• Published 16th Jul 2012
  • 6,823 Views, 349 Comments

Secret of Andalantis - Fizzy Orange



Lunaverse, On a trip to the beach Ditzy dissapears underwater, adventure ensue. COMPLETE!

  • ...
4
 349
 6,823

Chapter 9

The first thing Trixie noticed was that, to her augmented senses, the kaosharks were wrapped in the same type of magic as the so-called Sea Cucumber. The second thing she noticed was that the magic clung to them and didn’t bleed off into the water and leave a trail, but it did disrupt the trail of Lyra’s magic they had been following!

The third thing she noticed was that a great white – literally white - shark with polar bear arms was bearing down on her!

“EEP!”

She reflexively pushed herself away with her back hooves, using Sea Cucumber as a springboard. This sent the pair spinning head over tail in the water. Trixie managed to right herself just in time to swim away from swiping claws. In a flash she pulled up her invisibility spell, all the while cutting her magic sight in order to conserve energy. The kaoshark looked confused for a moment at the disappearance of its target. Trixie took a moment to look at her friends.

The kaosharks had them nearly surrounded, except for having left them a blatantly obvious escape route that headed away from Lucky Seagull Island. Trixie knew misdirection when she saw it, and this was rather obvious.

“We have to swim away now!” Called out Charybdis.

"Not while they still have my Lyra!" declared Bon Bon holding her position in defiance of the looming danger.

“This is for Lyra you monsters!” she called out.

She swung and delivered a powerful earth pony punch to the creature’s jaw, but the impact barely did any damage, instead sending her spinning away from her target. Fighting under water wasn’t going to be easy. The shark recovered first and reared back to strike.

“Look out!” cried Ditzy, flaring her wings.

She caught stray water currents and surged toward Bon Bon, pushing her out of the way of the attack. Before it could turn around and attack the tumbling mares, two shapes – one blue and the other magenta- collided with the tiger-headed creature. Sea Racer and Sea Youaround quickly took advantage of the beast's momentary distraction as a chance to ram it from the side, causing the shark to roar out in a mixture of fury and pain.

Bon Bon in the mean time swam down to the sea floor and planted her back hooves solidly in the sand. With one mighty push she threw herself, front hoof outstretched, at the tiger-headed creature and caught it right below the jaw before kicking herself away from the kaoshark. It still wasn’t Bon Bon’s full strength, but it sure made it roar in pain and bolstered the rest of their group. Using her wings and her sense of the current around them Ditzy began to move in the water with the same speed and grace as the seaponies. Together they began a series of hit and run from various angles, hoping to keep the creature in place so that Bon Bon could repeat her previous performance.

“Yeah! That’s the spirit!” shouted Scylla, excitement in her voice, “We can totally do this if we work together! Everypony! Attack!”

Meanwhile the polar bear shark was looking around trying to locate the vanished unicorn.

“She’s still there you idiot, just use your other senses to track her!” ordered Sea Cucumber.

The confused kaoshark closed its eyes and quickly turned its head straight toward Trixie. She gasped as its next swipe barely missed her and dropped her invisibility spell, since it didn’t do her much good. Its next swipe was stopped when Dusky Jack came in from nowhere, tackling the shark and grasping it in his front hoof just behind its bear arms. The violet merpony began to wrestle with the beast.

“Not so tough now that I got the drop on you right? One way or another we’re getting all our friends back today!”

Trixie chanced another look at her own friends. Ditzy and Bon Bon were teaming up with the seaponies to take turn and tackle the tiger-headed shark from various angles. The tactic seemed to work well enough for now. Charybdis wasn’t faring as well, realized Trixie with dread. The yellow seapony leader was struggling in the grasp of the grey kaoshark’s octopus tentacles! She resolved to go help her out but the wrestling Dusky and kaoshark suddenly swam right in her path, blocking her for a moment.

Much to the unicorn’s relief, and surprise, she saw none other than the royal blue shape of Scylla engage the octopus-shark hybrid in close combat to rescue the rival leader! The merpony grasped one of the ensnaring tentacles and pulled, just before biting on the appendage and causing the kaoshark to recoil away from the pair in pain.

Trixie’s attention was suddenly grabbed by Zizanie shouting.

“You’re not getting away that easily!”

The white unicorn had tackled Sea Cucumber, or whoever the light green seapony was, and was trying to pin her to the bottom of the ocean floor. That was easier said than the done, since Zizanie had to not only hold a fighting opponent but fight her own natural buoyancy in order to properly push her down. The sandy floor was kicked up by the struggling Sea Cucumber and Trixie could barely make out her form wriggling in Zizanie’s front hooves before the two were obscured.

A split second later Sea Cucumber, using surprising strength dragged Zizanie out of the sand cloud, her prehensile tail wrapped around the unicorn’s throat. Zizanie was clearly fighting against the grip but couldn’t seem to get any good hit on the seapony to force her to let go, and while her horn was glowing it seemed to not amount to much as panic clearly made her lose her focus.

“Foolish dry pony! The ocean is my domain, you can’t win against me here!” she laughed, slowly tightening her grip.

Sea Cucumber had a manic grin and an evil gleam in her eye. Trixie really didn’t like the blackmailer, but there was no questioning her need to protect her fellow unicorn. Zizanie was a thief, a spy, a con artist, and in every other way a completely untrustworthy pony, but even she didn’t deserve this. Still it would be so easy to not act until she fainted and get her out of the way until she could be arrested…

“Zizanie!” finally called Trixie, casting a shadow spell over Zizanie’s eyes.

The other unicorn didn’t really need any protection, her eyes already shut because of the pain she felt. One short casting later and a blindingly bright burst of light went off, with the sound of a firecracker, mere inches from Sea Cucumber’s deranged eyes! The green seapony reflexively reeled back, bringing her fins to her eyes. The movement gave Zizanie just enough give to slip partially out of the chokehold and bite down on her opponent’s tail. Sea Cucumber howled in pain and began to try to slam Zizanie against the sea floor, kicking up more sand in the process. Trixie once again lost sight of the pair during the struggle, but it was clear the seapony was unable to find a hard surface to hit Zizanie.

Too concerned for the struggling pair, Trixie failed to notice the other nearby fight between Dusky Jack and the bear arm shark until it was too late. The kaoshark had dislodged the merpony and with its mighty arm slammed the violet male into Trixie, pinning both of them against the seafloor. Trixie was stunned for a moment, stuck beneath the struggling Dusky Jack in the kicked up cloud of sand she couldn’t see their opponent. She could easily imagine it raising an arm, ready to maul them both to shreds though. There was a brilliant multi chromatic flash and the pressure on her back was released. She got up and saw the polar bear-shark hybrid holding its head in pain and Dusky Jack just charging again into the fray, trailing a few wisps of blood. Zizanie appeared in Trixie’s field of vision, scuffed, but generally unharmed. The white unicorn helped her right herself and the two began floating back to back.

“What was that flash?” asked Trixie.

“Magic missile,” explained a panting Zizanie.

“Impressive, do you think you have a few more left in you?” asked Trixie, surveying the multiple battles around them, and the form of a visibly enraged Sea Cucumber swimming out of a settling cloud of silt.

“I’m not a mage, Lulamoon,” replied the white unicorn in lieu of a direct answer.

Trixie knew what that meant though. Casting spells outside of one’s specialty meant lots of training that not many pony bothered with, and usually spent far more mana than something more familiar. It was even a wonder Zizanie knew that simple attack spell in the first place, but it was clear she wouldn’t be able to cast it again for the next few hours, maybe even not before a good night’s sleep.

“Right…” said Trixie, looking around at the ground around them before spotting what she needed, “But THEY don’t know that,” she added with a whisper “Think you can fake it?”

Zizanie raised an eyebrow as she looked at Trixie, but she nodded. “I’m not as good as you with illusions but something shapeless like that? Yeah I can fake it… Why?”

“A true magician always keeps the audience guessing. Just follow my lead!“ softly said Trixie with a smirk before facing Sea Cucumber and loudly announcing: “Time to let loose Zizanie! Show her what we dry ponies can do!”

The white unicorn shrugged, but she figured some trickery wouldn’t hurt. “With pleasure!”

Zizanie’s horn began to glow and a shimmering cone of light appeared before her and with a grunt she sent it flying toward Sea Cucumber!

This was the trickiest bluff Trixie had done in a while, at least since that time she used illusions to pay for a train ticket last winter. With her horn glow made invisible she had wrapped an nearby piece of rock in an invisibility spell, adjusted as best she could to the watery medium, and with swift telekinesis sent it flying inside the illusionary magic missile. The trick was to make sure it hit Sea Cucumber at roughly the same time as the flash of light, to convince her the attack was real.

The way the seapony recoiled and gasped at the impact seemed to imply she had fallen for it though. She looked at Zizanie, shocked. Trixie decided to keep going and turned to the battling pair of Dusky Jack and the shark.

“Another one Zizanie!”

With a sigh the blackmaller obliged and fired an illusonary magic missile while Trixie hurled her stone in the same path. The attack hit the creature right in the nose, causing it to squeal in pain.

Meanwhile, Charybdis and Scylla had come up with a rather ridiculous plan, where each grabbed hold of one of the shark’s tentacle with their teeth and then drag it into a path so that it formed a noose. They pulled as tight they could before the shark’s struggles managed to make them let go of the appendages. The creature was distracted by the effect long enough for the pair to double team it and ram it on both side of the head at the same time before it could be done untangling its tentacles. The impact clearly stunned the creature.

Sea Cucumber made to go to her henchshark’s help when another flash of light appeared in her peripheral vision and she was hit in the side of the head by the ‘magic missile’. She looked back to the unicorn pair, and the still struggling bear shark behind them. Her attention though was grabbed by something off to the side. Trixie looked and spotted Ditzy, Bon Bon and the other two seaponies swimming away from the tiger headed shark as it started to convulse wildly. Something was obviously wrong. A quick flash of her magic sight showed that whatever spell was altering its form was starting to come undone. She could literally see the magic ‘cracking’!

“It’s turning back to normal I think,” she said to a confused Zizanie.

Sea Cucumber gritted her teeth in annoyance. “That’s enough, time to retreat! GRAB NUMBER 5!” she barked, her fin extended toward the convulsing shark.

“Don’t let them! We need that prisoner!” said Zizanie.

Trixie wasn’t sure why Zizanie cared, but if there was one thing the blackmailer was good at it was digging up secrets. If she wanted the prisoner it probably meant there was a secret to be had.

“Regroup!” called Charybdis, as she and Scylla swam to Bon Bon, Ditzy and the seaponies.

Trixie and Zizanie sent another ‘magic missile’ to the polar shark, leaving it distracted long enough for Dusky Jack to steer it down onto a rock and then kick himself off with his tail. The trio reached the others and formed a screen.

“Time for our trump card…” whispered Trixie, winking at Zizanie. “Time for the Magic Wild Storm!”

The white unicorn smirked “With pleasure.”

A single missile appeared again, but soon multiple copies began to appear out of nowhere. A literal wall of multiple magic missiles, all of them illusions brought forth by Trixie really, occupied the water between the ponies and the sharks and their mistress.

Sea Cucumber seemed hesitant to move, seemingly waiting for the coming onslaught. Trixie was aware she was bluffing big with this. If the sharks decided to press it she didn’t have the skill to control enough rocks at once… but maybe it didn’t matter…

One by one the missiles began to fly in different directions, hitting the sea floor and causing it to explode into clouds of silt and sand. Zizanie quickly caught on to Trixie’s play, much to the blue unicorn’s surprise, and decided to add to the illusion.

“It’s too much power! I can’t aim correctly!” she shouted over the fake sound of fireworks explosion.

“Just keep firing, you’re bound to hit them at least once if they come closer!”

Trixie used the rock trick to hit the nearest kaoshark straight in the nose again, causing Sea Cucumber to finally make a decision.

“RETREAT!” she ordered.

The remaining two sharks and their leader swam off, as the missiles kept flying around them. Before they disappeared over a crest, the green seapony shot an angry glare at the unicorn pair.

“This is not over!” she said.

Trixie waited for a tense half a minute, the only sound heard being the weird noises produced by the kaosharks as it was wrecked by spasms, before she dispelled her illusions. Everypony seem to visibly relax once the ‘missiles’ vanished.

“Woah… what just happened?” asked Sea Racer, noticing the clouds of sand that had been displaced by the missiles just disappeared.

“It was just a little illusion work, nothing…nothing too complicated for the Great and Powerful Trixie! Zizanie doesn’t really have the kind of power we showed Sea Cucumber, we just had to trick her into believing she did.” replied Trixie, suddenly becoming keenly aware of how tired she was getting.

This little scuffle had been draining on her, and it was bound to get worse if Sea cucumber came back with reinforcements. They had to go after her quickly before she could regroup with her troops and come up with a way to use their hostages against them.

But first…

“Everypony, look! What’s wrong with it?” asked Ditzy, pointing a hoof at the kaoshark who was just now wriggling on the sea floor.

Its body was being coursed by cackling energy and dark glowing cracks seemed to form all over it. Trixie took another look with her magic sight.

“The magic surrounding its body is coming undone! Everypony stay back!” she warned, putting herself an extra pony length away from the creature.

The others did the same just as a bright flash, followed by a loud cracking noise, erupted from the kaosharks. Once the light died down a surprise gasp came out of the mouth of each member of the group as they looked at what had been revealed.

Where once was a blue kaoshark lying on the sea floor was an unconscious blue seapony with a grey mane!

“Cetus!” gasped Charybdis, swimming to the his side.

“Cetus?” asked Ditzy, turning to her seapony friends.

“That’s…that’s Sea Lion’s father! I saw him being kidnapped by the kaosharks almost two years ago!” explained Sea Racer, dumbstruck by the revelation.

The implications were huge. If the transmutation magic that Trixie had recognized had been used to turn a seapony into a kaosharks, then it was possible ALL the kaosharks were former seaponies, and possibly, merponies. And what about Lyra and Rock Beauty? Trixie turned to Scylla, expecting the merpony leader to accuse the seaponies of being behind everything, but instead she saw her swim to help Charybdis with Cetus.

“How is he?” she asked.

“He’s alive, but unconscious…”

Scylla turned in the direction that Sea cucumber had fled. “That witch! She’s turning our own people against us! Turning them into…into abominations! We have to take her down NOW!” she declared.

Dusky Jack, Sea Racer and Sea Youaround all nodded in agreement.

“We have to get Cetus back to our camp, we can’t bring him with us,” began Charybdis. “Sea Racer, Sea Youaround, I want you two to get him back to his son.”

“But Chari! We want to help you!” protested Sea Racer.

“And you will Sea Racer. I want you to come back with everypony else! We will need all their help if we hope to win and save our kin who were turned into monsters.”

“Dusky Jack, escort them to the edge of their territory, then you go get the others as well,” added Scylla. “We can’t risk our enemies getting to our clans before we can bring them the truth. Merponies and seaponies need to fight together, and I need you to convince the others to do just that.”

The male merpony turned to his seapony equivalent and extanded a hoof. Sea Racer grabbed the appendage between his fins and shook it once, staring into Dusky’s eyes. Somehow, fighting like this had brought them closer than their two tribes had been in hundreds of years.

Trixie and her friends had kept quiet, realizing this was an important moment for the aquatic ponies, but now was the time to get back on track.

Bon Bon was the first to pipe up, glaring in the direction of Seagull Island. “Let’s take the fight to that witch and get our loved ones back.”

There was no hesitation in that statement, no hint that this would be dangerous and risky, just an unflinching certitude in their success.


Lyra had to question the sanity of whatever being, immortal or mortal, had thought it was a good idea to put a crocodile’s head on a shark. It felt like needless overkill, considering that it didn’t offer the kaoshark any advantages over a regular one, unlike the other one she could see that sported a scorpion’s tail. That said the scorpion’s tail wasn’t as good for swimming and the shark was clearly struggling to move at a decent pace. Counting the one still guarding the cell, completely oblivious to their escape, Lyra had spotted 8 kaosharks so far, though she had yet to see the octopus hybrid again and that made her wonder how many more of these creatures were around.

The trio of escapees were hiding behind a cluster of rocks near the edge of the slave camp. They could see them working on two major areas. One of them was some sort of platform on the sea floor, maybe what was left of a building or a plaza? It was a partially buried circular construction of stones with what looked like a triangle carved into it, though one of the point hadn’t been uncovered from debris yet. The other structure actually looked like some sort of conical building made of cut stone with a circular opening at the front, probably a door. The 40 or so slaves were shackled at the neck in pairs, with long chains being run through hoops attached to giant boulders between them, usually with two or three other pairs sharing the same rock. The chains were clearly from different sources, with various styles, thickness and level of rust.

“This is gonna be tricky…” muttered Lyra.

“Wow, seeing them up close like this… turns out I know pretty much all of these merponies!” mentioned Rock Beauty.

“Same here…” added Sea Shanty.

Lyra was looking around the area, searching for something “We’re going to need the keys to free all of them…but where can they keep them?”

“You two stay here, I’ll go ask one of the prisoners! Distract the guards if they risk to notice me!” simply declared Rock Beauty.

“Wait! That’s…” began Lyra, trying to grab the merpony but she swam off before she could do anything.

“She’s really brave!” commented Sea Shanty, following her new friend sneak around between boulders.

“I’d call that reckless…I really don’t like being stuck as the responsible one,” complained the unicorn.

The aquamarine seapony patted Lyra on the shoulder. “I know what you mean, I feel like that sometimes when I hang out with my friend Sea Youaround, while I’m usually the silly one with Sea Lion… until we learned Sea Cucumber wanted me for my musical knowledge I thought I had been caught instead of him because of that. Anyway you shouldn’t worry, if her life is like mine, Rock Beauty must be used to hiding from kaosharks.”

The two watched in silence as she progressed from hiding spot to hiding, even hiding under the sand at one point. Lyra was rather scared she would be spotted from the cloud of silt but it settled fast enough that the patrolling sharks didn’t spot her. Her grey coloring made it easier for her to blend with the cut stone rubbles strewn around the place. Finally the merpony reached a spot where she could speak to one of the prisoners, a dull brown male merpony with a yellow and teal mane, the one Rock Beauty had identified as Puffer Fish earlier. He visibly jumped when she spoke to him but he managed to school his feature before the guards took notice.

Lyra took a moment to study the carving on the large triangle. She could swear one of the nearby glyph was shaped like the seapony carved on the wall of their makeshift prison. Was it some sort of reunion area? Maybe it was some sort of festival ground?

Her musings were interrupted when Sea Shanty tugged at her and got her to hide down against the ground, avoiding detection once again. It didn’t take long for Rock Beauty to come back. She looked sad, but still hopeful.

“He’s okay but everybody’s being worked ragged… he says the keys must be kept over there,” she explained, pointing to a small cave on the side of the dig site. Luckily the entrance itself was unguarded, but it was still in the line of sight of a couple of kaosharks.

“How do we sneak in there?” asked Sea Shanty.

“Puffer Fish said he’ll provide a distraction so we can slip in, but we have to get into position quickly,” explained Rock Beauty.

It was another tense minute of slipping between rocks, avoiding detection and constantly being on the look out. Once they were in position Lyra chanced a look at the brave merpony who was helping them. As if he had caught site of them he dropped his tool and just stopped working quickly getting the attention of the nearby Kaosharks. As one approached to force him back to work he began to insult the patchwork creature, casting rather colorful aspersion on its parentage, very loudly. Once all the creatures turned their head towards him, Rock Beauty, Sea Shanty and Lyra slipped inside the evil lair of their captor.

Lyra tried to ignore the grunt of pains coming from the brave slave who covered for them. Puffer Fish was probably getting a beating for his insolence, all that to help them get inside. There was no time to lose! Lyra lead them inside, clutching her lyre, ready for anything.

The cave was rather gloomy, with a few spots of the wall covered with phosphorescent blue moss, with some sort of purple glow emanating from deeper into the cave, around a bend in the tunnel. There was shelf space carved into the rock, with many artifacts lying there, and some larger one just standing on the floor. Stone tablets, pieces of broken pottery, carved coral implements, and many large lidded storage jars with colorful sceneries depicted on them in the style of the rock carvings they had seen. Those scenes showed the aquatic tribes of ponies tending to the creatures of the ocean together, in harmony. It was sad to think this harmony had been broken somehow. But no sign of the keys!

“Huh… girls…you should see this,” called Rock Beauty.

The merpony was staring in shock at something beyond the bend.

“Did you find the keys?” asked Sea Shanty.

Rock Beauty raised her hoof, lifting a big rusty ring holding about a dozen different keys from a nearby rock outcropping, all the while maintaining her sight on the mysterious object.

Sea Shanty moved in close to get the keys but her curiosity made her look further into the cave “What are you looking…at…oh.”

“What? What is it?” asked Lyra, swimming to catch up to the aquatic ponies.

Beyond the bend was the source of the mysterious purple glow, resting atop a circular stone table. It was a large purple crystal, about the size of a watermelon, held at the top and bottom in the interlocking tentacles of two jellyfish carved from pink coral. Even without Trixie’s magical sight Lyra could tell this thing pulsated with incredible power.

“Is that…” she began, not believing what she was seeing.

“The Jellyfish Lantern!” said Sea Shanty, gasping.

Rock Beauty finally gave up her staring contest with the legendary artifact of her people. “That’s where it’s been all this time? In the fin of those two traitors Lute Turtle and the other one?”

“Should…should we steal it?” asked Sea Shanty. “I don’t really feel like touching it for some reason.”

The other two nodded, sharing the feeling.

Lyra’s ears suddenly perked up.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, swimming back towar the entrance.

“What?” asked the seapony, following with a confused expression on her face.

“Nope,” added Rock Beauty.

“I don’t care!” came a thundering voice from outside.

It was Sea Cucumber and she was mad, really mad.

“They can sit on their bottom for the rest of the day for all I care, it’s not like they can swim away! What’s important is getting every shark we have to the main entryway! Those little fools have begun working together because of those BLASTED dry ponies! Just go and hold them off while I try something else!”

“We gotta hide! Quick!” whispered Lyra, moving behind one of the larger artifacts.

The three went out of sight just in time to see Sea Cucumber appear at the mouth of the cave. She stopped and turned back toward her minions to shout one last instruction.

“One of the dry pony can make herself invisible so keep your nostrils open for any intruders!”

Lyra realized that it meant her friends were coming. There were coming for them and would probably encounter a wall of ferocious kaosharks… they had to even the odds! Silently she pointed the keys and pointed out toward the entrance to the cave. If all the kaosharks were sent to deal with the incoming introders, leaving the slaves to their own devices…

Sea Cucumber swam toward the back of the cave, where the Lantern was…but more importantly where the keys weren’t. She was obviously grumbling under her breath, possibly wishing harm to come upon Trixie and all her potential progeny, but it was important she not realize the keys had been snatched before all the slaves had been freed!

“I’ll distract her,” whispered, as softly as possibly, the unicorn.

Rock Beauty and Sea Shanty weren’t given a chance to object, as Lyra quickly moved to follow Sea Cucumber. The pair left just as the unicorn reached the corner in the corridor.

Lyra was there just in time to catch a remarkable sight. Sea Cucumber was floating in front of the Jellyfish Lantern, back to the entrance, fins extended outward. The Lantern’s glow intensified, but also turned to a much darker color as nearly black tendrils of magic, slithering like a snake made of ink, reached out and began to wrap around Sea Cucumber. With a flash from the Lantern the tendrils plunged into the seapony’s body, causing her to grunt in pain. The glow of the tendrils extended all over her body and the now glowing shape of the seapony began to transform before Lyra’s eyes. In a second the glow subsided, leaving behind not Sea Cucumber the seapony… but Lute Turtle the Merpony!

Lyra could not help but gasp in surprise. Sea Cucumber and Lute Turtle were one and the same! But which identity was the real one? Or maybe neither? Whoever she was, she turned toward the entrance when she heard Lyra.

“You!” she said, anger in her voice.

She quickly turned and reached out a hoof toward the Lantern. The unicorn was not going to let the obviously evil whatever get her hoof on the evil artifact of legend capable of changing a pony’s tribe! She quickly ran her hoof over her lyre, producing a few notes of the telekinesis boosting song and using its power to pin Lute Turtle harshly against the far wall of the room. It wasn’t Lyra’s full power, like she had used on the giant rocks, but it was good enough to hold one small pony for a minute or two. The unicorn maneuvered herself so as to obstruct the merpony’s – or whatever she was – of the empty shelf where the keys to the chains used to lay.

“Alright, time to come clean: who and what are you?!”

The pinned pony just cackled “ I don’t know how you managed to escape but if you think this little trick is enough to gain the upperhoof on me, you got another thing coming! Any minute now my minions will…”

“Reach the edge of your little camp to face my friends. I heard you, no one’s coming to help you any time soon so why don’t you talk?” said Lyra, interrupting her captive.

The so-called merpony gritted her teeth. “And what about your little cellmates? I doubt you left them behind…”

“They swam off,” lied Lyra, “Now enough games! You’ve been using this thing to infiltrate both sides, and you got all these slaves digging up ruins… I want answers, whoever you are!”

“I don’t owe you anything, you meddling dry pony! I should have dumped your stupid little friend on a beach somewhere!”

Lyra played a riff on her lyre, causing her captive to move off the wall before slamming her back against the rocky surface. The creature closed her eyes and grunted in pain. When her eyes opened her face twisted in anger. It looked so different to how gentle Lute Turtle had looked before. The unicorn held the creature’s gaze with intensity.

“No one calls my friends stupid! Now tell me what you are and why you’re abusing the seaponies and merponies?” asked an obviously angry Lyra.

“Why do you care? This world is not yours; these merponies and seaponies are complete strangers. None of this concern you or the surface world. If you grab your little friends and swim back to the surface I might be lenient.” Simply replied the creature, smirking.

Lyra shook her head before glaring at the merpony-shaped being. “That’s where you’re wrong, it does concern me. You see, you trapped me with two nice ponies in a cell. We talked, we shared, we laughed, and we got to know each other. These are my friends now, and I’m not going to leave my friends to be abused by some nameless monster who pretend to be one of them! Once again, who are you?”

The creature rolled her eyes. “Foolish little dry pony… I tried to be nice one last time but I guess it won’t get me anywhere…” she said, sighing. “But I will be polite and reveal to you who I am. I am Ek’idna, Daughter of Phorcys! And all the oceans of the world, and all the creatures within are my BIRTHRIGHT to do as I please!” She declared, getting louder as she went on.

At the last second she suddenly peeled herself from the rock surface, much to Lyra’s shock, and with a hoof touched the Lantern. It reacted and before Lyra could recast her spell a dark tendril shot off the lantern towards her! Lyra dodged to the side, the attack barely missing her. However, by moving she revealed what she had tried to hide.

“THE KEYS! Where did you put the keys?” asked Ek’idna, enraged, grabbing the lantern with both hooves.

It was Lyra’s time to smirk as she righted herself. “By now my friends will have freed all your slaves.”

A growl began to build up in Ek’idna’s throat. The lantern’s glow began to turn darker and darker, as if answering Ek’idna’s rising anger. By the time Ek’idna’s emotions were let out in a frustrated roar, tendrils of dark magic were whipping about the small cave, threatening to overcome Lyra who began to back away from the enraged creature.

“I’ve had ENOUGH! You, and all your little friends, will feel the full brunt of my power!”

Lyra swallowed.


“I know this place!” had commented Ditzy, as they kept swimming toward Lucky Seagull Island. “It’s where I first got attacked by the kaosharks.” She had explained, pointing to a nearby rock formation with a tunnel dug in it.

“You must have gotten too close to their base,” had suggested Zizanie.

And it was true. Avoiding the tunnels because of their ambush potential the team had made it to the crest of a coral reef near the island. An invisible Trixie peeked over the large formation before ducking back under. A whole welcoming committee of Kaosharks was waiting for them.

“How many?” asked Bon Bon, shaking a little.

“I’d say about a dozen?” answered Trixie.

“That’s not a lot of troop for this whole operation…” commented Zizanie, rubbing her chin.

“Maybe they ran out of idea for weird animal combinations,” said Trixie, “Seriously, whoever thought it was a good idea to add a crocodile head to a shark? It’s totally redundant and doesn’t give it any advantages! Or the horns? Aren’t the shark’s own teeth a good enough weapon already?”

Everypony else politely ignored her outburst.

“Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing that many more of them either at once… I guess that’s why they kept us divided, they didn’t have enough bodies to face us all together,” said Scylla, gritting her teeth. “Whoever is responsible will pay…”

Charybdis meanwhile looked pensive. “I guess Sea Cucumber, or whoever she is, doesn’t have enough power to change ALL the ponies she captured, otherwise there would be way more of those things. There’s still too many of them for a full on battle until the others arrive, and we don’t have the luxury to wait. Maybe we can sneak through and free the other prisoners to help us?”

While the two aquatic leaders, Trixie and Zizanie talked about how to get through the line, Ditzy turned to Bon Bon and extanded a wing over her friend.

“You okay?” she asked.

Bon Bon leaned on the grey pegasus, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “I guess? It’s just… it just dawned on me how scary these things are… earlier I was full of adrenaline and thinking only of Lyra but now that I’ve seen them up close… and the idea of getting into another fight, maybe ending up as one of those creatures myself…I just don’t understand how you, Lyra, Trixie and the others Elements handle it?”

“Handle what?”

“This! The whole hero thing! You guys are so brave…”

Ditzy considered how to answer the question. “I guess it’s how you said earlier, I just think of the ponies I’m helping. My little muffin, my close friends, like Lyra and Trixie and you, but also the more casual friends like Charybdis and the seaponies. I don’t occupy my mind overthinking what could go wrong; I just think of what could be better, “ she said.

“Sea Cucumber lied to me… pretended to be so nice… but the rest of their tribe really suffered because of her. That was no lie. I could see it that they lived harsh lives; hanging on through solidarity… all the while she walked…or swam among them. To think the source of all that misery had just stood there, pretending to share it… It just makes me so mad! How could someone be so cruel? Now that I know more of the situation, I couldn’t turn my back on their suffering!”

“I guess that makes sense… but I’m still just a candy maker… I don’t know if I got what it takes like you and the other Elements of Harmony,” added the earth pony mare. “I’m not a hero.”

“I don’t know about that, you got a pretty mean left hook,” said Ditzy, smiling.

Bon Bon chuckled at that.

The moment was broken by Scylla “Are you daft?! Those creatures are our friends and you want to hurt them?!”

“We have to! They won’t listen to reason in their current state,” replied Charybdis. “I’m not happy about it but we can’t hold back against the Kaosharks just because they are our transformed friend and family.”

“She’s right,” said Ditzy, moving away from Bon Bon to return to the conversation, “Your friends probably all want to be freed from this transformation, and we know it can run out with time. If we knock them out, or incapacitate them without severe injury we have a better chance of getting them back than if we go easy on them and just get captured ourselves.”

Scylla sighed. “I guess I have no choice. Now, how do we get in there without an army?”

“Wait… do you hear that?” asked Zizanie, turning toward the enemy base.

Everypony got silent and listen intently, their ears standing at attention.

“Sounds like shouts…” said Trixie, turning herself invisible to poke her head above the coral reef again.

What she saw was obviously quite surprising to her, because she let out an audible gasp.

“Guys… I think we got our army, Let’s go!” she declared, reappearing and swimming toward the enemy.

“Wait! Trixie!” said Ditzy, following her.

When she crested the reef she understood exactly what Trixie had meant.

Somehow all the prisoners had been freed! The mass of assorted seapony and merpony were charging the surprised kaosharks from behind. Many of them were wielding digging tools like shovels and picks and some were swinging heavy chains around. The 40 to 50 prisoners physically slammed into the group of kaosharks, sending them into disarray. If they knew of the origin of the creatures they showed no sign of Scylla’s earlier doubt about harming their former friends. Flanks were tackled as hard as possible, heads were bonked with the flat side of digging tools and various appendages wrapped in heavy chains.

The sight of both tribes charging into battle against the kaosharks was pretty impressive. Still it was no time to just stand there and gape. The rest of their team charged headlong into battle, creating a pincer formation on the center of the group of kaosharks. As she got closer she realized many of the former prisoner looked malnourished and weak, some sporting bruisings from recent beatings. This battle wasn’t a sure shot, even if they had the advantage of number now with about 4 ponies to every shark. Bon Bon had gotten over her earlier issue and teamed up with Trixie and Zizanie in attacking a shark with a fierce looking scorpion tail. The white unicorn was grabbing the creature’s tail in some sort of wrestling hold, while Trixie pelted its eyes with flashes of light and Bon Bon tried to knock it out with her hooves. Ditzy tackled a hammerhead shark with griffin talons alongside Charybdis, just as it got into a fight with an older male seapony. The seapony leader quickly went to his side, clearly recognizing him.

“Phooka, where’s my daughter? Where’s Sea Beauty?” asked Charybdis, frantically.

“The witch took her to add to her army!” answered the seapony, pointing to one of the nearby sharks, the grey one with tentacles from the earlier fight.

Charybdis winced and looked away. Ditzy saw the hammerhead shark come in again for a charge and tackled the seapony leader out of the way. Phooka began to distract the creature while Ditzy shook Charybdis by the shoulder.

“Don’t forget what we just talked about! You can’t save your daughter if you get caught!”

Charibdis nodded and joined Phooka in swimming around the kaoshark. Ditzy’s attention was diverted when she heard the voice of Rock Beauty rising over the din of the brawl.

“Scylla! Scylla!”

“Rock Beauty! Thank the Spirit of Nereus you’re alright!” the merpony leader said, getting into a somewhat uncharacteristic hug with the younger member of her clan.

“It’s terrible! Lute Turtle is working with the kaosharks! And the bad guys…they have the Jellyfish Lantern! And Lyra is still out there trying to distract the bad seapony!”

Scylla’s eyes grew as big as dinnerplates. “They have WHAT?! Oh this is not good…not good at all.”

“What’s going on?” asked Ditzy, not sure what this lantern was all about.

Scylla looked around at the crazy brawl as one of her own was thrown into a nearby rock by one of the sharks. “No time to exposit, we have to get to your friend, fast!”

“Trixie! Bon Bon! We know where Lyra is!” souted Ditzy.

Her two friends, and Zizanie, disengaged from the scorpion shark just as it tried to trap them between a nearby stone and its own body. Instead the creature just managed to hit its own head against the rocky surface.

“You two go, I’ll stay here to help Charybdis and the prisoners,” simply stated the white unicorn.

Trixie shrugged. “As you wish!”

The smaller group managed to weave their way out of the fight, adding a worried Sea Shanty to their little expedition. They soon arrived at the site of a work camp, Rock Beauty quickly explaining the prisoners were forced into labor, clearing up the ruins. There were a ton of discarded equipment and chains, left where the slaves had been freed. There was no sign of Lyra or Sea Cucumber, meaning they were still in the lair Rock Beauty mentioned.

As they approached there was a loud sound, like an electrical discharge, and a green form was thrown out of the cave and crashed into the sand a few feets away, a lyre flying within reach of their shocked group.

“Lyra!” shouted Bon Bon, heading for her marefriend.

Lyra, laying on the sea floor rose up from the cloud of sand and extended a hoof out in warning.

“Stay back!” she called, as some sort of dark energy coursed through her body, clearly in pain.

Bon Bon stopped, more out of surprise and fear than genuine desire to obey.

“Listen! ARG! Sea Cucumber…Lute Turtle…same…GAH! Same creature!” she began, clearly fighting back against whatever spell was attacking her body. “Ek’idna! ACK! Uses…lantern to switch! ARRRRG!”

With that the dark energy covered her entire body, and, much to everypony’s horror, began to transform her. In a flash the energy dissipated, revealing a green kaoshark with paler spots along its back. To add insult to the terrifying injury, it was equipped with four spindly green arms, not unlike those Lyra had had when transformed by zebra magic.

“LYRA! NOOOOO!!!” screamed Bon Bon, stepping away in terror.

A mad cackled rose above the work camp, as if delighting in Bon Bon’s horror filled scream. Ditzy looked all around until she spoted the shape of Lute Turtle - or rather Ek’idna – exiting her lair. She held a strange crystal contraption in her hooves, probably the Jellyfish Lantern mentioned earlier. Dark tendrils of inky magic were reaching out from the object, dancing all around her body. Unlike with Lyra the magic didn’t take over her body, it seemed to drain out of her, peeling away like it had done from Cetus earlier and flowing back into the lantern.

It left behind a creature unlike any Ditzy had ever seen! It looked like a giant dark green anglerfish, but with a head and forelegs like that of a boar! It had three rows of sharp tusks jutting out of its massive lower jaw, sharp looking fins coming out of its boar elbows, and its dorsal fin and tail looked jagged and ripped in places, like they had went through hell and back. The most striking features though were the lure sprouting from its forehead, like an aquatic unicorn horn, with a glowing purple orb at the end, and its eyes. Its eyes were completely blank orbs of pure gold, no pupil to be seen and yet Ditzy could still feel a malevolent glare washing over her.

“I’m done with subtlety! Submit or share her fate!” declared Ek’idna, baring her giant fangs in the process.

Author's Note:

What a place to leave off huh? I hope you enjoyed this one... it's been a long time coming and for that I apologize again. I'm terrible at keeping up a correct pace aren't I?

Anyway this current version is probably filled with gramatical error and spelling mistakes... but I REALLY didn't want to make you wait any longer... so point out all my mistakes and I should fix it when I come back later... I got a wedding to attend today! :pinkiehappy: