"...I remember Valey telling me about him," Amber groaned, standing with everyone else and staring up at a board pinned in the intersection of three hallways. They were hardly the only ones interested in it, several other fighters and bystanders frequently wandering past or standing around for gossip, so no one intended to stay there and use it as a place for discussing sensitive information. But that didn't change what it said.
"Who gives their name as Grandpapa?" Shinespark asked, raising an eyebrow. "Aside from him, apparently..."
Gerardo cleared his throat. "Actually, adopting an alias is a very frequent technique for the tournament in order to protect one's relations from undue attention like we've fallen victim to..."
Slipstream giggled uncertainly. "I'm imagining someone naming their kid that..."
"Well then!" Felicity daintily coughed. "Since it sounds as though you're all more than familiar, I don't see any reason to stand around discussing things here? Perhaps somewhere more private?"
The conversation moved its way back to the private box, and eventually Shinespark flashed her horn and closed the door, satisfied that no one was spying on them. "So," she said with a frown. "The pony Valey is up against was good enough to knock her completely out of the fight without her even knowing she was in danger the last time they met. He's a Mistvale Monk, and you're confident he's a better fighter than you and you can't beat him." She glanced at Felicity. "Is that right?"
Felicity nodded, seating herself with a relaxed huff. "That's more or less the gist of things, yes. Which isn't to say I'm helpless, but I'm better at using my skills for... Shall we say other things?"
Shinespark returned the nod. "Then now would be a very good time to tell us everything you can about how Mistvale arts work, what their weaknesses are, and how we could counter them."
"Well..." Felicity took a breath. "They're a combination of magic and careful knowledge of the equine body, knowing how the right pressure to some spots is able to affect things that are completely unrelated... Much of the magic has to do with emotions and states of mind. It's very different from a constant, external exertion like a unicorn horn, and it's worth mentioning that this component only works for sarosians, so I won't be able to teach you any for your own uses. Imagine, say... holding your will in a ball around your hoof, and using it like a spike or dagger."
Shinespark blinked, leaning in. "An invisible emotional dagger? There's an interesting metaphor..."
"And quite an imperfect one," Felicity assured her, lifting a hoof. "May I?"
"As long as you don't do anything permanent..." Shinespark looked down at herself.
Felicity paused for a moment, then gracefully lunged forward, moving with a speed far greater than befitting her pampered appearance. A hoof struck Shinespark's chest, making her arch her back, and then three more rained down along the top of her spine. She blinked, eyes constricting as her friends looked on... and then stood there, not wincing, staggering or falling.
"That's... weird," Shinespark murmured, standing and staring blankly for a moment. "Like my body wanted to do its own thing for a moment. I felt a really strong urge to just... roll in the grass." She looked down. "Even though there's no grass here. That's strange..."
Everyone split their gazes between Shinespark and Felicity for answers, the batpony nodding at Shinespark approvingly. "That's quite the self-control, darling. And yes, these arts, shall we say... compel your body to follow through on some emotional urge, in the same way that you instruct it to do everything you normally think of yourself as doing. Combat applications of that typically involve anywhere from making you do something to give your opponent an opening to... well, quite literally making you damage yourself internally or simply lock up." Felicity grimaced for a moment, then her smile returned. "But you can probably see how a creative mare could find more uses for such a talent than pure destruction?"
Maple tilted her head, a nagging idea biting at the edge of her mind. "And you compared it to an emotional knife? Do you know if you could just make someone's body stop trying at all?"
"Stop trying?" Felicity blinked. "A severe depression or nihilism? That would be very difficult, considering you're effectively trying to force a conflicting impulse on someone against their own desires. The trained masters know that trying to fight someone's willpower with effects of brute force is useless, since even the most determined soul is just asking for someone stronger to rise up and fight them off. The trick for combat is to force ponies to do things they either don't notice until it's too late or fail to understand how to fight. The wrong combination of muscle twitches to lock up someone's back, an inability to relax tension around a weak spot... and all combined with the physical effects of careful hoofstrikes as well. Overriding someone's desire to act in any way sounds completely impossible. Why do you ask?"
Maple frowned. "You mean completely implausible, right? That if someone or something was strong enough, they could use this to just... make you quit?"
Felicity raised an eyebrow at her. "Darling, you sound like you have a specific example in mind."
Shinespark nodded warily. "And how possible would it be to compel someone to die?"
Felicity's brow narrowed. "These are far darker questions than most usually like to answer... Yes, it's theoretically possible, and no, unless you completely broke someone's spirit and will to go on, anyone would be able to fight something like that off. What are you all even getting at?"
"Well?" Shinespark looked up at Gerardo. "I'm willing to bet we just found out more about how that sword of yours works."
"A sword?" Felicity leaned in in interest as Gerardo withdrew the blade.
"Hmm... This?" He turned it over several times in his talons, the black blade gleaming over a black haft with its signature triangular hole, looking as much as it ever did like something belonged inside. "You're suggesting it functions somehow similarly to the Mistvale arts? Not a comparison I'd ever actually considered before. Then again, neither do I know an extensive amount about Mistvale." He flipped the sword again. "This could potentially give us an edge, carrying it into a fight with that stallion, as well..."
Shinespark winced. "Provided it doesn't kill him like all the pirates we used it on in the pirate ship."
"Excuse me?" Felicity tilted her head. "You have a magic sword that does what? Might I be bold enough to ask for an explanation?"
"...Sure." Shinespark sighed, then passed it back to Gerardo. "The sword is magic. No one knows how it works. It can cut any nonliving material, and passes through creatures like it's an illusion, but it paralyzes you where it touches. Legs, you lose just those, barrel, it's the waist down. Chest or neck, your entire body. And it lasts for at least a week."
Maple nodded, continuing for her. "Amber and I have had it used on us before. I... used to struggle with the kind of depression that would keep you in bed all day, because you'd open your eyes and tell yourself to get up and you just wouldn't. It reminded me of that, a lot, being stabbed by the sword. I could think and hear and move my eyes, and I still breathed, just couldn't bring myself to do anything no matter how much everything I cared about depended on it."
"Yep." Amber put a hoof of solidarity on her back. "I voluntarily tried it to see what it was like, and it was weird. Didn't affect my mind, but my body?" She shook her head. "Sounds a lot like what you just described, actually. Like I couldn't move because nothing happened when I tried to make myself."
Shinespark swallowed. "And when we tried using it on batpony pirates in Goldoa, it made them lethargic and less willing to put effort into anything, and eventually explode and disappear."
Felicity watched the sword with a slack jaw. "...Where in the Griffon Empire did you get such a thing?"
"Varsidel." Gerardo shrugged. "I bought it off a child merchant who claimed to be selling her enchantress mother's wares in a shady backwater bazaar. In my defense, I knew it was a rip-off, but really couldn't take my boat with me, and a cool-looking faulty magic sword is still a cool-looking sword. Knowing how it works now, I'm absolutely certain she stole it from someone, but the trail ends there. This would have been several years ago."
"I-I..." Felicity regarded it uncertainly. "Well, I appreciate your trusting me enough to tell me the details on a weapon like this? It sounds like a major tactical advantage to be kept under wraps, regardless of how it actually works. Now, what was I saying about Monk arts?"
Maple shrugged. "You said what they can do. What's the best way to defend against them?"
"Three ways, really." Felicity nodded. "The easiest and most obvious is to not get hit in the first place. You can also hope your opponent is an unskilled novice who doesn't know what they're doing and gives you impulses you can easily fight off, and finally you can know enough about the arts yourself to fix whatever damage is caused to you before it becomes too debilitating. But I've heard of this Grandpapa, and he definitely knows what he's doing, and as none of you are sarosians I believe all but the first are out of the picture."
Shinespark winced. "Great. Can you block the hits with armor?"
"A very effective way of doing things." Felicity nodded. "Granted, most masters are going to be aware of that and have other tricks up their sleeves to counter an armored foe, so you couldn't count your victories too early." She looked appreciatively at Nyala. "You would be quite hard to dismantle, I'm willing to wager."
Nyala looked away. "I was hoping not to. I don't know anything about a fight..."
Shinespark sat back, ears folded. "Well. Too bad Grenada took my suit of armor with her when she ran away, then. That's unfortunate." She gritted her teeth. "...What else?"
"You could sabotage your opponent," Jamjars pointed out from nearby, having kept her silence for the entire conversation. "Why has nobody brought that up yet?"
Maple smiled ruefully. "With the amount of time we have, eliminating him outside the ring would probably be just as hard as inside it, and a lot less safe if we lose."
"Then I am afraid, darlings," Felicity sighed, "that you're rapidly running out of options. If you need to discuss things amongst yourselves, I'll be nearby. And don't forget, much as I'd like to help you and work off some of my sister's debt, there are no invalid options. Even... retreat."
Everyone looked at each other as she shadow snuck away beneath the door, and no one wanted to be the first to speak.