The boat rocked gently on the water.
The seven ponies aboard the ship were casually going about their business. There was nothing to do at the current moment, or for the past few hours, so they decided they might as well take their time going about their individual tasks.
One of the members of the crew, Windgale, sighed heavily to himself as he continued to scrub the floor clean to the best of his ability. He had been at this for a while now, and it never seemed to get cleaner, no matter how hard he scrubbed, it annoyed him to no end. The burning sun and the fact that his hoof now hurt from scrubbing for so long didn’t help.
‘Bloody floors, why won’t they just hire a damned unicorn to do this job for them’ He muttered to himself. It would be much quicker, and a lot easier for him, if he did a job that suited his pegasus stature more.
He lifted his head up at that thought. Why didn’t they hire a unicorn for that job? Hell, why didn’t they just use the one of the unicorns they had on board for that job.
Dropping his brush, he flew over to where the captain was lazily lying on a hammock not too far away.
Landing he walked over to the captain.
‘Hey, uh, captain, can I ask you something?’
There was a small groan before the captain mumbled back at him.
‘Fine, what is it Windgale?’
‘Well, I was uh, just wondering, why don’t we use a unicorn for my cleaning job sir, I mean, it would be a lot quicker and easier for them, rather than for a pegasus like me.’
The captain groaned.
‘Look Windgale, unicorns are expensive to hire, they do jobs quicker than other races, we were lucky enough that ol’ Breezy over there actually wanted to come with us, meaning we didn’t have to pay her as much. As much as another unicorn would be beneficial, we simply don’t have the funds for one on a ship of this capacity.’
‘Of this capacity, sir?’
‘Meaning, we don’t make much money Wind, we literally can’t afford another one.’
‘Oh, right, I see, but don’t you think that we could at least try?’
‘Sure, if you are really that desperate, you can sell your belongings for one, if not, get back to scrubbing.’
Windgale sighed, before turning around, and walking away, mumbling something offensive under his breath.
Looking up at the blazing sun, he took a deep breath, before flying towards his floor again.
As he began scrubbing again, he lifted his head up and looked around, all around him were ponies of all races, lazily going about their jobs, not having a care in the natural world. Despite him being frustrated, he couldn’t help but feel some happiness for his peers around him.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath, inhaling the salty scent of the around him, making him feel dozy, his eyes stayed closed and he began to slowly fall towards the floor, intent on having a nice long sleep.
He lay down, and settled himself into a comfy position, before letting out a heavy sigh.
The boat shook.
Windgale snapped his eyes open at once and stood up, nothing should shake a boat that suddenly, a tilt of the boat maybe, a wave would cause that, but a shake? That couldn’t end well.
He could see other members of the crew reacting similarly to him, looking around and muttering to each other.
The boat shook again, this time with a bit more violence than the first.
This time ponies began to walk over the edge of the boat and peer over the side and see if they could spot the cause of the shaking.
Windgale, following his instincts and peers floated over to the side of the boat and peered over, staring deep into the deep, dark waters that lay below.
‘What’s going on!?’ Yelled the captain ‘Why is the boat shaking?’ he yelled, walking quickly over to the rest of the crew.
‘Dunno captain, could be anything’ replied one of the crew.
‘Well, find out what it is, I don’t need anything that could potentially harm this ship near us today.’
Once again the boat shook, this time for a significantly longer period of time.
‘You.’ The captain said, pointing at one of the younger pegasus in the crew. ‘I want you to fly up there and see if you can spot anything.
‘Aye captain.’ He said as he flew off.
Half a minute passed before he began waving frantically at the ship.
‘Hey! Something moved down here, still not sure what it is though.’
‘Can you tell what it is?’ The captain yelled back.
‘Not yet, looked big though, moved quickly.’
‘See if you can get a closer look at the water’
The pegasus complied without missing a heartbeat, quickly plummeting until he was mere meters off the surface of the water.
Looking down, all he saw was darkness, pure blackness.
But there was something in the darkness, he could see something moving, not much but something. Suddenly, something white appeared, well, it looked like a very dark white, more so grey.
Then some bubbles floated up from the blackness of the water.
It went still for a few seconds; the pegasus squinted, looking for anything that could be there. Until finally something happened.
Two glowing orbs of yellow appeared in the darkness, staying there, still, as if they were the eyes of something.
It hit him.
They were the eyes of something, the darkness was the….thing.
He barely had time to breath it before it lunged upwards, out of the water, engulfing him with it’s enormous jaw, quickly swallowing him, before anyone could register what had just happened.
The crew stood by the side of the boat, too scared to move, and still in utter shock of what had just happened.
The creature turned it’s head towards them.
‘Shit.’ Windgale muttered under his breath.
It let out a deep and unforgiving roar, that would have terrified even the gods themselves.
Almost instantly, the pegasi began to take off, flapping their wings as hard as they could to get away from the monstrosity that lay ahead of them.
The captain just stood there, staring at the creature, alongside the rest of his crew that couldn’t fly away to safety
Windgale noticed the beast go under the water, and disappear from sight, he ran over to the captain, and shook him with power and fear.
‘Captain what the hell are you doing! You need to get out of here now!’
The captain merely looked downwards as he took that in.
Turning to Windgale, he looked him in the eyes.
‘Wind, get the hell out of here, we try to move, and we would be dead in seconds, there’s no saving us now, get out whilst you still have the chance.’
Windgale looked at the captain, he hated him with a passion, but he had to respect the stallion for everything he had done in the past.’
Turning around, he put a look of horror on his face.
The beast had jumped out of the water, and had reached incredible heights, snapping several pegasi out of the air, and dragging them down to the depths of the sea before they even go far.
‘Well, shit, I’m dead either way now.’
Looking up he put all of his energy into flying directly towards the sun. The beast had now finished off the pegasi and had turned it’s attention towards the boat, he watched helplessly, as the beast, approached the boat, before diving underneath it.
As he kept flying upwards, hoping to escape to creature’s jumping height, he saw the last looks on the ponies that were left on the boat, moments before the beast jumped up, and clamped it’s mighty teeth around the sides of it, crushing it slowly, before quickly pulling it down below the surface of the ocean, and into the murky depths that lay below.
Windgale stopped flying, and looked down, there was only a few wooden planks remaining, along with the red stains of a few ponies blood that had been on that ship.
Windgale muttered a prayer to the gods before flying up above the high cloud line, and collapsing onto it’s soft bed.
As he lay there he could only think of two things; what in Tartarus was that thing, and where had it come from.
Author's Note
Just a thought that came to mind.
Criticism highly appreciated!
Link to image that inspired this: Here
