Chapter Ten
Legends and Profits
Swift Wing took the wheel after midnight while I scouted back along our course to make sure we weren't being followed. He really wanted to take a full watch, and he assured me that his wing wasn't bothering him at all.
"Just until Lance and I have finished with our little sideshow, then it's back to bed with you," I told him. "We will need you whole and healthy in the days to come."
"Uh… sideshow, Ms. Nightshade?"
"Yes, we're going to put on a performance for the baron and his guards," I said, heading for the companionway to the lower decks. "There may be screaming. Just ignore it."
I met Lance in the empty passenger cabin for a last-minute whispered conference. Then I went through the hatch to the cargo hold and worked my way forward until I was near the area where Baron Ironhoof and the pegasi were being held.
I watched them from the darkness for a few minutes. One pegasus was clumsily and ineffectively trying to loosen the hobbles on the baron's forelegs. He'd obviously never been held prisoner before.
I spread my wings and gave them a tiny shake to make the feathers rattle together.[1] The baron didn't notice, but the unoccupied pegasus certainly did.
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[1] Yes, rattle. Unlike Luna's soft owlish wings, my own—particularly when influenced by dark magic—were more like a raven's: stiff, and loud.
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"What was that?" The pegasus peered toward me, but his night vision was ruined by the lamp hanging directly above the group. "I thought I heard… what… what is that?!"
I'd brought up as much of a charge of dark magic into my horn as I could manage. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to get my eyes glowing and my horn crackling with greenish electricity.
"Meeeeeeat…" I growled low in my throat. I didn't walk so much as creep into the lamplight. "Fressssh meeeeat!"
Give those ponies credit: none of them screamed. The baron blanched and tried to scoot himself backwards through the bulkhead, and the guards put themselves between him and me as best they could.
"Release me, demon!" One of the pegasi demanded. "Let me die fighting! Let me go to the Summerlands doing my duty!"
I laughed. A long, low chuckle that burbled up out of my throat like blood from a deep wound. "Foolish little bird thinks it's a fighter. No… no… just food." I let my jaw fall open, and thin streams of drool dropped from between my fangs.
And that's when Stalwart Lance rushed to the rescue. He came through the hatch in the bulkhead opposite me and interposed himself, holding up a flat circular piece of brass that he carefully kept obscured from the prisoners' direct view. "Get back! The captain said you're not to have them yet!"
I hissed and flinched away from the instrument as if it were some sort of amulet that had the power to hold me at bay.[2] "I am hungry!" I whined. "Let me feast!"
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[2] In actuality, it was a simple nocturlabe from my navigation chest, useless on that world where the stars didn't match its markings.
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Lance thrust his hoof toward me again, and I growled and backed away. "Not yet! Get back to your cell!"
I snarled and noisily retreated until I was hidden in the darkness again. Then I settled in and listened.
"You'll be alright," Lance said. "For now."
"You… you… serve those monsters!" One of the pegasi accused.
Lance didn't reply. Neither of us wanted to rely too much on his acting ability, so his few lines were reserved for specific requests.
"Don't leave us! That thing might come back!" That was the baron. "You're a good earth pony! Why would you help those… aleak… al..."
"Al leekornu," the second pegasus said. "The destroyers."
"I don't know anything about that," Lance said. "I don't know what they are. I never heard of them before they descended on my village and took me."
"My guards say they're monsters from another world," the baron said. There was a long pause before he spoke again. "Some sort of tribal legend they don't share with… outsiders."
"Free us!" the first pegasus pleaded urgently. "Let us die on our hooves!"
"Shut up!" the baron snapped at him. "How about we not die at all?" Then, to Lance, "You're an earth pony! You can't let that thing eat us! Help us get away, and I'll make you rich!"
"I don't know…"
"Come with us!"
"You don't understand!" Lance said, and I think he did a very good job of sounding uncertain and afraid. "There's more of them. A lot more!"
"Gold," the baron said. "Mares, servants, anything you want, just help us get away!"
"I… alright. Okay, I will."
"It won't matter," the second pegasus said, almost too quietly for me to hear. "They come to scour the world. They will kill all—"
"Shut up, or I'll leave you here!" The baron snapped.
"Wait here," Lance told them. "I'll be back soon!"
He left via the hatchway and I remained hidden in the darkness, hoping to overhear more of interest.
One of the pegasi started to say something, but the baron cut him off. "I don't care what idiotic superstitions you believe in! You can keep quiet and obey me, or you can stay and feed that thing!"
"I only obey you because of the destroyers!" The pegasus hissed back. "But you stompers have failed us! They have come—"
"How dare you use that word, you flit-wit!" Ironhoof snarled.
I had just enough time to regret that I couldn't conjure a bag of popcorn to go along with the show before Lance returned with the key to the hobbles and a parachute. He released all of them, despite the baron's incensed desire to sacrifice his rebellious guard. Lance led them up to the main deck far enough forward that Swift Wing couldn't see them from the quarterdeck. The baron only realised Lance didn't have his own parachute a second before he jumped.
"I can't come with you," Lance said.. "They have my family."
"Too bad," the baron said, swinging his hind legs over the rail. "Good luck." And he dropped out of sight.
The first pegasus followed him, but the other paused to give Lance one last piece of advice. "You will die soon. Die fighting them, and your spirit will dwell in the Summerlands. Serve them, and you will suffer in Tartarus for eternity."
"I'll keep that in mind, thanks," Lance replied. The pegasus was gone before he finished speaking.
"Gee, Lance," I said, slapping a wing across his back in a friendly gesture that made him jump. "If you ever give up jousting, you might have a career in the theater!"
He sort of skittered sideways, not quite enough to shrug off my wing, so I took pity on him and folded it away myself.
"What was all that about, Ms. Nightshade?"
"I can't be absolutely certain," I said cheerfully, "but all knowledge is power, and we just got a little stronger. Conversely, we've weakened them by providing them with misinformation. Not bad for an hour's work. Go get some sleep. We've got a busy day tomorrow."
I took over the wheel from Swift Wing, despite his half-hearted protests, and steered Nebula from her deceptive westerly course onto a South-Southeast heading that would take us back to the southern pass. Then I cast the keel spell, and slowly and laboriously set as much sail as I could manage by myself. I shut down the engines and opened the cover on the binnacle post to check how much charge we'd used, remembering to close one eye to preserve half my night sight.
All four power indicators were well below the halfway mark. That meant about three days to bring the crystals back up to full again. We'd have to run the engines for half a day to get through the southern mountain pass again, too, so tack on another day for that. Considering the time we'd need for repairs, we wouldn't be fully charged until we crossed the border into the Empire itself. I wasn't pleased by that calculation, but there wasn't anything to be done about it.
I spent the rest of the watch mulling over the fruits of our little play while listening to the old familiar creaking of Nebula's rigging.
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In the morning, Skyla and I revealed our true nature to our new recruits. They took it very well, certainly better than the baron's pegasus guards had. Evidently, he'd been right about it being a closely held legend.
"Well dip me in gravy and call me a biscuit!" Star muttered.
Daisy gave me one doubtful glance before staring, wide-eyed at Skyla and gasping, "You're so beautiful!"
"We are alicorns," Skyla said. "Have you heard the word before?"
"Cain't say as I have… uh… Cap'n," Star replied.
"So beautiful…" Daisy's eyes filled with joyful tears. I began to worry that she might pass out.
"We're a blend of all three of the pony tribes," I said. "So you can see why we're naturally more egalitarian than your empire."
"Wait. You got earth pony in you?" Star frowned at me, then pointed a hoof at Skyla. "But not her, right?"
I silently counted to ten before going over the facts again, slowly.
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The traditional three skills required of a professional sailor or aeronaut are the ability to hoof, reef, and steer. That is, they must be able to control sails and lines, reef sails in heavy weather, and steer a ship accurately and safely.
The other essential three skills, rarely mentioned in daring tales of adventure, are scrape, sand, and paint. I will assume that my readers need no explanation of those activities.
I tended to the broken liftstay, with Ao assisting. The rest of the crew, with the exception of Skyla and Swift Wing, spent their day with scrapers, sandpaper and paintbrushes.
"Ah, the thrilling life of a pirate! Invigorating, isn't it, Ms. Ao?" I said, intentionally loud enough to be heard on deck.
"This one can barely contain an inappropriate expression of excitement, Ms. Nightshade," she replied in a deadpan voice as she helped roll my splice smooth with her magic.
We excused Cream Puff early so that he could prepare supper for the crew. Ao, Filigree, Skyla, and I settled in next to the engines and began feeding them mana. The rest of the crew kept on scraping.
After supper, I overheard a very interesting conversation.
Daisy (who had been given special dispensation to keep her non-pirate name), shyly approached Filigree and said, "May I ask you something?"
Filigree smiled at her. "Of course! You can ask me anything you'd like!"
"I was wondering why you don't sing as you charge the crystals. My overseer would have beaten me if I had forgotten to sing."
Just when I thought I couldn't despise that Celestia-forsaken world any more…
"That's horrible!" Filigree gasped. "They forced you to sing for them?"
"Oh, no! Not for them! For the crystals!"
"Ah… what?"
I decided it was time to butt in. "You sing to the crystals as you charge them?"
Daisy jumped and squeaked when I spoke to her. "Oh! M-Ms. Nightshade! You startled me!"
"Sorry. Now what about the singing?"
"Well, it's what we do. All the unicorns, I mean. We're taught the song when we're very young."
"Would you sing it for me, please?"
"Yes, ma'am," she said, and walked away from me.
I was nonplused for a second and then realized she was heading for the forward starboard engine. She settled in next to the open access hatch and began to sing. It was a slow, gentle tune, hardly more complex than an exercise practicing scales, really. The words were just nonsense syllables, Ah na la re, Ah ba ha fe… It was in common time, all quarter notes, something that would be boring for anypony but a beginning student of music.
But it was pleasant and soothing. After the first few measures, Daisy lit her horn and began to feed mana into the engine crystal. The flow of her magic was as smooth as silk.
I was impressed. I hadn't previously taken epithaumic factors into account when dealing with power crystals. Back home, charging crystals was a simple matter of power and time; other elements had so little effect as to be easily discounted. But on that low-magic world, any slight advantage or improvement in the process—like a musical meditation technique—would make a significant difference.
"Thank you, Daisy," I said. "You can stop now."
She let her magic fade, but kept singing for a few more measures afterward. "Was that alright, Ms. Nightshade? I can keep going for as long as you'd like."
"We'll put you on charging duty on your next watch. Go ahead and get some rest now."
"I'll walk with you, " Filigree volunteered. "You might need help hanging your hammock."
A half hour later, Filigree still hadn't returned to the main deck and I heard the soft notes of Daisy's song floating up from the crew quarters... in a duet. Oh, fickle stallions! Forgetting his devotion to his pirate princess so soon? Well, Daisy was quite a pretty little thing.
Thinking of pretty little things,[3] I made Swift Wing return to his bunk in the Second Mate's cabin and cast another series of healing spells on his wing.
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[3] Such an observation was in no way disloyal. Luna and I have an understanding. Appreciation of the visual aspects of other ponies was completely acceptable. And since we were both accomplished shapeshifters, mental notes reserved for later reference were not uncommon.
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I had about four hours before I went on watch, and it would have been wise to get some sleep before then, but Daisy's little revelation had gotten me thinking. I spent those hours disassembling the baron's broken gun and carefully examining each part of it.
What I found was well worth losing sleep for.
I won't bother to go into details of the chemo-thaumic interactions in regard to metallic contacts involved in mana flow mechanisms.[4] Suffice it to say that the second most suitable material for contact points is gold, and even that corruption-resistant metal degrades over time and wastes a measurable amount of mana with each connection or disconnection.
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[4] Somepony has written "Oh, thank Celestia!" in the margin of my manuscript, and the quillwork looks suspiciously like Rainbow Dash's. This is what comes of asking one's friends to act as pre-readers.
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The most desireable metal—one that neither degrades nor wastes mana—is an alloy known as orichalcum. Anypony who is neither a magical historian nor a thaumic material specialist can be forgiven for not recognising the name. The secret of its making was lost during the exodus to Equestria before the three tribes united. Even Starswirl was unable to recreate it.
It might seem like a trivial task to experiment with proportions and temperatures until the metal was reproduced, but there was another factor that eluded even the most persistent alchemist. It was some sort of magic, of course, but that left nearly limitless possibilities to be explored.
In the vaults beneath Canterlot, there is a strategic reserve of the alloy, amounting to a little less than five pounds. It's worth somewhere upwards of three hundred million bits.
The contact points in the gun were solid chunks of orichalcum. Nearly two ounces by my rough estimate. When I dragged the other guns out of the arms locker, I confirmed that the baron's weapon was not an anomaly. All of them used solid orichalcum contact points, and the larger ones had the delicate parts of their waveguides made of the stuff. The amount of the metal aboard Nebula could have bought a dozen Canterlot mansions. After sharing out the profit back home, everypony aboard would be remarkably wealthy.
All we had to do was sneak into the heart of a hostile empire, find and steal some ridiculously valuable gems without having access to high-level magic, and get away without being shot to pieces.
Simple.
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