//------------------------------//
// Trail of Blood 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

With a grinding of winches, two metal cables lifted the skiff from its prow and stern, hauling it out of the water and up to the frigate. It was devoid of ponies, all the mares either hovering or having been carried if they couldn't fly on their own.

Valey raised an eyebrow as she landed on the deck, following her purple-maned host's lead and deciding not to speak. As long as she kept her mouth shut and didn't reveal that she didn't know their squeaky eee language, nobody seemed inclined to believe she didn't belong there. Talking was what tipped her off to the pirates before, at least...

Several more mares wandered over from elsewhere on the ship and started a harsh conversation with Valey's mares, but hers moved as a group and quickly made the others shrug and give up. Purple-mane swaggered over and gave Valey a tap on the shoulder.

"You need a name," Valey muttered under her breath as she was nudged toward a nearby entrance, decorated with eerie wooden trim. "Think I'm gonna call you Grapejuice."

"Sick," Grapejuice muttered back, trying and somehow succeeding to put a casual wing over Valey's back even though she stood quite a few inches shorter. "I love it."

Valey blinked and rolled with it, walking where the small mare guided her with the rest of the posse split up between the front and back, only the most wounded staying behind. The room was long and narrow, spanning the width of the ship and having multiple exits to the deck, heavy racks of weapons covering the walls between them. An array of thick wooden tables were stacked against the far wall, and at least three staircases left the room, two downwards on the sides and one going up from the middle. Valey raised an eyebrow at the middle one, figuring it was the way to go.

"Nah, babe." Grapejuice patted her with her tail. "That one goes up to the stupid bridge. Nothing but controls and navigators up there. Important stuff's what you get below, if you know what I mean."

"Bananas, you're touchy-feely," Valey whispered back. "Aren't you clowns all supposed to be terrified of me, or something?"

"You betcha." Grapejuice winked. "But how many times can you say you've been offed by a demigoddess? This girl's going out with no regrets!"

Valey stared at her, then at all the other mares, most of whom were watching the interaction in fright. Well, she had chosen the one she thought was cutest, so this one must have stood out for a reason... "Yeah, fine, whatever. Look, I'm not usually in the business of-"

A mare came rolling down the central staircase, eyes wide and lifeless, looking like she had been ran completely through. Everyone froze.

"Eeeee!" One mare barked a command, and another jumped for a switch on the wall. Flick! Flick! Flick! They toggled it rapidly, but nothing happened, the other ponies who were using the room as an armory growing alarmed as well.

"Uhh." Grapejuice nudged Valey, clinging a little closer to her. "That's supposed to be the emergency alarm for intruders and other idiots. In case you were wondering. Looks like it's busted!"

"Alright," Valey ducked her way out from under the wing, cracking her forelegs and stretching. Her cutie mark was tingling, but she thought that was just being on the ship... "Dumping corpses down stairways isn't the norm for a place like this, I take it?"

All the mares blinked at her, and there were a few slowly-shaken heads. "Some chick that high up the food chain?" Grapejuice shrugged. "Nah, not really."

Valey sighed, then growled. "High-ranking, huh? And that's the way to the bridge? Look, if your stupid command structure gets decapitated right when I'm trying to search this ship and get my saddlebags back, I'm gonna be ticked. You all can do whatever. I'm off to clean some clocks."

She dashed toward the stairs, jumped the corpse, and flapped her way up, checking over her shoulder to see that at least five mares including Grapejuice were following. Good.

"Eeeee, or something!" Valey yelled, flipping onto her hooves as she landed in the next room... only to find herself with no one to talk to. It was square and filled with round tables, and the few ponies who were there - mostly stallions - sat slumped in their seats, unmoving.

Another staircase, this one switchback, went further up at the opposite side, and Valey sniffed, glaring down at a freshly-laid trail of blood from that one to the one she had entered by. The dead mare must have dragged herself down this way before croaking, somehow... Her eyes turned up to the far stairs again as her cohort assembled behind her, the vast majority of the mares eventually catching up and still there.

"No alarms, lots of dead dudes..." Valey frowned harder. There had been another ship, right? Looked like a merchant ship. Probably a standard pirate robbery. There had also been whatever was burning in the sky, which hopefully wasn't an airship but very well might have been. Cannon fire. She thought she had seen one more mass floating in the water. "You guys picked on some ship that could fight back, didn't you?"

"Alarm's not working, yo," Grapejuice murmured nervously, starting to get clingy again. "If you wanna use your invincible powers to get us outta here, dibs on coming first..."

"Not without my saddlebags," Valey growled, picking up her pace again, Grapejuice this time dragging herself along with her. "And everything in them! And I don't like this at all!"

Grapejuice hopped as Valey tried to take the next staircase, somehow climbing onto her back and sitting there like a proud, anxious rider. "Take a bath before you do that!" Valey hissed, but she was light as a feather and not worth the effort of shaking off for now.

The next room was equally empty, though looked far more official. As long as the previous two put together, it sat directly over them, a row of windows on the far end looking back out to the deck. In the middle was a lone staircase that turned around again, and another mare lay collapsed on her way from there to the rest of the ship, still bleeding out. Frowning, Valey briefly stopped to inspect her... Claw marks. She had been slashed, then pierced, by something very sharp.

She glanced at the staircase, the ceiling of the room beyond illuminated by flickering manalight that matched what she knew about terminal displays. Danger radiated down from it; something strong was up there.

"Would you please get off?" Valey whispered, checking the windows first. They provided a good sight of the happenings on the rest of the ship, and she could see quite a few batponies milling about on the deck. Their air presence looked like it had decreased significantly, and she thought there was a note of panic to the motions...

"Sorry, girl." Grapejuice shrugged, still large enough that her hindquarters dangled freely despite her best efforts to fit on Valey's back. "Nothing doing."

"Uh huh." Valey shadow snuck, trying to ditch her... but she snuck too, and was still there when she got back up. "Yeah, look, being able to dodge anything doesn't really work when some urchin is grappling me. You want me to save your butt, let me do my thing. That's, like... a divine decree, or whatever I get to do here."

That worked. Grapejuice slid off, giving an ears-folded glance that was somewhere between apologetic and satisfied. No regrets, she said. Right...

"Cool. Still stay right behind me." Valey nodded at her, then started up the final staircase.





She had guessed right about the terminals. Above a circular array of windows winging the room was an angled ring of screen panels, all connected to camera feeds from elsewhere in the ship. Several showed no commotion, several showed scrambling batponies, and a few showed only refracted, teal-tinted light, like their lenses had been cracked.

Below the windows was a ring of control panels, and those had seats, all unattended. Each one had a mare laying beneath it, shivering and bound with their eyes squeezed shut. The only seat that was occupied was the grandest, facing forward with its back to the staircase, and a rhythmic clicking came from the controls in front of it.

"Veto this alarm... veto that alarm... Heeheehee..." Click. Click. Click.

Valey cleared her throat, really hoping the occupant wasn't who she thought it was.

Slowly, the chair swung around, until there was a sudden drawing of breath and a flashing of teeth. "Well well well! Valey, right? I remember you! Who knew you were a pirate?"