On the Wind and Beneath the Waves
Above the skies of Mount Aris, hovering between the clouds as the sea breeze gently made the hull rock this way and that, was a zeppelin. It was truly a marvel, with sails to catch the winds and large contraptions that resembled wings on the sides to steer the zeppelin in whichever direction, as well as a large balloon to keep the ship-like structure attached underneath in the air. The zeppelin was making its final stop before it journeyed to its destination: Equestria.
“Do you see her?” Hugo called to Flurry Heart as the alicorn soared back to the ship.
Flurry shook her head. “She’s not on Mount Aris, that’s for sure. We’ll have to wait until Imara comes back from Seaquestria.” She caught the way that Hugo was fidgeting with his glasses, his claws tapping the helm of his vessel nervously, and she gently landed next to him, putting a hoof reassuringly on his shoulder. “Hugo, I’m sure Kailani’s okay. We’re going to find her.”
The flightless griffon took a deep breath and let it back out slowly. “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, going to make sure that everything’s tied down.”
He scampered around the deck, checking the crates full of supplies that were strapped to the wood and checking the knots to see if they were secure.
Flurry watched him for a moment before she used her magic to open the trapdoor in the deck and descend the steps until she arrived below deck.
Along with the addition of sails and wings to the zeppelin to more effectively control the direction and speed of the ship, Hugo had designed a larger hull for his ship, making it just large enough to have two floors. Belowdecks was a large, low-ceilinged area filled with enough hammocks for all of the zeppelin’s occupants, with more hoisted up against the ceiling. There were also more crates down here, pushed against the walls. Lamps swung from the roof, their light coming from crystals that Flurry had brought from the Crystal Empire. The crystals would emmitt light magically and were more reliable than the fireflies that Flurry had seen ponies back in her aunt’s time use, and weren’t so likely to set the ship on fire like candles or oil lamps.
Ash was outside, stretching her wings by flying over Mount Aris, scanning for any signs of Kailani like Flurry had just been doing. But their other friends were down here, unable to be very useful, and Flurry could tell that it was hard on them.
Lukas was sitting in front of his hammock, next to one of the crystal lamps as he reread the letters that they had received from Sunny just a few days ago. Flurry had no idea why the letters had suddenly started popping up randomly, but Lukas was trying to formulate some theories, and create a clear picture of what Sunny had been doing this entire time.
Midnight was swinging in his hammock, staring absently at the floor as his hoof dragged along it as he swung. His crescent moon pendant was also swinging hypnotizingly, and Flurry stared at it, remembering the vision he had shown her, about when magic had disappeared. She shook her head to try and clear it of any thoughts of her aunt. Not now. Later, maybe.
Brooks was lying on his back in his hammock, holding a ball of fire in one hoof. He was absentmindedly tossing it back and forth between his hooves. The fire didn’t harm him, as a kirin who could also turn into a nirik, but that did not mean that the zeppelin, or the creatures on it, were fireproof.
“Brooks, be careful with the fire,” Flurry reminded him, and the kirin glared at her before smashing his hooves together, dissolving the fire into thin air.
Midnight looked up from where he was. “Did they find her yet?”
“Not yet,” Flurry said, shaking her head. “But we haven’t heard back from Imara yet, so we can’t be sure until we do.”
The Crystal pony sighed and went back to rocking listlessly with the movement of the ship. Brooks snorted and stared at the ceiling.
Flurry understood his frustration. She wanted to cast an air bubble around herself and delve into the depths of the sea herself, find Kailani, and drag her back by her fins if she had to. The creatures had all agreed that they had to solve this together, and they had to get all of them together before they found Sunny. Flurry had a feeling that, once they got inside Equestria, it would be a while before they ever left, and she wasn’t leaving anyone behind.
“Guys!” Little Braveheart called from above deck, where she was keeping watch for their friends. She poked her head through the trapdoor. “Imara’s back!”
Ash was standing on the deck with Hugo when Flurry, Midnight, Brooks, and Lukas all made it up the stairs and were assembled. Imara the changeling was landing on the deck, in her normal form, but Flurry knew that her friend had been a hippogriff not a moment ago. Imara shook her head like a dog, and sprayed the rest of the creatures with salt water.
“Hey!” Brooks complained.
Imara shrugged. “I found Kailani,” she said, looking at Flurry. “But, uh… we’re too late. One of those shadow wolves got to her first.”
“What?” Hugo burst out, startling Brooks so that flames suddenly raced along his pronged horn.
“We have to do something!” Ash cried out, but Flurry was already in the air. She dived toward the open expanse of water, her horn glowing as yellow as the sun in the sky as a magical bubble appeared around her just before she hit the waves, and her vision exploded into a frenzy of bubbles. When it cleared, she was underwater, not far from Seaquestria, which glowed in the distance.
And she wasn’t alone. Imara was swimming next to her, in seapony form.
“This way,” she called to Flurry before leading the way into the underwater city.
Under any other circumstances, Flurry would have been amazed at Seaquestria. The whole magical city was sparkling with a purple glow that seemed to come from the stone that the palace was made of. Seaponies swam around them, along with all kinds of marine life. Flurry spotted dolphins and whales pulling seaponies behind them on seaweed ropes, and schools of fish swarming the coral reefs. The weightless feeling of being underwater made Flurry feel as if she were flying, but without the work of pumping her wings. But she couldn’t focus on that.
Imara led the way into the intricate structure that served as the hippogriff palace. There were no guards that Flurry could see, which unnerved her, but she didn’t have time to focus on that.
Inside one of the adjoining rooms to the throne room, a seapony was struggling on the floor. She was pinned to the abalone surface by a dark net made of darkness so complete that it seemed to suck the light out of the air. The seapony had soft lavender scales and an aquamarine mane that curled at the end of a ponytail, matching her tail fins. A necklace with two beads and a charm that came from the magical pearl that granted the hippogriffs the ability to change form hung around her neck.
Kailani looked over at Flurry and Imara as they entered, and her struggling renewed with increased vigor. Imara swam over and offered Kailani one of her claws. She tugged on her friend with all her might, but the dark net held fast. Already, Flurry could see Kailani’s eyes clouding over, just like Imara’s Aunt Cercus in the Changeling Kingdom. She could sense that, although she had hung on for this long, the hippogriff didn’t have long left before she was overpowered.
Flurry thought furiously. She sucked in a lungful of air before she deactivated the bubble around her. She then lunged forward and grabbed Kailani’s pearl charm, willing its magic to work. She immediately felt magic surge through her, felt her hind legs merging into a tail, felt the water work its way through her new gills, leaving fresh oxygen in its wake. She gasped and shook her head, now able to help more.
“What can we do?” Imara asked, looking at Flurry desperately.
Flurry didn’t know. She hadn’t exactly dealt with evil shadow wolves very much in her aunt’s day. She lit up her horn, sunshine yellow light dancing up and down and illuminating the room.
The shadows seemed to soften, and Kailani’s eyes cleared. She grasped Imara’s claw tighter, and the changeling tugged harder.
Flurry shut her eyes and willed her horn to glow brighter. Scorching light filled the room, refracting in the water they were submerged in and growing brighter by the second. The shadows holding Kailani down slackened enough that Imara and Flurry together were able to pull her free.
The shadows pooled together and began to take the form of a wolf again.
“Run!” Imara shouted, grabbing Kailani’s and Flurry’s hoof/claw and dragging them after her as she swam hurriedly out of the palace and toward the surface.
Flurry could see the wolf chasing them, but she wasn’t strong enough to repel it again. Whatever magic she had used left her completely drained, like she hadn’t slept in a week.
Imara burst through the surface of the ocean and, without missing a beat, transformed into a massive dragon, gripping Flurry and Kailani in her claws as she beat her wings hard, leaving the ocean behind her. Flurry dimly felt the pearl’s magic transform her back into a pony, and when she looked over at Kailani, her friend was a hippogriff, looking down at the shadow wolf that was standing on the surface of the water, oblivious of the waves crashing around it. Imara crashed onto the deck of the zeppelin and turned back into her normal form.
“Get out of here!” she practically yelled at Hugo. “Go!”
Hugo looked like he wanted to make sure that Kailani and Flurry were alright, but at the sharpness in Imara’s tone, he scrambled to the helm and opened the sails as wide as they would go. The wind pushed them along, away from Mount Aris and the shadow wolf that had almost claimed one of their own.
Kailani staggered to her feet once they were far enough away. She looked down at Flurry and offered her a claw to help her up.
“Thank you,” she said. Turning to Imara, she said, “Both of you. If you hadn’t saved me-” She shivered.
“How did you hold out for so long?” Imara asked. “Those wolves show you what you most want to see - what you most want to be reality - and they convince you that it’s real.” She fell silent and looked out into the distance, watching the clouds pass on either side of the zeppelin, and Flurry knew that her mind was back in the Changeling Kingdom.
Kailani shrugged. “I just… I knew that it wasn’t real. I could sense the evil behind it, and that told me that it wasn’t true. But if you two didn’t show up when you did, then I think I might have lost.”
“It’s alright now,” Ash told her comfortingly. “You’re safe.”
Kailani nodded and looked around at all of her friends assembled on the deck of the ship.
Little Braveheart ran to the front of the ship and shouted to the wind, “Equestria, here we come!”
It was as if her words had triggered something. Midnight suddenly gasped, and the sunlight seemed to dim as he was surrounded in an ethereal glow. The pendant on his chest suddenly levitated, sparkling brightly, hovering in front of him as his eyes glowed solid white. The wind shifted his purple mane like glittering waves on a violet sea, and then it ended. Midnight’s eyes returned to normal, he stopped glowing, and his pendant fell down, bumping on his chest again. He staggered, taking a step back, and shaking his head.
“What?” Brooks demanded. “What is it?”
“I… I saw some of the wolves,” Midnight said slowly, looking up and facing all of them. “They… they had Zipp and Pipp and Hitch and Izzy…”
“Sunny?” Ash said softly.
Midnight shook his head. “I only saw those four. But… if they fell, then-”
“Don’t,” Imara said harshly. “Don’t say it. Sunny wouldn’t let us down. She would fight.”
Flurry looked around her, and she saw that everyone was nodding. They needed to believe that Sunny was okay, because if she wasn’t - if the great Sunny Starscout had fallen - then there was no hope for the rest of Equestria.
“Either way,” Midnight continued awkwardly, “I also saw who sent those wolves - and who controls them.”
“Who is it?” Kailani asked.
Midnight opened his mouth, then closed it again. He said, “I… I don’t know.”
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It's grogar
Okay this is really getting crazy now so it looks like flurry Heart and the other creatures from across Equestria one by one being picked out by Hugo's Airship which wow that's amazing but the problem is they had us like delay because they're hippogriff friend is nowhere to be found so the other creatures had to find them but Imara found her but unfortunately the Shadow wolves found them as well so flurry heart and Imara had to get Kailani out of there before she be consumed by the mind control and once they got out of there they speed up to Equestria but midnight had a vision knowing that sunny and her friends are in trouble but also he also saw grogar apparently he's really on the Move now they need to hurry before things escalated quickly will they make it a Time I guess we'll find out next time
and I really hope to see Sprouts soon
Ok, Flurry got her friends together, now they need to find Sunny.