Man.
It was a word unlike any Cold Snap had heard before. It was simple, yet carried an air of unknown about it. More than that, it was positively foreign. Captain Gideon hovered his claws around the book as if to highlight the spectacular nature of his discovery. Unfortunately, Cold Snap had no idea what a “Man” was.
“So what is it?” he asked.
The captain sighed and dropped the book, now robbed of his moment. He chose to pick a few pages out of his pile instead of answer. The griffon presented these pages along with the book. “You may review these in a moment, but since you know nothing at all about the creature, then I have to give you an education on them. They are a peculiar interest of mine. Blame my father. He’s the one who cursed me with his obsession.”
Now, Snap’s hoof merely throbbed instead of leaked. He took a seat and awaited what was sure to be a long lecture on this arcane creature. Captain Gideon tapped a claw to his beak, pondering his words. “You know nothing about them. Fair, I suppose. They are not a common fixture of legends in most, if not all cultures. Details vary, but they are always clever. They are considered a sign of change, as nothing is the same after they come. Rarely are more than two encountered, and those arrive in a moment and disappear in another.”
Snap could only nod. While the creature was peculiar, he did not see the indisputable link between the myth and their relics that the captain seemed to see. The captain picked a page from his stack. “Nor are they consistent. Some come with blessings and balm. Others come only with a sword. Some for salvation, and some for slaughter. Truly a child of Chaos if there ever was one.”
“They were the Mad God’s creation?” Snap asked.
The captain snorted. “Hardly. Discord’s creations behaved in ways to defy the laws of nature. Man followed a pattern, but there were many possibilities to that pattern.”
Pages rustled as the captain flipped through his book. Finally, he settled on an illustration. Snap leaned in close. The subject of the image could only be described as bestial. It was all angles, and none of them seemed natural. It walked upright...mostly. The creature only needed two of its four limbs for walking, leaving gangly arms ending in ragged claws to whirl around the torso. Mismatched hair covered most of its body except for knobby joints that suck out in ways that had to be artistic fancy.
But none of that compared to the face. Fangs jutted from upper lips that were nearly hidden by coarse hair. Tiny eyes peered from sunken sockets. These were not blank like an animal’s, but brimming with intelligence. All in all, it was a horrifying specimen.
“That’s what we’re looking for?” Cold Snap couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.
“Not a terribly impressive representative, isn’t it? I suppose you’re wondering why I have enough of a fixation on these creatures to keep a book on them in my personal library?”
Somehow, the creature’s gaze kept following Snap no matter how he moved his head, and the sensation gradually grew unnerving. Just looking at it made him glad that it was a creature of myth.
Or, perhaps it wasn’t if the captain gave it as much thought as he did. Then again, the captain could have spent too much time on his ship and under the sun, and this was his hobby. Truth be told, he did not know. This ship proved there was more to the world than he expected. Perhaps there was enough room for Mans to exist too.
Snap took up the captain’s book and quickly flipped through the pages. It possessed a collection of text and figures that masterfully blended half-truths and total nonsense. It covered everything from the creature’s sleeping (they preferred sleeping in trees in small huts), their sciences (composed entirely of euphoric drugs and flammables, probably not a good mix with the trees), their tools (a mishmash of iron, wood, and rock that seemed to serve no useful purpose, probably because of the euphoric drugs), and even their mating habits.
Snap skipped that last part before he saw something he would regret. The Yellow Rose’s captain sat across from him, an eyebrow arched, waiting for Cold Snap’s judgment. His claws clicked ominously as he waited. “Well?”
The book felt heavy in his hooves. Just how did he tell the captain that his taste in literature could use refinement? It wasn’t like he could throw him overboard or something.
Nevermind. He actually could. Snap thought quickly.
“It’s...uh...interesting,” he finished quickly as he quickly flipped pages back.
“Don’t mince words with me. I can smell your discomfort from here. Out with it.”
Dodging the issue hadn’t worked. Perhaps being blunt would be quick and painless. “I can’t believe you spent money for this thing.”
Quickly, Snap cringed and waited for judgment.
The griffon nearly fell over laughing. He slapped the desk, leaving small gouges with each blow. Snap winced with each hit.
“What? That pile of drivel?” Captain Gideon resumed laughing.
The stress piling on Snap’s shoulders seemed to evaporate, not that he understood why. The captain reached back for his book. “I bought this at a discount. The seller couldn’t get rid of it. She truthfully thought I bought it for a party joke. As far as I’m concerned, it’s mostly useless.”
So, why was the captain making such a big deal about this creature? “Captain, I’m afraid I don’t see any evidence to support this Man-thing theory.”
“Then let me give you a theory of my own, my father’s theory. I believe that Man is no myth, that he and his kind are far more than the brutes depicted in here, and they understood things that we can only begin to grasp here.”
The only response Cold Snap could muster was cool blinking. This theory had to be going somewhere. It had to be. The captain noticed.
“Who do you think designed this ship?” the captain asked, and then immediately had a chuckle as Snap went bug-eyed.
“Perhaps I should rephrase that. This ship is of my design. However, I admit I drew from the ideas of Man in its construction. How else could a ship like her be on the water today? None today have the blast furnaces capable of producing high-purity steel. My pyroxil powders would blow anything less than her Parrot guns apart. None could produce enough to forge her keel and plates. No. I drew from others to make up for our weaknesses.
“She is a beast ahead of her time, ahead of her century. She is the mystery and fear of this era’s navigator. And despite all that, she is just a ship. Time or calamity will have their way with her. Though I can promise you that she will never fall in battle.”
The captain pulled out another book. “Book” may have been the wrong word. It was more of a notebook stuffed with pages and loose scraps. “Evidence. If you want evidence, I believe I can adequately provide that. Look at this.”
He handed a yellowed page to the earth pony. Someone had rendered a basic charcoal sketch in neat, sharp lines on it. It was obviously old, and folded a few too many times in irregular ways, but it clearly depicted two ships caught up in a brutal battle. Smoke clouded everything and rendered them like beasts challenging each other in the mist.
Snap blinked. How could he miss that? He studied the paper far more critically to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, to make sure he hadn’t spent too much time aboard Captain Gideon’s ship.
The smaller of the two looked exactly like a board with a barrel stuck on top. It was crude, but he could recognize the inspiration of the Yellow Rose’s turrets. The other… well, it was vaguely ship-like if he could look past all the angles. It had a smoke stack just like Captain Gideon’s vessel, and it floated. Truthfully, it floated better than its adversary. It didn’t change the fact that it looked like a lumbering beast in the water.
Still, if he put them together in the right way with a few creative embellishments on the designs, he could see how the Yellow Rose was born. Though how the captain had managed to blend the two was a feat he couldn’t begin to imagine.
“So what am I looking at?”
Captain Gideon reclaimed his page. “A battle between iron leviathans. Man was known for war. If there is one thing about that book I don’t doubt, it’s that Man was a violent creature, devoid of Harmony your people abide by. His history was one of war and struggle. They waged it on land,” he tapped the page, “and sea. Had they been blessed with wings or found a machine to take them there, they would fight in the heavens too.
“But to summarize, I believe Man to have been a creature intimately involved in our past, and even though they are gone, I believe their impact is still measurable across vast swaths of society.”
That was not the theory Cold Snap expected to hear when he planned to break into the captain’s cabin. He picked up a few of the pages the captain had set down and started skimming them. His attention was barely on the pages though. “And you believe that they had something to do with the box and that skeleton?”
“With all my heart,” Captain Gideon answered plainly.
He leaned forward. “Though as of yet, I am as much in the dark as you are, but I suspect that we will see our way to an answer soon enough. We will be busy before the end of the day refitting this ship.”
“We are going to a port?” Cold Snap asked a little too eagerly.
The griffon frowned. “So eager to leave my company? Yes. We will be docking at a port, one well-suited to the Rose’s needs.”
Snap’s eyes flicked to the map pinned to the wall. Now, he didn’t know where the rest of the world lay, but he knew the about where Port Archer lay, and the ship had been traveling consistently west to northwest for the past several days. All in all, that meant that they should be smack in the middle of the ocean.
And yet, Cold Snap knew better than to doubt the captain’s claims. If he said they would be docked by nightfall, then they would be. This might give him and Nebula an opportunity for...something. He really wasn’t sure what. He missed home, and he knew Neb missed it twice as much. Their families would start worrying soon.
They had to do something, but what?
Snap put those thoughts aside for the present. The captain was starting into another theory about their artifacts, and it looked like it was going to be a doozy. He and Neb could make their plots when they got closer. Yes, when they actually saw the place, they could make their plans then.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“So, where’s this port, genius?” Nebula groused from his shaded spot underneath one of the Rose’s guns.
“I don’t know, you idjit. All I know is that we’d be docked by night.” Snap snapped back. He leaned against the ship’s capstan and peered across the afternoon sea.
He didn’t have Captain Gideon’s double spyglass or even a normal spyglass. So he made do and cupped his hooves over his eyes to shade out the sun. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t.
“At least you could help me look,” he grumbled.
“Excuse me. I’m trying to nap here,” Nebula said as he steadfastly refused to budge.
“Well, excuse me. For some reason, I thought you wanted to escape.”
He looked back at his friend who had a stink eye leveled at him. “Well, excuse me for not excusing you. And after dumping princess-knows-how-much coal overboard, I’d really like to sleep a bit.”
“That was yesterday. You’ve slept. I’m fine,” Snap said in what he thought was a perfectly reasonable argument.
Nebula grumbled unintelligibly as he shifted. “Yeah, you’re fine, but I don’t recover as quick as you.”
Snap only grunted.
“Besides, where do you think he’s going to drop anchor? That hill over there?”
That took Cold Snap back. He shifted to look the horizon again. Sure enough. There was a small hill poking out of the water. It was so small though. There was no way this ship could dock there. But it could be a point near more land. Snap resumed his watch for the Yellow Rose’s mysterious berth.
Thirty minutes later, Snap admitted that the small hill wasn’t so small, but he wasn’t so sure that it held a dock. He didn’t see any sails going to or from it. He didn’t see anything especially notable about the seamount.
An hour later, he was both sure it was a seamount, a massive peak that towered above the sea. Its cone cut a dark wedge from the sky. He also knew there was no land about for as far as he could see, and they may as well have been the only ship on the sea.
Two hours later, they were in its shadow. The helmsmare cut a course around the mountain’s curve. The crew picked up their pace. Everything was stowed, and everyone slowly drifted to the ship’s bow. Everything grew quiet, leaving the ship’s constant rumble echoing off the land as the only sound.
Without a doubt, this was the Rose’s home, but Snap couldn’t imagine how.
“Look,” Nebula gaped as he raised a hoof.
He didn’t need to point. Once the Rose cleared a spit of land, the mountain opened up in front of them. A massive circular, black hole gaped in the mountain’s side and extended deep into its bowels. The Yellow Rose pushed onward.
The waves died almost as fast as the light. The rolling breakers outside died to pathetic splashes that were overpowered by surges from the ship’s bulk. The chamber lit with a yellow glow as the crew switched on their magical lamps. The light bounced and gleamed off of the walls in a rough, black, twinkle. Time seemed to slow as Snap saw an entirely foreign world with his own eyes.
Rocky walls echoed the Rose’s steaming engines, and smoke drifted across the ship in the still, confined air. Shiny glimmers reflected in the ship’s lights as precious diamonds that would be the envy of every sorcerer and regent were passed by like worthless gravel. More glints, these green and white, reflected the light in dark rock, more foreign minerals in this strange new world.
The walls never seemed to waver, as if they were cut by the will of a god. They could have gone full speed in this tunnel and never worried about striking. The walls started changing, not in shape, but in texture. The black rock was replaced by a reddish stone, and the walls suddenly were no longer so smooth. Now they were pockmarked with circular holes and gouges. Piles of these shattered stones lay at the base of the tunnel’s walls, far out of the YellowRose’s path.
Snap could see a light in front of them and not one of the ship’s either. He worked his way through the idle crew to get a better view. He felt a gentle breeze across his face, and his world changed once again.
The tunnel into the mountain suddenly ended, and the Yellow Rose steamed into a quiet bay in a great cavern. Sunlight poured through a hole far above them where the top of the seamount should have been. It entered at an angle and struck the wall above them. The bright light reflected off the sparkly granite and illuminated the rest of the cavern with a gentle glow.
Without the sun’s presence, he would have expected this place to be barren. Instead, it was lush. Water dripped off the walls and ceilings, irrigating plots of moss, creepers, and brush. Trees grew sporadically, but only where they could lay claim to the greatest concentrations of light. Flowers and colorful mushrooms dispelled any notion that this place was lifeless.
The ship slowed. “Bring ship to anchor!”
So enamored had Snap been with the incredible cavern, that he had forgotten why they were there in the first place. He wrenched his gaze from the micro-climate’s flora and focused on the dock. It didn’t look like a dock. If anything, it resembled a stone pen large enough for the ship to squeeze into and a large stone jetty for the crew to disembark as well as a staging area for cargo.
The crew hustled and began flying ropes between the ship’s tie offs and the stone walls. Others among the fliers swung out a large wooden ramp exactly the height of the Rose’s deck. Metal groaned, and the ropes grew tight as the ship skidded closer to the dock.
Then the ramp gently thumped into the ship just after the capstans stopped their labor. The rest of the crew burst into action, stowing away the unnecessaries and throwing open the hold doors. Somewhere down there was Cold Snap’s own delivery, not fated to ever be delivered.
For the first time in days, the ship sat still. Snap and Nebula both took their loads and brought it to a prescribed spot on the dock. Snap had to fight a small wobble in his legs with every step he took, but eventually, he overcame the inconvenience.
The work was hard. Captain Gideon had plundered well in his legitimized piracy. Soon, a small mountain of booty filled the side of the dock, and the rest of the crew had already pulled out a peculiar contraption like a funnel on the end of a jib pole. It hovered over the ship’s open coal bunks and released a steady stream of black rock and dust into the waiting bins.
While that was interesting, it couldn’t hold Snap’s interest. The captain’s secret lair was too much to ignore. Closer to the volcano’s cone, the sandy, ashy soil rose out of the water and would have ended at a solid rock wall. Perhaps it did at one point. Now, those walls were torn apart to make room for everything Captain Gideon and his ship would need to repair and restock.
“There’s so much here. I never imagined in all my years of traveling that there could be some place like...this!” Mr. Horn said as he joined them.
Nebula snorted. “Now how does it feel to see the magic behind your tall tales?”
Mr. Horn shook a cramp from his wings and fixed Nebula with a baleful stare. “Seeing this legend in reality does nothing to diminish it. If anything, it makes me even more in awe of it. Any sailor can spout nonsense about monsters and villains who’s origin is likely a bottle, but this…”
He trailed off into nothing as he took in more and more of the facilities at Captain Gideon’s disposal. Snap saw the supplies stacked up high. He saw the lean-to structures covering equipment, sleeping quarters, kitchens, and everything else it took to maintain a beached crew. This wasn’t the raider hideout he read about in his foalish fictions.
“This is beyond any legend. This is real, and accomplished by someone younger than me. The legend isn’t the demon ship. It’s the captain who made all of this without the world knowing.”
Nebula shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand me. That makes a great story, but you can’t just hide something like this. Look around. This is huge!”
Snap did look around. While his friend and Mr. Horn got locked deeper and deeper into a philosophical debate that was rapidly approaching an argument, Cold Snap took his friend’s advice and truly studied the world around him.
Yes, he still saw the supplies, the sheds, the kitchen, and barracks. He also saw the massive forges further back, long covered in dust, but with the walls still marred by soot. Near them lay mechanical fans to circulate the air and to blast surplus air into the furnaces. He saw the incredible hammers resting in their cradles, ready to pound crucible steel into shapes. He saw the steel rolls taller than him, exactly the kind that would make flat armor plate.
When he looked above, he saw the dirty marks on the walls from the foundry smoke traveling further up the volcano. It had traveled further up the natural chimney until it exited. If anyone happened to see it while Captain Gideon was doing his secret work, it would be thought of as nothing more than an active volcano and nothing to be trifled with.
Captain Gideon had chosen well. This was the place that would bring his ideas to life and prove his theories to himself and eventually the rest of the world. Because unlike Mr. Horn and his well-meaning friend, Cold Snap saw more than the Yellow Rose’s hidden berth. He saw Captain Gideon’s sketches. He saw the marks of Man.