63 - Battle Ship
Sonata woke up to the sound of screams.
Startled, she reflexively thrashed as she tried to sit up. This succeeded only in overturning the hammock, dumping her to the floor and depositing Nosey on top of her an instant later. Groaning, the two mares struggled to disentangle themselves, finally managing to get their hooves under them.
“What’s happening?” asked Nosey, fumbling for her notepad and pencil. There was clearly something happening; she could see ponies running around in fright, but the source of their panic wasn’t clear.
“I dunno,” replied Sonata. She blinked as she looked around, before reaching a hoof towards a frightened-looking earth pony stallion who was wearing a sailor’s getup. “Hey, what’s going on?”
He didn’t seem to see her at first, so she moved forward and put a hoof on his shoulder, causing him to let out a rather high-pitched shriek and jump, spinning around to face her as he did. Luckily, the sight of a pretty mare seemed to calm him down, and he managed to relax a little as he landed. “Huh? I mean…sorry, what did you say?”
“I said ‘hey, what’s going on?’” repeated Sonata. “Why’s everypony panicking?”
“We’re under attack!” he yelped in response. Just saying that seemed to threaten to make him descend into hysteria again. “Some kind of fish-pony monsters are boarding the ship!”
Nosey’s eyes widened. “‘Fish-pony monsters’? Oh I have got to see this!” she grinned, immediately heading for the stairs.
“No!” cried the sailor. “You can’t go out there! C. Shells said to keep everypony below deck while she and the rest of the crew try to hold them off!”
Sonata’s brow furrowed at that, barely even noticing as Nosey ignored the sailor’s warning and moved to head above deck. “What do you mean ‘she and the rest of the crew’ are holding them off? What about Lex?”
“Who?”
“Lex!” she yelled, suddenly starting to feel worried. “The unicorn who put this entire thing together! Red horn, weird shadow, mayor of Tall Tale, that Lex! Isn’t he up there fighting?”
“He went ashore!” babbled the earth pony. “He was supposed to be getting the docks ready!”
“What, alone?!” Sonata felt a sudden surge of worry. She knew that it was ridiculous; Lex was the pony who had fought a dragon all by himself, after all. But at the same time, she remembered that he had nearly died in that fight. For how smart he was, Sonata knew that he had a tendency to not realize when he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
A fresh round of screams from above deck reminded her that she had more immediate problems to deal with. Pushing her way past the sailor and ignoring his half-hearted attempts to stop her, Sonata ventured above deck.
What greeted her was a scene of complete pandemonium. Just as she’d been told, there were scaly green monsters the size of ponies pouring onto the ship. Most of the creatures had a trident or spear clenched in their jaws, and as they vaulted over the rail onto the deck, they immediately threw themselves at any ponies they saw, jabbing viciously. Those that weren’t armed were no less dangerous for it, lashing out with teeth and claws.
Sonata could see that several members of the crew were trying to fight back – and a few, C. Shells among them, were trying to organize a defense – but they were clearly being overwhelmed. Most of them were fighting with belaying pins or scrub buckets, and there wasn’t one of them that wasn’t bleeding from where they’d been cut, stabbed, or bitten. Worse, they were rapidly becoming outnumbered as more of the creatures – there had to have been almost two dozen now! – kept climbing onto the deck.
Even as Sonata watched, a pegasus stallion that was hovering in the air while he tried to whack some of the creatures with a bucket took a spear through the wing, letting out a pained howl as he collapsed to the deck. Instantly, two of the green things leaped at him, and his eyes widened in terror. Reacting instantly, Sonata muttered the words to a spell before taking a deep breath…
“BACK OFF!”
Augmented by magic, her words were loud enough to create tangible pressure. They lashed out with explosive force, catching the two monsters attacking the pegasus in mid-leap, sending them flying back over the side of the ship as though they’d been shot out of a cannon.
The sheer volume of Sonata’s attack was enough to bring the fighting to a halt, as everyone – pony and monster alike – stopped and stared at what she’d done before looking over at her. From where she’d hurriedly situated herself in the crow’s nest, Nosey blinked in surprise. She’d known that Sonata could sing, but to be able to do that…she had a serious set of lungs!
For her part, Sonata stood tall and gave her best impression of Lex’s commanding glare as she looked at the evil fish-thingies. “Those of you that don’t want to get, like, totes fileted, go back where you came from right now!” she announced. Inside, she felt almost giddy. She hadn’t been able to help when the dragon had attacked, but now she was SO going to redeem herself! Just the thought of Lex’s face when he got back and found out that she’d saved everyone was enough to make her have to struggle to keep from grinning.
“Maa-jik…”
The raspy croaking voice was enough to snap her out of her fantasy, and she couldn’t keep a surprised look off of her face as she looked at its source: one of the scaled monsters. “Huh?”
“Maa-jik…poh-nee…”
“Er, that’s right!” Sonata tried not to feel unnerved at the way those things were trying to talk. That had to be the creepiest thing she’d ever heard! “I’m, like, a super magic pony, so you better go away if you don’t want t-WHOA!” Her speech was interrupted as the scaly creatures charged her en masse, ignoring the other ponies on the ship in favor of her.
For a moment she thought that maybe this was one of those things where the creatures turned out to be misunderstood, and that they had a habit of making magic-using ponies their leader or something. But that theory was shot down a moment later as a spear was hurled at her, missing her head by inches. Giving a yelp of fright, Sonata stumbled backwards as the things threw themselves at her, hissing and roaring in what was quite obviously anger. Clearly magic ponies were NOT their favorite people!
Backpedaling as fast as she could to get away from the onrushing horde, Sonata quickly incanted a spell, waving a hoof at the creatures charged at her, now only a few feet away. Immediately, three of them collapsed, asleep before they hit the ground. But the rest of the crowd barely noticed, surging over their fallen brethren to get to her. “Maa-jik poh-nee!” they howled, their voices ringing with hatred.
Off to the side, C. Shells managed to shake off her surprise, and turned to the rest of her crew. “What’re you standing around for?” she bellowed. “We need to help her!” Picking her belaying pin up in her mouth, she immediately charged towards the back of the crowd, whacking one of the things over its finned head. Several of her crewmembers immediately followed suit. But although they succeeded in causing several of the monsters to turn towards them, the remainder kept their focus directly on Sonata.
Dodging under another spear strike, she then managed to avoid being skewered by a trident, but there was nothing she could do to stop a third creature from raking its claws across her flank, drawing blood. A fourth jabbed at her leg, its spear leaving a deep cut. Crying out in pain, she stumbled back, but felt her backside collide with the railing at the edge of the ship, and her blood ran cold as she realized that she was cornered.
For a moment she considered jumping into the water, but knew that wouldn’t work. These fish creatures were undoubtedly strong swimmers, and would likely get her before she’d managed to get very far. Instead, she muttered another spell, and again yelled out. “I said GO AWAY!” This time, she’d used a different spell, one that used less force in exchange for covering a wider area. It wasn’t enough to send any of the creatures flying, but it was more than loud enough to cause several of them to grab their heads in pain. A few even collapsed, twitching once or twice before falling still, bleeding from their finned ears.
But there were still over a dozen surrounding her, and as they moved in to press their attack, Sonata realized that she wasn’t going to get a chance to cast another spell. “Maa-jik poh-nee!” hissed the nearest creature, rearing back with its trident. Around her, several others snarled that appellation as well, raising their weapons. Sonata closed her eyes, realizing that she wasn’t going to be able to stop it.
A moment went by, and the pain of being stabbed to death wasn’t felt. Cracking one eye open, Sonata looked around. The creatures were all still there, and were screeching in anger, jabbing their weapons forward. But the blows weren’t connecting; instead, they were impacting harmlessly against a transparent wall, a force field, that had sprung up around her, shielding her from their attacks. For a moment, Sonata wasn’t sure what was going on, before the obvious answer came to her, and she slumped in relief.
“Lex…”
“You disgusting…primitive…monsters!” howled her boyfriend from behind the mass of creatures. “You want a magic pony?! Then come and get me!”
What happened then wasn’t so much a fight as it was a massacre. Screaming in rage, Lex flung himself into the mass of fish-creatures, Severance by his side. Each spell he cast unleashed bloody carnage on the monsters; one released a trio of bright red beams that struck three of the creatures, causing them to scream as they were cooked alive. Another unleashed five small glowing darts of light, which proceeded to fling themselves against another creature until they’d punctured its torso. Still another made one of the creatures clutch at its throat, its eyes bulging as it gasped futilely for air before collapsing.
Even as he unleashed death upon the creatures, they didn’t seem to be discouraged. If anything, the flagrant uses of magic seemed to enrage them, and they flung themselves at Lex in a wave of teeth and claws and blades. But only a few of them reached him, as Severance whirled and lashed out at those that came too close. Each such rotation caused blood to spurt or limbs to go flying as it cut the onrushing monsters to ribbons.
Despite this, several of the monsters still reached Lex, lashing out at him with all of the force they could muster. But he seemed not to notice; no matter how often they thrust their tridents or tried to bite at his face, their attacks couldn’t seem to find purchase, defeated by the array of defensive spells and magic items he wore.
Barely more than a minute after he’d arrived, all of the creatures were dead. Standing in the center of their massed corpses was Lex, Severance floating serenely beside him, both of them covered with blood. He looked around, and just that motion was enough to make C. Shells and her crew shrink back, horrified by the slaughter that they’d just witnessed.
Ignoring them, Lex gestured towards Sonata, and the force field around her collapsed. Instantly, he was by her side, looking her over. “You’re hurt.”
His voice was grim, but it made her smile nonetheless. “And you’re late,” she replied teasingly.
“I’ll heal your wounds,” he said, ignoring her banter. “So wait just…” he paused as he looked back at the rest of the crew, as though only just remembering that there were other ponies there. He glanced between them and her, clearly caught between wanting to mend her injuries immediately and checking to see if anypony else was in worse condition.
Sonata lightly pushed him away. “Go on. I’m sure some of them need your help more than me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me, I can totes handle a few scratches,” she smiled. He lingered for a moment, as though weighing the truth of her words, before nodding and turning towards the rest of the crew, who were still watching him with shocked expressions.
Sonata sighed as she sat down, only to give a start as Nosey leaned over, not having noticed her climbing down the rigging. “I was right about you two,” she smirked good-naturedly. “You’re just one story after another.”
Chuckling weakly as the adrenaline rush began to wear off, Sonata gave Nosey a rueful smile. “Let’s just hope that you won’t need to write another story about us fighting monsters for a while. It’s seriously starting to lose its luster for me.”
The sahuagin slowly opened its eyes as its consciousness returned. For a moment it couldn’t remember what had happened. Then its memory of a loud noise and suddenly being blasted off of the ship by one of those poh-nees returned.
Maa-jik. One of the poh-nees had maa-jik.
Barely noticing that its companion that had been knocked off with it was dead, it started to swim towards the ship to resume its attack. The very idea of the existence of maa-jik filled it with a killing rage; only the holy ones were allowed to have such powers – everything else was an insult to their greatness. They would need to be killed and devoured so as to reclaim that power for the sahuagin race.
But as it swam closer to the ship, it heard roaring and shouting of a different kind than had been happening when they launched their attack. Clawing its way up the side, the lone sahuagin watched as another poh-nee, this one also using maa-jik, killed the rest of its kin, all without taking so much as a scratch. Indeed, few of them even got close to it, thanks to that strange blade hovering at its side.
Releasing its grip, the sahuagin dived back into the water, its reentry barely making a splash as it began to swim away from the ship. For the first time since they’d come to this place, they had lost an entire raiding party. Worse, they had lost without devouring any of the poh-nees.
The Mighty Ones would need to be told.
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If the fish guys have just one dragon class leader who is going to put their oar in, then Lex is in trouble. If theres more than one of them, then things are looking very messy indeed. And thats just the fish guys.
So far, so good, they survived teh first raiding party, but how, if possible, to get to a more secure location, quickly. I would expect that ship to be an easy target that wont be floating much longer.
Sahuagins have taken over the waters around Vanhoover and there's an undetermined number of magic-wielding beings that they worship with them. Sonata is right when Lex often bites off more than he can chew but at least with Severance, he fares much better in battle now though I wonder if he'll start relying on it too much in later chapters.
Still, Captain Shells and her crew held up surprisingly well considering they fought off the sahuagins with just wooden sticks and buckets and from what I can see, suffered no casualties. Though I think they'll need better armaments for the next attack, that is after they dock at the port. No reason to fight aquatic foes on a ship in the middle of the water after all...then again, there might be more dangers on land than on the ship.
At least with the 'Mighty Ones' they're probably not worshipping an Aboleth. Since they work alone.
7861427 Do they? The description in the Pathfinder entry for aboleths mentions that they used to have vast empires, that they still dwell in "grotesque cities built in nauseating and cyclopean styles," and that "lone aboleths are often advance scouts for these hidden cities."
7860919 As you note, winning the first skirmish doesn't mean that you've won the war.
7861030 The issue of how much Lex relies on Severance is one that I've kept in mind, and I'm currently trying to juggle exactly how to have that play out. As it stands, Lex does rely heavily on Severance, but that's mostly for being able to recharge his primary magic on an as-needed basis, which is the central source of Lex's strength. Insofar as a melee weapon goes, he has less use for it there, though it's quite clearly still turning out to be valuable on that front as well.
Ooh boy am I behind.
You say blinked twice, I know it looks nice to be blinking while looking around, but reading this sounds awkward.
I read this as 'Most of the creatures had a trident or spear clenched in their jaws'. But that's just me.
I don't think you need the second 'and'.
Teeth is usually said first. And I think you could get rid of 'their' and still have the same meaning.
Shouldn't that be 'poh-nees'?
Those poor creatures, they have angered Lex.
7965181
I'm glad you're back! I thought you might have stopped reading.
You're right. I've changed the first one to "replied."
That does sound better. Changed.
Hm, I'm not totally convinced, but I'll go with your suggestion here.
That does flow better, doesn't it? Changed.
Whoops. Fixed.
No sympathy for those that hurt his waifu!