Many Leagues Under
The Seapony platoon navigated their way through the southwest coral reefs. Individual soldiers poked their heads through the tangled undersea barriers, before motioning their comrades to swim after them. It was there they twisted and wound their way, scanning for any signs of danger. There was none at present, but that was by no means a guarantee of safety. The enemy could come at any moment, any time, from any place. A dangerous new game that they were playing.
A few seapony soldiers swam up to their Lieutenant, who was overlooking the edge of the western side of the coral reef.
“The eastern reef is all clear, sir, no hostiles located.” one of them reported,
The Lieutenant nodded amiably, told them that they were “Dismissed,” and the soldiers swam off to rejoin their comrades-in-arms. Arms as in weapons, in the other case it would be forelegs.
He turned back to the west reefs, which were being searched and scanned at the moment, to ensure they weren’t occupied by any sea creatures. In a similar vein to Equestria’s new strategy of relocating animals while in battle, the seaponies had adopted the strategy of doing the same for their coral reefs, home to many a seacreature. It was their duty, after all, albeit a basic one.
All of this had been a constant since Equestria had fell in a vicious civil war that had left them in anarchy. Once their tried and true trustworthy allies, the Equestrians were both numerous, friendly, and had even saved their country once from the wrath of the vicious Storm King. They had helped their country many times afterward, between exchange programs and trade...
But with Equus’s power broken, the remains of the Storm King’s legions had risen to plague their waters and coastlines as they had done years ago. Even without their beloved leader, the Storm King himself who had been shattered into pieces, their terror was still as bad as it had once been. It went to show that their so-called ‘glorious conqueror’ made little difference, present or otherwise.
Despite these terrible setbacks, their own kingdom persisted onward. They took down the few seaworthy vessels that dared to fly the Storm King’s colors, but the nation had long ago phased out boats and sailing vessels for airships and sky legions. In these skies as hippogriffs, they would board and dismantle some of the smaller vessels, but the bigger dreadnoughts proved difficult to overpower.
That, and the fact that they still had many soldiers still servicing them for the purpose of finding any kind of disposable income, even without the Storm King and his equally ferocious right-hoof mare, Tempest Shadow, who had seemingly switched sides in the final hours of his conquest. Why she did, nopony under the Storm King’s remnants could say, but plenty simply used it as all the more reason why ponies were supposed to be their enemies.
The Lieutenant was part of the Hippogriff forces opposing the newfound expansions of the remnants, and part of that was sending out patrols both in the air and under the waves. The interwar years had proved fruitful, as plenty of hippogriffs had visited Equestria, and learned many things.
Lt. Sea Worthy of this particular platoon was one of them, having studied advanced naval warfare abroad, and returning to a commission of the very ranking he presently possesed. Naval technology had drastically changed, but out here, that mattered little. The Storm King remnants relied on their old technology to do their task, and innovated zilch, a significant brain drain since the old days when they ruled the skies.
Sea Worthy surveyed the surface from the deep itself using a pair of binoculars, and after seeing no signs of any Storm King ships floating above, he found himself exhaling a breath he didn’t know he was holding in.
“It’s been 2 weeks since we spotted that last sailing ship… perhaps they’ve finally given up on sea transport.”
He turned to swim back to the soldiers nearby, but as he did, something caught in his perpheral vision. A faint glimpse of something. Turning back curiously, he had a distant sound of something moving, and pulled up his binoculars to inspect the disturbance. As soon as he saw what it was, his heart skipped a beat.
The thing that he had noticed was a massive black behemoth, round and lengthy, and it was moving right towards… them. Plain as day was the Storm King’s sigil on the front end. The sight sent a twinge of fear down the Lieutenant’s spine. He knew exactly what the thing he had seen was, but he had only heard of such things being used farther north. Down here in the Zebrican coasts, you’d think Equestria’s technological stagnance was a joke… but there it was, defying logic. A Storm King Submarine.
Submarines were no living creatures, but complex workings of metal, ballast, and other contraptions. Welded together, the pressurized tubes permitted a being to travel underwater at the same rate, if not faster, than a ship with sails or even an ironclad. They were armed with deadly weapons, and if the sigil of the Storm King was anything to go off of… they weren’t here to make a friendly visit. Sea Worthy found his nerves after a second of staring, and he didn’t hesitate thereafter.
Immediately extracting a compass, he angled it properly and calculated the contraption’s movement based on the directions alone. His eyes flitted between the navigation device and the machine for a moment, before he clapped it closed and moved over quickly to those under his command. He extracted a small conch shell, inhaled slowly, and blew.
A loud, droning sound alerted the seaponies. They immediately turned their attention to their commander, with many surprised and shocked. After a brief pause to breathe, Lieutenant Sea Worthy took in another deep breath and proceeded to shred his lungs.
“Battlestations!” he bellowed at them, practically ballistic, “Storm King vessel sighted 256° west-southwest and underwater, bearing 76°! This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill! To arms, to arms!”
Pandemonium reigned for a few moments as seapony soldiers scrabbled for their weapons, suddenly alert to the incoming assault by the enemy. The Lieutenant immediately turned back after taking in a steadying breath, and kept his eyes trained towards the approaching submarine. It had not altered its course what-so-ever, continuing to beeline straight for their positions, of which the seaponies settled into armed with their weaponry.
Weaponry was being generous. They were armed with spears and tridents, and only the Lieutenant himself actually had a firearm to use, but it was low-caliber. They were left with no choice but to wait for the contraption’s advance.
Once it was within only a nautical mile or two away from them, an ellipsoid-shaped object sped out of a cylindrical depression on the front of the hull, its source of movement being a propeller on the back. As to be feared, the Lieutenant knew it had just fired one of its two torpedoes, which were explosive. If he hadn’t yelled loud enough before, he certainly did now.
“Torpedo incoming! Look out!”
Despite hardly any of them even knowing what a torpedo was, they didn’t need to be told twice. The torpedo smashed into a wall of coral and detonated, scattering pieces of sharp coral everywhere onto the ocean floor. Soldiers hurriedly swam away from the explosion and the sinking debris to safer waters, but one seapony was too slow, and got caught in the detonation.
“Seapony down!” one soldier called, alerting the others.
A few swam to their fallen comrade and hurriedly brought them to their medic. The distant sounds of rushed medical procedures could be heard, but the Lieutenant needed to focus. This wasn’t over yet.
Then, it got worse. More enemy craft joined the engagement, with the dark shapes of two airships soared into the overhead view. One had flown right over them in their busy disarray, while the other had joined the submersible weapon from where it moved.
The one above them unleashed a payload of small, barrel-shaped canisters. They plunged into the water and sunk towards them. The Lieutenant gritted his teeth, and turned to his men.
“Depth charges!” he roared, “Get out of the reef! Move it, move it!”
The battered Seaponies fled entirely from their defensives just as the depth charges sent a flurry of hydraulic shocks that turned the crumbling coral reef into a scorch mark-covered undersea plain. With nowhere else to go, the shaken platoon grouped up, stuck in the middle of the open.
“What do we do, Lieutenant?!” one harried seapony soldier asked.
The Lieutenant motioned a flipper hurriedly.
“Tighten up formation, put your backs against each other!”
They rearranged themselves so they made something like a shield wall, but it was curved so that they all faced away and outward from each other. They raised their spears defensively, buying the Lieutenant time to grab his binoculars and inspect the sub. It had slowed its approach, and now, something else was being thrown into the water. The fluctuating movement and size immediately indicated that they were living things, and swimming, at that.
The binoculars betrayed their main use: scuba gear. Each of them were hooked up to an oxygen tank, masked with a snorkel, and wearing a wetsuit. There were enough of them to make up an entire company
This is getting ridiculous! Sea Worthy thought exasperatedly, First they’re using submarines… depth charges… and now they’ve got underwater breathing equipment?! They must’ve raided… someone or something out in Equestria, this is all of their technology.
The diving forces immediately made for them, brandishing their weaponry. The shield wall held firm, but many of the seaponies were wary. Lt. Sea Worthy checked his compass, grabbed his conch and alerted them again.
“We’ve got a third wave! Enemy targets, sighted 244°, west-by-southwest!”
The soldiers gritted their teeth and tightened their grips. The Lieutenant un-holstered a specially-made pistol that functioned underwater, one of a few Equestrian weapon imports before they went dark. He turned to his troops.
“On my signal, we break formation and flank them,” Lt. Sea Worthy ordered, “Wait for it…”
A moment passed, and the divers moved closer to them. One soldier grunted.
“Wait for it… Wait for it…”
They were almost close enough to attack. The last depth charge that hadn’t detonated did so far off behind them, and the Lieutenant responded.
“NOW!”
They swam in a charge, echoing battle cries as they engaged the diving forces with vim and vigor. Although the Storm King’s forces had the gall to try and swim amongst the seaponies, they did not have the force to back it up. Seaponies easily outmaneuvered them in combat, making the enemies suffer heavy losses, but there were still enough of them to leave the seaponies outnumbered. Sea Worthy nailed a few unlucky divers with his pistol, underwater bullets zipping through to find their mark, and blood misted out in spades. They fought to their last, and the battle was a blur of combat and life-or-death fighting on a tooth-and-nail level.
Just as the Lieutenant had nailed two more targets, a diver snuck up behind him and stabbed him in his side vengefully. Sea Worthy shouted out in agony, and responded by shooting the opponent dead-on in the head, but the damage they had caused had already been done. The Lieutenant struggled to remain afloat, and his eyes were becoming heavily lidded. His left flipper went around his wound in a difficult effort to keep himself from bleeding out, but it was failing. He was too far off from his soldiers to reach the medic in time.
He looked to where he last saw the enemy submarine. It was right near them now, and vibrating with motion as it prepared to attack. Sea Worthy could only watch helplessly, his consciousness drifting away…
… and before he knew what was happening, a torpedo lashed out and hit the Storm King’s craft in a direct hit. The explosion tore a hole in its hull, giving it the company of Davy Jones and his locker, and the Lieutenant looked to the source in a daze.
Another submarine, darker, and bigger, had engaged them. There was no Storm King sigil, but rather, a crescent moon. He looked upward to the surface, and saw dark shapes flitting above near the airships, with sailors tumbling into the water as they flailed.
It was then, that due to loss of blood, Sea Worthy blacked out.
The Lieutenant groaned, awoken by the pain from his wounds, and he rolled to his side with a grunt. He felt very uncomfortable.
He was lying on a bunk, more comparable to a metal operating table rather, and it was suspended by chains affixed to the wall. His side had been wrapped up in bandages, turned scarlet from the lost blood.
An analog clock ticked on the wall, showing it was 3 in the afternoon. Sea Worthy didn’t even realize he had been reading an Equestrian clock until he remembered that seaponies didn’t even have clocks, or at least, most of them didn’t. Underwater clocks were a work-in-progress. Speaking of seaponies, he was still one, which wasn’t terrible. Seaponies could still breathe air, against the misconception that they were water-only. Whatever magic in them that they had been born with meant they could breath air as a seapony, and hypothetically, breathe water as a hippogriff… not that anypony ever tried.
Under the threat of tearing his bandages under an expanse of feathers, however, Sea Worthy remained seaworthy.
After a few minutes of getting his bearings in his cold, semi-cramped cell, a bowl of food was shoved through a slot on the bottom of the door, reminding him that he was hungry. He proceeded to flop over and chow down like he hadn’t eaten in days. To be fair, he probably hadn’t.
He had seen confinement like this before, being a soldier, and he knew they wouldn’t answer anything he said. Instead he was left to sit in the chamber, waiting for… whenever. Whatever.
So he waited. For hours, and hours. He was given more food to eat, and water to drink, but that was effectively it. The clock ticked by, and aside from a small porthole, he had no view out the outside world. From it, he only saw water that either grew darker or lighter depending on the time of day. It was here that he slept, trying to ignore the discomfort in his side.
The next day, a doctor came in and changed his bandages. He said nothing, and Sea Worthy didn’t bother asking anything either. Curiously enough, he was a batpony, which was new for him. He’d only read about them before.
The vibration of movement indicated they were traveling. Perhaps whichever invaders had captured him were taking him to a prison, where he would be a POW. Perhaps he was going to be released, or even executed, or ransomed. He only hoped that the newspapers he had read on the Hellquill-River Federation War had been exaggerating.
The process repeated. The next day, his bandages were removed, leaving a slight scar from the attack. The swords they used were crude weapons, often doing even more harm, exactly intended by the Storm King’s remnants. Using this opportunity, he turned into a Hippogriff, and walked around his cell rather than sit in it. His thoughts still burned with the prospects of his future, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew those who blabbed often let on more than they should’ve.
Eventually he was woken by a door opening and some guards entering one morning. They nudged him awake.
“Get up.”
They were dressed in dark uniforms, unknown to The Lieutenant, who had little else of a choice but to comply. He was led through the belly of the metal behemoth, passing through hallways and rooms with plenty of equines in them, all doing miscellaneous things aboard the ship. He was instead escorted to the surface, where he found himself in a luxurious-looking port coated in dark banners and with more guards. Curiously enough, plenty of them were batponies also. Even curiouser, it was nighttime, but he could’ve sworn the clock had said 8 in the morning. Perhaps it was wrong?
Rather than traveling inland, he was instead led to a glorious-looking capital ship that bobbed in the waters. Run up on the flagpole was a midnight-blue banner with a wing emblem and a crescent moon with a spire on it. A flag unfamiliar to him, though the theme at large seemed to be an endless tirade of blacks, blues, and silvers. He was led onboard, right into the command center of the ship, and up the stairs. At last, he made it to the main deck.
A creature of dark power awaited him, and the Lieutenant let out an involuntary shudder as soon as he saw her.
She had jet-black fur, midnight-blue armor, and cerulean eye-slits. Her lips curled up in a smile, revealing the sharp teeth within her jaw. If her appearance was anything to go by, she not only knew this, but was comforted by it.
“Ah, Lieutenant… Sea Worthy, was it?” she drawled by way of a greeting, “So good to see you up and moving. That wound proved troublesome.”
She was an Alicorn, a creature of legend. Sea Worthy was in total shock.
An Alicorn? Sea Worthy thought to himself in surprise, But how?! Are they not dead?!
Rather than yelling, he took in a short breath, and spoke his mind.
“I thought… I was led to believe that Equestria was torn apart. A Civil War.”
Alicorns lived only in Equestria, which meant that if one lived, then…
“It was, but I have since rebuilt it, and established my reign.” she explained, with the same wicked smile, “We encountered you during your battle. Do not worry about your soldiers, they have been tended to.”
Despite her words of ‘comfort’, there seemed to be something more to it. He swallowed nervously.
“Why… did you help us?”
Her smile became wider, and she trotted forward methodically. Her neck craned down to his eye level. She was unblinking.
“Because I need you to deliver terms.”
Sea Worthy was slightly confused.
“Terms for… what? An alliance?”
She cackled in response, making Sea Worthy feel smaller than he actually was. She didn’t mean…
“You are mistaken. I mean terms of surrender, and I intend to be the one to dictate them.”
She brought her head back, staring deeply into his eyes. He felt weak.
“And YOU are the one to deliver them. Fail, and your country shall suffer. Succeed, and you shall be rewarded for your loyalty, should you comply.”
There was only one question left to ask.
“...Who are you?”
She smiled, as if waiting for such a moment.
“I am Nightmare Moon, but you may call me… Liege.”
They were doomed.