Fifteen seconds ago...
"Eight more griffins taking-" Knight was cut off as the ship was rocked by a third impact and thrown off her hooves as the deck began to drop out from under her. Acting quickly, she wrapped her forelegs around the railing where she stood. This did her little good when the heavy arcane weapon on deck with her came rolling to the edge of the ship and smashed through the metal bars, tearing the mare free from the ship and sending her flying below.
As she fell, she observed several critical points. First, she reflected on the fact that she was very likely about to die. Second, she noted that her swing off the metal rail had given her enough forward velocity to manipulate her direction of travel. Third, she realized she was still higher than the griffin ship's balloons. Motivated by all three of these, she spread her hooves as wide as she could and leaned to the side, using the increased wind resistance to guide herself toward salvation.
Moments later, she smacked into the forward end of the left balloon and grabbed at it as best she could. Battered and stunned, she still found a small seam to grip, and hung on tightly. From her vantage point, she could see the deck of the ship below her, where griffins were running and flying in panic around a large metal cylinder embedded in their vessel. Knight took a moment to identify it in her concussed state.
The Flare. And it was glowing and sparking with energy. And... Knight blinked and rubbed her face against a foreleg, trying to clear away the blurriness. She looked back, but still couldn't tell which way the weapon was pointed.
A blinding ray of golden light burst through the air and through the balloon holding Knight. And then, as she watched, the upward-facing Flare shifted in place as it seared away the surrounding wood, and the beam followed its path. It cut through nearly the entire length of the left balloon and then through much of the craft below, finally settling out at a horizontal angle along the bottom hull and powering down.
In essentially the reverse of her experience aboard the Courser, the griffin ship lurched to the left and the destroyed cloth onto which she held plummeted as it swung outwards along its rope, leaving her dangling above the water with the lopsided vessel above her. Looking beyond that, she could see their own ship still dropping, and now nearly directly over the griffin's. It also appeared that most of their aggressors had fled in the aftermath of the Flare's firing, and she could see a large number of them on the horizon evidently headed to shore.
Seconds now from the water, Knight pushed off from her hoofhold and angled herself into a dive, devoting as much energy as she could to swimming down and away. She heard the griffin ship splashing down, and knowing that she was no longer likely to be crushed, surfaced to get a look. She tread water and turned to see that the vessel, despite huge gashes through its side and a missing balloon, remained afloat in the water. Breathing a sigh of relief, the black-coated mare began paddling towards it.
Then her own airship finished its rapid unplanned descent and smashed into it.
As the two vessels collided, the shattered starboard air tank from the Courser pushed into the left side of the Griffin at a vertical angle, while the rest it gradually leveled out and the port air tank settled on the water. Between the air tank, the balloon, and the relative buoyancy of both crafts, the mass of rent metal and shattered wood managed not to immediately sink to the bottom of the ocean. Knight resumed her swim toward the ships, and noticed several shapes stepping and flying into view as she did so.
.....
After a long series of explosions rocking the ship, the wall briefly becoming the ground, every loose object going flying around the room, hearing the Flare firing, and feeling a sudden impact with something curiously solid in the middle of an ocean, Minuette and Time Turner were hesitant to move or say anything whatsoever.
"Haha!" the earth pony proclaimed. "I knew we'd be fine!"
An undetonated cannonball in the fragmented air tank suddenly blew, rocking the ship and evoking a wince. Minuette just glared at him.
"Yes, well... Anyway, we should see what's going on up there," he concluded meekly. He stood, and helped her to her hooves. Together, they carefully stepped over the shattered glass and assorted personal effects that littered the floor of Minuette's room. The mare noted that they were actually moving uphill as they did so, indicating that the airship was slightly raised on its right side.
After clearing the rest of the hallway and climbing the stairs to the main deck, Time Turner pushed the door open and stepped out, blinking in the sunlight. "Clouds have cleared," he noted as he shielded his eyes with a foreleg and looked up. Then he spotted the figure of a pegasus and griffin approaching, and waved. "Soarin, Gilda!"
The pair landed on the deck simultaneously, standing across from the earth pony and unicorn. "Got a pretty good look around," Soarin began, "and I think all the griffins turned tail and ran."
Gilda snorted. "Cowards." Then she paused, tilting her head, and then turned to look behind her at the bridge just as Fancy Pants pushed the door open and stepped outside. His suit was visibly scuffed, his coat marked by blood in several places, and his mane disheveled, but he still wore his monocle and limped proudly onto the bridge.
"I hope my piloting skills were sufficient to compensate for the inadequate armor plating on those air tanks. Fortune favored us—had we not the second vessel to support our own, I fear it would have sunk."
For the first time, Minuette realized the starboard end of their ship was resting on the deck of tilted griffin galley. She trotted to the broken edge of the tank and looked down at the scorched and destroyed remains of the warship's upper deck. Through a hole several decks deep and running almost the length of the ship, she could see the inert Flare. "We should go down there and make sure it's stable."
Turner looked at her skeptically. "Do you actually need to go down there in order to check?"
"No, but... Look at it, Turney! It's a blown-up griffin battleship! How could we not go exploring!" She grinned as he fought a smile of his own, but turned away as she heard a thudding sound practically below her.
Hearing it as well, Soarin took to the air and flew around the front of the ship. "Hey!" he called back. "I found Knight! She's alright!" He dropped out of sight, helping lift her onto the ship. Minuette saw her opportunity fading and quickly hopped over the jagged lip of the air tank and into the griffin ship below, landing on a lower deck with a graceful roll.
"Come on, you guys!" she shouted. With no response forthcoming, the unicorn turned her attention to the nearby Flare and approached it. Surprisingly, she saw nothing so much as a scratch on the device. Pausing for a moment, she ran through several possible spells to determine the magical output of the device before settling on one. Her horn lit up...
And she immediately staggered, fell forward, and collapsed.
To his credit, Time Turner dropped every sense of apprehension the moment he saw Minuette falling, and he had jumped into the ship before her muzzle hit the deck. "Mini!" he cried out as he dropped, Fancy Pants close behind. The earth pony stepped up and nudged her in the ribs, and she blinked groggily. "Mini, are you alright?"
She stared up at him for a moment before Fancy Pants said, "Perhaps a simple head-trauma spell will resolve this?" Immediately her eyes went wide and she waved her forehooves.
"No! The..." she paused, looking vaguely nauseous. "The magical field is too strong. It will overpower any magic you attempt to channel."
"Wait, so the Flare is still charged?"
"It's not that. This was everywhere. I think... The gemstone must still be here. The Celestial Stone. It must be." Unsteadily, Minuette rose to her hooves and looked around. She glanced upward, where Soarin, Gilda, and Knight now stood at the edge of their ship looking down. "The Celestial Stone is still here! Check the upper decks!"
Everypony began to rummage through the vessel's remaining compartments. While the energy beam had cut clear through the wooden framing that comprised most of the ship, it had not penetrated the outer hull entirely, and still left plenty of area to search. Knight and Fancy Pants began with the few rooms built on the level of the main deck, as the stairs leading below were only nominally intact. Soarin swooped through the hole in the deck and into the first floor, which seemed to be dedicated mostly to crew quarters. Gilda began with the level below that, knowing perfectly well that that was where armories typically belonged on this model of airship. Minuette—who had already recovered from the magical energy surge—and Time Turner continued to poke around the storage room at the base of the craft.
After a few minutes, Soarin called out. Remembering that Gilda was the only one actually able to get to him, he went to the lower compartment and helped Minuette while the griffin did the same for Knight. Once all four of them reached the desired location inside a hollowed-out bunk, Soarin gestured to some of the exposed, charred portion of the outer hull that the Flare had hit. The pointing proved largely unnecessary, as obviously enough, a plain crystal-clear orb half the size of a hoof was embedded in the scorched metal. It periodically shimmered with rainbow energy, and the surface surrounding it glowed red-hot.
Neither ponies nor griffin were able to break the awestruck silence for a while. Finally, Minuette managed in a whisper, "This is it."
Knight shook her head and addressed Minuette. "Is it safe? Should it be radiating this much heat?"
The unicorn paused for a moment, frowning. "No. The Celestial Stone takes magical input and generates an increased magical output, but I don't think it's ever been used to store energy before. But what this looks like, and what I felt earlier when I tried to cast a spell... This thing is saturated in raw thaumic power. It's flushing huge amounts into the environment and that transfer must be producing the heat." Another pause, and then she took a step back. "Oh... no. This isn't right."
"What is it?"
Minuette continued, "It's just, if this stone took a direct hit from the Flare—and it clearly has—it would have absorbed a massive amount of power. The energy we're seeing this thing output... It's nowhere near what it should be."
"Theories?"
"It took in too much power too quickly and that's why it's storing it instead of transforming it into more."
"Wait," Soarin cut in. "You mean that all the magic pourin' off that thing is just the leftovers from what the Flare gave it?"
"Yes. And if that's the case, and it still does manage the conversion later... all that energy exponentially increased and released at once... The results could be devastating."
Everyone processed this for a moment before Soarin ventured again, "So... I suppose throwing it really far won't work?"
"It's melting the metal around it, 'N. We couldn't even grab it," Gilda countered.
"Minuette, give us a timeline."
"I can't! I can't so much as cast a spell right now, cap'! It's all guesswork!"
"Then guess."
"Ten minutes, maybe? Could be two, could be two-hundred. There is no precedent for this."
Knight sighed, looking around at the three others. "We can't move it, we can't get clear of it, we can't stop it... Folks, I'm listening. Find some straw and grasp."
The unicorn stared at the ground for a moment, grimacing, and then closed her eyes. "There is a way."
"Alright! Let's hear it!"
Minuette shook her head. "Not here. Gilda, help Knight back to the deck of our ship. Soarin, I need to see Turney."
Knight consented to the help and the griffin flew her off. Soarin arrived with Time Turner moments later. He'd begun to ask something when Minuette stepped forward and embraced him in a hug. The pegasus saw her whisper something in his ear, and then the ship rocked as the gemstone let out another small tremor of rainbow light. Then she pushed him back and stepped away.
"Time's running out," she said. "Help him back to our ship first. I need to check one last thing." Soarin and Time Turner both looked ready to say something when she shouted, "Go, now! Explosions and rainbows! Hurry!"
Soarin latched onto Turner and started fly back to their ship, when the earth pony immediately began trying to escape. "No! Stop, let me go back! Put me down!"
"Turner, the hay's wrong with you? We don't have time for this!"
"She said 'goodbye,' Soarin! Now take me back-" That was as much as the stallion managed to say before Soarin had glanced back and seen Minuette's horn light up with the beginning of a spell. With a heave, he dropped Turner the rest of the distance to their ship and turned, pouring on speed as he dove towards the unicorn struggling to stay upright.
He slammed into her just as her horn flared, and suddenly they were both falling and splashing into the empty ocean.