By lunch, the rain was coming down harder than ever, and they retreated to their rooms to eat, though not for long. In close quarters with Octavia, conversation was strained and clipped, and it was only half an hour before Rainbow, exhausted from dodging confrontation, left in a nascent huff.

She took off from the deck in a spray of freezing rainwater at her hooves, and went as high as she could through heavy, cold sheets of water. Rain blurred her eyes and weighed her down, and, though she wanted to reach the clouds, she had to turn back or else risk plummeting with numb wings.

She landed on the far side of the port and walked under a dark wooden dock. Its legs were encrusted in scum and wrapped in seaweed and the odd barnacle, all things she had read of in one of her Daring Do novels, but never actually seen. She walked up a gentle slope and watched the pegasi at work. Some of them dragged tremendous chains, while others helped stabilize hanging crates as they swung through the heavy air.

“Okay, let’s see here,” she mumbled. She and Twilight had discussed Vanilla’s gift the night before, and what she could do to use it. She closed her eyes and let the sound of the rain lull her into something resembling meditation. Feel the magic inside—that was Twilight’s first instruction. Look inside yourself and feel the newness of magic stirring around your psyche. An easy task for Rainbow, she had said, whose magic was hardly there to begin with.

She felt only the cold wind on her face. Frowning and squeezing her eyes tighter, she willed herself to locate what Vanilla had bestowed, but found only the same confused mix of self-confidence and uncertainty. Salt stung her nostrils, and the sand was packed around her hooves like ice. She shook her soaking mane unhappily and crept deeper under the dock, shielding herself from most of the water, but not the cold wind.

“Controlling the weather.” His note puzzled her. Though the words made sense, she could not imagine their application in the context of magic.

Something heavy struck a crate far above her, and pegasi flurried. Thunder crashed moments later, and she closed her eyes once more. In Cloudsdale, she had learned about sanctioned “free weather,” weather that was left uncontrolled. Certain national parks had it, as did places of highly concentrated weather production. The thought of no one controlling the wild rainstorm above her was oddly exhilarating.

“Find your center, and then see what surrounds it.” It was what Twilight had done with her enhanced telekinesis, she had said. It was as simple as thinking for a moment, locating the part of her magic that she drew from to cast spells, and noticing a part that didn’t belong. “So my center should be emptiness, or near emptiness.” She closed her eyes again, ignoring a lower rumble.

In her mind, beneath the quick moving thoughts and questions, the fantasies and discarded ideas, she found—with active pursuit and desire—the emptiness she sought. Subtle as an abandoned memory, it was the magic she had used so seldom that even the recollection of its initial discovery was a hazy afterimage.

And, exactly as promised, around that empty, meaningless memory, she could feel the queer urges of something she’d never before considered. She opened her eyes to a crash of thunder, and the idea didn’t waver.

“No way it’s this easy,” she murmured, following the foreign idea. It was simple, but felt profound inside her head, and where it ended, she had a choice. The options were clear and simple, though she knew she could not articulate them, if asked. Adjusting herself in the sand, she thought briefly what she wanted to do. “Oh. Psh, duh.” As easily as flight, she pursued the thought along a single, very clear line.

At first, she felt nothing. Then, her skin tingled, and grew warm. Rain fell noisily outside, wind sliced through the pier’s underside in occasional bursts, the sand was still cold, and the rotting wood above her dripped freezing water, but she was warming up.

The dark sky lit up with a sudden tower of lightning, and thunder came immediately after, loud enough to shake the boards above her. Wind followed, shrieking through spaces in the pier and hissing across the ocean. The working pegasi were drowned out, and a powerful gust of air knocked the warmth out of her, and her concentration. Wings tight against her sides, so she wouldn’t get yanked back, she reluctantly left her shelter. The ocean had been still that morning, but, with the increased wind, it churned and moved in great, gnashing whitecaps. She was reminded of a film reel she had seen once of a hurricane breaking on the coast. It had been controlled, and weak; even Equestria’s northernmost point was several hundred miles south of the planet’s equator, and the water simply wasn’t warm enough to sustain a proper tropical storm.

She looked up at the pegasi, but they were gone. Cargo swayed from the cranes nearby, their great necks lowering to the ground, and she shook her head. The thought of working in such conditions was beyond her. Thunder crashed and rolled with the waves across the sea, and she took off at a gallop to return to the ship, anchored to a large mass of rocks.

Everypony played cards in the other cabin, and Octavia listened to their banter from across the corridor. Her interest in practicing magic had waned for the day, and she merely lay in bed, listening for her own name in their conversation and the storm outside. She had not known their airship had an anchor, but was grateful for it.

“I should just go over there and get my apology out of the way. They will swallow it like they always do, and we can return to normal.” She got up, but stopped at the door. “I do not want to forfeit my integrity like this.” On the tail of that thought came another: “The needs of the group outweigh the needs of the one. And they do need me.”

She crossed the tilted hallway to their cabin and entered, silencing the conversation. Only Big Mac looked at her directly.

“You can do this, Octavia.” “I have given some thought to my previous words, and have decided that I owe you all an apology.” “This is ridiculous.” “I should not have been so callous.” “I should not have been so honest.” “I can see that I have upset you all, and I do not want that. We should be working as a team, not as enemies.”

Rarity put down her cards and looked at her dispassionately. “Is that it?”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s all you can do, apologize for saying what you said?”

Her voice darkened. “What more do you expect of me?”

“Every time, it’s the same exact thing,” Applejack said. “We’re fine, then we fight, then you apologize. It’s the same stupid cycle over an’ over again, and it’s gettin’ old.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Change,” Twilight said, glancing at her apologetically.

“You’re the reason we keep going through this,” Rarity said. “If you stopped pushing us away, there’d be no problem.”

“You expect me to change,” Octavia said slowly, “realizing that you are asking that I redefine my entire life. Is it not easier for you to simply avoid pestering me?”

“It’ll be better for you to do the first one,” Pinkie said meekly.

“And what would you know about self-improvement?” “I have my reasons for not dwelling on the past, and I think that they are enough.”

“I know it’s scary, but you’ve gotta do it sometime.”

“I am perfectly—”

“Fine on yer own?” Big Mac rumbled.

“…Yes.”

“When was the last time you slept for an entire night?” Rarity asked.

“An entire night? From start to finish?”

“That’s what an entire night is.”

She sighed. “I do not remember. It has been years.”

Twilight stood up. “Years? It’s been years since you’ve slept a whole night through? Octavia, I was worried before, but this is out of control!” She flinched as a salt block tumbled out of thin air to knock Pinkie’s cards out of her hooves. “And can we put a stop to this?” she shouted, gesturing at the overturned cards.

“Stop that. The last thing we need is histrionics.” She took a step back and breathed out. “Listen to me. I am fine. Am I not standing before you, carrying on a conversation normally? Do I not contribute when asked, and often when I am not? Where have I failed you?”

“You just don’t get it,” Applejack said. “We don’t care ‘bout yer performance here. We care ‘bout you. If yer not healthy, the group ain’t healthy. Can you understand that?”

“I understand it, but reject it.”

“What?” Twilight cried.

“Your care is misplaced. You should be more concerned with finishing your task, not worrying about me.”

“We can’t do that, Octavia. Friends don’t do that to each other,” Fluttershy said.

“If abandoning me on this coast would somehow ensure Discord’s defeat, would you do it?” Octavia asked, immediately turning her eyes to the floor. “Stupid, indulgent question.”

“Absolutely not,” Twilight said.

“Is it really that hard to accept our friendship?” Fluttershy asked.

“I…” “This is my chance to end this—for a time.” “After all I have done to you, I find myself reluctant.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Aw, you’ve got it reversed,” Applejack said. “After all we’ve been through, we’re even more ready to call you a friend. Not less.”

“That is not what it sounded like yesterday.”

“Well…” Rarity started. “I will admit, none of us were very nice to you.”

“Fluttershy and Big Mac have been nice.”

“Okay, I haven’t been nice. I… did say some things about you last night, that I didn’t mean.”

“Why?”

“I’m not certain. I just did.”

“We were trying to figure out where we all stood,” Twilight said. “Much the same as I’m sure you were.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rarity said. “What does matter is that we forgive you, and hope you can forgive us.”

“For talking behind my back,” Octavia said.

“Yes.”

“And refusing to change how you approach me, or address your concerns about my well-being.”

“We’re just worried,” Fluttershy said.

“I should walk away right now. These hypocrites will never learn if I stay.” She looked at each of them. “And they will surely fail without me.”

“Well?” Twilight said.

“Friends fight,” Octavia said. It was the best response she could produce with a straight face; anything longer, and a disgusted grimace would break through. She weathered the group hug that suddenly converged upon her. “And the cycle begins anew.”

By nightfall, the rain had let up some, and they could share the deck without being soaked. Octavia remained in the back, watching the others talk and laugh nervously. She was familiar with the activity; before her first several professional shows, she had engaged in the same anxious chatter with her orchestra mates.

They would leave as soon as the sun was up, no matter the weather. Fluttershy could not determine how much ocean they needed to cross, or how deep she and Twilight would need to dive, and, knowing Discord, Twilight felt it highly likely that they encountered something unforeseen on the bottom. They didn’t need the encroachment of sunset to complicate things further.

“Bet you’re happy sitting this one out, huh?” Pinkie asked, sliding over to Octavia.

“In a way.”

“What way?”

“The idea of being under all that water bothers me very much, just as the idea of being so high off the ground.”

“Is there a ‘however’ coming?”

Octavia gave a thin smile. “Yes. However, I am not confident that two ponies are enough to deal with whatever is down there.” She idly grabbed a salt block as it fell onto the deck. “And I am starting to worry about these.”

“At least they’re yummy!”

“Hm.” She lobbed it off the ship, as she had seen Twilight and Fluttershy do. “Why did you go quiet when I spoke with the others this afternoon?”

“No reason!”

“That cannot possibly be true. I have seen you playing and joking with them, and I heard you having a great time before I entered the room.”

Pinkie giggled, but sobered after a second under Octavia’s relentless eyes. “Well… you don’t really like all the noise, I know.”

“So?”

“Octy—Octavia, sorry!” She threw a foreleg over Octavia’s back. “I wanna make everypony happy, and that includes you! If that means toning down the volume a little, it’s a small price to pay!”

“It is not a mere lowering of the volume. You change dramatically around me. You hardly contribute to conversation, and, when you do, it is often in quite basic terms.”

Pinkie frowned. “I dunno, sis.”

She scrutinized Pinkie. “Shall we go beneath? Or perhaps for a walk?”

“Walking sounds nice.”

Without a word, Octavia left the ship, Pinkie just behind. Only when they were several meters from the ship, walking through the wet grass, did she speak. “I think that you—”

“It’s something about you.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve noticed it too,” Pinkie said. “I didn’t want to talk about it, but I guess I’m gonna now.” She made a stifled giggle. “Whatever it is, whenever you’re around, I just… I don’t feel myself, I guess. I don’t feel as… well, not happy, ‘cause it’s a quiet happiness. I don’t feel as rowdy. There you go, rowdy.”

“So my presence makes you calm down.”

“Well, it’s not quite that either. I guess I feel like… kinda diminished.”

“I see.”

“Maybe like I’m kind of unwelcome. Like, when you’re around, everypony else suddenly forgets about me.”

“Nonsense. For the most part, they just tolerate me. You are much more favored.”

“You think so?”

“You all enjoy talking behind my back. Ask them yourself.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Did you join them?”

“No, of course not!” She looked at Octavia briefly, her wide eyes pleading. “But I’m still sorry.”

“It is okay.”

“It is?”

Octavia looked over at the sound of shifting grass. Another salt pillar.

“You’re not really okay with them talking bad about you, are you?”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s okay to admit it when you don’t like something.”

“I am not afraid of anything that simple.” She sighed. “Being with you has reminded me of the rock farm. Have I done the same for you?”

“Sure, but that’s okay.”

“It is?”

Pinkie giggled weakly. “Not really. I guess we are alike, huh?”

Octavia grabbed the salt block and watched its edges furrow in the rain.

“So we remind ourselves of home. It’s okay. It’s natural.” She gasped. “Is that why you’ve got such bad insomnia?”

“No, Pinkie, it is not. I have been this way long before I met you.”

“You mean this most recent time?”

“Since leaving.”

“Oh.” She looked down for a second, then back up, an insincere grin on her face. “Change is coming.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know!” She hopped up, suddenly with an actual smile. “Just a feeling.”

“Is it that Pinkie Sense of yours?”

“Uhhhhh…” She scratched her head. “Yeah, actually! Yeah, it is! It’s really vague, though.”

“From what your friends have said, I thought you were supposed to get intuition like this rather frequently.”

“I used to.”

“What happened?”

She giggled. “Change!”

“Which is also on its way.”

“Yup!”

“What kind of change?”

“Uhhhhhh…”

“Try to focus, Pinkie. It could be important.”

“Well, it’s still pretty far away. I think it’s about you and me, though.”

“I do not like that.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t worry, sis, it’s nothing detailed.” She playfully bumped Octavia’s flank. “I know how personal you are.”

“If you do happen to randomly gain any insight about me, please do your best to forget it.”

“Uhhh, hello? World’s best secret keeper, right here!”

“I am not asking you to keep the secret, I am telling you to forget the information entirely.”

“Exactly! It’ll be like keeping a secret from myself!” Another salt block appeared at her hooves, and she kicked it over. “These are funny!”

Everypony got up at six o’ clock in the morning, except Octavia, who was already out, exploring the fields behind their ship in a misty, gray drizzle. They ate on the deck, and, by six forty-five, they were aloft and drifting out over the shore to make a large circle around the water siphoning station.

By seven fifteen, the shore had become a line of light brown, cluttered with dirty docks and meandering ships. They had decided to pile the salt blocks in the corner as they appeared, not wanting to throw them off over the ocean and resalinate the water. The drizzle had turned to yet another full rainstorm, and only Twilight, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Octavia stayed out. Each pony watched her version of the ocean’s gentle expansion under them from different vantages, as they floated farther and farther out, but seemingly no closer to the indeterminate edge that they had seen from afar days ago.

Fluttershy let out a small yelp, and Twilight thought it was a raindrop hitting her on the nose or eye—that happened from time to time—but then she gave a single, heart-freezing order: stop. Applejack disengaged the turbines and allowed them to drift in the wind.

“It’s beneath us,” Fluttershy said reverently. “Very far down.”

Octavia went below to collect the others, and Twilight looked over the rail. The ocean was a mere thirty feet below, and coming up slowly. She had tuned out the steady plink of salt blocks appearing, some on the deck, but many onto the modest pile they had already constructed. No waves swelled up at them, but the water boiled with rain, coming down in a steady outpouring, not as bad as the day before, but enough to make her seriously consider wasting some of her magic on a shield.

“So this is it?” Rarity asked.

“As soon as we’re low enough to make the jump, we’re going,” Twilight said, and sighed. “I guess.”

“Twilight, you’re not scared, are you?” Rainbow asked.

“Scared? Of what? Jumping off the ship into the middle of the ocean? Sinking all the way to the bottom, if there even is a bottom? Going until we run out of light? Of course not! What’s there to be afraid of?”

“It’ll be just like flying,” Rainbow said. “Except, you know, underwater.”

“Oh, great. Yeah, no problem there.”

“Don’t worry about it, Twilight! I’m not scared!” Pinkie said.

“Yer not goin’,” Applejack pointed out.

“Still not scared!”

“Twilight, I’m super scared too,” Fluttershy said, “but I’m ready.”

When they were a mere five feet from the incredible surface, Applejack lowered the gangplank, and Twilight and Fluttershy stood together under Twilight’s shield, a layered dome of shimmering magic. “This will keep all the water out,” Twilight said, “and weigh us down, so we’ll sink. I’ll have an oxygen summoning spell going on the whole time as well, and a carbon-dioxide banishing spell. Thank Celestia I learned about chemical spells. What this shield won’t do, though, is regulate air pressure. We’ll have to stop periodically to let our bodies adjust.”

“You have to do that underwater too?” Rainbow said.

She looked down at the water. “What did you think it was for?”

“Altitude flying.”

“Pressure goes both ways, Dash.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, no more messing around. Ready, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy nodded, and they stepped down the plank, pausing at the tip. With a final look back to her friends, Twilight closed her eyes, counted down, and made to hop off. The temptation to stop flashed through her mind, but Fluttershy jumped, and she had no choice but to follow. With a muffled splash, they entered cold water, and Twilight had enough time to watch water recollect over the spherical shield’s top, cutting them off from the ship.

“It takes a lot to keep these spells up, Fluttershy. I can do it, but it’s best if I don’t waste energy talking too much or looking around. Can you steer us?”

“Um… yes,” Fluttershy replied through clenched, shivering teeth. “Can you turn the heat up?”

“Waste of magic.” She squinted into the dark blue water that surrounded them. All the rain was gone, replaced with a dry freeze that seemed to creep through Twilight’s body like ice in her veins. The endless, dimensionless blue swiveled around them, empty of markings. She saw a dark patchwork below, but could not tell how far down they would have to go before stopping their slow free fall.

“No fish,” Fluttershy said. She jumped and screamed as something appeared with them to land on the shield’s bottom without a sound. It was a pillar of salt.

“Push it through the shield,” Twilight said, not looking. “If you push hard enough, you’ll go through. It’ll be okay, but use your hooves. I don’t want your magic mixing with mine down here.”

Fluttershy complied, shoving the salt out of their shield with a small grunt. She retracted a wet hoof. “I really don’t like this.”

The splash faded in frigid rainfall, and Applejack pulled the plank back up. “An’ now, we wait.”

Pinkie and Rainbow stood together at the gunwale, and Octavia sat in the middle of the deck with Big Mac, letting rain reduce her mane to long locks of shadow across a gaunt, sleep-deprived face. Salt blocks tinkled onto the pile.

The surface was a gray matte above them, the bottom a jigsaw of shadow and stone. Fluttershy pointed Twilight back on course as they drifted down, and it was not long before she descried their target while they hung, waiting for their pressure to equalize. The sunken ship from Octavia’s dream, brought back to life in Discord’s fearsome artificiality, rotted in a pale plain of silt more than a hundred feet below. To Fluttershy, it was but a curiously shaped rock or piece of coral, and to Twilight, it was but a thought as she stared emptily into miles of cold, crushing ocean.

“Stupid,” Octavia mumbled again, producing one of Twilight’s history anthologies and setting up a tiny shield over its pages. She had forgotten to tell Twilight of Vanilla Cream’s research recommendation until a couple minutes after her descent.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Rarity said. “Not that that’s a surprise, exactly.”

“We’re all nervous, Rarity,” Rainbow said.

“Here it is,” Octavia said. “The Deep Freeze was a standard passenger vessel, active from 2779 to 2790, that commonly ferried ponies across the boundaries of the Horseshoe Band—that is the name of this section of ocean—”

“We gathered that.”

Octavia gave Rainbow an icy stare. “And to the smaller, neutral islands south of official changeling territory, now part of their empire. It was captained by the siren, posthumously named ‘Coral Scales’ by the Equestrian Record Keeping Bureau, and ‘Web Wings’ by the Changeling Identification Commission.”

“A siren?” Rarity said.

“I am flipping to that page right now.”

“Wait, no, go back to the ship,” Applejack said. “Tell us more ‘bout this Deep Freeze.”

Octavia scanned the page. “It got its name from its captain, who enjoyed taking her leisure time at the bottom of the Horseshoe Band. It has nothing to do with the ship itself, or any particular ice powers. In fact, it says here that the ship was quite ordinary. There is no mention of magical healing powers, or the ability to float off the water, or any enhanced speed or maneuverability.”

“So it’s just a model Discord used to make this ghost ship,” Big Mac said. He shivered violently, and Rainbow giggled at him.

“Apparently. Okay, sirens.” She flipped through several pages, pausing often, before reading again. “Before I read this, do you all know what a siren is?”

“Ah don’t,” Applejack said, Big Mac nodding along.

“Sirens are aquatic creatures, strongly related to changelings. They take magical power from emotions, much like a changeling, but have a narrower range of emotions that they can actually convert to magic. They primarily live in the waters to the north and south of Equestria: the Changeling Ocean, where you will find larger sirens, and the Jarvick Sea, south of the minotaur continent. That is where the south pole is.”

“We know that,” Rainbow said.

“We don’t,” Big Mac said. “Keep goin’, Octavia.”

“Arctic sirens are much smaller than tropical ones. Because they are so close to the changeling, they can shape-shift, though it is harder for them to do for long periods of time, and they typically do not choose to do so anyway.” She looked down at the book. “Sirens live long, lonely lives in the open water, capable of surviving at depths of up to three hundred feet. Young sirens frequently live alone, but it is common to find older sirens in bands of three or four. They do not have a common language or government system.”

“So this Deep Freeze siren,” Rarity said. “Coral Scales. She… left the ocean?”

“It said that she would take the form of a pony to put her travelers at ease when moving them. Hold on, let me go to the page on her, and not her ship.” She turned a chunk of pages. “Coral Scales has been posthumously nominated for multiple awards and acknowledgements for her assistance to forming the pony-changeling alliance.”

“Whoa, alliance?” Rainbow said. “Last I heard—”

“We are on tense terms with them now,” Octavia said, “but we are not enemies. We trade goods extremely frequently. Do you know where bananas come from?”

“No way,” Applejack said. “All the way across the ocean?”

“That’s why they’re so expensive!” Pinkie cried. “I always thought there was a sinister banana cartel somewhere in the Equestrian heartland, managed by a grizzled thug with an eye patch and a banana bandana!”

“No,” Octavia said flatly. She read on. “Coral Scales was rather private, but well documented as being open about her identity, and is noted as one of the greatest examples of siren kindness. She was once quoted, ‘We learn to cultivate savage minds under the waters, but we’re not without goodness. We are not animals, and we are not wicked. A siren can be good or bad as easily as a pony, a griffon, a dragon, a changeling. We are individuals, just like you’.”

“Heh, you used a contraction,” Applejack said.

“It was a quote.” She smiled and brushed her mane back. “There are numerous rumors of her engaging in affairs with her shipmates… and it goes on into more personal, trivial details. Nothing that we are interested in.”

“It kind of makes sense now,” Rarity said. “Discord wants to harass us with a ghost ship, so he chooses its captain to look like the nicest siren in history.”

“The exact kind of irony he likes,” Big Mac said.

“But not particularly helpful,” Applejack said. “Ah guess it’s nice to learn ‘bout sirens. They got a picture in there?”

“Only in her pony form,” Octavia said. “And yes, Rarity, she wore the same shawl then as she does now.”

“What’s with her name?” Rainbow asked. “It said ‘posthumously named’; doesn’t that mean they called her that after she died?”

Octavia sighed and flipped back to the section on sirens, reading for a time before responding. “Apparently, they use subsonic vocalizations to communicate, and what they use to identify each other does not follow Equestrian naming convention. It does not say anything about her specifically, but my guess would be that ponies merely called her ‘captain,’ or something like that, and she never had occasion to invent a name for herself.”

“So do we call her Coral Scales now, or Thunderhead?” Rainbow asked.

“Thunderhead, definitely,” Rarity said. “Let’s not dignify Discord’s little gimmick.” She glanced at the growing pile of salt blocks, its peak nearly touching the top of the rail. “Although we may consider dignifying that.”

The ocean was absolutely silent. Twilight felt no strain from the trio of spells she kept running, but released a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding when Fluttershy cast a rudimentary illumination spell, turning their bubble into a pearl of light in the vast, frozen darkness. The bottom, closer, was an immense, pumiceous field, the ship a lonesome ruin wrapped in shadow.

The light swiveled sickly every time Fluttershy moved to remove a salt block, and Twilight could see her own shadow and reflection distorting across the shield’s inner surface. She closed her eyes, but that more absolute darkness was worse.

“Ah think we get more salt the closer they get to the Element,” Big Mac said. The pile of blocks had shifted slightly, tipping the top several off the ship and into the ocean in a white cascade of awkward splashes. Their origination had since shifted inward, and a new pile was forming beside the torch. “Which means we need to find a solution to this before it gets worse.”

“We’re not gonna eat ‘em all, that’s for sure,” Rainbow said, looking at Pinkie.

“I only suggested it once! Am I the salt-eating pony now in your heads?” Pinkie said.

“I hate to say this, but we may need to consider bailing it out,” Rarity said. “I don’t know how heavy this is, or if it can sink us. I’d rather not find out.”

“Yeah, let’s put all this salt that they broke their backs to get out back into the ocean,” Rainbow said.

“Better than bein’ crushed,” Big Mac said, grabbing one and hurling it in a great arc off the deck. “If we don’t sink, we could get pushed off.”

“Ah agree,” Applejack said. “C’mon, big bro. Reckon you can send one of these things farther’n me?”

They hit the bottom with a gentle bump, and Twilight flattened the shield’s floor, turning their sphere back into a dome. The wet sand at her hooves was like ice, and only the faintest light from above made it down. She could see the edges of stones, coral, and what she thought was the ship, but without Fluttershy’s meager spell, she would be utterly lost.

“This way,” Fluttershy said, taking a tentative lead.

They moved through the water at a normal walking pace, Twilight careless of the immense pressure on her shield. A group of fish scattered as they walked through, and she saw one bounce harmlessly off the shield. Seaweed bent away or collapsed at their hooves as they passed around or over it.

“Inside,” Fluttershy said. The ship lay flat, a massive gouge apparent in its port side, veiled by decomposing sails and webbed in encrusted rope. Nothing was smooth; every inch of the ship was besieged by calcification, barnacles, and shells affixed to its surface. Unlike the model they had faced two days ago, Twilight saw no evidence of any offensive capabilities. No cannons or cannonballs rusted in the silt.

They walked along the ship’s curving bottom to the raised back, leaving behind them a trail of salt blocks. With her shield bottomless, they could simply let the blocks fall and walk past them, the membrane sliding over them easily. The tattered, triangular boom mainsail hung in a great, pale curve on frayed rigging, and Twilight imagined she could hear the entire structure creaking in the depths.

Applejack had lowered the gangplank once more, and she and Big Mac worked at dumping groups of blocks off the edges while Rainbow, Rarity, and Pinkie shoved piles toward the ramp, letting them slide off in torrents. Octavia grabbed dozens at a time in her dark magic to toss them over the side.

It was enough, but only just.

Twilight and Fluttershy ducked under a protruding finger of shattered mizenmast to reach a short incline of broken deck, and passage to the ship’s black interior. They were both shivering, and Fluttershy moved constantly, looking around for potential assailants or traps. Her jittery motion was always in Twilight’s peripheral vision, and the silence she had imposed on her own thoughts was straining for it. The magic held strong, but she had to close her eyes from time to time to re-order her thoughts.

The first heavy thump made her jump. A block of salt fell before her to rest on the wooden deck, and another slowly drifted to the seabed outside their shield, behind.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” Twilight said, walking onto the deck. “Unless it only sank a year or so ago, it shouldn’t be able to support our weight.”

Fluttershy made no response as they climbed to a more level area. Twilight ran her hoof along a length of slick rope that passed through her shield. A sagging doorway, with no door, beckoned from the very back, and Fluttershy went toward it, pausing to watch a small crab move past.

“Do you think there could be octopi down here?” she asked quietly. Twilight didn’t look at her, but heard the lilting note of hope in the query.

“Can you give me more light?”

“Um, I’ll try. Hold on.” Fluttershy froze and closed her own eyes, and the glow that surrounded her deepened, only slightly. Twilight could see suggestions of the room’s interior, and held her breath as they walked through the portal into the dark, decaying navigation room.

Nothing sprung out at them, and no sounds were heard. A scummy globe rested in a rusting bronze crucible, with sextants, spyglasses, and compasses lining a depressed shelf in a similar state. Her eyes passed over the Element at first, sitting with other metal tools as innocently as if it belonged there. Applejack’s orange jewel glinted a dull goldenrod when Fluttershy’s light hit it.

“That was… easy,” Twilight said.

With more and more salt blocks covering the deck every minute, slick in the rain, they were not prepared for the sudden snap of magic above them, nor the heavy thunder of countless more pillars descending from atop their balloon. Only Rainbow was looking up at the time, and it was her swift shout that made them all dive for the torch, just in time to avoid being bruised and possibly knocked unconscious by the heavy, edged objects.

They crashed and banged on the deck and each other, chipping off flecks of salt to join the raindrops in a twinkling, eye-watering display. Beyond, more blocks fell outside the ship, an endless cylinder of undulating, imperfect white, stirring the ocean even more.

“Something tells me they found the Element,” Rarity said, looking from pony to pony. Above, the pummeling sound of pillars on the balloon swelled in a sound more ferocious than the rain that had been with them since leaving the shore. They whipped their heads around at a metallic creak and wooden crack, and had just enough time to see the plank leaning brokenly down.

“Something tells me we’re gonna be taking a swim soon if we don’t figure something out,” Rainbow said. She looked at Octavia, who could still throw clusters of blocks off the ship from her position. “She’s not gonna be nearly enough.”

Applejack took a moment to take in the scene, struggling to process it. What had started as one or two mysterious pillars of salt a day had become hundreds every minute, right on top of their ship, and the only magician they had, already dulled from insomnia, she could see weakening from the repetitive grab and toss that was not enough anyway.

“Applejack, can we move the balloon to a different part of the ship?” Rarity asked.

“What? Uh, Ah guess so, but how does that help?”

“Trust me. I think I have an idea.”

Something large and pale retreated into a crack in the wall as they exited the navigation room, and Twilight’s heart momentarily stopped. They left a trail of salt pillars behind them, falling through water and shield at a rate of two every second. Fluttershy had proudly placed the Element around her neck, claiming that it felt uncomfortable on her. Her own, when she chose to wear it, fit perfectly, but Applejack’s honesty was itchy and tight.

They left the ship at a quick trot, and, only a few steps away, turned to the first sound they had heard underwater. An unhealthy, twisted creak, like wood bending against itself, growled behind, and they watched as the shipwreck dulled, grew thin, and finally vanished in a current of bubbles. A moment later, a pair of letters spurted from Twilight’s horn.

“One’s from Trixie, for Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said, “and the other’s from Discord. It just says ‘more illusions’.”

“I knew that ship couldn’t be real,” Twilight said. “Hold onto them, please.” They followed their own dimming hoofprints across the ocean floor to where they stopped, a mere thirty feet away. “Ready?”

“More than ready.”

With a brief pulse of her horn, the dome became a sphere. “This part is the hardest of all, Fluttershy. I’m decreasing the shield’s weight without decreasing its strength. Only talk to me if it’s vitally important, okay?”

“Okay, Twilight.”

They started to float upwards as Twilight sat and closed her eyes.

With half the balloon’s ropes tied to the back of the ship, and Octavia dragging another over to where Rarity directed, trying to show where to put it without putting herself in danger of falling salt, Rarity felt more acutely than ever the pain of being without a functional horn. She had to use her hooves to tie the knots, and, while she could do it, it was difficult and terrifying, even with Octavia’s stabilizing magic. Every slip was another ten pillars onto their damaged ship, and the others simply could not keep up.

She hadn’t the time to voice her plan, and, for that reason, had felt a swell of pride and affection in her heart when everyone broke to try to stem the tide of falling destruction. On her word alone, Applejack and Big Mac had dared to go out into the cascade of blocks, accepting blows to the backs and flanks without complaint, and risking more serious head injuries without question.

With two ropes left, and the deck tilting upwards mildly, she stopped, realization hitting her like lightning. The torch.

“Big Mac!” she cried. Through the sound of rain, wind, and ceaseless pounding salt, she was surprised to see him turn his head on her first call. “Take this rope over there, Octavia,” she said, and approached Big Mac. “The torch needs to be stowed below. Can you get it down there on your own?”

He nodded in a long arc. In it, she saw a relieved smile; the balloon covered most of the space he needed to cover.

She returned to the side of the ship, where Octavia was holding a cable in place. “If you are doing what I think you are doing, then how do you expect Twilight and Fluttershy to get back on?”

“Octavia, darling, I really have no idea,” Rarity said, putting her cold hooves to the rope to knot it. “They’re both smart mares. I hope they can think of something too.”

They ascended with a rope of salt blocks falling off to their sides, but the block that drew Fluttershy’s notice came from much farther above. It drifted and tumbled down at them from an indeterminate height, and, a few minutes later, a second one followed. Anxiety brought its own icy touch to her insides, and she crouched on the clear shield’s floor, trying not to look down, or around. The vastness was close enough to touch, and, with the Element safely around her neck, she had nothing to distract from that cold feeling.

“Everypony back here!” Rarity shouted. The balloon was attached to the ship’s back, but they were not moving. “Push all the salt to the front!”

The others started immediately, hurling blocks off the deck, or forward onto it. Octavia used her hooves, following Rarity’s advice to conserve magic until the back was clearer. Thunder exploded overhead, and it was the first time she had heard it since the salt began falling in earnest.

The cascade had shifted its point of origination as well, following them to buffet the thick balloon. Enough of it overhung the back that the majority slid harmlessly into the water.

“Okay, Octavia, lift us,” she said, and Octavia nodded, retreated from pushing pillars, and looked into the dark throat of the balloon. “Rainbow, get over here.” A small explosion echoed low within its fabric chamber, and two more: miniature blasts that would produce hot air, but not enough force to harm the balloon. Rainbow came to their side to hover at the hole, using her wings to fan air upwards.

Six blasts in, carefully placed, and they were tilting upwards. The first blocks of salt at the very front slid uselessly into the water, and Rarity held her breath. “No way this is actually working.” She squealed giddily as an entire pile followed, and then something inside shifted, and she stumbled.

“And how are we to avoid sliding off ourselves?” Octavia asked.

“We—oh, ponyfeathers.”

The bubbling maelstrom of descending foam was like a reverse of the column she had seen rising into the water siphoning station. From their vantage, it was a powerful circle of white, marching down to them in inexorable, boiling insanity. The sheer volume of salt—and Fluttershy knew it could be only that—made her heart briefly sink with pity for the sea life that would not be ready for the sudden salination, and then contract with fear for their own situation.

Not speaking, she nudged Twilight and pointed forward emphatically, toward where the salt would eventually meet them. When they began moving, she made another motion to Twilight: “watch for more directions.” Twilight didn’t look up, and Fluttershy envied her for what she didn’t see.

From within the corridor, leaning awkwardly in the corner between stairs and floor, they listened to the salt storm outside. Their hull was tough, they knew, as was their balloon, but each had their ears cocked for a more disastrous sound: a crack of compromised wood, a scream of broken turbines, or, even worse, the world-ending rip of a hurt balloon.

Rainbow was outside, hanging miserably in a safe spot, watching the waters and their own elevation. The combination of her wind and Octavia’s explosions had gotten them back to ten feet off the bubbling surface when they had scrambled into the safer ship’s interior, but with their chipped and damaged bowsprit perilously close to the water.

She ducked in quickly, her voice clipped. “Hey, you might wanna know that we just lost the freaking wheel.” She didn’t wait for a response.

“Forgive my language,” Rarity said dully, “but fuck Discord.”

Pinkie chuckled lightly.

“What in Tartarus is this?” Twilight asked, her voice only a shade away from anger. The ocean was closed off from them in a sudden curtain fall of spinning, sliding, gamboling salt, occasional errant blocks ticking off their shield.

“I think they get more salt the closer we are to the Element,” Fluttershy said. “And now that we have it, they’re being flooded.”

“That’s not good.”

“I need to think,” Fluttershy said. With the amount of salt coming down to them, and the cylindrical shape it took, she could reason easily enough that the others had found a way to keep it off the ship—why she had directed them into the middle. Finding a way through the falling salt, at the surface, would be suicide, given how weakened Twilight’s shield would be. It was an explanation she realized only trapped inside the giant, hollow column; the initial choice had been intuition.

“So… who wants to hear a joke?” Pinkie asked. “Since we’re stuck here.”

“May as well,” Applejack said. “What do ya got fer us, Pinkie?”

“Why did the batch of cookies get sent to jail?”

“They were so delicious, it was illegal,” Octavia said, drawing their eyes. “Sorry. Ignore me. I am in a strange place right now.”

“Why, Pinkie?” Big Mac asked.

“As-salt! Get it?”

Applejack and Big Mach chuckled, but Rarity only looked at her.

“Get it? Because salt?”

“Cookies?” Rarity asked.

“They have salt in ‘em,” Applejack said. “A little bit.”

“Ah thought that was common knowledge,” Big Mac said.

“Oh,” Rarity said. “Well, oaay.”

“Wanna hear another?” Pinkie asked.

Fluttershy felt a resurgence of the iciness below in her veins when she looked up to see a colossal, solid, white mass coming down on top of them. Some twenty feet up, and closing fast, the hollow pillar ended in a filled hammer of salt, ready to shatter their shield and send them sinking to the bottom in shreds.

Pulling Twilight’s mane urgently and jabbing a hoof forward, she bit her tongue to keep the scream in. Twilight, not looking up, but recognizing that something was wrong, pushed them unflinching into the cascading prisms of dirty white. Slowed by water, relatively few hit the shield as they crossed through, and Fluttershy looked back to see the more massive obstacle sink behind them, unbroken to the surface. They were less than a hundred feet down.

When Rainbow poked her head in to announce Twilight and Fluttershy’s resurfacing, Pinkie froze mid-joke, and they looked at each other. “So, what do we do? AJ, it’s your Element they got, by the way.”

“Are they okay?” Rarity asked, not knowing what else to say.

“They look all right. Scared as hell, kind of like me.”

“Go to them,” Octavia said. “They know their situation better than we do. We can only wait.”

When Rainbow was gone, Applejack turned to Octavia. “Delegatin’ a job? You really are tryin’ to change, huh?”

“She flies. I do not.”

As soon as they hit the surface, Twilight removed the top half of the shield, leaving her and Fluttershy standing in a shallow bowl in a violent sea. Above, the ship leaned at an unnatural angle, its balloon hoisting the back end almost forty degrees up over the front, letting a deafening cataract of salt funnel and crash down the tapered deck to pour off in the stream that had nearly obliterated their shield some sixty feet below.

Rainbow swooped down to them and perched on the lip of Twilight’s shield. “So… yeah. You can see what we’re dealing with.”

“Can you carry me up?” Twilight asked. “That seems easiest.”

“Yeah, I got you.” Rainbow grabbed Twilight under the forelegs and dragged her upwards, Fluttershy just behind, and the shield faded away with a content sigh from Twilight.

“How are we going to stop this?” Fluttershy asked.

“I’ve been hoping Twilight can help us out,” Rainbow said. “Twi? Please tell me you have some idea on how to stop this.”

“Get me with the others,” Twilight said.

“I’m remembering our little, er, adventure in Cloudsdale,” Rarity said. “They had a similar problem. Too much snow.”

“How could I forget?” Octavia said.

“So my guess is it’s just a summoning spell that he cast on the Element. I guess there has to be a proximity spell involved too. If we could break either of those, we might be okay.”

“Girls, are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, flying down the tilted stairs. “Oh my Celestia, I’m never going underwater again!”

“We’re hangin’ in there,” Big Mac said, hugging her.

“Out of the way,” Twilight said, struggling out of Rainbow’s grasp. “I have to research.”

“Twi, wait,” Applejack said.

“What?” Twilight snapped. “Applejack, I have to break this stupid spell before the ship falls apart!” She marched up the hall to her room, throwing the door open with a powerful spell.

“No, listen to me! You don’t have to break it right now.”

“Really? ‘Cause I think that would be preferable to traveling under this nightmare over our heads.”

“How far out can you keep your telekinesis active?”

“What?”

“Answer me, sugarcube.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking!” Pinkie cried. “Twilight, just throw it away!”

“Pinkie, seriously,” Twilight said, bringing a hoof to her face. “That is the dumbest—”

“Keep it on a string of telekinesis, and throw it out behind us,” Applejack said firmly. “We’ll still hold on to it, but it’ll be too far away fer more’n two or three pillars to come at a time.”

Twilight looked at her, incensed, and then softened with a sigh. “That… could work.” She moved along the stairs, lifting the Element off Fluttershy’s neck, and, without waiting for further signal, sent it flying away with a sharp snap of magic and a flash.

The salt stopped falling.