Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Castle Tambelon, Cistern, Stuck inside a magic sealing clam shell, Ocellus-

“How did he grab us so fast?” Silver Stream was not taking it well, I wasn’t either and I had been slapped into this clam and before I knew it I was cut off from being able to feel everything. Not being able to sense emotions, it was almost as bad as sensing too many powerful ones or one major negative one over a region.

I was doing okay with my friend’s emotions protecting me from the malice in the air. They were scared, but very determined and brave. Well Silver Stream wasn’t at the moment, given she was a natural born sea pony… being trapped in a clam shell she couldn’t get out of must be causing her trauma.

Edith was clucking in an upset manner, but was affectionately nuzzling up to my hippogriff friend and cuddling her while shivering with fright.

“I can’t believe I was taken so fast…” Foenum Velvet looked upset, but at least she managed to get a warning out to the others, now we were hearing the remainder of the Froglin that was in here being eaten.

“Don’t worry, Pom will get us out of this, she always has some kind of idea of what to do and if she doesn’t she usually comes up with something eventually even if it isn’t the greatest idea.” She was a quick thinker at least and I was trying to be reassuring. “She kept us alive for most of this year and taught us a lot of things, she can get us out of the clutches of this clam that is preventing us from using magic.”

-Standing on the stone pathway going through the center of two semi-circles in the large round cistern, Pom-

We dodged out of the way and one of the seven tentacles that slapped at us from the ceiling, one lifted up and threw the grisly smashed and splattered remains of the unfortunate Froglin into the large red octopus’s mouth. Not beak, mouth with teeth.

Ultros was pretty weird, but that was understandable as digital creatures apparently had a lot of oddities, Squirk was disturbing for the fact that he was biologically native to Equus and why you don’t see mouths with normal teeth on the top portion of an octopus.

“Kids move back. Dolly get your magic charged up and maybe try to use gravity against him. Dormarch get a biological analysis and then send it to me directly, then stay safe sweetie. Woof, Tuft, Puff and Ruff, boys I want you to protect the others from any tentacles that come at them that you don’t think they can handle. Arizona, Tian, we’re at the front of this!” I was surprised I was taking charge of the situation, Tianhuo looked surprised too and otherwise nodded and didn’t gainsay me.

“Well this is…” Gallus was about to say something, but I stopped his inevitable sarcasm.

“All of you do what you think is necessary if you think you can do something, but try not to get yourself in danger and for my sanity don't be a hero, please.” I finished as I moved forward and raised my right hoof to fire a Thousand Spear air jet into the large red octopus’s yellow eyes, he didn’t flinch and didn’t even blink.

“My eyes are as tough as the rest of me, nice try though!” I leapt to the side then jumped straight up over the tentacle as slammed down and tried to swipe at me, the shockwave of it slamming down almost knocked me over. “Come on, I’m going easy on you by not using magic, do you not want to save your friends?”

While I was avoided a second tentacle trying to grapple me in the air, Tianhuo burst forth and deflect two tentacles and blasted forward on a jet of flames to kick at the upside down monsters head. No effect again, what was this guy made of?!

Arizona wasn’t having any better luck as her hooves and head were striking and knocking back the tentacles, but at most she wasn’t doing any damage. She even tried to grab and pull Squirk from the ceiling, but that proving to be ineffective too.

Even Arizona wasn’t strong enough to deal with this situation, fire wasn’t going to work.

“Gravity!” Dolly shouted out.

-A few seconds earlier, Gallus ‘Guard Griffon’-

The Dalmatian was an odd one, cute and had opposable digits on her paws, she was motioning to me to smack her skateboard with my spear as she held it up defensively. Yona and Sandbar were giving her confused loosk, Smolder however made a go ahead knowing gesture.

I brought back the shaft and swung it into her and saw some strange glowing orbs absorb into Dolly after she stood up to the impact, the dog motioned for me to strike again and possibly harder.

I swung and my spear slammed into her board and popped her back a bit, she managed to stay upright and sighed with a bit of a smile.

The dog barked and pointed a paw up at the octopus, a black and purple orb slammed into the octopus and caused him some discomfort. So that’s what Pom meant by charge up, must be a low capacity problem when it comes to magic and it now says a lot about me that I’ve learned far more about unicorns in the past year than I ever thought I would.

The tentacles were even moving much slower as Pom, Tianhuo and Arizona attacked doing jack all to the guy and getting him to let go of the clam shell holding our friends. Squirk seemed to be stretched downwards from whatever that magic did, but he still wasn’t coming off of the ceiling and even if he did, did we really want this guy to fall into the water? We probably didn’t want to fight this guy in the water if he fell into the cistern.

The Dalmatian whined and looked determined to get into the mess, but was pushed back by one of the Canis Minor before she got squashed by one of the tentacles. The three tailed fish canine was staying far back and scrutinizing our big red problem carefully.

Pom was fast, ridiculous so, the blue energy come off her hooves acted like she was clawing at the tentacles… the damage was minimal, as in she couldn’t do more than scratch the octopus’s skin. She didn’t exactly have the power, but was good at distracting. She even tried a golden colored claw attack, with maybe slightly large scratch as a result.

That wasn’t enough.

Tianhuo was as fast and a lot stronger than Pom as the middle ground between Arizona and Pom in overall capability. Still no damage, despite launching her body about avoiding the tentacles and trying to deliver powerful fully bodied blows with bursts of flames coming off of her. The light and flames, unlike with the Froglins, had no effect and aside from maybe causing a mild dent in a tentacle or the body itself.

Still wasn’t enough.

Arizona was knocking back the tentacles, but she was having a hard time keeping up with their speed even when slowed down by whatever Dolly did to Squirk. Her blows could knock back the tentacles and even do a small amount of bruising that quickly disappeared. The best she could do is wrap up a few tentacles with a length of rope and it would eventually be able to free its tentacles in short order.

Arizona didn’t brace for a tentacle and was sent smashing into the stone wall, which she quickly got out of and was back in the fight as the slowest combatant. She was tough and strong, but she couldn’t do nearly enough damage quickly enough or be given the opportunity to. Her speed was worst of the adults among us.

This Squirk guy was able to handle them so easily. Yona gave out a yell and charged forward to shield bash a tentacle, but was soon picked up and almost slammed entirely through the metal grating in the damage semi-circle to our right.

“Yona!” Sandbar immediately sent a mass of his sand to wrap around Yona and quickly pulled her free from the grating before she sank into the nasty water below. Yona was mostly okay, but whimpering as she held her shield in front of us. “Are you okay?”

“I am being fine, my pride as yak that can smash is being quite hurt though… also I think I have some bruising.” Yona was the strongest among us, next to Sandbar as long as he had beach sand or sediments to manipulate.

How did one injure an octopus with stone hard body?

A tentacle got around Pom’s midsection mid leap and Squirk tried to bit off her head, she let out a bark and Squirk reflexively released her after the blast caught him in the mouth… only after slamming Pom bodily into the ceiling.

Tianhuo caught Pom and quickly got her out of the way of another attempt by Squirk to grab back onto her after letting her go.

“Okay, analysis done…” Dormarch I think his name was, he looked fairly upset. “He doesn’t have weak points, his skin is as rubbery as it is tough and goodness knows what he’ll be like when he actually starts using magic against us… but I think I might have a solution for how to start hurting him.”

“Well let’s have it, because our best fighters are getting beaten over there by an octopus with one tentacle behind his back and I don’t think I’d have any better chances of putting my spear through the eye of that monster.” I would have lost my lunch at seeing the Froglin get eaten, but Griffons eat mice and small prey species. Usually they are cooked, but I’ve have to eat a lot of food raw before and bugs were not filling unless you could find them in large amounts. I’m surprised I didn’t have parasites in me from eating so many rats. “Not without getting torn in half and devoured afterwards at least, that guy is an apex beast.”

Dormarch turned to look at me.

“We need to pry Squirk off the ceiling and possibly get him wet, any ideas?” Dormarch asked as he watched Pom recover from being bashed senseless and get back into firing blasts of energy from her mouth, said blasts were blocked by a single tentacle creating a small barrier of energy around itself. Squirk refused to open his mouth to taunt Pom, probably because his tongue and mouth just got blasted and actually caused him some pain. “They are acting as a distraction at the moment and mom wants me to tell you that if you can just get him off the ceiling, that would go a long way to getting through this fight faster. We can maybe cause Squirk some serious problems with one Dolly’s spells if we can submerge him. As for why we want him off the ceiling… I believe his underside is highly vulnerable to attack.”

“Of course it is.” I said flatly, thinking about jumping into the water and stabbing the octopus from below in his more vulnerable parts through the grating in the floor.

“Yeah, that’s generally the kind of threat Pom has had to deal with for the past year.” Smolder commented dryly. “That’s not going to be a very easy to reach place Dormarch, also fighting him in water is a bad idea.”

“Not necessarily.” Earning my attention Dormarch. “Look I can’t explain the plan, but if we can make fall on top of the grating then at least we can try to stab him from below with Gallus’s spear to cause some damage. I have a distinct feeling as to why Squirk grabbed Ocellus, Silver Stream and Velvet of Foenum… Edith was probably incidental.”

Tianhuo plowed through the metal grating on our left a second later causing us to jump as a mass of steam and bubbles rose out of the water and eventually Tianhuo poked her mouth through a small portion of the grating to get some air while gasping and we could vaguely see her shadow quickly swim towards one of the larger holes.

The light in the room plunged when Tianhuo did, at least the Canis Minor had been on point and deflected several tentacle attacks directed to those of us who were standing around uselessly until Smolder lit a torch and held it aloft. After that Yona managed to block two tentacle strikes on her own and we backed up a bit.

Eventually a wet and gasping Tianhuo managed to find a large enough hole in the metal grating to crawl out of thanks to Smolder’s quick thinking and she reignited lighting up the cistern again. It was just in time to witness Arizona take a battering from all sides, as Pom quickly took to clinging to a wall to stare at the cow being tenderized with wide eyes.

Squirk was chuckling quite audibly at batting Arizona about between his tentacles, he eventually grappled her with all seven of them and started trying to crush her in front of us. Squeezing down on her from all sides in a devastatingly crushing grip that not even Yona would survive in for long.

Arizona refused to be crushed under the strength of the octopus, but she was clearly straining to push back against all the tentacles and in deep trouble.

I looked up at the ceiling trying to think and blinked… it was made of stone. It, the ceiling, was made of stone. A small lightbulb went off in my head. Let’s see holes in the ramshackle metal grating, yeah, I could make this work!

“If Squirk won’t come down, then we need to attack the ceiling… or…” I turned to look at Sandbar watching as Yona whimpered at seeing one of her heroes being slowly crushed alive. “Sandbar, you attack the ceiling!”

“What good would that…” Glaring at Sandbar, he quickly shut up.

“Can you turn that stone into sand?” I really doubt an octopus can keep a grip on the ceiling if Sandbar could do his Earth Pony thing.

“I like where your heads at, mom can actually help with that!” Dormarch stated with three wagging tails and Pom suddenly changed what she was doing dancing and flipping around tentacles to glance at the ceiling and making odd growling noises. “It’ll take her a moment to find the right magical frequency though and she’s doing it while in duress, maybe I should remember those for her... Anyway, if you can hurry up and help with the dangerous ceiling octopus, then that would be nice.”

“I can attack the ceiling, but I have a limited range on how far I can actually move my sand from me… I can’t actually control dirt, stone or any other form of material.” Sandbar did pretty good with just beach sand all things considered.

“Well it’s good enough to me and has protected us this far, now do your best… maybe spatula that guy off the ceiling by getting that sand above him and pulling down to get a pocket of air underneath him?” Here I got a look from Dormarch as Sandbar immediately started slapping the ceiling with sand and tried to get the sand up underneath his upside down butt and pull him down.

“You’re full of good ideas, why were you ever an orphan?” Dormarch stated and I gave him a sad look.

“Nobody in Griffonstone cared before, nowadays they do. Also I became smart exactly because of that.” A lot of sarcasm aside, I did like being adopted by witchy cat that didn’t care how weird you were.

“Huh, somewhat like Shanty, but she is more likely to rush into situations.” Dormarch’s attention was distracted by Pom slammed into a wall and pinned by a tentacle, she looked to be okay by the way her wool puffed up. Arizona was now free of the crushing grip of the six other tentacles flailing about in her direction.

“RRrrrrRRRRrrrrr…yip!” The ceiling block cracked in various places in as soon as Pom made that yipping noise despite being pinned. Squirk’s body had prevented the block from getting damage, but it was a start.

Tianhuo was trying to free Pom from the tentacle trying to crush her, while Arizona and Yona held off the other tentacles. Yona apparently got over her fright of seeing one of her heroes in a crushing grip and decided to defend instead of attack, which was proving to work better for her than going on the offensive as she was using her size effectively.

Sandbar was hitting the cracks with his sand as hard as he could manipulate it and he could hit pretty hard with it, I had nothing I was really doing unless I want to get close to that monster and get my body wrung out.

Even the Canis Minor were more useful than I was at the moment…

My eyes locked onto the clam shell being held at his back, don’t worry Silver Stream we’ll save you, Edith Ocellus and Foenum Velvet.

Squirk tried to stop Sandbar from slapping the ceiling with sand and worsening the cracks up there, but sand was hard to stop and Sandbar wasn’t staying within the range of Squirks tentacles.

“Oof…. Nghhh…!” Tianhuo was grabbed by a tentacle, she was struggling to get out of it as it squeezed her. Arizona and Yona were dealing with the five remaining tentacles poorly.

Pom was still pinned against the wall trying to bite the one holding her down for all the good it was doing her, at least she was still trying and her struggling became more pronounced when hearing Tianhuo’s bones creak from being pressured.

This chuckling octopus was terrifying and the fact that he could be even worse when he started using magic meant he was only just toying with us so far. Even if his magic was weak he was barely scratched and we were quickly losing ground against a guy that hadn’t moved from his spot since the fight even started. I didn’t want to know what this guy was like when he was mobile and using magic at the same time.

“It’s not nearly enough!” Sandbar stated as Yona moved to block a tentacle for him as he slammed another hoof shaped mass of sand into the ceiling around where Squirk was hanging from.

I looked to my right when I felt something tap me on my right leg, I blinked and looked at Dolly she pointed up to the octopus and quickly made several gestures while pointing to my spear. More like the tip of it? Is she barking for me to get in the middle of that?

Also I notice that Pom’s four god puppies started flying up to and biting at the tentacles, their bites did little and they were swiftly slapped away. They weren’t on the offensive, they were still defending us, just in a more aggressive manner.

“Ohh… I can’t take it anymore, sorry mom, but I’m jumping in! Search Hunter!” With a flash Dormarch seemed to have teleported onto the tentacle pinning Pom down and unleashed blast of energy from his mouth, lightly scorching it and doing basically nothing. A tentacle whipped out for him and he disappeared in a flash.

Appearing next to one of the octopus’s eyes, Dormarch fired a blast of energy from his mouth at it, again doing almost no damage. Dormarch at least forced the octopus to slap the ceiling and caused some more damage to it.

The five tentacles were occupied, I looked at a spot where there was a small hole next to Squirk’s body and glanced at Dolly who was still looking to me to do something with a serious expression on her face.

“I’ve got another idea to accelerate things, get on my back and warn me if Squirk notices me.” It seemed like Dolly was excited to hop onto me with her skateboard and rock solid bone.

“Sandbar when I say ‘now’, hit the butt of my spear with as much force as you can manage with your sand.” I spread my wings and leapt up, Sandbar turned to me and nodded. I carefully got into the air and Smolder continued to keep the room lit with her torch and was staying outside the range of the tentacles while hovering nearby.

“What are you going to do?” Smolder asked as she hovered close to me.

“Something helpful hopefully, didn’t train to be a royal guard for nothing… learned a lot about using a situation, environment or even my opponent’s lapse of judgement to my advantage.” Had to learn a lot of that from having Jaded as an adoptive big sister, she was utterly insane… I mean how do you normally respond quickly to someone running at you with knives taped to their eyes while on fire?! “Just keep the area lit up.”

“Right!” Smolder could probably bite and chew through the tentacle flesh, but she probably didn’t want to be slapped around like those poor puppies.

I slowly approached in the air towards the upside down octopus that was giving everyone a bad time. Even Sandbar got hit as I approached, I’m so glad for Earth Pony resilience and his ability to use sand to blunt the impact with the stone walls of the cistern entirely. Didn’t want to lose my best male buddy around, nothing against Spike or Big Mac, but Sandbar made me feel like I was normal and not the only brightly colored griffon in existence. I’m fairly certain one of my biological parents had to be a hippogriff, it would explain my bright blue feathers.

Blue was a good color for stealth in darkness as I hovered close while Squirk was looking below, I angle my spear and relied on the fact that Squirk would be too tough to feel me stabbing it into the damage ceiling he was sticking to.

Royal Guard spears were made of some tough stuff, but in general would not survive the rigors I might have to put my personal spear through. Mine was made with Adamantine and Yggdrasil wood… still wonder where Jaded got the wood that’s harder to break than most metals. I liked my gift, mostly because it was more durable than I was and was likely to survive this encounter and outlast my existence to eventually end up in Smolder’s hoard.

My will is leaving most of my things to my dragon friend as a form of sentimentality to remember me by, I’m going to leave some form of legacy behind and it’s going to be a memorable one.

I wedged the spear against the ceiling and the octopus's body, barely managed to get the tip of it up above the body of the octopus and then with both my hind legs I kicked the back end of my shaft and it wedged even deeper. It actually managed to lightly cut the stone hard flesh of the octopus a little bit.

“Now!” I called out to Sandbar and Dolly suddenly leapt of my back with a flash of green in her eyes and she somehow redirected the momentum of the tentacle to slam into the spear and suddenly Squirk was paying quite a lot of attention to us as portions of his body lightly popped off the ceiling a bit.

I quickly flew out of the way as Sandbar sent all his sand upwards and it slammed into the spear pushing it into Quirk and created an air pocket. His weight, which was apparently being effected by whatever Dolly did earlier, caused a loud popping sound as the octopus flopped off the ceiling and slammed into the floor head first with a meaty impact.

Squirk let go of all of his prisoners and was groaning on the grating and stone flooring through the middle of the room from the impact as he rolled into an upright position.

Pom and Tianhuo were freed, the latter was gasping for air as the former got her standing. I ignored them and managed to grab the wildly spinning spear by the shaft and dove for the clam shell.

I rammed it towards the exit to the cistern room with my full weight put behind the action, preventing Squirk from grabbing his hostages back up. My shoulder ached and I hoped everyone stuck in the magical clam thing was alright.

Dolly barked something and I quickly dodged losing my head inside my torso to a tentacle a second later, having seen the shadow and got an early warning I ducked us down behind the clam. The clam blocked the tentacle from slamming down on us from above.

Before I knew it Arizona was knocking the tentacle off of the clam and taking a blow for me from another tentacle sweeping towards me and the clam.

“Gah, you two work on getting that clam open!” Arizona roared as she bucked the tentacle away with her hind legs. “I’ve got you covered.”

Turning away from me Arizona pulled out a length of rope and glared down the octopus monster, who was still battering others without even looking at them. Did his tentacles have brains in them? It was like Squirk had become more aware of everyone in the room.

“Really?” Squirk stated before a tentacle lit up and slapped at Arizona shocking her with voltage causing her gasp and I watched as her muscles locked up. “I think it’s time I start putting my magic to use in this fight.”

Great, the only way this fight could get worse, is if he destroys the floor beneath us and takes the fight into the water below the grating. In fact looking at the stone pathway leading throughout the room, I notice that there was a line in the middle of the pathway throughout the entire cistern.

“Smolder I need some light over here!” I called out as the fight was still going poorly now that Squirk was upright and taking up most of the room and the center of the cistern. Also I had a sneaking suspicion as to how Squirk caught a Froglin and I was now hoping the line in the middle of the stone flooring didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

“Little busy not getting pancaked here and keep things lit up!” Smolder called out as one tentacle chased her around in the air either trying to swat her or wrap around her.

I watched as two tentacles suddenly started glowing and I knew exactly what Squirk was about to do.

“Everyone off the metal grating!” My warning came just in time two tentacles slammed down and the two semi-circles of space to move suddenly became blinding with lighting energy lighting up everything in the room.

Everyone had gotten off the grating, well just about everyone except for Arizona. She got the full brunt of one of the semi-circles lighting her body up with lightning.

“Ow, that pinched.” Arizona stated as she stiffly stood up and started stretching out. “Hate lighting so much…”

That implies Arizona has been hit by a lethal amount of voltage before, I want to know what her life was like before I’ve known her as a cousin.

Even when blinded Pom and Tianhuo somehow managed to keep dodging or attacking Squirk and I turned my attention to the clam shell and tried to wedge my spear into it to pry it open.

“Are you alright?” I asked as I try to open the clam.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Arizona wasn’t a one of a kind cow, I know what her mother was like with dynamite.

“Okay what did you need some light for?” Smolder asked as she hovered near me while everyone else attacked and distracted the octopus. One of the god puppies slapped against a wall paws first and then pushed off of it to go flying back at Squirk.

“To check the floor… not good my suspicions are confirmed.” I continued with trying to pry the clam open, but it wasn’t working. I pulled the tip of the spear free and looked at one of the nearby holes in the grating I could fit through on the right side of the room. “This isn’t working. Can you watch the clam?”

“Sure thing, but don’t do something too dumb.” Know me so well Smolder, I was planning on doing something pretty dumb.

Hopefully my Griffon constitution can handle being electrically fried if Squirk retaliates by sticking his tentacles into the water and electrifying it. Those swimming lessons with Silver Stream were going to pay off.

Watching through the grating as various blasts of magic filled the air. Squirk seemed to favor lightning magic a lot and was sometimes using blasts of water or raw unguided magic missiles, he occasionally sent bursts of wind out by physically swinging his tentacles to redirect his blasts of water in a given direction. Everyone was, at best, just distracting him and doing no serious harm.

Let’s change that, fortune favors the bold after all!

I took a deep breath and dove into the water through the large hole in the grating and started swimming towards the octopus offensive knocking around all my friends. As tough as they all were, Yona and Arizona would just survive by attrition, they weren’t invincible.

Taking my spear in both talons as I kicked with my hind legs and used my wings to sweep my way forward, I looked up and could barely make out a large pulsating fleshy sack of something that could only be a weak point that Squirk was keeping hidden. A smile came to my beak as I pulled the spear back and then stabbed it upwards and angle through the grating with as much force as I could manage.

I heard a pained bone chilling roared that shook the cistern and possibly the most of the sewers, my body locked up slightly and I could barely see what was going up there. All I knew was that I just did the most damage thus far as my spear pierced deeply into them.

A nasty looking fluid splashed out into the cisterns questionable waters near, said fluid definitely did not look like blood or ink and it was spreading throughout the water quickly… did I just bust a wart or was it something else? Either way what I just did had seriously hurt.

Prying my spear free, I stuck my beak up through the grating while Squirk was still roaring in pain and got a fresh gasp of air before quickly diving as far as I could as the upper portion of the cistern. My body was shaking and threatening to lock up and I wasn’t letting it until I got to safely deep enough.

The waters were soon filled with a strange toxic gunk pouring into it and creating a film on the top of it, followed swiftly by two angry electrified tentacles that stabbed through the metal grating like butter.

Kind of hard to not see the water above you fill with dark gunk and not know what was going on above you aside from the tentacles lighting up the water with lightning as a being bad thing. Know that I now had a limited range of movement I could do without being absolutely fried to death. Also the waters were starting to heat up from all the lightning energy.

I couldn’t surface like this… thank goodness for ten minute pirate breath holding techniques Silver Stream knew about, apparently sea ponies and pirates have a good rapport a lot of the time if the pirates hadn’t done any crimes against the sea.

I really should take up Kuril on permanently gaining the ability to breathe underwater after feasibly surviving this. If not for wanting to spend time with Silver Stream in Seaquestria, then to survive situations exactly like this one occurring again.

I don’t know what was going to kill me first, drowning, electrocution, the toxic body sludge, the water itself possibly being diseased or having foreign bacteria in it that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years, being boiled alive by the heat generated by the lightning energy and there’s always good old plain just getting ripped apart by a really large evil magical octopus monster.

Just stay calm and concentrate on holding my breath...

-Smolder-

I was trying to bite the clam open, no going, it must be magically enhanced.

“Gallus!” Pom shouted when the waters lit up, everyone was as worried about Gallus being down there. "I said not to be a hero!"

“If he wasn’t fried immediately then he’ll simply drown eventually in a matter of time, I have a taste for battered griffon wings with a sautéed lambkin.” Squirk could probably make good on his threat, aside from what Gallus just did, we really haven’t managed to damage this guy very hard. “You know what… I’ll just make a soup out of all of you when I’m done here, I wonder how you will all taste when you are painfully liquefied!”

Arcs of electrified water started spraying up through the grating controlled by Squirks magic. Yeah this battlefield really favored the big red menace entirely no mater where he was positioned, even out of water.