The cargo ship had sailed for two days after that, continuing on despite bad weather and storm-driven waves on the Olenian Ocean. Hurled around on the ravaging tide, it had taken this long just to reach the area marked on the map in Daring's journal. But now, weighing anchor in what appeared to be the middle of a rain-drenched nowhere, Tali was directly beneath the ship. Led from their waiting-places in the ship's makeshift brig within the hull, a group of the original expedition team were led on-deck: Daring Do, Desert Dust, the Captain and finally Cistern were shoved toward their destination. Waiting for them there was a small, bulky submarine of some kind. Oblong-ish in shape and made up of interlocking plates of thick, gunmetal grey iron, the watercraft's top hatch was screwed open by a pair of changelings as Roughneck marched into view. He gave a grim smile.
"All right kids, listen up." He began, climbing onto the hull of the craft. "I and a small troop of changelings will accompany you on-board this vessel." He tapped the metal hull of the sub with a talon. "You will not be given weapons, so any stepping out of line will be met with swift and quite merciless force. We will proceed down however far is needed, retrieve what we need with the help of Miss Daring Do's notes, and return promptly to continue on toward the final site. Any questions?" The group of adventurers simply glowered at him. With the exception of Cistern, who simply looked quite bored and unimpressed. "Good. Board the vessel then, and we'll be off." He concluded with a nod.
After the initial lowering of the submarine into the stormy ocean via the ship's crane, it was quite a while before the sub even came close to the bottom of the Olenian. The inside of the craft was dim, claustrophobic and smelled of machine oil. Steam periodically hissed from pipes along the thick walls, and the only illumination in the sub's single compartment came from the control panels; a calm array of golden lights cut apart by bright reds and sickly greens. Through the windscreen, nothing much could be made out of the surroundings. The occasional fish flitted past, a slimy eel coiled this way and that. The team sat hunched over on uncomfortable bench areas near the aft of the vessel, some staring at the floor and others looking to the side to try and see any change through the windscreen toward the front. Dust refused to look at her mother, though Daring threw occasional, reproachful glances at her estranged daughter before looking back to her hooves below. Cistern stared out through the windscreen, curiously observing as the ocean floor began to materialise into view. Fuse stared into space, feeling quite helpless and vulnerable. He did not feel this way often, and it was starting to get to him. The Captain was probably the calmest of the group. Sitting with upright, proud posture and occasionally checking over to the windscreen, she remained dutifully silent. Even as a gun-toting changeling stared her down with its cold blue gaze, she returned the emotionless gaze with the stern monotony that she had shown command of time after time.
The changeling helmsman turned to Roughneck and chittered out something. Grinning, the griffin turned and relayed the message to the crew.
"We're approaching the ocean floor, ladies and gentlecolts. Tali should be just-" He was cut off as something huge swiped past the submarine, smacking into it and throwing it a little off-course with a juddering slam. The hull had buckled in a few places, and warning lights began blinking on the control panels. "What in the wide world of Equestria was that?!" Roughneck yelled, clearly trying hard to keep his cool. Dust tried to get a good view out of the windscreen. The atmosphere became tenser still as the power began to fail, the lights in the cabin flickering and cutting out. The sub drifted downward.
"I don't like this.." Fuse uttered, shaking a little. "I don't like this one little bit.."
"Well, we're dead." concluded Cistern, looking quite calm and as cynical as ever.
There was a buzzing, and the roving spotlight to the aft of the sub flickered into life, illuminating the dark waters in front of them. Something else flitted past; a horrifying, stringy mass of flesh, torn, rotting and pale, writing about as if sniffing around for any life. It disappeared from view once again, and the crew were left dumbstruck and terrified. Even Cistern and the Captain looked shaken. The only one who seemed a little prepared was Dust. She had remembered the inscription on the statue's base at Solum, and reciting it, she began to panic.
"The secret of the Casket of Undead-Bringing lies hid at Tali, the Unholy Temple at the bottom of the Seas of Unrest.. Guarded by Morlyir Bae, the Many Limbed One, he who may smite down unwary visitors with many a barbed arm.." She recalled the cryptic inscription, now making sense of the oddly-described 'Morlyir Bae'. "It's a guardian. A huge, age-old animal of some kind.." She uttered, and the rest of the crew began to make sense of the situation on their own. There was an uncomfortable moment as the ocean around them became thick with the sound of writing flesh and the crumbling of rocks, and then all went silent. Roughneck scanned the area with the spotlight as the sub reached the location of Tali. Huge pillars of stone emerged from the dark, coiled in thick lengths of what were apparently the tentacles of the fabled Morlyir Bae. Broken buildings also rose out of the dark, covered in coral and broken in parts by tentacles or smoke-belching volcanic vents. Finally, the remains of the central structure came into view. A colossal structure of eroded, pale stone. It resembled an angular, blocky fortress, with high towers of rotten, decrepit bricks greened with slimy seaweed. The colossal doorway set into the front of the structure spilled forth a few thin, slowly-writhing coils of decomposing tentacles, but was otherwise empty of blockage. Roughneck steeled himself.
"Helmsman, take us inside the ruin. Avoid those.. Things.. At all cost. And arm torpedoes, in case this thing tries to stop us." The changeling at the helm simply nodded, lowering the sub toward the dark recess that was Tali's entrance.
Inside, the ruin was pitch-black. Only the relatively narrow cone of light from the aft spotlight could illuminate the consuming dark as the small sub slowly drove onward, swerving at intervals to avoid another disconcerting strand of rotten but still-living tissue.
"I can only theorise.." Daring spoke out to the group, watching the disgusting spectacle outside. "That the long life of this creature.. Of this Morlyir Bae.. Must have something to do with the Cask of Undeath. The tentacles appear to have decomposed long ago, but they're still quite alive." Dust pulled out her mother's journal and flicked through to some of the notes on the Cask itself and its properties. Apparently, according to the account of an Inquisitor from an old Celestian religious order, the Cask used 'many dark magicks, calling on the spirits of worlds beyond ours' to aid in a ritual which could resurrect the dead. The dark history of the Cask had not been widely published, and references to the artefact were few and far between. Scraps of reports, notices of trade and fragments of diaries made up the majority of the Cask of Undeath's written history. But what was described by some was bad enough. Maddened accounts of unnatural forces and horrific ritual sacrifice to appease the Cask featured in some, and in others, accounts of accidental mishaps during impromptu rituals which caused the most disturbing of results;
'From the personal log of Captain Rightwind of the Good Ship Oakheart,
Today we found some of those wild folk we picked up from the island dead in the hold. The circumstance of their death is a mystery to me and my crew. The corpses, lying on the wooden boards of the hold, were in such a terrible state that I scarcely dare recall what my senses imparted to me that woeful day. One of the ponies, seemingly the victim of some sacrifice, had merely been bound with ropes and had his heart removed. The others, however, were in a far worse state.. Their charred bodies were torn asunder, innards spread all around in a display of mindless violence. And in the area between them, laid down in the centre of a chalk-drawn triangular symbol of some kind, was that thing. The box. The one that the islanders called the Cask of the Rising Flesh. My crew had been implored by the islanders to have the accursed thing brought with them upon their capture and, knowing not of the wrongness of this instrument of darkness, we obliged. The Cask lay inert, the little rotten doors at its front closed over. But from the cracks in the small doors a thick, acrid smoke spilled to the planks of the floor, and all around the thing lay a heavy aura of evil. I had the crew seal the thing shut by any means necessary. We sealed the doors with boiling pitch, and had the entire box bound in lengths of heavy iron chains before we attached the accursed object to a cannonball and, praying to Celestia, tossed the foul thing into the sea.'
Shuddering to think over the details of the horrendous history of the Cask, Dust tucked away the journal again. Peering out of the submarine's windscreen, she observed as the craft drifted out into a wide-open chamber and, ascending through the water, surfaced in the air pocket. All aboard the sub felt uneasy as the entry hatch was opened, the craft driven over to a stop at the lip of a rotting stone ledge.
"Right.. Follow my lead. Anypony steps out of line, my guard are cleared to shoot on sight.. Understand?" Roughneck issued his ultimatum as the changeling troops looked on with wicked grins, cocking their guns. The selected team begrudgingly accepted, and all dismounted onto the stone ledge outside. The smell inside the submerged ruin was horrific. Musky scents of aged, worn stone mixed with the putrescent odour of rotting flesh and some sickly stench alike to excrement. Even Cistern, who had cleaned toilets for her whole career, saw fit to pull a handkerchief from her saddlebags and wrap it around her head to shield her nostrils from the smell. The group proceeded inward, through a half-collapsed doorway and down a crumbling stone staircase. Trailing along the side of the steps, to Dust's horror, she noticed one of the pale, rotten tentacles quivering silently like a drowned worm. Apparently, these appendages had an extremely far reach, and were not limited to being submerged in liquid. As they continued downward, Fuse piped up.
"Hey, what are we lookin' for down here again?" He queried. "I just hope we ain't gonna find too many more of those ugly things.." He motioned to the tentacle as it slithered back, retreating blindly down a dark corridor and out of sight.
"We're entering its home.. Walking right into the lair of the beast." Daring whispered, reverent. Apparently, she must have been reciting another account of the fabled Morlyir Bae. "And he that enter under the battlements of Morlyir Bae shalt know true fear, should the many-limbed guardian find him unworthy.."
"We're looking for some kind of key to unlock the final resting place of the Cask." Dust replied Fuse's question, shooting a concerned glance at her mother who seemed rapt and lost in thought. But nothing that Daring's compiled accounts and notation had uncovered could possibly prepare Dust and the team for what lay in the next chamber.