Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty five, Far North of Normal: Un-usual problems.

-Some distance away from Alpaca Accretion, Arizona-

The hot springs were quite nice to bathe in this morning, but we had something to deal with nearby.

Velvet wasn’t that much of a fan of the hot springs, even if she did like being all squeaky clean. She had apparently been entirely right about the weather being off, the alpacas couldn’t feel whatever was wrong with the weather and she could.

So at a guess, because Velvet could feel it, something like ice magic was probably involved in the rampant snowing problem currently plaguing the region.

It would explain the magical blizzards happening around the area of Alpaca Accretion, the safe haven that was the current nomadic alpaca tribes gathering zone.

If the blizzards kept up, Paprika’s family and all the other traveling alpaca would be endangered as they were never meant to settle down roots here as they were primarily nomadic. Food would become scarce if they couldn’t travel because of all the blizzards.

Incidentally, the magical blizzards were why we were so lost in the first place. Whatever the magic was, it was messing with our compass something fierce. Usually a compass would point north to south. The magical blizzards made the compass spin around rapidly for some reason, thus making the compass completely useless.

Now one would wonder how we were supposed to find the problem… that wasn’t all that hard to do really. I mean the large ominous clouds swirling over a single location was kind of fairly obvious even from Alpaca Accretion where it was readily visible, it’s just that the alpacas couldn’t send a force to climb the mountain and deal with it.

Kayamba or Rattle, whichever Paprika’s older brother wants to be called, volunteered to help us. He only did so because we said we’d go after the problem and deal with it, that we’d be dragging along one of his little sisters probably aided in his reasoning for wanting to help.

I wanted to stay with the alpaca tribe for a few days longer, but we’d get to that after we swiftly dealt with this situation before it became too big a problem.

“So… how are we getting up there?” I asked as I looked to my companions, I loved one, another I was coming to love and the last one was going to likely be an overly protective brother in law should Paprika and Velvet eventually open up to one another.

Rattle looked up at the eighty or so degree incline before us rubbing his chin, he eventually shrugged. He wasn’t a fluffmancer like his sister, so his helpfulness was limited to lending some extra muscle to our cause.

Even Paprika looked a little unsure of how we were getting up to the point where the swirling clouds were currently centered over.

“Well, it seems like I will have to be the one to point out the obvious solution here! Arizona rope, wrap it tightly around Paprika’s waist.” Okay, but that still doesn’t explain how we were getting up there Velvet. I did as she said and then turned to her with a length of rope sticking out from under my bandana. “Give us enough rope so that there is at least some distance between us if we were to wrap ourselves, then we’ll simply have Paprika walk up the mountain.”

“Walk up the mountain? What are you on Fluff Butt and where can I get some.” How exactly did Velvet expect Paprika to walk up at an almost ninety degree angle?

“Do you or do you not read Power Ponies? Jade would certainly be disappointed with you if she were around.” Lifting her nose into the air haughtily, Velvet huffed loudly. “We have our very own Mane-iac right here who can actually manipulate her fur to do amazing things. I’m thinking in terms of fiction meeting reality like those Ogre’s and Oubliette games we’ve played that taught us all a valuable lesson about thinking well outside the box.”

“Paprika doesn’t seem like the tentacle type to me Velvet, thank goodness and all that is holy for that.” Muttering that last part out loud, I started to pool some rope at my hooves slowly pulling out a good thirty or so feet of rope from under my bandana.

Rattle stared me with a look of awe and he pointed to the rope with confusion.

“Oh Arizona just has the ability to never be at the end of her rope, she can take that saying quite literally. I don’t honestly know if she’ll ever run out, but it’s always quite useful. My personal theory is that she can magically produce rope as needed.” Thank you for noticing that I was useful Velvet. I gave her raised brow. “Oh right, Paprika, you’re going to be very useful to us in a second so listen up!”

Paprika gave Velvet her laser guided attention and of course loving stare she’d also send my way whenever she could when she wasn’t looking at Velvet.

“Tell me, what do you know about spiders?” It took a while for Velvet’s question to be answered, Paprika had to do some interpretive dance, semaphore and an oddly fitting chicken dance before we got all that she knew from her. As far as the colorful ways to tell us information goes, Paprika knew some of the weirdest. “None of that was really helpful in the slightest Paprika, but I can agree that spiders are a bit creepy. What I was getting at about spiders is that they all have one unique ability in common. One such ability is being able to adhere to any surface using tiny hairs on their legs. If you could mimic those tiny hairs with your fluffmancer abilities, then you could very well adhere to just about any surface and just simply walk us up there.”

Paprika froze in place for a bit, slowly her pupils shrunk and then enlarged before shrinking back to normal. I could swear Paprika had a lightbulb floating above her head when the broad grin formed on her face.

With a flick of her right leg, Paprika’s fluff extended downwards to cover the tips of her of her hooves with a rather overly fuzzy looking fluff.

We watched as Paprika made her way over to the surface of the icy stone wall leading upwards and then placed her hoof against it.

Paprika gave her hoof a slight tug. Upon seeing that it held fast, she then started extending her fluff down to her other three hooves.

After a moment of testing her balance, Paprika started to scale the wall and stopped to look down at us with a bright smile when she was five feet up.

“Right then, as long as you don’t take more than two legs off the wall at any given time, then we’ll be up where we need to be in no time Paprika.” Turning to us Velvet gave off a laugh. “Well come on then, let’s bind ourselves and start climbing!”

Rattle gave his little sister a rather proud look and sent an appreciative look to Velvet.

Paprika just proved herself to be a master fluffmancer, which I was beginning to understand was more awesome than I had previously thought. Velvet had also helped create a trick that the other fluffmancer alpacas could learn to do, which was basically generating spider hairs to stick to any surface.

“Well, no sense in burning daylight!” I was first to get the rope wrapped around me, then Velvet and finally Rattle taking up our rear.

Paprika was acting as a sturdy anchor for us as we started to slowly march up the mountain’s side.

-One hour later, Velvet-

Once we reached the location where the clouds were gathered over through chilling winds and snow, we saw a really small castle made entirely of bucket shaped ice bricks.

“Well that’s just not very subtle at all!” Though I complained, it did look like it was at least sturdily built.

“It doesn’t exactly need to be subtle Velvet, since it’s kind of hard to reach by any other method than by air.” Arizona was right, this castle was built in the most awkward place possible.

How did the owner get up and down the mountain in a swift manner? I doubt a pegasus or a thestral would be the cause of a magical weather problem, at least not on this kind of scale without a noticeable team of them flying around to keep the blizzard going.

We approached the castle and just walked on into the entrance. The courtyard wasn’t much to look at and beyond that the small castle itself, we walked on in to a throne room with an odd occupant that was still here.

I believe we have found the source of the problem and it didn’t look all that threatening.

“Ten bits says it’s the crown doing all this.” Pointed out Arizona with a hoof.

“That’s a suckers bet Arizona.” I calmly stated as Rattle quickly grabbed the crown and was by our side within seconds. Paprika clapped her hooves at her brother’s bravery, it wasn’t exactly that brave and just prudence to take the magical object. “Let me see that please.”

Rattle hoofed it to me and as soon as I took hold of it I felt something like ice magic. One kind of it specifically, I’d have to ask our captive to be certain.

“Yes, this would be it.” I stated with clear surety that it was a magical object before giving it back. I turned to see what Arizona was doing and sighed. “Really Arizona?”

“Come on, tell me you weren’t thinking it too!” She was already in the process of tying up the large emperor penguin with the two cutie marks imprinted in its sides.

“Okay, I was, in any case… Paprika…” This should be pretty good, Paprika titled her head at me with confusion. “You can now hug the penguin.”

Paprika brightened up immediately and slammed into the throne to start nuzzling and cuddling the penguin.

“You have to admit that Paprika has been well behaved in front of her brother, I thought she would have done that much sooner.” Yes, that’s quite interesting isn’t it Arizona? Too bad we can’t talk Rattle into coming with us to keep Paprika under control.

I can appreciate that Paprika takes attacks on her family quite seriously, even if her reprisal was still entirely cuddles and kisses. Our peaceful friend was likely never going to change her ways, not when her love is painful enough as it is already.

The penguin, upon getting a Paprika power hug, woke up choking and sputtering as he was tightly squeezed by the alpaca that had been holding back her urge to love for a while.

“What are you doing, release me this instant, I am a king and I will not be held like this!” The emperor penguin was less than threatening, especially after we already tied him up and sent Paprika at him. “Wait until GODLESS hears about this, you won’t get away with infiltrating my kingdom!”

Okay the talking penguin just dug the pit deeper for himself by mentioning the organization that took down Jade, Arizona looked ready to bash his skull in just for mentioning it in front of us.

“A kingdom of one?” The half lidded lazy gaze Arizona gave the poor penguin certainly matched my mood. “Yeah, you’re really threatening there.”

“It’s clearly a work in progress! I am King Snow Bank and it took me a year and a half to build this castle it did, that’s not easy to do with these flippers of mine. They are nothing like my majestic hooves once were, for I was once a unicorn of peerless might!” He looked proud of something that would take an ice shaper reindeer only a single day to build at most. The end result wasn’t that amazing, but the effort was there and somewhat impressive. “Do you realize how hard it was for me to freeze fifty thousand buckets of ice and carry them up this mountain to start building my empire? Well surely I would have to start dating female penguins just to have a family, but I’m sure GODLESS will come through for me and free me of this penguin body… eventually.”

“You’d have been looking in all the wrong places, penguins are not even native to this region and some are even tropical. I take it there’s a reason GODLESS gave you this crown?” Pointing to it with my hoof and looking curiously at this blow hard.

He couldn’t have been stupid enough as to fall for my questioning if he were an actual part of GODLESS right? Then again he didn’t seem very bright. I do actually think he’s a unicorn that’s been incidentally turned into penguin, there would be no other explanation for the cutie mark on the penguin’s sides. He was likely some idiot they got to do all this… whatever this was.

“Oh yes, it is my mighty mission to freeze out the alpacas so that they can take their key to the seal of the Shadow Horde. They plan to find a way to use the seal to do away with the gods and save the world from the Shadow Horde at the same time, for they are the greatest of heroes!” Okay, Mr. Bank was actually that dumb and we now know for certain that he was someone the organization was just using, because there was absolutely no way they’d let this guy become a full on member. Unless they had a habit of endearing themselves to idiots, which wouldn’t be too big a stretch to think. “In return I will be granted my own kingdom and I will finally be free of this ridiculous body!”

-Arizona-

I glanced at Velvet and she looked back at me, yeah I’m pretty sure that this guy was never going to be cured of his penguin transformation and that GODLESS just wanted the…

Wait a minute, Paprika’s kin had one of the keys? We should ask about that when we got back to them.

“Did GODLESS ever tell you exactly how they were going to turn you back into a pony and if they could, why would they ever do so when they could hold this over your head for the rest of your life? If they are heroes they could have tried to right then and there, so why haven’t they cured you yet? You did say you’ve been at this building a castle thing for a year right?” There was a long pause and I just sighed audibly as Snow stared blankly at me with his beady penguin eyes. “Also if they are heroes, why are they asking you to kill off an entire tribe of peaceful and mostly pacifistic alpacas?”

“Well… I suppose they might be a bit racist, but you can’t be heroes without having a few flaws right?” Snow Mound was just one of those guys that I would like to introduce to Pain and Hurt, my front two hooves. Only for me to later introduce both Agony and Despair to his face.

“What does the crown do exactly?” Three… two… one and…

“Like I’d tell you all it does is let the wearer generate snowstorms and blizzards!” We just stared at Snow for a minute in silence, even Paprika was perplexed by his stupidity. “Oh… drat!”

Rattle put the crown on and walked outside, the blizzard stopped.

Author's Note:

Tenacious and audacious the GODLESS are, huh?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Penguins make great pillows and snow sledges?

[Fireeaters]

Lol

[Shadowshame]

Looks like it's adventure time

[The Scarlett Mare]

“Like I’d tell you all it does is let the wearer generate snowstorms and blizzards!” We just stared at Snow for a minute in silence, even Paprika was perplexed by his stupidity. “Oh… drat!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[talontitanbane]

“What are you doing, release me this instant, I am a king and I will not be held like this!” The emperor penguin was less than threatening, especially after we already tied him up and sent Paprika at him. “Wait until GODLESS hears about this, you won’t get away with infiltrating my kingdom!”

Ooh.... That's one dead bird.