There was of course the bigger War
however General Hannibals brother
Admiral Cain Revere and Damon's father
Captain Flint
had a more modest objective
for the next while.
Cruising out there just beyond range of Carthage's Coastal Defense Ballista weapons
was
the quadreme battlecruiser
RNS Dreadnaughtus
the pride and joy of Rome's fleet
and commanded by no less then Julius Caesar's
son
Aquala Caesar
She was 4 decks tall,300 hundred feet long and bristling with the latest
in rapidfire ballista's
turret mounted catapults and hundreds of expertly trained British yeomen skilled
at handling the longbow hanging from perches on her
triple masts.
She was cernturies ahead of her time
and both your dad and Revere
drooled at the notion
of not sinking her
but capturing her intact.
The problem was she was capable of laying down a barrage of stones,arrows
ballista bolts and Roman Fyre
up to a distance of 300 meters.
So clearly a direct attack by either the were-animals or ordinary
humans was a suicide task.
However the passing Greek goddess,a daughter of
the water God
Posieden
was working on the side of the Carthagians
and thought she could drum
up a strong underwater
current to help
any were-elephants move swiftly underwater
towards the Dreadnaughtus and take her
by surprise.
However first Damon and the other were-elephants
would have to train
for their mission.
And so
Captain Flint
a ex-submariner had to teach these
were elephants to not panic when all
of their huge body
was invisible underneath the surface of
the water
except for their trunks
which stuck out of the surface about 2 feet and acted like snorkels.
And so Damon Flint didn't get to enjoy the pleasure of Mary's
company for long that day
before his now tougher father
ordered him into
the training pool.
"No son of mine gets to loaf off whilst the others
do their duty" shouted
Captain Flint as he ordered Mary the Elephant to
push a reluctant Damon the elephant
into the deep cold training pool
where three dozen other were-elephants were in
various states of panic
as they learned how to swim
underwater,their
lives dependant on them
getting their
trunks above the surface
and trying to balance that with
the powerful
underwater currents
the Greek Goddess
was sending their
way to keep them from
sinking 100 feet to the
bottom of the training pool.
Which would have been fatal to be sure.