Blueblood's Ascension Part III; or, Even Alicorns Have Dreams

by MyHobby


Neverdead

“I shall meet you at Tartarus,” Luna had explained. “I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

With that said, she had flow off and left Blueblood alone on the aircraft. Technically alone, that is, considering the hundreds of other passengers the ship contained.

Blueblood leaned over the railing to get a look at the ground. The ship was hundreds of meters in the air, held aloft by magicks and science that he never really cared to investigate. The gentle hum of dozens of propellers sounded out all around as they pushed the Sky Ark forth.

The land below was wild. Nary a building had been in sight for the past half-hour; they were replaced by towering trees that had stood for eons. Blueblood sighed. “It’s a long way from home, isn’t it?”

He turned his back to the rails and leaned upon them. His eyes went to the balloons, or envelopes, or gasbags, or whatever you were supposed to call those containers of lighter-than-air. Though he would have much rather been gazing towards the aft of the craft, back to where he had come from.

The captain strode by, and Blueblood was struck by the sheer level of ornate the stallion displayed. The black, thick-rimmed glassed he wore were about the only clothing on him that wasn’t gold-stitched or multicolored. Gold epaulettes bedecked his shoulders, and a purple cape flowed out over his wings.

Blueblood took a moment to admire and envy the roguish beard-and-moustache combo the stallion sported. Blueblood suspected that if he had that level of facial hair, nopony would dare to call his voice high-pitched. “I wonder how long it would take me to grow that…”

Our beloved prince considered walking up to the stallion and asking him for beard-related pointers, when one of the sailors/stewards/whatever caught the attention of their captain. Blueblood didn’t quite catch what the subordinate said, but the captain’s reply was nothing if not audible.

“Joo said dere were storms on dere way?” the captain stated. Or asked. It was hard to tell with his accent.

Blueblood’s ears twitched forward to catch the other pony’s reply. “Yes, sir. Stormy cumulonimbus clouds.”

“Not gettin’ through dat.” The captain placed a cream-colored hoof on his stallionesque brown beard. “Hmm. Gonna take a while to go ’round.”

“That’s the strange thing, Captain,” the lackey muttered. “There’s a clear path leading right to Tartarus.”

Mild disinterest turned to keen attention as Blueblood leaned forward.

The captain squinted out of one eye. “Joo think it’s an omen? Or maybe the princesses just planned it for dere prince down in the cargo hold?”

“Whatever it is,” the other pony said, “it’s an anomaly. Reports have been flying in from all over Equestria about local weather teams fighting back storms from the wilds. Most of the continent is feeling pretty weathered.” She chuckled at her own joke, but the lack of response from her captain brought her back to the reality that didn’t think she was funny. “For this little path to be clear of clouds at this exact time… it seems a little rehearsed, you might say.”

The captain nodded. “Well, keep the weatherponies on alert. If dat storm closes in, we don’t wanna be caught wit our horseshoes loose.” The mare saluted and trotted away while the captain remained on the top deck, his steely gaze penetrating the horizon.

Blueblood brought his eyes back to the ground, and his thoughts with them. A glimmer in the leaves showed that the trees had undergone a recent soaking that hadn’t had time to evaporate. Plenty of the towering giants presented fresh breaks in their branches. Turning his eyes to the edge of the world, he could see the dark streaks of falling rain some few miles out.

Amidst the rain lay the town of Ponyville.

“Storms in the wild,” Blueblood mumbled. “May the wind be in your wings, Rainbow Dash.” He leaned his back against the railing again, examining further the plain envelopes hovering overhead. “Perhaps Twilight would know something about how to fix… Bah!”

He stood and shook himself. He stomped towards the front of the craft, keeping Ponyville out of sight. Ponies looked up at the sound of tramping hooves, then moved to the side after seeing the frown upon his face. Blueblood walked until he reached the rounded prow of the vessel, where he sat with a bit more force than was necessary.

A howl broke through the air: the call of a great hound. It was joined by another, and then a third. Blueblood’s ears perked upwards and forwards as he considered the source of the noise. “Oh, good,” he groaned, “a welcoming committee.”

Mountains loomed. The trees that decorated the hills disappeared entirely, leaving behind nothing but solid, unyielding stone. The mountains were numerous; they made up a skyline that put Manehatten to utter shame. Blueblood could only just make out a pass, scraggly and narrow, at the mouth of which stood a mythical mutt.

Cerberus’ black coat stood out against the light gray rock surrounding him. The three-headed dog gave another howl, and then retreated down the pass. The dog bounded nimbly from rock to rock, missing sharpened spikes and jagged breaks by what seemed like inches. Cerberus vanished from sight, down the dark and foreboding path through the Sleeping Mountains.

A sniffling, snuffling sound came from Blueblood’s side. He turned his head to see Captain Wishbone leaning on the rails beside him, wiping copious amounts of diamond dog snot on his forepaw. The dog’s eyes glistened in the morning light. “Beautiful. Simply beautiful.”

Blueblood, for lack of anything better to do, raised an eyebrow. “The Sleeping Mountains?”

Wishbone snarled. “No, dummy pony! Cerberus! The dog! The Dog! The dog which all other dogs aspire to be! He is the alpha male!”

“Aspire,” Blueblood mumbled behind closed lips. “There’s a word I didn’t expect to leave that mouth.”

Wishbone’s ears twitched. “Lotta more words gonna leave this mouth if you keep that up! Not so nice ones, too!”

Blueblood’s ears lay flat against his head. “Well, since we’re being so honest and sincere, Super-ears, let me just take a moment to say that I don’t particularly like being carted off to Tartarus. I don’t enjoy the thought of flying through that rocky death trap. And especially, I don’t appreciate Princess Luna’s choice in captains.”

Blueblood gathered all of the considerable smugness he had at his beck and call and channeled it into one smile. Rather than the rage, anger, nastiness, and general argumentativeness that he expected to come from the diamond dog captain, Blueblood found himself audience to a smile very similar to his own.

“We dogs have saying,” Wishbone said. “‘Don’t bite hand that feeds you.’”

Blueblood’s eyes lidded as his smile dropped away. “I grew out of being hand—um, hoof-fed long ago.”

“Didja, now?” Wishbone sniggered nasally. “So proud of you for moving on to sippy-cup.”

Blueblood opened his mouth, but Wishbone interrupted him with a raised claw. He brought his paw to his lips and blew a quick, loud whistle. The captain of the Sky Ark took notice and trotted over, his beard majestic against the morning sun. “Joo got something to say, Captain Fluorspar?”

Wishbone bobbed his noggin up and down. “Need you to give order to open cargo hatch. Princey and I gonna get going.”

A gem-studded fedora hung from the back of the dog’s neck. He set it upon his head and gave Blueblood a toothy grin. “You ever ride sky skiff before?”

At Blueblood’s head-shake to the negative, Captain Wishbone Fluorspar’s grin turned nasty. “Good!”


“I hate you and your whole airship-riding clan, do you know that!?”

The wind whipped past Wishbone’s ears, but failed to drown out the constant whine of the alicorn prince. The captain squinted beneath his flight goggles. “Liked little pony better when little pony was just snippy!”

Blueblood grasped onto the edge of the sky skiff, the only thing separating him from a plummet downward. No, his wings didn’t really come to mind. “Aaaah!” he articulated.

Less than two meters away sat those indomitable cliff faces. “Couldn’t we fly maybe a little bit higher!?” he asked.

Wishbone snorted. “Higher and we run into harpy nests!” He tugged on a lever, and the craft tilted to the left.

Blueblood slid to the right as centrifugal force tugged at his body. “Why don’t I just get out now? I could walk! Surely, let me walk!”

“Things lie in wait.” Wishbone secured his hat as the side of the skiff tapped against the mountain wall. The airship shuddered from the impact. “Terrible things. No Cerberus, no walking!”

Blueblood heard a hiss and stared up at the lighter-than-air balloon in horror, believing it to be leaking from one of its many patchwork repairs. He was slightly relieved when he discovered that the escaping air came instead from the boiler that powered the ship’s propellers.

“Uh oh.”

Blueblood’s relief froze in an instant at Captain Fluorspar’s murmur of disappointment. “‘Uh oh,’ what?”

“Slowing down. Not good.” Wishbone handed him a hefty wrench. “Just smack boiler until we speed up.”

Blueblood looked from the tool in his telekinetic grip to the uncooperative steam engine. “Just hit it?”

“Builds character!” Wishbone gripped two of the levers and wiggled them at random. The wind whipping past was much less forceful than before. “Builds lots and lots of character! Maybe build you character, too!”

The prince sneered. “I am something of a craftspony myself, and let me tell you, I have rarely needed to utilize percussive maintenance—”

“Cut little pony’s slagging kerf and get smacking!” Wishbone Fluorspar shouted. “Does little pony wanna die!?”

“What, now you’re threatening me?” Blueblood scoffed. “I should have you thrown in Tartar—”

It was at that exact moment that Blueblood noticed that Wishbone’s expression had changed from angry frustration to bitter depression. It was possible for a diamond dog to have puppy dog eyes after all. Wishbone sighed, pointed to something behind Blueblood, and then proceeded to scream his head off as he jerked the steering veins from side to side.

Blueblood looked behind himself and regretted it immediately.

It was Equestria’s worst-kept secret that manticores were huge softies at heart. All bluster, no muster. All roar, no claw. Still, there was no mistaking that they were huge, they were carnivorous, and they were strong. Hunger can bring out the worst in ponies, it was said, and manticores were very similar in that respect.

Still, pleasant enough creatures under the right circumstances.

Blueblood realized this on an intellectual level as he stared at the manticore climbing onto the back of the lighter-than-airship. Even as a giant paw took out a propeller, the prince was devising ways to greet the creature, and perhaps make an animal friend.

He might have actually attempted one of these things, had the creature not been lacking any sort of tissue.

No fur, no mane, no skin, no muscle, no organs. The great manticore that assailed their craft was naught but bones. That wouldn’t have been so bad, had those bones not included teeth and claws.

“Hit boiler!” Wishbone cried. “Hit monster! Hit anything! Hit everything!”

The wrench flew through the air and clanged against the boiler. Fig Newton’s third law of motion blew a raspberry and threw the wrench back with such force that it broke Blueblood’s concentration. The tool smacked him between the eyes, laying him low.

His prone position gave Blueblood a new outlook on life. For instance, he had never before realized just how many rows of teeth manticores possessed. The beast lifted its tail in the air, the barbed spike on the end aiming for the prince’s heart.

Blueblood screamed and threw himself to the side. He hoped that he wouldn’t accidently throw himself out of the skiff, but he wasn’t really sure it was the safest place to be. He stood to his feet, pleased with himself for having avoided the stinging tail.

The tail came down regardless of whether it would impale the prince, and instead found its mark on the frayed rope that held the envelope to the gondola. Or the balloon to the boat, as the case may be.

The balloon went up, and the skiff went down. The manticore slid forward until its head came into contact with the boiler. The resounding clang that resulted nearly drowned out Blueblood and Wishbone’s screams. The captain noticed, through his distress, that the propellers were once again churning at their usual rate. “Good enough!”

He pulled a red lever, one that he had not touched until that point. The sides of the skiff expanded outward, unfurling cloth wings with wooden bones. The wind caught the wings and halted the airship’s descent. The skiff jolted, sending the skeletal manticore flying off into the depths of the mountain pass. Blueblood would have followed it down, but his personal pride refused to let him be offed in such a way. He spread his wings and glided for a few meters until he was certain that the Yearling Hawk had stabilized.

“I say,” he coughed as he landed, “that could have been worse.”

They then entered the narrowest part of the pass, where the airship’s newly-gained wingspan became much, much wider than the distance between the walls. Cloth tore and wood snapped as the skiff lost altitude in a rather rapid manner.

Oh yes, and that manticore was flying quite well despite the fact that its wings were bony tatters.

Blueblood spread his wings and leapt out of the Yearling Hawk, his saddlebags strapped securely to his back. “Shake a leg now, Wishbone!” he called, holding out a hoof to the diamond dog. “Let’s wag another tail!”

Captain Wishbone jumped from the airship, which at least had the dignity to fall with style. A final kick of his legs sent the ship spiraling to the side, right into the path of the manticore. Fluorspar landed on Blueblood’s back and held on tight as the monster and the skiff collided. The boiler ruptured, and the whole thing exploded in a white cloud behind the fleeing travelers.

Wishbone gritted his teeth and sighed. “Had worse trips. Can’t remember when, but had worse.”

“My word.” Blueblood couldn’t resist a look back as he flew forward. “My word, what was that thing?”

Wishbone gripped the prince’s face and pointed it in the direction they were flying. “Go that way. You hear about ‘Alicorn’s Curse?’”

Blueblood thought for a moment, his ears swiveling for any sign of vile creatures lurking in the shadows. “What, that an alicorn will outlive his friends? Rather needless drama, if you ask me.”

“Maybe, but... that thing”—Wishbone gulped as he pointed down a fork in the pass—“what happens when spirit outlive body, but stays in body.”

Blueblood felt himself turn green in the proverbial gills. “That thing was undead!?”

“N-no. Not undead. Not die in first place.” The captain tugged on one of Blueblood’s ears to turn him, eliciting a whine of protest. “More like not-dead. Neverdead.”

“Neverdead.” Blueblood sighed as a particularly-tall mountain came into view. “I don’t suppose it’s worth hoping I don’t run into any more of those, is it?”