//------------------------------//
// History Catches Up 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

FLAAAAASH!

In a jet of light, Valey streaked across the room, trailing a green stripe from her mane and tail as she jetted towards the raised central platform where Navarre stood, frozen. Her cutie mark tingled and her nose burned with the increasing proximity to Stanza, but that machine was inert and it could wait. She had one target, and let out a reverberating yell as she dropped onto the platform, swinging around behind him to cut off his most obvious avenue of escape.

Navarre didn't even try to run. He sat back, put his forehooves in the air, and closed his eyes, a grimace of resignation and acceptance on his face.

"...Huh?" Valey raised an angry eyebrow, circling him with a wide stance so she could keep tabs on as many of the room's scientists as possible. "You're just going to sit there. Really?"

"I know who you are," Navarre sighed in an airy voice that bordered on girly. "Admiral Valey of Ironridge. Artifice of Luna. My last and accidentally-greatest work. I've been expecting you for a while."

"Uh huh." Valey patted her flank. "And you apparently know what I do, too, because you didn't even bother setting a trap for me. Then you probably know what I want, too." She glared at Navarre's body, making a point of staring at it without staring at the pony inside.

Navarre sighed. "Get on with yourself. There's nothing I can do to stop it."

Valey twitched. "You know, given why I want your head in the first place, I seriously doubt that. You know how to get around my cutie mark. Where's the other boot? Why are you just giving up!?"

"No, I don't know," Navarre countered, looking like she was dragging out something that should have been over instantaneously. "Ever since I awoke in my new form without memories, you've been the unknown factor. A terror of my past, something I created with methods and science now lost to time. Every second of my time since has been spent on self-preservation, trying to forestall this inevitable reunion. And now I have failed, and my time has run out."

Valey continued circling. "Well, if that isn't vaguely depressing, I don't know what is. Bananas, are you going to try and guilt me into leaving you alone?"

Navarre airily sighed. "Even with your aid, I couldn't save myself from the debts I've incurred in seeking survival and absolution, Artifice. Nor would I presume to desire it. Look at me and behold! Granted a fresh slate by my own last resort, a freedom from anything I may have incurred but you... I turned to my old notes for salvation. I resurrected a demon of the ancients in hopes it would protect me from your return, yet was left frozen and alone in seconds. Now, my soul belongs to Izvaldi... It will be a mercy to the world and myself once you lay my body to final rest in the tomb it deserves."

Valey's eyes widened, and she slapped him. "Bananas no!" She bared her teeth, glaring. "Stop being dramatic, and don't even think about holding my sister's body hostage! I don't want you dead, I want you gone!"

"Your... sister's..." Navarre's eyes widened in sudden, terrified comprehension. "Oh, dear Flame Face..."

"You didn't even know!?" Valey blanched. "Knock that off. You just said you read notes or something. And stop calling me an artifice! I'm not artificial!"

"You want this body," Navarre breathed. "That's why. I always knew you were after me, but that's why. You're going to separate..." His eyes unfocused in abject horror. "Oh no..."

"Buh?" Valey tilted her head... and suddenly her cutie mark flared with lethal danger. Before she could even react, Navarre had moved, kicking her with all his strength and throwing her from the platform. "Hey! You-"

The world went green.

All the lights fluctuated in sync, dropping their sterile white color and plunging the room into a negative light where shadows seemed brighter and light things were dark. Valey instantly became aware as she caught herself in midair that the rest of the workers and scientists had fled... and then an eldritch groan from the rail cart captured her attention. Stanza was moving.

With a single stroke of its wing against keys, the broken alicorn blasted brittle air from its organ pipes, creaking in its stone throne. Stanza's eyes gleamed emerald as it cracked and straightened, metal braces twisting themselves as its broken limbs raised it into a sitting position. Fully upright, it regarded the central platform with a deathly presence, and the air before it shimmered in a cylinder stretching all the way to the wall. Valey squinted; within the cylinder, Navarre was completely petrified. She flipped back to where her friends were waiting, less endangered but still on edge.

The crown stabbed into Stanza's chest glowed, fluctuated, and burst.

A crackling beam of green and black energy as wide as Valey's barrel lanced from it, seeming to appear in midair between Stanza and Navarre rather than take time to fly from one to the other. Navarre was impacted, lifting into the air as his body danced and burned and blackened with green flames. Holes began to melt into his lower legs, his fur congealed into a hard black shell, and a jagged, pit-riddled horn burst from his forehead, eyes losing their pupils and becoming one solid color. His mane and tail froze into translucent frills, and a cutie mark burst from his chest, glowing with color as the beam retracted and drew it back into the crown on Stanza's chest. When the display was done, Stanza's beam faded and the lights slowly returned to normal, though a glow of color remained emanating from the crown where the stolen cutie mark hovered. Nyala's empty body remained stuck in place, a faint shimmering in the air still holding it down: a shimmering that also covered Stanza's stone horn. The statue had a colorless telekinetic field.

"That... That thing's operational..." Valey breathed, watching Stanza with wide eyes.

"Could it do that before?" Maple stood strong in place, bolstered by her harmonic energies from the windigo heart and holding Starlight close.

"No," Starlight answered, meeting Stanza's glowing eyes with a glare. "It couldn't."

A low note emanated from the organ, wretched and mournful yet somehow tinged with pride as Nyala's shell rocked in its invisible grasp, as if to say, HERE.

"This is concerning," Gerardo remarked far too calmly for the situation. "Very, very concerning..."

"Is that so?" a new voice said from behind them. "I thought it was a wonderful showing, that machine proving it's good for something after all. How many birds did that kill with one stone? I don't think I can keep count."

Everyone tried to whirl without taking their eyes off Stanza, except Valey. She didn't need to. "Yo, Chauncey. What's up?"

Then Chauncey was between them and Stanza, leaving their backs to the exit without any need to watch two things at once. He regarded the statue and its hovering mote of cutie mark light, then turned to face them, the crown symbol emblazoned on his high collar and miter suddenly recognizable as the same spindly, twisted crown embedded in Stanza's chest. Chauncey regarded everyone for a moment, then sighed. "I'm not entirely pleased with the way this has gone down."

"Keep talking," Valey said. "I dunno what's going on, but I came to bust someone up and I haven't busted anyone up yet. And what I want is right over there."

"I figured as much." Chauncey shrugged beneath his robes. "You know, when a party of patriots from another country wanders into my realm, steals my experiments and interferes with my plans, I feel I have every right to be mad. Haven't I gone out of my way time and time again to help you lot? I've welcomed you into Izvaldi, forgiven you your role in Puddles' disappearance, done my part to rig things in the tournament towards your favor, and you repay me by sneaking into my facility in Gyre, stealing Puddles again and messing up my teleporter. Now you come here to make threats?"

Gerardo cleared his throat. "Excuse me, but good endeavors do not abate the presence of other more sinister actions! What is... all of this?" He waved a talon at everything.

Starlight glared at him. "I didn't sneak into your Gyre tunnels! Someone knocked me out and locked me up in there!"

Chauncey sighed. "I don't know what I have to do to work with you or earn your trust. Fortunately for us all, I'm in a very forgiving mood, so I'm willing to overlook the way your demise of my windigo cost me the utility of my best scientist and several years' worth of effort. But I'm tired of all this mistrust between us. Do you look cornered to yourselves? I'm letting you walk away at any time. Name any other peace offerings you'd like, and I'll give it to you."

"Stanza." Valey snapped her wing, pointing at the dark tunnel in the wall Stanza's rails led to. "Not in the room. Not a weapon like that."

"Easier done than said." Chauncey closed his eyes, and Stanza's platform rumbled, a mournful note playing out as the alicorn was carried toward the wall. "You'll want to grab that body to stop it from flying away after his grasp breaks."

"With pleasure!" Gerardo swooped ahead of Valey, using his larger bulk to pin Nyala's empty form down as Stanza's field vanished. "I have her!"

Valey eyed the retreat warily. "Cool," she slowly said. "Cool. Now I want you to take that body, take the piece of moon glass containing its real soul, and put them back together. Give me back my sister."

Chauncey fixed her with a hard look. "Regrettably, that is beyond my ability."

Valey glared and tapped a hoof.

"But I can provide an explanation," Chauncey continued. "I'm surprised you didn't ask for one earlier. I have nothing to hide from you, here, and am willing to explain everything." He started walking back toward the observation platform where Gerardo held Nyala, completely concealed save for his face by his robes. "The manipulation of brands is a subject of extreme interest to me for reasons I will reveal. Obsidian can extract them from sarosians. If you're from Ironridge, you've likely stumbled across our means of growing properly-attuned bodies around brands encased in obsidian. Stanza is a research project trying to develop a way to remove brands that can be switched on or off, instead of leaving them stuck. But breaking a brand free from its properly-attuned body, outside of a sarosian, is exceedingly difficult. The only known method requires the destruction of a windigo heart. Do you see the problem with this?"

Valey continued tapping.

Chauncey fixed her with his gaze. "You want a sarosian body and a brand inside moon glass to be recombined? Provide me with the time and components, and I will use a blank mare to grow it a body, wait years for the brand to manifest, remove it with a windigo heart and transfer it to its original vessel, then kill the new body so they don't recombine. Tell me this is what you want, and to earn your trust I will do it."

"What?" Valey finally blanched. "Bananas, no, that's messed up! Just do whatever it was they did in Icereach to make me!"

"Then you see the problem," Chauncey whispered. "There's clearly a better, more instantaneous way. Some method of withdrawing brands easily and transferring them from anywhere to anywhere. Unfortunately, Navarre's memory was wiped when he forcibly switched bodies. The stallion I found and brought here on my expedition to investigate Puddles' possession was barely a year old, in memory. And any research notes on the procedure used to assemble you no longer exist." He looked down the tunnel after Stanza and sighed. "And you've rendered my best scientist useless by killing off the windigo that was the base of all his research."

Valey gritted her teeth. "You're going to have to slow down in about a million different directions, buddy, because I'm not following and am not sure I want to."

Chauncey barely acknowledged her. "Stanza was his best attempt to create a machine that could cause that effect. As you just witnessed, Stanza has the power to remove brands... but only from sarosians. That beam fails on obsidian and causes flesh damage to other creature types."

Starlight cleared her throat. "He's saying he doesn't know how to put Nyala back together, Navarre lost his memories just like Nyala did and forgot how to do it too, and they needed Puddles for research on finding that way again."

"That's a succinct way of putting it." Chauncey nodded. "That body is yours. Take it. It's the latest in my series of peace offerings to you. Now, if you ever want to do anything with it..." His eyes thinned. "Let's sit down and have a talk, because we're going to have to work together."