• Published 16th Oct 2018
  • 1,376 Views, 39 Comments

Shadows Swarmed Below - Jay Bear v2



Campfire tales never scare Gallus. At least, none did until he heard Silverstream’s monster story. Now he’s possessed by an unshakable urge: sink to the bottom of the ocean.

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Taking Risks

3

“The Aurum and Volare families held the new wedding in an opulent cathedral near the peak of Mount Aris,” Silverstream continues. She floats in front of us with the enormous charybdis pit as her backdrop, giving her voice a subtle echo. We form a rough semi-circle around her. “It began with a procession of one hundred hippogriffs representing the business partners of the two families, followed by an hour-long sermon proclaiming the miracle of love. Then came a short memorial for Calamus. No mention was made of Pelagica.

“After the memorial, the bride and groom were pushed to the altar to read their vows. Attendees may have heard or felt a low droning sound, but they would have dismissed it. Maybe a mine collapsing or a caravan rolling by, they’d have thought. However, as the vows continued, the droning turned into a rumble like tectonic plates shifting.

“Alarms began to knell. Hippogriffs across Mount Aris stopped what they were doing, thinking it had to be an earthquake. The rumbling grew more and more intense until the tops of spires swayed. Thousands flew out of less sturdy buildings. Wedding guests at the cathedral ducked under the strongest-looking arches and clung to pews while dust rained from the ceiling. A minute passed, then two, impossibly long for an earthquake, but it only grew stronger. Suddenly, an ear-splitting sound shrieked throughout Mount Aris.”

Silverstream sticks two front fins into her snout and puffs out her cheeks, but she produces only swirls of foam. She flashes us a chagrined grimace. “Uh…imagine that was a super high-pitched whistle.”

She’s planned out this whole ghost story, I realize, and practiced it so that it’d be smooth despite our interruptions. She must have only practiced the whistle on land, though.

Silverstream continues. “No one understood why, but the sound made everygriff’s hearts clutch in mortal terror. A few of the most daring hippogriffs overcame their fear and searched for the source of the scream. They didn’t have to search long. In the ocean past Arbor Isle, a geyser exploded.

“With the first geyser, the whistle paused…and a second later, came back, but shriller. More geysers burst, sending white foam spraying into the sky. As each geyser receded, a new whistle began. Soon a bedlam of noises warbled through the air. One final geyser exploded, the rumbling ceased, and the unnatural fear that had seized everygriff broke.

“The wedding was put off. Airships rushed to sea, where they found no sign of the charybdis. No gore, no torn tentacles, and no alluring music. Divers discovered this pit, the now-abandoned home to a massive creature, and the greatest minds of Mount Aris concluded that the charybdis was gone for good. Sailing became legal again. Hippogriffs began diving for pearls and undersea gems. The competition from the new trading and jewelry businesses drove both the Volares and Aurums into bankruptcy. Within a decade, the entire regime of trading families had collapsed, allowing a fair and compassionate ruler to come to power.”

She does a corkscrew turn so she’s floating straight up and down. “One mystery remains, though. What happened to the charybdis? It had no predators, after all. At least, no natural predators.”

Her eyes narrow to slits. A devious smile appears.

“But, maybe, it had supernatural predators.”

The notion simmers a moment. A prickly feeling tingles through me.

“The divers who discovered the charybdis’s den reported strange sensations whenever they approached. Some felt a chill, even in the warmest days of summer. Others felt they were being watched. Exploration of the floor was impossible—this was all before Seaquestria’s magic pearl—but those who tried to reach the bottom said they had the sense of trespassing into another’s home. One diver, who knew sign language, left the den with the words, ‘leave our home,’ seared in her mind.”

Silverstream floats aside, giving us a clear view of the uninterrupted blackness beyond.

“Some believe that Calamus and Pelagica were avenged on the day of geysers. However, nothing known to hippogriffs could have faced the charybdis and won. The only explanation left is that their ghosts haunted it. What they did to drive it away, no one knows.” Her voice drops to a hush, drawing us closer. “But, tonight, we could ask them.”

She sweeps her arms to the lip of the charybdis’s den and waves us forward.

Smolder swims over first and lands on the lip, dimpling her pufferfish body against the ground. Ocellus perches herself a few yards away. Yona and Sandbar follow suit.

I’m frozen. Not because of fear. If anything, I’m excited. Maybe ghosts aren’t real, but there really could be a force, or a creature, or something no one will ever understand in that pit. If there’s any hint of truth to what Silverstream said, this thing scared away a terrible sea monster and made a home in its den. Right now I feel this vanishingly thin sliver of belief—someone else might call it hope—that if I look over the edge, there’ll be something looking back.

And it’s stupid. The only thing I’ll see is blackness. I know that. I’m only pretending there might be something else. But is it so terrible if I pretend a little longer?

Silverstream’s expression changes. Doubts are emerging. She looks at the four already at the lip, who are spread out over ten yards, and then returns to me. Or, not me exactly: my squid arms. She sidles up to me and whispers, “I didn’t think this part through! Can you help me out?”

“Help you out with what?” I whisper back.

“Spooking them! When I give the signal, tap them all on the back. Thank you thank you thank you!”

She flits away before I respond, leaving me with a weird, deflated feeling. So this whole story was building up to a prank. I didn’t even get a chance to let myself down.

Then again, Silverstream asked me to be part of it. That counts for something, I guess.

“Do you guys see anything?” she says when she gets back to them.

“I—” Sandbar starts in a nervous tone, but Silverstream cuts him off.

“Don’t worry, they might be a teensy bit shy. Let me try something.” She winks at me. I try to wink back, but apparently I don’t have eyelids. I sink to the floor and creep towards the edge. My body is flexible enough to make myself practically flat against the ground.

“Calamus! Pelagica!” Silverstream calls into the pit. “We half-dozen creatures beckon thy heedfulness!”

“Why are you talking like that?” Smolder asks. I duck to the side so she doesn’t see me when she looks up to Silverstream.

“It’s Classical Hippogriffese, so they understand us.” Silverstream cups her muzzle. “Forsooth, wouldest thou favor us with a true account of thy ordeals against the charybdis?”

They’re all still. I creep forward until I have arms behind Ocellus and Yona, and a tentacle at Smolder’s back. I also slide an arm over Sandbar.

“Hearest me, oh aggrieved spirits, if thou truly be there!” Silverstream shouts theatrically. A few seconds pass in silence. Her shoulders slump. “Huh. Maybe it is all just a silly—”

She gasps. Her eyes go wide. “Did you guys feel...that?

That’s my cue. I grab Smolder, Ocellus, and Yona, but swish the water near Sandbar.

Smolder puffs out. Yona lets out a blast of bubbles. There’s a pastel-colored rock where Ocellus used to be. Sandbar looks like he actually fainted.

And Silverstream is giddy. “Did we really get you guys? We totally got you, didn’t we? I knew that’d spook you! That was the coolest thing ever!” she hoots while swimming figure eights around our victims. “My mom used to tell Terramar and me that story all the time when we were little! Although in her version Calamus would spend long hours watching Pelagica from the shore without her knowing—”

“Hippogriff boy jerk and creep?” Bubbles blow out of Yona’s nostrils. “In Yakyakistan, yaks make him take long walk over thin ice.”

“Anyway, mom couldn’t take us out here while everyone was stuck in Seaquestria, so she said the lovers had disappeared in one of the shelters. She’d have Terramar and me go inside, but we had to stay as quiet and still as possible or else the ghosts would catch us.” Silverstream stops swimming. “Now that I think about it, she might have been getting us to practice staying safe if the Storm King invaded Seaquestria.”

“Wait,” Sandbar says, “so the story is made up?”

Her giddiness springs back. “Not all of it! There really was a charybdis that disappeared, and this really is its old den. The Aurums and Volares were real families, too. There are all sorts of different stories about Calamus and Pelagica, but they might be based on real hippogriffs.”

“But I saw something down there,” Sandbar says.

It’d be silent if the pit weren’t thrumming faintly. Silverstream and I exchange puzzled looks.

“At first there was nothing,” he says, “but then these shadows appeared. Two of them, I think, and they started moving. Then these eerie blue flashes came, like eyes peering up.”

“It might have been warm and cool currents mixing,” Ocellus offers. “The refraction index of water changes really quickly with temperature, so when hot and cold water mixes it causes a lot of distortions.”

“What about the blue flashes?” he asks.

Ocellus shrugs. “Those could have been moonlight reflecting off of a shiny rock. Water that deep will absorb red through green wavelengths of natural light, so everything down there would look blue and black.”

Yona has been lingering between the two of them, but now she turns away from the pit in a huff. “Not shiny rocks. Yona see eyes too.”

The prickly sense returns. “Ghost eyes?” I ask her.

“No. Not ghosts. Yona not know what.”

I float closer to her, maybe uncomfortably close. “How do you know they weren’t ghosts?”

“Yona see ghosts before. Ghosts kind, teach Yona about ancestors. Eyes in big hole…” Her expression curdles. “Nasty. Scary.”

“Wait, so yak ghosts don’t scare you? That’s got to be the lamest sort of ghosts.”

“Yak ghosts not lame!”

“Sure…”

Yona slaps the ground but doesn’t say anything else.

Smolder hasn’t spoken yet. I look around to find she’s drifted a few yards away. Her pufferfish quills are standing on end. “So what’d you see?” I ask her.

“Nothing.” She deflates some. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

She flicks her back fin like that’s the end of the conversation, but I can’t resist the gibe anymore. Even if I risk crossing a line with her. “Gee, this scary pit sure has you acting like some dainty little princess.”

Her scowl catches me off guard. “Why don’t you go in there if you’re so brave?”

“Smolder, cut it out,” Sandbar says. He won’t even look at me. “We should go back to camp and get some sleep.”

The others start murmuring their agreement, but I haven’t gotten a chance to look into the pit yet. There really could be something in there. As much as I tease them, Yona and Smolder wouldn’t get fooled by some shiny rocks and warm water. I jet over, lean my eye over the edge, and…

Nothing. I wait for some movement down there, or a glint of spectral blue light. Even that creepy sense Smolder got or some yak ghost lessons about my ancestors would be fine. It won’t happen, though. No matter how long I wait and stare, it’ll still be an inky black nothing.

What did I expect? Silverstream’s story was always going to be a letdown. Ghosts aren’t real. All of this is made up.

I wish I could forget that, though. I wish I could believe.

An idea takes ahold of me. “Hey, Silverstream.”

There’s swishing when the five of them stop. “What’s up?” she chirrups.

“You said we’d see ghosts. All of us.” I jab a tentacle into the pit. “So when’s it my turn?”


Sandbar and I spent every day of winter break together. He liked telling me stories, especially “scary” ones, and I liked hearing them while we huddled around lanterns late into the night. Personally, I also appreciated a mobile radiator with a doofy grin and a gentle voice.

On the first morning of spring semester, we met up to compare our class schedules in a window-filled room that Headmare Twilight called a “solarium.” During the day, the room would glow like the biggest gem on a crown. At night, if it was a new moon, it’d be so dark that wisps of the galaxy would appear. We thought it’d be toasty with all the sunlight streaming in, but that morning I could still see my breath in the air.

“Wanna go somewhere a little warmer?” I offered. “I bet we could sneak into the walk-in freezer.”

He glanced around the empty room. “This is okay. It’s nice and quiet.” A hint of a blush showed up on his cheeks.

We sat down on a sofa that sat along one wall, its cushions stiff from lack of use and the cold. Sandbar slid a little closer to me than usual. I didn’t mind. Ponies instinctively herd together when they get cold, so it was natural for him. We pulled out our schedules and held them side by side.

They couldn’t have been more different. We’d have one class together on Fridays, and another every other Tuesday. Not even our breaks between classes lined up. My first class started at eight in the morning, and his last class ended at five in the afternoon, so we’d barely get to see each other between breakfast and dinner.

“I’ve got an idea,” Sandbar said when we’d put away our schedules. He rummaged through his saddlebags and pulled out a flyer. “The new assistant professors—”

“We have new profs?”

He looked uncertain, but it vanished a second later. “Cozy Glow said Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom were going to start teaching optional classes on weekends. One of them is a seminar about Hearts and Hooves Day. The two of us could sign up for it.”

“Nah, sounds like I don’t have any of the right parts.”

Sandbar didn’t always get my jokes, and at that moment he looked like he might ask if griffons really didn’t have hearts.

“I’m guessing ponies don’t actually have a day celebrating two extremely particular anatomical features. How do you celebrate it?”

“I, uh…” He shivered. “I never have. Last year, I tried to, though.”

There was a holiday that some ponies didn’t celebrate, even if they tried? How intriguing.

“There was a pegasus at my old school I had a crush on,” he continued. “Super athletic, in the Junior Wonderbolts, beautiful dusty blue coat, and totally fearless. I really, really wanted to be with this pony as much as possible. I even signed up to be a water fetcher for the Junior Wonderbolts to get closer.”

I nodded along. I still didn’t know what it meant to have a crush on someone, but it sounded a little like finding another griffon to roost with. During the winter, griffons would pair off with somegriff they could put up with and build a nest to stay warm together. They’d go back to living alone after spring unless they had an egg. Then they’d be stuck in their nest through summer, and in autumn they’d fight over who had to keep the hatchling.

Grampa Gruff’s voice butted in. Your parents were smart. They figured out that neither of them had to be stuck with their kid.

I swallowed down a vinegary taste burning the back of my throat and let Sandbar continue.

“About a week before Hearts and Hooves Day, a lot of colts and fillies were talking about what they wanted to do for dates. I felt like one of the only students without a special somepony. But I had my crush. So I decided that afternoon I’d ask out my crush at Junior Wonderbolts practice.” Sandbar swallowed. “I’d confess my true feelings. To him.”

Sandbar locked his gaze on me like he’d just revealed the twist to one of his stories. I didn’t get it. Sure, I knew some creatures had strong feelings about roosting partners—or crushes—but like most griffons, I wasn’t picky about gender.

“So what’d he say?” I asked.

Sandbar’s face didn’t change, but his ears twitched up and relaxed. “I grabbed two bottles of water and went to where he usually landed during warmups. When I got there, he actually glanced down and waved! I was about to wave back, but this unicorn colt whooped at him. Seeing this new colt made me worried.”

This story had taken a downer turn for Sandbar. Obviously his crush had met somepony already. I pursed the corners of my beak in sympathy.

“The unicorn started shouting things like, ‘Watch your form!’ ‘Hold that left wing steady!’ ‘Easy on the bank!’ I figured he might be coaching my crush, so I felt better and ignored him. My crush was doing great that day, like he had extra energy. It got me so excited to talk to him.

“He finished up in the air and landed near the unicorn. Then he waved me over! He wanted to see me! I trotted up and got right next to them, but before I said a word, he wrapped a foreleg around the unicorn. ‘Sandbar, meet my flight coach,’ he said.”

“Oh!” I trilled, surprised by the happy ending.

“Who was also his coltfriend.” Sandbar’s head sagged pitifully with the twist.

“Aww. I’m sorry.” I gave him a wing squeeze. “But that means now you can have a crush on some other pony, right?”

All of a sudden he pawed at the cushions so morosely. “Yeah, but…I’ve never felt the same way about another pony. It was more than imagining us hugging and…kissing. I’d have done anything just to see him smile. When I met his coltfriend, I was glad that he’d met somepony who made him happy. Even though it wasn’t me.”

“Really? You should have challenged that unicorn to hoof-to-hoof combat, taught him a lesson for horning in on your boy.”

That made him laugh. “Nah. They were talking about getting married after they graduated. I…I really am so happy for them.”

He sniffled and wiped his nose, trying to disguise it as a shrug. “Besides, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am supposed to meet someone else.”

A quiet second passed, and Sandbar glanced at me again. I wondered if he’d said something he hadn’t planned to.

He chewed his lip. “Have you ever had a crush on someone?”

I almost shot my beak off. There were griffons I’d fantasized about roosting with, although none of them would have settled for me, but having a crush sounded terrible. Who would give up everything they wanted for some other creature’s happiness? Sure, I liked when my friends were happy, but I wouldn’t make myself miserable for it.

In a heartbeat, I imagined saying exactly that to him, and knew I’d be making fun of what he’d gone through. In a cruel way, though, not a way that’d cheer him up. My talon touched his foreleg, and I started to say something vague about griffons not having crushes, when Grampa Gruff’s voice made everything click.

He told you he wanted someone athletic, fearless, blue, and with wings. Doesn’t that remind you of somegriff?

My eyes met his, like two glimmering pools of water. Without a word I leaned in and kissed him.

It was a little awkward. Griffon beaks and pony muzzles don’t exactly mesh. Even still, the hair on his snout sent trembles from my crest feathers to the tip of my tail. He made a startled gasp that faded into a contented whimper. His chest pressed against mine. I exhaled through my nostrils, rustling his lip bristle, and felt it tickle me back.

The bell for first class couldn’t have picked a worse time to ring. We snapped apart.

“I’ve got to—” I jerked my talon at the doorway.

“Yeah, you should—”

“But we’ll talk—”

“Definitely, yeah, talk.” He got that irresistible, innocent smile. “Later.”

I booked it out of the room, driven partly from the lingering thrill of our kiss, partly from my nerves about starting the semester.

But mostly I didn’t want him to see me shaking.