Titanic

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Hooves Down Part 2

Jack dug his hooves into the deck to keep climbing as the angle increased, though not steep it was certainly more than most had ever climbed on a smooth surface. They passed a preacher and his congregation, hundreds of ponies, clinging to every fixed object on deck, and to each-other.

Glancing up at the moon, Jack smiled, “C’mon Rose, we can’t expect Luna to do all the work for us!”
A stallion slid past, slamming into the congregation, who stopped him and settled him into a position on the rising deck. They arrived at the railing, and Jack wrapped a wing around the rail, pulling Rose up to it, and wedging her in beside him, “Hey, look,” he pointed up at the flag, now hanging over the deck, the same flagpole she had scrambled for when she had slipped…was it really only two days ago? “This is where we met, Rose.”

The pastor’s voice rose above the screams, empowered, though not by magic. He was a Pegasus. Emotion crackled through his words, “…And I saw new Heavens and a new Equestria. The former Heavens and the former Equestria had passed away and the sea was no longer.” The lights went out, though flares still flew into the sky.

Jack muttered, “Long as it waits to disappear until we aren’t on it.”

“I also saw a beautiful new Jerusalem, the holy city coming down out of Heaven, from Faust, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne ring out ‘this is Faust’s dwelling among ponies. She shall dwell with them and they shall be her ponies, and She shall be their Goddess who is always with them.”

Rose glanced around. With the exception of the pastor, faces showed terror. The Pegasus didn’t even flinch as the deck’s incline forced him to wrap a wing around the nearby capstan for support. His congregation hung from his hoof as he continued speaking, “She shall wipe every tear from every eye. And there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away.”
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The Pegasus filly cleared the end of the pipe, settling on it briefly as she realized just how far gone the ship actually was. The stacks were all in the water, her own, surrounded at the root by swirling waves. The front-most was missing entirely. And on a night like this, there wasn’t enough clouds in the sky to make life-rafts for even close to a fraction of the Pegasi, to reduce the load on the wooden boats.
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Cupboards split open, spilling plates into the water and onto the floor.
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A piano slid past Shipsmith, who placed a rear-hoof back slightly further than was proper to maintain his balance. The clock continued to tick in the firelight. He was alone in the dark, waiting for the chimney to submerge and begin flooding. His right fore-hoof gently caressed the side of the fireplace, the warm brick, “I am sorry, truly. Celestia, give me into the care of your sister. Faust knows she has a place set aside for this.”
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Passengers slid down the tilted decks, losing their grip on the slippery wood as the bow sank deeper.
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More ponies fell from the rails, Griffons, Pegasi too tired to fly, still they tried. Another hit the middle propeller with the dull thump that only a Griffon could have made, the bell echoing louder than the cracking of bone.
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Truth looked at the sinking ship, terrified, even as Mossy insisted on trying to get closer, to rescue more ponies. The ship, supposed to be unsinkable, standing there, backdrop of stars, completely dark, but for a few hoof-held lights.
“Faust above,” Mossy Brown gasped, and stopped breathing for a moment, frozen at the spectacle. Something that could literally not be put in proportion against the endless backdrops.
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Pipes burst around him, the abrupt shift from steam-heat to icy cold cracking them like twigs. Machinery threatened to pull loose from overstressed bolts that were never meant to handle inclines like this. Water sprayed across the breaker panel. Chief Bell howled as the cold water struck him, but jerked the breakers back into position anyway. The room suddenly became lit up again as lightning arced between something. Beneath the salty waves, the dynamos roared, churning water to a boil as it sizzled off glowing red coils. Huge flywheels kept spinning, casting boiling water away even as they threatened to fragment under the stress of freezing in boiling water. “NOT YET!” The rest of his half-chewed mouthful fell to the water, but he didn’t care, “I’M NOT DONE WITH MY JOB YET!”
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Bright Island couldn’t even look at the ship. It hurt him to know that he had taken the cowardly path to escape, the sounds of the dying echoing back to him. There was a sudden, terrifying report like a cannon firing, but so much bigger.
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The deck split open between the third and fourth funnel with the thundering echo of metal shearing.
Lovejoy, a deck below, watched as the hull tore open. The maw widened before him, exposing the bowels of the ship, tearing apart like the booming of artillery. Stay cables tore loose, ripping ponies into the crevasse. Lovejoy dropped to his knees, tears pouring from his eyes, “Celestia forgive me.”
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Chief Bell let loose a scream of rage as the lights went out for good, and the deck levelled out briefly.
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The water tore through the stern, sucking it down violently. Lovejoy didn’t have more than an instant to see the other side of the crevasse approaching before it collided with him, twisting and mangling the decks as it brought them back together violently.
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Jack tucked his wings into the rail, rolling over Rose as the stern dropped, slamming into the water violently. Some of the ponies in the congregation began cheering. “We’re Saved!”

Jack looked at Rose, lying beneath him, and shook his head grimly. Nope. From his vantage point, he saw the bow protruding from the waves, several ponies atop it by chance. Not for long. It crept back beneath the waves, descending rapidly. The weight began to pull on the strained keel, dragging the stern upwards once more. Rose clung to Jack as the angle increased further. The preacher held on, flapping his wings against gravity in an effort to survive. More hooves started to lose grip. Griffons, weighted down by jewelry, fell, crashing into Pegasi flapping mist dampened wings. Bodies hit the water. Moose fell from a nearby family.
“Rose, move it!” He dug his teeth into her collar and lifted her up and over the railing, frozen as solid as the corpses below. As soon as she was on the top of the rail, he hissed in her face, “Come on, Rose! I’m here. I’ve got you!”

It was the very same rail he had leapt over just two nights earlier, saving her for a second time. As the ship reached vertical, Jack hovered away from the deck, hoof caressing Rose’s stocking encased one. Bodies continued to plummet as Jack tried desperately to look at Rose. He saw the large letters spelling out the name of the vessel, in brilliant white, reflecting the moon. Rose, less composed than the wandering artist, stared down through the rail at the chilly black water bubbling below them.
At their side, clinging to the railing, sat the baker they had run into earlier. He still had that bottle in hoof, “Helluva night, eh?”
The ship started dropping straight down, dragging Jack along for the ride, his hoof refusing to release its grip on Rose, but his wings refusing to carry the extra weight, “Take a deep breath and hold it right before we go into the water,” his voice sped up, trying to beat the ship, “The ship will suck us down. Kick for the surface and keep kicking. Don’t let go of my hoof. We’re gonna make it Rose,” he smiled at her, “Trust me.”

Her already naturally wide eyes grew wider as she stared at the approaching salt-water. She squeezed his hoof tightly, and grabbed his mane in her magic, “I trust you.”

The deck below dissipated into blackness, fading away faster and faster. The boiling surface hit Jack, ripping at his wings, but he refused to let go. Everything went dark, cold, painful. Still, he refused to fail now.

Flapping his wings, Jack made his way to the surface, hugging Rose to his chest.
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Chief Engineer Bell picked up his soggy sandwich as the water rushed up into the room, “Buck you too, Celestia.” The pressure ruptured his already blind eyes, tore his eardrums apart, then crushed him into the bulkhead as it burst under the pressure of the water outside.
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The Pegasus filly from the engine room burst out into the water, shooting for the surface as fast as she could, and immediately launching herself into the sky. It was cold, she was wet, and there weren’t enough clouds around to form a proper platform. Still, she looked around, shivering to keep warm as she fought her way to one of the lifeboats that were returning to pick up any more survivors. Or, count the bodies.
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Jack burst through the surface, dragging Rose up, just long enough to catch a breath before they were forced beneath the water by panicked ponies and waterlogged Griffons. One Earth Pony stallion pushed Rose under as he tried to climb on top of her. Jack, still holding her hoof, was twisted around, and snap-kicked the stallion in the jaw, knocking him away, “Swim, Rose! Swim!”
Her strokes are less effective than his, even as his wings formed a thin sheen of bloody ice that cracked and sliced at his leathery wing surfaces, then froze once more. He can go higher, maybe find a cloud, like he could see several Pegasi doing. But…He can’t let go of Rose, not for one second. He searched about for something to get her out of the water. A lifeboat maybe. A door? A pile of bodies in life-jackets? Back to the door. No, it was too submerged. The bodies…Gross…He muttered, “Luna, forgive me…” and grabbed at Rose’s dress in his teeth, mumbling through the cloth, “Keep swimming, keep moving…Come on, you can do it.”

Wailing surrounded them, screams, moans, a chorus of the dead and dying. He half expected to see a gate to Tartarus opening, but no…Nothing like that. Blackness as far as he could see. Glancing up, he noticed that the moon was obscured. Clouds, too high for him to reach. Too high for any of them to reach in their half-frozen state. Still, in the darkness, he found solace. A warm rain might well save them, but a cold rain would certainly doom them.
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Mossy Brown stretched out a hoof and gently touched one of the bodies in the water, turning it around. Truth gasped as she saw the icy rictus splitting the stallion’s muzzle in half. Mossy placed her other hoof on Truth’s shoulder, “Another dead. Sweet Celestia…”
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The tiny amount of icy fog the filly had managed to gather was not enough. She was lying across it like it was a chin-up bar, fore-hooves down at her rear ankles, gripping them securely to keep from slipping as she hung there like a storm-cloud, black with soot and oil, just barely out of reach.
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“Rose, see that mound there?”
She whimpered below him, not really wanting to look around at all the frozen and freezing bodies.

“Rose, open your eyes. I found something. It’s a little cold.”
She refused, but stretched out to touch it with a hoof. It gave a little, but she was able to get both hooves on it, and clamber out of the water. It wasn’t quite tall enough. Her hooves were still touching, and she could feel the chilly water freezing in her stockings, splashing against her fetlocks.

Author's Note:

The Titanic is no more.

And wow, this chapter actually hurt to write.

Comments

[Iroh Legoman]

Im sure it did hurt :fluttersad: