//------------------------------// // Prologue: Out of the frying pan. // Story: Upon the Sea of Sky // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// Captain Ruby / Kaily - 2nd of Leaffall, ‘09 EoH There is an old saying that goes ‘When it rains, it pours.’ It’s supposed to mean that change comes rarely, but when it does those changes pile up until everything is soaked to the bone. Based on my life so far, it’s probably completely true. I looked up from the ship’s wheel to the rigging on the mizzen mast. Or at least, the rearmost mast, in case that isn’t the mizzen. I could see Pine flying around the sail, inspecting the quality of the spell which animated the ship. The pale brown black maned pegasus mare’s face was hidden by one of the sticky-outy-mast-bits that holds the sails up. “Is there anything we can do to improve things up there?” I called, putting a hoof up to my mouth to help direct the sound. “She’s ‘bout as good as your average sailor’s job, Captain.” Pine shouted back. “Your wizard friends should see if they can’t get her to tie the rigging a bit more loosely. She’ll have a hard time changing the sail-plan if we hit a storm at this rate.” “Right!” I called in reply before turning my head to look for the twins. I never thought in my life I would be captaining a pirate ship. Not even a little dingy full of Somalis with AK-47s, the sort of pirates one expected in the modern age. The fact that I was now the captain of an old school wooden galleon in a world populated by mythical creatures was something I would pass off as a fever dream if I woke up in my apartment tomorrow. But it was real, it was actually happening. I have been here for two weeks, died once, and came back as a four legged grey-blue furred pegasus like pony with bat wings. My new body was somehow a vampire that was empowered by the sun. I’d gone from being female to being both genders at once. I’d gained the powers of a Bard, met a pair of twins who were wizards, sized the pirate ship we were being held on, and converted it’s former captain into an ally. All of this to help a mysterious group of people on a quest to save this world from what was described as ‘a magical reaper invasion’. It was like my life had turned into a game of D&D with the most awesome DM ever. Because as far as I could tell that’s exactly what happened. I’m now a time-displaced, reincarnated, bard pirate captain, who also happens to be an adorable vampire batpony with magical sunblock. Two weeks ago, I was a human who rang up purchases in a gas station. When it rains, it pours. I spotted the twins down on the quarter deck near the main mast. Risky and Lucky were a combination of those twins from Ouran Host Club, Tony Stark if he played tabletop RPGs instead of invented things, and the brother-sister duo from No Game No Life. They were the sorts of individuals who calculated everything, had memorized every single D&D book, and were crazy but endearing. Which is why it was terrifying that the mysterious group which gave us our quest and powers let them write out their own character sheets, effectively picking their own powers. At the moment, Risky and Lucky looked to be casting a spell together, their chanting and hoof waving must look so odd to people native to this world. Only unicorns normally get to cast spells actively, and they just sort of think about it. Dungeons and Dragons magic must look so weird to them. I let them finish casting their spell before calling to them. I may not have played as much as they had, but I was fully aware of what can go wrong when you interrupt a wizard’s spellcasting. My body was already a clusterfuck of magical properties. As they finished the ship’s sails rippled, their white canvas color turning coal black like someone poured dye into water. As the main sail recolored a spot in the shape of a twenty sided die and crossbones remained white, as if the sail was a screen printed tshirt. The twins grinned and gave each other a hoof bump. Pine yelped as the sale she was looking at changed, fluttering a few feet back before giving the ship a little impressed nod. “Huh, that looks way better. Why didn’t I ever think to dye the sails?” She had been unusually optimistic about everything for the last two days. The twins did something to her. I just knew it. “Hey!” I shouted to the twins, “Did you two charm Pine or something?” Risky turned and gave me a little wave. “Hi Captain!” “How’s the sails look?” Lucky called back. I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Great! But what did you do to-” “It’s okay Captain, I asked them too.” Pine said dropping to the deck to my right with a thud of hoof on wood. “I wasn’t adjusting well, one of them mentioned they could help. I agreed to let them curse me to be optimistic about everything. Neat huh?” I raised an eyebrow and looked down at the twins. “Really?” “She literally asked for it.” Risky said sheepishly. “Yeah, we explained it was technically a curse beforehoof.” Lucky finished. “We can remove it later if it’s an issue, and she wants us too.” Risky added. I rolled my eyes. This is why I was the captain. Sure Pine had the experience, but knew nothing about the quest. The twins were the kind of people who got power an instantly took over a pirate ship, magicked it into a flying, self driving airship, then made it’s former captain into a peppy cheerful person because she complained about being sad. Not really leadership material. “Just… just go help Pine tweak your spell to work better.” I ordered after a moment of facehoofing. “Sure, what do we need to do?” they asked in unison. Pine snapped her wings open and flew down to the deck, hovering a few feet in the air in front of them. “We need to loosen the rigging, and if possible, we need to make the ship able to remember each of its sail-plans. That way if we encounter rough winds or a storm it can adjust the sails properly so we don't have a mast rip off the ship. Fly on up to the mizzen’s top sail and I’ll show you how it should look.” “Er-” Risky blushed, scratching the back of her head with a hoof. “About that…” Lucky giggled nervously. “We can’t fly.” They quipped. Pine’s wings stopped moving. She dropped to the deck like a sack of potatoes, a completely confused look on her face. “What? You literally made my ship fly and run itself, but you can’t fly yourself?” “We don’t know how.” Risky admitted. “Ever hear of a mirror that leads to parallel universes? We’re from there. Our world didn’t have magic, so we couldn’t fly there, so we never learned how.” Pine nodded. “I know of it. I tried to take a ship carrying it to Equestria a few years back. It was a valuable target.” She shook her head and stood up, “I’m not even going to ask where you got your powers from, but you two need to know how to fly. Captain could you help me demonstrate-” Pine’s eyes shut tightly as she realized something. “You can’t fly either, can you?” “Well, I haven't flown in this body, but I did when I was a pegasus hybrid. Should be the same right?” I asked curiously. “This body?” Pine asked looking even more confused. “I died and was reincarnated.” I answered in as truthful a tone as I could manage. “Oh. Well okay then.” she shook her head slowly, “World’s going all crazy this week I guess. Captain, would you come down here and help me show these two how to fly? We can't be an airship with non-flying crew members, that’s not at all safe.” Risky blinked and gave Pine an odd look. “Why would a pirate care about safety?” “Why would?” Pine shook her head incredulously, “This is a business, this is how my crew and I made our livings. Even a pirate ship has to have certain rules, loosing crew is not good for business, nor is a captain who shoots people who make mistakes. There are rules, well okay, guidelines. My point is, you need to feel safe on this ship, which can fly now, so you two need to get off your plots and into the air. You’re grown mares, for Faust’s sake!” “She’s right.” I said as I snapped my wings open and flew down to the deck. “Okay Pine, what do you need me to demonstrate?” “Stand there and flap your wings.” Pine said. “We need to show them how it doesn't work.” I complied, flapping my wings as hard as I could. Pine pointed to my wings, “Thestrals are directly descended from Pegasi, you fly the same exact way we do. See how her wing flaps do nothing? That’s because our wings are too small to make enough lift to fly. Our wings are important, but you don’t fly with them.” I stopped flapping, and held my wings out straight, bending them slightly, then slowly moving them up and down. “The flight is magical. Your wing shape and movement guides the spell which forms what they call a ‘flight field’. The field warps space around you and pushes you up, down, or whatever.” Pine nodded. “I’m not exactly a great flier, being good is half talent, half practice. The more you fly the better your magic gets because your become better at making the right wing gestures. As a grown mare, you two should instinctively be able to move through the air at a walking speed. Give the Captain and I a few hours and you should be okay enough to help me help you get he rigging in order.” It was actually rather fun teaching the twins to fly. Mostly because of how completely terrible they were at it. They sort of bobbed and drifted like balloons while flying and would have to get good at it by brute force practice. As far as Pine could tell their natural pony magic was as weak as their granted powers were strong. The moment they were able to keep to a general area of space while hovering Pine had them up in the rigging, showing them exactly how the ropes were supposed to go. She was an incredibly patient instructor, you could tell she understood that some people just didn’t know what she knew and was used to explaining it. I chalked it up to probably having had to train a few crews before. I would have paid more attention to Pine’s lesson, I was a bit interested in how my ship worked after all. Unfortunately somepony had to keep us on course. The Enterprise liked to drift off course if you weren't paying attention to where it was going. The enchantments which made it work had been made by someone who knew nothing of how ships worked after all. Unguided magic wasn’t especially smart. One reason I loved this world’s magic is it worked like a science. It could bring your imagination to life yes, but it worked much better if you know what you were doing. So we were slowly getting the ship all ship-shape by revising and tweaking the spell as we sailed for the nearest village to crew up. According to Pine, that was a small batpony mining village on the seaside called Farriar. Apparently it was one of those villages where you got one of two jobs, sailing, or mining. It would be easy enough to find a crew, get some supplies, and then we could figure out where to go from there. The plan for saving the world was a bit non-existent at this point. The problem was a lack of information, the DMs were literally unable to simply tell us what was happening and what to do. The twins said they were using a spell to give us our powers and the like, but it was complicated and they didn't have much real power. Maybe they literally couldn’t say anything. “Some kind of direction would be nice.” I muttered to myself. I could feel the sun on my back as I mulled over the possibilities. It was getting late in the evening. We should be in town soon, maybe I could ask where a good library was. I could look up whoever this Grogar (who had apparently killed me the other day) was. On a whim, I squinted over the bow to see if I could spot the town on the slim gray line that was the shore. I wish I still had a pegasus’s eyes, they had excellent distance vision. I could see a small orange dot on the horizon. Maybe that was the village? It was a mining town, they probably smelted ores as well. I wouldn’t put a smelter underground, venting the smoke would be a nightmare. The light was pretty flickery though, forge fires and foundry fires usually didn’t look like that because of the extra airflow making the flames into more of a jet of fire than a camp fire. “Captain!” Pine shouted urgently. “Farrier’s on fire!” “Son of a bitch!” I cursed, slamming my forehead into the ship’s wheel violently enough to make my hat fly off. I scooped my my hat, dusting off the red felt with a hoof, and avoiding thinking too hard about how I was holding it. I found thinking about it fucked it up. “How far out are we?” I asked. Plopping my hat onto my head. “Well, we are a few knots faster than I’m used to… five minutes tops.” Pine answered. “Right. Run out the guns! If there is one thing years of fantasy novels have taught me it’s that we are about to learn everything we need to know to get started on this quest.” I sighed. I had known fighting was inevitable, but well, who really likes combat? “What do you mean?” Pine asked as she flew over to hover in front of me. “It’s simple,” I answered, summoning a electric guitar shaped like an axe with a spell to get ready for combat. “Starting Townington is always on fire.”