh ugh jugh!” but it wasn’t as if the sahuagin could understand Equestrian in the first place.

She rammed into the sahuagin’s stomach, then spun around and smacked him across the face with her tail, which for all intents and purposes was one giant limb of solid muscle. Even accounting for water resistance, the blow left the sahuagin floating in a senseless daze.

Sonata got a proud look on her face, but then sensed the other guard coming up behind her. He’d recovered from her earlier hit and was rushing her back, trident poised to strike. Then Aria descended on him from above, the sharpened shell piece held in her own mouth as she stabbed down with it. She hit the sahuagin dead center in the back of his neck, ending the threat rather instantly. Sonata gulped a bit at the sight of blood, but cleared her head fast and spit out the rock from her mouth, “Thanks, Aria.”

Aria dropped the shell, ignoring the taste of blood in her mouth, “Don’t mention it. You okay?”

Sonata glanced at the cut on her side, just above the base of her tail, and waggled the tail around a bit, “Think so. Yup, just a scratch.”

Aria nodded, “Good. Now let’s get out of here before the rest come to-”

A blazing series of magical flashes followed by loud detonations bombarded the two sirens’ senses, coming from outside the temple. The pair were presently floating in a very wide, rectangular entry hall that opened up on their right into the temple’s main worshipping chamber. There, several pillars of stone rose up to a beautifully carved ceiling of detailed depictions of seaponies frolicking with numerous forms of sealife. The pillars held altars carved with statues of several entities one would assume were the deities the temple honored, although neither Aria or Sonata had time to examine them in detail. To their left was the entrance of the temple itself, separated by periodic columns of white marble, with the stone stairs beyond it leading down to the courtyard.

It was from there that the sounds of explosions and bright flashes of light could be seen, and both bewildered siren sisters looked at each other.

“The ponies,” both of them said together, as if the answer was obvious.

“They must have come after us,” Aria said, shaking her head, “Because of course they did.”

“Wonder how they got all the way down here without drowning?” Sonata said, trying to scratch her head with her tail and not quite being able to reach, “Wouldn’t they, like, totally drown?”

“Magic,” Aria said with a shrug, “And here we were, about to escape just fine on our own. At least they’re providing a distraction. C’mon Sonata, let’s see what’s going on and if we can make a break for it.”

They made their way behind one of the columns supporting the entrance and peeked out into the courtyard. They were in time to witness Tempest Shadow’s madcap attack on the sahuagin forces, and the subsequent way in which Starlight Glimmer joined in to save Tempest from getting overwhelmed. Both sirens were transfixed by the spectacle, so much so they sort of forgot to consider whether they should use the distraction being provided to just swim away. Instead they watched until Tempest and Starlight fled together down a side opening in the courtyard, pursued by the vast majority of the sahuagin that had been occupying the courtyard. 

There were still about a dozen beleaguered looking fishmen milling about, helping the shamans free the trapped metal sphere that had been partially buried beneath the rubble of a huge archway Starlight had thrown, but that group was so busy they weren’t even looking towards the temple.

“Ooooh, this would be a good time to run away now, right?” said Sonata.

“It would be,” replied Aria, “Only if we split now, these crazy ponies are going to keep looking for us and probably get themselves killed or something. Ugh, I hate feeling like I owe them anything.”

“Mmm, yeah, guess it would be kinda a jerk move to leave them behind after they came to save us,” Sonata said, “And it’d suck if Pinkie got hurt. She’s funny and has, like, the best taste in food ever.”

“Awwww that’s so sweet, ‘Nata! I like you too!”

“I like me too, Pinkie. ...Pinkie!? Aaaaaaah!”

Blue siren and pink pony yelled at each other in mutual girlish squee and hugged each other, while Aria starred at them. A second later a lighter blue streak appeared before her and Rainbow Dash gave a wave.

“Yo, we’ve come to rescue you, and if you make a crack about whether I’m a little short for it, I’m smacking you with my awesome new fish tail.”

“Yeah, don’t care, but thanks for wrecking those walking sardines,” said Aria, noticing Fluttershy and Trixie swimming up as well, the group appearing from the globe of an invisibility spell Trixie had been casting. Aria also blinked at the sight of a shark swimming next to Fluttershy, nuzzling her like an obedient puppy. “I, uh, take it it was you guys that put that Tempest chick and Starlight up to going gung-ho on the sahuagin’s butts?”

Trixie huffed, giving the opening where the two unicorns had fled a worried look, “More that pigheaded Tempest’s idea than anypony else's. And poor Starlight had to go save her arrogant tail, too! She’d better not get Starlight hurt or I’ll...!” Trixie paused, glancing at the flat look Aria was giving her, and abruptly looked away, “A-at any rate, be glad that I, the Clever and Covert Trixie, was able to get us over here unseen to free you from captivity!”

“We kinda already did that on our own,” Sonata pointed out, “But I guess I can give you points for coming in for the assist!”

“More importantly, where’s the rest of the pony brigade?” Aria asked, “They waiting somewhere outside this freaky looking place?”

“Yeeeeah, about that, you siren gals missed out on some plot developments,” Pinkie Pie said, “Everypony else is helping a nice seapony witch find some shiny hidden treasure while the rest of us did the rescuing thing. We were supposed to signal them when we found you, but I think somebody screwed up in the planning department because I don’t know how we’re supposed to do that right now.”

“I think Starlight was supposed to send up a magical flare,” said Rainbow Dash, “But, uhhhh, yeah, Twilight and her team won’t be able to see it if they’re inside the palace. So much for that part of the plan.”

“And to make things worse, your two unicorn pals just rushed into the palace with half the fish-bastard army on their rears,” Aria said, shaking her head and turning around to show the chains around her fore hooves, “Look, whatever. Can you get these chains off of me and Sonata, pronto? If we’re going to be useful, I’d like to not be hogtied.”

It took a minute, but between Trixie’s magic and the other ponies pulling, they were able to loosen and remove the chains on the two sirens. Luckily Trixie’s magic was also still maintaining an invisibility spell that kept them from being immediately spotted by the remaining sahuagin in the courtyard. Fluttershy was watching that group, and as the sirens were freed, she got the others’ attention with a quick hoof wave.

“Um, it looks like they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing.”

The group's attention turned to the sahuagin, who had finished excavating the sphere from the fallen rubble of the archway. The four shamans were arguing with each other over something, and soon one of them swam off to a huge doorway in the opposite end of the courtyard, heading deep into the palace. Meanwhile the remaining three began ordering the warriors to haul the metal sphere back to the center of the courtyard. None of them were paying attention to the temple, but who knew how long that would last? 

“What should we do?” asked Fluttershy, “Shouldn’t we go after Starlight and Tempest?”

“Duh, of course that’s what we should do,” said Rainbow Dash, brandishing around her cutlass, “We can’t just leave them to get captured. Then this whole mess would be for nothing.”

“Much as I don’t like agreeing with her, she’s right,” said Aria, “There’s not much point in us escaping if we leave behind the magical heavy hitters. Going to need all the firepower we can get to deal with Charybdis, so better go make sure those two walking artillery pieces don’t snuff it prematurely.”

“You know you could at least pretend to be grateful we came to rescue you,” said Rainbow Dash, and Aria looked at her, exuding an aura of conflicted consternation.

“I am, dammit, but I’m not thrilled having to charge headlong deeper into this place. I’m getting the worst kind of bad vibe off of it.”

“You know, Aria, I didn’t wanna bring it up unless you did, but man does this whole place seriously creep me out,” agreed Sonata, who then glanced at the ponies, “Can’t any of you, like, feel it or what?”

The ponies exchanged looks, then shook their heads, Rainbow Dash saying, “No more than any other super-dead underwater grave city I’ve visited.”

“Never mind any of that,” Trixie said, her impatience making her voice become even more nasal, “We’re wasting time. We need to go after Starlight!”

Suddenly Pinkie Pie’s mane gave a shudder and the pony perked up like a merecat, her nose twitching as she looked back towards the courtyard, “Uh-oh guys, I think we forgot something and it’s about to bite us on the tails.”

“Huh?” Trixie said, looking in the direction Pinkie was. She spotted a sahuagin swimming from the direction the rescue team had come from and heading straight for the shamans and warriors near the metal sphere. “Is that...?”

“It’s that Ulgriv dude!” Rainbow Dash said, “I thought he’d still be out like a light!”

“Apparently not,” Fluttershy said, just as Ulgriv reached the other sahuagin and started talking. For a moment it looked like he might be warning them to go check the temple, as he was waving a trident he’d picked up towards the temple, yet the other sahuagin around him were just staring at him rather than responding.

It didn’t take long to understand why, as Ulgriv’s voice reached them from a distance.

“-telling you, the enemies of the Deep Mistress have come to free the ancient kin! You must check the temple immediately! Why won’t you understand!? Oh no, I’m still cursed by the evil witch’s magic! I’m speaking the surfacer tongue!”

As it happened, the translation spell Starlight had laid upon Ulgriv was only for Equestrian, and had yet to wear off. As far as his fellow sahuagin could tell, the young warrior was babbling in an incomprehensible surface tongue. Which only made them suspicious of the fact that intruders had ambushed them. One of the shamans asked a sharp question towards Ulgriv about how the intruders had gotten past the gates, and hearing the suspicion in the shaman’s tone, Ulgriv backed up.

“No, you don’t understand! They used magic to bind my mind and voice! By the Deep Mistress’ grace you must go to the temple!”

The shaman gave a quick gesture to the warriors around him, and two of them moved forward to try and grab Ulgriv. Driven by a certain level of potent faith, the young warrior evaded their grasp and then shot off like a swift barracuda towards the temple, “I’ll go myself, then! No matter what, I must undo this treachery!”

“Oops, he’s coming this way! Trixie, I don’t think your spell will work once they’re right on top of us,” said Pinkie Pie, just as the rest of the warriors started to chase Ulgriv, the whole lot consequently heading right for the temple. 

“You’re right,” said Trixie, narrowing her eyes and striking a pose, “So we must enact Trixie’s Foolproof Backup Plan!”

“What’s that?” Sonata asked, to which Trixie immediately took off at a swimming sprint as fast as possible for the opening in the wall that Starlight and Tempest had gone through earlier. Sonata blinked, then said, “Oh. Good plan.”

In short order the whole group was swimming after Trixie as fast as they could. Consequently, Trixie couldn’t maintain the invisibility spell while focused entirely on running, as the spell did rely a bit on the user not moving too fast to maintain itself. As a result everypony and siren appeared clearly to the sahuagin. The warriors were taken aback by the sudden appearance, while Ulgriv put on more speed to catch up while shouting, “Yes! See! I told you the enemy had come to free the ancient kin! Now you must- Ack! Wait! Stop attacking me! I’m not with them!”

The warriors, having seen Ulgriv rushing at the suddenly appearing intruders as if he’d known they were there all along, came to the entirely wrong conclusion. That being that Ulgriv had not only let the intruders in, but was now the traitor was rejoining his foul surfacers comrades. Clearly he was rushing to their aid after having provided a distraction! They cursed Ulgriv’s name as an apostate as they hurled tridents at him. 

Ulgriv was given no choice but to desperately evade while swimming fast after the ponies and sirens, all the while clutching his small prayer amulet and shouting, “This is all your fault you crazy surfacers!”

“Hey, don’t blame us because your pals are stupid!” shouted back Rainbow Dash.

So it was that the chase was on. The rescue team chased after the path their wayward allies had taken, hoping to catch up with Starlight and Tempest, who in turn were being chased by Morgawr, somewhere deep in the palace. And right behind them Ulgriv had to chase them, if not so much to catch the surfacers as to avoid being skewered by his own people! 

Left behind, the three remaining shamans all gave somewhat baffled looks at the departing spectacle and then turned back to the sphere they’d been working on. It was generally agreed amongst them that they’d leave... whatever in the Deep Mistress’ name all that craziness was about to the warriors. They still had work to do.

However, as they got back to it, the eldest of the three shamans found themselves looking towards the side of the courtyard where the south gate was. That young warrior who spoke the surfacer language had come from there, and according to the reports Morgawr had received just prior, the warbands posted at the south gate had gone to hunt down some ghostly illusion in the city.

But enough time had passed that those warbands ought to have returned. So where were they?

----------

The city was quiet as death. Aqulania’s corpse was as dark and frozen still in the horrible last moment’s of its tormented destruction as it had been for centuries. Yet there was an unseen stirring amid it’s stones. Currents in the shadow, moving faster. Already outposts of sahuagin had simply gone dark, the towers no longer showing any signs of life. Patrols returning to these husks did not get long to realize what was wrong before they, too, were taken by the awakening darkness, one by one. 

There was no longer any sign of the warbands that had charged off after Trixie’s illusions. No sign that was left for the living to see, at any rate. 

The sahuagin had been through Aqualania many times before. They’d used it as a base, an outpost, for a long time. The only clue they’d had to something being amiss about the city had been the occasional missing guard. Rumors abounded, ghost stories and the like, but it had never been taken seriously.

Perhaps it should have. For the thing about a disaster is that it rarely gives obvious signs of building. A volcano might give a shake or two before it’s eruption, a storm a faint taste of electricity in the air before it struck.  
 
For Aqualania, it had been warning it’s intruders for a long time. Taking them, one by one, to feed itself. Now, it was done with warnings. Now, the disaster was bubbling up to the surface, built upon centuries of anguish, and rising to devour all in it’s path.

----------

Being out of breath while underwater was even harder than on the surface, mainly due to the fact that you couldn’t just draw in more air to try and compensate. Gills only processed oxygen so fast. So even Tempest, a very in-shape mare, was having a little trouble by the time she and Starlight found themselves bursting into a sizable antechamber with three different tall openings situated to their left, right, and dead ahead. 

Starlight could hear the war cries of the sahuagin not far behind them and cast a glare at Tempest, “I don’t suppose you had a plan that extended beyond ‘barrel headlong into danger, hope I survive’?”

Tempest shot back an equally inflamed stare, “I don’t recall asking you to join me. The idea had been to lose these stinking fish in the palace and find my own way out after. Didn’t expect their leader to be so damned fast.”

Speaking of the stubborn fish man in question, both ponies looked down the wide hallway they’d come from to see Morgawr arrive gliding around the bend. His body was covered in scrawling, vermillion glowing symbols, and he was swimming through the water as if it was helping him along rather than impeding him. His warriors were further behind, not enhanced by the magic flowing through their leader, but they could follow his call, and with Morgawr’s speed there just wasn’t any way for Tempest and Starlight to shake his pursuit.

Starlight figured this out almost instantly, and with a huff she rubbed her hooves together and lit up her horn, “Fine. We can’t run. So we just make a fight of it. They can’t follow us if they’re unconscious.”

“Or dead,” Tempest pointed out, readying her harpoon.

“Are you always this bloodthirsty?”

“Only when my life is on the line. Or I’m sufficiently enraged.”

Morgwar was almost upon them, and Tempest lit up her own horn with it’s erratic streams of sparking power. Starlight licked her lips, her eyes focused on the poised spear of the hulking sahuagin warlord.

“We’ve got to deal with that trident,” she said.

“Leave that to me,” Tempest replied, eyes becoming locked to the trident in Morgawr’s grip.

Seeing his quarry was no longer fleeing, Morgawr came to an abrupt stop just inside the antechamber. The sahuagin regarded the two mares before him with unreadable fish eyes, but Starlight noticed a twinge at the corners of his massive mouth that might have been a smile. Then, to her surprise, Morgawr spoke in a barely understandable Equestrian, distorted and warbling through the water.

“Impressed you are no longer fleeing, surface ones. Our Deep Mistress demands payment in blood for your trespass, but I respect you chose to stand and fight. Your flesh will be eaten in honor of your courage.”

“How about no?” said Starlight, “Nopony is on the menu today.”

She swam swiftly to the right, while Tempest went left, the pair flanking around to either side of Morgawr. Starlight focused her horn up above him, however, and shot off a stream of magic. Morgawr had been prepared to intercept a spell, but only one was directed at him, and looked momentarily confused as Starlight’s beam of magic went well above his head. The reason for this became rather instantly evident as Starlight raked the beam of bright teal magic down from the top of the entrance, all the way down to the bottom, and the water grew instantly colder as ice began to form. While Starlight was more specialized in using spells of raw force, she wasn’t half bad with elementalism, and with enough power put into it her spell was able to create a three foot thick wall of ice in the passage they’d taken into the antechamber. This meant the bulk of the sahuagin warriors that were just now catching up were trapped on the other side. Granted they could probably break through, given time, but that meant that for now the fight was just between the ponies and Morgawr.

He let off a snort, as if being cut off from his reinforcements didn’t mean much of anything to him, and turned sharply to his right as Tempest launched herself towards him. Her horn blazed and shot out a twisting whip of uncontrolled energy, which Morgawr caught with his trident. Which is exactly what Tempest had wanted him to do, ducking down to swim beneath Morgawr’s extended weapon and within his guard. She then shot up with her harpoon, aiming to impale him from under the jaw. Without hesitation Morgawr simply opened his mouth and bit the end of her harpoon between his jaws with enough strength to halt her strike dead in its tracks.

“What the-!?” Tempest looked briefly baffled by the lack of effect her hit had, but Morgawr just grinned wider and snapped out with a free hand taken off his trident, grabbing her by the head with his webbed fingers. He then yanked her close while ramming his left knee into her gut, causing bubbles and a bit of blood to burst out of Tempest’s mouth as the force of the blow sent her reeling through the water at high speed at an upward angle while also causing her to drop her harpoon.

She barely controlled her ascent in time to keep from smashing into the wall, coughing again while Morgawr chuckled.

“You seem strong, for a surface pony, but I am a blessed champion of our holy Mistress,” he declared, running a claw over his chest, drawing blood from it. The blood seemed to excite the glowing symbols on his body, which moved and writhed like living snakes, coiling even faster around his flesh. “My body itself is a temple of worship to her greatness! The contract carved upon my soul, a testament to my devotion.”

“Your long windedness an opening to exploit,” Starlight said as she used her telekinesis to grab Morgawr’s legs while he was distracted. He didn’t have time to use his trident before she yanked him down to slam into the floor, not holding back on her own magical might to make the impact hard enough to indent him into the stone.

Yet while the blow should have been enough to knock out even a seriously tough creature, Morgawr took the impact with aplomb and swung his trident down. The points cut through Starlight’s magic like the telekinetic cloud of energy was just so much gelatin, absorbing her power into the weapon instantly.

“Gah!” Starlight yelped as Morgawr pointed his trident at her and unleashed the stored magic inside it in a raw bolt that grazed her side as she dove away. The bolt seared some fur, and went on to blast a large chunk out of the wall behind her.

By now Tempest had recovered, somewhat, and shot out more magic of her own. Instead of aiming at Morgawr, she let the uncontrollable spikes of raw magic rain down as they would around him, tearing up the ground and kicking up a cloud of sediment. She then swam down and leveled out at the sediment cloud’s height and swam straight into it. Starlight wasn’t clear what Tempest was planning, but took that moment to look for something she could use herself. 

Deciding that subtly had flown out the window, she took a grip of one of the tall metal doors in the wall of the antechamber directly across from where they had entered. It was big enough she guessed it must have weighed ten or so tons, which as far as she was concerned was more than sufficient to be a bludgeon. With raw telekinetic strength she ripped the door from its hinges and brought it around.

Inside the sediment cloud she heard the grunts of a scuffle, and the cloud burst apart as Morgawr’s magical sigils appeared to create an aura around his body, sending shockwaves through the water. It revealed that Tempest had gotten close again and this time used her whole body to wrap around Morgawr’s right arm and bend it at the joint, trying to both break it and tear away the trident he carried. However Morgawr was fleshing that limb with stupendous strength, and the magical aura around him concentrated on his arm, causing it’s muscles to bulge out and grow at an alarming and unnatural rate. 

The muscle growth alone caused Tempest to lose part of her grip, and the mare growled as she shoved her broken horn’s jagged end right into his arm and fired off her magic at point blank range. Unable to use his trident to absorb the magic, Morgawr’s body lit up like it was being electrocuted. Yet despite what must have been a great deal of pain, the sahuagin warrior just roared and slammed his bulging arm, Tempest still attached to it, straight into the ground. The ground broke apart some more, with Tempest shaken loose by the impact and left in a daze, spinning away through the water.

Morgawr readied his trident to skewer Tempest, but glanced to his right just in time to get a face full of door being swung at high speed by all the telekinetic force Starlight could muster... which turned out to be quite a lot.

The water was filled with a resounding noise like a gong being struck and Morgwar, along with the door, were hurled back into and then through the ice wall. The ice wall shattered and a number of unfortunate sahuagin warriors on the other side who’d been trying to chip their way through now got a face full of giant iron door, along with their leader. 

Starlight used the general disarray this caused to quickly seal the ice wall back up before any of the sahuagin could realize what had happened. With that done, she swam down to Tempest, who was floating limp.

“Tempest? Hey, Tempest, you alive or what!?”

“Glargflrmp...” was the dizzy reply as Tempest, eyes swirling, rolled around and reached out with her hoof. She grabbed Morgawr’s trident, which the sahuagin had dropped when Starlight had hit him with the door. 

“I got trident...” Tempest declared while her eyes remained unfocused, “That makes me the winner...”

Starlight sighed, letting out a half hearted laugh, “Hey, winner, how many hooves am I holding up?” 

“Uh, seven?” was the uncertain reply.

“Eh, close enough. Come on, we’d better hurry before that monster recovers and-”

The ice wall she’d just reconstructed exploded, a humongous hole blasted out of the center of it in a spray of shards. From the other side of the hole, a bleeding and thoroughly ticked off looking Morgawr held out a balled fist from where he’d punched the ice wall and slid through the hole, several of his warriors following behind him. 

“Give back my trident you disgraceful little ponies!” Morgawr roared, “It was a blessed gift from the Deep Mistress! You taint it with your filthy surfacer flesh!”

“Yikes, guess the date is over. Tempest, time to shift to Plan C!”

What was Plan C? Well Plan A, running, hadn’t worked, and Plan B, fighting, was clearly not cutting the mustard either. So Plan C was an emergency teleport. Now, teleportation was tricky business in the magical community. There were plenty of good reasons that Equestria didn’t utilize large scale teleportation for any number of economic benefits. The vast majority of unicorns simply couldn’t do it, at least not safely. Not only was it an energy intensive spell, but accuracy was an issue even for those who were used to the spell. Extreme familiarity with the location being teleported to was highly recommended if you didn’t want to end up somewhere unfamiliar or unpleasant. 

Teleporting in a rush, like when having an army of murderous fish people and their magically super-charged warlord bearing down on you, was not recommended. Doing it in a rush, while not having an extremely familiar and prepared spot to teleport too? Definitely not a good idea.

But Starlight Glimmer and Twilight Sparkle had discussed the idea of setting up a potential workaround system, once. The idea of using an item or individual as the teleport focus rather than a location. In theory it should work as long as the item or individual weren’t too far away from the caster, which admittedly sort of defeats the purpose of teleportation so Starlight had kind of tabled the theory as irrelevant. But now? Now she didn’t have any choice but to rely on a half-baked theory, and hoped Twilight’s enthusiasm over the idea hadn’t been misplaced.

Just as they’d theorized, Starlight focused her mental energy on forming a perfect image of Twilight in her mind, imagining every strand of mane and fur on the alicorn’s body. She grabbed Tempest, and poured magic into her horn just as Morgawr charged at them with claws slashing forward.

Then she and Tempest flashed out of existence-

----------

-and right in front of a very surprised Twilight Sparkle.

They collided in a confused mess of limbs for a moment before disentangling themselves from each other, leaving the breathless alicorn looking in stark bafflement at Starlight and Tempest. 

“W-what in the world!? Starlight!? Where did you and Tempest come from!?”

Starlight, a tad dizzied from her sudden and jarring teleportation, not to mention a near head on collision with Twilight, took a second to shake the haze out of her mind and look around. They were in a wide shaft that went straight up and down, lined with small glowing crystals every twenty feet or so that cast the shaft in a dim blue light. Just behind Twilight were Flash Sentry, Rarity, and Applejack, while just ahead, or rather down the shaft, were Admiral Seaspray and Wavecrest. All of them looked equally startled at Starlight and Tempest’s sudden appearance.

“Oh, I tried that teleport trick we talked about months ago. The one where you use a person as the focal point instead of a location you know or can see,” Starlight said, rubbing at her horn, which fizzled with a few errant sparks of magical power, “Ow. It worked, looks like. But wow was that uncomfortable.”

“No kidding?” Twilight blinked in astonishment, “That was extremely dangerous, Starlight. People or objects move around, and teleportation without a fixed and known point or at least direct line of sight for short-range teleportations could have all sorts of nasty side effects. Your lucky you didn’t end up in the wall or something. Tempest looks like she got it even worse than you.”

Tempest, for her part, still looked dazed and was glancing around, unfocused. Starlight waved a hoof, “Oh, her. She’s fine. Just a concussion I think, from getting a little too up close and personal with the sahaugin’s leader.”

“Starlight, a ‘concussion’ is not fine!” Twilight said, swimming close to check on Tempest, “Tempest, can you hear me?”

“Huh...?” Tempest looked at her, blinked a few times, her eyes going from distant to focused after a second, “Y-yes, I can. Ugh, that bastard hit harder than I expected. But look, I got his damnable magic stealing trident! Hah!” 

Tempest held up Morgawr’s trident triumphantly, and Wavecrest gave it a wary eye. “You’d best get rid of that thing, if indeed you took it from the grip of a sahuagin champion.” 

“What? Why?” Tempest said, “If it can soak up magic and shoot it back out at will, I’d say it’s a pretty useful weapon. Especially for me. Why, I could shoot my impossible to control magic into it and use the trident to focus that power for a change, instead of blasting it all over the place.”

“Be that as it may, if it was forged by the foul powers wielded by sahuagin shamans, or worse, their unholy mistress, then that weapon may be more dangerous to you than to your enemies, unicorn,” Wavecrest said, pointing her staff at the trident, “I would bid you toss it aside, but I am not your mentor, so keep it at your peril.”

“Speaking of peril, Wavecrest, could you give a bit of healing magic to Tempest? Just in case?” asked Twilight, and after the seapony nodded, she turned back to Starlight, “Okay, tell me exactly what happened? Where are the others? Did you rescue Sonata and Aria?”

“I suggest we move while we talk, ladies,” said Seaspray, “Assuming none object?”

None did, and so the group started a slow descent down the shaft while Starlight and Twilight swapped information, bringing each other up to date on the respective events thus far. Meanwhile, Wavecrest placed a light wave of healing magic upon Tempest, just enough to ensure the cobwebs were fully cleared from the militant unicorn’s mind. Tempest still refused to give up Morgawr’s trident, and Wavecrest had said her peace on the matter and so left Tempest to her own devices.

Still, by the time Twilight and Starlight were done swapping tales, Twilight gave Tempest a level look, “You might want to listen to Wavecrest. Or at least let me examine that weapon, just in case there’s some kind of harmful magic on it.”

“Ugh, you’re both being paranoid, but fine, examine away,” Tempest said, hoofing over the weapon. Upon closer inspection, Twilight noticed the trident wasn’t made of any conventional metal she was familiar with. It looked like some kind of wrought iron, but the shaft bore not a hint of rust, but instead a ever slight tint of green. Something about it did spark a notion, however, and Twilight motioned Starlight over.

“Say Starlight, you got a pretty close look at the throne Queen Chrysalis used to dispel magic around her hive, right?”

“I was a little busy trying to stay alive at the time, but yeah,” Starlight said, then tilted her head and peered closer at the trident, “Huh, you know, this does kind of remind me of it a bit. That throne was mostly made of stone, but it had elements of metal ore in it. I don’t know, Twilight. Everything in that hive was pretty green. Might have been a trick of the light.”

“Yes, but a throne that dispels magic, a trident that absorbs it... seems similar to me,” Twilight said, looking over the trident once more. A series of symbols were carved into the length of the shaft, curving and sharp. Starlight noted that the symbols looked a lot like the ones that had glowed on Morgawr’s body as well.

Twilight tried using magic on the trident, to probe it. But her magic, on immediate contact with the metal, was just sucked up like she was pouring water into the hungry sands of a desert. 

“You two done?” asked Tempest, and Twilight sighed, giving the trident back over.

“I can’t say for sure that it’s safe, Tempest, so at least promise me you’ll be careful using it?” Twilight asked, and for a moment Tempest looked uncomfortable with the sincerity in Twilight’s voice.

“F-fine, whatever. I promise to be careful. That make you happy?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I see light ahead,” Flash Sentry said, and all eyes focused downward towards the end of the shaft. Indeed there was a brighter light stemming from below, outshining the small crystals that had been lighting their way thus far.

Wavecrest visibly trembled with excitement, clutching her staff tightly, “We’re almost there. The Treasury is just ahead! Oh great ocean spirits bless us so that we may make this final step and reclaim what was once lost.”

“Not to ruin the moment but you did mention something about a mechanism we’d need to overcome?” Rarity pointed out, and Wavecrest nodded vigorously.

“Oh yes. The great door to the Treasury is trapped. In fact most of the chamber is filled with deadly traps. Not to fear, ponies, for my mentor wrote about them in detail and I have studied her journals thoroughly. Just stay close.”

“That’s encouraging,” Starlight said, and Twilight gave her a worried look.

“Are you sure the others will be alright?”

“Twilight, relax, I’m sure they’re just fine. Tempest and I drew off most of the bad guys, and left a clear path for them to get to where we think Aria and Sonata were being kept,” Starlight said, “By now they’ve probably rescued those two and are waiting somewhere safe for us to exit the palace.”

-----------

Entering deeper into the palace, Trixie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and a pair of recently rescued sirens swam full tilt. Right behind them, Ulgriv gave chase, and in turn was being chased, to such a point it was hard to tell if the young sahuagin warrior was running with the group or still technically chasing them.

In fact, Pinkie Pie, noticing the sahaugin’s distress, fell back a bit to give him a happy wave, “Say Ulgi, if you want I could try talking to your buddies for you! I’ll tell them all about how it’s not your fault we broke into the palace, that Starlight hit you with the crazy mind-bending magic! It’s okay, she did it to us once too.”

Ulgriv let out a strangled noise, “Stop talking to me! You’re making it look even more like I betrayed my people and am on your side! And what’s with the creepy smiling!?”

“Oh that’s just how Pinkie smiles,” said Rainbow Dash, falling back a bit as well to swim backwards while giving Ulgriv a casual grin, “You get used to it. So, fish dude, since you’re still speaking our lingo I wanna ask you, what’s with this whole ‘Deep Mistress’ thing you keep going on about?”

“Grrr! What is with you surfacers!? I am trying to catch you, and will seriously stab you! Do you always have casual conversations with your foes mid-chase?”

“Eh, if I feel like it,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug, “Not like you’re fast enough to catch me in a million years, dude. Check it.”

In a prismatic burst she zipped to the front of the group, then spun several circling arcs around the bunch, before appearing right where she’d left off, casually swimming backwards just outside of the reach of Ulgriv’s weapon. 

“See? Fastest flyer in Equestria. Er, swimmer, now, I guess.”

Ulgriv gaped at her for a moment before shaking himself and brandishing the trident he’d picked up while trying in vain to decide which pony to try stabbing first, not that he was close enough yet to do so, as he was still lagging a few feet behind them. “I can only pray to the Deep Mistress that servants more deserving than I will punish you in my stead, but I remain a son of the Abyss and will do all I can to impede your quest to bring ruin to my people!”

“Man, you don’t stop going on about that chick. What’d she do to earn the endless idol worship, huh? I mean, I’ve got my fanclub, but c’mon, I don’t expect them to literally pray to me,” Rainbow Dash said, then rubbed her chin, “Although a temple would be kinda cool...”

“Rainbow Dash, don’t make fun of him,” Flutteshy said, “He’s clearly trying very hard to be a good sahuagin, by their cultural standards, and we kind of are responsible for his friends wanting to hurt him. At the very least we could show a little consideration for his feelings.”

“I’d care more about their feelings and ‘cultural standards’, Flutters, if both of those didn’t seem to involve impaling us with sharp objects,” Rainbow Dash shot back, then called out louder, “Hey Trix! Where we going!? Do you see Starlight and Tempest up ahead yet?”

“Ugh, don’t call me ‘Trix’! And I don’t know where I’m going! Trixie is a magician, not a map!” Trixie shouted back. To this, Aria, who had been sticking to the middle of the pack alongside Sonata, groaned and pulled ahead a little.

“I swear this is the worst rescue ever! Your human versions were way better at this when they busted up that Grand Fisher freak. At least they had an exit strategy.”

“Never mind how bad that actually went,” Sonata muttered, and Aria growled.

“Okay, so maybe that rescue went sour, too, but at least we knew we had a way out and weren’t running blindly around like a school of suicidal guppies! Go left at the next juncture, Trixie.”

“Huh? Why?” Trixie asked, and Aria glared.

“Because I’m a siren and sirens have sonar, and I can tell there's a whole bunch of sahuagin about fifty or so meters ahead and we don’t want to just run into the back of them!”

“But wouldn’t that be where Starlight and Tempest are, if it’s the same group that chased them?” pointed out Rainbow Dash.

“Even if it is, I didn’t get a read on either of them being there anymore, so they must have ditched the pursuit. So unless we all want to fight on two fronts, I suggest we change directions,” Aria said, indicating the sahuagin still chasing them a good distance back from Ulgriv. 

Trixie didn’t look happy about it, most likely because not knowing where Starlight Glimmer had gone was upsetting to the showmare, but she followed Aria’s advice and turned a sharp left down a different hallway, taking them away from where Aria had sensed the lion’s share of sahuagin warriors. 

Ulgriv paused at the juncture, as if unsure if he should go ahead to try and rejoin the warriors further down the main hall, but ultimately growled and started to follow the ponies. The new corridor dipped downwards rather suddenly, leading in a curving path below the palace’s first floor. The sahuagin that had pursued the group from the courtyard would have lost sight of them, and would need to decide which direction to go to chase their quarry. If Ulgriv gave a yell, he could have alerted them which corridor they went down, but strangely he didn’t, instead silently chasing them by himself.

This fact wasn’t lost on the ponies, Pinkie Pie scratching her head quizzically, “Huh, figured for sure you’d let loose on the pipes to keep your buddies on our tails, Ulgi. What’s up?”

“Grr, they think I’m a traitor, and won’t believe anything I say until my voice is no longer corrupted by your surfacer magic. So instead I’ll keep an eye on you myself and wait for an opportunity to stop you all. If I do that, I can prove my faithfulness to my fellows,” he said, lifting his chin as if challenging them to attack him.

Pinkie Pie just nodded, “Okie Dokie Lokie!”

Rainbow Dash also nodded, “Cool beans. Welcome to the team.”

Ulgriv boggled at them, “What team!? I’m not on a team! You’re all insane!”

“Okay fine, you’re not on the team, you’re just our unofficial fishy mascot who wants to kill us,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug, “Dude, you’re about as threatening as a goldfish. I bet even Fluttershy could take you. She has a pet shark, now.”

“I’ve named him Mr. Snugglefins,” Fluttershy declared, petting her shark on the snout, which it leaned into with relish. 

Ulgriv continued to follow the ponies, but hung a bit further back and went sullenly silent while he questioned his life choices.

Meanwhile Trixie and Aria conferred on just where they were going, as the downward spiraling corridor soon started splitting off into new branches, and while they may not have much immediate pursuit, they couldn’t expect the sahuagin to stay off their trail for long. 

“We can’t just wander aimlessly,” said Trixie, “Can’t your siren sonar figure out where Starlight is? I’ll even settle for Twilight Sparkle at this point!”

“Look, we can just feel out with sound the shape of stuff ahead of us,” said Aria, aiming her snout down one path and making a faint noise deep in her throat that came out like the lightest ping of glass, “Like, I know down that way there’s a set of rooms that I think are sleeping chambers. While down another path there’s some kind of bubble-shaped area with a bunch of floating debris in it. But I can’t pick up specifics. I only knew the sahuagin were down that one hallway because me and Sonata have taken the time to get familiar with the signals they emit. What, can’t you find your fellow unicorns with magic or something?”

“I would if I knew a tracking spell and had given them something with an arcane mark on it, but I didn’t think of that before realizing we’d all get lost in a Celestia-forsaken underwater death trap maze filled with murderous fish people!” Trixie snapped.

“There’s no need to shout,” said Fluttershy, “I’m sure we can find them if we just take our time and go room by room.”

“We do that and we’ll probably get caught by the sahuagin again way before we locate any of your pals,” said Aria.

“Well why don’t we just find that Treasury place, since that’s where Twilight’s team was going anyway?” suggested Rainbow Dash, “I mean, this place has to have a map or something somewhere, right?”

“This isn’t a mall,” Aria said, rolling her eyes, “I doubt there’s a ‘you are here’ map conveniently posted on a wall somewhere.”

Suddenly the sullen Ulgriv perked up, “Treasury? You surfacers seek the Treasury?”

All eyes turned to him, and the young sahuagin actually shrank back a bit from the staring eyes of the surfacers, which to him looked quite alien and unnerving. Pinkie Pie smiled at him, which was only more unnerving.

“Do you know where the Treasury is, Ulgi?”

He gulped, thinking quickly. Normally helping the surfacers would be the last thing he’d want to do, but if there were more of these intruders in the palace and they were all seeking the Treasury, then perhaps if he followed them there he’d find a way to stop them from whatever unholy mission they were set upon? Besides, according to all the gossip and rumors he’d heard the Treasury was a dangerous place, filled with deadly traps. By leading these surfacers there, he was just increasing the odds they’d fail.

“Not... precisely,” he admitted, “But my fellow warriors talk, and I have heard their tales. The sub-basement levels of the palace are vast, but are said to contain a room where supposedly a door that has never been opened is located. Any warrior who had tried has died upon the barbs and blades of vicious traps. Rigash once told me he wandered down once, just to see the door, and described to me the path he took. I think I can recall it.”

“Well, sounds to me like you just got promoted from mascot to guide,” said Rainbow Dash, but then she eyed him curiously, “Although kinda wondering why you’re telling us this all of a sudden. Weren’t you all ‘kill the surfacers’ just a second ago?”

He raised his trident proudly, “Do not misunderstand. I still seek to end your threat to my people, but you did hear me speak of the traps, yes? I will lead you there, and stand back and watch as you foolishly try to break into the Treasury.”

“Hey, works for me,” said Rainbow Dash, “Then get up front, fish dude, and show us the way.”

----------  

Morgwar tempered the furnace of anger beating in his chest with the firm faith that these interlopers would soon be cornered and he’d be able to undo the disgrace of allowing them to sully the birthplace of the Deep Mistress with their presence. It was galling, for a part of him actually did admire the courage shown by the usually soft and weak surfacers, at least in regards to the pair of unicorns that had faced off with him. Yes, in the end, they had fled with their potent surfacer magic, all the while stealing his sacred trident, but up until that point it had been an enjoyable match. Of course with the power of the Deep Mistress flowing through his body, he had weathered their assaults and given back in kind. His head was a tad rattled from that last hit with the door. Looking at the open gap in the doorway to the throne room, he admitted to himself the one with the intact horn had sported impressive power.

Eating her heart would be an honor, once he tore it from her chest. 

“Great Morgawr, someone approaches!” warned one of his warriors, and he turned to see a small group of other warriors swimming forth into the antechamber from the direction of the courtyard. He glowered, swimming to meet them.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, “Have you left the courtyard completely undefended?”

“N-no, great warleader,” said one of the warband, the sahaugin’s gills widening with a nervous gulp, “The shaman remain to tend to the translocation sphere. But we had to pursue! A new group of intruders were seen, and they had freed the ancient kin!”

Morgawr found his teeth grinding, “I see.”

A part of him wanted to gut the feckless warrior in front of him for delivering such news, but that would be a foolish waste. It was clear these intruders were more cunning than he’d given them credit for, using the attack on the courtyard as a distraction to give their fellows an opening to free the prisoners. Ultimately the fault was his for falling for such a ploy. Now it equally fell to him to clean up the mess.

“I take it you pursued them in this direction?” he asked, and the warrior seemed to relax a little as it became apparent he wasn’t going to be executed on the spot.

“We did, but lost sight of them and the traitor with them.”

“Traitor?” Morgawr folded his burly arms across his broad chest, the crest of his head fin raising in question.

“Yes. I scarcely believed it myself, but one of our young warriors appeared just as the intruding surfacers did, speaking in their tongue. I can only assume he was trying to distract us while buying the surfacers time to escape. We of course tried to slay him for his blasphemy, but he escaped along with the intruders. We lost track of them a short time ago.”

It seemed nearly impossible to believe that one of their own could turn traitor. Morgawr couldn’t quite fathom it. What true bloodied sahuagin would dare turn from their faith in the Deep Mistress? Yet perhaps the young fool was somehow tempted by surfacer trickery? But if he was speaking the surface race’s language, he must have been taught it at some point by one who was not sahuagin. Morgawr had learned from prisoners taken over the course of years, a chance afforded by his position. No young warrior would be able to do the same. Something else was amiss here, but he had not the time to parse it out.

With a growl he threw an arm out in a sweeping and commanding gesture, bellowing to his warriors, “The intruders cannot hide forever in the palace, and cannot be allowed to escape with the ancient kin! Break into warbands and sweep the palace from top to bottom! Every corridor, every room, every hideaway! When you find them, show them no quarter!”

He did a quick count of the warriors he had present, and set them into three groups to search each sector of the palace simultaneously. He then picked out the warrior who’d done most of the reporting to him and bade the warrior return to the courtyard and seek out the warriors who’d been stationed at the south gate. He needed messages to go out to all the patrols and outposts in the city to pull back and surround the palace with a cordon.

The warrior swam off quickly to follow Morgawr’s orders, neither the sahuagin leader or the warrior aware that there were no more outposts or patrols to pull back, that a darkness unlike the shadow of the lightless ocean was rising up through the streets of Aqualania and already surrounding the palace like a black tide. 

----------

Divistis’ concentration upon his work had only been somewhat jostled by the sudden and violent removal of the door to the throne room. With a faint grumbling, the shaman had left the terror beast to go peek out at what the commotion was about, like a disturbed elderly individual about to shout at some foals about lawns. 

He’d noted Morgawr’s fight with a pair of surfacer unicorns, groused something about the idiocy of the chosen warrior of the Deep Mistress, and gone back to his work.

Fortunately, with the blood of one last shark whose lifeforce was transmuted into the power needed, the last of the mutation was finished and the final binding spells complete. Divistus felt the raw, hot pain of ripping through a portion of his own soul to form the contract seal that he layered upon the terror beast. Unlike the Mistress’ contracts, a seal forced upon another living thing was weaker and lacked the strength to fully empower their recipient; it was still enough to enforce the shaman’s will upon a weaker mind. His clawed hands, like gnarled pieces of fishbone, glowed with pulses of red and black power. He carved a circular brand of red fire in the water, filling the sigil with a sharply curved triangle made from three fang-like shapes, then cast the symbol onto the head of the terror beast.

The creature heaved with one final howl of pain as the sigil was carved into both it’s flesh and spirit, then it went surprisingly still as it’s eyes focused upon Divistus. The empty darkness in those eyes showed him the creature was fully under his control, simply awaiting his commands, now.

“Hmm, not my best work, but this shall suffice for showing that bone headed Morgawr who the real favored of the Deep Mistress are. Come, beast, let us go see if our ‘warleader’ needs help with the intruders.”

----------

Twilight felt a small thrill of discovery as they descended into the chamber. The secret passage had led to an innocuous hole in the ceiling, hidden behind an open sided dome, like an inverted gazebo, that contained bright glowing crystals that helped illuminate the entire room. Several other such ceiling fixtures were spread across the ceiling, although only the one seemed to have a passage carved into it. 

Beneath the lighting dome, the larger room spread out to encompass a space quite close to the size of a full stadium. It’s circular walls were filled with scones within which pedestals were erected. Each one contained a stone sarcophagus situated at the feet of statues carved in the likenesses of various noble-looking seaponies. There were several doorways that were locked closed with small iron doors at the bottom end of the chamber walls, but more notably there was a portion of the wall that itself appeared odd. It was like a section of stone was pushed out in the shape of a circle, bearing the crest of the royal family; the blue and gold entwined teardrops imposed over a seashell. Around this portion of carved out stone was a collection of statues of seapony warriors. Each one had some part of their bodies, weapons, or armor bearing a crystal embedded in them, glowing softly blue.

“I’ll give the seaponies credit,” said Rarity, “When they built something, they certainly went big.”

“I daresay it’s a tad humbling to be looking upon the resting place of Aqualania’s nobility,” Seaspray said, “You rather never imagine touching history like this when you’re just reading about it as a boy growing up. Yet here I am, looking at a place no living hippogryph has likely ever laid eyes on.”

“It is well that you all understand and respect the weight of the past upon which we tread,” Wavecrest said, slowly swimming down into the chamber as the others followed her, “While I cannot claim to be on a mission purely of discovery, I wish to show due respect to the place we are about to seek to take from.”

“Guess that’s some comfort ta the one’s laid ta rest here,” Applejack said, “I mean, yer one o’ their own n’ all, so ain’t exactly graverobbin’ or nothin’.”

“I do try to see it in such a light, although I confess I wish there was another way to aid my people than to take from this place of rest,” Wavecrest said, “I can only hope the ghosts of Aqualania understand our need is great and that the seapony people could sorely use the treasures that lay hidden just beyond that royal seal.”

“So that big carved sigil is the doorway into the Treasury?” Twilight asked, “What are the statues in front of it? I count ten of them.”

Wavecrest held her staff out as they reached the middle point of the chamber, forestalling anypony swimming further, “That is indeed the door, and we must be careful, here. The traps my mentor wrote of are tied to those statues, likenesses of the ten elite guards who were ever by Princess Scylla’s side during her adventures. Unless the light within the crystals is reflected in the right pattern, breaking the light will trigger devices capable of slaying any would-be thief.”

“But, uh, you know how to disable them, right?” said Starlight.

“In theory...” Wavecrest said, “It was at this point that my mentor was forced to flee the palace, but she had experimented with the statues. I have her notes. I just need to finish what she began and hope I don’t end up getting diced into small fillets of fish.”

As Wavecrest descended alone towards the statues, Applejack leaned towards Rarity and whispered, “Was that her tryin’ ta be funny?”

“At this point, darling, I think even a little bad humor is better than none,” Rarity whispered back, then louder she said, “Miss Wavecrest, isn’t there anything we can do to help?”

“I’d rather not risk your lives when my own will suffice,” Wavecrest replied, “More hooves will not make this task easier or any less dangerous. You all have done your part in bringing me here in the first place, for I doubt I’d have survived the journey alone, nor make any escape without your further aid. For now, stay back, and allow me to focus. If I fail, you may then try to use your pony magic to see if you can succeed where me and my mentor’s efforts did not.” 

So it was that the group could do little more than settle in, a fair distance away from the supposed door to the Treasury and it’s statues, and watch as Wavecrest went to work. The mood was silent and tense, each having their eyes glued to the seapony witch's movements as she carefully swam around each statue. Twilight could see how the light from the statue’s crystals would shine in wide but still very visible beams, and how Wavecrest took special care not to break any of the beams as she looked over eah statue and consulted with a book from her pack, presumably her mentor’s notes.

While Wavecrest had denied any help, that didn’t stop Twilight from considering several defensive spells she could cast quickly if something went wrong. In the event a trap was sprung, she believed she could shoot out a protective bubble to encase Wavecrest, or at least yank her out of harm’s way with telekinesis. From the look of concentration on Starlight’s face, the other unicorn was thinking along the same lines, and when their eyes met, Twilight gave an approving nod to her student. 

And as their focus was upon Wavecrest, none at first took notice of Flash Sentry’s sudden unease.

It started much as the previous incidents of the young Soul Reaper Lieutenant sensing something off. A brief, faint flash of what he thought to be spiritual pressure, or at least something his spirit senses could detect. However, unlike the other times where the sensation appeared and vanished with equal speed, it came back in an ever slowly rising wave, and with each passing moment Flash started to feel his skin grow cold at what he was sensing.

Yet not wishing to frighten his companions, he wished to be certain, even as he let one hoof fall upon the hilt of his Zanpaktou. He closed his eyes and truly let his spirit senses pulse outward, probing up through the layers of stone they were currently under, trying to sense further beyond the palace itself. With slightly quickening breaths he pushed his senses further, seeking...

Until he got a proper taste of it. His eyes snapped open and he drew his Zanpaktou, the faint rasp of the blade leaving it’s sheath finally causing his companions to look his way.

“Flash?” Twilight said, noticing the pale cast to his features and the tense way he gripped his sword.

“Something’s coming,” he said, “Outside the palace. I can feel it.”

“Like what ya were feelin’ before?” asked Applejack.

“Yes, but it’s so much stronger now I can hardly believe it.” Flash took a deep breath, trying to sort out what he was sensing at the edge of his spiritual perception, “I don’t know how I missed it before. Was it hiding itself, somehow? But this has to be reiatsu, not just magic. So dense, and angry. Hateful.”

“Slow down Flash, you’re saying you’re sensing some kind of spiritual entity outside the palace?” Twilight sought to clarify, “I thought you hadn’t sensed any such beings since coming to Equestria.”

“That’s just it, I haven’t. This is the first time I’ve felt anything like this! It’s almost like I’m feeling a horde of Hollows, but the energy isn’t quite right. Hollows are negative, yes, and hungry, but this... this is like I’m tasting pure hatred. And it’s all amorphous. I can’t tell if it’s just one entity or hundreds. But whatever it is, it’s outside the palace, and creeping closer by the second. I, uh, don’t think we have a lot of time to stick around here.”

“Well this is a less than stellar turn,” Rarity said, worry rising in her voice, “What about the other team and the sirens? If there’s something bad enough to fluster poor Flash here stalking closer to the palace, they’re in even more danger than we are! And that’s to say nothing of the sahuagin.”

“Maybe one o’ us oughta go look fer the others ta warn ‘em?” said Applejack, but Seaspray looked at her with a quick shake of his head.

“Splitting our numbers further won’t do us much good, Miss Applejack. Whoever goes to look for them is liable to just end up in worse danger themselves. We must trust that they can take care of themselves and finish what we came here to do. Whatever threat is rising in the depths outside is something we’ll just have to do our best to evade or deal with when it comes. But speaking of haste... Miss Wavecrest, how are things going down there?”

“Faster, if I am not being distracted,” came the grumpy reply as Wavecrest very carefully, and also slowly, aligned one of the crystals to bounce it’s light off of another, creating a safe loop of light that shone softly blue. “That said, this is not a task conducive to speed, I’m afraid.”

“But do you have any ideas what Flash is sensing out there?” Starlight asked, “You know the most about this place.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean I know all of the dangers Aqualania has hidden in its shadows. If I take what your spiritual friend is saying at face value, I would say this sounds like the vengeful spirits of Aqualania, finally returning to have their day of reckoning with all who have entered their resting place,” Wavecrest said, “In which case, I hope they take their time with the sahuagin, and that we in turn have time to escape their wrath.”

“Well no matter what’s coming our way, sounds like the solution is getting into this blasted Treasury,” said Starlight, glancing at Twilight, “And if doing it the old fashioned way is taking too long, how about the two most powerful spellcasters in Equestria make a faster solution?”

Twilight coughed politely, “Okay, first of all, let’s not get ahead of ourselves Starlight. I’d still say Celestia and Luna have us beat in the spellcasting department. However, that being said, I do agree that between the two of us we can probably, um... make an entrance. Er, Wavecrest, I know you’re doing your best to disable the traps and all, but do you object to a more expedient, if perhaps more forceful approach?”

Wavecrest looked up at the pair, frowned, then looked at the statues she was working on. One could almost see the reluctance to take a shortcut and the respect for the sanctity of the place she was in warring with the practicality of Twilight’s words. She gave an almost mournful look at the book containing her mentor's notes, and tucked it away with a heavy breath.

“I shall be content with entering the Treasury. I suppose the means of our ingress is not what’s relevant. But I do implore you to try not to bring the entire chamber down on our heads, please?”

With a morose flip of her tail, the seapony swam back up to the group while Starlight and Twilight took up positions a safe distance away, but firmly aimed at the sigil carved seal. They both blinked at Tempest, who took up a position next to them.

“What?” Tempest said, “You’re about to blow something up. I’m all about that.”

“Fine,” Starlight said with a roll of her eyes, and Twilight just shrugged.

“Well then, ladies,” Twilight said, “Horns at the ready. Let’s make ourselves an opening.”

“Open sesaboom,” quipped Starlight, her horn flaring to life alongside Twilight’s and Tempest’s.

Even with Tempest’s broken horn making aiming a secondary feature, her uncontrolled stream of magic still seemed to naturally follow the path of the twin beams of purple and teal power that shot out of Twilight and Starlight’s horns. The cascade of magical energy knocked over or broke several of the statues, and the room flashed with multiple discharges of deep green magic fire that shot out of nozzles in the ground. Blades like large saws rose from the ground and sliced through the water, while harpoons shot out with high air pressure from holes that opened in the walls. None of it hit the ponies or their allies, floating well back from the door, but if anycreature had been within about twenty or so meters of the door or statues they probably would have been killed several times over.

But seapony traps had never been built to account for unicorn magic and it’s range. The triple blast of raw magic power from two well above average unicorns and one exceedingly potent alicorn collided with the circular stone door in an explosion of power. To Twilight’s surprise, the door held up for a few moments, it’s stone flashing with a sheen of sea green magic that had been infused in the door to make it far stronger than any natural stone. The enchantment, as old and potent as it had been, was still overmatched by the raw torrent of energy that was being poured onto it. The circular door began to crack, and in a final shattering boom of noise, the stone collapsed and exploded in a thick cloud of rock silt. 

The sound faded, leaving those gathered to look on at the opening torn out of the wall. Where the circular stone obstruction in the shape of the royal sigil once stood was now a darkly lit hole, with just a faint hint of warm yellow light stemming from within.

“Gotta give it ta ya magic oriented gals,” said Applejack, “When ya want somethin’ opened, it gets dang well opened.”

“Normally I would have preferred for Wavecrest to be able to follow the proper procedure and disarm the traps, just like in a good Daring Do novel, but... well... timing,” Twilight said with a helpless shrug.

“Trust me, timing is important now,” Flash said, his own attention still somewhat focused on an unseen point above them.

“Is... is that thing you’re sensing getting closer still?” asked Rarity, and Flash focused for a moment.

“It’s hard to tell. Right now it just feels like it’s surrounding the palace, but that could change any second,” he said.

“Then let’s not tarry,” Seaspray said, “Onward, into the Treasury!”

“Please, allow me to go first,” Wavecrest said, a reverent note in her voice and an excited, almost child-like look in her eyes, “To cross this threshold my mentor could not, I wish to be the first. Also, we must still be careful. Since my mentor did not get this far, I don’t know what to expect within. There could be further traps.”

With no further discussion, the group followed Wavecrest down to the dark opening. The seapony brought forth magical light to her staff, while Twilight and Starlight both lit up their horns to pour light into the opening. What was directly beyond the portal was... a downward sloping tunnel? That soft yellow light stemmed from somewhere down below. With caution, but also a decent amount of haste, did the group quickly descend. Although wary of traps or other hidden dangers, there was a growing sense of energy in the group, even despite Flash’s warnings of whatever dire threat loomed in the city above. 

After all, how often did one get to enter the treasury of an ancient civilization? For Twilight it gave her a goosebumps sensation akin to when she and Rainbow Dash talked about Daring Do’s latest adventures. What kind of magical artifacts might be waiting for them?

About a hundred feet down the tunnel Wavecrest paused, looking at the ground, “Huh?”

“What is it?” Twilight asked, and Wavecrest picked up and showed them an object that had been laying on the tunnel floor. It was a bent piece of armor, a shoulder pauldron, Twilight guessed. It was a shining bronze color, with a upswept inner edge and the sigil of the royal family emblazoned upon it. 

“This armor,” Wavecrest said, “I recognize it from ancient carvings of Princess Scylla. It’s a part of the armor she once wore.”

“What does that mean?” Starlight asked, and Tempest grunted.

“Seems pretty obvious that this Princess came this way, and probably after a battle, if pieces of her armor were falling off.”

Wavecrest shook her head, looking at the bent pauldron with a disturbed flicker in her eyes, “I thought... I mean, according to the tales Princess Scylla fell in battle driving off her wicked sister. Granted her body was never recovered, but the final battle itself was well documented. How would a piece of her armor be here, in the entrance to the Treasury...? Unless she...”

Suddenly Wavecrest dropped the armor piece and swam forward at a swift speed, forcing the rest of the group to rush to try and keep up with her. The tunnel’s downward slope continued onward for at least another hundred feet, until Twilight had to imagine they were deep beneath the palace. Abruptly the tunnel opened up into a large, half-dome chamber, like a bubble of glass built into the side of a vast wall. Within the half-dome was a set of metal scaffolds encircling a platform upon which numerous clockwork and brass tube contraptions were built in what appeared to Twilight to be a control panel not unlike what she saw upon the Odyssey. She could see a few glass hatchways on either side of the dome that led out to larger scaffolding that extended out into the darkness of... some unbelievably huge expanse that lay beyond the wall they’d exited out to.

But for the moment all of that was secondary to the strangled cry from Wavecrest. The seapony witch had stopped short at the central platform within the dome, a look of shocked, wide eyed disbelief coating her face. She even dropped her staff, which clattered gently to the platform next to her.

“It can’t be...” Wavecrest whispered, floating forward towards something slumped against the control panel of odd clockwork gears and brass tubes.

It was a seapony body, long decayed to barely more than a skeleton with a few scraps of scaled flesh sticking to its husk and the armor it wore. The armor was a surprisingly still gleaming suit of bronze plate mail, with a skirt of scaled flanks covering what would have been the seapony’s tail, which in turn was capped with metal blades. A finned helmet left an opening at the top to allow a seapony’s fin crest through, although all that was there now were a few bone spines from the skeleton’s skull. Laying next to the skeleton was a brilliant pristine weapon, a glaive with a blade forged to resemble a striking wave, all forged in a bronze colored metal that seemed to deny the existence of rust through what Twilight could only assume were magical enchantments. 

Clutched in the skeleton’s limp left hoof was a pale yellow crystal orb, the light of which still shone brightly despite the passing of ages, almost like a guiding torch. 

“That’s...uh...her, ain’t it?” Applejack said, taking off her stetson hat in a gesture of respect, “Princess Scylla.”

“Must be,” Starlight said, one eye on the corpse, but the rest of her attention diverted to the odd glass dome they found themselves in, “But, uh, hate to spoil the shocked mood, but this doesn’t look like any kind of treasury I’ve ever seen. What is this place?”

“It's awfully big, whatever it is,” Rarity said, peering out into the darkness beyond the glass, “Why, whatever room is out there has to be at least as big as the tomb up top. Even bigger, actually. But I can’t see anything.”

“Girls, please...” Twilight said, gesturing for them to be quiet as she swam up to Wavecrest, who was staring at the presumed body of Princess Scylla with a stricken look. “Wavecrest, are you going to be alright?”

“I...yes,” Wavecrest shook herself, reaching to pick her staff back up, “I just never expected this. To see her remains. To know they’ve been laying here, all this time. I... I should lay her to proper rest, should I not?”

“If we have time, of course,” Twilight said, then with a pensive look and delicately choosing her worse she added, “But do you know for sure that we’re in the Treasury? And... What is that crystal?”

Wavecrest looked a bit dumbfounded for a moment, as if she hadn’t really looked at the dome they were in before Twilight actually brought it up. The crystal, too, had eluded her attention, which had been ratcheted to Scylla’s body. Now that she had a second to gather her wits, Wavecrest’s confusion suddenly mounted on her creased brows.

“I don’t know. I thought the Treasury would be a fairly simple repository for the treasures and artifacts the Princess gathered over her career as an adventurer. I don’t recognize any of these contraptions, although they do look like advanced Aqualanian designs. As for the crystal, I believe... It's a recorder. A simple magic device for storing messages.”

Her eyes suddenly widened, “The Princesses’ final words?”

“Do you know how to operate it?” Twilight asked, and Wavecrest nodded slowly.

“I believe so. We don’t use them much any more among the tribes, but a few of us still retain the knowledge of their use,” she said, and carefully, and with great reverence, picked up the crystal from the skeleton’s grasp.

As the others gathered around her, Wavecrest softly chanted, and directed a gleam of sea green light from her staff into the yellow crystal. A sound like a single ringing of a bell sounded out, and the crystal’s light flared, then a voice began to speak. The voice was distinctly feminine, but it had a gruff, tomboyish quality that reminded Twilight a bit of Rainbow Dash. There was also a wealth of pain and heavy regret weighting the voice down.

”Sea’s bleeding teats... where do I start? Ugh... losing too much blood. Heh... Chary... years of trying to toughen you up and teach you not to rely on magic... and only now do you learn how to throw a decent punch? Heheh... stupid... so stupid. Both of us. Mother too. Should never have made it a choice between us. You never wanted to rule, and I was never going to be any good at it. Doesn’t matter now, does it? My plans, your obsessions, both led our people to this godsforsaken slurry of bad choices. Did you really believe I killed mother? It was just...an illness...I never... ugh, dammit, losing focus. Okay! Whoever is listening to this godsdamned message, ignore the rambling! My name is Scylla V’Allegro, soon to be former Princess of the nation of Seaquestria. I’m dying. Looks like my sister proved herself right about magic being stronger than any blade I could wield. Er, anyway, whoever you are, be you citizens of Seaquestria, graverobbers, or even if it’s you, Chary, I don’t really care. I’m going to be dead, and consider this message my last will and testament or whatever. I’ve locked up the door to this chamber with the last artifact I stole from the surface. I stole a lot of those. From everywhere. Seriously, E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. It was my big... plan. Steal power from all the other lands... built up a huge army after becoming Queen... heh, take over the world by force, both ocean and surface. Stupid, right? 

...ugh, I think I passed out for a second there. Wow, everything is getting kinda dark. Right, just a bit more I gotta say to you, whoever you are. I’m leaving it all to you. Not just all the magic crap I stole. It’s all loaded... onto it. My dream. My pride. My soldiers worked endlessly to build her for me. Bigger than the Odyssey ever was. She can traverse it all, land...sea... air... the ultimate ship. I give her to you, and all the treasures within. My Treasury.

That’s it. Weird... thought it’d hurt more, but it’s just... numb. Chary... why did we fight so...much? Over...nothing? Was so much better... when we were kids. I...miss those...”

When the crystal’s voice finally faded to silence, not a soul spoke, as they were all taking in what they had just heard. 

Finally, Wavecrest just gently laid the crystal back into the hoof of Princess Scylla’s body.

“Rest within the ocean's embrace, Scylla V’Allegro.”

After another minute of respectful silence, Starlight brought up a point that had also been on Twilight’s mind, “So what do you think she was talking about? About the Treasury?”

Twilight’s eyes roved over the control panel against which Scylla had fallen, and her eyes lit upon a central lever that to her eyes looked very much like an “on/off” switch. 

“I think there’s one simple way to find out. Wavecrest, with your permission?”

Wavecrest gave the barest of nods, floating up next to Twilight beside the control panel. As the others floated up around them, Twilight reached out and flipped the lever.

There was an instant clatter of clockwork and a hum of magical energy as yellow and blue lights started to flow across the panel, multiple magical crystals inside turning on like light bulbs. The noises grew in intensity for a moment, then expanded outward beyond the glass dome. Suddenly flashes of intense light burst into view as giant white crystals mounted along the walls and ceiling of a truly enormous cylindrical chamber came on, row after row, in front of the glass dome.

And within this cylindrical chamber, nestled between a large scaffolding network, was a ship.

It was easily three times the size the Odyssey had been, and of a vastly more robust and complex design. It’s hull reminded Twilight of a giant swordfish in its general shape, with numerous metal fins curving off from it’s smooth hull. However, along its sides she took note of what looked to be a pair of particularly large ‘fins’ that were folded into the hull itself, and if Twilight guessed correctly these could fold outward to form a pair of wings. Had Scylla mentioned something about this vessel being able to take to the skies? The ship’s structure was built from a light gray iron, with bronze carvings along both the bow and aft to give the impression of curled waves at the fore and rolling clouds towards the back. The aft had the horizontal fins of a fish, mounted with crystal orbs surrounded by massive triple propellers. Towards the pointed front end of the ship, which ended in a long, elegant spear as large as a whale, was also a glass bubble for a bridge, reinforced by bands of iron. And stamped across the sides of a metal crest that rose from the top of that bridge was a name in bright bronze.

Treasury