The better part of the day went by in a blur. I remember bringing the maps that Midnight translated to the navigator and telling her to follow them to the letter even if they seemingly made no sense. I told the crew about the banshee and Sea Worthy’s death, there wasn’t a point to hiding it any longer. I recall my reception as a new captain was rather positive, in large part thanks to Sawbones spinning them a longer version of the same story he told me in the morning.
After finding and correcting a minor error in the ledger, we were left with an extra barrel of rum left to distribute. Three or four rounds later the mood was sufficiently jovial to almost let everypony forget that it was also the last dinner that could’ve been prepared from our ship’s supplies. Having finished it, the new cook – Moon Shine’s former assistant – informed me that the next breakfast will fully clean out the hold of anything edible.
The day took an unexpected turn when my conversation with the boatswain and a group of other drunk sailors outside the mess was interrupted by Midnight.
“…and that is why it’s imperative that your bats keep an eye open for– What’s that?“
The crowd of batponies parted to let Midnight pass. Their initial hostility has long been replaced by respect, admiration and perhaps a hint of fear. “Nice hat,” she said with her signature smile plastered on her face. “I thought it’d look good on your head since the day we embarked. Where did you find it?”
Murmurs from the crowd suggested that the joke (if it was a joke) wasn’t well-received on the day of Sea Worthy’s death. Hoping to regain control of the situation I said in a hushed voice, “Could you at least wait until I finish this conversation? I'll tell you later, when there's fewer prying eyes around.”
Instead of responding, Midnight moved closer to the point she was almost leaning on me, and faced the crowd. “Did you hear, everypony? Captain Long Vigil and I want some privacy.” Then, pretending to no longer notice the crowd, she turned to me and said, “So, how about we head to my cabin? Or – even better – your new stateroom, hmm?”
Of course, she made sure to keep her voice loud enough for everypony in the crowd to hear. A moment and a dozen jealous looks later, the crowd began to thin out until me and Midnight were the only ones left in the corridor.
I sighed. “If you can't wait a minute, couldn’t you just teleport us away instead of playing this silly act?”
“I could but that’s very exhausting,” she said with a grin, “and I admit that I do like to play it, silly as it may be.”
I firmly put my hoof on the ground, at least as firmly as the rum in my blood let me. “Every time you do it, I become the object of the freshest rumors.”
“From a certain point of view, that’s just another form of respect.”
“Call me a hypocrite,” I said, “but now that I’m a captain, I’d rather not base the respect for myself on lies.”
“Ha, maybe that was a bit much.” Midnight laughed. Suddenly she leaned even closer, raised her head with her enormous hat and looked me straight in the eyes. Her eyes and her smile took a playfully predatory expression that clashed with the sweet tone of her voice. “Or, you know, we could solve this problem in another way. I don’t want to stop and you don’t want to lie to your crew. My offer of finishing this conversation elsewhere was genuine. I heard the stateroom has a very nice couch.”
I stammered some half-finished words, taken by surprise.
“You’re blushing.” Midnight giggled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She took a step back and returned to her usual posture. “Congratulations on your promotion, by the way. Good to see somepony with a functioning brain at the helm.”
“Sea Worthy was a brave captain,” I protested, having finally regained my breath.
“Brave? Indeed, she was so brave that her misguided stubbornness almost left us starving to death.” She looked away. “The time for mourning will come after our mission is finished. Now tell me what you really saw that night. Swabones’s version was no doubt greatly simplified and filled with supernatural nonsense.”
“I can’t say it wasn’t,” I agreed. “In the actual dream, at first I was in the same room as in the previous–“
“There’s no point in idly standing here, is there?” said Midnight. “You can tell me along the way. And by the way, that runic sigil on your flank isn’t ‘Traveler’s Promise’. It’s–”
“Homecoming, I know. She told me herself,” I said.
“She?” Midnight raised a brow. “I thought I felt a faint echo of Luna’s magic but I was sure it was a fluke…”
“You’ll be able to take a closer look very soon,” I whispered.
“You’re not so bad, Vigil,” she said and smiled.
Perhaps the day wasn’t going to be all bad, after all.
The next day Sawbones insisted that the sailors should eat breakfast in complete silence. He said that keeping quiet during the last meal on the sea has been reported to bring good luck. I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or if he made the story up to avoid uncomfortable questions that could decimate the scraps of morale that my decisiveness yesterday helped salvage.
All the silence did for me, however, was making me painfully aware of the gazes I’ve been receiving from nearly every other member of the crew. Some were anxious, others trusting and hopeful. I’ve also caught a glimpse of well-hidden jealousy which wasn’t helped by the less-than-concealed looks I’ve been getting from Midnight. Still, there was something off about the room – it felt too empty, even considering the casualties we’ve suffered recently. I finished the modest meal and headed off to ask the navigator – and my new first officer – about the missing sailors. I found her looking at the translated charts.
“I have great news, captain!” The navigator was almost ecstatic. “Land!”
“The west?! Finally?” I asked in disbelief. “Are you sure it’s the place marked on the maps I gave you?”
“Not quite,” she said, “but this island is close to the designated course. With any luck, we'll find something edible there.”
“Adjust the course and follow the maps as closely as you can,” I commanded in a steely tone, “even if they told you to go through an island or swim in circles.”
“But captain, I can’t.” She lowered her ears. “Four of our sailors took a longboat for reconnaissance.”
“They what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“They left in the middle of the night, telling the watch guards that they have your permission. Since you appeared to be, hmm, busy, the guard let them go.”
“What happened later?” I prepared myself for the worst.
“I think their boat crashed and now they’re stuck. See for yourself, captain.” She gave me her spyglass and pointed at a flat cloud on the horizon.
She was right, it was a small island, not a cloud. I saw the four unlucky castaways gathered around a massive word ‘HELP’ arranged on the beach from a collection of flotsam and seaweed. Larger pieces of a shattered longboat lay nearby. The batponies themselves were waving their hooves hoping to get anypony’s attention. Most of the island was covered by a forest but between the branches I saw something that looked like a pond.
I returned the spyglass and said, “Back to the previous course, quick!”
The mare blinked rapidly, shocked by the order. “But, captain, they are our comrades!”
“You think they are?” I raised a brow. “I’d expect better attention to detail from a navigator.”
“You saw them yourself!” she protested.
“No, I saw four supposedly winged creatures who spent hours building a sign instead of flying back here. How far are they anyways, five miles?”
“No more than ten –” she nodded “– but they could’ve gotten wounded in the crash.”
I stretched my wings and said, “They don’t look wounded to me. And even if one sprained a joint in their wing, why didn’t the other three ask for help directly?” The navigator remained silent, so I continued. “There’s more. Look at the broken boat again.”
She held the spyglass to her right eye. “I don’t see anything suspicious, captain. The boat seems to have struck something hard near the bow. It split all the way to the stern.” She lowered the spyglass and looked at me with a mix of doubt and concern. “While it’s unlikely that they would be moving fast enough to cause such massive damage, it wouldn’t be the first time I saw inexperienced sailors disrespect safety concerns near an unknown shore.”
“Good job, you’ve found something I overlooked. But I meant something even more obvious.” I nervously looked at the island slowly growing larger on the horizon. “Be quick.”
“I… I see! The inside of the wreck is completely dry!” she cried out. “Whatever destroyed the boat did so after it reached land.”
“Correct. Therefore the pieces scattered on the beach…”
“…were deliberately placed to make it look like an accident. No sailor would do this.” Her eyes went wide as the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place. She gasped. “It’s a trap!”
“Calm down,” I said, ”I don’t know who – or what – hunts like this but they wouldn’t bother setting up this act if they could attack us directly.”
She took three deep breaths and quickly made some corrections to the main chart. “We should be back on the previous course in half an hour. As for those four bats…”
My eyes wandered towards the island. I sighed. “They were dead before we woke up.” With nothing more to say, I went back to oversee the situation on the deck.
After climbing the stairs, I saw over a dozen sailors forming a small crowd by the starboard. I considered squeezing through the crowd but one of the guards noticed me and shouted “Make way for the captain!”, sparing me the trouble. I joined Midnight and Sawbones who stood at the front of the crowd.
Between us and the island, roughly two miles away from the ship, a large group of black pony-like creatures with tattered manes the color of seaweed raged in the water. From time to time one would gracefully jump dozens of meters into the air, shapeshift into a pegasus or a batpony mid-air, and attempt to glide towards the ship riding some invisible current. Each of those maneuvers ended the same, with the creature suddenly pushed back by a gust of wind that sent them flying through the air back to their original location. Some of the larger among the herd reared and hurled lightning from their front hooves but that spell, too, was deflected long before it could reach the ship, resulting only in the wonderment of the sailors.
“Unbelievable,” whispered Sawbones. “I never thought I’d see a kelpie in my life, much less dozens of them!”
“I doubt anypony has ever seen this many,” added Midnight, too surprised to come up with a sarcastic remark or a joke. “Everything we know about them suggests that they’re extremely rare and highly territorial. Powerful beyond belief, too.”
“Thank Luna we’ve avoided their ambush,” I said, “and that they can’t cross whatever barrier separates us.”
“’Thank Luna’, huh?” Sawbones chuckled and pointed at my flank. “I believe your assessment was surprisingly on point.”
In the middle of all this commotion no one noticed that the homecoming sigil went ablaze in a calming light blue hue. The flame danced whenever the barrier deflected a spell or averted a flying kelpie.
“I wonder what stops them from teleporting us, ship and all, outside the field.” Midnight scratched her head. “After all, the teleportation spell I’ve worked on with the Princess is based on a kelpie sorcery.”
“They haven’t learned it yet,” said Sawbones. “Those are just their young.”
I decided to back up Midnight and said, “Their young? There are no documented – or even rumored – cases of kelpie reproduction!”
“Really, Vigil?” Sawbones made a surprised expression. “Have your parents never read to you ‘The Fishermare and a Kelpie’? If I remember right, the captured Kelpie Queen takes the mare to the kelpie kingdom in ‘the place beyond the fog where no pony ventured before’.”
“That’s a story for little colts and fillies!” I snapped back. “It’s all made up!”
“I thought so, too, until a moment ago,” said Midnight in a measured voice, “but it seems that the farther we go, the less of a difference there is between things that should be real and those that shouldn’t.”
“For once you’re speaking the truth,” said Sawbones, nodding his head. “Let’s hope that we’re far away from here by the time the Kelpie Queen shows up.”