Currents of Fate

Ripples in the water. Sister Pearl watched from the forecastle of the 'Gaze of Sol' as the rowers sunk their oars into the murky waters of the Mournful Sea and stirred it up into foam and rippling trails, like long white plumes that hung from its stern as one might wear on a hat. These were speed and force—a brutish set of virtues that all but defined the mighty vessel, though one might not think so from the way it looked in that moment.

Her sails were brightly colored and all its oars were painted a different shade of crimson, while banners and ribbons streamed from its mast and rigging. Flower baskets were arranged every five paces with candles in between, and a cage of butterflies had been freed onboard just earlier that evening. The still wayward critters lazily floated between baskets, as though dancing to the beat of the flutes and lyres the band played in the background. It was almost enough to belie the true nature of the mighty bireme, but not quite.

Sister Pearl couldn't push it out of her mind. At the far bow of the bireme, flashes of light caught her eye every now and again and the buzz of magic drew her attention to the bronze-plated hull of the ship. She knew as little about the armorer's trade as she did of the shipwright's, but she knew enough to recognize the gleam of candlelight against the half-sunken ram, or the sound of the spellcraft used to reinforce the plating. War spells. The 'Gaze of Sol' was every bit a warship, though the princess wished to disguise it as a pleasure barge for the evening.

But the party was not enough to rid Pearl's mind of the memories that plagued her thoughts. Not two months had passed since the last pegasi raid, but the images were still clearly burned into her eyes. Wings over burning seas, the searing heat of a hundred fires and so many sounds melded together into one incoherent, primal screech in the dead of midnight... Ah, but it was the screams that stuck with her. The desperate wails that rose over the slave quarters all through the night, where none had bothered to stage a defense.

Pearl tended to the wounded for days after that. Her ivory coat, so pristine and well-groomed for the party, had been a mess. Caked in blood and rank with sweat and tears... she still remembered the flies. Clouds of them, thick as smoke, they’d crawled all over her and under her mane. The sound, the smells, it was all with her, and under the shimmering candlelight and all the brightly colored ribbons, all she could feel was a deep emptiness that pooled in her chest and did not let go.

"We can always raid for more," she muttered to herself, as she leaned over the crenel of the forecastle to stare into the murky blackness of the sea. They could, and they most likely would, but if the words of the Exalted Mother had been meant to comfort her, they had failed miserably.

"Sister Pearl." The voice woke her from her memories. "There has been an accident near the ovens. One of our guests has burned his fetlock."

"I'll only be a second, sister." Pearl quickly lit up her horn's magic to wipe away the moisture from her eyes. "Bring me water and light, if you please."

"Of course, sister."

Time to get to work.

"Ouch! Watch it, please..." the colt squirmed and winced at every low vibration of her healing aura. Pearl didn't terribly mind. It was a very simple spell and he didn't thrash nearly as much as... He was also a handsome young thing, which helped some, she had to admit. The process was so quick, so effortless, so mundane it was almost therapeutic. With a final turn of her aura around the burned fetlock, she extinguished the azure glow of her horn and turned her gaze back to the colt and his mother, whose watchful gaze had never left Pearl's ministrations in case she got hoofsy with her son, she supposed.

"It is done, Lord Palfrey," she offered with a charming—though hopefully not too charming—smile, and fully extinguished her horn in deference to his mother.

Glowspur, the Terror of Verdant.

All magical energy ebbed away from her horn, and it was left cold and numb, like a limb one sat upon for too long. Her aura was extinguished, and only after Glowspur nodded in acknowledgement did she allow the magic to flow freely once more. Like holding one’s breath.

"My lady," she continued, "the injury should be kept covered and the bandage be changed with some regularity, at least once a day, if it pleases my lady. It should not sting any further by the morrow."

"Thank you, sister." Lady Glowspur placed a hoof on her son's withers, whether affectionately or as a warning, Pearl wasn't sure. Though Palfrey was rumored to be her favorite.

"Pardon me, sister," the young colt asked through a gentle grin. He was handsome indeed, though there was none of the rugged looks of the baseborn equine in him. Palfrey was a slim and lithe creature with a beautifully kept silver mane and pale violet coat... the kind that a more reckless mare might not be able to keep from imagining being pressed tightly against her muzzle... finely toned muscles, as though sculpted from rock and polished to a shine... slender, exquisitely shaped form, like a dream one might have, where a more scatter-brained mare might picture him pinned beneath her own body...

"Sister?" he asked again, with the vaguest trace of amusement in his voice.

'Dammit.'

"Ah! Yes, of course. Sorry." Pearl quickly glanced at the mother. Oh, Celestia preserve her, the mother. Lady Glowspur was a bull of a mare, and the foreleg draped over her son was armored in a cold iron sabot that could break clean through most shields. Pearl didn't want to know what it could do to a silly unicorn priestess with her head in the gutter.

"I wished to know when I might stop wearing the bandage, sister." The grin on his face! That coquettish colt knew.

Not that anyone had ever accused Pearl of subtlety around the fairer sex, of course...

"Yes, I was just getting to that." She cleared her throat and made every effort not to look at Glowspur. "Three days, Lord Palfrey. No fewer, and Celestia-willing, no more. Do visit me if the swelling persists after that. If it please your lady mother, of course."

"We wouldn't wish to disturb your work, sister." Glowspur blew air out her nostrils like a raging boar. "We'll check with our house healers. May the sun shine on you."

'Visit me...? PEARL YOU BUCKING-'

"O-of course..." She just managed to squeak out a farewell, and Glowspur was halfway gone with her son in tow. Still, she couldn't quite miss the sly smirk he shot her way as he left, or the way his long, toned legs framed his...

'No! Why am I like this?!'

Sister Pearl shook her head to clear it of some very indecorous thoughts and quietly disappeared into the crowd. Around her, the cream of the Crimson Shore's noble families leisurely dined and chatted the night away. It was very late in the night and all the spectacles had been spent, and most of the beer was gone, along with the food. All that was left was the quiet as the 'Gaze of Sol' gently made its way back to port.

Still, some activities were still ongoing. Off the stern of the vessel some fishermares tossed their nets in hopes of catching a few more lemon-fish for themselves, and a juggler did her tricks for a couple foals and their fathers. By the main mast and propped on her litter, Princess Crimson Belle lazily munched on fruit and sipped from a bowl of beer while her personal guard and a big pegasus barbarian kept watch over her royal self. Pearl recognized the guard if not the barbarian, though the latter stirred the mess of memories that troubled her mind. Why the princess let her whims convince her to take on such a creature for a bodyguard, she couldn't tell. But it was hardly her place to criticize her, so she turned her gaze away.

The mood onboard the 'Gaze of Sol' quieted down a little more with every minute that passed, until the only sound to be heard was that of the musicians, the grunts of effort from the rowers, and the whispering caresses of the Mournful Sea against the hull of the bireme. Sister Pearl leaned against the starboard railing and sighed. Perhaps she might still get a chance to brood in peace, after all?

"By Luna's silver moon, what is that thing?!"

Maybe not.

The shocked gasps and oaths to the Equestrian deities broke Pearl and half the ship from their reverie and festivities like a slap across the muzzle. Up on her litter, Princess Crimson Belle cocked an eyebrow and half-tilted her head towards the stern of the bireme, where a small crowd slowly grew in both awe and numbers. The murmurs rose like the tide.

"Mind the net, if it please my ladies," a fishermare called over the growing racket as more and more nobleponies gathered at the foot of the aftcastle, behind which the fishermares had hauled a seemingly huge catch of fish from the deep, only to find that the weight that had strained their horns wasn't fish at all. It was something else, something larger and if Pearl's eyes did not lie, it was something covered in cloth!

"Is it dead?" somepony asked. Pearl knew the answer before the fishermares confirmed it. Magic lit up her horn almost out of instinct and she read the creature's vital signs like a clay tablet... warm despite the freezing water, though all the heat had long since left its limbs to make its final stand deep in its core; no heartbeat, no cerebral activity, though she couldn't tell if its brain had starved of oxygen quite yet. Even if it hadn't, it wouldn't be much longer. Every second pushed the drowned beast closer to eternal slumber.

"Remain calm, everypony!" she called out, though it didn't help much. Almost as soon as she said it the creature began to convulse violently, perhaps for the very last time. Its long, oddly jointed limbs spasmed and twitched, and the many digits on its not-hooves twitched as though grasping for something. They were blue at the tips, she noted absent-mindedly, almost too shocked for pity.

But not quite.

"We only have a few minutes..." she said to the nearest fishermare. The unicorn looked at her with something between fear and surprise, and Pearl got the distinct impression that every instinct in her body wanted to tell her to 'buck off!', but in the end conditioning beat self-preservation, and the commoner lit up her horn to remove the net at Pearl's command.

"Everypony stand back," she called, and motioned for the second fishermare to keep the crowds back. Pale at the thought of ordering nobleponies around, the unicorn hesitated, and was promptly shoved aside by a grim-faced unicorn mare with her mane and coat tinted a deep crimson, and four heavy, cold iron sabots on her hooves.

"What, by Grogar's teeth, do you plan on doing, sister?" Glowspur growled as she and three other crimson-tinted mares in iron sabots formed a line between the creature and the crowd.

Pearl's horn was already aglow and hard at work before she had a chance to think of how to respond. When her thoughts finally caught up to the question, she realized she didn't know.

"I..." she stammered, clumsy with her words where her magical arts sharply coursed through the creature in search of anything that might resemble unicorn lungs.

"My son is on board this ship, priestess. If that thing so much as looks at him..." Glowspur said. Pearl had better sense than to remind her that her lord husband and two daughters were also there with them, and instead kept quiet and licked the mounting dryness from her lips.

'Just what in the holy buck ARE you doing?'

The crowd, though silent at first, quickly began to echo Glowspur's concerns as it became rapidly apparent that Pearl did not plan on returning whatever monster it was the fishermare's had dug from the deep back overboard. The cries rose high enough that Pearl began to hesitate.

She'd found the thing's lungs—massive in comparison to a unicorn's—and its heart. It was a simple matter of draining the first and kickstarting the latter... but should she? Sweat began to pool at the base of her horn. The voices around her grew louder. The poor animal had only a few more minutes before brain death set in... and yet, might that not be for the best? A quick glance at its powerful limbs spoke of some primeval strength, perhaps greater than a unicorn's. Could it wield magic? Was it venomous? She bit her lip hard enough that it hurt.

That's when the candlelight illuminated its face. His face, she realized with no little shock. A hard jawline set over the strangest, most delicate muzzle she'd ever seen on any being, with a short-cropped mane and eyes so ridiculously small... he was a colt! Like a creature of legend, masculine and mysterious, risen from the depths to tempt mares to their doom, perhaps? Pearl didn't know, and she didn't quite care.

Mother didn't raise no knave.

Against her better judgement and the judgement of everypony around her, Pearl cast her spell. The creature's lungs filled with air, his heart coursed with energy, and a torrent of water was expelled from its small, amusingly shaped muzzle to splash all over a terrified fishermare. It convulsed in a fit of coughing, not entirely conscious, before its breathing finally stabilized. The creature, draped in thick, heavy clothes now ruined by the brine and filth of the Mournful Sea, collapsed once more into a deathly sleep. But sleep nonetheless.

Pearl sucked in a deep breath and ran a final check of the colt-thing. Whatever the normal signs for a being of its size and type were, it seemed to be sufficiently within—or close enough to—a 'normal' range that she felt confident no further intervention was necessary. Or better said, there was buck-all she could do if anything else went wrong. Though oddly pony-like, the being’s insides were still weirdly arranged and she wasn’t sure it would react well to unicorn magic.

"It's Celestia's whim now," she muttered to herself. Then squeaked as Glowspur's heavy sabot pressed against her shoulder.

"You should have tossed him overboard," the Terror of Verdant grumbled. So she had noticed?

Pearl shook her head.

"What gentlemare might see a colt in need and not lend aid, my lady?"

"That thing's not even a pony," the mare replied, but Pearl noticed—or hoped—that some of the aggression had seeped from her words. Her heavy hoof and sabot left her shoulder and struck the floorboards with a dull thunk!

He really wasn't, but the similarities were obvious to anypony who cared to look. There was something almost... civilized about him, even in the way the creature's clothes were fashioned, though they were garishly excessive. As he lay there on deck, his chest slowly rising and falling to the rhythm of his breaths, Pearl noted with no little surprise that there was something enthralling about the creature. Glowspur must have felt it too, for there was no further call to harm him.

"What is he, sister?" she asked after a moment of silent contemplation. Pearl contained a sigh of relief at being referred to by rank once more, and took it as a sign that Glowspur wouldn't brain her with her sabots. At least not for the time being.

"I've no idea," she responded. "I don't believe there is a creature anywhere in the known world that might resemble this... whatever he is."

"Perhaps something from Old Equestria?" a new voice joined the conversation. A voice that made Pearl's spine tingle and made her fear for her life at the same time. Lord Palfrey stepped between her and Glowspur with all the curiosity of a newborn foal plainly on his adorable, beautiful face...

Pearl forced her eyes forward as Glowspur ground a sabot against the floorboards.

"Most likely not, my lord," she said, trying to drown her marely appetites in theology. "The blessed Alicorns have not sent anything through for centuries, not since the early tribes of pegasi and unicorns first came to this land. Might I suggest, Lady Glowspur, that the creature could be native to Verdant?"

The Terror chewed on the thought for a moment before she finally shook her head. Her heavy, braided mane tossed like a whip at the motion.

"Never seen anything of the sort. Mud ponies often make use of strange creatures to till their fields, but never anything like this. Yet it might be possible. Alicorns only know what chaos-begotten things lurk in the mainland of that savage continent."

"Yet he's clothed like a unicorn," Palfrey mused. "And he could not have come from Verdant, if you'll pardon me, sister. Why, he looks freshly drowned..."

"You're a clever colt, my lord." Pearl pressed a hoof to her muzzle and cast her eyes over the dark horizon. The blackness of the sea beyond the railing of the bireme was absolute, but for brief flashes of lighting to the far north, where some distant thunderstorm raged beyond the Unicorn Shore. "Indeed, this is a mystery. Perhaps he came onboard a raiding ship?"

"This early in the spring?" Glowspur's eyes took on a dark shade. "I'll have anymare of mine flogged who took able unicorns away from their farms if that's the case, sister. You can have that in clay."

"Maybe it wasn't one of ours..." Palfrey whispered. Neither mare replied immediately, and in Pearl's mind the thought that out there in the dark there may be more pegasi battle-barges sent a very different kind of sensation running down her spine...

"Go with your father, Palfrey." Glowspur said after a long moment spent with her eyes on the waves. "A colt has little business in the talks of mares. No matter how clever the colt may be."

Palfrey smiled and extinguished his horn in farewell, then left. Pearl tried not to seem too crestfallen about it.

“You’ve raised a fine colt, my lady,” she offered, and quickly sucked in her lips at the look the older mare shot her. “He’s clever! Very clever. His tutors must be so proud. A good education is key, after all.”

Glowspur grumbled some under her breath and turned to face the creature once more.

“This better not come back to bite us in the rump, sister.”

Whatever response Pearl might have come up with was quickly lost at the approach of heavy hooves against the floorboards. “The princess!” one of the crimson-tinted mares, Glowspur’s own Crimson Knights, muttered hurriedly and sent the entire ensemble into a momentary rush. Glowspur turned on her hooves at once, while the rest of her knights rearranged themselves to her left. The result left Pearl awkwardly placed out of line, much too far from either flank to form up in time.

“Your grace,” Glowspur hailed the princess as she extinguished her horn. The rest of her knights, and a very flustered Pearl—oddly left behind the others—followed suit.

Pearl waited with a numb horn as Princess Crimson Belle stepped out of her litter with the feline grace of the mythical cat from old Equestria. The unicorns that held it aloft didn’t have time to lower it before the princess of the Crimson Shore hit the floorboards with nary a sound.

“Subjects! Glowspur!” she announced, as though by her word they had only just materialized. “Light up your horns, mares. Go on! No need to bother with pleasantries, this is a party after all!”

She slid between Glowspur and the knight at her left with the ease of a summer breeze.

“I suppose this is my newest guest, then?” She giggled. “Courtesy of my healer... Pear! Did I get that right, Rainstorm?”

“Nay,” a new, heavily accented voice said from behind the line of Crimson Knights beside Glowspur. Pearl swallowed. There weren’t many unicorns along the Unicorn Shore who would dare say that to a princess... then again, the mare who said it wasn’t a unicorn at all. Pearl could only barely make out the messy green mane under bark-hide lion leather coif, or the cream-colored coat painted over in blue barbarian markings, but there was no mistaking the pegasus mare. The big pegasus mare, nearly a full head taller than Glowspur, and Princess Crimson Belle’s newest guard.

“Ah, darn it.” Crimson Belle pouted as she edged much too close to the unconscious creature. Every knight tensed and her own royal guard took a step forward, horns alight and spears tightly gripped in their magical auras. Rainstorm flexed her wings and yawned.

“I was so sure I’d got it right this time. Why must my subjects have such funny names?”

“If it please your grace,” Glowspur walked next to the princess. “This creature might still be dangerous...”

“So it might!” Crimson Belle nodded, as though sharing in some sagely conclusion to a long-standing philosophical query with her Crimson Knight. “What do you think, Rainstorm?”

“Brain it.” The pegasus shrugged, and Pearl felt a protest be born and die in her throat. “Yer fanciness won’t have to feed it then.”

“No no no,” the princess tutted. “We’re not in Windland, Rainstorm. Your barbarian ways aren’t our own. We have civilization!”

The pegasus rolled her eyes and flexed her wings. “Buck it, then.”

If the outrage that flashed across the face of every knight and royal guard present—and even Pearl herself—was shared by the princess, she didn’t show it. She merely pressed a hoof to her muzzle and hummed.

“Sister Pearl,” she called after a moment. The sound of her name shocked Pearl something fierce, but she stepped forward and extinguished her horn with practiced ease all the same.

“What is this thing on my beautiful warship?”

She explained as best she could that, well, she had no idea. But it wouldn’t do to simply admit it, of course. Pearl raked the creases of her brain for the words, the theories, the tales and legends of Old Equestria that might make some sense of what the creature was. She spoke of the fabled minotaur! or the legendary diamond dog! what had existed in the heavenly Equestria, the land of Alicorns where Unicorns and Pegasi had once been united as a single tribe... and Crimson Belle, to her credit, listened to some of it.

“Fascinating, truly.” She sat her royal rump next to the creature, much to the immeasurable chagrin of the guards oathbound to protect her life with their own, and giddily poked him in the cheek. “So you don’t know?”

“Ah,” Pearl grimaced, “that’s... a succinct way to put it, your grace. I’ve never seen anything like him.”

“Him?” she turned to look at her like a hunting trap snapped shut. “Oooh, now that’s interesting...”

“Your grace, if it please you...” Glowspur began, but the demeanor of the princess suddenly changed, and everypony felt it at once. Every guard stood a little straighter, every knight clenched their jaw a little tighter. Pearl herself had a new pressure in her chest that hadn’t been there a minute earlier, and even the wild Rainstorm seemed to sober up some.

“Many things please me, Lady Glowspur. I don’t think this is one of them.” She turned her gaze to Pearl and the unicorn priestess felt her heart wither and die in her chest. “That one of my priestesses decided to resuscitate something this foreign to both herself and my security on board of a merry gathering with half my court onboard, in particular, I find rather hard to be amused by.

“But!” She smiled, but there was little joy in the gesture. “This is a party, after all, and I’m willing to see this as a gesture of goodwill in honour of my victory over the barbarians. So! Sister Pearl...”

“Y-yes, your grace?”

Princess Crimson Belle practically bounced towards her. The gesture would have been rather amusing if she hadn’t been so terrified.

“Am I to understand that this exotic, masculine beastie is your gift to me, in celebration of my great victory over the accursed Storm Mane?”

Pearl swallowed hard. Crimson Belle’s eyes—red as rubies, like her coat, her mane, and the runes carved into her alabaster horn—drilled into her own like a war pick might puncture a helmet. Was it a trick question? Was she even supposed to answer? Sweat seemed to pour in rivers out of her head as she struggled to form a coherent thought. In the end, with every pair of eyes set on her, she managed a response.

“Yes,” she squeaked. A hastily added ‘your grace’ followed soon after.

Crimson Belle remained still a moment longer. Pearl’s heart stopped beating, her lungs froze still, and her brain boiled inside her skull as she struggled to understand what the right answer had been to the question she had just surely bungled...

“Goody!” the princess said instead, and turned away from the petrified unicorn to return to her litter. “Let’s get back to the food then. Do take care of my beastie, won’t you, Sister Pearl? I would so very much hate to lose him so soon, particularly after all the trouble it was to bring him back to life. Wouldn’t you say, Rainstorm?”

“Nay, I still say you ought to brain it dead,” the pegasus grumbled, and followed as the litter effortlessly carried the princess back to her spot by the main mast.

The crowd dispersed around Pearl, and left her alone to ponder on the sudden turn of events. Or mostly alone. Next to her, Glowspur snorted and turned to face the creature with four loud knocks of her heavy hooves.

"So why did you do it?"

Pearl swallowed. She had no good answer to that question, or at least, nothing different than the one she had already given.

"It just didn't feel right to let him die," she said.

Glowspur chewed on the thought for a moment. Before them the strange being lay sprawled on the floorboards while the fishermares gingerly tried to get him onto a stretcher without disturbing his slumber. He was almost three times the height of a regular pony, measured from hind hoof to head, and broad at the shoulders, with a barrel that could easily fit two ponies pressed side to side. His short-cropped mane was black, like most of his garments, and that ill omen alone should have been enough to mistrust the creature. But his face was so pony-like... In the end Glowspur did not immediately answer, but turned to summon one of her knights.

"Yes, my lady?"

The knight, a young mare in her late teens, painted over entirely in the crimson of her order but for the faintest traces of a teal horn, stopped a couple paces away from Glowspur. Pearl did not immediately recognize her until she spoke, the voice was almost a perfect copy of her mother's.

"Shimmer," Glowspur grunted. "Get Lancer, Rouncey, and... No, forget Rouncey. Get Bronzehammer instead. Tell them to armor up. They'll be guarding Sister Pearl's pet from now on."

"As you will it, my lady."

Glowspur's daughter, Shimmershield, nodded.

"My 'pet'?" Pearl's aprehension went unheeded.

"Good lass," Glowspur dismissed her with a gesture and turned back to the flustered priestess. Her eyes were cold, hard saphire in her otherwise red-painted body. "As for you, sister...

"This was a bucking mistake if ever I've seen one." Glowspur's expression was stone. "Why you decided to bring this thing back to life is beyond me, but so help me Luna and all her stars, if this creature so much as spits near a unicorn, I'll run it through with my own horn. Do we understand each other?"

Pearl did not consider herself a particularly brave mare, but a mare she was, and a unicorn priestess too. From somewhere in her body, enough courage mustered to let her meet that hard gaze with her own.

"We do," she said, but either stupidity or Discord's malice kept her lips moving. "As for the rest, whether to heal this or any creature is hardly within your purview, my lady."

Her heart hammered hard in her chest as she finished her sentence. Glowspur's expression did not change. The same iron eyes remained fixed on her, as though she hadn't heard her at all, but Pearl was certain that behind that cool front a fire raged in the older mare. The Terror of Verdant, however, said nothing more of the matter. She bid her goodnight, turned back to the party and was gone.

Alone with her creature—if Glowspur was to be believed he technically was, at least until the princess claimed him back—Sister Pearl sucked in a deep breath and held it for a full minute to stop the blood pounding inside her skull. When she finally sighed, it was like her very spirit left her body and returned to green Equestria, where sunny skies and pleasant waters wouldn't let Glowspur near her.

"Ah, sister?" a very uncomfortable fishermare asked.

Pearl looked up to see two unicorns holding the being aloft on a stretcher, their horns aglow and expressions pained from exertion.

"Do you uh... do you want us to leave him on your cot or...?"

Pearl wanted to cry.

Author's Note

Story will update daily up to chapter 4, guaranteed unless I die.

I'm looking for pre-readers too, if anyone's interested.

Please take the time to like and leave a comment. It gives me the drive to continue doing this whole 'words' thing. Many thanks!