Back inside the sub, Carl watched the Diamond Dog he was supposed to lead to the surface get suited up in his escape suit. It was a reddish-orange suit, pretty similar to the immersion suits in use on commercial vessels with the thick waterproof fabric and the loose one-size-fits-all type. The difference was, the submariners’ version was fully enclosed and came with a small supply of compressed air carried in a satchel. The air was for breathing until the surface was reached and while transitioning inside the airlock, to provide buoyancy that would pull the escapee to the surface, and to fill the inflatable liferaft integrated into the suit.

Needless to say, quite a bit higher on the tech ladder than the thick neoprene suits merchant sailors used to ward off hypothermia.

Vàzquez struggled a bit as he put on his suit. Male Diamond Dogs may have been the closest in shape to humans – at least of all the species found among Georgia’s crew, an Ornithian or an Abyssinian might have been a better choice-, but they still were different. Sure they were humanoid, but they were a bit closer to gorillas in their gait than to humans, and the dog’s large meaty arms stretched the suit’s sleeves to their limit.

“This going to work?” Carl questioned as a griffon Chief helped him squeeze Vàzquez inside the suit.

“Ain’t gonna be comfortable...” The dog panted, finally pulling the zipper shut and letting the Chief run a buddy check over him. “… but it should work. Correct, Chief?” He asked the griffon.

“Aye, ah reckon it will.” The griffon patted him on the shoulder. “Careful on the ascent, son. Remember, don’t hold your breath or you’ll crush your own lungs with the pressure differential. You got an air supply and this kid over here’s gonna help you up, so breathe steady, ‘kay?”

“Comprendo chief.” Vàzquez gave a thumbs up.

Tried to at least. He could move his digits alright but the fabric was so stretched he could barely move his arms. Carl would have to help him all the way up, because there wasn’t much the dog could do on his own.

“Just remember: this isn’t training, this isn’t a safe shallow swimming pool. It’s open ocean, you’re 600 feet deep, it’s cold, there’s current, and we’re counting on you getting up there and making sure the rest of the crew will follow.” The griffon insisted more firmly, tightening his talons around Vàzquez’s shoulder. “Don’t. Fuck. This. Up.”

The Chief then turned around and exchanged a few words with Carl to make sure the hippogriff hadn’t forgotten the procedure before they finally allowed the two inside the airlock. A griffon helped Carl pull Vàzquez up the ladder by the straps of his collar until the dog was fully inside before dropping back down. The hatch sealed up behind them with an almost solemn clang.

Time to get up to the surface then.

“Cadet, we just got a message from Fugro up top.” The griffon Chief told him through the interphone in the compartment. “They say: aim for the moonpool. Normally we wouldn’t need a decompression chamber but we’re so far deep we’re going to use it anyway just to be on the safe side. Get to the moonpool, pass off Vàzquez to the sailors up there, then come back down to assist your doc. I’m keeping the airlock ready, don’t make me wait, kid.”

“Understood.” Carl simply replied.

Hanging up the interphone, he made sure to open the air canister on Vàzquez’s suit and let it balloon up as it was supposed to before he turned the valves that would fill the airlock with seawater and equalize pressure with the outside ocean. Soon as water started flowing in, he switched back to his seapony form, inelegantly flopping on the floor because the water wasn’t high enough yet.

Eh, at least the display was enough to bring a chuckle out of the admittedly stressed out Vàzquez, though Carl had to make sure he stayed centered with the hatch coaming above them. Not like the dog could do much in the overly stretched suit.

Then, after what felt like hours of water slowly crawling its way up towards the ceiling, the airlock was full and a little light told Carl he could finally open the outer hatch, greeting him with the sight of all the seapony teams that were swimming around the stricken submarine and inspecting it, setting up stuff and markers to make sense of the field of debris lying around Georgia.

Not that he got much time to look around because Vàzquez rocketed towards the surface as soon as the hatch was open, his buoyancy pulling him up at breakneck speed and leaving behind a bewildered seapony. It took Carl a few seconds of realization to beat his tailfin and catch up with the dog before he drifted out of position and rammed his head against Fugro’s keel. He wrapped his forefins around the submariner and steered him back along the umbilical tether that connected Fugro to Georgia.

Mere seconds later, both of them emerged inside of the dive support vessel’s moonpool. Carl only had enough time to blink and brush a bit of seaweed off of his snout before a pair of sailors bent down and grabbed Vàzquez by the collar, pulling him aboard where he was immediately carted off towards a decompression chamber where Lilian would make sure he hadn’t sustained barotrauma from the sudden ascent and abrupt pressure change.

“Well, I guess that settles it...” He mumbled as he watched the USN sailor disappear behind a door while he scratched his snout with his fin.

“Was that the only one?” A parrot bearing cadet ranks on his shoulders asked in a Portuguese accent.

“Yeah, the rest is supposed to evacuate with your diving bell as far as I understood.” Carl nodded. “Guy should be enough to tell you what’s what, but could you haul me up on deck?”

“Uh… why?”

“Because the sea dog you just took inside may have it in his noggin’, but I got to hand you the papers and to do that I need to change back in the dry. Now if you don’t mind?” He asked, holding out one of his forefins.

“Sure.” The parrot shrugged, reaching down with a claw and pulling him out of the water with a heave. “And here you go.”

“Thanks...” Carl quickly shifted to his hippogriff form which kept the documents Graham had given him dry. He took off the satchel with the technical data and handed it over to the parrot. “Care to bring this to the Officers? I gotta get back to the sub and help Doc Delacroix. What’s your name by the way?”

“Garcia Almeida, you?” The Ornithian replied as he checked the insides of the satchel.

He was a military macaw now that he paid attention to it: mostly green feathers, with a blotch of red above his beak and bluish-yellow trim on his forearms, legs and crest feathers. Much like males of his species, he was of the stout, muscular type. A stark contrast with the tall and lean female Ornithians.

“Carl Van Peij.” He said with a curt nod, before rolling over his back and letting himself fall down in the moonpool.

In Savannah, Amandine’s crew had fallen back to their ship after the transfer of cargo with the HPI. All the containers filled with spare parts were quickly stowed and secured inside the holds, ever mindful of not harming the ship’s stability. Their job done, most of the sailors were all too happy to return to their cabins and stick to routine maintenance and guard duty for the remainder of the day.

That didn’t extend to Aleksei’s recce team, as their truck was soon seen exiting Amandine through the side ramp and driving past the rampart of containers they used as a security perimeter. They headed for the town proper, the truck’s tall radio antenna bobbing up and down every time Scarface swerved to avoid one of the many obstacles that barred the way in the ruins of the city.

“Can somebody please remind me why we’re doing a recce here in the first place?” Thanasis complained from the back. “I mean, haven’t we done what we were supposed to already? Job’s done, time to catch up with the fleet.”

“So we’re just supposed to forget the fact there are some survivors in the area?” Scarface fired back from behind the wheel as he steered their Defender 130 around a part of the road that had collapsed in a ditch, turning half the street into a swamp.

“The HPI guys seemed to imply they were bandits.” Thanasis insisted. “We lookin’ for bandits now?”

“They claimed they were bandits.” Aleksei pointed out. “Now, don’t take it as me being naive but having felt those thaumic shields the HPI uses, I kind of understand why they’d shoot at the train.”

“They were looting the area though.” Radiant joined in on the discussion after getting bored of watching post-flood suburbs and the short mud-covered, damaged houses that could be found in the area.

“Don’t we loot some of the areas we go through?” She quirked an eyebrow at the Equestrian.

“Point to the Priestess of Epona.” Scarface snarked.

Aleksei huffed and threw the gargoyle a glare.

“I ain’t no priestess, satyr.”

“Sure feels like you are though.” He countered. “You convene with her in your dreams, you got an artifact from her, she gave you a daily-use spell. How long are you going to keep up the delusion, uh boss? And… satyr? That the best you got?”

“Eh, it’s accurate. Last I checked you ‘sampled’ pretty much any species you could get your dick in back in Belfast… horny bastard.”

“Antlers actually.” The Bulgarian quipped cheekily, tapping a finger on the two dark prongs that sprouted out of his mane. “Though now that you mention it, satyr’s pretty accurate.”

“I just can’t understand why you’d be so… varied in the lasses you go for, pal. Pretty sure most species don’t go for as many flavors as you do, even dragons, and they can pretty much reproduce with anything.”

“Actually I’m pretty sure I can explain that.” Radiant said from his position beside Thanasis in the back. “It’s normal for his species.”

Aleksei blinked once at the Pegasus, barking a quick order at Scarface to take the next right after she checked the map.

Just a matter of driving around a sinkhole that revealed what used to be Savannah’s underground tunnels, their moldy masonry for once in their existence lay exposed to the late afternoon sunlight amidst piles of rubble, broken pipes and collapsed buildings.

“Care to elaborate?” Aleksei prodded.

“It’s in gargoyles’ reputation.” Radiant shrugged with his wings. “Unlike most species they’re known as the big xenophiles of the lot. I don’t know the full details, but they’re generally the ones that get along best with other species, unlike – and I loathe to admit it- ponies for instance.”

“Ponies aren’t welcoming?” Scarface’s ear flicked in curiosity. “Hard to believe. You Equestrians seem rather… uh… priyatelski? Amicable I think is the word?”

“Then you’ve never witnessed herd instincts at play. With some groups it can get so bad ponies stampede to get away from the strangers. Even equine species actually.” He looked pointedly towards Aleksei. “Like hippogriffs for instance. Ponies that aren’t affected are more of a rarity than the norm.”

“You?” Aleksei inquired.

“Why do you think I went for that career in particular?” He chuckled. “Unlike most ponies I don’t mind frequenting other species. Guess that’s because even as a colt I traveled so much with my mom I never really had a herd to stick with. Less herd behavior when there’s no herd to speak of.”

“Eh, gonna have to take your word for it.” Scarface just shrugged as their truck finished circling the sinkhole and resumed its path down the street. “Though I’ll admit, I’m not very picky when it comes to species. Still… I believe this distracted us from this priestess thing we were talking about.”

Aleksei glowered at her subordinate, though she didn’t reprimand him. So much for dodging the subject, but in all honesty the question was warranted. Her relationship with the Celtic horse goddess was certainly odd.

As of late, the goddess would summon her spiritual form to the Otherworld once every two days during her dreams to further teach her about the Celtic magic realm. She’d gotten to know some of the horses in the herd that inhabited Epona’s plateau – her children-, all of them having come to the realm either to seek refuge when magic faded away, or simply for their afterlife.

Like Morvarc’h for instance. He was a dark courser, very lithe in build with a short russet cropped mane and feathering around his hooves. His red eyes matched the fiery sparks he sometimes exhaled through his nostrils. Epona had presented him to Aleksei one night, proclaiming him to be so fast on his hooves he could go from the Isle of Ushant to Cornwall under two hours. Because he could gallop over water apparently.

The less impressive part was that the stallion himself had admitted to dying stupidly in a hunting accident with the King of Cornwall.

So much for being a demigod when your rider’s grip slips and he shoots you in the back of the head with a longbow. His brothers had been right: horse-archery should be left to easterners.

He was of the more impressive part of the herd, the magic kind of horse, though that didn’t mitigate the fact that the rest of Epona’s herd were all prime specimens of equine nobility in their own right, something which their goddess of a mother was all too proud to tell Aleksei about between two tales of the other realms that made up the Otherworld.

She had also granted Aleksei another daily-use spell a few days prior. Nothing too big, just a ‘relieve pain’ spell she could cast on touch after…

After she’d had to help Epona with giving birth to her latest foal. That was the one part she didn’t tell her shipmates, not knowing whether she ought to be embarrassed, alarmed, or… just plain disgusted.

She did help with the birth, and the foal was as healthy as they got. It was just that, as a marine engineer, she really never expected in her life to be summoned as a dream spirit in another realm to help a horse goddess give birth.

Brave new world...

“Al’, I don’t want to make you feel like you’re not in control of that situation, but it really sounds like you should have a serious chat with Epona.” Radiant offered.

“Guess you’re right.” She sighed, leaning her head against the dashboard. “I… I just assumed that wasn’t going to be a problem. She’s a Celtic goddess, I’m from the Baltic, I’d assume there are other gods that could lay claim on me or… something.”

“I believe for that to be true we’d have to make contact with them, and the Celtic pantheon is the only one we met so far.” Thanasis said. “Not that I don’t expect we wouldn’t find any back home in Greece and… was there a Baltic pantheon?”

“Eeyup.” Aleksei nodded. “Problem is the belief was so stamped out through foreign conquests and by Jesuits that they’re mostly forgotten about. Hell, if it’s like with the Giant’s Ring and you need an ancient site to reach them then I have absolutely no idea where to find one in my own country. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were dismantled or even turned into churches.”

“What about other Baltic countries?” Scarface asked.

“I don’t even know where to find one in Latvia, what makes you think I’d know about any in Lithuania? Nah, finding any would take some serious research and digging through archives back in Riga. Ain’t as easy as Greece where if you sneeze too hard your snot might land on an ancient altar or some shit.”

“Gross, but accurate.” Thanasis admitted. “So you going to have a chat with her then?”

“Sounds like I’ll have to.” Aleksei sighed, looking down at the magic bracelet she still wore every waking hour.

Back in the Otherworld, Epona stared bemusedly at her scrying pond while her foal nursed from her teats, having just listened to that rather interesting bit of conversation. It seemed like the topic would be brought up sooner than she wished to.

“Morvarc’h?” She turned her head slightly, beckoning for the stallion to come forward.

Dutifully, her son trotted over to her, taking a quick pause to nuzzle his newborn sister in passing.

“What is it mother? Do you require anything from me?” He asked her.

“Yes, I need you to journey to the realm of Oghma and pass along a message.”

“The Tuath Dé? What does he need to know?” The black stallion nickered softly.

“Nothing personally, but he knows how to reach a Baltic deity I need to contact. Please tell him I need to have a few words with Lord Ūsiņš of Latvia, and in as short order as can be achieved.”

“Then it shall be done.” Morvarc’h nodded firmly before turning around on his hooves.

Rearing up on his hind legs, he neighed loudly to signal the rest of the herd he was leaving momentarily before he rocketed off towards the edge of their plateau, hooves kicking up large clumps of dirt as he leaped off and disappeared behind the misty veil that marked the border of Epona’s territory.

Unaware of such dealings, the recce team had carried on with their task, carefully combing through the streets of Savannah in search of the so-called bandits the HPI train had come across. A task which turned out to be far from easy considering the poor state of roadways inside the city.

Numerous times, they had to stray off their planned patrol route to avoid a sinkhole that blocked the way only to then have to change course again when the next street was blocked off by a fallen tree or collapsed building. Sure, at some point Savannah must have been a rather quaint town, and fairly green too from the amount of trees lining the streets and all the parks, but now it was more of a labyrinthine maze Aleksei was doing her level-best to make sense of, repeatedly scratching out roads on the map she was using when they turned out to be blocked.

Outside the Defender’s windows she could see the buildings that made out downtown Savannah. They had their own kind of charm, being medium-sized square buildings with flat roofs, overwhelmingly made out of bricks with forged iron decorations and colorful-but-destroyed storefronts. Those that didn’t have brick facades were made of ochre-colored stone and concrete that didn’t clash overly much with the bricks. Most were also overgrown, covered in vines, Spanish moss and other plants.

A pretty nice blend of colors, but it was pretty damn clear in the layout that they weren’t in old, cluttered and cramped Europe anymore, no. The streets were a lot wider than any they had seen in Northern Ireland, and they quickly saw once they reached the suburbs that parcels were a lot bigger, and how much more popular wood was as a construction material, often painted in bright colors. For all the good that it did after the flooding, because a lot of these wooden, one-to-two stories suburban houses had suffered a lot more damage than the bricks and concrete of downtown Savannah.

And that was saying something.

“Wouldn’t it be a little faster if we… I dunno, flew?” Radiant pointed out after their third obstacle-induced deviation. “Last I checked all four of us had wings.”

“I second the alien.” Thanasis added.

“I’d share the sentiment, but there’s one thing the two of you forgot.” Aleksei replied after jutting down something on her map. “Scarface, care to tell them?”

“You two forgot to weigh in all the gear we have along.”

“Can’t be that heavy...” Radiant mumbled.

“Now, let me list things off...” Aleksei tapped a talon against the dashboard. “For one you got personal gear. Armor, ammo, walkie-talkies, weapons. Extra stuff like rations just in case. Then you have the water. Two jerrycans of that plus the canteens. The maps, GPS receiver, long range radio, first-aid kits and potions...” She listed off. “Pretty sure I don’t have it all, but do you feel like you can carry it all? We’re talking like thirty kilos of gear you want to fly – not walk, fly- with.”

“Given my performances up in the air I’d take the truck over my wings.” Scarface quipped.

“Fine then, be that way.” Radiant relented.

“I’m not dissing buddy.” Scarface said. “Just sayin’, with the experience I got from rucking with the Bulgarian Army I can tell you it ain’t the thing I wanna combine with flying.”

Unfortunately they didn’t find anything in downtown Savannah. There were traces of looting and spray paint marks to indicate which areas survivors had already gone through, but they didn’t actually find a colony there. And neither did they find any in the ravaged suburbs south of the town center. Someone had definitely gone through the area, and they even found hints of a fight having occurred between roving wild dogs and survivors, but they didn’t actually find anything.

It wasn’t until they veered west towards the interstate that they actually located something. The area was close to an airport, and thus far less densely populated than the rest with lower-value housing, geared more towards small industry and shops lining the roads that connected downtown Savannah to the interstate and what Aleksei assumed were more suburbs even further inland west. They hoped it would yield better results, being in an area that was further away from the river and thus spared the worst of the floods.

And right beside the I-95, they found it. A truck stop. Fortified that is, which is what spurred Scarface to stop their truck and pause to look at the thing in surprise.

It was just that… a truck stop with a gas station linked to a convenience store in the middle of a large asphalt area, with a couple adjoining buildings around a parking lot behind the station. They could see a small single-floor motel shaped like a U behind the gas station, with a garage, a long building that held a couple abandoned food courts and small shops, and a fenced yard filled with old caravans, campers and used cars.

Besides the yard, they didn’t see a lot of vehicles in the parking lot, barring the rigs left behind by the couple truckers that must have been in the motel at the time of the Event.

What caught their attention was the fortified convenience store in the middle of it all. They could see the boards blocking off the windows at ground level, along with rows of sandbags around the main door to provide a firing position, much like those set atop the awning of the gas station. And on the large neon sign that towered above the station, someone had spray-painted the words ‘Bandits back off!’.

“Well, looks like we found someone.” Scarface said after a minute of silence. “Boss?”

Aleksei gauged the building from a distance with a frown. Now that she paid attention to it there was a chain link fence surrounding most of the area behind the gas station, with a couple holes plugged with corrugated steel, barbed wires and plywood to reinforce the barricade.

“Let me handle it. You three, stay in the truck, don’t touch your guns and… here, keep my rifle.” She said, passing it over to Thanasis.

“You going in unarmed?” Scarface quirked an eyebrow.

“Got my pistol.” She said, tapping the holster on her flak jacket.

“Pistols ain’t worth shit at range.”

“Pistols are a lot less conspicuous than a biggass gun. Look...” She jabbed a talon towards the big red words on the sign above the station. “If they mention bandits, then that means they’ve been on the receiving end and don’t want a repeat of that. Showing up with a rifle might not get the best reaction out of them.”

“Pretty confident aren’t you?”

“With a magic speechcraft bracelet and an appeasement spell?” She fired right back at the gargoyle. “Worst case scenario, how far can you throw that shield spell of yours?”

“Pretty far, it’s a deflection shield. Repurposed telekinesis actually.”

“Then throw me one if you think it’s getting too heated. I’ll be careful. I promise.” She reassured him before leaving the relative safety of the truck with a confident smile on her beak.

Slowly, she walked over to the station, deciding not to take to the air lest she pushed the occupants into opening fire. She already knew the flak jacket she was wearing wouldn’t help, though she hoped the high-vis coveralls she wore under it would make it clear she was not military. The feathers in her wings bristled in anticipation as she approached.

“Halt! Who goes there?” She finally heard in a rough, accented voice when she got close enough.

Aleksei slowly lifted her head up to stare at the gas station’s awning, and at the pair of equines looking down at her from up there behind the sandbags. Kirins actually, her mind corrected when she took note of the poofy manes, scaled backs and single antlers both sported.

Neat, she didn’t expect to meet any in the US. Would have thought they’d be confined to Asia. They were both stallions sharing the same color palette: gray, yellow eyes, a dull red mane that matched the color of their antlers, and a set of jade scales running over the back, barely visible beneath the denim jackets they wore. The bigger of the two looked significantly older than the other, with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth and his horn ablaze with magic.

Telekinesis. He was lifting a shotgun aimed loosely in her direction.

“Lass I suggest you give me a name. Got a slug loaded in there, that ain’t the thing you wanna try out believe me.”

“Alright, alright.” She calmly replied, sitting down on her haunches and raising her claws. “The name’s Aleksei. Aleksei Klavins. I’m not here to cause trouble.”

Now to let that bracelet work its magic.

“Then what are you doing here, pray tell?”

“Reconnaissance, if you were wondering.” She replied casually, clicking her beak and carefully gauging the two kirins. “My group caught word of bandits in this city, so we were just looking around trying to figure out whether that was true or not. Not trying to be rude, but I could stand to learn your name right now.”

“Ho-Jin Park.” He said, keeping his shotgun raised, though she noticed the tip of the barrel lowering ever so slightly. “The kid’s my grandson, Dal.” He added, jerking his head towards the younger kirin at his side. “Your group?”

“Crew actually. We’re sailors, merchant sailors. Just came in from Northern Ireland.”

“You’re awfully well-geared for merchants.” Ho-Jin pointed out.

“An unfortunate necessity. We’ve had several incidents popping up along the way. Monsters. Felt necessary to gear up at a couple military bases to fight back. About those bandits...” She trailed off, pointedly looking towards the spray-painted letters on the station’s sign.

She felt her bracelet thrum ever so slightly. Ho-Jin shook his head softly and put his shotgun back in a scabbard he carried on his back.

“I’m afraid whoever it was that told you there are bandits in town was right.” He sighed, leaning over the sandbags with his forehooves crossed. “Tell your buddies they can move their truck over to the garage, looks like we’re going to have a little chat, miss Klavins.”

“Hold on… run that by me again, you found what in the sonar sphere?” Graham repeated into the handset.

How he could even hold it in the frog of his hoof was a mystery he made a point of ignoring. So long as he could hold stuff again without resorting to his mouth, he wasn’t going to complain.

“Found is a bit of a stretch.” Skinner elaborated from his end of the line. “I just got word from the diving teams that they heard some banging coming from the bow section. Morse actually.”

“A SOS then?”

“Yep.” The Scottish Captain confirmed. “A bit garbled though, so we’re led to assume whoever’s doing it is stuck in some way.”

Graham’s gaze flicked towards a pile of messily scribbled notes where they had written their damage reports, lists of all the systems that had sustained damage throughout the sub and an evaluation of the slow flow of water that was trickling inside through the damaged bulkhead that separated the main interior of the sub from the foremost compartment that was the sonar sphere.

“Problem with that is that the compartment is flooded. That I’m certain of. We did have a couple sailors running an inspection in there, no-”

“Seaponies.”

“Oh… right.” The XO blinked. “So one of my crewmembers turned into one.”

“Sounds like it, only way I can explain how there would be a survivor in there. Now to identify who that crewmember is...” Skinner trailed off.

“You think it can be done?”

“Of course. Blurry as it gets sometimes, there is a pattern to transformations. Griffons and dragons mostly come from Eastern Europe or have ancestry from there, for instance. As for hippogriffs-dash-seaponies, it’s island nations.”

“Hold on, I’m pretty sure the doc you sent down here is French. That’s no island nation.”

“Far as I know, she’s from overseas territories, not mainland France. Lots of hippogriffs in the fleet are Filipinos, Indonesians, you catch the hint?”

“Solid, hold a second I need to check out the casualty list.” Graham said, momentarily laying down the handset and going for one of the many pieces of paper they’d set down on what used to be the chart table inside of control.

He quickly fished a single spreadsheet, eyes flicking towards the end of the list where they had written down the names of the sailors lost in the collision. Of those three that had been trapped inside the sonar sphere at the time, he quickly found which was the likeliest to be the seapony.

Not Weps unfortunately. Seamus Young from Denver wasn’t exactly what he’d call an islander.

But there was one name on the short list that left him with little doubt as to who the seapony was.

Kainano Mauga. An E5. He vaguely remembered hearing about the guy when he was first assigned to Georgia, something about him being of Samoan descent.

A rarity. There weren’t that many of them in the Navy, though he’d also heard that the little amount it represented was actually a fairly large share of American Samoa’s population.

Either way now he had a name to put on the mysterious seapony, which he quickly transmitted to Skinner up on the surface.

“I’ll go ahead and assume you can’t just open a hatch and get to him from the inside, no?” Skinner eventually said after Graham had to spell out the full name.

“Certainly not. We’re already taking on water. The rate is semi-negligible as of now, but if we were to open that hatch we would flood our battery well with seawater. Not going to risk our backup power supply over this.”

“… which means it’s up to the divers to get to...” Skinner paused. “Kainano. Got it.”

“You think you can manage that?”

“Most likely. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take considering we got to take some specialized tools. Probably going to have to cut open the hull and find a way to pry it open. That uh… how thick is the outer shell?”

“Two inches, give or take. Think your tools can cut through that?”

“Not fast.” Skinner said. “But they should. I’ll assign a team to that task for now. As for the diving bell, we’re still waiting for Vàzquez to get done with his decompression process then we can move on to prepare that. Then… we’ll see how that works out.”

“Alright, call back when he’s out then.” Graham nodded.

“Aight, will do.” Skinner agreed before hanging up.

“So where do we go now then?” Someone in the group asked in French. A deer, one of the newest additions to the colony.

“It’s only one more kilometer east to the pine grove, we’ll be there in a minute.” Rockhoof casually replied from his position leading the narrow file of colonists along the path, barely sparing a glance at the UTM map he had tucked under his trademark leather rig.

He had to thank Miles and Emeric for recovering local maps from the military academy. The standard in cartography was leagues ahead of what he’d grown accustomed to back in modern Equestria (let alone ancient Equestria). They’d grabbed an entire portfolio of them when the two had gone back to Camp Coëtquidan to fetch the radio equipment Emeric wanted, among other things that included getting some extra stuff from their former dorms.

Still no hope of getting inside the armory though, and Starswirl didn’t care enough to help with that.

Rock was pretty satisfied with the two ponies he’d quickly come to consider as his lieutenants (them having the rank in the first place helped, too). They may be overly reliant on technology that itself relied on supply chains that could no longer be maintained, but they couldbe crafty in a pinch. Case in point with Emeric’s little projects like the coal turbine and now the radio equipment.

Miles wasn’t as good with tech, but she made up for it by starting to train some of the recent additions to the colony. With a population that had jumped to three-dozen in the last week, she had felt it was necessary to get some more guards. One of these trainees was trailing behind Rockhoof right then. A dark-furred stag that was apparently a former lumberjack, which was exactly why the Earth Pony had wanted him along on that specific outing.

While Emeric was just guarding the castle and Miles was leading a salvage party looking for hardware stores, his team of half-dozen colonists had headed deeper into the heart of Broceliande towards a pine grove.

They needed lumber. Lots of it. Now, Rockhoof was no carpenter, that much he was aware of, but he was skilled enough with his own hooves to know how to make do, and he damn well knew picking any of the ancestral oaks that made up the vast majority of the trees in Broceliande would have been ill-advised.

For one simple reason: pine was an easy, supple wood to work with. Oak wasn’t. It was also far easier for their group to just strip felled pines of branches and haul them back to the castle. Oaks were gnarly, filled with knots and with twisted trunks. Not that they couldn’t grow with upright trunks, it was just that they did the complete opposite in Broceliande and sprawled in every possible direction.

In comparison, the pines’ trunks were so ramrod straight that processing them into planks and making a palisade out of them was going to be a walk in the park. Plus there was also the whole fact the bed of needles at the foot of all these pines made for a lot less shrubbery to clear and remove than it would have been with other species, something no one on the logging team complained about.

They got to work as soon as they got to the grove, selecting the best trees of the lot according to how much wood Rockhoof said they’d need. Some in the group still had difficulties working with their new bodies – mostly the deer-, so it fell upon Rockhoof and the lone centaur in the group to cut down the pines.

Over the next few hours, the relative silence of the forest was disturbed by the repeated clanging of axes against bark, followed by the cracking sound of strained wood, each time punctuating the forest canopy with a new hole.

They quickly found a routine in their system. Rockhoof and the centaur (a guy called Albert) would cut down the pines and then saw the trunks into multiple logs before moving on to the next. Meanwhile, two others would strip them of branches and collect them inside a crate someone had brought to their ‘logging camp’. There was some use for them, if only as firestarters and filling for the charcoal kiln.

As for the stripped logs, they were moved off to a pile to be dealt with by the two last members of their team. Probably those with the most arduous task of the tree, as it involved tying chains around each log and dragging them back to the castle.

Needless to say, they had to swap the stripping and hauling teams several times over lest some of them fall over from exhaustion. Deer and unicorns (the vast majority of the colony’s population) were not equal in strength to Earth Ponies, and unfortunately hard muscle wasn’t something they had a large supply of among the colonists. Nevertheless, they did manage to get the job done, if at a much slower pace than Rockhoof would have liked.

So long as they got the wood for making planks and charcoal, he wasn’t going to complain about delays. It was only by the time the sky started turning orange late in the evening that the very last log was carted off towards the castle. Rockhoof finally took a pause, the stallion sitting down on his haunches and wiping sweat off his forehead.

His circlet helped keep it out of his eyes. But only up to a certain extent.

“Hard work, uh?” Albert the centaur commented between two gulps of water from his canteen.

“I’ve had worse.” Rock shrugged, cracking his neck.

He might ask Meadow for a massage after dinner though. That always helped.

“Can’t say I have.” The centaur – a bay draft horse on his equine half- said. “But I’ll admit it’s a lot more fulfilling than office work. Feels like I’m actually doing something for a chang- c’était quoi ça?”He turned his head around, ears tracking coming from deeper within the woods.

Back at the castle, Martin was just playing in the courtyard under Meadowbrook’s watchful eye when all of a sudden she saw him stop and turn his head in a seemingly random direction, transfixed. She was about to ask him what was wrong when the fawn suddenly ran off into the woods.

Not a second later, Starswirl emerged out of his tower, the ghost’s cloak billowing behind him as he galloped after Martin.

“What the… what’s going on?!” She asked aloud, standing up and intent on running after the two.

Intent on. She didn’t get past the gatehouse before a wave of nausea hit her and made her retch in the castle’s moat. Right. She’d just hit the excessive nausea part of her pregnancy.

Rockhoof’s ears had swiveled on his head, quickly zeroing in on the stomping sound coming from the deep woods, paired with the rustling of vegetation. Something was headed their way. Something big.

Behind him, he heard Albert pick up his axe, pretty much echoing his own reaction as he took his combat shovel out of its scabbard. There was magic in the air, more than usual in the enchanted forest, making the hair on his back bristle in anticipation.

The stomping got closer.

Out of the bushes emerged a large humanoid creature, easily three times as tall as a fully grown minotaur even with its hunchbacked posture. Its head was made out of a deer skull, clean white bone from which sprouted a great pair of antlers covered in various green glowing sigils, their sheen matching that of the two magic embers that filled the skull’s eye sockets. A muddy beard of roots filled with clumps of dirt hung below its jaw and down to its stomach, as if it had laid belly down for a long time before finally standing up, a magical construct with rotten bark for skin and green magic coursing through artificial veins.

It held itself up like a gorilla on its four long limbs, each as big as trunks, with its forelimbs ending in wickedly sharp claws as long as a pony’s hooves.

The creature… or construct rather, was mostly hollow. Cracks in the bark plates that made out its skin showed wiry muscle-roots within, each pulsing with the green magic that gave it life. On its hunched back lay a mossy carpet, draped over its shoulders like a damp mite-infected cloak.

Yet that wasn’t what got most of Rock and Albert’s attention. And neither was it the wild fiery look in its eyes.

No. That merit went to the human skeleton trapped in its rib cage, clutching a staff that served as the constructs’ spine. A druid?

The construct stepped into the pine grove, eyes passing over the stumps left behind by the recent logging before tensely coming to a rest on the Earth Pony and centaur. The forest was silent, no trill from birds, no sound of the wildlife running through the shrubbery.

Just the wind softly blowing through the canopy as the evening slowly set in and the sunlight began to wane.

The Forest Guardian’s glare was palpable.

“Rock?” Albert whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I believe logging inside a magic forest may not have been the brightest of ideas.”

Author's Notes:

Wasn't a matter of 'if', only 'when'.

And with the kirin using telekinesis to levitate a gun: I know it's a technique that's been seen and assumed in the fandom (mostly, I believe, because of Fallout: Equestria), but I can't believe it would ever be effective. It's worse than firing from the hip, you're shooting with the gun as it's one to two meters off to the side.

What would be better is the unicorn/kirin using telekinesis to levitate the gun, and then using said gun as a crutch to lean on so they can aim down the sights. That allows some tactical movements on two hooves, lets them fire on the move (unlike griffons and hippogriffs for instance: they need to stop and fire prone/crouched), and they can actually aim down sights.

Last thing I can ramble on... let's see... Oh, you see Morvarc'h in this chapter? Here's an annoying thing I found out when researching him: technically, there are two Cornwalls. One is a part of Brittany, the other is... well, the actual Cornwall. I know it's due to a common etymology and hazy translations, but considering how tales tend to cross over between those two regions since they're actually rather close to each other... it's a fucking pain in the ass to figure out which of the two a story is referring to.

Cornwall [ENG] becomes Cornouaille/Cornouailles [FR]

The only difference? In French they had a 's' at the end to differentiate between the two.

Of course they forget about it when writing. Did you think it would actually be clear and consistent?