22. Meri
The sound was faint, but incessant.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It had woken him some time ago, whereupon he’d found himself in a room so dark he couldn’t see his own hooves in front of his face. The echoes of the dripping water were coming from somewhere else, too faint to be in the room with him.
The last thing he remembered was the deck of the ship buckling beneath his hooves, and a plunge into the water. He’d grabbed for Tyria, like she’d said, but he couldn’t remember whether he’d gotten hold of her or not. Had she survived? Had he? Maybe this was what being dead was like.
He moved a foreleg, feeling the soft fabric of his ambassadorial robes slide across it. That was comforting—he was pretty sure you didn’t get to keep your clothes in the afterlife. The floor beneath him felt like smooth stone, damp with cold water. His robes weren’t entirely dry, and he shivered as he peeled them away from his skin to air them out.
The question now: where was he? And where was Tyria?
Let’s shed some light on the problem.
Rye took a deep breath, and opened himself up to the current of magic. It was a thing difficult to describe without metaphor; the one he’d always preferred was a river. Like his robes, it was a comforting sensation. He couldn’t plunge into the waters like most unicorns, but he’d learned to appreciate the soothing coolness as the magic lapped at his hooves on the banks of the river. Even if he was stripped of all his belongings, he’d always have this.
There was something unusual in the arcane currents today. It was nothing like the rampant, wild magic he’d felt in the Antlerwood so long ago; it was something much less obvious: a faint rumble like the echoing roar of a great cataract muted by vast distance. His curiosity was piqued, but he didn’t have time to look for the source—whatever it was had to be far outside this place, and he’d rather spend as little time here as possible. Wherever here was.
Rye opened his eyes and lit his horn. The orange glow revealed a small room, made of flat, worn stones, just as he’d thought. The stones were mottled white, perhaps marble, but clearly in bad shape. Mildew splotches covered every surface, even the fluted pillars that rose to meet the ceiling. Rye suspected they were decorative; the room was not large enough to require the supports.
On the walls were frescoes, or at least the remnants of them. Most of whatever they had depicted was long gone, the paint stripped by untold years of mold and water damage from weeping cracks in the ceiling. The floor, however, retained most of its imagery, and Rye found himself lying on a large mosaic of some kind of sea creature, with eight tentacles extending from a bulbous head to curl in artful patterns.
Behind him was a pool of dark water. The depths were un-guessable; it might have been a meter or twenty, his light didn’t penetrate far enough to tell for sure. A trail of droplets stretched between the pool and his resting place, not yet dried thanks to the wet air. So that’s how I got in here. One mystery solved.
Across the room, an open archway was the only other visible exit. Rye stood and steadied himself on the nearest wall, feeling over himself for any broken bones or pulled muscles from the destruction of the ship. Everything seemed to be in order, but the whip-marks on his back were starting to sting again. He winced, tugging his robes. Bits of them that had dried were caked in salt from the seawater, and they chafed. He was very much looking forward to getting some clean clothing when he and Tyria got back to Zyre.
If we ever do. Tyria, where are you?
He had a momentary pang of fear that she’d drowned when the ship was destroyed, but he quashed it. If he was still alive, then it stood to reason she was too—who else could have brought him here?
Leaving through the archway, he found himself in a long hallway, the end of which vanished into the darkness beyond his horn’s light. The walls were covered with more mosaics of sea life, fish and turtles and other creatures he didn’t even recognize all swimming around his head in a dance that had frozen in time.
As he continued down the hall, he began to see small blue lights wink in and out in the distance like fireflies. The echoes of his hooves resonated hollowly through the hallway, accompanying the steady drips of water from a myriad of cracks in the ceiling. The longer he walked, the more he felt that something about the whole place felt slightly off, as if the floor was tilting.
Well, the building seems completely ruined; guess I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a bit of a lean.
His unease grew as he walked. It seemed like he was the only living soul in the place. It was obviously an abandoned building, though he couldn’t even guess at its purpose. Had Tyria somehow dragged him to one of the islands? That seemed unlikely; the nearest settlement large enough to have large stone buildings like this was Zendruga, a five- or six-day journey by ship. He hadn’t been unconscious that long, surely.
The blue lights turned out to be some kind of bioluminescent moss that was growing inside cracks in the walls. The moss would glow briefly then dim in a periodic manner as he passed. Rye poked a clump of it in curiosity, and it shone much brighter than before, only dimming once he’d given up on waiting and begun to walk down the hall again.
This corridor was beginning to make him nervous. The tight walls, the musty air, and the darkness were all bringing up memories he’d rather forget entirely. The endless noise of water droplets hitting the floor set his teeth on edge. It sounded entirely too much like the clacking of insectoid mandibles.
The right side of the hallway suddenly opened up like a balcony. Instead of a full wall, there was now a strip of stone at chin height—probably closer to chest height for a normal-sized pony—with smooth arches at meter-spaced intervals leading up to support the vaulted ceiling. Rye poked his head over the short wall, looking for the other side of the room, but it was lost in blackness. The floor was likewise hidden, but he could hear the echo of water hitting it somewhere below.
He bit his lip, considering the risks of shouting. Well, I haven’t seen anything alive except for plants so far. He put his hooves to the sides of his mouth and yelled. “Tyria! Tyria, you out there?”
His voice echoed loudly. The room couldn’t be much bigger than his light’s range. He listened for a few seconds as the echoes died, but no one called back to him. With a sigh, he prepared to walk on.
There was a new sound from the darkness. It was markedly different from the percussive dripping of water, so soft and quiet he almost thought he’d imagined it. The sound repeated, but now he heard his name buried in the echo.
“Rye?” It was a familiar voice coming from somewhere far away.
Rye’s eyes flashed wide. “Tyria! It’s me! Where are you?”
“Rye!” she called again. It sounded like her voice was traveling to him through several distant rooms. “Stay there! I’ll find my way to you.”
“All right! Follow my voice.” He looked around. “I’m on a balcony in some kind of large room. I can’t really see much.” Rye began rapping his hoof on one of the pillars. “Just head toward the noise.”
“Nearly there,” she responded, her voice much closer than before.
“I think I’m a floor above you,” he called, trying to see movement in the darkness.
A dim blue glow appeared below him. It grew brighter, and the sound of hoofsteps joined it. Soon, the light revealed the shape of an arch in the wall, and a shadowy figure draped in luminescent moss came cantering out into the wide expanse beneath his balcony. Tyria’s voice, now at a normal volume, said, “Rye! You’re alive, thank the Sisters. I thought—” she exhaled heavily, “I thought I’d gotten you killed.”
Rye beamed. “Not yet!”
That drew a laugh, but he heard the relief behind it. “I don’t see a way up to you. You found any stairs?”
“No. Think I can jump?”
“Um…” Tyria paused, apparently gauging the distance. “Maybe, but you might break your legs. You’re about seven meters above me.”
“Seven meters! How big is this place?”
“Huge. I’ve been walking around for hours looking for you. Although for all I know I’ve been following the walls in circles; this building’s an absolute maze of passages and rooms. I woke up alone in some tiny little chamber, soaking wet. I found this moss growing on the walls, and I’ve been searching for you since then. Any idea where we are? Or how we got here?”
Rye shook his head. “I thought you took us here. If you don’t know, I’ve got no clue.”
He heard her tap the floor with a hoof. “Hmm. It’s old, whatever the place used to be. The architecture’s almost Classical Pegasid, but… I think it’s even older than that. The pillars are Doric, not Ionic; and the sea frescoes definitely aren’t from any pegasus culture I’ve heard of. It’s… it’s almost Early-Palatial period, but I need to see some pottery to tell for sure. Though there is all that sea imagery…”
Rye blinked. “Wow. Where’d all that come from?”
He could hear the wry smile in her voice. “You don’t study under Batty Brushstroke for years without learning a little art history.”
Oh, she and Cranberry are going to get along marvelously. Rye looked side to side, tapping the stone railing. “Well, I guess I should look for a way down.”
“I think I’ve searched most of the areas in that direction,” she said, pointing a shadowed hoof back the way Rye had come. “Found a broken stairway and a caved-in room or two, but no way up to where you are.”
“No ways down, either. I guess we should head forward.”
Tyria nodded, or bowed her head—it was difficult to tell in the dim light of the moss. “If we don’t find a way to meet up in an hour, we head back here, okay?”
“Deal.” Rye rubbed his neck and looked around again. “At least there aren’t any nasty critters in here trying to eat us.”
“Well don’t jinx it,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.” The blue light headed off to Rye’s left and vanished into another hallway.
Rye kept going down his own corridor, still suffused with relief at finding Tyria alive. By all rights we should both have drowned. Maybe this building has some answers.
The growing suspicion in the back of his mind was too ridiculous to consider yet. Although Tyria did say this place’s architecture is using two-thousand-year-old designs. The building itself couldn’t possibly be that old; with this much mildew and water damage, it would have long ago collapsed to dust if it was from the time before the return of the Sisters. Of course, if it was buried underground, or even underw—Rye shook his head. Absurd.
The hallway yielded to further rooms. He made an effort to go right whenever possible, hoping to find stairs of some kind, but the rooms continued without a path down. More frescoes and beautiful designs of myriad fish decorated the walls and ceilings, some of them much better preserved than the ones in the first room.
Though the scale of the structure suggested some kind of public office, Rye kept finding signs that it had been lived in at some point. Stone platforms that could only be mattress supports were in the corners of many of the rooms, and in one room he even found the remnants of a wooden table and chair. They’d long rotted to pieces in the humid air, but the length of the table’s remains hinted that this had once been a dining room.
Maybe an apartment complex of some sort. Or one seriously huge manor.
The next room threw all that into question. It was a long room with a strip of rotted carpet, leading from the door to a short flight of stairs that led up to a platform. Resting on the stone was a large, tall-backed seat that glinted gold under his horn’s light. It was unmistakably a throne.
Weirder and weirder. Rye kept going, past the throne room and into another long hallway. He inhaled, eyes widening. Ahead, the left side of the wall had broken down, scattering rubble across the floor. Through the hole, he could see bright daylight, playing on the cool stones.
He raced toward it, noting apprehensively the strange way the light danced around in tendrils. It almost looks like it’s shining through water…
When he reached the hole, his hooves slowed to a stop, and he stared. He felt his jaw work, trying to process the sight revealed by the ruined wall. After a few moments, he muttered, “Well, this might be problematic.”
Beyond the wall lay the wide expanse of the ocean floor. He could see the surface above; this portal wasn’t actually too far below it, about fifteen meters or so. Sunlight glowed down, lighting up the clear blue water around him. The water was pristine, clearer than any he’d ever seen either in a port or while sailing.
Below, the ground—seafloor, he corrected himself—was completely obscured by a vast swathe of bright colors. Coral of innumerable shapes and sizes covered every centimeter of the ground, up to and including what little he could see of the sides of the building. Millions of fish swarmed above and inside the reef, more than he had ever seen or imagined in his life. A huge creature with what looked like wings and a long, thin tail swooped past, gliding through the water with quiet grace.
This dead building was surrounded by an explosion of life unlike anything on the surface that Rye had encountered. He just stared, marveling at the sheer variety of it all. It was a minute or two before he belatedly wondered, How exactly am I breathing?
He examined the hole in the wall. Now that he was looking for it, it was easy to see the translucent barrier where the air met the water. It bulged slightly outward, rippling as the low-pressure air tried to escape to the surface. Who knew how long it had been trapped in this building?
Nine hundred years, I’ll bet, he thought, staring out at the immense oceanscape before him. “Phoenixia,” he mumbled, putting voice to his incredulous conclusion. A whole empire, sunken in a single day. What else could it be?
Phoenixia had been a great trading city, rivaling Zyre at the height of its power, but its downfall had—despite Marquis Zahira’s theories to the contrary—come from the greed of its queen. Not content with all the money, pleasure, and power of the ancient world, the unknown last queen of Phoenixia had driven her mages to discover the secret of that most desirable power: immortal life.
The astonishing thing about the tale was that, by most accounts, these mages had actually succeeded. They had found a way to tap into the Earth’s magic in a manner unlike anything the earth ponies had ever done: a way to bring out the lifegiving energies that allowed plants to grow, not for agriculture, but to harness it for themselves. Opening a well to this power inside the city, they built a fountain and infused its waters with life, extending their own as they drank from it.
Some versions of the story said that the waters reanimated the island itself; less fanciful ones suggested that the immense outpouring of magic simply reacted with some geologic process. Whatever the reason, eternal life proved to be far shorter than the queen or her advisors had anticipated. The slumbering volcano beneath the island erupted, blasting itself to pieces in a titanic explosion.
The greatest damage to the city came not from ash or lava, but from the shifting ground beneath its foundations. The entire inhabited side of the island shook apart, sliding into the sea in a massive mudflow, taking the buildings and all the unfortunate citizens with it. All that remained now was a thin strip of land on the border of the old island, near the southern end of the Serpent Archipelago.
It was a story often told as a warning against pride and avarice, an example of the fate that would inevitably befall those reaching beyond “appropriate mortal limits”. Rye had always thought that was hogwash; limits were only set to be surpassed. He’d found the real message to be that uncontrolled magic was dangerous, and that any attempts to conquer nature should be undertaken with caution. The evidence for that was all around him.
Indeed, now he was beginning to see the remains of other structures in the reef, not natural but pony-made. Most of the rubble was completely buried, but a few pillars climbed above the coral. Further in the distance, he could see actual buildings rising from the seafloor, white marble terraces and roofs, an entire city entombed beneath the water.
Cautiously, he put a hoof forward to the bubble’s edge. Tensing his legs to start running if water began pouring in, he poked through. A few large bubbles followed his hoof out to escape for the surface, but no surge of seawater crashed through. He held his hoof in the water, waving it back and forth a bit. This is surreal.
A huge shape swam past, and he jerked his hoof back. A shark about half again as large as himself slowly moved down from above, making its way toward a nearby shoal of fish. The fish scattered, instantly vanishing into the coral.
Rye, panting slightly, eyed the shark. It was a yellowish gray, with a pale underbelly and a wide, flat head that was a little bigger than his own. The shark seemed not to notice him, or it didn’t care; regardless, it passed on. Curiously, it ignored the few adventurous fish that dared leave the coral in its wake. Must not be hungry.
Stepping back from the hole, Rye sat heavily on the wet stones. This is just great. How did we end up in a thousand-year-old sunken city? Especially since we were so far from the maelstrom. Something must have carried us here.
“Rye!”
He turned to see Tyria racing toward him down the hallway from his right. She cast aside the glowing moss and met him with a massive hug. Rye wrapped his forelegs around her, hugging her as close to himself as possible, resting his head over her shoulder. “Tyria! Found some stairs, did you?”
“Down the hall another fifty meters,” she said, shaking her head and squeezing him tighter. “It’s good to see you. I really thought I’d—”
“Hey, hey,” he said, patting her on the back. “Relax. We’re both fine, that’s what counts.” He glanced sideways at the view of the seafloor and his mouth twisted. “Well, relatively speaking.”
Tyria, caught up in the reunion, finally noticed the view. She sat up, releasing him in shock. “We’re—we’re under—”
Rye gave her a minute to stare. “I think we’ve found the sunken city of the Phoenixians.”
Tyria looked slowly around at the reef, mouth open. “Well, that explains the architecture… How’d we get here?”
“I’m more concerned at how we’ll get out.” Rye looked up toward the surface. “Even if we could swim up there without drowning, I have no idea how close we are to land.” He sat back down, taking in the view. “And then there’s the sharks… well, take a seat; we might as well enjoy the view while we think.”
She sat beside him, and together they watched the reef as its countless inhabitants swam around in the dance of life. Thousands of colors threaded together in a rich tapestry of activity. Bright orange fish darted through the coral, hiding in waving strands of strange plants. Undulating eels snaked between outcroppings of rock, hunting prey. Crabs ranging from tiny coin-sized creatures to monsters half as large as a pony pattered across the surface, clacking their claws together with noise that did not penetrate the air barrier.
Tyria lay down and propped her head up on her hooves. “I’d give my right ear for a canvas and some paint.” Her eyes flicked back and forth as she absorbed the scene. “It’s so alive.”
They kept looking, pointing out new details to each other, watching the complicated ecosystem with rapt fascination. One of those eight-armed creatures Rye had seen floor decorations of, an animal Tyria told him was an ‘octopus’, went swimming by. Its tentacles curled and pulsed in a way that no static image could capture. Rye followed a different tentacled creature with a long shell-like head as it scooted past. “This’d be a good place for a restaurant…”
Tyria laughed. “What, underwater?”
“Sure! You’d have to get some spells cast to reinforce the glass, and draining the building out would be a hassle, but then you’d be set…” He smiled, picturing it. “The customers would come just for the view.”
“Definitely worth it,” she admitted, pushing herself back up into a sitting position. “Course, to build it, we’d have to get back to land. Had any bright ideas about getting out of here? I don’t think I can swim enough for both of us that long, no offense.”
Rye sighed, shaking his head. “There was some wood a few rooms back, but it’s so rotten it’d just crumble away as soon as we touched it. Maybe… hmm…” he trailed off, lost in thought.
Tyria gave him a sideways glance. “You know, this is the first we’ve had any real privacy.” She half-smiled. “I guess it takes kidnapping and shipwrecking to get you to myself.”
Grinning, Rye shrugged. “Well, until we think of an escape plan… what do you say we take advantage of the opportunity?”
She slid her hooves over his shoulders. “No objections here, Ambassador.”
They kissed as deeply as they had through the bars on the Nightingale. Rye was still unaccustomed to the novel addition of tongues to these little make-outs, but it was something he was quickly learning to enjoy. He returned the kiss with enthusiasm.
Tyria leaned into him, and he allowed her to gently push him to the floor. She lay down with him, her warm body pressing against his torso. Rye was so absorbed in the kiss that he nearly didn’t notice her hoof sneaking beneath the clasp on his robes. It popped open with a swift pull of her hoof.
Rye’s eyes snapped open. Whoa. When I said ‘take advantage,’ I just meant a little necking. His stomach suddenly felt very far away. Tyria pulled her head back and smiled breathily at him. “I was right, your robes are soft…”
His mind was wheeling in panic. Oh, Sisters, is this really happening? What am I supposed to do with my hooves? The air smelled of seawater and sweat. “Uhhhh…”
She sighed happily. “Shh, it’s fine. You don’t have to say anything.” She slid a hoof under his robes, running it over his shoulder. “The tension’s been killing me, too.”
Excitement warred with terror. What if he messed this up? What if he said something stupid? What if he couldn’t make her happy? Please, Sisters, I want to make her happy…
Tyria swung her right hind leg over his chest, resting on him as she pushed his head back to the floor with another kiss. He felt warm all over, but he couldn’t tell if it was his own body or hers. Her hooves framed his face as she lifted her head and sat back. With a small, teasing smile, she brought them up to her shirt buttons, and began undoing the highest one.
Rye swallowed, feeling his heart thump wildly in his ears. Tyria paused. “Something wrong?”
“Just… nervous,” he managed, pawing at the clasp of his robes.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, that teasing smile getting a little bigger, “Never done this before?”
Cheeks warm, he mutely shook his head. Tyria’s smile vanished and her eyes shot wide. “Oh. Oh!” She practically leaped off of him, her face flaming red. “Oh my Goddesses, I didn’t realize—I thought you were nervous about me—I was practically assaulting you—” She slapped a hoof to her face. “Somepony kill me, please.”
Rye sat up, pulling anxiously on the neck of his robes. “Well, I don’t—I mean, I’m not opposed to, uh…” Actually saying that simple three-letter-word seemed unreasonably difficult. “It was just a little unexpected! I do… I do want to… to be with you, if you do.” He summoned his courage and gave her a hopeful grin.
She smiled, still blushing furiously. “Th-thanks. I don’t want to seem like some kind of—of—succubus. If this is your fir—well, this shouldn’t be something traumatic for you. We’ll take it slow.”
Moving back over to him, she took his hooves in her own, and guided them to her shirt buttons. “You lead, if you want. It might help you feel more comfortable.”
He kissed her eagerly as he fumbled with the buttons. They came undone, one after the other, leading down toward something he’d scarcely dared imagine. Tyria’s hooves rested on his shoulders, squeezing gently as he neared the final button. He wouldn't look below the shirt; he was still a bit too nervous for that. Breathe, Rye, breathe…
“GREETINGS, SURFACERS!” shouted a voice from behind them. Rye and Tyria both whipped around to stare at the source.
A pony’s head was sticking through the surface of the air bubble leading to the outside. She was teal, with a sea-green mane, and the biggest, friendliest, beaming smile Rye had ever seen. The rest of her body was resting in the water outside. It was normal looking enough from her head to her waist, her forelegs bent reflexively to stay out of the air; but from the waist down she was covered in smooth skin like a porpoise's, tapering in a long tail, and ending in what was unmistakably a flipper.
The two of them stared at the newcomer, stunned. She opened her mouth wide, and yelled, “WELCOME TO NEW—” she paused, her eyes flicking between the two of them, still pressed together in an incredibly compromising position. She lifted a hoof, mouth still open, and turned pink. “Uhh, welcome to, uh… New… Phoenixia…” The pony bit her lip. “I can come back later,” she said, pulling her head back.
“Wait!” shouted Rye and Tyria at the same time, scrabbling to stand upright. Rye was suddenly very, very grateful for his concealing robes. What hideous timing, he thought with dismay. Alas, the moment was ruined.
The pony, hearing their outburst, stuck her head back out of the water. “I, uh, didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”
“You’re a seapony!” exclaimed Tyria, staring at the pony’s tail. “I’ve seen so many paintings—I never thought I’d actually meet one!”
“Well,” said the seapony, smiling awkwardly, “my name is Meri. I’m pleased to meet you properly, surfacers. Sorry for shouting, it’s just so exciting to finally talk to you! How’s my surface-speak? I’ve been practicing!”
Rye blinked, still processing this. Meri looked just like the hippocampi who bordered all his father’s favorite china. The seaponies were a reclusive bunch; he’d never expected to run into them even with his wide-ranging travels. He hadn’t even known there were any in the Golden Isles. “Your Equestrian’s pretty good, actually. I’m Rye, and this is Tyria. You said ‘meet us properly,’ have we met before?”
“Well, sort of. I’m the one who brought you here!” Meri’s voice was gaining back some of its earlier exuberance. “Took some doing, too, but Vina helped me.”
“She a friend of yours?” asked Tyria.
“One of the best!” said Meri, cheerfully. She pulled her head back into the water and gave a fluting call that pierced the water barrier. Waiting for a moment, she beckoned someone with a hoof.
Rye hissed in surprise as the shark he’d seen earlier came swimming into view, swiftly coming up beside Meri. The seapony smiled, reaching her hoof out and stroking its head. The shark nuzzled her hoof, then swam up and out of sight once more.
Meri stuck her head back in. “Vina’s a good girl, but she’s really shy.”
“You have a pet shark,” said Rye faintly.
“Most of us do! They’re tremendously helpful. Especially for saving shipwreckees, like you two. And they even feed themselves!” Meri was almost bouncing with excitement. “Oh, I can’t believe I found two surfacers all on my own! If me and Vina hadn’t been out harvesting seaweed by the lodestone, nopony would have found you guys, and that would have just been terrible!”
Rye raised an interested eyebrow. “You eat seaweed?”
“Among other things. There’s lots of plants in the ocean, if you know where to look.” She flashed another smile. “Surfacers don’t like most of them. Or so I hear.”
“You hear?” Tyria was trying to button her shirt surreptitiously. “How many surfacers have you met?”
“Uh, well…” Meri glanced sideways, then admitted, “you two.”
Rye had re-clasped his robe, and recovered some of his composure. “How many seaponies are there in—what’d you call this place? New Phoenixia?”
“That’s right,” said Meri, nodding. “New Phoenixia, a city born from the ashes of the old.” The words sounded recited. “We’re a lot, lot smaller than the old city, of course. There are about half a hundred ponies in this reef, all told. We need a lot more space than you surfacers.” She shuddered. “You don’t really live in these tiny little buildings, do you?”
Rye gave her a wry smile. “My house could fit inside this building fifty times over.”
“My apartment has forty-something people living in it,” added Tyria.
Meri shook her head, amazed. “I don’t know how you don’t go crazy, cooped up in those cages. I’d lose my mind if I couldn’t swim a few miles every day.”
Rye watched her tail sway back and forth, fascinated. He was struck with a sudden burst of professional curiosity. “What’s your government like? Who leads your people?”
“Oh, that stuff’s boring,” said Meri, waving a hoof smoothly through the water. “We don’t really have a government. We’re just a big family. We don’t run into a whole lot of other seaponies, but when we do, I guess my uncle Keron’s the one who does most of the talking. I suppose he’s who you’d call our leader.”
“Wait,” Tyria broke in, “I need to ask. How in the world did you get us here from the lodestone? We can’t breathe underwater.”
“Oh, well, neither can we!” said Meri. “We just hold our breath as long as we can.”
“How long is that?”
“About forty-five minutes,” said Meri matter-of-factly, as Tyria’s jaw dropped.
Rye blinked, a little taken aback. “Then how…?”
“Oh, right! Well, when we get surfacers down here, we usually give them airstars. You’re both lucky I always bring some with me when I go out with Vina, just in case I come across a shipwreck.”
“Right,” said Rye, blankly wondering what an airstar was. “Look, Meri, you have our thanks for saving us, but we really need to get back to the surface. Do you know where the island of Zyre is?”
“Zyre… maybe. It’s northeast of here, I think.” Meri’s chipper expression dampened. “Although… taking you anywhere might be a problem.”
Rye’s eyes narrowed. “Are we prisoners?”
“What? No! No, of course not. It’s just… well, there have been some complications recently…” She tilted her head from side to side, weighing her words. “Well… not recently, it’s been going on for a while… look, maybe I should take you to talk with some of the older ponies.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” said Tyria. “The sooner we get back, the better.”
“Okay, then! Let me go get you some airstars. Talking through this little hole is really awkward; the elders are going to want to speak without swimming sideways.” Meri pulled back and swam off out of sight.
Rye and Tyria stood silently, looking blankly at each other. “Uh…” he mumbled, feeling his face grow warm, “You’ve got a button in the wrong hole.”
Tyria hurriedly fixed it, blushing and looking out toward the reef. “Wonder when she’ll be back.”
“Long enough…?” Rye suggested hesitantly.
“Probably not,” said Tyria, still red. “And I’d rather not repeat that entrance.”
He winced. “Right.”
Together, they watched a distant shoal of bright blue and yellow fish dart around each other. “It really is quite a view,” said Tyria with a wistful sigh, sitting down to rest.
Rye nodded with a grim smile. “Let’s just hope we aren’t going to be seeing it for the rest of our lives.”
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Found Atlantis, almost went to Third Base. Well, if that ain't progress, I don't know what is.
4626652
Much agreed here. Although I can't say I'm not disapointed for DSNe to cut short the sexy times.
4626652 Can ponies even get to 2nd base?
I'm very much looking forward to Rye's conversation with the seaponies. I'm surprised you made them an elusive culture rather than a myth.
It took me a while to stop parsing the title as "Love, Sugar and Snails". Seeing it in my feed again after a several-month hiatus, it seems I'm back to square one.
4627868 seaponies are canon to the mlp-verse ^^ (well, maybe not g4... but still)
Thas scene with welcome is hilaries mega funny
Also very interesting development. I look forward to his talk with seaponies.
Thanks for the update
and rye has found another illusive likely useful civilization to ally with.
Now I really want Rye to casually pet Vina when he gets back to the surface in front of the pirates or ate least get a bid dopey grin when he and the pirates see a shack speeding towards them. Probably not gonna happen, but I can hope.
Rapture, Otah Gungah, or even the Research Center from FFVIII, anypony? I
sunken cities!
I have to wonder how you came up with this name... I can't be the only one thinking it's a combination of Batty Gloom and Pen Stroke.
4671959 I was thinking of the Precursor City from the Jak games.