Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty two, The Grand Dissolution: The goddess’s supposition.

-Fizzle-

“Jade!” My eyes snap open to the white ceiling and I realized I was in Gentle Cruise Hospital. In my panicked state, I had hoped that what had happened was just a nightmare.

It sure didn’t seem like it with the burns in my fur, I reached up and felt some bandages wrapped around my head. I might have had a concussion, had it actually happened?

The last sight I remember was… I gripped my head in pain.

The room was on fire and the speck of light that had been Jade’s magical alchemy clone had exploded.

I immediately got up out of the bed, rushing to leave the hospital. My movements were ungainly, I was trying to gallop.

“Wait, stop, you need to…” I shoved Dr. Bones out of the way as she tried to stop me, instead of giving chase she just stood there and looked at the floor.

Soon I was outside and making my way for the center of town, that’s where I’d find my answer.

I eventually came upon Sekhet’s back, her size blocking my view of what I wanted to see.

Steeling my nerves, I stumbled forward hoping that I would see something instead of nothing.

-Sekhet-

A part of me had been ripped up that night, it was an unimaginable pain that I’ve barely recalled feeling before. The pain was not to be physically measured, but it surged through me all the same as if something was horribly wrong with the world.

Since that night, I’ve been sitting here staring at the spot contemplating the truth of what might have happened. It had rained and the world seemed that much bleaker, but I protected this spot with my power and continued to stare at it trying to comprehend something.

The rain didn’t bother me or my accoutrements, as I sat here staring.

I felt Fizzle approach me.

Once she came around me and saw that the fire was no longer there, she moved forward sat down and stared at the spot too.

“She’s…” Fizzle started, one could almost hear her heart shattering from this range.

“Not dead.” I answered hastily, much to her surprise as much my own that I could say that with at least some certainty.

I received a questioning look of hope. I would loathe to dash said hope, but I had to do it quickly before it grew to be too much for her.

“Wouldn’t her fire go out if she died?” She stared at the pile of unburnt wood, she seemed numb at the moment and it was only a matter of time before that dam breaks. “It’s… just not there anymore.”

“I’ve been contemplating something for a while Fizzlepop. Considering you look like you just rushed from the hospital, I have to tell you that you’ve been out for more than a day.” I turned to Fizzlepop Berrytwist, It would be hard to tell her my summation of this situation. “Blade has sought out and found Jade’s knife in a grove of magically crystalized plants where excessive amounts of magical energy has been unleashed upon that one spot. She also found Pegasus feathers and animal scratches at the scene. Dr. Bones said the blood on the knife smells of donkey and eye gouging and I concur with that assessment. That is what we know to be Jade’s last known location and she had been fighting quite viciously before she disappeared.”

“Do you think Jade is alive?” There’s that hope again Fizzle, I’m sorry I implied as such.

“I don’t, not exactly, even I’m not sure what happened to her and I’m a goddess. The other mortals are waiting on you to tell them what happened in your room, but that is not as important as the two things I’ve discovered that seem odd and or contradictory.” There was a silence as I waited for her to ask, instead tears started to spill from her eyes. I sighed loudly. “Do not cry or let your spirit break, please take your time to ask me what you want to hear. I do have something of an idea as to what happened to her.”

I wiped her tears with the tips of the feathers from my left wing, they gently caressed her face and the scar over her right eye.

“You’re kinder than you should be, what are the two things?” She finally asked hiccupping, sniffling and making noises so distraught that I wanted to rip apart the one who did this.

Laws of mortal interference could be damned for all I care at this rate, but I held myself in check.

“It’s kind of a riddle I’ve been contemplating, we have two pieces of evidence that tell very different stories about Jade’s fate.” I started, before I was interrupted by something fruitlessly ramming into me.

“Then tell us!” Arizona seemed particularly stressed today.

“Arizona, I don’t think getting mad will help.” Velvet was the more solemn of the two. “Well this time at least.”

Arizona seemed not only angry at everything, but also quite helpless to do anything. A feeling I’m sure she despised nearly as much as I did.

“If you would cease your interruptions, then I’ll tell everyone who will listen. The first piece of evidence points to Jade as being dead from whatever happened to her.” I lifted my eyes from the empty space the ever burning fire used to occupy and turned to look at one of the many miserable Airship Mauled residents. A very particularly one.

The sun… Jaded La Perm had created a hole that couldn’t be filled by anyone else.

Those who were sitting around the spot bereft of the fire staring aimlessly at it, they suddenly looked towards what I currently had my eyes on.

It was Snickers the sea turtle dove. The little guardian was chronically depressed and unable to smile, her wings losing their feathers and skin turning a sickly pale white, it was heartbreaking even for me to look at her now.

It was safe to say Snickers wasn’t taking this too well.

“Her familiar bond was broken and that’s not an easy thing to do, the fact that it is torn apart should means that Jade is likely dead. Distance doesn’t matter for the bond that formed between them. If she exists in the here and now, then Snickers would know how to find her.” That news sent the depression I was feeling around me spiraling a bit out of control. “Though… there is a contradictory bit of imperceptible evidence on Snickers that she’s alive.”

“What is it Sek?” Turning to Kuril who joined in, she stood there with her head down. The brim of the witch hat was covering her face. She sat down, but didn’t look up into anyone’s eyes as she pulled Fizzle to herself and started to tease her mane. “What’s the good news?”

“The way Snickers familiar bond broke didn’t leave Snickers with everything she would have gained from Jade’s death. The bond was not broken by Jade’s death, but something else. I believe that the high amounts of magic had to do with the bond breaking in an unnatural manner.” It matched my supposition that Jade hasn’t died per say, but it did look pretty bad. “It had to be powerful magic to break a strong bong as those two shared, on par with a god even. In this case Jade might be alive, but completely impossible to reach or find easily.”

“What’s the other piece of evidence?” Many were surprised that Wary Berry was as upset as she was, the way her voice wavered sent a new amount of emotional pain through everyone’s bodies.

“The way her fire disappeared. If she had died it would have left ashes behind, instead it left nothing behind which is the most disconcerting thing I’ve been trying to figure out. If she were alive then the fire would still be here.” That was a riddle as well, the sun given power could never falter if Jade continued to exist and if Jade died then there should have been something to show her passing on. “I now wish to hear what Fizzle saw.”

So we heard with sordid detail that Jade took a damaging injuries to the chest, her side and then throat, among the other minor injuries.

The despair I felt worsened, but I did not let despair keep its hold on me.

“Could she still breathe, was the wound too deep?” A neck wound was a tricky thing to survive for mortals, a single strike to the throat would kill in a number of ways. It would be minutes to seconds if an artery was hit.

“She could still breathe, but I don’t think she could talk. The strange thing is, she looked worried for me and not herself.” A curious insight you have provided there Fizzle. When one is grievously injured, they’d worry more about themselves and survival than someone who was perfectly safe. Jade must have been severely worried about her lovers. “She did say Daring Do was there, as well as the word ‘Obelus’. I believe that to be a name and not a division symbol.”

“The donkey she slashed up most likely. The feathers match Ms. Do’s smell and profile, did a checkup on her as she visited fairly often enough recently to require my services with some rather nasty injuries. Most of said injuries involved having broken wings, that poor pony is not very lucky about that.” Dr. Bones finally arrived and pulled out a flashlight, she shined it into Fizzle’s eyes as she began to check her over. “Go on and tell us what you think happened to the poor lass you great big fur ball.”

I would not let indignation enter my voice, I could see how this mortal dealt with pain both emotional and physical. Zen either laughs it off or insults everyone around her until she feels better.

“She’s either lost somewhere on this world, she’s in another dimension or the mostly likeliest thing that happened…” I began wondering how Celestia would react to this once she found out. “She was erased from existence entirely.”

“I think I like the one that sounds the least distressing.” No one would counter that Grace, even you could read the atmosphere around here and didn’t try to cheer anyone up. “Now if only I knew which one that was. If not that then the one that was the least painful for her. I personally believe that she’s alive, it’s almost like Maggie dropping off the face of the world all of the sudden while leaving Arizona to me.”

Arizona was mute and didn’t comment, instead she walked up to Grace to silently press her face into the larger cow’s chest. Grace pulled her into a hug and carefully started to pat her back, she then held out a hoof and brought Velvet into it to comfort her too.

“Erased from existence?” Jacky murmured, her purple eyes searching mine. “Is it possible to have multiple afterlife god’s check for her?”

“Ratatoskr!” I called out immediately, we had need of his services. The messenger god leapt into action, he immediately had a notepad and a pencil to write down what I needed of him.

Ratatoskr would check the several pantheons Jade has some connection with, he’d even do this for free.

Yakhalla, Elysium, The Heavens, Cloud Nine, The Collective Mind, The Realm of Spirits, The Realm of the Dead, The Cycle, The Gates Beyond and even Tartarus was not being left out of consideration here.

I even tasked Ratatoskr with looking into my own pantheon’s cycle as much as his.

-Evening, Airship Mauled-

“Ratatoskr has checked just about every afterlife we know that she had some vague connection to, Jade was in none of them. Which means that while not dead, erasure is still highly probable.” Airship Mauled had an air of depression around it, one so thick it was that it was affecting even me to a great degree. “To bring someone back from erasure… it’s about as hard as bringing a unicorn’s horn back. Not impossible, but there’s apparently an infinitesimally small chance for it to occur.”

“A chance she would take for me.” Fizzle stated while continuing to sit by my side unmoving.

They all needed to eat and get back to their lives. If Jade were dead, she wouldn’t want them living like this.

“Could she have… reincarnated?” Kuril seemed to be considering something.

“Not likely at all, one cannot reincarnate without at least ending up in a realm of death and her soul, as sacred as any other, seems to have disappeared entirely. Plus one cannot reincarnate immediately, unless under special circumstances and I doubt Jade met those circumstances.” For some reason I could feel something off about the way Kuril asked that, only now she seemed even more depressed than ever and I didn’t feel like pressing her about it. “The best we can do is wait. Provided that she is somewhere on this world, she’d do anything to find her way back to us.”

“So that’s it then, we just wait to see if my sister comes back?” We were all upset Jacky, even Ratatoskr looked to have faded or lost two million years of his lifespan from this one occurrence alone. “What if she is in another dimension? What if she died there, alone and afraid?”

“Then she might come back to this world someday, but if she didn’t go somewhere else… it’s going to take a miracle to pull her back from erasure.” The depression is really getting to me, I could feel tears filling my eyes for a mortal. Other war gods would be enraged, I however just cried. I sometimes felt like I wasn’t a war god at all. “A miracle that even most gods and goddesses can’t perform.”

“What if she traveled through time?” Maries, nor Fizzle, were willing to give up.

“If she traveled to the future, at least within a thousand year time span, then Snickers could find her for me to send her back to her proper time. Provided she doesn’t appear in the middle of a volcano, at bottom of the ocean or somewhere else where she’ll immediately perish.” I turned to cut Kuril off before she could say anything. “Yes, she can breathe underwater, but she can’t handle that much water pressure suddenly with the injuries she has. Not to mention the horrible infections she’ll get if she doesn’t get them treated quickly. If she appeared in the past, then she would or wouldn’t have changed anything depending on circumstances.”

“Can we figure out what happened to her exactly if we went to the location she disappeared at and scanned around?” The one thing that we haven’t done yet Marie the snake, one of three.

“With so much wild magic in the area, you’d need to be absolutely focused to find out what happened to Jade through the magic that’s still ambient in the surroundings.” They all looked somewhat hopeful. “I can put up a denial effect around the area to prevent any magical tampering and can look into it personally, but it would take years to find the right bit of magic that took Jade. Even a chaos god wouldn’t be able to do it in a timely manner without making it much worse first.”

“Then do so and tell us any discoveries.” Somberly, Kurilian slowly walked towards the restaurant. “My kitten is now a Humdinger’s Cat Paradox.”

Author's Note:

Now comes the point where the heroes of Airship Mauled start splitting apart, each for their own reasons and with their own goals and stories to tell.

Now the question is, who goes first?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

So the Vortex wasnt so much a Hiccup, as an Aku?

Jade couldnt have been fully erased from existance, because the Town Remembered. but, like Gort, they need to take time to learn and understand how to start working out how to create teh return. I suspect they cant pull off a Kimball Kinneson this time.

People will leave, the town will reduce, but who is going to be the last one to stay, they who stand, and wait?

As for Humdingers Cat Paradox?

Time to get Pixel bashing.

[Fireeaters]

I wonder why kuril hasn't told everyone Jade has reincarnated before and remembered everything.

[Zappa12]

Ah your going with the "Main character disappears only to pop back up after sometime, then has to find their friends, get them back together, and tell them/find out the group (the GODLESS dumb***'s) after them is down to their last numbers" thing. Heck I even realized that Jade is the "End Of Immortality" thing GODLESS was after because of her Dyscalcula, while I was typing this.

Good story by the way. Got to this point in the story in a week.

[Heretics Everywhere]

Found this song and its pretty fitting for this arc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBR8MmC0ezw&ab_channel=LyricsArt