Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Fourteen, Oh Goddess Why: Worse times.

-Fluttershy-

I had to stop the convoy once we were far enough away from the attacking hoop snakes, I flew back to the wagon and saw my friends looked a little under the weather.

“Are the both of you okay?” I was so worried when Fizzle and Jade started getting medical aid from Cheerilee.

“Define okay, they were able to hit me even when I'm sustaining my knife. Got to hand, paw or hoof it to you Cheerilee, you have some hidden depths.” Jade sat up, she was covered in scratches that looked to be covered in some kind of gel. “Cheerilee was immediately ready with the antivenin when we got back and patched us up quickly.”

“Could be better, took a bite to one of my rear legs.” It looked a bit swollen, oh dear I hoped Fizzle didn’t have problems walking. “Teach, where did you learn to do this stuff?”

“Well if I couldn’t get a teaching career going, then I would have gone into some form of pediatrics… most likely a pediatric nurse. So I know quite a bit about first aid.” That’s nice Cheerilee, maybe I could learn a thing or two from you. I watched as Cheerilee got the swelling on Fizzle’s leg to go down. “Fillies and colts can get a bit reckless at times and hurt themselves, so I’m always prepared to help an injured filly or colt. The swelling should go away soon Fizzle, which is good for us. Since aside from Sekhet, you two are the only ones that can really fight.”

“So how long can you keep the lemmings sitting still for Fluttershy?” When Jade asked that my mind blanked for a moment, oh dear…

I shot out of the wagon to start gathering the lemmings up before they could scatter too far.

-Five minutes later, Fizzle-

Thankfully Fluttershy managed to get all the lemmings back together before they wandered off too far, she started making them run a circle to give us time to rest. She was going to get pretty tired herself if she keeps this up. It wasn’t long before we were back on the trail towards the southeast and Jade was gulping down some chilled water to rehydrate from using her fish scale necklace.

I was back up on the wagon, Jade was resting in the back for a bit. Nobody was getting sick from their cuts and scrapes thanks to Cheerilee’s vigil. It was only another mile or two when we ran into another problem that made Fluttershy manipulate the lemmings into running in a circle.

“Jade, problem. Can you give me info on snakes with heads at both ends?” They looked kind of like little dragons somewhat. “They have two legs on something that reminds me of a chicken or a dragon’s body.”

“Do they have wings?” Upon Jade asking me that I looked more closely.

“No, no wings as far as I can see.” Looking to me were Cheerilee and Fluttershy, Sekhet looked to be sitting with a bored expression on her face as she checked the bottom of one of her paws.

“They’re Amphisbaena, two headed snakes that can come in several flavors. One is the most obvious, no limbs and just snake heads at both end. They come in a number of varieties including two legs, four legs, also with or without wings. Rarely do they ever have horns.” Now I needed to know, are they dangerous Jade? She must have read my glance. “They aren’t very threatening, but you should steer completely clear of them if you can help it. All amphisbaena are twice as poisonous compared to normal snakes even if only one head bites you. If one of them bites a lemming, it’s guaranteed to be dead in under a minute. We’ll last longer by at least ten if we didn’t have antivenin. If they’re small they’ll scare easily, which would be a lucky break for us.”

“Fluttershy, we need go around them! Cheerilee make some noise if they get too close and I’ll try to help scare them off.” The next ten or so minutes for me were harrowing as I had to force a few tens of lemmings back into the herd and running on my bit leg didn’t feel too good.

Jade was able to get back into things, while I rested she screamed and yowled at the two headed poisonous monsters keeping them away from our lemming drive. She even had to fire a magic missile at one that was getting too brave and tried to charge the mindless swarm of rodents we were moving along the trail.

“Well that wasn’t so… oh please don’t tell me that’s what I think it is!” Let’s see, Jade looks absolutely horrified about something to have made that kind of exclamation to go with her currently pale face.

Fluttershy was frantically forcing the lemmings into running in a large circle again, so what is it this time? I turned to look.

It was the largest snake that I think that I have ever seen in my entire life and my blood ran cold.

Yeah, that would definitely cause a panic.

-Jade-

That… was a basilisk. It was a big basilisk too! No wonder no other pony wanted to go on this trip. This is practically suicidal, but I promised Fluttershy I’d help. Well I better intercept it, because it was heading straight for the lemming swarm.

I started on my favorite magical alchemy sustain, the knife, and moved to intercept the creature. I quickly grabbed a rock from the ground and chucked it at its left eye. I drew its attention off of the lemmings and onto me.

“Get them moving Fluttershy!” I charged forward and slowed down a bit as the snake reared above me putting me in its shadow.

It inhaled… well I wasn’t dead from looking it in the eyes, but something was off about what this basilisk was doing. Those actions even seemed oddly familiar to me, it was as if I’ve done that multiple times before in an eerily similar manner.

Given its teal coloration and that it doesn’t kill on sight, or would it be by sight? Anyway it just causes massive mortal terror that I may as well just die from looking at it, I’d give a guess that it was about to…

The basilisk fired what looked like a solid white beam at the ground and started sending it right for me, I rolled to the side and watched it mulch all the dirt, rock, grass and everything else, leaving a fairly large ditch in its wake.

Since the ground around where the beam struck was now wet, its beam was made entirely out of water that had cut a distant boulder in half, it also converted a large portion of the ground for a few feet around into mud.

Okay, that was a bit horrific, basilisks are not supposed to be able to do that unless… you have got to be kidding me. A hydrokinetic basilisk! How does that even happen? I mean seriously, why in all that is holy is this a thing?!

In my inattention I was almost swallowed alive as it dived for me, it missed me as I darted out of the way pulling my knife and slashed its body as it dug into the ground. The knife did nothing to its thick scales, oh and it can burrow too… just great. I watched as its tail disappeared into the ground.

The ground around me began rumbling, I stumbled a bit and then things were quiet.

“Jade… don’t know about you… but I really think we should run now.” I turned to give Fizzle a flat look.

“You do realize I’m right here mortals… you don’t need to let the pride get the best of you.” There was a reason we weren’t asking Sekhet for help with this. If the goddess kept protecting us, then we would never learn to be strong on our own without her. “You can ask me for help, I won’t think less of you if you do. This just might be well above your ability to handle.”

“Yeah, I think it’s a little late for that Fizzle.” The ground underneath me started bulging upwards and lunged forward as a pair of jaws ripped out of the mud from beneath me. “Also Sekhet, just keep protecting the wagon!”

After the basilisk’s finished erupting from the ground, it started to slither in a circle around me. It had me swiftly surrounded. Not only did it spray beams of water, could burrow and was obviously venomous, it was also fast too.

I went to jump onto the back of the basilisk only for the tail to slap me back into the circle with a strike to the chest, okay this was problematic and painful. That... had definitely hurt. I was laying on my back in the mud being circled by the basilisk that opened its mouth and started to come down on me again.

I held up my left palm towards its open mouth and fired a magic missile right into it.

Its mouth closed in pain and its head diverted into ramming its own coils.

I quickly clambered up onto it and got out of the circle it made and after jumping off of it on the other side, I started making my way towards Fizzle. She was coming to me with a worried look as I clutched at my chest with my left arm.

“Are you okay Jade? You’re bleeding pretty badly there.” Sending Fizzle a confused look as she looked at me worriedly, I wondered what she was talking about.

“It only winded me Fizzle what do you, oh…” I looked at the blood seeping out from under my arm, how did the basilisk do that with its blunt tail? “Yeah, now that I notice that, I’m in far more pain than I previously thought I was.”

“Your stupidly high pain tolerance is getting in the way of you recognizing when you get hurt badly!” Fizzle sounded angrier at my pain tolerance than me, so I was okay with that. “It’s getting up… how are we supposed to stop that thing from chasing after the lemmings or us?”

The basilisk lifted its head and opened its mouth that was fizzling and frothing with bubbles as it inhaled through its nose. Fizzle grit her teeth and fired a blast of magic into its mouth where the resulted pulse of magic caused the basilisk’s head to flop onto the ground with a dazed look in its eyes.

“Shooting it in the mouth looks like it works.” Putting an arm around Fizzle’s neck as I stumbled a bit, we started moving away from the monster.

Hearing a noise, I looked back as it rose its head up. It shook away its slightly dazed look and turned to us with another roar. Only it got more horrifying when its scales popped out into sharp pointy blades all across its body including the ones on its tail that it had struck me with.

“Don’t know if that really did anything… other than make it mad I mean.” At least it looked mad to me and it started inhaling again.

We both continued moving towards the wagon as several white beams fired from the surrounding popped scales at many differing angles alongside the one solid directed beam from its mouth that chased after us.

“Why would nature make a creature that’s this lethal?!” Fizzle whined as we got close to the wagon. When the beam reached us, a barrier blocked it. “Thanks Sekhet!”

“No problem. It is a bit much to expect you to face a basilisk, but we can’t just leave it alone. We have to immobilize it or knock it out.” As Sekhet spoke, the basilisk dove into the muddy swamp it had formed with its high pressure beams of death, I could see it tunneling straight for us. “While it can’t kill me, its poison could still make me unable to assist you in surviving if it were to bite me.”

“Get on you two, start running Sekhet!” Whoa, Cheerilee is taking charge. “Fizzle move Jade over to me.”

I found myself forced in front of Cheerilee who moved my arm and removed my shirt and started tightly wrapping bandages around my chest.

“We won’t outrun that thing for long, just telling you so you know.” Even so Sekhet was pulling the entire wagon behind her at a good clip.

The entire wagon suddenly lifted up quickly before slamming back to the ground, it stayed intact and we were only missing one pony, a rather important pony.

“Fizzy!” I saw fizzle tumbling across the ground and the snake started to circle her with its bladed scales out. Annoyingly enough, I was pulled back by Cheerliee.

“I’m not letting you go out there, not in this state!” Cheerilee held me down, I couldn’t see the Fizzle in the snake’s folds. “I’ll go and…”

The snake lunged down, only for Fizzle to leap up and clamp onto its nose thrusting both her front hooves into its nostrils. It started shaking its head, opening and closing its mouth, just about anything to dislodge the pony from its face.

The basilisk turned away from the circle it made and tried to scrape Fizzle off on the ground. That’s when she pulled her hooves, covered in mucus, free of the giant snake and got off it.

There was a sharp look in Fizzle’s eyes, she seemed to be thinking of something. A small smirk crossed her face and she fired a small burst of magic. Despite the fact that it drained her, it apparently did what she wanted it to do. She had the attention of the basilisk on her and then she started running.

She ran a circle around the snake twice and then leapt onto it, leapt off and continued to run around with the basilisk’s head on her tail. She jumped on and off of the basilisk crisscrossing her path around it several more times.

We watched as Fizzle, covered in various bad cuts from jumping around on the bladed basilisk’s body, ran up to us to turn around and sit down. She calmly let the basilisk's mouth snap shut a foot from her face.

A slow smile crossed her face, she slowly turned around and bucked it in the snout with as much force as she could manage. Its head snapped backwards, but it didn’t seem to be hurt all too much by the powerful blow.

The basilisk looked quite surprised that it couldn’t get to Fizzle, maybe it should have paid better attention to what exactly Fizzle was doing when she was running it around.

The basilisk tried to inhale and fire a blast of water, only it started choking loudly and coughing up streams of water.

Fizzle’s movements had forced the basilisk to knot itself up. With its scales doing the sharp and pointy thing combined with the knot it tied itself into, it was now quite stuck.

“Let’s get out of here before it figures out how to untie itself.” After Fizzle got onto the wagon, she flopped onto her face and said one thing before passing out. “Jade... you need a bigger weapon.”

-Hours later-

We had made it out of ‘Raging Reptile Ridge’ alive, all of us were quite tired as we set up camp and the lemmings were digging into the ground for the night.

Author's Note:

Planning a hiatus trip around July 13th - 19th.

May change my mind later, don't know for sure right now.

Comments

[Thy Lord]

Okay, that was a bit horrific, basilisks are not supposed to be able to do that unless… you have got to be kidding me. A hydrokinetic basilisk! How does that even happen? I mean seriously, why in all that is holy is this a thing?!

Boss fight!

[Shadowshame]

At least fizzle wasn't left cat-atonic