Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter fifty five, Recovery: Clasp.

-The Volcano, Midday, Outside Temple of Dark Flames, Jacky-

“Here we are again, once more unto the breach…” Even as I said this, I wasn’t moving forward.

One does not willingly enter a magical lotus eater without being slightly insane. What did it say about me that I took my first step towards the stairs intending to do so? Possibly that I’m a true La Perm in spirit, my tolerance for pain was getting pretty ludicrous.

I was shivering until a wing came up around my back and curled around my left shoulder affectionately, I looked down to Gene as he looked up at me. Gene turned to Nefer.

“Come inside a ways, but don’t follow us down Nefer. Stay within view of the entrance.” The cat threw us a salute and his leaves rustled slightly. “Stay safe and don’t do anything to endanger yourself. I know this might get boring for you, so soak up some sunlight while you can.”

“You be careful, you’re my family!” Our favorite plant cat followed us in, but stopped after following us far enough inside.

I took up Gene’s tail in my right hand and we walked down together, into the depths where the darkness of the magical lotus eater swallowed us alive.

-Nefer-

I watched as Captain and Gene disappeared from sight, I strained my ears until I couldn’t hear the sound of the captain’s feet, the clack of Gene’s talons or the soft thuds of his rear paws against the stairs.

Turning back to the entrance, I soaked up what little light I could get down here. It took me a while to notice something off about the entrance, mostly because we couldn’t have seen it coming in.

It was already too late for me to go after Jacky and Gene, I’ll have to wait for them to come back and then I would tell them about it.

Well at least I hope they’ll come back.

-Jacky-

“You know, I’ve been thinking about something.” It was something of a curiosity that had been niggling at the back of my head since we came here.

“What is it?” Gene asked as we both somehow ended up in the room from before. Three mirrors, four doors to our worst nightmares and we were suddenly standing a distance from one another. At least this was consistent.

“Aside from the key of the longma or the gem we’re after, why did the GODLESS agent originally come here? It makes little sense that Teatime would go to so much effort to prepare an attack on the entire city. To what end would he need this much preparation? We’re missing something here.” I knew we were inside it now and that you couldn’t trust any of your senses at all in the dream like quality that places like this had. I was still going to discuss this with Gene and act like I had little to no paranoia about what was going on around me. “Why go to all this trouble? What we’re after here is not actually worth all the effort and resources that Teatime seems to be putting into this, we even know he can’t bypass the magical lotus eater here. What is Clockwork, or the other agents with him, really after aside from possible riches and or ancient artifacts? He only took interest in the temple after we investigated it according to Tianhuo’s guards.”

The mountain was definitely watching us right now, I could almost feel it.

“Those are all good questions Jacky. I have some of my own, was Dispel in the Fiery Fights just to aid in distracting us? Shocking apparently is an adrenaline junkie, I got a good read on him and he’s only in it for the fighting and the viciousness involved therein. So his participation wasn’t suspicious in the slightest, being with GODLESS makes him a lot of enemies and Shocking enjoys all the fighting that will come his way from that.” Gene looked around at the all the doors and then looked behind me. “Dispel doesn’t seem the type and Arizona noted he seemed bored with the competition until Pom proved problematic by happenstance or luck. I trust Arizona to have at least some accurate idea of Dispel’s character from basic observations. Also something is different here, have you noticed?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of obvious. So I was honorable enough to just see… us… what are we supposed to do here?” I turned around and looked at the only mirror that currently showed a reflection, it was us standing together with me still holding Gene’s tail and we had dead looks in our glowing eyes. We looked like zombies and given that Skelly existed… I’d rather not go there or think about Blanks, the pony O and O equivalent, possibly existing either. “That is a bit unsettling. Anyway, I don’t know much about Dispel, as far as Fortitude knows he wants to destroy everything he considers a blight, evil or unholy by his personal definition. Skelly is considered one or more of those things and she’s the nicest skeleton I’ve ever seen. Mind you that pirate skeletons are likely to get up and stab you when you turn your back on them, because Pirate’s do occasionally get curses that vaguely work like that without actually dying.”

“Good thing Skelly is a Viking then. Just know that everything will be okay Jacky, as I’m here with you.” Gene came over and comforted me with a hug and I snuggled him up against myself. “We can do this… now if only we knew what we were doing. We fought honorably in the Fiery Fights so that explains the minor change in the room, but what else did we hear about this place again? What does the new mirror change about all this?”

“The only thing I can think of is, reflect on what you see when it comes into… sight… we first appeared in this room not facing that location specifically and it’s happened again.” I looked at the reflection of us in the one mirror where the stone arch used to be. Taking part in those fights led to this oddity of the fourth mirror. “Gene, come on, I think I have a hunch about what to do! Get to the left of me and let me grab your tail.”

“Wait… if we’re going to reflect one another, then shouldn’t I be on the…” Gene’s eyes widen fractionally and he took up positon so that we were opposite of our counterparts. “Oh… I see it now.”

“Start walking forward.” We did so at even pace, our reflections eventually copied our movements when we got closer.

Once we walked into the mirror meeting our copies, I felt the oddity of my beak going through that of my mirror image. Everything became blurry, it was as if we were surround by walls of glass in a world of light for a few seconds. It was so bright and hard to see anything.

Then everything flashed a painful red color that blinded me, I released Gene’s tail as I stumbled and fell forward in shock. I felt my talons gripping something with the consistency of powder as I caught myself and stopped my beak from hitting the floor.

I’m surprised my beak wasn’t blunter after everything that’s happened to me throughout my life.

“I think we’re somewhere else, and I don’t think this is part of an illusion.” Gene grabbed at his head and looked about while wincing as I blinked my eyes.

Picking myself up, I looked around with caution. The floor in our immediate surroundings was covered in a thick greyish volcanic ash, the area we were in was round and lit with an orange glow that seemed to be moving.

Behind us was a wall of solid black stone, was it obsidian? As for ahead of us… I could tell we were in The Volcano itself and yet some form of magic was definitely preventing convection from ruining our day. The rocky obsidian walls were filled with veins of bright liquid rock, lining the hallway before us that led into a larger room.

The hallway itself was semispherical, the veins of magma we were seeing were being held back by glass. At least it looked like glass from my perspective or was a clear glass like substance enough to be called as such. I could see spots where there were holes for magma to spill into the tunnel that weren’t covered in partially solidified rock.

Those softly glowing orange circles, beyond the decidedly not glass, were lighting up the hallway from above. Said hallway was set up to kill anything that came through here, though dragons and longmas might be an exception to that.

If whatever the glass stuff was that is keeping the magma at bay were to suddenly disappear… then the magma would spew forth quickly from those given areas. We wouldn’t even have an opportunity to scream as the heat would kill us long before the magma or toxic fumes could actually touch us.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this, but the only option is to move forward so…” Gene started forward and I followed him closely looking through the glass tunnel at the molten thousand degree lights that shined on us softly from above.

I turned my gaze to the shifting floor below us through the flat fake glass flooring we walked along.

Once we reached the end of the hallway, we came upon a large room. Said room was filled with what is clearly a long lived dragon’s hoard worth of stuff and at the top of said room was a bubble dome of more of that strange glass and an unnerving amount of softly glowing magma hanging openly above our heads.

We were clearly not safe or in charge of this situation.

I cleared my throat and went to say something, while hoping to not get a response.

“You, who now comes into my domain, I know why you are here.” A deep rumbling, yet vaguely feminine, voice cut me off before I could and I swallowed loudly.

“Are you… The Volcano?” I asked quietly.

“Yes… I am he who became one with the land, I wonder how little Scales fared? The dragon lord with the name of Torch is in command of the dragons now and has been since carrying himself quite well when he last visited my body… so I think Scales didn’t do too well or lasted very long at all. Leadership is not just for the strong, but also for the wise, as I’m sure Scales has learned when things tipped the balance too far out of favor for them. You already know me, but let me introduce myself properly, I am the spirit of Huoshan.” The voiced let out a hissing bit of laughter and the room rumbled. It was both calm and ancient sounding, that and the massive amount of magma alone made us quite sure that we should be on our best behaviors. “It is by my will that you are not dead. I can kill you in an instant, so do not test my patience.”

Gene and I were slightly worried about that as we came closer together.

“Though you need not worry too much, I have gained a lot of patience to test since I entered my death sleep. You are here for the cursed Dragon Burst Gem, the gem that ultimately comes from my own blood in my efforts to create a new dragon bloodstone.” Huoshan gave us a more humorless sounding laugh. “I succeeded, much to my horror, but the power of infinite explosive fire created from magic and concentrated dragon blood is not so easily controlled and it has sadly harmed my children numerous times before. That is why it has been left to my domain ever since and is to be considered cursed despite having aided my children in duress. Even the bloodstone scepter of the dragon lords would be hard pressed to contain its power, that was made cheaply by the first dragon lord for the express purpose of guiding our race towards a better tomorrow. My tomorrows have personally ended.”

I tried to say something, but he continued.

“Making a dragon bloodstone as pure as possible was not one of my better ideas and the dragon bloodstone scepter cannot be replicated or used by anyone other than dragons. My personal gem is a different case as it can be used by anyone, definitely to their own detriment.” That’s nice to know Huoshan. “You also seek the key of the longma… something that will always belong in the hooves of my beloved children.”

“Well at least we now know for sure that you weren’t imagining things.” Gene stated plainly as he turned towards me.

“Yes, I’ve been watching for quite a while. My blood is both in and on this mountain, for the longma have been watching you just as closely as I. I also watch over Torch’s little spark; she’s quite adorable, it is so nice to have a guest like Ember. A dragoness that’s interested in learning to use her brain alongside her natural brawn, the future is far brighter for it as Torch learned has the lesson I taught long ago.” Okay, I was seeing a pattern in his speech here and I just had to call him out on it. “I may have an answer to your conundrum as to what GODLESS is doing here, nothing escapes my sight so long as it is close to me.”

“Before you get to that. Torch carrying himself, balance being tipped on a dragon named Scales, Ember being a little spark, dragon burst gem with an explosive power… like a volcano." I put my fists on my hips and glared at the… wait, where was I supposed to glare?! "You have a serious thing for puns don’t you?”

“I have to get some entertainment in retirement somehow… so don’t make me out to be a molehill.” Huoshan replied. “I hear that it is quite hard to do when I’m as large as a mountain.”

“Ugh…” I grunted at how horrible he was, then I realized something. “Uh, would Ember happen to be a princess?”

“Yes, of the current dragon lord. Though her title may change greatly with the next ‘Gauntlet of Fire’, I expect many great things from her.” Hearing a loud hum from Huoshan, we waited for him to finish thinking. “Ah yes, you are worried about your crew member… that sprawling Savannah. I think the grass is quite a bit brighter there. No, they have not met… yet.”

“Okay, getting back on track, what are those GODLESS guys up to really?” Help me out here, because Gene and I certainly didn’t know.

“Aside from wanting my treasures and what rightfully belongs to me and my children? They want to cause chaos, to sow dissent, they will try to turn the dragons against the pony princesses. To that end I ask that you help protect young Ember or my children might suffer.” Well that wasn’t very foreboding at all. “Now I shall ask of you this, do you wish to take the longma key that could save the world or do you want the Dragon Burst Gem you have sought?”

“A test of character then, that should be an obvious choice, right Jacky?” Gene actually gave me a worried look as I stayed silent and didn't look his way. ”Jacky?”

Author's Note:

The spirit of Huoshan is at the heart of The Volcano, but the heart of Huoshan is in the Longma themselves.

A coin flip and a few dice rolls later... okay, got it!

Comments

[Booster Spice]

I forgot, aint both items needed for the world to survive in any state fit for further existance of life?

[The Scarlett Mare]

Jackyyyyyyy?????