"Wrap up the camp and prepare for departure." Hora ordered. "We're bring those visited by it to Niris."

The anyubinites brushed their left pectoral with their right hands as a salute and immediately went to work. Hora stepped in front of the plank leading to the ship and gestured for the five to cross it. The closer Stelimus got to it, the bigger it became. If he was sure of the wee bit of history he knew; it would qualify as a triple-decked, quinquireme-sized vessel. The bottom of the vessel had been obscured by the rise of the beach dune it had pushed up while being repositioned on the land. Just stepping on the black planks made the group feel uneasy and quite nervous. They didn't like the ship, but they needed to go through with it.

"You okay, Copper?" Stelimus asked as he did his best to hold her up.

"Yes. I'll be fine," she reassured.

Yolumay groaned in annoyance and stomped to the bow of the ship. "Stop being such whiny calves," she scolded.

The two accompanying Hora had split from him and were currently engaged in the menial tasks to prep for sail, leaving him alone with his guests. "I trust you have no form of seas sickness?" he asked with a grin. The guests shrugged.

"We've never been to the sea before," Copper explained.

Hora shook his head. "That won't do at all, but if you do feel a bit queasy, our shipboard doctor has a remedy for that."

He was about to go into the cabin when Yolumay stopped him. "What path are we taking, exactly?" she inquired.

"We're going through the White Sea to enter Lahriin's Ocean."

Yolumay's vacant expression already entailed much to her understanding, prompting Hora to hold in his anger.

"One second," he said.

The anyubinite casually walked down the cabin and into the depths below only to resurface a few minutes later with a rolled up parchment in both hands. He set it on a stump that should have been the location for a mast. The contents of the map had nothing o the left side of the ocean save for a mark over the location of the tundra. On the right of the map were quite a few territories, and right across ocean was indeed 'Saddle Arabia' holding a large percentage of the land mass closest to the beaches that occupied the near entirety of it save for Niris and a tiny slab of land still left unconquered. The northern lands, separate from the Saddles, were painted over with a red hammer. It was a small territory, barely a few dozen square kilometers across, but its colors were spread about like chicken pox in the northern masses. This confused Stelimus, so he pointed to that area of the map.

"What's this?" he asked.

Hora did not budge from his spot and ignored the deer. "We are going to circumvent the coastal territory owned by the Saddle Arabians to reach this spot owned by my people," he explained.

"I asked a question," Stelimus insisted.

"This is the source of several deltas that flow through our territory and allow farming in the arid deserts."

"HORA!" Stelimus shouted.

The anyubinite slammed his hands and dragged his fingers along the surface of the map, almost tearing it up. "Do not assume that because we are going to reveal to you what the 'Black Snow' is-" He turned to Stelimus, both glaring and baring his sharp teeth at him. "-that we'll tell you everything."

Stelimus reared his head back in surprise and didn't dare say anything else.

"With this boat and a proper weather, we should reach it in three days. If not, we'll get there in a week."

Yolumay leaned over the map and rubbed her chin as she contemplated the names. "This is the Hexian Blue," she said as she touched the name of the ocean."

"No, it's Lahriin's Ocean," Hora spoke with a rising tone of annoyance.

Tenyom and Radivus both pushed the reindeer away from the anyubinite. Everyone felt extremely uncomfortable on the boat, as though their souls were being fought over by otherworldly beings and their lives were at risk. The lack of comfort was broken momentarily by Tenyom actually talking for once, and her voice was surprisingly feminine.

"Isn't this sea, whatever its name, currently occupied by the Mer-Auder?" she asked.

"Wait WHAT?!" Yolumay shouted in response.

Hora scratched the back of his head. "Yes, but we didn't really have to deal with it when we came through." He looked on to the vast blue that awaited them all and shrugged after a bit of inner meditation. "It's not a problem. We can deal with it if it appears," he grinned proudly.

"Are you insane?" Yolumay asked. She pointed behind her to the entirety of the vast sea. "Legends say that it and the kraken fought together and created the oceans and seas, and--"

"That the mer-auder lives in the seas and the kraken in the oceans," Hora interrupted. "Yes. I know. Everyone has that legend."

"Everyone?" Stelimus thought. He started thinking about the meaning of 'everyone' in this context. "That shouldn't be. That's a bizarre coincidence for two people so distant from each other and never having met to have the same legend." He turned to his queen to ask her a question. "Have you heard of this legend, Copper?"

"Of course I have, Cotton Candy!" she grinned. "Everypony has!"

"C-Cotton Candy?" Stelimus stuttered.

"Yup!" Copper kissed him on the muzzle, prompting him to blush in embarrassment. "It's because you're big, fluffy, and look like blue cotton candy."

Yolumay snickered at the display while Stelimus turned a deep shade of red, but Horas and the others were apathetic to the display of affection. Still, the 'princess' of the tundran reindeer wasn't about to let the words of the anyubinite slide that easily.

"How are you supposed to fight off something that practically CREATED the world as we know it? What'll you do if the kraken is there as well and they're fighting in our pathway?"

"We'll go AROUND them?" Horas mocked. "This isn't a painting. The sea is in three dimensions. It would exponentially lengthen our time to get to Niris, but we have provisions to last us three weeks if necessary."

"Then let's go!" Radivus shouted from atop the spiraling wood.

It took about two hours for the materials to be brought back onto the ship and for the vessel itself to be pushed back into the sea, but they set off immediately when everything was prepared, leaving little to nothing behind them but invisible vestiges of their camp hidden in the sands. The stumps where the masts and sails should have been sparked briefly, terrifying the guests of the ship. Seafoam green colored shapes grew upon those stumps while the torches at either end of the ship flared up violently in reaction to the growth. Masts coupled with sails had grown on both sides of the ships, stunning the deer.

"Is this magic?" Stelimus wondered aloud.

"I doubt it," Yolumay commented. She passed her hoof through the mast and observed her 'toes' while wiggling them. "It's not our 'essence' either. I have no idea what this stuff could be, and I doubt they'll tell us anything anyways. They seem rather insistent on that."

Leaving the forms be for the time being, Stelimus let his mind wander into the open blue both above and below. Gregary had completely forgotten what it felt like to be at sea; To have the wind blowing on his face, to have the soothing sounds of the waves flowing and the chirps of the sea birds dive-bombing into the water to catch fish. In fact, thinking back on it, the last time he went out to sea was with his friends back when he was twenty-four. That was a pretty long time ago, but he just couldn't quite put a finger on why he refused to go back to sailing across the ocean. The memory refused refused to come back.

"Don't you think this is romantic?" Copper asked Stelimus.

"Huh?"

"We're alone on the front of this ship." A loud crash echoed below deck when she said this. "The others went below deck to see how our accommodations would be like so we have alllllllll the time to ourselves."

"I was daydreaming that hard?" He was broken out of his trance once again by the mare giving him extremely affectionate and almost obsessive eyes. "Personal space," Stelimus said. Copper ignored it. "Gotta talk about our personal space again, Copper?"

The mare stuck her tongue out playfully.

"Geez. If I ever see Cadance's soul, I'm going to ask her what the hell she injected this pony with. This is WAY too excessive." Stelimus had to think of a quick way out of the situation and used the crappiest excuse ever. "Hey, what's over there?" he said as he pointed to the opposite side of the ship and slid away.

Copper nearly fell onto her face but caught herself in time. She glared at the deer and glared, nodding her head.

"Oh, it's going to be like that, is it? I do love a good challenge, but I'll get that kiss," she nodded. "But how do I not make it seem so obsessive?" she thought aloud. "I've managed to get kisses out of him, but he's so flustered when he demonstrates his affection. He's so cute when he does that!" she squeed.

The first day saw Copper respecting Stelimus' need for personal space as she devised a plan to sneak attack him and get the much-needed kiss, but on the dawn of the next day, a disturbing event occurred.

"The mer'auder is there," an anyubinite sailor shouted.

The guests and several anyubinites rushed on deck to see the monster in action. It was a gigantic white creature about a hundred meters in height with four tentacles ending in large clamps protruding from its back. Surprisingly, the muscular 'fish' had two pairs of strong arms ending in three digits; Two for one side and one for the other, and they were positioned in a way that allowed them to still grab things...provided their blade-like forms did not slice through what they were holding. The beasts was minding its own business, so it was difficult to see its face, but once it heard the wooden hull of the vessel pushing through the water, it turned its head to see the culprit. Its left eye had been completely gouged out by a massive horn which grew through the back of its skull, and it was somehow still alive from this. The top of its head was quite flat and the cranium itself quite large, but this didn't hamper the intimidation it gave off. Where there should've been only one eye, two were horizontally placed next to each other in the right eye socket. The intimidation was further driven home by the fact that it was currently chewing on a whale, but despite its somewhat humanoid form, its mouth was not at all opening as one would expect: It opened sideways, and the right 'jaw' split into two mandibles lined with teeth. It was a very bizarre creature.

"Should we be worried?" Stelimus whimpered.

Hora took a bite out of some dried meat while staring blankly at the giant. "No. As long as we don't aggravate it, the thing will let us be."

"Really? That seems strange for something huge like that. I mean, you'd expect it to use that to its advantage and try to destroy everything that bothers it."

Hora loudly exhaled. "Not everything that is enormous wants to kill, maim, and burn, King Anglacite."

"It's 'Stelimus'," the deer corrected.

"Oh?" He turned to face the deer with wide eyes. "You did not inherit your father's name?"

"I did, but--"

"Then your title is 'King Anglacite'," Hora insisted with yet another blank expression. He quickly added "Shortened, of course."

The mer-auder continued staring at the ship and, after several feet of separation had been acquired, started following the vessel. It gradually dived down then rose up very closely to the ship's left side to have a better look on the deck.

"Is it looking for something?" Radivus asked.

"No. As I mentioned, not everything has aggressive intentions. It is probably curious and assessing whether or not we're a threat."

"Oh. I feel MUCH better," Stelimus spoke sarcastically and crossed his forelegs.

Next Chapter: Burning Glass Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 41 Minutes